{"id":39038,"date":"2026-03-27T17:20:12","date_gmt":"2026-03-27T17:20:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/39038\/"},"modified":"2026-03-27T17:20:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-27T17:20:12","slug":"trump-jokes-rants-talks-price-of-pens-as-iran-war-enters-fifth-week","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/39038\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump jokes, rants, talks price of pens as Iran war enters fifth week"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

During his first Cabinet meeting since launching the U.S. war on Iran, President Trump spent 10 minutes talking about the price of ceremonial White House pens<\/a> \u2014 which he claimed to have brought down, from $1,000 to $5, by switching to his favored Sharpie brand.<\/p>\n

Trump was trying to make the point during the Thursday meeting that he\u2019s a great money saver. He seemed chipper, joking with the other leaders of his administration at the table.<\/p>\n

Late Thursday, when asked on \u201cThe Five\u201d on Fox News about whether Iranian people have access to basic necessities such as drinking water and food, Trump complimented the looks of Dana Perino<\/a>, the Fox host who\u2019d asked the question, compared to when he\u2019d met her years before.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow I\u2019m not allowed to say this, it\u2019s the end of my political career, but you may be even better looking, OK?\u201d Trump said. \u201cYou\u2019re not allowed to say a woman\u2019s beautiful anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n

He then talked about Iranian authorities killing protesters, but said he\u2019d been pleased with them more recently because they had given him a \u201cpresent\u201d by allowing oil ships through the Strait of Hormuz.<\/p>\n

Through both discussions, Trump maintained a flippant, casual tone \u2014 the same he has maintained since the war began a month ago, and a vast departure from that of past wartime presidents.<\/p>\n

For weeks, Trump has batted away criticisms of the war campaign and questions about why it was justified and how long it will last. He has derided reporters for asking questions about tactics and whether he\u2019ll deploy boots on the ground as inappropriate and foolish, and repeatedly met concerns about the human toll of the war by shrugging them off or changing the subject.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, his war has cost the U.S. billions of dollars<\/a> and depleted its global reserves of critical weapons systems such as Tomahawk missiles, which cost millions of dollars each and are needed to maintain U.S. security around the world, according to the Washington Post<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Entering its fifth week, the war has badly disrupted markets, with U.S. stocks falling Friday<\/a> as Wall Street approached the end of its fifth straight losing week \u2014 the longest such streak in nearly four years \u2014 and oil prices rising again.<\/p>\n

Markets have fluctuated based on Trump\u2019s changing messages on an end to the war, planned and then postponed strikes on Iran\u2019s power plants, strikes on oil and gas infrastructure across the Middle East and Iran\u2019s stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz, through which a quarter of global oil usually passes.<\/p>\n

Trump has talked in recent days about an impending deal to end the war<\/a>, but so far it has not materialized, with Iran downplaying the seriousness of the negotiations. Iran instead appeared to be formalizing its hold on the strait, including by creating what amounts to a toll on ships seeking passage through the channel from its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.<\/p>\n

The number of U.S. deaths in the conflict has held steady for days \u2014 at 13 \u2014 but the war continues to exact a daily, devastating toll in the Middle East. In Iran, thousands of targets continued being hit, with the death toll ticking toward 2,000.<\/p>\n

Speaking by video during a Human Rights Council meeting in Geneva on Friday, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi accused the United States and Israel of harboring a \u201cclear intent to commit genocide\u201d in Iran, claiming that more than 600 schools had been damaged or demolished and more than 1,000 students and teachers \u201cmartyred or wounded.\u201d<\/p>\n

The discussion related in part to a Feb. 28 strike on an elementary school in Minab that killed more than 165 people, most of them children, which evidence reportedly suggests was the work of the U.S. and which the U.S. says is under investigation.<\/p>\n

Casualties also continued in Gulf nations allied with the U.S., where Iran continues to strike U.S. military installations and other infrastructure, and in Lebanon, which Israel has invaded and bombed relentlessly in its own war with the Iranian-aligned Hezbollah force.<\/p>\n

And yet, Trump has bounced between speaking engagements and more formal meetings with an apparent lightness \u2014 seeming unbothered by the weight of the conflict and acting as if U.S. victory were already at hand.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve already won the war. Militarily we\u2019ve totally won the war,\u201d he told \u201cThe Five\u201d on Thursday.<\/p>\n

After Trump\u2019s exchange with Perino, fellow host Greg Gutfeld began to change the topic, saying, \u201cI\u2019m debating whether to be serious or not serious.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDo you think Biden would do this interview? Can you imagine? You think Biden \u2014 Sleepy Joe \u2014 he would do it?\u201d Trump said.<\/p>\n

He called the war a \u201clittle bit of a detour\u201d from what he said were his otherwise winning economic policies, and asserted again \u2014 without providing evidence \u2014 that Iran was on the cusp of having a nuclear weapon and would have used it to cause devastation across the Middle East and to the U.S. if the U.S. hadn\u2019t struck first, including when it bombed Iran\u2019s nuclear sites last summer.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t let a madman or you can\u2019t let a mad ideology have a nuclear weapon,\u201d Trump said.<\/p>\n

He repeated his long-pushed lie that he won the 2020 election, and suggested his support among his MAGA base remains at 100%.<\/p>\n

An AP-NORC poll this week found that most Americans believe that the U.S. military campaign in Iran has gone too far<\/a> \u2014 including about a quarter of Republicans \u2014 and that many are worried about gas prices.<\/p>\n

During his Cabinet meeting<\/a> Thursday, Trump seemed supremely confident, but also aware that the conflict was far from settled.<\/p>\n

He said that the U.S. was \u201cextremely \u2014 really a lot \u2014 ahead of schedule\u201d in its war effort, and that \u201cthe Iranian regime is now admitting to itself that they have been decisively defeated.\u201d But he also said that \u201ceven now, we don\u2019t know if there are any mines\u201d in the Strait of Hormuz, despite the U.S. having wiped out Iran\u2019s \u201cmine droppers,\u201d and acknowledged that \u201cif you think there may be a mine, that\u2019s a bad thought and it stops things up.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said the U.S. has \u201cdecimated\u201d about 99% of Iranian capabilities, but \u201cthe problem with the strait\u201d is that the remaining 1% threat \u201cis unacceptable, because 1% is a missile going into the hull of a ship that cost $1 billion.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cIf we do a 99% decimation, that\u2019s no good,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

During \u201cThe Five\u201d interview, Trump was also asked if the CIA had told him that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei \u2014 who took on the Iranian leadership role after his father, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed in initial strikes \u2014 is gay, which would be a crime under Iranian law. <\/p>\n

\u201cWell they did say that, but I don\u2019t know if it was only them. I think a lot of people are saying that. Which puts him off to a bad start in that particular country, you know?\u201d Trump said, in a stunning acknowledgment of a previously rumored intelligence briefing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"During his first Cabinet meeting since launching the U.S. war on Iran, President Trump spent 10 minutes talking…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":39039,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[11130,16968,2871,102,34,196,3590,49,16969,722,7949,1219,680,16970,16966,16967],"class_list":{"0":"post-39038","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-iran","8":"tag-end","9":"tag-fifth-week","10":"tag-five","11":"tag-hormuz","12":"tag-iran","13":"tag-iran-war","14":"tag-iranian-people","15":"tag-middle-east","16":"tag-oil-ship","17":"tag-president-trump","18":"tag-question","19":"tag-strait","20":"tag-strike","21":"tag-u-s-military-installation","22":"tag-u-s-war","23":"tag-u-s-death"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116302291152187468","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39038","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39038"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39038\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39039"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}