Trying to Rewrite the Story

June 10, 2026. Today, a report from the Department of Labor showed that inflation in May hit its highest level since early 2023, reaching an annual rate of 4.2%, up from 3.8% in April. The Federal Reserve likes to keep inflation at 2%. Energy costs are the biggest driver of that inflation, with fuel oil up 59% and gasoline up 41% over their costs last year. Airline fares have risen 27%. Fruits and vegetables are up 6% over their costs a year ago. At a signing event for the Budget Reconciliation Measure, Republicans passed to add an additional $70 billion in funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, and Customs and Border Protection, or CBP, the parent agency for Border Patrol. A reporter in the Oval Office asked President Donald J. Trump if he was concerned about the inflation number. Trump answered, No, I love it. The numbers were great. You know what I really love? I love the inflation. You know why? And then a speech slid into a fantasy rewriting of the history of his war on Iran and his decision to launch it. Trump claimed that he was telling reporters and Iran for the first time that the U.S. was secretly taking oil from Iran. Do you know we've been taking out millions of barrels of oil? He asked, Nobody knows it. You know who doesn't know about it? Iran, until right now. We took out the other night 22 ships late at night with no lights because they don't have any radar because we blasted the crap out of it. We took out, that's why oil's $85 a barrel. As Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Swan of the New York Times report, Trump appeared to be referring to the well-known U.S. operation to help dozens of commercial vessels traverse the Strait of Hormuz. So far, the journalists report, the U.S. has guided more than 200 ships through in a little more than a month. Before the war, about 3,000 ships a month traveled through the Strait. The reporters say they could not confirm Trump's claim that the effort had enabled more than 100 million barrels of oil to reach the market. Then Trump slid into a rewriting of why he started the strikes in the first place in order to suggest the dramatic hit the economy has taken from the war was part of his plan all along. He claimed he had deliberately made the choice to hurt the economy, to stop Iran from producing a nuclear weapon, which he claimed, contrary to his own intelligence officers' assessments, it was going to have very soon. I said, Look, the one bad thing will be we hit the best economy we've ever hit, Trump claimed. And I said to my people, I had Treasury Secretary Scott Besant, I had Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, I had Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, I had all I had then Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche in the room. I said, The one thing we have to do now, we had just hit the highest stock market in history, highest 401Ks in history, everything was going well. And I said, I hate to do this to you guys, but Iran's going to have a nuclear weapon very soon. We have to go and attack. In fact, in his video announcing the strikes and in comments in the early days of the war, Trump emphasized that the US intended to end the Iranian regime, which he claimed had been at war with the US for 47 years, and he urged Iranians to rise up against it. Ending Iran's nuclear ambitions would come from the regime change, he advocated. In any case, he said today, oil was not nearly as expensive as the $250 a barrel people had said it could reach. So its current level is pretty amazing. And the stock market, he said, remains high. He went on to say that his strikes on Venezuela were a great success and that Venezuela has become a happy country and that we went to Iran and essentially we've done the same thing. He claimed Iran's military has been destroyed and all the Iranian leadership is gone. When a reporter finally brought him back to the question about inflation coming down, he said that when the war is over, it's going to come down like a rock. Meanwhile, John Nephal of Media Matters noted yesterday that Fox News hosts, many of whom supported the initial strikes on Iran, are now arguing that Trump should start bombing again. Their mantra is that it will take only two weeks to win a decisive military victory. Trump's relationship with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein is back in the news, as New York Times' White House reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, who have a book on the Trump presidency coming out, detailed how desperately worried the White House was last summer over the Epstein files. They searched desperately for a way to look as if they were being transparent to appease the MAGA base, while also making sure the files stayed hidden. The write-up of the story distances President J. D. Vance from the files, suggesting he was panicked by them and wanted them released. This position, attributed to him by White House officials, is good for him politically, as he will want to pick up MAGA voters unhappy about the Epstein cover-up by 2028 at least, or before should he need to take the mantle of the presidency from Trump, who will turn 80 on Sunday. Vance is in the news this week, as he seems to court MAGA in other ways as well. On Monday, he announced he would refer Minnesota Governor Tim Walls and Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison to the Department of Justice for an investigation of criminal fraud. The claim that Somalis in Minnesota are engaging in social services fraud, while Democrats look the other way, is a driving factor behind MAGA politics. Raquel Coronel-Yuribay and Tara Prindaville of NBC News report that Walls has called Vance's attacks on him a campaign of retribution meant to punish blue states like Minnesota. Ellison told the reporters the allegations were unfounded and a political stunt. It is deeply troubling to see official powers and public resources diverted away from serving the people and instead aimed at pursuing political adversaries, he said. This is not what government is for and it diminishes public trust in our institutions. Vance has also jumped aboard the unfounded accusation of Trump and his loyalists that the slow counting of ballots in California suggests the election is insecure and the Republican candidate is being cheated. Election denialism is increasingly a hallmark of the MAGA Republicans as they argue any election they lose is fraudulent. During the 2024 presidential campaign, when caught lying about Haitian immigrants eating pets, Vance admitted he felt it necessary to create stories so that the media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people. Yesterday an Iranian drone downed a US helicopter, although a US official told CBS News it was not clear that the strike was intentional. This evening Trump launched new airstrikes against Iran, saying they were self-defense strikes in response to Iran's unwarranted and continued aggression after the slow progress of negotiations for an agreement to end the war. US Central Command said US forces launched strikes on Iranian military surveillance capabilities, communication systems, and air defense sites across Iran. US Marine Corps, Air Force, and Navy assets fired precision munitions on Iranian targets that posed a threat to US forces and international commercial ships transiting regional waters. Christof Kotel and Christian Trebert of the New York Times confirmed reports from Iran that US strikes destroyed what appears to have been a drinking water facility. They note that targeting civilian infrastructure can be a war crime under international law. Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps responded to the US strikes with their own strikes against US targets in the region and announced it was closing the Strait of Hormuz completely and would attack any vessels trying to cross it. With the renewed strikes, the price of oil jumped more than a dollar a barrel. Tonight Trump posted on social media a demand that Republicans in Congress give the US military an additional $350 billion and pass the Save America bill that would suppress voting. No games, no delays, and no weak compromises. Do this ASAP, he wrote. This is a generational investment in our military, even bigger than President Reagan's, he wrote. The $350 billion reconciliation bill, which could pass without any democratic votes, is the only path to the full $1.5 trillion military budget our warriors need in order to build the arsenal of freedom. He also demanded Republicans pass the Save America Act, requiring proof of citizenship to vote and an end to mail-in ballots except for illness, disability, military, or travel in order to protect our elections for generations to come and to secure the nation for our children and grandchildren. Then he added, no men in women's sports and no transgender mutilization surgery for our children. Then concluded, thank you for your attention to this matter. President Donald J. Trump. Letters from an American was written and read by Heather Cox Richardson. It was produced at Soundscape Productions, dead in Massachusetts, recorded with music composed by Michael Moss.