Donald Trump, the candidate elected to end forever wars, is now fighting one. His approval rating has collapsed to 36% as gas prices and mortgage rates spike, shattering the non-interventionist pillar his 2024 coalition was built upon.
On Breaking Points, Saagar Enjeti noted a rare majority of Americans - over 52% - already oppose the conflict. The administration assumed the public would follow, but no rally-around-the-flag effect materialized. Instead, young voters who backed Trump for his anti-war rhetoric now face economic pain and the threat of a draft.
Saagar Enjeti, Breaking Points:
- The government at this time really showed its hand.
- They felt so arrogant, Trump and others, that America would follow them into this war, that they didn't even bother trying to sell us.
The strategic logic is equally broken. Enjeti argues that by assassinating Iranian leaders who opposed nuclear weapons on religious grounds, the U.S. has likely accelerated Iran's nuclear program while gaining nothing.
Christopher Caldwell, on The Ezra Klein Show, frames this as the terminal failure of Trumpism. The movement was a project of democratic restoration, promising to bypass the permanent state and deliver the policies voters actually chose. Its load-bearing pillar was non-interventionism.
Christopher Caldwell, The Ezra Klein Show:
- Trump promised a country in which you would get the stuff you voted for and not the permanent state.
- Having gone to war now, the limit is sort of off.
With that constraint gone, Trump becomes indistinguishable from the establishment he was elected to dismantle. The populist energy in the base may persist, but the governing program has collapsed, reverting to a series of shout-outs to billionaire donors.
The war is also dictated by markets, not diplomacy. Breaking Points reported that Trump’s 10-day delay on strikes was a failed attempt to calm bond markets and lower oil prices, not a genuine diplomatic pause. Iran mocked the claims with AI videos. Foreign policy is now a slave to the Bloomberg terminal.
The political fallout is likely permanent. The candidate hired to prevent this exact scenario triggered it, resetting how a generation evaluates power.
