Iran War Update & other news

On tonight’s show, I’ll start with Iran, because that’s still the story driving everything else.

The Trump administration is trying to sell the idea that peace may be right around the corner, even as US and Iranian forces are still clashing in the Gulf, the UAE is under renewed attack, and US forces just hit two empty Iranian-flagged oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman. So which is it? Are we on the verge of a deal, or are we escalating the war?

And now we’ve got Joe Kent saying the US intelligence community assessed before the war that Iran wasn’t developing a nuclear weapon, and that attacking Iran would likely lead to exactly what we’re seeing now: attacks on US bases, threats to the Strait of Hormuz, and a strengthened hardline regime. In other words, the experts warned them. They did it anyway. And now Trump is reportedly bored with the war and desperately looking for an off-ramp.

Then I’ll get into the economy, because Trump’s Iran mess doesn’t stay in the Gulf. It comes home in gas prices, inflation, and family budgets. Trump keeps claiming everything is great -- consumer confidence is “way up,” gas prices are “way down,” the economy is roaring. Except consumer sentiment just hit a post-1952 record low for the second straight month, gas is averaging $4.54 after being $2.73 in January, and families are looking at $4,000 summer vacations and deciding to stay home. The jobs report was better than expected, yes, but that just means the Fed is now focused even more squarely on inflation. And while ordinary Americans are cutting back, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy apparently managed to take a seven-month family road-trip vacation to film a reality show while still holding his full-time Cabinet job. It's good to be king.

In legitimately terrible news, Republicans just got a huge redistricting gift in Virginia, making the Democratic path to the House harder even though Trump is unpopular and Republicans still have no coherent message. Trump’s billion-dollar ballroom “security” money is already in trouble because even Republicans know this vote is political poison. We’ve got a hantavirus outbreak on a cruise ship after RFK Jr. fired the CDC unit that handled cruise outbreaks, and Trump’s answer is basically, “hope it’s under control.”