The Wall Street Journal, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch, one of Donald Trump’s biggest supporters in the media, recently released one of the sharpest and most critical descriptions of a president facing a major crisis that has ever been seen in the American press.
According to senior officials in the administration who spoke to the Journal, when Trump found out that two American pilots were missing after their F-15E jet was shot down over Iran, he went into a state of intense agitation that lasted for several hours.
His outbursts were so disruptive and unhelpful that his own aides had to physically take him out of the situation room. Instead, they began briefing him at set intervals.
This is a shocking moment: the leader of the country was removed from his own war room by his own team.
While his team focused on rescuing the two missing pilots in a dangerous area, Trump was shouting in the nearly empty West Wing about fuel prices and European allies who weren’t supporting his military actions.
His main worry wasn’t the pilots’ safety but how this would impact his political future. Specifically, he was really worried about ending up like Jimmy Carter.
In March, Trump had said, “If you look at what happened with Jimmy Carter… with the helicopters and the hostages, it cost them the election,” adding, “What a mess.”
So, as two American pilots were missing in Iran, the president’s main concern was whether this would hurt his political standing — the same way he had ignored military advice when he decided to start the war in the first place.
One pilot was rescued by the end of the day.
The second crew member was taken out of danger two more days later. Hours after learning that the rescue had been successful, Trump celebrated Easter Sunday by posting a message on his social media platform that included profanity and demanded that Iranians “open the F—n’ Strait, you crazy b—–ds, or you’ll be living in Hell” — and added “Praise be to Allah. President DONALD J. TRUMP.”
When his advisers were worried, Trump said he was trying to appear “unstable and insulting” to push Iran into negotiations.
Then — in perhaps the most revealing moment of the whole story — he immediately asked, “How’s it playing?”
He threatened an entire civilization.
He signed it with a religious message on Easter Sunday to appeal to his own Christian supporters. And his first thought after that was about how it was playing with the public.
On Tuesday, he posted that “a whole civilization will die tonight.”
Then he backed down for the fourth time. Then he told reporters that Iran “had agreed to everything” and called it a “great victory.” Less than 12 hours later, an Iranian Revolutionary Guard ship attacked a tanker in the Strait of Hormuz.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told the Journal that Trump “remained a steady leader our country needs” — of course, if you believe the country needs a leader who was kicked out of the briefing room by his own aides.
Fifty-one lawmakers have introduced a bill to use the 25th Amendment.
Marjorie Taylor Greene called Trump’s threats “evil and madness.” Alex Jones called it a war crime. Now, Rupert Murdoch’s own newspaper is publishing stories from senior officials describing a president who was in a long, emotional outburst, removed from crisis management by his own staff, asking “how’s it playing?” while American pilots were missing in Iran.
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