White House 'flailing' over 'head-spinning' Trump walk-backs: MS NOW
U.S. President Donald Trump arrives at Joint Base Andrews, U.S., May 3, 2026. REUTERS/Nathan Howard
May 06, 2026
The unrelenting flow of statements about the state of the war with Iran, with positions and plans changing from hour to hour depending on who is speaking, has the White House “flailing” to come up with a coherent message for a deeply skeptical US populace, according to analysts.
On Wednesday morning, Donald Trump was on Truth Social claiming the end of war is at hand, which Iran immediately disputed, less than 24 hours after Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the war is already over.
As reports continued to stream in Wednesday morning, MS NOW co-host Jonathan Lemire told “Morning Joe” co-host Mika Brzezinski, “What we've seen here, and it's just, it's head-spinning. We shouldn't lose sight of it: it's dizzying. The different messages from this administration right now, including yesterday, where we had the secretary of state go to the White House briefing room, a rare senior official beyond Secretary [Pete] Hegseth, to talk about this war. And he did so and said that we're winding down the conflict. But this operation to keep the strait open is proceeding, and it's going to be a success that we want to have the Strait of Hormuz open."
"Hours later, the president says, 'Nope’ we're done with that. Now we have this idea of a deal being, he [Trump] says, within reach and now Iran is saying no,” he reported. “And we know President Trump wants to be out of this war, but he has set deadline after deadline after deadline and every time Iran has called his bluff. Is that going to happen again, or does Trump feel like he actually, this time, is going to need to follow through with the resumption of a bombing campaign?”
“And what would that look like? Would most military targets have been hit? Does that mean now the infrastructure, does that mean the bridges, the power plants? Does that mean wading into the territory of war crimes?” he asked. “There's a lot here that shows, to your point, Mika, this administration is flailing for an answer to this war.”