Iranian state media published a propaganda video last Saturday titled "Where to Kill Trump?" — a detailed breakdown of President Trump's travel routes between airports and residences, including Mar-a-Lago and Trump Tower, with analysis of security arrangements around each location. The video doesn't pretend to be anything other than what it is. It closes with a direct message to its audience: "Stay tuned… we are going to get even closer than this."
A sovereign nation just broadcast a murder tutorial against a sitting American president. On purpose. To the whole world.
The same week, a billboard in Tehran's Islamic Revolution Square depicted Trump in a coffin alongside the message "We Kill Trump." It went up during funeral ceremonies for Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — and at those same ceremonies, mourners chanted "Kill Trump" and "Death to America" while displaying posters placing Trump and other American officials in crosshairs. The state newspaper Kayhan ran the headline "We want Trump's head." This isn't a rogue actor on social media. It's the official apparatus of the Iranian government publishing assassination logistics the way other governments publish weather alerts.
President Trump addressed the threat at the NATO summit in Ankara. "I'm on all their lists," he said. "So far, I've been a little lucky, but maybe that luck won't last much longer." That's the President of the United States — at a multinational summit, in front of the world — acknowledging that a foreign government is actively working to kill him.
This isn't new behavior from Tehran. The Justice Department has already filed murder-for-hire charges connected to Iranian operatives. Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former National Security Adviser John Bolton have both been identified as Iranian targets. The threats intensified after the January 2020 killing of Gen. Qassem Soleimani, and Iran has never pretended they would stop.
The administration didn't respond with a press release.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that U.S. forces killed a senior Iranian operative described as "an important figure in an Iranian unit suspected of planning assassinations" against Trump and other American officials. Iran published a video mapping the president's travel routes. The United States eliminated the man running the operation. That's the response.
Now consider the contrast. We spent four years listening to Democrats and their media apparatus tell us that Donald Trump was the "threat to democracy." They impeached him twice. They raided his home. They tried to remove him from ballots. They called his supporters domestic terrorists. All because he posted pointed tweets and questioned election procedures.
Meanwhile, an actual theocratic dictatorship publishes travel routes and security analysis designed to facilitate the murder of our president — and the same apparatus that screamed about "incitement" at every Trump rally can barely find the outrage.
Iran isn't being subtle. They titled the video with the quiet part out loud. They printed "We want Trump's head" in their state newspaper. They chanted "Kill Trump" at a funeral. They put him in a coffin on a billboard in their capital. They told us to stay tuned.
The question isn't whether Iran wants to kill President Trump. They've told us — repeatedly, in writing, on video, on billboards, at funerals, in newspaper headlines. The question is what it says about our political class that a foreign government can publish a hit guide on the American president and half of Washington treats it as background noise.
Pete Hegseth didn't treat it as background noise.
