❓WHAT HAPPENED: President Donald J. Trump authorized military action against Iran over the weekend, with Raheem Kassam, Editor-in-Chief of The National Pulse, offering his analysis of the decision on Monday.
👤WHO WAS INVOLVED: President Trump, Raheem Kassam, and The New York Times.
📍WHEN & WHERE: The strikes on Iran began on Saturday, with the conflict spanning the wider region.
💬KEY QUOTE: “He loves the idea of finishing the job that his predecessors couldn’t even start,” Kassam said of Trump.
🎯IMPACT: The Iran war could heighten tensions within the MAGA movement or boost the President’s standing if it is concluded swiftly and successfully, although Kassam warns it could prove to be an unhelpful distraction from the administration’s domestic agenda.
Raheem Kassam, Editor-in-Chief of The National Pulse, has told The New York Times that President Donald J. Trump’s strikes on Iran reflect the fact that “He loves the idea of finishing the job that his predecessors couldn’t even start,” referring to Joe Biden, Barack Obama, and other recent presidents’ failure to tackle Iran’s ballistic missile and nuclear programs directly.
“It’s not something I would have done, but it is definitely something Trump would have done,” Kassam said, noting that the President’s supporters appear to trust him to finish the job in Iran cleanly with minimal U.S. casualties more than they trusted previous leaders. He warned, however, that “Operation Epic Fury” may become a problem for the administration if it becomes a distraction from domestic priorities.
Americans, Kassam explained, are “just starting to feel better about the economy” as the 2026 midterms loom, “because they spent too much time on Elon Musk’s failed DOGE project.”
Kassam noted that transformative government cuts had not been achieved by the SpaceX and Tesla tech mogul, adding. “I agree with the critics that it is a big problem.”
Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) was declared officially over by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) in November, with Musk himself having left and started a vicious spat with President Trump months prior. While DOGE claimed it had achieved $214 billion in savings, independent analyses found that DOGE had overstated its savings by as much as 97 percent in some cases.
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