Trump’s Cabinet secretary lets slip what president would rather do than talk about Iran
Standing outside of a Washington, DC, courthouse in late August, one of Donald Trump’s most trusted Cabinet members let slip how the president blows off steam.
‘The president works all day every day, and there are two things that he does for enjoyment. He plays golf on the weekend. And he builds,’ Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said with a flashing smile at a press conference, the New York Times first reported.
Standing on a sidewalk as a protester repeatedly yelled ‘shame’ at the secretary, Lutnick argued why the court inside should allow Trump’s name to be added to the Kennedy Center, DC’s sprawling theater and live complex.
‘Why are we talking about this? This is what he enjoys. So late at night, 11:00 at night, he calls me and he wants to talk about things he’s building because it’s fun for him.’
‘If you sat with him, would you have a nice chat with him? No, you’d ask him about Iran, then you’d ask him about this, then you’d ask him about that. Everybody does that, and the one thing he likes to do during the week is construction.’
A former Manhattan financier who has known Trump for decades through New York’s business and social world, Lutnick described the president’s current preoccupation as construction.
He posited the president as a ‘construction manager’ capable of driving a sweeping remodel of the Kennedy Center or any of the half-dozen other ‘beautification’ projects now underway across Washington.
In Lutnick’s telling, Trump is far less eager to dwell on the Iran war.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick recently mused about how President Donald Trump would rather go golfing or focus on a construction project rather than the Iran war
‘If you sat with him, would you have a nice chat with him? No, you’d ask him about Iran, then you’d ask him about this, then you’d ask him about that. Everybody does that, and the one thing he likes to do during the week is construction,’ Lutnick said
Screengrab of a US military video showing the sinking of an Iranian oil tanker in the Gulf of Oman this week, after the war flared up with a new barrage of strikes
The commerce secretary said the president would rather talk about what he is building than about the conflict in the Middle East — a war that, after a relatively quiet stretch in August, has flared again.
After a monthlong halt in hostilities from the end of July through the end of August, the US and Iran began launching strikes more aggressively last week,
US officials claimed to hit Iranian launchers and military sites on August 30 and September 1. The strikes were described as some of the largest in weeks.
Iran answered with its most aggressive missile and drone strike since April, launching nearly 60 projectiles at Israel and US and allied bases in Jordan, Kuwait, Bahrain and Iraq.
The US strikes killed 18 and wounded 108, according to Iran’s health ministry. Over 3,500 Iranians are estimated to have been killed during the conflict, though exact totals remain unclear.
According to the Department of War, 18 US service members have been killed and over 750 have been wounded.
Despite a ceasefire agreement quickly falling through after being signed in June, a US Naval blockade has strangled the regime’s economy. Iran has faced debilitating inflation, tanking the value of the local currency.
The most recent spasm indicated how quickly the war can spiral and cause political and economic flare-ups.
