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WASH­ING­TON (AP) — Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump yes­ter­day pushed back against mount­ing crit­i­cism that he hasn’t done enough to ex­plain why it was nec­es­sary to start a war with Iran now or to ar­tic­u­late his vi­sion for an endgame to the es­ca­lat­ing con­flict.

The frus­tra­tion is com­ing not just from the po­lit­i­cal left but al­so from his MA­GA base, as the con­flict ex­pands, en­er­gy prices surge and the death toll in the Mid­dle East ris­es in a war that the ad­min­is­tra­tion sug­gests may on­ly be in the open­ing stages.

Trump al­so seemed to leave open the pos­si­bil­i­ty for a more ex­ten­sive US mil­i­tary in­volve­ment, telling the New York Post yes­ter­day that he was not rul­ing out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of boots on the ground. It came as De­fence Sec­re­tary Pe­te Hegseth told re­porters the ad­min­is­tra­tion would not get in­to the “fool­ish” ex­er­cise of telegraph­ing “what we will or will not do.”