Memory hole, meet Iran war.
Donald Trump, speaking at a press conference at his golf club in Doral, Florida, because of course that is where you announce big decisions, today said that the war against Iran will end “very soon.”
Talking to the New York Post about oil prices, Trump said there was no cause for worry, because “I have a plan for everything. You’ll be very happy.”
He also said he doesn’t remember ever meeting Jeffrey Epstein, his poll numbers are higher than anyone has ever seen, and tiny plastic pigs will fall out of the sky.
I was thinking when I saw a photograph of Trump driving a golf cart yesterday that someone would get to him out on the links, and he would come up with some new line of bullshit about the war today. I should have known that he didn’t get his mind changed on the golf course. He came up with the idea that the war will end during a phone call with murder hornet Vladimir Putin.
Trump told The Times of Israel yesterday that he and Bibi Netanyahu would make a “mutual” decision about when the war ends. That’s out the window, now that he’s talked to his pal Putin, with whom he had “a very good call,” because He has never had a call with Putin that wasn’t “a very good call.” Trump told reporters today that he and Putin discussed ideas about ending the war in Iran and the war in Ukraine. Both. Because you cover all the bases when you have very good calls with the guy who started his war against Ukraine and has been prosecuting it for four straight years. Putin adviser Yuri Ushakov told Russian reporters today that Putin has presented Trump with “several proposals” for ending the war in Ukraine.
Can’t you see Trump out on the patio at Mar a Lago on the phone with Putin, and Putin says, how about we do this? You stop the bombing in Iran, and I’ll agree to take only a little bit more of Ukraine, and Trump covers the receiver and turns and asks somebody, “Is this a good idea?” We have no idea who Trump talks to before a call with Putin, or during the call, or afterwards, because he fired about two-thirds of his National Security Council staff in the White House and appointed his proposed Viceroy of Cuba, “Little” Marco Rubio with the additional job of national security adviser. Rubio, whose main job is Secretary of State, also runs USAID, which Trump closed and then had to reopen when someone told him that only Congress could do away with an entire department of the government that had been established by a law passed by Congress and signed by President John F. Kennedy, but who cares? He took the Kennedy Center away from him, why not USAID?
Yesterday, or was it last week, or last month, or last year? I get my timelines so mixed up these days. Anyway, whenever it was, Trump’s Putin go-fer Stevarino Witkoff came back from one of his meetings in Russia, or from all of his meetings, and told reporters that he had presented the Russians with “several proposals” for ending the war in Ukraine. And several proposals for Big Important Deals that could be made between Trump and Putin once the war had ended.
Trump today also told reporters that he and Putin had discussed oil prices. Because Russia is back in the oil business now that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced last week that the U.S. had lifted sanctions on trade in Russian oil so that India could start stocking its refineries again, because the Strait of Hormuz was closed…or something. This was at the same time it became known that Russia has been supplying Iran with targeting information on U.S. forces, including the positions of American warships and military aircraft. Russia has intelligence satellites, you see, and Iran doesn’t, and Russia is what foreign policy experts call a “key ally” of Iran.
At his Doral golf club press conference, Trump was asked how he could explain Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s recent comment that the war on Iran “is just beginning,” if the war will end “very soon.” Pete was talking about “the beginning of building a new country,” said the man who promised the U.S. would never again be involved in nation building, he would never get us involved in a war thousands of miles away, and from now on everything is “America First.”
So, let’s review: We are in the tenth day of our undeclared war against Iran. Trump’s latest poll number is 38 percent approval of his performance in office, 58 percent disapproval. When it comes to his war on Iran, his approval numbers are as low as 27 percent. Oil prices briefly hit $120 a barrel today before settling back to $110. Our stocks of high-tech weapons are being depleted at a rate that is unknown, but the word “unsustainable” is being thrown around by defense experts. China is said to be looking at what we’re doing in Iran and gazing across the water at Taiwan and licking its chops.
Somebody got cold feet in Florida, where the high today was 75 degrees, and the low tonight will be 73. Meanwhile, the new Supreme Leader of Iran hasn’t done a thing, and Trump is about to declare victory and go home.
Stay tuned. Who knows what he’ll do when the sun comes up tomorrow.