Trump’s Iran flip-flops and ‘love’ of inflation show agenda hitting reality
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Why does Donald Trump like inflation?
Why does Donald Trump keep saying the Iran war is nearly over and then tells a Fox reporter he’s going to “bomb them”?
Why is Donald Trump trying to revive his controversial slush fund after saying it was dead?
Why does he insist on appointing an unqualified housing hacker to head national intelligence, despite his own party’s objections?
REPORTER’S NOTEBOOK: REBELLERS THREATEN TO CHANGE GOP AGENDA AS GROWING DISAPPOINTMENTS WITH TRUMP
Something strange is happening here, but what?
Is Trump “becoming increasingly frustrated with everyone,” as Politico quotes a MAGA operative close to the White House? “He’s very angry and people don’t realize how angry he is.”
President Donald Trump is taking a big step toward a lasting peace deal with Iran abandoning its nuclear weapons ambitions. ((Roberto Schmidt))
If there’s a connective tissue here, it’s that Trump and his far-reaching agenda are quickly becoming a reality.
WAR SITUATION: HOW TRUMP IS FIGHTING A 9-FRONT WAR
He was even blamed for his presence causing the Knicks to lose Game 3 of the NBA Finals (while Taylor Swift’s T-shirt was credited for Wednesday’s miraculous comeback).
Opposition, led by the courts, has blocked much of what the president wanted to do. Its name comes from the Kennedy Center. The award-winning ballroom is connected like the 250-foot arch he proposed.
Republicans were so upset by the interim appointment as director of national intelligence of Bill Pulte, who launched mortgage fraud investigations into Trump’s enemies, that they refused to renew the expired domestic oversight law. After researching the matter, the president bowed to political reality yesterday and nominated Jay Clayton, the U.S. attorney in Manhattan.
TRUMP SHOWS SIGNS OF MAGA UNREST ABOUT POTENTIAL MILITARY ATTACK ON IRAN
Trump has publicly called the Jeffrey Epstein ruckus a “hoax” by Democrats and a few Republicans. But he and his team were privately obsessed with the scandal, according to a new book by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan.
The Justice Department released scores of Epstein documents on December 19, after President Trump signed the Epstein Files Transparency Act in November. (Patrick McMullan via Getty Images)
Trump refused to do what most advisers encouraged him to do; This was to forestall Epstein’s statements before Congress made the files public. While MAGA insisted that its base was behind it, many of its members were actually angry over his past ties to the deceased pedophile and complained about a cover-up.
Trump accused California of running a fraudulent election on Tuesday. But he took credit for it when late voting pushed former Fox host Steve Hilton’s candidacy to one of the two candidates in November.
TRUMP AND DEMOCRATS ARE LOCKED IN AN ENDLESS PAYMENT CYCLE AFTER COMEY ALLEGATION AND TARGETING THE PRESIDENT’S ENEMIES
In fact, Trump’s insistence half a dozen years later that he actually won the 2020 election, despite not offering a shred of evidence in court, remains a classic example of him seeing the world the way he wants. The same goes for the January 6 rioters, whom he tried to portray as patriots. This was the impetus to put money into the pockets of the $1.8 billion “anti-proliferation” fund, but we all watched on live television as many of them attacked police officers and threatened lawmakers.
Now, why would the president make a politically unwieldy comment like “I love inflation”? Especially when the annual rate rises to 4.2 percent, the highest level in the last three years?
Trump’s statement: “Do you know that we have extracted millions of barrels of oil? Nobody knows that. Do you know who doesn’t know that? Iran – until now.”
WHAT PRESENT DID TRUMP GIVE DEMOCRATS BY SEEMING TO ALLOW AMERICANS’ FINANCIAL CONCERNS?
But this was no secret. The New York Times reported this last month.
The war offers the most vivid example of Trump’s violent tendency to see a foggy picture through blurred glasses. For more than two months, the president has repeatedly declared that he is close to a deal with Iran, that they are desperate for a deal, and that he is giving the mullahs a few more days. However, no agreement has yet emerged.
President Donald Trump speaks in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington on June 10, 2026. (Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP)
Instead, the administration and Tehran exchanged bomb attacks after a US helicopter was shot down and the crew was fortunately rescued. But Trump stuck to the fiction of an ongoing ceasefire.
WHY TRUMP AND IRAN ARE SEVERAL YEARS DIFFERENT ABOUT A POSSIBLE DEAL TO END THE WAR
He took aim at one of his favorite targets during his call-in to “Fox & Friends” yesterday.
He said the issue was “fake news.” He said the media was “skewed.” “The New York Times writes news as if it is doing well but it is not,” he said about Iran. He included CNN and MSNOW in that indictment.
“The press is covering this so wildly.”
WHY TRUMP RESPONSES THE IRAN WAR NEWS IN THE MEDIA VERY NEGATIVELY – INCREASED BY FCC’S RHETORICAL SUPPORT
While the media’s hostility toward Trump has influenced some war coverage, what I see most recently is an attempt to reflect the zig-zag nature of Trump’s actions and statements toward Iran. If Iran’s defenses are so exhausted, as Trump says almost daily, how did the terrorist state manage to shoot down an Army helicopter?
He also said he plans to take over Kharg Island, the epicenter of Iran’s oil infrastructure.
And then came the ultimate in shifting the blame to one’s own citizens.
TRUMP RETURNS ON STRIKES WHILE MAINTAINING THE IRAN DEAL AND TESTING WHETHER TEHRAN IS WATCHING.
“I don’t know if America has the stomach for this… I think they’d like to see us come home,” he told Fox. “I’m not sure the country is willing to do that.”
This may well be true, but it is not something a leader would usually say out loud.
Still, Trump stated that Iran “WILL BE HIT HARD TONIGHT.”
TRUMP PULLED IRAN TO THE BREED – BUT HAVE WE GAINED ANYTHING LASTING?
And yesterday afternoon, as I was finishing this column, Trump flipped again and rescinded his airstrike threat.
He said the negotiations were “brought to the highest level of Iranian leadership and approved.” The stock market “liked the deal.” Perhaps a signature would be made “very soon” in the next few days.
I never believed that Trump would truly try to destroy Iranian civilization. His heart wasn’t there. He doesn’t want to be remembered in history like this. This has always been a pressure tactic.
I’m no longer one of those people who write off Trump after decades of watching him recover from thousands of different investigations and controversies. He is the Houdini of politics.
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None of this exactly helps Republicans maintain control of the House of Representatives in the midterm elections. But if Trump pulls out of Iran despite an arrangement that has been harshly criticized for not eliminating nuclear weapons definitively, the country could move on and the environment could feel very different in November.
The most important question is whether the President will see his own preferred vision of the world or recognize the real landscape, with all its obstacles and disappointments.
