Trump Praised “Central Casting” for a Heroic Military Rescue in Iran; Then Threatened an Entire Civilization.

If This Were a Movie, I Wish We Had a Different Script

President Trump wants to talk about central casting and spent much of Monday praising a daring rescue mission for an American servicemember in Iran.

While impressive, there is a more pressing question: How does this end? We’re in a moment of uncertainty, of bluffing, of bombast in a foreign war started by a President who ran on ending all of them. Instead, we’re very much entangled in a day-to-day war that drives prices higher, complicates trade and has truly unclear outcomes.

The President, as he often is, fixated on theatrical details.

At a press conference on Monday, President Trump declared an operation to save a servicemember who ejected from his aircraft and hid in the Iranian mountains as “straight out of central casting.” High stakes, impossible odds, a happy ending. The kind of scene that makes one tear up.

He wasn’t wrong. It was a harrowing mission. I felt it—I was raised to—and I’m sure a lot of Americans of both parties did, too.

My grandfather was a Colonel in the Air Force. When we visited him in Wichita, he took us on base. He tried to instill what excellence looks like, what service costs, and why it matters. I was routinely impressed by the bravery of our servicemen and women in missions near and far when I had the privilege of working in the White House.

The US military is extraordinary. This weekend proved it again. They executed their mission. The question isn’t military might; it’s leadership. I couldn’t get through that press conference without thinking: if we’re doing central casting, I want a different script.

Nobody Knows How This Ends

Anyone who tells you they know how this will end is bluffing. And each onramp toward the end of the conflict seems to end with President Trump upping the rhetoric.

The President says he isn’t sharing all the details. Maybe there’s a play here he’s planning that’s hard to see. Maybe, against serious odds, this ends with Iranian leadership that doesn’t chant “Death To America,” or hang its own people in the street.

I wish for that fairy tale. Across two presidential terms, though, I’m well past the point of believing that President Trump has mystical powers for subterfuge. More often than not, what you see is what you get. I don’t know how the current script gets us to that fairy tale ending of new and positive leadership in Iran (as it would seem a frustration with the US bombs will only grow discontent).

What I do know is that the President is threatening to bomb Iran back to the stone age.

Just this morning, he suggested that “a whole civilization will die tonight.” I know we’ve become inured to this rhetoric by this point, but no President in US history would speak or communicate this way, even if it is a bluff.

I listened to one Iranian woman say she wanted the President to know Iran is already living in the stone age. She doesn’t know how his actions right now gain women freedom. I’ve wondered about that myself, the whole of this war.

But as we all wonder what’s ahead, the costs of this war are adding up. And the destruction only asks for more patience and sacrifice on behalf of the American people, most of them tired of war long before this started.

The Tab That Keeps Running Up

Trump ran on no new foreign wars. Every tweet, bombing raid and escalation is a failed campaign promise, which is likely why his once allies are now calling to invoke the 25th Amendment to strip power from him. Who knew I would be listening to Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Candace Owens, but then… Things are getting weird.

President Trump won this past election, in part, because Americans were angry with the US’s heavy involvement in Ukraine against Russia and in Israel against Hamas. Today, he’s presiding over a military campaign that makes both pale in comparison.

Americans were against wars that kept adding up while we ignored necessary investments in the US. And now we are in a war of choice with Iran, with a debt clock that has surged on this President’s watch, a proposed defense budget of $1.5 trillion, and cuts to the domestic programs that are supposed to hold communities together while the goal seems to be to project power abroad.

The Movie I Actually Want to See

In my hometown, patriotism is baked into our essence. People will root for the US military, because many are military families. They know the sacrifice in a way many on TV only pretend to. And they have been asked, again and again, to bear the costs of these entanglements, in a way those writing the script rarely do.

So when President Trump started talking about central casting I started thinking about the script I would want for them.

One where the core of this country isn’t rotting beneath a beautiful facade, distracted by a foreign war. Where we don’t turn against one another. Where we’re manufacturing our necessities here. Where good jobs and good wages keep families feeling full. Where our healthcare and retirement benefits are secure. Where we’re making structural investments in the next generation: education, opportunity, the conditions that produce brilliant Americans who solve hard problems and expand our reach around the world.

But instead our toll and our debts are piling up for bombs. This script leaves massive debt that our children will inherit, for bombs that we don’t quite know yet how they’ll explode.