President Donald Trump sat down for nearly half an hour with Axios correspondent Marc Caputo after signing a memorandum of understanding to wind down the Iran war — and that reporter flagged one particular statement that stood out to him.
The 80-year-old president acknowledged that he negotiated an end to the war to avoid a global economic recession, but he denied that he had been humbled by the experience and instead had determined "there are no limits" to his power.
Caputo shared his takeaways from the sit-down with MS NOW's "Morning Joe."
"What stood out for me is the guy didn't really sleep," Caputo said. "The president hadn't slept much, I think maybe two hours [since] he had flown back from Europe. But his general attitude was very positive. Despite all of the negative commentary and pushback over the deal, the president seems pretty relieved because he has an exit here, and he's looking at two things. He's looking at the stock market, and he's looking at the price of oil, and the price of oil is down."
Caputo highlighted the quote that stood out the most to him about the president's state of mind.
"At one point in the interview, he said it at a few points in the interview, he said, 'It's a gusher,' as if he literally struck oil through this deal because of the price lowering," Caputo said, "and that really impressed me because it just shows what Trump is really focused on."
The reporter was asked whether Trump would seek to punish Republicans who have already spoken out against the terms of the peace agreement outlined in the memorandum of understanding, and he declined to speculate.
"Woe betide him who predicts what Donald Trump is going to do," Caputo said. "Nevertheless, I would find it difficult to believe that he would change that much. My general view of Trump is that if you criticize something that he has started to put his chips in, he doesn't like the criticism. I asked him during the interview, are you going to punish any of the Republicans who oppose you on this? Because there are elements of the deal with sanctions that are going to need to come back to Congress for final approval, in part to set up or make effective this $300 billion reconstruction fund."
"It took me a little while to get the president to answer, but he said basically no," Caputo added. "Now, I'm wondering if that'll change, that is, if the criticism reaches a fever pitch from his own party, does he start to push back and start to target people? I don't know that."
The war had grown increasingly unpopular, especially as gas prices soared as a result of the Strait of Hormuz closure, and Caputo said Republican chances in the midterms were a consideration in Trump's decision to negotiate an end to the conflict.
"If you scratch a few layers beneath the surface, yeah, you'll hear that," he said. "But there certainly is going to be nothing on the record or even on background. But you can tell that what was just really concerning them is not just the poll numbers, but what was causing the underlying poll number troubles, and that was the price of gas."
Caputo identified a potential opening for Republicans to campaign their way out of the problem Trump created for them.
"My guess here, having talked to them over the past months about the war, is that the argument they're going to make is, is, look, everyone was complaining about gas prices – well, gas prices are coming back down," Caputo said. "Therefore, what the president is proposing is a good idea, and that might be a challenging argument for his opponents and his critics to push back on."
"The American people don't really pay a lot of attention to the finer points of foreign policy, and, you know, these various points of the MOU, they're focused on their lives and they're driving around," Caputo said, "and every day there's been a scoreboard on street corners that people have seen, and that's the price of fuel. Even if you drive a Tesla, you at least can see what the price of fuel is doing, and it's been up and people don't like it, and now it's going to come down. The president's hope is, as a result of that coming down, the fortunes of Republicans increase. That is, if they take yes for an answer, his version of yes and embrace this deal."
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