President Donald Trump shrugged off a reporter’s question about the stalled negotiations with Iran, bluntly declaring “I really don’t care” if they’re over, because they had “started to get very boring.”

The U.S. and Israeli strikes against Iran have been controversial from the beginning, and the Trump administration has received scathing criticism from the right as well as the left as the war has continued, specifically regarding the deaths of U.S. military service members, the massive multi-billion dollar cost of the war, and the inflationary impact on gas prices.

On Monday, Iranian state media reported that Tehran was suspending peace talks after Israel had struck Hezbollah targets in Lebanon.

CNBC senior Washington correspondent Eamon Javers interviewed Trump by phone Monday about the stalled peace talks. When Javers asked the president if the Iranians had said to him that the negotiations were over, he replied, “No, they haven’t.”

Trump did say he was going to ask Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu about the situation in Lebanon, and wrote a Truth Social post saying he had had “a very productive call” with Netanyahu. (A later report by Axios contradicted this claim, citing two unnamed U.S. officials plus a third anonymous source to report that Trump had lambasted the Israeli leader on the call as “f*cking crazy” and accused him of showing “ingratitude.”)

Javers spoke to the president at length (CNBC has posted the transcript of the phone call) and asked him about the reports Iran was shutting down negotiations:

EAMON JAVERS: Do you think the negotiations are over now, or is this a bluff?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: I don’t care if they’re over, honestly. I really don’t care. I couldn’t care less. If they’re over, they’re over. If they’re not, you know, I think they took too much time. Frankly, I thought they started to get very boring. They were giving us what we needed, but I think I think they handled the negotiations poorly. It took too long. I thought they were tapping us along that’s all. Yeah, they were.

JAVERS: You think they were stalling for time?

TRUMP:Yeah. I thought that, yeah, I did.

Javers followed up by asking Trump what was “the way forward” and how he expected to get the Strait of Hormuz open. Replied Trump:

I’d say there’s about now, well, the strait is already open. If you think all you have to do is take a look at the many boats that have gone out of there over the last week. You do know that, you know, boats have been leaving, and we have, and we have the blockade, we blockade them, they blockaded the strait, and then we blockaded them, and our blockade is a lot tougher than their blockade. As far as I’m concerned, they can, they can continue to lose $500 million a day, which is what they lose because of the blockade, they can continue to lose that.

Trump added that he thought NATO should help out, but also insisted that we “don’t need NATO”:

TRUMP: Well, I think then NATO should come in and help us out, you know, because they’re the ones we don’t use the strait, we don’t need it. We have a lot of oil, we have more oil than Saudi Arabia and Russia combined, times two, so we don’t need the oil, but Europe does. We’re out there doing a service for a lot of other people, primarily because we still don’t think we can. We know we can’t allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon, so that’s why we’re doing it. That’s why I’m doing it.

JAVERS: Have you talked to anybody in NATO about that? I mean, have they changed their tune on the strait?

TRUMP: They would, if I wanted them to, but they would. I want them to. We don’t need them. We don’t need NATO. They were very, very weak and very sad. What they said, they said we’ll help you as soon as the war is over. NATO, Europe has lost its way. They have a tremendous immigration problem, and they have a tremendous energy problem, because all they want to do is build windmills all over the place, so anyway.

The president also insisted he was not worried about oil prices, or that they would go up further with the stalled negotiations, predicting they would “go down very quickly” instead:

JAVERS: Are you worried about oil prices —

TRUMP: No

JAVERS: — given the apparent breakdown of negotiations? No?

TRUMP: No, I don’t worry about that, no.

JAVERS: And why not? Are you confident this will be over in a short time —

TRUMP: Yeah –

JAVERS: — or are you confident the oil market can ride it out?

TRUMP: I think the oil will be dropping like a rock in the very near, you know, the very near distance. I think oil is going to come down very much. You have 1,700 boats right now that are loaded up with oil, and that’s going to be like an oil gusher. So I’m not worried about it at all, and the people understand it, and the only thing I care about, the thing I care about, I care about everything, but the thing I care about most at this point in life is that Iran will not have a nuclear weapon. And if they want to try and have a new nuclear weapon, I will blow them up to kingdom come.

JAVERS: One of the things that we’ve seen is a real concern out there about price of gas among Americans. What’s your message to Americans about the price of gas?

TRUMP: It’ll go down very quickly as soon as it’s over, and Iran will not have a nuclear weapon. Once you explain that this is all about Iran having a nuclear weapon, people are willing to pay a little bit more, and but it’ll, it’ll happen very quickly, and as soon as that happens, gasoline will get down to $1.85 like it was in Iowa three months ago. I was in Iowa, was $1.85 a gallon, and when it was really getting low.

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!