Georgia votes on successor to Marjorie Taylor Greene

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Tonight, on all it.

Just seems so insane based on what he ran on.

I mean, this is why a lot of people feel betrayed, right?

The president's plan to have it all!

Thank you.

Mr. President, you've said the war is, quote, very complete, but your defense secretary

says this is just the beginning, so which is it, and how long should Americans be

working?

Well, I think you could say it both.

Tonight Trump flails as his quick war with Iran's stalls and Paul Krugman on damage

it's doing to the economy.

I knew oil prices would go up if I did this, and they've gone up probably less than I

thought they'd go up.

Then special election night are the voters in Marjorie Taylor Green's district as disillusioned

as she is.

We need to have a serious conversation about what the f*** is happening to this country.

And Carol Enig on her new reporting on a counter-terror exodus of the FBI and the DOJ pushed

to overthrow the Cuban government.

The liberation of Cuba is upon us.

It's just a matter of time now, but all in starts right now.

Good evening from New York.

I'm Chris Hayes.

We are on day 11 of Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu's War with Iran.

A war of choice launched with constantly shifting rationale sometimes even minute to minute

and now mired in outfuscation and lies.

This week, Donald Trump ran into the fundamental strategic contradiction at the heart of this

war.

It keeps presenting itself over and over.

Donald Trump wants a war with Iran, a big military victory and regime change, and he

also wants to keep gas prices low.

And guess what?

You can only have, at most, one of the two and, well, possibly neither.

That has left this administration in something of a bind.

On Saturday, Israel struck 30 Iranian fuel depots creating an environmental political catastrophe.

The scenes throughout the country were downright apocalyptic, major fires breaking out across

the capital of Tehran, one of the largest cities in the world, the largest city in Iran,

an anonymous Trump staffer went to Axios to vent about the attack, which the United States

had advanced.

Knowledge of quote, the president doesn't like the attack.

He wants to save the oil.

He doesn't want to burn it and it reminds people of higher gas prices, probably true.

Lindsey Graham also had some diplomatically stern words for Israeli allies.

Over the weekend, the price of a barrel of oil spiked to nearly $120.

That's a lot.

Trump went into spin mode trying to manage the market.

He called CBS News during the day on Monday to say, quote, I think the war is very complete,

comma, pretty much.

It seems an obvious attempt to calm the panic on Wall Street, which is also seeing a stock

sell off as investors are worried about what's going to happen.

And then, markets close at five, he goes back out to the cameras to kind of walk it back.

We've already won in many ways, but we haven't won enough.

We go forward more determined than ever to achieve ultimate victory that will end this

long-running danger once and for all 47 years.

It should have been done a long time ago.

We've already won in many ways, but we haven't won enough.

Meanwhile, the flow of commerce through the straight of our moves has effectively stopped.

That's where an enormous portion of the world's oil traffic goes.

Ron has effectively shut it down and his attack ships have tried to travel through that

key choke point in the Gulf.

The key choke point that if you were to take a class on the geopolitics of oil or previous

oil crises or strategically relevant straits in the world, day one's going to be the

straight of our moves, right?

Trump just thinks, though, that everyone needs to just grow a spine.

Brian, you did a phone interview with the president of the United States.

What is his read on this?

There's exactly what he said.

These ships should go through the straight of our moves and show some guts.

There's nothing to be afraid of.

They have no navy.

We sunk all their ships.

Well, that's not quite true.

There's just news today that we sunk 16 ships just in the last 20 minutes.

We're going to get to that, so clearly they still have ships.

And then when speaking in public, Trump, guess what?

Back down as he so often does.

Because you have to keep the straits flowing.

With all of that, it affects other countries much more than it does the United States.

It does really affect us.

We have so much oil.

We have tremendous oil and gas, much more than we need.

You keep seeing it over and over again, right?

That old cartoon meme of the guy who's sweating between pushing two buttons, right?

It's like, keep gas prices low, have a long enough word to get regime change.

So this all weirdly escalated to then to Trump's Secretary of Energy.

Today, this is what happened.

I don't know if you saw this, but this is wild.

So Chris Wright is his name, former energy executive, fossil fuel company executive.

Who's, by the way, Pervue has very little to do with oil prices.

But he announced that the Navy might step in to escort those ships through the very

dangerous street.

You don't think Navy escorts of vessels are necessary?

They might be.

They might be.

Their early tankers probably will involve some direct protection by the U.S. military.

But most important is to defang their ability to threaten these ships.

Just take a second to sit with that.

That was him, of course, on Sunday, right?

Sort of starting to lay the groundwork for this idea that raised the possibility and

be clear.

It's a huge deal.

I mean, just think about it for a second.

Look at this map.

Those ships are in range of Iranian missiles.

And so this would mean commanding American service members in boats to risk their lives,

to escort ships bringing tankers full of oil to God knows where, another country.

Like, should our troops die for lower oil prices?

Quite literally.

Should they sacrifice their lives?

Should they be maimed and killed and maybe drowned in the ocean or be incinerated?

So that some shipment from Aramco can go to India.

You think so?

And then get this today, Secretary Wright actually tweeted that it was happening.

Okay?

Lays the groundwork on Sunday.

And today, the big announcement in a tweet, the U.S. had escorted a ship successfully

escorted in oil tankers for the state of foremost.

Wow.

Putting our, I guess, money where our mouth is, so to speak.

And as you might imagine, markets responded positively.

It was like, oh, they're going to reopen the state of foremost.

I, you know, escorting ships through and the price of oil dropped.

And then Wright deleted the post because it turns out it wasn't true.

I know the post was taken down pretty quickly and I can confirm that the U.S. Navy has

not escorted a tanker or a vessel at this time.

Though, of course, that's an option the president has said he will absolutely utilize

if and when necessary at the appropriate time.

Well, that's a pretty big mistake.

That's pretty different.

Discoording a ship's or not, which leaves us back where we started on that front reports

today of possible Iranian mine deployment in the strait, Trump angrily posting warnings

not to news in the last 20 minutes that we have been targeting Iranian mining ships,

U.S. claiming they've sunk 16 of them.

And we're nearly two weeks in this war that is sprawled now to more than a dozen countries.

We got word today of an eighth U.S.

service member who has died along with more than 1200 Iranians, 570 Lebanese by the way

in the south of Lebanon where Israel has gone into that country yet again and 13 Israelis

have lost their lives.

And there's no clear way out.

Of course, Iran has released a little reason to trust the president and now Republican

Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a guy who by his own admission helps go down

Trump to the war is publicly advocating for it to explode into a wider full fledged

regional conflict.

To our Arab friends, I've tried to help you construct a new mid-Ace.

You need to up your game here.

I can't go to South Carolina and say, we're fighting and you won't publicly fight.

What you're doing behind the scenes, that has to stop.

The double dealing of the Arab world when it comes to this stuff needs to end.

I go back to South Carolina.

I'm asking them to send their sons and daughters over to the mid-Ace.

What I want you to do in the mid-Ace to our friends and Saudi Arabia and other places,

step forward and say, this is my fight too.

I join America.

I'm publicly involved in bringing this regime down.

If you don't, you're making a great mistake.

You're going to cut off the ability to have a better relationship with the United States.

I mean, I'm not an expert in the region at all or a diplomat for the region at all,

but you might think they might say to Lindsey Graham, you know, we got to live here, actually.

In remarks today, a spokesperson for the Qatari Foreign Ministry took the U.S. to task

for already sparking a regional conflict.

All right.

Now, as we speak, you can put the map of the region

in front of you and you will not be able to find a finger-pointing space where escalation

is not happening.

This is exactly what we have said from day one.

This is the biggest I told you so in the history of I told you so in the world.

We have said from day one, left unchecked the escalation that started in 2023 would lead

to a regional war.

What we are seeing right now is a regional war that still cannot be contained.

But the trajectory we are going through right now is a very dangerous trajectory for the

region.

And we keep warning that again, this left unchecked and conflict moved from negotiation rooms

to battle fields will lead to even more catastrophic results for the people of the region.

The concept of the Gulf cooperation countries joining the fight actively feels what's to

say rather unlikely this point and it surely doesn't help the case for the U.S.

For regional allies to join the fight, when the U.S., on the very first day of this,

were bombed a girls elementary school killing nearly 200 students and staff.

Analysis of the attack shows it was likely a Tomahawk cruise missile that struck the

school.

As of now, three countries have Tomahawk missiles, the U.S., Australia, and the U.K., widespread

analysis by a number of news organizations indicates it was our bomb.

In fact, the New York Times published photos of weapons debris from the attack.

One Remlint is labeled, quote, made in USA.

The Pentagon says it is still investigating the attack, but is also at this point almost

certainly knows it was our bomb.

Donald Trump, meanwhile, says Iran bombed itself.

You just suggested that Iran somehow got its hands on a Tomahawk and bombed its own

elementary school on the first day of the war, but you're the only person in your government

saying this.

Even your defense secretary wouldn't say that when he was asked standing over your shoulder

on your plane on Saturday.

Why are you the only person saying this?

Because I just don't know enough about it.

I think it's something that I was told is under investigation, but Tomahawks are used

by others, as you know.

There's other nations have Tomahawks, they buy them from us, but I will certainly whatever

the report shows I'm willing to live with that report.

Oh, really?

Other nations by Tomahawks, do we sell Iran Tomahawks, Ms. President?

Iran does not have Tomahawk missiles.

Iran does not have the capability to use Tomahawk missiles.

He's lying about civilian strikes as audaciously as Vladimir Putin would, just as he has lied

about nearly every aspect of this war of choice.

Senator Andy Kim is a Democrat in New Jersey, previously served as a White House National

Security Council at the Pentagon, acting as a civilian advisor to generals in Afghanistan

and he joins me now.

And Senator, I was seeing that you had formed actually a caucus in the Senate based on

and in Congress based on your experience, the NSC and the Pentagon in minimizing civilian

harm in wars.

In fact, there was an office that was tasked with that that has effectively been shuttered

and gutted by Pete Hegseth.

And that is something that you've pursued in your policy.

What is your reaction having the president suggest that Iran bombed its own school rather

than taking responsibility?

Yeah, Chris, well let's call this what it is, which is a cover-up.

This is a cover-up by the president to try to change the subject, try not to have the

Americans understand the costs of war.

You're right.

I was an advisor embedded with the military in Afghanistan.

I worked on the counter-ISIS fight.

I've seen our military in terms of how they try to calculate civilian casualties.

And I worked with my fellow members in Congress to set up a civilian protection center within

the Department of Defense.

This was something that was meant to try to avoid exactly the scenario of planning, of testing

and reviewing targets for civilian casualties.

What did Secretary Hegseth and the Trump administration do?

They shuttered this center, they gutted it, they have made it and rendered it absolutely

inert here.

And so, you know, this is something that the Trump administration owns.

They clearly deprioritized it and they're now involved in an absolute cover-up to try

to hide their tracks here.

Members of the Armed Services Committee and the Senate today were brief today and some

of your Democratic colleagues came out saying, one of their takeaways of the briefing, aside

from the kind of incoherence of the justifications, was that they are thinking about very serious

about putting ground troops in.

As the Teos had some reporting saying that Trump is dangerously close to sending troops

to Iran, there's been some other indications of that.

How worried are you about that being the next step here?

I'm incredibly worried about this.

I mean, this president has shown such disregard for the safety of our service members.

And I heard Secretary Hegseth say this directly in a briefing that I was in where he said,

he will not rule it out.

And that, you know, this is something that they are considering.

I just think that that is absolutely reckless.

The American people deserve to be told to their face that they are not going to see Americans

on the ground in Iran.

I mean, when we see this administration and the lack of planning that they had, the risk

that they've thrown our service members into, for instance, the six service members

killed in Kuwait.

This was a, by all accounts, a makeshift operations center.

It was not a hardened structure from above.

It did not have, you know, fully operational warning system for attacks.

And what did we see?

We saw attack directly upon them and six service members killed.

There should be more of an investigation in this.

I think that this administration has tried to downplay the lack of security protocols

that they had there.

And then so the idea that we would have boots on the ground where service members would

be even more exposed that Iran would know exactly where our service members would be and

have a greater ability to be able to strike them and attack them.

You know, like I said, I was in Afghanistan and Iraq.

I saw that the vast majority of Americans killed by Iranian agents were through IEDs,

through these different types of attacks based on Americans on the ground.

It was not ballistic missiles.

That was the number one killer of Americans by Iran.

So was these attacks on the ground and our service members would be absolutely exposed.

Today, Democrats at least sent letters from the Senate saying that they're demanding

Pete Hegseth and Marco Rubio testify on this war to come before the committee and just

I mean, just sort of an obvious move.

But it is also striking to me that there's been background briefings and Hegseth has gone

to his like very strange and surreal hand-picked Pentagon, you know, press corps who he's

gotten kind of testy with even though they're all essentially like pro-Trump folks.

It's crazy that we haven't had anyone come before Congress and explain what's going

on, right?

I mean, do you think that should happen?

Is it going to happen?

I hope the American people demand this because they deserve to have the answers.

I mean, just again, the level disregard from this president to the American people that

we have, you know, numerous service members killed now.

We have billions of dollars being sent into this war effort, whereas we're being told

by this administration.

We don't have enough money for your health care, for your groceries, for what you need to

be able to live your life, you know, the American people deserve this.

So yes, I hope the American people and certainly all of us in Congress are going to be demanding

public hearings to have some transparency and accountability here.

I'm just sick and tired of this administration hiding behind these classified briefings.

The vast majority of what I hear in these classified briefings can be said publicly,

but they intentionally do this to be as a tactic to be able to prevent the American people

from hearing and questioning what it is that they're doing because, you know, the reason

why Chris is because this administration knows that the American people are not with

them.

They know that the American people do not want a war and they want to see instead a government

focus on lowering their cost of living, affordability and other things, which this president

not only is ignoring, but is making matters worse right now.

Senator Andy Kim of New Jersey, thank you so much for making some time with us tonight.

Thanks Chris.

Coming up, we have an interesting update on the race to replace Marjorie Taylor Greene

in Georgia.

Ali Valshi, there he is.

He's working at the big board.

We will have results for you.

Next.

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Once again, it's a Tuesday and it's an election night in America.

Georgia voters cast their ballast today in a special election in a very special district,

the 14th district, where they're looking to replace former Congresswoman Marjorie

Tehran Green, who very abruptly announced her retirement over Donald Trump's handling

of the Jeffrey Epstein scene files last year.

Now, as polls have closed, we actually have some results in Ali Velschi.

The MSNOW Chief Data Reporter joins me at the board with what those results are.

Ali, what do we got?

We've got interesting stuff going on in Georgia 14.

We've got about 55% of the vote in right now and it has advanced to a runoff.

This is what we expected because in most southern states you have to get 50% or more to advance.

This will be a vote on April 7th now and that'll be just to finish out Marjorie Tehran

Green's term until the end of the year.

This is also expected.

The highest vote getter is a Democrat.

This is Sean Harris who's overperforming what he got when he ran against Marjorie Tehran

Green in the last general election.

There are only three Democratic candidates here, so when you add that up, he's at about

43%, 44%.

There are 11 Republicans running.

Clinton Fuller is the Republican who was endorsed by Donald Trump, which is kind of interesting

because Colton Moore, who's coming in third with 11%, is the Trumpier of the candidates.

The bottom line is these two are going to face off with each other and what you're looking

at is about 43.5% in total for Democrats and about 56% in total for Republicans, which

Chris follows with this idea of Democrats losing by less and winning by more.

There's a little bit of outside betting that a guy like Sean Harris could win.

That's not likely.

Clinton Fuller is likely to be the one to win, but Sean Harris is outperforming not just

in this redistricted area where a piece of Cobb County, which is an Atlanta suburb is in,

he's actually outperforming in other parts of the state.

This is a very interesting weather vein for what's going to go on.

There's not a lot of people who think this is a district that would flip for Democrats,

but that may not be what matters in the general election.

Right.

So we're looking at Trump carried it by 30 points.

And right now, if you add up Republicans and Democrats, you're going to look at something

like, as of now, Republicans winning by 13, 14 points, all Democratic candidates, all

Republican candidates.

If you think those consolidate in a special runoff, and you're there, you're looking at

something in the 17 point overperformance, correct, which is in keeping.

It's actually a little lower than some places, but it's in keeping with what we're seeing.

All right.

All right.

All right.

All right.

All right.

All right.

All right.

All right.

Cortez, Michelle Goldberg, who's an opinion columnist for the New York Times.

Obviously, like, we don't have full results yet.

And special elections are a special thing that Democrats do very well because they have

captured higher and higher shares of what we might call real freaks.

Like people that really pay attention and are high propensity voters.

All of that said, however, Corbin, given the fact that this is one of the most local

die-hard Trump politico's in the country, turned on him, leaves Congress.

I am looking at what those final numbers are, well, here in the runoff to see how much

of a problem they have.

Well, I mean, I think the other thing to look at is there was 4.3 million, I think, that

went to getting those votes, right?

And yeah, I mean, I was just watching a race, not that long ago, a few months ago, in Tennessee,

Tennessee 7, another special election.

And that was an overperformance by, I think, very similar number, 17.

So what I think this is going to have to do with is these seats that looked sort of

unflippable that were, like, plus seven, plus eight, that's the ones that are really going

to be important, I think, in 2026.

Yeah, that's a great point, right?

Because you've got the, you've got the, like, very small handful of, like, what we know

are contested, plus one, plus two.

Yeah.

You know, I think there's, like, what are there, like, 11, only 11 seats, I think, that

were won by, that were carried by Harris, that Republicans represent, something like that.

Yeah, so, yeah.

So those we know, right?

Yeah.

It's that outer run next up that is the-

I think there's a few more of those because of Republican redistricting.

Yes.

Yes.

In fact, they've created some more R plus seven, particularly in Texas.

That arrogance.

Yes, actually, that they went in and carving out these districts, they'd almost got them

in Tennessee.

They carved up Tennessee five into three separate districts.

And I think they're going to see that play out all across the country, is that their arrogance

is sort of overplayed.

Yes.

They went in and they got rid of Nashville having a-

They're all member of Congress, as they could-

They could diffuse all the urban voters speaking of Texas.

This is my favorite election story so far.

So it's going to be run off between the Attorney General Kent Paxton, who again is almost

comically corrupt, and they're an incredible sort of rap sheet and sitting incumbent John

Corne, okay?

It's a rap sheet.

It's actually a rap.

No, he's actually been a-

Someone who was impeached by-

By Republicans.

By Republicans, right?

Yes.

So here's what happened.

So it goes to run off.

They've already spent tons of money on this race.

Trump declined to endorse in the first round of the primary.

Now Trump comes out the day after and says, I'm putting an end to it.

I'm going to endorse shortly and the other-

The person should drop out.

That was a week ago.

That endorsement has not been forthcoming.

In the interim, here is some polling, okay?

If Trump were to endorse Corne, you've got-

You've still got Paxton winning in the race, right?

That's if he endorses Corne and if he endorses Paxton, he would basically end it, right?

Because clearly there's a bunch of voters who voted for Wesley Hunt, who was also Trump

to be characterless time, who are magovoters, who like Donald Trump and don't like Corne

and want to vote for Paxton.

And they desperately want Donald Trump to weigh in, but he's looking at this polling

and thinking to himself, if I do make this endorsement and then lose, what does that say

about me?

Right.

Then it's humiliating and I think that-

Yeah, I mean, I think Donald Trump can be a kingmaker for a more moderate candidate

running against a more conservative candidate, but kind of he can't or at times.

But in a race like this where John Corne is so unpopular in Texas, the only thing-

He's like 30 points underwater in the same polling favorability.

Right, and so Donald Trump, if he kind of tries to put him over the top, he spends some

of his own political capital, he embarrasses himself and Ken Paxton wins anyway.

I mean, Ken Paxton is still going to be a reliable vote for Donald Trump, but he's just

kind of showed the world that he doesn't control the Republican Party as much or at least

as much as he thinks he does.

And I think Trump's, you know, his superpower was knowing what his base wants, talking

to his base, but then moving with him in the same direction.

Yeah.

I think trying to totally change the way he doesn't like to-

He doesn't have that capacity to move them in a whole different direction.

And, you know, and I think the people around him are really overestimating how bad a Paxton

election would be.

You know, I think people really think, oh, Paxton and Taloriko, Taloriko is going to

take him down, but the polling doesn't say so.

No, I'd, you know, it's not like a given-

Well, the poll shows him losing by- or the polls show that Taloriko, I think, would

rather run against Paxton.

But it's basically did, right?

It's right-

Right, it's right-

It's right-

Right, I mean, I think Taloriko is kind of the underdog, no matter what, but it seems

like, you know, he-

If you could choose-

Right.

Although, although there's an argument I've heard from Texans that is that Cornyn is so sort

of unpopular in the state, and so that if you have a Cornyn-Taloriko race, it's a

clearer sort of like new, fresh, I'm coming against Washington versus Washington, whereas

if you get next and you have the comical levels of corruption, but at least like, I'm also

an outsider, you know?

But this whole mega thing is built on comical levels of corruption, right?

Yeah, right.

You know, they're really just taking-

They're really unmasking the whole thing and going for it, so I think Paxton would

be a great fit.

Well, what's funny, too, right, is that what I love about this part-

I mean, they might drop-

They're talking about dropping like tens of millions, maybe $100,000, on the runoff to

be clear.

The sort of Republican Senate campaign, official arm, to keep Cornyn in Paxton out, is

that Cornyn's been going after him for like, you know, basically he's a scoundrel, you

know?

Oh, he's cheated on his wife, and it's like, I don't know, man, I mean, there was a time

where that seemed to work in politics, but like, really you think that's going to work

in a runoff in the Republican Party?

Yeah.

I mean, definitely, obviously adultery is not a deal breaker for the Republican Party.

I mean, you have people in Congress right now who, you know, not only cheated on their

wife, you had recently somebody who is- who- who- who- who sexually harassed a member

for staff, and she- staffed herself on fire, or you have a congressman in Florida.

And he, by the way, he won the first round of that primer to be clear.

Yes.

And actually, it has- has now it looks like is going to step aside for somebody who

has his own addition of mine comp.

But you know, you have somebody in- in Florida, Cornyn Mills, who has just like sex scandal

on top of sex scandal, yes, there are no standards in the Republican Party.

I do think, again, Ken Paxton wasn't peached by Republicans.

There are Republicans in Texas who know who he is and find it unacceptable.

It's just that that's a harder argument to make.

That kind of corruption is a deal breaker in Donald Trump's Republican Party.

Yeah.

But have you seen him own the lives on TV?

Well, that's- I mean, that good at that is what I'm trying to-

Well, we get a lot of clear.

We get a lot of clear.

So we're going to try and- and Michelle Goldberg, great to have you.

Thank you very much.

Pleasure.

All right, still ahead.

As Donald Trump sends oil prices on a wild ride, no more price-

price-winning economist Paul Krugman on what it all means for you next.

We are nearly two weeks into Donald Trump's war on Iran.

Oil prices are spiking up nearly 40% since the start of the year with predictions of

a possible recession.

Interesting stat I saw today from Bloomberg Economics, which estimates that an oil price

of $83 a barrel is the break-even point for whatever tax refunds might come through

to Americans through Trump and the Republicans' big mega bill, which is already skewed towards

billionaires.

Meaning, if oil's at high, $83 a barrel, it wipes out dollar for dollar all of the already

meager benefits of the tax cuts that would have flowed to people.

As Bloomberg reports, if oil exceeds that, currently the case, higher gasoline prices

would more than drown out the gains from refunds.

Paul Krugman is a noble prize when the economist is also currently distinguished professor

economics at the graduate center of the city of New York, an author of the sub-stack blog,

Krugman Wanks Out, and he joins me.

Now, it's great to have you, professor.

What is your read, I guess, top line on the kind of macroeconomic, global economic reverberations

of the big supply shock we're seeing right now with oil?

Okay, this is potentially really terrible.

The current price is still assuming, basically, traders are assuming that this will not

go on more than another week or two.

If it goes on longer, then this is 20% of the world's oil flows through the state of

hormones, and there's really no other way for it to get to where it can be used.

So that's enormous.

That's a much bigger shock to world oil supplies than the oil shocks of the 1970s.

This is of just a gigantic disruption to world energy supplies, and the price can

go easily much, much higher than where it is now if it's sustained.

I mean, this is basically impossible, and that's nasty.

Now the world is less oil-dependent than it was in the 1970s.

The U.S. economy is about four times as big as it was in 1973, but we burned about the

same amount of oil.

So we're less exposed to that, but it's still.

This is, if you were going to conquer recipe for somehow revisiting all of the bad things

of the past 60 years of U.S. economic history, it would be what's happening right now.

You know, I was thinking about, you know, having you on, I think, a year ago, when the

so-called Liberation Day was announced in which the president slapped tariffs on every

country on Earth, including a few uninhabited islands and places like Madagascar that only

export, basically, vanilla.

But, you know, one of the things is, one of the tricky things about the politics inflation

and how it intersects with the political economy inflation is that generally, presidents

don't have a ton of control over the price level, which is why it's so bedeveling, right?

You know, the Fed is sort of there to deal with the price level and they can raise rates

or whatever.

But in this case, it really is the case that a guy that ran on lowering prices, the two

biggest actions he's taken, of macroeconomic impact, slapping a ton of tariffs on unilaterally

and starting a war unilaterally, you kind of couldn't come up with another way to unilaterally

raise prices other than those two.

You know, they're very particularly, you know, price of oil, price of gasoline, you know,

presidents get blamed constantly and yet they have no influence on it normally, but

start a war that threatens to, you know, supply of oil, that'll do it.

So that's, and all the indications on the head, they didn't think about it.

They just assumed that this would all be over and they, you know, install a puppet government

and...

Well, you've got, you've also got Trump's sort of obsession with oil prices as the,

as the means of regulating prices, right?

So he would get asked in the campaign about bringing down prices for anything and he would

say we're going to drill baby drill.

He's got something today about some new refinery capacity in, in Texas, which has actually

started in 2024 before he came president.

He is obsessed with this and the, and the, the bet that the markets are making is the

same bet they made with liberation day and with each new successive introduction to

the tariffs, which is taco.

Trump always chickens out and when he's just not going to abide oil at $5 a gallon.

Now, that's not an economic question for a Nobel Prize winner like yourself.

It's essentially the psychology of one man, but I do wonder what you think of that.

Well, I mean, again, who knows, it's, it's got to be warring emotions.

On the one hand, Trump is horrified, presumably by the political fallout that's developing.

On the other hand, you know, he has to win.

He cannot accept the loss and very hard to spin leaving that Iranian regime in place,

you know, just as anything but a loss will try.

But the thing that's really important, I think, here is to understand that we, we don't

get to decide when this is over.

There's actually three players here.

There is the United States.

There's Israel and there's the Iranians and, you know, the new Supreme Leader of Iran

is a fanatic.

He is next dreamist.

He hates America and we just killed his family, you know, and saying, okay, we're, it's

over.

Sorry about that.

We're going to declare victory and pull out and assuming that the Iranians stop launching

drone attacks on their neighbors that they allow free traffic of, of tankers through the

straight.

That's not a very good assumption to be making and this, this all, it's kind of generally

this idea that the world resolves entirely around America.

That's part of the drill, baby drill.

The idea was that by increasing oil production in the United States, we could make everything

great.

We're not that, we're an important player in the world energy scene, but not the only

one.

And this war, you know, wars are, there's at least two sides to a war.

In this case, there's three and it's not something where you can just make it go away.

Yeah.

In fact, there's some reporting in the Guardian I saw today, which we have not confirmed

independently in MSNOW that, that the Iranians have rebuffed two attempts by Steve Wickoff,

the president's personal sort of emissary to sort of talk about, you know, a ceasefire

de-escalation, and they're making a calculation that there has to be, that they can't just

sort of call it quits at this point because, you know, the Americans in Australia just

come back in another few months.

So your point there about, you know, the U.S. doesn't you to laterally get to decide

when the oil flows is, seems quite apt.

Yeah.

And there's just a whole bunch of things here, I mean, the, of the various things that

you really don't want to get into a shooting war around, there's nothing I can think of

as vulnerable a target as an oil tanker.

I mean, there's, this is an incredibly fragile form of international trade that we tremendously

depend upon, that the world tremendously depends on us.

We don't get oil at these days from the person called, but it doesn't matter.

It's a global market and, and yeah, I have been, the way the market is, you know, pops

up and the oil price plunges every time there's a hint that, oh, you know, we're going to

talk, oh, I think that's, that's, you know, I'm not an oil trader, but that seems to

me to be wildly optimistic.

Yeah.

It's better thought for the Asian economies.

They're going to get really hammered by this and they've basically done nothing to, to

just go any of the fall cut.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Still come.

The Trump plan to use the Department of Justice to go after Cuba's leaders.

The next regime change target, Carolinic joins me right here.

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Donald Trump's administration has no clear or certainly not articulated plan for what

we're doing in Iran.

Just yesterday Trump said the world was, quote, very complete.

While his defense department in the same day said it, this is just the beginning.

Who's right?

Who knows?

It is clear that they are already plotting the next foreign military adventure this time

against Cuba.

Trump and his allies have been teasing it publicly and repeatedly.

I'm not looking for a fair fight.

If we get in a fight, I want to win it.

I want to win it quick.

I'm in Miami.

You see this hat?

Free Cuba.

Stay tuned.

Yeah.

The liberation of Cuba is upon us.

It's just a matter of time now.

We're marching through the world where Iran is going down and Cuba is next.

It's not just talk.

Our own reporting shows that an arm of the justice department has been running a quiet

operation in Miami over the past several weeks to find criminal charges they could bring

against Cuba's top leaders, an effort which could help propel a change in Cuba's leadership.

Carolina pulls surprise winning journalists and now senior investigative reporter.

She's the co-author of Injustice, Health Politics and Fear Vanquished America's Justice

Department.

And she joins me.

Yeah.

So nice to have you here in prison.

Great to be with you, Chris.

You tell me a little bit of the reporting about what the DOJ is up to vis-a-vis the Cuban

government.

So for some weeks before we reported this, sources of ours were telling us that senior

members of the Deputy Attorney General's Office were conferring with prosecutors in Miami,

the Southern District of Florida, the U.S. Attorney's Office there, conferring with them

about the possibility of bringing charges against top leaders of Cuba's government.

That could mean the president or that could mean the de facto leader of the Communist

Party, a very elderly Raul Castro.

What was fascinating was, and when we finally did report this, was when we got these materials

that showed the Southern District of Florida, U.S. Attorney actually explained to a new

task force he was creating around January 19th, forgive me, February 19th, we have an urgent

mission.

I'm paraphrasing a little to find prosecutable crimes of these individuals.

And that just rang so hollow to me, because the Department of Justice doesn't pick a target

and then say, let's find some crimes, but that was the format of this message.

And it was clear that it's urgent, right?

Why is it urgent?

The next day the president said, essentially, Cuba's next.

And we should say that this is the game plan they use with Nicolás Maduro.

I mean, in this kind of bizarre way in which we've been striking boats in the Caribbean

and saying it's war, it's war, not law enforcement.

When we actually decapitated the regime and kidnapped the leader, we said it's law enforcement

not more, right?

So, clearly they think, oh, let's just rerun the Maduro play, right?

Totally.

You totally nailed it and said it better than I could.

Absolutely.

This is a copy of, we have criminal reasons to go after Mr. Maduro.

And now we will also use the military to invade his personal capital and in Caracas.

And we will seize him and his wife and pull them out, you know, a lot of people killed

and injured on the way.

In the case of Cuba, though, one of our reporters at MSNAL, who I asked a little bit about this

conferring with this White House reporter, hey, what are you hearing about the White House

wanting to have regime change in Cuba?

And that reporter, Jake Trailer, found that in the White House, two weeks before this

task force was formed by the U.S. Attorney in Florida, White House aides were complaining

that they were worried they couldn't find a crime.

Essentially, they couldn't run the Maduro playbook.

And then this task force is created.

I mean, you know, there's an old apocryphal staying attributed to Stalin and I think it

was actually but Bariya, one of his lieutenants, has had, you know, show me the man, I'll show

you the crime, right?

That this is not the way it's supposed to work.

I also feel like I should put my parenting cap on and say you're not allowed to start

another war until you finish the war you have.

Well, it's Trump copied you a little on that, right?

I mean, he essentially said we were going to wait a few weeks to tell you about Cuba.

Wait till we get this one done.

Yeah, he said to Dan Abash, you know, we're very focused on Iran when he interrupts himself.

There's, there's another bit of really worrying reporting that relates to the current

war effort, which is about counterintelligence and counterterrorism in the U.S. government,

Justice Department FBI.

The cash per tell has fired, had fired out agents with expertise in Iran, like specifically

counterterrorism, experts in Iran, which is a country that has sent agents to different

countries to pull off attacks in the past.

And the D.O.'s manager has been losing, in general, experienced counterterrorism minds

at this critical time you've been hearing from folks in the department.

Yeah.

I think the two blockbuster sort of factoids for your viewers and, and, and everyone

in the American public are these one 300 FBI agents with national security expertise,

have either been fired, removed or, or walked themselves out out of disgust with the way

this agency is being run, concerned about the chaos under cash per tell's leadership.

The second biggie is that at the Department of Justice, half of the people who were in

the counter espionage unit, essentially this really important arm of the national security

division are gone.

Now, we don't know the death.

Yeah.

And this is the unit I will just emphasize that sort of intercepts when there is transnational

repression efforts.

That's a big word, a big phrase rather for saying operations where Iranians or other foreign

adversaries find a way to get on U.S. soil and surveil dissidents here in the country.

Often when they do that, they begin to morph into targeting Americans, and that unit has

caught all sorts of Iranian spy plots, Iranian cyber hacks, Iranian murder for hire attempts

they participated in a very, very big investigation that found targeted dissident.

Yeah.

Well, targeting a dissident, but morphing into surveilling Americans.

Um, that, that is now essentially that unit is hollowed out.

Well, half strength and the leader of it who left in 2025 has been replaced with someone

through no fault of their own, but replaced with someone who has no counter espionage experience.

And you know, these are, these are sensitive jobs.

Sure, Kashfetel is going to find, uh, uncover the next plot in the next locker room that

he invites himself into at Carolinic.

Thank you very much.

That does it for all in.

You can catch us every week night at eight o'clock on MS now.

Don't forget to like us on Facebook, that's facebook.com slash on with Chris.

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