Trump thinks he’s a wartime president

In yet another disturbing and embarrassing moment on the world stage, the President of the United States, Donald Trump, held a press conference today at Mar-a-Lago in Florida and called himself a wartime president. But that wasn’t even the most surreal part. Because Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stood beside him and announced something that sounded more like strategy than tribute: Donald Trump would become the first American ever to receive the Israel Prize. “President Trump has broken so many conventions,” Netanyahu said, “so we decided to break a convention too.” And just like that, Israel’s highest civilian honor was handed to a man who isn’t Israeli, has never fought in a war, and doesn’t even seem to understand what leadership requires.

But that’s the playbook, and everyone knows it. If you want something from Donald Trump, you just give him a trophy. A plaque. A fake title. Something shiny enough to make him feel important. It works every time. He stood on that stage today nodding like he’d earned this new one, like it meant something real.

And then he said it. That he was a wartime president. No one asked what war. No one asked who sent troops or what sacrifice he was talking about. Because they all knew it didn’t matter. The story didn’t have to make sense. The show was already on.

“He’s been a wartime prime minister,” Trump said, pointing at Netanyahu, “and I guess we could say I was a wartime president, in places more than just Israel, if you think about it, but Israel was a big factor, and we’re with you, and we’ll continue to be with you. A lot of good things are happening.”

And make no mistake. Beyond the nonsense of it all, he’s not a wartime president now, and he never has been. But as long as someone’s clapping and the cameras are on, he’ll keep pretending.

That was the moment. Not the stiff walk or the shallow breaths. Not the long, wandering pauses between thoughts. Not even the way Netanyahu kept glancing over like something wasn’t right. It was when Donald Trump, out loud, on camera, called himself a wartime president, just like Netanyahu. That’s when the performance became impossible to ignore.

When Donald Trump calls himself a wartime president, it’s not just a ridiculous lie. It’s an insult. To every leader who’s made the kind of decisions that you never recover from. To every soldier who’s walked into battle. To every family who’s buried someone they loved. Wartime leadership isn’t a performance. It’s not a press conference at a golf club. It’s pain, and sacrifice, and choices no decent person ever wants to make. And while Trump played pretend today, standing on a Florida stage soaking in applause for a war he never fought, real war crimes were unfolding in Ukraine.

Officials released intercepted Russian military orders confirming that surrendering Ukrainian prisoners of war are being executed on command. At least 147 documented cases since the war started. One video shows unarmed men facedown in the dirt being shot. Another man tries to run. He’s shot too. This is war. What real war looks like. It’s not soundbites or speeches. It’s blood and dirt and final breaths. And it proves once again that Vladimir Putin is not constrained by rules. He does not care about international law, human rights, or basic decency.

I don’t usually go into international war crimes in these posts. I try to stay focused on what we can control: our president, our votes, and our future here at home. But this matters. Because this is who Donald Trump keeps siding with. Over and over again, he chooses Putin over Ukraine. He praises him. Defends him. Smiles at him. And while Russian forces carry out cold-blooded executions of unarmed prisoners, Trump stands on American soil calling himself a wartime president, like he’s earned that title. Like he belongs in the same conversation. He doesn’t.

What he wants isn’t leadership. It’s power without accountability. Just like Putin. That’s the strongman he admires most. That’s the man he models himself after. So when he stood next to another world leader today and soaked in applause over a prize he didn’t earn, it wasn’t just absurd. It was dangerous. Because Trump doesn’t just mimic their tone, he copies their cruelty. And he’s never once hidden it.

After World War II, we created laws to stop this. Geneva. Nuremberg. The idea was simple: if you commit atrocities, you will be held accountable. Never again, we said. Never again would the world stand by while prisoners were executed in cold blood, while civilians were targeted, while power excused mass cruelty. But today, as those very laws are being shredded on the soil of one of our allies, the President of the United States didn’t stand with the victims. He didn’t stand with the rule of law. He stood, once again, with the man responsible for breaking it. He chose to side with Vladimir Putin, the same way he always has. And that’s not just cowardice. It’s betrayal. Of our values. Of our history. Of everything we said, we learned from the last time the world let evil go unchecked.

And while I watched the rest of the press conference from my home in California, windows open, my street quiet, my daughters all home and watching a movie, it didn’t feel like anything was wrong. For a moment, it felt ordinary. But that’s how it works. The duality of collapse. You can be surrounded by peace and still feel the world falling through the floor. Because the danger isn’t always what you see. It’s what slips through while you’re looking the other way. I actually paused to think about that before jumping back into the rest of the press conference. I’m half glad I did, so I can share it with you. And half not, because what came next was worse.

Trump threatened to bomb Iran. Again. He said if they rebuild their nuclear capabilities, the United States will “knock the hell out of them.” That’s how casually he says it. Threats broadcast from a golf resort podium. But that wasn’t the only strike he bragged about. He also claimed the U.S. hit a “big facility” in Venezuela. What’s come out since is that the CIA conducted a drone strike on a Venezuelan coastal port facility, the first publicly confirmed U.S. attack inside Venezuela. Trump later said it was “the dock area where they load the boats up with drugs,” and added, “So we hit all the boats, and now we hit the area.”

There’s still no formal confirmation from the Pentagon. No statement to Congress. Just another vague operation done in secret for all the wrong reasons. That’s how it works now. We don’t get oversight or accountability. We get cryptic war stories dropped on Trump’s social media platform or unveiled at carefully staged press events meant to look like leadership. But it’s not leadership. Its performance.

And this performance has a long history. Trump isn’t doing anything new; he’s just recycling the same dangerous tactics used before. In Vietnam, it was the Gulf of Tonkin. In the 1980s, it was Iran-Contra. Manufactured threats. Secret strikes. Backdoor deals. All wrapped in patriotism and sold as strength, while the Constitution gets ignored and the public gets left in the dark.

History keeps repeating itself under this administration. Not because they’re strategic or smart, but because they’re unoriginal. They don’t build bold plans. They rerun bad ones. Sloppily. Loudly. Predictably. And in a way, that’s the one small advantage we have. Their playbook is easy to spot if people are willing to look. Much of the world already has. Our allies see it clearly. They’ve stopped waiting for us to course-correct. Canada. Europe. They’re making plans that no longer include us. Because they know exactly what this is. And I can only imagine how painful it must be to watch from the outside as the country that once promised “never again” slides, again, into the same patterns played so many times before.

Because they remember. They remember what it looked like last time. And they remember who showed up to help stop it. The Allied Forces, including us. Americans. We were the ones who came. We liberated. We prosecuted. We cleaned up the wreckage and promised the world: never again.

And now, they’re watching the exact same thing happen. Here. In the country that once promised it would never fall for it. Thirty percent of our own people either don’t see it, or worse, they do, and they think it won’t touch them. They think they’re safe. That they’ll be spared. That they’re the “good Germans.” The ones who nodded along quietly and kept their heads down, while others disappeared. They think that as long as it isn’t them, they can live with it. And that’s exactly how it spreads.

That’s why we have to keep telling the truth. That’s why we have to keep drawing the lines between history and right now. At some point, people will start to see it. That’s why we keep going. That’s why we speak up, and we don’t stay quiet. Each one of us has a role. We donate and march. We email, call, and send letters to our representatives. We put the pressure on our members of Congress. Because right now, they are all we have. Until the midterms, they’re the only tool we can use to stop this. So let’s use it. Let’s push back. We’re going to get through this.

I’ll see you tomorrow.
Heather

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