President Donald Trump joked that he might run for president of Venezuela, claiming he polls higher than any other politician in the South American country.

Trump made those remarks during a Monday press conference centered on the rescue mission of an Air Force officer who had gone missing after a fighter jet was shot down over Iran.

“The people of Venezuela, they say, if I ran for president of Venezuela, I’m polling higher than anybody has ever polled in Venezuela, so after I’m finished with this, I can go to Venezuela,” Trump said. “I will quickly learn Spanish. It won’t take too long. I’m good at language and I will go to Venezuela. I’m going to run for president. But we’re very happy with the president-elect that we have right now.”

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Trump mentioned Venezuela on several occasions during the press conference. He compared the Easter weekend rescue mission’s success to the Pentagon’s capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. He also suggested that the outcome in Iran would be similar to Venezuela. He described the conflict with Venezuela as being “over in 45 minutes,” and boasted that the United States has now taken hundreds of millions of barrels of oil from the country.

During a cabinet meeting late last month, Trump joked that he “may run” for president against acting President Delcy Rodriguez, whom he installed as the leader after Maduro was captured.

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“The people — actually, I’m the highest polling person. In other words, after the presidency, I think I may go to Venezuela and run for president,” Trump said.

Trump described the prospect as a “wonderful option” for him.

While Trump boasted his “good” language skills at Monday’s press conference, last month he told Latin American leaders at the inaugural Shield of the Americas Summit that he would not learn a new language.

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During his address, Trump praised Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who, as the son of Cuban immigrants, speaks fluent Spanish.

“He’s got a language advantage over me, ‘cause I’m not learning your damn language,” Trump said. “I don’t have time. I was okay with languages but I’m not gonna spend time learning your language. That much I won’t do.”

WASHINGTON — President Trump said Monday that the United States and Iran are at a “critical point” in negotiating a potential ceasefire agreement, but the chances of reaching a deal by a Trump-imposed deadline on Tuesday evening appeared uncertain.

In a lengthy news briefing at the White House, the president echoed an expletive-laden Easter Sunday warning to strike Iran’s vital infrastructure if Tehran does not agree to open the Strait of Hormuz by 5 p.m. PDT on Tuesday.

“The entire country can be taken out in one night and that night might be tomorrow night,” Trump told reporters.

Mediators from Egypt, Pakistan and Turkey sent the United States and Iran a draft proposal of the 45-day ceasefire on Friday, the Associated Press reported. Its prospects seemed dim amid the president’s threats and a lukewarm response from Iranian leaders, who dismissed the president’s diplomatic overtures as “unrealistic” and denying direct talks with the United States.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei rejected the latest ceasefire proposal, saying Monday that the American demands were “both highly excessive and unusual, as well as illogical.”

Still, Trump continued to assert that Iranian leadership has been negotiating in good faith. He characterized newly installed leaders as an improvement over their predecessors.

“The people that we are negotiating with now on behalf of Iran are much more reasonable,” he said Monday.

Trump declined to comment further on the ceasefire proposal at the news conference, but told reporters that Iran is negotiating ahead of his Tuesday deadline.

“I can tell you they’re negotiating, we think in good faith,” Trump said. “We are going to find out.”

The president did not say whom the United States is negotiating with, but said the most difficult challenge so far has been establishing a reliable channel of communicating with Iranian officials who he said have “no method of communicating.”

Trump also declined to say whether he was prepared to offer Iran assurances to wind down the conflict, or whether he would escalate by following through with his threats to bomb critical Iranian infrastructure, leaving the door open to both diplomacy and military action.

“I can’t tell you — it depends on what they do. This is a critical period,” he said,

Central to the negotiations is Iran’s control of the Strait of Hormuz, a choke point that, if left blockaded, could continue driving oil prices higher and further destabilizing global energy markets.

Trump, in characteristically unorthodox fashion, floated the possibility of the United States seizing operational control of the waterway and charging tolls for passage, a proposal that he provided without much detail.

“Why shouldn’t we?” Trump said. “We have a concept where we’ll charge tolls.”

He also mused openly about seizing Iranian oil, as he has in recent social media posts in which he floated the idea of using the war to claim Iranian energy resources. He acknowledged public pressure was holding him back from that course.

“Unfortunately the American people would like to see us come home,” he said. “If it were up to me, I’d take the oil, keep the oil and make plenty of money.”

In addition to reopening the Strait of Hormuz, Washington is also demanding the permanent decommissioning of Iranian nuclear sites and an end to its uranium enrichment programs. The proposal also requires Iran to halt support for regional proxies and accept strict ballistic missile limits.

In exchange, the United States says it will provide sanctions relief and assistance with civilian energy production, according to media reports.

Speaking at the White House Easter Egg Roll earlier Monday, Trump showed no signs of softening his posture to bring “hell” to Iran if a deal doesn’t materialize.

“We are obliterating their country. And I hate to do it, but we are obliterating. And they just don’t want to say uncle. … And if they don’t, then they’ll have no bridges, they’ll have no power plants, they’ll have nothing,” he said, adding ominously that “there are other things that are worse than those two.”

Iran has warned of “more severe and expansive” retaliations if Trump follows through on the threats.

Also at Monday’s briefing, Trump celebrated the dramatic rescue of the American officer whose fighter jet was downed by Iran last week. He told reporters the operation to retrieve the wounded officer from “one of the toughest areas in Iran” was possible with a mix of “talent” and “luck.”

The president, however, was angered that a news outlet, which he did not name, reported that the weapons system officer had gone missing and was stranded behind enemy lines. Trump vowed to root out the source of that information, including by threatening to jail the journalist who broke the story.

“We have to find that leaker because that is a sick person,” Trump said. “We are going to find out, it is national security. The person who did the story will go to jail if he doesn’t say.”

Also Monday, Israel struck Iran’s largest petrochemical facility in Asaluyeh and killed Gen. Majid Khademi, the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ intelligence organization.

The Israeli military also hit three Iranian airports, purportedly targeting dozens of helicopters and aircraft it said belonged to the Iranian air force.

Iran responded with missile strikes targeting Haifa, Israel, and energy infrastructure in Kuwait and Bahrain.

A party-line tactic to ram legislation through Congress and bypass the Senate filibuster has become a dumping ground for Republicans’ legislative priorities throughout the year.

Now, as Democrats refuse to fund immigration operations, Republicans are once again readying a budget reconciliation package. The hard part will be getting enough of the GOP on the same page to craft a bill that can pass and survive the strict rules underpinning the process.

Republicans used the same process to pass President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” last year. It’s a time-consuming, labor-intensive legislative maneuver that nearly blew up and could fail unless both the Senate and House align on what exactly they want to include.

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Trump officially backed using reconciliation again this week as a way to skirt Democrats’ refusal to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), as Congress inches closer to ending the ongoing Department of Homeland Security (DHS) shutdown.

Trump demanded that Republicans get the bill on his desk by June 1.

“We are going to work as fast and as focused as possible to replenish funding for our Border and ICE agents, and the Radical Left Democrats won’t be able to stop us,” Trump said on Truth Social.

Still, Republicans have viewed reconciliation as a vehicle to tackle fraud, affordability, Trump’s tariff authorities, additional tax provisions, healthcare, funding for the Iran war, supplemental agriculture spending, and election integrity measures in the months since passing the “big, beautiful bill.”

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Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., has warned that if reconciliation is going to work — especially given the limited timeframe lawmakers have to start and finish the process — Republicans need to “keep our expectations realistic.”

“Our theory of the case behind all this was to keep that thing as narrow and focused as possible, and that maximizes the speed at which we can do it and the support for it,” Thune said.

“There will probably be some attempts to add things,” he continued. “There are things out there that, obviously, many of us are interested in. But on a reconciliation vehicle like this — which we need to move with haste, as the president has pointed out — it’s probably not a likely magnet for all these other issues.”

Senate Budget Committee Chair Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., told voters at an event this week in South Carolina that he is eyeing two new reconciliation packages, which could ease concerns about cramming all the GOP’s priorities into one massive bill.

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“We want to do it quick — ICE, Border Patrol — fund it as much as you can, multi-year,” Graham said. “Then there’s another one coming. I just made news. There’s another one coming in the fall, and that’s going to be about going after fraud.”

House Republicans spent their recent policy retreat earlier this year pushing a so-called “reconciliation 2.0,” gearing up to load the package with several provisions that could drain time and struggle to earn support in the Senate — where strict guidelines could kill proposals entirely if they don’t comply with the rules.

The Republican Study Committee (RSC), which has long called for a second reconciliation bill, also wants to add proposals addressing affordability concerns.

“We support pursuing funding for military readiness and Homeland Security through this legislative process, while simultaneously codifying the president’s agenda to deliver lower costs for working families,” the RSC Steering Committee said in a statement to Fox News Digital.

Some Republicans are also pushing to include the latest policy fight: the Safeguarding American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act. The voter ID and citizenship verification legislation has no chance of passing the Senate given unified Democratic opposition.

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It’s also unlikely to survive the Senate’s reconciliation rules, which allow only provisions that directly impact spending.

“I think we have to set our sights a little bit lower on this reconciliation bill,” Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., told Fox News Digital. “It’s got to be targeted to fund ICE for 10 years — I think that’s the number one thing for us. If we can nibble at the edges of the SAVE Act, that would be great, but the parliamentarian is not going to let us do the SAVE Act. That’s just an impossibility.”

Some of the loudest proponents of the bill in the House GOP acknowledge that adding the SAVE Act to reconciliation would be a challenge — largely because they would prefer to keep the bill intact and push it through the Senate.

“Look, it’s time for them to do a walk-and-talk and filibuster, and let’s make this thing happen,” Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., said. “The American people are watching — piecing it together just to try to get a piece.”