Analysis: From the start of his war with Iran, US President Donald Trump took care to acknowledge the ugly headlines that could result. It would be a much more significant operation than his previous military strikes, he said in a video posted shortly after the military action began, and that meant likely US deaths.

The specter of troop deaths — there have already been six — is indeed a sombre variable that appears likely to test Americans' limited tolerance for a war that they don't seem particularly keen on.

But it's especially a problem for Trump. He has many talents as a politician, but speaking about dead and wounded service members is decidedly not among them. In fact, it's a real blind spot.

And because of his choice of foreign conflicts, that weakness faces a harsh spotlight.

The war with Iran is now less than a week old, and Trump and his administration have already made multiple awkward comments about the deaths of US soldiers.

After the first three deaths were reported, Trump told NBC News on Sunday: "We have three, but we expect casualties, but in the end it's going to be a great deal for the world."

Trump was immediately inserting those deaths into a cost-benefit analysis.

Then in a video posted to social media the same day, he again seemed to ask for people's understanding about the subject.

"And sadly, there will likely be more [deaths] before it ends," Trump said, before adding: "That's the way it is. Likely be more."

He then added: "But we'll do everything possible where that won't be the case."

Many Democrats harshly criticized Trump for his "the way it is" remark, suggesting it betrayed a certain callousness - as if this was just the cost of doing the business of war.

And then during a briefing at the Pentagon on Wednesday (US time), Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth criticized the media for supposedly focusing too much on the dead soldiers in an effort to make Trump "look bad." He suggested those deaths were getting disproportionate play, compared to the military's successes.

"But when a few drones get through or tragic things happen, it's front-page news," Hegseth said. "I get it; the press only wants to make the president look bad. But try for once to report the reality."

The media often covers service members who die in combat; some newspapers regularly ran multi-page features commemorating the fallen of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

These are also especially significant deaths, given they're the first in a new war whose justification the administration has struggled mightily to explain.

Hegseth's comments were even more puzzling given what happened next. When chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine spoke, his first order of business was - you guessed it - detailing and memorializing the deaths of those troops.

"First, it's with profound sadness and gratitude that I share the names of four of our six fallen heroes, all from the 103rd Sustainment Command, US Army Reserves out of Des Moines, Iowa - Captain Cody Khork, Sergeant First Class Noah Tietjens, Sergeant First Class Nicole Amor, and Sergeant Declan Coady," Caine said.

It was a striking contrast. While Caine seemed to be speaking as the nation's highest-ranking military officer, Hegseth seemed more focused on a political message catered to Trump.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt tried to do a little clean up on Wednesday afternoon, denying Hegseth was asking the media not to prominently cover service members' deaths, while also attacking reporters. When pressed by CNN's Kaitlan Collins on whether the administration believes the media should cover those deaths, she called it a "disingenuous" question and added: "That's not what the secretary meant."

"It's the position of this administration that the press in this room and the press across the country should accurately report on the success of Operation Epic Fury and the damage it is doing to the rogue Iranian regime," Leavitt said.

She also said Trump will attend the dignified transfer of the troops' remains.

But the president's rhetoric is par for the course for him. Over and over again through the last decade, he's said questionable things about dead and injured service members and seemed to struggle to show the kind of empathy and respect that you'd expect from a president.

To wit:

Trump caused a huge stir during the 2016 primary campaign when he said of John McCain, who spent years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam: "He's a 'war hero' because he was captured. I like people that weren't captured."

In 2017, a Democratic congresswoman accused Trump of telling a Gold Star widow that her deceased husband "knew what he was signing up for." (Trump denied the account, but the widow confirmed it, and the White House seemed to tacitly confirm it as well.)

Multiple media outlets and Trump's former chief of staff John Kelly said that Trump in 2020 disparaged dead and injured soldiers as "suckers" and "losers" and declined a visit to honor the dead at Aisne-Marne Cemetery in France. Kelly said Trump didn't want to stand next to amputees because "it doesn't look good for me." Trump denied those comments.

Trump has repeatedly in recent years downplayed the traumatic brain injuries that more than 100 soldiers suffered from a 2020 Iranian missile strike on a US base in Iraq, calling them "headaches." That earned him a rebuke from the Veterans of Foreign Wars, which called on Trump to apologize.

The VFW also criticized Trump in 2024 for saying the civilian Medal of Freedom was "much better" than the military Medal of Honor because the latter's recipients are often "in very bad shape."

In March 2025, Trump seemed unfamiliar with the cases of four US soldiers who had gone missing during a training exercise in Lithuania. Asked whether he'd been briefed on the situation, Trump paused and said: "No, I haven't." The soldiers were later found dead.

Just two months ago, Trump caused a bit of an international incident by claiming that troops from NATO allies “stayed a little back“ from the front lines in Afghanistan. Many NATO allies suffered high numbers of combat deaths and casualties while joining the US-led war on terror.

Trump has also repeatedly made flippant remarks comparing his own sacrifices and achievements to soldiers and war heroes. And he's been accused of procuring a "bone spurs" diagnosis when he was younger explicitly so he could avoid the Vietnam War draft.

Trump has never taken great care to abide by political and societal norms or to use politically correct speech; in some ways, that's part of his appeal.

But if there's one area in which this approach can cause real problems, it's in how he talks about this most serious of subjects. And that's quickly an issue with the war with Iran.