Good evening. I'm Catherine Rampel in for Stephanie Ruhl, and welcome to the mid-week

nightcap. On the 33rd day of Donald Trump's war with Iran, he addressed the nation about his

administration's goals in that war. There were a lot of questions about what we might hear

tonight. For example,

was Trump getting ready to pull American forces out? Would he lay out an endgame for the war?

Or even make a case for putting boots on the ground? Instead, we got kind of the same talking points

that we've been hearing from Donald Trump since this war began. Listen.

In these past four weeks, our armed forces have delivered swift, decisive, overwhelming victories on the battlefield.

Victories like few people have ever seen before. Tonight, Iran's Navy is gone.

Their air force is in ruins.

Their leaders, most of them, terrorist regime they led are now dead.

We are on track to complete all of America's military objectives shortly, very shortly.

We are going to hit them extremely hard over the next two to three weeks. We're going to bring them back to the Stone Ages where they belong.

In the meantime, discussions are ongoing.

So one thing is very clear. Donald Trump knows that high gas prices are a major problem for him.

And there was little acknowledgement of the economic pain being caused by his war.

Tonight we heard him try to shift the blame for those escalating prices that you are paying.

Many Americans have been concerned to see the recent rise in gasoline prices here at home.

This short-term increase has been entirely the result of the Iranian regime launching deranged

terror attacks against commercial oil tankers and neighboring countries that have nothing to do with the conflict.

And in any event, when this conflict is over, the strait will open up naturally.

It'll just open up naturally.

...