Aristotle wrote more than two thousand years ago that no speech can persuade if it betrays itself. However, faced with President Donald Trump’s communication model, the Aristotelian maxim faces its greatest challenge: does contradiction weaken the speaker, or does its unpredictability make him more powerful?
For The Stagirite, rhetoric is an art of balance: credibility — ethos — depends on the speaker’s integrity of character and consistency; emotion — pathos — requires harmony with the argument and a connection with the audience; and reasoning — logos — collapses if it asserts one thing and its opposite. In any case, contradiction between rhetoric and facts must be avoided. Without this balance, discourse may stir emotions and prevail temporarily, but it cannot persuade in a sustained way; it may generate noise, but not that probable truth that builds public trust.
Trumpist politics, however, has elevated contradiction into a method. And the war against Iran has become a laboratory of verbal inconsistencies, abrupt turns, mutually incompatible messages, and a stark dissonance between propaganda and reality. The promise of peace accompanied by the threat of destruction undermines the logical coherence that Aristotle considered indispensable for any reasonable persuasion. According to classical rhetoric, contradictions diminish the speaker’s authority; in the media politics of the twenty-first century, they are part of the spectacle and generate omnipresence; and in geopolitical terms, they open up an unpredictable scenario in which words lack lasting value.
The logic of contradiction affects the very core of the America First governmental doctrine. The slogan, designed to evoke an approach away from military interventions abroad and focused on domestic issues such as the economy, immigration, and national security, is deeply undermined by a war that damages the U.S. economy and causes military casualties. Donald Trump campaigned against the “endless wars” of “all the warmongers and America Last globalists” and in favor of “peace in the world,” yet he launched a “massive and ongoing operation” against Iran. Even though his generals did not guarantee him an easy and rapid victory, he promised that this new war would be “a short-term excursion,” which, however, has already far exceeded the time frame he himself set (4–5 weeks), making him the driving force behind yet another prolonged conflict.
Trump sought to justify the attack within the America First framework: “Our objective is to defend the American people” from Iran’s “menacing activities” that “directly endanger the United States” and “our core national security interests.” However, his arguments do not hold up and are far too reminiscent of the lies used to invade Iraq. There is no evidence that Iran posed an “imminent threat”; intelligence services have said there is no evidence that it was developing intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching the United States; and the president himself stated that Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities had been “completely and totally obliterated” during the Twelve-Day War in June 2025. Donald Trump has insisted that Iran “will never have a nuclear weapon,” yet it was he himself who withdrew the United States in 2018 from the nuclear agreement signed in 2015, which was precisely intended to limit that risk. U.S. threats and bombings only give Iran more reason to develop it because of its deterrent capacity (see North Korea). After blowing up the diplomatic path, Trump denounces its possible consequences. It is a textbook case of what Aristotle would call an argument that destroys itself.
Secretary of State Pete Hegseth has also framed the U.S. attack as a defensive war to protect his country. Applying the principle of negationism, he stated:
For 47 long years, the expansionist and Islamist regime in Tehran has waged a savage, one-sided war against America […] We didn’t start this war, but under President Trump, we are finishing it […] It took the 47th president, a fighter who always puts America first, to finally draw the line after 47 years of Iranian belligerence.
It would seem as if the coup d’état against the elected president, Mohammad Mosaddegh, to restore absolute power to Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi had never taken place. It is as if the United States had never supported Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Iran, or as if the U.S. warship USS Vincennes (CG-49) had never shot down an Iran Air commercial airliner, killing all 290 people on board. Hegseth also overlooks the recurring illegal threats and suffocating economic sanctions imposed by successive U.S. governments on Iran since its inclusion in the Axis of Evil, as well as the assassination of Iran’s top general, Qasem Soleimani, at Baghdad airport in 2020—an outright act of war outside a formally declared conflict. And, naturally, he makes no mention whatsoever of murky collaborations such as the “October Surprise” of 1980, when Ronald Reagan’s campaign team allegedly reached an agreement with the “Great Satan” not to release the American hostages before the election—which he would go on to win—in exchange for better terms than those offered by Jimmy Carter. Nor does he mention the subsequent Iran-Contra affair, when the Reagan administration secretly sold weapons to Iran so that Tehran would pressure Hezbollah to secure the release of American hostages, while the money was illegally diverted to fund the Nicaraguan Contras.
Humanitarian rhetoric offers another pretext that has historically been used—perhaps the most hypocritical one. The Trump administration has accused Iran of “brutally murdering its own people for merely speaking out against its oppressive rule” over the past 47 years and has claimed that its actions aim to liberate the Iranian people: “the hour of your freedom is at hand.” Donald Trump, however, also threatened to “bring them back to the Stone Age” and stated that “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again” if Tehran did not reopen the Strait of Hormuz. How can one claim to advocate for a people’s rights while simultaneously threatening their total destruction? Furthermore, how credible is a promise of freedom when it is coupled with support for regional dictatorships and the genocidal Netanyahu administration? These ambivalences cancel out any moral claim and expose a fallacious use of humanitarian language: it is invoked to legitimize force, not to constrain it.
Indeed, Donald Trump has stated, in an example of self-incrimination, that he is not concerned “at all” about potentially committing war crimes because the Iranian people are “willing to suffer in order to have freedom,” although, as was predictable, there has been no attempt at uprising under the bombs. Back in 2020, the president threatened to strike cultural sites, which would constitute a war crime. The Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, has committed the war crime of declaring that “no quarter” will be given to Iran and has been explicit about the irrelevance of human rights and democracy: “no stupid rules of engagement, no nation building quagmire, no democracy building exercise, no politically correct wars. We fight to win and we don’t waste time or lives.”
It is obvious that this war is not being fought for human rights or for the freedom of the Iranian people. Contradicting the America First doctrine and the White House’s projection of power, Marco Rubio offered an alternative explanation for the war. According to the Secretary of State, the United States anticipated that an imminent Israeli attack on Iran would trigger retaliation against American troops. On the same day, Trump contradicted Rubio and attempted to reassert his position of authority, stating that the bombing had nothing to do with Israel, although with little conviction: Iranians “were going to attack first. And I didn’t want that to happen. So, if anything, I might have forced Israel’s hand. But Israel was ready and we were ready.”
Amid so many contradictions, regime change appears as the main cause of the war. Although the administration has stated that “this is not a so-called regime-change war” and that “our objectives here from the very beginning had nothing to do with the leadership,” the assassination of key figures within the Iranian power structure and numerous statements suggest otherwise. In June 2025, toward the end of the Twelve-Day War, Donald Trump wrote on his social network Truth Social: “It’s not politically correct to use the term, ‘Regime Change,’ but if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn’t there be a Regime change??? MIGA!!!” On February 11, 2026, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convinced Trump that regime change would be possible — “Sounds good to me,” the U.S. president reportedly said. Shortly before launching Operation Epic Fury, on February 14, Trump said that regime change would be “best thing that could happen” and noted that “there are people” who could take over. After the first strike on February 28, Trump addressed the Iranian people:
“When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take.” On March 6, he left no doubt about the type of regime he would accept:
“There will be no deal with Iran except UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER! After that, and the selection of a GREAT & ACCEPTABLE Leader(s), we, and many of our wonderful and very brave allies and partners, will work tirelessly to bring Iran back from the brink of destruction, making it economically bigger, better, and stronger than ever before.”
On April 1, in the middle of negotiations, Trump denied the obvious, stating that “Regime change was not our goal. We never said regime change,” only to add immediately: “but regime change has occurred because of all of their original leaders’ death. They’re all dead. The new group is less radical and much more reasonable.” The president ignores that a change of leadership is not the same as a change of regime, but his intention is clear: to end Iran’s independence and bring it under control.
The sum of all these contradictions reveals a deep communicative pattern: war as a soundbite political spectacle, foreign policy as an extension of a personalist narrative, and strategy subordinated to the need for media impact. But Trump faces the reality of a war that cannot be compressed into a ten-second video. For this reason, he has had to force the narrative: he has shared clips on social media in which he mocks Iranian adversaries or celebrates military operations with reggaeton music, using hybrid warfare tactics where propaganda and spectacle are mixed with military action. However, the contrast between the seriousness of the conflict and its communicative treatment creates a deep fracture between message and facts.
Trumpist rhetoric is, at its core, a struggle between appearance and reality. Through the lens of Aristotle, Trump would not be a rhetorician but a demagogue: someone who hypertrophies pathos in order to subsume ethos and anesthetize logos. Perhaps Trump’s success lies in having understood something Aristotle did not foresee, that in the age of attention, consistency is boring and contradiction is magnetic. And as long as his electoral base accepts and even celebrates this illogical form of (mis)communication, its contradictions will carry a huge global cost.
In terms of political culture, perhaps the question is not whether Trump persuades, but what kind of society emerges when coherence ceases to be a requirement and instead becomes an obstacle. The normalization of contradiction as falsehood, accelerated by (anti)social media, creates misstructured psyches capable of Orwellian doublethink —holding two contradictory beliefs simultaneously and accepting both as true. By driving chaos in the world system and in mental frameworks, Trumpism seeks to create a new morality detached from ethics. When anything goes for a significant part of the people, the rule of unreason can expand against them and with their support.
Nevertheless, the gap between what is said and what is done, between what is promised and what is threatened, and between discourse and empirical reality can be interpreted as the most visible symptom of an empire that no longer controls its own narrative; as the inability of the United States to sustain a credible narrative before the world and even before its own voters.
Dozens of polls show that Donald Trump is facing increasingly negative disapproval ratings, both overall and specifically in relation to the economy and the war. At the beginning of March, 44% of Americans supported the war and 56% opposed it, while by early April support had fallen to 34% and opposition has remained stable. More importantly, during this period, support for the war among Republican voters dropped from 84% to 67%. Support among MAGA voters has barely declined — only by three percentage points (77%) — whereas it has fluctuated among non-MAGA Republicans (56% on March 14, 33% on March 28, and 54% on April 4). The data suggests that public opinion is still taking shape as people become more aware of the details of the attacks and their consequences. Greater opposition to the war is necessary, but the data may already have served as a warning sign for Trump.
The magnetism of the spectacle of madness has its limits. The U.S. government believes itself to be omnipotent — and this is precisely what may lead to its eventual downfall, because no power exists without limits. In the war against Iran, the main contradiction is that of an all-powerful discourse confronted with the reality of a war that imposes constraints. Donald Trump has declared that he has already “won,” only to later say that he still must “finish the job”; the attacks could end “soon,” but they may need to go “further”; “Well, I think you could say both [very complete and just the beginning].” One would have to be naïve to think that the United States is winning. The government agreed to a ceasefire because escalation would be worse for its interests: a probable defeat, an intensified and prolonged energy and economic crisis, a lack of support for sending ground troops, the destruction of strategic industries in the Persian Gulf monarchies, the weakening of those countries and their alliances with the United States, the deaths of American soldiers, and the inability to subdue Iran through military means.
The U.S. government has managed to buy time, but it now finds itself trapped in a triple contradiction with no easy way out: it will not be easy to sell the idea of victory from a position of weakness and with the Iranian regime still standing; it is unlikely to be able to guarantee peace when Israel remains determined to continue bombing; and it will face difficulties in sustaining a war that it is unlikely to win and that could further increase discontent among its voters.
We do not know whether stubborn reality can help a broader segment of Trump’s voters emerge from this contradictory state, but at the very least, these contradictions and divisions should be strategically exposed through anti-war communication capable of addressing them effectively. It may be nothing more than wishful thinking, but it is the only option. Aristotle may be of help.
In any case, there remains the possibility that the United States could carry out a massive attack with the aim of provoking Iran into responding on U.S. soil and, in this way, be able to declare martial law in order to prevent elections from taking place. In that case, public opinion would no longer matter. This must be prevented, or else we will be left only with the brave and sad prediction that Miguel de Unamuno, the rector of the University of Salamanca, voiced to Spanish fascists after General José Millán Astray shouted “Death to intelligence! Long live death!” in 1936: “You will win because you have an abundance of brute force, but you will not convince. To convince, you need to persuade, and to persuade you need something you lack: reason and right in the struggle. It seems to me to be useless to ask you to think of Spain”. Or the U.S. and the world in today’s context.
(Featured Image: “Donald Trump and the hand of peace” by muffinn is licensed under CC BY 2.0.)
