Wannabe Nobel Laureate Donald Trump has now ordered more attacks against a greater number of countries than any other president in modern U.S. history.
On the campaign trail, Trump repeatedly pledged to reduce American military engagements abroad. After assuming office for the second time last January, he modeled himself as the “President of Peace,” even claiming to have solved a highly contested number of conflicts around the world as he sought to secure himself the Nobel Peace Prize.
In the same period, though, he has ordered strikes against targets across no less than seven nations—Iran, Nigeria, Venezuela, Iraq, Somalia, Syria and Yemen—at a rate that has already outstripped the total sanctioned by Joe Biden throughout the Democratic president’s four years at the White House, Axios reports.
The outlet adds that while attacks under Presidents George Bush and Barack Obama may have been “massive in scale,” they were largely “concentrated in inherited or congressionally authorized theaters,” like Iraq and Afghanistan.
The first three of the countries targeted by Trump have never before come under attack by the U.S. His assault on Iran, which has plunged the Middle East into chaos as shockwaves ripple across the global economy, has claimed at least four U.S. service members’ lives since it began on Saturday.
“Sadly, there will likely be more before it ends. That’s the way it is,” the president, who dodged the Vietnam War draft on five separate occasions, said in a statement Sunday. He has warned that the fighting could last another four weeks.
Trump’s latest assault flies directly in the face of his promises to voters on the campaign trail. “I’m not going to start a war. I’m going to stop wars,” he told the nation in his 2024 election night victory speech.
With his approval rating hovering at a meager 39 percent over the past several months, the war now marks a severe test of his support at home, with the latest polls suggesting just one in four voters support his ongoing action in the Middle East.
Conservative pundit Tucker Carlson, an otherwise staunch ally of the president, has called ongoing strikes against Iranian targets “absolutely disgusting and evil.”
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment on this story. An official told Axios that Trump’s “first instinct is always diplomacy,” and that “unfortunately, the Iranian regime refused to engage realistically with the United States.”
“As a result, President Trump is taking decisive action to eliminate major national security threats to the American people, which past presidents have talked about for 47 years, but only this president had the courage to accomplish,” they added.
