Stream with KPBS+ / Watch Tuesday, May 26, 2026 at 10 p.m. on KPBS TV
When Donald Trump campaigned for his second term, he made a repeated promise: no new wars. As the president took office, he doubled down: “My proudest legacy will be that of a peacemaker and a unifier,” Trump said at his January 2025 inauguration.
In the months since, the president and a team of advisors have decided to deploy the U.S. military overseas in one attack after another — culminating in an ongoing war with Iran that has rocked the international order, shaken the financial markets, and could impact the future of the Republican Party in the midterms.
Who and what are behind Trump’s expansive use of the military in his second term, and what is at
stake? Those questions are at the heart of "The War Cabinet," a 90-minute FRONTLINE documentary. The deeply reported documentary is from an acclaimed team led by Michael Kirk and Mike Wiser ("The Rise of RFK Jr."; "Trump’s Power & the Rule of Law"; "Lies, Politics & Democracy").
Drawing on in-depth interviews with President Trump’s allies and associates, officials from his first administration, and his critics, as well as former diplomats, military experts and journalists, the documentary traces how, after vowing to end wars, not start them, Trump assembled a team of loyalists, and together they pursued a much different course.
That team includes Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, longtime aide Stephen Miller, Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and Vice President JD Vance. The film tells the story of how the cabinet, a group whose members had diverse life stories and worldviews, came together to support the president in his quest to demonstrate the United States’ military might on the international stage.
“Trump is looking for people who can communicate ideas, complicated ideas, and make them accessible to the American people,” Trump associate Steve Bannon tells FRONTLINE.
“What you really see in this war cabinet is a group of people who do not want to get on the wrong side of President Trump and who don’t see it as their obligation to stop him,” says journalist Eric Cortellessa of TIME Magazine.
As "The War Cabinet" reports, that’s a stark contrast with the team Trump assembled the first time around, which included people who were “trying to stop terrible things from happening,” says Fiona Hill, who served on Trump’s National Security Council in his first term.
“The President had Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, multiple Secretaries of Defense, Chiefs of Staff, who were actively obstructing and undermining the agenda the American people elected him on,” says Alexander Gray, a Trump ally who also served on the president’s first-term National Security Council.
With panoramic scope, the documentary illuminates how, in his second term, the president’s impulses and U.S. foreign policy have become increasingly one and the same. "The War Cabinet" traces how Trump has increasingly sought to cement his legacy and achieve U.S. policy objectives through military strength; how the administration has engaged militarily everywhere from Yemen, to the waters off Venezuela, to Iran; and the roles of key players in Trump’s second-term military decisions.
As the film reports, Vance, who served as a U.S. Marine in Iraq, was reluctant to enter the current war with Iran. But Vance stood down, telling the president that if he moved forward, he would still have his support.
With the Iran conflict now in its third month and threatening to define Trump’s second term, "The War Cabinet" is a must-watch documentary on how the president who promised peace has become a wartime president — and the ongoing ramifications.
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Credits: A FRONTLINE production with Kirk Documentary Group, Ltd. The director is Michael Kirk. The writers are Michael Kirk & Mike Wiser. The producers are Michael Kirk, Mike Wiser, Vanessa Fica, Elliott Choi and Philip Bennett. The reporters are Vanessa Fica and Brooke Nelson Alexander. The managing editor of FRONTLINE is Andrew Metz. The editor-in-chief and executive producer of FRONTLINE is Raney Aronson-Rath.
