President Donald Trump speaks in the Oval Office of the White House, Thursday, Aug. 6, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon) When you are the president of the United States it is a good idea to play the movie through in your head to the end before you take your country to war. But caution is not President Trump’s style. He is, as Peter Baker put it in the New York Times, “The most impulsive president of modern times,” who “follows his instincts and can completely reverse himself by the day, or sometimes the hour.”
His impulses led him to believe that war with Iran would end quickly, that it would not drag on as his critics alleged.
The war started on Feb. 28. One day later, on March 1, the president said, the war likely would last “four to five weeks.”
On March 5 he said, “The United States military, together with the wonderful Israeli partners, continues to totally demolish the enemy far ahead of schedule and at levels that people have never seen before.”
And two days after that, Trump told reporters on Air Force One that, “We’re winning the war by a lot. We’ve decimated their whole evil empire.”
On March 20 he said, “I think we won. We’ve knocked out their Navy, their Air Force. We’ve knocked out their anti-aircraft. We’ve knocked out everything.”
But it is August, the war still isn’t over. Talks are stalled, and Americans have grown more and more weary of the president’s optimism.
A new Associated Press poll tells us that about two-thirds of all Americans — 64 percent — say the war is not worth fighting. Eighty-seven percent of Democrats are against the war — but so are more than one-third of Republicans — 37 percent.
“The results are a stark repudiation of the Republican president’s approach to the conflict, which has dragged on far longer than he originally predicted,” as the AP explained it.
A spate of new polls don’t look good for the president. He has the support of just 34 percent of Americans in CNN’s latest poll, matching his lowest point just after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. In a new AP-NORC poll, the president’s approval stands at just 33, tying his lowest since 2017. And he has a 32 percent approval rating in a Quinnipiac poll.
But none of that that has stopped him from declaring on Truth Social that, “MY REAL POLL NUMBERS ARE THE HIGHEST THEY HAVE EVER BEEN.”
Putting it all in capital letters, shouting it to the American people, won’t change reality.
And even if Trump really believes what he is putting out, Republicans running for reelection know the truth. And they’re rightly worried. They’re playing the movie through all the way to November — even if the president isn’t.
Kristen Soltis Anderson, a Republican pollster, told the Times that, “The best thing Republicans have going for them is that the Democratic Party is going through its own issues and does not have a crisp message besides ‘Trump is bad.'” Then she added: “However, if the environment truly stays this grim, that may be enough.”
Forgive the cliche, but Trump, more than five months into a war with no definite end in sight, now has a choice: fish or cut bait.
The American people have had enough of his promises to bomb Iran into submission one day, then stopping the next day and hoping diplomacy will get him out of the war. It’s likely he’s lost credibility in Tehran. But he’s also lost credibility here at home. Whether he’s actually confusing the people in charge in Iran is anyone’s guess. But he’s leaving Americans unsure of what comes next — and what his strategy is, if he actually has a strategy. And it’s why his poll numbers are so low.
If current negotiations fall apart, Trump doesn’t have to bomb Iran back to the Stone Age, as he once promised, but he does have to inflict enough pain so that Iran comes to the table to make the kind of deal the U.S. can accept.
Or … he could just walk away and end it. He can even declare victory, if that makes him happy … but nobody will buy it — even if he shouts it in all capital letters on Truth Social. They will know that it did not end well for Americans — not here at home and not around the world.
Those are his choices. Inflict so much pain to the mullahs in Tehran that they — or whoever’s in charge over there — will make a deal, one that not only opens the Strait of Hormuz but also guarantees — with something resembling certainty — that Iran will not have the ability to make a nuclear weapon. Or the president can throw in the towel and go home.
He needs to pick one. The midterms are right around the corner.
Bernard Goldberg is an Emmy and an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University award-winning writer and journalist. He is the author of five books and publishes exclusive weekly columns, audio commentaries and Q&As on his Substack page. Follow him @BernardGoldberg.
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