As Iran war threatens to spiral out of control, Trump appears utterly unbothered

This is an adapted excerpt from theJuly 20 episode of “All In with Chris Hayes.”

Donald Trump has provided the country with another unbelievable split screen: the president of the United States — and first-ever FIFA Peace Prize recipient — yukking it up and partying at the World Cup final while the war he started with Iran (and then restarted) faces one of the worst weeks yet as it threatens to spiral out of control.

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For Trump this weekend, all eyes were on the gold. He and his family seemed to have a grand old time attending the final match amid the backdrop of even more U.S. troops killed on his watch.

The Pentagon has now identified three American soldiers who have been killed in action over the weekend: Army Pvt. Isabella Gonzales, 19; Army 1st Lt. Tyler James Feehan, 25; and Army Sgt. Michael Emmanuel Swinton, 30.

Gonzales and Feehan were killed when Iran struck a military base in Jordan, which maintains a large footprint for American forces and serves as a key hub for U.S. airstrikes in Iran. Swinton died in Iraq in an unrelated incident involving a downed Iranian drone. Their deaths bring the total of Americans who died in this war to 17 — that we know of. According to new reporting from The New York Times, the Pentagon has withheld information about dozens of injuries related to the Iran war. Pete Hegseth’s Defense Department appears to be so obsessed with a culture of winning and total domination that any information contrary to that narrative is suppressed, apparently.

Those unreported attacks not only injured dozens of U.S. service members, but they also damaged several helicopters. However, according to the report, “the Pentagon did not disclose the earlier strikes, nor the casualties and damage they inflicted.”

In response, a U.S. military official told the Times that U.S. Central Command is not required to release information about injured service members, especially when they quickly return to duty.

So I guess your government does not think you need to know about the service members being injured, ostensibly on your behalf, in a war being fought with your tax dollars.

There has been reporting for months, across all fronts of this war, that the situation is not as rosy as the administration is letting on — including reports that the U.S. and Israel are running critically low on missile interceptors because we were just completely unprepared for the reality of this war.

But, to that last point, it is not even clear whether Trump knows of that reality. As The Washington Post reported, citing a single U.S. official granted anonymity: “We do not have enough [munitions] to safely sustain operations, and I don’t think the White House is aware of that.”

Meanwhile, thousands of people are dead across Iran and Lebanon, including civilians. They are apparently not a consideration at all for this White House, which, lest we forget, bombed a girl’s elementary school as one of the war’s first acts, according to the U.S.’ own preliminary military and intelligence reviews.

The Houthis, a Yemeni militant group, also announced a blockade of the Red Sea from Saudi Arabian oil. Should they go ahead and fully close the Bab el-Mandeb strait, it could reduce the global oil supply by 7%.

So, everything is sort of sitting on a knife’s edge in the Middle East. And here at home, the second-order effects of this war are returning fast.

Since oil is not moving through the Strait of Hormuz, gas prices are creeping back up, with the national average back over $4 a gallon. Right now, our strategic reserves are running to their lowest levels since the Reagan administration.

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And, throughout all of this, the U.S.’ commander in chief is basically asleep at the wheel. When he’s awake, he’s mostly plotting and ranting about sabotaging the election or obsessing over his little redecorating projects.

Trump just transparently doesn’t care about the war, and he can’t even bother to pretend to. The president only commented on the death of those soldiers after a reporter called him and asked him to do so. According to NewsNation, Trump told the reporter he was “very sad” to hear about their deaths.

“We hate to see it happen,” he said, before adding that it was “in service to our country” and that the U.S. would “never” allow “Iran to have a nuclear weapon.”

Trump started this war, in part because the Israeli government convinced him to, and he got bored. Then he went back to doing what he would much rather be doing, flying back to New York to hang out at the World Cup final.

I would not say the president received a warm reception from the crowd. Lots of people have posted videos of what sounds like booing. After all, Trump gets booed at basically every sporting event he attends.

According to one local report, security at MetLife Stadium confiscated thousands of red cards that fans were going to wave to mock the president’s corruption. Patrons said the cards were taken when security learned they were part of an anti-Trump protest.

And it appeared the president’s sports curse struck again when Argentina — the team he clearly preferred, from a country with a Trump sycophant as president — got shut out.

But the man was clearly just thrilled with all the attention anyway. After Spain won, he joined the team onstage to present the trophy and soak up all its glory. He then appeared to try to photobomb the team picture before he was pulled aside by FIFA President Gianni Infantino.

As The Guardian put it in a truly excellent photo caption of the moment, “Gianni Infantino carefully explains to President Trump that he is not part of the Spanish national team.”

All of this would pair well with the ridiculous FIFA Peace Prize the organization made for Trump as some kind of participation trophy after he didn’t win the Nobel Peace Prize.

Just over two months after receiving that prize, Trump started a regime-change war of choice, a war that continues to this day — leaving thousands dead, injured and displaced; leaving American service members’ families grieving; and leaving the president utterly and completely unbothered.

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Allison Detzel contributed.