Even the White House is struggling to defend Trump’s crappy Iran deal
The full text of President Donald Trump’s supposed deal to end the boondoggle of a war he started in Iran has yet to be released, with even the Republican Senate majority leader saying Tuesday that he hasn’t seen nor been briefed on what the deal includes.
But if the talking points the White House released on Tuesday on how Republican leaders and right-wing media grifters should respond to the supposed deal are any indication, the agreement is a massive capitulation to one of the United States’ most dangerous enemies, and amounts to an embarrassing loss for Trump.
The four-page “memorandum of understanding talking points” leads with the “top five message points” for Republicans to try to convince the public that the deal is good. And all five of the points are either complete lies or embarrassing spin that is unlikely to convince anyone but MAGA cultists who think Trump can do no wrong.
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The first point is that “Iran will never have a nuclear weapon”—even though reports say that there is no deal yet on what Iran will do with its enriched uranium or its nuclear ambitions.
In fact, Trump himself on Tuesday tried to downplay the need for Iran to get rid of its uranium—even though that was the entire reason Trump started this costly mess of a war in the first place. That suggests that the deal he has yet to publicly release doesn’t actually include any agreements on Iran’s nuclear capabilities.
“You could make the case, why even bother? It’s not very valuable stuff,” Trump said Tuesday morning of the enriched uranium.
The second bullet declares that, “President Trump ended the fighting on every front, including Lebanon. No forever war.”
First of all, ending the fighting that you started is not a flex. But more than that, it’s not even true!
The Times of Israel reported that Hezbollah launched rockets from Lebanon just this morning. And Israel reportedly said the deal is “vaguely worded” and they could keep launching attacks on the country.
What’s more, even Trump sycophants said that including Lebanon in the deal isn’t something Trump should brag about.
“Getting Lebanon included in the Vance peace deal was an Iranian objective, not the U.S.—and one the U.S. initially resisted when the ceasefire was announced. To spin this as an American achievement is Orwellian,” right-wing Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen wrote in a post on X—using Vice President JD Vance’s name in the deal so as to not directly criticize his Dear Leader for bowing to Iran.
The White House then encourages Republicans to stress that “the Strait of Hormuz is open again, free of charge.”
Of course, the Strait of Hormuz was open and free of charge before Trump started the war. And like the previous talking points, this is false, as Iran has said it will charge fees for passage—effectively creating a new revenue stream for a U.S. enemy.
What’s more, CNN reported that because of the war, U.S. intelligence agencies now believe that Iran knows it will be able to blockade the Strait of Hormuz in the future and use it as leverage when the country is under attack.
“We have now handed Iran de facto control over the strait—a weapon more powerful than any nuke,” an intelligence official told CNN. Great work, Trump!
Then the talking points seek to spin the $300 billion Iran is allegedly set to receive in the deal Trump struck.
“Iran’s rewards come from its own unfrozen money, not from American taxpayers, and only after it performs,” the talking points assert.
Of course, that is the same exact thing former President Barack Obama gave Iran when he struck a deal with the country that actually got Iran to agree to stop enriching uranium. The only difference is that Trump is unfreezing more of Iran’s assets, giving the country triple the amount of cash Obama did.
Lastly, the Trump administration tells Republicans to defend the supposed Iran deal by saying that the agreement is signed by Trump and Iran.
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“Obama never even got a signed document,” the talking points allege. “President Trump did, from strength, after dismantling Iran’s program.”
Find me the voter who is okay with this deal because it got an electronic signature. I’ll wait.
Ultimately, the talking points were so bad that even Republicans mocked them.
“Shocking we will provide many x what Obama paid for pinkie promise Iran won’t enrich uranium,” Marc Short, a longtime Republican operative who served as chief of staff to former Vice President Mike Pence, wrote in a post on X.
Right-wing radio host Erick Erickson used his program on Tuesday to debunk the talking points one by one, and slammed any Republicans or right-wing media personalities who would disseminate the White House’s spin.
“Today, you’ll easily be able to discern who is carrying water and who is not by whom on TV and radio parrots this,” Erickson wrote in a post on X. “I appreciate my friends in the conservative sphere wanting to be team players, but if the deal were a good deal, it’d be released already, and we wouldn’t need multiple days for 5 measly talking points.”
At the end of the day, Trump has been desperate to end the war he started, as even his own base doesn’t support the conflict and is angry that it caused gas and grocery prices to spike.
It seems he didn’t take the advice he gave in 2015, when Obama was negotiating the Iran deal Trump later tore up.
“Message to Obama re: Iran,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “‘The worst thing you can possibly do in a deal is seem desperate to make it.’ – The Art of the Deal.”
