In a Sunday talk show appearance, President Donald Trump used the death of Senator Lindsey Graham the day prior as a get-out-of-answering-questions-free card.The weekend saw the unexpected death of the Republican senator at age 71. It also saw the United States and Iran trade fire in the Middle East, reaffirming the apparent collapse of the June memorandum of understanding between the two countries. When CNN’s State of the Union host Jake Tapper queried Trump about the latter development, the president used the former as an excuse not to answer.“Are we back at war, and who controls the Strait of the Hormuz?” Tapper asked. Before he had even finished the question, the president was dodging it: “Well I don’t want to—out of respect for Lindsey, I’m not talking about that. We hit ’em very hard last night, so I don’t want to talk about it, but I will say we hit ’em very hard last night.” The president went on to allege that Iran’s leaders had been “giving up everything” during talks on Saturday before they turned on a dime, hitting “a ship with a drone.” Such rhetoric is consistent with Trump’s past attempts to portray Iran, despite the evidence to the contrary, as desperate and on the verge of surrender.“These people, there’s something wrong with them,” Trump said of Iran, “but I’m talking about a man who had nothing wrong with him, and that’s Lindsey Graham.”Later in the interview, Tapper tried again to get information about the war out of Trump, asking if the Strait of Hormuz is closed as Iran has claimed. But his luck was no better this time, with the president responding, “It’s open as far as we’re concerned. Don’t talk about it. Talk about the reason that you asked me to speak.”Come Monday morning, Iran and the U.S. were both claiming to be in control of the strait.