The Memo: Trump’s unpredictability roils waters from Iran to Capitol Hill |
The Memo: Trump’s unpredictability roils waters from Iran to Capitol Hill
President Trump’s long-established trait of unpredictability is affecting two huge issues at home and abroad.
On Iran, Trump went from setting a 48-hour deadline for an attack on Iran’s power stations to a public postponement of such actions and a suggestion that he is preparing to bring the curtain down on the war.
On the partial government shutdown, Trump had suggested that any deal on new funding should be tied to progress on separate voting legislation he wants — the SAVE America Act.
But Trump appears to have abruptly reversed himself in a Monday evening meeting with a group of GOP senators, apparently deciding no such linkage is necessary after all.
Trump’s change of heart on the latter topic appears so complete that he is open to some kind of nascent compromise, which would see funding restored for the Department of Homeland Security as a whole, but with the most controversial element — money for certain activities by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) — to be decided at a later date.
The two abrupt changes have left allies and adversaries alike unsure what Trump is intending to do.
His most ardent defenders insist there is method to his volatility, helping him wrong-foot his opponents and ultimately seal deals.
“A lot of the things he does are just for negotiation purposes, and he’s really good at negotiation,” Barry Bennett, who worked as a senior advisor on Trump’s 2016 campaign, told this column. “He will throw something out that he really doesn’t want, which he’s willing to trade away to get what he wants.”
Bennett insisted confusion arises only for those who are “naive enough” to think Trump is making policy pronouncements rather than setting out a position as part of a dealmaking process.
Even so, the trait draws consternation even among some people who are broadly supportive of the president but who can be left out on a limb.
In the case of Iran, the war that began on Feb. 28 has been bedeviled by shifting messaging from Trump, particularly regarding why he believed there was a threat so imminent as to require military attack, and whether the downfall of the Islamic Republic is an integral part of the war aims.
In an interview broadcast on Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) was asked by co-anchor Jonathan Karl what he understood the “primary objective” of the war in Iran to be.
“I don’t know, and I think it’s a real problem,” Tillis responded.
Meanwhile, liberal critics are scathing of Trump’s approach. Democratic strategist Mark Longabaugh told this column that Trump “stuck his neck out too far” with the threat of new attacks on Iranian energy infrastructure that could have caused more shocks to the global economy.
“I think people with a lot more common sense got to him and said, ‘The markets are crashing, oil is going through the roof and you are digging way too deep on this one,'” Longabaugh said. “There’s no ‘Art of the Deal’ here.”
Trump aides had insisted there were four clear objectives for the war: inflicting serious damage on the Iranian navy, thwarting Iran’s nuclear ambitions, impairing its ballistic missile capabilities and stopping it from aiding radical proxy groups in the region.
Trump rephrased some of those objectives in a Friday social media post, to which he also appended a fifth goal: “Protecting … our Middle Eastern allies.”
Then, on Tuesday, Trump declared that regime change had in fact already been achieved in Iran.
“We have, really, regime change. You know, this is a change in the regime. Because the leaders are all very different than the ones that we started off with,” the president told reporters covering the swearing-in of new Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin.
What has occurred in Iran so far does not come close to meeting the usual definition of regime change.
Although Iran’s then-supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed by Israel on the first day of the war, he has been succeeded by his son, Mojtaba Khamenei. The overall hold of the Islamic regime on power does not appear to have loosened appreciably so far.
Trump’s abrupt change of tone on Monday morning, when he withdrew the threat to Iranian power plants for five days, sparked a relief rally on the stock market and a precipitous fall in the price of oil.
But as uncertainty lingered, those effects were diluted on Tuesday. The three major American stock indexes all fell, and the cost of Brent crude oil once again zig-zagged, at one point rising above $104.
Meanwhile, in Iran, there is suspicion over Trump’s supposed moves toward peace and fear that his postponement could in fact be a bluff designed to buy time for more U.S. troops to arrive in the region.
At home, the attempt to secure funding for the Department of Homeland Security was roiled by Trump’s Sunday evening assertion that the GOP should strike no deal with Democrats “unless, and until, they Vote with Republicans to pass ‘THE SAVE AMERICA ACT.’”
This never looked likely to happen, but it still came as a shock to Beltway observers when Trump seemed to lift the roadblock as fast as he had erected it.
Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.), asked by reporters at the Capitol whether her group had a solution at hand to the partial shutdown after meeting with Trump on Monday evening, replied, “We do.”
Trump was asked about the topic at Mullin’s swearing-in on Tuesday.
Referring to the idea of a compromise, he said: “I’m going to look at it. We’re going to take a good, hard look at it. I want to support Republicans.”
Alluding to the difficulty in passing the voting-related legislation, Trump added, “Sometimes it’s awfully hard to get votes when you have Democrats that don’t want to have voter ID, they don’t want to have proof of citizenship.”
Democrats contend that measures in Trump’s voting legislation would have the effect of placing undue burdens on people to register to vote, in effect disenfranchising millions of Americans.
As is often the case with Trump, however, the specific details seem less important than what success he can claim, or what blame he can place upon his opponents.
For friends and foes alike, the question is always whether Trump’s current position can be relied upon — or whether there are new, sudden shifts yet to come.
The Memo is a reported column by Niall Stanage.
Copyright 2026 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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The Memo: Trump’s unpredictability roils waters from Iran to Capitol Hill
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