‘My favorite thing is to take the oil’: Trump goes off script on Iran war plans
President Donald Trump made several telling remarks Sunday in an interview with the Financial Times, revealing some of his administration’s potential war plans as it relates to Iran.
“To be honest with you, my favorite thing is to take the oil in Iran but some stupid people back in the US say: ‘why are you doing that?’ But they’re stupid people,” Trump told the Financial Times, the outlet reported.
Trump told the outlet that his “preference” in his administration’s war against Iran would be for the United States to “take the oil," invoking a comparison to the U.S. takeover of Venezuela’s oil industry in January when the Trump administration halted Venezuelan oil shipments to the Cuban government, and started oil shipments to Israel “for the first time in years.”
Trump also spoke to the possibility of the U.S. military seizing Kharg Island, an Iranian island critical to the nation’s oil industry.
“Maybe we take Kharg Island, maybe we don’t. We have a lot of options,” Trump said, speaking with the Financial Times. “It would also mean we had to be [in Kharg Island] for a while. I don’t think they have any defense. We could take it very easily.”
Trump’s war against Iran has sent oil prices soaring as Iran continues to block U.S.-aligned vessels from accessing the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial shipping channel through which 20% of the world’s oil trade flows. Trump has reportedly been looking for a way out of the war, though one former Trump security advisor warned that such an off-ramp may no longer exist.‘Womp womp’: Trump’s ‘obsession’ with crowd sizes rubbed in his face over low CPAC turnout
MS NOW host Catherine Rampell took a sharp jab at President Donald Trump on Sunday for skipping the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) convention for the first time in nearly a decade, suggesting he did so to avoid embarrassing optics tied to his “obsession” with crowd sizes.
“If we know anything about Donald Trump, it is his obsession with a handful of fairly specific things: gold plating, the Village People, and of course, crowd sizes. So you can only imagine how he must feel seeing this split screen,” Rampell said on MS NOW’s “The Weekend Primetime,” queuing up a split-screen video of the massive No Kings rallies and the CPAC event in Texas.
“On the left side, you have the absolutely massive No Kings day protests which took over small towns, big cities all over the place, all around the world. Organizers say at least eight million people showed up. And then on the right side of your screen you have CPAC. Womp, womp. Notice a difference?”
This year’s CPAC conference notably does not have either Trump or any of his children speaking at the event, often a strong draw for conservatives to attend the event. Turnout appears to have suffered as a result, Mother Jones reported.
“It’s sh----,” said GOP delegate Warner Kimo Sutton of the event’s turnout, speaking with Mother Jones. “Last time this place was packed.”
Trump rips Senate GOP for ‘playing it too soft’ in shutdown fight: ‘It’s a shame’
President Donald Trump criticized Republican Senate leadership Sunday for having supported a bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) without funding for two key immigration enforcement agencies, calling their actions “a shame.”
“It's a shame. They should really just go to a filibuster, they should terminate the filibuster and they should vote, that's what I think,” Trump told a reporter aboard Air Force One on Sunday.
“I think the Senate is playing it too soft – the Republicans. They're wonderful people, but we're dealing with very sick individuals – the Democrats are sick, there's something wrong, they're like terrorists!”
In the middle of the night last week, the Senate passed a bill to fund DHS and end the ongoing partial government shutdown that has sparked chaos and long lines at airports nationwide. House Republican leadership, however, rejected the bill and instead put forward their own alternative to fund DHS.
