Open Tabs: "We’ve won."
Oil at $200 a barrel? The regime fighting on? Trump is too busy celebrating to bother with the small stuff.
State of Play: All New is Good News
“We’re going to be in very good shape,” Donald Trump told reporters last night, after returning from his trip to Kentucky and Ohio, fielding a question about Iran’s moves against the oil trade. “We’re riding free range over that country, and now we’re going to look very strongly at the Straits. The Straits are in great shape. We’ve knocked out all of their boats. They have some missiles, but not very many. I think we’re in very good shape.” Shortly afterward, six more ships were attacked in Gulf waters. This morning, after oil prices shot up to nearly $100 a barrel again—and after the Iranian regime issued a warning about prices going up to $200—Trump posted a statement saying that higher oil prices are good for America because we sell oil, too.
At his rally in Kentucky, Trump was no less ebullient. He danced to the music and complemented his choice of the name for the war. “Operation Epic Fury!” Trump bellowed to the crowd. “Is that a great name? Well, it’s only good if you win, and we’ve won. Let me tell you. We’ve won. You know, you never like to say too early you won. We won.” He added, “In the first hour, it was over.”
As usual, you’re left wondering whether Trump is simply trying to project invincibility, or whether he actually believes what he’s saying. Given the longstanding concerns that he ignores intelligence briefings he doesn’t like, and that his aides, including “Human Printer” Natalie Harp, keep his spirits up by feeding him only the news he wants to see, it’s tempting to believe the latter. In any case, he’s clearly too busy driving the narrative to concern himself with much else. Details have historically been other people’s problem—a convenient arrangement that allows him to take credit for wins and pin setbacks on others.
Already we’re getting a sense of who may get the blame if the war bogs down or, God forbid, there is some kind of retaliatory attack inside the US. Asked last night about whether he’d been briefed on possible sleeper cells inside the country, Trump answered: “I have been. A lot of people came in through Biden with his stupid open border.” In any case, it’s not a question he’s going to lose a lot of sleep over right now, not when the vibes are so damn good. “We know where most of them are,” he said. “We’ve got our eye on all of them. I think.”
What We’re Watching
We’re going into today unsure about whether we have room for a guest. The Iran story is moving quickly and yet also slowly: we’re still at war, we still don’t know why, and we’re making grave mistakes along the way. Many thanks to Saul for offering to jump in with me here in rounding up the updates.
Iran latest
The new normal: We’ll start with the latest on the war and the raft of excellent reporting helping to fill in the spaces that Trump and Hegseth prefer to leave blank.
Oil prices and the latest with the shipping lanes in and around the Gulf remain the big story. This morning, in his first message to the world, the new supreme leader said that Iran will continue to use its leverage over the Strait of Hormuz. Remember: this is good news for America!
On Wednesday, The New York Times reported that a preliminary military investigation into the deadly attack on an Iranian elementary school has confirmed what was already widely suspected, and what Trump has tried to deny: that it was an American strike gone wrong. Over the course of the day, reporting—including from The Washington Post and NBC—provided more horrific detail. Of note: A ProPublica report published this week found that the administration dismantled an emerging Defense Department program last year “aimed at reducing civilian harm.”
Something else they don’t want to talk about: CBS reported on Wednesday that the drone attack that killed six US service members was “more severe than has previously been revealed, with dozens suffering injuries including brain trauma, shrapnel wounds and burns,” and that one injury “may require the amputation of a limb.”
Finally, a pair of must-read Times stories make two points abundantly clear: (1) that Trump and his advisers utterly “misjudged” how Iran would respond, and (2) that the Iranian regime and its military are “adjusting,” not buckling. That assessment seems to align with US intel reports, which, according to Reuters, have produced “consistent analysis that the regime is not in danger” of falling apart.
Trump in Kentucky
What does the commander-in-chief think about this? Trump took his affordability tour to Kentucky on Thursday, where he rallied with Rep. Thomas Massie’s primary opponent and Jake Paul. The whole thing had an extremely “Mission Accomplished” vibe.
In addition to the “we’ve won” riff, Trump said he doesn’t want to leave Iran “too early,” but also leaned heavily into his “little excursion” line, which he seems to think really hits. We’ll go slightly long playing all the weirdest and most out-of-touch bites.
The fundamental unseriousness with which Trump is conducting this war has to be obvious to everyone, even his own apologists. Will they care? Probably not. But the low-information, fuck-the-establishment crowd is a different matter. Here’s Joe Rogan this week: “I mean, this is why a lot of people feel betrayed, right? He ran on ‘no more wars,’ ‘end these stupid, senseless wars,’ and then we have one that we can’t even really clearly define why we did it.” The young men that Puck’s Peter Hamby talked to this week said the same thing.
We’ll get into the politics and the latest we know about where public opinion is moving. It’s a good day to have Dan on the pod.
Republicans’ “Course-Correction Mode”
House Republicans gathered in Florida this week for their annual retreat, and the stories and quotes coming out of their meeting depict an irresistible mix of fear and cope. How could we not dive in?
First, the fear: Axios scooped that White House Deputy Chief of Staff James Blair told members not to talk about “mass deportations” and instead focus on removing violent criminals. That’s remarkable guidance coming from a senior White House official about his boss’s top priority.
We have some great sound to play here: Mike Johnson saying during one of the televised portions of the event, “We got a little hiccup with some Latino and Hispanic voters, for certain, because some of the immigration enforcement was viewed to be overzealous. Everybody can describe it differently, but here’s the good news: we’re in course-correction mode right now. We’re gonna have a new Secretary of Homeland Security.”
A second Axios story outlined the White House’s plan to try to keep the House majority: try to make the midterms a referendum on Joe Biden’s failures on crime and border security. If you say so!
We’ll go from here into the latest with the SAVE Act, Trump’s obsession with getting it through the Senate, its salience in the Republican Senate runoff in Texas—where Sen. John Cornyn is struggling to explain reversing his views on the filibuster—and why right-wing loons have convinced themselves that Majority Leader John Thune actually is fully controlled by Hill tipsheet Punchbowl News. Yes, really.
One small programming note: I’m off next week, so you won’t see this newsletter back in your inbox until the following Thursday. Try to manage!
Open Tabs
Three of the many articles I’m trying to make my way through before I get on a transatlantic flight with small children:
