Trump calls Iran sanctions report untrue, demands Axios pull it anyway

…(cont) I wrote that down and moved on, because here's where the same story keeps going without me.

By Monday the two sides were still talking — indirectly, CBS says, which I take to mean nobody's actually in the same room. A senior U.S. official told them things were making progress. An Iranian diplomatic source told the same network they weren't going well at all. Which one had the better seat, I couldn't tell you. The receipts don't say. They just disagree, in print, on the same day.

That same Monday, according to ABC, eight Marines were hurt when a ship was attacked in the Strait of Hormuz. Is that the strait the seven-day plan was supposed to reopen? It is — same water, same name. And how long has that water been a fight? Seven months, by my count, since his own White House called it major combat operations back on the twenty-eighth of February.

Also that Monday, Axios reported the president had privately offered Iran something on the side: sanctions relief, and the unfreezing of funds currently frozen, so Tehran could take another look at its nuclear program. I copied his answer straight off the post. Two words, dated the twenty-eighth, carried by the Washington Examiner the same day. Three words, one Truth Social post, two newspapers a day apart. Which one is the actual denial? I have all three written down and I still can't tell you which was meant to be the final one.

I keep a car in the garage that does something like this. Ask it what's wrong on a Tuesday morning and it tells you the belt. Ask it Wednesday and it's the battery. It isn't lying, exactly — it's just naming whatever's nearest the front that day. Is that what's happening here, one problem wearing three names depending who's asking and when? I don't know. I just know what's on the dashboard changes.

So here's what's on the page, in order: a seven-day offer, used for one. Talks continuing anyway, called both fine and not fine by the two people closest to them. Eight Marines hurt in the strait the plan was supposed to fix, the same day a report said sanctions relief and frozen funds might be moving toward Iran after all. And a denial of that report that came back in three different words from the same man, depending which outlet got there first.

Oh — one more thing, before you go. If the story's untrue, why does the same post also demand Axios pull it? I have that demand written down, dated the twenty-eighth. I don't see a correction filed anywhere after it, from either side. Do you?