It's pretty clear by now that Donald Trump sees war as nothing more than a video game. Having avoided going to war as a young man (by paying a doctor to lie about his non-existent "bone spurs"), he has no concept of what a real war is like. Nor is he interested in finding out. His daily briefings reportedly include a two-minute video of American bombs and missiles "blowin' stuff up." And he has no overall plan or even any clear objectives left in his war of choice against Iran. He's just making it up as he goes along, while attempting to gaslight the country to believe his own warped reality.

This was much in evidence at a press conference Trump gave today, along with Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and military and C.I.A. leaders. Trump casually revealed a few military secrets as he bragged about the rescue operation to save the downed crew member of the F-15E that Iran shot down, and he issued new threats to Iran in an attempt to get them to open the Hormuz Strait. He has pushed back his deadline for this to happen twice now, so it will be interesting to see what happens tomorrow (the new deadline).

But there were several moments during the presser where Trump proved just how divorced from reality he truly is. From the New York Times blow-by-blow account of the press conference, here is one of these moments:

[Donald] Trump dismissed the possibility that Iran could collect tolls to allow ships safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz. Instead, he said, the United States could charge for passage through the strait, without explaining how that could be accomplished. "We have a concept where we'll charge tolls," Trump said.

Seriously? This is a retort worthy of an elementary schoolyard yelling match: "No, we're going to charge tolls!" and should be filed with pretty much everything else Trump has said about the Strait. Remember when we were promising that American warships and warplanes would force open the Strait and escort oil tankers through it? That didn't happen, and no sane person now expects America to somehow start charging tankers any sort of tolls.

The biggest break from reality is Trump gaslighting what was supposed to be the biggest war objective of them all: stopping Iran from being able to make nuclear weapons. First, let's review the reality of the situation (as opposed to how Trump sees it). Barack Obama struck a deal with Iran that resulted in them giving up 97 percent of their stockpiles of enriched uranium. It allowed for international inspectors to monitor Iran's compliance and make sure that they weren't restarting their enrichment program. It would have still been in effect right now.

Trump, during his first term, pulled out of this agreement. He insisted that it was a "bad deal" (mostly out of spite, because Trump can't stand Obama's accomplishments) and replaced the deal with... nothing. Freed of its constraints, Iran started enriching uranium again. Which would not have happened if Trump hadn't pulled out of the deal -- this is an important point.

They now have almost 1,000 pounds of uranium enriched to 60 percent. Only one more step is needed to refine it to the 90-plus percent necessary to create atomic bombs. If they took that step, they could construct about 10 nuclear devices. But they had not taken these final steps before the war started, nor were they threatening to.

Last year, Trump and Israel bombed the deeply-buried sites of Iran's nuclear program. Trump swore that everything had been "obliterated," but if that was true then the current war makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. In fact, Trump lied about it at the time. Iran still had that 1,000 pounds of enriched uranium, but it was buried deep in the rubble left after the attacks on their nuclear sites.

Then Trump lied again, when he started this current war of choice. He said that Iran was somehow just a few short weeks away from creating atomic bombs -- which was simply not true.

Got all of that? We wouldn't even be in this position if Trump had just left the Iran deal in place. Iran's nuclear stockpiles were not "obliterated" in last year's bombing. But neither were they imminently about to be made into nuclear weapons. Trump told the world Iran's nuclear capabilities were one of the biggest reasons for launching his war. He continues saying this to this day:

Trump brushed off a question about the possibility that U.S. attacks on Iran's civilian infrastructure, which he has repeatedly threatened, could amount to war crimes. "We're never going to let Iran have a nuclear weapon," Trump said.

And he continues to lie about the effects of pulling out of Obama's deal, as well:

Trump repeated his claim that if he had not terminated the 2015 nuclear deal, Iran would already have a nuclear weapon. He has never explained his logic on this claim. The Iranians were observing almost all of the provisions of the agreement in 2018, when Trump withdrew the United States from it. Once Trump got out, Iranians began to rebuild their nuclear infrastructure and enriched uranium at higher-than-ever levels.

But as we enter the sixth week of the war, nothing has changed. The enriched uranium is precisely where it was when the war started. So last week Trump floated the idea that this was really no big deal and now wasn't even considered a war objective at all any more:

"We can't let Iran get a nuclear weapon," Trump said in response to a question, less than a week after he said that he was willing to leave the 970 pounds of near-bomb-grade uranium deep inside tunnels in Iran, because with satellite surveillance the United States could keep track of it. Seizing the nuclear material is one of the several issues on which Trump has contradicted himself repeatedly.

We could send troops in to secure and remove the uranium, but this would come at a very high cost. It would takes weeks if not months, and would require American troops to hold a small piece of land deep inside enemy territory for this entire period. Lives would be lost -- that much is almost certain. The operation would make this weekend's dangerous rescue of a downed aviator look like a walk in the park, in fact. So it's not very likely that Trump will order this to happen.

Of course, the best way to get the uranium out of Iran would be if they gave it up. This, however, would require negotiations and a new deal. And the Iranians are now understandably not in the mood to negotiate. Twice before now, they were actually in negotiations with America, and both times turned out exactly the same: Trump invaded while the negotiations were still ongoing.

Trump is trying to bluster his way into Iran just surrendering, but so far that hasn't worked. He's dialed up the level of his threats to apocalyptic levels, but it hasn't changed any hearts and minds in Iran so far. There has been no regime change (another of the unfulfilled objectives Trump had for the war), and in fact the current leadership is even more extreme than the people we have already killed.

Remember Trump's wonderful healthcare plan? The one he promised over and over again -- it was going to be cheaper and better and more awesome than Obamacare, right? But it never materialized. It was always the "concepts of a plan" that was eternally two weeks away from being unveiled. Well, rest assured, Trump now has a war plan. He said so today:

Asked about the possibility of regime change in Iran, Trump responded by saying that Americans should trust him on the war. "I have the best plan of all," Trump said. "But I'm not going to tell you what my plan is."

Trump has had great success gaslighting his followers into believing all sorts of up-is-down things over the years. But he is struggling to gaslight how his war of choice in Iran is some sort of wonderful thing for America. Gasoline prices remain sky-high, diesel prices are through the roof, fertilizer is in short supply (during spring planting season) and also expensive, and few of the stated war objectives have been met or have any reasonable chance of being met. Trump is still petulant about not winning a Nobel Peace Prize (he whined about it again today), and he's certainly not going to win any sort of war prizes for his leadership through this whole mess.

Donald Trump is either divorced from reality while America is at war, or else he is lying to the world on a gargantuan scale in the hopes that nobody will notice. Now his only objective in the war seems to be getting the Strait of Hormuz open for business -- which it already was, before the war started. If that's all America manages to achieve with this war, it will go down in history as one of the most epic blunders any U.S. president has dragged the country into.

Trump's delusions know no bounds. He certainly didn't seem at all chastened today. He even teed up another obsession, which at one point could be brushed off as a joke but now nobody's laughing about the possibility:

[Donald Trump] closed out the news conference with a warning to Europe: "We want Greenland. They don't want to give it to us."

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant