Trump just sent his MAGA promises to hell with a rash betrayal
Donald Trump is epically and furiously destroying … all of his 2024 campaign promises, causing MAGA to fume and the rest of the world to sweat.
The official name for his war with Iran, Operation Epic Fury, most aptly describes what is unquestionably Trump’s biggest, more ferocious, blood-boiling hypocrisy of all.
There is one through-line, from gas pumps to grocery aisles to the Epstein files to Epic Fury. The louder and more frequently Trump makes the promise, the more spectacular the inevitable betrayal.
This weekend, he jumped a shark.
Americans feel the disconnect in their proverbial pocketbooks. Trump promised lower prices and relief from inflation. Instead, inflation remains above the Federal Reserve’s target. Tariffs, Trump’s favored word until “war” came along, add pressure to consumer costs.
Grocery bills haven’t retreated. Essentials are still pricey. And now, with a widening war in the Middle East, energy markets are rattled. Iranian retaliation targeting infrastructure, including Saudi Arabia's biggest oil refinery, threatens to send gas prices climbing.
“Drill, baby, drill” doesn’t mean much when global supply lines are on fire and geopolitical instability is priced in at the pump.
The same with health care. Trump promised better and cheaper. Expired Affordable Care Act subsidies and rising Medicare and Medicaid costs belie it. There is no relief in sight. No legislation, no executive orders, nothing to address a quickening national crisis.
Then there are the Epstein files. Trump pledged full disclosure. Appropriately, that was a sick joke. What has occurred has been steeped in non-disclosure. Trump’s Attorney General and the abhorrent FBI director openly shield their boss.
And all of this — the high prices, the health care strain, the botched Epstein releases — are now outshone by his biggest hypocrisy, his biggest lie of all. Trumpism was never about “America First” or “start no wars.” It was about Trump as dictator and imperialist.
He pressed “go” on Operation Epic Fury and unleashed death, destruction and chaos throughout the Middle East. This war, its reasons still unclear, will not end in a week, or two, or five. That’s not what happens when there are no clearly defined objectives.
It’s not what happens when you have a liar and a hypocrite leading the charge. Trump has suggested the operation will last a couple of weeks. History will remember that whopper.
The Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is dead. So are many other Iranian leaders. That’s a good thing but the Trump administration insists it isn’t “regime change.” Strange, because it sure looks like a governmental decapitation.
Adding to the symbolism of lies and double-crossing — and the alarm — is Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of Defense who after Trump represents the ultimate “F.U.” to MAGA.
Trump promised no wars. Instead, he and Hegseth started a “War Department,” with Hegseth as “Secretary of War” and soldiers recast as “warriors,” committed to a “warrior ethos.”
The candidate who campaigned as the antidote to endless Middle East conflict now presides, with the woefully inexperienced Hegseth, over a conflict that risks expanding beyond anyone’s wildest imaginations.
Two lying, untrustworthy warmongers, who think peace is for sissies.
We are told this won’t be Iraq. It will be. We are told it will be limited. It won’t be. Contained. Not anymore. Strategic. Never was.
Americans have heard this before. Under George W. Bush, in 2003, Iraq was supposed to be quick and surgical. Not a quagmire. Not prolonged. Not generational. Oh, and Trump says Iranians should take to the streets and take back their government. In Iraq, Dick Cheney said U.S. forces would be welcomed as liberators. No similarity there.
Hegseth’s “this isn’t Iraq” is an icing of lies on top of a cake of prevarication.
If the promise of “no wars” morphed into Operation Epic Fury, why should the promise of “not a long war” mean only a couple of weeks? When trust is repeatedly broken, it doesn’t magically regenerate into truth, especially when dishonestly flows from Trump and Hegseth.
Hegseth is the embodiment of this transformation. On Monday, standing at the podium of what used to be the decorous Defense Department, he declared: “If you kill or threaten Americans anywhere on Earth, we will hunt you down … and we will kill you.”
“Kill.” It was repugnant.
It was a word delivered not with staid solemnity but with insidious irreverence. Clearly, Hegseth thinks “kill” makes him sound like a UFC champion. It may play well with the bullies and bros.
But Hegseth’s hyper-hypocrisy continues. The same leadership that demands ironclad discipline from its “warriors” has skirted established security protocols, relying on insecure communications channels while lecturing the country about national security threats.
The pattern of pietism is entrenched and unmistakable. Lower prices became lingering inflation. Healthcare reform meant higher premiums. Transparency transformed into protection of the Epstein Class.
And “no wars” mutated into a renamed “War Department” and chaotic Middle East conflict.
Politicians break promises. All. The. Time. But Trump’s lies are worse, with profound implications for Americans and for the world.
You cannot campaign as the peace candidate — and yearn for a Nobel — then govern as a war president. You cannot decry “forever wars” while launching one.
MAGA voters must reconcile themselves to airstrikes, oil volatility, rising gas prices, and the possibility of a drawn-out conflict. They were told “America first.” Instead, they see America entangled abroad while costs rise at home.
Under Trump, America is never first. Trump is first, always. When peace made Trump look weak and like a loser — no Nobel — he became conqueror-in-chief. That’s a lie too.
- John Casey was most recently Senior Editor, The Advocate, and is a freelance opinion and feature story writer. Previously, he was a Capitol Hill press secretary, and spent 25 years in media and public relations in NYC. He is the co-author of LOVE: The Heroic Stories of Marriage Equality (Rizzoli, 2025), named by Oprah in her "Best 25 of 2025.”