Trump's Wartime Presidency Turns Against US Institutions
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- Donald Trump threatened tolls for ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz but offered safe passage to Gulf states investing in the United States, then reopened hostilities against Iran and vowed to "take out" the underground nuclear-weapons site at Pickaxe Mountain.
- Trump's election jeremiad revived claims of 2020 manipulation; an Associated Press study found only 475 documented fraud cases in 2020 battleground states—far short of the number needed to alter outcomes.
- A National Intelligence Council report found "no indications that any foreign actor attempted to alter any technical aspect of the voting process in the 2020 U.S. elections," from registration through vote tabulation.
- Only 25% of Americans believe the 2020 presidential election was rigged, though the figure jumps to 50% among Republicans, according to a YouGov survey taken roughly a month ago.
- Trump's political standing sits at 61% disapproval, with 43% saying they are "not as well off" as when he took office, per this week's Washington Post/Ipsos Poll.
- Cornell political scientist David Alexander Bateman argued that Trump's preemptive attacks on voting machines amount to "laying the foundation for him insisting that [the 2026 midterms] was rigged against him" if Republicans lose.
Why it matters: The article frames Trump's behavior as an inversion of historical wartime-presidential norms: while Lincoln and FDR rallied national unity around combat, Trump is using the Iran conflict to energize his base and preemptively discredit the election machinery before 2026 midterms where his 61% disapproval puts House control in play. If Democrats win subpoena power and Trump contests the results, the article suggests, the United States faces an institutional crisis that previous wartime presidencies avoided by affirming—not attacking—democratic legitimacy.
