How are you “monitoring the situation,” four days into the joint US-Israeli offensive against Iran? Our Commander-in-Chief has adopted an unorthodox approach: evading the press in person as the strikes and counterstrikes fall, while taking phone calls from basically any journalist with his personal number.

By Cockburn’s count, President Trump has given at least 20 “exclusive” telephone interviews to reporters since the early hours of Saturday morning. Old habits die hard. The starting gun was fired by the Washington Post’s Natalie Allison and Tara Copp at 4 a.m., three hours after the bombs started to hit. “All I want is freedom for the people,” Trump told them. Since then, he’s offered a variety of other reasons for US involvement. The strikes were “a great thing for our country,” Trump told MS NOW’s Mychael Schnell and Laura Barrón-López late Saturday. “MAGA loves what I’m doing – every aspect of it,” he said to Rachael Bade yesterday.

Trump has also taken calls from: ABC (twice), the Atlantic, Axios, Israel’s Channel 14, CNBC, CNN, the Daily Mail, the Daily Wire, Fox News (twice), the New York Times, News Nation, Politico, the Sun, the Telegraph and the Washington Reporter (three times).

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