Nikki McCann Ramirez
View all posts by Nikki McCann Ramirez March 23, 2026
President Donald Trump speaks with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth during a roundtable discussion on public safety at a Tennessee Air National Guard Base, Monday, March 23, 2026, in Memphis, Tenn. AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein Why did we go to war with Iran? Ask any two people in Donald Trump’s administration and you probably won’t get the same answer. Explanations have ranged from claiming Israel was going to attack Iran anyway so we might as well join them, to insisting Iran was weeks away from obliterating the U.S. with a nuclear bomb.
As the conflict increases in complexity and decreases in popularity with the American public, Trump is trying a new tactic: throwing his Cabinet under the bus.
At a Monday roundtable event with national military and law enforcement leaders, Trump told the audience and reporters that his Secretary of Defense and self styled Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, was actually the person responsible for pushing him to go to war.
“Pete [Hegseth,] I think you were the first one to speak up and you said, ‘Let’s do it because you can’t let them have a nuclear weapon.’”
Trump blames Hegseth for the war: "Pete, I think you were the first one to speak up. You said, 'Let's do it.'" pic.twitter.com/QBGeFuhM1M
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 23, 2026
The comments came hours after tried to claim that not only he, but his entire administration, was caught off guard by Iran striking other Gulf nations in response to the U.S. and Israel’s attacks. “Look at the way they attacked, unexpectedly, all of those countries,” he told reporters. “Nobody was even thinking about it.”
Reuters has reported, in fact, that Trump was warned internally that Iran could launch retaliatory attacks, and that Trump ignored the warnings.
Trump: "Look at the way Iran attacked unexpectedly all of those countries surrounding them. That was not supposed to– nobody was even thinking about it." pic.twitter.com/5wZsxU0CLn
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 23, 2026
Hegseth makes sense as a scapegoat, if Trump wants to pin blame on any one administration figure. The Defense Secretary has been one of the blundering faces of the war effort as it approaches its one-month milestone, spending much of his time delivering screeds about lethality and anti-rules of engagement warfighting to the Pentagon press corps, while also berating reporters for not producing enough positive coverage of the conflict that has so far killed 13 American service members and metastasized into a full-blown disaster throughout the Gulf region.
Editor’s picks
The 250 Greatest Albums of the 21st Century So Far
The 100 Best TV Episodes of All Time
The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time
100 Best Movies of the 21st Century
Trump also on Monday repeated dubious claims that the administration has begun negotiations with Iran to end hostilities and reopen the Strait of Hormuz. The claims came as Trump reneged on his threat to bomb critical Iranian targets if they did not meet his demands by Monday afternoon, with the president pushing the ultimatum back by five days. Iranian officials say they are engaged in no such negotiations.
