Trump declares victory, no matter what, and the Iran war is the latest example

WASHINGTON (AP) — In the pilot episode of “The Apprentice” in January 2004, Donald Trump He said something today that he would never accept.

“It wasn’t always this easy,” he says via voice-over, adding that by the late 1980s, “I was in serious trouble” and “billions of dollars in debt.”

This is one of the few times Trump has publicly acknowledged his failure. Even then he was reading a script intended to introduce viewers to his credentials, just in case. combative charisma this propelled his political career a decade later.

“I responded,” Trump said. “And I won. Big league.”

Trump never loses. At least in his words.

He declared victory a few days later Iran war He repeated this over and over, even as Tehran hit US and allied targets and drowned them in bombs. Strait of HormuzIt spreads economic pain around the world.

with one ceasefire is now in effectTrump said the US has achieved its goals.

The president praises the change in administration following the killing of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. However, he was replaced by his son Mojtaba Khamenei, who was seen as more strict-minded. Trump said Iran will not be allowed to have nuclear weapons, but Tehran has stockpiles of enriched uranium. The Bosphorus reopens under Iranian military control.

When The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board wrote that Trump had claimed a premature victory in Iran, the president responded in a social media post on Thursday: “It’s actually a Victory.”

On Saturday, he said news organizations “like to say Iran ‘won,’ when in fact everyone knows Iran LOSED and LOSED BIG!” he shared. His condition was asked later in the day. Negotiations with IranTo the question, Trump replied, “No matter what, we won.”

Claiming the title of winner has been part of Trump’s psyche since he was a teenager and became a real estate developer in New York. He persisted in matters big and small.

Golf tournaments in his clubs where he is the permanent champion. Negative court decisions where he insists things are going his way. Deals he announced but were never completed.

“He has a fictional narrative in his head” and is “like a screenwriter,” said David Cay Johnston, author of “The Making of Donald Trump.” “When you need to change the narrative, just change it.”

No example is more stark than Trump’s denial of defeat to Democrat Joe Biden in the 2020 electionsA result confirmed in more than 60 cases and by his own attorney general. Yet Trump He declared victory very often that his supporters believed in him. He knows the power of repetition and volume.

This is Trump’s world; pitchman and president, a man who shaped his own story and that of others, chanting slogans in his second term. He wears a baseball cap with a hawk that summarizes this approach in five words: “TRUMP WAS RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING.”

“It’s a lot easier to lead when you’re successful and you’re winning,” Trump said at a recent Saudi investment conference in Florida, noting: “I actually always like to hang around the losers because it makes me feel better.”

“If you win, people will follow you,” Trump said.

For decades, White Houses have tried to portray bad news as good, hoping to soften negative assessments of politics, policy and even war. But Trump has always made winning a central element of his presidency.

Supreme Court Reduced signature tariffs? Trump promised work around the decision import duties could thus be “used in a much more powerful and obnoxious manner and with legal certainty.” If he promised the investments he encouraged in the USA actually realizationHe says they sometimes do it while inflating their imaginary values.

The Justice Department has stopped challenging court decisions blocking executive orders aimed at punishing big law firms. reverses course because not appealing may seem like admitting defeat.

This type of alternative programming has become a governing principle and a Trump family value.

Eric, one of the president’s sons, said his father “never felt the need to project a ‘winning image’.”

“He is the definition of a winner,” the younger Trump said in a statement, “based on what he has built and what he has accomplished.”

‘This was the message strategy’

Trump’s former first-term White House deputy press secretary, Sarah Matthews, resigned over the decision. Crowd of Trump supporters riot at the Capitol On January 6, 2021, he said that the president “won’t let his ego admit defeat” and that “reality is somehow bowing out to him.”

“That was the messaging strategy,” Matthews said. “It was, ‘How can we redefine this loss as victory?’”

He said he regretted it now, but at the time there was “always a way to find an excuse to justify that loss and defend his position.”

More recently, Trump’s second-term White House marked his first year back in office by listing “365 wins” in the same number of days. These included some repeated and exaggerated claims, and there were also boastful claims. rising stock exchanges, falling gas prices And strong employment creation These have mostly been untrue since the Iran war began.

White House spokesman Davis Ingle said Trump “consistently reflects with pride in his public statements the unique greatness of our country.”

John Bolton was one of Trump’s early national security advisors and an early supporter of the US and Israel attacking Iran. But regardless of the actual outcome, Trump’s declaration of victory over Iran was always “baked into the cake,” he said.

“For him, the world is divided into winners and losers,” Bolton said. “And he’s always the winner.”

Presenting failures as victories is not new

in 1973 federal authorities sued Trump and his father alleged racial discrimination when renting apartments their company built in Brooklyn and Queens, two boroughs of New York City. Urging Trumps to countersue Roy CohnNotorious lawyer who aggressively supported Senator Joseph McCarthy’s anti-communist “red scare” hearings in the 1950s.

The case was settled two years later after both parties signed an agreement prohibiting the Trumps from “discriminating against any person.” The future Republican president called it a victory, noting that no wrongdoing was admitted, even though the Justice Department called the agreement “one of the most far-reaching agreements ever negotiated.”

Trump first met Cohn at Manhattan’s exclusive Le Club in 1973, and Cohn is credited with imparting the basic rules, including never admitting you’re wrong or admitting defeat and attacking anyone who attacks you.

Cohn “taught Donald that you should never concede so much as a comma,” Johnston said.

“Whatever position you take, that’s the position, and anyone who challenges you is wrong. They’re disgusting. They’re incompetent. They’re stupid,” Johnston said. “If they are law enforcement, they are corrupt.”

Bankruptcies did not tarnish Trump’s image

Over the years, Trump has consistently lost money; It launched unsuccessful product lines of the same name, including steak, bottled water, vodka, a magazine, an airline, a home mortgage lender, and online courses. The Trump Plaza Hotel filed for bankruptcy, the New Jersey Generals of the United States Football League closed, and the Tour de Trump cycling race was never the United States’ answer to the Tour de France.

Barbara Res, who worked for Trump at her company for nearly two decades, recalls that he liked to pit top executives against each other to ensure he remained the strongest voice even as losses mounted.

As for today’s Trump, he said, “If it helps, there is no problem for him.”

“He wasn’t always like this. He knew the difference before,” said Res, author of “Tower of Lies: What My Eighteen-Year Study of Donald Trump Revealed About Him.” “I can’t say why he changed. It might be because he has too much power. Or it might be because he doesn’t really believe in it.”

None of this has tarnished Trump’s image of the rich and famous, further enhanced by TV’s hit series “The Apprentice.”

But Robert Thompson, a professor of television and popular culture at Syracuse University, said the success was based on earlier factors; these included the charming conceit of the title of Trump’s 1987 book “The Art of the Deal,” his aggressive courting of media attention and his obsession with naming everything after himself.

That helped Trump become “the everyman character of the billionaire,” Thompson said, and led to him appearing in movies like “The Jeffersons,” “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,” “The Nanny” and “Home Alone 2.”

“When you need someone to represent the ‘Rich American Man’ quickly and efficiently, Trump throws himself into that position,” Thompson said, “and everyone else fits the bill.”

Trump did not acknowledge his surprising losses. After three casinos in Atlantic City, New Jersey filed for bankruptcy. he insisted to the Associated Press. Atlantic City was “a great time for me,” he said in 2016.

Meanwhile, he became the mainstay of WWE management from 2007 onwards. Vince McMahonHis wife, Linda, is currently Trump’s secretary of education. The future president enjoyed raucous, made-for-television events where the wrestler he supported always won.

Trump also began addressing crowds, developing the “draft and rhythm” that would later become his strength as a politician, Thompson said: “Rallies are born in wrestling.”

“Winning is an attitude, not a set of facts,” Thompson said. “Winning in this case is always defined by the person who wins.”

‘You create your own reality’

Trump carried this unlosable view into his political career.

After losing the 2016 Republican Iowa caucus, she shared that the winner, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, “illegally stole.” Trump claimed he won the popular vote against Democrat Hillary Clinton in November “if you take out the millions of people who voted illegally.” Aside from his baseless claims that the 2020 race was stolen, he claimed widespread irregularities in the 2024 election despite capturing all the key states.

Dartmouth University professor Russell Muirhead, who has written about Trump’s chaotic governing style, said the president has been in practice long enough “to live in a world where you create your own reality” and that there is no real world “outside of your own mind.”

Even the road Trump is playing golf means increasing wins – at least own property.

Trump says he has won 38 times at golf clubs he owns. This includes a tournament in West Palm Beach, Florida, in 2018; he did not play here but scored the winner in a subsequent match; in one he missed the first round and in another he shot a final-round 67 – a score even some professional golfers would envy.

Matthews said he doesn’t remember Trump admitting he was wrong, even in private conversations while he was working for him in the White House.

“When it clearly looks like a defeat on paper, you have to somehow turn it into a victory,” he said. “Because that’s what Trump would want.”

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Will Weissert has covered politics for The Associated Press since 2011 and the White House since 2022.