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During the previous decade, Trump weathered a series of scandals that would likely have been career-ending for any other politician:
- the Access Hollywood tape, in which he boasted that he would "grab" women "by the pussy" without consent;
- the firing of then-FBI Director James Comey;
- his indiscreet sharing of intelligence with Russian officials in the Oval Office;
- an impeachment for attempting to extort Ukraine;
- an egregious approach to COVID-19, followed by a bout with the disease that reportedly nearly killed him;
- a series of attempts to steal the 2020 presidential election, culminating in the January 6 insurrection;
- his absconding with sensitive documents to Mar-a-Lago after his term ended; and 34 felony convictions.
Despite all of this, Trump returned to the White House in January 2025. The notion of his invincibility became canon. Perhaps Trump himself came to believe it.
But the war in Iran has dealt a serious blow to the idea that Trump can slip out of any bind easily. Over the past three days, three American service members died in that conflict: two in Jordan, where Iranian missiles struck a military base, and a third in Iraq, killed by debris during the intentional destruction of an Iranian drone. The official American death toll in the Iran war now sits at 17.
