“The latest out of Iran”

Hi there, everybody.

It's War Clark in New York.

At this hour, the war in the Middle East is in danger of widening, even as the Trump

administration has failed to clearly answer the important questions when it comes to Iran.

Why the United States attacked when it did?

How long the operation is expected to take?

And what exactly are the goals of this war with Iran?

The Pentagon saying today that more forces are heading to the region, Secretary of State

Marco Rubio just said that the next stage of the operation will be even more intense.

Iranian attacks have claimed the lives of six United States service members, both Donald

Trump and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Dan Cain, have said that more American

casualties are expected.

And what the United States military calls a, quote, apparent friendly fire incident through

United States fighter jets were shot down in Kuwait.

This video shows one of those jets plunging to the ground.

All crew members survived and all are safe.

Early this morning, Iran began attacking energy installations in the Gulf, launching hundreds

of missiles and drones at U.S. allies that are hosting U.S. military bases.

Cutter, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia.

For their field, fighting erupted along Israel's northern border after Hezbollah launched

rocket strikes at Israel.

The conflict appears to be expanding and growing as Team Trump offers conflicting and incoherent

answers on just about every aspect of this war.

There appears to be no stated goal that is clear or publicly known in terms of how or when

or why it ends.

There's no answer to how long the operation is expected to last.

At a medal of honor ceremony, we're in between talking about the conflict Donald Trump has

plunged our country into.

He mused about the ballroom that he's building.

Trump said that war in Iran would take weeks, but maybe longer, listen.

We're already substantially ahead of our time projections, but whatever the time is, it's

okay, whatever it takes, we will always, and we have, right from the beginning, we projected

four to five weeks, but we have capability to go far longer than that.

We'll do it.

Four to five weeks or far longer than that is what's being publicly stated.

Wall Street Journal reporting that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Dan Cain, has raised

concerns about running down the stockpile of munitions in the longer version that's been

articulated.

The Washington Post reports this, quote, inside the Pentagon and among some members of

the Trump administration, there were deepening concerns on Sunday that the Iran conflict

could spiral at a control, according to people familiar with the situation.

There is anxiety among senior leaders that the fighting looks to end for weeks for their

stressing, limited U.S. air defense stockpiles, end quote.

As for that timeline, Donald Trump told Axios that he could quote, end it in two or three

days.

So all these different and conflicting timelines have been stated publicly by Donald Trump

and his cabinet.

So there were three days, weeks, or, quote, much longer.

Trump also told the New York Times that he had, quote, three very good choices as to who

could lead Iran after an Israeli strike killed Iran's supreme leader.

But then he told ABC's John Carl that possible candidates to succeed the Ayatollah were killed

in that strike, saying this, quote, the attack was so successful, it knocked out most of

the candidates.

It's not going to be anybody that we were thinking about because they are all dead.

Or third place is dead end quote.

As for the why, why we have attacked Iran now, Donald Trump told the Washington Post that

regime change was the goal of the war, quote, all I want is freedom for the people end quote.

Now that's fine, but it is a complete and total abandonment of the public platform.

Donald Trump has run for president on across 12 years for three elections.

And also contradicts what he and his own officials are saying is the stated public goal of

the operation.

Seven minutes ago on Capitol Hill, United States, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the

objective of the mission was to destroy Iran's missile capabilities.

Donald Trump himself said this morning that the country had been facing an urgent threat

from Iran.

Watch that moment.

An Iranian regime armed with long-range missiles and nuclear weapons would be an intolerable

threat to the Middle East, but also to the American people.

Our country itself would be under threat, and it was very nearly under threat.

It was very nearly under threat, multiple outlets, including CNN and Politico report that

Pentagon officials are saying something very different to members of Congress, Politico

reporting this.

The administration briefed some Hill staffer's Sunday on the operation, but officials did

not present clear evidence that Iranians were preparing an imminent attack on U.S. troops.

The conflict with Iran threatening to expand as the Trump administration fails to articulate

an end goal or justification or to share the same script in terms of articulating why we

struck when we struck is where we start today, with some of our favorite reporters and

friends.

New York Times diplomatic correspondent Michael Crowley joins us, also joining us Lieutenant

General Mark Hurtling.

He served as the commanding general of the United States Army in Europe.

Former Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman is with us as well.

She led the U.S. negotiating team that reached an agreement on the Iran nuclear deal in

2015, and here with me at the table for the hour of former deputy national security adviser

to President Obama, now the co-host of Pod Save the World.

If only it could, contributor bedrods is here.

I want to start with the news that two more service members have lost their lives in

this war against Iran.

General Hurtling, let me start with you.

Let me read from St. Com's account on X as a 4 p.m. at Eastern time, March 2nd, 16

United States service members having killed an action.

U.S. forces recently recovered the remains of two previously unaccounted for service

members from a facility that was struck during Iran's initial attacks in the region.

Major combat operations continue.

The identities of the fallen are being withheld until 24 hours after next-of-kin notification.

So if we could just center ourselves on the very real consequences of matters of war and

just center ourselves in the white matters.

The white matters that today, today o'clock, Mark Arabian Donald Trump offered two different

rationales for why, as a 4 p.m. Eastern on March 2nd, six service members have lost their

lives, your thoughts.

It is for these kinds of reasons, Nicole, that the American people are informed, Congresses

informed about what the administration is going to do.

When men and women, our nation's sons and daughters are put into harm's way, people

should understand why.

And that's connected to the other thing that you were saying, and that is we're not sure

the why yet.

What are we doing?

Why are we doing it?

How long is it going to go?

All the things that really consume, both should consume both the Congress and the American

people, are not being stated.

Six so far, a couple of airplanes shot down.

One of the things that I'm concerned about, first of all, bless all of them who have

sacrificed, that's what they know they may have to do when they raise their hand to join

the service.

But the other thing that's fascinating to me is the names have not been released yet

of the first four, even the first three.

There are several thousand people throughout the middle, several thousand military members

throughout the Middle East.

There are parents, there are spouses, there are children who are wondering if their son

or daughter, their mother, their father are one of those six that have been killed.

So there's a whole lot of people right now who are concerned that they may be affected.

And as both the Secretary of Defense said this morning and also the President and Secretary

Rubio just said the same thing, there may be more.

So for that reason, I think the mission set should be adequately defined.

We go through these things called the war colleges, the military does.

And there's a big joke at the end because they say you can sum up your entire year studying

strategy in four key words.

Number one, always take or fourth key sentences, always take the high ground, both morally

and physically.

Words are important, so be precise, logistics determines the art of the possible and personalities

matter.

Each one of those things are playing a part, those minor things are playing a part in

the strategy right now that we don't know much about.

Michael Crowley, let me just make sure I might understanding meshes with your tremendous

reporting along with your colleagues today.

In terms of the length, these are the public communications about the duration of the war

with Iran.

One to three days, four to five weeks or longer, which Trump has said it, I think four

or five or six times in reporting that I read today.

And then on the reasons, Marco Rubio just said over and over again, it was their missile

capabilities.

Trump has posted and talked about regime change and the IOTOLA and not just the IOTOLA

that his second and third in command, who were his runner-up choices to run the country.

So clearly in Trump's mind, as our commander in chief, there wasn't just a target, but

there was a conversation or some information he consumed about who would replace the IOTOLA

community.

Am I missing anything?

Well, you know, possibly because Trump is, what the administration is messaging in such

an unusual way, you know, President Trump is fielding phone calls from reporters and

having these brief snippets of conversations all over the place.

He's released some videos.

He made some comments today.

And you know, frankly, it's very difficult to keep track of everything he's saying.

And compounding that is the fact that it's all over the map.

So, you know, in reality, no, I don't think you're actually missing anything.

You've got the key points here.

But what I'm trying to convey is the messaging here is it's like a shotgun blast.

It's pellets of information and a fact and opinion flying all over the place.

It's really hard to make sense of Nicole.

And you know, so is the timeline a couple of days, is the timeline several weeks.

One thing I don't think I heard you mention, which really struck me was in one of the interviews

the president gave today, I believe it was with the New York Post.

He was a little bit, I think you could say arguably, flip about the possibility of putting

boots on the ground in Iran.

And he said something like, I don't rule it out.

I don't get the yips like a lot of other presidents do on that subject, which is, you know,

just a little bit an odd way to be talking about this incredibly consequential possibility.

And you know, what it just amounts to is a real haze of confusion about what's really going

on here.

And whether the president himself was really clear on why he was doing this, you know, was

it just that kind of his frame of mind in a given moment when he signed on?

Did he have a clear game plan here?

And you know, maybe there is a clear game plan and the administration is changing its mind

about how to explain it.

But there has just not been a clear succinct, consistent message from this president, especially

and his entire administration about why the U.S. began this campaign, what its goals

are, and what the American people should expect.

Let's just deal with what they've said we're doing there.

They have indicated that there was an urgent threat from Iran.

Here's Ted Cruz saying that there was no indication Iran was anywhere close to a nuclear weapon.

What I said is they were building nuclear weapons a year ago and our bombing took that out.

They also had an ongoing desire to rebuild them.

I don't have present day intelligence on what progress they had made towards rebuilding

nuclear weapons since we bombed their facilities.

I have no indication that they were anywhere close to getting nuclear weapons because our

bombing was devastating.

So Wendy, I guess I'm old enough to remember the public messaging around the first military

campaign against Iran and the description was total obliteration.

And Donald Trump was so committed to that mission description, I think it was still a little

bit underway, but he stuck with it to the degree that they fired people inside the Pentagon

that didn't toggle in on that messaging.

So it was either his true belief as to what the results were or what he had been told

or what he wanted people to believe.

And when Ted Cruz is saying that doesn't add up to the language we've heard since early

Saturday morning about the threat Iran poses, if you're trapped, you've got a real credibility

problem when you've lost Ted Cruz.

Without a doubt, Nicole, this has taken me back, I'm sure it does for Ben as well, to when

we were working on the joint conference of plan of action, the Iran nuclear deal in

2014, 2015.

The critics then, which were some of the same critics we have now, said we need to really

take them down and my response to them, the President Obama Secretary Kerry's response

was there's a choice here.

We can try to negotiate this and really stop them from getting a nuclear weapon or we

can take a risk of an Arab Persian war.

And that is what we are walking into now.

This is, in many ways, a war of choice, a war of chaos and really echoes of the forever

wars that the American people do not want.

The President doesn't understand Iran, Steve Whitkopf and Jared Kushner did not understand

Iran.

You can't do a drive by a negotiation with such an odious, repressive and oppressive regime.

We have to really stick in there and be tough.

But I found two things very interesting about all of these different versions of why we're

there.

Rubio, Secretary Rubio did not talk about nuclear weapons because he understands what Ted

Cruz said is true.

He talked about someone who's going to attack Iran, I suspect that's Israel, and then

they were going to come after us.

And that's why we were doing it, which is a totally new reason.

The other thing I find very interesting is the President saying that then as well as

the template, if then as well as the template, that means that Donald Trump would be willing

to leave a theological supreme leader in place, if in fact we got what we wanted out of

this.

And how does that get freedom for the Iranian people?

Ambassador, I'm sorry, I neglected to call you by your proper title.

Ambassador.

What is, what do the Iranian people want right now in terms of what you're hearing?

I have no doubt that the vast majority of Iranian people, the majority of whom are under

the age of 35, maybe even under the age of 30, we're talking about 92 million people.

This is not a small country.

Of course they want the future they see on the internet.

Even though their internet is hard, they have VPNs, they have starling, they have other

ways of seeing, they see how other Islamic people, people who believe in Islam, get to live

a life, get to have a future, get to have a family, a career, all of the freedoms that

they wish for, but they know that this regime, and I think the follow-on regime, even after

all of the assassinations, will still be a theological regime, which will repress the

Iranian people.

And so it's not clear to me whether taking away their ballistic missile capability, their

naval capability, if we are even able to do that, will in fact provide the freedom that

the president says he wants for the Iranian people.

He started this by saying we would have the back of the protesters, thousands and thousands

of whom were killed by the regime.

It doesn't seem like that's where we're headed at all.

Ben-Ros, again, we don't have a lot of visibility into what we don't know, but what we do know

is totally inco-he-sive and incomprehensible.

We know that about five weeks ago Donald Trump was talking about the things the ambassador

is talking about.

He was speaking directly to the protesters, telling them to take to the streets.

He hasn't talked about them much, except to say, I did what no one else would do, go

get your country.

We know that at some level he was made aware or had some list presented to him of who would

replace the IOTOLA to be able to say, and all the press he's been doing, that numbers

two and three are dead also.

Marco Rubio might be the most interesting person, the person that clearly sees what we all

see, that this moment will end, that someone's going to have to run the country in three

and four years, and this name won't be Donald Trump.

So he seems to be hewing to some of the facts, or at least speaking very carefully, has

said nothing about regime change.

Where do you start on backing where we are today?

Well, let's just start with the pretext and then to the outcome.

What they're saying is not true.

It is not true that Iran had any kind of ballistic missile capacity to reach the United States,

or had an imminent risk of a nuclear warhead on that ballistic missile.

This is just not true.

Nobody can show any evidence, any intelligences, anywhere near that.

So they've retreated back to, while they had ballistic missiles, we have to take them

out.

They've had ballistic missiles for many, many years.

So they literally cannot identify any reason for the precise timing of opening the biggest

Pandora's box in the Middle East.

As Wendy said, a country of 92 million people, and that leads to the what next.

Donald Trump goes out and he called upon those protesters.

He said, help would be on the way.

And then thousands of them get massacred.

Then he goes out and announces the beginning of this bombardment of Iran and says, rise

up.

Rise up is not a plan.

Rise up and then what?

Because he may have decapitated parts of the leadership, but there are millions of people

under arms in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the besieged militia that massacred

those protesters and Iranian armed forces and police.

And so what are we doing here?

The future of Iran is very important because if they're just going to decimate this regime,

the outcome could be a civil conflict in Saperon.

The outcome could be mass violence in Iran, the brutal suppression of anybody who does rise

up.

They continue kind of indiscriminate firing of drones.

Even if they run out of ballistic missiles, they have these more rudimentary ways at lashing

out at energy infrastructure, lashing out and making places like Dubai not safe for business,

not safe for tourism.

Their strategy is clearly to take the chaos and violence in Iran and say, okay, if you're

a war with us, we'll be a war with everybody else.

And I think one other thing that's important here, Nicole, is Trump keeps talking about

where we could go four or five weeks or I could stop in two or three days.

Do you think the Iranians are going to stop?

The Iranians get a vote on when this war ends.

And if their Supreme Leader has been killed and they feel like every one of their

revinds has been crossed, the idea that the war ends when Donald Trump wants the new

cycle in this country to stop paying attention, flies in the face of what we saw in Iraq

and Afghanistan and Libya when I was in the Obama administration.

Like once you kill the leader of a country, you are opening a Pandora's box where you

have no idea where it's going.

And they are not at all.

If you're in a Gulf country or if you're a European ally in the United States, how are

you sure do you feel about these mixed messages and mixed rationales coming out of the administration?

Especially starting this way, my sense is that from a little bit of experience, it doesn't

get better.

You don't gain public trust.

You squander it as things get more difficult and as more lives are lost.

The high water mark for this whole enterprise was killing the Supreme Leader in a lot of ways.

What is the next event that's going to happen?

It's going to allow Donald Trump to say, this is great.

The war is over.

We've achieved our objectives.

Nobody knows.

As I said, the New York Times has some great reporting on how we got here.

I'm going to read that and ask Michael Crowley to take us through that.

Everyone stays with us.

Also, head for us.

We'll track the briefing going on before Congress right now with skeptics on both sides

of the aisle.

Top leaders on the Hill are hearing from key members of the administration.

If we learn anything about those briefings, we'll forget to you.

Plus, Democratic lawmaker, former service member Jason Crow will be our guest.

We'll talk to him about the cost of war.

President Trump's, quote, as long as it takes, attitude about how long we will be at war.

And later in the broadcast, it could be more than just a crack to his MAGA base.

It could blow the whole thing wide open.

We'll look at Trump's complete betrayal to his most core supporters on one of his prime

messages over a decade as a politician.

People who believed him, for many, many, many times, he promised that the United States

of America would turn its focus to problems here at home and not get involved in any new

wars.

The story's in much more when Death and White House continues after a quick break.

We're back with an embarrassment of riches in terms of expertise, Michael Dimmer-Hurtling,

Ambassador Sherman and Ben.

Ambassador Ben told me to call you Wendy.

So I'm going to call you Wendy.

I want to read you some of this great reporting from the Times and Michael Crowley.

The CIA had produced a series of scenarios that might play out.

The country's supreme leader were killed in an offensive.

One, envisioned a hardline cleric replacing commandee, perhaps even a leader more bent

on acquiring a nuclear weapon.

Another scenario predicted an uprising against the government, a possibility many intelligence

officials thought was remote, given the weakness of Iran's opposition.

A number of senior Trump officials seized on a third scenario that a faction of the

Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, more pragmatic than the hardline clerics, might take over.

Such a move would be a dramatic turn for an officer corps that have been staunchly anti-American

for four decades and deeply intertwined with Iran's clerical leadership.

But the CIA analysis suggested that as long as the U.S. did not interfere with economic

activities of this faction, its influence in oil group of officers might be conciliatory

toward the United States.

Have you heard of this theory that a moderate group, a faction of the IRGC, would be softer?

I've never heard that that was a scenario and that seems of all the ones, the Times reports

them as seizing on that, that seems, again, from outside, like the most far-fetched.

I think it is far-fetched.

I wish it were so.

I think wishing doesn't make something a fact or come true.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps really controls the economy of Iran.

And they haven't minded the sanctions because they own the black market, and that's very

useful for them.

Would they be pragmatic in terms of the economy where the U.S. is concerned, perhaps?

But it doesn't mean they would be any less repressive to their people because they would

still want to control all the mechanisms of that economy.

The President of the United States has been very transactional in all of his diplomacy.

It would break my heart to find out that that is, in fact, what would happen here, where

there would be some economic trade-off at the cost of the people of Iran.

So I think it's very unlikely that there are those pragmatists.

Look, I know Iranians who speak.

I know the Foreign Minister quite well.

He was my counterpart during negotiations.

He speaks excellent English.

He writes excellent English.

We shared pictures of our grandchildren.

We became grandparents for the first time.

But I knew exactly who he was and what he believed and what he had to achieve.

And in a Senate hearing, I said something, I wish I had not, that the Iranians took

as a slur, and I found myself and my family afraid because on the streets of Tehran, there

was death to Andy Sherman and posters on the walls.

So I have no illusions about Iran and what might happen here.

It's just an extraordinary reminder that death of expertise that you brought doesn't appear

to be on the playing field.

General Hartley, I'm going to ask you a question that may be over the line, but I just, it

feels so central, not sure, anything else matters.

We're talking about the Iranian people and how they may have their interests overlooked,

either in a hasty decision or one that didn't think through, you know, like a Saturday

was day zero, day one, two, three and everything after.

What is the, what would you say if these were your men and women who had given their lives?

It was a brilliant military operation, even if all of the goals aren't known.

It seems that the military always does what's asked of them and then some.

But what is, what is, what is your understanding of what the military will tell those families

about why the military was deployed, where it was deployed and what the mission is?

That's a great question, Nicole, and you're right.

It was a phenomenal military operation, General Kane pointed that out in a very detailed

and professional brief this morning, unlike some others that we've heard.

But I've experienced this, fighting in Iraq and later in Afghanistan, when parents or spouses

of some soldiers could not understand why their soldiers had been killed, why they had sacrificed

their life.

They thought the war was wrong in many cases, and it's hard to explain to them that we

as the military do the nation's bidding and that people who tell us to go different places

and attempt at our very best to win, sometimes it's the hardest load that a commander carries

is to see his or her soldiers sacrifice in the ultimate way and then have to explain it

to the loved ones.

I've talked to you about the box that I have on my desk that I look at every day.

It's just painful sometimes.

No, it's painful all the time.

I had a discussion one time on my porch after I returned home with a father whose son had

been killed in Iraq and it was unfortunately a fratricide incident and he was on my front

porch for three hours telling me how it was wrong and we screwed up and we shouldn't have

been there in the first place and it was a terrible mission and so on and so on.

It's tough from a commander's perspective to try and get past that.

That's all I'll say.

When you're wearing the uniform, you do what you're told to legally do and you defend

what the elected administration asks you to do and that's why it is so important, so

critically important that the elected officials get it right and they don't go about asking

soldiers to go in harm's way just because of a whim and they have more than yips as

was stated earlier when they think about sending people in a harm's way on the ground.

I'm always grateful to have all of you, but especially today, Michael Crowley, thank

you for the reporting that we centered our conversation around really, really important

Lieutenant General Mark Hurtling, thank you for being here, Ambassador Wendy Sherman,

thank you for starting us off and stick around.

General Hurtling's new book, if I don't return a father's wartime journal, it will be out

next week.

More important now than perhaps ever before.

We'll have a chance to talk to him about it as well.

After break for us, a former US service member now United States congressman who takes

American lives, being sent overseas or lost overseas, very seriously, will be our next

guest, Congressman Jason Crowley joins me and Ben at the table, don't go anywhere.

As we've mentioned, a briefing is underway right now on Capitol Hill, where top committee

members are hearing from the Trump administration on Donald Trump's war with Iran, Donald Trump

is saying publicly that it could last four or five weeks, that he could end it in one

two or three days, or it could last if necessary, quote, far longer than that end quote.

Today, Donald Trump is sending more US forces into the region, in case it is one of those

longer term scenarios, he's not ruling out, putting United States troops on the ground

in Iran, Donald Trump is also warning that more United States service members will likely

be killed.

Already, six have died, within this hour, with five others seriously wounded.

Today, US troops continue to conduct large-scale combat operations, having already hit with

Israel more than 2,000 targets, according to the New York Times.

Acts of war lawmakers say, by Donald Trump, all taking place without congressional authorization,

joining us at the table.

Democratic Congressman Jason Crowley, Californians, and member of the armed services and intelligence

committees, he also served in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

I think one of the first conversations I had with you was after your combat training sort

of instinctively led you to protect your colleagues on January 6, and you joined our

breaking coverage as that was happening.

I remember thinking of, well, that's right, that if we had another war in our lifetimes,

Trump wouldn't start it because he's run for president three times, and for all his

incoherence on all manner of issues, the Epstein, the tariffs, the economy, no new wars

was central, was exactly who he was.

It's how he wins the Republican primary in 15 and 16.

And I wonder if any part of you, even though you didn't support him, was shocked or felt

betrayed on behalf of his coalition?

Nicole, what Donald Trump realized during his campaign, and why he campaigned as an isolationist

and he campaigned about ending endless wars, is because he realized that the anger and

the resentment of 20 plus years of conflict, the $3 trillion plus dollar spent, the $6500

service members who died, the years of credibility and loss opportunity, he realized that deep

anger and resentment that I share, actually.

And he said, I'm going to stop this cycle, and of course, now he has broken that very

promise that he campaigned on.

But that exists now.

And I now am sitting here saying, what is working class America getting out of this?

It is true that Iran is a terrorist regime.

It is true that the Ayatollah was a bad person and an evil person.

That is all true.

But the analysis begins with that.

It doesn't end with that.

Because what was also true is that Saddam Hussein was a bad person.

What is also true is that the Taliban is bad.

And we saw how that turned out.

So the analysis has to now happen after the fact, but whether this is the right thing to

do, what we need to do to protect our service members, and Congress needs to be put in

the driver's seat.

What is it like right now for men and women of the military and their families to have

the administration, the commander-in-chief offering multiple explanations, both for

the rationale and the timeline?

Well, I was just really struck by the video that Donald Trump put out on Friday night

when he announced the start of this.

He did it at Mar-a-Lago in front of the curtains.

You know, we've seen this before, those black curtains.

He talked about the costs of war.

He talked about the fact the service members were going to die.

He said that that's just something that's going to have to happen.

Then he talked tough and he banged his chest like elites in Washington often do.

Then he literally walked behind the curtains to his private club and he hosted a million

dollar a plate dinner and dance party that night.

If that doesn't tell you everything you need to know about the tone deafness and how

the elites always get wealthy and get something out of this and the working class are left

holding the bag.

I don't know what does.

What is your share of what we're doing there and how this came to pass?

I think for Donald Trump, this is about power and domination.

I think he wants to assert his will.

He wants to show that he's in charge.

I don't think Donald Trump has ever had any ideology about Iran.

I don't think he cares about the Iranian people.

I don't think he cares about them yearning for freedom and democracy like I do, like so

many other people do.

I don't think he cares about peace in the Middle East.

I think he wants to distract folks and he wants to assert power and show that he's in charge.

Once again, the problem is it's working class kids like me and the people that I grew up

with that have to go and do the tough thing, have to do the fighting and dying and it's

Americans that have to finance all of this.

To the congress's point, did you put Elon Musk in charge of talking to Iran at the beginning

of his presence?

Yeah, Elon was going to solve that problem too.

I mean, which just shows like the fundamental and seriousness of this and the shifting objectives

with respect to Iran.

Remember, we heard about how we're going to make Iran great again at times, then we're

going to have a nuclear deal.

But now he's bombed them twice in the middle of nuclear negotiations.

Just think about that.

The concern is American national security.

He could have achieved those things diplomatically.

But I agree because he wanted to assert his power and use the US military as an extension

of his kind of personal interests, not as a national interest, as a national interest

you'd have a national debate and you go to congress.

But instead, his only ideology I agree is just the assertion of his own power.

I can control things.

I can make the military do what I want.

The USS Gerald Ford, which is now involved in these operations, had to come all the way

from Venezuela where it was involved in an illegal series of actions there going up

boats and abducting the president of Venezuela.

And I know Jason, the question too is how much does cost?

Because that never comes up.

Do you feel like in congress you get any straight answers about the price tag on this?

No.

I mean, the wall, the smoke and mirrors of this administration is unlike anything I've

ever seen.

And back home in Colorado, I represent Coloradans and back home in Colorado.

I have thousands of constituents that are losing their health care.

People can't afford homes.

People can't afford groceries.

The cost of gasoline, by the way, just went up about $80 cents a dollar in most places

in the last 48 hours, right?

So, and that's not even counting the fact that we are going to spend tens of billions

of dollars.

I mean, you know the cost of these things, right?

The amount of munitions and the technology that's being used right now, tens of billions

of dollars on this, and I think it's not going to put us in a better place at the end of

it.

You know what's interesting about the country and about the public and the entire American

citizens, the only thing more unpopular than covering up the Epstein files, which I think

is about 26 percent, is the war in Iran, which is under 20 percent.

So, if you thought he was going to distract from something that was a loser for him, this

is actually more unpopular.

We're going to sneak in a quick break, we'll all be right back on the other side.

Carson, what is the, what are the tools available to Democrats and Republicans who oppose what

has happened without congressional authorization?

Well, I said on the Armed Services Committee and the Intelligence Committee, so we are going

to be asking for briefings, hearings, we're going to do document requests, figure out how

much this costs.

One of my biggest concerns right now is whether or not we can actually protect our 50,000

service members in the Middle East, you know, there are drones, missiles flying every

which way now.

I mean, this is spreading like wildfire throughout the Middle East.

We have, you know, that many, about 45 to 50,000 service members over there.

We have to protect those folks.

And without a plan in place, and I don't believe they've thought through this well, that

they're at great risk.

So that is my number one concern.

And then we're going to force a vote.

I'm heading back to Washington tomorrow.

We're probably going to force a vote, what's called a privilege resolution, which is one

of the few ways in which the minority party can force a vote on an issue like this.

I think Thursday we're going to take names.

Right, people need to stand up and let their constituents know where they stand on this

issue.

You said something in the break that I think is fascinating.

The lack of public support is a crisis for the men and women of the military.

I mean, you know, you should take a whole country to war behind the men and women of

the military who pay the ultimate price.

But there is no public support for a war with Iran.

It's in the low 20s.

It's the only thing as unpopular as covering up the Epstein piles.

Which Donald Trump surely knew, right?

I mean, this is a man who pays close attention to polls.

He also pays close attention to his own megabase.

And you know, overwhelmingly, the American people don't support this.

And the core of that megabase doesn't support this, too.

And so it's a pretty remarkable step for him to take.

And look, I mean, I'll just say what concerns me is, it is worrisome, the degree to which

he does not seem to care about public opinion on these military operations.

He didn't seem to care that much about it and been as well.

He didn't seem to care that much about it in Iran.

It makes you wonder what else is coming.

One reason for Congress to assert war powers is that I don't think this is the last war.

We bombed seven countries just in the last two and a half months.

We bombed Nigeria and Christmas.

I don't even know if people know that.

We were blowing these boats out of the water for reasons that were never clear.

We abducted the President of Venezuela.

Now we killed the Supreme Leader in Iran.

Where does this stop?

Because with Trump, it kind of keeps moving around.

It's Cuba next.

What is the next place that we're going to use war?

What's going to happen in this country where he's deeply politicized in military?

He's given a speech of general saying, US cities might be training grounds.

Just the other day, they banished Anthropic, the AI company because they said they didn't

want the Pentagon to use their technology for mass surveillance of Americans.

So this is all very worrisome.

To be continued, thank you both for being here today with us.

It's great to have you at the table, it's great to have you here at the table too.

One more break.

We'll be right back.

They don't care about the kids.

They don't care about who's going in.

No, Trump doesn't care.

He's not caring about the lives that he's putting in there and risking their lives.

It's all about the power.

Do you feel safer now than you did a week ago?

No.

I don't.

I think that we're the laughing stock of the rest of the world.

I think people are not vacationing here anymore because they don't want to be associated with

us.

I think our role has been damaged by his actions and his tariffs and his mockery of other

people overseas.

I mean, his sheer childishness of dealing with foreign affairs.

It's just a minute, it's just.

Those are real life voters in Charlotte, North Carolina speaking to one of our journalists

earlier today.

New polling shows that they're articulating their majority of Americans opposed Donald Trump's

strikes in Iran, including some of his supporters who voted him into office, in part because

he promised no new wars.

We'll talk about that.

After a short break, when the next hour of dead-end White House starts, don't go anywhere.