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President Trump sat down for an interview with Axios White House reporter Marc Caputo this week, in which he said he has not yet “learned” the limits to his presidential powers — if they even exist.
“There are no limits. None. I haven’t learned that lesson yet. I know there are. But, you know, there are no limits,” Trump said, before claiming about the war in Iran, “We defeated them totally, militarily.” The president went on to brag about the naval blockade he oversaw as well as the Memorandum of Understanding.
“Who else could have done a blockade like that? I did a naval blockade where not one ship was able to get through,” Trump asserted. “Some tried. They didn’t last very long.” Caputo, for his part, pushed back against Trump, noting that the president’s bar for victory at the start of the war in late February was “unconditional surrender.” (The MOU that his administration negotiated with Iran does not, by most critics’ accounts, imply unconditional surrender).
“Well, it really probably is unconditional surrender,” the president nonetheless told Caputo. On Friday, the Axios reporter joined the hosts of MS NOW’s “Morning Joe” to offer some further insight into the comments the president made to him.
“His general attitude was very positive, despite all of the negative commentary and pushback over the deal. The president seems pretty relieved because he has an exit here,” Caputo said. “He’s looking at two things: He’s looking at the stock market and he’s looking at the price of oil, and the price of oil is down.”
“At one point, he said, ‘It’s a gusher,’ as if he literally struck oil through this deal because of the price lowering,” he further explained. “That really impressed me, because it just shows what Trump is really focused on.”
The Axios journalist was also asked about the ripple effects this could all have on the midterm elections, considering the resolution has displeased members of both the Republican and Democratic parties.
“The argument they’re going to make is, ‘Look, everyone was complaining about gas prices. Well, gas prices are coming back down. Therefore, what the president is proposing is a good idea,’” Caputo said. “That might be a challenging argument for his opponents and his critics to push back on.”
“The American people don’t really pay a lot of attention to the finer points of foreign policy and these various points of the MOU. They’re focused on their lives,” he concluded. “You can see what the price of fuel is doing, and it’s been up. People don’t like [that], and now it’s going to come down. The president’s hope is, as a result of that coming down, the fortunes of Republicans increase.”
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