From the beginning of his war with Iran, President Donald Trump took care to acknowledge the ugly headlines that might end result. It can be a way more important operation than his earlier navy strikes, he mentioned in a video posted shortly after the navy motion started, and that meant seemingly US deaths.
The specter of troop deaths — there have already been six — is certainly a somber variable that seems likely to test Americans’ limited tolerance for a war that they don’t appear significantly eager on.
But it’s particularly an issue for Trump. He has many abilities as a politician, however talking about lifeless and wounded service members is decidedly not amongst them. In reality, it’s an actual blind spot.
And due to his selection of overseas conflicts, that weak spot faces a harsh highlight.
The war with Iran is now lower than every week outdated, and Trump and his administration have already made a number of awkward comments about the deaths of US troopers.
After the primary three deaths had been reported, Trump informed NBC News on Sunday: “We have three, but we expect casualties, but in the end it’s going to be a great deal for the world.”
Trump was instantly inserting these deaths right into a cost-benefit evaluation.
Then in a video posted to social media the identical day, he once more appeared to ask for folks’s understanding about the topic.
“And sadly, there will likely be more [deaths] before it ends,” Trump mentioned, earlier than including: “That’s the way it is. Likely be more.”
He then added: “But we’ll do everything possible where that won’t be the case.”
Many Democrats harshly criticized Trump for his “the way it is” comment, suggesting it betrayed a sure callousness — as if this was simply the price of doing the enterprise of war.
And then throughout a briefing on the Pentagon Wednesday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth criticized the media for supposedly focusing too much on the dead soldiers in an effort to make Trump “look bad.” He steered these deaths had been getting disproportionate play, in comparison with the navy’s successes.
“But when a few drones get through or tragic things happen, it’s front-page news,” Hegseth mentioned. “I get it; the press only wants to make the president look bad. But try for once to report the reality.”
The media usually covers service members who die in fight; some newspapers usually ran multi-page options commemorating the fallen of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
These are additionally particularly important deaths, given they’re the primary in a brand new war whose justification the administration has struggled mightily to explain.
Hegseth’s comments had been much more puzzling given what occurred subsequent. When Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine spoke, his first order of enterprise was — you guessed it — detailing and memorializing the deaths of these troops.
“First, it’s with profound sadness and gratitude that I share the names of four of our six fallen heroes, all from the 103rd Sustainment Command, U.S. Army Reserves out of Des Moines, Iowa — Captain Cody Khork, Sergeant First Class Noah Tietjens, Sergeant First Class Nicole Amor, and Sergeant Declan Coady,” Caine mentioned.
It was a placing distinction. While Caine appeared to be talking because the nation’s highest-ranking navy officer, Hegseth appeared extra centered on a political message catered to Trump.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt tried to do some clear up Wednesday afternoon, denying Hegseth was asking the media to not prominently cowl service members’ deaths, whereas additionally attacking reporters. When pressed by NCS’s Kaitlan Collins on whether or not the administration believes the media ought to cowl these deaths, she known as it a “disingenuous” query and added: “That’s not what the secretary meant.”
“It’s the position of this administration that the press in this room and the press across the country should accurately report on the success of Operation Epic Fury and the damage it is doing to the rogue Iranian regime,” Leavitt mentioned.
She additionally mentioned Trump will attend the dignified switch of the troops’ stays.
But the president’s rhetoric is par for the course for him. Over and over once more by means of the final decade, he’s mentioned questionable issues about lifeless and injured service members and appeared to wrestle to indicate the type of empathy and respect that you simply’d count on from a president.
To wit:
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Trump induced an enormous stir in the course of the 2016 main marketing campaign when he mentioned of John McCain, who spent years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam: “He’s a ‘war hero’ because he was captured. I like people that weren’t captured.”
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In 2017, a Democratic congresswoman accused Trump of telling a Gold Star widow that her deceased husband “knew what he was signing up for.” (Trump denied the account, however the widow confirmed it, and the White House seemed to tacitly confirm it as nicely.)
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Multiple media retailers and Trump’s former chief of workers John Kelly mentioned that Trump in 2020 disparaged dead and injured soldiers as “suckers” and “losers” and declined a go to to honor the lifeless at Aisne-Marne Cemetery in France. Kelly mentioned Trump didn’t wish to stand subsequent to amputees as a result of “it doesn’t look good for me.” Trump denied these comments.
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Trump has repeatedly in latest years downplayed the traumatic brain injuries that greater than 100 troopers suffered from a 2020 Iranian missile strike on a US base in Iraq, calling them “headaches.” That earned him a rebuke from the Veterans of Foreign Wars, which known as on Trump to apologize.
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The VFW additionally criticized Trump in 2024 for saying the civilian Medal of Freedom was “much better” than the navy Medal of Honor as a result of the latter’s recipients are often “in very bad shape.”
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In March 2025, Trump appeared unfamiliar with the circumstances of 4 US troopers who had gone lacking throughout a coaching train in Lithuania. Asked whether or not he’d been briefed on the scenario, Trump paused and mentioned: “No, I haven’t.” The troopers had been later discovered lifeless.
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Just two months in the past, Trump induced a little bit of a world incident by claiming that troops from NATO allies “stayed a little back” from the entrance strains in Afghanistan. Many NATO allies suffered excessive numbers of fight deaths and casualties whereas becoming a member of the US-led war on terror.
Trump has additionally repeatedly made flippant remarks comparing his own sacrifices and achievements to troopers and war heroes. And he’s been accused of procuring a “bone spurs” diagnosis when he was youthful explicitly so he might keep away from the Vietnam War draft.
Trump has by no means taken nice care to abide by political and societal norms or to make use of politically appropriate speech; in some methods, that’s a part of his enchantment.
But if there’s one space in which this method may cause actual issues, it’s in how he talks about this most severe of topics. And that’s shortly at challenge with the war with Iran.