WSJ editorial warns Trump is losing control of decisions

President Donald Trump is receiving a warning from a newspaper whose columnists usually support him — he seems like a “captive” as he leads America into war with Iran.

“Events may yet pan out but Mr. Trump is becoming captive to decisions made elsewhere,” wrote Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. of The Wall Street Journal. “The Iranian regime is apparently choosing whether to bet big on its ability to hold the world’s oil consumers hostage and dare Mr. Trump to do something about it. Then it becomes a different ballgame.”

Jenkins pointed out that, amidst allegations that Trump needed to help an oil tanker navigate the Strait of Hormuz amidst Iranian retaliation, the administration needs to worry about Iran strangling the American economy by raising gas prices, much as they did in the 1970s.

“The Trump outcome depends now on securing this U.S. strategic interest,” Jenkins wrote. “If he gives the impression of being deterred by Iran’s threatened closure of the Strait of Hormuz, it will be a geopolitical earthquake he didn’t bargain for. Among other results, China might reconsider its relatively hands-off attitude toward the U.S.-dominated Persian Gulf.”

Jenkins speculated that Trump is acting like a man who is not making decisions rationally but based on external pressures. In addition to destabilizing the international order, Trump’s Iran war may have also compromised his own political base at home.

“Trump is running far ahead of his political support,” Jenkins said. “It wasn’t long ago Democrats were trying to stir up U.S. military personnel to disobey his orders. If we learned anything from Joe Biden, a president fighting to keep his head above water cognitively is a president who has a hard time keeping his administration adhering to his priorities.”

Jenkins added that, when Nixon confronted a Middle Eastern war in 1973, he had more respect internationally as a statesman because of his successful prosecution of the Vietnam War and opening of diplomatic relations with China. Yet as Nixon’s adviser David Gergen told this journalist for Salon in 2018, even Nixon’s risky Middle Eastern gambits aroused tremendous consternation from his advisers.

“Nixon was the commander in chief, and [former Secretary of Defense Jim] Schlesinger in effect was saying, ‘We’re going to override the commander in chief if in fact we think it’s coming from some sort of aggressive personality or he’s just pissed off. Whatever it may be,'” Gergen told Salon, commenting that Nixon’s mental health deteriorated in 1973 due to the Watergate scandal and his alcoholism. “And I’ve asked people in the Defense Department, ‘Do you think there’s a similar arrangement today between [Secretary of Defense Jim] Mattis and the four-star generals?’ And the answer they’ve given me back — I don’t think there’s any reason to believe he’s giving such an order … [is] that if they’re given an order that they think comes from an erratic personality, they will double-check it with the secretary before they carry it out.”

Yet as Jenkins pointed out, Nixon still managed to inspire “broad respect as a geopolitician, even among his enemies.” Trump lacks the same foundation of respect as Nixon, Jenkins concluded.

“Nixon, with the dregs of his Watergate-damaged authority, put the U.S. military on global nuclear alert to stop the Soviets from involving themselves in that year’s Mideast war and global energy panic,” Jenkins wrote.

Jenkins is not alone among prominent conservatives to question the political wisdom of Trump’s Iran war. Podcaster Joe Rogan, one of Trump’s most prominent media supporters, said on Tuesday that supporters who backed Trump because he promised to keep America out of unnecessary wars feel “betrayed.” Meanwhile Steve Schmidt, a Republican strategist and former advisor to President George W. Bush, argued on his Tuesday Substack that Trump is missing bigger priorities by focusing on Iran.

“We're always told there isn't enough money for schools, for health care, or for our veterans — but there's always enough money to bomb people on the other side of the world,” Schmidt argued. “We can support the democracy movement in Iran. We can prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon — all without bombing innocent schoolchildren or sending American troops off to die on the other side of the world.”

He later continued, “The American people understand, and are seeing more clearly every day, that everything Donald Trump promised was a lie — and that what they've been given is a catastrophe. What we have to do is vote these people out and take away the political power they have abused so badly.”

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