This is going to be a much shorter column than I had expected to write. Because last night, Donald Trump appeared on television to America and said basically nothing. He spoke for 20 minutes and didn't manage to say anything new or informative at all during the entire time. He essentially just read off a series of social media posts he's already made previously. But there was just no substance to any of it.

All the questions, worries, fears, and concerns that Americans had before Trump spoke still exist. None have been answered or assuaged or explained at all. So while I had intended to spend time analyzing Trump's speech today, there's just no "there there" to analyze. It was a giant nothingburger of a speech.

The overall impression Trump gave off is that he's now bored with the war. Even his daily diet of video clips of "blowin' stuff up" isn't doing it for him anymore. He does not want to face the fact that things have gone badly and repercussions have taken place. He has convinced himself that all of the bad things are somehow magically (and instantly) going to go away after he gives the order to stop the bombing and send the troops home.

He even blatantly admitted as much, last night. He claimed that the Strait of Hormuz would "open up naturally -- it'll just open up naturally" at some unspecified point in the future. That's some downright magical thinking right there, folks.

This war will go down in history as one of the worst-planned wars America has ever engaged in. It didn't even need to happen -- if Trump hadn't broken the deal Barack Obama had signed with Iran, they wouldn't have enriched uranium to the level that they now have. The deal would have prevented that. Trump set the entire situation up by breaking that deal.

With no "adults in the room" left, Trump felt free to dismiss any military experts who cautioned that the war might not be as swift and decisive as the raid on Venezuela. He was told in advance about the problem the Strait of Hormuz might become, but he just ignored such advice because he didn't believe anything bad could happen.

Instead Trump was convinced it would be another one-off operation. Previously, he had bombed Iran's underground nuclear facilities and managed to stop any wider war from happening. He obviously believed this time would be similar -- just go in, bomb their leadership, and then a ceasefire would develop soon, and the Iranians would overthrow their government and install one much friendlier to the U.S. Who would then lavish praise and gratitude on Trump.

Obviously, that didn't happen. And now the world is paying the price for Trump's shortsightedness. Last night, Trump told both America and the world that he just doesn't care what price will have to be paid. He's going to attempt to just wash his hands of the whole mess and leave it for someone else to clean up.

What is truly stunning is how little Donald Trump cares about skyrocketing gas prices in America. He's never been any sort of paragon of empathy (on any subject), but you'd at least think he'd realize how closely gas prices are tied to how people feel about the overall economy and how people feel about the job that he's doing. But there wasn't any sort of "I feel your pain" moment last night, and in the future he's probably going to want to deal with high gas prices the same way he dealt with the daily reports of COVID-19 deaths -- by not wanting to hear about them. He's going to either become increasingly petulant on the subject or he's just going to start lying through his teeth about how wonderfully low gas prices now are.

Donald Trump had nothing to say last night. He had no news. He did not lay out an exit strategy from his war of choice. The impression he gave was that he'll allow Pete Hegseth to keep bombing more stuff for another two weeks, and then he'll get so bored and fed up with the whole thing that he'll declare it is over. Trump stumbled and flailed his way into this war and he's going to stumble and flail his way out of it, it seems.

Trump will doubtlessly proclaim victory (he certainly tried to do so last night), and then from that point on he will just refuse to listen to anything that contradicts his fantasy view of the whole thing. He'll call it "fake news" or something.

America will have accomplished degrading Iran's military might. But the same fanatical religious regime will still be in place afterwards. And we will have made zero progress -- none at all -- on removing or securing Iran's enriched uranium. Iran has announced it is going to now treat the Strait of Hormuz like a tollbridge and charge all ships a fee to transit safely. That will provide them with a huge source of income.

And they will get the message very clearly from all of this. Number one, just enriching uranium isn't the same as actually having a nuclear bomb. You don't see America invading North Korea, do you? There's a reason for that, and Iran will likely learn this lesson well. And number two, build more and more missiles and hide them as well as you can, because if you have enough of them you can force the world's superpower to its knees eventually. They'll likely take that lesson to heart as well. Cheap drones and missiles can eventually win a war of attrition against high-tech interceptors -- if you have enough of them. We've blown up a whole bunch of Iran's missiles, but they still know how to build more -- and they will.

The other big negative conclusion the entire rest of the world will draw is that America can no longer be trusted. Alliances mean nothing anymore. America is not the "leader of the free world" and will callously walk away from a geopolitical mess without caring what the repercussions for our allies turns out to be.

Trump's speech changed none of that. He is actively "making America small again," contrary to his favorite slogan. And the price of gas is going to stay very high for the foreseeable future, but Trump does not care one whit. Trump could have posted a very short statement on social media yesterday rather than giving such a nothingburger of a speech. He could have had the same effect by merely posting: "You're on your own, folks!"

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant