Nicholas Fondacaro@NickFondacaro
And there it is.
After the media spent most of yesterday and today suggesting Trump was going to nuke or otherwise genocide Iran, CNN is already suggesting Trump will "chicken out" and drops the "TACO" line:
WOLF BLITZER: The president is sticking to his very, very tough language right now. Is he painting himself though into a corner? If the Iranians don't accept the concessions that he wants?
KIMBERLY DOZIER: This could be a high stakes negotiating tactic to try to get them to blink, but so far they haven't. They've proved consistently that they can take more pain, and they see themselves as gaining in political stature every time they force Trump to bypass one of his deadlines, which we might see tonight. The TACO, Trump always chickens out syndrome.
Or we could see as a gulf official I just spoke to was worried about a massive strike against many targets in Iran that then causes Iran to retaliate against the gulf. So far, they've been doing destructive attacks, but they haven't unleashed the full scope of what gulf officials think they could do.
PAMELA BROWN: And, Peter, we've seen empty threats before from the president. This seems different, though. And if he doesn't follow through and or doesn't get anything tangible in the negotiations, I mean, what kind of a position would that put the U.S. in this war?
PETER BERGEN: Well, actually, I'm reminded in his first term he said he could he could end the Afghan war in a week, but it would kill 10 million people. So, he's made these kind of very grandiose kind of threats before.
I mean, in this case, obviously, this, you know, who knows what's going to happen at 8 p.m. tonight? The only person who knows is the commander-in-chief. Um, I presume to if he wants to kind of retain some form of credibility, he's going to have to do something because he's threats have been so over the top.
But you know, they could be limited and they could be dressed up as well. The negotiations continue. So the limited strikes and continued negotiations, I mean that wouldn't be surprising.
BROWN: Yeah.