Good evening and welcome to Washington Week.

The New York Times polling average shows that 58% of Americans disapprove of President Trump's job performance, a new high that can be largely attributed to voters economic concerns.

Can the president manage the straight of her moves and his sagging approval ratings at the same time?

Joining us tonight to discuss this and more, Annie Linsky is a White House reporter at the Wall Street Journal.

Sunman Kim is a White House reporter for the Associated Press.

Tyler Pager is a White House correspondent at the New York Times and Ivan Winet Sanchez is a staff writer at the Atlantic.

I bet you're jealous that you're not a White House correspondent.

We can make you White House correspondent.

You can make me anything you want.

Yeah.

Ivonne actually is visiting us from Phoenix.

She lives in America and is going to talk to us about what she sees actually in America.

So, that's very exciting.

Um, let me Tarla, let me start with with you.

the approval ratings um especially on the economy.

They're they're they're slipping fairly quickly into fairly red zone territory.

So you're you're well all of you are in the White House every day talking to them.

Uh what's the level of worry?

I mean there's obviously concern publicly they are trying to downplay that concern and say there's months till the midterms.

voters are not locking in until the summer and their hope is that the president gets this conflict under control and prices start to go down.

But we've seen time and time again.

Voters one, two, three concern is the economy that Donald Trump came back to the White House on a message about lowering prices and we're seeing the exact opposite happening.

So there is clearly concern and we're seeing that in the body language of Donald Trump, the way that he is talking about this and for as much as they are trying to tamp it down publicly, it's obviously dictating the way in which he's behaving because Republicans don't want to lose control of Congress.

And I think there was a lot of optimism that Democrats could take back the House, but these numbers are putting the Senate in play as well.

um something.

Do they really have months?

I mean, this idea that people don't lock in until the summer.

What's getting locked in now is the perception that gas costs too much, food costs too much, that the Iran war is not being won.

Yeah.

Particularly when you have his top cabinet officials talking about how gas prices may not go down for a long time, even if President Trump disagrees with that assessment from the energy secretary, Chris Wright.

But there is certainly a lot of concern, you know, throughout Washington, Republicans, about their prospects in the midterms.

And I would point to just what we saw on Tuesday with the Virginia redistricting referendum.

You know, we still have to wait to see what the local courts say about that map, whether it's constitutional under Virginia law.

But if that map stands, I mean, that could be the game on its own in terms of uh in terms of Democrats gaining the House majority.

Um you know, you're talking about sentiments from the White House.

James Blair, the former deputy chief of staff now leading the midterm effort, uh, said on CNN this week that it's too soon to declare defeat, but I do think that is an acknowledgement.

That's really not that is a challenge there.

Um, I think Republicans know they have a really big uphill uphill hurdle.

I I want to come back to the gerrymandering uh issue.

We're going to do a 40-minute slide deck presentation for our viewers on on gerrymandering, but I want to stay on on the gas prices and Iran for the moment.

Annie, you wrote u this week a pretty remarkable story with Josh Dossi about the president's unease uh with the way things are going in Iran.

I want to read this one passage.

Uh Trump has since marveled at the ease with which the strait was closed.

The guy with a drone can shut it down, Trump has said to people, expressing belated irritation that the key waterway was so vulnerable.

He has publicly oscillated between demanding support from allies to help open it and insisting that the US doesn't need or want military assistance.

He was told obviously in the leadup to this war that that is the choke point.

I mean, so so are is he really surprised?

Was he not paying attention to the the briefings?

Uh, yes.

First of all, he he was told this was a briefing that he received.

His top generals um and war planners came to him and said, "Sir, one of the first things that will happen is the straight of Hermoose will be closed."

Now, the president believed that the US bombing campaign would um uh would topple the regime before they had the chance to do that.

uh he was aware when he ordered this is what Netanyahu said, what Heg said, what other other more enthusiastic participants and and and we have reported that this this was the sentiment within the White House that the president was told this this will shut down this straight will shut.

And look, I mean, did the president order the president was aware that his belief could be inaccurate.

I mean, he he didn't order the bombing purely thinking that that the street wouldn't close.

there was an awareness that the straight would close.

But I think um the other part that was interesting is they there there wasn't as much of an awareness that the straight would close so fast that that boats would um be so easily coerced into not passing through because there wasn't some big battle for the straight of um you know the Iran the Iranians said we're going to we're going to shoot we're going to sink any boat that goes through and companies said okay we we will stop sending our boats through and so there was a disconnect there also with um people uh advising the president people around around the president.

But look, Trump believed that the regime would fall first and and that that turned out to be wrong.

Now, look, you know, this and this remains the choke point and remains the issue that he's going to have to wrestle with as we contend in the next few days with whether this bombing campaign starts again.

Right.

You, Ivonne, there's something so interesting here politically.

you you've watched presidencies uh as we all have uh since Jimmy Carter, Iran has uh destroyed a couple of presidencies, certainly undermined other presidencies.

Um maybe when we look back on this period we'll we'll say that the height of the the height of confidence uh that that the the Trump administration was experiencing came right after the Maduro operation and that led them to kind of lose their balance and think oh we are going to deal with Iran in a different way than any president since.

I I mean I looking at the arc of history I this is all predictable.

I mean when you go out and you talk to how this is you talk to people you like really try to sus out how this is playing with everyday Americans whether political operatives like it or not like voters are locked in right now.

They are locked in not because uh they think that Trump is any sort of badass for like going and doing you know the Venezuela uh pulling it off in Venezuela.

They they are feeling maximum pain.

That's why they are locked in.

They're not paying attention really to what is happening in foreign countries, what our foreign policy is.

They are looking at their checkbooks every day and they're looking at how much money is going.

But Tyler, that's an interesting point.

Is there is there a a chance that if he had done this in Iran, everything was the same except gas prices remain the same?

Do you think that this would not be a a crisis for the White House?

I mean, if if he had been successful in in taking out the regime and then, you know, I I mean, I think when you look at the big picture, to your point, you're I absolutely agree with you that Maduro was the high point.

When you listen to Trump talk about his foreign policy, he lists off his accomplishments as if it's a laundry list of of success.

He talks about Sulammani from the first term.

He talks about the operation midnight hammer from this summer where they dropped bombs on Iran and he said they obliterated their nuclear program.

That's not fully true.

Um you you know he talks about the Madura operation.

And so I I think he wants to think of himself on this pedestal of a president who has brought peace to the world and he sees these various operations as doing so.

I so I think if this operation in Iran had been successful in the sense that he was able to replace the regime with people who were more willing to cut a deal with him like he had done in Venezuela.

Absolutely.

I don't think there would have been some political pain because the economy there are other factors contributing to rising costs, not just the war with Iran.

But I do think that he overestimated and compared the Venezuela situation to Iran.

And if you talk to any experts or any foreign policy analyst, they could not be more different.

S this is a really kind of interesting moment to study his ambitions because we we've gotten the sense that from Cuba to Venezuela to Iran he wants to change their governments and he wants the credit for bringing democracy to these places.

The same reason he looks at maps and says I want to own Greenland.

He wants to change the way things look.

We know that in Washington because he wants to build an enormous arch, you know, right across from the Lincoln Memorial.

He redecorates the White House.

I don't want to talk about the redecorating and King Charles's upcoming visit to the Oval Office.

King Charles, an architecture expert, by the way.

Um, but but is he being thrown off his game now?

He he had these ambitions of changing the world and now the world is saying it's not so easy.

Well, clearly.

I mean when you are at war with another country the other country gets a say and I think that's the I mean it's a basic fact and that but that is the complicating factor for the president right now and his ambitions are not something that's easily um explainable to the voter who is looking at the gas tank who was looking at the price tag when they fill up their cars.

you know, when when the president gets pressed about the gas issue, he says, "Well, you know, it's it's a small price to pay, particularly if it means Iran doesn't have a nuclear weapon for the future, and he may be right on that point, but that I'm not sure how much that matters to the voter who's now paying 50, 60, $80 for a tank."

And I mean, we all covered the Biden administration.

remember how obsessive Ron Clay was, the former White House chief of staff with gas prices because it is kind of the one consumer product where you see the price tag, the sticker price all over town wherever you go.

So that is ingrained in voters's mind so much more in a way than like perhaps egg prices or milk or clothing or whatnot.

And that's why it is so politically potent.

Um and the White House knows that, right?

And just I I mean just to add on to that, um when the president asks for short-term pain for some sort of elusive goal that voters didn't even know they were working toward, that's a big ask.

It's like to to take the Biden administration back to it.

They use the word transitory.

That rising prices were just a transitory phenomenon.

That doesn't really hit when, as Hungman said, you're going to the gas price and it's just more expensive.

I don't think a lot of voters are making the calculation that it's okay because we're winning a war in Iran when by all accounts it doesn't feel like we're winning a war with right.

Well, let me go to this that direct point.

Um I want you to listen to something that Trump just said.

He believes that he has or he says he believes that he has all the time in the world to confront Iran.

But here he is comparing a possible timeline to a notably unsuccessful American war.

Listen to this.

So, we were in Vietnam like for 18 years.

We were in Iraq for many, many years.

We're in for all the I don't like to say World War II because that was a biggie, but we were four and a half almost five years in World War II.

We were in the Korean War for seven years.

I've been doing this for six weeks.

I will agree that World War II was a biggie.

It was It was one of the biggiest uh wars that we ever had.

But it just seems like I mean here's a man with very good political instincts, Ivonne, and and he uh and he's invoking Vietnam, the most notably unsuccessful, devastating war in the country.

You said earlier that voters are fixed on gas prices and not these foreign adventures from Venezuela to Iran, but they hear him invoking Vietnam as a promise.

It's got to affect the the mindset of people.

It is terrifying to a lot of people.

They for for a lot of people, this just came out of nowhere.

They have no idea why what we're doing, why we're there.

Um this is a president who promised that he would not do this.

He would only bring peace.

They're paying more at the pump.

They're cancelling their summer vacations.

They can't afford to take their wives and families out for dinner.

I mean these there's a huge disconnect between what is happening out in the real world and how people are absorbing this moment and his decisions and how they may view this playing out um by the time the midterms actually roll around.

Have to put a point on it.

I mean there are two promises that um President Trump ran on.

One was to tackle inflation and another was to stay out of foreign wars and foreign entanglements.

And those are two areas which you know you know that is not what people are seeing transpire.

So we are also hearing that same concern from voters and the white house is hearing it too.

I mean Trump is is seeing this this polling numbers.

He's seeing internal polling numbers from his political team.

They are showing it to him.

But in his mind his calculation is that this has been a problem that I believe seven other presidents have have wrestled with.

And I mean Iran has been a nettlesome issue you know for 47 years and he has been hearing from other people around him that look you can do something that no other president was able to do and I think that that was quite enticing to him and you know we we still will see what will happen.

I mean there's a scenario where this can wrap that there's there's a scenario where he gets out of this in not his four to six week time frame but more of a sort of two month to two and a half month time.

Surprising though that he he has Vietnam on his mind.

I mean just to build on that I mean he has said all these former presidents have called him and said you did something that I could never do.

There's no evidence that that that is true.

But but it's to Annie's point that he wanted to do something he thought his predecessors couldn't.

And and also just on on that front, he is petrified of comparisons to the JCPOA, the the deal that Obama Obama Iran deal Iran deal.

He does not want any comparison to that deal.

He's always said he could do better and that's why he ripped it up in his first term.

So he's caught between wanting to get out of this war.

That's why we keep seeing extending the ceasefire with no time limit.

He's not eager to continue to drop bombs on Iran and also trying to get a deal that is better than Obama's deal in his words.

But Iran now has leverage in a different way than they have had before.

It strikes me that that he would rather perhaps have a an Iranian toll booth on the straight of Hermuz than go into back to an active shooting war with Iran given where we are in the 2026 cycle.

Right?

And it just all shows the complications again of war.

I mean, for example, he was pressed on the the four to six four to six week timeline that he had said several times when he was uh when he when he was holding an Oval Office event earlier this week.

And when a reporter asked him about that, he said, "Well, you know, I destroyed the military in four weeks."

So that we're that's kind of the time frame that we're working on.

So he's changing the goalpost there a little bit.

But the fact remains that we're on, I believe, week eight now.

Um, so that is far that is beyond the initial time frame that he gave to the American people.

And also another important thing to remember is the War Powers Act.

There's a 60-day time limit by which um you know Congress is going to have to get their say under this law.

That 60 days is coming up fairly soon next week.

On the other hand, Congress is not the most active of the three main branches of government.

But in theory, that's what the law would allow.

I would just say also though the the Iranians are feeling pain too and their their their oil reserves on Carrick Island are are about to fill up.

They're at the almost at capacity because they haven't been able to run the US blockade and get oil out.

And so they're going to they're in a position where they're going to have to stop pumping oil which is is leverage for them.

They will right.

We we can forget in these conversations that the United States is the superpower.

Iran is a third tier power.

They have chokepoint obviously they're also a brutal terrible regime who wildly unpopular with their own population and we also sometimes forget that Donald Trump has had luck throughout his career.

I want to but I want to turn to something that's a little bit unlucky for