“Only the president knows where things stand and what he will do.” That’s what White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters earlier this month after President Donald Trump threatened that a “whole civilization will die tonight” unless Iran reached a deal with the U.S.
For the aides left to defend Trump’s shifting messages on the war with Iran, Leavitt’s comment was less a reassurance than a job description.
The president’s messaging on the war with Iran has shifted consistently — at times, hour by hour. Within 48 hours last weekend, he went from saying Iran had “agreed to everything” toward a potential deal to warning that if Iran did not sign on the dotted line, the “whole country is getting blown up.” He has extended the war’s timeline by weeks, offered Iran a handful of deal extensions after saying he likely would not, and — most recently — indicated there was “no time frame” for the war to conclude, swiftly followed by a threat that Iran has “a matter of days” to reach a deal as a fragile ceasefire holds.
Left in the wake of Trump’s muddled message are top aides, who have wrestled with how to smooth it all over and defend a strategy that appears to be shifting in real time. The resulting political maneuvering has left some fatigued and others trying to change the subject altogether, according to one current and one former White House official, both granted anonymity to candidly discuss internal strategy.
“Ninety percent of White House top aides that are speaking publicly right now don’t necessarily believe what they’re saying but they know it’s satisfying what the president wants them to say,” said the former White House official. “Ultimately, that’s their goal. They’re not communicators for the public; they are communicators for the president.”
“From the outside looking in, it is very clear that the goalposts are moving all over the place,” the former official went on. “That doesn’t scream confidence, it doesn’t scream that we are anywhere close to a resolution.”
Still, some within the administration maintain that Trump’s seemingly scattershot messaging is deliberate.
“It’s by design,” said a senior administration official granted anonymity to speak candidly. “It’s to project a message of strength and to ensure that everyone knows our position, and to force negotiators to understand that they need to come to the table for a deal or there will be consequences.”
The mixed signals have not gone unnoticed by Iran. Senior Iranian officials have publicly mocked the contradictions in Trump’s messaging, using the inconsistency to cast doubt on whether the U.S. has a coherent strategy or a credible negotiating position.
At home, the contradictions have wedged White House staffers into a reactive crouch, requiring them to sometimes scramble after Trump’s Truth Social posts and Rolodex’s worth of reporter phone calls that often contradict one another as the president shares incompatible wartime information.
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Two additional White House officials told MS NOW they are frustrated by the volume of calls the president takes from reporters — in some weeks, totaling dozens — and noted the difficulty of keeping up with and defending each of his minute-by-minute pronouncements.
“[The White House] hasn’t done a successful job of nailing down one reason why we’re there,” said a former Trump official. “They’ve sort of thrown every reason out there. If they could narrow it down to one message — clear: ‘Feel the threat, feel the urgency’ — I think they’d have better success.”
There is one huge obstacle to that: Almost none of Trump’s advisers want to be seen as challenging the president, whether in private or public. “No one wants to disrupt the symphony,” said the former Trump official, referring to the happy picture Trump’s political team paints for the president when talking about the war and voters’ views of it.
Trump’s shifting message on the war has left some White House aides eager to change the subject, but facing with a compounding problem: The issues they have hoped to pivot to — affordability, the economy, gas prices — have all been negatively affected by the war.
“The president is going to dictate when the war ends,” said the first White House official. “In the meantime, we planned to ramp up the messaging on everything else, but obviously, now those are all tied to the war as well.”
The White House did not respond to MS NOW’s request for comment.
Jake Traylor is a White House correspondent for MS NOW.
Jacqueline Alemany is co-anchor of "The Weekend" and a Washington correspondent for MS NOW.
Laura Barrón-López covers the White House for MS NOW.