What did Donald Trump do today?

He shifted the end date of the Iran war from "definitely six months ago" to "maybe two months from now."

Today is the 194th day of Trump's war with Iran. He first declared victory over Iran on the eighth day of the war, in early March, and has been repeatedly insisting that Iran has already been defeated ever since. 

He said it while loosening sanctions on Iranian oil mid-war, in a futile attempt to bring down the soaring gas prices caused by Iran's seizure of the Strait of Hormuz. 

He said it in June while being forced to agree, in theory at least, to humiliating terms just to bring Iran to the negotiating table, and then he said it again after Iran ignored those talks completely and refused to give up the tactical advantages it had gained. 

He said it after four servicemembers were killed by Iranian attacks in July—then deleted their names from a list of those killed during the war to support the idea that the war had already ended. 

He has said it so often that news organizations have attempted to keep track of how many times he's said it, only to lose interest. NBC News counted 32 times by early July.

But as virtually all observers outside the Trump White House agree, the reality is that Iran has trapped Trump in a quagmire he cannot escape through the only realistic tools available to him—economic sanctions and long-range bombardment—while simultaneously making it psychologically impossible for him to admit defeat. The result: a shockingly fast degradation of the United States' ability to function as both an economic and military power in the world.

Today, Trump changed course: instead of declaring the war over, he declared it would end sometime after the midterm elections, which are still two months away: "I think the war's going to end immediately after the election because they can't hold out any longer," Trump told reporters.

But in reality, that is an acknowledgment that Trump is unable to actually change the fact of Iran's new control over the Persian Gulf region, even though it is a matter of political life or death for his party. 

 

Trump made the remarks shortly before he spoke at the "midterm convention" in Texas that he demanded—with limited success—that Republican candidates attend. But even the diehard fans who made up the sparse crowd in Dallas tonight were expressing anger and disappointment over the situation with Iran.

Why does this matter?

• A president fit to command the United States military would never have gotten himself into this humiliating situation in the first place.