Three Weeks Ago, Trump Sang Their Praises; Now They’re ‘Scum’

President Donald Trump’s assessment of the Iranian regime is, like so many things in Trump’s orbit, volatile at best.

“They’re scum,” Trump said Wednesday of Iran’s current leadership, which he played a large part in bringing to power. “I don’t want to deal with them, but they’re scum.”

“They’re scum, they’re sick people, they’re led by sick people, and they’re vicious, violent people,” he emphasized.

Yet just last month, Trump said he’d be “honored” to meet Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, adding that “he has a very good reputation, actually.”

Mojtaba was only elevated to the role after Trump, at the urging of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, assassinated Iran’s previous leaders en masse and called for regime change ― until he backpedaled and claimed it wasn’t about regime change at all.

“You talk about regime change. I never cared about regime change. It [was] never a part,” Trump said at the G7 meeting last month in France, directly contradicting himself.

“But I guess you have regime change because you know better than anybody, the first group, they’re all dead. The second group, they’re dead. A part of the third group is gone,” he said.

He then proceeded to applaud himself for having killed enough of Iran’s leaders to have arrived at a group he deemed “very rational” and “nice to deal with.”

“And we’re dealing with people that I think are very rational people. They were nice to deal with. They were strong people, smart people,” Trump said of the group he now insists is scum.

“I think actually they’re smarter than the first and second group, but they’re not radicalized and they’re, you know, looking to help their country,” he said.

That’s markedly different than his take Wednesday, when, in addition to calling them “scum,” he said talking to them is “just a waste of time.”

“As far as I’m concerned, it’s just a waste of time dealing with them. They’re liars. We make a deal, and if I make a deal with him, we have a deal,” Trump said. “He goes out, he talks. We make a deal. Everyone’s agreed, no nuclear weapons. We make a deal. They go outside, talk to the press, they say we never even talked about it. Is something wrong with them? They’re cuckoo.”

Asked Wednesday afternoon what changed, Trump struggled to reconcile the two conflicting narratives. The president said he concluded they’re “scum” after he “got to know them” but again called them “more rational” than their predecessors.

“I think they are more rational but based on their actions over the last week or two … I’m not sure I want to make a deal with them,” Trump said. “We can play games but I’m not sure I want to make a deal. Let’s just finish the job.”

Trump then called the Iranians “lunatics” in a follow-up: ”I have to make sure of one thing. That we don’t have lunatics having control over nuclear weapons.”