1129: Why Democrats Must Oppose Trump's Iran War

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Also, beyond this show, we'll be covering all the developments around the war in Iran and the political fallout across the Crooked Network. So please consider subscribing if you haven't already so that you don't miss out on anything. Friend of the Pod subscribers get our new extra episode of Pod Save America called Pod Save America Only Friends. Other subscriber only shows like Polar Coaster with Dan Pfeiffer. Access to all of our excellent Substack newsletters like Pod Save America Open Tabs. Ad-free episodes of all your favorite Crooked Pods like this one. And you get to feel good about supporting one of the few media outlets left that Barry Weiss isn't in charge of. It's a very real joke. I know. So anyway. Is she interested? Head to crooket.com slash friends and subscribe today before it's too late. All right. Let's start with what we know as of Monday afternoon Pacific time about the latest war that Trump and Netanyahu have started in the Middle East. The U.S. and Israel have been launching airstrikes in Iran since Saturday, aimed at destroying the regime's military capabilities and killing its leaders, dozens of whom are now dead, including the 86-year-old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini. Iran and its proxies have retaliated with strikes against at least 10 other Middle Eastern countries, targeting U.S. military bases and assets, but also hitting airports and hotels. The U.S. and Israel have killed at least 550 Iranians so far, including at least 175 people, mostly children, in an Israeli strike that hit a girls' elementary school in southern Iran. Iranian retaliatory strikes have killed at least 10 Israelis, six civilians across the Gulf, and now six American troops, with at least 18 other Americans seriously wounded. Trump's initial reaction to the first American deaths of this war came in a pre-taped video message he released from his golf club on Sunday. Let's listen. We pray for the full recovery of the wounded and send our immense love and eternal gratitude to the families of the fallen. And sadly, there will likely be more. Before it ends, that's the way it is. That's the way it is. It's the way the cookie crumbles. Trump's first live remarks about the war came on Monday morning during a Medal of Honor ceremony at the White House, where he did not take any questions. Let's listen. Today they said, oh, well, if the president wants to do it really quickly, after that he'll get bored i don't get bored there's nothing boring about this do you agree with that pete i don't think there's anything mr generals i think there's nothing boring about it 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 but i think we can save a lot of money I just saved curtains. Because I built many a ballroom. I believe it's going to be the most beautiful ballroom anywhere in the world. And when you hear all that hammering out there, you know why the first lady is not thrilled exactly. When I hear that sound, that beautiful sound behind me, it means money, so I like it. But my wife isn't thrilled. We are at war right now. He did say that after the news that, at that time, four Americans were killed, now six. So you guys have any initial thoughts on the seriousness and sobriety with which the commander-in-chief is talking about a war that has now killed Americans? How about it, pal? So we've gone to several stupid wars in American history. A bunch of Republicans launched a war preemptively in Iraq, and they tried to do it in the most sophisticated way possible. They were all so smart and they'd all know history and they'd had all the years of expertise and research to explain how that was going to be so easy and quick and we would be welcomed as liberators. These were the smart Republicans, we were told. These were the people that had really thought it out. They knew what they wanted. They knew their objectives. They were willing to lie to get there because they were so convinced of their point of view. They had an ideology and they were going to pursue it to its end. And that turned into a disastrous quagmire that cost thousands of American lives and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives unleashed to chaos. We're still dealing with the consequences of this group of fucking yahoos. So glib in virtually every way they talk about this, barely offering a rationale. the rationales they do offer are completely in conflict with one another from a golf club in Florida while he's wearing a hat, not enough to stay back at the office to launch the preemptive war in Iran. And we're expecting this to go well with these fucking schmucks in charge. It's unbelievable. And the fact that we can watch these sort of cavalier and second right people lead our country to war. And not only do they do that, but they have the backing of Republicans in Congress. They have even Democrats in Congress afraid to criticize them, afraid to put their names either yes or no in favor of this. The whole thing is such a kind of statement of rot and decline. It is disgusting. I was disgusted. And I sort of watched it all happening over the weekend and just sort of like i i it was sort of it's not just how awful these people are it's the way in which it's treated they're they're treated with a level of of seriousness and how they're approaching it when we can all see with our fucking eyeballs that they're so in over their heads and unqualified uh and ridiculous and how they handle it uh that's where i'm at tommy remember um obama responding to the death of american troops by saying that's the way it is from in a tapes message from hawaii Yeah. Remember that? We weren't always perfect on the death of Americans, but yes, I know what you're saying. Like I have a stylistic and a substantive critique here. As a communications matter, the fact that he launched a war on Saturday and then didn't comment on it until like live in person until Monday morning at an unrelated event about like a Medal of Honor. Need a war in Iran topper for these remarks. It's baffling. I mean, like after the Venezuela operation, Trump did a press conference immediately. Rubio was on all the shows. Like now we're just doing a video message from your country club. that does not suggest like confidence in the policy. And I think like big picture over the weekend, I was consuming news and like doom scrolling. And then every once in a while, I would just like get so angry that I wanted to scream because this is a war of choice. And the first choice was 2018 when Trump pulled out of the Iran nuclear agreement, which Iran was complying with and would have prevented them from getting a nuclear weapon. And it led to a series of choices that got you to Saturday when Trump launched a war of choice that has now led to six US service members dying and apparently a school full of girls in Iran getting bombed. And like Iraq, this is a war of choice built off of a lie. Like we'll get into the details in a minute, but there's no imminent nuclear threat. There is no imminent threat of Iran having a ballistic missile that could hit the United States. There is this new spin that they're on the cusp of creating a missile shield for their nuclear work. That is totally bullshit. But this choice is going to get a lot of innocent people killed. We are going to spend tens of billions of dollars at a minimum on weapons and it could play out for years. So like, I think the neocons are back. Like we might as well have Dick Cheney in charge given this policy. I was worried that over at the Bulwark, Bill Kristol would be like reactivated like a Manchurian candidate. And all of a sudden kind of like his body moving in ways he doesn't totally understand and is not in control of, kind of like going back to the old Dick Cheney controls. He's very upset. Good. He's very upset about it. Must be a conflict in there. I will say that it is mostly stylistic, the communications, the communications critique here. But there's something substantive about it too, which is like, and we could talk about Obama, but it's like, I don't know, George Bush, Biden, anyone. Like you send Americans to war, you talk to the American people about it and you take questions from their representatives in the press. Like that's just what you do. And the fact that they don't do that, the fact that he spent 300 words towards the end of a two hour State of the Union on Iran, not even bothering to make the case, not bothering to make the case in the lead up, not even bothering to try to make the case to the rest of the world, not responding to any questions from the press about this, doing a couple of tape messages from Florida while this is happening. It just goes to show like they don't give a fuck what we think. They don't give a fuck what anyone thinks. They think that they're in charge. They make the rules and everyone else can go fuck themselves. Well, it also like it it goes to the lack of any kind of real congressional debate, any sense that Congress ought to weigh in as our representatives. Like, yes, it's a process question is not about the substance of whether or not this is right or wrong, but the way those things connect is in a democracy, we are supposed to weigh in because we understand that the stakes of an action like this are very high. Trump's not really a details guy, which is why he's left the nitty gritty of explaining his government's rationale for starting this war, as well as their objectives in Iran, to the substitute weekend Fox host who now runs the Pentagon in between a push-up contest with the Health and Human Services Secretary. Pete Hegseth held a press conference on Monday alongside the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Dan Raisin Cain. Here are the highlights from Hegseth. We didn't start this war, but under President Trump, we are finishing it. Turns out the regime who chanted death to America and death to Israel was gifted death from America and death from Israel. This is not a so-called regime change war, but the regime sure did change. No stupid rules of engagement, no nation-building quagmire, no democracy-building exercise. To the media outlets and political left screaming endless wars. Stop. This is not Iraq. This is not endless. What is our exit strategy here and when will it be deployed? I would never hang a time frame from our perspective, The commander-in-chief sets the op tempo in terms of this fight. As I said, it's on his terms. What are our objectives? And can you share more information on how the soldiers who were killed were killed? To ensure that they can't use that conventional umbrella to continue a pursuit of nuclear ambitions. As it pertains to the U.S. casualties, every once in a while you might have one, unfortunately we call it a squirter, that makes its way through. And in that particular case, it happened to hit. So right before the squirter comment, which is, that's going to be a hard one to forget. Hegseth did lay out after a couple of contradictory statements like endless war. Come on, this is an endless war. So what's the time frame? I would never put a time frame on this war. But he did lay out what's maybe the closest the administration has come to defining the military objective in Iran. Tommy, what did you make of his answer there? How many times do you think he practiced those lines in the mirror in the morning as he was shaving? Too many, like, sing-songy, like, not a regime-changed war, but the regime sure did change. Death to America, but we gifted them death to that. Yeah, not a regime-changed war, but the Israelis killed the supreme leader of Iran, who is in charge of the country since 1989 and also seen as a religious figure and the leader of the armed forces and the, you know, final say in all political decisions. But, you know, regime evolution, I guess, is what we're saying. Yeah. And that the attack is surgical and not utopian. However, Iran, take back your country. We're not just going to destroy their missile capability or the nuclear capability, but their ability to, quote, project power. Yeah. Right. So whatever that means. So, yeah, the new line is that they're on the cusp of like seemingly making so many ballistic missiles that they would have a, quote, conventional umbrella that would allow them to pursue nuclear weapons. That's just that's not a thing. The country's got a nuclear umbrella. That means you can use a threat of nuclear retaliation to deter attacks. That's what the North Koreans do. The idea that Iran could have enough ballistic missiles to prevent the U.S. from intervening to take out a nuclear program is just made up bullshit. A magical force field. Yeah. And the reason, you know, it's made up bullshit is because, like, the U.S. and Israel over the past year have had their way with the Iranian military whenever they wanted. They bombed them repeatedly and no, you know, conventional deterrent has changed that. So I don't know why they're trying these new lines. I don't know why they're trotting this bullshit out. The messaging changes are so stark. Like you were saying, like on Saturday, we were talking about a regime change and the people rising up. Now that's gone. Trump's like, clearly has no plan for the future. He talked to like 10 reporters and one of them, he was like, oh, I got a list of three guys who should take over. Then he called another reporter. It's like, oh, those three guys are dead now. So they're just winging it. Yeah, why do you think there's all these shifting explanations for the rationale for this war? Who fucking knows? It's really, it is, well, so Rubio also underscored what Hegseth said. He said, Iran in about a year, or a year and a half, would have crossed the line of immunity. I don't know what the line of immunity is. There's no such thing. They would have so many missiles that they could hold the whole world hostage, which is of course quite a claim because I have, are we suggesting that the Iranian conventional arsenal would have been unable to be defeated by the United States of America? I don't think that's what our military would say about it, but then, okay, that's a year and a half. And so then he's asked, Rubio's asked, is it imminent? And he says, yes, because we were aware of Israeli intentions and understood what it would mean for us and understood what it would mean for us and had to be prepared to act as a result of it. So he's saying it was imminent because Israel was going to strike imminently. And if Israel striked Iran imminently, Iran would strike back at us. So but Cain, the chairman of Joint Chiefs, says in that conference with Hegseth that Israel acted on U.S. intelligence when it did the strikes against Iran's leadership. We were not only aware of it, we were instrumental to it. And so the argument is now from directly from Rubio, we had to strike because Iran was going to strike after we struck. Like that's where they're at, which feels like actually the closest to the truth. Well, we talked about this in the last episode, but that random administration source or it was in and around the administration source to Politico that basically said the hope within the administration was that maybe Israel would go first because then Iran would retaliate and we could retaliate against Iran. And it turns out they thought that that was a possible scenario and then said, yeah, instead of letting Israel go first, let's just go with them because that's going to happen anyway. Yeah, that political leak was that they thought it would be better politics. Right. For the Israelis to strike first. Which was also insane. Yes, completely insane. And then Rubio today, there was a leak over the weekend that there was an imminent threat, right? That the U.S. had to preemptively strike Iran because the Iranians were going to hit us or hit our bases in the region and lead to a mass casualty incident. And who's that idiot over at CNN, that fucking goober who's always yelling on the panels at I, Scott Jennings. Oh, yeah. Tweeted this out credulously, which was like not believable, not credible in any way. And what Rubio did today to clarify was to say, we knew the Israelis were going to strike, which meant the Iranians were going to strike back. So we had to be involved on the front end to preempt that or, you know, keep American forces safe, which I think kind of like cuts out the step where maybe you could talk Israel out of doing something that would put, you know, U.S. personnel in the region at risk. Well, also, traditionally, the United States doesn't publicly say we are only going to full-scale bombing across a Middle Eastern country because kind of Israel dragged us into it. Well, let's get that in a second. But on this missile point, like, the Iranians have a lot of missiles, but they do not have an ICBM. The Defense Intelligence agency did an assessment last year that found that if Iran decided to have one, they could have an ICBM by 2035. So that assessment has basically been the same since the 90s, that they're a decade away from having this technology. So the suggestion that Iran was on the cusp of having a missile that could hit the United States is a lie, and it is undercut by the U.S. intelligence agencies, period. It seems like all of these lies have all been undercut by now, too. It's always like they throw out a bunch of lies at the beginning and then they stop trying to defend them. Like, because now, now where we are is the Rubio rationale, right? Which is not an ICBM, which is not, they were a week away from having a nuclear bomb or nuclear material, whatever the fuck they were trying to say. It was not any of this. It was just, well, Israel was going to do it. And so we decided to just go with Israel, which also, by the way, if you read the long New York times piece and we can get into like how Trump got to this, got to yes on war. It was Bibi Netanyahu who played a huge role here. And the two of them were talking about this since, I guess, December was the first time Bibi brought it up to Trump. And then they kept talking about it. And then Trump was going to go after the regime started murdering all of the protesters. And then Bibi was like, no, no, we're not quite ready yet. So just wait a little bit and then we'll do it together. So this idea that like, oh, and Israel just went, we had to, we were going to, they were intent on going. And so we just had to go with them. Like, Bibi and Trump were planning it the whole time. And just, again, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs said that Israel acted, that when Israel struck the leadership of Iran, they did it with U.S. intelligence. So it was with our participation. We are instrumental to this happening. We are aware that it is happening. That is a joint effort. So I don't understand how this is. we had, we created, we had to, the imminent threat was from the campaign we were starting. That's what made it imminent. We are the imminent. We did the imminence. I wouldn't think too hard about it. Yeah. I think, I think there's two, I think the conflicting rationale has come from, look, I think the reasons we're at war with Iran are Trump's ego and Netanyahu. The ego point is, I think, Graham, Lindsey Graham, people like that. And the neocons are saying, take out Maduro, take out the Iranian regime, then we'll get the Cuban government next and it'll be this grand historic figure. And Trump, I think, has seen like the capabilities of the U.S. military. There's one story that said he thinks he has like godlike powers or they have godlike powers and he wants to use them. And then there's Netanyahu who has been pushing Trump really hard to act, like you guys were saying, and put out a statement, I think yesterday saying, this coalition of forces allows us to do what I've yearned to do for 40 years. And you just said it. So last June when I said, you know, I thought, I feel like the United States got dragged to war by Netanyahu. Jonathan Greenblatt at the ADL said that was anti-Semitism. And now this is what Marco Rubio was saying. And this is what Netanyahu was saying happened here, which is that he talked the United States into joining him in this insane war of choice that doesn't actually directly threaten the United States. Yeah, I realize there's a lot of folks, especially on the right, who say, you know, the Israeli government controls U.S. foreign policy. And then people say that that's like vaguely anti-Semitic and certainly anti-Zionist. But like in this case, it seems pretty clear the administration is saying that Israel helped. Now, I do think, Tommy, to your point about Trump's ego, I'm sure that B.B. fed into that during like was he's trying to make the case to Trump. Right. Because I'm sure B.B.'s not just like, I really want this. Please do that for me. For sure. Be like, sir, you could be the greatest president of all time. I also think that the that Obama and the nuclear deal is a big part, too, because they probably told him that pussy Obama. he did this terrible deal and you can you can show him up by actually showing that you did this the right way and it would be easy and so i'm sure that obama was a part of it too and did you read i'm sure you read the new york times story about this vance of all people convinced trump to do this because he was leaning towards remember he was thinking about doing a quick strike and then maybe saving the big one for later or he was going to do the big one and vance was like well if you're going to do it go big and go right away and then trump apparently after that meeting started thinking about what Vance said and was like, okay, that was a good idea. The other part of this too is- Jamie Vance, who wrote that op-ed. Yeah, all these fucking- Well, the best part, what was the best part about Donald Trump is that he's not going to get us in any more foreign wars? Yeah, no new wars. Yeah, and then I do think part of this too is Trump, you have Rubio out there saying they were a year away from having a hyper-advanced conventional umbrella that would have made them immune. But meanwhile, the lesson they took from Operation Midnight Hammer is that actually Iran's capabilities are not something we have to worry too much about. They're actually in a weakened position. Now would be the time, right, in the wake of these protests. Look, the idea that like Benjamin Netanyahu with U.S. intelligence is not decapitating the entire Iranian regime without U.S., if not encouragement permission, right? And so even Rubio going out there and saying, well, Israel was gonna do it, so he had no choice. I don't think they needed encouragement. Well, I'm not saying they would need encouragement, but they're not gonna start the campaign unless they feel pretty confident the U.S. is- Yeah, support, encourage, yeah, I mean, support. Right. And like, so Rubio going out there and saying, well, the Israelis were gonna do it, and therefore that was gonna create some kind of imminent threat I don understand why in this moment they feel the need to act as though they were dragged into it Maybe that in part because of their own politics about not wanting to seem like they were just choosing a random day to start a giant new conflict in the Middle East Maybe they are worried a bit about their own politics. But that's the only way I can see to kind of undercut the idea that we weren't dragged into this in part because Benjamin Netanyahu has been gunning for a war with Iran for the entire time he's been in public life. I thought another notable detail in that story was that Intel officials had predicted that a popular uprising against the regime after a strike was a remote possibility, which is interesting in that Trump, when he first announced this, was like, take your country back. Yeah, I mean, it's like a large unarmed population is just going to rise up against rise up against the security forces that look, they have no plan. Like they're just winging it. Like, again, like there's all these people talk about what the options are. Like people like, well, maybe there's a Venezuela option where you find like the vice president. There's like a Dulce Rodriguez of Iran. I don't think that exists. Iran has stronger power centers. There's RGC. There's the Basij militia. There's all these groups that are that are armed. And to tell an unarmed population to rise up and take those people on is laughable. Like they're the people are going to get killed. Also, like Iran, tens of millions of Iranians vote for the hard line government. Right. We see the videos of people in Tehran celebrating the death of the Supreme Leader, but we don't know what the whole country thinks. And so the suggestion that there's some uniformed opinion about what happened here, that everyone will support what the U.S. just did, is just wrong. And then there are also ethnic and religious minorities who might see this as their moment to rise up and take their own space. There's the Kurds, there's the Baluk separatists, there's Sunni minorities. And so I'm sure there's some listeners who are Iranian listening to this, yelling at us through the phone, being like the regime was bad, we needed a regime change. And like, I hear what you're saying, but like, I obviously hate this regime too, but like it couldn't get worse from here. We've seen it happen before. And like, that's the concern. And also ultimately you're trusting Trump and Pete Hegseth to manage a war with Iran, which seems bad idea to me. Taliban was a murderous, repressive regime. Saddam Hussein ran a murderous, repressive regime. Kim Jong-un. Kim Jong-un. Vladimir Putin. We don't go to war with governments that aren't repressive and dangerous. so far this year. Yeah, used to. Pod Save America is brought to you by ZipRecruiter. What's the latest trend in hiring? Skills-based hiring is the latest trend proving that talent outweighs credentials, leading to faster hires and higher quality results. If you're an employer who's adopted skills-based hiring, we should do that here. it's like no I don't focus on the skills what's Peter's PhD doing for us nothing we overlook the skills here we just try to just the best way to ensure that your applicants have the right skills is of course ZipRecruiter ZipRecruiter recommends smart screening questions to help you hone in on that perfect match for your role and right now you can try it for free at ZipRecruiter.com slash crooked ZipRecruiter's powerful matching technology finds qualified candidates fast You can easily add ZipRecruiter's screening questions to your job post so you get the highest quality applicants. 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That's article.com slash crooked for $50 off your first purchase of $100 or more. So looking forward, Trump's been all over the map on what an exit strategy might look like and has basically had a different answer for every reporter who has randomly dialed his number, which apparently happens quite frequently now. There's the, as Tommy mentioned, the Venezuela type outcome where he gets his Delce Rodriguez of Iran, who's willing to work with the U.S., I guess, because I don't know what they're promised, like oil money, corruption gets them, gets to grease the wheels there, and then they just oppress their people. There's also, you know, telling the Iranian people to overthrow the regime entirely, which, as we discussed, is pretty remote. And then it's like, well, maybe if it's fine, if we just degrade their military capabilities to the point where they can't cause any real trouble for at least a few years. Do you think, Tommy, that the administration is trying to be strategically ambiguous? Is there any chance on the outcomes? Or do they just have no fucking idea what they actually want? No, I mean, look, I sort of think, I walked here a second ago what I think. I don't think they have a plan. I don't think they have a plan for what comes next. As Trump, you know, like we were saying before, Trump called a reporter and said, I have a short list. And then he said, they're all dead to the next reporter he talked to. So even if they find a Delce Rodriguez type, I think that person is likely to get killed by the IRGC or other existing power structures unless we have boots on the ground to support that person. Like just saying rise up and, you know, take your country back. Like that's not a plan. They're just winging it. They don't know what will happen next. I think they're just letting rip. What are some of the different ways this whole thing could go south really fast? Anyone want to walk through some of those? Aside from the fact that just, you know, more Americans could die in the prosecution of the war. so what you feel from what hegseth says there when he says like uh you know this is not iraq and what what trump is saying like there's this idea that as long as we don't claim ownership of the consequences we're not going to be responsible for the consequences right as long as we don't we're not they're they're avoiding saying we will not put troops uh like boots on the ground they won't say that explicitly but obviously they don't want to put uh boots on the ground and all of their language around like this wasn't regime change but the regime changed whatever whatever it is, it is around saying, we're doing what we're going to do for their military capacities, for their capacity to deploy drones and do damage to our bases and our allies in the region. Iranians are going to own the consequences of that, right? Like that's what they're kind of saying. And whatever chaos comes next, if there's a civil war, there's violence in the streets, if a new repressive regime emerges and puts down anyone who tries to fight it, whatever happens next. Like, not our problem, not our problem. But of course, it will be our problem one way or another. We will be dealing with the ramifications of it. Our allies will be. We will. Israel will be U.S. bases in the region will be the the the the the impact on on oil and gas prices. We will live with the consequences, even if you don't claim them. Yeah. Trump. Trump does not seem like he wants to live by the pottery barn rule. Opposite. Yeah. Opposite that. If you break it, sue the pottery barn. For those of you who weren't alive during the Iraq war, that was Who said it? Was it Colin Powell? The Powell Doctrine, yeah. Yeah, the Powell Doctrine. If you break it, you bought it. Not so for Donald Trump. I mean, look, there's this concern that, first of all, we've already seen violence and chaos spill out, not just in the Middle East, but all over the world. We've seen at our embassies in Pakistan, I see Iraq, Jordan, right? There's like protests outside the embassies. There is this idea that like if Iran becomes a failed state, it's not only a haven for terrorism and civil war, but it precipitates another refugee crisis. There's, you know, the oil shocks all around the world. How many fucking tens of billions of dollars will this war cost the American taxpayers? There's also like the idea of terrorist attacks against American interests, American troops abroad. And even here inspired terrorist attacks here. We saw a shooting in Austin over the weekend. Potentially the shooter was sort of inspired by what happened in Iran. So this just like and this is just what a couple of days into this thing. I mean, yeah, started on Saturday. I mean, Iran has decided to attack everyone. They're fired. They think they've there's been attacks on like 11 countries or 12 countries. They're firing at all these Gulf countries, the UAE, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait. Some of those shots are fired at where we have U.S. bases, but some are just like civilian infrastructure. And the Iranians use ballistic missiles and then use these cheap drones called Shahed drones. It costs like 20 grand, 50 grand a pop. They have tons of them. They could fly 2,000 kilometers and they basically just like GPS to a point and then detonate when they hit it The interceptor missiles we use to take them down are In short supply and they're really expensive. So those things cost 20 to 50 grand the Shad drones Our interceptors cost million bucks a couple million bucks a pop and so we're running low on them The UAE is running low Qatar is running low and it's this whole thing is a big war of attrition Which is to say what's gonna run out first the interceptor missiles or the Iranian ballistic missiles and drones? So like, that's a big thing we're all watching. There's the economic cost, which is the Iranians said they would close the Strait of Hormuz. They haven't mined it, but they've been firing at ships. 80, you know, 20% of the world's oil goes to the Strait of Hormuz. That will have a huge economic cost. Including to their allies, by the way. What's that? Their allies also rely on the Strait of Hormuz as well. Yeah, the Chinese, everyone does. Yeah. And then, you know, the longer term, like the longer this goes on, the more likely there is to be civil war, sectarian conflict, some sort of failed state, some sort of refugee flow. And again, we're talking about a country of 90 million people. And the administration from Trump on down has repeatedly in the last couple of days since this started, refused to rule out boots on the ground in any like significant capacity, which is also pretty terrifying. They won't rule it out. They won't rule it out. Trump didn't just refuse to rule it out. His comments were very weird. He said, I don't have the yips with respect to boots on the ground. Like every president says, there will be no boots on the ground. I don't say it. I say probably don't need them or if they were necessary. So I don't know what he's trying to signal there. Like I could imagine a commando raid that includes the US and Israel that is designed to get the HEU or the nuclear materials that they think are somehow buried somewhere. Beyond that, though, it's like, what are we talking about? I really like so much of what this is, is in response to the things they don't like about Democrats. Right. And they always felt like the date certans around Afghanistan were kind of projecting what we were going to do to our enemies. And so I think they're incredibly reluctant to put like troops on the ground, not to like excluding kind of short sort of like tactical, like deploying small units to do small tasks. But boots on the ground, Trump is clearly worried about it, but he kind of feels as though in order to project strength, I'm not going to tell you what I'm going to do. I need to have, that is, I think him trying to be, kind of leave his options open to not sort of first wear a scary option to the Iranians. Or it means we have boots on the ground right now. And we may also have boots on the ground. And I think there's a very good chance that there are like special forces contingents who are on the ground. And then maybe they're not. Maybe they're deployed under like Title 50. So it's deniable. And, you know, that's kind of what he's getting at here. I agree with you that like in Venezuela, there were boots on the ground, right? It was very short term. And I think what J.D. Vance focuses on, what Trump tries to focus on is we're not doing long term occupation and nation building. But I think the response to that is it's not necessarily up to you. If Iran remains a threat, if they keep firing drones and missiles, if this regime in some form or fashion stays in place and the threat is not gone, the threat is not gone. The Israelis won't see the threat is gone. So what then? I mean, also, you know, George W. Bush kept saying that they were going to get troops out of Iraq by the spring and summer of 2003. Sometimes like these the intentions to not have boots like one thing leads to another. And then suddenly you feel like, OK, well, now I got to stay in there and now they're firing on us here and now we got to put in more. I mean, it's it's it's fucking slippery slope. It was just like, so the arrogance of believing you're in control of events. You've launched a war, it's destabilizing. The world is a dangerous place. You're not in charge of all the consequences you've unleashed. And, you know, there's this sort of like kind of macho thing that Hegseth does is the way Trump gets kind of puffed up by the people around him. Like, but yeah, man, like managing delicate relationships with regimes that are despicable and murderous to try to get deals to protect your interests without destabilizing, like it is unsatisfying on some level. It is hard to live in the real world and accept compromise and like long-term strategic thinking where the outcomes aren't certain. But you choose that over instability because you have respect for how dangerous the world can be, how much worse things can get, even against your best intentions. And there's just, that is to me, like that is the connection from the way they talk to the substance, which is like these people are cavalier about American lives because they are just not thoughtful or careful. They are like decadent about history. And it is dangerous to have people like that and just charge in moments like this. Incredibly dangerous. All right, let's talk about how the politics of this war are playing out so far. One joke I saw going around on Twitter this weekend was a good thing Congress isn't alive to see this. That was a good joke. Sure enough, with a few exceptions, the Republicans who run Congress are all on board with whatever Trump wants to do in Iran. Democrats being Democrats have split into a few camps. You've got your very pro-Israel hawkish types like your Josh Gottheimers and your John Fettermans, who are so far fully supportive of the war, though that's definitely a minority position in the party. You've got progressive Democrats and even a lot of mainstream Democrats like Ruben Gallego, who is going to talk to later, John Ossoff, Tim Kaine, who've come out strongly opposed to the war. And then you've got the most Democrat response of all from a group of Democrats who start their statements with a lot of throat clearing about how the Iranian regime is bad, you must prove that you are not grieving the Ayatollah with your first couple sentences. Because someone out there, apparently, there's apparently a bunch of liberals out there grieving the Ayatollah. I haven't seen them, but they're out there. We've got to condemn them, and we've got to make sure that we're not grieving for the Ayatollah. Every statement has to start with, Iran is brat. And that's where it goes. And then after you do the throat clearing about how awful and terrible and oppressive and murderous the regime is, then you've got to mainly criticize Trump for not consulting with Congress first. And then you kind of just do a bunch of mealy mouth shit from there. You think some of these Democrats are scared of the politics here? And if so, why? I don't know why they would be scared of the politics. Like, this is not a popular war. There's not a close to a majority of people who want this war. Not Democrats, not independents. I think what I want from Democrats is go after the war on the merits, not on the process. The process ship has sailed. Focus on what's happening here, which is Trump lied about the threat. Trump, Iran was nowhere near close to getting a nuclear weapon. He's lying about the threat from Iranian ballistic missiles. They are nowhere close to hitting the United States. Hammer him on that. He lied. And then talk about the cost. Now, six service members are dead. More are gravely wounded. It's going to cost us tens of billions of dollars. No one wants to be spending money this way. It's not a popular thing to be doing. And then I think we should just highlight the chaos around the world. Since this action, the war is not happening in Iran. It is terrorizing populations in Israel and Lebanon, in the Gulf. American diplomats are less safe. Embassies are getting overrun. Americans, either the gunman in Texas might have been inspired by what happened in Iran. Like Trump is making us less safe. And like, just hammer him on that. Go for it. Talk about the substance. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I asked Diego about this and he said the same, like we should be focusing on like, why are we at war with Iran? Like why, what was the goals? What is the objective? Why is it worth sending, risking American lives in this moment for this conflict? And all these people that are defending this, if you would have asked them a year ago, would you like to see the US in a regime change war with Iran in the next year? They'd all have said no. They'd all have said, of course not. And no one wants that. And no one saying that Republicans want that should be believed. We never would want that. Of course not. But now that it's here and it's happening, all these people feel obligated on the Republican side to support it. And then Democrats, who I think there are some that I think genuinely feel there are, I think, reluctant both because of the politics and because on some level they support the policy and they know that those politics aren't good either. Right. Like they don't want to support the policy. I think on some level they're like, you know what, I wouldn't have done it this way, but I hope it works. And I don't want to go out there and say, I think this is a bad idea if they can remove the Ayatollah. There's two flavors of that. There are some who just quietly do actually want to see the Iranian regime toppled. And a lot of them are kind of the closest individuals to AIPAC, for example. And then there's the other group, the old folks, of which there are many, who think about like Gulf War I in 1991 and the people who were against the first Gulf War and felt like they looked stupid afterwards when it was popular and successful and had 90% support. It's just like, have we not lived through enough of these wars that we're still thinking and responding in the binary here, which is like, oh, well, so then if you're opposed to this, you must love that Iran is the number one state sponsor of terrorism around the world and has killed Americans and has destabilized the region. because if you're against that, then you'd be for this war. There's no, like, oh yeah, I want to see the Iranian regime topple too. I don't want to see the fucking Ayatollah there. I don't want to see a murderous regime in Iran. I hope that, like, you know, the hamburger from heaven falls from the sky and takes out the whole regime and then democracy flourishes in Iran. Yeah, of course, that is something to hope for. Some stone-cold moron at the free press tweeted, if you call yourself a progressive and you're not even a little excited by the prospect of a woman-hating, gay-hating, Jew-hating, Neanderthal regime that in no way represents the will of its people being crushed. You're not actually a progressive. I like that. No one ever saw the Ayatollah pride. So put it on your progressive checklist. Medicare for all, death to the Ayatollah. Like, what are you talking about? No, it's okay to talk about the downside risk of a regime change war of choice, even against a bad guy. Yeah. Look, sometimes when you're trying to murder an 86 year old ayatollah you have to also kill uh over a hundred uh young school girls yeah and that's just the way and i guess if you're a progressive who likes women's rights don't you what oh i guess that doesn't work there huh just like we have to ignore all the other stuff ridiculous well they it's just this thought that like that after a couple strikes that democracy is going to flourish in iran and there's going to be no cost to do that like what the fuck are we talking about here. We just did this in Iraq. And like it starts out less popular than any previous conflicts, in part because there was no debate. Like the country's waking up, you know, the country's Friday night. You know, people are like, what? We're at war with Iran, but it's the weekend. Like there's just like no debate about it whatsoever. We learn about it from the press over the weekend. The president doesn't give a big speech, as you said. And if it starts out in this way? And then you look at what people say and they say, well, like, you know, there is ambivalence in the polling for sure. Like that's always there because people don't like the Iranian government. But you say like, oh, is it worth American lives? No, the sport starts to drop. Would you be okay with continuing the conflict if gas prices are rising? No, they wouldn't. People weren't in the market for sacrificing American lives and our tax dollars and having the economy be hurt for a war with Iran, in part because no one ever made the case for that. No one ever signed up to make that sacrifice as a nation. That just didn't happen. I'll just read off some of the polling. There's been a bunch of polling so far. What stood out to me, Washington Post did a poll. They did a thousand person poll. They also did that thing where they text them as well. 39 percent strongly or somewhat support. That was it. 52 percent strongly or somewhat opposed. In In fact, strongly oppose was 39%. So the number that strongly oppose is the same as total strongly and somewhat support. Why are we there? They ask people, why are we there? To take control wins at 14%. Unsure is in second at 13%. Regime change at 12%. Stop them from getting nuclear weapon at 9%. Getting their money and oil at 9%. Distract from the Epstein files at 8%. 8%, and then at the very bottom, protect the United States at 7%. Coming in after distract from the Epstein files. They have not really sold people on a clear vision for what we're doing here. There's also, they ask, are you concerned about a full-scale war? 74% is concerned, 25% now. Pause. We're having a full-scale war. What is that question? I know. I think maybe when the strike started, they were like, maybe it's a few strikes. Who knows? I don't know. But I know I had the same thought about that. What is full-scale war? I do think like if you want the generous interpretation or the sort of whatever to give it meaning would be soldiers on the ground fighting on the ground in Iran. Yeah. And then Reuters did a poll only about they found only a quarter of Americans approved of the strikes. Among Republicans, the total was 55 percent. Still not that high. And 42 percent of Republican voters said that they will be less likely to support the Iran campaign if it leads to U.S. troops in the Middle East being killed or injured. Well, there you go. That has happened now. Yep. So that is the point. I just like here's the thing if you're a Democrat and you're I mean, Chami, you brought up the George, the first Iraq war with George Bush. Right. So let's say for principled reasons, you come out against the war strongly right now. And then I don't know, Trump somehow gets the scenario where the regime falls or they get some other Iranian leader who's in the regime to actually start working with the United States and be more pragmatic. and it's not full democracy in Iran, but it looks more like, I don't know, Saudi Arabia, one of these Gulf monarchies or something. And it's not great, but it also doesn't like threaten the rest of the world. And you were opposed to the war. I don't know. What do you think is going to happen? You think you're going to lose your next election? You think that when someone says that you weren't for the war that was like, that left sort of an okay middling situation that we don't know about? You think that you'd be like, yeah, well, I didn't want to go to war and risk American lives in the world. You think that's going to be a problem for you in politics? Like, I don't think that's going to be a fucking political problem. Just say what you believe. If the United States were attacked and Donald Trump responded to some kind of an attack by taking the country into war and then there was a congressional vote and it got behind it, I would be terrified to have Donald Trump in charge of our military during a time in which we were dragged into a war. Truly, if that were the situation, actually brought into a war that we didn't choose. Donald Trump should be impeached and removed from office for his various crimes. He's the most corrupt president in American history. He's profiteering off the office. He is destroying and lawlessly dismantling government agencies, unleashing ICE. He's spending money without congressional approval. He is a menace who is abusing his office every day. Of course, you should not support Donald Trump choosing to take our country to war because he should not be in charge of our military. He should be nowhere near any of these authorities. It is a great crime. It is a shame of history that he is in this job and that we have not been able to keep him from returning to it. And the fact that even when Donald Trump is president, you can't muster the ability to say, no, I'm not in favor of going to war with Iran. I will vote no if there's a war powers resolution. I will vote no if there's an authorization for the use of force. We are certainly not, it is not necessary for us to go to a war with Iran right now. And certainly I would never support giving this president even more authority than he's already had in abuse. Like the fact that we can't make that, it's ridiculous what we're talking about. Donald Trump is prosecuting a war that we did not have to fight. And Democrats, a lot of them, are afraid of their own shadow to come out and just say this is fucking stupid and dangerous Like that is ridiculous ridiculous Putting everyone down for a no Out really unbelievable And then these fucking like all these guys like obtusely saying, I don't see how anybody can, like how anybody can watch what's happening and not be just proud and not just be proud. That's Fetterman, Fetterman's like, why can't we, no Fetterman's like, why can't we just be celebrating what happened today? He is just insufferable. Kind of like, well, why don't you answer your own question? What do you do, this performative, performative idiocy, this sort of like fake obtuseness, where you pretend to not understand that there's a very legitimate argument against what you're saying from colleagues you see every day and presumably have some respect for. I mentioned that Republicans in Congress support the war with a few exceptions. Rand Paul, Thomas Massey, basically. Beyond Congress, at least so far, beyond Congress, there are plenty of MAGA influencers who aren't happy about this war and have already criticized Trump. The Daily Wire's Matt Walsh, the Federalist Sean Davis, which is some new ones there. Steve Bannon. There were also reports that Tucker Carlson had been personally lobbying Trump not to attack. Do you think these guys eventually get on board or at least just sort of quiet down? Or do you think this could be a problem for Trump and further down the road, Vance? I think Bannon tends to get on board. Matt Walsh and Sean Davis probably will, too. I don't think Tucker will ever get on board. He's been consistent about opposing the war in Iran since last June and did not come around when others came around and started praising Trump for Midnight Hammer. I also think, look, Tucker knows his audience and he knows there's a big mega audience out there. for folks who want to hear criticism of regime change wars. And some of it has to do with U.S. support for Israel. And he will be making the case that Netanyahu pushed Trump into going to war, and he's going to have a big, I told you so. Seems like he's got a good case. He's going to play that Rubio quote over and over again today and have a big, I told you so. But I think the J.D. Vance element of him not only no longer opposing regime change wars, but pushing for the biggest, boldest version of them, I do think will harm him in the long term if, you know, MAGA's isolation history continues to grow. Yeah. Yeah. I don't, like, I don't, even if some of these people get back in line, I just, I actually think the comments from Rubio today will be really important. There's just, there is a big overlap between the America first anti-interventionalist mindset and the conspiratorial anti-israel mindset the fact that now we have the secretary of state basically saying we had to do this because israel uh was going to bring us into this will like have a life of its own in those spaces and there'll be people that will go back to trying like nothing nothing anti-semitic is true and if it's true it's not anti-semitic and so like if this is what what rubio is saying like it's going to give a lot of purchase to that argument on that And that is going to have a lot of power. And I don't care what the Republicans in Congress or the powerful influencers say. I think from the bottom up, people are going to be enraged by this. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. This March, as we celebrate International Women's Day, we honor the incredible strength and resilience women show every day. 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Find support and feel lighter in therapy. Sign up and get 10% off at betterhelp.com. That's betterhelp.com. The country feels like it's falling apart right before our eyes and the people inside it are being silenced. So we're going to East 26th Street and Nicolette Avenue, which is where Alex Preddy was executed by ICE and Border Patrol. That is not a headline. That is a human life. And it is all happening right now. Do you worry about your own safety being involved in all this? Yes, but it doesn't really feel like there's another option, you know. And of course they use a five-year-old child as bait. And of course they're doing all these horrible, bad things because they don't know what they're doing. They've been told that they're going to get rid of the worst of the worst, then they have absolute immunity. And they've been told that nothing they do will they ever be held accountable for. On my show, Runaway Country, we go where the headlines hit home, from communities under threat to the people fighting to be heard. New episodes of Runaway Country drop every Thursday. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts or watch on YouTube. Sign up for your one euro trial today at Shopify.nl. That's Shopify.nl. Two other related stories before we get to Lovett's interview with Gallego. First, we talked last week about Pete Hegseth threatening Anthropic because the AI company won't let the government use Claude, their AI model for mass surveillance on Americans or fully autonomous weapons. Turns out Anthropic held firm and Hegseth carried through on his threat except he didn't decide that the government just wouldn't do business with Anthropic anymore. He designated the company as a risk to national security and essentially blacklisted them, saying that, quote, no contractor, supplier or partner that does business with the United States military may conduct any commercial activity with Anthropic. This decision is final. Unsurprisingly, Elon Musk's XAI, which makes Grok, and then Sam Altman's OpenAI, which makes chat GPT agreed to Hegseth's demands. Anthropic has pledged to fight the government in court over Hegseth's decision. Anyone want to go off on how insane this is? Yeah, I mean, just like, again, Anthropics had two asks. One was don't use our software to do bulk mass surveillance of American citizens. And then it was don't use it in autonomous killer robots yet because it's not good enough yet. Yeah, they can't do it. It wasn't even like that clear of a moral stand. You just said the AI wasn't ready. And so it's not. Oh, I'm sorry. You're right. That was France. Right. And so we learned over the weekend that. Honestly, don't beat yourself up over it. Claude. Claude was. Claude, you're fine. Just kill away. You felt something strongly and you went for it. You went for it. Yeah, yeah. The drone wasn't going to fly itself. It turns out it was. So they use Claude against in the Iranian operation over the weekend. We learned somebody reported that. But in response, like you said, two things happens. One, the Trump administration, they didn't just like pull cloud out of their classified systems. They're trying to destroy the company, like designating them a supply chain risk is crazy. That is what the United States has done to Huawei. Yeah. A Chinese state backed telecommunications system that could provide a backdoor for the Chinese, you know, spies to get into all of our communications and Kaspersky Labs, which is a Russian antivirus company, which, you know, you probably don't want to put Russian antivirus software in your computer. And then also that craven, craven fucking dork, Sam Altman and open AI just swept in to gobble up the contract afterwards just to show that he is the most amoral, money focused, like deplorable little schmuck. So the position of the Pentagon is that anthropic is so essential to our national security that the government can dictate how its product is used and it can't be stopped by anthropic. But also it's a national security threat at the same time that can be banned from every company. It doesn't really make sense. Don't know that that'll hold up. And the great thing about a democracy is the Secretaries of Defense don't get to decide when decisions are final. So good luck with that. The issue here is like, okay, Anthropic in this case is at least publicly, as far as we know, like what they're demanding is pretty reasonable. It is more ethical than what the Pentagon is suggesting. The Pentagon argument is all we ask of our contractors is that we use your product. We will follow the law. But the law right now is not caught up to what AI is going to be capable of. It's not caught up to what AI can do right now. There are not laws that really govern this, certainly not at the national level. That said, no, I don't think Anthropics should be making decisions about when and how our military can use AI. I'm pretty uncomfortable with this administration making those decisions. These are novel issues. I've seen people saying, well, if Raytheon makes a missile, Raytheon doesn't get to decide how the Pentagon uses the missile. It's like, okay, that's an analogy you can use for AI if you want. AI is like a missile now. These are genuinely difficult and new and very scary questions about how AI is going to be deployed inside of our military. They're meant to be taken seriously and carefully and debated over time. And instead, we have a dunce Fox News host making domineering, kind of sneering threats at the company. You have kind of opportunistic, valueless people like Altman and Musk trying to come in and kind of take their market share and kind of punish their adversaries. Meanwhile, it seems we're sort of like kind of sleepwalking into employing a new and incredibly powerful technology that we don't fully understand in charge of life and death decisions inside of our military. So like it's the same response to this as to the fucking war on the whole. Like these are people that are not responsible enough to be helping us figuring out how to make these difficult decisions over the long term. I mean, it's also what this says is if you start a company and you create a product or technology that the government decides it wants to use and you don't want it to use it the way that they want to use it because it will create or could lead to great harm, potentially catastrophic civilizational collapse. Yeah, this term into judgment day kind of stuff. Yeah. That's on the table, I suppose. The government can just come and destroy your company. That's what it is. So here's one reaction. Quote, this is simply attempted corporate murder. I could not possibly recommend investing in American AI to any investor. I could not possibly recommend starting an AI company in the United States. That is from Dean Ball, who wrote the Trump administration's AI action plan. Yeah. So these guys just have to go to like DEF CON 5 on everything. Everything has to be all out war. They can't just have a difference of agreement, a lack of alignment with Anthropic and say, OK, well, we're just going to part ways on the use of this software. They have to destroy the company. Well, the other, like the, and then the long-term issue, right, is what, if they're worried, they're worried about mass surveillance, they're worried about these tools autonomously deciding, like on targets and things like that. You know, one protection we have had against mass surveillance is just the amount of data, just the amount of data that's been, encryption and the amount of data, right? Like just, there's vast, vast amounts of encrypted data that's hard to get at. And there's just too much that's collected for human beings to parse. Like that's a protection. And AI says there's actually a world in which you don't have to worry about that anymore because it can process vast amounts of data far beyond anything we can imagine today. And the fact that they are not willing to make – so even a temporary kind of willingness to say these will not be used in that manner. And if they are, we under control of Congress. Anything to that effect. They just want to kind of dominate and say, no, you don't get to tell us. We will do whatever we want. Like it just tells you what kind of people these are. And like we are going to have to have this debate. We will have to do it when they're gone, I suppose. But this is a frightening moment, given how much, it doesn't take much imagination to see where this goes. And we just don't have the right people to have that debate. In other authoritarian news, Trump's billionaire political allies just expanded their regime-friendly media empire to include, among other properties, CNN. The Ellisons finally won their bid to acquire Warner Brothers Discovery by overpaying for it in an offer that Netflix couldn't and wouldn't beat. The result is that Paramount Skydance, under the leadership of the Ellisons and Barry Weiss, their favorite conservative journalist, will now control both CBS News and CNN. Over the weekend, Weiss responded to a tweet criticizing Zoran Mamdani's opposition to the war in Iran with a fire emoji. She's a straight shooter, respected on both sides. Yeah, there was also a tweet from CBS referring to like Iran's nuclear weapons, which they don't have and they've never had. And I think CBS this weekend, the Sunday show, had like all pro-war voices on its panels. So good stuff. I don't watch a lot of cable news anymore. I imagine you guys don't really either. We have it on in the office, but like when I'm home. Except for times like this, like when there is a war, when there is a crisis, I'm putting on CNN or I'm putting on MSNOW because they're doing real-time reporting. They have people like in Tel Aviv. You can see the missiles falling. They have people in Lebanon. Right? Like that is invaluable in a time of crisis. And like the idea of Barry Weiss kind of thumbing the scales at all times on all the news gathering is really unnerving. Like bigger picture, I'm more worried about the TikTok US operations now being majority owned by Oracle. Another Ellison. Another Ellison. Another Ellison thing. The Silver Lake Capital. They're like conservative backed investor group. And then MGX, an Abu Dhabi based investment company, right? Like, I think that's going to be more impactful in terms of their ability to impact sentiment about politics in this country and do it secretly. But, yeah, it sucks. Well, they're hitting every demo, every age group. That's for sure. What a move by Netflix. You're just going to get a couple of billion dollars for having just kind of negotiated up this deal to a crazy degree and like kind of thirsty fucking Paramount paying just a huge, huge premium to take on this like asset like CNN. like whatever its ideology, like it's kind of like, I don't know what the future looks like, but they have a lot of, they have a lot of threats at CNN that aren't the free press and Barry Weiss. So like I worry too about, my bigger worry is the same as Tommy's, which is like, okay, there's like whatever the specific like kind of ideological tilt of CNN over time. I hope the independent journalists and anchors there get to continue to do what they do. I hope that like the places that have a strong culture like HBO don't suddenly have to run like anti-woke versions of their shows to go along with like whatever industry. More than that, I just, here's just a sort of a drip, drip, drip of like, okay, now you get TikTok is going to be controlled by right-wing allies. CNN is controlled in that way. Fox News, of course, always was. And like bit by bit, you kind of lose these access points and the noise and all the kind of churn in the algorithm. Even if you are independent, you're kind of like kind of stuck in that to reach people as well. So it's just a sort of bad sign, bad sign. It is a bad sign. It's a bad sign. Yeah, well, and, you know, authoritarian takeovers of the media aren't always neat and tidy and just coming in and shutting them all down and having state media and stuff like that. You get, you know, it happened in Orbán's Hungary as well, right? They start, you get a few that there's direct state TV and then you get some that are the, you know, leaders, billionaire friends that own the media stations. And it's just, you know, so that's what they're trying to do. They're trying to cobble together a regime-friendly media empire here. It's a little TikTok, a little CBS, a little CNN. I do think they'll fail. Ultimately, I do. Like I just this is not Hungary and we're a big, fractious country with a lot of different ways of getting information. And one of them is Crooked Media. Crooked.com slash friends. Please subscribe. Yeah. Well, I mean, you're not if you're but if you are. But like, seriously, if people are subscribed to what we're doing, right, the algorithm matters less. They're going to get this. They can share this with other people. Like it will be incumbent on people to build an alternative that we want to be a part of. Like that's real. All right. When we come back from the break, you'll hear Lovett's conversation with Senator Ruben Gallego about Iran and how Democrats are doing, including today's Senate primary in Texas, where Jasmine Crockett and James Tallarico are facing off. We'll be right back. was built to change that. They stripped away the junk and kept only what matters. Zero grams of sugar, zero percent gummy additives, 100% clean nutrition. The best part, kids actually love the taste. Working alongside pediatricians and nutrition scientists, Haya created a superpower chewable vitamin that packs a blend of 12 organic fruits and vegetables plus 15 essential vitamins and minerals into every dose. The ingredient list is clean, non-GMO, vegan, dairy-free, allergy-free, gelatin-free, nut-free. They've thought of everything. Designed for kids two and up, Haya ships straight to your door. 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We worked out a special deal with Haya. I need 55 whole food sourced ingredients. Sure do. I'm coming to pieces over here. We got a great deal for Haya. Best-selling children's vitamin. 50% off your first order. to claim the deal, you must go to hyahealth.com slash crooked. This deal is not available on their regular website. Go to H-I-Y-A-H-E-A-L-T-H hyahealth.com slash crooked and get your kids the full body nourishment they need to grow into healthy adults. The country feels like it's falling apart right before our eyes and the people inside it are being silenced. So we're going to East 26th Street and Nicolette Avenue, which is where Alex Preddy was executed by ICE and Border Patrol. That is not a headline. That is a human life. And it is all happening right now. Do you worry about your own safety being involved in all this? Yes, but it doesn't really feel like there's another option, you know? And of course they use a five-year-old child as bait. And of course they're doing all these horrible, bad things because they don't know what they're doing. they've been told that they're going to get rid of the worst of the worst, then they have absolute immunity. And they've been told that nothing they do will they ever be held accountable for. On my show, Runaway Country, we go where the headlines hit home, from communities under threat to the people fighting to be heard. New episodes of Runaway Country drop every Thursday. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts or watch on YouTube. starting a business means wearing many hats designer marketer manager while chasing your vision shopify powers millions of businesses with tools to build beautiful stores create content and market with ease from inventory to shipping everything runs smoothly if you're ready to sell you're ready for shopify sign up for your one euro trial today at shopify.nl that's shopify.nl joining me now to discuss this weekend's airstrikes is arizona senator rubin gallego senator welcome back to the pod thanks for having me so let's just start what are your initial reactions to the strikes in iran that began over the weekend and the deaths as of this recording of six u.s service members in the campaign just what what your overall response is to it well Well, before coming on here, I was just reading a statement that Rubio said that we had to attack because Iran was going to attack because they were about to be attacked. So basically what Rubio is saying is that Israel was attacking – going to attack Iran. And because Israel was going to attack Iran, it was the assumption of this country that we had to also join the attack. So we're essentially giving up our war-making, our war-making decisions to another country. i mean did everyone did anyone even try to say hey don't do that did someone try to tell ninyahu like you're going to start a you know a regional war that we don't want to be a part of right now or did we just now are we just now allowing ninyahu to make these decisions for us like what what is going on here what are happening in america first like it and i'm the kind of guy that understands like you know i actually do believe israel is an ally i do believe we should you know, help protect Israel and our allies. But this is not, this is ridiculous. We lost six men and women so far. And I'm not sure there was what kind of pre-planning and planning was actually created and not in enough time to actually be able to even execute this correctly. Like right now, I'm hearing that our stockpiles are running low and it takes forever for us to redo and rearm ourselves all because Israel wanted to take a chance at the fact that, you know, Iran was, was weak and we just had to follow them through if this is actually what happened this is what mark rewa just said to everybody that is an absolute abdication of leadership by trump and by everybody in his cabinet the fact that we were basically pushed into the war uh by israel that was that is not what should be happening uh at all that is not our national interest and you know now there's six men six men and women dead i don't know how many people injured who knows how much of our depleted stock is now gone, or how much of our stock has been depleted, how much is going to be drawn away from Europe and from Asia where it's needed, all because we decided that we need to hand over our foreign policy to NetYahu. It's just disturbing and disgusting. Yeah. So I was actually going to play you the clip, but you just sort of got into it before I heard it. It's sort of a... No, no, no. It's a shocking... thing to hear, in part because there have been so many different rationales for doing this. So you have Rubio basically saying the reason we had to do this is we were preemptively preventing further damage because Israel was doing this. But certainly Donald Trump would not say he's being led into this by Benjamin Netanyahu. He said that they were trying to, it's at times a regime change operations, at times It's not a regime change operation at times. It's about the nuclear program. It's at times it's not. What do you make of these shifting rationales? Well, the rationale is probably Rubio's actual rationale was a real reason. And now they're coming up with the actual other reasons because they know that that is not good reasoning. They know that even people that are pro-Israel, that they want to see Israel continue as a sovereign state, know that that is not what Americans want to hear. and that we just got involved in another Middle East war because Netanyahu decided that this is the best opportunity for Israel What does that have to do with our national interests How is this worth the blood of our men and women? And that is the rationale. And now they're going to come up with all these other rationales because they're going to try to basically make it easier because it's not the Democrats are going to have problems with. Now it's their America first base that they're going have problems with. I've never heard of any other country essentially having to react in that manner and use their national prestige, their weapons, the whole war-making capability because another country is starting a war and therefore we are going to have to react. Did somebody even try calling Iran saying like, hey, this is not us. We're going to be staying out of this. No, we guess decided that we're going to let netanyahu choose our wars this is it's very disturbing to me it's very disturbing and everyone should be really mad about this and i don't even think this is not a like a left right issue this is not this is not like are you a pro-israel person or are you you know whatever these other people are right this is like the the fact that our country gave up its war making that the the gave started inflicting damage on another country because of another country's decision, that is not leadership. That is not what you want to see leadership doing. And it's absolutely horrendous. So there is a debate, and you're right, there is a divide that isn't like strictly Democrat versus Republican. That's playing out in Congress. These strikes were carried out without congressional authorization. You've said the Senate should not hold any votes until it votes on a war powers resolution. but as of this moment, a war powers resolution wouldn't have the votes to pass. So, so what, what, what would be the value of having a war powers resolution when the outcome would be Rubio and Trump and all these people holding it up and saying, see, they couldn't disapprove it and therefore they approve it? Well, we have, so we do know that there's one coming up, I think tomorrow or the day after. So at least we know that there is. I do think we also need to have a very different approach to this. This is not a very popular war. Let's just put it very plainly. It's only supported by about 30% of the population of this country. It's deeply unpopular with kind of the MAGA base of the Republican Party. The value in this would be that there is men and women put on record that will have to go forward and defend this when they go home during recess. And I think there's going to be a lot of people that are going to have a very tough time doing this, especially now that we understand the rationale, the real rationale behind this, right? There was no imminent threat to our country. Imminent threat means that it was going to happen. What we just heard from Marco Rubio was essentially that we were going to get attacked because someone else was going to attack. They were going to eventually attack us anyway, so therefore we decided to preempt the attack. in what world does that word salad actually justify us going to war and risking our men and women? And that's what we have to put on the record when it comes to Republicans and some Democrats coming up pretty soon. So one argument, and it's an argument that Senator Chris Murphy has been making, is a war powers resolution gets it a little bit backwards. It suggests that somehow the vote would kind of retroactively suggest support from Congress when what's actually needed is an authorization for the use of military force. a failed war powers resolution, the absence of disapproval is certainly not approval. That really what we ought to be doing is having a Congress that asserts the president cannot conduct war without a vote in Congress that authorizes the use of force as we did in Afghanistan and as we did in Iraq. What do you make of that argument? He's right. But if we're in the majority, we have that. But that's like an AUMF is not a privileged resolution. I'm sorry I'm getting all dorky with you guys. No, no, it's fine. Well, that's the reason why we're doing a war's power, because that's the only option we have that will actually bring a vote to the floor. Because if we try to introduce AMF, then it has to go through the process and they're just going to kill it in committee, right? But if you do a war's power, it gets to skip all the bullshit that the Republicans can use to actually slow it down. And yes, you're right. It doesn't immediate end it, but it does put certain timetables that actually restrict at least some of that executive power. So no, this is not the best solution at all. But it's the only solution that we have when the Democrats are in the minority. In the majority, there's actually a lot more power we have. But we have to do what we can with what we can right now. And this is actually the best kind. You force a debate, by the way. You force the – you have to – you take up time on the schedule. It actually forces the conversation, the national conversation to focus on this. But Senator Murphy is not wrong. It's just that that's not an option that we have immediately. So Politico reported over the weekend that some Republicans in Congress are hoping to use the conflict as a way to pressure Democrats around the Department of Homeland Security, claiming that the military action in Iran increases threats and therefore it ought to increase pressure on Democrats to fund DHS. That's been held up because of what ICE has been doing. Are you buying that? Is there any truth to that argument? How do you respond to that? When all the FBI agents that are now looking for immigrants at Home Depot go back to their desks, when HSI goes back to looking for money launderers and especially international drug cartel money launderers and potential terrorists go back to actually doing their jobs and actually doing money laundering instead of looking for women and children at bus stops. when they actually start deploying all these 45-day trainees to the border to help make sure that no terrorists are crossing over the border, then we could be serious about this. But right now, DHS has $175 billion, more money than the Marine Corps. They have enough money. As a matter of fact, they have enough money. They could be using a lot of these guys who are doing a lot of other things. For example, backfilling the ATF right now. The ATF right now doesn't have enough men even to do a lot of the background checks that you need. The guy that shot up, potentially the terrorists that shot up people in Austin, bought a weapon legally, by the way. If there was a fully staffed FBI ATF, they may have been able to flag that this guy was potentially dangerous. But where's ATF right now? Either they've been fired because of political reasons. And by the way, also a lot of FBI agents that specialize in terrorism have been fired. Or they've all been put as provisional ICE agents. And instead of them doing the things they're really good at, like background checks, investigations, trying to track down bombs, weapons, things of that nature, they're chasing migrant workers through the fields and trying to hit the Stephen Miller quota. So these guys aren't serious, right? They're not serious about national security. If they were serious about it, then these people would all go back to the work where they're supposed to actually keep our country safe. They just want to actually put public pressure so they could get their way and they could get an extra $30 billion on top of the $175 billion they already have to go and do these mass deportations and hit the Miller quota they want every day. So I saw you endorsed a main Senate candidate Graham Plattner this morning. Why, what'd you do to jump on the Plattner train? Oh, there's a Plattner plane or something like that. Look, two reasons. Right now, we're in war, right? As a matter of fact, Graham and I actually were in Iraq at the same time. He was down closer to Fallujah. I was up closer to the Syrian border. We need veterans that actually understand that. Number two, Janet Mills can't win. It's just that simple. There's no way that we are going to get Janet Mills to actually win in a year when people want authenticity, want some level of populism. uh uh you know it's a change election and to think that we're going to send a 80 year old nominee uh versus you know i don't even know how old senator collins is the appropriations share and that's going to have a good outcome i think it's fanciful and the elections in two isn't in two months right now sorry early ballots drop in two months we need to consolidate around graham Graham has lived real experience. He was a young Marine. He was dumb. He did dumb things, and he has actually apologized for them. He's learned from that. Right now, we have so many people that are expecting this perfect candidate, and we end up looking for these perfect candidates that don't know how to connect with everyday voters, and we figure out, oh my God, I can't believe we lost. Well, we need to win. Democrats can't just win in North Carolina, which I think we're going to win. We can't just defend in Georgia. We need to pick up seats or else we're the minority. It doesn't help us if Susan Collins is a little more moderate. She still gives power to John Thune, to have the power to appoint Supreme Court Justice, to have the power to actually do another reconciliation so they can super charge ICE. And so Graham's the only one that can win. That's it. It's very simple. And everyone else, you could have your excuses, everything else like that. There's only two candidates on the ballot right now. There's only one that could win. And we need to win the seats. And that's the pathway we do it. And the man has lived a real life. He's a lobster man. He's a working class man. He knows how to communicate. Not everyone's perfect. Welcome to politics. But we will get him there. And he certainly will be better than Susan Collins. So he's under fire today. He had done, and sorry to belabor the details, but I think they matter. He went on a YouTube channel, did a live stream with a guy. It's a pretty big channel. He mostly talks about guns, military culture, military life. He also does delve into some conspiracy theories, including anti-Semitic conspiracy theories around the killing of Charlie Kirk, for example, among others. He also is somebody that went on another channel that is virulently anti-Semitic, okay? Plattner goes on the first channel and has an hour-long conversation, talks about the values of immigrants and his friends in the immigrant community in Maine. it's a completely fine conversation represents his message. But people who are already suspicious of Plattner because of the tattoo, because some of those previous comments, as you mentioned, are saying, oh, this is just too much. We have there's there's too many signs here. There's a person that's comfortable in these anti-Semitic environments. At the same time, they exist. They exist. And he had a well, I mean, it's on those platforms. Let's let's back up. Who's gone on Joe Rogan's show? I don't have to mention names, but there's a lot of Democrats have gone on joe rogan's show joe rogan has said anti-semitic anti-jewish conspiracy and tropes but because there's been these very sophisticated democratic politicians no one has a problem with those guys going on there right right some people do but yeah i take your point but i think some people do some people do but like not to the outcry that's happening here right so like all you know you know a working class man goes and has a conversation on a platform that is very similar to what joe rogan you know talks about not necessarily guns and stuff like that but everyone freaks out on this guy. Why? Because the establishment doesn't want him. I mean, this is very simple. The establishment does not want him. So they're going to make sure that he, you know, looks bad. You know, no one actually talks about the fact that, you know, he got that tattoo as a young man and then re-enlisted twice. And every time you re-enlist, you have to go through a physical. When you go through a physical, the Marines and the army, which he, you know, went and joined later, they check for tattoos and they check it against a database of, you know, anti-Semitic and gang tattoos. Never ever was hailed there. Then he actually went and got a security, a very clear top security clearance to protect the ambassador of Afghanistan. Also, you have to get checked for that. So clearly, you know, him and his mates, when they were young and stupid Marines, like I was a young, stupid Marines, got a tattoo that looked like a cross and skull bones, which we have a lot of those in the Marine Corps, like pirates. But what happens is years later when he finally gets into politics, someone like, you know, points it out. And what does he do? He gets rid of it. But now because he's running against the establishment, he's tainted, right? Because he was a young Marine, young dumb Marine. He wasn't perfect when he was young. Now that he's, you know, in his, you know, late thirties, early forties, you know, it's always going to hold against him. But he's the type of person that actually understands how young, stupid people are and how people change. And he's the one that actually connects with not, you know, this governor who's, who's 80 years old, but you don't hear about that. You don't hear about the fact that like for all these times he went through all these vets and he kept on passing the vet, right? All you hear is just the fact that, oh, it's a, it's an SS mark. No, if you look at it, it looks like skull, skull and crossbones. And you know, if you're a Marine, you know, we get stupid tattoos. We get tattoos in different languages don't even make sense. And we get tattoos of things that look cool, especially when you're young, that young and dumb. And the man has actually made, you know, a men's for it. But you know, there was a, you know, there's already a movement. There's a movement of people that want to continue helping these elite people win, even though they can't win the election, and hoping that it will, instead of looking at the fact that, you know, the US government basically said that there was nothing wrong with the tattoo for years. So why would this young man think there was anything wrong until finally politics pointed it out to him? And good thing they pointed it out to him. And what did he do? He got rid of it as soon as he could. Yeah, look, people want to be suspicious of Graham Plattner. They don't like these associations. I'll just say I watched the whole conversation and it was a great conversation where it was good to see a Democrat in that space, being able to kind of have that conversation. And after he gets off the live stream, which nobody watched all these people telling Grant Planner, nobody watched. After he gets off the live stream, he's on this sort of conservative libertarian pro-gun channel that does engage in conspiracy theories that I do not like, which is why I don't consume them. Don't like them. He pulled his audience and they liked him. 90-10. They liked him 90-10. And so if you have a problem with him, fine. If you don't think you should be a senator, fine. But boy, I wish you had a better answer for what we do about not having people who can speak to these audiences. Also, by the way, you can question. I'm not the kind of person like, oh, you shouldn't question this. Absolutely question. I think it's legitimate people have some concerns. Why wouldn't you? But also, let's not also lie ourselves into this situation where somehow this guy is some evil being because number one, he's going to win. He's going to win that primary. Number two, once we realize, you know, the full scope of what people are talking about, once people look at the old tattoo, once people understand that the U.S. government gave this guy very, very, very, very high security clearance, knowing that he had that tattoo and also assuming that it was also not anti-Semitic, it all kind of starts making sense. Yes, maybe he was a stupid young man, but now he wants to serve his country and he's learned and he's grown. And guess what? The majority of Americans are not a bunch of student council presidents just being perfectly distilled people waiting to run for governor, president, Senate, whatever someday, right? People live real life. Hey, you're going to get in trouble with some of your colleagues. Some of your colleagues are student council presidents that have been running for president since they're five years old. I was a dorky student council president. So I'm one of those people too, right? So like, you know, but I'm saying in general, like there's a problem in this country where, you know, we want authenticity, but we only want the authenticity that's not that authentic. Right. Yeah. We want someone that could cross over and talk to these Republicans and and conservatives and bring in these young men. But we want to do it in a nice, clean, neat way. Right. We want this perfect candidate to be able to bring all these people that aren't perfect into our coalition. That doesn't exist. Right. You have to accept a lot. You have to accept that some people are going to be, you know, at fault, that they've made mistakes, that they said stupid things. Have they grown? Have they learned from it? Then that's what matters. But if you want that person that can figure out how to get those bros in, how to get that disaffected voter back, how to get that Republican to cross over, we have to have people that are authentic first, number two, and have some real lived experience to be able to go talk to that person and connect. Because if not, you're going to find ourselves in a situation where we run these cookie cutter candidates in these tough races. I'm not saying you shouldn't, you know, there's some definite races where you could, have a cookie cutter candidate, the perfect candidate. But some of these races, you're going to have to have someone that could actually reach across the way and actually touch somebody because that person has lived your life, understands your struggles, understands you've made mistakes, and is willing to accept you into this coalition, provided that we all understand that we're here to make sure that Democrats win, that we have control of the agenda, and that we're not going to have another two years potentially of Donald Trump in control of the Senate and the House. Last question, because you're on such a roll on these Democratic primaries. Where are you in the Texas Senate Democratic primary? When this comes out, people will be voting in Texas. Have you weighed in on Tallarico versus Crockett? Where's your head at? I mean, I think they're both great candidates. I think they both have a chance to win. I'm going to help out whoever wants to be helped come Tuesday. And I'm going to be very excited. Texas is the Arizona of this year. I feel like what's happening in Texas, what happened in 2018 in Arizona, where we just had a huge surge and got people elected to office up and down the ticket. I think you're gonna see that also in Texas. And look, my endorsements are all over the place. If you wanna do one through line is I'm helping people get elected that can make sure we win. We need to have control of the House. We need to have control of the Senate. And sometimes that's gonna be people that I think are on what people consider on the left, right, that are populist on the left. Some people, it's going to be people that are kind of middle of the road. Some of them may be a little on the conservative side. I don't understand. People don't see the world we live in right now. We're in a very dangerous situation. We need to make sure we have control. We need to take anybody into a coalition that can help us win control of the House and the Senate. And then once we actually get out of this craziness, then let's have a little purity battles, right? But this guy is the guy that nearly killed a lot of us on January 6th. I was there on the House floor, right? This is the guy that just got us into a fucking war with Iran, right? This is the guy that's already taking ballot boxes and stuff out of Atlanta, Georgia. And we're here trying to have this purity battles when we should be looking to see who's going to help us win these elections. And by big margins for us to actually reset the agenda, push the Democratic agenda forward. And that will be, you know, in the NBA, if you have never noticed, it ends up being a fairly progressive agenda. And then hopefully in 2028, we could deliver that Democratic president, Democratic House and a Democratic Senate. But you don't get a Democratic Senate for that president if you don't win some seats, by the way, in 2026, because 2028 gets harder. And then after it gets harder. Right. So people need to understand that we need to win first. And people there's some candidates right now that just aren't going to make it through. Time is running out for them. And I want to win. I want to win so we could protect this country. We can protect them from Republicans. And you have to make some tough choices. And that's just how life is. Last question. I just want to end because this is obviously on Iran. You know, there's Democrats that have been saying this didn't go through Congress. There's Democrats who oppose a War of Powers vote at all, which I think is strange because even if you believe Iran, the Iranian regime was a terrible government, shouldn't Congress have authority? But do you think Democrats on the whole are doing enough talking about why preemptive wars are dangerous in and of themselves? No, I don't think they are. I actually think we need to get off this process question. You know, I think voters are really smart. And, you know, I'm not saying that they won't understand this process question. But I think before they even get to the process question, they want to have a values conversation. And they want to know, like, what do you what do you think about this? Right. And, you know, maybe, you know, and I didn't pull, but I knew exactly what I felt because of my horrible experience with the first Iraq war or second Iraq war, can't remember anymore. But like, that makes a difference. Like people right now want to see like strong leadership. They want to see like, oh, you know what? This guy knows what he's talking about. Or this gal knows what he's talking about. They know that the war is bad for this country. And then the process question kind of will take care of itself, right? But we really need to show strong values when it comes to whether or not we're willing to commit our men and women to war, to potentially death. And not just for us, but also for Iranians or for other civilians in the world, whether it is Israelis in Israel or Jordanians or Saudis, Saudi civilians that we've all kind of exposed to this regional breakout. These are the things that we need to be considering before we get into these big process questions. Well, Senator Ruben Gallego, thanks for your time. Thanks for talking to us. And we'll talk to you again soon. Appreciate it. Adios. Apple Podcasts. Also, please consider leaving us a review that helps boost this episode and everything we do here at Cricket. Pod Save America is a Cricket Media production. Our producer is Saul Rubin. Our associate producer is Farah Safari. Austin Fisher is our senior producer. Reid Churlin is our executive editor. Adrian Hill is our head of news and politics. The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Jordan Cantor is our sound engineer with audio support from Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis. Matt DeGroat is our head of production. Naomi Sengel is our executive assistant. Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Haley Jones, Ben Hefcoat, Mia Kelman, Carol Pellaviv, David Tolles, and Ryan Young. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East. The country feels like it's falling apart right before our eyes and the people inside it are being silenced. So we're going to East 26th Street and Nicolette Avenue, which is where Alex Preddy was executed by ICE and Border Patrol. That is not a headline. That is a human life. And it is all happening right now. Do you worry about your own safety being involved in all this? Yes, but it doesn't really feel like there's another option, you know. And of course they use a five-year-old child as bait. And of course they're doing all these horrible, bad things because they don't know what they're doing. They've been told that they're going to get rid of the worst of the worst. Then they have absolute immunity. 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