Trump’s wars are just getting started

Late last night, the President of the United States sat awake, fuming inside the walls of the White House. And at 11:34 p.m., he started a nearly two-hour erratic posting spree on Truth Social. While most world leaders understand the importance of sleep and diplomacy, Donald Trump had no interest in either. Between 11:34 p.m. and 1:12 a.m., he posted eleven times. He attacked the Pope. Twice. He attacked NATO. He shared an article citing one of Jeffrey Epstein’s defense attorneys. He attacked Obama. And he ended the night defending an AI-generated image of himself as Jesus. This wasn’t just a late-night rant. It was a window into what is driving the presidency right now.

He started at 11:34 p.m. by turning his attention back to the Pope. “Will someone please tell Pope Leo that Iran has killed at least 42,000 innocent, completely unarmed protesters in the last two months, and that for Iran to have a Nuclear Bomb is absolutely unacceptable,” he wrote, closing with, “Thank you for your attention to this matter. AMERICA IS BACK!!! President DONALD J. TRUMP.” Which is a remarkable way to start the night, considering the backlash he has been facing for repeatedly attacking and fixating on the leader of the Catholic faith that so many of his followers hold sacred. The President of the United States once again thought it was a good idea to attack the leader of 1.4 billion Catholics for daring to call for peace.

Five minutes later, at 11:39, Trump turned on our allies. “NATO wasn’t there for us, and they won’t be there for us in the future!” This from the man who has threatened to annex Greenland from a NATO member and cut off all trade with Spain for refusing to join his war.

Then came the flood. Between 12:01 and 12:03 a.m., five posts in two minutes, all linking to articles from Just The News, a right-wing outlet. One cited an Epstein defense attorney. Another attacked Biden, feeding his ongoing obsession with the former president’s use of the autopen, a routine tool used by presidents for decades that Trump has turned into a personal conspiracy theory, even ordering an investigation into Biden’s “cognitive decline” over its use. This came on the same day the Justice Department released a report accusing the Biden administration of “weaponizing” federal law against Christian anti-abortion activists, part of the Trump DOJ’s broader effort to retroactively criminalize his political opponents.

Another post dredged up coverage of his own 2019 impeachment, seven years later, still fixated on it, still nursing the grievance. Another targeted Judge James Boasberg, the federal judge who has repeatedly ruled against the administration on deportation flights and who, just this week, was the subject of an appeals court ruling in the administration’s favor. Trump has previously called Boasberg “a Radical Left Lunatic of a Judge, a troublemaker and agitator” and demanded he be removed from all cases related to the administration. Another post went after ActBlue, the Democratic fundraising platform, which he called “The most corrupt group in Government!”

Five targets in two minutes. This was extreme even by Trump’s standards. It read less like a stream of consciousness from a president in cognitive decline struggling to settle down for the night and sleep, and more like a hit list.

At 12:08 a.m., he paused just long enough to announce his Fox Business interview with Maria Bartiromo, already taped, airing the next morning, where he would confidently tell the country that the war is “very close to over.”

Then he went quiet for about an hour. And just after 1 a.m., he came back. At 1:10, he shared a meme attacking the Pope again, this time using supporter content to mock Pope Leo’s calls for peace. At 1:11, he went after Obama and the Democrats. And at 1:12 a.m., he posted a meme defending the AI Jesus image he had deleted just the day before after mounting backlash.

That was the performance of power Trump put on in the dead of night. This is how the man with access to nuclear weapons spends his time. Not sleeping like a normal person. Rage posting in the middle of the night. He’s not up considering the consequences of the war he started or how to actually govern. And he’s certainly not being kept awake by the reality of a ceasefire expiring in seven days. What keeps him up is his ego. His grievances. And most of all, his need to be worshipped.

And while he rages on social media from his phone, and the rest of us are left bracing for what comes next, the administration he leads is planning for something much bigger than most people realize.

Today, The Wall Street Journal reported that the Pentagon has begun approaching American automakers, including Ford and General Motors, along with other commercial manufacturers, about helping to produce weapons and military supplies. The Journal itself described the move as reminiscent of a practice used during World War II. But not the version of World War II most Americans were taught in school. Not the clean narrative of Allied liberation. The earlier phase. The buildup. The part where governments quietly began converting civilian industry into war machines because they were preparing for something far larger than they were telling their people.

In the 1930s, Hitler didn’t militarize German industry because the country was under attack. He did it because expansion was the plan, and the factories had to be ready before the public understood what was coming. Stalin followed a similar path with his industrial programs, shifting civilian production toward military capacity not in response to an immediate threat, but to build the infrastructure of centralized control. That is the pattern. Build the machine first. Justify it later.

And this didn’t happen overnight. It has been escalating in full view for weeks, and too many of us have chosen to ignore it. In early March, Trump summoned CEOs from Lockheed Martin, RTX, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, BAE Systems, L3Harris, and Honeywell to the White House after Iran strikes had deeply depleted U.S. weapons stockpiles. He announced they had agreed to “quadruple production” of what he called “Exquisite Class Weaponry.” Days later, NBC reported that the administration was privately discussing invoking the Defense Production Act to force manufacturers to produce more munitions, a 1950s-era law designed for wartime emergencies.

By late March, the Pentagon had signed framework agreements with defense contractors to put the military on what it called a “wartime footing.” And now it isn’t just pressuring defense contractors. It’s reaching beyond the defense industry entirely, asking the companies that build our cars to start building our bombs. That is not what a country does when a war is almost over. That is what a country does when it is preparing for something much bigger.

And the numbers confirm it. Today, The Washington Post reported that the United States is deploying more than 10,000 additional troops to the Middle East before the end of April. Roughly 6,000 aboard the USS George H.W. Bush carrier group, and another 4,200 from the Boxer Amphibious Ready Group and the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit. These reinforcements will join the approximately 50,000 U.S. personnel already operating in the region, bringing the total to roughly 60,000 American service members and giving U.S. Central Command three aircraft carriers in theater. The Post’s own framing was telling. It said the deployment would allow the administration to continue negotiations with Iran while also preparing for “the possibility of additional strikes or ground operations.” That is not the language of peace. That is the language of a government hedging its bets on escalation while telling the public to look the other way.

And this morning on Fox Business, Trump sat across from Maria Bartiromo and said he believes the war with Iran is “very close to over.” He said it with the same certainty he brings to everything, the kind of confidence that sounds like authority until you measure it against what is actually happening. Because the ceasefire expires on April 22. Seven days from now. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed today that the administration has not reached an agreement to extend it. More than 5,000 people have been killed since the U.S. and Israel began launching strikes on Iran nearly six weeks ago.

And later today, all but one Senate Republican, Rand Paul of Kentucky, voted against a measure that would have reasserted Congress’s constitutional authority to authorize war. One senator. Out of 53 Republicans. One was willing to say that the United States Congress should have a say in a war the president started without asking. John Fetterman was the lone Democrat who voted against the resolution. That is where we are.

So when Trump tells us the war is almost over, we have to watch what he does. Not what he says. He is sending 10,000 more troops. He is moving to convert civilian factories to weapons production. He is blockading a sovereign nation’s ports. And he is already telling us who could be next. Because we also learned, in reporting from both USA Today and Zeteo, citing multiple sources, that the Pentagon has received direct orders from the White House to prepare for a potential military operation in Cuba. This is the President of the United States ordering his own Defense Department to plan for another conflict before the current one has even ended.

On Monday, Trump said, “We may stop by Cuba after we’re finished with this.” Last month, he said of Cuba, “It may be a friendly takeover, it may not be a friendly takeover. It wouldn’t matter.” Reports indicate the administration is discussing plans that could include targeting Cuban leadership, echoing tactics the United States has already used in recent months, including the capture and abduction of Venezuela’s leader, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife, and the repeated strikes killing and targeting leadership and military infrastructure in Iran. Trump’s oil blockade of Cuba has already caused blackouts, food shortages, and devastating inflation across the island. Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel responded directly, telling NBC, “If that happens, there will be fighting, and there will be a struggle, and we will defend ourselves, and if we need to die, we’ll die.”

Venezuela was the test case. Iran is the main stage. Cuba is next in line. And Trump has already named the countries after that, over and over again: Canada, Colombia, Mexico, Greenland. And we have to believe that these are just the starting countries. This is not a man who wants peace. This is a man who wants world dominion. And the proof isn’t just in his actions. It is who he has always been.

This is the same man who ran on “no new wars.” The self-described peacetime president. The man who wanted a Nobel Peace Prize so badly that when the committee gave it to Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado in October 2025, he punished her for accepting it.

The Washington Post reported that Trump’s inner circle called her decision to accept the prize “the ultimate sin,” and that if she had refused it and said it was really Trump’s, “she’d be the president of Venezuela today.” Then, in January, Machado visited the White House and gave Trump her physical Nobel medal as a gesture of gratitude for deposing Maduro. He took it, posed with it, and kept it.

And just days after that meeting, he sent a message to the Norwegian Prime Minister: “Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace.” Except the Norwegian Prime Minister doesn’t decide the Nobel Peace Prize. A five-member independent committee does. But that didn’t stop him. He made his demands clear to the world. And then he started a war, and now he is building the machine to keep it going indefinitely.

That is the lie at the center of everything. Not just that the war is almost over, but that he ever wanted peace at all.

Maybe he watched too many World War II movies and decided he wanted to be the hero of one. Trump’s obsession with World War II and its generals has been documented for decades. On the 2016 campaign trail, he talked about General George S. Patton and General Douglas MacArthur at nearly every rally. “Within our military, I will find the General Patton, or I will find General MacArthur,” he told crowds. “I will find the right guy. I will find the guy that’s going to take that military and make it really work. Nobody, nobody will be pushing us around.” He was not trying to learn from history. He was trying to cast himself in it.

But it went deeper than Patton. During his first term, according to his former White House Chief of Staff, retired General John Kelly, Trump repeatedly told staff, “I need the kind of generals that Hitler had.” When Kelly tried to clarify, asking if Trump meant Bismarck’s generals or the Kaiser’s, Trump said, “Yeah, yeah, Hitler’s generals.” When Kelly explained that those generals had actually tried to kill Hitler multiple times, Trump refused to accept it. “No, no, no, they were totally loyal to him,” he insisted. Kelly also said Trump told him, “Well, but Hitler did some good things,” and when Kelly asked him what, Trump answered that Hitler “rebuilt the economy.” Kelly responded, “Sir, you can never say anything good about the guy. Nothing. I mean, Mussolini was a great guy in comparison.” Kelly, a Marine general who lost his own son in Afghanistan, eventually called Trump a fascist on the record and said the only military virtue Trump actually prized was obedience.

And if we think about what we are watching right now in that context, this is a man who wants generals loyal to him personally, not to the Constitution. A man who has admired Hitler’s ability to command absolute loyalty, who rebuilds an economy not for the people but to turn it against them. A man who watches old war movies and dreams of being the hero. And now, a man who is deploying 60,000 troops, converting auto plants into weapons factories, planning the next invasion before the current war has even ended, and telling the country to trust him when he says peace is almost here.

Maybe he is manufacturing a global conflict so he can play wartime president, surround himself with generals, and demand the kind of loyalty and worship that only crisis can produce, like he saw in those old movies. Maybe he saw what war did for other leaders’ approval ratings and thought he could replicate it, only to find that it doesn’t work when you start the war yourself and the whole world knows it.

Or maybe this was always the plan. The Heritage Foundation. The Project 2025 architects. The defense contractors who stood behind him at the White House. They didn’t build this infrastructure for a man who wanted peace. They built it for expansion. And Trump didn’t just go along with it. He reveled in it.

And maybe what we are being shown, over and over again, in everything he says and does, is this: we already know who he is. We have seen the pattern. We have heard the threats. And we do not believe a single thing he says. We watch what he does. Not what he says.

When he says peace is close, we look at the 10,000 troops being deployed and the auto plants retooling for munitions. When he says Cuba will just “fall,” we look at his Pentagon planning the invasion. When he threatens to obliterate a civilization, we take him seriously because he has shown us that he means it. We make sure everyone can see what he is doing vs what he is saying so that nobody ever gives him the benefit of the doubt. We remind the world that this can never be treated, none of it, as normal political rhetoric. And we start acting like people who understand exactly how much danger we are in.

We also keep harnessing and using the power we have. This week, DoorDash staged a delivery stunt at the White House, and it backfired spectacularly. People started deleting the app and canceling memberships. And then other companies surprised us by doing the exact opposite. HelloFresh stepped up with a post mocking the whole thing. Our Place jumped in with a comment about their products being easy to use, “but even that might be a little overwhelming in that big (white) house.” Brands chose a side. And consumers responded.

That is economic resistance in action, and it matters more than we sometimes realize. Companies are in an especially hard position right now. They face real financial risk when they speak out. They face retaliation from an administration that has proven again and again it will use the full weight of government to punish anyone who crosses it. And still, more of them are deciding that being on the right side of history matters more than protecting their margins. That is meaningful and a shift that deserves our attention and our dollars.

When I see a company willing to stand up, I want to make sure they survive. I want to make sure they know we noticed. HelloFresh and Our Place are going on my list of companies I actively support, right alongside the independent voices, creators, and journalists who are telling the truth every single day, at real personal cost. This is all part of the economic protest that I have been doing, where I choose to put my money behind the people and the companies that are putting themselves on the line. And as for DoorDash, that is a decision each of us gets to make for ourselves, knowing what we now know about who they chose to stand with. Every dollar is a vote, and every purchase is a statement. And in a moment like this, where the government is failing us, and the institutions are crumbling, our economic choices may be the most powerful tool we have left.

And for every institution that has failed us this week, for every member of Congress who stayed silent, for every ally Trump pushed away with a midnight post, there were also people and companies who chose to stand up. Who looked at this moment and decided that going along with it was not an option. That is what resistance looks like. It looks like ordinary people, ordinary businesses, ordinary consumers, making the harder choice because it is the right one. And there are more people and companies willing to take a stand every day. That is why I 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: Found this neighborhood supervisor doing important work amongst the flowers today. Hope your Wednesday brought you a small moment of something good, too.

Sources:

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/4/15/us-senate-rejects-another-war-powers-resolution-to-limit-trump-on-iran
https://rollcall.com/2026/04/15/iran-war-powers-resolution-blocked-for-fourth-time-in-senate/
https://www.npr.org/2026/04/14/g-s1-117430/doj-biden-weaponization-report https://www.cnn.com/2025/11/28/politics/trump-biden-auto-pen https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/fact-checking-trumps-claim-that-biden-pardons-are-void-because-he-used-an-autopen
https://www.npr.org/2026/04/07/g-s1-116722/congressional-democrats-raise-alarm-over-trumps-comments-on-iran
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-said-hitler-did-some-good-things-and-wanted-generals-like-the-nazis-former-chief-of-staff-kelly-claims https://www.bostonglobe.com/2024/10/22/nation/trump-hitler-generals-military-john-kelly/