WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said Monday that “bullshit artists” in the Iranian regime have been “bullshitting” other American presidents for nearly five decades.
Trump’s comments came during his third White House press briefing of 2026 in response to a question from CNN on whether or not reopening the Strait of Hormuz is a top priority in a potential deal to end the war.
“Are you willing to make a deal that does not include reopening the Strait of Hormuz, or is that now a top priority?” a CNN correspondent asked after Trump called the outlet “fake news.”
“I would say it’s a very big priority because, see, that’s one thing that’s a little different…We can bomb the hell out of them. We can knock them out… But to close the Strait, all you need is one terrorist that somehow has a truck loaded with…a water mine, drop them in the water, and now you tell people that own ships that cost a billion dollars… ‘Don’t worry about the mine.’ You can do that even just by saying we put mines in the water so it’s not like the rest,” Trump said.
Trump touted that the United States had “knocked out” Iran’s navy, air force, and mine droppers, but noted the regime could use other boats to lay mines, though he questioned if Iran has any mines left to put in the Strait, adding those in the regime are “very good bullshit artists.”
“They don’t have any mine droppers anymore, but they put them on other boats, and they could drop them,” he said. “I’m not even sure they have any mines… by the way. I’m not sure… They say there might be eight. I don’t know. I don’t know. I think there might be none because they’re very good bullshit artists.”
“That’s why, for 47 years, they’ve been bullshitting other presidents, and they haven’t done the job. And people are living in hell. You live in that country; they’re living in hell. No, I think that 47 years of this stuff is long enough,” he added. “They’re at the weakest point they’ve ever been. They have no navy, they have no air force, they have no anti-aircraft weaponry. They have no radar. They have no communication.”
Trump said the biggest obstacle to negotiations is that Iran lacks the infrastructure to communicate.
“In fact, the biggest problem we have in our negotiation is that they can’t communicate… We’re communicating like they used to communicate 2000 years ago, with children bringing a note back and forth,” Trump told reporters.
“But all I want to see is I want to have a safe world,” he added.
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