Trump Erupts in Fury as Damning Leaks on Botching of War Hit Him Hard

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This is the Daily Blast from the New Republic,

produced and presented by the DSR Network.

I'm your host, Greg Sargent.

Over the weekend, Donald Trump exploded in several tirades over media coverage of his Iran war.

He accused news organizations of deliberately producing false stories about the war,

and even said they want us to lose to Iran.

And then, in an angry rant to reporters, he rebuked other countries for refusing

to help open the Strait of Hormuz, and things got truly weird.

All this comes as a new exposé about Trump's handling of the war reveals shocking new details

about his incompetence and derangement, showing that we really need the free press right now more than ever.

Which raises a question, is Trump about to use the war to launch a domestic information crackdown?

We're talking about all this with Molly McHugh,

an international relations expert and author of a good new piece on the deeper stakes of this moment.

Molly, nice to have you on.

Thanks for having me, I appreciate it.

So the big story right now is that Trump is trying to determine how to get the Strait of Hormuz

reopened, with many of our allies rebuffing his demands for help, and Trump trying to decide

whether to go all in for an extended commitment.

Molly, can you bring us up to date real quick on where this stands and why it all matters?

You know, I think we're on what day 17 now of the strikes against Iran.

No one is sure what the strategic objective is.

In any war game, tabletop exercise of should we strike a run or not?

One of the first questions has always been, can we keep the Strait of Hormuz open or not?

Because the impact on shipping on global transit of goods, particularly energy and oil supplies,

if the Strait is closed, is catastrophic as we've seen in previous interrensals in the 70s and

otherwise, the impact on the economy on energy prices, on prices we will pay for everything

on how markets fluctuate will be extremely significant if there is not a solution to

what Iran is doing right now.

Well, Trump erupted in a wild fury at the media on Sunday night.

Clearly, this stuff is getting to him.

One of his truth social posts said this, quote,

The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal and other low-life papers and media actually

want us to lose the war. They're terrible reporting as the exact opposite of the actual facts.

They are truly sick and demented people that have no idea the damage they caused the United States.

Close quote.

In a second one, Trump accuses news organizations of deliberately suppressing the US's successes

against Iran and hails federal communications commission chair Brendan Carr for threatening action

against media organizations whose reporting on the war just pleases Trump.

Molly, there's little chance the press curtail itself, but Carr's threat is a serious matter.

What's your take on it?

I think in general the president's tone and his supposition that media is not telling his story,

not telling the story, not telling the truth is extremely problematic and the use of government

resources to now pursue these claims as if they are reality is something that should concern us

all. In the same way they've pushed the line on defining what is a domestic terrorist or not,

the pursuit of people not telling the truth using sanctions from the US government

could be extremely significant. We've already seen people self-editing and sort of suppressing their

views in universities, in the media and other places for fear of the kind of things Trump lashes out

at. And I don't think this will be helpful. Americans deserve to know what is happening in Iran,

what are objectives are in Iran that more than 200 Americans have been injured and the pursuit

of whatever our goals are in Iran that more Americans are deploying to the region in Iran

and why and what that's for and what it will look like. And they deserve to know that this war

is not a standalone thing but connected to the bigger war being fought. And the idea that

the lies being told to the American public, quote unquote, prevent them from seeing the truth,

we've gotten so used to as an American public this sort of bombast from the president and I

think one by one so many institutions have caved to this strategy that were really in a dangerous

place. The New York Times had an extraordinary expeze on Trump's handling of the war against Iran.

One big revelation is that a quote unquote frustrated Trump asked Joint Chiefs Chair Dan

Cain why the US can't immediately reopen the Strait of Hormuz and he was told gently that super

tankers would be very vulnerable to even one missile in an attack. Trump's also urging companies

to quote unquote show some guts and brave the Strait even though it's obvious how dangerous this is

and Trump is trying really hard to get other countries to help reopen the Strait after not consulting

them before the invasion and even saying recently that we've already won the war, these leaks are

absolutely devastating. They're damning as hell. Molly you think Trump would have known before

all this started that number one it would be hard to reopen the Strait and number two alienating

allies would make them less likely to help them now. How is it possible that the commander and

chief is this disconnected from obvious realities? I definitely think part of the problem is he

decide he has already decided whatever he thinks is reality is reality and that's a challenge

for anyone in charge of anything. I think that the we know for sure that the people around him

don't give him the information they give him the three bullet points written in crayon or whatever

that he wants to see and we know that the intelligence that's being presented to him has been

extra edited in the context of this administration. It's been presented in a range of the other

stories we know from the past to suit his views to suit his needs. Obviously they're not talking about

what Russia is doing. He doesn't believe the story about how they're helping her on with intelligence

etc etc. Everything he's presented with is whatever is meant to prop up his view of the moment

and no one can make valid decisions living in the soup of lies. It seems that I mean it's really

a disaster. Let's check out what Trump said to reporters now. He was asked if he will be able to

persuade other countries to help reopen the Strait. You responded angrily. Listen.

I don't do a hard sell on them because my attitude is we don't need anybody. We're the strongest

nation in the world. We have the strongest military by far in the world. We don't need them but

it's interesting. I'm almost doing it in some cases not because we need them but because I want

to find out how they react because I've been saying for years that if we ever did need them they

won't be there. Two things here first he can't decide whether he needs the help of other countries

or not and second he can't seem to fathom that he wronged our allies first so he's taking

their refusal to join in the absurd and pointless war as a snub against us and him and an excuse

to further weaken the NATO alliance which he's been weakening. What do you make of all that?

And he even sort of says it in that block of text right? It's well I'm just trying to prove the point

I've always made that absolutely no one is going to show up and help us. Obviously this is a false

narrative which he presents constantly. He has campaigned on it three times now and it does

resonate with a number of Americans who do believe that the American defense budget and other

support outweighs those of our allies. I think that is a misrepresentation of history and the

purpose of the alliance and the ways that our allies have responded to our calls for help over the

past 30 years but that aside I think this notion that no one's going to come and it will prove

that they were never going to come and we don't need anybody anyway so is absolutely ridiculous

and juvenile but also so dangerous and fraught. Everything that we have learned from Russia's war in

Ukraine from what we should have learned from that on what the future of warfare is on what the

current state of warfare is on how we will need to prepare to fight wars and fight wars

is that we need allies that we need supply lines that we need integrated systems of sort of

interoperability and control and anybody who walks away from what we should be learning but clearly

aren't with we're just going to go it alone is absolutely missing the point and Trump even knows

this because not just from the current phase of conflict whatever we want to call it in Iran

where we and our allies are shooting incredibly expensive missiles and interceptors at crap

Iranian drones and much cheaper Iranian missiles to try to defend our people and facilities from

attacks by them we had this previous year of the same kinds of asymmetric basically warfare

in the Red Sea where the Houthis are shooting you know barrels of fireworks at us and we're using

a $4 million missile to stop it from blowing up a NATO ship I mean we know this is a challenge

for how our defense systems work how our defense industries have gotten crazier and crazier

in terms of the lack of product and the expense attached to all of it and the fact that since 2022

in particular we have not overcome this production gap in our own defensive supplies let alone

figured out a way to produce enough for the war that Ukraine should win against Russia

I just I'm having a hard time with how none of those lessons learned which are pretty obvious even

for those of us who just you know live on social media sometimes are not being reflected in the US

government's planning for fighting a major much larger conflict against the nation of Iran

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and the winner by knockout is out of the day out of the day bring it on yeah and trump just

isn't capable of learning and I think these reports are really just scratching the surface of

just how bad the decision-making process really is at this point there's another extraordinary

revelation in the big times piece it's that Benjamin Netanyahu privately got trump to believe that

if an initial strike against Iran decimated some of its leaders the protests would quickly restart

trump took that which he heard from Netanyahu and used it in his own message to the Iranian and

American people saying the US is striking Iran to help the protesters take back your country

and now trump is kind of back flipped and resorting to claiming that it's going to be very hard for

the protesters to accomplish anything after all it's like he's trading Iranians like the contractors

he's been stiffing for decades and like graduates from trump university it's like he's scamming

everyone again it's incredibly damning stuff trump seems to have gotten badly played by netanyahu

here no I think there's two things that are really important and whether you're looking at in what

you just said and it's a really good this whole subjective discussion is a really good point to be

making the first is whether it's Netanyahu or you know MBS the Saudi princeling or whatever

other guy has a thing he wants to get done and that could be a guy who wants to bomb Nigeria

or a guy who wants some bill passed in the US everybody has figured out the trump is highly

influenceable particularly if it involves some form of financial incentive and it's crazy

watching how willing he is as in theory the most powerful leader in the world to do the work of

any guy and some ladies who want to use him for whatever their agenda is and he just does it

and he thinks it's great and he thinks it makes him smart and powerful that he's like willing to

help these people in this way and it's crazy because everybody is willing to take such risks

to get him to do their thing while there's the opportunity to do that but there's not nobody is

planning adequately for whatever the outcome of the risk taking is and it's kind of weird to watch

I think the second thing that's really interesting is both in the case of Iran and in the earlier

intervention or whatever we call it in Venezuela while it does not seem to necessarily have been

intentional on the president's part some element of the planning in these places directly

discredited the democratic opposition in both cases they took Machado out of the country before

the attack on Maduro and basically kind of proved to the point that she had no cloud I mean

the second Maduro was gone he says she's got no cloud not it's not going to be that lady like here

I made a deal with the deputy dictator instead and in Iran there was this bizarre like clearly there

was some effort to engage with Pallavi with the baby Shaw to sort of tall call on the people to come

to the streets and again like especially Iranian women have been taking such risks in the protests

to try to bring change in Iran and all of that it's like the way he looks at them well they couldn't

they couldn't take down the regime themselves and they have no weapons and couldn't possibly do it

anyway so I guess there was never going to be change and we'll just figure something else out I

mean the cynicism of all of this but also it seems in some element of planning whoever is in charge

the deliberate attempts to discredit a democratic alternative for these places and try to make a

deal with whoever can deliver the money into their bank account in Qatar faster is very troubling

I'm going to predict right now one possibility that Trump at the end of the day throws the

Iranian protesters under the bus what do you think of that I mean he already did one certainly

he's happy to do it again unless they want to pay him a whole bunch of money right that is really

what it always comes down to what do you expect Molly on the domestic front here it seems pretty

likely that Trump and people like Pete Hegseth who lashed out in a wild fury at the press on Friday

are seriously entertaining some kind of press crackdown they've got burning car out kind of

the tip of that spear do you fear that and what could it realistically look like I think the reason

I would fear it more than I normally would in terms of there they're just you know yapping at the

wind like always is they know they're losing their own especially manosphere podcaster base

with this war nobody signed up for let's invade Iran I know there are plenty of people who are now

on the bandwagon who are transmitting the message that victory is near that are huge you know

military success of the first day is proves we are the greatest thing in whatever

I understand that there's people who support this and again it's not like anybody is in love with

them all is and wants them to return to power the same way we don't want Maduro to be back in power

this is not the the choice that anyone is making but it is not popular and it is clear there's a lot

of dissent in the influencer space that Trump pays a lot of credence to in order to access younger

especially younger male voters they're not happy they don't like this the attacks on the press

still resonate a lot with his base and it will be a boost to him in the context of not winning any

other message right as the Iran stuff goes sideways he throws the base attacks on the press and

potentially government action against the press right I think it I mean it's a possibility for sure

and it seems to be an element of what they're shaping into the same narrative right now I think

there's actually one positive story that's emerging from all of this which is that to those who

may remember the run up to the Iraq war the media coverage was really really sycophantic towards

George W. Bush and not at all questioning enough of official assertions we're not seeing that now

this is the press as aggressive as I've seen it in some time scrutinizing the rationale for

going to war the fake rationales but also digging hard into actual things that are happening on

the ground the reporting on the bombing of the school in Iran has been absolutely spectacular

and revelatory and also there's deep digging into what went into Trump's decision making and

what a disaster that was what a fiasco it was and how completely absurd the whole thing was and

it's all being laid bare before the American people so I think that also is probably working against

Trump in a major way within some of the quarters of the manosphere that aren't too pro-Mega right

they're probably seeing some of this stuff and being pretty damn horrified at what they were seeing

and so then that kind of creates more of an incentive this incredible press aggression creates

more of an incentive for some kind of crackdown I agree with you that there is like a little grain

of sort of optimism about some of the energy we see and on the on the reactive side to that

that what's so interesting is the instinct that this I mean the Trump has developed over

the last 10 years but that this administration has sort of reflexively absorbed and because

they all just mirror Trump's behavior now there's no normal press secretaries there's no normal

communications it's all just the same we're going to punch you in the face stuff is in the context

of an actual serious thing they do not know what to do if it was a vaguely normal administration

we would have done what we did all the times we hit a school in Afghanistan or whatever

which is you just say it is where it's under investigation it is a likely targeting error

we're sorry you know like don't you have to say sorry but it's likely a targeting error we weren't

trying to blow up the school like I think this is the the case right that it's clear this

this piece of property was once a part of this base someone didn't update the maps probably

because they were in a rush to make a targeting list and they hit the school just admit it then

everybody forgets and it you know it's like we'll never discuss it again because that's how we

are as a population we don't really think about the the human costs of war too much but they just

can't like they they cannot in any instance present what they view as weakness and I don't think

that the instincts that they have been able to coast by on for the last year are going to

serve them particularly well in the context where reality is suddenly going to be biting us all a

lot harder well let me cue on that despairing note let's call it a day folks if you want to check

out Molly's work you can see it at the great power sub stack Molly thanks so much for coming on

thanks for having me