Jonathan Karl

The president made it clear to me that these U.S.

strikes on Iran are specifically in response to Iran's downing of that Apache helicopter.

He brought up the peace deal that he is trying to negotiate with the Iranians.

It seemed clear to me that even as he was ordering U.S.

attacks on Iran, he still believes he can get a peace deal with the Iranians.

My fellow Americans, this is Liberation Day.

My fellow Americans, this is Liberation Day.

I listened very carefully, Lindsay, for something new about his plans for ending this war, some new indication about the direction that he was going.

I have to tell you, candidly, there was nothing new in that speech.

These are all points that he has made either in his Truth Social posts or in his many appearances over the past four weeks.

He had said earlier today that he was going to give a speech

where he would say, this is actually a quote from something he did earlier today.

He said, basically, I'm going to tell everybody how great I am, what a great job I've done, what a phenomenal job.

There was quite a bit of that, talking about the great success, as he sees it, of the U.S.

military.

I thought that what was striking is how little he talked about something that he has done

mentioned, and he's mentioned directly to me several times, the negotiations with the Iranians.

It was almost an afterthought.

He talked about how they are, we are sending them back to the Stone Ages, bombing them back to the Stone Ages, and then the very next sentence is, but we continue to have negotiations.

I didn't get a sense that there's a lot of optimism expressed in that speech about