Pressed on possible war crimes, Trump peddled 3 answers. They were all unacceptable.

After months of rhetoric about possible war crimes in Iran, Donald Trump upped the ante on Sunday morning, publishing an unhinged threat to his social media platform in which he explicitly vowed to target Iranian power plants and bridges. As Easter Sunday progressed, the president did brief interviews with several media outlets to echo that point. The New York Times reported soon after that, according to legal experts, historians and former U.S. officials, “No other recent American president has talked so openly about committing potential war crimes.”

A day later, Trump fielded questions from reporters — first at a White House Easter Egg Roll event, then at a White House press conference — who pressed the Republican on his willingness to target Iranian infrastructure, in defiance of international law. It didn’t go well. The president, who must have realized he’d face these questions and had plenty of time to huddle with his aides and prepare coherent answers, peddled three distinct responses to the line of inquiry.

1. Refuse to talk about his plans for possible war crimes.

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’s Lindsey Pipia asked, “Are you committed to committing a war crime in this war with Iran?” Trump heard the question but refused to answer it. “What else?” he said to no one in particular, as if the question wasn’t worth his time or consideration.

Or, put another way, as far as the Republican sees it, the United States would be justified in committing war crimes because Iran deserves it — a line that is every bit as morally abhorrent as it appeared. This is not simply an academic exercise: Trump has set a deadline for 8 p.m. ET on Tuesday by which he expects Iranian officials to accept his demands. If not, in the words of the American president, he’s prepared to “blow up the whole country.”

With roughly 12 hours remaining before his arbitrary deadline, the Republican published a new message to his social media platform, which read in part, “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will. ... We will find out tonight, one of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the World.”