Air Force C32-A
><Ahead of the Labor Department’s latest inflation numbers Wednesday, Pundit-at-Large Stephen Macaulay has arguments with the Trump administration’s claims of US manufacturing and wage gains. Don’t miss contributing pundit reaction in the left column and Rich Corbett’s pro-Trump commentary in The Gray Area.
The Art of the Quagmire – President Trump is going “low-key” on negotiations with Iran even as the two sides argue about who owes whom for the four- to six-week war now in its 20th week.
Trump told reporters Monday he wants Iran to pay the US reparations, NPR reports.
“We’re going to ask for money for damage they’ve done over a 50-year period,” Trump said, after Iran’s Supreme National Security Council Secretary Mohammed Bagher Zolghadr demanded reparations from the US in a multi-point offer Saturday that brought the two sides no closer together.
Washington Post columnist and senior fellow in national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations Max Boot told Morning Edition that Trump’s tactics in the war, in which he has flipped between negotiations and threats of annihilation at least seven times in 20 weeks, is “guaranteed to fail.” While the president sees it as a “brilliant” negotiating tactic, Iran sees it as confusing and incoherent, he says.
•••
Meanwhile, at the Pump – After about a week of small, steady gas and diesel price declines, the prices have ticked up Tuesday, according to the AAA. National average for a gallon of unleaded regular is $4.0116 Tuesday, up a quarter of a penny over Monday and up 1.2096 over February 27. Diesel is $5.3213 per gallon Tuesday, up 2.17 cents over Monday and +$1.5975 over late February.
•••
Tuesday’s Primaries – Wisconsin, Minnesota, South Carolina, Connecticut, Vermont and Alabama hold midterm primaries August 11.
•••
What’s on the Flight Menu? – President Trump switched from his new über-luxurious Qatari-gifted Boeing 747-8 to his old, über-fortified Air Force One 747 on his return flight July 8 from a NATO summit with world leaders in Ankara, Turkey, after credible threats of an attack by Iran.
Or so we were told.
It seems a third aircraft and an airport catering truck served as Air Force One for the return flight, The Washington Post scoops, citing material it reviewed as well as an official familiar with the operation and another person with knowledge of Trump’s travel. The president was “secretly shuttled” from the old, über-fortified Air Force One 747 – already the alternative to the ex-Qatar Air Force One -- to an Air Force C-32A by hiding him in an airport catering truck, according to the report.
A Pentagon spokesman referred the WaPo’s questions about the operation to the White House, which publicly has repeated its account that Trump returned to the US aboard the good old blue-and-white Boeing 747. Compiled and edited by Todd Lassa