Seven months into a war he promised would last 'four to five weeks,' Donald Trump has now admitted US munitions stocks are 'a little bit lower' than before — then immediately insisted everything is fine, actually. In a sweeping Time magazine interview published Thursday, the president dismissed his cratering poll numbers as 'fake,' refused to rule out declaring a state of emergency before the midterm elections, and floated the possibility of ramping up strikes on Iran after November. So: victory declared, weapons depleted, escalation possible. Got it.
The Admission He Couldn't Avoid
Let's be precise about what Trump conceded, because he did his best to bury it under optimism. The US, he told Time, has munitions that are 'a little bit lower' in some categories as a result of the Iran war. He specified 'middle grade and upper middle grade' ammunition without offering any further detail on what that means or how bad the shortfall actually is.
This is not new information to anyone paying attention. The Pentagon's own inspector general published a report in mid-July finding that the war had produced critical munitions shortfalls and resupply bottlenecks. The Center for Strategic and International Studies estimated that stocks of key interceptors, including Patriot missiles and THAAD systems, had been depleted in some cases by more than half, according to BBC News.
Trump called that inspector general report 'mostly fake news' when it dropped in July. Now he's confirming its central finding while assuring everyone that weapons manufacturers are building new plants 'all over the country.' The plants, presumably, do not yet exist. The empty silos do.
The Victory Lap With an Asterisk
Here is the sequence of events Trump would prefer you forget. In March, he told Americans the conflict was projected to last 'four to five weeks.' At the end of that same month, he said he planned to wind it down within 'two to three weeks.' In May, he insisted a peace deal was nearly finalized, according to the Guardian.
It is now October. The war is still going. The Strait of Hormuz is still closed after Trump told Time he rejected an Iranian proposal to reopen it because it was 'just not good enough.' And when asked by Time whether Americans had simply misunderstood him about the war's timeline, Trump blamed the press. 'I think the press fed it to them,' he said.
He also told Time the US could ramp up strikes on Iran after November's midterms, which sits awkwardly alongside his earlier declarations of victory. Trump said he had extended the conflict 'because I wanted to go further.' Earlier in September, he had told reporters the war would 'end immediately after the election' because Iran was 'desperate to try and affect the election.' So the war is won, and also ongoing, and also possibly escalating soon. A coherent doctrine this is not.
The Economy, Which Is Apparently Great
Americans have been paying above $4 a gallon for gas for months. Inflation is sitting at 3.4% and refusing to budge, per the Guardian's reporting. In a fresh Associated Press-NORC poll released Thursday, only 26% of adults said they approve of Trump's handling of the economy, a new low. Overall, just 31% approve of his job performance. About 65% of respondents said they directly blame Trump's policies for higher costs.
Trump's response to all of this in the Time interview: 'They're fake numbers.' He went further, saying he would beat any rival 'by 20 points' in a hypothetical election and adding, 'Look, we have the strongest economy.' He called pollsters 'almost as corrupt as the writers,' which is a nice thing to say to a magazine that just gave you a lengthy platform.
Republican campaign strategists are privately worried, per BBC News. Democrats are making inroads even in historically conservative states like Texas, the Guardian reports. Trump told Time he plans to campaign personally and believes that his presence on the trail will deliver wins. 'If I campaign for people, those people are going to win,' he said. The 31% approval rating presumably begs to differ.
The Emergency He Won't Rule Out
This part of the interview deserves significantly more attention than it's getting. When Time asked Trump directly whether he would declare a state of emergency before the midterm elections, his answer was: 'I don't rule anything out or in. We'll see.'
He also confirmed he has not yet invoked the Insurrection Act, the 19th-century law allowing presidents to deploy military troops domestically, but said he 'could use it' and that 'a lot of people think I should use it sometimes.' FBI Director Kash Patel has separately declined to rule out deploying federal law enforcement to polling locations, which is illegal, according to the Guardian.
This is happening against a backdrop of Trump signing executive orders restricting mail-in ballots, requiring voter ID, and asserting greater federal control over voting methods. He refused to concede the 2020 election. Democratic lawmakers have already raised concerns that he will allege fraud if Republicans underperform in November. The pieces are on the board. He just told us he's not ruling out how he might use them.
While We're Here: He Regrets His Supreme Court Picks
Almost as a footnote, Trump also told Time he regrets appointing Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court. All three are lifetime appointments. 'I put them in. They voted against me too often,' he said, according to the Guardian. 'I gave them the position of a lifetime, and they voted against me often.'
The court has ruled against Trump on his sweeping tariffs and on his efforts to end birthright citizenship. It has, by any reasonable measure, sided with his administration far more often than not. But 'often' is doing a lot of work in that sentence. What Trump appears to mean is that they voted against him at all. That's the standard. You get a lifetime appointment; the expectation is personal loyalty in return.
The Dingo Take
When exactly did 'we are running low on weapons in an active war' become a political talking point we just absorb and move on from? Trump admitted Thursday that US munitions stocks are depleted after seven months of a conflict he promised would be over in weeks. The Pentagon's inspector general said the same thing in July. CSIS said the same thing. Multiple assessments painted the same dire picture. And the response from the White House has been, in sequence: fake news, fake news, okay fine but we're stocking up, everything is great. A country is running low on interceptor missiles and the president's primary concern appears to be that the polls reflecting public unhappiness are fraudulent.
The emergency declaration answer should terrify people. 'I don't rule anything out or in' is not a reassuring non-answer from a man who has spent months tightening his grip on voting infrastructure, whose FBI director won't rule out illegal deployments to polling places, and who has never acknowledged losing an election in his life. Combine that with a war whose timeline he controls and has already suggested might escalate post-November, and you have a sitting president openly telegraphing that he is thinking about all the levers available to him. That is the story. Not the approval ratings he called fake. Not the weapons shortfalls he called fake. The man sitting in the Oval Office refusing to rule out what he might do if the election goes badly.
The Supreme Court regret section is almost a dark comedy bonus. He appointed three justices, reshaped American law for a generation, and his complaint is that they didn't vote his way enough. They were supposed to be loyal. They disappointed him. He's said it out loud. File that away next to everything else he's told us plainly about how he views the people and institutions around him. The word for what he's describing, when a president appoints judges expecting personal fealty, is not a complicated one.
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