The hosts of MS NOW’s “Morning Joe” unpacked recent reports Monday of President Trump being “bored” with the war in Iran right now, noting that the president is at risk of looking “extraordinarily weak.”
“Donald Trump [is] very bored with this war and wanting to move on, which we all knew he would be. He had told me, ‘Two weeks, two weeks. It’s going to be an interesting two weeks,’” host Joe Scarborough noted. “I remember saying, ‘Listen, there’s no way this thing goes into May because he will get bored too quickly. He’s going to want to move on and go on to Cuba and other things.’ He just can’t.”
“He can’t leave that country with a nuclear deal that is even weaker than what he thought Barack Obama’s deal was. He can’t give them more money than Barack Obama gave,” Scarborough continued. “He can’t leave with the Straits being owned by the Iranians the way they’re owned by the Iranians now. Even if they can make more money after the war on oil than before the war, he looks extraordinarily weak.”
“So he can’t leave unless he just wants to be seen as a weaker president than Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush in Iraq,” Scarborough concluded, noting that Bush and Carter are “two presidents [Trump has] constantly attacked for not getting good deals out of those countries.”
You can watch the full “Morning Joe” segment yourself in the video below.
“Morning Joe” co-host Jonathan Lemire offered further insight into Trump’s current state of mind on Iran.
“He’s trying to work through in real time how he can get out of this war. He’s desperate to get out of it,” Lemire said. “He is, indeed, as one senior advisor used the word, ‘bored.’ But there’s also this sense he’s deeply frustrated and feels like he’s boxed in. He doesn’t know how to get out.”
Scarborough, meanwhile, again reiterated the national, reputational and global stakes presented by the current conflict in Iran. “If you lose Iraq, you don’t destroy the world economy,” the “Morning Joe” host explained. “If you go into Iran, then you set the world economy on fire.”
On Sunday, Trump rejected Iran’s latest ceasefire proposal, which included, among other things, a demand that the United States recognize the country’s sovereign control over the Strait of Hormuz. Iran has essentially controlled the Strait since the war broke out earlier this year.
On Monday, Trump said the ceasefire with Iran is on “life support,” telling reporters, “I would call it the weakest right now after reading that piece of garbage they sent us. I didn’t even finish reading it.”
