As the Iran war drags on, Trump has worked to project a sense of American strength, perhaps at odds with the war’s progress. With little end to the violence in sight, has this war of choice affected Trump’s personal bandwidth for action and the willingness of even his ostensible allies to advocate on his behalf? 

While many Americans give their country “positive reviews,” a number of the U.S.’s closest allies offer “far less flattering ratings,” said Politico. As Trump’s “aggressive posture” geopolitically disrupts the “longstanding world order,” the U.S.’s global reputation “appears far worse than Americans realize.” What’s “especially depressing” about this is that it’s based on data reflecting “international attitudes before the debacle in Iran,” said economist Paul Krugman on his Substack. The “general public” may not realize that Trump’s America offers “no reward to nations that come to its aid” and “does nothing to punish nations that aid its adversaries.” But “every leader in the world” has noticed and “will treat the United States accordingly,” said Krugman. 

In Iran, Trump wants a “quick victory and a conventional confrontation,” said historian Arash Azizi at El Mundo America. Thus far, he has “not had it,” and if the war results in a situation “similar to the current one,” Trump could be “seen as a loser.” 

Trump’s inability to articulate a strong justification for the war highlights an “inconvenient” truth for the administration to admit, said The Guardian: This war is a “distraction” from his growing unpopularity. The irony, then, is that Trump will struggle to “consolidate his authoritarian regime” because he’s “simply not popular enough to do so.”

Trump has come out in favor of Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr’s threat not to renew and even revoke broadcast licenses for networks over “fake news” during the Iran war. Ongoing “scrutiny” over the weekslong war in Iran has “escalated” Trump’s “pressure campaign” against “legacy media” in which Carr has become a “key participant,” said The Washington Post. 

Carr has “regularly” brought up the prospect of “seizing station licenses over various programming decisions at the major television networks,” said The New York Times. But that process is legally dubious and “exceedingly onerous by design.” 

As Trump’s “attack dog” at the FCC, Carr’s threats have “garnered lots of attention,” even if the chair has “very little power to follow through,” said CNN. The FCC hasn’t denied a license renewal in “decades,” and any effort to do so now would result in a “protracted legal battle” in which a station would “likely cite Trump’s retributive streak and mount a First Amendment case.” 

Critics of this administration have already labeled Carr’s threat as part of an “authoritarian assault on free speech,” said CNBC. Carr’s threat is “Constitutional law 101,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). The government can’t simply censor the speech it “just doesn’t like about Trump’s Iran war.”

It is a “common consequence of war” that censorship becomes “more politically tempting,” said The Washington Post’s editorial board. That dynamic makes it “imperative to call out government efforts to chill free speech in moments like this.”

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