Dem Tells Jim Acosta Trump’s Much-Derided Two-Week Deadline ‘Not A Bad Thing’

Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT) told Jim Acosta that despite the mockery, President Donald Trump’s oft-used “two weeks” deadline for a decision on Iran is “not a bad thing” in this case.

Trump’s abrupt rush toward U.S. military involvement in the Iran-Israel conflict has created a fracture among high-profile MAGA supporters, ratcheting up pressure for a decision that White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters is now two weeks away.

That timeframe drew instant mockery and launched supercuts of Trump’s history with the two weeks “crutch.”

On Thursday’s episode of The Jim Acosta Show, Himes laid out the stakes for this decision and said “we can joke about” Trump’s habitual delay, but it gives space for beneficial things to happen:

JIM ACOSTA: What do you make of Trump hitting the pause button here? I mean it sounds like it’s an infrastructure bill or a health care bill that he wants to wait two weeks on. This time it’s war. Your thoughts?

REP. JIM HIMES (D-CT): Yeah, well, I guess I’m not surprised, right? And the fact that we’re not reading about a US attack on Iran right now actually gives me a little bit of comfort.

I was asked this morning, if you’re advising the president, what do you do? And the advice I would give the president is, you are in a point of maximum leverage right now, right?

And the regime has been badly hurt, badly embarrassed. They’re probably worried about what’s gonna happen inside Iran with the Iranian people.

So now is the time to call him up and say, “You give up any enrichment,” which by the way, is the deal from the old JCPOA and yes, that had a fuse on it, but you give up any enrichment and this stops today. Point of maximum leverage.

So, you know, the fact that we’re not talking about a U.S. attack leads me to believe that maybe that’s what’s happening, which I think is good, because Jim, I mean, I’ll try to make this quick, but war in the Middle East is a hell of a roll of the dice, right?

JIM ACOSTA: Oh, yeah.

REP. JIM HIMES (D-CT): You know, there’s some chance you could have the best case scenario, setting aside right and wrong and justice and injustice, and all that, there is some chance that you could get the dream scenario, right?

Which is that the Iranian people finally decide they’ve had enough, and they overthrow this regime, and you know, you get a situation where this incredibly educated, very capable people decides that we’re going to rejoin the company of decent nations.

You know, war in the Middle East. You know there are 50 other scenarios that range from, you know, our naval base in Bahrain and our air base in Qatar being attacked to the fall of the King of Jordan. You know the King of Jordan is hanging on by his fingernails for a whole bunch of reasons.

I mean, I could just go on for an hour about the different scenarios that if you are knowledgeable on the Middle East, you would say, hey, there’s some chance of that too.

So long-winded way of saying if, you know. We can sort of joke about TACO and you know everything is two weeks or four weeks or never but i think when you’re talking about war in the Middle East, going slower than rather than faster is not a bad thing

JIM ACOSTA: No, there’s no question about it.

Watch above via The Jim Acosta Show.

New: The Mediaite One-Sheet "Newsletter of Newsletters"
Your daily summary and analysis of what the many, many media newsletters are saying and reporting. Subscribe now!