Musing About Annihilation at the UN
In an NPR opinion piece, the writer describes President Donald Trump musing openly before the United Nations about whether he should annihilate Iran, and calls that a stark contrast with how his predecessors have spoken about wielding US military power. The comparison is drawn at the level of language rather than action: what a president says about force in a multilateral hall, not what was ordered. Whether that counts as a break in substance or only in style is the argument the column invites.
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Saying the quiet part out loud has a certain honesty to it. A president who names the extreme option leaves less room for the euphemisms that usually dress it up.
Or it just relocates the euphemism. The contrast here is about how presidents talked, and that tells you nothing on its own about what any of them actually did.