Donald Trump has unleashed almost as many airstrikes in five months as Joe Biden managed in four years, nudging his pledge to “stop all wars” towards outright collapse.
Newly released data from Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (ACLED) shows 529 U.S. strikes since Inauguration Day—compared with 555 under Biden over the entirety of his presidency.
The independent non-profit organization, which collects data on violent conflict worldwide, found that 470 of those sorties under Trump pounded Yemen’s Houthis, with dozens more hitting ISIS in Somalia, jihadists in Syria and Iraq, and, most provocatively, Iran’s nuclear sites.
“This isn’t about geography—it’s about frequency. The U.S. military is moving faster, hitting harder, and doing so with fewer constraints,” ACLED President Clionadh Raleigh was quoted in The Daily Telegraph, calling the pace “one of the most dramatic escalations on record.”
The numbers explode the “peace through strength” mantra Trump trotted out during his inaugural address in January, when he vowed America would “measure our success… by the wars we never get into.”
Instead, according to The Guardian, Yemen alone has endured more U.S. ordnance this spring than in any comparable period since 2002, costing the U.S. taxpayer more than $1 billion.
The attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities last month introduced a brand-new theater.
That Iran strike detonated a civil war inside MAGAworld. Georgia firebrand Marjorie Taylor Greene raged that foreign wars have “cost the U.S. trillions” and snapped, “I’m sick of it.”
Tucker Carlson went further, branding Trump “complicit” in Israel’s conflict with Iran and warning online that the real divide is “between warmongers and peacemakers.”
Trump shot back that Carlson had “called to apologize,” but the sniping underscored a base suddenly split between isolationist instinct and bunker-buster reality.
White House aides insist the president is still delivering “peace through strength,” arguing that remote strikes spare American boots on the ground.
Yet, at the current tempo—roughly 100 strikes a month—Trump will overtake Biden’s four-year total by August, long before voters even start paying serious attention to foreign policy on the 2026 mid-term trail.
“It’s bizarre that Daily Beast is opposed to President Trump’s decisive action in obliterating Iran’s nuclear facilities, which made the entire world safer, and successful strikes against ISIS and other malign groups who want to do harm to Americans,” White House Deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly said in a statement. “Reporters at Daily Beast should look inward as to why they sympathize with evil terrorists and want them to live.”
