WASHINGTON, June 7 -- The number thirteen hung in the air over Donald Trump's Sunday television appearance like a question no one had fully answered. Thirteen American soldiers killed in a conflict now entering its fourth month, a war the president launched in June 2025 and has repeatedly insisted was nearly over. He volunteered the figure himself, unprompted, while explaining why he had no intention of bringing roughly 50,000 US troops home.

"I think we'll keep them there until such time as we have a completion," Trump told NBC News's Meet the Press moderator Kristen Welker in an interview taped Friday at Custer Farms in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, and aired Sunday. He offered no definition of what completion would look like, no diplomat...