Letters from an American - President Under Pressure

Episode Date: March 23, 2026

March 22, 2026Trump defends failure to inform allies and partners about US attack on Iran, Closure of Strait of Hormuz puts enormous pressure on the president, Administration lifts sanctions on Iranian oil giving Iran huge relief without any concessions, Pressure builds over DHS corruption involving Kristi Noem and Corey Lewandowski, Trump threatens to use ICE to hurt Democrats, Trump maligns Robert Mueller on the announcement of his death, Reporting on the Epstein scandal reveals that a vast amount of paperwork was shredded after Epstein was found dead in prison.Watch today's recording here: https://www.youtube.com/live/g9TUa1Rwd6U?si=T8_KKcHQZElhpnZ-Get full, free access to Letters from an American here: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/subscribeYou can also find me:Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/hcrichardson.bsky.socialInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/heathercoxrichardson/?hl=enFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/heathercoxrichardson/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@heathercoxrichardson Get full access to Letters from an American at heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/subscribe

March 22nd, 2026. President Donald J. Trump's behavior is increasingly erratic as he lashes out at those he perceives to be enemies. On Thursday, he defended his failure to inform allies and partners about his February 28th attack on Iran by telling a Japanese reporter he wanted the element of surprise. Who knows better about surprise than Japan? Why didn't you tell me about Pearl Harbor, okay? Trump said, referring to the Japanese attack on Hawaii that took place on December 7, 1941, five years before Trump was born. The Prime Minister of Japan, Sinaita Kaiichi, appeared taken aback. Japan is a key Pacific ally of the United States. The president is under enormous pressure,

as his war with Iran sparked Iranian officials to close the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20% of the world's oil flows. This outcome was expected by previous presidents, but Trump seemed to think he could avoid it, and now is stuck without an easy solution. As former defense secretary and Central Intelligence Agency Director Leon Panetta told David Smith of The Guardian, if there was an escape here for Trump, it would be to declare victory and it's over and we've been able to be successful in all of our military targets. The problem is he can, he can, declare victory all he wants, but if he doesn't get the ceasefire, he's got nothing. And he's not going to get a ceasefire as long as Iran is holding the gun of the Strait of Hormuz against his head.

He tends to be naive about how things can happen, Panetta told Smith. If he says it and keeps saying it, there's always a hope that what he says will come true. But that's what kids do. It's not what presidents do. In a frantic attempt to lower oil prices, the administration on Friday lifted sanctions on Iranian oil currently at sea. Iranian oil has been sanctioned since 1979. The lifting of sanctions will enable Iran to sell about 140 million barrels of oil worth about $14 billion, including to the United States and to China. National Security scholar Phil Gordon, who served as the White House coordinator for the Middle East, North Africa, and the Persian Gulf region during the Obama

administration posted. When Obama sent Iran $400 million plus $1.3 billion in interest in 2016, Trump called it insane, and he and others spent a decade mocking the idea of pallets of cash, Even though it was Iran's own money, American prisoners were released, courts were likely to require the U.S. payment, and Iran had just agreed to significant and verified reductions and restrictions on its nuclear program for 15 or more years. Now, Trump is giving Iran up to 10 times that amount of revenue, one of the most significant measures of sanctions relief provided to the Islamic Republic since its founding. in exchange for marginal and temporary relief from the big increase in oil prices his actions have caused, without any concessions from Tehran, and even as Iran continues to target the United States, its allies, and world oil supplies.

No way to read as anything other than desperate recognition of the situation Trump's own actions have created and the lack of available alternatives for dealing with it. it. On Meet the Press today, Senator Chris Murphy, a Democrat of Connecticut, said, we're going to give Iran $14 billion to fund this war with the United States. We're going to give Russia billions of dollars to fund their war with Ukraine. We're literally putting money into the pockets of the very nations that we're fighting right now. We've never seen this level of incompetence in warmaking in this country's history. Trump is also under pressure over the Department of Homeland Security, or DHS, which has been

mired in news stories about corruption since former Secretary Christie Noem stepped down. Yesterday morning, Trump appeared to try to change the momentum of those stories by going on the offensive against Democrats. New scrutiny of the department has brought renewed attention to the November 2025 ProPublica report by Justin Elliott, Joshua Cappell. and Alex Mergeski that DHS had awarded a $220 million contract for a taxpayer-funded ad campaign to cronies, getting around transparency laws by awarding the contract to a small company that then subcontracted the deal to friends of Nome and her associate, Corey Lewandowski. Of the contract, Trump allegedly said, Corey made out on that one.

On Thursday, March 19th, Julia Ainsley, Matt Dixon, Jonathan Allen, and Laura Strickler of NBC News reported that Lewandowski told George Zoli, the head of the giant private prison company Geo Group, that he expected to be paid for steering contracts to Geo Group. Zoli said he declined initially, but later offered to put Lewandowski on retainer with a consulting fee. But, sources told the journalists, Lewandowski wanted payments, what some people would call a success fee, based on awarded contracts. When Zoli refused, Geo Group lost out on contracts. A senior DHS official told the journalists, Lewandowski had told him not to award any more contracts to Geo Group. Lewandowski's official title was that of a special government employee with a temporary appointment that permitted him to work only 130 days in a year. But DHS officials told the journalists that Lewandowski had broad authority over contracts in the department and was referred to as chief. He allegedly sidestepped the limits of his appointment by going into the building accompanying Nome and thus without swiping in using his back.

Lewndowski has denied any wrongdoing. Yesterday, Hamid Aliazes, Alexander Burzon, Nicholas Neumos, Zolan Kenno Youngs, and Tyler Pager of the New York Times, reported on the extraordinary power Lewandowski had in DHS under Nome, explaining that he held meetings without her present, sat in on classified briefings, read a version of the highly classified president, Daily Brief and issued orders as he spearheaded detention and deportation of migrants. In addition to approving government contracts that worried officials, Lewandowski helped put Greg Bovino, a mid-level Border Patrol leader, into a senior position that gave him national power. At 1134 yesterday morning, Trump tried to turn the DHS story into one about the Democrats, posting,

If the radical left Democrats don't immediately sign an agreement to let our country, in particular our airports, be free and safe again, I will move our brilliant and patriotic ICE agents to the airports, where they will do security like no one has ever seen before, including the immediate arrest of all illegal immigrants who have come into our country, with heavy emphasis on those from Somalia, who have totally destroyed, with the approval of a corrupt governor, attorney general, and congresswoman Elon Omar, the once-great state of Minnesota.

I look forward to seeing ICE in action at our airports. Make America great again. President Donald J. Trump. This appeared to be a threat to use immigration and customs enforcement agents, whom Trump appears to see as his own private army, to hurt Democrats by pinning the long lines in airports on the Democrats' refusal to fund DHS, which means that transportation security administration or TSA agents aren't being paid. But Democrats have repeatedly proposed funding every agency in DHS other than ICE and Border Patrol, leaving those out until their abuses under Nome, Lewandowski, and Bovino have been addressed. Republicans have refused that funding unless DHS requests are funded in full at the same time.

Under Trump, ICE has become the highest funded law enforcement agency in the U.S., with an annual budget higher than those of all other federal law enforcement agencies combined. While ICE budgets previously had hovered around $6 billion, the Republicans' One Big Beautiful Bill Act gave DHS $85 billion to fund it through September 30th, 2019. What is outstanding now is its base budget of around $10 billion. Unlike TSA agents, ICE agents are getting paid during the funding fight. Today, the administration announced ICE agents will take the place of some TSA agents, although as the former national security officials at the steady state note, the legality of moving ICE agents into TSA positions isn't clear.

tonight Trump admitted he is not interested in any deal with the Democrats to fund the Department of Homeland Security unless Democrats also agree to the Save America Act, which would require proof of citizenship to register to vote and to vote, and which is widely understood to be a measure designed to suppress voting. Trump also includes in the measure an end to mail-in voting and an attack on transgender Americans. Then at 126 yesterday afternoon, Trump responded to the death of 81-year-old Special Counsel Robert Mueller by posting, Robert Mueller just died. Good. I'm glad he's dead. He can no longer hurt innocent people, President Donald J. Trump. As Josh Meyer of USA Today reported, Mueller was a lifelong public servant. He served in combat as a Marine Corps officer in the Vietnam War, during which he was wounded. I consider myself exceptionally lucky to have made it out of Vietnam, Mueller said years later.

There were many, many who did not. And perhaps because I did survive Vietnam, I have always felt compelled to contribute. He became a federal prosecutor covering organized crime, terrorism, and public corruption. A conservative Republican nominated by President George W. Bush to direct the Federal Bureau of Investigation, or FBI, he took office just a week before 9-11 and proceeded to reshape the FBI's mission from fighting crime to an emphasis on counterterrorism and intelligence. In 2017, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed Mueller's special counsel for the Department of Justice to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 election. Mueller's team filed charges against Trump's former

campaign share Paul Manafort and co-chair Rick Gates violating the foreign agents registration act and conspiracy against the United States and reached a plea agreement with Trump's former national security adviser Michael Flynn who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russian operative and ambassador involved in pushing Russian propaganda to American voters. Ultimately, the team indicted 34 people, including six of Trump's former advisors, five of whom pleaded guilty. Mueller's final report detailed the efforts of Russian operatives to help Trump and hurt Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, saying Russia launched multiple systematic efforts to interfere with the election. Mueller said he had not been able to consider Trump's guilt because Justice Department

policy prohibits the prosecution of a sitting president, but added, if we had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said that. He refused to say his report exonerated Trump, as Trump's supporters insisted. A later report by the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee agreed that members of Trump's 2016 campaign, led by Manafort, worked with Russian operatives to help Trump get elected. Not only is Robert Mueller getting under Trump's skin, so clearly is his own failure to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. At 744 last night, he posted, if Iran doesn't fully open, without threat, the Strait of Hormuz, within 48 hours from this exact point in time, the United States of America will hit and obliterate their various power plants, starting with the biggest one first. Thank you for your attention to this matter, President Donald J. Trump.

In a conversation with Anne McElvoy of Politico on Thursday, United Nations Secretary General Antonio Gutierrez noted that attacks on civilian energy infrastructure are war crimes. Yesterday, Julie K. Brown of the Epstein files, whose work digging into the cover-up of the Epstein story for the Miami Herald has been instrumental in bringing the scandal to light, and her colleague, Claire Healy, reported that after sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was found dead in his prison cell on August 10, 2019, a corrections officer called the FBI's threat operations center, saying the officer, found it suspicious that an after-action team charged with investigation would be shredding huge amounts of paperwork while FBI agents were in the building. An inmate who helped shred documents told guards, they are shredding everything, and an assistant federal prosecutor noted the destruction or misplacing of relevant records. Another corrections officer wrote to the FBI on August 19th about an unusual amount of shredding and disposal and suggested, you may want to investigate why Bureau of

Prisons employees are destroying records. This morning at 824, Trump posted, now with the death of Iran, the greatest enemy America has is the radical left, highly incompetent Democrat Party. Thank you for your attention to this matter, President D.J.T. Tonight, just before midnight, he posted, Peace Through Strength, to put it mildly. Letters from an American was written and read by Heather Cox Richardson. It was produced at Soundscape Productions, Dead in Massachusetts, recorded with music composed by Michael Moss.