Takeaways from Trump’s address: No end date for Iran war, no direct criticism of NATO

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump sought on Wednesday to explain his rationale for the war against Iran at a pivotal moment at home and abroad, but he offered few new details as he amasses extraordinary executive authority to prosecute the military operation.

The war is fast becoming a signature of his second-term agenda and the speech was a capstone to a remarkable day flexing presidential power.

Trump started the morning as the first sitting president to show up for a U.S. Supreme Court hearing, a stunning reach of the executive into the affairs of the judicial branch. He ended with his first primetime address from the White House about a war he launched on his own, bulldozing past Congress.

On an early spring night when many Americans may have been looking upward as Artemis II astronauts lifted off for NASA’s return to the moon, Trump gave a nod to that historic milestone. Then he quickly refocused attention back to him — and ...