As this week got underway, Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law and diplomatic envoy, assured Fox News that diplomatic efforts with Iran were ongoing. “The conversations between the U.S. government and different areas of the Iranian government at all areas is probably more robust than it’s maybe ever been, and so there’s been a lot of good dialogues, which I think is very, very helpful,” Kushner said.
He added that the process was advancing slowly, “but we are having very positive and active conversations.”
Roughly 24 hours later, his father-in-law said the opposite.
“There are no talks or conversations going on, or scheduled, with the Islamic Republic of Iran,” the president declared by way of his social media platform. In the same missive, the Republican added that the Strait of Hormuz is “open and operating.”
The latter point was obviously absurd — the Strait of Hormuz is many things, but “open” isn’t one of them — but just as important, if not more so, was the fact that Trump and his own diplomatic envoy took opposing views about the existence of talks with Tehran.
Making matters worse, the president hadn’t just contradicted Kushner, he had also contradicted himself. As CNBC reported, just two weeks earlier, the Republican said Iran was being “duplicitous” by denying that talks were underway. He went to describe the nature and details of the negotiations that he now apparently no longer recognizes.
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Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”
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On U.S. policy in Iran, Trump keeps contradicting his own team — and himself