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You'd actually be surprised how many people out there are willing to show love and support you in your time of need. My advice for anyone that needs to start up a GoFundMe would be do it. You don't need to feel shame. You don't need to feel guilt. You don't need to feel embarrassment. If you need GoFundMe, use GoFundMe. Start your GoFundMe today at gofundme.com. That's gofundme.com. G-O-F-U-N-D-M-E.com. This message reflects one person's experience. Our laws are clear. You can refuse illegal orders. You can refuse illegal orders. You must refuse illegal orders. No one has to carry out orders that violate the law or our Constitution. Hi again, everybody. It's 5 o'clock in New York. They warned us, and here we are, just three hours away from Trump's deadline for Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz, or, quote, a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again, end, quote. And while Pakistani officials are proposing a two-week delay to that deadline, Donald Trump's existential threat to Iran is already putting the U.S. military in the unprecedented position of either obeying the commander-in-chief as he publicly vows to commit what would amount to war crimes against a civilian population or engage in a widespread act of defiance of illegal orders. While Trump's threats might have been intended to force the Iranians to come to the table and make a deal, it so far appears to have had the opposite effect. As U.S. and Israel bombed rows and bridges throughout the day in Iran in an effort to force Iran to open the Strait, the New York Times reports this, quote, Iranians formed human chains along bridges and around power plants, around the country, videos and photographs posted by state and local media showed, in effect daring the United States and Israel to kill civilians in order to hit those sites. It was unclear whether the gatherings were arranged by the government, which has organized rallies in its support throughout the war. In the last half hour, Donald Trump called those human chains, quote, totally illegal and said, quote, they're not allowed to do that. And as Trump's attempts to bring the Iranians to the negotiating table by force fail, experts are warning that the leadership of the U.S. military could be facing legal jeopardy. One of those experts telling the Washington Post this, quote, I'm concerned that the president's bombast is putting the operational commanders in a very difficult position. That's according to Jeffrey Korn, who served as a top law of war expert at the U.S. Army in Iraq in 2004 and 2005, who adds this, quote, they know that you cannot just draw a circle around the country and say every element of the electrical grid is now a lawful target. It's a concern echoed by a frequent guest on this program, former Lieutenant General Mark Hurtling. I'm sure there's a lot of military commanders right now, a lot of senior officers who are saying to themselves, I can't obey an unlawful order. I can't do things that I know are absolutely wrong. But they also feel like they have to provide support for their soldiers who don't just get to quit. It's really causing some dynamics within those who are thinking soldiers, saying, how do I continue to serve my constitution and live by the rules that are in law and still conduct these kinds of actions which are horribly immoral and illegal? Trump's existential threat to Iran and the untenable position he is putting our nation's military in is where we begin the hour with retired U.S. Army Brigadier General Steve Anderson with me at the table for the hour. Puck News, Senior Political Columnist and National Affairs Analyst John Halman. General, I start with you and just want to hear everything how you see this moment. Well, thank you, Nicole, for having me. I know General Hurtling well. He was in my company at West Point 50 years ago, hard to believe, and he's spot on target. I mean, we are really putting our military leadership in a bind. And the video that Senator Kelly and others produced a couple of months ago is really prescient because we've come to a moment in which it looks like they may be asked to conduct illegal orders to obey illegal orders because that's what committing a war crime is. I mean, there's an entire protocol associated with evaluating appropriate targets within the theater, and they always include a legal review. And if it's something that has to do with the civilian target, it's more important than ever to have a legal review. And of course, then it's got to be signed off by the appropriate commander. And the more difficult and the more impact that the target may have, the higher in rank would be the approving authority. This has to happen for every single target. So for the president to say we're going to totally annihilate the company, the entire country, is absolutely ludicrous. We're setting ourselves up for failure. I remember, and I'm sure many, any student of history would as well, the Nuremberg trials. I wasn't born yet, but I certainly know the impact, you know, where we had 12 senior leaders in the German military that were hung. They were executed because they committed war crimes. Their crime at the time was to obey the orders of those who pointed over them, including, you know, of course, Adolf Hitler. What I would like to not see is a situation down the road in which our soldiers face legal ramifications, some kind of a military tribunal for the military orders that they may be conducting, you know, that are simply illegal. Those, you know, a tribunal stood up by the Hague or some other international court. Donald Trump may very well try to pardon them, but they're not going to be able to withstand legal action from an international standpoint. And that's what really, really worries me at this time. And I think the careful point you're trying to make is that hiding under an order from Trump to Hegzeff is not a defense if the laws of war are violated. And I want to bring it back to that video that so rattled Trump's cage. He tried to prosecute the six members of Congress, and that they didn't get a single member of a grand jury to agree to indict them. He tried to use the Pentagon's justice system to punish Senator Markelle. That didn't work either. So let me read you what Senator Slotkin tweeted today. I know that our service members up and down the chain of command know that their duty and the law to refuse illegal orders. Even as the commander in chief tells the world otherwise, it is moments like these that are why we made the video to service members last year. And I hope and believe our troops, especially those in command, will have the moral clarity to push back if they are given clearly illegal orders. What is she saying? What she's saying is that our soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines swear an oath to the Constitution, not to a person. And that means that they will obey legal orders and disobey illegal orders, committing a war crime to target a water desalination plant or a power grid that includes a hospital. That would be a war crime, an illegal order. And she's saying, and they very rightfully reminded us all of the importance of understanding that every soldier, sailor, airman, marines has the right and the obligation to disobey illegal orders. Let me read you one more reaction today to Trump's post this morning. Threatening to eliminate a civilization is comparable to genocide. That is illegal and moral and should not be in the vocabulary of an American president. The ominous sentiment he's suggesting would be a criminal act. Unfortunately, he's put our professional military officers in a very difficult situation. They cannot carry out an illegal order. Our allies are no longer just skeptical. They're shocked and appalled. And they can't tolerate even the suggestion, let alone the behavior he's talking about. And I think he's not focused on realistically ending this conflict as he seems to have lost control. In fact, he's become as fanatical as the regime leaders in Tehran. So now you seem to have two groups of fanatic leaders battling each other. That's not a good outcome for the world or for peace. What do you make of the things that we can't walk back from? That we all are, as Americans, represented by his threat of genocide and his conduct on the world stage? Well, it is so sorry to see the degradation to the American culture and the way of life that Donald Trump is executing every day. We've always been the beacon on the hill, the bright shining light, the example of what a good democracy and what good people can do for the world. And we're just doing the opposite. We're acting like a predatory bully. Iran is looking like the rational actor right now. Even though they're being led by a bunch of religious fanatics, they look almost reasonable and sane in comparison to our own president, who's embarrassing us every day, who's dragging this country down. America's stock has never been lower than it is right now. We have no allies. NATO allies are shaking their heads. I mean, I think Charles Manson has a higher approval rating in Denmark than does Donald Trump. The GCC, they're saying, hey, wait a minute, we put all these bases over here in the Gulf to protect us and now they're being targeted. Japan, Korea, the insults to Australia and others, we are just going downhill fast. It's all because of Donald Trump and it's really because the GOP, the cowardice of the GOP has allowed this to happen. Where is the outrage? Where are they complaining? Where is anybody calling for the 25th Amendment to be enacted? Because that really should happen. This man has absolutely lost it. And the Republican Party is letting down this nation and they're disobeying their own oath of office by not standing up and exercising the rights as a Congress in the United States. It's not just the general saying it. Laura Ingram has questioned whether Trump can quote take information in. Alex Jones said he's quote gone. Marjorie Taylor Greene said he's insane. Scar Mucci said he's threatening nuclear annihilation in the 25th Amendment. I mean, the list of people making these arguments is longer than the list of people speaking on this news cycle, not making these points. So as you know, because we've been doing this for a while, right? I'm not a Johnny come lately on this question. I mean, I think the issue of Donald Trump's cognitive decline has been evident, not just in the last few recent weeks, but has been evident in the fall of 2024. But when we were going through the presidential election, I remember I wrote a column about it and said, you know, there were lots of signs that and I don't this people often confuse this with psychological analysis, armchair psychiatry. I'm just talking about cognitive decline here. I'm talking about the inability to string together coherent thoughts, the diminution of vocabulary, the inability to kind of make coherent arguments, all of that. Right. So this feels like we've been this point. We've been building to this point for a long time now. And I would say that, you know, that if you couple that with the more precise point that we've been talking about here. So you've got first, you've got Trump's diminution. Is he still all there? Can he understand the information he's getting? Is he making sense of it? Has he lost it? Right. That's one thing. And then there's the question of the situation the military finds itself in. And one of the things that has not, I think, gotten enough discussion is the fact that part of the reason why those Congress people put that video up was because of what had happened with the Venezuelan boat strikes in the fall. We saw those boat strikes off the coast of Venezuela. And there were signs and reporting that you had members of the military who were leaving their jobs, stepping down from important command posts without really explaining why. But the reporting suggested, and a lot of speculation was that they were saying, these, I'm being given illegal orders here. And so that part of what raised it, that was in October, when the words war crime first started to get into our vocabulary in terms of discussing Trump's increasingly bellicose attitude in a lot of places in the world. We didn't see that in Trump 1.0. We really have seen it a lot over the course of the last, not just the last few weeks, but over the course of the last 14 or 15 months. And so on one level, it feels like we're sitting here on this precipice of potential catastrophe and of a totally remade world, a world where we went through with something approaching. Forget about some of the hyperbole from what Trump said today. Just the stuff he was talking about yesterday, the kinds of strikes on civilian infrastructure or partially civilian infrastructure, taking out the Iranian electrical grid, which is possible to do that would cause the lights to go out for six months in Iran, would trigger such a massive humanitarian crisis in Iran, and would almost certainly not achieve regime change, a popular uprising. What we've seen in history, and a lot of the people who study this have pointed this out over and over again, is that those kinds of large-scale air offensives tend to harden resistance, rally the people to their current leaders, and cause people to dig in. And in that world where we still haven't gotten what we really want, which is to open the straight up for a move, literally the way in which our geopolitical order, which a lot of people assumed would be Russia, China, the United States, those are the great powers, we're elevating Iran into that. We're literally strengthening the other axis. Into that pantheon, and strengthening China and Russia in the bargain. So we're sitting here on this precipice that feels so strange, watching our, looking at our watches saying a few hours from now, we could be on the way towards a new, a genuinely new and much scarier world order. And on the other hand, it's really strange. And on the other hand, it feels like for almost 10 years, we've been kind of building to a moment that would crystallize all of this, the kind of, what have we done moment, right? Like, how did it ever get to this point? I mean, I guess it got here because... I know there's a complicated answer. No, but I mean, look, it's a good place to hit pause. I mean, we got here because, and the reason Marjorie Taylor-Green and Alex Jones and Tucker Carlson are news, is because they used new media and disinformation and political fealty and a little hefty dose of sort of threats of political violence at various points and at various junctures. Marjorie Taylor-Green has actually now been on the receiving end of threats against her own family. But, you know, all manner of dark and politically toxic tools to elect Trump twice. Yes. And on top of that, you have those people who all are welcome, I say, to the world in which they are criticizing Donald Trump this way. Thank you. I'm glad to hear them making the arguments they're making. They enabled this in their way in the way that you just described. And then there's this whole other, much more, I think, corrosive cadre of what we used to think of as normal Republicans who decided to say silent for years and years and years about Donald Trump and all of them privately new on some level. Rob Hartman, John Cornyn. Yes. And the people around him, the administration, we were talking about this before he came on air. If you read this Maggie Haberman and John Swann piece that's basically derived from their forthcoming book that's in The New York Times today about how Trump made these decisions, it is a portrait of a cabinet, all except for a couple, basically nurturing profound ambivalence and doubts about this war and all of them afraid to sit in a meeting with Donald Trump and say, Mr. President, I think this is a bad idea. And up to and including General Cain, who is presenting both sides and people in the room were like, we can't really tell what he's for. He won't offer an opinion. He would lay out the risks, but also lay out the rewards. No one wants to do what we all Democrat or Republican, whoever. We all need people around the president to do, which is to occasionally go, Mr. President, this is a bad idea. It's going to end badly. Let me tell you why I think it's going to end badly. None of them do it. And they are a perfect reflection of what the whole Republican, the normal part, the mainstream part of the Republican Party has done now for a decade. Those people on the far right are a different category of complicity, but the combination of those two forms of incitement and complicity on one side and kind of turn your eyes and look away and pretend like it's not potentially as bad as it could get, that kind of Republican is another kind of Republican. And together, that is a large part of why we are aware. Well, and just importantly, from the piece of reporting in the New York Times that you mentioned, what is clear from the report is that this was not a U.S. national security principles meeting. This was a foreign visit from Bibi Netanyahu. That first started it, yes. He pitched them a plan to attack Iran that In the situation, have you ever heard of a foreign head of state sitting in the situation room with the president ever? No, no. That Radcliffe called quote, farcical. And then Rubio translated and described in that piece as that quote, bullshit. So not only, not only- And Trump was like, not only were they ambivalent or opposed to war with Iran, two of his top national security officials, I think Rubio has like three titles called Netanyahu's presentation, farcical, bullshit. And then at the end decided, Mr. President, this is what you want to do, go ahead and do it. Having basically retreated from that language from that first meeting, by the end, they're basically kind of saying, okay, I mean, sure, do it. Brigadier General Steve Anderson, thank you for the frame you put around this conversation, starting us off. Halman sticks around. When we come back, one of the six Democratic lawmakers who made that video, we showed you and have been talking about, reminding the men and women of the military that they can and must refuse illegal orders. Democratic Congressman, and Chrissy Holian is our next guest, also ahead. Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, once again marching in lockstep, this time over the future of the pro-Russian, Christian, nationalistic, autocratic leader of Hungary. Today, with Donald Trump threatening to wipe out the civilization of Iran, the sitting vice president of the United States, was dispatched to Budapest in a bid to prop up Magda Darling, Victor Orban. It doesn't sound very America first to you, you're not wrong. We'll get to that later in the hour. Deadline White House continues after quick break, don't go anywhere. Stay up to date on the biggest issues of the day with the MS Now Daily newsletter. Each morning, you'll get analysis by experts you trust. Video highlights from your favorite shows. Voters weighed in. Donald Trump's dismissal of their concerns has been weighing on his political standing. Updates on our latest podcasts and election coverage, plus written perspectives from the newsmakers themselves, all sent directly to your inbox each morning. Get the best of MS Now all in one place. Sign up for MSNow Daily at MS.now. I want to bring in Democratic Congresswoman Chrissy Hulahana, Pennsylvania. She's a member of the House Armed Services and Intelligence Committees. She served as an officer in the Air Force and was one of the six elected officials who released a video warning men and women of the military not to obey any illegal orders. Thank you so much for being here. You're welcome. Thank you for having me. Does it make more sense now that Trump completely freaked out and tried to have all of you prosecuted when you watched the conduct of this White House? Well, I would say that it's not surprising. It's devastating and horrifying, but it's really not surprising. I guess I would say it's pretty hard to believe that you and I are having this conversation about the fact that the commander-in-chief has just called for the eradication of a civilization. That clearly is a violation of American law. Clearly puts our men and women in service in legal jeopardy should they follow an order, an actual order that asks them to do that, because anytime you're talking about threats to civilian violence, you're talking about a war crime and a legal order. And obviously the men and women at the military know that. So what do you think they're thinking or what conversations do you think are happening that we don't see? Sure. I think it depends. I think it depends on where in the in the structure you are at the combatant command level, sort of the most senior level where those decisions are going to be made or typically are made about kind of the scale and scope of an attack that the commander-in-chief authorizes. They're the ones who have to really consider themselves in legal jeopardy, moral jeopardy as well if they if they are given an order to do anything close to what the president said. Every bridge, every power plant, a whole civilization dies. So they have to make some really hard choices and you may have seen some of those choices already be made with some of the firings and people leaving. Unfortunately, you may have also seen that where they've moved the jag or the lawyers out of the decision process. And then at the lower levels where people are flying or marching, those people are given specific order, specific packages and specific targets. And there's where I hope that the system will excel. The exquisite capability of our military will will stand whole firm because I hope that those will be properly vetted for their military value and against their civilian opportunity. What are you hearing from? I think you have a lot of military families in your district. What are you hearing? I just can't imagine having a son or a daughter or spouse or child there and you're worried about their safety. They've trained for this, but now you're also worried that they may have to worry about whether or not their orders are legal. What are you hearing from military families? I have people in this office who have sons and daughters in the area. I have people who come from this office who are in the area as well. And I come from a strong military heritage, not in addition to having been active in the military myself. I think that people are really worried. The calls here in this office have been off the hook both here in the district where I'm talking to you and also down in Washington, D.C. And I come from a purple place, one that's nearly equally divided between Republicans and Democrats, 4040 and a pretty big significant part of Invenant voters, to a T, to a person, those people who are calling are absolutely alarmed by what it is that the commander-in-chief has uttered. And it follows quickly on the heels of what he said on Easter Sunday of all days. Do you think that Congress should be in session? Congressman Garcia made the point that Mike Johnson decided that spring break was a better use of the Congress's time this week as this war is going to be escalating. And since the Congress came into session, the 119th Congress came into session, he's decided that that's the best course of action a lot. He sent us home an awful lot. And here we are on recess working still, but not in Washington, D.C. And that's deliberate. He's keeping us away from any authority and powers that we have. Some of the powers that we still have is the authorized use of military force, constitutional requirement, where we could vote on something like that. And I believe that it's possible that there may be enough Republican votes at this point in time to pass that. But as long as we're here, the majority has the rule of not allowing us to go back to Washington, D.C. I mean, John Hammond, that's an interesting point. When you look at the polls, they're only going in one direction. And it seems to be something that Republicans are taking in as they are sort of inching closer and closer toward political concerns about an unauthorized war. Right. And I mean, it's not that they are, that they seem to be going only in one direction. They are only going in one direction. I mean, and you will remember better than most, right? There was a time in a lot of second term presidents, second terms, when they start to decline politically, and then something happens and they reach, they kind of, there's a tipping point. And then there's no turning back. It's all downhill from there. The question is how steep the slide is after that. It happened in Joe Biden's first term after the withdrawal from Afghanistan. His poll never recovered after that. There were other factors, but that began the descent. And it happened certainly after Hurricane Katrina for George W. Bush. It's a very common phenomenon. And it has been the case that Donald Trump's polling, which is the polling really for the Republican Party, and they move in lockstep, right? And that's what the midterms are really going to be about. It's really an up or down vote on Donald Trump for a lot of Republicans. His poll numbers have been in decline since the first week. It has polling average. It has occasionally plateaued, but it has never gone up. He's not had a bump or a, or a beep a week where he's gone up. It's been down a lot and then flat down and then flat and then down and then flat. And this war for obvious reasons, some of which have to do with people's fear about getting involved in a protracted forever war, like he promised we wouldn't do, some of which have to do just with gas prices, a lot of which has to do with Jeffrey Epstein, some of which has to do with the fact that, that what the Congresswoman was talking about, which is that people in the country who decide midterm elections have decided that this Republican Party and this speaker are not doing the people's business. But this is a slide that augurs very poorly for the Republican Party in November. Increasingly, there's a view in Republican and Democrats' black circles alike that not only is the House gone for Republicans, but that not only is the Senate in play, but you could make an argument that Democrats may now be a slight favorite to take the Senate, which was something that no one thought was possible, given the map. Right, a month ago, two months ago. Certainly six months ago, right? It was like you had to really figure out a lot of bank shots to make that happen. And there's a pretty decent, you think about the dynamics here, we were talking before about the potential catastrophe, the ways in which the world would change, the price of oil, how supply chains work. We haven't even started to feel a lot of the economic pain from what's already happened on the ground in Iran. This picture is not going to get brighter. And we may have just reached the point with Donald Trump where he's nothing but a political albatross around the neck of the Republican Party. And that's part of the explanation for what you're seeing and why some people, not just in the Tucker Carlson, Gretchen Kelly, were not running for anything part of the world, but people like Ron Johnson. And yes, those people are also thinking about running for something down the line, but people like Ron Johnson and members of Congress, you saw a couple of Republicans come out today and not big name Republicans, but said, I'm not in favor of destroying a whole civilization. That's all part of it is about self-interest. But it's so sick that it's news. Of course. There are a couple Republicans stuck their head up and said, I'm not in favor of destroying a civilization. But yes, we'll take it as far as possible. And thank you very much for taking some time to talk to us today. We're grateful to you. Thank you. Thanks for having me again. When we come back, how Donald Trump and JD Vance are once again putting the United States squarely in the same corner as Vladimir Putin. We'll bring it up reporting next. Welcome to the Rachel Maddow show. Morning Joe, the briefing with Jen Psaki and more voices you know and trust. MS Now is your source for news, opinion and the world. Learn more at MS.Now. Well, Donald Trump seems intent on continuing to alarm and offend and upset our allies with his conduct, including grave and unprecedented threats against Iran to destroy their civilization. Vice President JD Vance is in Hungary today campaigning for Viktor Orban, the country's authoritarian, MAGA-aligned, Putin-aligned anti-European Union leader. JD Vance plunging into an Axios is calling Europe's most volatile election in years, a Hungarian campaign engulfed in spy scandal, sabotage and unprecedented peril. While Russia aids Iran during Trump's war, JD Vance is putting the administration on the same side as Vladimir Putin on another issue by boosting Orban, who as the New York Times reports has put hostility toward Ukraine at the center of his campaign for reelection. More from that report, quote, in brief remarks before meeting, Vance praised Orban as quote, one of the only true statesmen in Europe, and said, Trump quote, loves you and so do I. I'm going to bring in former Undersecretary of State for public diplomacy and public affairs during the Obama administration. MS Now political analysts were extinguished. I'm still here. So, Wall Street Journal has reported that Russia is assisting Iran. Yesterday, Trump sort of, you know, all pretenses are gone, not that there were ever many, said, well, on this NATO thing, Putin explained it to me. It's a paper tiger. And today, JD Vance is with Putin's pal and hungry Viktor Orban. Yes. And there have been a couple of stories about the link between Orban and Putin, a phone call they had, a phone call between the Hungarian foreign minister and the Russian foreign minister. But, you know, as an old magazine editor, what I wish is that every story about Hungary would have a little box and in the box would say, Hungary is the poorest country in the EU. Hungary is the most corrupt country in the EU. Hungary is a country the size of Pennsylvania, but it's four times as poor as Pennsylvania. Italy is 10 times richer than Hungary. Hungary is an example of failure. It's an example of what politicians, what foreign policy experts call state capture. Basically, it's not that they're corrupt and violate the law. It's the corrupt, and they change the law to benefit the corruption in themselves. Orban's son-in-law is the richest man in Hungary because he gets every contract, which should be familiar to, you know, our president, who enriches his own son-in-law. So, Hungary, I'm just amazed that conservatives buy into this idea that Hungary is an example of anything but the opposite of what we should be doing. Well, I mean, you make a perfect point about the need for a magazine editor. I've been writing television copy because I think people, well, I don't know, I won't call anyone uninformed or stupid, but I think people may be uninformed and stupid in their full embrace of Viktor Orban, because that is precisely where another one of Trump's big political vulnerabilities are. And Koltor came out and just blasted what I think the biggest part of the Trump story that doesn't get enough attention because he's constantly striking matches and throwing them into other countries, allies, and adversaries alike. But the corruption, maybe that's what they're modeling. Well, they're modeling the corruption. They're modeling state capture, which is that you can create this for yourself, but they're modeling something else which is even more venal, which is that it's a homogeneous white Christian nation that's older, that's losing its population. Again, all they think that we should not be. And by the way, remember, we talked about this before. I remember when I interviewed Vladimir Putin, he talked about Russia being the last white Christian nation. That's why he sees Hungary as their little brother, their little white Christian brother. And that is what they're modeling also, which is also really so antithetical to everything in America. What about an American vice president who was left out of the room for a meeting as the New York Times reports today, where his boss decides to follow Bibi Netanyahu into war with Iran, just sort of yucking it up as a political boost to Orban? I mean, the optics for JD Vance are not great either. They're not. Although, of course, in that same story that you guys were talking about, I mean, JD Vance was the one person who almost stood up to say, look, Mr. President, this isn't a good idea. It's not clear why though, because he makes the point that the political coalition would fall apart, which... By the way, at this point, I don't care what the reason why is the fact that someone would do it and someone would say, even that, I mean, maybe he's saying that because it's calculated to influence the boss. But yeah, the fact that he's there, it's sort of humiliating for him while this is all going on. And it's just a kind of a ridiculous sideshow. I'm going to bring Halman in on this. I have to take it a quick break while I'll be right back on the other side. A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons. I can't put it any better than Jackie Kennedy did after the Cuban Missile Crisis. She said that what worried President Kennedy during that very dangerous time was that a war might be started not by big men with self-control and restraint, but by little men, the ones moved by fear and pride. I mean, everything everyone has said comes down to that last point she makes, that we're all now waiting to see if Trump's pride permits him from taking some off ramp. We put it earlier in the hour that Pakistanis have an idea for a two-week pause. That is right now civilization's best chance for avoiding Trump's pledge to destroy and annihilate the Iranian civilization. I mean, it's impossible to predict with him, right? On some level, obviously, nobody wants there to be a civilization ending bombing campaign starting tonight. So that's what we hope for. But you do wonder at which point you can, is the taco too far. At some point, Trump, you imagine would think, if I taco again, I'm going to lose all credibility. No one's ever going to take me seriously if you come out and promise civilization. Well, I hope so. I hope he doesn't care about that. I want to be clear what I put you through. But you wonder whether that's in his head, whether he's trying to find, well, we're going to do some kind of a big-ish bombing campaign to hit certain military targets that in the electrical grid. They're trying to figure out some way where we can do something that doesn't make it look like he's completely tacoed, but not obviously go all the way towards Armageddon. I don't know, but I don't know. And the incredible thing about the reporting from today is that nobody seems to know. At various times, we've had a pretty good premonition on where Trump would go because people around him would be sort of like, don't worry, he's going to back off this, he's going to back off that. As we sit here at this hour, 5.47 p.m. on the east, it's like, I don't know, people well-wired Republicans, people sources in the White House, other people, no one seems to really know where his head's at. And that's what kind of makes that thing we were talking about earlier, the sense of being on the precipice, feel more scary in a way that I don't generally get scared. This is just a very uncertain moment. But I hate the fact that we're even talking about it like that, like it's a game show, like there's a big reveal at eight o'clock. I mean, this is the sort of thing that part of the rationale for what he's doing is to get people to buy into this, like, the ticking time clock of like, on 60 minutes. And so... No, he would love for there to be like a countdown clock for all the networks to go up with special coverage at eight to see what has he decided. That's what he wants. But I think, you know, I've said this this week, it's what day is it? It's Tuesday. I mean, I wrestle every day with how much of his bullshit to quote Margaribio to platform because it is to him a game. But I guess in this instance, others might argue that there are lives on the line, in this case, innocent civilians in Iran. Yes. And I think the responsible thing is to actually cover it like you're doing because the downside is so immense. I mean, it's not, he's not like threatening a small thing. He's threatening to end one of the oldest civilizations on the planet. And even if it's kind of braggadocio and he's sort of doubling down, it would be irresponsible to just completely ignore it as much as I would like to. Well, it brings you back to that, Timothy. It's not a thing you were quoting earlier today, which is that, you know, a president of the United States, whether he's doing it in game show fashion or not, and whether the time clock is real or whatever, personally, the United States going out and threatening genocide is the thing that you can't put that genie back in the bottle. And you would have thought that Republicans would know this more than anybody. It's like the people who spoke most passionately and movingly in all of our careers about American exceptionalism, Shining City on the Hill, America not being like other nations, you know, were people who would traditionally, but Republicans, they would speak in those terms and to hear a president who, these are the words that you would imagine, you know, from Paul Pot, you know, but not Paul Pot or Chairman Mao or Stalin or Hitler, you know, the President of the United States is out threatening to commit genocide. There's just no way, I totally agree with you. You feel like you're a sucker to get drawn into Trump's game. And yet this is a thing that everyone around the world who already, many people thought it was crazy that we elected Trump to twice to begin with are now like, you know, okay, you guys really are not the world's exceptional unique nation anymore if you're in that place. And in the 250th year, our anniversary, where we created something that was meant to be a model for all mankind with decent respect for the opinion of mankind, Donald Trump threatens genocide, which is in some ways the end of the 250 years republic. Let me ask you a question about, because we also have such a sort of self-absorbed lens on this. What does it say to you that the Iranian people are right now creating human shields and human chains around their own infrastructure? I mean, part of what it does is it shows Americans that Americans never think that anybody has nationalism like we do. Like, these are people who love their country. He's doing, what Trump has done is he's undermined the original rationale for what he was doing just to help the Iranian people overthrow them. As John said earlier, you know, bombing campaigns solidify support for the regime. It increases the power of right-wing people. But it's also, these are people who deeply believe in Persian civilization that have great pride in their civilization. And they have this maniac threatening their civilization and they're doing something that they're standing up for their own people. I mean, Trump, talk about how impossible it is to create a regime that people used to wonder about is Iran rational. Iran looks so flippant rational compared to the United States. Oh, and Rick Sting, oh, he trumped it. Trumped it on Easter Sunday. We'll get it out of you next time. Rick Sting, old Don Hellman, thank you for being here for this. When we come back, what led to the release of an American journalist held captive in Iraq? New details after a short break. We'll leave you with a bright spot today. The American journalist abducted in Iraq by an Iranian Allied militia was freed. That's according to the militia and to Iraqi security officials. Shelley Kittleson, a freelance journalist who's been reporting on the Middle East for more than a decade, was held captive for a week, prompting a manhunt for her kidnappers led by Iraqi security forces as the U.S. worked on negotiating her release. The militia group warned in a statement that, quote, this initiative will not be repeated in the future. And said she must leave Iraq immediately. The State Department has not yet released a statement. We'll continue to monitor that. One more break. We'll be right back. Thank you so much for letting us into your homes tonight. We are grateful.
