President Donald Trump is traveling considerably less in his second term than he did in his previous one between 2017 and 2021. It was assumed the 80-year-old was slowing down or couldn't hack it with the rigorous schedule he once kept. But it appears there might be another reason, Maggie Haberman teased on Friday.

Speaking to CNN's Audie Cornish, Haberman, co-author of the new book Regime Change, explained that the administration is scared.

Reports are unfolding about the shocking revelations that the reason Trump swapped planes in Turkey to fly part of the way back to the U.S. is there were credible threats of a possible attack on Trump's plane.

"This is a president who has survived assassination attempts," Cornish noted. "Does this kind of concern loom large for him?"

Haberman said that those attempts "really radicalized" him and his team.

"The assassination attempts that he faced, in particular Butler, happened around the time that someone had been charged with being part of a murder for hire plot involving or set up by Iranian officials. Allegedly," she said. "And in his mind and in the campaign's mind at the time, it all became one thing."

It's for that reason, Haberman said, Trump and his team saw the new threats from Iran as serious and concerning. These kinds of threats are part of why Trump isn't seen out and about as much.

"You are already seeing a president who does not travel outside the White House that much. Part of it is that, you know, he would tell aides at the beginning of the of the term, 'I'm done campaigning,' but part of it is legitimate security concerns," said Haberman.

Haberman noted that another challenge she sees for Trump is that he is not surrounded by top experts and experienced professionals. For example, she added, those negotiating with Iran aren't well-schooled in nuclear weapons, much less in diplomatic negotiation. It's Trump's son-in-law and his catch-all "envoy for everything," Steve Witkoff.

The group of influencers is also kept extremely small, meaning if someone like Witkoff isn't in the room, they have no clue what is going on. One of the more significant things that happened as a result of that is that Witkoff felt he was close to a deal with Iran, but Trump decided to bomb them out of the blue. The lack of expertise meant that Trump wasn't properly prepared for what he'd face and never crafted an exit strategy.

"It became very clear that foreign policy — as someone said, and we quote them anonymously in the book, is 'whatever Trump says at any given moment,'" said Haberman.

During his first administration, Trump was rushed to the presidential bunker out of fear as a crowd grew near the White House protesting the police death of George Floyd. In his second term, a major project for Trump has been rebuilding the same bunker beneath a giant ballroom.

President Donald Trump hasn't yet released what he has agreed to on the Iran deal, but there are those in his administration who aren't happy with it and think it's a mistake.

According to the Mirror, Trump is pondering firing them. Those include Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and CIA Director John Ratcliffe.

"The debate has been settled. Anyone who opposed it could pay a personal price," a source told The Mirror.

One person who appears to be safe is Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who serves in multiple roles for the president.

It's unclear whether Trump would be willing to fire Vice President JD Vance, who has opposed to the Iran war from the start. In April, The New York Times reported that Vance was the most skeptical voice on the strikes. But The Mirror reported that Vance is supportive of the deal.

Oddly, Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, who have been on the team working on the deal, are also said to support it, the Mirror reported. Since the deal hasn't been revealed, it's unclear if it prevents Israel from defending itself against Hamas in Lebanon. In the past both Kushner and Witkoff have been ardent supporters of Israel's ability to defend itself.

The Jerusalem Post reported on Tuesday that Witkoff and Kushner are being seen as "sell-outs" as a result of their support for the deal.

Right-wing pundit and close ally of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Yinon Magal, host of Channel 14 's The Patriots, blasted Kushner and Witkoff using a slur, saying that Trump's deal makes him look like a “loser.” Magal accused the two men of acting under pressure from Qatar and “selling their brothers in Israel.”

"Rubio, Hegseth, and other officials from both the Department of Defense and State have presented an assessment that the current Iranian regime was already in decline due to economic pressure and that turning up the heat on the country would eventually end in a surrender or, alternatively, its collapse," The Mirror claimed.

South Carolina Republican, Lindsey Graham, fears that the U.S. and Iran might have "different" views of what the deal is or should be.

He wrote on X that he was "pleased to hear the memorandum of understanding with Iran to allow the Strait of Hormuz to open has been agreed to."

"I will be watching closely the ensuing negotiations regarding Iran’s nuclear program and other matters," Graham wrote. "I am somewhat concerned that Iran’s view of the agreement seems different than what the American negotiating team is claiming."

That said, Graham doesn't appear to want Trump to decide whether the deal is final.

"Under our law, any nuclear deal with Iran will be sent to Congress for review and a vote," Graham claimed. "I look forward to reviewing the final product, and I believe it is imperative that the architect of the deal, Vice President Vance, and his negotiating partners be part of the process in presenting the final deal to Congress."

New York Magazine writer Jonah Shepp says President Donald Trump considers himself very intelligent — but that intelligence apparently didn’t extend to the definition of “quagmire.”

The U.S. and Iran are back at war again, less than a month after agreeing to a cease-fire deal and Trump’s frustration is visible.

“This is a very unpopular war that Trump reportedly thought would be over in days, then claimed would be over in four to six weeks, then insisted was actually over and fully won when anyone could tell that it wasn’t,” said Shepp. “Five months later, amid an alarming escalation, there’s still no end in sight. From everything Trump has said over the past few weeks, he’s apparently still under the impression that the war is under his control, the U.S. is winning and Iran is overwhelmed and desperate to negotiate, and the costs are not only bearable for Americans, but negligible.”

Worse, Trump’s original war goals, from the threat of a nuclear Iran to the Israeli regime-change scheme he bought into have come and gone, replaced by … nobody’s really sure. These days it’s about the state of the Strait of Hormuz—which Trump himself caused by unilaterally committing war on Iran.

“Welcome to a forever war, in other words,” said Shepp.

Trump dragged Iran and his own voters into war with “unclear, unrealistic objectives, lacking both an articulate theory of victory and an exit strategy,” said Shepp.

Projecting strength and avoiding the humiliation of defeat is tantamount to a guy like Trump, but the war’s unpopularity at home and abroad is putting the heat on Trump to cut and run—as if that would be possible without admitting defeat. Still, escalation doesn’t appear to be getting anywhere except in voters’ wallets.

“Passing over whether Trump is or is not the world-historic genius he perceives himself to be, he has yet to demonstrate a brilliant new strategy to prevent the Iran war from turning into an extended debacle,” said Shepp. “On the contrary, he disdains expertise and has put negotiations with Iran in the hands of two complete amateurs whom their Iranian counterparts don’t trust and whose only accomplishment so far has been a crappy deal for the U.S. that fell apart in weeks. Meanwhile, our armed forces are currently under the direction of a right-wing television personality and televangelist whose latest manosphere-inspired innovation is a policy to test U.S. soldiers for low testosterone.”

Worse, Shepp said that the U.S. diplomatic corps “has been hollowed out and politicized, Iran experts have been lost to budget cuts and ideological purges, and at this rate, Marco Rubio may soon be the only person left working at the State Department.”

“As Trump is now discovering, the U.S. didn’t get bogged down in past wars because his predecessors were ‘dumb,’ but rather because they suffered from historical, political, and ideological blind spots,” said Shepp.

U.S. President Donald Trump lauded the “very good relationship” he has developed with his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, at the NATO summit in Turkey on July 8, 2026.

Vice President JD Vance has the bad luck of trying to sell another book at the same time that he's being put in charge of a much-maligned deal to end the war in Iran. But one strategist thinks the real intention is to cover up who the actual architect was.

CNN's Audie Cornish closed her Thursday show talking about President Donald Trump's comment during his G7 press conference, during which he said he'd blame Vance if the memorandum of understanding (MOU) fails.

Democratic strategist Meghan Hays asked if anyone truly believed that Vance was the one who negotiated the Iran deal.

Hays, the former Joe Biden White House director of messaging, asked: "Are we just trying to hide that Jared Kushner was actually the one negotiating this deal, who does not work for the United States government?"

"I mean, I just think that maybe Marco Rubio will end up better when he's trying to run for president," Hays continued. "But I don't think that Donald Trump cares who gets blamed as long as it's not him. But I don't think the American people are that stupid to [not] realize their gas prices went up because we went into a war of choice by Donald Trump."

A report from The New York Times in May said that Trump wanted to give Iran a $300 billion "bribe to back out of a war he never should have waded into," as The New Republic characterized it. The Times said that an Iranian official put the reconstruction of Iran at $300 billion.

The idea came from United States Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff and the president's son-in-law, both of whom are real estate investors. The two had also pitched a kind of real estate investment fund that would help provide financial incentives for developers in Iran. Kushner is already being investigated by the House Judiciary Democrats for cashing in on foreign investment funds while working on behalf of the United States government.

If Democrats win in November, the Trump administration believes that investigations will promptly begin, The Hill reported.

The Jerusalem Post noted that Israeli right-wing figures are attacking Witkoff and Kushner as "losers" over the plan.

When U.S. President Donald Trump and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian digitally signed a memo aimed at ending the war between the two countries and reopening the Strait of Hormuz, outgoing U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-Louisiana) slammed the deal as a major victory for Iran and loss for the United States. Cassidy declared that the late President Ronald Reagan "is rolling over in his grave" — a sentiment that former GOP strategist Steve Schmidt wholehearted agrees with in a blistering Substack column.

The Never Trump conservative emphasizes, however, that Trump alone is not to blame for the "dangerous" ceasefire deal and argues that history will judge his "loyalists" harshly for going along with the agreement.

"America has produced giants in public service," the 55-year-old Schmidt writes. "George Marshall. Dean Acheson. James Baker. Brent Scowcroft. Men who understood that American power isn't measured simply by bombs, aircraft carriers or divisions of soldiers. It's measured by credibility, alliances, restraint, deterrence and the confidence of friends and adversaries alike. Whether one agreed with every decision they made is beside the point. They understood the weight of history. Donald Trump's national security team has demonstrated something very different."

The ex-GOP strategist, a founder of The Lincoln Project, continues, "Steve Witkoff. Pete Hegseth. Marco Rubio. JD Vance. Jared Kushner, whose influence over Middle East policy has remained profound long after leaving formal office. History will judge them alongside Donald Trump — not because they exercised independent leadership, but because they chose loyalty over candor, politics over strategy and performance over statecraft."

Schmidt argues that although Trump talked tough during the war and demanded "unconditional surrender" from Iran, the ceasefire agreement "bears little resemblance" to that "rhetoric."

Schmidt praises Cassidy's "Reagan is rolling over in his grave" comment as "remarkable words" coming from a Republican.

"The deeper problem extends beyond one agreement," Schmidt explains. "It concerns the quality of leadership that produced it. America once selected national security leaders because they possessed experience forged in war, diplomacy and difficult judgment. This administration rewards something else — TV appearances, personal loyalty, and absolute deference to one man. No serious national security team should function as an echo chamber…. But history has a ruthless habit of remembering the moments when nations confused loyalty for competence and spectacle for strategy."

Schmidt adds, "The men who surround Donald Trump want to be remembered as architects of American strength. History may remember them instead as something far smaller: the little men."

In late April, President Donald Trump announced that Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff (the Trump Administration's special envoy to the Middle East) would be resuming peace talks with Iran — only to tell the media, the next day, that the trip was off. Kushner and Witkoff are longtime business associates of Trump as well as political allies; both of them have backgrounds in high-end real estate, like the Trump Administration.

Reporter Linda Kinstler examines the "murky legal status" of Trump's Board of Peace and the Trump Administration/Kushner/Witkoff arrangement in an article published by the New York Times Magazine on May 1.

"Over the past year," Kinstler explains, "Kushner and Witkoff have crisscrossed the globe as White House emissaries: They have met with Hamas and with Vladimir Putin, with (Ukrainian President) Volodymyr Zelensky and with Iranian negotiators. Their near-universal presence at high-stakes negotiations suggests that Kushner and Witkoff, New York real estate developers who are now executive members of Trump's Board of Peace, have been almost single-handedly tasked with realizing Trump's desire to be remembered as the 'president of peace.'"

Kinstler adds, "But these are businessmen first and diplomats second…. Their view seems to be that peace is an asset to be leveraged and maximized."

Lawmakers, according to Kinstler, "are noticing the murky legal status" of Board of Peace activities.

"Several Democratic congressional investigations are looking into both Witkoff's and Kushner's financial records and international relationships," Kinstler notes. "In mid-April, four Democratic senators announced a probe of the Board of Peace's proposal to create a stablecoin for Gaza, pointing out that a number of its executives, including Witkoff and Trump himself, could stand to profit. In a letter addressed to Kushner announcing a House Judiciary Committee probe of his dual role as an investor and a 'volunteer' government representative, Rep. Jamie Raskin wrote, 'You cannot faithfully represent the United States with billions of dollars in Saudi and Emirati cash burning a hole in every pocket of every suit you own.'"

Kinstler adds, "By continuing to do so, Kushner was effectively insisting 'that the normal rules do not apply to you,' Raskin argued."

The reporter stresses that it remains to be seen what the Board of Peace will be able to accomplish in the Middle East.

"Rising energy prices have begun to strain American households," Kinstler observes, "but Trump and his 'people' aren't feeling the squeeze. Witkoff has said he is in the process of divesting from his real estate and crypto holdings; in 2024, Kushner said he would 'try to pre-emptively avoid any conflicts of interests.' But both men have seen their wealth grow significantly since Trump returned to office. And the peace they have long promised remains out of reach."

Before U.S. President Donald Trump ordered airstrikes against Iran in late February, many foreign policy and national security experts warned that an Iran war would be even more difficult and complicated than the George W. Bush administration's invasion of Iraq — as Iran is a much larger country and is considerably different geographically. And according to national security insiders interviewed by CNN, the Trump adminstration's downsizing of the U.S. National Security Council (NSC) did a lot to put the United States at a major disadvantage against Iran.

Reporters Sean Lyngaas and Zachary Cohen, writing for CNN, emphasize that the NSC was "largely gutted in the lead-up to a war with Iran that has seen Trump shuffle through a series of strategies."

"Instead of using the (NSC) to draw on input from a vast federal network of experts," the CNN journalists explain, "Trump has leaned on a small group of close allies, such as (Secretary of State and Acting) National Security Adviser Marco Rubio and envoy Steve Witkoff, when debating strategy for the war. That has presented challenges for military planners, who were kept at arm's length from pre-war discussions before being abruptly tasked with moving U.S. assets to the Middle East, CNN has reported…. The hollowing out of the NSC has altered U.S. foreign policy at key moments of the wars in Iran and Ukraine while catering to Trump's shoot-from-the-hip management style, four veterans of Trump's second term said in interviews with CNN."

The NSC was established by Congress with the National Security Act of 1947, which also created the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). And it existed under a long list of U.S. presidents before being "gutted" by the second Trump administration, according to Lyngaas and Cohen.

One of the former Trump administration officials interviewed by CNN said that while there are advantages to having a smaller NSC — including less bureaucracy — a larger NSC could have made it easier for Trump to coordinate his strategy with U.S. allies in the Middle East and have a more "thorough" discussion of the Iranian regime's willingness to block the Strait of Hormuz.

"Trump slashed the Council's staff from roughly 200 in the early days to less than half of that today, according to estimates from three sources," the CNN journalists note. "Trump made the cuts, at least in part, at the behest of far-right conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer, who claimed that the NSC was full of people who were inadequately loyal to Trump…. Since its inception, the NSC has periodically frustrated some Pentagon officials who have seen it as a power grab of their war-planning duties. That was true during the Biden administration, where the NSC staff numbered well over 300 people. But few presidents have taken a sledgehammer to the NSC the way Trump has."

Lyngaas and Cohen add, "It was the Stephen Miller-led Homeland Security Council, a body created in the wake of 9/11 to deal with threats to the U.S. homeland, that was the hub for drawing up plans for a post-(Nicolás) Maduro Venezuela."