President Donald Trump has repeatedly insisted that America’s war in Iran is not in fact a war — but he contradicts that in his own rhetoric.
“President Trump said Wednesday he won't call the conflict in Iran a ‘war’ because ‘you are supposed to get approval,’ suggesting the label itself could trigger congressional authority the administration says it doesn't need,” Axios’ Avery Lotz wrote on Thursday. Yet she noted that on that very same day the president referred to the conflict himself as a “war,” such as when he used that term to describe his military offenses in Iran and Venezuela.
At one point during this Thursday address he even said that the "war essentially ended a few days after we went in." Earlier, during a Monday speech in Memphis, he similarly said that Democrats call it a “war” and he calls it a “military operation,” but then noted that he had Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s title changed to Secretary of War because "we like the sound of it better."
Lotz listed other terms Trump has used to describe his mission including “major combat operations," "a little excursion,” "an excursion that will keep us out of a war” and “OUR HOSTILITIES [with Iran] IN THE MIDDLE EAST."
Trump’s own MAGA movement is turning against him because of the Iran war. For example right-wing podcaster Joe Rogan, a prominent Trump supporter who backed him during the 2024 election, admitted shortly after Trump invaded Iran that many of the president’s antiwar supporters felt “betrayed.”
Well, it just seems so insane, based on what he ran on. I mean, this is why a lot of people feel betrayed, right?” Rogan said. “He ran on, ‘No more wars,’ ‘End these stupid, senseless wars,’ and then we have one that we can’t even really clearly define why we did it.”
Joe Kent, President Donald Trump’s former National Counterterrorism Center Director, clearly felt the same way, resigning earlier in March from his post on the grounds that the war in Iran was immoral. On Wednesday he told right-wing podcaster Tucker Carlson the war occurred because of Israel and a “foreign nexus” assassinated the right-wing activist Charlie Kirk.
“Things really got going on Tuesday when Kent told conservative writer (and two-time failed California gubernatorial candidate) Michael Shellenberger he’d be willing to testify in accused Kirk murderer Tyler Robinson’s defense that the FBI botched the investigation,” wrote The Bulwark's conservative pundit Will Sommer about Kent. “Kent told Shellenberger he was warned his own inquiry into Kirk’s murder—which he operated from his government post, separately from the FBI—could hurt the prosecution against Robinson.”
Kent then told Carlson, “I was definitely warned of that over and over again. If I end up having to [be called as a witness], then I’ll do it. It’s not something I’m seeking.”