About a year ago, the word “panican” entered the MAGA lexicon when Donald Trump chastised Republicans who were concerned about his tariffs, calling them “weak and stupid.” In early February, the word popped up again in a post on the White House website, in which the administration warned Republicans not to worry about snowballing economic concerns, asserting that despite a recent run of bad news, MAGA was still “winning.”
Now it’s been used again, this time on a post to the White House X account declaring “no panicans!,” accompanied by an image of a stealth bomber and the slogan “peace through strength” – a reference to the ongoing war in Iran. While this is an attempt by the administration to keep its base from panicking about the increasingly out-of-control conflict, according to leading historian Heather Cox Richardson, it and other statements pouring from Trump in fact reveal that he himself “seemed to be panicked” over the war and its spiraling consequences.
Trump and his allies are frantic to propagate the impression that all is well and that the US is on the verge of winning the war any day now, but they do so despite strong evidence to the contrary.
As Richardson points out, American intelligence says that the Iranian regime is no closer to falling today than it was at the beginning of the war. Oil, fertilizer, and other essentials have stopped flowing through the Strait of Hormuz, driving up prices for gas, food, and other goods. Gulf partners that were considered increasingly secure in recent years are being pummeled by Iranian missiles and drones. And all of this happens as American casualties continue to climb.
Now Trump is flailing, declaring of anti-war, isolationist America First MAGAs, “THEY ARE NOT MAGA, I AM.” After a year of disparaging allies and potential collaborators around the globe, he’s now asking for their aid, saying “hopefully China, France, Japan, South Korea, the UK, and others” will send military might to open the Strait of Hormuz and help in the fight against Iran (a request that European powers like Germany shot down fast). Then he suggested that media outlets “should be brought up on Charges for TREASON” for reporting war news he didn’t like, and also found time to attack the Supreme Court for deeming his tariffs unconstitutional and accuse the justices of rigging the 2020 election for Joe Biden.
According to Richardson, these are not the words of a president who is confident in how the war is progressing nor of the support he’s receiving for it, but the statements of one who is panicking as his efforts fall apart for all the world to see. It suggests that he himself is the “panican,” and that he isn’t as confident in his decisions as he’d like believed.
As further evidence that he too is beginning to lose faith in his approach to Iran, Richardson cited a statement he made in an interview this week with the Financial Times: “You could make the case that maybe we shouldn’t even be there at all.”
