Many of President Donald Trump’s critics who did not approve of his ordering of Operation Epic Fury have focused on his failure to “rally the public” to the battle with Iran which the United States and Israel have been fighting — extremely successfully — for more than a month. Last night he gave the prime time address some of his critics have been demanding.
This column had to be filed hours before the president spoke, however, so I can only predict that, with some confidence, that reactions to the address will be “mixed.”
About 35-40% of the country will applaud the remarks. Roughly the same number will condemn them. And the crucial middle 20-40% will either be “undecided,” or will admit to not having seen it.
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This result will come about because opinions about President Trump and anything he does do not move much, if at all. Ever.
The president has built a base. It endures. When the president was opposite then Vice President Kamala Harris on an actual ballot, he smoked her, winning decisively and in all seven of the “swing states.” That was a real test.
The next time public opinion will truly be tested is in the fall elections. So much will happen between then and now that the safest prediction remains: The GOP loses the majority in the House, but retains the majority in the Senate, but it’s all dart throwing so far out. If the president has had quiet notification from one or two members of the Supreme Court in his pocket, he can be assured of a few news cycles favorable to him before voting begins, as the left will do its very predictable and ridiculous overreaction to any nominee and alienate the center.
But about the address last night…
President Trump will rightly have extolled the job done by the American military and our Israeli partners. The combined forces have devastated Iran’s ability to threaten its neighbors and the world. A military junta is now running the country, if the smartest analysts are to be believed, and even if Khamenei 2.0 is alive but injured, it does not matter. It is very obvious he’s not “running” anything. It’s not even clear that the junta is running anything.
A smashed military can’t do much but bluster and fire off the missiles they can drag out of the shattered caverns and fire them off “in ones and twos” to quote the combatant commander of Central Command, Admiral Brad Cooper. Israeli news is full of leaks about how the IDF is almost out of targets. It would be remarkable if America wasn’t too. That doesn’t mean the junta lacks the ability to kill its own people. It just means that the Islamic Republic of Iran no longer menaces the region and the world.
The region and the world are so much better off today than five weeks ago that it is very hard to describe just how great the change is. Work still remains to be done by a variety of our forces, but hats off to the Pentagon’s planners and the front line warriors and everyone in between, because it has been a dominating and stunning display of America’s military might. Our most important ally, Israel, has also demonstrated — again — that when mortal combat looms, you want Israel on your side.
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No matter what President Trump said last night, however, those invested in hating him will join with Democrats invested in winning the elections this fall to find fault with the speech. That’s fine. That’s America in 2026. We never call time out from our never-ending political battles.
Which is why there were so many skeptics to begin with of the necessity of the big “Oval Office” address of yesteryear, including me.
Think of Richard Nixon’s “great silent majority” speech of November 3, 1969, which explained his policy of Vietnamization of that war. Nixon bought himself time and support with that address. About 70 million people watched that speech, and more than 3 out of 4 of them approved of it. That was a speech that moved the needle of public opinion for a time.
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I didn’t expect anything like that impact from President Trump’s speech. Americans are far more fixed in their political positions today and have been for a long time. That’s what “polarization” means.
We collectively consume news so very differently from 50+ years ago as well, and while many of us will get clips and snippets of the speech by the dozens from various social media feeds, it’s hard for any single or even multiple Beltway “analysts” to spin the speech one way or another. The “elites” of American public opinion just aren’t there anymore. The New York Times’ reaction, much less those of network news, matter very little.
What matters now are results. Americans are following the battle with the mullahs and the Islamic Republic Revolutionary Guard’s new junta very closely. But where you sit defines what you see and hear. The center-right to conservative half of America cares not at all for the hot takes from legacy media, which has near single digit credibility with “the great silent majority.” The president’s 77 million voters are inclined to approve of his actions and serious national security folks are already applauding the evisceration of the Iranian threat.
“Normal” people would also cheer the fall of the junta and that may yet happen. Everyone who buys gas would like the oil to flow freely again through the Straight of Hormuz as well. As the answer to the problem of high prices is in fact more production from other sources, that will follow if oil through the Straight from the Gulf is actually throttled back for much longer. The president knows average Americans hate high gas prices. He will be urging Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum and Secretary of Energy Chris Wright and everyone on the National Energy Dominance Council to go faster still. And they will. The price of gas has probably peaked and will not fall steadily.
Crucially, the threat of nuclear weapons ringed by tens of thousands of long-range ballistic missiles all in the hands of religious fanatics is now near zero for the foreseeable future. Israel will now keep watch on Iran’s splintered military. It will act again if it has to. Precedents matter. A very visible and enduring precedent has been set.
The world saw the bared fangs of Iran’s religious zealots when they murdered tens of thousands of their own people in January, and again when it struck out wildly at everyone within shooting distance, as well as when it fired off missiles at Diego Garcia — demonstrating a range the old regime swore again and again they didn’t have.
Exposed and humbled, the remnants of the regime are huddled in secret offices at least indoors and probably deep underground, operating secretly for fear of assassination. They sit uneasily atop a government that is nearly out of money and serious weaponry. The public in Iran hates them. Maybe the junta lasts a year or two. Maybe not. But Iran is on the path to freedom from its medieval lunatics. Godspeed to the great Iranian people and their desire to be free.
The only question I had going into Wednesday night’s speech was whether the president would announce that America is done with NATO.
NATO has been the most successful military alliance in history, but its most prominent members just face-planted before the world. The front-line countries sharing borders with Russia, like Bulgaria, Finland, Poland, and, of course, Ukraine are valuable allies. But the rest of Europe? Turns out that gratitude for saving it first from Hitler and then from the Soviet Union had a shelf life. It has expired.
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NATO’s failure is not President Trump’s fault. NATO’s member countries could have pitched in or at least cheered America and Israel on (as the Gulf States in fact did.) NATO’s members chose not to. It was a choice of great consequence, one that even Reagan-era “peace-through-strength” hawks saw and absorbed. Time for the new realism in America to get real about sclerotic European powers.
The key point: The United States has won a great and lasting victory over an evil regime. It cost at least 13 American lives and scores badly injured. That’s an enormous cost. There may be more casualties yet. To serve in uniform or in our intelligence community is too often go in harm’s way. We civilians cannot repay those families, but we can and should honor and help them.
But the world and America is much better off today than it was five weeks ago. Much, much better off. To not recognize this reality is to proclaim ignorance of both how the world works and how dangerous Iran was five weeks ago. No matter how the speech went Wednesday night, President Trump has already delivered on an important promise made by every president since George W. Bush: Iran would never join the club of “nuclear powers.”
Many Americans are already grateful for the president’s decisive action. Historians will honor the choice no matter what snap polls say about Wednesday night’s speech.
Hugh Hewitt is a Fox News contributor and host of “The Hugh Hewitt Show” heard weekday afternoons from 3 PM to 6 PM ET on the Salem Radio Network, and simulcast on Salem News Channel. Hugh drives Americans home on the East Coast and to lunch on the West Coast on over 400 affiliates nationwide, and on all the streaming platforms where SNC can be seen. He is a frequent guest on the Fox News Channel’s news roundtable, hosted by Bret Baier weekdays at 6 p..m ET. A son of Ohio and a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School, Hewitt has been a Professor of Law at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law since 1996, where he teaches Constitutional Law. Hewitt launched his eponymous radio show from Los Angeles in 1990. Hewitt has frequently appeared on every major national news television network, hosted television shows for PBS and MSNBC, written for every major American paper, has authored a dozen books and moderated a score of Republican candidate debates, most recently the November 2023 Republican presidential debate in Miami and four Republican presidential debates in the 2015-16 cycle. Hewitt focuses his radio show and his column on the Constitution, national security, American politics and the Cleveland Browns and Guardians. Hewitt has interviewed tens of thousands of guests from Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump over his 40 years in broadcasting. This column previews the lead story that will drive his radio/ TV show today.
