He seems to hope to slip away without Americans noticing the magnitude of this defeat.
The president’s comments at the G7 summit revealed that he doesn’t understand the war he started—or the words that come out of his own mouth.
By Tom NicholsJune 16, 2026, 6:42 PM ET
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Donald Trump arrived in France yesterday for this morning’s G7 summit and promptly confirmed America’s capitulation to Iran. Instead of merely repeating the outlines of what looks to be a terrible peace deal, however, Trump made a series of statements so bizarre, even by his usual standards, that they raise the question of whether the president still understands the words that come out of his own mouth.
The president began with a classic Trumpian move, daring his listeners to forget today what they knew yesterday. Just this winter, Trump had promised the Iranian people that the tyrants who ruled them would be gone. But now? “I never cared about regime change,” he told reporters, waving away his failure to achieve a primary strategic goal by denying that it had ever been a goal at all.
Things got a little weirder, however, when he described the Iranians who have stepped in to replace the regime leaders killed in U.S. strikes: “We’re dealing with people that I think are very rational people. And they were nice to deal with.”
“They were strong people, smart people,” he added. And then he dropped this remarkable claim: “They’re not radicalized, and they’re, you know, looking to help their country.”