Donald Trump told Tucker Carlson and Elon Musk in an Oval Office meeting early last year that he would not go to war with Iran. "We're not doing that," he said, according to a forthcoming book by New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan.
Carlson, the rightwing commentator, had warned Trump that a broader conflict with Iran would destroy his presidency. "They want you to go to war with Iran," Carlson said. Trump replied with his assurance against military action.
The conversation took place as Trump was evaluating advice from figures who still held sway over his base. Although Carlson had criticized Trump's handling of the Gaza war and his refusal to pressure Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump sought his counsel on matters of foreign policy and domestic influence.
During the same meeting, Trump boasted about his own power. "I don't think there's ever been an American president as powerful as I am," he told the group. Carlson replied that since Franklin D. Roosevelt, no president had wielded such authority, "and the only thing that could wreck it is war with Iran."
By February 28 of this year, Trump had attacked Iran. An agreement to end the conflict was signed days ago.
The account appears in "Regime Change," scheduled for publication in the US on Tuesday. Haberman and Swan draw on extensive reporting about Trump's behavior in the Oval Office, including descriptions of his fascination with Israel's September 2024 pager attack on Hezbollah, an Iranian proxy group.
During the meeting with Carlson and Musk, Trump lingered on graphic details of injuries from the explosive devices. He described victims with "mutilated genitals and missing hands" and compared one survivor's wounds to a shark bite. "It was horrible," he repeated, cycling between expressions of horror and fascination.
"He seemed at once enthralled and horrified," Haberman and Swan write.
Musk, who was leading the government efficiency initiative at the time, was described as transfixed by a golden pager that Netanyahu presented to Trump. The authors note that Trump was both taken by the ingenuity of the attack and troubled by its indiscriminate nature, which had killed and maimed people without regard to who was holding the devices.
The book offers a portrait of an aging president whose behavior in private settings has grown increasingly erratic, from his preoccupation with details of violence to his assertions of unprecedented power.
Author James Rodriguez: "This is a stunning reversal that raises hard questions about what changed Trump's mind on Iran in just weeks, and whether his assurances to Carlson and Musk meant anything at all."
Comments