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For once in his life, Donald Trump wishes he was getting less attention.
“Iran really wants to make a deal, and it will be good for the United States and those who are with us,” the president tweeted. this morning at 1:02. “But the Democrats, and several seemingly unpatriotic Republicans, don’t understand that it’s harder for me to do my job well and negotiate, when political hacks keep ‘crying,’ at levels never seen before, over and over again, that I should move fast, or move slow, or go to war, or not go to war, or whatever.
The first part of the post is incorrect. Weeks of stalled talks suggest the Iranian regime is in no rush to reach a deal—and this morning, Tehran said it was. withdraw from the conversation and would completely block the Strait of Hormuz in response to Israeli attacks in Lebanon against Iran’s ally Hezbollah. The US, Iran and Israel have all launched strikes today.
Trump’s boasting and prevarication about war is not new, but the second part of the post focuses more on his view of the administration. The president brings an unusual combination of authoritarianism and hypersensitivity to the job. On the one hand, he wants to start, fight, and resolve wars without having to answer to Congress or the American people for it. On the other hand, he is easily distracted and irritated by their criticism.
The president’s backlash over Republican pushback is puzzling. As I wrote last week, recent primary polls bear that out Trump’s iron grip on the GOP seems strong, even if the American public increasingly hates him. (One caveat is that Trump’s victory over congressional Republican incumbents creates a group of lawmakers who don’t recognize him and are probably eager to get paid.) Yet he seems very receptive to the GOP’s definition. Late last week, he appeared to reject a deal with Iran after attacks from hawkish allies including Senators Lindsey Graham and Ted Cruz and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Now he worries about public criticism again.
Members of Congress will continue to criticize a war that ultimately goes wrong, but Trump could increase support among loyal Republicans (and, to some extent, the public) if he sought congressional approval or made the war case to the American people. He refused because it was easier not to bother, but the vocal opposition to the war is now a reminder of what checks and balances can be. political benefits for the presidentnot just a barrier. That push hasn’t translated into any kind of action—so far Republican leaders in Congress have been able to denied their right to be involved– but Trump is nevertheless disappointed that the members of parliament are exercising their right to freedom of speech.
Trump wants them to slide down and leave. “Just sit back and relax, it’ll all work out in the end – it always does!” he wrote in the same post. The past few days alone have given ample reason to doubt that. The Trump administration took charge of planning the nation’s 250th birthday, appointed discredited commissioners, and the result—as my colleague David Frum wrote yesterday—it’s a fiasco. The series of splashy concerts turned out to be a mixture of events and repetitions, and yet many of them withdrew, resulting in Trump say this weekend that he might pull the plug and hold a political rally instead.
Over the weekend, Trump also suffered a blow to his plan to take over the Kennedy Center. He promised that his reform of (and adding his own name to) the art institution would make it stronger. A few months later, as his the plan has failedannounced his intention to close the center for two years. On Friday, a federal judge ruled that Trump had to remove his name and could not close the station — though, if My colleague Janay Kingsberry reportsit is unclear what is left to remain open, and Trump is threatening to leave altogether.
Trump’s attempt to get $1.8 billion from the Treasury in payments to his political friends, to overhaul the federal government’s “weapons,” could be even worse. To do so (and avoid a judge blocking it), Trump’s aides he quickly made a plan that sidelined government lawyers and surprised some advisers. It is now facing pushback from Congress and skepticism from within the White House, and two judges on Friday made decisions that call the bag into question. Axios reported this afternoon that according to two senior administration officials, the White House intends to completely abandon its plans for the fund.
That brings us back to Iran, where there are few promising signs of success. The White House has teased and then retracted the deals several times in the past few weeks. Trump held a meeting in the Situation Room on Friday that he promised would lead to a “final resolution” on Iran, but it ended without a resolution and appears to have been completely overtaken by events. In an interview with his own daughter-in-law Lara on Fox News over the weekend, Trump he said that “we have actually left their soldiers alone. People will be surprised to hear that.” They certainly would, because Trump has repeatedly claimed to have destroyed Iran’s vast military capabilities. Trump said in the same interview that if he doesn’t get a good deal, he will “finish the job” of the military.
Trump can’t get his talking points straight now. This afternoon, president he told CNBC’s Eamon Javers that he didn’t care if the conversation was over, saying, “I don’t really care. I couldn’t care less. If it’s over, it’s over. If it’s not over, you know, I think it took too long.” Not long, he has been published that “negotiations are continuing, at a rapid pace, with the Islamic Republic of Iran.”
Today’s hostilities could be a sign of the larger conflict that Trump threatened, or more evidence of how tough the supposed ceasefire is. Either way, the fact that so many big plans are headed in the wrong direction explains why Trump doesn’t want people to pay too much attention—and doesn’t give anyone much reason to relax and take his assurances that everything will work out.
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Today’s news
- Defense Minister Pete Hegseth blocked the promotion of seven Navy officersincluding female and minority officers, a move that current and former defense officials say is highly unusual. His decision seems to be inconsistent with the system of military merit development.
- Anthropic was presented to the publicmaking it the first of the major AI startups to begin the IPO process. The company, which makes the Claude chatbot, could be worth about $1 trillion when its stock goes live.
- Oil prices it jumped more than 4 percent today as the United States and Israel resumed fighting with Iran, raising fears that the Strait of Hormuz could remain closed, further disrupting global energy supplies.
Dispatches
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Evening Read
Fold clothes with me!
By Julie Beck
The nation’s welcome mats have been doing very little welcoming lately. Although Americans have been spending more time at home in recent years—one hour and 39 minutes more per day in 2022 than in 2003—they don’t invite other people in. The percentage of people who organized or attended a social event on an average day has decreased by 50 percent over the past few decades. Socialism of any kind declined during the same period, and isolation increased. These days, it seems, home is where people go to be alone.
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Rafaela Jinich contributed to this magazine.
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