President Donald Trump alternated between threatening strikes on Iran and declaring a deal was close before abruptly canceling planned airstrikes, the columnist wrote. Trump told a Fox reporter he would “bomb the s—- out of them,” then later said negotiations had been “brought to the highest level of Iranian leadership and approved,” the column said.
On Fox & Friends, the president questioned whether “America has the stomach for it,” and he posted that Iran would be “HIT VERY HARD TONIGHT,” according to his public remarks cited in the column. He later said a signing could come “very soon” and said the stock market “likes the deal,” the column added.
The notebook argued those flips are part of a broader tendency by Trump to see the world as he wants it to be. The column cited a Politico report that quoted a MAGA operative close to the White House as saying Trump was “pissed” and increasingly frustrated with people around him. It also cited a new book by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan that said Trump and his team were privately preoccupied with Jeffrey Epstein disclosures and resisted advisers’ calls to get in front of the scandal.
The columnist linked the pattern to domestic political skirmishes. It said Republicans were angered by the temporary appointment of Bill Pulte as director of national intelligence and that the controversy contributed to a refusal to renew an expiring domestic surveillance law. The column said Trump later nominated Jay Clayton, the U.S. attorney in Manhattan.
The column also noted a politically awkward moment when Trump said, “I love the inflation,” as the annual rate hit 4.2 percent. Trump defended the remark by saying the U.S. had been removing millions of barrels of oil and that “nobody knows it” — including Iran, he said. The column added that The New York Times had reported the oil removals last month.
Jon Ross Myers is the executive editor and publisher of the Mississippi News Network, Mississippi's largest digital only media company. He can be reached at editor@tippahnews.com
