Trump Made Massive “Tactical Error” on Iran During Ukraine Talks

The U.S. could have had the schematics for Iran’s Shahed drones, but the Trump administration said no.

Roughly seven months ago, Ukrainian officials tried to sell the White House the technology to destroy Iran’s inexpensive, low-flying drones, going so far as to compile a PowerPoint presentation to sway the admin. The intel was battle-proven: Ukraine has more experience fighting Shaheds than practically any other country, downing the same design under Russia’s flag (Russia rebranded the military tech as “Geran drones”).

The decision to snub the offer is now being discussed as one of the biggest miscalculations thus far in the Iran war.

“If there’s a tactical error or a mistake we made leading up to this [war in Iran], this was it,” a U.S. official told Axios Tuesday.

Ukraine developed its own home-grown, low-cost interceptor drone to combat the design, along with air defense systems and sensors. At a closed-door White House meeting on August 18, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy offered the defense tech to Donald Trump. It was extended in an act of good will—an attempt to strengthen ties with the U.S. amid increasing tension over Russia’s invasion. Trump was reportedly interested and “asked his team to work on it, but they have done nothing,” an unnamed Ukrainian official told Axios.

The Shahed drones are capable of flying low and slow, a facet of their design that has made them difficult targets for U.S. air defenses, particularly as the U.S. and its allies run low on interceptor munitions.

Military officials have stressed since last weekend that fighting Iran has drastically depleted America’s missile defense systems. In a closed-door meeting with lawmakers on March 3, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine reportedly said that Iran’s Shahed attack drones had proved a more difficult problem than initially predicted.

In the days since, European Union defense officials have warned that the U.S. is no longer capable of supplying missiles to its allies amid its war with Iran, stressing that the continent would need to develop its own missile manufacturing sector in order to adequately fill its supply without Washington’s help.

One source told CNN that the U.S. has been “burning” through long-range precision-guided missiles in order to fend off the drones.

President Donald Trump was caught in an obvious lie about the military strike on a girls’ primary school in Iran that killed 175 people, many of them children. 

Speaking at a news conference Monday evening, Trump floundered when asked whether the United States would accept responsibility for the deadly strike after it was reported that the strike was conducted with a Tomahawk missile—a weapon primarily used by the U.S. military. 

Trump said that Tomahawk missiles were “one of the most powerful weapons around” but were also a “generic” weapon that the U.S. sold to many countries. Iran was in possession of some, and an investigation would reveal “whether it’s Iran, or somebody else,” he said.  

“Mr. President, you just suggested that Iran somehow got its hands on a Tomahawk and bombed its own elementary school on the first day of the war,” asked New York Times reporter Shawn McCreesh. “You’re the only person in your government saying this. Even your defense secretary wouldn’t say that when he was asked, standing over your shoulder on your plane on Saturday. Why are you the only person saying this?”

The president struggled to back up his claim for even a moment. 

“Because I just don’t know enough about it,” Trump said. “I think it’s something that I was told is under investigation. But Tomahawks are used by others, as you know. Numerous other nations have Tomahawks, they buy ’em from us. But I will, certainly whatever the report shows, I’m willing to live with that report.”

Trump said Saturday that it was his “opinion” that the strike was done by Iran. “They’re very inaccurate, as you know, with their munitions,” he said. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who stood lurking behind the president, had done his best to dodge the question, saying that the strike was under investigation, “but the only side that targets civilians is Iran.”

Jen Griffin, Fox News’s chief national security correspondent, said Monday it was “highly unlikely” that Iran fired at its own school. Tomahawks have to be fired by submarines or warships, she explained. Other militaries in possession of Tomahawk missiles are the British, Australian, and Japanese militaries. Not Iran.

“I think the president knows that, he just knows that this is a, certainly a mistake, a big mistake. And it’s being investigated, but he’s trying to muddy the waters by talking about the Tomahawks,” Griffin said. 

Marjorie Taylor Greene’s old congressional seat in Georgia could flip to the Democrats in a special election Tuesday.

Since Greene’s resignation took effect at the beginning of the year, the special election in Georgia’s 14th congressional district has Republicans and Democrats running on the same ballot. And with a crowded field in the normally safe Republican district, a Democrat could benefit. In all, there are 12 Republicans, three Democrats, one libertarian, and one independent on the ballot, and if none of the candidates receive a majority of the votes, a runoff election would be held on April 7.

Donald Trump has endorsed Clay Fuller, a district attorney, but his chief Republican opponent is Colton Moore, a former state senator and staunch opponent of Trump’s indictment for election fraud in the state with broader support from the far right. The leading Democrat in the race is Shawn Harris, a cattle farmer and retired brigadier general, but he’ll have a tall order in what the nonpartisan Cook Report considers the most Republican-leaning district in Georgia, which went for Trump by 37 points in 2024.

Trump’s endorsements do not have a good track record in the state. In 2022, he endorsed former NFL player Herschel Walker for the Senate, who ended up losing to Democrat Raphael Warnock. His pick for governor that year, David Perdue, left the Senate to take on Republican gubernatorial incumbent Brian Kemp and lost. Likewise, Trump’s choices for attorney general and secretary of state, John Gordon and former Representative Jody Hice, respectively, lost to Republican incumbents Chris Carr and Brad Raffensperger.

Greene, who became a strong critic of Trump last year before resigning, has refused to endorse anyone in the race “out of respect to my district.”

“I truly support the wonderful people of Georgia 14 and want them to pick their Representative,” she said in a post on X in November. “So anyone claiming they have my endorsement would not be telling the truth.”

Harris will hope to replicate the upset wins of other Democrats during Trump’s second term, many of which took place in areas that lean heavily Republican. With fewer Democrats in this race, he has pretty good odds of making it to the April 7 runoff. If Trump and the GOP’s approval ratings are still abysmal by November, he could pull off a massive upset.

President Donald Trump told America that there were dead people walking around with no arms or legs during his Monday evening speech at a GOP retreat in Florida.

Trump made the perplexing statement while blaming the Iranian regime for violence against American troops, as multiple Western countries have accused Iran for years of supplying their Middle East allies with improvised explosive devices.

“We think they should put a president in or the head of the country that’s going to be able to do something peacefully for a change. They’ve been doing this for 47 years, killing people for 47 years. Whether it’s the barracks or even the SS Cole where they were involved, very strongly, they always denied it,” Trump said. “But they were very strongly involved and all of the people that died through the roadside bombs died and are right now walking around with no legs, no arms. A face that’s been so badly damaged.”

On the one hand, this obviously doesn’t make sense. How could dead people be walking around “right now”? While we can decipher what he meant, we shouldn’t have to. He’s the president, and yet every speech turns into some spaced-out tangent. And while there was a lot of attention on former President Joe Biden’s mental acuity (rightfully so), moments like these deserve as much scrutiny, as they happen constantly.

As for the attacks Trump references—Western media has long positioned Iran as the kingpin of the so-called “axis of evil,” accusing it of funding Hezbollah and Hamas, and teaching insurgents how to make IEDs in Iraq, among other things. Of course, this leaves out the suffering—both via sanctions and bombings—that the U.S. has caused throughout the entire region, and certainly does not justify this current regime-change war that Trump is touting as a massive success.

* This post has been updated to remove reaction quotes from unreliable sources.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth decided to quote scripture to eulogize yet another U.S. soldier who died for no good reason in retaliatory strikes from Iran at his press conference Tuesday morning.

“Having just returned from Dover [Delaware] last night, our troops and their families and the enormous sacrifice that they make is certainly heavy on my mind. So I’ll close with Scripture, drawing strength from Psalm 144.

“Blessed be the Lord, my rock, who trains my hands for war and my fingers for battle. He is my loving God, and my fortress. My stronghold and my deliverer, my shield in whom I take refuge,” he continued, ending the verse before switching to his own prayer.

While it’s a lovely verse traditionally attributed to King David, it does not accurately portray the reality of the situation whatsoever. The United States is the Goliath of this story, along with Israel. The countries’ joint attacks of aggression have killed over 1,200 Iranians, many of them young schoolgirls. Iranian fuel depots were hit so hard that oil rained from the sky in Tehran on Sunday. Seven American service members have died because a president who promised peace sent them to war for money and regime change, not liberation. Listening to Hegseth read Psalm 144 feels like an ominous justification for further aggression rather than a comforting message.

“May the Lord grant unyielding strength and refuge to our warriors, unbreakable protection to them in our homeland, and total victory over those who seek to harm them,” Hegseth concluded. “Amen.”