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Foreign. 2026 as we enter the summer months, we're hitting the ground running. There's so much news today, I'm going to have to let some of it splash over into tomorrow to do it justice. For today, Iran and its role in the president's deteriorating mental condition are going to take center stage. Over the weekend, there were what I'm going to have to call the usual reports of an imminent agreement between the US And Iran to end hostilities with the usual outcome. Last week, the US and Iran appeared to be making headway on a 60 day memorandum of understanding to continue the ceasefire and to establish a framework for further talks about Iran's nuclear program. But President Donald J. Trump is caught between a rock and a hard place in these negotiations. His base demands that he look strong and accomplish what, after the initial strikes failed, he claimed to have started the war for to make sure Iran doesn't have the capacity to produce a nuclear weapon. He also needs to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, which was open before he began the strikes, and get oil flowing again from that region of the Middle East. Prices in the US Are rising, and the looming threat of oil reserves running out adds even more pressure to consumer prices. And Congress returns to work tomorrow, raising the possibility that lawmakers will pass a war powers resolution requiring Trump to withdraw American forces from the region. House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican of Louisiana, sent House members home a day early before the Memorial Day holiday out of concern such a measure would pass. But Iran is in no hurry to throw Trump a lifeline. Their negotiators now maintain they have a right to control the Strait of Hormuz. They're demanding reparations for the damage inflicted in the country during the war, and they say they won't negotiate over the nuclear program until there is a ceasefire. But these conditions are all problematic for Trump's negotiators. Permitting Iran to control the strait is not just about oil. It's about the principle of freedom of the seas, set out after World War II. Global trade depends on that concept. The exchange of money is also a problem for Trump. He has spent much of his political life attacking the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action that China, France, Germany, Russia, the uk, the US and the European Union negotiated with Iran during the Obama administration, claiming that former President Obama gave Iran $1.7 billion. In fact, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action simply permitted the release of Iranian assets frozen overseas by sanctions. But much of Trump's base believes that Obama showed weakness by buying an agreement. And then there is the nuclear issue. So what has tended to happen in negotiations is that the teams come up with a framework, details leak to the media and Trump's base hears that Trump has weakened on some of his maximalist demands. They complain. Trump then posts something false about the talks or incendiary about Iran and the negotiations fall apart and the cost of the war in both lives and treasure and the pressure on US Consumers and the economy continue to mount. Last Friday, Trump and his advisers spent two hours discussing the latest round of negotiations in the Situation Room. According to Erica Solomon and Farnaz Fasihi of the New York Times, that agreement included the release of about $24 billion in frozen Iranian assets and and a post war investment fund to rebuild Iran, with one diplomat telling the journalists the number on the table was $300 billion. Talks about Iran's nuclear program would be deferred. On Friday morning, Trump posted once again that the strait would be opened and that Iran must never have a nuclear weapon. But then he emerged from the Situation Room without the final determination on the agreement he had promised. On Saturday, Mohsin Rezai, one of the advisers to Iran's supreme leader, posted, as predicted, the President of the United States is betraying diplomacy for the third time. Over the weekend, Trump's social media account posted repeated attacks on Democrats and on the judges who have been deciding against him in legal cases. He posted long defenses of his alterations to monuments in Washington, D.C. and AI images of Capitol landmarks covered in trash and graffiti juxtaposed with ones gleaming and fresh, with captions that blame Democrats for the former and praise Trump for the latter. His posts seem designed primarily to reassure himself. By Saturday, so many of the musical acts his team had lined up to play at his Freedom 250 Great American State Fair from late June through the beginning of July had had bailed that Trump posted that he was thinking about bringing the number one attraction anywhere in the world, the man who gets much larger audiences than Elvis in his prime and he does so without a guitar. The man who loves our country more than anyone else and the man who some say is the greatest president in history, the goat Donald J. Trump. To take the place of these highly paid third rate artists and give a major speech rallying the country forward like I have done ever since being president, he continued. Two years ago the United States was dead. Now we have the hottest country anywhere in the world. I don't want so called artists that get paid far too much money who aren't happy. I only want to be surrounded by happy people, smart people, successful people and people that know how to win. So by copy of this truth, I am ordering my representatives to look at the feasibility of doing an America is Back rally On Wednesday, Washington D.C. same time, same location, only great patriots invited. It will be a wild and beautiful celebration of America President Donald J. Trump. It was an odd echo of his December 19, 2020 tweet calling his base to Washington D.C. in which he wrote Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there. We'll be wild. Odder still was what followed image after image of Trump as a great leader. There were images of Trump alongside first President George Washington, one of them showing the two presidents riding horses together in colonial garb beside a race car with Trump across the hood, the White House in the background and the space shuttle overhead. In an AI image, Trump is dunking a basketball over an exhausted New York governor Kathy Hochul, a Democrat. In another image, he and Patriots football player Tom Brady stand talking backlit under a caption that reads Goat. There were pictures of Trump kissing the American flag, Mount Rushmore with Trump sculpture in line with those of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln, who look somewhat alarmed. Trump apparently as a superhero admiral with armor on his chest that bears an American eagle. Trump standing near King Charles Trump with China's President Xi Jinping. A series of AI images in the style of the 1950s Dick and Jane readers show a town parade festooned with flags and patriotic bunting, little girls laughing together at an old fashioned town fair and little boys in a suburb playing ball. All of the images read America is back and in them all of the people are white. He posted an image of a white family from that era standing beside a Cadillac Coupe de Ville parked on a suburban street, with the caption billions were spent to convince you this is evil. Then Trump's account posted a series of images contrasting his vision of Biden's America versus his own. In his images, Biden's world was one of theft, illegal squatting, violence and illegal immigration. The images of Trump's solutions to these problems showed people imprisoned, arrested and deported. At 102 this morning, Trump posted, iran really wants to make a deal and it will be a good one for the USA and those that are with us. But don't the Democrats and various seemingly unpatriotic Republicans understand that it is much tougher for me to properly do my job and negotiate when political hacks keep negatively chirping at levels never seen before over and over again, that I should move faster or move slower or go to war or not go to war or Whatever. Just sit back and relax. It will all work out in the end. It always does. President DJT A minute later his account posted has anyone ever seen a happy dumb ocrat? Then later this morning, Iranian officials said they were suspending negotiations with the US Until Israel, which entered the war alongside the US stops its strikes on Lebanon. Strikes they say violate the ceasefire agreement. They warned they would close the Strait of Hormuz entirely. A few ships have been making the transit and move against the Bab El Mandeb Strait at the outlet of the Red Sea as well. On cnbc, Trump told Eamon Javers that he doesn't care if peace negotiations with Iran end. I couldn't care less, he said. Negotiations were starting to get very boring. But oil prices jumped sharply with the announcement of the suspension and the threat to the Bob El Mandeb. And at 1:43 in the afternoon, Trump posted talks are continuing at a rapid pace with the Islamic Republic of Iran. At 5:47 he posted on social media that he had spoken with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and indirectly with Hezbollah, and that they both agreed to stop striking each other. The Pentagon has been trying to control information coming out about its actions for months now, but that effort is now ramping up. This afternoon, Scott Nover of the Washington Post reported that the Pentagon has designated its press office as a classified space, a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, or scif, and even those journalists who have not had their press badges rescinded will require an appointment to talk to the press secretary.
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Letters from an American was written and read by Heather Cox Richardson. It was produced at Soundscape Productions, Dead in Massachusetts, recorded with music composed by Michael Moss.