Trump will address the nation about the Iran war on Wednesday. Here’s what to expect

“April is the cruelest month,” T.S. Eliot wrote. 

With U.S. crude nearly doubling in price since the beginning of the year; the Strait of Hormuz still more or less blocked; and the subsequent rising cost of almost everything from cars to flights to plastics to semiconductors, April is shaping up to be a very cruel month, indeed.

President Donald Trump will address the nation at 9 p.m. ET Wednesday to deliver what the White House has called “an important update on Iran”—his first primetime remarks since the U.S. and Israel launched strikes on Feb. 28. The address will air across all four major broadcast networks, forcing scheduled programming to move aside, including the season finale of The Masked Singer and a special episode of Survivor.

The address comes as gas prices cross the $4 a gallon threshold on average in the U.S., and as Trump’s approval rating has sunk below 40% in recent polling while he continues to advance a war that the majority of Americans say they oppose. Politically, for Trump, the pressure to explain the war—the who, what, why, and when—has become unav...