Special Episode - Trump Threatens Civilizational Destruction Of Iran…Is He Serious???

This is an iHeart podcast, Guaranteed Human.

This episode of The Chuck Podcast is brought to you by Ethos.

And what Ethos does is it helps you find life insurance.

Let me tell you why life insurance bailed me out.

My father died when I was 16.

We didn't have a lot of money when it happened.

And we were in a pretty tough financial spot after it happened.

I'm an only child. Suddenly my mother's single.

Single mother. She had a job. Suddenly lost a job looking for

another job. And we were struggling.

You know, my dad didn't leave us in the best financial situation.

But he did make one purchase. He bought a life insurance policy.

Wasn't a huge chunk of change.

But it was enough when we found it.

And when I say we found it meaning we went through his desk and we found,

oh, look at this. Let's see if there's anything here.

And it helped us out at a time that we really needed it.

And that's why I think it's important that if you can,

especially if you have young children,

if you can get life insurance, you should get it.

Life is full of unexpected emergencies.

Unexpected things happen.

It is an extra bit of security.

Something you can leave and help out at a time when you're not there to help.

So what does ethos do?

Well, ethos makes getting life insurance fast and easy.

And it's 100% online.

You can get a quote in seconds.

You can apply in minutes and you can get same day coverage.

They will find you the right fit.

There's no medical exam.

You just answer a few simple health questions online.

You can get up to $3 million in coverage.

And some policies are as low as $30 a month.

And you'll get your lowest rate from their network of trusted carriers.

So take 10 minutes to get covered today with life insurance through ethos.

Get your free quote at ethos.com slash chuck.

That is ETHOS.com slash chuck.

Application times may vary and rates may vary.

Ah, the debate about Donald Trump and words, right?

It began all the way in 2015 and 2016 with the ridiculous.

Do you take them seriously?

Do you take them literally?

And here we are again.

We are in our 11th year of Donald Trump,

dominating American politics.

And we still don't know whether we should take his words literally,

seriously, or both.

He found a way in his latest tweet to be both menacing.

And meaningless.

If that's possible, he figured it out.

So he tweets out this morning,

a whole civilization will die tonight.

Never to be brought back again.

I don't want that to happen, but it probably will.

So sit on that for a minute.

The sitting President of the United States is threatening to annihilate an entire civilization.

And we know he's not serious about it.

At least we're like 95%.

I'm 95% sure he's not serious about it.

The guy is a chicken hawk.

He's all of those things, right?

You know, he's the classic bully,

you punch him in the nose,

who'd go running to mommy to complain and running nose.

He will sue somebody rather than fight back,

right? That is who he really is.

And this is no tough guy.

This is a guy who is, you know, no matter what age he was,

he ran from a fight.

He is the classic guy that wants the goaded,

everybody else into the fight.

And he wants to sit back and watch.

And we all knew those sort of chicken,

those chicken hawks and those bullies.

I had my own run in with once.

And I remember the feeling of empowerment.

Wait a minute, when I punched back,

they just ran and complained to their mommy.

This really happened.

That's who he is.

And we know this.

But is at the same time,

you sit here and if you really want to go down a rabbit hole,

right?

Pete Higgs set this just fired

generals very high up out of nowhere,

really for no reason.

And now you wonder,

geez, are they trying to clear the chain of command

of anybody that might

get in the way of some horrendous order

that may be given by the commander in chief?

So I understand why some in the conspiracy minded set

have gone down some really ugly rabbit holes

based on this tweet.

And it's probably by design.

I should read the rest of it.

A whole civilization will die tonight,

never to be brought back again.

I don't want to have that happen,

but it probably will.

However, now that we have complete and total regime change,

where different, smarter and less radicalized minds prevail,

maybe something revolutionarily.

His word, not mine.

Wonderful can happen.

Who knows?

All caps.

We will find out tonight one of the most important moments

in the long and complex history of the world.

47 years of extortion, corruption, and death

will finally end.

God bless the great people of Iran.

So, right, the entire truth post

is filled with all sorts of contradictions,

the typical blowhardiness.

And, you know,

there's certainly a discount that we've all,

I'm sure everybody gives their own discount to Trump language.

I discount it probably more than others do.

Because I've seen how often his words have been meaningless.

But you can't ever say,

you know, it should be a zero.

I mean, you know, I didn't think he would be this dumb

to start a war he didn't know how to end,

which he's clearly done with Iran.

But that's what happens when you clear out any points of friction, right?

He has created the conditions in the second term

that he is surrounded by yes people.

Nobody is pushing back.

Even those that push back, they do so, so gently

that it doesn't even look like a pushback.

But this is some scary stuff.

And, you know, there's certainly a part of me

that has been concerned that

putting my best Trump brain on, right?

How does Trump think?

Well, the way Trump would think

is Harry Truman dropped the bomb

and Japan's now our ally.

Right?

And it's always the simplest

facts that seem to be the ones he carries with him.

I remember a moment he,

when before he decided to fire Komi,

he sort of spitballed the idea

during one of my conversations with him in his first term.

Well, everybody liked that.

Everybody hates Komi.

I don't think that's going to work out the way you think it's going to work out.

So if you were to tell me he actually asked,

well, why not?

On the idea of dropping a tactical nuke,

I don't think any of us would be shocked.

I really do believe that somebody would remind him that, you know,

the Middle East is kind of a small place.

So you're going to, if you tried that,

you pretty much could,

I don't know, poison millions, kill millions,

the after-on-effects, the radiation, all that stuff.

So I don't think you have to take them seriously.

Or excuse me, take them literally,

but you have to take some of his threats seriously.

Because he's already followed through to a point.

And he's certainly gotten the entire world into this mess on this front.

It's probably a little comfort, but, you know,

I do not believe he's going to do something this rash.

It is worth noting that officially,

the news organization, AFP,

got a confirmation from the White House that a nuclear bomb is not being considered

for use in Iran.

But just imagine that that had to be asked.

And it's given what he said, what choice did you have,

but as a responsible wire service reporter,

of just double-checking is, you know,

is the nuclear option on the table?

And apparently, the White House said, no, it is not.

But American credibility is now shit, okay?

I mean, he is, we are a, we're a, we're a leaderless world.

The United States, it's abdicated, it's leadership of the world.

We are now causing more problems than solving.

That has not been what American leadership over the last 80 years has been about.

We're, we're there to try to solve problems.

We are now creating problems.

We have, we are, we are the source of energy price spikes around the world.

As Daniel Jurgen told me, the worst energy shock we've ever experienced,

ever, all thanks to a war of choice by Donald John Trump.

He's frustrated that he launched a war and the Iranians fought back.

He clearly was either misled into this.

Felt cocky because of how easy he thought Venezuela was.

But by the way, he is still overseeing a dictatorship.

I'm sorry, by the way, I don't, I don't mean to go down that rabbit hole.

But the fact that he's bragging that Venezuela is a success, it is not a success.

It is not a democracy, Mr. President.

Do you, if you want to know if he cares about democracy, we know the answer is NO.

He is preventing it from taking place in Venezuela.

So what do you think he wants anywhere else?

I'm sorry to see people that have cared about this issue for as long as they have.

I'm looking at you, Marco Rubio, that you're just looking the other way while he essentially

takes advantage of a Maduro puppet and has made a Maduro puppet, a Trump puppet.

Is that what you've been fighting for?

Is that what so many of our South Florida friends and families have been fighting for?

To turn one puppet into another puppet.

So look, I am, here's the real struggle here.

He is now handing propaganda wins to the Iranians, right?

He's the one using bombastic language.

He's the one using very uncomfortable and infusing religion into this fight in ways that are

a bit crusade like and very much un-American on this front and these threats.

And he doesn't care if what he orders looks like a war crime.

He's not bothered by it at all.

Now, look, this is the same guy that at his rallies.

I mean, the only thing that I think, you know, the only people we have to blame ourselves on this,

it's not as if Donald Trump didn't tell us this is who he is.

This is the same guy that at rally said, I wish we could take him out on a stretcher,

right? He embraces pugilism, he likes the spectacle of violence.

This is a man who thinks mixed martial arts on the White House lawn to celebrate America's

250th anniversary is an appropriate thing to do.

I'm not here to trash MMA. I know a lot of people love it.

I'm not sure it's the most patriotic thing to do on the White House lawn on the 4th of July

or for his birthday or whatever the hell it is that he's that he's concocted here.

But he has made it clear. He sort of seems to want to play with these toys.

And it's beyond irresponsible rhetoric. We're so far past where are the adults in the room?

If there are any adults that exist in the elected Republican party in Washington,

then they must be curled up in a fetal position afraid of their own shadow because none of them

are speaking up. There's not a single elected Republican that I've interacted with

that would support anybody speaking this way unless it was Donald Trump.

They're so afraid of criticizing Donald Trump that they won't say anything.

And now you can't undermine the credibility.

I mean, it puts us in a situation where if you undermine the credibility of our commander-in-chief

and undermines the credibility of the United States, it certainly is, you know,

but this war is going to now do more long-term damage to America's ability to lead the world

to how much repair is going to be necessary for the next president regardless of party.

And what they're going to have to do to try to win back trust from our friends and allies,

let alone rivals and adversaries. And no matter what decision he makes tonight,

he is in some ways already punted away that credibility.

Either he doubles down, doubles down on it and follows through and commits some atrocities

that we can undo and will be a stain on the United States for decades.

Ori Tacos,

any, we're in this stalemate in Quagmire and he continues to find himself in political

quicksand and he's stuck in his Chinese finger trap and he continues to in some ways hand,

you know, we're militarily defeating the Iranians and simultaneously handing them propaganda tools.

With his words and his, his behavior.

So bottom line is like I called, I call these, I call this these words menacing and meaningless.

We know they're meaningless. They're intentionally menacing.

I guess he thinks this is some sort of art of the deal, but the one thing that I don't think

he fully understands is, you know what Iranians love to do? Negotiate.

And they're going to negotiate and negotiate and negotiate.

They're not coming. This is a regime that already killed its own people for protesting.

What do you think they're afraid of? That's the problem he's got here.

These threats ring hollow because I'm not sure those in charge of this regime who are just trying

to survive. See any incentive to play ball here. So on that uncomfortable note,

I'll see you tomorrow with a full episode of the Chuck Todd Cast.

This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.