‘War leader’ Trump fixates on trivial matters as Iran death toll mounts

More than two weeks into the US-Israel war on Iran, and the conflict appears at risk of spiraling out of control.

Back home, Donald Trump’s behavior also appears chaotic. A foreign conflict typically brings somber reflection from leaders: in Trump’s case, it has brought a stream of behavior that has defied norms and raised eyebrows over his state of mind.

Take last Sunday, for example: the Pentagon solemnly announced that a seventh US service member had been killed in the Iran conflict. Trump spent the day playing golf in Florida, where he appeared to be wearing the same baseball cap he wore during a dignified transfer ritual of dead military members on Saturday.

That same day, Trump spoke at a “Shield of the Americas” summit, alongside a group of Latin American leaders. He told heads of countries, including El Salvador and Honduras, that Marco Rubio, his secretary of state, has “a language advantage over me”, because Rubio speaks Spanish.

Trump, the oldest person to be elected president, said he was able to function without speaking Spanish, however.

“Just give me a good interpreter. Interpreter, very important,” the president said.

“And I know if somebody’s good. I may not speak the language, but I know – I had an interpreter recently that wasn’t good, talking to a very strong person from a different part of the world, and I could tell, even though I – even though I don’t speak the language, I could tell the interpreter was not good.”

He added: “The interpreter is – I talk about it all the time – interpreters are really important. When you don’t speak the language and they don’t speak the language, it’s, you’re, people have no idea. People have no idea how valuable – and I’m on them all the time – people have no idea how valuable a good interpreter is. But over the last year, the world has witnessed the supreme power of the United States. We’re the most powerful military country in the world.”

Trump’s odd weekend came after he had posted eight separate times on Friday about how he had fallen out with Bill Maher, the American TV host and comedian. Maher has no connection to the war in Iran.

In truth, Trump’s conduct had been strange before that. On 3 March, the Pentagon named four of the US military killed in the war. Trump did not mention the troops on his Truth Social account, but the president did post: a photograph of himself, wearing wayfarer sunglasses, which had the text “the most badass president of all time”; an image bragging about how many people watched his State of the Union address; and a decades-old video of him and Melania announcing their engagement on The Ellen DeGeneres Show.

“I think it reflects a mix-up of the priorities of the president,” Emmitt Riley III, associate professor of politics at the University of the South and the president of the National Conference of Black Political Scientists, said of Trump’s recent behavior.

“The president has always exemplified these rash behaviors, but I think he sometimes uses that strategically. But the other element of this is the president is older, and all of the critiques that he leveled against Joe Biden’s age appear to be impacting him now: we’re seeing him falling asleep in cabinet meetings, we’re seeing him be temperamental.”

Along with the distraction, there has been an element of Trump burying his head in the sand. He has repeatedly touted the importance of low gas prices, which could be problematic politically, given average prices have gone up by about 20% since the war began.

Yet Trump’s response has been: it doesn’t matter.

He wrote on Thursday: “The United States is the largest Oil Producer in the World, by far, so when oil prices go up, we make a lot of money. BUT, of far greater interest and importance to me, as President, is stoping [sic] an evil Empire, Iran, from having Nuclear Weapons, and destroying the Middle East and, indeed, the World. I won’t ever let that happen!”

It was a stance that seemed to ignore the concerns Americans have over rising oil and gas prices and potential inflation.

Riley said: “This is a representational dilemma of: how do we expect a person who is a billionaire to actually be concerned about the wellbeing of people who are not of wealth, who are not of that particular economic class? And I think Trump’s behavior shows either he’s a narcissist, or he just simply doesn’t care.”

White House assistant press secretary Olivia Wales told the Guardian: “President Trump and all Americans grieve for our fallen heroes who made the ultimate sacrifice for our nation. They represent the very best of our country – and we will never forget their service and sacrifice. They gave their lives for a courageous mission that President Trump will continue in order to eliminate the threats posed by the sinister Iranian regime and make our nation and world stronger, safer and more free than ever before.”

As the war has stretched on, with no Iranian surrender in sight, Trump’s remarks have become increasingly aggressive, the president using language more familiar to a barroom brawl than diplomatic relations.

At 12.33am on Friday, Trump wrote a lengthy post on Truth Social, complaining about the New York Times’s reporting on the war. In it he referred to Iranian leadership as “deranged scumbags”, adding: “They’ve been killing innocent people all over the world for 47 years, and now I, as the 47th President of the United States of America, am killing them. What a great honor it is to do so! Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DONALD J. TRUMP”

It is hard to see families of killed or wounded troops finding much comfort in Trump’s posts. At 5.44pm on Thursday, US Central Command said it had lost a refueling aircraft over western Iraq; it later emerged all six crew members had died.

Trump, who famously avoided the Vietnam war draft because of bone spurs in an unidentified foot, did not comment on the downing of the US plane. However, at 8.57pm he giddily posted a black and white photo of a younger version of himself dressed in military clothing. “At Military Academy with my parents, Fred and Mary!”

According to biographers, Fred Trump sent the future president to the New York Military Academy, an expensive private school about 60 miles of New York, after he discovered Donald had accrued a cache of knives.