Professor John Krull warned that Donald Trump is “no longer in firm contact with reality.” Krull, who is the director of Franklin College’s Pulliam School of Journalism, said, “The other day, President Donald Trump claimed he’d had a conversation with a former president who endorsed Trump’s ill-considered war against Iran.”
The professor wrote for The Statehouse File that Trump also claimed that the unnamed former president told him that he wished he had done what the POTUS had done. However, Krull wrote, “Like so many of this president’s misrepresentations, this was a stupid bit of mendacity.”
The columnist explained that to verify Trump’s claims, reporters reached out to four living former presidents, including George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden. However, all four of them, Democrats and Republicans alike, denied speaking with Trump, especially about his war on Iran.
Trump: “I spoke to one of the former presidents who I actually like. I actually speak to some, I do like some people, it’d be shocking. And he said, ‘I wish I did what you did.’ Other presidents, somebody should’ve done it. 47 years this went on.” pic.twitter.com/OELNsYSt1D
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 16, 2026
The journalist questioned why Donald Trump would make such a claim when he knew that it would be uncovered shortly after. “The least disturbing answer is that he just doesn’t care whether someone catches him fabricating falsehoods,” Krull wrote.
“He reasons that his gullible, gullible followers will swallow any deception he conjures up, no matter how blatant it may be, and that’s all he cares about,” he added. However, the professor said there’s an alternative answer that is “truly frightening.”
“That alternative is that the president of the United States—the person controlling the most powerful arsenal on earth—finally and fully has come to believe his own con and no longer is in firm contact with reality,” Krull wrote.
He questioned whether the POTUS, who has already faced rumors of cognitive decline, truly believes that he had a conversation with a former president, “Or was this just a relatively innocent white lie?”
Krull compared it to a “larger scale” distortion of fact, which prompted Trump’s National Counterterrorism Center director, Joe Kent, to resign. Kent wrote, “I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran. Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.”
After much reflection, I have decided to resign from my position as Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, effective today.
I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran. Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this… pic.twitter.com/prtu86DpEr
— Joe Kent (@joekent16jan19) March 17, 2026
Krull wrote that Kent’s letter “establishes a pattern of duplicity on the part of the president.” He wrote, “By highlighting Trump’s prior commitments to avoiding such wars, Kent makes clear that the president has broken faith with his most devoted supporters.”
“Kent’s implicit argument is that Trump plunged the United States into exactly the sort of war he promised he would keep the country out of. Worse, Kent says, the president did so by using an egregious falsehood. Iran posed no significant threat to America’s security, so this is a war of choice,” Krull added.
Krull questioned whether Trump truly believed Iran posed a threat and why he did not seek Congress’ approval first. “Maybe Trump thinks he did all that. Just as maybe he thinks he really did have a conversation with a former president about the fighting,” noted the professor.
