Update: Trump Breaks Silence About Iran War

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All right.

Welcome back to Patsy of the World, this is a bonus episode to update you guys on the major

developments in Donald Trump's insane regime change war of choice with Iran since we recorded

on Saturday.

So we're going to take through the latest operational details.

We'll dig into Iran's surprising response that's regional, we'll place some clips from

Trump and then Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who finally spoke today and covered

the administration's bizarre messaging strategy and coherence and policy and coherence as

well.

We'll talk about the Democratic Party's response so far, the good, the bad, and then really

what we'd like to hear.

We will record again on Tuesday for Wednesday morning release per usual and we'll use that

episode I think to geek out on Iranian succession plans, maybe concerned about sectarian violence

and civil war and much more.

So if you have not yet, please subscribe to Patsy of the World on YouTube and wherever

you get your podcasts because as we said on Saturday, Ben, a lot of the coverage of this

war so far has been absolutely horrendous.

It is giving me PTSD from 2003 and watching the Iraq war coverage.

I don't know if you caught Pete Hegseth's press conference with Raising Cain, the Chairman

of the Joint Chiefs, but seeing him there take questions from like the new fake Pentagon

press corps was absolutely demoralizing.

We got a little taste of what it's like to have a compliant state media with a Fox and

friends weekend anchor as your Secretary of Defense, like the convergence of those threads

was not very reassuring coming.

No, it was profoundly demoralizing.

So again, please subscribe to Patsy of the World on YouTube wherever you get your podcasts

because we are trying to do real coverage here.

So we're recording at midday Pacific time on Monday.

Sent comm says that US forces have destroyed more than a thousand targets so far, including

Iranian ships, subs, IRGC command centers, missile sites, the Israelis have hit hundreds

of targets as well, especially that first wave of regime change targets that included

top Iranian political and military officials.

Since we recorded Saturday, Ben, Iran is confirmed that the Supreme Leader is dead.

He was killed, I think, in an Israeli strike with intelligence provided by the US or that's

what's been reported since.

So this is a seismic event in Iranian history as this guy has been in charge since 1989

and it will now set off a succession process that will probably take a little while.

It also seems like the president of Iran was incapacitated in the strike to the point

where he can't run the country anymore as that authority has been delegated to somebody

else.

Four service members are confirmed, dead American service members.

I believe all were in the army and were hit by an Iranian drone in Kuwait.

Three American F-15s were shot down over Kuwait as well, reportedly in a friendly fire incident.

They were shot at by Kuwaiti Air defenses, thank God all six of them ejected safely.

Trump in his various messaging opportunities, we'll get into that in a minute.

I said the operation could last four more weeks or maybe five more weeks so he refuses

to put a specific timeline or goal behind that estimate.

He's also refused to rule out putting US boots on the ground in Iran so that's something

to look forward to.

He could certainly imagine some sort of future US or Israeli commando operation to get Iran's

nuclear materials.

For example, Hezbollah is now involved.

They're firing rockets at Northern Israel.

The Israelis are responding in kind.

There have been some very scary incidents at US embassies and consulates where those facilities

have been gotten attacked in places like Lebanon or other Muslim countries like Pakistan.

Hundreds are dead in Iran, at least 10 people have been killed in Israel by Iranian missiles

and drones.

Iranian drones also killed three people in the UAE, injured dozens more there.

They killed one person in Bahrain, two in Iraq, one in Kuwait and dozens in Lebanon.

I assume the Lebanon casualties ban or a combination of Israeli and Iranian fire.

A number of people have been wounded in Qatar and Oman as well and by the way, those casualty

stats were coming from a running tally by Al Jazeera.

President Trump did not deliver a major address to the nation about Iran over the weekend.

The White House did not book any senior officials on the Sunday talk shows.

They just released these bizarre video messages from Trump and then Trump sporadically took calls

from reporters and offered sort of incoherent lines of messaging.

Trump finally did an event where he spoke publicly today as did Secretary Hegseth and Chairman

Kane will play all that for you in a minute.

But this really has been like a case study in how not to communicate.

So Ben, we'll get into the Iranian nest response deeper in a minute.

But any initial reactions to from you, to like what you've seen since Saturday?

I think the initial reaction is that all of our concerns about this war are playing out.

In the sense that there's a total lack of coherence from the US, from what Trump's saying,

what Hegseth is saying about what the objectives are and there just seems to be a lot of momentum

to keep doing stuff that the Iranian response is chaotic, but widespread, it's like a machine

gun being dropped on the floor, firing in all directions, and that nobody knows what

this is going, which is what happens when you decapitate regime with no plan for what

comes next.

And that regime is much deeper and more heavily armed than, say, the Venezuelan government

was.

So it's a very unsettling moment right now, Tom.

Yeah.

The machine gun firing on the floor analogy is a perfect description of what Iran has been

doing because they continue to target not just US bases in the Middle East and Israel,

but also these Gulf countries.

On Monday, Iran attacked energy sites in Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

And then over the weekend, Iran fired hundreds of missiles and drones at the UAE Qatar, Kuwait,

Bahrain, Jordan.

I think when we talked on Saturday, Ben, they had not fired at Oman yet, but now they have.

And Iran even fired a drone at a British military base in Cyprus, although Britain, the

UK is not involved in these operations.

So the vast majority of these missiles and drones were intercepted by missile defense

systems, but not all of them.

A lot of the targets were civilian infrastructure, like high rises and hotels.

Again, that's a lot to a bunch of casualties, including in Iran, Ben.

But it just seems like, again, it seems like the Iranian calculation here was, shoot at

all these Gulf countries, get them to pressure the US and Israel to stop the war.

But like time will tell, but this seems to have catastrophically backfired as far as

I can tell, like countries that seemed initially wary of what the US and Israel we're doing

are now denouncing Iran.

There's some sense that the Gulf countries that initially had barred the US from flying

anti-Iran missions out of their territory or through their airspace might be reconsidering

those views.

Maybe some of this has to do with Iran not having command and control anymore.

There's not like centralized decision making.

So you have some random group of commanders firing at Cyprus for no reason.

But I do think the big question still remains, how long will Iran have the capacity to respond?

Will they run out of ballistic missiles and launchers?

And will they run out of them before the places they're targeting run out of interceptor

missiles?

Because as we discussed on Saturday, those interceptor stockpiles are very low.

And they are very expensive.

So like an Iranian drone cost between 20 grand and 50 grand.

So many of these US interceptor missiles cost several million dollars each.

Finally on the Iran front, then traffic through the straight-of-hormouse is down 85 percent

according to some energy analysts I saw this morning.

Crewed oil prices are up between 5 and 8 percent, which is a lot, but not catastrophic.

Iran has attacked ships in the straight-of-hormouse.

I don't think they have mined it yet, though, which would be really stopping things up.

So I don't know.

I just continue to be surprised by Iran kind of unloading the clip on every single country

in the region.

I guess the idea was just to create chaos, but what do you make of their strategy?

Well, I think the message is that is that so long as violence and chaos is being rained

on us, we're going to bring violence and chaos to everybody, including all these Gulf

countries, nearly all of whom have some US military presence in them.

Not saying it's a good strategy, it's certainly reprehensible in terms of the indiscriminate

targets that they're shooting at.

But if there is a logic, it's that.

We need to make this war so destabilizing to the region, to global energy markets, that

there's just a pressure to make it stop.

And look, they may not be inflicting tremendous physical damage because of the interceptors,

but they are inflicting tremendous damage psychologically.

If you are in Dubai, that city relies upon security, security for international business

travelers and tourism.

That is shattered right now.

I mean, that could have long-term effects for Dubai.

I saw that they also hit some data centers in the UAE, we're certainly firing at them.

Well, the UAE is trying to get, you know, and is getting, as we've talked about, hundreds

of billions of dollars in investments to build data centers there.

How do you feel about that investment these days?

You know, are you looking to build data centers in the Gulf?

So there is kind of a strategic logic in the sense that they're creating an insecurity

so long as our regime is not secure, you know, we can burn it all down and nobody's

secure, which again is dangerous, but there is some rationale.

It's also the case that the Gulf is just closer, you know.

So with drones in particular, it's an easier shot for the Iranians.

And then, to your point about the interceptors, it's a bit of a race against time because

I presume that what Israel and the United States are trying to do is just take out as many

ballistic missile sites, whether it's production facilities, launchers, before they basically

run out of interceptors because the longer this thing goes on, if Iran can continue to

fire things, ballistic missiles and drones and these kinds of waves, they're going to

get through more and more of the air defense systems because the air defense systems are

just depleted.

And so that's a real risk too here.

I mean, Trump, you know, people keep talking about this as if when my Trump stopped the

war.

I also don't think there's any guarantee that Iran, like as in the 12-day war, although

I think it's one war, that Iran just stops because Trump stops.

Just because we may run low on interceptors and say, all right, timeout guys, let's pause,

the Iranians could keep firing.

So it is a question of how much their ability to manufacture or store, hide, drones and missiles

can weather this initial onslaught in terms of how much damage they can do going forward.

Yeah, we don't even know who would make the decision to stop if it went around to a

run right now.

Well, I think the command and control point you made is essential because it feels like

there were delegations made by the Supreme Leader anticipating you might be killed.

And I think Abasa Rachi said as much on some TV show he was on that, like, well, look,

we no longer have centralized command and control because we knew that if you killed top leaders

that we wanted these guys to be able to act independently, so we really don't know what's

happening.

All right.

And look, there was an inevitable story in the Times about the killing of the Supreme

Leader and all this great intelligence.

I mean, he was in his office, I mean, I've no no disrespect to the CIA, but it'd be like,

you know, wow, we figured out the presence in the White House, you know, but it almost seemed

like this, if the Supreme Leader wanted to survive, like, you know, he might have wanted

to be quote, unquote martyr, you know, I don't know, I mean, he's a fucking asshole.

I don't, you know, it's not not at all someone you have any sympathy for, but it may be

that he delegated down said, you know, unload the clip, you know, an anticipation of this

happening in some decapitation, they might have said to every IRG commander with a drone

or a missile, the orders to you are if we die, just unload the clip and because that's

what it feels like is happening.

Yeah.

It is.

I don't know what intelligence collection the CIA did.

I had the same reaction to you, which was like the Supreme Leader knowing the threat he

faced was above ground in his own office.

And adjacent to him was a meeting of all the top like Iranian political and military leaders.

I, it's hard to overstate how stupid that was.

I mean, obvious and hindsight, but I can't believe they didn't realize it in the moment.

I mean, it does, maybe that does, I think, explain why the strikes happen in the daytime,

why they happen on the weekend.

I also was talking to someone over the weekend who said, Trump doesn't like to start wars.

During the weekday, he doesn't want to rattle the markets, I bet that is true.

But you're right on the race.

I mean, it is, I think, from what I've read, it sounds like the ballistic missile launchers

are the choke point.

So I think the US and Israel are probably rushing to take out as many of those as possible.

That said, I mean, I was just watching the Fox News, I think, in one of their big kairans

is that the drones, Iran's drones have proven harder to intercept.

And ultimately, like, those are easier to fly from a lot of places, Iran is more of them.

You just sort of like set the GPS coordinators in these drones, which, you know, they're like

lawnmower engines, but they can fly like 2,000 kilometers and just follow a GPS to a point.

So that threat could take a long, long, long time to fully visualize.

And remember that those drones, those Iranian drones have been used in Ukraine by the Russians.

And the Russians are firing those drones at Ukrainian targets, and there were air defense

systems there too.

I mean, these things, we've seen them on the battlefield and Ukraine have a huge amount

of damage that they can cause.

So this is the point about, this keeps Dragyan, it's going to be impossible to eliminate

all their drones.

These are like, you know, you know, toy airplanes, essentially, but can do a lot of damage.

And so this, you know, yes, they can, their ballistic missiles are a, you know, a tool that

is going to run out at some point, but I'm not sure that these drones will.

Yeah, the ballistic missiles can do more damage, but right in the long term, like, who knows

how long they'll have these drones.

So on Monday, President Trump finally spoke about the war.

He started on Saturday morning in public.

It was not a major address to the nation.

It was like a little Iran war topper at a, I think, pre-existing ceremony to award the

middle of honor to three people.

Here's a bit of what he had to say in his remarks.

It was very proud to have knocked out the Iran nuclear deal by President Barack Hussein

Obama.

That was a horrible, horrible, dangerous document.

They would have had nuclear weapons three years ago, and they would have used them.

This was our last best chance to strike what we're doing right now and eliminate the intolerable

threat posed by this sick and sinister regime.

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 front, right from the beginning, we projected

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

We'll do it.

Whatever somebody said today, they said, oh, well, President wants to do it really quickly

after that.

He'll get bored.

I don't get bored.

There's nothing boring about this.

We also projected four weeks to terminate the military leadership.

And as you know, that was done in about an hour, so we're ahead of schedule there by

a lot.

We've got a great service members here with us, too, and this beautiful building, isn't

it?

Beautiful.

We're adding on to the building a little bit.

We're improving the building.

See that nice drape?

When that comes down right now, you see a very, very deep hole.

But in about a year and a half from now, you're going to see a very, very beautiful building.

I picked those drapes in my first term.

I always like gold.

Specifically led with the JCPOA criticism to trigger you and our greatest president said

mission accomplished, my friend.

So Ben, look, I think what listeners should take away from that, super cut is just the

incoherence.

And it gets worse when you look at the totality of Trump statements from Saturday till

now.

Like on Saturday, he talked about regime change as a goal.

He told the Iranian people to rise up.

Today, that was just not part of the messaging.

The Saturday video statement about the war went through these greatest hits of Iranian

aggression and grievances with the two countries starting in 1979.

The new spin on Monday is that Iran was trying to rebuild its nuclear weapons program,

which I don't know, may or may not be true, but it certainly wasn't an imminent threat.

And then he tries out this new line that we'll later hear from Hegseth, which is that Iran's

ballistic missile program would provide a shield for its nuclear ambitions, which is

complete and total bullshit as evidenced by the fact that the US and Israel are pounding

the fuck out of Iran's military targets now and would have been able to do so in the

future.

So everyone should write that off.

And then on top of that, Ben, Trump told one reporter that he had a list of three people

who might run Iran going forward.

And then later, he called another reporter and said, just kidding, they're all dead.

So I don't know.

I don't know.

I don't have a ton of faith in the team running the show at the moment.

No.

I don't tell me.

And actually, you know, the Iran nuclear deal has never looked better, which maybe why

Trump is trashing it, I think most Americans, almost all Americans would rather that we

be in, you know, your 10 of the JCPOI than we be in this kind of incoherent war with Iran

that is costing us tens of billions of dollars, started to kill the Americans or for

some members.

And it's like wreaking havoc on the global economy.

And just one quick point on that, Ben, like people would be like, well, the deal would

have sunsetted by now.

The goal would have been to renegotiate it.

And Trump could have gotten it a tougher deal if he'd wanted.

And if he did a good job in the negotiations.

Yeah.

And the whole deal went a sunset.

The strictest provisions would have sunsetted, but, you know, I mean, frankly, Trump could

have negotiated it two days ago.

I mean, it is worth just saying that they are completely full of shit about the need to

do this now.

There was no room to threaten the nuclear program.

There was no distinct threat from the Muslim missile program.

There was any different than the, you know, how many ever many years Iran has had Muslim

missiles, you know, 20 years.

This happened now because BB Netanyahu wanted to happen now.

I mean, there's no really other explanation.

It was, it was the Israelis who started going to Trump being like, now's the time they're

weak.

And then in Lindsey Graham going to Trump and saying, you can be the man that took out the

supreme leader of the historic and Reagan on steroids and all this, like the timing was

determined by kind of Israeli interests and Trump's ego.

Like that, that's the convergence of timing here.

And by the way, Jonathan Greenblatt from the ADL called me an anti-Semite for saying

as much during the last around war.

And I'm sure we'll do so again to the both of us.

Again, like it's fully reported.

Netanyahu, like there's tons of reporting on this and the times today and other places.

Netanyahu is like taking credit and bragging about getting Trump to fight for it.

Like, this is such an insult to our intelligence is Jonathan Greenblatt to the world because

BB Netanyahu put out a video like yesterday in which he said that he's wanted to do this

for 40 years and he finally got a US president to do it.

He said it.

Not us.

Not us.

Yeah.

Are you going to call BB Netanyahu an anti-Semite?

I guess so.

Like this is totally absurd.

Is it a dual loyalty?

Is that what we're learning today?

Would I allow to say that Israel wanted this to happen?

It's crazy.

When Israel keeps saying that before they said they wanted to happen, now they're saying

it out.

Anyway, break, break.

The other things that I take away, the incoherence about what comes next inside of Iran.

He's calling reporters, I mean, the times one is a journey.

He had a six minute conversation with the New York Times that in and of itself is a journey

because on the one hand, he's saying the Iranian people can rise up and it can be this

regime change.

The other thing he's saying, we can do the Venezuelan model and just deal with the regime.

This is a guy who has no idea what his own plan is.

Because first of all, the Venezuelan model is impossible inside of Iran.

This is a much more ideological, heavily armed regime and it's far more likely to fracture

than that there's one individual who raises their hand to be the Delci Rodriguez.

That's the Venezuelan vice president who took over.

The person who raises their hand in the Iranian system to be that person probably doesn't

have a very long life expectancy inside of Iran.

Look at shot up 150,000 members of the IRGC and then a million or two best-each militia

members on the outside.

When you take the totality of the scale of bombing that they're doing and the destruction

that's being wrought and the absence of a plan, it just feels like some regime implosion

or some kind of cornered, angry IRGC type regime is most likely to emerge.

We'll see.

The only other thing I want to say about Trump is that you can say this anytime he opens

his mouth, but every other US president who's launched a war, you can kind of feel the

gravity on their shoulders.

The degree to which this guy doesn't give a shit, I mean right now he is killing probably

thousands of Iranians.

There's some preliminary estimates in the high hundreds, but you can't hit hundreds and

hundreds of targets and not kill thousands of people, including by the way civilians.

We've already seen reportedly over 100 kids killed at that girl's school.

That doesn't seem to bother him in the slightest, and Americans are dying.

Already we've had four Americans dying.

Every American on a base in that region knows that they're being targeted by drones and

ballistic missiles, and he's joking about curtains.

We cannot allow that to be not reprehensible because it is.

And he's dropping the hits to Barack Hussein, Obama, okay, we get it, you know, he is a

Muslim middle name.

Give us a break, man.

It's all politics.

And on your Israel point, I mean, there is all this reporting also that these Israelis

are worried Trump might wrap things up sooner than they want to, so it's just like it's

not just the Netanyahu pushed him to start the war, it's that he's pushing him to continue

it.

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Let's continue to nail this point.

Here's a clip of Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, from the press conference he did

this morning.

That press conference also included General Kane, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, who

frankly seems to conduct himself in a far more professional and kind of like by the

book way that you'd expect.

So we're not including any of that.

Obviously he's part of this idiotic crazy policy.

There were reports that he was more critical about it, but we're just going to play Hegseth

for you this morning.

So let's watch.

Iran was building powerful missiles and drones to create a conventional shield for their

nuclear blackmail ambitions.

Let me say that again, a conventional shield for their nuclear blackmail ambitions.

Our bases, our people, our allies, all in their crosshairs, Iran had a conventional

gun to our head as they tried to lie their way to a nuclear bomb.

It almost worked under Obama, and it's terrible deal, but not under this president.

To the media outlets and political left screaming endless wars, stop.

This is not Iraq.

This is not endless.

This operation is a clear, devastating, decisive mission.

Destroy the missile threat, destroy the Navy, no nooks.

No stupid rules of engagement, no nation building quagmire, no democracy building exercise,

no politically correct wars.

We fight to win, and we don't waste time or lives.

As the president warned, an effort of this scope will include casualties.

War is hell, and always will be.

As it pertains to the U.S. casualties, that particular incident was, you know, you have

air defenses, and the lots coming in, and you hit most of it, and we absolutely do.

We have incredible air defenders.

We want to, while you might have one, unfortunately, we call it a squirre that makes its way

through.

And in that particular case, it happened to hit a tactical operation center.

So I mean, look, saying no stupid rules of engagement when you just reportedly bombed

a school full of little girls is like, fucking disgusting.

Again, though, like he's lying.

There is no such thing as a conventional shield for Iran's nuclear program.

But wait, Tommy, he said it twice.

Yeah, they had a gun to wear.

So did you do the second time, really?

Yeah.

Well, gun to our head again, U.S. could annihilate like whatever this conventional shield would

be.

Second, like the bloodless, like fatalistic ways that he and Trump are trying to talk

about American casualties to kind of, I don't know, spin it away.

It's like this, this war did not need to happen.

I think that is the important point.

This wasn't a squirre, I don't even know what that means.

This is an Iranian drone that killed American service members because you asked holes launched

a war of choice that we didn't need to start.

And then finally, again, like you said earlier, like Hegseth does not get to decide when

the war ends.

The Iranians could decide to fight this poor generation and it would just might be sporadic,

but people are going to die.

That's, yeah.

I'm glad you said that because they can say this is not another endless war or another

forever war because we're going to stop bombing at some point.

But that doesn't mean that the war ends at that point.

People in Iran could still be killing each other and dying.

They could still be firing things at people in the region.

The 12-day war was not a 12-day war, it's still going on.

We don't describe World War II as a series of hundred different wars because at times

we weren't, this is a stupid fucking way that they're trying to make the American people

and their megabase in particular feel like they didn't just open Pandora's box because

they did.

So, Pete Hegseth, you want the Secretary of Defense to be sober and reassuring.

That is anything but that's a guy who looks like maybe he's not drinking, but he had to

fucking take some Adderall and repeat the conventional shield line to himself in the mirror before

going out so he could look top for something.

He doesn't know.

He's not qualified to be managing those.

He doesn't know.

It's all buzzwords with him and no rules of engagement and this and that.

What is the plan, I mean, there's nothing I've been thinking about, Tommy, and we can

talk about it on the podcast a little more, but if you're the Gulf allies who rely on

the United States for your existential security, if you're Sadie Rabia, Cutter and the UA,

let's just take those three.

You're probably making up plans to buy a nuclear weapon because you're like, I can't rely

on these, as are a lot of countries.

A lot of our adversaries probably are too.

Yeah, because North Korea's got nukes and an ICBM and no one's messing with them.

Kim looks, you know, like he's ripping sigs and looking at stuff and he's just fine,

right?

And so I did the lack of, who wants to, because the mag of audience doesn't even want

this war.

Like who is Hexat talking to, right?

And that's not reassuring allies.

That's not reassuring Americans.

That's not intimidating Iranians.

Like he's literally performing for Fox News and Lindell TV and whoever else is in that

briefing room without giving any coherence or clarity about, you know, because what

he said about the mission, that it's not about democracy, well, I thought they'd been

telling us for weeks that this is because of peaceful protesters that we had to come

to their aid and Donald Trump telling the Iranian people to rise up.

If you're one of the Iranian people that is sinking and rising up and then you hear

Hexat say, this is not about democracy.

It's about killing, it's about destroying their missiles and Navy.

Does that incentivize you to rise up?

I mean, it makes no sense.

It is totally incoherent.

Yeah.

I mean, it's incoherent for the people in Iran who aren't clear whether Trump is fully

pushing for regime change or not.

The distinction in the goals is pretty important to the Gulf countries you just mentioned too,

because the worst case scenario for them is, you know, we bomb a bunch of stuff, but then

Trump kind of just gives up and leaves some, you know, rump version of the regime or

like a next up IRGC led government that hates, you know, their countries just as much

and are just as caustic and terrible.

I mean, maybe they won't have the capacity to support proxies.

Maybe they won't have the capacity to do things that we're worried about, but I don't

know.

I don't know.

I wouldn't want to bet on it.

Well, and because that's the most likely scenario, doesn't that feel like the most likely

scenario now that like essentially we bond them for a few weeks, kill more and more people,

but then there's maybe some civil conflict, but the IRGC and the besiege is just massacre

of people and horrible numbers.

And then there's this kind of crazy rump IRGC regime.

And you can say that they've been defanged, but it's still a giant country.

And they'll rebuild some capacity and they might be more dangerous.

They'll certainly try to get a nuclear weapon, I mean, like that's got to be less than

they take.

Their desire to run this war by the news cycle is so historical, because when you

decapitate the regime of a country of 92 million people that is heavily armed, it's not

going to end when you try to turn the news cycle off, which is what they'll do in four

or five weeks or whenever it is.

And that, it's just astonishing to me how much they think, I mean, that Venezuela thing

must have gone to their head.

Oh, definitely.

That they thought that you could do the same thing in Iran, which is a fucking wildly

different country and a wildly different part of the world, where there's been a lot

more war conflict and civil conflict.

And it's a lot more coherent, yeah, cohesive of a country.

Yeah, I think that like, there's almost certainly a scenario where Trump will, in the

Israelis, will bomb a shit out of a lot of like advanced military infrastructure that

will in the near term, at least reduce the threats to the US or Israel, but it will

not in any way reduce the threat to the people that we are telling to take to the streets

and rise up, because you don't need an ICBM to kill a protester, you just need a gun,

and they are all over Iran.

Ben, speaking of kind of incoherence, so the Democratic Party's response bit a little

all over the place.

Some Democrats have been great, and we can talk about them if you want.

Some Democrats have fully endorsed the war, which is just absolutely insane to me, given

the recent history in Iraq, in Libya, for example, or more generally that you would trust

Donald Trump and Phexf with a task like this.

I think you have lost your mind if you are co-signing this process, but we'll find out.

And then you have a bunch of Democrats like we discussed over the weekend that have focused

their condemnation on the process that need to get a vote from Congress to authorize a

war or the need to clearly spell out the goals to the American people.

And obviously, I agree with both of those criticisms, but the ship is kind of sailed

there, so we're in a tough spot.

The one thing I would just like, I want to implore Democrats listening to loudly condemn

the war on the merits.

It is not popular.

This does not pull well.

It will not pull well as time goes on.

And then the things I would just focus on though are Trump is lying about the threat.

Iran is nowhere close to having a nuclear weapon.

Iran was nowhere close to having a missile that could hit the United States.

He lied.

He's lying hammer them for it.

This talk about the cost for service members are dead already more gravely wounded.

The conflict has already cost tens of billions of dollars.

Trump ran against regime change wars.

No one wants us spending money this way.

Not the mega right, not the left, nobody.

And then I would highlight the chaos all over the world because this war is not just happening

in Iran right now.

It is terrorizing populations in Israel and Lebanon.

It is killing people and spilling it to all these cities and the Gulf.

It is making American diplomats and tourists less safe all over the world.

There were some reports today.

I don't know if they're confirmed then that this terrorist gunman in Texas might have been

motivated by what's happening in Iran.

Things could happen in the US like it is making us all less safe.

And I don't get the hesitation to just take on the war on the merits on the substance

and focus on that.

But what are you looking for from Democrats?

And we should say the Senate might have a war powers vote this week.

The House won't be in session until Thursday to have any kind of deliberation or vote on

this.

I think there's some US senators who are concerned that a war powers vote actually might

just kind of like be taken care of by Trump might be able to push away the kind of concerns

over congressional authorization to quickly and what we really need is a vote in the debate

about an AUMF and authorization for the use of military force in Iran, which would

actually be harder to get because it would take a 60 vote, a threshold versus 50 votes.

But that's a bit in the weeds.

But what are you looking for from Democrats?

A spine and a pulse.

Yeah.

Maybe there's two things I'm looking for.

And again, I want to be clear, there are a lot of Democrats, probably the majority of

Democrats in Congress who have been very good.

And you know, again, Chris Murphy, Ruben Gaiego, like the progressive caucus in the House,

like many people, right?

But, you know, there's some people that are outwardly supportive and then there's some

people who are kind of so anodized so you don't know where they stand.

Look, the point is that we are, you know, a few days into this war, it's clearly a

shit show.

Trump started on vacation.

The reason one of the reasons that he doesn't pay a bigger price for this kind of incoherence

and insanity and doing something that is so against public opinion is that there's not

a unified opposition party that is being vocal and aggressive and coherent and holding

him accountable.

And so it lets him escape some of the accountability that he should be facing for what's happening.

There's a couple kind of Democrats here that the people that are supportive, I said this

on our last episode, but there's an overlapping band diagram between who takes a lot of

APEC money, you know.

But if you're going to be supportive, even if you hate the Iranian regime, to your point

Tommy, like Donald Trump and Peter, that you would trust them with anything is beyond

the pale.

But there's another kind of democratic response that I think we need to name, which is

people who are like nervous, like, what if this goes okay?

Yes.

Like, I don't want to go.

I don't want to be to, oh, he killed a supreme leader.

I don't want to look, you know, like, look, it's like a Gulf War one hangover from the

1990s.

It's a Gulf War one hangover.

It's crazy.

And here's the thing.

We should just be anti-war.

Yes.

Like, unless it is an imminent threat that absolutely compels this nation to take military

action, the democratic party should be morally, legally, ethically, priority-wise, because we

want to spend money at home instead of abroad, the easiest political message in the world

to deliver.

That is not a hard message to deliver.

I should, I, we are spending more money on munitions in the Persian Gulf right now than

on the ACA subsidies that were cut.

Like this, you know, you don't need to be a, you know, Dan Fifer to like, to say for this,

this one.

Shout out to Dan.

Shout out to Dan.

Yeah.

The, the point being is that, like, even if this is the best case scenario, which I don't

think it's going to be for all of you, as you said, I would still be against it, because

as a matter of principle, and frankly, to be in line with public opinion, particularly

the public opinion of our own people in the democratic party, like, we need to be against

this.

And, and so I just really hope we start to see, like, more of a pulse from the Democrats.

And, and not just like, we want to have this vote on this, which I'm props to Rokana.

It's not against him, but the concern that, that you have one vote that fails, and then

you want to, you know, pivot to your economic messaging, you know, well, your economic messaging

is this.

It's, it's like, let's, let's not keep fighting demours so we can spend money on the things

that people actually care about.

I just would like to see Democrats like want to have this debate and, and not sometimes

like unhappy that someone's be asking the question about it.

Yeah, lean into this.

The Washington Post had a flash pole, 52% of Americans oppose the war, 39% support it.

But like, the opponents are far more passionate, like, and that's the high watermark.

Yeah, that's high watermark.

Can you think, you know, it is 40% like strongly opposed in an overwhelming majority of

independence opposed this war.

So like, you are on sound political footing, you are on 100% sound legal and moral footing

Trump is lying.

He's a bunch of, the staff by fucking idiots, this administration, like, just come on.

What are we doing here?

Yeah, and that's the thing is that the, the day that the, the supreme leader is killed

is there's not another thing that Trump's going to do in this war that is going to drive

out public opinion about this war.

You know, I cannot imagine, and, and even if it ends, like, how much to your point,

like, get the answers to how much this cost and what's the damage and what was the

economic cost?

Because all this is already, or things that have already happened and, and that are ongoing.

And, and another reason to be the surface, and I have a piece out in the New York Times,

if you want to check this out today, but he's going to do this again.

So, so one reason to really oppose him here is I don't do trusted.

This is the last war Donald Trump's going to start.

Lindsey Graham is again on air on TV over the weekend, like, near orgasm, talking about

how Cuba is next.

So it's like, this is again, it's going to happen again.

Yeah.

Sucks.

Okay.

So, for today, again, we're going to record again Tuesday for Wednesday, normal release.

Thank you guys for watching this.

Sorry, this is happening in the world.

Absolutely sucks.

But, here we are.

So, we're going to cover it.

And thanks for watching and subscribe it.

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