There are plenty of things that could be highlighted from Donald Trump’s latest public appearances.
Here are four:
Inconsistencies over discussions with the Iranians
The US president has said a few times over the past 12 hours that dialogue with the Iranians is ongoing.
“They want to make a deal,” he said on the plane back to Washington DC on Sunday night, repeating it again on Monday.
But when asked the obvious questions – “Who are you talking to that wants to make a deal?” and “what does a deal look like?” – the president couldn’t answer.
Instead, he said that all the people they had been talking to were now dead. He’s said this before, attributing it, bizarrely, to the military operation being so successful.
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He also mused whether he would actually want to make a deal with the Iranians even if they wanted to. These musings were peppered with “they want to make a deal”.
Artificial Intelligence
The president revealed that he had seen a video (presumably on social media) which showed the US aircraft carrier, the Abraham Lincoln, under attack and on fire. He then revealed that he’d called his generals and asked “what’s with the Abraham Lincoln? Looks like it’s on fire”. He was then told it was fake.
This raises serious questions about the sort of content the president is absorbing and believing on social media.
The Starmer call
The president and prime minister spoke by phone on Sunday. The “readout” of the call from Downing Street was thin and revealed very little. A source later told me that the call was “good” and that there was a “clear shared interest in keeping the Strait of Hormuz open”.
I am told that any public frustration shown by the president was not reflected in the call.
The president has now revealed a further window into that call.
“You know the prime minister of UK – United Kingdom – yesterday, told me, ‘I’m meeting with my team to make a determination’.”
“I said, ‘you don’t need to meet with the team. You’re the prime minister. You can make your own… why do you have to meet with your team to find out whether or not you send some mine sweepers to us…'”
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Learning about Lebanon
In another moment of conscious thought, he revealed that he’d only recently been told about the geographical power structure in Lebanon – something that’s vital to understand given the Israeli military operations the US is supporting there right now. In the same sentence, he also expressed surprise that people lived even in Ukraine or Lebanon.
This is the verbatim transcript of that moment: “…substantial person, wealthy person, whose parents live in Lebanon. I said: ‘Really, how do you live in Lebanon? Your parents? Oh, yeah, they live there. And over the years, they’ve gotten used to the fact that it’s being bombed.’
“But they explained to me that it’s really a different section of Lebanon. It’s the section where Hezbollah is, and they get used to it I guess… I mean people live in Ukraine.
“You would think they wouldn’t live in Ukraine, but they live in Ukraine. I don’t know that I’d do that, but they live in Ukraine. They live in Lebanon.”
