The NPR Politics Podcast - What to make of Trump’s mixed-messages on the Iran war

Episode Date: June 12, 2026

President Trump sent a lot of mixed messages on the war in Iran this week, starting with imminent peace on Monday, threatening to take control of Kharg Island on Thursday, followed by more imminent peace and then more threats. We discuss what to make of the back-and-forth.This episode: political correspondent Ashley Lopez, political reporter Elena Moore, White House correspondent Franco Ordoñez, and senior national political correspondent Mara Liasson.This podcast was produced by Bria Suggs and edited by Rachel Baye.Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

Hey there, it's the NPR Politics podcast. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover politics. I'm Franco Ordonez. I cover the White House. And I'm Mara Liason, senior national political correspondent. And we're recording this at 12.20 p.m. Eastern Time on Friday, June 12, 2026. It's been another busy week in politics, one with a lot of whiplash, as President Trump went back and forth between making threats to Iran and suggesting a peace deal may be imminent. I mean, let's take a quick trip down memory lane. Stay with me, guys. This is like a lot of. lot of back and forward. So Trump started off on Monday early in the morning with a truth social post that he reiterated later during a teller rally for South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham. We're negotiating now and they want to make a very good deal. They're willing to give us everything. They're willing to give us no nuclear weapon. And on Wednesday, he seemed to reverse himself. Well, we're going to be attacking and attacking them very hard. Cut to Thursday morning, he doubled down, threatening to take Carg Island in another social media

post before again reversing course both on social media and during an event in the Oval office. We have a deal that Iran will never have a nuclear weapon, which was the whole purpose of what we had to go through to get this. So it was a very big thing. But we have a signing soon and the documents are in pretty final shape. So we'll see. We'll see.

And then this morning he reversed himself again. he made more threats on truth social. Franco, what is going on? I mean, look, it's a lot of whiplash, and it's a kind of whiplash that we have been watching over the last several weeks. But I will say this week, it was just to an exponential degree. I mean, it was just so much back and forth. And I think it really kind of shows the kind of box that Trump is in as he really tries to end this war. Sometimes it seems like he's trying to end the war with his own words.

yet as we saw with the, you know, the downing of the Apache helicopter and the fact that Israel will make strikes when he doesn't want them to, it just shows that there are so many other things that are just out of his control and he cannot end this war with his rhetoric. I mean, I've spoken with several analysts who just tell me that he's trying to manufacture a reality that is not true. And you can kind of see why with, you know, inflation hitting these high numbers. his popularity remains low. I mean, he's under a lot of pressure to kind of deal with getting that cost down. He's also, I think, wants to, you know, reassure Americans that the narrative that he told is going to work out and that he just needs a little bit more time. But the reality, again, is that gas prices keep going up. Electricity is still more expensive. And after weeks and weeks and weeks, people are just not necessarily believing as much, you know, when he says

this is around the corner. You know, he, the velocity of the whiplash has just been getting exponentially faster. He went from yesterday in the Oval Office saying that there was going to be a time and a place for signing the agreement, maybe in Europe, to today, saying that the terms that Iran leaked were completely false, and it's all totally unacceptable. They better get their act together and fast. He's in a box of his own making. I mean, he started a war he thought would be easy to win, just like the military action in Venezuela, where the U.S. military went in and grabbed Nicholas Maduro, but it turns out it's not like that at all. And it turns out that the enemy gets a vote. And Iran has some cards to play, and he can't figure out

a face-saving off-ramp to stop this unless he does what he attacked Barack Obama for doing, which is to giving Iran a lot of money in exchange for opening up the Strait of Hormuz, which still wouldn't solve the big reason that he says he went to war in Iran, which is to stop them from getting a nuclear weapon. Yeah, I should say this was all in the backdrop when he was attending the Knicks game in New York City this week. And he has also spent a lot of time this week talking about his building projects. I mean, what do the president's comments this week amidst all of what's going on in Iran? What does this tell us about where his focus is?

Yeah, I mean, I definitely think it shows that it's in many different places. I mean, in some ways, it's kind of like you have like these two different presidents on the one hand. You have a president who's kind of mixing threats and diplomacy as he tries to end this war. And then the other, you have one who's kind of dialed into this cultural moment, you know, going to basketball games, the NBA playoffs, you know, hosting a World Cup, and also planning to host a UFC fight, an ultimate fighting championship mixed martial arts battle on the same weekend as his birthday. I mean, Trump has always kind of meshed sports and politics like no other president, but I do think what is so fascinating is he's doing at a time of war when most past presidents would have, you know,

just felt like this moment needed to be as serious as possible, really calibrate any type of message and not try to do anything that could be seen as frivolous. Now, supporters will say, well, that just shows his versatility. That shows how close he is with the working man or how he relates with him. But critics are going to say, look, this is someone who's distracted, who is out of touch with the seriousness of the moment. Yeah. And Mara, I was by the fact that he went as far as to say he's bored by the negotiations with Iran. At one point, he said he was bored by the negotiations. And you can tell that he is because he's so much more interested in talking about other things like the buildings he's planning

to build on the mall or painting the bottom of the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool or pond, as he calls it. So yeah, he is distracted. And what's interesting to me is that he is still not immune to the laws of political gravity. His approval ratings are really low. People don't like the war. People don't like the fact that taxpayers are paying for the ballroom and other of his building projects, even when he promised that they wouldn't. But he's not on the ballot and he's pretty unfettered. I mean, there are no real political consequences for him. There will be political consequences for his party, but we don't know yet how important Republicans winning in the midterms is to Trump because he's doing a whole lot of things to undercut them.

Yeah, I mean, there's no political repercussions yet in his base anyway, right? Because his approval rating has been really well. Right. And he won't be on the ballot. Yeah, but polling shows he's been pretty unpopular. Yes, he certainly has consequences in terms of polling, but I'm just saying he's not going to face the electorate again. So he doesn't have electoral consequences. Yeah, what do you guys think voters probably want it be hearing from Trump right now? How he's going to bring prices down. And I think voters don't just want him to to tell them he's going to bring prices down because he's done that ad nauseum. But they want to see prices come down and he hasn't been able to do that. And the war in Iran is keeping prices high.

I mean, the fact that the Strait of Hormuz still has not open, that Iran still has control over it is just making energy prices surge, gas prices, electricity prices, and that is leading to all different type of other goods and services being expensive. So life just does not seem like it's going to start getting less costly until this war is over. But Trump hasn't been able to figure out how to end it. Again, he's trying to will it to an end, but that's not happening. Yeah. I guess my last question for you guys is like, are there any geopolitical repercussions to

Trump zigzagging so much on this, like being so inconsistent on the message of how things are going in Iran? I mean, I'd say yes. I mean, look, Europe is seeing the same things that we're seeing, Trump zigzagging, that is message changing. I mean, they have to take that into consideration when they are dealing with the president. They have been taking that into consideration. I mean, next week, Trump is actually heading to southern France to attend the G7 summit

where he's going to be talking with leaders about Iran and a host of issues. You know, I've been talking with diplomats and analysts about this trip, and they're telling me that these leaders are trying to do everything possible they can to kind of avoid kind of getting too much into this whiplash. They don't want to deal with any controversy because he could do the same lashing out at them. Sometimes he lashes out even when they haven't done anything to anger him. Like when they've agreed to certain conditions or a certain tariff rate

and then he turns around and decides he wants it higher. So there's no predictability here. Yeah. All right. We're going to take a quick break. More in a moment. Welcome back. And we have some new economic data this week showing that inflation hit a three-year high,

now above 4%, which is. is at least in part a result of the war in Iran. Trump was asked about those numbers on Wednesday and said this. You know what I really love? I love the inflation. You know why? Because as soon as this war is over, you know, I can say it now. Something you didn't know.

Do you know we've been taking out millions of barrels of oil. Nobody knows it. You know who doesn't know about it? Iran until right now. I love the inflation. Franco, what does Trump mean by this? What he said he was trying to say is that he loved that the inflation was going to go down because once they end this war, inflation would roll and he was referring to kind of the oil tankers

as bringing in so much oil that the numbers would quickly go down. Well, you know, he's also said in the past that he is not thinking about Americans' financial situations. He said the economy is great. He said gas prices are going to come down really, really fast. the war is over. The problem is that all of these statements, even if he tries to explain them later, are all going to appear in Democratic political campaign ads this fall. Yeah, you can see kind of like the Democratic advertising writers kind of clipping those points right there. Yeah, which I imagine is what voters are going to hear more of. They're less likely to get like an

associated press feed. They're going to hear those ads. No, I mean, look, the Democrats are very, you know, politically they're very excited by all these things happening. They want nothing more from a political standpoint to be able to point to President Trump and say that he is distracted by all these interests that he have, his priorities, whether it's foreign intervention, an arch near the Lincoln Memorial, fixing the pond, building a ballroom, that this president is so focused on his own personal goals and not focused on the issues that you, the American people want, which is lowering the cost of living. Yeah, and we've talked about this before Mara, which is like there are parts of the economy and they're like Trump doesn't have full

control over what Iran does. But do you think it would be just politically beneficial for Trump to be making the show that he's trying to solve these things? Well, there are certainly a lot of Republicans who think that. They're concerned about the midterms and they're concerned about all the things that Trump is doing that's making their life harder in the midterms. Whether he went out and showed that he cared about ordinary people's financial situation would change the dynamics of the midterms is unclear, but there's no doubt that if you had a secret ballot, Republicans who are up for elections would say they wish that he would stop talking about all the things he's building on the mall and start talking about how he has helping ordinary people.

Now, let's be clear that when you ask the White House and you ask President Trump whether he's doing that, he says yes. He is working on these issues and he is talking to voter. He's going to Wisconsin to talk to farmers. He's going to Florida, talk to seniors and talking about the work on prescription drugs and lowering the cost of drugs. That said, you know, just pointing out all the issues that we're talking about the buildings, when you really kind of fine-tune and look at what he's talking about more and you compare it scale by scale, clearly the issues that he's most focused on are Iran, the foreign intervention, and all these building projects. Yeah. Before we wrap things up, I do want to talk about something in the news this week.

We saw another example of Trump backpedaling with his pick for director of now. National Intelligence. Last week, he named Bill Pulte, his acting director of national intelligence, which sparked a backlash among Republicans on Capitol Hill. Then yesterday, he named Jay Clayton as a permanent pick for the role, but not before the drama prevented Congress from voting to renew a key surveillance tool before it expired today. How do you guys read how all this went down? Yeah, I mean, there was a lot of controversy about Bill Pulte when Trump announced him. I mean, Bill Pulte, he was the head of the federal housing financing. agency, but he was so controversial because he had no military background. He had no intelligence background. And many people, including Republicans, thought he was more of a Trump attack dog than someone who could legitimately serve in this role. I think that all of these controversies on Capitol Hill have shown that Republicans are slightly more willing to buck Trump. They're angry about a lot of things that he's done to make their lives harder. And I don't think this adds up to a big rift. I don't think he's losing control of Congress. He still has a pretty rock-solid hold on the base of his party. But a handful of them are willing to push back. Especially now. I mean, the primaries are over, you know, where Trump can do the most damage is lessened. Now a lot of the, you know, this handful of Republicans that Mara's talking about who are speaking out, they're likely looking at, you know, general elections where they got an appeal to.

to more independent and more moderate voters. Yeah. The primaries are over for some. We still have until September. But I imagine the more some of these Republicans in more purply areas, they win their primaries. They're going to have to pivot away from the president. Anyways.

All right, Mara, we have to let you go. We're going to take a quick break. And when we get back, it's time for Can't Let It Go. And we're back. And political reporter Elena Moore joins us now. Hey, Helena. Hi. Hi, Elena.

It's time to end the show like we do every week with Can't Let It Go. part of the show where we talk about the things from the week that we just can't stop thinking about, politics or otherwise. I'll go first. I've been wanting to talk about this for a while, but I feel like now is the time, and I'll get into why. Let it all out. I want to talk about Congresswoman, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez. She happens to be the person in Congress who most descriptively represents me for people who did not subject themselves to Policai 101. That just means like our demographics are very similar. We're like the same age. She's a Latina from the Caribbean diaspora.

Like our cultures are very similar. Blah, blah, blah. Who cares about that? I'm going to tell you about the one way in which she really represents me in which she is an avid, obsessive knitter. No way. Yeah. So CNN had a story out this week. They followed her on the road.

She's sort of road testing some messaging across the country. The article's like, oh, you know, she's looking at a possible Senate run, maybe a presidential run in 2020. Anyways. And the opener to this. piece was that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has been doing a lot of knitting lately. They talked about how she's churning out a collection of hats and sweaters as she's like talking about messaging and her endorsements and stuff like that. And I just, I love that. I am also an obsessive avid knitter. Have you checked out our work?

I have. And I, and the reason why I'm like, I wanted to talk about this before is because I do remember her doing like an Instagram live. And she was knitting as she was talking to people about the, what happened. And I was like, of course, what sweater is she knitting? Yeah, you want to know details. And so I learned it was the step-by-step sweater, which signaled to me it was probably her first sweater because it's like a very popular first sweater.

Anyways, I just love this. I know that there are probably more members of Congress who knit a lot. To a shout-out. Yeah. Be like, hey, if you're knitting and you're in Congress, talk about it more. I prefer to hear about that than a lot of other stuff to talk about.

Is this the most you've felt seen? Yeah. descriptively represented. Wow. Okay, this is politics aside. Anyways, that was, I was very excited to see the CNN. Happy for you. Yeah.

Franco, what can't you let go of this week? What I can't let go is I am so excited that the World Cup has started. Yeah. I mean, I love soccer. I love the competition. I love kind of just like the international flavor and taste that you get when the World Cup is going on, just all the fans. What's interesting about this one, you know, obviously being in the U.S., you have all these, you have all these people coming to the United States from other cultures, other countries.

And a few of them have actually gotten some attention. There's this German guy named Freddie, who's gone a little bit viral with his, like, his posts online as he kind of discovers the South for the first time. He's been to Atlanta. I think he's just arrived in New Orleans. and a lot of people are kind of tracking them. And, you know, I'm from Atlanta as well. You know, he's been to, like, a waffle house, and he's talking about getting the, you know,

the hash brown, smothered, covered, chunked, and, you know, just trying Taco Bell. And it's just so much fun to kind of see your own background, see your own culture through another person's eyes. And I was joking with our producer, Brea about this. Shout out to Brea. And she was just saying

that she found it so funny, you know, kind of watching these people talk about American food and that people are actually joking that they're going to return to their home countries about 15 pounds heavier.

Yeah, probably. I mean, the portions are what they are. Yeah. I mean, I feel like this is very heavy food for sporting. That's true. Like running around a lot. This seems like a stomachache

waiting to happen, but who knows? I mean, you only live once, I guess. I feel like a stomachache waiting to happen is okay, though, It all happens every four years the world come. Get yourself some smothered covered.

No, pay, no gain. All right, Elena, I'm almost scared to ask because I know what's coming. What can't you let go of this week? Well, you all might be wondering why I'm here, for I don't have reporting that I shared on the pod today. I'll set the scene. I'm wearing a beautiful blue Knicks hat. Keeps hitting this microphone as I talk. I'm here to talk about the freaking Knicks.

I'm from New York City. The Knicks are one game. away from winning the NBA championship. They have not won since the 70s. Decades of loss, heartbreak, tears at the garden could be rectified tomorrow, Saturday. And it's going to be crazy. The last game was insane. The Knicks came back from a 29-point deficit.

It was nuts. I was watching with my sister in our house. And we were screaming so much. My downstairs neighbor texted us and said, Is everything okay? It was like 1130. That final shot was just absolutely amazing. Unreal.

And honestly, so the magic of the actual game is the thing I can't let go of. But the thing that makes it extra fun is like New Yorkers are crazy. They're acting out. They're really acting out. And it's been so funny. Like there's this one incredible creator, long-time New York Knicks fan. His name is Che Igbo. He's been posting about the Knicks nonstop.

He's been posting in front. of the garden, he'll do after games, he'll, like, talk about how much he loves Jalen Brunson, the point guard captain, MVP. And there's this one video of this creator who talks about how much he loves Jalen Brunson. This is the original video. He's my doctor. He's my engineer. He's my mechanic. He's my subway driver.

He's my pilot. But, of course, because it's 2026, everything has to become a song. And so now this is what it sounds like. and I can't get out of my head and it needs to be in your heads too. I'm not from New York. He's my engineer. We're living in the Knicks.

It's my way driver. I'm not from New York. I'm not a fan of the Knicks in the way you are. But it is all over my social media feed. I'm wondering if anyone has been spared from the chaos. I'm excited for the Knicks. I lived in New York a while. I loved watching the Knicks.

But when I was there, they really saw. Yeah. Think you're alone. I started watching the Nets. What was then was the New Jersey Nets. So I really feel. for the Knicks, and I really hope they can pull it off. But I am not going to be convinced until they actually do.

Hey, why are we bringing that mojo, dojo, mojo. We're rooting for the underdog here. No, I'm all for the Knicks. I'm very excited. I just don't want you to jinx it by wearing your hat today at work. That's true. I could have made a huge mistake, and it's documented now. But yeah, oh my God, go New York, go.

This is going to be amazing. And please, just if you're not, I don't know, living under a rock, just open your phone. scroll. Look at the content. It's so good right now. It's waiting for you. It's waiting for you. I can ensure that. All right. That's a wrap for today. Our executive producer is Methoni Matery. Our editor is Rachel Bay. Our producers are Casey Marell and Brea Suggs. Thanks to Krishna Dev Kalimer. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover politics. I'm Elena Moore. I also cover politics. And I'm Frank Ordonez. I cover the White House. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.

Bing Bong. I liked the bing bong in your laugh.