Trump’s war exposed the truth

Yesterday, at 3 p.m. local time in New York City, Melania Trump sat upright in the striped blue chair reserved for the rotating president of the United Nations Security Council. She adjusted her posture, tugged gently at the hem of her dark grey colored jacket, and studied her leather-bound notebook. Her movements were exact, controlled, almost robotic. After a brief glance to her left and a subtle nod from the person seated beside her, she lifted her eyes, offered a faint smile, and called the meeting to order: “Good afternoon. The 10,113 meeting of the Security Council is called to order.” She brought the gavel down once. A crisp, hollow strike that echoed through the chamber. With it, she made history, not just as the first First Lady to preside over a Security Council meeting, but quite possibly as the least qualified person ever to do so.

The topic of the meeting was “Children, Technology, and Education in Conflict,” falling under the Security Council’s mandate for the maintenance of international peace and security. The stated focus was education’s role in advancing tolerance and world peace. And the woman chosen to lead that conversation was the wife of the man who, days earlier, was part of a military operation that killed at least 165 schoolgirls and staff in an elementary school in the town of Minab, in southern Iran.

The person chosen to lead such a symbolic meeting held no elected office, no diplomatic title, no security clearance, and none of the foreign policy experience that typically accompanies a position of that importance. Traditionally, the rotating presidency of the Security Council is filled by the President of the United States, the Vice President, the Secretary of State, or the U.N. Ambassador, people with positions of legitimate diplomatic authority. But instead, this administration chose to seat the First Lady. Not because she was qualified, but to send a message, a deliberate act of contempt toward the institution itself and toward every nation sitting at that table. They sent the least qualified person they could possibly justify to say: we don’t take you seriously. We don’t take this institution seriously. And there’s nothing you can do about it.

And when it came time for Melania to address the room, she offered what she called “heartfelt condolences” to the families of fallen service members and said, “The U.S. stands with all children throughout the world. I hope soon peace will be yours.” She never mentioned Iran, or said the word war. Instead, she spoke about artificial intelligence “democratizing knowledge” and urged the Council to “safeguard learning,” as if the greatest threat to children’s education right now is their access to a chatbot, and not the bombs her husband ordered just days earlier.

But others in the chamber were not so careful with their silence. UK Ambassador James Kariuki used his time to speak about how conflict disproportionately impacts girls’ education, and how girls in war zones face heightened risks of “exploitation, child marriage, trafficking, and sexual and gender-based violence.” He said the word trafficking while sitting across the table from the wife of a man whose name appears in the Epstein files more than 38,000 times. And it’s hard not to read into that moment and see it for exactly what it was.

And what made it worse, what turned it from strange political theater into something much darker, was what was unfolding outside that chamber of the United Nations. Because we learned the next day that Trump started this latest war because, as he would later admit, he “had a feeling.” Not intelligence or evidence. Not even an imminent threat confirmed by the Pentagon or the CIA. A feeling. During a press conference today with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Trump said this: “It was my opinion that they were going to attack first. They were going to attack. If we didn’t do it, they were going to attack first. I felt strongly about that. And based on the way the negotiation was going, I think they were going to attack first. And I didn’t want that to happen.”

And even that explanation couldn’t hold for more than a few hours. Because the justifications have shifted so many times, from so many people inside this administration, that it’s become impossible to know whether any of them are telling the truth, or if they even know what the truth is anymore. First, it was that Iran’s ballistic missiles were advancing rapidly and would soon be capable of reaching the United States. Then on Monday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio offered an entirely different rationale: “We knew there was going to be an Israeli action. We knew that would precipitate an attack against American forces. And we knew that if we didn’t preemptively go after them, we would suffer higher casualties.” It sounded rehearsed. It sounded like something lawyers helped write. But Trump undercut it the very next day. When asked by a reporter if Israel had forced his hand, he didn’t hesitate. “No, actually, I might have forced their hand.” It sounded less like a statement of policy and more like someone covering for a friend.

And then came the most chilling admission of all. According to reporting from an ABC News interview with Jonathan Karl on Sunday night, Trump acknowledged a deeply personal motive for ordering the strikes. Referring to the killing of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Trump said: “I got him before he got me.” He was referencing Iran’s alleged 2024 plot to assassinate him. A sitting president of the United States admitted that personal revenge played a role in his decision to launch a military operation that has now killed children, destabilized the region, and pulled the world into crisis.

And the lies don’t stop there. According to CNN, in the weeks leading up to the strikes, Trump and his top officials overstated Iran’s capabilities and distorted how close Tehran was to developing a nuclear weapon. The case for war was built on inflated threats, shifting stories, and personal grievance. And now they can’t even keep their own stories straight.

And we can’t lose sight of what this was really about. Trump already created his own parallel council, the “Board of Peace.” A man who just admitted to launching a war based on personal spite, or feelings, depending on when you ask him, built a $10 billion entity designed not to stabilize the world, but to replace the only international body with the ability to hold him accountable. He doesn’t want diplomacy. He wants control. And he certainly doesn’t want a forum where uncomfortable questions can be asked. He wants a table where no one can outvote him, no one can subpoena him, and no one can speak about the trafficking of women and girls or the military actions he keeps ordering.

That is why Melania was at the Security Council. Because if the point had been peace, he could have sent a diplomat. If the point had been diplomacy, he could have sent a secretary of state. But the point was mockery and to signal that the existing institutions no longer matter. That the real power sits with him, and that the rest of the world can either fall in line or be ignored.

Everything about this, the UN stunt, the shifting stories, the war itself, comes from the same place. This administration is reckless. And recklessness has a price. It’s just never paid by the people who cause it. These are the names of the people who paid the price for a president’s feelings. Captain Cody Khork was 35 years old, from Florida. Sergeant First Class Nicole Amor was 39, from Minnesota. Sergeant First Class Noah Tietjens was 42, from Nebraska. Sergeant Declan Coady was just 20 years old, from Iowa. Twenty. Two others have not yet been publicly identified. They were killed when Iranian drones struck a tactical operations center in Kuwait. Eighteen more were seriously wounded. They didn’t get to have an opinion about whether this war made sense. They answered the call, served their country, and made the ultimate sacrifice without Congress ever authorizing the war that killed them, because the president was afraid for his own life.

And now many more of our brave service members are about to be put in even greater danger. Because the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly a third of the world’s seaborne crude oil passes, is closed. Iran shut it down in retaliation, and the shockwave hit immediately. Gas prices jumped 11 cents overnight. Oil surged nearly $10 a barrel. European natural gas prices spiked 40%. And instead of reckoning with any of this, and pausing to assess the damage or protect what’s left, this administration is doubling down. Trump is threatening to order Navy escorts for commercial tankers through one of the most volatile waterways on earth, positioning American sailors directly in the line of fire in a region that is actively at war because of a decision he made four days ago. We’ve already lost six. Eighteen more are wounded. And his answer is to send more.

But perhaps the most disturbing story to emerge from this war isn’t about strategy or geopolitics at all. It’s about what’s happening inside our own military. The Military Religious Freedom Foundation has received complaints from more than 100 service members across at least 30 military installations, who report that their commanders are framing the war in Iran as part of a biblical plan to bring about the end of the world. Mikey Weinstein, founder and president of MRFF, said they started getting calls in the early hours of Saturday morning, just as the bombs began falling. “People saying their commanders were just jubilant about this and trying to tell people, ‘Don’t worry, it’s all part of God’s plan,’” he said.

According to a complaint filed by a non-commissioned officer on behalf of himself and 15 other troops, all from different religious backgrounds, a commander told them the war in Iran was “all part of God’s divine plan.” The commander cited the Book of Revelation and the section specifically referring to Armageddon and the “imminent” return of Jesus Christ. And then, with what was described as a big grin on his face, the commander told his troops: “President Donald Trump has been anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth.”

That is a United States military commander telling service members, young men and women who are about to be deployed into a war zone, that they are fighting to bring about the apocalypse. And it’s not just one commander. Service members reported being invited to Bible studies at their commanders’ personal homes over the weekend to “discuss how this was all part of the plan and it’s all being lived out in the Book of Revelation and Christian eschatology.” Commanders were described as being “in a hurry” to get subordinates on board.

And here’s what makes it even worse: these service members can’t push back. Under the military’s Uniform Code of Military Justice, defying a superior officer is a punishable offense, one that can result in court-martial, confinement, and a federal conviction. As Weinstein put it, “If you’re being proselytized to by your superior, you can’t say, ‘Get out of my face.’” He described what happens to service members who file complaints. “You become what we call a ‘tarantula on a wedding cake.’ How long do you think that cake lasts at that wedding?”

And I want to be clear. Some of these commanders may genuinely believe what they’re saying. They may be people of real faith reaching for any framework that makes an unjust order feel justified. I understand that impulse, even as I reject what it leads to. But this isn’t just coming from the commanders. This is coming from the top. Pete Hegseth has made faith his primary tool for consolidating loyalty inside the military. He declared at a prayer breakfast last month that the U.S. is a “Christian nation.” He holds prayer meetings at the Pentagon each month. He wraps every policy, every mission, every order in the language of scripture and divine purpose. And he does it because he has figured out that religious authority operates differently in people’s minds than any other kind of authority. And Trump? Trump doesn’t believe any of it. He just goes along with it because someone told him it would keep him in power. For Trump, God is just another prop. He doesn’t need to believe it. He just needs them to.

And none of this is new. Every authoritarian movement in history has figured out this same trick. Franco called his civil war in Spain a “crusade” and made the Catholic Church his partner in fascism. The Nazis stamped “God is with us” on their belt buckles. Extremist movements across every religion and every century have used the same playbook: borrow God’s authority to make obedience feel sacred instead of coerced. The leaders never believe any of it. They just know it works. That’s not faith. That’s predation.

Harrison Mann, a 13-year Army veteran who served at the Defense Intelligence Agency, warned that this is exactly how institutions collapse from within. “There’s danger in commanders telling soldiers they only vouch for Christians, whites or MAGA supporters,” he told HuffPost. “When the public starts to view the military that way too, then you get to a much more dangerous place where they no longer have trust in them.” He called for Congress to impeach Hegseth and urged people to support service members who are living through this. But he wasn’t hopeless. “It’s way too soon to give up,” he said. “There’s just so much that we have not tried. There’s so much people power that has not yet been mobilized.”

And he’s right. There is still so much we can do. I used to feel overwhelmed by all of this. Helpless. Like we were all just watching it happen. But I don’t feel that way anymore. Every single day now feels like another opportunity to push the resistance a little farther. And these nightly posts are a big part of that for me. Writing to you, hearing from you, knowing that something I said might have helped someone make sense of what’s happening, that keeps me going. You keep me going.

I’m not going anywhere. I will be here every single night until this is done and until we’ve rebuilt. Three years, five years, ten years, I don’t care. If I physically can, I will be here. Because the people in power aren’t coming to save us. We will save us. And that means reaching people where they are.

I think of what we’re building together as something multi-layered. There’s the online part, where we share facts to counter the disinformation and where we support the people creating the content, both long-format writing like these evening posts and shorter content from creators on social media. Because everyone takes in information differently, and our only goal is to make sure the truth is louder than the lies being fed to people every single day. We must continue to support them however we can. The other side has super PACs and billionaire money funding their content. We have each other. And just as importantly, there’s what we do in person and what we do with our wallets. Having the hard conversations, even with people we don’t know well, because this is not politics. This is the future our children are going to inherit. And being intentional about where our money goes, because it’s the only language some of these people understand.

Now, as I’m writing this, I’m watching the Texas primary results come in. And they are giving me so much hope. Primaries don’t normally get big turnouts. But tonight, Democratic primary turnout in Texas has nearly doubled from 2022. More than 1.3 million early votes compared to about 625,000 four years ago. In Texas. We need three House seats and four Senate seats to take Congress back. Those are achievable numbers. And tonight, in one of the most reliably red states in the country, the energy is unmistakable. That’s why I still have hope for America, and you should too.

I’ll see you tomorrow,
Heather

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This commentary represents my personal opinions and analysis of matters of public concern, informed by publicly available information. Any references to individuals constitute opinion and commentary protected under the First Amendment.