Regarding Iran sanctions

He's afraid of Iran. And he should be.  But, how embarrassing, when he insisted this was the worst deal Obama ever made.

President Trump is issuing a final waiver on Iran sanctions, the administration announced Friday.

"Despite my strong inclination, I have not yet withdrawn the United States from the Iran nuclear deal. Instead, I have outlined two possible paths forward: either fix the deal's disastrous flaws, or the United States will withdraw," the president said in a statement.

"Today, I am waiving the application of certain nuclear sanctions, but only in order to secure our European allies' agreement to fix the terrible flaws of the Iran nuclear deal," Mr. Trump continued. "This is a last chance."

  CBS

Let's hope it's his last chance.

Apparently, they had some trouble with the conference call.

It took the White House twenty-two minutes to figure out how to enable the "listening only" feature on a conference call on Thursday where senior administration officials announced that President Trump would continue to waive nuclear program-related sanctions, keeping the deal intact.

"This White House can't even run a f*cking conference call," a reporter on an unmuted phone line angrily exclaimed to the entire call. "They don't know how to mute their line."

"It's the illegitimate media that doesn't know how to conduct themselves. They can't mute their f*cking phones," an unidentified official said. "Mute your phones."

Another White House official repeatedly attempted to quiet the noisy line "so the people in charge" could talk.

[...]

A State Department official announced at the end of the call that the technical difficulties prevented the senior administration officials from taking any questions from reporters.

  CBS

Well, it's a handy excuse anyway.

The White House has struggled with facilitating background briefings on conference calls before.

[...]

Last May, Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney hosted a call that quickly devolved into a scene out of an episode of the HBO series "Veep," in which crying babies, hacking coughs, and the tune of "Yankee Doodle Dandy" were heard on the line.

[...]

In July 2016, during another background call on the Obama administration's Iran policy, a participant on the call announced that his "inflatable doll is a lesbian."

Good one.

I've been on conference calls where people didn't mute their phones before. Indeed, it is difficult and annoying, but why were they doing this on a conference call in the first place?  Will no one go out in front of the press any more?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.