He showed this frustration when he was quizzed by a reporter about the timeline at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, after attending Sunday's World Cup final in New Jersey. "On Iran, Mr. President, you said at the start of the war it would be four or five weeks," the reporter said. "Now it's nearly five months?"
Trump immediately shot back that the reporter had somehow undersold the scale of the task at hand. "This is a far bigger job that we're doing," he said. "We were doing a little job, stopping them from having a certain capability. Now, we're just ending it."
He continued with a rambling, garbled answer before stopping the interview and hot-footing it to the waiting Marine One helicopter.
He was much clearer inside the White House, according to insiders who spoke to the Wall Street Journal. He reportedly went into meltdown mode, calling Iranian leaders "scumbags and lunatics" in a rant peppered with expletives.
Failed negotiations with Iran have made him angry, according to people familiar with the matter. One senior administration official told the Journal that the president believes that the only thing Iran understands is military force.
They said that he was in "revenge mode" against Tehran, adding that he has no bright ideas beyond continuing strikes.