A wartime leader’s words are critically important. But Trump, contradicting himself and denying reality, is no Churchill
During a White House ceremony on 9 April 1963, then president John F Kennedy bestowed honorary citizenship on former prime minister Winston Churchill, remembering how effectively Churchill inspired millions with his words during the second world war. As Kennedy put it, Churchill “mobilized the English language and sent it into battle”.
The same cannot be said of Kennedy’s successor Donald Trump. Their names may be awkwardly conjoined atop the shuttered Kennedy Center, but the comparison ends there. Kennedy, like Churchill, spoke effectively, with great attention to the facts, particularly during the Cuban missile crisis, when the world’s leaders hung on every phrase and participle spoken by the leader of the free world.
Trump has been much less successful in building support for the Iran war, at home or abroad. Far from uniting the free world, he has been dividing it with a torrent of taunts and threats, mainly directed at allies. It’s a curious way to wage a war, which explains why victory still feels so far away, a month in.
The words of a president are critically important; as Lincoln once said, there is a world of difference between a horse-chestnut and a chestnut horse. But Trump has yet to address the American people in a serious way about his war aims. Traditionally, presidents would build a case for a war in a somber address, delivered from the Resolute Desk of the Oval Office. But nowadays, presidential utterances are more likely to come from Mar-a-Lago, which is not exactly what Churchill meant when he said “we shall fight them on the beaches.” Trump was at his Florida retreat when he announced the war, while wearing a baseball hat, with a video released in the middle of the night of 28 February.
Since then, each interjection has added to the muddle, with shifting statements that routinely contradict each other or simply deny reality. The war is about to end … or it may last a long time. We are not afraid to send boots on the ground … but then again, we may not. The threat from Iran was “imminent” … but it might have taken 10 years to mature, as US intelligence suggested. We “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear stockpiles in 2025 … or maybe we didn’t? We destroyed “100% of Iran’s military capability” … except for its ability to use drones, missiles, mines and speedboats to shut down the strait of Hormuz.
In the war’s fifth week, the muddle has deepened, with inconsistent messaging that clearly betrays the lack of a strategy. Are we going to “obliterate” (that word again) Iran’s civilian infrastructure, as Trump announced on 21 March?
That might be a war crime, as many have argued – much like the war crimes we routinely accuse Vladimir Putin of committing in Ukraine. But never mind, that goal was taken off the table on 23 March, well before the 48-hour deadline Trump had imposed, because Iran was suddenly communicating with him (a claim denied by Iran). The result was a five-day pause to calm markets, dangerously roiled. Then, after a few more angry threats, a new pause was called for, this time for 10 days, to 6 April. Future historians may label this the Stop-and-Go War.
On Monday, he again threatened to target civilian infrastructure, including the desalination facilities that make water available in a parched region, while also claiming “great progress” in the talks that may or may not be happening.
The quest for a ceasefire, if sincere, is a worthy goal. But any peace deal is likely to conclude the conflict with most of Trump’s goals unmet. Again, his speeches keep digging a deeper ditch. At times, Trump has issued stern edicts that sound vaguely reminiscent of the second world war, demanding an “unconditional surrender” that Iran is clearly not offering. Then, when that doesn’t work, he simply moves on to declare that the war has already been “won”. Really?
Victory will come as news to the American people, who were just asked to pay $200bn toward an ongoing war effort. It will also surprise Iran, still lobbing missiles, and threatening to set invaders “on fire”. The two sides remain far apart, with tankers idling in the strait of Hormuz, while the regime ignores Trump’s threats. In advance of the negotiations, Iran is demanding reparations from the US and ongoing control of the strait – a long way from “unconditional surrender”. Their nuclear materials remain undetected, and it’s absurd to claim, as Trump has, that a “regime change” has already taken place.
It is of course possible that peace will result from the talks to come, and a safer Middle East will be the result. But the incoherence of Trump’s plan has wounded American prestige, especially within Nato. That was particularly clear on 16 March, the day that Trump demanded that Nato allies clear the strait of Hormuz. That was always going to be a long shot, given that Nato had never been consulted on this war, and such an effort would have strained Nato resources badly needed in Ukraine. It was also confusing because Trump had earlier declared that the US navy, with far greater resources, would take care of the problem. When no Nato nation sprang into action, Trump erupted on social media and declared that he no longer wanted their help. Later that day, he asked China – an ally of Iran’s – to do the same job. Needless to say, they too refused. On 27 March, he fumed that he might not help Nato nations, even if they were invaded.
Nato has helped the United States in foreign conflicts before – in Afghanistan especially, a war that began in a moment of genuine transatlantic solidarity, in the aftermath of September 11. But it is essentially a defensive alliance designed to protect Europe from Russia, as its founding treaty clearly indicates. That treaty mentions possible attacks on North America or Europe (including Turkey); it says nothing about the Middle East, or using Nato as a traffic cop to keep oil flowing from petrostates.
Another reason for the growing rift is not hard to find. With the passage of two months, it has become clear that Trump’s January obsession with Greenland was a strategic fiasco of the first order. It marked the end of a long period of Nato solidarity, especially in Ukraine (two new Nato members, Finland and Sweden, joined in 2023 and 2024), and the beginning of something far less stable. “Turn left at Greenland,” John Lennon quipped in A Hard Day’s Night, when asked “how did you find America?” Those words have taken on a dark new meaning in 2026, with the former allies walking down divergent paths.
Obviously, Trump failed in his short-term goal of seizing the huge landmass, partly because his speeches wandered from reality and persuaded no one in Canada or Europe (no Chinese or Russian vessels were seen in the region). But the long-term damage was even worse. His quixotic quest deepened Europe’s determination to defend a Nato member’s territory from a threat that was unexpectedly coming from the west instead of the east. Denmark not only refused to give in, it began to prepare – shockingly – for the possibility of a US invasion. The other Nato nations sided with Denmark. The resulting loss of confidence in the United States has been devastating, as Europe’s ongoing ambivalence over the Iran war demonstrates.
The situation has been especially difficult for the United Kingdom, traditionally America’s closest ally, and the whisperer between the US and Europe. Trump has insulted its prime minister, Keir Starmer, repeatedly, as “no Churchill”, and in so doing, he has badly damaged the special relationship that Churchill did so much to will into existence with his oratory. According to a recent poll, only 30% of Britons believe that the special relationship exists any more – a 17 percentage point decline over the past year.
That is a calamity for both countries, and a gift to Putin, who is likely to emerge the real victor of the Iran war. To keep oil prices from climbing, Trump has waived sanctions on Russian oil, greatly replenishing its depleted coffers and giving it the resources it badly needs to continue its flailing war in Ukraine. In the meantime, Britons are struggling to pay catastrophic prices for gas and heating – a wartime consequence Trump never bothered to explain to them.
If Starmer is “no Churchill”, then neither is Trump. For a long time, he has gotten away with a rambling speaking style, “the Weave”, that can be entertaining in a rally setting. But it works less well in a complex military mission, where goals need to be defined, and allies persuaded to join in the fight.
Once, there was no question on that last point. In 1962, when Charles de Gaulle was informed that Kennedy wished to provide him evidence of Russian missiles in Cuba, he said that he did not need to see the photos, because he trusted the word of the president of the United States. Today, no Nato leader would say that.
The war may end soon. Churchill would have conveyed that feeling with the sort of poetry that he was effective at finding (“Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”) It was a poetry all the more inspiring for being tinged with realism, and careful to avoid false promises of easy conquest.
We are unlikely to hear that kind of reflective language anytime soon from Donald Trump. When the president was recently asked about a possible end date for the war, he replied: “We’re very far ahead of schedule,” then undermined his own response by adding: “I don’t know, it depends. Wrapping up is all in my mind, nobody else’s.”
Ted Widmer is the author of Lincoln on the Verge: Thirteen Days to Washington, and the editor of several anthologies of presidential speeches. He was a speechwriter in the Clinton White House
