The Trump Presidency Timeline

Europe has finally clocked that Donald Trump is less all-powerful God-Emperor and more loud landlord with a foreclosure notice. German chancellor Friedrich Merz publicly says Trump’s Iran war has no exit strategy and that Tehran has "humiliated" the US, which is diplomatic code for "this guy has no idea what he’s doing." Macron, Starmer, and even Giorgia Meloni are now treating Trump like what he is: a security risk with nuclear codes.

Trump and JD Vance tried to rig vibes in Hungary for Viktor Orbán and face-planted, then floated the idea of buying Greenland again, because why stop at bankrupt casinos when you can move on to NATO allies. Europe noticed that the US actually needs European bases for its Iran misadventure, that Ukraine is now mostly funded and armed by Europe and Ukraine itself, and that a lot of Trump’s chest-thumping gets kneecapped by courts, Congress, and his own Maga clown car. Translation: the leverage isn’t what it used to be.

So the EU is sharpening the knives. If Trump slaps higher tariffs on European cars, Brussels has a €93bn retaliation package ready to go, plus an "anti-coercion instrument" aimed at US hi-tech companies for when the Greenland land-grab fantasy inevitably returns. Europe is pouring more money into its own arms industry, "de-risking" from US defense and digital services, and discovering that standing up to Trump actually boosts their poll numbers. Turns out the aura of invincibility fades once everyone realizes the strongman can’t even successfully bully Hungary.

Trump is "reviewing" a new 14-point peace proposal from Tehran the way a loan shark reviews your kneecaps, announcing Iran hasn't yet "paid a big enough price" for the last 47 years of existing in a way Washington doesn't like. The war that the US and Israel helpfully kicked off in late February is under a shaky ceasefire, but the guy who launched strikes during nuclear talks now insists he just can't imagine accepting any deal where Iran doesn't suffer more first. Nothing says "we're the good guys" like demanding additional pain as a precondition for stopping the war you started.

Iran's offer reportedly includes US withdrawal from areas around Iran, lifting the US blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, releasing frozen assets, lifting sanctions, compensation, ending the war on all fronts (including Lebanon), and creating a new control mechanism for the strait. Washington's counteroffer? Threaten more military action if Iran "misbehaves" and warn global shipping companies they'll be sanctioned for paying Iran to pass safely through a waterway Iran physically controls. The US has already slapped on a naval blockade of Iranian ports while Iran chokes traffic through Hormuz, driving oil prices 50% above prewar levels so everyone can enjoy the fun.

Having detonated the old nuclear deal years ago, Trump is now demanding a new arrangement that "prevents Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon" as the price for ending the war he chose to start in the middle of nuclear negotiations. Iran insists its program is peaceful; Trump insists he'll consider peace right after Tehran bleeds enough to satisfy his sense of cosmic justice. It's less diplomacy and more a hostage negotiation where the arsonist keeps explaining that the fire just hasn't learned its lesson yet. Humanity and the World are apparently very important to him — just not quite as important as the ratings bump from another war scare.

Pete Hegseth went to Congress to ask for a casual $1.5 trillion war budget and somehow discovered that the real threat to America isn’t Iran, or a spiraling US-Israel war, or even the $25 billion already burned through in two months – it’s members of Congress who say out loud that this looks like a quagmire. The defense secretary told the House armed services committee that the "biggest adversary" the US faces is the "reckless, feckless and defeatist" rhetoric of Democrats (and a few Republicans), because nothing says "robust democracy" like declaring domestic critics more dangerous than the country you’re bombing.

Two months into a war Trump promised would last four to six weeks, Hegseth is now calling it an "existential fight" and proudly invoking Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan as the gold standard of staying too long in unwinnable conflicts. When Rep. John Garamendi dared to use the word "quagmire" and mention the "astounding incompetence" that produced yet another Middle East disaster, Hegseth lost it and accused him of handing propaganda to the enemy. Meanwhile, Trump is posting AI-generated Rambo fanfic of himself with the caption "NO MORE MR. NICE GUY" and threatening an open-ended naval blockade, because nothing reassures the world like a septuagenarian dictator cosplayer with a meme folder and a carrier group.

On the money front, Pentagon CFO Jules Hurst III revealed the meter is already at an estimated $25 billion – mostly munitions and replacing equipment, i.e., great news for defense contractors and absolutely no one else. Hegseth and Republican chair Mike Rogers framed the 50–60% budget increase as simply "the true cost of American deterrence" and sweetened it with a "historic" 7% pay bump for the lowest enlisted, the traditional move where you tape a small raise to a giant check for Raytheon and call it patriotism. Ranking Democrat Adam Smith, not yet fully absorbed into the Forever War cult, asked whether this tidal wave of cash will be squandered and why the US is diplomatically isolated while Trump is busy insulting allies’ leaders and their spouses mid-conflict.

Then there’s the part where a US strike hit a school in Minab, killing at least 168 people, most of them children. Two months later, Hegseth is finally under oath and the best the administration can manage is: "We made a mistake and that happens in war," followed by complete radio silence that, as Smith noted, made it look like the US "just don’t care." When Hegseth bragged that Iran’s nuclear facilities had been "obliterated," Smith pointed out that if the threat was "imminent" and now it’s gone but Iran still hasn’t abandoned its ambitions, then Operation Midnight Hammer accomplished precisely nothing – aside from dead kids, billions burned, and another open-ended war the White House is very proud of.