What did Donald Trump do today?
He admitted that Iran had beaten him.
While in Versailles, France today, Trump apparently signed the memorandum of understanding establishing the basis for peace talks with Iran. Also today, the United States government released the text of the MOU for the first time, effectively confirming Iran's previous readout.
There is a broad consensus across the entire American political spectrum that the MOU, even as it is only a temporary bridge towards actual negotiations, is a catastrophic humiliation for Trump and the United States. Some of the most withering criticism of Trump came from staunch Republican allies who'd initially backed the war. Fox News contributor and former Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) said he thought someone was playing a practical joke on him when he saw the confirmation of the terms, correctly noting that it makes the Iranian regime many billions of dollars richer while requiring them to change nothing about their nuclear ambitions. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) said that President Reagan was "rolling over in his grave" and called the war "the worst foreign policy blunder in decades."
Other prominent Republicans (summarized in this article by conservative columnist Howard Kurtz) used phrases like "doomed to fail" and "awful," and said that Trump's whole misadventure in Iran was characteristic of "an administration that habitually over promises and under delivers." Arch-conservative media figure Erick Erickson said flatly that "Trump has surrendered to Iran."
Pressed today on why he signed the MOU, Trump effectively admitted what he'd denied all along: that Iran's ability to choke off traffic through the Strait of Hormuz—something that had been theoretical until Trump forced their hand—had forced his hand. As he put it:
The alternative to this deal was a global recession. There are stupid people who want to see a global recession. They are just stupid people. The Strait of Hormuz would never have been opened.
Trump had, for weeks, been insisting against all common sense and evidence that ships were transiting the strait. And he'd insisted, in extremely explicit terms, that he didn't care about the economic pain Americans were feeling as a result of the war because ending the military and nuclear threat he said Iran posed was more important.
In a sign of just how eager Trump is to run away from the conflict, he reversed himself on those points today too. In separate sets of remarks, he openly endorsed Iran's right to develop long-range missiles and nuclear reactors.
Trump endorses Iran having ballistic missiles: "I'm saying that if other countries have them, it's a little unfair for them not to have some"
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) June 17, 2026 at 2:14 PM
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Why does this matter?
- This is the President of the United States admitting he lied about the war the whole way through, from why he started it to why he lost.
- There's defeat, and then there's whatever this is.