Saagar Enjeti

The headline here is behind Trump's public bravado on the war.

He grapples with his own family.

I like that aspect of it.

Let me read you a little bit of the lead here, and then I'll get some of Emily's reaction and her understanding of what's going on behind the scenes.

It says, it seemed like Donald Trump's appetite for risk had run out.

His fears were ramping up.

It was Good Friday afternoon and a nearly empty West Wing soon after the president learned an American jet had been shot down in Iran with two airmen missing.

Trump screamed at aides for hours.

The Europeans aren't helping, he said repeatedly.

Gas prices averaged $4.09.

Images of the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis, one of the biggest international policy failures of a presidency in recent times, had been looming large in his mind.

If you look at what happened with Jimmy Carter with the helicopters and the hostages, it cost them the election, Trump said in March.

What a mess.

Trump demanded the military go get them immediately, but the US hadn't been on the ground in Iran since the government overthrew that overthrow that led to the hostage crisis, and they needed to figure out how to get into treacherous Iranian terrain and avoid Tehran's own military.

Aides kept the president out of the room as they got minute-by-minute updates because they believed his impatience would not be helpful

Instead, updating him at meaningful moments, a senior administration official said.

So we can just start with that.

First of all, I mean, just in these opening graphs, Emily, you have him thinking about, oh, my God, I'm turning into Jimmy Carter.

Like, this could be a total disaster.

Of course, he only cares about, like, the political ramifications of that, not, like, the moral, ethical ramifications of what he's doing here.