In Donald Trump’s first term, he might have live-tweeted the war in Iran. These days, his presence on Truth Social, the social-media platform that he owns, is more targeted at Trump superfans, many of whom are not entirely enthusiastic about their MAGA leader’s decision to launch a new war of choice in the Middle East. Despite the conflict, Trump has kept up a prolific pace of posting in recent days, but the message to his followers has strongly suggested that he is anything but consumed by the burden of commanding a conflict that has, in not even two weeks, killed Iran’s Supreme Leader, unleashed the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market, spread to at least ten additional countries across the region, and cost American taxpayers more than eleven billion dollars and counting.

Instead, he’s relayed his observations about recent “politically suicidal” comments by Gavin “Newscum,” in what was maybe “the most self-destructive interview I’ve ever seen”; bragged about plans to save the Great Lakes from a plague of “rather violent and destructive Asian Carp”; endorsed various Republican congressional candidates, including a challenger to one of Trump’s only remaining public critics inside the G.O.P., the “Worst ‘Congressman’ EVER,” Thomas Massie; and circulated articles about Hillary Clinton, Larry Summers, alleged noncitizen voters, the “rigged” 2020 election, and the “misfit” who will be the new chair of Harvard’s history department.

As for Iran, Trump this week has posted only a few updates, including a poll purporting to show that his war is supported by more than fifty per cent of Americans, a short boast about the U.S. destroying “10 inactive mine laying boats and/or ships,” and a demand that Iran “IMMEDIATELY!” reopen and de-mine the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s oil supply is shipped, or face “Military consequences … at a level never seen before.” On Thursday morning, as oil prices soared above a hundred dollars a barrel and the new Supreme Leader—who is the son of the old Supreme Leader—threatened the U.S., Trump posted that high oil prices were actually good for America, since it is the world’s largest producer, and vowed to press on with a war aimed at “stoping an evil Empire.”

The President’s relative reticence on the subject of the most consequential military action he has ever ordered is an observable fact, and not, as his decision to launch the conflict apparently was, based on only a “feeling.” The Washington Post found that less than twenty per cent of the more than two hundred and twenty posts by Trump in the first nine days of the war were related to the conflict, and, when I looked at this week’s output, I found that even fewer—only seven out of his fifty-three posts since Monday morning, or thirteen per cent—were about the war. (The number rises to eleven if you count one about the Iranian men’s soccer team playing in the World Cup and another three demanding asylum in Australia for the Iranian women’s national soccer team.) In campaign-style appearances this week, including one at a rally in Hebron, Kentucky, on Wednesday, Trump was similarly unfocussed on the war—though he did explain, between expounding on the evils of bald eagle-killing windmills and how tricky it is to walk down the stairs of Air Force One, that he personally chose the name Operation Epic Fury after being presented with a long list of options for what to call the conflict, most of which were so boring that he was “falling asleep” listening to them.

There are several possible explanations for this: perhaps Trump is already tired of the war and finds weeks-old interviews from the book tour of the Democratic governor of California more interesting. Or perhaps he’s worried that, after years of promising to avoid the stupid and unnecessary entanglements of past American leaders in the Middle East, the conflict with Iran is simply not popular among his most hard-core supporters. It’s also possible that Trump is concerned about how the war is going, and he doesn’t want to call attention to the spiking gas prices, plunging stock market, and chaotic geopolitical situation which the conflict has so far unleashed. Or maybe he just thinks that people who look at his social-media feed would prefer to see memes of Democratic congressional leaders dressed up in red devil suits, such as the one he posted on Monday morning. The answer, of course, could be all of the above.

The official White House social-media account, meanwhile, has begun posting footage of Operation Epic Fury as if it were a video game. In a video from Wednesday evening, images of missiles hitting targets were interspersed with stock footage of a man bowling a strike; the next shot shows animated bowling pins representing “Iranian Regime Officials” being knocked out by a red-white-and-blue U.S.A. bowling ball. Another video, posted on Thursday, even more explicitly gamifies the war, which has thus far killed seven American service members and more than a thousand Iranians. There’s bowling in this one, too, but also archery, baseball, basketball, boxing, golf, and tennis. Thus does the world’s leading superpower celebrate its killing power.

It’s true that, in his many comments to reporters in recent days, the President has been far more voluble about the war, if not exactly clear about its objectives, progress, or likely duration. He’s called it a war, a major combat operation, and, on Wednesday, “an excursion, a little excursion.” He has suggested that the United States would take over the Strait of Hormuz in order to secure safe passage for oil tankers, and also that there was no problem at all with the Strait of Hormuz as it is. He made news by claiming that it was not the U.S. but possibly Iran itself which had sent an American-made Tomahawk missile to kill at least a hundred and seventy-five people at a girls’ school on the first day of the war. Never mind that Iran does not possess Tomahawk missiles.

Perhaps his most closely scrutinized statements have been those concerning when and how the war might end. These, too, have been confounding to the point of nonsensical. This week, Trump has said that “we won,” but also that “we’re not finished yet.” He has demanded unconditional surrender and regime change, and also denied that victory would require either of those things. At his rally in Kentucky, he spoke of staying the course, whatever that course is, almost as though trying to convince himself. “We don’t want to leave early, do we?” he asked the audience. “We got to finish the job, right?”

In the past, perhaps the only reassuring thing that could be said about Trump was that he was not so reckless and unhinged as to take the United States into a major new war. Avoiding armed conflict was, after all, one fixed principle—besides the magically transformative powers of tariffs—that he truly seemed to believe. As he ran for reëlection in 2024, his two key campaign promises, aside from mass deportations, were that he would fix the economy and not start any wars. Even his voters might have thought twice about granting Trump unchecked life-and-death power over millions if they thought he might actually use it.

And yet here we are, scrutinizing Trump’s voluminous and incoherent ramblings for clues to the future of a conflict that may well rewrite the map of the Middle East for years to come.

The need for this level of Trumpology itself is a sign of how swiftly America’s democratic institutions have declined. Congress, despite the Constitution’s specific grant of warmaking powers to the national legislature, has opted out. The weaklings around Trump in the most senior positions of our government can do nothing other than agree with him. (“Inside the administration, some officials are growing pessimistic about the lack of a clear strategy to finish the war,” the Times wrote. “But they have been careful not to express that directly to the president, who has repeatedly declared that the military operation is a complete success.”) The Israelis, with whom the U.S. launched the war, may have a more coherent plan or timetable, but as I have heard firsthand this week, the one factor they cannot control is the President of the United States, who might singlehandedly decide to pull the plug on the operation at any moment.

There’s no point in deceiving ourselves: Trump now sounds little different than Vladimir Putin in how he justifies the conflict—and in how much power he has claimed for himself to dictate America’s participation in it. I don’t know how exactly the war will end, but I do know that, however and whenever it does, there’s only one possible outcome as far as Trump is concerned: a late-night social media post emblazoned with the word “VICTORY!” ♦