Trump Uses 9/11 to Push War That Will Destabilize Middle East (Again)

President Trump used his speech at the Pentagon on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks to promote his ill-advised war in the Middle East.

“[W]e salute the service members working right now to ensure the world’s number one sponsor of terror, the Islamic Republic of Iran, will never, ever, have a nuclear weapon,” Trump said to scattered applause.

Trump’s comments came shortly after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also used the 9/11 memorial event to push war with Iran. “Over the past six months, we have laid waste to the world’s most prolific state sponsor of terrorism,” Hegseth said. “Our warriors have fought an Islamic theocracy that has wished us death for nearly half a century, that cheered on 9/11.” (Iran officially condemned the attacks in 2001.)

Using the 9/11 attacks as a justification for bombing Iran is disturbingly in line with American policy the last 25 years. President George W. Bush responded to Al Qaeda’s attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon by launching decadeslong wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and a wider “war on terror” that caused the deaths of thousands of U.S. service members and millions of innocent civilians.

That war on terror has seemingly never ended. While Afghanistan’s Taliban regime was initially pushed out nearly a quarter-century ago by the U.S.-led campaign, it is now back in power. Iraq has struggled to recover from the U.S. invasion, enduring an insurgency and the rise of the Islamic State. National security restrictions and mass surveillance have grown unabated in the U.S. in the last few decades.

More recently, the war with Iran has disrupted the global economy and killed 18 U.S. service members as well as up to 8,000 civilians across the Middle East, wounding countless more. It shows no signs of stopping, with periodic ceasefires ultimately collapsing. Despite criticizing the war in Iraq and Afghanistan to start his political career (reversing earlier opinions), Trump appears to be restarting the blunders of those two campaigns and is in danger of creating a worse quagmire in Iran.

The Justice Department prosecutor leading the “grand conspiracy” case against President Trump’s perceived enemies resigned suddenly on Thursday—and Trump hasn’t said a word about it.

Counselor to the attorney general Joe diGenova was essentially responsible for finding proof of Trump’s baseless claims that investigations against him—from the 2016 probe into Russian election interference all the way to his federal indictments after he left office in 2021—were actually part of a larger conspiracy against him. DiGenova was formerly Trump’s personal attorney and helped lead Trump’s 2020 lawsuits claiming widespread election fraud, which he lost.

“I did resign today by letter to the attorney general. I said that it was a privilege and an honor to serve the president and the department, and I was very grateful,” diGenova told the New York Post Thursday. According to their sources, the Trump administration began to lose confidence in him, claiming that he was “slow-rolling” indictments of Trump’s perceived enemies—like former President Barack Obama, former CIA Director John Brennan, and former FBI Director James Comey—and going down “rabbit holes.” After five months on the job, DiGenova still hadn’t charged anyone.

“If you want indictments where there’s no evidence, you have an ethical problem,” he said—which suggests that the investigation was a fraught, overzealous exercise from the start.

DiGenova later clarified that comment to the Associated Press.

“There’s plenty of evidence in all of these cases to prove the theories of prosecution. It just takes time to get there, and some people want to get there a little faster than others—and you can’t do that.”

The Justice Department has not commented on the prominent departure, nor has the White House.

Texas Senator Ted Cruz brushed off a convention attendee shouting to kill Democratic politicians and candidates.

During his speech at the Republican midterm convention Thursday night, Cruz failed to address an audience member calling for New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, and Texas Senate candidate James Talarico to be shot.

Cruz began: “When Mandami [sic] says he wants to seize the means of production—,”

“He should be shot!” someone interrupted from the crowd.

“He means it,” Cruz continued. “When Abdul El-Sayed says he has a quote ‘obligation’ to comply with Sharia law—”

“He should be shot!”

“He means it,” Cruz said. “And when James Talarico says he wants to dismantle capitalism—”

“He should be shot!”

“He means it!” Cruz continued.

If Cruz were anything resembling a real leader, he would have condemned the violent language, particularly as the comments fell on the one-year anniversary of Charlie Kirk’s death.

Clearly, Republican outrage at violent language only goes one way. Cruz himself has repeatedly condemned Democrats for using “hateful rhetoric” to criticize President Donald Trump’s sweeping immigration crackdown. Republicans have claimed that the left has a monopoly on doxing and calling for assassinations—all while the Trump administration has deleted government research showing that the right is responsible for far more political violence. Not to mention, Republicans regularly ignore Trump’s outlandish statements, whose own violent language has done little to lower the national temperature.

Republicans spent more than $40 million to produce their unprecedented midterm convention—but even that enormous investment couldn’t convince the American public to tune in.

Donald Trump spoke at the Dallas event on Wednesday night for more than an hour and a half. Yet the latest Nielsen ratings data, obtained Friday by Mediaite, proves that pretty much no one was interested in the president’s headlining performance.

The speech pulled 2.5 million viewers on Fox News, one of the few networks that aired the spectacle. That’s actually a slight loss compared to Fox’s typical programming in the same time slot: Last month, Gutfeld attracted 2.51 million viewers per episode, suggesting that people who would have already been watching Fox might have actually tuned out Wednesday.

Newsmax, C-SPAN, and OAN also aired the entirety of Trump’s address. Their ratings numbers are not in yet, but it’s unlikely that they attracted more viewers than Fox News, which typically takes the vast majority of America’s conservative audience.

The president’s lackluster prime-time popularity might have been affected by the National Football League, which opened its season on Wednesday night with a game between the Seattle Seahawks and the New England Patriots. The ratings report from the season kickoff still hasn’t been made public, but if last season is any indication of the league’s potential audience, then it likely attracted the eyes of around 28 million viewers.

Nonetheless, Trump was convinced that his performance had outdone football itself.

“The Republican Midterm Convention last night, in Dallas, was a major, sold out hit, far bigger, better, and more important than anyone thought possible,” Trump wrote on Truth Social Thursday morning. “It was really something, streaming all over the place, and really big numbers, despite going up against the NFL. The overall numbers beat the NFL.

“The Arena, which was really nice, beat its own attendance records,” Trump continued. “The place was packed! There were thousands of people outside who couldn’t get in. Screens were provided. I guess people LOVE TRUMP POLITICS! I’ll be there again tonight to close out the show. Exciting ‘Stuff!’ MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!”

But the seats were not packed. In fact, days before the event began, Republicans began handing out tickets for free, though those ticketholders were not guaranteed admission. As a result, large swaths of the stadium—particularly in its upper levels—were empty.

President Trump fell asleep at the 9/11 memorial ceremony.

The president dozed off at multiple points during the event Friday, slumped over in his chair with his eyes closed and his head hanging down while everyone else onstage—Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Melania Trump, and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice—was clearly awake.

This is one of many times the 80-year-old president has appeared to be completely asleep on camera in front of dozens of people. But for him to do it today—in front of the families of victims on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the most devastating terror attack in American history—is particularly inappropriate.