Franco Ordonez

He makes a real maximalist pressure demand, and then he seems to want to find a way to negotiate out of it so he can take the pressure off and declare victory.

But it kind of goes either way, right?

I mean, the adversary gets a vote.

Yeah, I mean, as you guys mentioned, Trump said he was postponing attacks on the power plants for five days because his team was having, quote, productive conversations with Iran.

Trump said they were talking to a top person in the Iranian regime who is not the new supreme leader,

But he would not say who it was.

He did claim, though, that whoever they were negotiating with agreed to Iran never having a nuclear weapon, which, of course, they've said before.

Well, I mean, it's very clear that Trump wants to reach a deal and to do so soon.

Emily Harding, who handled the Iran portfolio in the George W. Bush White House, told me Trump is looking for an off-ramp, basically.

And he knows the politics.

He knows the midterms are coming and sees the oil market struggling.

And she recommended taking Trump's bravado with a bit of a grain of salt.

And she points out that we've heard these kind of things before.

I mean, Trump repeatedly said he was close to reaching a deal with Russia over the Ukraine war.

And of course, that never materialized.

Well, I mean, I do want to say that Trump still likely has some runway politically to work with.

I mean, right now, most Republicans are behind him, but the party often struggles when Trump's name is not on the ballot, which it won't be.

That said, if the U.S.

and Israel can wrap this war up in a couple weeks, he'll probably be all right politically.

But John McHenry, a Republican pollster with North Star Opinion Research, he told me if the war goes on much longer than that and gas prices continue to creep up, say another 50 cents or more...