About a month before Election Day 2024 in the United States, tensions in the Middle East escalated as Iran targeted Israel with a ballistic missile attack. Asked about the developments, then-candidate Donald Trump appeared largely focused on himself, insisting that there were no similar events during his White House term — a claim that was demonstrably ridiculous.
But that’s not all he said.
Referring to Iranian officials, the Republican argued, “They have no respect for the [Biden] administration. This would have never happened if I was president.” As part of the same exchange, Trump added that the sooner he was returned to power, “the safer the world will be.”
The rhetoric was absurd but familiar. In the four years following his 2020 defeat, Trump routinely tried to convince the public that his first term was a time of global peace, stability and tranquility — in part because so much of the world respected his awesomeness, and in part because U.S. foes feared his mightiness. It was an utterly bizarre effort to rewrite recent history, but it nevertheless became a staple of his pre-election pitch.
As MSNBC’s Chris Hayes summarized via Bluesky, “Trump’s go-to line about every foreign policy crisis and war — from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, to October 7th, to the Israel’s devastation of Gaza — was ‘It would never have happened if I was president.’”
Ahead of his second inaugural, Trump similarly told Time magazine, “I think that the Middle East is an easier problem to handle than what’s happening with Russia and Ukraine. Okay, I just want to say that up front. The Middle East is going to get solved. … I think it’s more complicated than the Russia-Ukraine, but I think it’s, it’s, it’s easier to solve.”
As the president really ought to know, his rhetoric often has unfortunate confrontations with reality. NBC News reported that the Israeli military launched a massive attack on Iran on Friday, increasing the risk of another war in the Middle East.
The strikes, which killed senior Iranian scientists and top military officials, involved more than 200 fighter jets. They were aimed at Iran’s main enrichment facility and targets associated with the country’s ballistic missile program, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei swiftly vowed retaliation. Soon after the strikes, Iran launched more than 100 drones towards Israel, Israeli Brig. Gen. Effie Defrin said.
The Trump administration, which has spent recent months negotiating with Iran over the future of its nuclear program, made no secret of the fact that it wanted Israel to hold off on launching such a military offensive as the diplomatic talks continued. Netanyahu appears to have ignored those calls.
With this in mind, the State Department made clear after Israel’s attack that the United States was not involved in this offensive and was not providing assistance.
The next morning, the American president seemed to undermine his own administration’s line with a statement published to his social media platform. “I gave Iran chance after chance to make a deal. I told them, in the strongest of words, to ‘just do it,’ but no matter how hard they tried, no matter how close they got, they just couldn’t get it done,” Trump wrote online, putting a spin on his own inability to successfully negotiate a deal. “I told them it would be much worse than anything they know, anticipated, or were told, that the United States makes the best and most lethal military equipment anywhere in the World, BY FAR, and that Israel has a lot of it, with much more to come — And they know how to use it. Certain Iranian hardliner’s spoke bravely, but they didn’t know what was about to happen. They are all DEAD now, and it will only get worse!” The Republican suggested that Iran should continue to negotiate with the United States and “make a deal,” in order to “save what was once known as the Iranian Empire.” (There was never any such thing as “the Iranian Empire.” Whether Trump was trying to refer to the Persian Empire was unclear.) I won’t pretend to know what the White House might say or do next, though Politico reports that the broader MAGA movement is largely divided between those who expect the U.S. administration to rally behind Israel and those who want the administration to steer clear of a burgeoning Middle East crisis. As of this writing, it’s unclear whether Joe Biden will tweet, “They have no respect for the Trump administration. This would have never happened if I was president.”
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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