WHITE HOUSE: NO DECISION: As about 3,500 Sailors and Marines aboard the USS Tripoli amphibious assault ship have arrived in waters just outside the Persian Gulf, and several thousand paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division are set to join them, President Donald Trump is talking tough, insisting he has all the cards.

“I just have lots of alternatives,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One last night. “We have tremendous numbers of ships over there. We don’t need them all because of, you know, the power.” Trump spoke confidently of Iran’s ballistic missile attack being reduced to “sputtering” and asserted that he’s now dealing with “a new group of people that we’ve never dealt with before that are acting very reasonable.”