1129: Why Democrats Must Oppose Trump's Iran War

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Welcome to PlotSave America.

I'm John Favreau.

I'm John Lovett and Tommy Dithore on today's show where it wore with a run.

Violence is spreading all over the Middle East.

American soldiers are losing their lives.

The administration is struggling to explain why it's happening.

And Democrats are struggling to explain why it shouldn't be happening.

Uh, we'll talk about what we know and don't know and where we are on all of it.

We'll also hear from Senator Rubin Gallego on how Democrats are responding and how

he's thinking about the midterms.

Also, beyond this show, we'll be covering all the developments around the war

and Iran and the political fallout across the crooked network.

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All right, let's start with what we know as of Monday afternoon Pacific time about

the latest war that Trump and Netanyahu have started in the Middle East.

The US and Israel have been launching airstrikes in Iran since Saturday.

Aimed at destroying the regime's military capabilities and killing its leaders.

Dozens of whom are now dead, including the 86 year old Supreme Leader Ayatollah

community around and its proxies have retaliated with strikes against at least

10 other Middle Eastern countries targeting US military bases and assets,

but also hitting airports and hotels.

The US and Israel have killed at least 550 Iranians so far,

including at least 175 people, mostly children in an Israeli strike that hit a

girls elementary school in southern Iran.

Iranian retaliatory strikes have killed at least 10 Israelis, six civilians across

the Gulf and now six American troops with at least 18 other Americans seriously wounded.

Trump's initial reaction to the first American deaths of this war came in a

pre-taped video message.

He released from his golf club on Sunday.

Let's listen.

We pray for the full recovery of the wounded and send our immense love and eternal

gratitude to the families of the fallen.

And sadly, there will likely be more before it ends.

That's the way it is.

It's the way it is.

It's the way the cookie crumbles.

Trump's first live remarks about the war came on Monday morning during a

medal of honor ceremony at the White House, where he did not take any questions.

What's listen today?

They said, Oh, well, President wants to do it really quickly.

After that, he'll get bored.

I don't get bored.

There's nothing boring about this.

Do you agree with that, Pete?

I don't think there's anything, Mr. General.

I think there's nothing boring about it.

See that nice drape when that comes down right now.

You see a very, very deep hole, but in about a year and a half from now,

you're going to see a very, very beautiful building.

I picked those drapes in my first term.

I always like gold, but I think we can save a lot of money.

I just saved, I just saved curtains because I built many a ballroom.

I believe it's going to be the most beautiful ballroom anywhere in the world.

And when you hear all that hammering out there, you know why the first lady is not

thrilled exactly.

When I hear that sound, that beautiful sound behind me, it means money.

So I like it.

But my wife isn't thrilled.

We are at war right now.

That he did say that after the news that at that time,

four Americans were killed now, six.

So you guys have any initial thoughts on the seriousness and sobriety,

with which the commander in chief is talking about a war that is now killed Americans?

How about it, Paul?

So we've gone to several stupid wars in American history.

A bunch of Republicans launched a war preemptively in Iraq,

and they tried to do it in the most sophisticated way possible.

They were also smart and they had all no history.

And they had all the years of expertise and research to explain how that was going

to be so easy and quick.

And we would be welcomed as liberators.

These were the smart Republicans.

We were told these were the people that had really thought it out.

They knew what they wanted.

They knew their objectives.

They were willing to lie to get there because they were so convinced

of their point of view.

They had an ideology and they were going to pursue it to its end.

And that turned into a disastrous quagmire that cost thousands of American lives

and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives on least chaos.

We're still dealing with the consequences of this group of fucking Yahoo's.

So GLIB, in virtually every way they talk about this,

barely offering a rationale.

Now the rationals they do offer completely in conflict with one another

from a golf club in Florida, while he's wearing hat,

not enough to stay back at the office to launch the preemptive war in Iran.

And we're expecting this to go well with these fucking schmucks in charge.

It's unbelievable.

And the fact that we can watch these cavalier and second-rate people lead our country to war.

And not only do they do that, but they have the backing of Republicans in Congress.

They have even Democrats in Congress afraid to criticize them,

afraid to put their names either yes or no in favor of this.

The whole thing is such a statement of like rot and decline.

It is disgusting.

I was disgusted and I watched it all happening over the weekend

and just sort of like, it's not just how awful these people are.

It's the way in which it's treated.

They're treated with a level of seriousness in how they're approaching it

when we can all see with our fucking eyeballs that they're so in over their heads

and unqualified and ridiculous in how they handle it.

That's where I'm at.

Tommy, remember Obama responding to the death of American troops

by saying that's the way it is in a tape's message from Hawaii?

Yeah, remember that?

I, we weren't always perfect on the death of Americans.

But yes, I know what you're saying.

Like I have a stylistic and a substantive critique here.

As a communications matter, the fact that he launched a war on Saturday

and then didn't comment on it until like live in person until Monday morning

at an unrelated event about just like a medal of honor,

a war and a run topper for these remarks.

It's baffling.

I mean, like after the event's oil operation,

Trump did a press conference immediately.

Rubio was on all the shows.

Like we're now we're just doing a video message from your country club.

It does not suggest like confidence in the policy.

And I think like big picture over the weekend,

I was consuming news and like doom scrolling.

And then every once in a while, I would just like get so angry

that I wanted to scream because this is a war of choice.

And the first choice was 2018 when Trump pulled out of the Iran nuclear agreement,

which Iran was complying with and would have prevented them from getting a nuclear weapon.

And it led to a series of choices that got you to Saturday

when Trump launched a war of choice that has now led to six U.S. service members dying

and apparently a school full of girls in Iran getting bombed.

And like Iraq, this is a war of choice built off of a lie.

Like we'll get into the details in a minute,

but there's no imminent nuclear threat.

There is no imminent threat of Iran having a ballistic missile that could hit the United States.

There is this new spin that they're on the cusp of creating a missile shield for their nuclear work.

That is totally bullshit.

But this choice is going to get a lot of innocent people killed.

We are going to spend tens of billions of dollars at a minimum on weapons

and it could play out for years.

So like I think the Neal cons are back.

Like we might as well have Dick Cheney in charge given this policy.

I was worried that over at the bull work, Bill Crystal would be like reactivated

like a mentoring candidate and all of a sudden kind of like his body moving in ways

he doesn't totally understand it is not a control of kind of like going back to the old Dick Cheney controls.

He's very upset.

Good. He's very upset about it.

Must be a conflict in there.

I will say that it is mostly stylistic.

The communications, the communications critique here.

But there's something substantive about it too, which is like and we can talk about Obama.

But it's like, I don't know, George Bush, Biden, anyone like you send Americans to war.

You talk to the American people about it and you take questions from their representatives

in the press.

That's just what you do.

And the fact that they don't do that, the fact that he spent 300 words towards the end

of a two hour state of the union on Iran, not even bothering to make the case, not bothering

to make the case in the lead up, not even bothering to try to make the case to the rest of the world,

not responding to any questions from the press about this, doing a couple of tape messages

from Florida while this is happening.

It just goes to shit.

They don't give a fuck what we think.

They don't give a fuck what anyone thinks.

They think that they're in charge.

They make the rules and everyone else can go fuck themselves.

Well, it also, it goes to the lack of any kind of real congressional debate any sense

that Congress ought to weigh in as our representatives.

Like yes, it's a process question.

It's not about the substance of whether or not this is right or wrong, but the way those

things connect is in a democracy.

We are supposed to weigh in because we understand that the stakes of an action like this are very

high.

Trump's not really a details guy, which is why he's left the nitty gritty of explaining

his government's rationale for starting this war as well as their objectives in Iran

to the substitute weekend Fox host who now runs the Pentagon in between a push up contest

with the Health and Human Services Secretary.

Pete Hegseth held a press conference on Monday alongside the chairman of the joint chiefs,

General Dan Raisin-Kane.

Here are the highlights from Hegseth.

We didn't start this war, but under President Trump, we are finishing it.

Turns out the regime who chanted death to America and death to Israel was gifted death

from America and death from Israel.

This is not a so-called regime change war, but the regime sure did change.

No stupid rules of engagement, no nation-building, quagmire, no democracy-building exercise to

the media outlets and political left-screaming endless wars stop.

This is not Iraq.

This is not endless.

What is our exit strategy here and when will it be deployed?

I would never hang a time frame from our perspective.

The Commander-in-Chief sets the opt-empo in terms of this fight.

As I said, it's on his terms.

What are our objectives and can you share more information on how the soldiers who were

killed were killed?

Sure, be sure that they can't use that conventional umbrella to continue a pursuit of nuclear

ambitions.

As it pertains to the U.S. casualties every once in a while, you might have one, unfortunately,

we call it a squirter that makes its way through and in that particular case, it happened

to hit.

Right before the squirter comment, which is that's going to be a hard one to forget, Hegseth

did lay out after a couple of contradictory statements like, endless war, come on, this

is an endless war, so what's the time frame?

I would never put a time frame on this war, but he did lay out what's maybe the closest

the administration has come to defining the military objective in Iran.

Tommy, what did you make of his answer there?

How many times you think he practiced those lines in the mirror in the morning as he was

shaving?

Too many, like, sing-songy, like, not a regime change war, but the regime sure did change,

death to America, but we gifted them death to that.

Not a regime change war, but the Israelis killed the supreme leader of Iran who was in charge

of the country since 1989 and also seen as a religious figure in the leader of the armed

forces and the, you know, final say in all political decisions, but, you know, regime

evolution, I guess, is what we're saying?

Yeah, and that the attack is surgical and not utopia, and however Iran take back your

country, we're not just going to destroy their missile capability or the nuclear capability,

but their ability to, quote, project power, right, so whatever that means.

So, yeah, the new line is that they're on the cusp of, like, seemingly making so many

ballistic missiles that they would have a, quote, conventional umbrella that would allow

them to pursue nuclear weapons.

That's just, that's not a thing, right?

The country's got a nuclear umbrella, that means you can use a threat of nuclear retaliation

to deter attacks, that's what the North Koreans do.

The idea that Iran could have enough ballistic missiles to prevent the U.S. from intervening

to take out a nuclear program, it's just made up bullshit and the reason they're called

force field.

Yeah, and the reason you know it's made up bullshit is because, like, the U.S. and Israel

over the past year have had their way with the Iranian military whenever they want it.

They bombed them repeatedly and no, you know, conventional deterrent has changed that.

So I don't know why they're trying these new lines, I don't know why they're trying this

bullshit out.

The messaging changes are so stark like you were saying, like, on Saturday, we're talking

about a regime change and the people rising up.

Now that's gone.

Trump's, like, clearly has no plan for the future.

He talked to like 10 reporters and one of them, he was like, oh, I got a list of three

guys who should take over.

And then he called another reporter, it's like, oh, those three guys are dead now.

So I, they're just winging it.

Yeah, why do you think there's all these shifting explanations for the rationale for this

war?

Who fucking knows?

It's really, it is, well, so Rubio also, kind of underscored what Heg said, said, he said,

in Iran in about a year where you're in a half would have crossed the line of immunity.

I don't know what the line of immunity is.

There's no such thing.

They would have so many missiles that they could hold the whole world hostage, which is,

of course, like, quite a claim because I have resuggesting that the Iranian conventional

arsenal would have been unable to be defeated by the United States of America.

I don't think that's what our military would say about it.

But then, okay, that's a year and a half.

And so then he's asked, Rubio's asked, like, is it imminent?

And he says, yes, because we were aware of Israeli intentions and understood what it would

mean for us and understood what it would mean for us and had to be prepared to act as a result

of it.

So he's saying it was imminent because Israel was going to strike imminently.

And if Israel striked Iran imminently, Iran would strike back at us.

So, but Cain, the chairman of Joint Chiefs, says in that conference with Hegseth, that Israel

acted on U.S. intelligence when it did the strikes against Iran's leadership.

We were not only aware of it, we were instrumental to it.

And so the argument is now, directly from Rubio, we had to strike because Iran was going

to strike after we struck, like, that's where they're at, which feels like actually the

closest to the truth.

Well, we talked about this in the last episode, but that random administration source,

or it was in and around the administration source, to Politico, that basically said,

the hope within the administration was that maybe Israel would go first because then Iran

would retaliate and we could retaliate against Iran.

And it turns out they thought that that was a possible scenario and then said, yeah, instead

of letting Israel go first, let's just go with them because that's going to happen anyway.

Yeah.

That political leak was that they thought it would be better politics for the Israeli

strike first.

Which was also insane.

Yes.

Completely insane.

And then Rubio, today, there was a leak over the weekend that there was an imminent threat,

right?

Preemptively strike Iran because the Iranians were going to hit us or hit our bases in

the region and lead to a mass casualty incident.

And who's that idiot over at CNN, that fucking goober who's always yelling on the panels

that I, Scott Jennings tweeted this out credulously, which was like not believable, not credible

in any way.

And what Rubio did today to clarify was to say, we knew the Israelis were going to strike,

which meant the Iranians were going to strike back.

So we had to be involved on the front end to preempt that or keep American forces safe.

Which I think kind of like cuts out the step where maybe you could talk Israel out of doing

something that would put, you know, US personnel in the region at risk.

Well, also you traditionally the United States doesn't publicly say we are only going to

full scale bombing across a Middle Eastern country because kind of Israel drags us into

it.

Well, let's get that inside.

But on this missile point, like the Iranians have a lot of missiles, but they do not have

an ICBM.

The Defense Intelligence Agency did an assessment last year that found that if Iran decided

to have one, they could have an ICBM by 2035.

So that assessment has basically been the same since the 90s that there are decade away from

having this technology.

So the suggestion that Iran was on the cusp of having a missile that could hit the United

States is a lie and it is undercut by the US intelligence agency's period.

It seems like all of these lies have all been undercut by now too.

It's always like they throw out a bunch of lies at the beginning and then they stop

trying to defend them.

Because now where we are is the Rubio rationale, right, which is not an ICBM, which is not

they were a week away from having a nuclear bomb or nuclear material, whatever the fuck

they were trying to say.

It was not any of this.

It was just, well, Israel was going to do it.

And so we decided to just go with Israel, which also by the way, if you're at the long

New York Times piece and we can get into like how Trump got to this, got to yes on

war.

It was BB Netanyahu who played a huge role here and the two of them were talking about

this since I guess December was the first time BB brought it up to Trump and then they

kept talking about it and then Trump was going to go after the regime started murdering all

of the protesters and then BB was like, no, no, we're not quite ready yet.

So just wait a little bit and then we'll do it together.

So this idea that like, oh, Israel just went, we had to we were going to they were intent

on going and so we just had to go with them like BB and Trump were planning it the whole

time.

And just again, the chairman of joint chiefs said that Israel acted hot that when Israel

struck the leadership of Iran, they did it with US intelligence.

So it was with with our participation, we are instrumental to this happening.

We are aware that it is happening that is a joint effort.

So I don't understand how this is we had we created, we had to, the imminent threat

was from the campaign we were starting.

That's what made it imminent.

We are the imminent.

I wouldn't think too hard about it.

Yeah.

I think there's two, I think the conflicting rationales come from, look, I think the

reasons were at war with the runner, Trump's ego and Netanyahu, the ego point is I think

Graham, Lindsey Graham, people like that and the Neal cons are saying, take out Maduro,

take out the Iranian regime, then we'll get the Cuban government next and it'll be this

grand historic figure.

Trump, I think, has seen like the capabilities of the US military, there's one story that

said he thinks he has like godlike powers or they have godlike powers and he wants to use

them.

And then there's Netanyahu, who has been pushing Trump really hard to act like you guys

were saying and put out a statement, I think yesterday saying this coalition of forces

allows us to do what I've yearned to do for 40 years.

He just said it.

So last June, when I said, you know, I thought I feel like the United States got dragged

to war by Netanyahu, Jonathan Greenblatt at the ADL, so that was anti-Semitism.

Now, this is what Marco Rubio was saying and this is what Netanyahu was saying happened

here, which is that he talked the United States into joining him in this insane war of choice

that doesn't actually directly threaten the United States.

Yeah, I realize there's a lot of folks, especially on the right who say, you know, the Israeli

government controls US foreign policy and then people say that that's like vaguely anti-Semitic

and certainly anti-Zionist, but like in this case, it seems pretty clear, the administration

is saying that Israel helped. Now, I do think Tommy, to your point about Trump's ego, I'm

sure that BB fed into that during hit, like was he's trying to make the case to Trump,

right?

Because I'm sure BB's not just like, I really want this, please do this for me, for sure

to be like, sir, you could be the greatest president of all time.

I also think that the Obama and the nuclear deal, the, uh, is a big part too, because they

probably told him that pussy Obama, he did this terrible deal and you can, you can show

him up by actually showing that you did this the right way and it would be easy.

And so I'm sure that Obama was a part of it too. And did you read, I'm sure you read

the New York Times story about this, Vance of all people convinced Trump to do this because

he was leaning towards, remember, he was thinking about doing a quick strike and then maybe

saving the big one for later or he was going to do the big one and Vance was like, well,

if you're going to do it, go big and go right away and then Trump, apparently after that

meeting started thinking about what Vance said and was like, okay, that was a good idea.

Yeah, the other part of this too, Vance, uh, who wrote that op ed, uh, yeah, all these

the best, well, the best part, what was the best part about Donald Trump is he's not

going to get us in anymore for a new worse. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then I do think part

of this too is Trump, uh, you have Rubio out there saying they were a year and a year

away from having a hyper advanced conventional umbrella that would made them immune. But

meanwhile, the lesson they took from, uh, operation, I don't remember what the fuck. I mean,

I fear midnight hammer is that actually Iran's capabilities are, uh, uh, not something

we have to worry too much about. They're actually in a weakened position. Now it would be the

time right in the wake of these protests. Look, the idea that like Benjamin Netanyahu with

US intelligence is not decapitating the entire Iranian regime, uh, without US, if not,

uh, encouragement per mission, right? And so even Rubio going out there and saying, uh,

well, Israel was going to do it. So we had no need of encouragement. Well, I'm not saying

they would need encouragement, but they're not going to start the campaign unless they

feel pretty confident that you support support. Support, yeah, support, yeah. I mean, support.

Right. And like, so Rubio going out there and saying, well, the, the Israelis were going

to do it. And therefore that was going to create some kind of imminent threat. I don't understand

why in this moment, they feel the need to act as though they were dragged into it. Maybe

that's in part because of their own politics about not wanting to seem like they were just

choosing a random day to start a, a giant new conflict in the Middle East. Maybe they

are worried about their own politics. But that's the only way I can see to kind of undercut

the idea that we weren't dragged into this in part because Benjamin Netanyahu has been

gunning for a war with Iran for his entire time. He's been in public life. Yeah. I thought

another notable detail in that story was that Intel officials had predicted that a popular

uprising against the regime after a strike was a remote possibility, which is, uh, interesting.

And that Trump, when he first announced this was like, take your country back. Yeah. I mean,

I mean, just like a large unarmed population is just going to rise up against, uh, rise up

against a security forces that are like, they have no plan. Like they're just winging it. Like,

again, like, there's all these people talk about what the options are. Like people are like,

well, maybe there's a Venezuelan option where you find like the vice president. There's like a

Delci Rodriguez of Iran. I don't think that exists. Iran has stronger power centers. There's

air G.C. There's the Basish militia. There's all these groups that are, that are armed into tell

an unarmed population to rise up and take those people on is laughable. Like they're, the people

are going to get killed. Also, like, Iran, tens of millions of Iranians vote for the hardline

government, right? We see the videos of people in Tehran celebrating the death of the Supreme

Leader, but like that's, we don't know what the whole country thinks. Yeah. And so the suggestion

that there's some uniformed opinion about what happened here that everyone will support what the

US just did is, is just wrong. And then there are also like ethnic and religious minorities

who might see this as their moment to rise up and take the curve base. There's the Kurds. There's

the blue separatists. There's Sunni minorities. And so I'm sure there's some listeners like from

who are Iranian listening to this, like yelling at us through the phone, being like the regime

was bad. We needed a regime change. And like I hear what you're saying, but like I obviously hate

this regime too, but like it couldn't get worse from here. We've seen it happen before. And like

that's the concern. And also ultimately, you're trusting Trump and Pete Hegseth to manage a war

with Iran, which seems bad idea to me. Taliban was a murderous, repressive regime. Saddam Hussein

ran a murderous, repressive regime, like Kim Jong Un, Kim Jong Un. We don't, we don't, we don't

go to war with governments that aren't repressive and dangerous. So far, so far, so far. Sorry, we used,

yeah, used to.

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So looking forward, Trump's been all over the map on what an exit strategy might look like and

has basically had a different answer for every reporter who has randomly dialed his number,

which apparently happens quite frequently now. There's the, as Tommy mentioned, the Venezuela

type outcome where he gets his delsy Rodriguez of Iran who's willing to work with the US, I guess,

because I don't know what they're promised. Oil money, corruption gets them, gets degrees

the wheels there and then they just depress their people. There's also telling the Iranian people

to overthrow the regime entirely, which as we discussed is pretty remote. And then it's like,

well, maybe it's fine if we just degrade their military capabilities to the point where they

can't cause any real trouble for at least a few years. Do you think Tommy that the administration

is trying to be strategically ambiguous? Is there any chance on the outcomes or do they just

have no fucking idea what they actually want? No, I mean, look, I sort of think I walked

through a second ago what I think. I don't think they have a plan. I don't think they have a

plan for what comes next. As Trump, you know, like we were saying before, Trump called a reporter

and said, I have a short list and then he said they're all dead to the next reporter he talked to.

So even if they find a delsy Rodriguez type, I think that person is likely to get killed by the

IRGC or other existing power structures unless we have boots on the ground to support that person.

Like just saying rise up and take your country back, like that's not a plan. They're just winging it.

They don't know what will happen next. I think they're just letting rip. What are some of the

different ways this whole thing could go south really fast? And we're going to walk through some

of those aside from the fact that just, you know, more Americans could die in the prosecution of the war.

So what you feel from what Hegseth says there when he says like, you know, this is not a rock and

what Trump is saying. There's this idea that as long as we don't claim ownership of the consequences,

we're not going to be responsible for the consequences, right? As long as we don't, we're not there.

They're avoiding saying we will not put troops like boots on the ground. They won't say that

explicitly, but obviously they don't want to put boots on the ground and all of their language

around like this wasn't regime change, but the regime changed, whatever it is, it is around saying

we're doing what we're going to do for their military capacities for their capacity to put drones

and do damage to our bases and our allies in the region. Iranians are going to own the consequences

of that, right? Like that's what they're kind of saying. And whatever chaos comes next, if there's

a civil war, there's violence in the streets, if a new repressive regime emerges and puts down

anyone who tries to fight it, whatever happens next, like not our problem, not our problem. But

of course it will be our problem one way or another. We will be dealing with the ramifications of

it, our allies will be, we will, Israel will be, US bases in the region will be the impact on

oil and gas prices. We will live with the consequences even if you don't claim them.

Yeah, Trump, Trump does not seem like he wants to live by the pottery barn rule, opposite that.

If you break it, sue the pottery barn. For those of you who weren't alive during the Iraq war,

that was, who said it was a colon powel? Yeah, the powel doctrine, if you break it, you bought it.

Not so for Donald Trump. I mean, look, there's, there's this concern that, first of all,

we've already seen like violence and chaos spill out, not just in the Middle East, but all over the

world. We've seen at our embassies in Pakistan, I see Iraq, Jordan, right? There's like protests

outside the embassies. There is this idea that like if Iran becomes a failed state, it's not only

a haven for terrorism and civil war, but it precipitates another refugee crisis, this, you know,

the oil shocks all around the world. How many fucking tens of billions of dollars will this war

cost the American taxpayers? There's also like the idea of terrorist attacks against American

interests, American troops abroad, and even here inspired terrorist attacks here. We saw a shooting

in Austin over the weekend, potentially the shooter was sort of inspired by what happened in Iran.

So this just, like, and this is just what, a couple days into this thing. I mean,

yeah, started on Saturday. I mean, yeah, Iran has decided to attack everyone. They're a fire,

they think they've, there's been tax on like 11 countries or 12 countries. They're firing at all

these Gulf countries, the UAE, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait. Some of those shots are fired at where we have

US bases, but some are just like civilian infrastructure. And the Iranians use ballistic missiles,

and then they use these cheap drones called Shahed drones, it costs like 20 grand, 50 grand

of pop. They have tons of them. They can fly 2,000 kilometers, and they basically just like GPS

to a point and then detonate when they hit it. The interceptor missiles we used to take them down

are in short supply, and they're really expensive. So those things cost 20 to 50 grand,

the Shahed drones are interceptors cost a million bucks, a couple million bucks a pop.

And so we're running low on them. The UAE is running low, Qatar is running low,

and it's this whole thing is a big war of attrition, which is to say, what's going to run out first?

The interceptor missiles or the Iranian ballistic missiles in drones. So like, that's a big

thing we're all watching. There's the economic cost, which is the Iranians said they would close

the straight-ahormus. They haven't mined it, but they've been firing at ships.

20% of the world's oil goes to the straight-ahormus. They'll have a huge economic cost.

And then to their allies, by the way.

With their allies also rely on the Chinese and everyone does, yeah.

And then the longer term, like the longer this goes on, the more likely there is to be civil war,

sectarian conflict, some sort of failed state, some sort of refugee flow. And again,

we're talking about a country of 90 million people.

And the administration from Trump on down has repeatedly, in the last couple of days,

since the start of it, refused to rule out boots on the ground. And then he, like,

significant capacity, which is also pretty terrifying.

They won't rule it out. They won't rule it out.

Trump didn't just refuse to rule it out. His comments were very weird. He said,

I don't have the yips with respect to boots on the ground. Like every president says,

there will be no boots on the ground. I don't say it. I say, probably don't need them,

or if they were necessary. So I don't know what he's trying to signal there. Like, I could imagine

a commando raid that includes the US and Israel that is designed to get the H.E.U. or the nuclear

materials that they think are somehow buried somewhere. Beyond that, though, it's like, what are we

talking about? I really, like, so much of what this is, is in response to the things they don't like

about Democrats, right? And they always felt like the date certain around Afghanistan were kind of

projecting what we were going to do to our enemies. And so I incredibly reluctant to put,

like, troops on the ground, not to, like, excluding kind of short, sort of, like, tactical,

like, deploying small units to do small tasks. But boots on the ground Trump is clearly worried

about it. But he kind of feels as though in order to project strength, I'm not going to tell you

what I'm going to do. I need to have that is, I think, him trying to be kind of leave his options

open to not sort of, first, wear a scary option to the Iranians. Or it means we have boots on

the ground right now. And we may also have boots on it. And I think there's a very good chance

that they're, like, special forces contingents who are on the ground and then maybe they're not,

maybe they're deployed under, like, title 50. So it's then Iable. And, you know, that's kind of

what he's getting out here. I agree with you that, like, in Venezuela, there were boots on the

ground, right? It was a very short term. And I think what JD Vance focuses on, what Trump tries to

focus on is we're not doing long-term occupation in nation-building. But I think the response to

that is it's not necessarily up to you. If Iran remains a threat, if they keep firing drones and

missiles, if this regime in some form or fashion stays in place and the threat is not gone,

the threat is not gone. These rallies won't see the threat as gone. So what then?

I mean, also, you know, George W. Bush kept saying that they were going to get troops out of

Iraq by the spring and summer of 2003. Sometimes, like, these, the intentions to not have boots, like,

one thing leads to another and then suddenly you feel like, okay, well, now I got to stay in there

and now they're firing on us here and now we got to put in more, I mean, it's, it's fucking slippery

It was just like the arrogance of believing you're in control of events. You've launched a war.

It's destabilizing the world is a dangerous place. You're not in charge of all the consequences.

You've unleashed and, you know, there's this sort of like kind of macho thing that Hegset does.

There's a way Trump gets kind of puffed up by the people around him. Like, but yeah, man, like,

managing delicate relationships with regimes that are despicable and murderous to try to get deals

to protect your interests while without destabilizing. Like, it's, it's, it is unsatisfying on some

level. It is hard to live in the real world and accept, compromise and, and like, long term strategic

thinking where the outcomes aren't certain. But you choose that over instability because you have

respect for how dangerous the world can be. How much worse things can get even against your best

intentions? And there's just that is to me. Like, that is the connection to the, from the way they

talk to the substance, which is like, these people are cavalier about American lives because they are

just not thoughtful or careful. They are like decadent about history. And we, and, and it is,

it is dangerous to have people like that and just charge in moments like this. Incredibly dangerous.

All right. Let's talk about how the politics of this war were playing out so far.

One joke I saw going around on Twitter this weekend was a good thing. Congress isn't alive to see

this. That was good. That's good. Sure enough, with a few exceptions, the Republicans who run

Congress are all on board with whatever Trump wants to do in Iran. Democrats being Democrats have

split into a few camps. You've got your very pro-Israel hawkish types like your Josh Gottheimers and

your John Federmans who are so far fully supportive of the war that that's definitely a minority

position in the party. You've got progressive Democrats and even a lot of mainstream Democrats like

Ruben Gallego, who love it talk, is going to talk to you later. John Assoff, Tim Cain, who've come out

strongly opposed to the war. And then you've got the most Democrat response of all from a group of

Democrats who start their statements with a lot of throat clearing about how the Iranian regime is

bad. You must, you must prove that you are not grieving the Ayatollah with your first couple

sentences because someone out there, apparently, there's apparently a bunch of liberals out there

grieving the Ayatollah that we, I haven't seen them but they're out there and we've got to condemn

them and we got to make sure that we're not grieving for the Ayatollah. Every statement has to start

with Iran is brat and that's where it goes. And then after you do the throat clearing about how

awful and terrible and impressive and murderous the regime is, then you've got to mainly criticize

Trump for not consulting with Congress first and then you kind of just do a bunch of melee

mouth shit from there. You think some of these Democrats are scared of the politics here and if so,

why? I don't know why they would be scared of the politics. Like this is not a popular war that

there's not a close to a majority of people who want this war, not Democrats, not independence.

I think like what I want from Democrats is go after the war on the merits, not on the process.

The process ship has sailed. Focus on what's happening here, which is Trump lied about the threat.

Trump, Iran was nowhere near close to getting a nuclear weapon. He's lying about the threat from

Iranian ballistic missiles. They are nowhere close to hitting the United States. Hammer him on

that. He lied and then talk about the cost. Now six service members are dead, more gravely wounded.

It's going to cost us tens of billions of dollars. No one wants to be spending money this way.

It's not a popular thing to be doing. And then I think we should just highlight the chaos around

the world. Like since this action, the war is not happening in Iran. It is terrorizing populations

in Israel and Lebanon and the Gulf. American diplomats are less safe. Embassies are getting overrun.

Americans, either the gunman in Texas, might have been inspired by what happened in Iran.

Trump is making us less safe. Just hammer him on that. Go for it. Talk about the substance.

Yeah. As gay go about this and he said the same, we should be focusing on why are we at war with

Iran? Why? What was the goals? What is the objective? Why is it worth sending risking American

lives in this moment for this conflict? And all these people that are defending this,

if you were to ask them a year ago, would you like to see the U.S. in a regime change war

with Iran in the next year? They'd all have said no. They don't said of course not.

And no one wants that. And no one saying that Republicans want that should be believed.

We never would want that. Of course not. But now that it's here and it's happening,

all these people feel obligated on the Republican side to support it. And then Democrats,

who I think there are some that I think genuinely feel there are, I think,

reluctant both because of the politics and because on some level they support the policy

and they know that those politics aren't good either, right? They don't want to support the

policy. I think on some level they're like, you know what? I wouldn't have done it this way,

but I hope it works. And I don't want to go out there and say, I think this is a bad idea

if they can remove the IOTOla. There's two flavors of that. There are some who just quietly

do actually want to see the Iranian regime toppled. And a lot of them are kind of the closest

individuals to APAC, for example. And then there's the other group, the old folks,

of which there are many who think about like Gulf War I in 1991 and the people who were against

the first Gulf War and felt like they looked stupid afterwards when it was popular and successful

and had 90% support. It's just like, have we not lived through enough of these wars that we're still

thinking and responding in the binary here, which is like, oh, well, so then if you're opposed to

this, you must love that Iran is the number one state sponsor of terrorism around the world and

has killed Americans and has destabilized the region. Because if you're against that,

then you'd be for this war. There's no like, oh, yeah, I want to see the Iranian regime toppled

too. I don't want to see the fucking IOTOla there. I don't want to see a murderous regime in Iran.

I hope that like, you know, the hamburger from heaven falls from the sky and takes out the whole

regime and then democracy flourishes in Iran. Yeah, of course, that is something to hope for.

Some, obviously, some stone cold moron at the free press tweeted, if you call yourself a progressive

and you're not even a little excited by the prospect of a woman hating, gay hating,

Jew hating, Neanderthal regime that in no way represents the will of its people being crushed,

you're not actually a progressive. So like that. So whenever saw the IOTOla, pride.

So put it on your progressive checklist. Medicare for all, death to the IOTOla. What are you talking

about? No, it's okay to talk about the downside risk of a regime change, war of choice,

even against a bad guy. Yeah, look, sometimes when you're trying to murder an 86-year-old IOTOla,

you have to also kill over a hundred young schoolgirls. Yeah. And that's just the way

to, and I guess if you're a progressive who likes women's rights, don't you? Oh, I guess that

doesn't work there, huh? We have to ignore all the other fucking ridiculous. Well, it's just this

thought that like, after a couple strikes, that democracy is going to flourish in Iran. And

there's going to be no cost to do that. Like, what the fuck are we talking about here? We just did

this in Iraq. And like, it starts out less popular than any previous conflicts. And part because

there was no debate like the country's waking up, you know, the country's Friday night, you know,

people are like, what, what? We're at war with Iran, but it's the weekend. Like, there's just like

no debate about it whatsoever. We learn about it from the press over the weekend. The President

doesn't give a big speech, as you said. And if it starts out in this way, and then you look at

what people say, and they say, well, like, you know, there is ambivalence in the polling, for sure.

That's always there because people don't like the Iranian government. But you say, like, always

it worth American lives. No, the sport starts to drop. Would you be okay with continuing the

conflict if gas prices are rising? No, they wouldn't. People aren't in people weren't in the market

for sacrificing American lives and our tax dollars and having the economy be hurt for a war with

Iran. And part because no one ever made the case for that. No one ever signed up to make that

sacrifice as a nation that just didn't happen. Just read out some of the polling. There's been a bunch

of polling so far. What stood out to me, Washington posted a poll. They did a thousand person poll.

They also did that thing where they they text them as well. 39% strongly or somewhat support.

That was at 52% strongly or somewhat opposed. In fact, strongly opposed was 39%. So the number

that strongly opposes the same as total strongly and somewhat support. Why are we there? They ask

people why are we there? To take control wins at 14%. Unsure is in second at 13%. regime change

at 12%. Stop them from getting nuclear weapon at 9%. Getting their money in oil at 9%. Distract

from the Epstein files at 8%. And then at the very bottom protect the United States at 7%.

Coming in, coming in after distract from the Epstein files. They have not really sold people on

a clear vision for what we're doing here. There's also a they ask, are you concerned about a full

scale war? 74% is concerned. 25% is. We're at we're having a full scale. What is that question?

I know. Well, I think I think maybe when the strikes started, they were like, maybe it's

a few strikes who knows? I don't know, but I know I had the same thought about that. What is full

scale? I do think like if you want the generous interpretation or sort of whatever to give it

meaning would be soldiers on the ground fighting on the ground in Iran. Yeah. And then Reuters did a

poll only, but they found only a quarter of Americans approved the strikes among Republicans.

The total was 55%. Still not that high. And 42% of Republican voters said that they will be

less likely to support the Iran campaign if it leads to US troops in the Middle East being

killed or injured. Well, that has happened now. Yep. So that is the point. I just like, here's

the thing. If you're a Democrat and you're, I mean, Tommy, you brought up the George, the first

Iraq war with George Bush, right? So let's say for principled reasons, you come out against the war

strongly right now. And then I don't know. Trump somehow gets the scenario where the regime falls

or they get some other Iranian leader who's in the regime to actually start working with the United

States and being more pragmatic. And it's not full democracy in Iran, but it looks more like,

I don't know, Saudi Arabia, one of these Gulf monarchies or something. And it's not great,

but it also doesn't like threaten the rest of the world. And you were opposed to the war.

I don't know. What do you think is going to happen? You think you're going to lose your next

election? You think that when when someone says that you weren't for the war that was like that

left sort of an okay middleing situation that we don't know about. You think that you're

really like, yeah, well, I didn't want to go to war and risk American lives in the war. You

think that's going to be a problem for you in politics? Like, I don't think that's going to be a

fucking political problem. Just say what you believe. If the United States were attacked and Donald

Trump responded to some kind of an attack by taking the country into war. And then there was

congressional vote and it got behind it. I would be terrified to have Donald Trump in charge of

our military during a time in which we had were dragged into a war truly if that were the situation

actually brought into a war that we didn't choose. Donald Trump should be impeached and removed

from office for his various crimes. He is the most corrupt president in American history. He is

profiteering off the office. He is destroying and lawlessly dismantling government agencies

unleashing ice. He's spending money without congressional approval. He is a menace who is abusing

his office every day. Of course, you should not support Donald Trump choosing to take our country

to war because he should not be in charge of our military. He should be nowhere near any of

these authorities. It's great crime as a shame of history that he is in this job and that we have

not been able to keep him from returning to it. And the fact that when even when Donald Trump is

president, you can't muster the ability to say, no, I'm not in favor of going to war with Iran.

I will vote no if there's a war power resolution. I will vote no if there's an authorization

for the use of force. We are certainly not. It is not necessary for us to go to war with Iran right

now. And certainly I would never support giving this president even more authority than he's already

had an abuse. The fact that we can't make that is ridiculous what we're talking about. Donald

Trump is prosecuting a war that we did not have to fight and Democrats. A lot of them are afraid

of their own shadow to come out and just say this is fucking stupid and dangerous. That is

ridiculous. Ridiculous. Putting everyone down for a no. Oh, really unbelievable. And then

then these fucking like all these guys like obtusely saying, I don't see how anybody can

like how anybody can watch what's happening and not be just proud and not just be proud.

But I was like, why can't we know? Fairman is like, why can't we just be celebrating?

He is just insufferable. Kind of like, well, why don't you answer your own question?

What do you do? This performative, performative idiocy, this sort of like fake obtuseness.

We pretend to not understand that there's a very legitimate argument against what you're saying

from colleagues you see every day and presumably have some respect for. I mentioned that Republicans

in Congress support the war with a few exceptions. Rand Paul Thomas Massey basically beyond Congress.

At least so far. Beyond Congress, there are plenty of mega influencers who aren't happy about

this war and have already criticized Trump. Daily wires, Matt Walsh, the Federalist Sean Davis,

which is some new ones there. Steve Bannon, there were also reports that Tucker Carlson had been

personally lobbying Trump not to attack. Do you think these guys eventually get on board or at

least just sort of quiet down? Or do you think this could be a problem for Trump and further down

the road? Vance. I think Bannon tends to get on board. Matt Walsh and Sean Davis probably will

too. I think I don't think Tucker will ever get on board. He's inconsistent about opposing the

Warner Ron since last June and did not come around when others came around. It started praising

Trump for midnight hammer. I also think, look, Tucker knows his audience and he knows there's

a big mega audience out there for folks who want to hear criticism of regime change wars.

And some of it has to do with US support for Israel and he will be making the case

than Netanyahu pushed Trump into going to war and he's going to have a big I told you so.

He's got a good case. He's going to play that rubio quote over and over again today and have a big

I told you so. But I think the JD Vance element of him not only no longer opposing regime change

wars, but pushing for the biggest boldest version of them, I do think will harm him in the long

term if you know, magas isolation history continues to grow. Yeah. Yeah, I don't like I don't

even if some of these people get back in line. I actually think the comments from rubio today

will be really important. There is just going there is a big overlap between the America first

anti-interventionalist mindset and the conspiratorial anti-Israel mindset. The fact that now we have

the Secretary of State basically saying we had to do this because Israel was going to bring us

into this will like have a life of its own in those spaces and there will be people that will

go back to trying like nothing nothing anti-Semitic is true and if it's true, it's not anti-Semitic.

And so like if this is what what rubio is saying like it's going to give a lot of purchase to that

argument on that that and like that is going to have a lot of of power and I don't care

with the Republicans and Congressers or the powerful influencers say I think from the bottom

up people are going to be enraged by this.

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Two of the related stories before we get to love its interview with Geigo. First, we talk last

week about Pete Hegseth threatening Anthropic because the AI company won't let the government

use Claude, their AI model for mass surveillance on Americans or fully autonomous weapons,

turns out Anthropic held firm and Hegseth carried through on his threat except he didn't decide that

the government just wouldn't do business with Anthropic anymore. He designated the company as a

risk to national security and essentially blacklisted them saying that, quote, no contractor,

supplier or partner that does business with the United States military may conduct any

commercial activity with Anthropic. This decision is final. Unsurprisingly, Elon Musk's XAI,

which makes GROC and then Sam Altman's OpenAI, which makes chat GPT, agreed to Hegseth's demands

Anthropic has pledged to fight the government in court over Hegseth's decision. Anyone want to go

off on how insane this is? Yeah, I mean, just like, again, Anthropics had two asks. One was,

don't use our software to do bulk mass surveillance of American citizens and then it was, don't use it

in autonomous killer robots yet because it's not good enough yet. Yeah, they can't do it. It wasn't

even like that clear of a moral stand. You just said, yeah, I wasn't ready. And so it's not,

I'm sorry, you're right. That was France. Right. And so we learned over the weekend that,

honestly, don't beat yourself up over it. Claude was, Claude, you're fine. Just kill away.

You felt something strongly and you went for it. If you went for it, yeah, yeah, the drone wasn't

going to fly itself. So they used Claude against in the Iranian operation over the weekend,

we learned somebody reported that. But in response, like you said, two things happens. One,

the Trump administration, they didn't just like pull Claude out of their classified systems,

they're trying to destroy the company. Like, does igniting them a supply chain risk is crazy?

That is what the United States has done to Huawei. Yeah. A Chinese state backed telecommunication

system could provide a backdoor for the Chinese spies to get into all of our communications and

Kaspersky Labs, which is a Russian anti-virus company, which you probably don't want to put Russian

anti-virus software under computer. And then also that craving, craving fucking dork, Sam Ultiman,

an open AI just swept in to gobble up the contract afterwards just to show that he is the most

amoral, money-focused, like deplorable little schmuck. So the position of the Pentagon is that

andthropic is so essential to our national security that the government can dictate

how its product is used and it can't be stopped by anthropic. But also, it's a national security

threat at the same time that can be banned from every company. It doesn't really make sense. Don't

know that that'll hold up. And the great thing about a democracy is the Secretary of Defense,

don't get to decide when decisions are final. So good luck with that. The issue here is like,

okay, andthropic in this case is at least publicly as far as we know. What they're demanding is

pretty reasonable. It is more ethical than what the Pentagon is suggesting. The Pentagon argument

is all we ask of our contractors is that we use your product. We will follow the law.

But the law right now is not caught up to what AI is going to be capable of. It's not caught

up to what AI can do right now. They're not laws. They're really governed this certainly not

at the national level. That said, no, I don't think anthropic should be making decisions about

when and how our military can use AI. I'm pretty uncomfortable with this administration

making those decisions. These are real, these are novel issues. I've seen people saying like,

well, if a, if Raytheon makes a missile, Raytheon doesn't get to decide how the Pentagon uses

the missiles. It's like, okay, that's an analogy you can use for AI. If you want AI, it's like a

missile now. These are genuinely difficult and new and very scary questions about how AI is

going to be deployed inside of our military. They're meant to be taken seriously and carefully

and debated over time. Instead, we have a dunce Fox news host making domineering, kind of sneering

threats at the company. You have opportunistic, valueless people like Altman and Musk trying to come

in and kind of take their market share and kind of punish their adversaries. Meanwhile,

it seems we're kind of like a sleepwalking into employing a new and incredibly powerful technology

that we don't fully understand in charge of life and death decisions inside of our military.

So like, it's the same response to this is to the fucking war on the whole. Like, these are people

that are not responsible enough to be helping us figuring out how to make these difficult decisions

over the long term. I mean, it's also what this says is if you start a company and you create a

product or technology that the government decides it wants to use and you don't want it to use it

the way that they want to use it because it will create or could lead to a great harm,

potentially catastrophic, civilizational collapse. Yeah, there's tremendous great

government day kind of stuff. That's on the table, I suppose. The government can just come and

destroy your company. That's what it is. So here's one reaction, quote, this is simply attempted

corporate murder. I could not possibly recommend investing in American AI to any investor.

I could not possibly recommend starting an AI company in the United States. That is from Dean Ball

who wrote the Trump administration's AI action plan. Yeah, there's something that these guys

just have to go to like DEF CON 5 on everything. Everything has to be all-out war. They can't just

have a difference of agreement, a lack of alignment with Anthropic and say, okay, well, we're just

going to part ways on the use of this software. They have to destroy the company.

Well, the other, like the, and in the long-term issue, right, is what, if they're worried,

if they're worried about master values, they're worried about these tools autonomously deciding

like on targets and things like that. You know, one protection we have had against master

valence is just the amount of data, just the amount of data that's been encryption and the amount

of data, right? Like just there's vast, vast amounts of encrypted data that's hard to get at

and there's just too much that's collected for human beings to parse. That's a protection.

And AI says there's actually a world in which you don't have to worry about anymore because it can

process vast amounts of data far beyond anything we can imagine today. And the fact that they're not

willing to make, so even even a temporary kind of willingness to say these will not be used in

that manner. And if they are, we under control of Congress, anything to that effect. They just want

to kind of dominate and say, no, you don't get to tell us, we will do whatever we want. Like it

just tells you what kind of people these are. And like we are going to have to have this debate,

we will have to do it when they're gone, I suppose. But like this is a frightening moment given how

like how much just doesn't think much imagination to see where this goes. And we just don't have the

right people to have that debate. In other authoritarian news, Trump's billionaire political allies just

expanded their regime-friendly media empire to include among other properties, CNN. The

elephants finally won their bid to acquire one of brothers' discovery by overpaying for it and

offer that Netflix couldn't and wouldn't beat. The result is that Paramount skydance under the

leadership of the elephants and Barry Weiss, their favorite conservative journalist, will now control

both CBS News and CNN. Over the weekend, Weiss responded to a tweet criticizing Zoran Mumdani's

opposition to the war in Iran with a fire emoji. Okay, she's a straight shooter, respected on both sides.

Yeah, there was also a tweet from CBS referring to like Iran's nuclear weapons, which they don't

have and they've never had, I think CBS this weekend, the Sunday show had like all pro-war voices on

its panels. So good stuff. I don't watch a lot of cable news anymore. I imagine you guys don't

really either. We have it on the office, but like when I'm home, except for times like this, like when

there is a war, when there is a crisis, I'm putting on CNN or I'm putting on MSNOW because they're

doing real-time reporting. They have people like in Tel Aviv, you can see the missiles falling,

they people in Lebanon. That is invaluable in the time of crisis. And the idea of Barry Weiss kind

of thumbing the scales at all times on all the news gathering is really unnerving. With bigger picture,

I'm more worried about the TikTok US operations now being majority-owned by Oracle and other

else and other else and things. The Silver Lake Capital, they're like conservative

backed investor group and then MGX and Abu Dhabi-based investment company. I think that's going

to be more impactful in terms of their ability to impact sentiment about politics in this country

and do it secretly, but yeah, it sucks. They're hitting every demo, every age group, that's for sure.

What a move by Netflix. You're just going to get a couple of billion dollars

for having just kind of negotiated up this deal to a crazy degree and like kind of thirsty

fucking paramount paying just a huge, huge premium to take on this like asset, CNN,

whatever its ideology, I don't know what the future looks like, but they have a lot of

threats at CNN that aren't the free press in Barry Weiss. So I worry too about my bigger worry

is the same as Tommy's, which is like okay, there's whatever the specific ideological tilt of CNN

over time. I hope the independent journalists and anchors there get to continue to do what they do.

I hope that like the places that have a strong culture like HBO don't suddenly have to run like

anti-woke versions of their shows to go along with like whatever industry.

More than that, I just, here's a sort of a drip, drip, drip of like, okay, now you get TikTok

isn't be controlled by right wing allies. CNN is controlled in that way. Fox News, of course,

always was and like bit by bit you kind of lose these access access points and the noise and all

the kind of churn in the algorithm. Even if you are independent, you're kind of like kind of stuck

in that to reach people as well. So it's just a sort of bad sign, bad sign. It is bad sign.

It's bad sign. Yeah, well, and you know authoritarian takeovers of the media aren't always neat and

tidy and just coming in and shutting them all down and having state media and stuff like that. You

get, you know, it happened in Orban's Hungary as well, right? They start, you get a few that there's

a direct state TV and then you get some that are the billion, the, you know, leaders billionaire

friends that own the media stations and it's just, you know, so that's what they're trying to do.

They're trying to cobble together a regime friendly media empire here. It's a little TikTok,

little CBS, little CNN, they're just. I do think they'll fail. Ultimately, I do. Like I just,

this is not hungry and we're a big, fractious country with a lot of different ways of getting

information and one of them is crooked media. You back home slash friends, please subscribe.

Yeah. Well, I mean, you're not, if you're, but if you are, but like seriously, if people are

subscribed to what we're doing, right? The algorithm matters less. They're going to get this.

They can share this with other people. Like it will be incumbent on people to build an alternative

that we want to be a part of. Like that's real. All right. When we come back from the break,

you'll hear love. It's conversation with Senator Rubin Gallego about Iran and how Democrats are

doing, including today's Senate primary in Texas, where Jasmine Crockett and James Telleriko are

facing off. We'll be right back.

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Joining me now to discuss this weekend's airstrikes is Arizona Senator Ruben Gaiego.

Senator, welcome back to the pond. Thanks for having me.

Let's just start. What are your initial reactions to the strengths in Iran that began

over the weekend and the deaths as of this recording of six U.S. service members in the

campaign? What are your overall responses to it? Before coming on here, I was just reading a

statement that Rubio said that we had to attack because Iran was about to was going to attack as

they were about to be attacked. Basically, what Rubio is saying is that Israel was attacking

because it was going to attack Iran and because Israel was going to attack Iran, it was the

assumption of this country that we had to also join the attack. We're essentially giving up our

war making, our war making decisions to another country. Did anyone even try to say, hey,

don't do that? Did someone try to tell them, yeah, who are you going to start a regional war

that we don't want to be a part of right now? Or are we just now allowing Netanyahu to make

these decisions for us? What is going on here? What are we having in America first?

And I'm the kind of guy that understands, I actually do believe Israel is now away. I do believe

we should help protect Israel and our allies. But this is ridiculous. We lost six men and women

so far. And I'm not sure there was what kind of pre-planning and planning was actually

created in enough time to actually be able to even execute this correctly. Right now,

I'm hearing that our stockpiles are running low and it takes forever for us to redo and

rearm ourselves all because Israel wanted to take a chance at the fact that Iran was weak

and we just had to follow them through. If this is actually what happened, this is what

Mercury would just said to everybody. That is an absolute abdication of leadership by Trump

and by everybody in his cabinet, the fact that we were basically pushed into the war

by Israel. That is not what should be happening at all. That is not our national interests.

And now there are six men and women dead. I don't know how many go injured. Who knows how much

of our depleted stock is now gone or how much of a stock has been depleted,

how much is going to be drawn away from Europe and from Asia where it's needed,

all because we decided that we need to hand over our foreign policy to Netahu. It's just

disturbing and disgusting. Yeah, so I was actually going to play the clip but you just sort of got

into it before I've created sort of a shot. No, no, no, it's a shocking thing to hear in part

because there have been so many different rationales for doing this. So you have Rubio basically

saying the reason we had to do this is we were preemptively preventing further damage because Israel

was doing this. But certainly Donald Trump would not say he's being led into this by Benjamin Netanyahu.

He said that on that they were trying to it's at times a regime change operations.

At times it's not a regime change operation at times. It's about the nuclear program. It's

at times it's not what do you make of the shifting rationales? Well, the rationales probably Rubio's

actual ration was a real reason. And now they're coming up with the actual other reasons because

they know that that's not good reasoning. They know that even people that are pro-Israel that they

want to see Israel continue as a sovereign state know that that is not what Americans want to hear

and that we just got involved in another Middle East war because Netanyahu decided that this is

the best opportunity for Israel. What does that have to do with our national interests? How is this

worth the blood of our men and women? And that is the rationale and now they're going to come

up with all these other rationales because they're going to try to basically make it easier

because it's not the Democrats are going to have problems. Now it's their America first base

that they're going to have problems with. I've never heard of any other country essentially

having to react in that manner and use their national prestige, their weapons, the whole

war-making capability because another country is starting a war and therefore we are going to

have to react. Did somebody even try calling Iran saying like, hey, this is not us. We're going to

be staying out of this like, no, we just decided that we're going to let Netanyahu choose our

wars. It's very disturbing to me. Everyone should be really mad about this and I don't

mean think this is not a left-right issue. This is not like, are you a pro-Israel person or are you

whatever these other people are, right? This is like the fact that our country gave up its war-making.

The game started inflicting damage on another country because of another country's decision.

That is not leadership. That is not what you want to see your leadership doing. It is absolutely

horrendous. There is a debate and you're right. There is a divide that isn't like,

strictly Democrat versus Republican. That's pelling out in Congress. These strikes were carried out

without congressional authorization. You've said the Senate should not hold any votes until it votes

on a war-powers resolution, but as of this moment, a war-powers resolution wouldn't have the votes

to pass. What would be the value of having a war-powers resolution when the outcome would be

Rubio and Trump and all these people holding it up and saying, see, they couldn't disapprove it

and therefore they approve it? We do know that there's one coming up, I think tomorrow or the day

after. At least we know that there is. I do think we also need to have a very different approach to

this. This is not a very popular war. This just put it very plainly. It's only supported by about

30% of the population of this country. It's deeply unpopular with the mag-based of the Republican

party. The value in this would be that there is men and women put on record that will have to go

forward and defend this when they go home during recess. I think there's going to be a lot of

people that are going to have a very tough time doing this, especially now that we understand the

rationale, the real rationale behind this, right? There was no imminent threat to our country.

imminent threat means that it was going to happen. What we just heard from Mark Rubio was

essentially that we were going to get attacked because someone else is going to attack. They were

going to eventually attack us. Therefore, we decided to pre-emptive attack. In what world does

that word sell it actually justify us going to war and risking our men and women? That's what we

have to put on the record when it comes to Republicans and some Democrats coming up pretty soon.

One argument that Senator Chris Murphy has been making is a war powers resolution gets it a

little bit backwards. It suggests that somehow the vote would kind of retroactively suggest support

from Congress. When what's actually needed is an authorization for the use of military force.

A failed war powers resolution, the absence of disapproval is certainly not approval. That really

what we ought to be doing is having a Congress that asserts the president cannot conduct war

without a vote in Congress that authorizes the use of force as we did in Afghanistan and as we

did in Iraq. If we're in the majority, we have that, but that's like an AUMF is not a privilege

resolution. I'm sorry, I'm getting all dorky with you guys. No, no, it's fine. That's the reason why

we're doing a war's power because that's the only option we have that will actually bring a vote

to the floor because if we try to choose AUMF, then it has to go through the process and they're

just going to kill it in committee, right? But if you do a war power resolution, it gets to skip

all the bullshit that the Republicans can use to actually slow it down. Yes, you're right. It

doesn't immediate end it, but it does put certain timetables that actually restrict at least

some of that executive power. No, this is not the best solution at all, but it's the only solution

that we have when the Democrats are in the minority. In the majority, there's actually a lot more

power we have, but we have to do what we can with what we can right now. This is actually the best

kind. You force the debate, by the way, you force the, you have to take up time on the schedule.

It actually forces the conversation, the national conversation to focus on this, but the Senator

Murphy is not wrong. It's just that that's not an option that we have immediately.

So political reported over the weekend that some Republicans in Congress are hoping to use the

conflict as a way to pressure Democrats around the Department of Homeland Security, claiming

that the military action in Iran increases threats, and therefore it ought to increase pressure

on Democrats to fund DHS. That's been held up because of what ICE has been doing. Are you

buying that? Is there any truth to that argument? Well, when all the FBI agents that are now looking

for immigrants at home depot go back to their desks. When the HSI goes back to looking for money

launders, especially international drug cartel money launders and potential terrorists go back

to actually doing their jobs and actually doing money laundering instead of looking for women

and children at bus stops. When they actually start deploying all these ICE

45-day trainees to the border to help make sure that no

terrorists are crossing over the border, then we could be serious about this. But right now,

DHS has 175 billion dollars. More money than the Marine Corps. They have enough money.

It's a matter of fact, they have enough money. They could be using a lot of these guys

doing a lot of other things. For example, backfilling the ATF right now. The ATF right now

doesn't have enough men even to do a lot of the background checks that you need.

The guy that shut up, potentially the terrorists that shut up people in Austin,

bought a weapon legally, by the way. If there was a fully staff FBI ATF, they may have been able to

flag that this guy was potentially dangerous. But where's ATF right now? Either they've been fired

because of political reasons. And by the way, also a lot of FBI agents that specialize in terrorism

have been fired. Or they've all been put as provisional ICE agents. And instead of them doing the

things they're really good at, like background checks, investigations, trying to track down bombs,

weapons, things of that nature, they're chasing migrant workers through the fields and trying to

hit the Steven Miller quota. So these guys aren't serious, right? They're not serious about

national security. If they were serious about it, then these people would all go back to the

work where they're supposed to. They're actually keep our country safe. They just want to actually

put public pressure so they could get their way and they could get an extra 30 billion dollars

on top of the 175 billion dollars they already have to go and do these massive

portations and hit the Miller quota they want every day.

So I saw you endorse main Senate candidate grant planner this morning.

Why would you let you to jump on the planner train?

Oh, there's the planner planner plan or some of that. Look, the planner plan right now.

We're in war, right? As a matter of fact, Graham and I actually were in Iraq at the same time.

He was down closer to Fallujah. I was up closer to the Syrian border. We need veterans

to actually understand it. Number two, Janet Mills can't win. It's just that simple. Like,

there's no way that we're going to get Janet Mills to actually win in a year when people want

authenticity, want some level of populism. It's a change election. And to think that we're going

to send a 80 year old nominee versus, I don't know how old Senator Collins is, the appropriations

share and that's going to have a good outcome. I think it's fanciful. And the elections in two

is in two months right now. Sorry, early ballots drop in two months. We need to consolidate around

Graham. Graham has lived real experience. He was a young Marine. He was dumb. He did dumb things.

And he is actually apologized for them. He's learned from that. Right now, we have so many people

that are expecting this perfect candidate. And we end up looking for these perfect candidates that

don't know how to connect with everyday voters. And we just, and we figure out, oh my god, I can't believe

we lost. Well, we need to win. Democrats can't just win in North Carolina. I think we're going to

win. We can't just defend in Georgia. We need to pick up seats or else we're in the minority.

It doesn't help us if it's Susan Collins, you know, is a little more moderate. She still gives power

to John Thune to have the power to appoint Supreme Court judges to have the power to actually,

you know, do another conciliations that can super, you know, charge ice. And so

Graham's the one that can win. That's it. It's very simple. And everyone else, you could have

your excuses, everything else like that. There's only two candidates on the ballot right now.

There's only one that could win. And we need to win the seats. And that's the pathway we do it.

And the man has lived a real life. He's a lobster man. He's a working class man. He knows how to

communicate. Not everyone's perfect. Welcome to politics. But we will get him there. And he'll

certainly will be better than Susan Collins. So he's under fire today. He had done and

started the labor of the details, but I think they matter. He went on a YouTube channel,

did a live stream with a guy. He's a pretty big channel. He mostly talks about guns,

military culture, military life. He also does delve into some conspiracy theories, including

anti-conspiracy theories around the killing of Charlie Kirk. For example, among others,

he also is somebody that went on a another channel that is virulently anti-Semitic. Okay.

Plattener goes on the first channel and has an hour-long conversation talks about the values

of immigrants and his friends and immigrant community in Maine. It's a completely fine conversation

represents his message, but people who are already suspicious of Plattener because of the tattoo

because some of those previous comments, as you mentioned, are saying, oh, this is just too much.

There's too many signs here. This is a person that's comfortable in these anti-Semitic

environments. At the same time, they exist. They exist and he had to speak on those platforms.

Let's back up. Who's going on Joe Rogan's show? I don't have to mention names, but there's

a lot of Democrats who got on Joe Rogan's show. Joe Rogan has said anti-Semitic, anti-Jewish

conspiracy and tropes, but because there's been these very sophisticated democratic politicians,

no one has a problem with those guys going on there, right? Some people do, but yeah,

I take your point, but I think some people do. Some people do, but not to the outcry that's

happening here. Working class man goes and has a conversation on a platform that is very similar

to what Joe Rogan talks about, not necessarily guns and stuff like that, but everyone freaks out

on this guy. Why? Because the establishment doesn't want him. This is very simple. This

establishment does not want him. They're going to make sure that he looks bad. No one actually

talks about the fact that he got that tattoo as a young man and then re-enlisted twice. Every time

you re-enlist, you have to go through a physical. When you go through a physical, the Marines and

the Army, which he went and joined later, they check for tattoos and they check it against a

database of anti-Semitic and gang tattoos, never ever was hailed there. Then he actually went and

got a security, a very clear top security clearance to protect the ambassador of Afghanistan.

Also, you have to get checked for that. Clearly, him and his mates, when they were young and

stupid Marines, like I was a young stupid Marines, got a tattoo that looked like a cross and skull

bones, which we have a lot of those in the Marine Corps, like pirates. But what happens is years

later, when he finally gets into politics, someone points it out. What does he do? He gets rid of it.

But now, because he's running against the establishment, he's tainted. Because he was a young

Marine. He wasn't perfect when he was young. Now that he's in his late 30s or early 40s, it's

always going to hold against him. But he's a type of person that actually understands how young,

stupid people are and how people change. And he's going to actually connect with not this

governor who's 80 years old. But you don't hear about that. You don't hear about the fact that for

all these times, he went through all these vets and he kept on passing the vet. All you hear

is just the fact that it's an SS mark. No, if you look at it, it looks like skull and cross

bones. And if you're a Marine, we get stupid tattoos. We get tattoos in different languages.

Don't even make sense. And we get tattoos of things that look cool, especially when you're

young, that young and dumb. And the man has actually made a men's for it. But there was

there's already a movement. There's a movement of people that want to continue helping these

elite people win, even though they can't win the election and hoping that it will. Instead of

looking at the fact that, you know, the US government basically said that there was nothing wrong

with the tattoo for years. So why would these young men think there was anything wrong until

finally politics pointed out to him and good thing they pointed out to him. And what did he do?

You got rid of it as soon as he could. Yeah, I look at people want to be suspicious of

Graham Platner. They don't like these associations. I'll just say I watched the whole conversation.

And it was a great conversation where it was good to see a Democrat in that space being able

to kind of have that conversation. And after he gets off the livestream, which nobody watched,

all these people telling Graham Platner has nobody watched. After he gets off the livestream, he's

on this conservative libertarian pro-gun channel that does engage conspiracy theories that I do not

like, which is why I don't consume them. Don't like them. He pulled his audience and they liked him

90, 10. They liked him 90, 10. And so if you have a problem with him fine, if you don't think he

should be a senator fine, but boy, I wish you had a better answer for what we do about not having

people who can speak to these audiences. Also, by the way, you can question. I'm not the kind

of person like, oh, you shouldn't question this thing. Absolutely question. I think it's legitimate

people have some concerns. Why wouldn't you? But also, let's not also lie ourselves into this

situation where somehow this guy is some evil being because number one, he's going to win.

He's going to win that primary. Number two, once we realize the full scope of what people are

talking about, once people look at the old tattoo, once people understand that the US government

gave this guy very, very, very, very high security clearance, knowing that he had that tattoo and

also assuming that he was also not anti-Semitic, it all kind of starts making sense. Yes, maybe he

was a stupid young man, but now he wants to serve his country and he's learned and he's grown.

And guess what? Yeah. The majority of Americans are not a bunch of student council presidents,

just being perfectly distilled people, waiting to run for governor, president, senate, whatever

someday, right? People who are some of your colleagues, some of your colleagues are student council

presidents. I was a dorky student council president, so I'm one of those people too. But I'm

saying in general, there's a problem in this country where we want authenticity, but we only want

the authenticity that's not that authentic. We want somebody to cross over and talk to these

Republicans and conservatives and bring in these young men, but we want to do it in a nice,

clean, neat way, right? We want this perfect candidate to be able to bring all these people that

aren't perfect into our coalition. That doesn't exist, right? You have to accept a lot. You have

to accept that some people are going to be, you know, a fault that they've made mistakes, that

they said stupid things, have they grown, have they learned from it? Then that's what matters. But

if you want that person that can figure out how to get those bros in, how to get that disaffected

voter back, how to get that Republican to cross over, we have to have people that are authentic

first, number two, and have some real lived experience to be able to go talk to that person

and connect. Because if not, you're going to find ourselves in a situation where we run these

cookie cutter candidates and these tough races. I'm not saying you should, you know, there's

some definite races where you could have a cookie cutter candidate, the perfect candidate.

But some of these races, you're going to have to have someone that can actually reach across

the way and actually touch somebody because that person has, you know, lived your life,

understands your struggles, understands you've made mistakes, and it's willing to accept you

into this coalition, provide that we all understand that we're here to make sure that Democrats win,

that we have control of the agenda, and that we're not going to have another, you know,

two years potentially of Donald Trump in control of the Senate and the House.

Last question, because you're on such a role on these, on these Democratic primaries,

where are you? And the Texas Senate Democratic primary, you know, when this comes out,

people will be voting in Texas. If you wait in on Telleriko versus Crockett, where's your head at?

I mean, I think they're both great candidates. I think they're both, they both have a chance

to win. I'm going to, you know, help out whoever wants to, to be helped come Tuesday, you know,

Tuesday, and, you know, I'm going to be very excited. Texas is, you know, the Arizona of this,

of this year. I feel like what's happening, Texas, what happened in 2018 in Arizona,

where we just had a huge surge and got people elected to office up and down the ticket.

I think you're going to see that also in Texas. And look, you know, my endorsements are all over

the place. We want to do one through line is I'm helping people get elected that can make sure

we win. We need to have control of the house. We need to have control of the Senate.

And sometimes that's going to be people that I think are on, will be with consider on the left,

right, that are populist on the left. Some people is going to be people that are kind of

middle of the road. Some of them may be on the little on the conservative side.

I don't understand people don't see the world we live in right now. We're in a very dangerous

situation. We need to make sure we have control. We need to take anybody into our coalition

that can help us win control of the house in the Senate. And then once we actually get out of

this craziness, then let's have a little purity battles, right? But this guy is the guy that

nearly killed a lot of us on January 6. I was there on the house floor, right? This is the guy

just got us into a fucking war with Iran, right? This is the guy that is already taking, you know,

ballot boxes and stuff out of out of Atlanta, Georgia. And we're here trying to have this purity

battles when we should be looking to see who's going to help us win these elections. And by big

margins, for us to actually reset the agenda, push the Democratic agenda forward. And that will be,

you know, in the end of the day, if you have never noticed, it's always up being a fairly progressive

agenda. And then hopefully in 2028, we could deliver that Democratic president, Democratic House,

and a Democratic Senate. But you don't get a Democratic Senate for that president. If you don't

win some seats, by the way, in 2026, because 2028 gets harder and then after I get harder, right?

So people need to understand that we need to win first. And people, there's some candidates right

now that just aren't going to make it through. Time is running out for them. And I want to win.

I want to win so we could protect, you know, this country. We could protect them from Republicans.

And you have to make some tough choices. And that's that's just how life is.

Last last question. I just want to end because this is obviously on Iran. You know, there's

Democrats that have been saying we didn't go through Congress. There's Democrats who oppose

a war of power's vote at all, which I think is strange because even if you believe Iran,

the Iranian regime is a terrible government shouldn't Congress have authority. But do you think

Democrats on the whole are doing enough talking about why preemptive wars are dangerous in and

of themselves? No, I don't think they are. I actually think we need to get off this process question.

You know, I think voters are really smart. And, and, you know, I'm not saying that they would

understand this process question. But I think before they even get to the process question,

they want to have a values conversation. And they want to know, like, what do you, what do you

think about this? Right? And, you know, maybe, you know, I didn't pull, but I knew what I felt

because of my horrible experience with the first Iraq war or the second Iraq war. I can't

remember anymore. But like that makes a difference. Like people right now want to see like strong

leadership. And they want to see like, oh, you know what? This guy knows what he's talking about

or this guy knows what he's talking about. They know that the war is bad for this country.

And then the process question kind of will take care of itself, right? But we really need to show

strong values when it comes to whether or not we're willing to commit our men and women to

war to potentially death. And not just for us, but also for Iranians or for other civilians in

the world, whether it is, you know, Israelis and Israel or Jordanians or Saudis, you know,

Saudis, civilians that are all we've all kind of exposed to this regional breakout, right?

These are the things that we need to be considering before we get into these big process questions.

Well, Senator Rubin Gehago, thanks for your time. Thanks for talking to us. And we'll talk to you

again soon. Appreciate you. All right. Adios.

That's our show for today. Thanks to Senator Gehago for coming on. If you live in Texas,

we'll be get out and vote today. Last chance. Dan and I will be back with a new show on Friday.

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