‘Trump didn’t have time to explain the war to Americans!’ | Simon Marks’ American Week

Never mind the full week, President Trump has been on quite a journey just over the last five days.Let's pull back to Monday afternoon, when CNBC's anchor, Eamon Javers, gave him a call on that much -coveted cell phone number that Washington reporters have been scrambling to get hold of, and the president picked up.Mr. Javers takes it from there.

We had this report at the top of the day today that the Iranians were actually breaking off negotiations with the United States.That moved oil markets, and so that's what I asked the president, I said, do you think the negotiations are over now or is this a bluff by the Iranians?The president said, I don't care if they're over, honestly.I really don't care.I couldn't care less.If they're over, they're over.

If they're not, you know, I think they took too much time.Frankly, I think they started to get a little boring.

Oh, the talks got a little boring.That, by the way, was hauntingly familiar, because back in March, less than a month after he began his strategy -free war on Iran, the president's officials were privately telling reporters he was already getting bored with it.Imagine how bored he must be now it's June.If only he had an Xbox instead of access to the largest military arsenal in the world.We could all have been spared a lot of hassle, and American motorists could still be paying two bucks a gallon.But he doesn't, they're not, and he appeared to concede in his conversation with Mr. Javers that they won't be for a long time to come.

He said ultimately if the Iranians were want to try and have a nuclear weapon, I will blow them up to kingdom come.He said what this is all about for him is a strongly held conviction that the Iranians should not ever be allowed to have a nuclear weapon and that American voters will tolerate higher gas prices as long as they know what the goal is here.

But they don't know what the goal is here.First, because that strongly held conviction that Iran was on the brink of getting a nuclear weapon is not supported by any evidence.And the president himself said last month that he didn't have time to explain the conflict to American voters.If it sounds like you get more maturity from a four -year -old, take a listen to what happened yesterday in the Oval Office.Pete Doocy, chief White House correspondent for Fox News, had heard whispers that the president might agree to a face -to -face meeting with Iran's new supreme leader.I mean, that wouldn't be boring at all.

would it?

I'd be OK with it.

Would that happen here in the US?

Oh, I don't know.I haven't really heard too much about it.I didn't suggest it, but some people have suggested it.If it happened, it would be happened.I'd be respectful.

But in what passes these days for Washington reporters holding power to account, Mr. Ducey pressed him.Did the president think that the new Supreme Leader might have a beef with him because he'd ordered the killing of the old Supreme Leader, who was his dad?

Well, I would say I'm not his favorite person.But with that being said, he's probably a professional.I don't know.He's probably a professional.In some circles, he has a very good reputation, actually.You know, sometimes people say bad, but a lot of people say bad about me.

It's totally false, of course.

Now, I could remind you that the president has previously described the new supreme leader as unacceptable and a lightweight, and that he has also publicly questioned on numerous occasions whether Mojtaba Khamenei is even still alive.Or I could just ask you again.How did we get here, to a place where an American president who has, on a whim, sent the entire global economy into an unnecessary crisis, now can't really be bothered to clean up the mess he has created because he's bored by negotiations with Iran?Let's see how his Secretary of State and possible successor, Mark Zuckerberg,couched things when he testified this week on Capitol Hill.He's being questioned here by Senator Cory Booker, a Democrat from New Jersey.

Iran has lost a substantial percentage of their missile launchers, and their economy is far worse today, and I mean far worse today, than it was six to nine months ago.And they are looking at hundreds of billions of dollars of reconstruction costs just to get to where they were six months ago.

Mr. Rubio, you keep telling us how we're winning this war.The president keeps saying - Well, the war's over now.Completely annihilated.The war is not over.And yet the American people see how we're losing at the pump and with their costs, and yet this thing still hasn't been resolved.

Now, there is another narrative possible here that while the American people are suffering, as Senator Booker indicated, in fact, the country's ruling elite is doing just fine, more than fine in many cases.First, the president's mates in the oil industry are making out like bandits.America, as he likes to remind us regularly, is now the world's largest producer of oil.It's responsible for almost a fifth of daily global production.And the country's oil majors are therefore therefore coining it, and will do unless and until those boring negotiations find a way of getting the Strait of Hormuz reopened.Meanwhile, evidence has been growing that the Trump family is also benefiting financially during this crisis.

You know what's crazy?The President of the United States trading stocks.We all know people in Washington should not be playing the stock market.It's pretty basic.

That is Senator Mark Kelly, a Democrat from Arizona, blowing the whistle on the news that President Trump's personal stock market portfolio has benefited from thousands of trades this year, including buying gobloads of shares in Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, and Northrop Grumman, three of the country's largest stocks.suppliers.

Came out recently that Trump made hundreds of millions of dollars in stock trades since the start of this year.Literally thousands of trades.And not only is he trading these stocks, he's using his platform to promote the same companies that he's invested in.It's blatant corruption and it's abuse of his office so he can become richer.

Now, the White House says there's nothing to see here.The president has nothing to do with his account.It's allegedly in the hands of third parties.They have the sole and exclusive authority to make investment decisions on his behalf.In which case, I'd like to meet them, because my microscopic portfolio could certainly benefit from their stewardship.It is also important to underscore that Democrats are no slouches when it comes to making remarkably prescient investment decisions of their own.

Nancy Pelosi, the former Speaker of the House, is so good at it that there's even a company that allows you to invest in an account that mirrors every single trade she makes.But let's get back to the Trumps plural, because this week we got fresh evidence that never mind the working stiffs in the rest of America, for the president's daughter Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner, life is a financial dream.

I'm working on an incredible project with my husband in the Mediterranean.It's massive in scale.

I think that's an understatement.

Can you explain?Yes, it is.

There's no power on this island.You're building everything from scratch.

Correct.Well, it's an unbelievable, beautiful, 1 ,400 hectare private island in the middle of the Mediterranean.We were on a friend's boat.and we stopped for a swim.Effectively, that's how we found it.We swam to the islands.

We went on a hike, barefoot all the way up to the top, and we were justcaptivated.

Now let me just emphasize here that this weekend, millions of Americans will be struggling to pay for their groceries, their airfares, and a tank full of unleaded.Food poverty is real in the United States.Credit card delinquencies are soaring to their highest rates in a decade.The numbers of people taking loans from their retirement accounts has reached levels where even the IRS, America's equivalent of HMRC, is warning people not to do it.But for Ivanka Trump, and Jared Kushner, it's just a great time to be in the proximity of power.

I was on a vacation after we left government in the summer of 2021.We were on our friend Nat Rothschild's boat.We got picked up in Montenegro, and then we started sailing over to Corfu.And we spent a couple of days in Albania.One of the nights there, Prime Minister Rama came to the boat.I had not met him when I was in government.

But I was very, very impressed with his vision for what he wanted to do with Albania.I really didn't know anything about the country.I didn't understand the history.And the darkness of the history with the communism and the terrible leadership actually led to it being fully undeveloped.

Let's just stop in there for a second to dwell not on the casual Nat Rothschild name drop, but on the astonishing gaps in Jared Kushner's knowledge.The bloke who is back in government now, negotiating with the Iranians, the Saudis and Vladimir Putin, discloses that he never knew Albania was a Stalinist hellhole cut off for decades from the rest of Europe.by brutal dictator Enver Hoxha.Makes you wonder what else he doesn't know, but he definitely senses personal opportunity when it knocks.

And then about a year later, we started looking at opportunities in the Balkans, and the partner who's leading that effort, I said, you know what, let's go down to Albania.I had such a good experience there, go check it out.See if there's something there.And we were immediately drawn to where they were building an airport in Vlore.And obviously, a country is going to build an airport by the coast in the place that they think is the most beautiful.So we went there, we looked for opportunities, and we were able to find some incredible, incredible opportunities.

Don't you just love it when life works out and you can build a $1 .6 billion off -grid resort, marina, and residential complex on your own private island in the Mediterranean?Well, it turns out the Albanians don't love it.All week long, thousands of people have taken to growing protests in the Albanian capital, Tirana, demonstrating against the government's agreement with the Trumps and clashing with security forces.They mobilised after the site was sealed off with razor wire and bulldozers moved in.Protest leaders say there has been no public consultation and they claim the project is a threat to the island's rich biodiversity.Prime Minister Rama said this week, there is absolutely no chance that the investment will stop as long as he remains in power, which is only making demonstrators more determined to try and force him out.

It should not be lost on any of us, I think, that in the United States 250th birthday year, the Albanian people are proving to be more exercised over public corruption than the Americans.Yes, we've had the no kings rallies, but 16 months into this presidency, second term, the White House is not being besieged by daily protests, despite alleged corruption and influence peddling that is taking place in plain sight.Venality is a modern American hallmark.But in some places, it seems, there isn't much of an export market for it.