by Steve Benen | Nov 3, 2026 | Iran, Iran Tensions, Maddowblog, White House
On the eve of Election Day 2026, Donald Trump did a live telephone interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity, and when the discussion turned to the ongoing war with Iran, the president said something unexpected.
“This is not much of a war, Sean, because there hasn’t been shooting for months,” he said.
The Republican made similar comments several hours earlier during a bizarre pre-election event at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, where he declared, “We had a war with Iran, we won. We had a war with and, you know, I don’t know if you even call it a war, because we haven’t been doing any fighting for months.”
Trump’s timing could have been better. As The Wall Street Journal was the first to report, “The U.S. attacked Iran’s Qeshm Island on Monday, U.S. officials said, in the latest of a series of limited strikes Washington has secretly carried out against the country in recent weeks.”
Observers were left to wonder whether the American president was trying to deceive the public with his rhetoric on the same day, or whether he simply didn’t know about the latest U.S. military operations in the war he initiated eight months ago.
Making matters slightly worse, in the Hannity interview, Trump also said, “I heard a very stupid congressman on Fox, on, I think it was ‘Fox & Friends,’ saying about we spent $30 billion on this war with Iran. Well, that’s peanuts.”
Putting aside the fact that $30 billion is a lot of money, it’s just as notable that every cost estimate of the conflict, including the Trump administration’s, is far in excess of $30 billion.
Hours before the Hannity
by Steve Benen | Aug 18, 2026 | Iran, Iran Tensions, Maddowblog, News, Politics, World
Donald Trump has invested an enormous amount of time and energy lately trying to convince people that the United States controls the Strait of Hormuz. In reality, the U.S. most certainly does not control the Strait of Hormuz, but the American president spent much of last week insisting on the delusion for reasons he never explained.
At one point last week, the Republican added a twist to the truly bizarre rhetorical campaign, posting an item to his social media platform that read in part, “The U.S.A. has total control over the Strait of Hormuz. I THINK WE WILL KEEP IT! … Praise be to Allah!”
The idea that the U.S. will somehow “keep” the body of water didn’t make a lot of sense, but as last week neared its end, Trump elaborated on the proposition during an event in New York.
Trump says that after Iran is defeated he’s going to declare the Strait of Hormuz a territory of the United States — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-08-14T19:56:59.178Z
“[A]fter we finish defeating Iran, which is being very badly defeated, pretty soon I’ll be declaring the Hormuz Strait a territory of the United States,” Trump said.
During an unrelated White House event this week, a reporter asked the president to elaborate on this apparent plan. He said making the strait a U.S. territory is “a great idea,” before again falsely claiming that the waterway is currently “open” and controlled by U.S. forces. Trump added, “I like the idea of declaring it a territory.”
Trump on making the Strait of Hormuz a US territory: “I like the idea. We have total control over the strait.”— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-08-17T18:14:08.233Z
There’s
by Steve Benen | Aug 14, 2026 | Iran, Iran Tensions, Maddowblog, News, Politics, World
It’s been more than a week since MS NOW first reported on the conditions aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, including moldy showers, food shortages and sailors running out of basic necessities, like soap.
The report, based on conversations with a dozen family members with loved ones serving on the ship, sounded the alarm about “excruciatingly long shifts” and potentially dangerous conditions as the aircraft carrier enters its ninth month at sea and its fifth consecutive month of combat operations against Iran. The Lincoln, MS NOW went on to note, left its home port of San Diego on Nov. 21 and has set a modern-day record for the most continuous days at sea.
President Donald Trump said effectively nothing about this until Friday afternoon, during a brief Q&A with reporters.
Q: The family members of US service members are concerned about the conditions on the USS LincolnTRUMP: No they’re notQ: Has the deployment gone on too long?TRUMP: No no no. Not nearly long enough.— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-08-14T17:16:35.974Z
When one reporter noted that family members of U.S. service members are “concerned about the conditions” on the USS Lincoln, the president started to reply before rejecting the premise of what he’d been asked. “No, they’re not,” the Republican said.
After insisting that the Lincoln would soon be “replaced” by another ship, Trump was asked whether the current deployment has gone on too long.
“No, no, no,” Trump replied. Leaning in closer to the press corps for emphasis, he quickly added, “Not nearly long enough.”
At that point, the president turned and walked away.
The suggestion that the family members of sailors and Marines aboard the USS Lincoln are not concerned
by Steve Benen | Aug 12, 2026 | Iran, Iran Tensions, Maddowblog, News, Politics, World
As this week got underway, The Wall Street Journal reported that Donald Trump had privately expressed optimism about reaching a deal with Iran that would finally reopen the Strait of Hormuz, but the president’s confidence didn’t last long. MS NOW reported a day later that Iranian officials said they would only agree to reopen the strait if the U.S. meets all of the conditions that Tehran contends are in the June memorandum of understanding between the two countries.
That would mean, among other things, that the White House would have to unfreeze Iranian funds and take steps to the end recent fighting in Lebanon.
It’s reached the point at which some in the region are reportedly starting to see Iranian control over the Strait of Hormuz as a new normal that will persist, even if they’d prefer this were not the case.
It’s against this backdrop that the American president apparently has an idea: pretend that Iran doesn’t control the Strait, reality notwithstanding.
In his latest missive published to his social media platform, the Republican wrote, “The U.S.A. has total control over the Strait of Hormuz. I THINK WE WILL KEEP IT! … Praise be to Allah!” The weird post came roughly 12 hours after he made similar comments to reporters during a brief Q&A on an airport tarmac.
Trump preposterously claims that the US “owns” the Strait of Hormuz— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-08-12T03:23:13.091Z
“We totally control the Strait of Hormuz,” Trump said. “We have control over it. Nobody else, only us.” He added soon after, “We have total control over the Hormuz Strait right now. They don’t have control. We have total control. We own
by Steve Benen | Aug 3, 2026 | Iran, Iran Tensions, Maddowblog, News, Politics
Last week, Minnesota detected a cyberattack on roughly three dozen municipal water systems in the state, and a U.S. official with knowledge of the matter told MS NOW that it was probably the work of Iranian hackers.
On Friday, however, Donald Trump decided he had no use for the intelligence that blamed the U.S. adversary. The president instead blamed Americans.
“We heard in Minnesota there was a cyberattack, and they blame it on Iran — I don’t think so,” the Republican said during a Cabinet meeting at Camp David. “I blame it on Minnesota because they’re grossly incompetent.” He went on to say, “There was a cyberattack of 30 water plants, and I would blame it on Minnesota and the governor, the corrupt governor of Minnesota.”
Shortly thereafter, as the meeting started to wrap up, a reporter asked Trump whether he’s prepared to rule out the possibility that Iran was responsible for the cyberattacks. “I think that Minnesota is behind it,” he said. “You know who is behind it? Minnesota. … I don’t think there was an Iranian cyberattack.”
Even for a president who increasingly treats Democratic-led states as undeserving of federal support and resources, Trump’s eagerness to blame Americans for cyberattacks that appear to have come from Iran was quite bonkers, even for him. To hear the president tell it, Minnesota hacked itself, which is every bit as absurd as it sounds.
It quickly became apparent, however, that Minnesota wasn’t the only target. The New York Times reported:
The scope of cyberattacks on U.S. water systems has grown to include at least seven states and may be far wider, officials and experts warned, as the authorities raced to safeguard the nation’s water supply against an assault that increasingly
by Steve Benen | Jul 31, 2026 | Iran, Iran Tensions, Maddowblog, News, World
Roughly a week into the U.S. war in Iran, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth held a press briefing and took a moment to push back against reporting he disagreed with. The beleaguered Pentagon chief specifically said he’d seen coverage that suggested the war in Iran “might be expanding” beyond Iranian borders.
“Nothing could be further from the truth,” he said.
A week later, the former Fox News host tried to re-emphasize the same argument, telling reporters, “It’s worth underscoring, I see in the media banners that say, ‘War expanding,’ or ‘War spreading. It’s actually the opposite. It’s actually quite contained.”
Even at the time, the rhetoric was difficult to take seriously. On the first day of the military offensive, the conflict involved three countries: The United States, Israel and Iran. By the sixth day of the war, The Washington Post noted that the violence had “touched 12 countries across the Middle East.”
This week, nearly five months after Hegseth insisted that the conflict was “actually quite contained,” neither “expanding” nor “spreading,” the secretary’s arguments from March appear tragically absurd. The New York Times reported:
A resurgence of fighting in the war with Iran is expanding the scope of the conflict across the Middle East and further threatening shipments of oil and other products crucial to the global economy.
With little sign of peace talks resuming, a series of attacks, including two consecutive nights of strikes between Iran and the United States, ended a short period of relative calm — and entangled a growing list of U.S. allies in the conflict.
Jordan and Saudi Arabia, for example, have been targeted and are moving forward with plans to create a
