On Wednesday evening, two historic things happened, almost simultaneously.
First, four courageous astronauts successfully lifted off from Launch Complex 39B at Kennedy Space Center aboard Artemis II, which will attempt the first lunar flyby in more than 50 years.
It was a stunning sight, and one that turned out more than three million people just who watched the official NASA launch broadcast alone.
It recalled a nostalgia for the days of Apollo, which excited and inspired so many Americans, and for just a moment, stirred up the kind of patriotism and hope that’s felt hard to come by in recent months.
In a parallel universe this would have been the perfect moment for the president to address the nation with a soaring speech marking the moment. We could have seen the kind of speech John F. Kennedy gave in 1962, inspiring an anxious nation to believe in possibility and progress amidst a backdrop of Cold War fears.
But that’s not the universe or timeline we’re living in. America is at war, and we don’t really know why.
President Trump finally delivered his first national address more than a month into his self-proclaimed — and unauthorized — “excursion” into Iran, an incursion that’s resulted in numerous U.S. casualties, strangled the free-flow of oil, created turmoil in the markets and world economies, and created fear among the U.S. and our allies that our actions will have dangerous ripple effects in the region and here at home for months, possibly years.
But a speech that was meant to satisfy the concerns of a skeptical public — two-thirds of which disapprove of Trump’s war and don’t believe he has a clear plan — failed to meet the mark.
Despite Trump’s rah-rah declarations of victory and decimation, no one with even a cursory knowledge of Iran’s history and capabilities could believe this reckless and aimless war of attrition is anywhere close to being over.
Offering no real plans to recover the roughly 1,000 pounds of highly enriched uranium buried in the rubble at Natanz and Isfahan, offering no real plans to liberate the people of Iran from a regime that’s thus far no different from the last one, offering no real plans to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and the world’s free flow of oil, Trump blustered, boasted, and balked, all while wagging an indignant finger at our allies for not jumping into this ill-advised quagmire with us.
And in fact, in his attempt to brag about how short this war has lasted, his comparisons to other lengthy conflicts like Vietnam and the Iraq war only reminded Americans how costly and consuming this one is likely to be.
The speech also comes against the backdrop of Trump’s threats to withdraw from NATO, the post-World War II treaty that’s kept Soviet and other tyrant states from attacking the Western alliance for more than 70 years.
While Trump may not understand its importance, the world certainly does, and is collectively rebuking his reckless efforts to weaken the body that is crucial for ensuring our own national security and stability and that of Europe.
But times feel fraught, without question. A corrupt, ignorant, and self-motivated wannabe dictator is prosecuting an ill-advised war using American blood and treasure, all while threatening to isolate our nation and endanger others even further. He’s wreaking economic havoc at home and across the globe, and without much care or consideration.
If we look at this mess Trump’s created too closely or for too long, it feels impossible to have hope for a better tomorrow. Perhaps that’s why now, more than ever, we need to look up and away, toward the stars, where actual heroes are leading the way. We’re all cheering you on, Artemis II.
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.
image of U.S. President Donald Trump is displayed on a digital billboard in Times Square in New York on April 8, 2026.
Trump is stuck between two realities. Neither serves the American people
Normally, I worry that events may overtake a column. But not so with the Iran war.
I don’t worry about running afoul of a headline or Truth Social post from the president because what is said about the situation is no longer very relevant to the reality.
On April 8, Nick Catoggio, my Dispatch colleague, dubbed an earlier stoppage with Iran “Schrödinger’s ceasefire.” This was a reference to the famous thought experiment by the physicist Erwin Schrödinger, who was trying to explain the weirdness of “superpositionality” in quantum physics. A cat in a box is both dead and alive at the same time until you open the box. Schrödinger meant to illustrate the absurdity of the idea that particles aren’t any one thing, but a “cloud of probabilities.”
The Trump administration is stuck in a word cloud of probabilities of his own making. The war is over. The war is on. The war isn’t a war. We have a deal, but we don’t have a deal, but we’re about to have a deal. We destroyed Iran’s military. No, we left it intact. We want regime change. No we don’t. We already accomplished it. We “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program a year ago. We had to go to war in February to prevent nuclear war. The Strait of Hormuz is open, closed, or something in-between. No deal without “unconditional surrender.” Let’s make a deal!
This everything-all-at-once vibe can be disorienting, particularly since most Americans didn’t have a war with Iran on their bingo cards until the shooting had already started. President Trump didn’t prepare the country or consult with Congress beforehand because he thought it would all be a smashing success in a matter of weeks.
The miscalculation that started it all: killing Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and much of Iran’s senior leadership, on the first day of the war. To “the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand,” Trump announced on Feb. 28. “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.”
I support regime change in Iran and shed no tears for Khamenei or his goons. But when you start a war by killing the regime’s top leaders, it’s not unreasonable for the remaining ones to conclude that you really intend regime change.
Khamenei was a murderous fanatic, but he was a fairly cautious one. He liked to threaten closing the Strait of Hormuz or attacking our regional allies, but he was reluctant to actually do it, fearing it would invite a regime change war. The mullahs and IRGC goons believed, not unreasonably, that if they lost their grip on power, they’d be lynched by the Iranian people they’ve brutalized for decades.
By starting with a regime change war, Trump removed any reason for the regime not to go for broke. When you have nothing to lose — particularly when you are a millenarian religious fanatic — a Persian Alamo strategy makes a lot of sense.
So Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz and attacked its neighbors.
But it turns out this wasn’t the Alamo. In the contest of wills, Trump blinked. The Iranian regime’s tolerance for punishment proved — so far — to be greater than Trump’s and that of our gulf allies. Militarily we could finish the job, but that would require ground troops and much greater economic turmoil. In a conflict Trump launched unilaterally without the prior support of Congress, NATO or the American people, Trump doesn’t have the political capital for that.
But that’s only half the problem. Trump wants the war over, but he doesn’t want to pay — militarily, economically, politically — what that would cost. So he wants to make a deal that ends it. But there is no deal available that wouldn’t come at an equally undesirable cost. Any deal that looks like what President Obama struck with the Iranians would be too embarrassing to bear. But the Iranians are convinced that they can get just such a deal, and they’re willing to drag things out as long as it takes.
The result: Trump’s in a box of his own making. He thinks he can talk his way out by simply asserting a reality that doesn’t exist. When the financial markets get nervous, he announces a breakthrough that is, at best, a possibility. When the Iranians agree to a deal that looks similar to one Obama might negotiate, Trump goes back to his threats.
It can’t go on forever. But I’m sure it’ll last until long after this column is forgotten.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.