Trump's Address on Iran and Its Impact on Market Stability | Vanity Fair

It was a little after 7:30 a.m., and President Donald Trump sounded groggy. “I don’t worry about markets,” he told me. “I worry about nuclear weapons.” Fox News blared in the background.

The night before, Trump delivered a 19-minute speech updating the world on the war in Iran. It was the commander in chief’s first address to the nation from the White House since he ordered the initial strikes, more than a month ago, that killed Iran’s supreme leader and multiple government officials, sparking a massive regional conflict that ensnared a dozen countries, shocked energy markets, and threatened to create a global economic crisis.

If the speech was intended to inform the country about the goals of the war, Trump offered few specifics. He declared victory, but said the war would continue for “two to three weeks,” his preferred timeline for accomplishing any goal. He did not reveal what that would entail, only sharing that the United States would hit Iran “extremely hard” and “bring them back to the stone ages, where they belong.”

He sounded tired, his cadence slow and halting, his mouth full of saliva. Trump offered unnerving reassurance, pointing out that other wars—World War II, Vietnam, Korea, and Iraq—lasted years. As he spoke, markets responded. Oil futures spiked and the S&P 500 plunged, a sign that traders are bracing for more uncertainty as the war drags on.

I called him up with some lingering questions the morning after the speech. If the war has already been won, why pledge to send Iran “back to the stone ages” in your speech, a saber-rattling remark that was parroted by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth on X?

“Militarily, it’s been won easily,” Trump told me. “It’s been easy militarily. And it ultimately is going to be a change. We’ve changed—there’s been a total change of government in that country. You understand that. I mean, the first one’s been wiped out. The second one’s been wiped out. You have a total regime change. It was not my ambition to do that, maybe call it luck or call it talent, but there’s been regime change.”

What do you say to prominent allies, like Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly, who oppose this war? The night before, Trump had posted a column in which Carlson was described as “deranged.”

“I don’t say anything to them. I have nothing to do with them. I say nothing to them.”

Are you worried about the civilian death toll in Iran? It looks like the missile that struck a school, reportedly killing at least 175 people, most of them children, was an American one?

“I don’t know that. I don’t know that.”

As we reported last week, the Pentagon is still investigating the bombing of an elementary school in Minab. The New York Times has reported that preliminary findings indicate that the school was indeed struck by an American bomb.

There is fear among Trump’s allies that the president is overly fixated on issues of less importance than war and the economy. Aboard Air Force One this week, reporters peppered Trump with questions about Iran—but first, he pulled out various printed mock-ups of the 90,000-square-foot ballroom he plans to build in the large ditch to the side of the White House that once served as the foundation of the East Wing.

“A lot of people are talking about how beautiful the ballroom is,” Trump said. “I don’t have time to do this. I’m fighting wars and other things. But this is very important, because this is gonna be with us for a long time.”

The fixation on the ballroom, whose construction was halted by a judge this week in a scathing ruling that ordered Trump to obtain congressional approval for the project, has in particular frustrated allies who see the venture as out of touch with the anxieties of Americans.

“This isn’t even a ‘let them eat cake’ situation. This is a ‘watch us eat cake’ situation,” said Matthew Bartlett, a Republican strategist and former Trump State Department official. “I’ve just never seen such a tone-deaf approach to both the international and domestic concerns and priorities of the American people.”

During our call, at least, Trump was focused on the war. There was no talk of Corinthian columns or gold leaf accents. Then, about 15 minutes after we got off the phone, he posted on Truth Social.

“Bad, and very boring singer, Bruce Springsteen, who looks like a dried up prune who has suffered greatly from the work of a really bad plastic surgeon, has long had a horrible and incurable case of Trump Derangement Syndrome, sometimes referred to as TDS,” Trump wrote. “The guy is a total loser…MAGA SHOULD BOYCOTT HIS OVERPRICED CONCERTS, WHICH SUCK. SAVE YOUR HARD EARNED MONEY. AMERICA IS BACK!!! President DJT.”

One close Trump ally texted: “I mean.. Today? Really?? Like.. last night you literally said you were bombing a country back to the stone ages… and Bruce Springsteen is front of mind today?”

As Trump declares victory and vows to decimate Iran, a country of about 93 million people, there are concerns that his campaign threatens more than just the stability of the Middle East. Robert Kagan, a historian and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, fears that the damage to America’s standing in the world has already been done.

“We’re living with the worst-case scenario,” Kagan told me over the phone this week. “The question is, what does that unfold into? And I think it’s going to happen much quicker than people realize.”

He argued that the war, and Trump’s treatment of the system of alliances that the United States established in the wake of World War II, have emboldened Russia and China while creating a multipolar world in which America is seen, for the first time, as a rogue actor.

“It’s going to be a very lonely and very dangerous world for Americans, much more than they realize,” Kagan said. “When people say, ‘Well, wait till Trump is gone’—he can do catastrophic damage, and is already doing catastrophic damage. But with another three years, the world may be unrecognizable.”

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