While President Trump threatens to destroy “ONE BRIDGE OR POWER PLANT” in Iran for every shot they take at a ship in the Strait of Hormuz, Americans back home are hoping and praying this folly of a war wraps up yesterday.
Strikes over the weekend brought the death toll for U.S. troops to 18, with 100 more injured; the Strait of Hormuz is essentially closed again, with Iran’s Houthi allies in Yemen threatening to block other oil routes; gas prices are up 16 cents from the average a week ago, 88 cents higher than last year and $1.04 higher than the week before the war, per Politico; and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth admitted in a hearing on Tuesday that the conflict had already cost U.S. taxpayers $37.5 billion — as he asked for $67 billion more.
All of this while no one — not Hegseth, not Trump, not Secretary of State Marco Rubio or Vice President JD Vance — can tell voters how or when we plan to exit this war having achieved anything of long-term significance. It’s the very definition of a quagmire.
Meanwhile, Iran and its dangerous proxies are clearly playing the long game, hoping that upcoming American midterm elections force the U.S. to exit the war we started without accomplishing a single one of our stated objectives — a very real possibility.
Trump is posturing, as he’s wont to do, insisting he’s not influenced by the calendar. “I don’t view it as ‘Gee, we’re having an election in a period of time,’ ” he said on Tuesday. “No, the election — I can’t think about that having to do with this. I think people are very impressed.”
Not so, as a majority of Americans now say the war in Iran was the wrong decision, while a belief that the war is worth the economic cost among Trump’s MAGA base has dropped to just over a third — a 13 point drop in two months.
Voters, Republican lawmakers up for reelection, and the Iranian regime — all united in their hope that Trump can be pushed to the exits by the election politics of an unpopular war.
But for once, I hope Trump isn’t bluffing.
We shouldn’t have entered this war, and we most definitely shouldn’t have entered it without a clear strategy. But here we are, and it’s now our job to leave it responsibly.
What does that mean?
Unfortunately, it means admitting we likely can’t make good on a number of the grandiose promises Trump made to justify the war in the first place. It seems we’ve given up on the idea of regime change and liberating the Iranian people, to name two. But we can and should pursue other objectives that would leave the U.S., our allies, and the region better off.
First and foremost, we must leave with verifiable restraints on and multilateral monitoring of Iran’s nuclear program. If it’s unrealistic or costly to retrieve Iran’s buried uranium cache, we must secure a non-conditional non-proliferation agreement — with teeth.
We must leave having guaranteed unfettered access to shipping routes, from the Strait of Hormuz to the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. Our European, Asian and Gulf allies must be integrated into a joint coalition to protect international shipping lanes from repeated extortion attempts.
And we must leave our regional allies, like Kuwait, protected from retaliatory strikes through binding non-aggression commitments and a long-term off-shore carrier strike group presence to prevent a security vacuum.
This is a far cry from what Trump promised with his ill-advised and ill-prepared blunder of a war — and in the case of Hormuz, it’s merely restoring access we already had before the war. But it’s the least we should accept in our retreat.
As much as we want to get out now, we owe it to our allies, our Gulf partners, our troops — and the Iranian people — to leave this mess of our own making with something to show for it.
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a“ Steel Across America” event ahead of the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11th attacks on the Ellipse near the White House on Sept. 8, 2026 in Washington, D.C. President Trump welcomed 9/ 11 first responders to the Tunnel to Towers Foundation’ s“ Steel Across America” event featuring a 16,900- pound, 21- foot steel beam recovered.
For Trump, even 9/11 is an opportunity
There was a reason organizers of the 9/11 ceremony in Manhattan told President Trump he could not speak at this year’s memorial service.
A good one, it turns out.
Because in a speech he gave on Tuesday in Washington, he did exactly what they were presumably worried about — he made it about himself.
According to The New York Times, Trump had wanted a speaking role at the service, but the National Sept. 11 Memorial and Museum, which oversees the site, said no, as they’ve maintained for the past decade-plus that the venue and event should be nonpartisan.
Trump has long used awful tragedies to either puff himself up, trash political opponents, or sell lies to the American people.
He blamed a deadly plane crash at Washington National Airport last year on diversity, equity and inclusion policies. He blamed Puerto Ricans for the devastation they endured after Hurricane Maria in 2017. He reportedly considered withholding disaster relief after the California wildfires based on the way affected regions voted. In an interview on Fox News meant to commemorate the 75th anniversary of D-Day in Normandy, he used the occasion to slam former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi…with graves of the dead behind him.
And now, as we approach the 25th anniversary of what many New Yorkers consider the darkest day in modern history, Trump has done it again.
He told a rambling, nonsensical story — one he’s told before — about going to Ground Zero just after terrorists flew two commercial jets into the twin towers. In the story, which no one has been able to verify, despite multiple attempts, he says firefighters had to carry him out of One Liberty Plaza, also known as the U.S. Steel Building, because they thought it was about to collapse.
As CNN fact checker Daniel Dale notes, there’s no evidence Trump went into this building, especially at a time when NYPD and NYFD had locked down the area. There’s no evidence that building was collapsing — in fact, it was deemed structurally sound and reopened within two months of the attacks. There’s no evidence he was carried out of it by firefighters.
But the lie isn’t even the worst part. Pretend it was all true — why would the leader of our country, and a New Yorker, decide to make that tragic day about himself?
Because that’s who Donald Trump is. He’s a malignant narcissist.
He’s also, incidentally, a terrible and ineffectual president, who’s made ill-fated decisions that he has to keep defending, and there’s nothing he won’t do to make himself look and feel better.
Within the first two minutes of his speech, he was cravenly using 9/11 to justify and promote his dumb war in Iran — two events separated by 25 years and 6,000 miles.
“And I will tell you, we’re right now fighting because we have a certain nation that wanted a nuclear weapon, they were very close to getting it, and now they have no chance at getting it. They will never have a nuclear weapon. Iran will not have a nuclear weapon. And they’ve been punished greatly. As you know, we’ve really taken it to them.”
As a New Yorker who lived through 9/11, still one of the worst days of my life, I’m utterly sickened by Trump’s crass, political, and self-promotional framing of that awful day.
And I’m relieved he won’t be given a platform to do it again on Friday’s anniversary in lower Manhattan.
Because for Trump, everything is his for the taking, and absolutely nothing is sacred.
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.