Lawrence: Trump sounded like ‘spoiled child’ in trying to negotiate out of war he claims he’s won

The man who started the most expensive war in history without being able to explain why continued to sound like a spoiled child today when he claimed he was trying to negotiate his way out of the war that he started.

Are you negotiating on who's going to control this trade from now on?

No, we'll have control of anything we want.

We'll have control of anything we want. He wants to control the Strait of Hormuz now, and he doesn't. And he doesn't know how to get control of the Straits. Donald Trump finds himself now waging a war to try to gain control of the Strait of Hormuz that was free and open to shipping before Donald Trump started his war. So the objective of his war is to achieve something that existed before his war. Donald Trump started his war

and Iran effectively shut down shipping on the Strait of Hormuz. And now Donald Trump is continuing to fight his war to open the Strait of Hormuz and claiming we'll have control of anything we want. That has not been true in the aftermath

of an American war since World War II. And it took millions of American troops, along with even larger numbers of troops from American allies, plus two atomic bombs for the United States to decisively win World War II and almost get control of everything we wanted. Even then, we did not get control of anything we want in Germany, because the Soviet Union, fighting as our ally

in that war with a much larger army than we ever had and millions more casualties than we suffered, blocked the United States from full control of Germany. And so, if Iran was gonna give Donald Trump complete control of anything. And so if Iran was going to give Donald Trump complete control of anything he wants, they would have surrendered already. That is not going to happen. But Donald Trump

is going to continue to lie about what is happening and what will happen with Donald Trump's war polling the lowest of any American war in its first month. And Donald Trump is now hitting new lows in the polls because of his war. Donald Trump is looking desperately for a way out that will not look like total surrender on his part. And so he orders thousands of troops

to start moving toward the Middle East, just toward the Middle East, with a report tonight of 2,000 82nd Airborne Soldiers being deployed to the Middle East. 2,000 American soldiers heading in the same direction as a few thousand Marines are, according to our own military history, capable of achieving nothing in a country of 90 million people. Iran is a country of 90 million people that has more combat-ready soldiers in Iran than

the entire United States Army. There are 600,000 in active military service in Iran, with another possibly 500,000 reserves. And the entire United States Army has 450,000 soldiers, most of whom are not assigned to the infantry to serve in combat, to actually be the boots on the ground that the reporters are all talking about. And remember, at the peak, the absolute peak of our commitment in Vietnam, we had 545,000

soldiers on the ground in Vietnam. And we lost that war. And Vietnam had a population of less than half the population of Iran. And, of course, a military miracle could happen. Two thousand American soldiers could make a move on Karg Island, 20 miles off of the Iranian coast. And then maybe the entire Iranian army could just surrender or flee the way the 165,000 members of the Afghanistan military did when the Taliban rose up against them.

But military history, American military history tells us that miracles aside, a few thousand troops headed in the direction of a country of 90 million people at war with the United States cannot accomplish very much and definitely cannot win that war. So the boots on the ground question that the White House reporters keep asking is always phrased in the simplistic, childish way. Will there be American boots on the ground in Iran? The White House press corps assumes, I guess, that we have enough boots

to send to Iran. And we don't. Not even close. And Iran knows that. Germany had a population of 70 million people in 1942 in the middle of World War Two, a population smaller than Iran's current population. And for the United States of America to defeat Germany in World War II, the United States had to recruit and draft millions of soldiers to send to Europe. And they weren't enough. General Dwight Eisenhower, who became President Eisenhower, led not just an American military

invasion of Europe to crush Germany. He led an allied invasion, allied invasion, because the United States of America could not do it alone. And our biggest ally in defeating Germany was actually the Soviet Union, which was fighting the German military on the other side of the country, on the eastern side of Germany, while Dwight Eisenhower was sending millions of troops toward Germany through France. Millions to defeat and occupy a country with a smaller population than Iran. And so if you're going to ask one of those cliche White House press corps boots

on the ground questions to Donald Trump, ask him if he has a way of getting 500,000 boots on the ground now that he has no European allies in his war with him. So far, the only way to interpret the movement of a couple of thousand troops in the direction of the Middle East is as a Trump stunt. A stunt by the person who says we'll have control of anything we want. Donald Trump is now losing ground in the polls every day. 36% of Americans approve of how Donald Trump is handling his job.

That is down four points since last week. And it's easy for me to sit here confident that Donald Trump will not be putting boots on the ground in Iran, but imagine being the parents or the spouses or the children of those thousands of soldiers headed toward Donald Trump's war tonight with the man who's

sending them there sounding more childish about his war every day. There were things that happened during wartime that American presidents chose not to discuss publicly, but they did not publicly discuss not discussing them publicly. And for Donald Trump to say that the Iranian regime that has been so cruel to the Iranian people, the Iranian regime that murdered thousands of its own people before this war started, the Iranian regime that has tried to crush the spirit of Iranian women in every way that they possibly can.

Must be so deeply offensive to those people in Iran who are opponents of the regime to hear Donald Trump talking about the Iranian regime, presumably the Ayatollah, giving him a present. Politico has this report on what Donald Trump's present could be, the present that he's so excited about. It's possible Trump was referring to a ship carrying two million barrels of Iraqi crude

that passed safely through the Strait of Hormuz, the first tanker to export Iraqi crude since Iran tightened control over the Strait, according to Bloomberg. But the White House press office declined to answer any follow up questions. Several people close to the White House said they were baffled by the president's remarks. Baffled, indeed.

One ship, one ship getting through the strait, and Donald Trump treats it like a wonderful president, a quote, very significant prize. But there's new reporting tonight from Bloomberg indicating that maybe no ship got through. Bloomberg says an oil supertanker hauling Iraqi crude whose signal appeared to show it had exited the Strait of Hormuz has not transited

the waterway, its manager said. And Donald Trump says that that present that may or may not have made it through the Strait, that very significant prize means quote we're dealing with the right people. The only people who could authorize the movement of a ship in that situation is the current Iranian ruling regime, which is exactly the same ruling regime that was in place

before Donald Trump started his war. And so Donald Trump is now desperately saying publicly that he desperately wants to negotiate with the very same regime that was in power before Donald Trump started his war, which means Donald Trump wants to negotiate to leave them in power.

The stock market and the price of oil are in control of Donald Trump's war. And Donald Trump knows that the stock market wants him to end his war. And he knows that American voters want him to end his war and so he has stopped issuing bombastic threats of him committing bombing war crimes in Iran and now says he doesn't need to do any of those things because he has already won his war. I think we're going to end it. I can't tell you for sure. You know, I don't like to say this. We've won this. This war has been won. And now the Trump voters who gave

us this presidency finally know what it feels like when Donald Trump wins a war. Here is Donald Trump's former defense secretary from his first term as president, General James Mattis, describing Donald Trump's war.

I think that what we're seeing is a situation where targetry never makes up for a lack of strategy. And by that I mean 15,000 targets have been hit, there have been significant military successes, but they are not matched by strategic outcomes. Now some of the strategic outcomes early on, unconditional surrender, regime change, we're going to dictate who the next supreme leader is. Now some of the strategic outcomes early on, unconditional surrender, regime change, we're going to dictate who the next supreme leader is. Those were clearly nonsense.