Subscribe to read this story ad-free

Get unlimited access to ad-free articles and exclusive content.

“We are so glad you started your week with us, and it is good to be home,” Guthrie said at the start of the show. She wore a bright yellow dress, echoing the yellow ribbons and flowers left at her mother’s home.

“TODAY” co-anchor Craig Melvin, wearing a yellow tie, patted Guthrie’s hand and replied: “Yes, it is good to have you at home.”

The two anchors then turned to the morning’s top headlines, including an opening segment about the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran. “Well, here we go, ready or not,” Guthrie said. “Let’s do the news.”

Guthrie, who has co-anchored “TODAY” since 2012, stepped away from her role in early February after Nancy Guthrie, 84, went missing from her home near Tucson, Arizona. Authorities have described the case as a possible kidnapping or abduction.

Guthrie told Hoda Kotb last month that she believed returning to the “TODAY” anchor desk is “part of my purpose right now,” even though it was difficult to imagine going back to a workplace she associates with “joy and lightness.”

“I can’t come back and try to be something that I’m not. But I can’t not come back because it’s my family,” Guthrie said in the interview, her first since the start of the ordeal. “I don’t know if I can do it. I don’t know if I’ll belong anymore, but I would like to try.”

In the second hour of Monday’s show, Guthrie greeted “TODAY” fans gathered outside on Rockefeller Plaza, some wearing yellow pins and holding signs with her mother’s photo. Guthrie fought back tears as she held co-host Jenna Bush Hager’s hand and thanked her supporters for their prayers and letters.

“You guys have been so beautiful,” she said. “I’ve received so many letters, so much kindness to me and my whole family. We feel it. We feel your prayers.”

Nancy Guthrie’s family reported her missing around noon Feb. 1 after she did not show up at a friend’s house for virtual church services, according to the Pima County Sheriff’s Office. She was last seen the previous night around 9:45 p.m. after having dinner at her daughter Annie Guthrie’s home, according to authorities.

The investigation into her disappearance gripped the nation and put an intense spotlight on the quiet Catalina Foothills area of Tucson. Authorities have not identified a suspect or motive, though the FBI released chilling doorbell camera video of an armed and masked man outside Nancy Guthrie’s home on the morning she was reported missing.

The bureau described him as a man of average build, 5 feet, 9 inches to 5 feet, 10 inches tall, wearing a black Ozark Trail Hiker Pack 25-liter backpack.

Guthrie and her siblings, Camron Guthrie and Annie Guthrie, have provided updates on the case via social media. In emotionally wrenching videos on Instagram, they have thanked members of the public for their prayers and made direct appeals to Nancy Guthrie’s possible abductor.

“Someone knows how to find our mom and bring her home,” Guthrie wrote in the caption to a Feb. 24 video post.

The family is offering up to $1 million for information that leads to the 84-year-old’s recovery. The FBI is offering a reward of up to $100,000 for “information leading to the recovery of Nancy Guthrie and/or the arrest and conviction of anyone involved in her disappearance.”

Kotb, a “TODAY” contributor, substituted for Guthrie. In that period, Guthrie withdrew from NBC’s coverage of the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics; Mary Carillo stepped in to co-host the opening ceremony alongside NBC Sports’ Terry Gannon.

Guthrie visited the “TODAY” set March 5. In photos taken from outside the studio by a photographer for The Associated Press, Guthrie could be seen wiping tears and embracing her colleagues. The visit was not televised.

“I really wanted to come and see everybody. I just love this beautiful place that we call home, where we get to come and be every day,” Guthrie told Kotb, adding: “When times are hard, you want to be with your family.”

Subscribe to read this story ad-free

Get unlimited access to ad-free articles and exclusive content.

Translation: The affordability problem isn’t improving.

New government data released Friday showed non-supervisory workers getting a 3.4% pay raise on average hourly earnings over the last year. That’s the slowest pace of wage gains since 2021, and a downshift from the last two years, when pay bumps were closer to 4%.

The slowdown comes as economists worry about rising inflation, with the Iran war choking off oil tankers and pushing gas prices up over $1 per gallon in just a month, to a national average of $4.09 on Friday.

As diesel costs break $5.50 a gallon (compared to just $3.89 a month ago), retailers and grocers are now contending with higher transportation costs. Amazon said Thursday it will begin charging sellers a 3.5% “fuel and logistics-related surcharge” beginning on April 17.

Airlines like United and JetBlue are raising bag fees in an effort to offset sky-high jet fuel costs. The International Air Transport Association says the price of jet fuel is up 104% in the past month.

“With the recent uptick in inflation driven by energy prices, real wage growth is likely to decelerate further, putting increased pressure on consumers,” said Thrivent’s chief financial and investment officer, David Royal.

For now, Americans are still seeing their earnings rise at a faster pace than the increase in price tags at the store. As pay rose by 3.4%, the most recent inflation data showed prices rising by 2.4% year-over-year.

Wage gains for non-supervisory employees — a category that includes roughly four out of every five non-farm workers — have been outpacing price increases since March 2023, when post-pandemic inflation finally began to cool.

But the concern is that the story could change soon. Because of the bump from oil prices, Navy Federal Credit Union Chief Economist Heather Long said it’s possible inflation could pace at 4% this month.

“Four percent is above that 3.5 percent annual wage gain, and that’s where you see a lot of squeeze on workers, particularly middle-class and moderate-income workers,” Long said.

Warning signs are flashing that slowing wage growth could ripple beyond the gas station and prices at the grocery store. Higher mortgage rates now have some worried about icing out even more potential homebuyers.

The average 30-year fixed mortgage rate rose from 5.99% at the start of the war to 6.45% on April 3, according to Mortgage News Daily. The rise is due in part to concerns that the Federal Reserve will have to raise interest rates to tamp down on war-driven inflation.

“With choppy job growth, weaker labor-force attachment and rising uncertainty, many households — especially renters and first-time buyers — could become more cautious as weaker inflation-adjusted wages erode recent affordability improvements,” said Zillow senior economist Orphe Divounguy.

If wages can’t keep up with rising costs across the board, it’s likely that affordability will become a larger issue than it already was prior to the war. An NBC News poll conducted during the first week of the war with Iran found that, for a plurality of respondents, inflation and the cost of living was the most important issue facing the country.

Economists feel the same way.

Responding to a question from NBC News at a March 18 news conference, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell noted that “real” wage gains — a measure of wages adjusted for inflation — need to be positive in order for Americans to feel better about affordability.

“it will take some years of positive real earning gains for people to feel good again, we think. But you’re right — when you talk to people, they do feel squeezed,” Powell said.

A Democratic congresswoman whose parents fled the regime of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini decades ago announced Monday she would file articles of impeachment against Secretary of War Pete Hegseth for alleged war crimes amid the current conflict.

Rep. Yassamin Ansari of Arizona previously told the New York Times she initially “felt a rush of hope, but also unease” when she learned Americans and Israelis had taken out Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in February.

But she has since been harshly critical of how the Trump administration has overseen the conflict, including President Donald Trump’s Easter message to what’s left of Iranian leadership to “open the f—ing Strait” of Hormuz by Tuesday or risk strikes on critical infrastructure.

“Donald Trump’s deranged statements — including one on Easter Sunday — are further entrenching our country and our world in another devastating, never-ending war,” Ansari said in a statement announcing her plans to impeach Hegseth.

77-YEAR-OLD HOUSE DEM FACING YOUNGER PRIMARY CHALLENGERS SEEKS TO IMPEACH DONALD TRUMP

Ansari claimed Trump is threatening war crimes in violation of the Geneva Convention and has already committed “illegal actions and atrocities already committed at his direction — including violence that has destroyed schools, hospitals, and critical civilian infrastructure.”

“As the daughter of Iranian immigrants who fled this regime, and as an American Congresswoman who swore an oath to the United States Constitution, I know that this cannot go on,” she said.

Ansari’s father was a medical student studying in the United States when the Iranian Revolution broke out and couldn’t return to Iran, while her mother fled and was sent to live with another family in Delaware at age 17 after the Khomeini regime continually restricted women’s rights, according to the UK Guardian.

Ansari urged invocation of the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office and said she would file articles of impeachment and seek to formally impeach Hegseth “next week.”

DEMOCRATS THREATEN TO GRIND SENATE TO A HALT TO FORCE PUBLIC IRAN HEARINGS

She alleged the Pentagon chief “repeatedly violat[ed] his oath of office and his duty to the Constitution. Only Congress has the power to declare war, not a rogue president or his lackeys.”

“Hegseth’s reckless endangerment of U.S. servicemembers and repeated war crimes, including bombing a girls’ school in Minab, Iran, and willfully targeting civilian infrastructure, are grounds for impeachment and removal from office.”

Hegseth and Trump recently engineered the rescue of an airman shot down by Iranian forces over the weekend, with the president telling the press at the White House that a large military operation was required.

Gen. Dan “Raizin” Caine declined to state how many troops were involved, likely for security reasons.

When reached for comment, Pentagon Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson slammed the plan to impeach her boss, telling Fox News Digital that Ansari is “just another Democrat trying to make headlines” as an ongoing Mideast military operation and two “daring and successful” rescue operations were conducted.

“Secretary Hegseth will continue to protect the homeland and unleash epic fury on Iran’s radical regime,” Wilson said.

“This is just another charade in an attempt to distract the American people from the major successes we have had here at the Department of War.”

Fox News Digital reached out to the White House for comment.

Shelly Kittleson, the American journalist who was kidnapped last week in Iraq, has been released, according to Al-Monitor, the Middle East publication where she works as a freelance contributor. 

Viral surveillance footage appeared to show Kittleson being forced into a car by two men at a busy intersection in Baghdad last Tuesday. The State Department previously said an individual with ties to the Iranian-aligned militia group Kataib Hizballah was believed to be involved in Kittleson’s capture. 

Kataib Hizballah issued a statement that Kittleson was set free in “appreciation of the patriotic positions” of Iraq’s prime minister, Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, who pushed for her release. The group said she would be set free “on the condition that she leaves the country immediately,” according to Al-Monitor.

AMERICAN JOURNALIST KIDNAPPED IN IRAQ, EMPLOYER SAYS

“This initiative will not be repeated in the future… we are in a state of war waged by the Zionist-American enemy against Islam and in such situations many considerations are disregarded,” Kataib Hizballah security commander Abu Mujahid Al-Asaf added, according to The New York Times. 

A U.S. official confirmed her release to Fox News. 

“There were U.S. efforts behind the scenes, I am told, to secure her release from Kataib Hezbollah,” Fox News chief foreign correspondent Trey Yingst reported. 

Former Pentagon official Alex Plitsas, a friend of the journalist who has called himself her designated U.S. point of contact, posted on X that he isn’t ready to celebrate.

“We are still awaiting Shelley to be transferred to US officials. We welcome the news of her pending release but will save celebratory statements until she is transferred…. we will have more to say when she is in US hands,” Plitsas wrote. 

The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment by Fox News Digital.

The 49-year-old freelance journalist, an American citizen and Wisconsin native based in Rome, reported from war zones for years, spending time in Afghanistan and Syria before Iraq. She “often worked without formal assignments from editors and on a shoestring budget, taking shared taxis to lawless corners of Iraq where militia rule outweighs government control,” the Associated Press reported after speaking to her friends, family and colleagues. 

REPORTER KIDNAPPED IN BAGHDAD KNOWN FOR PURSUING GUTSY, LOW-BUDGET ASSIGNMENTS WHILE LIVING ‘FRUGAL EXISTENCE’

Recent headlines published by Kittleson include, “On eve of Iran’s Pezeshkian visit, Iraq jostles for Shiite space amid rivalries,” “Iraqis protest proposed ‘anti-women’ amendment to personal status law” and “Honor killings in Iraq rekindle efforts to criminalize domestic violence.”

“Hope she can return to do her job and tell the story of many who are not heard in region,” Al-Monitor top editor Joyce Karam posted when reporting her release. 

The Associated Press, citing “an Iraqi official with direct knowledge of the situation,” reported that she was freed in exchange for “several members” of Kataib Hezbollah that had previously been detained by Iraqi authorities.

US STRIKES AGAINST IRAN-BACKED MILITIAS IN IRAQ REPORTEDLY CONTINUE AS BAGHDAD WARNS OF ‘RIGHT TO RESPOND’

Reporters Without Borders released the following statement: “We are overjoyed by reports that Shelly Kittleson has been released by her captors in Iraq. Shelly’s abduction underscored the very serious risks facing even the best-trained and experienced journalists. RSF is deeply grateful to all the parties involved from the American and Iraqi governments who were able to secure this positive outcome. RSF, the Committee to Protect Journalists, and the Foley Foundation wrote to Secretary of State Marco Rubio on April 3, urging him to do everything in his power to bring Shelly home. We are now waiting for reassurance that she is all right and that she will be able to reunite with her loved ones soon.”

Before she was abducted, Kittleson told friends that U.S. officials had told her a militia group intended to target her, but she didn’t believe the threat was credible. 

This is a developing story, more to come… 

The Associated Press and Fox News chief foreign correspondent Trey Yingst  contributed to this report. 

Subscribe to read this story ad-free

Get unlimited access to ad-free articles and exclusive content.

“We are so glad you started your week with us, and it is good to be home,” Guthrie said at the start of the show. She wore a bright yellow dress, echoing the yellow ribbons and flowers left at her mother’s home.

“TODAY” co-anchor Craig Melvin, wearing a yellow tie, patted Guthrie’s hand and replied: “Yes, it is good to have you at home.”

The two anchors then turned to the morning’s top headlines, including an opening segment about the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran. “Well, here we go, ready or not,” Guthrie said. “Let’s do the news.”

Guthrie, who has co-anchored “TODAY” since 2012, stepped away from her role in early February after Nancy Guthrie, 84, went missing from her home near Tucson, Arizona. Authorities have described the case as a possible kidnapping or abduction.

Guthrie told Hoda Kotb last month that she believed returning to the “TODAY” anchor desk is “part of my purpose right now,” even though it was difficult to imagine going back to a workplace she associates with “joy and lightness.”

“I can’t come back and try to be something that I’m not. But I can’t not come back because it’s my family,” Guthrie said in the interview, her first since the start of the ordeal. “I don’t know if I can do it. I don’t know if I’ll belong anymore, but I would like to try.”

In the second hour of Monday’s show, Guthrie greeted “TODAY” fans gathered outside on Rockefeller Plaza, some wearing yellow pins and holding signs with her mother’s photo. Guthrie fought back tears as she held co-host Jenna Bush Hager’s hand and thanked her supporters for their prayers and letters.

“You guys have been so beautiful,” she said. “I’ve received so many letters, so much kindness to me and my whole family. We feel it. We feel your prayers.”

Nancy Guthrie’s family reported her missing around noon Feb. 1 after she did not show up at a friend’s house for virtual church services, according to the Pima County Sheriff’s Office. She was last seen the previous night around 9:45 p.m. after having dinner at her daughter Annie Guthrie’s home, according to authorities.

The investigation into her disappearance gripped the nation and put an intense spotlight on the quiet Catalina Foothills area of Tucson. Authorities have not identified a suspect or motive, though the FBI released chilling doorbell camera video of an armed and masked man outside Nancy Guthrie’s home on the morning she was reported missing.

The bureau described him as a man of average build, 5 feet, 9 inches to 5 feet, 10 inches tall, wearing a black Ozark Trail Hiker Pack 25-liter backpack.

Guthrie and her siblings, Camron Guthrie and Annie Guthrie, have provided updates on the case via social media. In emotionally wrenching videos on Instagram, they have thanked members of the public for their prayers and made direct appeals to Nancy Guthrie’s possible abductor.

“Someone knows how to find our mom and bring her home,” Guthrie wrote in the caption to a Feb. 24 video post.

The family is offering up to $1 million for information that leads to the 84-year-old’s recovery. The FBI is offering a reward of up to $100,000 for “information leading to the recovery of Nancy Guthrie and/or the arrest and conviction of anyone involved in her disappearance.”

Kotb, a “TODAY” contributor, substituted for Guthrie. In that period, Guthrie withdrew from NBC’s coverage of the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics; Mary Carillo stepped in to co-host the opening ceremony alongside NBC Sports’ Terry Gannon.

Guthrie visited the “TODAY” set March 5. In photos taken from outside the studio by a photographer for The Associated Press, Guthrie could be seen wiping tears and embracing her colleagues. The visit was not televised.

“I really wanted to come and see everybody. I just love this beautiful place that we call home, where we get to come and be every day,” Guthrie told Kotb, adding: “When times are hard, you want to be with your family.”

Subscribe to read this story ad-free

Get unlimited access to ad-free articles and exclusive content.

Translation: The affordability problem isn’t improving.

New government data released Friday showed non-supervisory workers getting a 3.4% pay raise on average hourly earnings over the last year. That’s the slowest pace of wage gains since 2021, and a downshift from the last two years, when pay bumps were closer to 4%.

The slowdown comes as economists worry about rising inflation, with the Iran war choking off oil tankers and pushing gas prices up over $1 per gallon in just a month, to a national average of $4.09 on Friday.

As diesel costs break $5.50 a gallon (compared to just $3.89 a month ago), retailers and grocers are now contending with higher transportation costs. Amazon said Thursday it will begin charging sellers a 3.5% “fuel and logistics-related surcharge” beginning on April 17.

Airlines like United and JetBlue are raising bag fees in an effort to offset sky-high jet fuel costs. The International Air Transport Association says the price of jet fuel is up 104% in the past month.

“With the recent uptick in inflation driven by energy prices, real wage growth is likely to decelerate further, putting increased pressure on consumers,” said Thrivent’s chief financial and investment officer, David Royal.

For now, Americans are still seeing their earnings rise at a faster pace than the increase in price tags at the store. As pay rose by 3.4%, the most recent inflation data showed prices rising by 2.4% year-over-year.

Wage gains for non-supervisory employees — a category that includes roughly four out of every five non-farm workers — have been outpacing price increases since March 2023, when post-pandemic inflation finally began to cool.

But the concern is that the story could change soon. Because of the bump from oil prices, Navy Federal Credit Union Chief Economist Heather Long said it’s possible inflation could pace at 4% this month.

“Four percent is above that 3.5 percent annual wage gain, and that’s where you see a lot of squeeze on workers, particularly middle-class and moderate-income workers,” Long said.

Warning signs are flashing that slowing wage growth could ripple beyond the gas station and prices at the grocery store. Higher mortgage rates now have some worried about icing out even more potential homebuyers.

The average 30-year fixed mortgage rate rose from 5.99% at the start of the war to 6.45% on April 3, according to Mortgage News Daily. The rise is due in part to concerns that the Federal Reserve will have to raise interest rates to tamp down on war-driven inflation.

“With choppy job growth, weaker labor-force attachment and rising uncertainty, many households — especially renters and first-time buyers — could become more cautious as weaker inflation-adjusted wages erode recent affordability improvements,” said Zillow senior economist Orphe Divounguy.

If wages can’t keep up with rising costs across the board, it’s likely that affordability will become a larger issue than it already was prior to the war. An NBC News poll conducted during the first week of the war with Iran found that, for a plurality of respondents, inflation and the cost of living was the most important issue facing the country.

Economists feel the same way.

Responding to a question from NBC News at a March 18 news conference, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell noted that “real” wage gains — a measure of wages adjusted for inflation — need to be positive in order for Americans to feel better about affordability.

“it will take some years of positive real earning gains for people to feel good again, we think. But you’re right — when you talk to people, they do feel squeezed,” Powell said.

Subscribe to read this story ad-free

Get unlimited access to ad-free articles and exclusive content.

Stocks were volatile, with major indexes plunging early in the day before moving higher at the close on shifting headlines about the war in the Middle East.

U.S. indexes recovered their early losses on news that Iran’s deputy foreign minister said his country would outline a “new navigation regime” in the Strait of Hormuz after the war ended, injecting fresh optimism into markets over the future of the key waterway.

At the closing bell at 4 p.m. ET, the S&P 500 closed up 0.11%, the Nasdaq Composite ended higher by 0.18%, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 61 points. The Russell 2000 index, which tracks smaller companies, rose 0.7%.

Subscribe to read this story ad-free

Get unlimited access to ad-free articles and exclusive content.

The unemployment rate fell to 4.3% last month, down from 4.4%. The gains were concentrated in health care, construction, transportation and warehousing.

Despite the outsized headline figure, there were further indications that the job market remains wobbly. Wage growth declined to 3.5% in March from 3.8% in February, falling short of forecasts.

Jobs report estimates from January and February were also revised, upward and downward respectively. Combined, they show that U.S. payrolls fell by a net 7,000 over those two months.

The labor force participation rate, or the share of the overall population either employed or looking for work, fell to its lowest level since November of 2021.

“While this month’s jobs report delivered an upside surprise, we continue to believe that risks to the labor market remain elevated and higher oil prices from the Iran conflict could prove an additional impediment in the months ahead,” Scott Helfstein, head of investment strategy at Global X financial group, said in a note to clients.

Surveys conducted by the BLS for this report were completed by March 12. At the time, the full brunt of the war had yet to hit the job market.

Three weeks later, gasoline prices have surged to more than $4 a gallon, a level that, if it is sustained, would sap U.S. consumers of hundreds of dollars in annual discretionary income.

On Wednesday, the Atlanta Federal Reserve lowered its real-time gross domestic product estimate to 1.9%, down from more than 3% just before the start of the war.

On Tuesday, the BLS reported the hiring rate in February fell to just 3.1% of the U.S. workforce, a level last recorded in April 2020, as the Covid pandemic bore down.

Job openings also fell in February, though they appear to be stabilizing overall. The rate of layoffs also remains at an all-time low.

Meanwhile, many Americans’ views of the economy and Trump’s handling of it continue to sink to new depths.

A CNN poll out this week found that just 31% of respondents approved of how Trump is managing U.S. economic performance, with just 27% saying they approved of his handling of inflation, down from 44% a year ago. His overall approval rating appears to have stabilized at about 35%.

A debate is now underway about how many jobs the U.S. would need to add each month to keep the unemployment rate — 4.3% as of Friday — stable.

Over the past year, a massive drop in overall immigration to the U.S., coupled with a growing number of baby boomers leaving the workforce, mean fewer overall jobs need to be created for the economy to absorb newcomers to the labor force and keep the overall unemployment rate steady, according to economists with the Dallas Federal Reserve.

That overall number of new jobs needed is known as the “breakeven” employment rate. The economists wrote in a note published this week that the breakeven employment rate now may be close to zero.

If the overall workforce continues to shrink, even fewer new jobs will be needed to incorporate workers entering the labor force, such as recent college graduates or parents who put their careers on hold for a few years.

That won’t necessarily make looking for a job any easier. The median spell of unemployment is now about 2½ months, with the average much longer — about six months. About 25% of all unemployed workers are out of work for at least 27 weeks.

High-level sources have informed Fox News that during rescue efforts in Iran after a U.S. fighter jet was shot down, the commander of U.S. Central Command directed an attack against an underground Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps headquarters.

While the airman rescue was going on, CENTCOM Commander Adm. Brad Cooper directed a strike on an IRGC headquarters in an underground facility near Tehran — it was done with B2 bombers, using Massive Ordnance Penetrators, the same weapon used last year in Operation Midnight Hammer, according to the sources. Fox News is told the headquarters was obliterated.

U.S. military B1 bombers (BONES) dropped a hundred 2,000-pound bombs during the rescue operations to keep Iranians away from the rescue area during the operation, according to a senior U.S. defense official.

A senior military source told Fox News, “we delivered the heat” on the IRGC.

RESCUE EXPERT SAYS MOST DANGEROUS MOMENT COMES AFTER ‘JACKPOT’ CALL IN RECOVERY BEHIND ENEMY LINES

CENTCOM noted in a press release that U.S. forces had rescued two service members after their F-15E was downed.

Fox News was told that the operation took place between the two rescues: Cooper ordered the B2s to fly round trip from Whiteman Air Force Base in the U.S. because they received time-sensitive intelligence about the location of a large number of IRGC commanders inside this underground bunker in Tehran, and the Massive Ordnance Penetrators, bunker buster bombs, were dropped by the B2 warplanes.

AIRMAN RESCUE SHOWS US CAN PENETRATE ENEMY TERRITORY ‘ANYWHERE’ IN IRAN, FORMER PENTAGON OFFICIAL WARNS

Following the rescues, President Donald Trump declared in a Truth Social post, “We have rescued the seriously wounded, and really brave, F-15 Crew Member/Officer, from deep inside the mountains of Iran. The Iranian Military was looking hard, in big numbers, and getting close. He is a highly respected Colonel. This type of raid is seldom attempted because of the danger to ‘man and equipment.’ It just doesn’t happen!” 

RETIRED F-16 PILOT SAYS RESCUED US AIRMAN’S SURVIVAL IN IRAN HIGHLIGHTS INTENSE EVASION TRAINING

“The second raid came after the first one, where we rescued the pilot in broad daylight, also unusual, spending seven hours over Iran. An AMAZING show of bravery and talent by all!” he said.

President Donald Trump touted the “historic” rescue of the downed F-15E airmen behind enemy lines and issued a warning to Iran to make a deal before Tuesday night’s 8 p.m. ET deadline or face being “taken out.”

“This is a rescue that’s very historic,” Trump told the White House press corps in a Monday news conference. “It’ll go down to the books.”

“Late Thursday night, an American F-15 fighter jet went down deep inside enemy territory in Iran while participating in Operation Epic Fury, where we’re doing unbelievably well. Well, at a level that nobody’s ever seen before.”

Trump quickly paused his hailing of the rescue to add a warning for Iran to come to peace.

TRUMP REVEALS IRAN MADE ‘SIGNIFICANT PROPOSAL’ AFTER ULTIMATUM, BUT ‘NOT GOOD ENOUGH’

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

Trump continued to press Iran to come to a peace deal, hours after saying the offers thus far are “not enough,” and War Secretary Pete Hegseth vowed the heaviest bombing of Iran to date.

TRUMP SAYS IRAN ‘NO LONGER A THREAT’ AFTER 32 DAYS — OUTLINES NEXT PHASE OF US WAR

“By the way, per the president’s direction, [Monday] will be the largest volume of strikes since day one of this operation,” Hegseth vowed, taking the mic just before Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan “Raizin’” Caine. 

“Tomorrow, even more than today. And then Iran has a choice,” Hegseth added. “Choose wisely, because this president does not play around. You can ask Soleimani, you can ask Maduro. You can ask Khamenei.”

Trump, responding to a question from Fox News, noted there were military leaders warning against the dangerous exfiltration of the two airmen, citing the risks to a multitude of troops.

“There were military people, very professional, that preferred not doing it: These two were totally on board, which was very important,” Trump said, noting Hegseth and Gen. Caine. 

IDF CONFIRMS IRGC INTEL CHIEF KILLED; QUDS FORCE COMMANDER ALSO ELIMINATED IN STRIKE

“But, no, there were military people that said, ‘You just don’t do this; you don’t go into the heart of a very powerful military.”

Trump noted that “half the people are wearing uniforms” in Iran, exacerbating the challenges of extracting the American airmen.

“I was surprised somebody said it’s the only time it’s ever been done,” Trump continued. “I said, that’s not possible, but it is possible because you’re going into hundreds of thousands of soldiers along the path. I mean, look at some of the helicopters, how they got hit.”

Trump, in a moment that went from serious to lighter, asked Caine “how many” people conducted the rescue.

INSIDE THE DARING RESCUE OF AIRMAN BEHIND ENEMY LINES: HOW CIA ASSISTED WITH ‘DECEPTION CAMPAIGN’

“I’d love to keep that a secret,” Caine shot back.

“I’ll keep it a secret, but it was hundreds and hundreds of these people,” Trump said. 

“Hundreds of people went into this journey. Hundreds of people could have been killed. Forget about the equipment. A lot of equipment. Nobody cares of it. Hundreds of people could have been killed,” Trump added.

“So we had people that were within the military that said, ‘This is not a wise move,’” Trump said.

“And I understood that, but I decided to do it.”