In 2019, after Iran shot down a U.S. spy drone, tensions between the countries intensified, and it appeared increasingly likely that Donald Trump would approve military strikes in Iran as a retaliatory move.
The New York Times and The Washington Post reported that the president had, in fact, approved strikes on Iranian targets — but ultimately backed off. As NBC News reported, the Republican ultimately confirmed the reporting, telling the public that the armed forces were “cocked and loaded” for an attack, but he called it off.
In fact, Trump told NBC News on the record that he’d walked back the plans with just 30 minutes remaining before the mission was set to launch.
The public learned of the aborted mission on June 21, 2019. That same day, the Republican administration’s then-envoy on Iran, Brian Hook, said that it was “important we do everything we can to de-escalate.”
Exactly six years to the day later — on June 21, 2025 — the public heard the opposite news. Whereas Trump abandoned a plan to attack three Iranian targets in 2019, the president approved a plan to attack three Iranian targets this year. Instead of taking deliberate steps to de-escalate, Trump and his team chose to open the door to a new and prolonged conflict in the Middle East.
The dangers, significance and potential consequences of this decision are obviously of dramatic geopolitical importance, but it’s also worth appreciating the burgeoning political pattern. The Washington Post’s Philip Bump recently noted:
A lot of things happened in 2020 that Donald Trump didn’t like. During the first six months of 2025, he has expended a lot of energy and presidential power on reversing those things or trying to make it the policy of the federal government that they didn’t occur.
In Trump’s first term, he was talked out of deploying U.S. troops onto American streets. He would occasionally follow the advice of his party’s “establishment” when making key personnel decisions. He held off on launching political wars against his own country’s institutions of higher learning. He nearly approved strikes on Iranian targets, but reversed course at the last minute.
In Trump’s second term, in other words, he’s doing many of the same things he wanted to do before his 2020 defeat, but didn’t.
Just a couple of days before Election Day 2024, John Mitnick, who was general counsel of the Department of Homeland Security under Trump, wrote a memorable thread via social media. The conservative Republican and Heritage Foundation veteran, who pleaded with voters not to return his former boss to power, explained that the United States did not go “completely off the rails” during Trump’s first term because “there were just enough senior officials who served as ‘guardrails.’”
If Trump is put back in power, Mitnick added, “senior administration positions will be filled entirely by blindly ambitious or unqualified radicals and grifters who pass a test of personal loyalty to Trump. There will be no ‘adults in the room’ who stand up for the Constitution and our cherished American democratic institutions.”
Periodically in recent years, people close to Trump have shed light on important behind-the-scenes details. In mid-April 2017, for example, Politico had a report on the internal turmoil in the White House. It was the responsibility of Trump’s advisers, one said, “to talk him out of doing crazy things.” Four months later, Axios had a related piece, citing a half-dozen “dismayed” senior administration officials, exasperated by the then-president’s dangerous instincts. “You have no idea how much crazy stuff we kill,” one said. In 2018, outgoing House Speaker Paul Ryan talked about his private efforts to prevent Trump from making enormous mistakes. “I can look myself in the mirror at the end of the day and say, ‘I avoided that tragedy, I avoided that tragedy, I avoided that tragedy,’” the Wisconsin Republican said on his way out the door. Now, no one is killing “crazy stuff.” No one is speaking up to “avoid that tragedy.” Instead of steering clear of disasters, the president is aiming for them — without voices of dissent. There was some talk before Trump’s second inaugural that Americans should expect a different kind of Republican presidency upon his return to power, because he’d learned lessons during his first four years that he’d now apply in his second term. What much of the public might not have appreciated is the degree to which he’d learned the wrong lessons, clearing the way for worse decisions.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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