Bulwark Takes - We’re at War. Why Is Trump Silent?

Episode Date: March 2, 2026

Tim Miller and Sarah Longwell discuss the deafening silence from President Donald Trump and his administration after the U.S. strikes in Iran. As of Sunday evening, no one from the White House has laid out to the American public the case or any clear objectives for the major assault. Three U.S. service members have been killed with others severely wounded. Note: Shortly after this taping, The New York Times published a report about a brief telephone interview the Times conducted with Trump Sunday in which he said the assault will go on for "four to five weeks" if needed and offered no clear vision for a transfer of power in Iran.

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Hey, everybody. Tim Miller from the Bullwark here with the publisher of the Bullwark, Sarah Long. well, we are taping this, oh, about 8 o'clock on Sunday evening. And we wanted to jump on because the White House has called a lid for the day. For those you don't know, a lid is basically where the White House press secretary tells reporters, they're not going to have any more news or comments for the rest of the night. Reporters can go home. Obviously, if an emergency happens, things can change.

But essentially, they've shut it down for the weekend. This is pretty notable given the fact that we started a war with Iran. this weekend and the president has not taking questions. The VP's been totally missing. They weren't on the Sunday shows. So much to go over on this. But Sarah, what's your sense for what that means? Just the big access president for this one day has decided to kind of play it close to the best.

I can't tell you what it means because I have no information like everybody else. There's a whole bunch of things that have been making me insane all day. One of them is I couldn't believe that there hasn't been a presidential address, like an actual formal presidential address from the Oval Office. Actually, I don't care if it has to be from some whatever makeshift room they've got in Mar-a-Lago, fine. But like, stand up in a with the networks and make sure the American people understand what's happening. It's been sort of maddening to watch the discourse on Twitter where people sort of fighting about is it a good idea, is it a bad idea? and you're like, I don't know what are our stated objectives? Like the only thing we got today, none of them went on the Sunday shows,

none of the people from the administration, to lay out both what has happened and what they expect to happen. The only thing we have gotten are two truth, social videos of Trump direct a camera giving us almost no information. I mean, you can spend some time talking about how he sort of casually says Americans are going to die. The lives of courageous American heroes. may be lost and we may have casualties.

Some Americans have died. There's probably going to be some more. That is not a strategy. It's not not, and I'm not saying he's got to lay out every little thing that's happening, who he's working with exactly in the Middle East, but like, or what conversations he's having. But tell us what the stated objective is, not just that Iran shouldn't get nuclear weapons, but like, are we staying?

Are we sending in troops? Like, what are we doing? And it is remarkable that what you have got as a president you can't trust, an administration that lies to people, the president's son-in-law doing negotiations with people in the Middle East. Like, there's no point even all of us fighting about it anywhere about whether it's good or bad. We just don't know anything. Yeah, and it's just disorienting. To your point about the Oval Office address, like something of this magnitude. I mean, three Americans have already died in this war. You know, they're claiming it's. going to go on for weeks, you know, in any other circumstance, with any other president, at least a case would be being made to the American people about this. And then you get instead this video, you mentioned, so it's been these two truth social videos, crazy enough as it is.

Like, this is a private company the president owns that has a stock, you know, that people can invest in. It's insane that he's doing this on his own private business platform. But then he puts it up and, like, there are obvious splices and cuts. Let's just like just play a little bit of it. For almost 50 years, these wicked extremists, have been attacking the United States while chanting the slogan, death to America or death to Israel or both. They are the world's number one state sponsor of terror. I mean, without getting to the substance, we'll be doing a lot of that.

You know, tomorrow it's just like, what is happening? An edited video on social media, and then he lands tonight back in D.C. And, you know, Caitlin Collins reports that, you know, as he's one, walking off, you know, the plane or whatever, you know, there's shout questions at him like they do. He usually comes over and answers some questions. He doesn't, but he does shout out unbelievable statues about the new statues you put up in the Rose Garden. Yeah, that's crazy. I want people, because I think sometimes I'm tempted when it gets so insane.

You almost sort of want to laugh or just like talk about how crazy it is. But I want people to zero in on the fact that you made this point on our live stream, but I've been thinking about it ever since you said it. It's really true. Trump just addressed the nation on Tuesday in the most high profile speech a president can give. He laid out no case. He laid out no justification. And maybe you're thinking, okay, let's say for some reason you think the president doesn't owe us some kind of justification.

You know what he wants to keep it secret for strategic reasons or whatever until it's done. Sure. They haven't gone to Congress and brief Congress, right? So like now everybody's in a fight over, is it a legal war? Is it an illegal war? Like, okay, like, that's not great to live in a country where the fight is, is it legal or illegal? Is Congress going to do something? What would Congress do? What information does Congress have? I mean, it feels like they're all looking at Twitter just like everybody else trying to glean what's going on in the situation. Like, the American embassies are being attacked or are being threatened to be attacked. There's a, there's a, there's a,

a maybe terrorist attack in Austin? Like, it feels like things are a little bit off the rails. It would be great if we could hear from the president or somebody from this administration with some authority to talk us through what's happening. I think that the lack of clear objective, the lack of making a pitch about it on Tuesday, the lack of really a sense that there's a unified objective, even within the administration, partially explains this, right? So just for one example, right? We had Rubio, after the Venezuela strikes, Trump, the press conference, and then the next day, Rubio appeared on all three networks, took questions, et cetera.

Well, whether you're for or against what happened to Venice, well, like, they had a plan. They had something they were going to do, that they were going to get rid of Maduro and install some other communists who they thought was more pliable and take the, like, right, like, that was the plan. Maybe not a great plan. No, not a great plan. But they had one, and everyone was kind of able to defend it. Like, Rubio, because it was probably Rubio's plan, really.

And so Rubio, I'm confidently going on the networks. And he's like, I can talk about this. The boss won't get mad at me, right? Because we're all singing for the same hymn book. That I don't think it's happening right now. And so nobody went on the networks this morning on the Sunday show. It's very strange. And then just as one person as an example, J.D. Vance, who's the vice president,

who, you know, has positioned himself as one of the word doveish, whatever, isolationist people in the administration. He said nothing. J.D. Vance has not tweeted about this from either account. I mean, J.D. Vance was shit posting the minute that Rene Good was shot, you know, and so it's not like he is scared of going out there where, you know, it's a controversial situation. J.D. Vance has not tweeted one time. He's not given a statement. A lot of people on social media were confused because it's been so quiet, like there was this one viral video of J.D. talking like after the last Iranian strike about how Trump is smart. And that's been going around. And I saw some people get confused and thinking that was today. It wasn't today. He hasn't talked. So nothing on camera from him, nothing on camera from. the defense secretary, nothing from Trump besides that cut video. Nothing from the secretary of war. And I think it's in part because they don't know what to say.

They're like, JD v. Ans would be worried or Hegson would be worried if they answer one of these questions about what's your purpose. They don't want to say something that Trump would then disagree with or, you know, undercut. Because like this is another piece of information we don't exactly have, right? I mean, last time, Heggseth was tweeting out the war plans on Signal or like, He was just including everybody on his signal chat. So he was read in on that, right? He was running an operation. The last time, as you point out with Venezuela, it's not just that we heard from each of them.

They held a press conference. They held a press conference where they all stood on stage together. This is nothing. We're getting no information. And so you might be right. But like, is Trump not freelancing exactly? But is this just him and Netanyahu and MBS together just cooking these things up? And it does seem like Israel is the senior partner in the military side of it.

But he's out there. Like, I mean, again, forward against him. But BB has a clear plan. Bibi wants a regime change in Iran, right? Bibi is not hiding the ball about that. Maybe this is, again, we don't know because they're not talking. Maybe they have a more ambitious plan of supporting the Israel regime change operation. They just don't want to say that because they know it's not popular.

Literally, I just, we can't know. Yeah. I mean, that's what, but it is, the, everybody else is out there talking. People from, I mean, I watched the prime minister of England. Like, he's out holding a press conference with his country saying, let me tell you our position on this. We weren't actually involved in the operation, but here's a briefing and here's what our position is, our stated position.

The United Kingdom played no role in these strikes. But we have long been clear. The regime in Iran is utterly abhorrent. Part of this is also so maddening because it'd be one thing if this was something where we all understood what was happening because Trump had campaigned on this. Trump had a really coherent foreign policy vision. But in fact, he has had a coherent policy vision. It's America first isolationism. And this is the exact opposite of that.

So it is also the absence of information is problematic because not only is this contra everything he's told us about how he planned to handle foreign policy, It's also contra foreign policy objectives of most of his administration, like the stated ones that they ran on. And so if it's the opposite, nobody's telling us that. Right. And you would think that would make it more incumbent on them to explain. Right. Right. You know, it would be one thing.

It's like, well, you know what you're going to get from me? Like, why do you have to expect? It's a huge change, you know, from their stated posture. This is a little cheeky, but I just think it's a fair point. Michael Cohen is a writer. I like not the fixer for Trump, but different guy's same name. He posted this.

If Trump can speak from the Oval Office about Charlie Kirk, he sure his shit can do the same when he takes a country to war and people die. I'm like, that's just right. I just think that the fact that Trump is out there so much is also what makes this so conspicuous. Right. Trump has get to, you know, this term in particular,

the second time around has taken every opportunity possible to be in front of cameras. And the idea that in this moment, he is not doing interview. the plane. He's not walking up to the gaggle shouting at him. He's not having no he's not doing any of those things. You know, this is a little bit of tea leave reading, but again, to me it kind of betrays a lack of confidence. Like, I don't think, I guess what I'm saying is, I don't think they know what the plan is, which is why we don't know what the plan is, right? I don't actually think that there's some secret, you know, three-dimensional chess thing going here, that they're

hiding from us. I think that Trump liked to see the bombs go boom and was on board with the MBS and Bibi project and he's kind of like living minute to minute. Yeah. I mean, and I think that the fact that Trump was able to like grab Maduro, install, you know, just the next person and have it kind of go away in the news and not really be a thing. And similarly, bomb Iran the last time and say he obliterated it without any follow up, whatever. I think he's got this sense that he can just go in, do a smash and grab job and then walk away.

And like he might, is it possible? He is belatedly realizing that that is not possible with something like this and that it requires like drawing an inside straight where the people in Iran are going to rise up and take over the government or like are we going in? Like this is, this is insane. I think anything's possible. I think anything's possible. And maybe we'll find out tomorrow. So anyway, we wanted to wait until there was the official lid and, you know, vent some spleen about this. And, you know, we'll be continuing to monitor it as things go on.

Do you have any other final thoughts for folks? Only, I'm sorry if, like, we want to do the sense making for you. We have, I've spent all weekend trying to understand better what could possibly be going on. And so I am extremely, I got up this morning to watch the new shows. I'm trying to watch the Avengers movie with my kids. And instead I'm on Twitter, just trying to glean anything I can. And instead, it's just like, it's just discourse. It's just people taking sides.

Like there's a bunch of like brain dead analysis being like Democrats who don't think we should have done this, you know, are siding with a, you know, the Iranian regime. And it's just like, actually a bunch of people would just like to know maybe what's going on here. Yeah. What are we trying to do here? What are we doing? What exactly is it that you'd say you do here? Anyway, that's Sarah Longwell. She published the bulwark. Subscribe to the feed. We'll be back tomorrow with much more from us. I'm talking to Bill Crystal. It's right on the pod. Mark Kurtling will be back on the channel. So stick with us. We'll see you guys soon.