Trump Defends Commerce Secretary Saying No Americans Died in Iran

Following the president’s example, Trump officials have taken to saying whatever comes to mind with little regard for the significance of their office, or the truth. Donald Trump defended one such slipup Thursday, shielding Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick after his longtime adviser claimed that no Americans had been harmed in Iran.“Sec. Lutnick had Venezuela on his mind when he said nobody was killed. 18 people were killed in Iran!” Trump posted on Truth Social.But Lutnick did not mince his words when he flubbed the statistic during an interview with CNBC on Wednesday, making it abundantly clear that the secretary understood he was speaking about Iran.“The way the president is playing Iran, right, there’s not—there haven’t been American deaths, it’s really just an economic choke-out, which the administration is now executing more broadly and I think it’ll be very effective,” Lutnick told the network.Whether or not Lutnick was thinking about Venezuela when he opened his mouth hardly matters. His inability to get the facts right revealed just how clueless the Cabinet member is about the administration’s warmongering, whether that relates to an unpopular Middle East war that has cost the American public hundreds of billions of dollars and more than a dozen American lives, or the decision to indiscriminately bomb boats in the Caribbean, infiltrate a South American government, and abduct its leader.Nonetheless, Lutnick embraced Trump’s cover, writing in a statement Thursday that he “misspoke.”“Eighteen members of our military have died, and to those families my heart breaks and I am so very sorry for their loss,” Lutnick wrote on X. “I was thinking about the Venezuelan military operation where no service members died.” Lutnick then invoked the twenty-fifth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attack, claiming that he was “deeply thankful for our military and the sacrifices the men and women who serve our great country make.” He noted that he lost his brother Gary and hundreds of his “close friends and colleagues” in the World Trade Center collapse.Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. ordered the new head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to remove two measles deaths from the Pennsylvania tally, in an effort to fudge the numbers lower. Last Friday, the CDC held off on its annual Friday measles update, waiting instead until Sunday, when it removed the Pennsylvania fatalities, adding a note that read, “At this time, available information does not establish whether measles caused or contributed to the (Pennsylvania) deaths or whether the individuals died from other causes while infected with measles.”The change was made at Kennedy’s personal request, three sources familiar with the conversation told Reuters.This decision came days after Kennedy and Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro traded barbs online, with Shapiro accusing Kennedy of stoking fear and spreading misinformation by claiming that the measles vaccine contained “fetal tissue,” and that the disease could be cured with “chicken soup and vitamin A.”“Before [RFK Jr.] held his current position, measles was virtually eliminated in the United States,” Shapiro wrote on X last week. “As recently as 2024, there were only 285 cases of measles across the entire country over 12 months. This year, in just 8 months, there are nearly 400 cases of measles across 29 counties in Pennsylvania alone—and nearly 3,000 cases across the country.... The correlation is clear: Secretary Kennedy has stoked confusion amongst parents and others—and the result has been less protection from measles and more cases.”Even still, newly appointed CDC head Erica Schwartz removed the deaths from the measles tally in Pennsylvania at RFK Jr.’s behest, completely delegitimizing the findings of the state health care apparatus. Former American Public Health Association chief executive Georges Benjamin called that move “unheard of.” “The secretary had no business ​interfering in the normal process,” he said. “He has an anti-vaccine agenda and he’s using this to play out his anti-vaccine agenda.”As Shapiro noted, measles is virtually entirely preventable due to the development of the MMR vaccine, an acronym for “measles, mumps, and rubella.” RFK Jr. of course loathes this vaccine, and his rhetoric against it has surely contributed to the resurgence of the disease—and the deaths which he ordered erased from the database. President Trump is planning to escalate military action against Iran after November, as his inner circle scrambles to keep him from intensifying the war before the midterms. Reuters reports that White House officials want any new offenses in the war to come after the November vote to prevent heavy losses in the election. For now, the focus is on economic pressure against Iran in order to get a better peace deal, anonymous sources told Reuters. “We are keeping the pressure on Iran,” an official said. “But November is a priority.”The latest polls show that the war is highly unpopular, with 63 percent of Americans disapproving of the conflict versus only 31 percent in approval. Iran has every incentive to make things worse in the next two months and step up its attacks on U.S. military bases in the Middle East. Meanwhile, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has extended troop deployments into 2027, signaling that the war won’t end anytime soon. Warship crews, air defense units, and paratroopers are among those whose deployments have been prolonged. Anonymous sources told The Wall Street Journal that the move is meant to give Trump more options in the war, but it’s also pushing troops to their limits and causing a maintenance backlog. It’s not clear what Trump will actually do, although the Journal reports that he is discussing how to declare the war over. On Wednesday, he claimed that he was happy with the economic pressure campaign against Iran, but complained about the Iranian people failing to “rise up and fight.” Whatever happens next is not likely to please the American people or ease pressure on the struggling economy. President Donald Trump just let everyone know how he really feels about Ken Paxton.Speaking at a dinner at the White House Rose Garden Wednesday, Trump promised to campaign for the Texas attorney general—but couldn’t resist telling everyone what he actually thinks about the Republican Senate hopeful.“So, Ken Paxton, you might not like the way he dresses. And I say this—it’s so insulting to him, but I might as well say it—you might not like the way he looks,” Trump said. “You might not love his look. You might not love his television interviews, but he was the best attorney general in the country, perhaps, he was one of the best in the entire country. And that speaks a lot louder than the suit he’s wearing that doesn’t look so great. Or than anything, frankly.”Trump: Ken Paxton, you might not like the way he dresses, and I say this, it's so insulting to him, but I might as well say it. You might not like the way he looks. You might not love his television interviews. But he was the best attorney general and that speaks a lot louder… pic.twitter.com/TOu5IP31WE— Acyn (@Acyn) September 2, 2026 It’s not exactly surprising that Trump’s thinking is so transparently shallow—after all, he’s scouted half his Cabinet members from television shows—but his humiliating outburst highlights how little control the 80-year-old president has over what he says in public.Trump has repeatedly pledged his desire to see Paxton elected but has yet to commit any part of his $400 million MAGA Inc. war chest to help him win. Meanwhile, Paxton has struggled to match Democratic candidate James Talarico’s funding. According to the latest quarterly filing with the Federal Election Commission, Talarico’s campaign had raked in $31.6 million, while Paxton had only raised $9.3 million.Instead, Trump has directed his super PAC to spend on ads that focus not on the Republican candidates who are running for the House and Senate, but on the president himself.If this is how Trump talks about his friends, well … I guess we’ve actually seen him talk about his enemies a lot, and that was really bad, too. Read more about the Texas race:Trailblazing women’s rights leader Gloria Steinem has died.She passed away peacefully in her New York City residence, according to a statement posted Thursday on her Instagram account. She was 92.“Gloria’s near-century on earth were years well-lived, and she continued working for equality until the very end,” the statement read. “Gloria’s greatest gift was her ability to listen to others, to make others feel seen and heard. Her words, actions, and example gave people permission to be their truest selves. Gloria lived true to her independent spirit, always with curiosity and a great sense of humor.”Steinem emerged as a leader of the second-wave feminist movement through the 1960s and ’70s. She often served as the face of a movement that—in no small part due to her influence—witnessed the development of Title IX, laws and regulations guarding women’s legal and financial rights, the passage of Roe v. Wade, the first United Nations World Conference on Women, and the national expansion of rape crisis centers, turning what had previously been a private issue into a political debate on equality.Steinem’s journalism career was similarly profound. She broke into the national writing scene in 1962 with a feature for Esquire on contraceptive use that became a vehicle for Steinem to argue against the contemporary demands placed on women, forcing them to choose between having a career or having children.Her star shone even brighter the following year when she published “A Bunny’s Tale” in Show magazine, exposing the exploitative labor conditions, unsafe working environment, and abysmal pay rates offered to New York City’s famed Playboy Bunnies. To write it, Steinem went undercover for a year, applying to a classified ad under a pseudonym, Marie Ochs, to work at the city’s Playboy Club.In interviews throughout her career, Steinem explained that it was a 1969 abortion rally that changed the trajectory of her life, morphing her from a nascent journalism star into a public activist. Steinem had gotten an abortion herself years earlier—in 1957—when the procedure was illegal.Steinem had no biological children but is survived by the four stepchildren she gained from her husband, David Bale, one of whom is actor Christian Bale.This story has been updated.