Martin Schram: Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the most presidential…

Chroniclers of history and masters of geometry have every reason to be equally confounded by what we have witnessed happening to President Donald Trump – not just once, but time and again, this year.

Trump seems to keep painting himself into a corner of his cornerless Oval Office. He's looking trapped and unable to see he can deliver on those famous global and domestic promises he'd assured us would "make America great again." He started the Iran war, but then can't stop as it inflames the Mideast. He bullies our allies, but then they stop trusting America. He cuts aid for Ukraine, but looks like he's helping his pal Putin. Inflation stresses America's families who see his tariffs as just making it worse.

Now make no mistake, I've covered past presidents who cornered themselves once in that same Oval Office. But no one kept doing it to himself the way Trump does – making himself look unpresidential with the whole world watching. It's a pattern that he could easily fix. But only if he can win his undeclared war with his inner self.

To see the solution clearly, we need to go back yet again and remind Trump of all the inconvenient truths he really knew before he started the Iran war on Feb. 28, but found it easier to ignore.

Today America seems suddenly shaken by news reports that Trump's Pentagon is beset by missile air-defense and munition shortages which have seriously limited America's ability to secure a troubled world. But Trump was warned about that – and we were too. On Feb. 23, the Wall Street Journal reported that Trump had been warned by military briefers including Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Daniel Caine that an extended war with Iran could significantly deplete U.S. air defenses and arsenals.

And when the military briefers warned Trump that Iran was expected to close the Strait of Hurmuz if America started a war, Trump reportedly dismissed their warning. "He (Trump) told his team that Tehran would likely capitulate before closing the strait – and even if Iran tried, the U.S. military could handle it," the Wall Street Journal reported.

But Trump's advisers – and the entire world – had early and very clear warnings that Iran was ready and even rehearsing to close the Strait in the event the Islamic Republic was attacked. Two weeks before Trump and Israel attacked Iran, Iran's Fars News Agency reported: "Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps launched the maritime exercise code-named ‘Smart control of the Strait of Hormuz' in the Persian Gulf on Feb. 16, 2026."

U.S. military leaders reportedly underestimated Iran's ability to effectively use drones to close the strait so that the U.S. could not guarantee the safety of tankers using it. But Fars indeed had reported that drone units "accurately hit fixed and moving targets" in that exercise.

Now, think back to our 47 th president's mindset as he sat in his Oval Office, making his decision to launch his air attack on Iran in conjunction with Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. They had their date certain: Feb. 28 – because that was when Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei would be meeting with his top leaders. So Trump and Netanyahu rushed an air attack that would assassinate them all.

How would it all play out? Trump analyzed that not by consulting his experienced national security advisor who could tell him what experts say Iran would likely do after the mass assassination – because he had none. No Henry Kissinger. No Zbigniew Brzezinski. No Brent Scowcroft. He didn't need one of those. What he had was almost as great as looking into the mirror on his wall. He had Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, the ex-Fox anchor who was always loyal to him and always could be counted on to tell Trump what Trump wanted to hear: You are absolutely right, sir.

Trump guessed that Iran would quickly cave and work out a deal with him because, after all, that's what Venezuela had just done. Trump also guessed he'd be looking great and powerful, everywhere, because he'd be telling the world how great he was.

So Trump launched his war and days later was assuring America that the war would be over within days. And you've been hearing that from our president every few days, ever since.

Never mind that everything turned out just the opposite, ever since. Iran is more hardline and militaristic than it was under its assassinated supreme leader. Now the entire Gulf region is destabilized and so are global economies that counted on gulf oil. And all that fueled inflation around the world, including in Trump's America.

And every time everything foreign and domestic got worse, Trump's remedy was to try to divert attention by creating something shiny (or controversial, or both) somewhere else for the news media to focus on – like his Ballroom, arch, or his name atop of a monumental memorial to an assassinated president.

How's that working? Apparently not well enough. So Trump just ignited another controversy by saying another unspeakable thing out loud. He played his TRUMP card. He shamelessly announced he will renovate America's Kennedy Center, but only on one condition – that the legislative and/or judicial branches capitulate and agree to put his "Trump" back on the Kennedy memorial.

And that successfully diverted the focus of the media's big eye away from Trump's war, for maybe 24 hours.

Epilogue: As Washington was reading its morning news about that, another of those former presidential national security advisers, Joe Biden's Jake Sullivan, showed up on MS NOW's Morning Joe. "Bibi Netanyahu has asked multiple American presidents to go to war against Iran," Sullivan observed. "And multiple American presidents – including Joe Biden – said no. Donald Trump said yes. And now look at where we are."

You can look for yet another new shining object shimmering soon on a news screen near you.

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