Velshi: Trump's war is not making U.S. stronger, has the nation asking 'What the hell is going on?'

the last word with Ali Belschie and for Lauren starts right now. Hey, Ali.

Hey, you know, you had my old friend, Barbara Starron. Barbara and I spent, you know,

I guess we were together at CNN for about 12 years. She's a straight shooter as it gets.

And her takeaway from this was, yeah, great reporter. And you know, what she was talking about,

the way Hegseth talks about this war and the gamification of it, the video game aspect of it,

the don't get in my way with with probing questions about soldiers dying or civilians dying.

She, she brought out the fact that that seemed very, very, I mean, it's really one of my takeaways

this week that they're, they're, they're being, they're really being awfully cavalier about it.

Incredibly flippant. The videos you've referenced and we played a mash of them,

our group, our set of them, are just honestly disgusting. And, and there are men and women

serving around the world every day. You've interviewed so many of them around the world.

Who see that stuff? And it really should be chilling to everybody who sees it.

Thank you for another great show, my friend. Have a great weekend. We'll see you in a

minute. Thanks, Ali. All right, we begin tonight with a president in crisis, all of his own

making. He's deeply unpopular with the American people. And over the next hour, we are going to

discuss a variety of reasons and consequences for Donald Trump's tanking approval ratings.

The economic news is bad. And voters don't think he's doing enough about that.

We saw on Tuesday the enthusiasm at the ballot box is with the Democrats, not with Donald

Trump's Republican Party. And now he started a war that according to lawmakers who've seen this

nation's most sensitive intelligence, he had no legitimate reason to start. The administration

has also admitted as much by offering multiple and at times conflicting reasons for this war.

So, unsurprisingly, this is a war that, like the president himself, is deeply unpopular.

Peter Baker summed up, summed it up this way and is an analysis for the New York Times.

Quote, President Trump likes to assert that he has accomplished things. No other president has.

With the opening of his military assault against Iran, he has achieved another distinction.

He is the first president in the era of modern polling to take the United States to war

without the support of the public, end quote. Now, this war is unpopular because over the last

25 years, this nation has already been through two wars that dragged on and on and on.

Far too many members of our military paid the ultimate price for those wars, returning home

in flag draped coffins. Far too many Iraqi and Afghan citizens were killed. Trillions of

dollars were spent and there's been precious little to point to from either war that can be called

an accomplishment. And yet somehow, here we are again. And according to every poll taken since

this war started, most of this nation is watching in horror, wondering just what the hell is going on.

Today, Donald Trump made his clearest comments yet on what he wants in his war of choice against

Iran. It's regime change. He posted on social media, quote, there will be no deal with Iran,

except unconditional surrender and the selection of a great and acceptable leader.

Who's supposed to surrender? What leaders? The citizens of Iran does Donald Trump think that

they're reading a social media posts? And never mind that Iran's foreign minister said yesterday

that Iran is not looking to negotiate with the United States, let alone surrender. That's even

as Israel launched a new wave of attacks on Iranian infrastructure in Tehran tonight,

including the country's primary international airport.

Donald Trump and his top officials have not ruled out the possibility of sending in ground troops.

Officials told the Washington Post about a sudden change of plans for the 82nd Airborne

Division, which specializes in ground combat, quote, the army in recent days abruptly cancelled a

major training exercise for the headquarters element of an elite paratrooper unit, fueling

speculation within the Defense Department that soldiers specializing in ground combat and a

range of other missions may be sent to the Middle East as the conflict with Iran widens.

Today we learn that Russia is providing Iran with intelligence that it can use to target American

forces in the Middle East. Siting multiple sources, the Washington Post calls it, quote,

the first indication that another major US adversary is participating even indirectly in the war.

Russia has passed the location of US military assets, including warships and aircraft,

analysts said that the sharing of intelligence would fit the pattern of Iran's strikes against

US forces, including command and control infrastructure, radar, and temporary structures,

like the one in Kuwait, where six service members were killed.

But here's the interesting thing. Watch how Donald Trump dismissed a question about Russia helping

Iran today. It sounds like the Russians are helping Iran target and attack Americans now.

That's an easy problem compared to what we're doing here. Can I be honest? It's just,

I have a lot of respect for you. You've always been very nice to me. What a stupid question

that is to be asking, at this time, we're talking about something else.

What a stupid question to be asking at this time.

Wonder what left-wing liberal outlet, the reporter who asked that question was from.

Oh, it was Steve Ducey from Fox News. Asking a question about a war in which America is involved

in which so far six people have died. Six service members have died. Lots of other people have

died. And the president called that a stupid question. In the next 12 hours, there will be a dignified

transfer for six US service members who lost their lives in Donald Trump's war of choice. It will

take place at Dover Air Force Base at 10 a.m. tomorrow. As the Trump administration prepares to

welcome home the first of what could be more dead US soldiers today. The White House inexplicably

released, I just want to make sure you're sitting down for this. They released this video mashup

of old movies cartoons breaking bad and war.

The American way. I am the danger of time to find out.

Flawless victory.

That came from your White House. Over 1200 people in nine different countries are dead

since last Saturday. And according to UNICEF, more than 190 children have been reported killed in

the region since the weekend's military escalations. This includes 181 children in Iran,

seven children in Lebanon, three children in Israel, and one child in Kuwait.

Many of those Iranian children were among the roughly 175 killed in an attack on a girls

elementary school on Saturday. And now we're learning that the US is likely responsible for that

with the highest reported civilian deaths toll so far in this war. Evidence assembled by the

New York Times quote indicates the school building was severely damaged by a precision strike

that occurred at the same time as attacks on an adjacent naval base operated by the Islamic

Revolutionary Guard Corps. An official statement that US forces were attacking naval targets near

the Strait of Hormuz where the IRGC bases located suggest they were most likely to have carried out

the strike end quote. Donald Trump's war is not making America stronger. In fact, our next guest

professor Timothy Snyder believes that the opposite is true. Quote, we are at war now, a war that

is transparently one of a series of masculinity contests. Our American strongman is strong because

he is stronger than the other strongman. He can abduct Maduro. He can assassinate Khamenei. He

is performing relative strength at huge cost to others. It's another question, of course, as to

whether any of this makes the United States stronger. The use of force in this way is obviously

illegal in terms of both international and domestic law. Breaking international and domestic

institutions will tend to make the United States as a country weaker rather than stronger.

That's a tragedy made all the worse by the lives lost on both sides in a war that is making

this nation weaker. Donald Trump said something to time magazine about that loss of life yesterday.

And I think historians of the future will point to it as one of the most callous and confounding

things he's ever uttered while in office. And that's saying something. Here's what he said, quote,

like I said, some people will die. When you go to war, some people will die.

Today at the funeral of the late Reverend Jesse Jackson, a different American president spoke

words that feel like a true antidote to the neilism of the current occupant of the Oval Office.

Every day you wake up to things you just didn't think were possible. Everywhere we see greed and

bigotry being celebrated and bullying and mockery masquerading as strength. So it may be tempting

to get discouraged to give into cynicism. It may be tempting for some to compromise with power

and grab what you can or even for good people to maybe just put your head down and wait for the storm

to pass. But this man, Reverend Jesse Lewis Jackson, inspires us to take a harder path.

His voice calls on each of us to be heralds of change, to be messengers of hope,

to step forward and say, send me wherever we have a chance to make an impact, whether it's in our

school or our workplaces, our neighborhoods, our cities, not for fame, not for glory or because

success is guaranteed, but because it gives our life purpose, because it lines with what our faith

tells us God demands. And because if we don't step up, no one else will.

Hey, earlier I played a recording of somebody asking the president a question about it.

Russia's involvement in the war. I said it was Steve Ducey. It was actually Steve Ducey's son, Peter

Ducey, also a question from Fox News, a very relevant question that was asked of the president,

that the president laughed off and called him stupid for asking. Leading off our discussion

tonight is Timothy Snyder, a professor of history at the University of Toronto, his the author

of the New York Times bestsellers on freedom and on tyranny. Timothy, thank you for being with us.

I think it's noteworthy. For better or for worse, whether wars are justified or not, for

better or for worse, generally when America heads into a war, even the last two that have been

pretty disastrous for us, there's a rallying around the flag effect. There's some sense that we're

all in this thing together. And then over time that support tends to dwindle because body bags come

in and costs go up and it's not clear what we're doing. We're starting underwater on this one. The

majority of the overwhelming majority of Americans are not interested in this war. Do not believe

this war is legal and do not understand why we're doing this. Yeah, I mean, it says though we've

gone through the first year of the war in the first minute or the first day, right? Like we're

already at the point where Americans understand that there was no plan. We're already at the point

where we understand that their leaders have lied to them. We're already at the point where we're

feeling the costs of it. And I think the reason why we're already at that point is that it's pretty

clear that the reasons that this war has started had nothing to do with American national interest.

At best, they had to do with the interests of oligarchs around Mr. Trump and not necessarily

American ones. And it's also pretty transparently obvious that insofar as it has to do with America,

it has to do with the manipulating Americans. It has to do with trying to get us to rally around

the flag. It has to do with getting us to give up on our right to elections. I think people have

already seen through all of that. Talk to me about there's an issue here. There are a lot of

people who have real issue with the Iranian regime. They are murderous. They are dictatorial.

There are a lot of bad things. But we had a deal with them back in 2015. Then Donald Trump pulled

us out of that deal. Then he apparently wanted to get back into some sort of a deal. And even if he

did succeed, the Iranians seem to claim that they were further along in these discussions than

the Americans say they were as of last Thursday. But let's say that were true. How does anybody

make a deal with Donald Trump anymore? Yeah, I mean, I can't help but comment on what you say.

We did make a deal with Iran. And we toss that deal out the window. And the reason we did it was

because the Trump needed to take credit for it. And you had to take credit away from Barack Obama

because Barack Obama is not allowed to succeed in anything. And so then here we are, right?

Here we are fighting a war because you can't negotiate. And not only do we not negotiating good

faith, we then essentially said, okay, we're going to send you home and we're going to try to kill

you. The first tier, the second tier, the third tier, the fourth tier of your government. We're

going to try to kill you all. How can anyone negotiate with us after that? I agree completely.

So here's the issue. It's unclear. When we were bombing boats in Venezuela and it was supposedly

about drugs. And then we went into Venezuela and we took out Maduro and it wasn't about drugs.

It was actually about oil. Now we're, the president's not even asking for Congress for the legal

authority to prosecute this war. It sort of just seems we're all being set up for the idea that

Donald Trump isn't going to follow any rules. And I don't know where that leads. I don't know

whether that leads to the invasion of Greenland or the taking over of Canada or the federalizing

of elections. But he's setting the, he's set the table well for the idea that Donald Trump doesn't

have to follow rules. Yeah. I mean, on the one hand, this is already a successful attempt to take

powers that he doesn't have, right? He is the commander in chief. But this isn't a war. He hasn't

gone to Congress. He's exercise, people are letting him exercise an authority. They doesn't really

legally have. And that's terrible. On the other hand, it's rather good that this is incredibly

unpopular. It's rather good that people are observing it. And terrible, though it might be in

every respect. It's also useful to see how incredibly incompetent he is around this. Because

the way we're not going to get to the electoral scenario, which is the one that matters, is that

people recognize, hmm, I don't want to sacrifice my political life, my future, my reputation to

somebody who's doing this to the country. I don't want to wreck the Republic on behalf of this guy

who's making a mess of the world. Well, you, people associate you with the study of democracy

and tyranny. You're a student of war. You studied wars, including the war that's going on between

Ukraine and Russia. There never is as simple and easy as Donald Trump and Pete Pegseth would

have you believe. First, it was going to be really short, then it was going to be four weeks,

now it's going to be eight weeks. So within the first day had gone from four weeks to eight weeks,

we are fighting a war against the country with 93 million people that is heavily armed and has

has asymmetric ways of fighting wars against us. This could end up very badly.

Yeah, I mean, all the usual rules apply. War is always unpredictable. The enemy gets a vote.

And the reasons you start a war, if you have any, right, but the reasons you, how you start a war

are usually not the reasons you finish the war with. All those usual rules apply, but then there

are a couple of writers. Number one is that Trump and Pegseth and unfortunately many of the people

around them are very, very incompetent. And this is a point that cannot really be overstated.

Because as terrible as the Iranian regime is, they're not stupid. And I'm afraid that the people

who are running the war on our side, I'm afraid that adjectives of that sort could be usefully

applied to them. And the second writer that has to be applied is that our goals here are far

more incoherent than usual. The idea is that they're going to regime change and they're going to

unconditionally surrender. It's unclear who regime changes to what? Who's going unconditionally

surrender? And I'm noticing today that Mike Johnson is basically saying, well, they don't have to,

we're not actually at war. So we can decide whether they unconditionally surrender or not and we

can just go home, right? We can just say this was never a war and we can just turn around and go home.

If only were that simple. Tim Snyder, thanks as always my friend Professor Timothy Snyder at

the University of Toronto. All right, coming up, the Constitution is unambiguous about who decides

when the United States goes to war. Our next guest, Judge J. Michael Ludig will join us to discuss

why Donald Trump's war in Iran is illegal. That's next.

The Constitution is very clear about who decides when the United States goes to war. The Congress

shall have the power to declare war, it says, in the Constitution. More than two centuries ago,

James Madison warned that quote, the executive is the branch of power most interested in war and

most prone to it. writing to Thomas Jefferson in 1798, Madison said, that's why the Constitution

quote, vested the question of war in the legislature. But over time, that balance has shifted.

Presidents of both parties have gradually taken on more authority to act militarily without

explicit approval from Congress. The Republican vote against the Iran War Power's resolution

this week may be the clearest example yet of that shift or at least how complete that shift has

become under Donald Trump. A shift that under Trump has become far more explicit than it's been

in earlier years. Trump says he was using his authority to carry out strikes on Iran because

the United States faced an imminent threat. Or as he put it quote, it was my opinion that they were

going to attack first. It was my opinion that they were going to attack first. On Wednesday,

the Democratic Congressman Jim McGovern said this. Why wasn't Donald Trump in favor of regime

change until this weekend? Why did he campaign on swearing he would never send American kids to

fight and die in the Middle East? Republicans can't answer because they were against war with Iran

until exactly the second Donald Trump decided to go to war. And now they're all running around

sounding like Neocon lunatics. America can't take this level of gaslighting. I went to the class

to fight briefing. There was no imminent threat. I guess unless Republicans want to redefine

the word imminent to mean stretching back 47 years, this whole thing is just so transparently

built on lies. Our next guest, Judge J. Michael Looted, co-author to peace stating that Donald Trump

quote, has embroiled the United States in another illegal war. Less than two months after an

unconstitutional and unauthorized US military operation in Venezuela, Trump has launched a full-scale

bombing campaign against Iran. The fact that presidents have long alighted this law and Congress

has let them do so should not detract from its plain language and intent. Trump's decision to go

it alone in violation of this vast corpus of constitutional statutory treaty and other obligations

has not only resulted in the deaths of at least four American servicemembers, but also has

caused widespread civilian death and injury across the Middle East. The bombing of a girls elementary

school in Iran with about 150 casualties is an ominous sign of what could come if this war continues.

Dictators and aspiring dictators all too often start foreign wars to distract from or build

support for their subversion of democracy at home. The United States remains a democracy. Our

president should not be allowed to use war to subvert the rule of law at home or abroad.

Joining me now is Judge J. Michael Looted, who served on the US Court of Appeals for the

Fourth Circuit. Judge Loody, thank you for being with us. You are a jurist. We use you for a lot

of things having to do with democracy, but you actually have specific expertise with respect to

this topic. You served in the White House in the early 1980s. You worked in the Department of Justice

in the early 1990s, and some of your work actually involved war powers issues and the inherent conflict

between Congress and the executive on issues like this. That's correct, Dali, especially during my

time at the Department of Justice when I headed what's known as the Office of Legal Counsel

within the Department. That office is responsible for resolving constitutional and other legal

disputes within and for the executive branch in that role, the head of the office, and I,

during the years that I was there, dealt essentially every day with the war powers of the United

States, including the constitutional power to declare war in Article 1, Section 8.

Dali, you know, the listening to your opening, there has been a gradual shift over the past

250 years in favor of the executive over the Congress. But what we are witnessing today with

this war in Iran is anything but the gradual next step, if you will. This is a step unlike any

other that any president has taken in the conduct of war up to this point. For instance, this is

seriously more than his attack over Iran earlier. But with every unconstitutional action this

president takes, he proves over and over and over again the wisdom of the Constitution and the

genius of the Constitution's separation of powers. Before the launch of this attack, the reasons

the president gave were regime change and an imminent threat to the United States.

Neither of those were sufficient to justify a war without congressional authorization.

And every day thereafter, as your previous guest noted, the president and his administration's

reasons for the war and the objectives for the war have shifted daily, every day. Meanwhile,

every day the war has grown in both scope and projected duration. As we were just

told today, the president demanded an unconditional surrender from Iran. Well, if this isn't a war,

then what are they unconditionally surrendering to and for? The president of the United States believes

this is a war and so does the Congress of the United States. But the Republican members of Congress

are pretending to the American people that it's not a war because they don't want to be held accountable

for their exercise of the war-making power. Frankly, it is their power and their power alone,

clear to the American people now that the Congress of the United States has abdicated its powers

almost across the board, you know, to this president. You write in the contrarian, a piece for the

contrarian. You said absent approval from the UN Security Council, the use of military force

is permitted only in self-defense under Article 51. Trump's openly expressed objective of

initiating regime change does not fall within the narrow exception for self-defense outlined in

Article 51 and is thus an illegal use of force. In addition, deliberately targeting ahead of state

even a dictator, such as Iran's Supreme Leader, is an illegal act of aggression under international

law and launching strikes during active diplomatic negotiations, which were ongoing during February,

arguably violates the principle of good faith and shrined an article two of the UN Charter.

I mean, this assumes that Donald Trump knows anything about the U.S. Charter or would read it,

but your point as a retired judge is that there are laws, there are international laws, there are

U.S. laws, nothing supports this action. Nothing supports this particular

waging of war by this president, nothing whatsoever. But as you recite those various

applicable provisions of law, I'm reminded that through all of contemporary history,

and with the use of military force abroad, I have always believed with respect to every

single incident by every other prior president, that there were good faith reasons and good faith

reasons in law to believe that the president could conduct the military operations that he did

without congressional authorization. This is unlike any of those instances in all of American

history. There is not even an arguable basis now, days into the operation, even if there were

an argument on day one, which there was not, that this president could have gone to war without

authorization from Congress. It's worth noting, as you just did, that Congress could have provided

authorization for a military operation without declaring a war. And the president of the United

States understood that, but he didn't want to ask Congress for that. Did he seek it?

Did he seek it? He did not seek an authorization of the use of military force from them.

So it's a weird situation. You describe tensions in the 80s and 90s that are built into the system.

This isn't even tension. The president didn't ask. Congress didn't give. And now we are apparently in

this weird state of limbo that is, that looks and smells a whole lot like war to the rest of us.

Judge, good to have you here. As always, thank you for joining us tonight and offering your

expertise. Judge J. Michael Ludig. All right, coming up. Donald Trump's economy is failing. Gas

prices are soaring as Trump's war in Iran continues. And terrible new jobs numbers here at home have

the unemployment rate moving in the wrong direction. We'll talk about that next.

Dow falls 450 points, posts worst week in nearly a year as oil tops 90, jobs data disappoints.

That's how CNBC summed up a brutal day for the American economy and for Americans struggling

with the cost of living. AAA reports that six days into Trump's Iran war, the national

average for gas has jumped to $3.32 a gallon. Today is the first Friday of the month. That means

it was the first jobs report day of the month. You got Friday, we had February's jobs out now.

You know the day when the government reports how many jobs have been created. Negative 92,000.

This country lost a net 92,000 jobs in February, pushing the unemployment rate up to 4.4%.

That's not all. The New York Times reports revisions to previous months bolstered the case

that the job cuts in February were consistent with a broader decline rather than a blip.

In December, employers shed 17,000 jobs down from an earlier estimate of a gain of 48,000.

Hiring figures for January were also revised downward slightly to 126,000.

Taken together, the job growth for the last three months effectively slowed to zero.

Even Trump's labor secretary, Laurie Chavez-deramert, could not deny how bad this jobs report

actually is. Madam Secretary, 92,000 jobs out in February. The fewer jobs in health care,

fewer jobs for information services because of AI, the weather-heard things,

government employment down. If you add it all up, it doesn't look good for the Trump economy.

Yeah, I couldn't agree with you. I think we have to address the fact that this is not a good report

in its raw numbers, but we have to also talk about why this possibly has happened,

this snapshot in time. It was mentioned the weather. We saw health care numbers go down. We saw

a record strike in California over 30,000 jobs lost there, but that has been resolved.

We're recognizing what happened this month, and we're going to stay laser focused to bring those

jobs numbers up. Laser focused. I think we know what it looks like when Donald Trump is laser

focused on something, and it's not jobs. The most beautiful ballroom. I believe it's because

I built many a ballroom. I believe it's going to be the most beautiful ballroom anywhere in the

world. What if you? This is the door to the ballroom. You were ahead of schedule on the ballroom

and under budget. It's going to be, I don't think there'd be anything like it in the world actually.

You can focus on the ballroom because, as he said, he's solved inflation. Given all that,

it's no surprise that a new poll shows that 61% of Americans disapprove of how Donald Trump is

handling the economy. Take a look at that. 38% approved. Donald Trump's handling the cost of living.

32% approved. 67% disapprove. It's very hard to find these kinds of numbers. By the way,

Donald Trump, as you know, that 32% is kind of as low as it gets for him. It's kind of his

equivalent of zero. Here's what people in the same poll said about the prices they're paying

compared to early 2025. 81% said they're paying more for groceries than a year ago. 79% say

their utility costs are up. 71% say their health care costs are up. 65% say they're paying more

for housing. 51% say they're paying more for gasoline. We should note, this poll was mostly

conducted before Trump's Iran war sent oil prices surging. So this could all change. Joining us

now is Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union. Heather, nice to see you. Thank

you for being with us. Notwithstanding the fact that generally speaking prices go up. And if

they're not going up, you have a different sort of economic problem. There is a sense amongst

Americans that prices are going up faster than their wages are going up. And that was the case

for a long time. It's sort of evened out a few years ago. But there is certainly a perception

amongst Americans that something's happening. Prices are getting away from them.

No doubt about it. And there's a there there. There's a reason that affordability is top of

mine for Americans. And a key reason is it's I call it whack-a-mole inflation. So just when

one area of your budget gets under control, like we finally have the egg prices have come down,

something else spikes. And recently it's been a big spike in utility costs. And those electricity

costs people are right about that. And that polling data that you just showed utility costs are

growing way faster than wages for people. And you have to pay that. You have to keep the lights

on. And medical care costs have also been spiking recently. And look, then there's the ongoing

child care and housing costs that continue to be years of well outpacing wage growth. So you

put all that together. And it's no wonder that there's a big strain for a lot of American families

right now. Yeah, because if your if your wages are going up, let's say three or four percent,

and inflation's up two percent, you won't have the sense of dread about the whole thing.

One of the things about oil, we've seen a big spike in the price of oil, there are estimates

that it could be much higher. At the moment, ships are having trouble getting through the

straight of hormones. The American military, the Navy is capable of keeping that straight open,

but people who have to ship their oil through are a little worried about this because they have

to ensure that. Unlike tariffs, which sometimes get passed on to the consumer and sometimes

the company absorbs, that never happens with oil. 100% of the cost of the increase in oil gets

felt at the gas station. And people are already seen. And as you flashed up the data, we're up

over 30 cents just in the past week. That begins to add up for most households. That's about

at least a $15 increase a month. And it looks very likely now that West Texas intermediate

crude has gone to $90 a barrel. That usually results in $4 a gallon gas in the United States.

And we could see that at some point next week. And I think that's a big psychological shift to

see $4 average gas. Again, we haven't seen that. We saw it briefly in September 2023, but we really

haven't seen that since the dreaded summer of 2022. And I think that's, I worry a lot that people,

not only does that cost about $50 more a month for the typical family, but people begin to worry

and fear that all their costs are going to go up again. And that's when you could really start to

see some sort of inflation spiral. And by the way, like you mentioned about your electricity,

you can't do much about that. If you are an American who drives to and from work, over time,

you may be able to carpool or do whatever the downsize your car, but fundamentally that's not an

immediate choice you can make. Oil probably, before all this nonsense started, oil was hanging

around $57 a barrel. That seems like where it was. And then there was about a $10 what we call a

risk premium built into it because there was a fear of that war. And there was some talk last weekend

before oil started trading after the attacks on Iran that we know what the risk premiums have

been built into oil. So you probably won't see much of a spike. And since then we've worked our

way up to to around $90 a barrel. So clearly, there's more of a fear about what happens to oil

than we then we all thought. Well, definitely. And there's also the overriding question which is

how long does this war last? And clearly, it's going to last longer than just a few days,

which may have been the initial assessment that it would be over quickly. I think you're also

starting to see before this started, there was an oversupply of oil on the global market. I mean,

it was one of the bright spots for the Trump administration. Gas was below $3 just a week ago,

below $3 a gallon. And a lot of people were noticing that. But look, the reality is that many parts

of the Middle East have been hit. And many oil capacity is now greatly reduced. And you are

really starting to see these prices not just shoot higher, but it's hard to imagine that even if

things wrapped up miraculously over the weekend, that oil would start flowing quickly again.

Heather, great to talk to you as always. Thank you for being with us. Heather Long.

All right. Come here. Democrats think they've got a good shot at retaking the House of Representatives

fall. My next guest secured his spot in one of those house races, winning a key primary in North

Carolina earlier this week. I'll ask him how he did it and how he plans to beat his Republican rival.

Donald Trump's second term has been a master class on how to turn off independent voters.

According to the Pew Research Center, Trump got an even split of independence in the 2024

presidential election, about 48 percent. 15 months later, two things are a whole lot different.

New polling from Fox News. This is an unbelievable number shows that 72 percent of independent voters

disapprove of Donald Trump's job performance. 78 percent think he is focused on the wrong issues.

Overall, 57 percent of all Americans disapprove of the job Donald Trump is doing. That is according

to Fox polling. This has Democrats feeling pretty good about their chances of retaking the House of

Representatives and maybe even the Senate in the 2026 midterm elections and the Democrats overseeing

congressional races have a list of candidates that they think can beat sitting Republican members

in November. And among them is my next guest, Jamie Ager, a fourth-generation farmer.

He secured the Democratic nomination on Tuesday in North Carolina's 11th congressional district,

which covers a mostly rural area in Western North Carolina that includes the city of Asheville.

The Democratic National Committee is also backing Ager posting on election night quote

while Republicans continue to hemorrhage support as Trump's failed policies raise costs on

North Carolina families. The DNC is all in to support Ager who will lower costs for hardworking

North Carolinians and protect health care. Joining me now is Jamie Ager. He's the Democratic nominee

in North Carolina's 11th congressional district. Jamie, welcome to the show. You come from

one of the most beautiful parts of one of the most beautiful states in this country. Western

North Carolina, I think God had a hand in inventing that.

Yes, we're super lucky down here in Western North Carolina. We're definitely the

the prettiest part of the country and thanks for having me on. I really appreciate it.

Well, congratulations on your victory. Let's talk about this.

And North Carolina is so interesting to us on this show because it's not obvious what North

Carolina is. It is, it has, you have Democrats who win statewide office when Republicans otherwise

win things. You have Democrats like Roy Cooper who win when Donald Trump otherwise wins.

So one can never assume anything in North Carolina. Your particular NC 11 has a rural center and

then a urban center in a whole lot of rural areas. You've got sort of Democrat concentrations and

Republican sort of looser affiliations. Tell me what you think your advantages in a district like

that. You know, Western North Carolina, we have the 16 western most counties, Western North

Carolina. So we're really here in the Appalachian Mountains. And you know, I'm on my background for

the past 25 years, my wife, Amy and I, that came back to my family farm. I'm fourth generation here

at Hickorynut Gap Farm. And we started selling local pasture-based meats for generatively raised,

grass-bed, you know, stuff like that. And really over the past 25 years, we've really built a small

business or small business owners. And people here in Western North Carolina see us in the

context of small business owners, community members, people who, you know, basketball coach,

we raised our three boys in our community here. And I think folks in your Western North Carolina

really want to see leaders who are less interested in partisan politics and more interested in

being a neighbor, being a community member. And that's kind of the campaign we're trying to run

right here. And we find that across the country, but we also find that in this particular moment,

particularly when people are concerned with things like affordability and healthcare,

they don't seem to think as ideologically as we in the media would like to think that they think,

right? They think about who's, who can I elect who's going to actually work on the problems that I'm

facing? Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, you look at things like healthcare folks in our

community, healthcare premiums went up, some folks up 300% just this January, whenever the

subsidies went away. Here in Western North Carolina, we have a very service-based economy,

a lot of tourism. And a lot of folks moving into the community and buying up houses and so

housing is very expensive. Here in Jackson County, North Carolina, there was a study done

that showed that if you're to buy a starter home, you need to be making close to $150,000 a year.

That's just unrealistic for so many folks. And here we run a farming operation. And to expect to

people to make these big high salaries is just unrealistic. And we have three sons. And we'd love

to have them returned in community and be able to live here and buy a home. But oftentimes for so

many folks, it feels out of reach. And nowadays we're seeing everything else go up with groceries,

everything else. And that's just really discouraging for so many families. And I think when people

get discouraged about their ability to work 40 hours a week, put in their hard time,

they can't afford to live in those communities or afford to get ahead and save money,

then they start to get discouraged. And to me, that's a really big problem with our democracy,

because people feel like it doesn't work for them. Yeah, people should be able to work and get

their fair share according to what they understood to be the case. Jamie, nice to meet you. Thank you

for being with us tonight. We'll follow your campaign very closely. We hope you visit with us again.

Thank you so much for the opportunity. Jamie Ager, Democratic nominee, North Carolina's

11th congressional district that is Western North Carolina. We'll be right back.

What if the Allied forces never defeated Germany? What if fascism had won in the 1930s?

That what if question is explored in the science fiction classic, The Man in the High Castle

by the late Philip K. Dick? The novel early explores an alternate reality where the US is split

between the Nazi ruled American Reich and to the east and the Japanese occupied Pacific

states of America to the West. We'll discuss The Man in the High Castle for tomorrow's

meeting the Vell Chicago philanthropist book club. I hope you'll join us 10 a.m Eastern

right here on MS now and that is tonight's last word. That's where it's last word,