在2026年大选前夕，唐纳德·特朗普接受了福克斯新闻主持人肖恩·汉尼提的现场电话采访，当谈话转向与伊朗的持续战争时，这位总统说出了一番令人意外的话。
On the eve of Election Day 2026, Donald Trump did a live telephone interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity, and when the discussion turned to the ongoing war with Iran, the president said something unexpected.
“肖恩，这算不上什么战争，因为已经有几个月没有交火了，”他说。
“This is not much of a war, Sean, because there hasn’t been shooting for months,” he said.
这位共和党人在几小时前举行的一个反常的选前活动——在倒影池畔——上发表了类似言论，他宣称：“我们跟伊朗打了一仗，我们赢了。我们跟……你知道，我都不知道你能不能叫它‘战争’，因为我们已经有几个月没打仗了。”
The Republican made similar comments several hours earlier during a bizarre pre-election event at the Reflecting Pool, where he declared, “We had a war with Iran, we won. We had a war with and, you know, I don’t know if you even call it a ‘war’ because we haven’t been doing any fighting for months.”
特朗普的时机选得不太好。《华尔街日报》率先报道：“美国官员称，美国周一袭击了伊朗的格什姆岛，这是华盛顿近几周秘密对该国实施的一系列有限打击中的最新一次。”这让观察人士不禁猜测：美国总统是在同一天用言辞试图欺骗公众，还是他根本不知道八个月前由他发起的这场战争中最新的美军军事行动。
Trump’s timing could’ve been better. As The Wall Street Journal was the first to report, “The U.S. attacked Iran’s Qeshm Island on Monday, U.S. officials said, in the latest of a series of limited strikes Washington has secretly carried out against the country in recent weeks.”Observers were left to wonder whether the American president was trying to deceive the public with his rhetoric on the same day, or whether he simply didn’t know about the latest U.S. military operations in the war he initiated eight months ago.
更糟糕的是，在汉尼提的采访中，特朗普还说：“我在福克斯、在‘福克斯与朋友们’节目上听到一位非常愚蠢的国会议员说，我们在这场与伊朗的战争上花了300亿美元。好吧，那只是九牛一毛。”撇开300亿美元是一大笔钱不谈，同样值得注意的是，所有关于这场冲突的成本估算——包括特朗普政府自己的估算——都远超300亿美元。
Making matters slightly worse, in the Hannity interview, Trump also said, “I heard a very stupid congressman on Fox, on, I think it was ‘Fox and Friends,’ saying about we spent $30 billion on this war with Iran. Well, that’s peanuts.”Putting aside the fact that $30 billion is a lot of money, it’s just as notable that every cost estimate of the conflict, including the Trump administration’s, is far in excess of $30 billion.
在汉尼提采访前几小时，《纽约邮报》的米兰达·德瓦因发布了她与总统的最新播客访谈，他在其中也试图谈论这场与伊朗战争中的美军死亡人数。
Hours before the Hannity interview, The New York Post’s Miranda Devine released her latest podcast interview with the president, in which he also tried to talk about the number of U.S. fatalities in the war with Iran.
“我们有18人，”特朗普说。“他们是18位伟大的战士灵魂。但即便如此，别人会损失数千人却没人说什么。我们损失了18人；我们已经打了七个月。”
“We’re at 18 people,” Trump said. “They’re 18 great warrior souls. But still, somebody else would lose thousands of people and nobody would even say anything about it. We lost 18 people; we’re in for seven months.”
首先要指出的是，战争开始已有八个月，而非七个月。同样值得指出的是，在以往战争中当“数千名”美军士兵阵亡时，大量的人确实“说过话”。但最重要的是，特朗普不断声称有18名美军军人在与伊朗的战争中死亡，但根据他自己政府的统计，实际总数更高。
Right off the bat, let’s note the war began eight months ago, not seven. It’s also worth noting that when “thousands” of American soldiers were killed during previous wars, plenty of people “said things about it.”But most importantly, Trump keeps saying that 18 U.S. service members have died as part of the war with Iran, but according to his own administration’s own tally, the actual total is higher.
综合来看，仅在一天之内——紧接中期选举前的24小时里——特朗普错误陈述了美军在战争中的死亡人数、战争的财政成本、战争的持续时间，以及作为战争一部分的最新美军军事打击。
Taken together, over the course of just one day — a 24-hour period that immediately preceded the midterm elections — Trump misstated the number of U.S. fatalities in the war, the financial cost of the war, the duration of the war, and the latest U.S. military strikes as part of the war.
一位发动了冲突却显然不知如何收场的总统，在极短时间内表现出如此令人不安的无知。
That’s an unsettling amount of ignorance, in a very short amount of time, from a president who launched a conflict he apparently has no idea how to end.