When asked last fall what she believed President Donald Trump’s greatest accomplishment of 2025 was, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles was clear. “I think the country is beginning to see that he’s proud to be an agent of peace,” Wiles told Vanity Fair. “I think that surprises people. Doesn’t surprise me, but it doesn’t fit with the Donald Trump people think they know.”
That certainly aligned with the branding effort we saw regarding Trump that time period, with the While House posting a photo of Trump captioned “THE PEACE PRESIDENT” in October, less than a year after, in his election night victory speech, Trump promised “I’m not going to start wars, I’m going to stop wars.”
But a few months later, he already seemed to waver in his resolve, saying in December 2024 that when it comes to a possible war with Iran, “Anything can happen. It’s a very volatile situation.”
But still, Wiles chose to believe, telling VF “I cannot overstate how much his ongoing motivation is to stop the killing, which is not, I don’t think, where he was in his last term.”
She hastened to add that it’s “not that he wanted to kill people necessarily, but stopping the killing wasn’t his first thought. It’s his first and last thought now.” Just four days ago, in fact, the White House issued a press release referring to Trump as the “President of Peace,” even as it outlined “targeted military strikes” undertaken under his leadership.
Trump’s words on Saturday, as the US launched attacks across Iran, seemed to focus less on peace than on force. “We’re going to annihilate their navy,” Trump said of Iran during an eight-minute-long video posted to Truth Social. “This regime will soon learn that no one should challenge the strength and might of the United States armed forces. I built and rebuilt our military in my first administration and there is no military on earth even close to its power, strength or sophistication.”
According to Trump, who has repeatedly expressed dismay that he has not received a Nobel Peace Prize, Iranian soldiers “face certain death” unless they unequivocally surrender. He also admits that US troops might die as a result of his decision. “The lives of courageous American heroes may be lost, and we may have casualties,” Trump said. “That often happens in war.”
(For this military action to be considered a war, Congress must first approve it, as Wiles acknowledged last year. At present, this has not occurred.)
In the latest reports from Iranian state media, at least 201 people had been killed and more than 700 injured, the Associated Press reports. According to the US military, as of publication time, there have been no American casualties, despite “hundreds of Iranian missile and drone attacks” on US bases in the Middle East.
