“I don’t think that’s what was decisive for the president,” General Keane said, but it contributed to the decision, which he said was mainly driven by the casualty concern. “What was decisive for him was the comparison for him, compared to destroying missile batteries and killing people, of shooting down a drone.”
By this point, time was running out. Mr. Graham, who had pushed for a strike, was on an airplane heading to the West Coast and out of touch. Mr. Trump scrubbed the mission.
The decision made, Mr. Trump turned on his television to watch the opening of Mr. Carlson’s 8 p.m. show, where he heard what surely must have sounded like vindication. Onscreen, Mr. Carlson declared that “foreign wars have ended in dismal failure for the United States.”
While no decision had been announced, Mr. Carlson praised Mr. Trump for resisting military intervention in Iran. “The same people who lured us into the Iraq quagmire 16 years ago are demanding a new war, this one with Iran,” he said. “The president, to his great credit, appears to be skeptical of this — very skeptical.”
If he kept the television on, though, Mr. Trump would have heard a radically different message from another friend on Fox at 9 p.m. With the news of Mr. Trump’s decision still not public, Sean Hannity declared that “the president is putting the mullahs of Iran on notice.” While Mr. Trump was “being very patient,” Mr. Hannity said, he may have “no choice” but to “bomb the hell out of them.”
By Friday morning, the news of the president’s canceled raid had broken, and the voices on “Fox & Friends” were exasperated.
“What’s it going to take for America to actually act?” asked Brian Kilmeade, one of the president’s favorites. “There are consequences for nonaction and there’s consequences for action. In the Middle East, a nonaction is looked at, in many cases, as weakness.”