Trump can’t lie his way out of a missile shortage
All the obfuscation in the world won't make munitions.
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Last week, the Washington Post published a devastating account of internal conflict within the administration.
President Trump, the Post said, was furious at Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who had failed to inform him about a dangerous shortfall of munitions. Those shortfalls limit options for engagement in the current, grindingly endless, and pointless war with Iran. They also threaten US interests elsewhere — most notably in Ukraine.
In public, though, Trump has not reprimanded Hegseth, or, God forbid, fired his smug and useless posterior.
Instead, Trump praised Hegseth’s allegedly “extraordinary” work and raged at the Washington Post for reporting on his failures. On Truth Social, he bellowed that the story was false because “the US has massive amounts of ‘munitions,’ especially of certain types.”
Somewhat contradictorily, Trump also attacked “’leakers of these treasonous statements” who he said would be “hunted down” and thrown in jail.
So is the story false, or did someone treasonously leak it? Trump can’t keep his own lies straight, not that he cares.
A was the case during covid, Trump’s main concern is not to actually fix problems, but to prevent anyone from pointing out that they exist. He divides the world into good people who flatter him and evil people who don’t. Whatever irritation he expresses with Hegseth in private, he knows his sycophantic defense secretary is fully on team flattery, and that’s all that really matters.
The cupboards are bare
Keeping up with the demand for missiles in various conflicts has long been a struggle; shipments to Ukraine were delayed under President Biden because of concerns about depleting US stockpiles.
Trump’s war, though, has exacerbated the situation badly, and analysts have been worried for months because the US has depleted stores of key weapons.
In late April, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) was already warning that in the conflict with Iran the US had expended more than half its pre-war inventory for munitions used in long-range ground attacks and air and missile defense. Now Reuters reports the “US has used ‘virtually all’ its long-range precision missiles.”
This is not a short term or easily resolvable crisis, because these missiles cannot be produced quickly. The Pentagon has asked Congress for a massive appropriations request — a record $1 trillion. But the war is extremely unpopular and it’s unclear whether the budget can pass.
Even if the Pentagon gets all the money it wants, weapons manufacturing takes time. A CSIS report suggested it would take three years to restore crucial weapons systems to pre-war levels. That would be well into the presidency of Trump’s successor.
To the extent that Trump has a strategy in Iran, the missile shortages have already undermined it. The US had counted on its ability to destroy Iranian missile and drone attacks against ships and against Israel and other countries in the region. But Iran has become better at avoiding interceptors. That, the depleted stockpiles, and the apparently endless engagement have eroded US capacity.
According to The Atlantic, defense officials say that “even when troops see Iranian missiles approaching, they are forced to decide in a matter of seconds whether to expend a limited number of interceptors or hope for the best.” This limits Trump’s ability to escalate since, “if the US were to strike, Tehran would likely launch a barrage of missiles and drones against its neighbors in the region and the American bases they host.”
Without the requisite munitions, the US can’t intercept those Iranian attacks. Trump hoped to wear Iran down, but instead, thanks to Trump’s recklessness idiocy, the US has backed itself into a corner.
Nor is the strategic collapse limited to Iran. Ukraine uses US Patriot air defense systems to intercept Russian ballistic missile attacks. But the US has burned up those Patriots and other munitions in its war of choice. That means fewer missiles are available for Ukraine, and that in turn means more Russian missiles are pummeling Kyiv.
The BBC reported that Ukrainian missile interceptions have fallen to 44.4 percent this year from 66.7 percent in 2025. This coincides with a spike in Ukrainian civilian casualties. Last week, after a Russian attack killed 17 Ukrainians, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wrote on social media that “ballistic missile interceptors could have saved the lives of those killed today. It is very important that our partners understand that delays in supplying them, or an unwillingness to provide anti-ballistic systems, lead directly to such horrific casualties and destruction.”
But when Trump was asked about Zelenskyy’s call for more aid, he responded with his usual gracelessness, saying “we want missiles too.”
The munitions crisis has also affected US policy in the Pacific. In May, the US paused arms sales to Taiwan in order to horde missiles for the Iran War. China certainly noticed. According to the New York Times, some analysts believe South Korea and Japan may start to explore nuclear weapons since the US can no longer supply a conventional deterrent.
“Cannot overstate the unreality of this situation,” political science professor and national security expert Elizabeth Saunders wrote on social media. “We are losing a war. Trump has rotted out the middle rungs out of the US escalation ladder so that his options are humiliating defeat or (likely futile) massive escalation. The stockpile problem affects allies/partners all over the world.”
Getting mad that people noticed
As the US security position deteriorates across the globe, Trump is, of course, laser focused on whining and blaming the press.
Again, Trump personally declared the US has a lot of some missiles (which is true and also beside the point). He also called those in the administration who talked to the press about the shortfalls “treasonous.” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt called accounts of Trump lambasting Hegseth “FAKE NEWS” and insisted that “I was at Camp David with President Trump and Secretary Hegseth. This literally never happened.” Chief Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell called the reports of weapons shortages and of tension between Hegseth and Trump “equally fictional.”
Trump also rushed to social media to insist that Camp David was a paradise of amity.
“I am extremely happy with the job that Pete Hegseth is doing,” the president said on Truth Social, insisting that anyone who said otherwise was “spreading false and completely unfounded rumors.”
These protestations are a lot less comforting than Trump seems to think they are, since at this point anyone who has any confidence in Hegseth is a fool. The defense secretary should have been fired in March 2025 when he was caught using Signal group chats to share military attack plans. He should have been fired for pushing for war with Iran without, apparently, considering the possibility that Iran would close the Strait of Hormuz. He should be fired for failing to provide sufficient food for sailors on the aircraft USS Lincoln. He should be fired for being a sexist asshole who refuses to promote women.
Trump likes Hegseth, though, because he looks good on TV — or as Trump said, “If I’m doing a movie, I’d pick him to play my lead.”
And Trump likes Hegseth because Hegseth is willing to tell him what he wants to hear. If Trump wants to invade Iran and drops lots of bombs, Hegseth assures him that invading Iran will be cool and manly and the bombs will go boom. If Trump wants to hear that the war in Iran is not like Iraq and won’t go on forever, Hegseth happily trots out in front of the camera and says the war “is not Iraq” and “is not endless.”
Trump is accustomed to surrounding himself with sycophants whose only skill is assuring Trump that Trump is the greatest. More, Trump is accustomed to relentlessly refusing to absorb or understand anything that contradicts his own fantasies of his own overweening awesomeness. Trump, in the mind of Trump, is always triumphing over unfair treatment, always executing flawless and brilliant phone calls and stratagems, always launching beautiful and perfect wars. Thus his hatred of the carping journalists who point out that outside his skull there exists a real pandemic, a real election, a real war.
But the sad truth is that when cannot lie your way into magical missile production. Unlike Republican voters and senators, adversaries like Russia, Iran, and China are not especially dazzled by Trump’s oozing narcissistic wounds. Trump may well fire Hegseth at some point, as he’s fired other bootlickers in hopes of a polling bump. But that won’t bring back the missiles spent on his useless war of choice.
Trump’s priority is his ego first with national security coming in a very, very, very distant second. That’s why he already lost the Iran war — and that’s why instead of cutting his losses, he’s pointlessly depleting US munitions supplies, leaving the country unprepared for future threats.
That’s it for today
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And so he picks this strategic moment to start an invasion of Greenland? Of course, he's invading with oil drilling equipment rather than troops, but the governments of Greenland and Denmark have emphatically NOT approved this mining operation, and it is soon likely to become a military confrontation With NATO. What a genius.
Excellent piece, but is your copy editor on vacation?