If you ask President Trump, he’ll tell you we’ve already won the war in Iran.
When asked for an update by Axios on Wednesday, Trump responded with the kind of upbeat nonchalance and flippant boastfulness you’d usually see when asked about the progress on one of his hotels.
“The war is going great,” he said. “We are way ahead of the timetable. We have done more damage than we thought possible, even in the original six-week period.” He then offered that there’s “practically nothing left to target.”
As for an ending? “Any time I want it to end, it will end.”
How, exactly, is it “going great”? What is the “timetable”? Shouldn’t it end when the mission is achieved and not when Trump simply wants it to?
His administration has simultaneously given no rationale to justify our strikes on Iran — failing to prove we were the target of an imminent attack — and all the reasons why we had to, from regime change, to oil, to support for Israel.
It’s sent mixed messages on timing, promising both that it’s practically over and that it could take a while. And it’s been unreliable in its own accounting of what’s actually happened. Have we decimated Iran’s nukes? (I thought we’d already done that.) And who is responsible for the attack that killed 160 schoolchildren in Iran?
We still have no answers to these important questions. When pressed on the school attack, for one, Trump has said everything from Iran was responsible to, most recently, “I don’t know about it.” But an initial report determined the U.S. was at fault, the result of a targeting mistake.
As for the nukes, which the White House declared“ obliterated” last June, our own intelligence assessment just found that Iran can still access about 60% of its enriched material stored at Esfahan. As the non-partisan Arms Control Association notes, “Although strikes can set back Iran’s nuclear program and destroy key infrastructure…military force cannot eliminate Tehran’s proliferation risk.”
Trump’s version of events, as is so often the case, isn’t based on facts, but wishcasting, projection, bombast and bluffs.
And abroad, it isn’t working.
In France, for example, Le Monde derides Trump’s treatment of the war as “spectacle,” lambasting his “celebratory tone.” It noted his grotesque joke that it’s “more fun” to sink Iranian warships than to seize them,” and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s boast that “we are punching [the Iranians] while they’re down, which is exactly how it should be.”
In The Guardian, columnist Rafael Behr points out the chaos and incompetence of Trump’s war: “Regime change was the plan, but Trump finds it easier to change plans than regimes. He says he has won, but also that he has more winning to do. This is the familiar stage of rhetorical climbdown, indicating dawning awareness that a problem is more complicated than the president initially thought. Complexity resists his whim. It bores him.”
And in Germany’s Bild, Europe’s highest-circulating newspaper, the question is pointed: “Whose pockets is Trump filling with bombs?” It declares “the clearest winner in the biggest Middle East conflict in decades is the U.S. arms industry” and Trump’s sons, who are conveniently now in the drone business.
The world can see through Trump’s charade, but do American voters? Most polls show more voters oppose the war than support it, but by a slim margin.
That margin will widen with time, most certainly. And then Trump’s slick sales pitch will be less and less effective. Or maybe I’m the one who’s wishcasting.
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.
Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner speaks to voters at a town hall at the Elks Lodge 188 on June 7, 2026, in Portland, Maine.
McConnell and Platner both feel entitled
The two men could not be more different. One, a Republican, octogenarian, seven-term Southern senator, the other a progressive, millennial Maine oysterman who’s never spent a day in elected office.
But Mitch McConnell, the senior senator from Kentucky who’s been MIA for the past few weeks and Graham Platner, the Maine Senate candidate who’s facing calls to drop out of his race against Sen. Susan Collins, apparently do have something in common: an outsized sense of entitlement.
McConnell, who is 84 and not running for reelection, has been hospitalized for three weeks, and yet we still don’t fully know what he was admitted for or what his condition is. Per CNN, “his office has not disclosed a medical reason for the hospitalization or provided specifics on his health status beyond saying last week that he ‘continues to improve’ and ‘is working closely with his staff on Kentucky and Senate matters.’ ”
While several legislators have said they’ve talked to him and insist he sounds strong, others have said they are completely in the dark. One MAGA influencer, Laura Loomer, posted ”High level source close to the White House tells me ‘Mitch McConnell is officially brain dead. He’s not coming back.’ ”
Meanwhile, up in Maine, Platner has been artfully dodging calls from his own party to drop out of his race after several allegations of misconduct from women, including a sexual assault allegation from a former girlfriend, came to light. While Platner, who has managed to survive a Nazi-tattoo scandal, a sexting scandal, and several old tweets scandals, denies the allegations, he has not quit.
High-profile Democrats including Sens. Bernie Sanders and Chuck Schumer, the latter of whom had unsuccessfully hand-selected Maine Gov. Janet Mills to face Collins instead of Platner, have urged Platner to drop out, while other Dems have accused him of trying to influence the picking of his replacement.
Maine Democratic Party Executive Director Devon Murphy-Anderson released a statement Tuesday, which said in part:
“Unfortunately, Graham Platner’s team has repeatedly reached out to us in an attempt to put their thumb on the scale of what this process looks like. We have repeatedly reiterated to Graham Platner’s team that they have no role in determining our next Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate nor in determining what this process looks like.”
Both incidents show a deep lack of accountability to voters, who in one case deserve to know whether their senator is capable of performing his duties, and in another deserve a candidate who isn’t being accused of crimes, bigotry and deception.
The offensive and odious entitlement of both McConnell and Platner stands out not because it is particularly unique among today’s political class. Tom Kean, the New Jersey GOP congressman, missed more than 100 votes, only sharing after a three-month mystery absence that he was dealing with depression.
Former President Joe Biden’s Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin failed to disclose a hospitalization for prostate cancer surgery, flouting the established rules for Cabinet members and senior U.S. officials.
From Biden’s insistence on running for reelection despite his obvious cognitive and political weaknesses to Trump’s brazen flouting of laws and norms, few politicians seem to appreciate that their public service job comes with responsibilities to constituents, including transparency and honesty.
But both parties increasingly justify the chicanery, because the stakes of winning elections and keeping power are simply too high. But that’s no excuse. If we’ve learned anything over the past decade, it’s that character and accountability do, in fact, matter. And when we, the voters, stop caring about it, well, so do they.
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.