{"id":491581,"date":"2026-06-21T03:05:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-21T09:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/coloradosun.com\/?p=491581"},"modified":"2026-06-22T09:00:26","modified_gmt":"2026-06-22T15:00:26","slug":"trump-iran-vance-opinion-littwin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/coloradosun.com\/2026\/06\/21\/trump-iran-vance-opinion-littwin\/","title":{"rendered":"Littwin: In the wake of Trump\u2019s humiliation in Iran, he has only one card to play \u2014 lie"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As the blunderous war in Iran comes to its humiliating end \u2014 assuming it\u2019s the end \u2014 Donald Trump faces his greatest test as two-term president:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How\u2019s he going to lie his way out of this one?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump declared victory, you\u2019ll recall, on day one of the bombing, which didn\u2019t work out all that well. He announced the end of the war many weeks later \u2014 praising the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Iran \u2014 just before his 80th birthday present of a UFC cage match on the White House lawn, which also didn\u2019t work out all that well. Trump nemesis Michelle Obama<\/a> turned out to be the big winner that night.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He made a self-congratulatory speech to the Gang of 7<\/a> in Europe, praising the MOU to what you might call modest applause, as he tried to explain why Iran needs to keep its missile stockpile (self-defense?) and why he doesn\u2019t want to become the next Herbert Hoover (and be responsible for a global recession) and why his bombing campaign didn\u2019t work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump had many laugh lines in the speech. But almost none of them were intentional.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So what\u2019s a desperate president gonna do? This already looks like the biggest unconditional surrender since Jared Polis pardoned Tina Peters. I mean, he\u2019s too busy to deal with details of the negotiations, which were put off for a day while Israel and Hezbollah exchanged niceties<\/a> \u2014 and Trump\u2019s already got the reflecting pool disaster to worry about. As others have pointed out, Trump always promised to drain the swamp, and now he\u2019s created one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But while he\u2019s sinking \u2014 just like his polls \u2014 under the force of this very bad, horrible, no good deal, he did have an idea. In order to avoid as much personal blame as possible, he threw JD Vance under the bus \u2014 not necessarily a bad idea, by the way \u2014 by making the vice president the chief defender of the MOU.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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All Vance has to do is tell maybe a million lies, and even that is unlikely to be enough. As Trump  said to Vance \u2014 OK, I\u2019m paraphrasing \u2014 good luck on that one.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s where things stand. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The American people overwhelmingly see the war as a disaster, which according to Moody\u2019s Analytics, has cost U.S. taxpayers and consumers at least $132 billion. In a rare moment of truth, Trump said we needed to end the war \u2014 the war of choice that he started for no good reason \u2014 because he didn\u2019t want to be remembered like Hoover, the president often blamed for the Great Depression.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The right-wing press is turning on the MOU. The National Review, for one example, calls the war a \u201ctotal humiliation.\u201d The New York Post and Wall Street Journal weren\u2019t any kinder. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even some GOP senators are giving it bad reviews. Louisiana\u2019s Bill Cassidy, whom Trump worked to defeat in a recent Republican primary,  said<\/a> of the deal: \u201cRonald Reagan is rolling over in his grave.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ted Cruz, a reliable Trump sycophant, offered this: “History demonstrates that giving billions of dollars to theocratic lunatics who want to murder us is an exceptionally bad idea. If we give billions of dollars to Iran, that money will be used to murder Americans, and so I don’t believe we should do that.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But, one might say to the critics \u2014 whom Trump calls either \u201cfools\u201d or \u201cbad people\u201d and says they should just shut up \u2014 that Trump did get Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. OK, we know the answer to that. The strait was open, and never threatened, before the bombs began dropping. And the lesson Iran has taken from this war is that it can choke off the strait \u2014 through which 20% of the world\u2019s oil passes \u2014 any time it wants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Which is leverage, as Trump would put it, like no one has ever seen before. So, what\u2019s a desperate president gonna do? I mean, he\u2019s already got the embarrassment of the $14 million reflecting pool to explain away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, how\u2019s Vance\u2019s propaganda tour going?  What do you think? Is anyone counting this as a win yet?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump admitted, jokingly, that if the final negotiations with Iran \u2014 which will probably end when Trump is being dragged out of the White House \u2014 go well, he\u2019ll take the credit. And if not, he\u2019ll blame Vance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But was it a joke? I think not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s a test, I believe, for Vance, who \u2014 if you\u2019re in the mood for irony \u2014 was the loudest voice in the administration against the war. If he wants Trump\u2019s blessing as his successor, he\u2019ll have to show he can lie nearly as well as Trump can.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We know Vance can lie. Who can forget his racist lie about Haitians eating their neighbors\u2019 pets<\/a>? It was such a good lie, in Trump\u2019s view, that he repeated it himself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But this is different. To claim the MOU as a win for America (meaning for Trump), he has to count on at least three things:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One, that the great majority of people will never read the MOU. Two, that people would take Vance\u2019s word on anything. Three, that people will forget the war by the midterms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here are a few of Vance\u2019s more obvious lies<\/a>, as outlined by the Bulwark\u2019s Will Saletan. He fact-checked Vance in the most obvious way \u2014 by actually reading the two-page MOU. And so, Vance has said: <\/p>\n\n\n\n