In the early days of the war with Iran, leading Republican officials were divided over the basic issue of whether to call the war a war.

When Donald Trump initially announced the military offensive in the Middle East, his prerecorded video message included this line: “The lives of courageous American heroes may be lost, and we may have casualties. That often happens in war.” One day later, then-Sen. Markwayne Mullin (before the Oklahoma Republican became the Homeland Security secretary) appeared on Fox News and told viewers, “We are not at war with Iran.”

These divisions were common in GOP politics for days, with some party leaders, such as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, insisting that the United States is at war and other party leaders, such as House Speaker Mike Johnson, arguing the opposite.

At one point, the White House distributed talking points to congressional Republicans that addressed some common questions. The document included a straightforward line — “Is the U.S. at war with Iran?” — but it did not include an answer.

Three weeks later, not only is the debate ongoing, but the president himself has positioned himself on both sides of the question.

At an event on Monday, for example, Trump said, in reference to Democrats, “They call it a war, we call it a military operation.” A day later, in the Oval Office, the Republican echoed the phrase, word for word.

Ten minutes later, at the same White House gathering, the president added, “People don’t like me using the word ‘war,’ so I won’t, but the Democrats call it a war.”

In between these two quotes, Trump also declared, “You know, I don’t like to say this, we’ve won this, this war has been won.”

It led MS NOW’s Catherine Rampell to summarize, “The war that is not a war has been won.”

Since the opening days of the conflict, Trump has referred to the war as a war. As the military offensive approaches its one-month mark, it seems the president has been advised to rewrite the narrative, but it’s clearly not going well, since he keeps using the very word he’s supposed to avoid.

As for the bigger picture, when the question is “Is the United States currently at war?” and the answer from the White House is “It depends on who you ask and when,” there’s a problem.

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From MS Now.