AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
President Trump's announcement online of the rescue of that Air Force colonel was celebratory in tone - a notable departure from a post yesterday in which he wrote, make a deal or open up the Hormuz Strait. Time is running out. Forty-eight hours before all hell will rain down. NPR national political correspondent Mara Liasson joins us now. Good morning, Mara.
MARA LIASSON, BYLINE: Good morning.
RASCOE: So Israel says it halted airstrikes so the U.S. could retrieve that colonel. But there were airstrikes elsewhere in Iran yesterday, like at a major petrochemical hub, and traffic is not flowing freely through the strait. So right now it does not seem like this war is ending anytime soon.
LIASSON: No, it doesn't. And this comes after that Wednesday night speech when President Trump tried to explain to the American people that the war was ending shortly, but he also said in that speech that he's bombing Iran back to the Stone Age. So he's given some contradictory messages. That threat that you just read - 48 hours; open the strait, or else all hell will rain down - that contradicts what he said earlier last week, where he said the U.S. doesn't need the Hormuz Strait. Let the Europeans open it up. Or he said it would open naturally when the war was over.
So this war continues to be incredibly unpopular. Sixty percent of Americans oppose the war. The financial markets, which were a - are a kind of poll, a poll that Trump pays attention to, were not satisfied by that speech. And the big question is, can Trump leave Iran if the Strait of Hormuz is still controlled by Iran? That would be a big defeat for Trump. The question is, does he keep the strait open with ground troops or negotiations? Either way, it seems pretty difficult.
RASCOE: You mentioned that polls say the Iran war is unpopular. Well, the White House just released a budget. And as we've pointed out in years and administrations past, Congress makes the budget and, you know, these ones that come from, you know, the White House - they're political documents. They signal to supporters. So what is this signaling?
LIASSON: Well, they explain the president's priorities. And this one has a huge increase for the Defense Department - $1.5 trillion, a rise of 42% - and a 10% cut in nondefense spending, including health care. So these are the president's priorities. Here's what he said in a briefly released video from the White House.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: It's not possible for us to take care of day care. Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things - they can do it on a state basis. You can't do it on a federal. We have to take care of one thing - military protection.
LIASSON: Well, Medicare is a federal program, and it's unclear what the president means that the federal government can't take care of it. But the thing that was so striking about that statement was it was very similar to his situation in Iran. It's a 180-degree reversal of what he campaigned on. He campaigned on no foreign wars. He said that he would not touch Social Security or Medicare. One of the reasons he won is that he was the - an unconventional Republican who wouldn't touch entitlements. Now, Congress is unlikely to pass this budget. It is a political document, and it's going to become an issue in the midterms.
RASCOE: The president let the attorney general go this past week. She was ousted. Do you think we'll see more changes in the president's cabinet this coming week?
LIASSON: Well, there is talk about that. The president fired Pam Bondi, his - from - at the Department of Justice. That follows his firing of the Department of Homeland Security secretary, Kristi Noem. And Bondi was very loyal to the president, but she failed in an important way. She didn't prosecute and convict enough of his political enemies. And this puts the president in a pretty tough spot. His approval ratings are dropping into the 30s in some polls. The war is unpopular. Gas prices are still high, and the midterms are right around the corner. So this is a difficult situation for him. One of the reasons he might want to fire more people is it will be easier to get his new nominees through Congress before the midterms rather than after them, when he might not have control of both Houses.
RASCOE: There were some Supreme Court arguments this week that Trump sat in on. Are we seeing a change in the relationship between the White House and Supreme Court?
LIASSON: Well, he's had one big loss already - tariffs. And it looked like the justices were very skeptical about his arguments on birthright citizenship. He might lose again then on that issue. But he also could go to Congress and ask them to codify his vision of what citizenship is.
RASCOE: That's NPR's Mara Liasson. Mara, thank you so much.
LIASSON: You're welcome. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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