Trump takes unconventional approach to communicating to the public about war in Iran

Typical of an unconventional presidency, the Trump administration waited more than 48 hours to make any live, public communication to the American people about why it had decided to go to war with Iran.

President Donald Trump discussed why he launched the attack prior to a White House ceremony honoring military heroes on Monday but took no questions from reporters. Earlier in the day, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Dan Caine briefed journalists at the Pentagon.

The two days previous, Trump delivered two pretaped statements that were released on Truth Social, the social media site owned by the president’s media company, and granted telephone interviews to more than a dozen journalists — several of which produced fragmented responses that, to some, clouded as much as they cleared up.

The communications strategy opened Trump to criticism that he hadn’t done enough to explain the rationale and objectives of the war, even as the American military suffered its first casualties. By contrast, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has teamed with the U.S. against Iran, delivered two statements the day the war began and addressed reporters Monday at the site of a mi...