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President Donald Trump's cascading failures in the Iran war — from the closure of the Strait of Hormuz to the collapse of his regime-change fantasy — stem from a single fatal flaw: the president doesn't actually believe other people have agency, New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie argued Wednesday.

And that leaves him vulnerable.

"Over his decades on the public stage, we have seen little to no evidence that he believes in the existence of other minds," Bouie wrote, calling Trump "without question, the most solipsistic person ever to occupy the Oval Office."

The result, Bouie argued, is an administration that keeps getting blindsided by entirely predictable consequences of its own actions, from public outrage over DOGE, to backlash over the wrongful deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, to Iran's decision to close the Strait of Hormuz and retaliate against Gulf state allies.

None of it, according to Bouie, was planned for.

Trump appears to have expected Iran to fold the same way Venezuela did earlier this year, a "replay fantasy" that has since crashed into a more complex reality, Bouie wrote. That has left him trapped in an "escalation spiral," in which the president has no choice but to keep doubling down when one approach fails.

Bouie pressed the question of why the White House fails to see what others could easily predict.

"This gets to the real problem. Trump is famously indifferent to the concerns of those around him," he wrote, slapping the president with the label of a "consummate narcissist."

Trump's flaw is an opportunity for opposition, Bouie added. He is "a weak and deeply unpopular president," who also happens to be "cursed with a kind of blindness," wrote Bouie. That means he cannot see that his "opposition is real," and won't see it when it acts, Bouie concluded.

CNN's Donie O'Sullivan talked to one attendee at the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, who slammed President Donald Trump over his war in Iran.

"I'm at CPAC in Dallas," O'Sullivan explained on Thursday. "It's the biggest conservative conference in the country. And lots of people here are talking about the war in Iran. Trump is not speaking at this event this year."

"But in the past, when he has spoken here, he's talked a lot about not starting new wars," he noted.

Attendee Alex Stone told O'Sullivan that he was "not happy" with Trump because of the war.

"I'm not happy. I'm not happy at all. I mean, President Trump ran on no new wars," he explained. "I feel like we've been co-opted into a war that shouldn't be ours. It should be Israel's."

Do you still support him? the CNN correspondent wondered.

"I want him to succeed," Stone hedged. "I think it's to be determined on, you know, if I can remain to support him. We'll see how the next six months go, and I'll see what happens."

"We hear the phrase America first," he added. "Let's put America first."

However, many CPAC attendees still supported the president.

"This is not a war," Shawn Michael insisted. "Oh my God, I absolutely support the president of the United States of America!"