“U.S. F-15 Fighter Jet shot down in Iran”

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Right now we are monitoring a developing situation inside Iran, specifically a US military search and rescue operation that is underway as we speak. It is for an American service member somewhere inside Iran's borders. That is according to a US official with knowledge of the matter. Again, this is a fast evolving story, but here's what we know at this hour. A US F-15 fighter jet, a combat vessel that seats two, a pilot and a weapons systems officer was shot down this morning over the skies of Iran. You can see pieces of it on your screen there. Earlier officials confirmed to MS now that one of the two people on board was thankfully rescued. Now whether that was the pilot or the systems officer, we are still not sure. Also unknown, the whereabouts of that second person. And while there is plenty of reason to doubt anything said on the airwaves of Iran's state TV, we're going to note this. Earlier presenter read aloud a bounty reward for the capture of quote, enemy pilots. We understand that Donald Trump has been briefed on all of this last hour he posted on social media. Not with words of encouragement or a thought for the missing service member, but with this in all caps. Keep the oil anyone? That message merely 43 hours since he told the American people in a prime time address from the White House that US goals in the region were nearing completion. Watch. Tonight Iran's Navy is gone. They're air forces in ruins. They have no anti-aircraft equipment. Their radar is 100% annihilated. We are unstoppable as a military force. We have all the cards they have none. Now in this space between that moment and today's ongoing search and rescue operation for an American service member in Iran, US military conducted an assault on a major civilian infrastructure, a violation of international law including a major bridge still under construction that resulted in eight people being killed. It was an escalation that has already resulted in retaliation. All of that with a major deadline now on the other side of this weekend. Remember Trump insisted that Iran had until Monday to reopen the Strait of Hormuz or else as commander in chief, he'd instruct the US military to initiate attacks on Iran civilian power plants. But in the meantime, the search is on for an American service member perhaps stranded deep behind enemy lines. And that is where we start today. Retired Army Major General Randy Manor is here. He served as Deputy Commanding General in Kuwait and Acting Vice Chief of the National Guards Bureau. Also, Mark Jacobson is here. He is a retired intelligence officer for the Navy and former senior Pentagon official. He is also a military historian and our national security reporter, David Rode. General, I'll start with you as we come on the air NBC News citing a US official is reporting that two US military helicopters that were actually involved in the search and rescue operation today came under fire and were struck by Iranian fire. We understand that those vessels aboard are thankfully safe, but it highlights just the risk that is at play here both in the initial operation with that F-15 and the rescue and the search and rescue operation that is ongoing. My thoughts, of course, are with those servicemen in harm's way, as well as, of course, probably even more importantly, they're family members who are so very worried about them. When you send in strikes into over enemy territory, you have search and rescue capabilities already loitering, not too far away so they can be there hopefully within minutes, if not a very brief amount of time. It's usually composed of HC-130s with Blackhawks helicopters, as well as, of course, paired jumpers that would go in to be able to help any wounded or injured pilot. And these would be escorted by fighters because, of course, they're very defenseless whenever they're flying and they fly very low and very slow, but the fighters would be there to support them. So this is just a very unfortunate situation. And again, my heart and my thoughts are with all of the military members and their families. General, how complex is a search and rescue operation? You touched on it a little bit, and you mentioned the helicopters that are involved. And we were mentioning that NBC News reporting that the helicopters themselves also came under fire. They have to cover a lot of terrain looking for these pilots. And I'm wondering how complex of an operation that is that they are close to the ground, subject to enemy fire, trying to keep a visual on where that plane went down and possible any signals that might be emitted or transmitting signals that might be emitted from that second service member. Yes, it's extremely complex, and it does require a lot of sophisticated coordination among the air and in those resources that may actually have to get down to the ground to inspect any kind of wreckage or anything else to determine, hopefully, of course, if the other person is alive. And if not, of course, to be able to extract the remains in the worst of cases, of course. So it's very, very difficult. It's very dangerous work. My son actually was an HC-130 pilot in charge of a crew like this in Afghanistan when I was in Iraq in Kuwait back in the day. So it is, again, you can imagine every time he was flying, I was concerned about him and his crew as well. Hundreds of lives are at stake trying to save that one pilot as it should be. Yeah, absolutely. A very important point. Mark, of course, we were just highlighting the dangers and the risks involved. The commander-in-chief and his first public reaction to all of this significant development today was to post, keep the oil, anyone. What's your view of the situation and that reaction? Randy, first, let me echo what Randy said. Our thoughts are with the families, our prayers are with the pilots, at least one of whom is still behind enemy lines, and there's a lot of uncertainty here. This is a complex operation, I am sure. If there is one thing I am sure about with this White House, that the concerns of the president are with the families and are with the troops. And if there's any doubt as to how serious this incursion-conflict war with Iran is, then today should be a very clear sign. Just like when bodies come back at Dover, that this is not only serious, but we are going to take more casualties the longer that we are involved in this campaign. David, the New York Times reported that a second Air Force combat plane crashed in the Persian Gulf region on Friday, and the lone pilot was safely rescued according to the two U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss these operational matters. The A-10 Warhawk attack plane went down near the Strait of Hormuz about the same time that an Air Force F-15 was shot down over Iran, the officials said. And in that incident, one crew member was rescued and search and rescue operations are still ongoing for that second Airmen. Officials provided scanned details about what led that A-10 crash, including where it happened. What more can you tell us about this reporting and the dominance, if you will, or the lack thereof of American air power over the skies of Iran and the region? Yes, I had two officials tell me that in terms of the Warhawk going down, that's correct. They said there was just one pilot in the Warhawk and that that person had been rescued. But the main question, and you know, I mean, that's the most important thing they've been rescued, but the main question in terms of the performance of the U.S. forces versus Iranian defenses, it's not clear if the Warhawk crashed or was shot down. If Iran's military has managed to shoot down two U.S. planes, they had not shot down any until today, hours after President Trump made that declaration in the speech to the nation, that would be a shocking result. And it does point to the resilience of Iranian forces, it's sort of asymmetric warfare that they're able to, there's been, I believe, 10,000 sorties that have occurred, no planes shot down, and now they're able to take these down. I think it's too hard to say at this point whether this is a, you know, these are two isolated incidents or not, but I just think it is another challenge to the President's narrative about that this war is going well, that we've decimated Iran's air defenses, yet you have two planes crashing, one of them the F-15 being shot down. David, what else have you heard in your reporting, and what are you tracking down, what are you working on trying to track down right now on this day? I'm very concerned about this pilot. It's dark in Iran that could help them possibly hide. There's transmitters that pilots have. There was a famous case many, many years ago in Bosnia where an American pilot hid for a long period and it was actually rescued. So there's a chance this pilot is still out there somehow hiding. They get specialized training. Both of my colleagues here, the military experts, will know, but it's called a SEER training, S-E-R-E. It's to survive, to get to the ground. Hopefully this person wasn't injured. If they were injured, it's easier for the Iranians to get them. E is for evade, that they should evade capture as I just talked about. And R and E, the last parts of the training, are resistance. That's if you're captured. I do think the Iranians will keep him or her alive. The propaganda value of being able to show a captured American pilot is enormous for the Iranian regime. And the final SEER is escape. There is a duty for U.S. service members to try to escape when possible. It's a huge complex effort. I just hope they find this pilot and find them and they're still safe. General, tell us a little bit about that F-15 fighter jet. And just to pose that with the comments the president made that the U.S. basically had complete dominance over Iranian skies. Is that a plane that would be easily shot down? What kind of weaponry could bring down an F-15 over the skies of Iran? I think there's actually two very important points that all the viewers have to understand is that the president's comments were quite frankly almost to the level of political propaganda. Why do I say that? Because never underestimate your enemy. We have not completely destroyed everything that they have. They have a very powerful army. They have many, many man pads. They have the ability to attack us in different ways. It is absolutely true that the strategic capability to attack their neighbors has been significantly diminished. It is not zero. And we should never assume that. Because as soon as you get laxadaisical, it doesn't matter what equipment that you have or how well trained you are. If you let your guard down, then bad things can happen. So again, we need to be open-eyed about this. We need to know that this is a high-risk environment. It is not just taking a flight around Iran. That is not what is going on here. Do not underestimate your enemy. Mark, the official status of the missing service member is duty status. Whereabouts unknown? I'm wondering if you can explain that to our viewers. And are you at all surprised that one service member has been rescued and the other remains missing? Does that tell us anything about how the nature of the aircraft may have come down and the two service members split up? Right. Well, to answer your first question, the Dust 1 status, the duty status unknown, essentially this is the Pentagon doing the right thing being prudent because they're not certain of any information. I think the viewers will be familiar with two other statuses, missing in action and killed in action. But there's also EPWPOW, prisoner of war. Now, we don't want to see the missing in action. We don't want to see the killed in action. We don't want to see the prisoner of war. So this is maybe a bureaucratically mundane thing right now, but I think it represents some prudence on the part of the Pentagon. And look, I hope any moment now we get some good news. I think the point David made about this being night, that's to the advantage of the downpilot. And no, I'm not surprised that they had found one pilot but not the other. Evasion is very important and we don't know the status of the situation in the area where they came down. The first thing they're going to do is try and evade any troops that are in close proximity. They also are going to try and establish communications with the potential rescuers and that's going to be absolutely critical to make sure they're guided to the right place. I mean, looking back at the examples from Kosovo, from Bosnia, we can go back historically to the Vietnam War, Desert Storm, Korea. It is so important that those pilots stay away from potential capture. Otherwise, they're in for a long and potentially brutal period of captivity in the hands of the Iranians. Yeah, general to Mark's point and we know how important it is that the Iranians right now are saying this and again, I caveat that as it is state controlled media. So it is, you know, to the extent that we know anything about it, completely unverifiable. But they are putting out a bounty offering anyone who can capture that remaining service member if he or she is alive, some kind of reward. What is going on through the mind of the Iranian regime right now and how can the capture of this American service member be used as leverage? Any time that you have an American service member missing in action in this kind of a situation, if the enemy was to obtain them alive or not, it will be a huge propaganda coup for them with the implication that the United States could not take care of their own or rescue our own pilots. So they can leverage this for propaganda significantly. And then of course, anytime that happens, we have to remember that there are families behind every one of these missing, this missing pilot. And so it is something that not only is very harmful, of course, for that family, but for the American military in general. This is one of those things where I hope that this is, again, we try to de-escalate the situation rather than escalate the situation because sometimes people can get all pumped up and quite easily. And frankly, seek additional blood when things like this happen. I hope that cooler heads prevail and we're able to work through this in a way that reduces the loss of life. David, of course, it's in moments like these that people really want to hold on to international law, that countries and participants of war who are involved in any kind of combat adhere to the rules of international law, that if this service member is captured, that he or she is treated with respect, that he or she, his life is preserved, taken care of. It obviously is complicated by the fact that our own Secretary of Defense was recently talking about violating the rules of war. Tell me a little bit about what the diplomatic effort might be involved in trying to get to Iranian officials that if they do capture this American service member, they want him treated well. It's crystal clear in military law and international law about how you treat a prisoner of war under the Geneva Conventions. The pilot should not be physically abused in any way and be kept safe. It is a rhetoric coming from the administration, but Secretary Hevges has talked about showing no quarter to the enemy, that meaning quarter in the sense of killing all of your enemies. And the President's threat to attack power plants is problematic also, this Monday deadline you mentioned. It's possible to attack some power plants if they are supplying electricity to a military facility or somehow part of a war effort. But he's, the President's talked about generally all plants, power plants in Iran. Vladimir Putin has been doing that in Ukraine and has been criticized because that is a war crime. And so it's rhetoric. The U.S. hasn't done that yet, but it does create a danger, I think, to American service members if they are taken captive. Mark, I want to give you a chance to weigh in on that as well. I'm very worried about this part. If we want to take, let's take ourselves and the viewers back to 2006 and what the late Senator McCain and the late Senator Levin were doing in terms of making sure that the U.S. military adhered to a standard of detention and interrogation that would, amongst other things, make sure that we could go out, call out those who did not treat our own soldiers well. And we know our history, whether it's Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, etc. And I do worry that that will be used as an excuse by the Iranians to mistreat our prisoners. There is, as the general said, great propaganda value in putting unharmed captured individuals out there and showing the strength and prowess in humanity. But again, I worry about this piece and I do worry that the statements coming from the administration, particularly the Secretary of Defense, may not achieve what he wants to see for our troops, and that is that they are protected when they are captured in times of war. Learn more at MS.Now. Amy, let me begin with your background here as a former fighter pilot. Just talk us through the kind of training these crew members had to go through and prepare for, and what's at stake for them in this moment? So I flew a very similar aircraft to the F-15 that was shot down on lots of combat missions in Iraq and Afghanistan and over hostile territory. And every single flight, we go over procedures of what happens if we are shot down or have to eject and over hostile territory. And I can tell you that we all know that the search and rescue units that are sent if we are shot down, those search and rescue units are the best. We know they are. We train with them. The first thing that people have to understand is the ejection itself from an aircraft that has been shot down is a very violent thing to undergo. And you may not even survive an ejection. If you do, you might be injured. Once you're down on the ground, the first thing you're thinking about is evading and making sure that you stay away from anybody that might capture you. And then you're trying to get a hold of those combat search and rescue crews. And we have some communication equipment to be able to do that. We're trained on that. We're briefed on these procedures and we brief ourselves as aircrew every single mission. So highly trained here. Amy, can I ask you about that ejection mechanism for a moment? Because if there were two service members on the plane, I was asking Mark about this earlier, how unlikely is it that they are not together and that during the ejection process, they were separated and one was rescued and the other is still status unknown? Well, Amy, when you have an ejection out of a plane like the F-15, both aircrew are going to be ejected very quickly, one right after the other. We're talking like within a second. So they're going to be in the same area. It's highly unlikely that one would not be ejected unless there was some malfunction there. We just don't know that right now. This is ongoing. But they're probably in the same general area. It's not likely that one stayed in the aircraft and the other was ejected out of the aircraft if that's what you're asking. Yeah, so to that point, General, you were talking about this a little bit in terms of the tools that are available for the military to conduct this search and rescue operation. What are the nature of the forces that are involved in this? You referenced your son earlier, but I suspect at some point there would be troops on the ground, American boots on the ground, going over this terrain, going over this territory and perhaps even trying to secure the location from oncoming Iranian troops who may be also looking through that area. Absolutely. And by the way, I want to definitely shout out to Amy for her past service and continued service to our country. That's quite an honor to have her here. It will take hundreds of people in multiple aircraft to be able to retrieve that pilot. They are not likely to put boots on the ground in terms of the Air Force paratroopers unless they notice remains or a parachute or they receive the signal itself. So you're not going to just put troops on the ground to do searching. You're going to use thermal methods. You're going to use electronic means to be able to determine where they are. You have the capability with those HC-130s and the Blackhawks. These are highly skilled people to be able to go in and to be able to find either, again, the aircraft or parts of the aircraft or to pick up any special signals into help secure and safeguard the pilot once they locate him. Amy, talk to us about how you viewed the president's comments today, where in the midst of all of this and, you know, all of this country now concerned about the families of these service members and their well-being and the search and rescue operation and then even those that are now going to go in harm's way to look for this second service member and the president deciding to come out and post about oil against this backdrop. I mean, every single time the president makes a post like this, it's just, it hurts. It hurts because we have men and women in harm's way right now fighting for a war that he started without the backing of the American people, without the backing of Congress. I am thinking of all the aircrew involved in this dangerous mission right now, this rescue mission, reports of other, possibly other aircraft down. I just feel like the president is, it's just sad to see that that focus right now. And two days ago, remember, he stood up in front of the American people and said the Iranians didn't have their air defenses were decimated. Well, clearly, that's not true. We're at war. He needs to be focused on that. Yeah, you bring up an important point. In the past, he said Iran's nuclear program was obliterated. He said Iran's air defenses were decimated. And clearly, there's a bit of a disconnect there between that reality and what we're seeing play out. Do you believe this situation is escalating rapidly out of the control of the president? He said this war had been over in the first hour when we decapitated the Iranian regime. He said initially it could be a couple of days, maybe two to three weeks. We are not five weeks into this. And a couple of days ago, he told the American people it could be yet another two to three weeks. The president has been all over the map. If anybody that listened or watched his speech two nights ago, he is all over the place. He does not know how to get out of this. He says that he's in negotiations right now, but he can't tell us with who. We somehow keep assassinating the people that we're supposed to be negotiating with. The Strait of Hormuz is still closed. He says that the Iranians, their air defenses have been destroyed, and yet they just shot down one of our aircraft. He is all over the place. And I'm very worried that as I was worried when we got in this war, that it's not strategically sound. I don't think he has a strategy to get out of it. General, I wanted to give you the final thought about the adherence to international law because as we were talking about the Iranian state TV is offering those bounties on Americans, if any Iranian residents find that service member to hand them over to Iranian security forces. And we juxtapose that with what we are hearing from our Secretary of Defense and our president, who is threatening to bomb power plants. We've already seen him bomb a bridge. We're hearing the Secretary of Defense saying effectively the rules of war don't apply to the way he's conducting this war. I'm just curious to get your thoughts on how you view what now is the perilous situation our service member finds himself in and the rhetoric coming out of our own administration. All of our military personnel are in greater risk than they have ever been before in terms of any other previous administration. We have a Secretary of Defense who has actually stated words in his speeches and in writing that are literally the words of potential war criminals. Even if the president pardons him for these things, the Hague will eventually come to get him. It's very disheartening whenever the Secretary of Defense who we're supposed to look up to for guidance and counsel and strategy is saying things about show no quarter which by its quote is prohibited and defined in U.S. law as a war crime. The idea of attacking infrastructure that affects civilians is a war crime. So it goes on and on and our military members start to question what are we doing here if we're attacking for example a bridge under construction. It just doesn't make any sense in terms of what are the military objectives which seem to keep changing on a regular basis. And if you don't have military objectives and then you know when success has been achieved that means all you're going to do is get further and further involved in this warfare and it's going to go worse and worse for the United States and for the American public in terms of the oil prices just as an example. General Randy Manor, Amy McGrath, thank you to the both of you. Really appreciate your time and insights. After the break Pete Hexett's purging of Pentagon leaders why he's playing culture war games and firing experienced leaders in the military. We're going to have much more after a quick break. We'll be right back. The war in Iran which has cost the lives of 13 service members and currently has the United States military desperately searching for a missing service member in Iran has not stopped Pete Hexett and his purge at the Pentagon. Hexett has fired Army Chief of Staff Randy George who was the Army's top uniformed officer along with two other generals. The Pentagon confirmed the firing saying that George would be retiring from his position immediately. According to the New York Times, George's senior Army officers reacted with anger and frustration to the news of General George's dismissal, characterizing it as the latest blow to a service that already feels under siege by Hexett. The firing of George is the latest in a wave of meddling that Hexett has involved himself in at the Pentagon. NBC News reports that Hexett has interfered with the promotion of more than a dozen senior military officers which include Hexett personally blocking the promotions of four officers set to become one star generals. Two of them were black and two of whom were women. According to the New York Times in the weeks ahead of the Defense Secretary blocking their promotion, Hexett has been pressing Secretary of the Army, Dan Driscoll and General George for months to remove the officers from the promotion list. But Mr. Driscoll and General George refused citing the officers long records of exemplary service. Joining me at the table, Paul Rykov, he is the host of the Independent Americans podcast and the founder and CEO of Independent Veterans of America. Also with us political analyst, Molly Jung Fass, she's the host of Fast Politics and a New York Times contributing opinion writer. The crazy thing about this, Molly, is that General George was confirmed, I believe, 96 to 1 in the Senate confirmation hearing when he was promoted to that position. And it seems like this is the new normal for Pete Hexett, right? That irrespective of the confirmation process, irrespective of the endorsement that an officer has from his officers and the rank and file soldiers, Pete Hexett is willing to politicize somebody who stands up to him or disagrees with him on something. Yeah, you know, it's like they're doing all the stuff they accused the left of doing, right? They were like, it's a woke army, it's this, it's politicized. And then here you have someone who is a political actor, really, who's been on television Hexett, who is now firing someone who was, you know, a 96, you know, 96 senators voting for someone. It shows that they are not a political animal, that they are in fact a nonpartisan actor in the military. Yeah, and again, like when you look at that reporting about the members, the generals who were up for promotions, right, they were taken from, you know, taken out of promotion for, you know, and you have the other people who are like nonpartisan military actors saying there's no reason to remove them. So there is actually, they are actually doing the very thing that they have accused the woke left. Yeah, there was a projection. Paul, what do you think this sends? What type of message? When in the middle of a war, this is when you're expecting, you know, the entire chain of command to be unified, to at least be on the same page, even if there is, you know, through the normal process, disagreements about tactics and strategy. But in the middle of a war, what message does this send that you are firing somebody like General George? The message it sends is that loyalty is prized over integrity. And this has always been Hegset. Hegset has demanded loyalty. He's always been what I call the acting secretary of culture war, because he's always been focused on the culture war and battling the woke and battling DEI and battling the liberals much more so than battling Putin or even battling our enemies in the Middle East. He's always wanted to cleanse the Pentagon of anyone who opposed him or wasn't in lockstep with the administration. Here's the real problem. Now he's in an unpopular war. He's in a forever war that a lot of people in the Pentagon don't like either. And if they speak out critically about that, you're going to see, I think, a new wave of purges and firings that are happening. There's also an internal political conflict happening between Hegset and Army Secretary Dan Driscoll. That's now starting to trickle out. He can't fire Driscoll, but he can fire the generals around him. Only the president can get rid of Driscoll. And there's concerns that Driscoll might overshadow Hegset, that he could even replace Hegset. So there's some internal conflict happening. And the calls are coming from inside the house. There are a lot of people who don't respect Hegset. He's got very little support from the rank and file civilians across the Army, and that popularity continues to plummet. And as the war continues to go sideways and if not south, he's going to be on the hook for a lot of it. He's going to demand loyalty. And I hope that we hear from these generals finally who've been fired. They often don't speak out. They don't want to cross that political Rubicon. Now is the time for us to hear from them, because our democracy requires it. You called him the acting secretary of culture wars. And I think that's so important because I guess you definitely do not want any cultural wars happening in our military. You don't want morale to be eroded as a result of these politicized culture wars that somebody like Pete Hexeth is leaning into. And yet that is exactly what he's doing. Going forward, not just in the next week or two, what is the long-term damage to our military, to our national security because of the cultural wars that Pete Hexeth has injected into the military? It narrows it. It makes it look more like Trump's army. It makes it look more like the MAGA army. I mean, another thing that Hexeth did here is he fired ahead of the Chaplain Corps because he wants to enhance the Chaplain Corps. He wants more religion. He wants more of his brand of religion. He invokes Jesus almost every time where only 80% or so of the force is Christian. To everyone else, he's not talking to you. So if you're not Christian, if you don't believe in Jesus, you probably don't feel as welcome in this military right now as you might have under a previous administration. Also yesterday, he also took time to decide he was going to allow open-carry firearms on military bases. In the middle of all this, after his president gave a terribly failure of a speech, he posted a video how he's going to allow open-carries on military bases. He's focused on that instead of focused on our enemies, which is a continued focus on the culture. I would argue right now, it seems like Pete Hexeth might be interested in running for president because he's much more interested in these political issues, these culture war issues than he is in fighting our wars overseas. Alright, Paul and Molly, stay with us. We're going to squeeze in a quick break. When we come back, have some of the administration's most loyal supporters are reacting to this war. We're going to show you some of that next. We're back with Paul and Molly. Molly, let me get your thoughts on it. And one of the things I've said is that perhaps there's no bigger lie that Donald Trump sold the American people that he was not going to start any new wars or wars in the Middle East. And let me play for you two people who endorse Donald Trump and now seem to have regrets. Take a listen to Joe Robin and Theo Vaughn. I guess, yeah, like, yeah, I don't know, man, everybody just feels scared and it makes them scared. Well, they should because a lot of things are getting exposed right now. You know, there's a lot of fraud and you're seeing at the highest levels of government. And people are also scared because no one's getting in trouble for things. Like no one's getting in trouble for the Epstein files. No one's getting in trouble for... Yeah, that's almost disappeared kind of. Well, that's part of what happens when there's some sort of a big social thing. One thing that's in the past that leaders have used to cover up problems at home is a war. I'm not saying that that's why they bombed Iran, but that would be a way to do it. If you're that psychotic, you know, and if you were thinking about doing it anyway, you might be able to justify it. You might be able to justify it. He never went to the American people to even explain it. He didn't go to Congress to explain it. The goalposts are shifting, but he's clearly lost to people that... And I'm not excusing the fact that they went out there and said, vote for Donald Trump. But it seems like he's lost Theo Vaughn and Joe Rogan. What does this say about his base and support for this war? Right. And you have to wonder how much is them reflecting their base, right? The people who listen to them. So they are, right? They know this war is very unpopular. Look, I do think like the biggest lie was definitely no foreign wars. The second biggest was, I'm going to make things cheaper. Right. He came in on an anger that the American people had. And he was as popular as he's ever been. He won the popular vote for this guy to win the popular vote. It was kind of amazing. And he has literally done everything he said he wouldn't do. And there's like no historical precedent for a president going in. And it gets one thing to go in and try and not be able to do something. But it's another thing to go in and just like expressly do the opposite of what he said you were going to do. And I'm shocked that his numbers aren't lower. The other thing is they have never, ever even tried to sell this war, even tried to say like even, you know, even in the movie Wag the Dog, which was about a war distracting from something else. They at least were like, this is why we're going to war. Never. And then the idea here is that how would you even know that the war was won? Because there's no goal. Yeah. And to your point, I mean, I remember George W. Bush spent a year going to the UN and going to the American public and Colin Powell at least trying to make the case. And they didn't even do that here. I think one of the important things speaking of the commander in chief is the way he communicates the American people. And as I said, we started this show with the search and rescue operation. A lot of people praying for the safety of the service member today. And the commander in chief who has been briefed on this operation comes out, doesn't post about the missing service member or the heroes that went in to rescue that other service member. He tweets, keep the oil anyone. And these are the most delicate moments that a commander in chief can face. And he's not good at him. And I think he's failing spectacularly to understand the complexity of the moment to offer the right tone. But going back to the base is a really important point here. He ran against the man. He ran against the system. He ran against the government. Now he's all those things. And the populist part of this country that hates government, that hates the authorities, that wants to eat the rich is coming for him. Because he's making profits. He's clearly in charge. He's also floating things like a potential draft. And when you see Theo Vaughn, you see Joe Rogan, you see Sean Ryan, it's a breaking point. They're done. They've had it with him. And I hear this from a lot of people I served with who supported Trump. A lot of people I grew up with who supported Trump. They're done. And the big lie is now that he said no foreign wars, no forever wars, no regime change wars. And the question is who's going to break ranks internally? Because Tulsi Gabbard said it too. So at some point is she going to break ranks? Is Dan Driscoll going to leave? Or one of these generals going to speak out? Because the dam is breaking. The question now is who's next? Yeah, we still have two and a half years left of this administration. Paul Reikoff, Molly Junk, Fasker, Ted Blossie with us. Thank you so much. After the break, we're going to switch gears for a moment. News of another legal challenge to Trump's election power grab. We'll tell you about that. Take it with us. A group of attorneys general, all Democrats from 23 states filed a lawsuit today in an effort to block Donald Trump's latest attack on mail-in voting, which he backs with debunked claims of widespread voter fraud. As democracy docket points out, this lawsuit now represents the fourth legal challenge to Trump's new executive order, which the attorneys general, according to that reporting, call a, quote, shocking and unprecedented power grab. They write in part, quote, neither the Constitution nor any act of Congress confers upon the president the authority to mandate sweeping changes to states' electoral systems or procedures. After the break, much more on the search for the second airman in that war plane shot down over Iran and will also turn to firing of Pam Bondi and what's next at the Justice Department. Much more ahead as Deadline White House continues after this break. We'll see you next time.