Is Trump hooked on ‘war porn’? The disturbing rumours about what really goes on in the Situation Room… and why it makes the President think he’s winning

President Donald Trump wants the world to think a ceasefire with Iran is still possible. But deep inside the Pentagon and the White House, his military commanders are preparing something very different.

Unnamed defense ministry sources warn us to expect the ‘final blow’: a massive air, sea and land assault that will open the Strait of Hormuz, save the world economy and completely crush Tehran’s resistance.

The plans are, of course, shrouded in mystery. Scope and timeline continue to change. The only certainty is that the action will be captured on camera as it occurs, and the explosive footage will be edited into short video compilations to impress the Commander in Chief.

War is a deadly business, but for Trump, life at the campaign headquarters is a non-stop video game.

U.S. Central Command officials are responsible not only for ensuring that America’s increasingly complex operations in the Middle East go smoothly. C-suite executives need to feed their screen-addicted Presidents a satisfying daily stream of “things exploding,” according to top sources.

Since the epic Operation Rage began with the first bombings on Iran a month ago, Trump’s workday routine has included regular sittings with his close advisers among the oak panels and large screens of the newly renovated White House Situation Room.

There, in each session, the team was reportedly shown ‘attack montages’ lasting two or three minutes, featuring satellite or aircraft images showing Iranian targets turning into smoke and dust. Of course not all of them. America’s warplanes and missiles have hit nearly 10,000 targets in the past four weeks, so there is no time to review every action. Videos are more of a highlights package.

These briefings are said to have a ‘written part’, but everyone knows Trump is a visual creature.

Smoke rises after an Israeli airstrike on the southern suburbs of Beirut on March 17, 2026

The president also likes to talk. Before and after these regular screenings, he discusses the progress of Operation Epic Rage with everyone in the room – the likes of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Susie Wiles, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan ‘Raizin’ Caine, and others. Seeks feedback and advice on how best to proceed. Trump mostly takes calls from reporters during these hearings. From time to time he puts his phone on speakerphone to have ‘workshop’ conversations with members of the war cabinet.

On Wednesday, the White House backtracked on allegations that the President treated the Situation Room as a private cinema, attempting to deny the allegations.

Yet the allegations continued — and for good reason, I’m told, though more “somber” than the administration’s social media channels, which spread “hype videos” of top-secret presentations, bombshell footage, memes, cartoons and pop songs. I understand there is no musical accompaniment in the Situation Room.

Many in Washington worry that Trump and his team are becoming addicted to ‘destruction porn’ to the detriment of strategic wisdom. All the ‘bomb-bomb-bang-bang’ imagery distorts Trump’s perception of the course of the war.

Some are asking whether the President was shown a contrasting image: alarming evidence of Iranian missiles and drones hitting US bases in the Middle East. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt rejects the claim that the Commander in Chief is obsessed with war porn. “This is an absolutely false claim coming from someone who was not in the room,” he said in a statement.

‘Anyone who has been present at meetings with President Trump knows that he actively seeks the opinions of everyone in the room and expects complete honesty from all his senior advisers.’

But he did not deny the existence of the video briefings, which suggests the claims are almost certainly true.

The action will be captured on camera as it happens, and the explosive footage will be edited into short video compilations to be played in the US Situation Room.

US President Donald Trump is pictured in the Situation Room of the White House on June 21, 2025

There is also a makeshift war room at the President’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, where he watched the first night of the strikes on Saturday, February 28. But on weekdays, Trump conducts operations from Washington and makes a special point to complain to anyone who listens to the negative portrayal of his war on national television. Why doesn’t the ‘fake news’ media, he asks, show more of the spectacular carnage he has just seen?

Trump is not the first President to claim that the media has failed to show America’s military success in all its patriotic glory.

Lyndon Johnson scolded the Press and TV for negative coverage of the disaster unfolding in Vietnam. President George W. Bush accused the media of focusing too much on the car bombs in Iraq rather than his administration’s laudable efforts to rebuild the country it had just destroyed.

But no previous US administration has turned war into the art form that Team Trump promotes. White House and War Department media outlets are pumping out surreal propaganda, including, for example, a video that blends actual black-and-white scenes of targeted attacks with clips from a Nintendo Wii sports game.

One clip features exciting footage of troops in action, accompanied by audio of Secretary Hegseth reciting the warrior prayer; another begins with the declaration ‘we’re negotiating with bombs’ as an ominous soundtrack kicks in.

TV comedians wasted no time in dispatching Hegseth, but no satire could beat the show the Pentagon put on.

At times, Trump seems confused about what is real and what is not. Speaking to a group of Kennedy Center board members last week, he revealed that he called a top military commander after watching a fake video of the flagship aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln in flames. ‘I called the general. I said, “General, what’s wrong with Abraham Lincoln? Does he look like he’s on fire?” The general apparently replied: ‘No bullets were ever fired at him, sir. They know better [than to do that].’

Trump especially enjoys regaling audiences with presidential war stories. On January 2, 2020, he was watching top Iranian general Qasem Soleimani being assassinated. Trump has since entertained guests at fundraisers about the incident, saying: ‘He was saying bad things about our country… that was the last thing I heard from him.’

Trump, who campaigned as an anti-war candidate, attacked Yemen, Somalia, Nigeria and Venezuela in his second term. Now he’s waging his biggest military campaign ever, and he seems to be enjoying it.

US forces captured Nicolas Maduro after a daring raid on Caracas in January. Trump told anyone who would listen that seeing the mission come to fruition “will literally be like watching a TV show.” ‘You could see the speed, the violence, we watched every aspect.’

He marveled again and again at the genius with which the soldiers brought down the Venezuelan dictator: ‘They had to go through steel doors… it was like papier-mâché… these guys blew every door open… they got into vagrancy so quickly.’

He also started making ‘bing bing’ sounds while describing the action at press conferences.

There is deep unrest even among Republicans. Yesterday, it was reported that senior figures walked out of a secret briefing with Iran on Wednesday, claiming they had been ‘misled’ about the administration’s true objectives.

As the midterm election campaigns get underway, the fear among a growing number of his fellow Americans, including some of the MAGA base, is that the 47th President is losing touch with reality.

And sitting in the comfort of the Situation Room with some close supporters, he may find the idea of ​​watching U.S. troops in action too exciting to resist.

• FReddy Gray is deputy editor of The Spectator.