US President Donald Trump speaks to reporters aboard Air Force One, June 17, 2025 (screenshot)
When Donald Trump posted “Today is Day 61” on Truth Social on June 13 – just before Israel launched an unprecedented attack on Iran – he wasn’t simply counting days. He was redefining the rules of international engagement.
Trump was referring to the ultimatum he gave Iran: 60 days to reach a nuclear agreement or bear the consequences. But here’s the disturbing thing – he counted the days publicly like a child waiting for a birthday, while this was a threat of war. He published “Day 61” with the same casualness that people update their breakfast status. This fusion of the trivial and apocalyptic, the childish and deadly, reveals something profound about how Trump perceives his role and shapes the media as a player in his service.
In an ABC News interview on June 13, Trump said about the Iranians: “I gave them a chance, but they didn’t take it.” In a conversation with journalists aboard Air Force One on June 17, he added that he was “not in the mood” to return to negotiations – on June 21, this mood translated into action when the U.S. attacked Iranian nuclear facilities. And when the Wall Street Journal asked him about the Israeli attacks on Iran on June 13, he replied: “It will be great for the global market.” This language – the language of real estate deals, personal relationships, moods – is not just style. It’s a revolution.
Because what Trump is doing is nothing less than erasing the boundary between the personal and the institutional/national. When he says, “I gave,” he’s not confused or exaggerating. He truly experiences the United States as an extension of himself. The state is him, and he is the state. Instead of seeing this as mere megalomania, we must understand this as a worldview.
Compare this to Putin. He is an autocrat; he too identifies himself with the state. But Putin operates with stately calm, building political narratives (even if completely false), speaking on behalf of “Russia.” With Trump, there’s not even a pretense of separation. Everything is personal, because the personal is the national.
Or compare to previous American presidents. Nixon was suspicious and took things personally, but still understood he served America, not the other way around. Johnson was crude and personal but knew how to separate persona from role. Reagan, the actor, understood he was playing a part. With Trump, there is no role – there’s only him.
This phenomenon isn’t entirely new regarding Trump. In his first term, we saw how Trump turned meetings with Kim Jong-un into romantic theater (“We fell in love,” he said at a rally in West Virginia on September 29, 2018), how at the NATO summit in July 2018 in Brussels he treated allies as “owing” defense expenses as if collecting debts, and how he presented the Abraham Accords as his victory – not America’s, his. Now, in his second term, this pattern sharpens even further.
It manifests in everything. Diplomatic time becomes individual time – “60 days” aren’t a period in international negotiation, they’re the time Trump decided to give. Strategic achievements are measured not in geopolitical terms but in market terms – “great for the global market,” as if launching a product, not a war. Diplomatic language is replaced with business language – Iran’s nuclear program is handled like a Manhattan real estate deal. And when Trump publishes an AI video imagining Gaza as a tourist Riviera, he’s not offering a vision – he’s turning human tragedy into a purely economic project.
The greatest revolution is in the conception of performance. When Trump says the attacks “will be great,” he’s not talking about strategic outcomes. He’s talking about the show. This isn’t a superficial statement but the implementation of a worldview where the statement is the essence, a worldview at the heart of the Trumpist mechanism. J.L. Austin’s principles of pragmatics can clarify this well.
Austin distinguished between “constative” statements that describe reality and “performative” statements that create it. With Trump, political power turns every statement into a performative one: “I gave them a chance” is not a description but policy; “I’m not in the mood” is not an explanation but a decision; “It will be great for the global market” is not analysis but direction.
The media, by echoing these statements, enables the performance, the extra-linguistic existence – turning private utterance into global event and personal whim into political declaration. Without the media echo, the statement remains just private mumbling.
And here we can ask how Israel enters the picture. In Trump’s reality, its attack on Iran is not an independent strategic move but a chapter in his personal story. “I was aware,” “they coordinated with me” – in these expressions, he turns Israel’s military achievements into part of his narrative.
Even in the era of classical diplomacy, Israel struggled to translate military achievements into political gains – from Lebanon to Gaza, battlefield victories didn’t become strategic change. Now, not only must military force be translated into political achievement, but political achievement itself is measured in terms of individual whim.
But the important question to consider is this: why does the global media in its various forms surrender to the Trumpist mechanism? Why is “I’m not in the mood” not covered as an embarrassing whim – as a gossip item about the American president’s moods – but receives front-page headlines?!
Trump presents a new model of democratic leadership with the media becoming an active partner: the leader experiences the state as an extension of self while still operating within institutional constraints, business language replaces diplomatic language, and individual time becomes historical time – and it all happens in real-time, in the feed, as every tweet rolls through coverage into political move.
Beyond recognizing the relevance of moods – a deeper answer to the question reveals his dark genius: the moment Trump erased the separation between personal and institutional, he trapped the media in an impossible bind.
This is the heart of Trump’s mechanism – abolishing the boundary turns every personal statement into performative potential, and the media is forced to treat it as such. It cannot ignore whims because they might become policy.
The Trumpist mechanism has erased the distinction between gossip and news, between personal caprice and strategic decision. Here lies the power of turning the personal into the new institutional. The erased boundary between personal and institutional, the absolute performativity of every personal statement, and the media echo that realizes it together constitute the mechanism. Trump didn’t just change the rules of the game – he made the media subject to the new rules.
What to do in such a situation? Perhaps we should start right here – with the understanding that when we quote “I’m not in the mood” as policy, we’re not reporting on it but creating it as part of the coding in the Trumpist mechanism. In a world where personal whim can ignite war and mood can change history, this understanding is of paramount importance.
The solution lies in explanatory journalism – the only approach that can confront the Trumpist mechanism. When Trump says “I’m not in the mood,” headlines shouldn’t just report on the mood but expose the pattern: “President uses personal mood to halt negotiations – fifth time emotional language preceded policy change.”
Such journalism would track patterns, emphasize the transformation from personal to political, and equip readers with tools to understand not just what’s happening but how the mechanism works. It would note when “not in the mood” preceded military action, when personal insult reshaped alliances, when emotional declarations became economic policy.
When an American president’s mood can trigger or prevent wars, understanding this mechanism is not academic – it’s urgent. The power to resist lies not in ignoring the performance but in its relentless explanation. Once we understand that “I’m not in the mood” functions not as description but as policy creation, we can begin to see the strings of the mechanism – and perhaps cut them. Understanding, ultimately, is the strongest power against manipulation.
Sagit Alkobi Fishman is a PhD candidate at the School of Communication at Bar-Ilan University
