“A demand for unconditional surrender”

We start with breaking news and Donald Trump's brand new demand for Iran's unconditional

surrender and that widening war in the Middle East.

Even as the Trump administration fails to clearly articulate exactly why we are in a war

with Iran right now and fails to articulate what the goal is for the war and has either

refused or failed to articulate what we can expect to happen next.

Others are growing that the situation may already be out of Donald Trump's control.

This warning from an expert is ricocheting around the world today watch.

The problem is that once we drop those bombs and once we announce regime changes are

goal and we had no other tools trying to do this from the air, this has never worked

in over a hundred years.

This is not like it works sometimes or rarely works.

I'm choosing my words carefully.

President Trump is up against the weight of history here and it's the illusion of the

smart bombs being near perfect and destroying their target and the problem is when those

bombs fall, they inject, they change politics in the target.

So keep that in mind up against the weight of history.

That's definitely when we tell you this.

Today Donald Trump said on social media that he will accept nothing short, nothing less

than quote unconditional surrender from Iran.

It's a demand president Roosevelt made of the Germans and the Japanese in World War

II.

Donald Trump added this quote after that and the selection of a great and acceptable leader,

we and many of our wonderful and very brave allies and partners will work tirelessly to

bring Iran back from the brink of destruction.

In other words, full and complete regime change where we weigh in on the next leader.

Remember what Dr. Robert Papers said in that clip we started with that regime change has

never been accomplished.

It has never been done from the air in more than a hundred years.

So if Iran's unconditional surrender in a scenario where we pick the next leader is

actually the goal now, which was the latest explanation, articulation from Trump and it

is still an F because that has changed since Saturday.

But if the goal is regime change and complete surrender, what does the Trump administration

have in mind as to how we achieve that and why won't they address the country directly

to explain it?

Would it require boosts on the ground, do they have a historic never been done in a hundred

years plan that we don't know about?

We don't know.

There is brand new reporting today in the Washington Post on a sudden and potentially

alarming change in plans for the Army's elite 82nd Airborne Division, officials telling

the Washington Post this quote, the Army in recent days abruptly canceled a major training

exercise for the headquarters element of an elite paratrooper unit.

It fueled speculation within the defense department that soldiers specializing in ground

combat and a range of other missions may be sent to the Middle East as the conflict

with Iran widens.

Right now, all signs do point to that widening conflict, a blockbuster piece of reporting

also in the Washington Post reports that Russia is quietly providing crucial aid to Iran.

Three intelligence officials telling the Washington Post this quote, Russia is providing

Iran with targeting information to attack American forces in the Middle East.

The first indication that another major U.S. adversary is participating, even indirectly

in the war.

Analysts said that the sharing of intelligence would fit the pattern of Iran strikes against

the U.S. forces, including command and control infrastructure, radars and temporary structures,

like the one in Kuwait where six service members were killed.

A war in the Middle East started by Donald Trump, now threatening to spiral beyond his control

is where we start today.

Dr. Robert Pape, University of Chicago political science professor who studies national

and international security affairs joins us.

He writes the sub-stack, the escalation trap.

Also joining us, founder of Crooked Media, co-host of the podcast, POD SAVE AMERICA, and

POD SAVE THE WORLD.

Tommy Veter is here.

He was the NSC spokesperson under President Obama.

Also joining us, publisher of the Bullwork, host of the focus group podcast, Sarah Longwells

with us as well.

She just announced she has a new book coming out later this year.

She's been multitasking to say the least.

How to eat an elephant, one butter at a time, think of it as a playbook for everyone and

how to beat the MAGA movement and reverse the country's alarming slide into authoritarianism.

We're so happy to have all three of you.

Dr. Pape, we were struck.

We were really sort of stopped in our tracks by what you said there.

Please explain.

Well, you've got it just right.

President Trump's not just taking on Iran.

He's taking on the history of air power.

For over a hundred years, states have been trying to topple regimes with air power alone

and just think of the way Donald Trump describes it.

Oh, just a few bombs and we'll take out a few leaders and all of a sudden we control

an entire country and not just the country.

We get all the things that we want, all the enriched uranium, for example, maybe even

they're oil.

So this, of course, seems very enticing and in the smart bomb age, it's also a worrying

because the bombs will fall with virtually a hundred percent success.

I've taught for the U.S. Air Force conventional targeting stretch.

I'm very well aware of the accuracy of our precision and the professionalism of our

forces.

That said, this strategy, and I'm choosing my words carefully, has never worked.

And what it does is it typically hardens the regime.

You typically, when you kill the leader, as the Russians did, the Chechen leader did

die of in April 1996, you replace the dead leader, make that person a martyr and replace

them with a more aggressive, in the Russian case of his name, was Basia.

And he is the one who did the suicide attacks.

He kicked Russian forces out of Chechnya and then it took three years of fighting to have

them come back.

So this is what we are up against and what his rhetoric is now, oh my goodness gracious.

This is yet another clear loser in history because we know from the inside records that

when we announce this unconditional surrender, what it really did in the German case is it

took away almost all, not quite a hundred percent, but almost all this energy to cut a

deal with the West, so that they wouldn't be conquered by the Russians.

So this really is just one step after another, we're getting into the escalation trap.

Well, he also, if I could just ask you to sort of put this part of the statement in

the context of history, Dr. Pepe Donald Trump posting after that, after Iran's, quote,

unconditional surrender, quote, the selection of a great and acceptable leader.

The Wall Street Journal reported 24 hours ago that in Iran, there is support for committee

son who's more brutal and it seems like if there was a plan to weigh in on who would

lead Iran after the initial strikes, it would be emerging from inside Iran, not from

Donald Trump's Twitter feed, has an external public sort of media campaign ever influence

the internal politics of a country?

It has not influenced them in the positive direction of moving the internal politics toward

us.

It is often moved it in the negative direction and it does so by infusing the idea of

the foreign military power now, taking over the political control and all that that means.

And so if there was somebody who was the dove, they are now disincentivized because what's

going to happen is they'll get a bullet in the back of the head.

So they may Donald Trump may say, I threatened to kill you.

These are the horns of the dilemma now and it's a brutus problem if you see what I

mean.

And so this is why it actually has never worked.

We don't have many 100% propositions in military history, air strategy, but this is one

of those and it is a self-defeating policy, which is why and it's politically self-defeating.

It's not the bombs don't hit the target.

I want to be clear.

It's not that our men and women and arms are not the ultimate professionals, they absolutely

are.

It's that the task itself is about politics and that is the self-contradictory nature

of it.

And by pouring on the fire here that it's his way or the highway over and over and he's

going to micromanage exactly, it'll be our new car's eyes, so to speak, in Afghanistan.

Well, if put an army in, maybe there's a chance, but this is not Afghanistan.

This is a much bigger problem.

I really think we've taken on way too much more than we can chew and the danger is the

escalation now is coming out of Iran, sweeping into the region and I fear that over the

coming weeks it will start to creep toward the homeland.

Donald Trump doesn't seem to disagree with that assessment, Donald Trump saying in an

interview that things could happen here, that people could die, that we are at risk here.

So in so much as that isn't in dispute, it seems all the more self-defeating on the political

side that Donald Trump hasn't addressed the country to articulate a mission, a goal,

a timeline.

What do you make of this moment?

Yeah, the communications failures around this war have been extraordinary.

I mean, the last time we heard him talk, I think it was yesterday and it was in Iran

topper as he welcomed an MLS soccer team to the White House.

So he talked about Iran and dropping bombs on a country and then he told a bunch of

the players how hot he thought they were.

That literally happened yesterday.

And as you mentioned at the top, I mean, one day we're talking about regime change,

Donald Trump is saying he wants to pick the next leader of Iran, he's demanding unconditional

surrender.

And then you'll have a Pentagon briefing with Pete Hegseth and the chairman Dan Kane,

where they talk about, no, no, no, no, no, this is about bombing Iranian naval assets,

it's about taking out their ICBMs, it's about eliminating their ability to project power

outside of Iran's borders.

But regardless of which source you're listening to, the premise of the war is built on a lie

or many lies.

Iran was not close to getting a nuclear weapon.

We know this, he was Donald Trump told us that they totally obliterated their nuclear

sites last June.

Iran is not close to having a ballistic missile capacity that could hit the US.

We know this because the defense intelligence agency said that they are a decade away from

having that capability if they choose to get it.

So we're all left wondering why are we conducting this war?

And now we are seeing these reports of the 80s tech and airborne mobilizing.

And Trump is refusing to put a rule out putting boots on the ground as his Hegseth.

And you have to wonder is the 82nd airborne going there to the Middle East to get Americans

out?

Is there a mission to go inside Iran, right?

I could imagine a commando raid by the US and Israel to try to take control of the

highly enriched uranium that's still in the country.

Is this a regime change operation?

Like this is getting hairy, very, very fast.

And it doesn't seem like anyone has a clear handle on what comes next, not in the White

House, not in the Pentagon, not anybody.

Tommy, the Washington Post reporting that Russia is assisting Iran with targeting information

about locations of US troops in the Middle East is staggering.

And my brain instantly replayed all of the flattery that Donald Trump has lavished

on Vladimir Putin.

One of the most heinous things Iran has done over the last 20 years is they're working

at rock where they are directly responsible for the death of men and women of the military.

That's one of the reasons normal presidents, I guess, as they went to the country would

articulate for why we would ever consider being at war with Iran.

That Russia is doing that very same thing.

Seems like a staggering development.

And I wonder if it's just the blur of the sort of pace and freneticism of the news cycle

that that hasn't stopped Republicans and Democrats in Congress to at least reconsider

their votes on congressional authorization for this war.

Yeah, I mean, look on some level, if you're Russia, you're probably thinking the United

States has been providing intelligence and targeting information to the Ukrainians to

take out Russian targets for a long time.

So this is their response to that on some level, right?

But like as the president of the United States, this should be totally unacceptable.

And I think I saw Caroline Levitt was interviewed earlier today and she basically said, who cares?

If Russia is doing this, I blew my mind that she would say something like that because

early on, it seemed like the Iranians were just firing their sort of cheap shahed drones

wherever, right?

They were hitting civilian buildings, they were targeting US military installations.

They were just trying to soak chaos with the benefit of a few days and some satellite imagery

and some great reporting.

We are now seeing that Iran has managed to hit multiple command and control sites for the

US military, key infrastructure, key radars, infrastructure that's important for missile

defense systems.

So they're having some real success that seems to be based on very good intelligence.

And if that's coming from the Russians, you would hope that Donald Trump would rethink

all the things he said about Vladimir Putin.

I mean, last time I checked, they still had a jumbo photo up on the wall of Trump and

Putin together at the Alaska summit.

So maybe start by taking that thing down.

But yes, I mean, it is a pretty extraordinary development.

Sarah, I have been doing my best in your absence these last five days of this week, actually

six days ago Saturday, to try to explain the political betrayal to every single person

who ever voted for Donald Trump over the last three presidential elections to have taken

the country to a war in the Middle East with no clear goal, no clear mission and refusing

to rule out boots on the ground.

But I, I, I, I'm out of words.

I mean, if there was one central honest intellectual pillar of MAGA, it was we will

focus our interests and our needs and our dollars here at home and we will not start new

wars in the Middle East.

And here we are.

Yeah, I mean, look, America first is meant to be a statement of prioritization, not just

a slogan.

It's about saying what we're going to do is not, you know, send our money overseas, we're

going to focus on people here at home taking care of them.

That's the promise that voters heard from Donald Trump.

Now right now, public opinion on something like this is a little bit crazy.

We've been doing focus groups since this happened.

That's immediately what I do.

I rush out to listen to voters and see what they know and I'll tell you, the public is

still catching up to what is happening.

We did focus groups this week and there were people who didn't know we were in a war.

And now some of that is because we've got a government that isn't just saying we're

in a war.

They're trying to pretend like this isn't a war when we're actively dropping bombs on

another country.

But I think that because it's so far away, sometimes it takes a minute until oil prices

start to spike until people feel the personal consequences for everybody to get their heads

around what's really happening.

And Trump benefits from the fact that when he went and grabbed Maduro in Venezuela, that

was a story for a bit.

And then it kind of went away.

And the last time we bombed Iran and, you know, obliterated according to Donald Trump,

nuclear program, that was something that was felt short lived to Americans.

What will happen is if this continues to go on, right?

If it becomes prolonged, if there's more loss of American lives, then you will start to

see the American public look up and say, what are we doing here?

Because right now, public opinion, it sort of maps onto approval of Trump.

Like you will see that the number of people who approve of this, the approval numbers,

which are about 40%, 43%, that's Trump's approval rating.

And the 50 plus that disapprove of it, well, that goes along with his disapproval rating.

And so right now for the public, it's sort of coming down to, do you trust Trump or not?

But that will start to erode as people in America start to catch up and say, are we suddenly

in a prolonged war in the Middle East?

And I do want to also say there's something about the Middle East that is different for

Americans than something like Venezuela, because the memory is still just so fresh.

People have a very specific way that they think about us going into the Middle East and

their tolerance board is much lower than other things we might do in other parts of the

globe.

But I do think that when you talk about the betrayal, one of the things you also have

to remember, though, is that it's, I don't want to just say it's a cult, but the people

who trust Trump are going to trust Trump for a while until it starts to negatively impact

him.

So he's going to have this narrow window where his base will stick with him.

But over time, that is going to erode, especially as a lot of the people who are more sort

of the talking heads on the right, they are not 100% with him.

And so they are telling their listeners about this betrayal.

And so over time, I think you see it, you will see it start to shift, but right now

it tends to be, public opinion tends to be locked in a, if I trust Trump, I'm okay with

this right now.

If I don't trust Trump, I'm not okay with it.

So much more on that.

You brought us some of that from actual voters.

I want to play that.

And to your point, you've got Tucker Carlson, Megan Kelly, Marjorie Taylor Greene,

taking out territory very much consistent with MAGA and opposed to what Trump is doing.

We'll talk about that as well.

Everyone sticks around with us.

Also, head for us.

Another broken campaign promised from Donald Trump after backing away from his declaration

of no new foreign wars.

He's finding that he is not making America affordable, either.

Donald Trump's Iran-fueled economic crisis has sent gas prices soaring and employers

slashing jobs.

And now he's losing public sport in those areas as well.

We'll show you those numbers also ahead.

The White House and the State Department today struggling to explain why they were not

prepared to evacuate the thousands of Americans in the Middle East when the war started.

We'll talk with one of those frustrated travelers, a retired major general from the United States

Army who was stranded in Dubai for days.

But before we take a break, we want to show you something we're going to go back to Chicago

where former Vice President Kamala Harris is speaking at the memorial service for the

Reverend Jesse Jackson honoring the late civil rights leader.

Let's listen to a little bit of that.

I'm not in to say it.

I told you so, but we did see it coming.

But what I did not predict is that we would not have Jesse Jackson with us right now to help

us get through this.

And this afternoon has been such a beautiful remembrance of his spirit, his life, and

his faith.

And in a way that Reverend Al talked about it and so many others have, I do think of this

afternoon as what it is doing for me to renew my faith in what is possible fueled by the

hope that Jesse Jackson so often reminded us of.

I'm reminded of a passage.

We are back with Professor Pape, Tommy, and Sarah, Professor, let me come back to a point

that you and Tommy were both making.

This is from Time Magazine's reporting about Donald Trump's public statements.

Asked whether Americans should be worried about retaliatory attacks at home, Trump acknowledges

the possibility, quote, I guess, but I think they're worried about that all the time.

We think about it all the time.

We plan for it, but yeah, you know, we expect some things.

Like I said, some people will die when you go to war, some people will die, end quote.

Then a window into maybe more thought than we were aware he gave the risk of terrorism

and attacks from Iran and the homeland.

And if that were true, it doesn't sync up with the firings of the FBI, all the agents

that are trained to protect us, hire among those who have been targeted most viciously

with purges.

I wonder what you make of any serious preparations to the homeland for what Iran is capable

of doing in retaliation?

Well, Nicole, you may not know, but my second area, especially for decades, has been

suicide terrorism.

I collected the first complete database of all suicide attacks around the world just

after 9-11, and it predicted that if we invaded and occupied Iraq, that we would touch off

the largest suicide terrorist campaign in modern times.

And that prediction came true, and it was a unique prediction, very few other terrorism

experts were saying that they were saying it would be a cakewalk.

And why did I make that prediction?

It's because what I discovered was at about 95% of all suicide attacks around the world,

and this is true for decades, are in response to a foreign military occupation, ground forces

most especially.

And so once you take that out of the equation, you still have some, but again, 95% are in

response to that.

So that's why over time, suicide terrorism has disappeared.

It's not because the Islamic fundamentalists have disappeared.

It's because we've changed our policy, and I spent decades working with both Democratic

and Republicans on both the Hill, I mean, my goodness gracious.

And we basically were able to solve that problem.

Well now what's happening is we're going in the opposite direction, and you're even reporting

something about the 82nd April, well that would count as ground forces, absolutely.

And so this really is a problem as we go forward, because what we're doing is we are,

we are creating, recreating the conditions that led to this massive wave of terrorism.

Now it doesn't happen on a day.

I can talk a little bit about the trajectory over time, but the bottom line is we are heading

down a row deeper and deeper with more and more reckless ideas.

And it's really stunning to me that it's not just President Trump, but apparently folks

all around President Trump really have very little understanding of the strategy.

They may know quite a bit about putting a bomb on a target or how to kill an individual.

But in terms of the actual strategy of military power, this is really becoming quite disconcerting.

Tommy, Mark Mazzetti was here the beginning of the week and made clear that there wasn't

any sort of formal national security, NSC policy process, that a lot of the decisions

that have been made so far have been on, I think Donald Trump has even said this publicly,

on his gut.

When you get to this part of it, the initial strikes and militaries geniuses on full display,

but this part of it that requires strategy, that requires protection for the homeland,

that requires a conversation with the country about whether or not there will be boots

on the ground.

What happens with that, a policy process?

Yeah, I mean, it's just like mega jazz, you know, they're just kind of winging it.

I mean, to Dr. Page's point, they are, Trump administration is bombing a Muslim country

during Ramadan and you have Lindsey Graham out there calling it a holy war.

That is the kind of thing that we would have avoided doing or thought was a bad idea after

9-11 when there's a lot of concern about U.S. policies and the way they might ferment

terrorism.

So, I mean, it just, look, there's been a lot of reporting that Donald Trump has seen,

you know, the Operation Midnight Hammer mission go through and then the Venezuela operation

and has decided that the U.S. military gives him God-like powers.

And the truth is, he has gotten very lucky over time.

The Venezuela mission, as we learned at the State of the Union, you know, one of the

lead helicopter pilots took four bullets to the leg and somehow managed to fly through

that, get everyone down safely and get out safely without anyone getting hurt or getting

killed.

If one of those bullets goes, you know, a few inches of one direction or the other, that

ends very differently.

I think now President Trump has, he's learning the hard way that he's bitten off more than

he can chew, that there's no way to conduct a regime change operation against a regime

that is as ideologically driven as the Iranian regime.

And so, like, what happens next, I guess, is up to him, but there is no NSE process, like

you said, in place to kind of vet these ideas, to talk about downside risks, to get him

intelligence assessments for what could come next or how bad it could be, because he just

doesn't want to hear that kind of information.

I am going to do what I promised.

I'm going to play this new focus group sound.

These are Biden 2020 butters, Trump 2024 butters, it's fascinating.

Professor Robert Payton, I'm going to thank you and spare you that part of our political

conversation, but we will call on you again.

Tommy and Sarah stick around, after the break, we'll show you that sound.

We'll also talk about the economic damage to being at a widening war in the Middle

East and the signs already that it's having an impact on affordability and on the prices

of the pump and elsewhere.

We'll get to that next.

Today the markets continued to respond.

They plummeted with a Dow closing down more than 400 points, slightly driven by the dramatic

spike in oil prices, now more than $90 a barrel.

As shipments have been severely impacted by the war in Iran, as well as an alarming jobs

report that hit today that showed that we lost 92,000 jobs in February, even before

that data was released, voters weighed in, Donald Trump's dismissal of their concerns

has been weighing on his political standing for some time now, and now, with the start

of a war in Iran, the doubts voters have about him are starting to multiply, take a listen

to voters who voted, as they said before the break, for Joe Biden in 2020, and Donald

Trump a year ago in 2024.

I sort of feel this though, he might be trying to hold out his script when it comes to

what he has always made jokes stating that there won't be another election, and I just

feel as though maybe this war is also the catalyst to somehow allow mid-turn elections to

not happen because of us going into war.

He bombed in the first time and set their nuclear program back decades, and why are we bombing

them again?

That's my first question.

My second question is if we're bombing them so we can have a regime change, what's our

game plan for who's going to take over now, and how are we going to ensure that they're

not going to be worse than the IOTOla?

Because my fear is that it's going to be a repeat of what happened with Saddam.

Sarah, those are your voters.

These are obviously ones you've taken in a lot of information about what has happened

so far.

Your thoughts?

Yeah, I mean, look, these are swing voters.

And a lot of the swing voters, when you have a Biden to Trump voter, they tend to have

voted for Donald Trump for one specific reason, which is that he promised he was going to

lower prices and make America more affordable.

That's what they heard.

That's what they believed.

It is the story I hear over and over and over again from voters in the focus groups.

And what's interesting is that the way that these voters process, anything that Trump is

doing is they just ask, is what he is doing, making my life more affordable, because that's

what I hired him to do.

And so whether it's building the ballroom, whether it is the aggressive way that they are shooting

Americans in the streets and going after immigrants in America's streets, or whether it is this

war with the run, they see it as not what they were promised he would do.

And in fact, I mean, you said this at the jump, and I don't think I hit it hard enough,

but it is so important to remember that one of the reasons Republican voters today are

so much more isolationist than they were 15 years ago is because Donald Trump taught

them to be.

I mean, but big part of why he was even elected or why he was able to sort of railroad

Jeb Bush and some of the other folks is because Americans were tired of these foreign

wars.

And so many people in his administration promised that that's not what they were going to do.

They were going to spend their time improving the lives of the average American.

And so these voters feel the trade every time Trump does something that they don't see

as to their advantage.

And this Iran war is no different, but it's also worse because as you can hear from these

voters, and I hear this from a lot of people in the groups across the political spectrum,

is it's just so close to the wars they felt like we just got done fighting.

Like the fatigue is already there.

And so they'll give Trump a little bit of leeway, but they won't give him infinitely

way.

I mean, I got to tell you, gas prices, they've already gone up about $0.30 a gallon.

That is the kind of thing when people are driving up and down the road, they see it on

the signs at their local gas station.

It is the kind of psychological thing that hits people and it drives up the cost of everything

and voters understand that.

And so that is an enormous vulnerability because it's one thing to fight a war that's far

away, that they can't feel the implications of.

It's another thing when they start to feel the cost at home, that's when it drives down

public opinion.

I mean, what's interesting, Sarah, is you're talking, I'm looking at the Fox News polling

on the economy.

How would you rate the economy today?

Excellent, good, 30% fair, poor, 71%.

I mean, the 30% is beneath his approval rating, beneath that group that you said basically

trust Trump by more than 10 points.

This is his greatest political vulnerability.

And the war in Iran, it's most immediate and direct consequence is the loss of six

American lives.

The second and most widespread consequence is higher gas prices.

Yeah, and look, the fact is people dying and

there will be a short term sort of letting Trump do what they think he needs to do, right?

This is why the Venezuela sort of smashed and grabbed job on Maduro and why the initial

bombing of Iran.

The fact that those were over very quickly, voters saw that, like Trump also internalized

it like Tommy was saying and it makes him think this is all so easy.

But that happens with the voters too, right?

They think, well, you know, this will be short, we're just, we're doing some bombings,

it's far away.

The fact is this one looks like it's going to get away from Trump very quickly.

And as soon as Americans start to feel the pain, whether it's the loss of American lives,

whether it's just the days that go on, right?

It doesn't, it's not over really quickly or it is their gas prices.

And just that Donald Trump isn't focusing on the one thing they want him to focus on,

the one thing they hired him to do.

That's the betrayal, that's the frustration and that's where you hear a lot of the sort

of mega talking head types really going hard at hand.

Like this isn't what America first was supposed to be about.

This isn't the promise you made to us.

And that is like the most central vulnerability for Trump to the extent that he is often seen

as invulnerable, but this is the central vulnerability.

Yeah, I mean, the things that Tucker Carlson and Megan Kelly and Marjorie Taylor Greene

have said about him over the last six days are amazing.

I'm not going to show him to you, but they are amazing.

I'm going to show you what Trump's been saying though, about that really just showcases

either his obliviousness to what you're articulating Sarah or his indifference.

And we'll talk on the other side about which is worse for him politically.

No one goes anywhere.

We'll all be right back.

I have never had more compliments on something I did.

People felt it's something that had to be done.

So if we have a little high oil prices for a little while, but as soon as this ends,

those prices are going to drop, uh, affordability is a hoax.

It's a conjurer.

I think affordability is the greatest conjurer.

The ports here in the U.S. the traffic has really slowed and now thousands of dock workers

and truck drivers are worried about their jobs.

No, we lose.

That means we lose less money.

People are buying their holiday presidents, their planning.

Don't be dramatic.

No, no, don't be dramatic.

Here's what I want.

Here's what I want.

I know.

You said dolls, even dolls could cost a couple bucks more.

Maybe they might.

I don't think a beautiful baby girl needs, that's 11 years old, needs to have 30 dolls.

Tommy, I want to try to not get distracted by all this outrageous in there.

And focus on maybe the one truth, um, quote, as soon as it ends, the prices will drop.

I mean, ding, ding, ding, that might be the biggest problem with the lack of clarity

and certainty to what he's commenced in the Middle East.

And by the way, that's not necessarily true.

I mean, as Sarah was saying, the price of the barrel of oil is up to $90.

Uh, I think at the peak of the Ukraine war, it was up to $139 a barrel so it could go

way up.

The Qataris are saying you could see $150 barrels of oil.

So, um, there's also some situations where if these oilfields need to be shut down,

you can't just turn them back on.

That's just not how the technology works.

It could take weeks if not months.

And then you have this massive choke point in the state of hormones where 20% of the

world's refined petroleum products transit every day.

And if you know, the Iranians or the Houthi rebels are firing missiles at ships there

and taking them out, that is just going to cut off a lot of commerce.

So Donald Trump can, can spin as much as he wants.

And you know, like political freaks like us who consume a lot of political news, we will

see some of that and maybe it'll influence maybe us, maybe it won't.

But most voters at like Sarah was saying are just going to drive to the gas station and

see the price of the pump and be happy about it or not.

So I like, I just don't really think he can yada, yada, yada away his political problems

here.

No, I mean, I'm sure you guys have seen like the crazy, you know, edited hype videos

with like movie reels cut in or like Call of Duty clips put to these videos of bombs

and airstrikes like I just, I don't think this stuff is really effective when you're

talking about life and death and service members dying in a real war.

Um, Sarah, let me just stipulate obviously the war is in Iraq and Afghanistan or wildly

unpopular with the American people.

To your point about some of Trump's political leeway right now being this idea that voters

think this is so far away, that cuts the other way when, um, you know, the people that

most Americans do is the best among us, people that volunteer to serve their country to

protect us, start losing their lives.

What is your thought to Pete Hegseth describing the six men and women who have lost their

lives already in the efforts to cover those deaths and talk about who they were as a

quote effort to make Donald Trump feel bad, the sort of the callousness that they've already

displayed.

And Donald Trump repeatedly, I think he said every day since that or day, yeah, people

are going to die.

Well, obviously I couldn't have a lower opinion of Donald Trump and the leadership around

him.

I mean, look, the way that they are waging this war demonstrates a contempt for the

American people.

Right?

Donald Trump, it was just last Tuesday, he gave the State of the Union, he could have made

the case to the American people then about why this was such an imminent threat, why we

needed to do this.

He's obviously not gone to Congress with this, like he is side stepping everything that

makes America, America and the way the processes by which, you know, we go to war and do something

that is so significant that will cost lives and treasure of the American people.

Like you show people, um, decency in those moments, you show people leadership in those

moments, you show people that you care about America.

I mean, everything you just showed from Donald Trump's waving a way of affordability, as

though people not being able to like afford real goods, real material goods just doesn't

matter.

The way that they have, the way that he talks about people dying in this war with a shrug

as though, yeah, that's just what happens.

And here's the thing, it that's true on some level, right?

Of course, if you are going to be at war, lives will be lost.

It's a very serious thing, but that is why you sit down in the Oval Office and you face

the American people and you explain your plan.

You don't go on your janky personal social media app that you own that's a private company

as the only way to give Americans any information about the war that you are dragging them into.

And so it is contempt for the American people and our constitution and our congressional leadership

from top to bottom.

And it is embarrassing, actually, that Congress's response is to just roll over and let him

do it.

And man, their role as a check on this, I just, it is, it is awful.

The way that he talks to Americans and takes for granted, the serious, the price that

people will pay for this in all, in all different vectors.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's, it's sort of just inspired another conversation.

And hopefully we can have that next week.

Sarah, I'm so happy that we could announce the title of the book and I cannot wait to read

it.

I hope I'm among the, the early people who get to lay my eyes on it.

Tommy Veter, thank you for being here.

We'll see you again tomorrow.

This is awesome news, the premiere of Crooked on MS now, a new series that highlights the

very best moments of the week from Crooked Media's top podcast.

You can catch Crooked right here at 9 p.m. Eastern tomorrow after the break.

The Westie Nome may have lost her job, maybe because of that disastrous congressional

testimony she gave this week, but that might not be the only trouble she's in right now.

We'll explain.

Senate Democrats are pressing for a perjury investigation into whether freshly fired

Kristie Nome lied under oath this week when she claimed that Corey Lewandowski did not

approve contracts for the Department of Homeland Security.

Senator Richard Blumenthal says Democrats have evidence to suggest that Corey Lewandowski

had done that and that may not have been the only time she perjured herself, listened

to what she told Senator John Kennedy at the same hearing.

The president approved ahead of time, you spending $220 million running TV ads across

the country in which you are featured prominently.

Yes, sir.

We went through the legal processes.

Did it correct?

Did the president work with OMB?

Yes.

Which is interesting because Trump told Reuters the next day this, quote, I never knew anything

about it.

And not just Reuters.

Trump also told NBC News, quote, I didn't know about it, end quote.

And then she lost her job.

So seems like Kristie Nome's very bad terrible, no good week continues.

We'll stay on top of it.

Act of the break, Donald Trump acknowledges that the human cause of a war with Iran could

be felt right here at home as well.

Quick break, Donald White House will be right back.