President Donald Trump has given himself a two-week deadline to decide whether or not the U.S. will attack Iran, but CNN points out that he’s given that exact same deadline many times before.
A supercut of his two-week pledges aired last month when host Kasie Hunt had already identified the president’s troubling habit of letting his deadlines lapse with no action. Karoline Leavitt was pressed on his repeated use of the same tactic Thursday after Trump promised to make a decision on Iran within two weeks.
In the first clip, Trump tells a reporter on April 27 that he’ll know in approximately two weeks what his next moves were in relation to Russian President Vladimir Putin and his invasion of Ukraine. When pressed by a reporter who asks for an actual date or timeline, Trump responds, “Well, two weeks or less, or if it’s a little more at the time I’d say...” and shrugging.
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In the next, filmed on May 19, he tells another reporter that he’d rather answer their question about what will happen next in Ukraine in “about two weeks”.
Hunt then draws viewers’ attention to the timestamps on those videos, pointing out that, once again on May 28, Trump had avoided answering questions about Russia and Ukraine by postponing the issue by another two weeks.
Almost a month later, there has been no further acknowledgement of the fact that the president’s two-week deadline has been and gone with no sign of a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine in sight.
Trump’s press secretary was pressed on the pattern Thursday. “He’s used this phrase about two weeks several times, in terms of ’We expect a two-week deadline,’ and then you give another two-week deadline. How can we be sure that he’s gonna stick to this one, making a decision on Iran?” a reporter asked Leavitt.
After initially blaming the issue on President Biden and the fact that Trump “inherited“ the conflicts of Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Iran from the “previous, incompetent president,” Leavitt suggested that Trump’s fixation on a self-imposed two-week timeline was born from a desire to find diplomatic solutions to problems.
Leavitt told reporters, “The last time the president said two weeks, you saw [Russia and Ukraine] have direct negotiations for the first time in years.”
She continued, “The president is always interested in a diplomatic solution to the problems and the global conflicts in this world,“ adding, ”He is a peace-maker-in-chief, he is the peace-through-strength president. If there is a chance for diplomacy, the president will grab it. But he is not afraid to use strength, I will add.”
