The Reasons Why — The Truth Matters, Now More Than Ever

💰 Reason #1: Distraction From a Failing Economy

Just days before the bombing began, Trump stood before Congress claiming his economic agenda was delivering a "golden age" for America. Four days later, he launched strikes on Iran — putting every one of those claimed gains at risk.

The hard numbers tell a different story than the White House spin:

Job growth in 2025 was the weakest outside of a recession since 2002, according to reporting by PBS News and Euronews, weighed down by Trump's own tariff policies.
The Federal Reserve's preferred inflation measure has been stuck at roughly 3% for nearly a year — well above the 2% target — even before the Iran war sent oil prices surging.
Oil prices immediately spiked over 6% after the strikes, threatening higher prices at the gas pump, in grocery stores, and on home mortgages.
JPMorgan economist Joseph Lupton warned that a "military war, layered on top of the ongoing US 'war on trade,' could reignite concerns over global stability."
Former Fed Chair Janet Yellen said the war "puts the Fed even more on hold" on rate cuts, which directly impacts mortgage rates for millions of Americans.
An Economist/YouGov poll showed Trump's net approval on inflation and prices stood at -26 — and on jobs and the economy at -12 — even before the bombs fell.
As one analyst put it bluntly: "People want the focus to be on the cost of living. If gas prices rise again, that will reinforce concerns that everyday essentials are becoming harder to afford."

📄 Reason #2: Burying the Epstein Files

Just weeks before the Iran bombing, the Department of Justice was under intense pressure — from both parties — over its handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files. The files contain thousands of references to Trump, and what was buried inside them was explosive:

A 2020 federal prosecutor email stated that Trump flew on Epstein's private jet "many more times" than previously known — on at least 8 documented flights between 1993 and 1996, including four on which convicted sex offender Ghislaine Maxwell was also a passenger (NPR, CBS News).
The DOJ released over 3.5 million pages of files in January 2026 under the Epstein Files Transparency Act — but lawmakers noted that over 3 million additional pages were withheld, including FBI witness interview transcripts where victims named their abusers.
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) stated on NPR: "I know from survivors and survivors' lawyers that when they had these conversations with FBI agents, they specifically named other men who they were trafficked to... The DOJ has not released a single one."
NPR's investigation found that the DOJ withheld dozens of pages of FBI interview summaries involving allegations against Trump by a woman who claimed she was a minor at the time.
A CNN poll found 49% of Americans were dissatisfied with how much of the Epstein files had been released, with two-thirds saying the government was deliberately withholding information.
Only 23% of Americans approved of Trump's handling of the Epstein case, according to a Reuters poll.
Trump himself dismissed the entire scandal, telling reporters: "What this whole thing is with Epstein is a way of trying to deflect from the tremendous success that the Republican Party has."

The timing is stark: as congressional pressure for full disclosure intensified in early 2026, the bombs started falling on Iran — and Epstein vanished from the front pages overnight.

⚔ Reason #3: Hoping for an Attack on U.S. Soil — A Path to Martial Law

Perhaps the most alarming possibility of all: that Trump is deliberately provoking Iran into retaliating against American civilians on U.S. soil — giving him the pretext to declare a national emergency, invoke martial law under the Insurrection Act or the National Emergencies Act, suspend civil liberties, deploy the military domestically, and cancel the 2026 midterm elections and potentially the 2028 presidential election — keeping himself in power indefinitely.

This is not speculation. Trump has said it — in his own words, repeatedly:

In August 2025, during an Oval Office meeting with Ukrainian President Zelensky, Trump openly expressed envy over Ukraine's wartime ban on elections. "So you say during the war, you can't have elections... if we happen to be in a war with somebody, no more elections? Oh, that's good," Trump said. (C-SPAN, Time Magazine, CNN)
Trump told NBC's Kristen Welker he is "not joking" about serving a third term, despite the 22nd Amendment expressly forbidding it.
In 2022, he claimed that purported voter fraud "allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution."
In 2024, Trump told Christian supporters they "won't have to vote anymore" after 2024 because he would "have it fixed so good." He declined multiple opportunities to clarify or retract the remark.
Illinois Governor JB Pritzker warned on CBS's Face the Nation: "The other aims are that he'd like to stop the elections in 2026... He'll just claim that there's some problem with an election, and then he's got troops on the ground." Pritzker drew a direct comparison to Adolf Hitler's 53-day transformation of Germany into a dictatorship.
California Governor Gavin Newsom said at a Politico event: "I don't think Donald Trump wants another election. People actually think this guy's serious about having another election?"
Democratic strategist James Carville warned: "I would not put it at all past him to try to call martial law or declare that there's some kind of national emergency... the hoof prints are coming."
The Brennan Center for Justice at NYU documented a comprehensive scheme — including a March 2025 executive order and the SAVE Act — designed to disenfranchise at least 21 million voters and place federal control over election systems.
A CNN analysis noted that Trump "keeps talking about not holding the November midterm elections, when Republicans could lose control of the House, Senate or both."
To make an Iranian attack on U.S. soil more likely, Trump gutted the very agencies designed to prevent one. Just days before launching the Iran strikes, FBI Director Kash Patel fired a dozen agents from CI-12 — the FBI's specialized counterintelligence unit whose sole mission is tracking Iranian spies, sleeper agents, and terror plots on American soil. They were fired for one reason: they had previously worked on the investigation into Trump's retention of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. (CNN, CBS News, Washington Post)
A senior intelligence source told CBS News the CI-12 firings were "devastating to the FBI's Iran program." "These agents have confidential informants in the Iranian community in the U.S. You can't replicate that with new agents. These sources will go away." The CIA cannot operate domestically — CI-12 was America's only robust domestic Iran intelligence program.
Attorney General Pam Bondi disbanded the FBI's Foreign Influence Task Force on her very first day in office — the unit built specifically to counter covert Iranian, Chinese, and Russian operations on U.S. soil.
U.S. Cyber Command has had no permanent commander since April 2025, when Trump fired its leader without explanation — leaving America's cyberdefense leaderless as Iran prepares to retaliate with the destructive cyberattacks it has used against U.S. water systems, hospitals, and energy grids in the past.
Trump offered mass resignation buyouts to CIA, NSA, and ODNI employees in early 2025, hollowing out decades of institutional knowledge across all three agencies — knowledge that cannot be quickly replaced.
Congressional Democrats on the Homeland Security Committee wrote to Kash Patel demanding answers, stating: "Firing these experts just days before President Trump ordered strikes on Iran raises questions about coordination across the Trump administration, and about the FBI's ability to identify and counter dangerous Iranian operations on U.S. soil."
A former senior DOJ official stated plainly: "The senior ranks of the FBI's and DOJ's national security teams have been decimated. The FBI and Justice Department are completely unprepared to respond to a crisis, including the fallout from the current conflict in the Middle East."

History is clear: the United States held elections during the War of 1812, the Civil War, and both World Wars. No president has ever canceled an American election. The Constitution does not give any president that power. But Trump has already shown he does not feel bound by the Constitution.