CNN Anchor Dismisses Trump’s Two Week Iran Deadline: ‘Verbal Crutch’ That He ‘Often Doesn’t Mean’
CNN anchor Brianna Keilar chalked up President Donald Trump’s two week deadline for Iran to a “verbal crutch” he often deploys without following through.
At a Thursday briefing, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that United States involvement in the escalating fighting between Iran and Israel will be decided in the next two weeks. The president has split part of his MAGA base when it comes to Iran, with some advocating for more aggressive action like bombing nuclear sites and others pushing for diplomacy and not getting involved in another war.
“Based on the fact that there is a substantial chance of negotiations that may or may not take place with Iran in the near future, I will make my decision on whether or not to go in the next two weeks,” Leavitt quoted the president as saying.
On CNN News Central, Keilar expressed some doubt about a two week deadline, calling “two weeks” a longtime “verbal crutch” for the president.
“We do just need to be clear here, that would ordinarily be quite a deadline, but the president says two weeks all of the time, it’s really this kind of verbal crutch that he uses that he often doesn’t mean so it’s hard to know exactly what he means here,” Keilar said.
She then ran through a number of examples.
“He’s used this recently when he’s talking about Ukraine, what to do about Ukraine and Putin, it’s going to be in two weeks, all the way back to the beginning of his term, whether it was a healthcare plan to replace Obamacare or it was his infrastructure plan,” Keilar said. “Most of these two week promises never happen. Some of them do, but not within two or sometimes the two to three weeks as he will sometimes say. He makes a lot of these Fortnite references. And so this is really tricky as we try to parse this.”
In April, President Trump told reporters he wanted a deal to end the Russia-Ukraine war in “two weeks or less.” Trump was then asked in May whether he believes Russian President Vladimir Putin wants to end the war, and he responded, “I can’t tell you that, but I’ll let you know in about two weeks, within two weeks.”
Trump similarly used the “two weeks” model when promising a new infrastructure plan in 2017, and repeatedly in 2020 when promising a replacement for Obamacare, as Keilar referenced.
Boris Sanchez added that the first time he heard Trump make a “two week” promise was when he was promoting false conspiracy theories about former President Barack Obama’s place of birth.
“I think one of the first times I heard him say that we should wait and see within two weeks was when he was talking about Barack Obama’s birth certificate, which never came to fruition,” Sanchez said. “Obviously, the birth or lie that he espoused before ultimately running for president.”
Watch above via CNN.
