Trump delivers jaw-dropping and slurred Iran address that offers no end in sight to unpopular war

An exhausted President Donald Trump slurred his way through an incoherent national TV speech Wednesday night in which he repeated the same justifications. war with Iran He said he had been posting on social media throughout the month-long conflict.

The prime time speech, which came ahead of the planned television programs on all broadcast networks at the request of the White House, was announced as an important address in which Trump would finally explain the reasons for the military action he launched against Iran; This speech would eventually provide details to a tired American public about how and when the conflict would end.

Instead, the President spoke for nearly 20 minutes from a podium in the main foyer of the White House, with prepared signs repeating his Truth Social posts verbatim, offering conflicting statements about the war, Iran, and Iran. We are now bogged down in the Strait of HormuzHe repeatedly has trouble pronouncing words such as “enemies,” “Venezuela” and “battlefield.”

Addressing both the cameras and an audience of cabinet members including Vice President J.D. Vance, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Trump began by claiming that the joint U.S.-Israeli campaign, dubbed “Operation Epic Rage,” “delivered swift, decisive, crushing victories on the battlefield, victories that few have ever seen before,” and then repeated many of the following statements: Appearingly identical to last month’s allegations of damaging Iran’s military capabilities came out.

He boasted that Iran’s navy was “gone”, its Air Force was “devastated”, boasted that “most” of the country’s leaders were now dead due to beheading attacks in the early days of the war, and claimed that Tehran’s ballistic missile capacity had been “significantly reduced”.

“Never in the history of warfare has an adversary suffered such clear-cut and devastating large-scale losses in a matter of weeks,” Trump said, before claiming that the US had “won, and won now bigger than ever” as a result of the decision to attack Iran in the middle of negotiations on February 28.

He then began boasting about oil production in both the United States and Venezuela, claiming that the country was now “completely independent from the Middle East.”

“We don’t need to be there. We don’t need their oil. We don’t need anything they have, but we’re there to help our allies,” he said.

Trump went on to change the subject once again, citing another set of grievances as justification for starting the war, including demonstrably false claims that Iran was responsible for the 2000 bombing of the USS. Cole’s Al Qaeda terrorists are preparing to be tried before military commissions at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

He then returned to discussing current events, repeating his oft-used lines about America’s alleged aims to “cripple” Iran’s military capabilities, and said he was “pleased” to say that “key strategic objectives are nearing completion.”

He claimed, without providing any evidence, that the families of the 13 American soldiers killed since the start of the conflict had each asked him to “finish the job,” arguing that failure to “complete the mission” would dishonor the fallen soldiers and airmen.

And inexplicably, while he boasted that the United States has “never been better economically prepared” to deal with skyrocketing gasoline prices caused by its own war, he blamed high energy costs solely on Iran for “launching unbalanced terrorist attacks against commercial oil tankers that have nothing to do with the conflict in neighboring countries.”

“We were a dead and crippled country after the last administration and we turned it into the hottest country anywhere in the world, no inflation ever, record-breaking investments coming into the United States – over $18 trillion and the highest stock market ever with a record 53 all-time highs in just one year. All of this positioned us to recover from a long-simmering cancer. It was known as a nuclear Iran, and they didn’t know what was coming,” he said.

The president’s comments on the US economy and gas prices come as his advisers brace for reports that oil prices will surpass the $150 per barrel mark. The Iran war is entering its second month and The Strait of Hormuz, a vital trade chokepoint through which 20 percent of the world’s oil passes, remains largely closed.

Global oil supplies have shrunk due to Iran not allowing most oil tankers to pass through the key point, leading to huge price increases in the global oil market.

But Trump appeared unaware of the interconnected nature of the oil trade, ignoring the war’s impact on oil prices and claiming that his administration was somehow immune from the effects of the US-initiated war because of what he called the “drill baby exercise” program.

“There is no country like us anywhere in the world, and we are very well positioned for the future. The United States imports almost no oil from the Strait of Hormuz and will not in the future. We don’t need it. We don’t need it and we don’t need it,” he said.

He then appeared to repeat word for word the Truth Social post he made earlier this week; Here he called on other countries to use their naval forces to reopen the strait to maritime traffic.

“They must value it. They must seize it and value it. They can easily do that. We will help, but they must take the lead in protecting the oil on which they are so desperately dependent,” he said.

“I have a suggestion for countries that can’t find fuel and many of whom refuse to be involved in the decapitation of Iran: Number one, buy oil from the United States. We have a lot of it. We have too much. And number two: Gather some long overdue courage… Go to the Bosphorus and take it, protect it, use it for yourself. A large part of Iran has been destroyed. The hard part is done, so it should be easy.”

Trump added that the disputed waterway would “naturally open up” once the conflict ends and predicted that the economic damage wrought by the war he started would be reversed.

“It will continue to flow and gas prices will come back quickly. Stock prices will rise rapidly… Our economy is strong and improving every day and will soon begin to recover faster than ever before. It will rise above the levels of a month ago,” he said.

The president’s rambling speech came just hours after a new CNN poll found Americans were largely dissatisfied with the war; Only 34 percent of respondents expressed approval. The poll also reported that a supermajority of Americans, 66 percent, disapprove of the war, while 43 percent strongly disapprove.

Despite hopes that he would provide a timeline for ending the unpopular military operation, his words were no different from those he has made in countless public appearances since the beginning of the war.

Instead, he claimed the war would continue for the “next two or three weeks” and that U.S. forces would “bring it back.” [Iran] “Go back to the Stone Age, where they belong,” he said, threatening an indiscriminate attack on Tehran’s electricity-generating capacity, something that would be a war crime under US law.

“We’re going to hit every single one of their power generation facilities very hard, and probably at the same time, we didn’t hit their oil, even though it was the easiest target, because that wouldn’t give them a chance to survive or rebuild. But we could hit it and it would be destroyed. And there’s nothing they can do about it,” he said.