Dave Lawler

And it was point well made.

I think it was a point well made in terms of the fact that Trump has been dissatisfied with the fact that there's been some reporting.

I think our colleagues at NBC did some reporting on what Trump is being told and shown about the war.

And there have been, at a tactical level, all sorts of successful strikes.

They've taken out

a lot of stuff that they wanted to take out, the military execution.

I mean, there have been some horrible mistakes.

I mean, we can mention the girls' school, et cetera.

But there have been certainly lots of military successes.

And so if he's every day getting a brief, sir, we hit this, we hit that, here's how it's going on the ground.

And then he sees the media coverage from folks like us saying that this has been at least a mixed picture.

And in some cases, there's been extremely critical coverage.

coverage of how the war is going.

Maybe he does think that he needs to go out there and shake people by the lapels and tell them that it's just as good as he personally believes it is.

I think Dave made a good point earlier that Trump has not expended a ton of effort ahead of and during the war to make this case up to now.

I mean, it's pretty remarkable given that this has dominated coverage and also it's just such a critical issue to his presidency that he's been a little bit blasé in a

Oh, I thought gas prices would be even higher.

You know, like just sort of the casualness with which he's discussed some of this stuff and the lack of, I don't know, a clear messaging strategy.

Now, he's not somebody who sticks to one messaging strategy, but he's an effective messenger on some issues when he chooses to be.

This one, I think not particularly.