Donald Trump thinks he's the King of the United States
At 4:41 p.m. this afternoon, the President of the United States arrived at Morristown Municipal Airport wearing a white hat that said “45-47 USA” as he made his way back to Washington, D.C., after a weekend away golfing in New Jersey. As he approached Air Force One, he completely ignored the shouted questions from the press gathered on the tarmac. By 4:47 p.m., he was onboard a different Air Force One than the one he had been expected to fly home on. This plane was the old-style baby blue-colored version instead of the newer plane he had arrived on just two days earlier. The White House has not announced a reason for switching planes.
Just before takeoff, with the president and those traveling with him already onboard, members of his Secret Service team delayed the departure as they gathered beneath the wing of Air Force One after appearing to notice something of concern down toward the runway. No further details were released, and the plane departed shortly thereafter.
After completing the journey back to Washington, D.C., the president was seen entering the White House at 6:26 p.m. Just 17 minutes later, he posted on Truth Social a grainy AI-generated video of a blue flag flying from the mast of a fishing boat, waving in the air with the words, “King Trump 2028.”
What he shared tonight is a window into his mind after an embarrassing setback in court on Friday. Two days ago, a federal appeals court ruled that the President of the United States cannot tear down the White House and rebuild it as a monument to himself without the approval of Congress. In their opinion, the judges wrote something that contradicts Trump’s own feelings about his residency in the White House when they said, “Each President is a temporary tenant, not the owner.” Even after a weekend’s vacation golfing at his private club, he was still thinking about this so deeply he shared that flag image that said he wants to be king.
He has held the presidency twice. He has dominated politics in this country for more than 11 years. He has reshaped the Supreme Court, started a war, bent entire institutions to his will, and commanded the front pages of every newsroom on the planet nonstop. He has been the most powerful person in the most powerful country on Earth, and that power has reached into every corner of the globe with the full machinery of the federal government at his disposal. And it is not enough. It will never be enough. Because being elected president and holding that office was never the point. The title was never even the point. Donald Trump has always wanted power beyond even that. He’s not interested in just being the leader of a democratic republic. He wants to dominate the world as a king.
Even ahead of the upcoming midterm elections, he has started to distance himself from Republicans because he is not concerned about the future of the Republican Party. He is only worried about his own future. When asked about campaigning for Republican candidates recently, he said he already won his race, and continued with “I don’t have to be away in Nevada yesterday. I didn’t have to be in Los Angeles yesterday making speeches. I didn’t have to be supporting all the people. I have a lot, you know, I have a busy schedule.”
His hunger for unchecked power and authority is what led us into the war with Iran. And today, the Wall Street Journal published an article that shows how dangerous that type of focus in a leader can be.
According to the Journal, citing U.S. officials, Trump has been privately floating to his senior aides the idea of declaring victory against Iran without achieving a nuclear deal. The reporting indicates that if the United States can keep Iran’s nuclear program in check and shipping resumes through the Strait of Hormuz, Trump would extend the ceasefire indefinitely and walk away. He has privately told aides that Tehran is “likely unable to revive its nuclear work” after Operation Midnight Hammer caused heavy damage to Iran’s three main nuclear facilities in June 2025. A White House official told the Journal that the United States has “completed all of its military objectives against Iran” and that the president’s focus is now on “securing the flow of the world’s energy through the Strait of Hormuz.”
In a separate interview with Axios today, Trump did not even try to hide his change of direction. “We are only semi-negotiating with them,” he said. “We are just watching Iran with its huge inflation and the fact they have no money.”
Trump is showing us he has no strategy and is hoping the problem resolves itself before anyone makes too big of an issue that the whole reason we went to war is now being quietly abandoned. The master negotiator, the dealmaker who was going to bring peace through strength, is now publicly admitting he is standing on the sideline and waiting. This is not a victory or a successful exit. This is another Trump failure.
Donald Trump ran on no new wars. He promised the American people he would keep them out of conflict. Then he launched multiple military actions, started a war against the warnings of allies, and against the counsel of military advisors who told him what would happen if the United States went in without a plan for what comes after. He ignored every lesson the last half century of Middle Eastern conflict has tried to teach us. And now he wants to call it a win and walk away, leaving the region worse than before he started the war.
It’s not just a destabilized region. At least 18 American service members are dead, and hundreds more have been wounded. The United States has depleted munitions that defense officials have warned could leave us exposed in a future crisis. Yet another dangerous byproduct is that before this war, Iran never fully recognized the Strait of Hormuz as a strategic weapon, but now understands exactly how powerful that leverage is. They now have proof that they can choke off one-fifth of the world’s commercial oil supply and demand payment for safe passage. They can hold the global economy at ransom. We taught them that. This war taught them that. And they will not forget it.
The people we bombed have not forgotten either. Iran’s current leaders rose through the wreckage we created. They carry personal grief alongside political ambition. They lost family members in our strikes. They came to power not in spite of this war but because of it. And they are not interested in giving Trump a quiet exit. On Saturday, Tehran laid out its most ambitious demands yet for reopening the Strait. They now want billions of dollars in compensation, the return of frozen assets, the full withdrawal of American forces from the region, and an end to the U.S. naval blockade. Trump wanted a way out, and he practically gave Iran the opportunity to set their own price and terms.
This morning, his own party sent a signal that even they understand how badly this has gone. Republican Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana appeared on Face the Nation and said that the president needs to speak forcefully and directly to the American people about the path forward. Cassidy noted that Vice President Vance had attended a Senate GOP lunch and “did a good job of explaining the perspective as to how to go forward.” But someone else at that lunch told Vance that it is the president, not the vice president, who needs to deliver that message to the public. What they are saying is that they know he has no plan, and they know it could cost them the midterms.
This is the pattern of authoritarian leaders throughout history. They start wars to project strength, discover they cannot control what they have unleashed, and then try to rebrand retreat as triumph. Argentina’s military junta invaded the Falkland Islands in 1982 to rally nationalist fervor and distract from economic collapse at home. The war lasted just over two months. They lost. The junta fell. The Soviet Union spent a decade in Afghanistan trying to project dominance across Central Asia. They withdrew in 1989 with nothing to show for it but devastation, a broken economy, and a radicalized population that would haunt the region for a generation. Wars started by men like Trump are never about the stated objective. It is always about the leader’s need to appear invincible. And when the illusion breaks, it is the people who bear the cost. Not the leader.
And while the war costs mount and the economy weakens and his own party begins to fracture, Trump keeps trying to build more monuments to himself, but not without resistance.
On Friday, the courts once again threw a wrench in his ballroom plans. In a 2-1 ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ordered above-ground construction to stop. The court majority wrote: “We are aware of no instance in American history in which a President unilaterally and using privately collected funds demolished substantial portions of the White House that Congress authorized to be built and American taxpayers paid for. Until now.” Trump has vowed to appeal to the Supreme Court. The court has given him a two-week window.
We will have to see how this plays out. Maybe the ruling will be overturned, but this buys us more time and forces Trump and his enablers to produce more documents and show more of their cards. Every legal challenge that forces this administration to explain itself in writing, under oath, on the record, is building the architecture of accountability that will be waiting when this is over.
The ballroom is not the only monument we are hearing about this week. A National Park Service assessment found that Trump’s proposed 250-foot triumphal arch, planned for the traffic circle between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery, would adversely affect 37 historic sites across Washington. The Lincoln Memorial. The Washington Monument. Arlington Cemetery itself. He wants to build a structure more than twice the height of the Lincoln Memorial, planted directly between the president who held this country together and the men and women who gave their lives defending it. So that when you stand at Arlington and look toward Washington, the first thing you see is not Lincoln. It is Trump.
I keep coming back to the same question tonight. Not whether we survive this, because I believe we will. But what will be left when he is done.
I think about what this country will look like after a man who could never get enough finally leaves office. What is left of the safety net for seniors who depend on programs he has gutted without a thought? What is left of the protections for disabled Americans, for mothers and children, when the people designing policy see them as line items to be cut? What is left of our trust in science after he handed the National Institutes of Health to a man who spent years undermining public health? What is left of our relationships with one another after more than a decade of being told our neighbors are our enemies and that empathy is a weakness?
I worry about what will be left of our place in the world. He has abandoned allies who trusted us and cozied up with strongmen who have threatened the entire planet. He has turned partnerships that took generations to build into transactions that benefit no one but himself, his family and his enablers. He started a war that destabilized an entire region and deepened hostilities while radicalizing a new generation against us. And tonight, with a flag on a fishing boat and a four-second video on a propaganda platform, he told the world he wants to be king of all of it.
Men who cannot be satisfied do not stop when they have taken enough. They stop when there is nothing left to take.
But here is what I also know tonight. The answer to “what will be left” is us. We are what is left. Donald Trump is going to unleash even more unimaginable chaos and cruelty before the elections, and then again until he is finally out of office. He is facing some sort of cognitive and physical issues. He no longer has capable people advising him. There are no guardrails left around him. But no matter what comes next, whatever he does or doesn’t do, we still have each other. We still have our voices. We still have our votes. And ultimately, we are the guardrail they have not been able to remove.
The midterms are our chance to tell him that he is not a king, never will be a king, and that this country still belongs to the people who live in it. We were founded on the premise of “We the People” and in rejection of monarchy. Donald Trump can call himself a king, post AI videos pretending he is one, and surround himself with people willing to treat him like one, but he cannot change the fundamental truth this country was built upon that the power will always belong to us. And that is why I still have hope for America. And you should, too.
I’ll see you tomorrow,
Heather
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This commentary represents my personal opinions and analysis of matters of public concern, informed by publicly available information. Any references to individuals constitute opinion and commentary protected under the First Amendment.
Picture of the Day: Since that middle-of-the-night moment in November of 2024, when Trump was projected to be the winner, I truly feel like I have been living in a level of exhaustion I have never experienced before. I hear from so many others who feel the same way. It will need to be studied someday to fully grasp what his presidency has done to our health, mental and physical. My dog also seems to be feeling the same way. We find her “sleeping on the job” practically every day.
Links to sources used to write this post:
https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/09/world/live-news/iran-war-trump
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/face-the-nation-full-transcript-08-09-2026/
https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/07/politics/trump-midterms-gop-unpopular
https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/07/politics/trump-midterms-gop-voters-republicans
https://abcnews.com/US/appeals-court-blocks-construction-white-house-ballroom/story?id=135459043
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/pentagon-briefing-us-strikes-iran-nuclear-sites/
Dear Heather, thank you for the lovely reminder that after he is gone and out of our hair, that We the people, We will be here. This country has been rebuilt several times, this possibly is the biggest challenge that we’ve encountered, I believe we will lock arms and pull through stronger. What we are faced with is an awakening of the weaknesses that We the people, need to rebuild. We must continue to strive to rebuild a more perfect union and we can.
Heather, Thank You. There are no other words that can fully express our gratitude for all that you are doing to save our country and insure it is a country for the people and by the people. As a person of Faith, I will stand by your side in accordance with God's Love and Intention for us.