President Donald Trump says he believes his war on Iran is nearly done.
Fox News shared a snippet from an interview with the president at the White House on Tuesday, exposing Trump’s eyebrow-raising thoughts about the war he started in the Middle East.
“I had to divert, because if I didn’t do that, right now, you would have Iran with a nuclear weapon, and if they had a nuclear weapon, you would be calling everybody over there ‘Sir,’” Trump, 79, said in the clip. “And you don’t want to do that.”
“You keep saying ‘was,’” Fox News host Maria Bartiromo responded. “Is this war over?”
“I think it’s close to over, yeah,” the president replied. “I mean, I view it as very close to over.”
“You know what? If I pulled up stakes right now, it would take them 20 years to rebuild that country,” he continued. “And we’re not finished. But we’ll see what happens. I think they want to make a deal very badly.”
The Daily Beast reached out to the White House for comment.
As Trump’s war against Tehran enters its seventh week, the commander-in-chief ordered his military on Sunday to conduct a naval blockade of Iranian ports in response to Iran’s prior closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
The reopening of the crucial trade passageway, through which 20 to 25 percent of the world’s oil typically travels, has become a key objective of the U.S. military that influenced its closure in the first place.
Since Iran shut off the Strait of Hormuz to general ship traffic on March 2, domestic gas prices have skyrocketed. Americans at home have had to pay more than $4 per gallon on average as global oil prices rise in response to the conflict.
Trump’s war has resulted in the deaths of 13 American service members and injuries to hundreds more.
Diplomatic negotiations with Tehran, led by Vice President JD Vance alongside Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and real estate developer-turned-special envoy Steve Witkoff, that took place in Islamabad over the weekend bore no fruit, as Vance said the Iranian leadership refused to agree to terms set by the U.S. surrounding the country’s nuclear weapons development.
A ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran is in place until April 22, though U.S.-allied Israel has continued to strike Hezbollah forces in Lebanon during the temporary truce.
Trump’s taped interview with Bartiromo comes only two days after he called into the Fox News anchor’s Sunday Morning Futures show, where his bizarre rambling baffled even the conservative journalist.
As the geriatric president incoherently ranted about preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, rising gas prices, and the stock market, Bartiromo appeared bug-eyed as she attempted to steer the interview back on track to her initial question about the domestic impact of Trump’s war.
“So, do you believe the price of oil and gas will be lower before the midterm elections?” she asked.
“I hope so,” Trump replied. “I mean, I think so.”
“It could be, it could be the same, or maybe a little bit higher, but it should be around the same. I think this won’t be that much longer. They’re wiped out. They’re wiped out,” he added.
Also during their Sunday chat, the president peddled election conspiracies, one of his favorite topics.
“Under Biden, who was an incompetent president, he was grossly incompetent,” Trump said. “Look, the election was rigged. You know that. I know that. Everybody knows that now.”
Bartiromo, 58, appeared to respond, “Yup.”
After being falsely accused of rigging the 2020 election, Dominion, a voting technology company, settled a defamation lawsuit with Fox News for $787.5 million in 2023.
