Trump Goes to War: Iran Strike Breaks Promise of No Regime Change

Hey everybody, Tim Miller from The Bulwark here. We are live this morning. I am with our publisher Sarah Longwell, editor Jonathan V. Last, and military analyst Mark Hurtling. The U.S. and Israel began a major military operation in Iran. I guess it was early Saturday morning here, early Saturday morning there, late last night here. Trump has already spoken about this, And he's positioning this very differently than the operation of Venezuela, the past operation in Iran. In a written statement, he said to the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand. Stay sheltered. Bombs will be dropping everywhere. We'll get into more about how they're positioning this. But I figure we just start by going around the horn and getting initial reactions. Sarah, why don't we start with you? I mean, the first thing I'll say is that JVL called this yesterday when we were on the secret pod. He was like, I think this is happening. I think we're going like it's imminent. And so he was right about that. It looked like you could tell from the movements, different places that we were lining up to maybe make this happen. You know, there's a bunch of obvious points. And I think the biggest one is just that this is a 100 percent opposite contrast to what Donald Trump said he was going to do in terms of foreign policy in his presidency. He was voted for in large part or there was a whole section of voters who were persuaded that Donald Trump was going to be a peacetime president. Many of the people who are his current administration officials were the ones saying that Kamala Harris was going to send your sons to die in foreign wars. You know, they put Tulsi Gabbard into the administration in part because these were the these were the dovish people, supposedly. And so for Donald Trump to in the middle of the night wage what is going to be a likely either boots on the ground or at least with the potential of casualties war, a regime change war, which is what this is, is the exact opposite of what his voters thought they were getting when they voted for him. Yeah, and Trump himself has already said, and we'll get to that in a second, that there could be casualties in this war. So he isn't even, for once, hiding the ball on something. JVL, what's your initial thoughts on the political side of this? And then we'll get into the military. Two things. First of all, it could turn out well. Now, I don't think it's likely to. But the Iranian regime is a terrible, repressive regime. it is possible that they could wind up deposed and that something like an Iraqi level democracy could reemerge there. And that would be good for Iran, good for America, good for the world. I think this is a low, low probability outcome, but you know, like it's there. And so we ought to, we ought to acknowledge it. Secondly, I do think this, and this isn't exactly political. But we are seeing, I think this is now just a clear pattern. So between the original Iran strikes, the Venezuela regime swap out where, you know, he pulled one dictator and inserted another. And now the attempt to topple this regime. I mean, it just seems to me that this is now Trump's mode of foreign policy. He is not interested in confronting actual great powers like China or Russia, but he is interested in being really activist with the military in order to choose the leaderships of countries that are disfavored by he and his regime. And so I look at this and I just think, boy, if I was the leadership in Cuba right now, I would be trying to figure out my way out of this. General, I'll come to you in one second. I just want to expand a little bit on JBL's point about outcomes here. Sure. I mean, anything could happen. And the Iranian regime is so horrendous that there's a big space between the current disaster where they've been killing tens of thousands of their own citizens and a flourishing democracy. I think that would be better. From the American perspective, though, I just want to frame this up. We're conducting a war that has no legal grounds. you know and so like even if the outcome is correct like the process has been i both against our our own laws and rules but but also an affront really to the american people i mean you know sarah talked about how this is countered what he said in the campaign for sure it's anti his mandate but in addition to that he spoke to the american people on tuesday on tuesday night and didn't didn't didn't make a case for this one paragraph it was one paragraph i don't know it was about nuclear weapons and now he's out there talking today about freedom for the Iranian people i i mean there was no case made for the american people for the war the his foreign policy message american people is totally incoherent i mean like they were they've literally been giving big speeches over the course of the past few months talking about how stupid wars like this are and how we should care more about our spheres of influence and care more about you know national power at home. And so it's a direct, you know, attack on what they've been claiming, you know, in addition to, you know, them not having any authorization for it. And I think that I'm interested to talk about kind of that in a second. But General Hurtling, what, responding to kind of what you've heard from the three of us novices and anything else that has caught your eye here? Not so novice, Tim. I'm going to reinforce what Sarah said first, is it's not only an issue that he promised his base when he was in the campaign. But it's also something, I mean, we did at the Bulwark a deep dive into the national security strategy and the national defense strategy a few weeks ago. And there was nothing about conflict in Iran or in the Middle East. In fact, just the opposite was true in those documents. And Hegseth has backed that up. Rubio has backed that up, saying we're getting out of those foreign wars. Within the last few weeks, this wasn't part of campaign. This was recently. The other thing is the fact that JBL just mentioned in terms of how is this going to appear around the world? And you stated it too. I don't think there's any rational legal basis that would prevent us from not becoming an international pariah on this. We're already seeing things from various allies. I'm getting texts this morning from my allies in Europe and one individual I fought alongside an Iraqi in Iraq saying, what the hell are you doing? So, I mean, not only the American people confused and by the way, the polling and I'm not a big polling guy, but I know what polling is saying about a lack of support for operations outside the country. It's not only nationally that there's some confusion, but it's internationally as well with our allies. And really, the last thing I'd say is to back up what you just mentioned. I think President Trump has gotten a little bit too sanguine about how capable the military is and how there's a whole lot more to war than just military strikes against targets. You know, he was very combative toward the Iranian regime, okay, after a couple of weeks of trying to bring about a deal. He was sympathetic toward the Iranian people, which I don't think he fully understands the culture of Iran. And it is going to be a very diverse population in terms of either supporting regime change or standing up and rising up and forming a new government. Anytime you have a regime change, there is chaos within the population, no matter how strong the different factors are. And that's going to be especially important when you're talking about a country that repeatedly calls us the great Satan. And then in his speech this morning, he prepared the public for casualties. That's the first time I've heard him do that. So someone's telling him, hey, this is going to be a tough slog. I would hope that's the chairman of the Joint Chiefs and some of the other people who understand the reality of conflict and how it's It never goes the way you think it's going to go. And there's always wild cards in place whenever you put on the shields of war. Why don't we pull up that video, actually, because we do have it. And for people who are just joining us here on the Borg livestream, if you're new to us, I'm Tim Miller. That's Sarah Longmore, our publisher, Jonathan Lastmark, Mark Hurtling. We were just hearing from, was the commanding general of the U.S. Army. Europe has a long, decorated career in our military. So as you mentioned, Trump has been speaking about or gave remarks about this early this morning. Let's just pull that bite where he talks about the risks, about how. Situation has taken every possible step to minimize the risk to U.S. personnel in the region. Even so, and I do not make this statement lightly, the Iranian regime seeks to kill. The lives of courageous American heroes may be lost and we may have casualties that often happens in war. Very different than how he was pitching the last Iranian strikes in Venezuela. Yeah. And not only that, it was kind of a, oh, by the way, we're going to have potential casualties. I mean, it was really sort of just a hand wave to what happens to American sons and daughters when you go into conflict. And this is why I think a lot of people have been trying to tell him, make your case first to the Congress of the United States and the American people, because they're the ones that are sacrificing their sons and daughters for potential operations like this. Hey, Mark, one of the things I got I got two thoughts on that. One is, do you think that Trump, because of how the Venezuela operation went, because of how the first Iran bombing went, where like he's gotten this sense that you can just go in, do a smash and grab job, our military is really good at that, he gets a little pop and he feels good about it, has led him to think incorrectly about how easy this might be? or it because in that clip, it sounds like he's saying there will be casualties or there could be casualties. So it seems like he kind of understands that this is a different animal. But is he like overconfident because of how things have gone so far? Absolutely. Yeah, Sarah. Absolutely. I've been saying this for days. He used special operations forces in every single attack he's conducted so far. Those individuals are very precise and very surgical in their attack. He's got two carrier battle groups in the area right now. They are still precise in terms of their weaponry and how they conduct operation. It's very well planned and very well executed. But when you're talking about expanding it beyond the special operations community and you're making something much bigger than a Venezuelan snatch and grab, You know, it just boggles my mind how he thinks this is going to be simple and how, well, maybe there's going to be casualties. If this is sustained for a period of time, there will be casualties. There will be pilots that are going to be potentially shot down. And when you have that happen, then you've got to pull them out of the country in some way. You've got to have what they call CSAR, Combat Search and Rescue. I'm sure the Navy has planned for that. But again, I keep going back to the size and the geography of the Iranian territory and the places he's conducting attacks against. And it is a rabid society. You know, he seems to go back. He keeps going back to the 1979 revolution. That was 47 years ago. The people that were involved in that revolution are 80 years old now. So, you know, the society has been used to the kind of regime they have right now. It's going to be tough to replace it. I want to talk about the rationale here. I've been asking guests on the pod all week, like, why are we really doing this? You know, because, you know, you hear a lot of people giving very confident assertions about why it is. saying the administration's reason, which we're about to show you here, is just a lie on its face about the imminent threat to nuclear weapons. So we know it's not what they're saying it is. Now Trump, just this morning for the first time, is starting to talk about freedom for Iranians. So he's offering a new neocon explanation. There's the explanation that he's just doing whatever Israel wants. Israel's walking him into this war. And I think there's maybe something to that. People say this is some distraction. I think it's the craziest thing to do possible if you're trying to distract from the Epstein files. other maybe corrupt motives. So, J.B., I'm going to get your take on that. But first, let's listen to Trump offer what he says the reason for this war is. Just imagine how emboldened this regime would be if they ever had and actually were armed with nuclear weapons as a means to deliver their message. For these reasons, the United States military has undertaken a massive and ongoing operation to prevent this very wicked, radical dictatorship from threatening America and our core national security interests. We are going to destroy their missiles and raise their missile industry to the ground. It will be totally, again, obliterated. Again obliterated, JVL. What do you make of that? We're going to re-obliterate. So my simple-minded view of this is that the thing we have not discussed yet is that this is a joint war being waged by the U.S. and Israel. And this is Bibi Netanyahu's war. I mean, again, the strikes we did on Iran were preceded by Israel opening up an actual, you know, days-long war against Iran in which they tried to decapitate the regime then. They did not succeed. Bibi Netanyahu believes, this is just my readout, I could be wrong, that he has three years left of an American president who will do basically whatever he says. and this is their shot to settle all family business. And Israel is threatened by the stock of missiles. You know, Iran sits on like 1,500 missiles or so, we think. This is a chance to go and get a bunch of those. This is a chance to blow up the regime, send Iran into chaos. I mean, Israel would love it if Iran became a democracy, but they don't need that. It would be fine for their purposes if Iran became a failed state. and uh this is again we we we haven't talked about the israeli part of this but they seem to the reports are that they've launched uh strikes in syria against hezbollah forces in violation of the ceasefire they just signed with them like this everything seems to me to suggest that israel is driving this this boat and uh like i just don't see any other compelling explanation yeah Yeah, so let's talk about then, okay, let's say that is our working explanation for why this is happening. Then it takes me to the next layer of the question, which is why is Trump letting Bibi put a dog collar on him and walk him around the neighborhood? I don't really understand that fully. One theory I have to offer, I'm interested in your take, General, and Sarah, if you want to pop in, is Trump is kind of impressed with Israel's military. He's easily impressed, and again, this is all very early. So I just want to caveat that. But initial reports from Israeli officials assess that the commander of the IRGC was likely killed. The Minister of Defense and Chief of Intelligence was maybe killed. There are conflicting reports about Khomeini. They went after Khomeini himself. So we don't have confirmation one way or the other on that. Reports of Israel's broken into Iranian internal military communications. We can go through the list. Say what you want about Israel. The military has demonstrated some pretty impressive capabilities over the past couple of years. And maybe Trump just thinks I can kind of take, you know, it's more co-opted glory. Like these guys know what they're up to. Or is there something more corrupt or some other motive? Because it's hard to think that he figures it's a domestic political win. I don't know. Do you have any theories on that, Sarah or Mark? Yeah. Yeah, I think there were there was reporting last week, too, that there was a dynamic. And this is over open source intel channels, that there was a dynamic between the Israelis and the U.S. of who would lead this strike. Would it be the Americans going in first or would it be the Israelis and with the Americans following? And I think there was tension because Netanyahu was forcing us to go first so he could tag along. And it was the other way around with some in our government or, you know, limited kinetic strikes. So, yeah, I would definitely say people are being led around by a chain. But I'm going to add to your concern, Tim, if you don't mind, because we were talking about the Israelis. But that letter that was recently issued by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia scared the bejesus out of me because he's the kingdom. is basically saying, hey, any attacks against our Arab neighbors in the region, and they named a few in the letter, would be considered by us an attack on us. So this not only talks about a potential multinational or a combined operation between Israel and the United States, but I think others in the region have been prepared for this, and they're ready to join in the fight against Iraq. So could this turn into, and I'm saying worst case here, could this turn into a global conflagration? Because China and Russia are going to back around, in my view. So you're going to have some really tense moments in the next couple of days in terms of who's deciding which side to be on. So yeah, I'm concerned about that as well. It's interesting you made the point about the kingdom. And Sarah, I'm going to show some video and then we'll come to you. But one thing I've been talking about the last couple of days is whether there's actual corruption at play here or just the perception of it. Like Trump is in business with all the Arab states now, too. Right. And so that Saudi statement comes in the context of Saudi giving, you know, however many hundreds of billions to Trump's son-in-law. UAE and Qatar, you know, getting involved in this. Qatar is giving us an airplane. You know, Qatar is also involved in the CNN, you know, WBD. We can just go down the whole list. UAE is in business with the Trump family on crypto. So all of that has to be considered as well in their interests, in addition to the Israel interests. And to your point about this kind of ballooning and expanding, I saw a comment here from one of our viewers who's in UAE talking about how there's explosions happening around the region. Here's one video that we do have of Iran striking back. It seems like they've had some failed strikes in other countries. But here is an attack on the U.S. Navy's base in Bahrain. Let's just take a look at that. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. OK. So at least one of the Iranian missiles gotten through Sarah thoughts on kind of the geopolitics of this So I going to back into it by saying this because I want to just go back to the idea that Trump is waging this war entirely by himself and without Congress I am basically obsessed with the way that Congress has abdicated its role, not just here, but in all things. But so what's crazy to me, and I'm interested in what you guys think about this, is like Trump will own this war singularly. There's no party going with him. There's no I mean, maybe Lindsey Graham, you know, but like he doesn't even at least a phonic statement on this was like lukewarm. I wasn't, you know, and she's kind of on the Warhawk wing of the if I can add to that. I'm not sure the military is all that enamored with this either. I mean, Dan Cain has been reported in The Washington Post saying, hey, this is going to be very dangerous. So it's not only Congress, the military will do what they're ordered to do if it's legal and evidently it's legal. But that's a dangerous prescription, too. This is not a good military adventure. Yeah, but I just want to think it through from this vantage point of Trump has decided to go it alone, not America alone, like Trump alone. Trump and BD alone. Trump and BDL. But I guess at a time when American public sentiment is not only anti-regime change, is not only growing more anti-Israel. Sorry, my bubbles. But is – so like in every way, like part of the military's deep support for Trump was that Trump was there saying, I'm not going to get us into any stupid wars. Like and so I started with with this idea that Trump is doing exactly the opposite of what he campaigned on, but also like the opposite of the people he put in his government, the opposite of the sort of voters who have come along with them, the Republican base. And so Trump is like going against everyone right now without going through Congress. So there's no backing. And so he's going to get us into this singularly. And unless he pulls the inside straight that we're talking about, where somehow he manages to take, what is it, like 10 to 17 different sects within the country that is like has 90 million people, twice the size of or is like two Texases, two and a half Texases. Like it's just him. And so sometimes people are going to ask us, what do you think of the wisdom of this? And it's like almost none of it matters in the face of like Trump waging a war alone I'm against, always firmly against, because why would we trust Trump to wage a war alone that could drag us into a world war in the Middle East? Sarah watched the Tucker and Ted Cruz debate. You know, she knows the population of Iran. So JBL, respond to that, but also just why I just don't want to circle all the way back around to you on the Israel thing to see if you have a theory of the why Trump is so pliable. I don't. I mean, I think there are a bunch of reasons. I think he believes the Republican Party is basically down for whatever in support of Israel. And, you know, look, it's the lone real democracy in the region, longtime American ally. Our interests and Israeli interests historically have aligned quite tightly. I don't think he quite clocks what J.D. has going on. J.D. said, has had a statement, the idea will be an immediate eastern ward for years. There's no end in sight. There's no chance that will happen. J.D.'s confident that that's not going to happen. Well, and you know what, though? Well, I'm reasonably confident in that, too, because we've been thinking about this all in sort of escalatory, you know, through an escalatory lens, which is good. I don't mean to say, but there is another possibility, which is that you get like seven days of strikes and then Trump just declares victory. And this is why he's dead, especially in that case. I just want to take a victory. Yeah. Look, if they kill any person who he can plausibly say was really important, then, well, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, Oman. We got him. And he was really the most, the key guy behind everything. The reason I was pretty confident that this was going to happen was because all three actors wanted this war. Netanyahu wants to degrade Iranian capability. Trump has decided that he can use the military to just blow stuff up and that that's good for him. And Iran was in a pretty weak negotiating position on their ongoing talks about their nuclear program, which was not, as it happened, totally obliterated. The Iranians seemed to think that if they just absorbed a bunch of body blows here, Trump would need to declare victory. And they can put together a deal then that is a better deal and was on offer and just let Trump declare victory and walk away. And that is, I think, again, probably the most likely outcome here. It's not, you know, not better than 50 percent. But of all the outcomes that you're looking at, all the potential universes that we could wind ourselves up in, I think one of them is like just drop a bunch of bombs. It's based on a lot of confidence that Iran is not going to be successful in, you know, taking out key American, you know, military assets. And that's a very bad assumption to make. You know, one of the things that happens in contingency planning is when you look at a war plan, the very first page is nothing but assumptions. And old Don Rumsfeld used to go through those ad nauseum with his combatant commanders and say, well, what if that does happen? And what if that doesn't happen? And what what key assumptions are you going to be surprised about? And it always happens in warfare because war is a people, you know, it concerns people in the way they might be going. And the enemy always gets a vote. And in this case, the enemy is going to get a vote. And I don't think Trump can declare victory. But it gets back to the strategy, Tim. you know, we were talking about strategy of what was the strategy in Venezuela? What exactly what were you looking to do? And it seemed to boil down to taking their oil. Well, Venezuela is now off the front page of most of our newspapers and in our cable news. And it's chaos down there. It's not good. And I would suggest Iran is going to be exponentially worse. Sarah, I want to come back to you on the Congress part of this just a couple of things a minute ago when I said that J.D. Vance put out a statement about this J.D. Vance actually hasn't put out a statement this morning this was earlier in the week J.D. Vance was promising we're not going to get into a lengthy conflagration in the Middle East we have it from Mike Johnson he said in the statement that he was briefed in detail earlier this week that military action may become necessary to protect American troops and American citizens in Iran I received updates from Secretary Rubio They'll have to remain in close contact with the president and the Department of War as the operation proceeds. So over on the Hill, just a couple of things I want you to kind of riff on, Sarah. There was some discussion earlier this week. There was this Rochanna-Thomas Massey bill. They're the only ones who do anything, apparently, anymore in Congress. But they're going to do a joint bill together forcing an Iran war powers vote. That didn't happen. There's going to be some mixed reporting on why that was delayed. But I talked to Roe about it. I think that they wanted to move it quicker. The Democratic leadership and negotiations were trying to work on a few things. I think there's a question about whether the Democratic leadership was intentionally slow walking this. Schumer's statement after that Gang of Eight meeting referenced by Mike Johnson was pretty neutral, I would say. I got you. It didn't say it's just Chuck Schumer was not giving a like we need to stop this war with Iran type statement when he came out of that meeting. So I'm wondering and then but we have from Tim Kaine, I should just say, here's just one example of a Democratic response. I'm going to read this from Tim Kaine. Has President Trump learned nothing from decades of U.S. meddling in Iran and the Middle East? Is he too mentally incapacitated to realize that we had a diplomatic agreement with Iran that was keeping his nuclear program in check until he ripped it up during his first term? The Senate should immediately return to session and vote on a war powers resolution to block the use of U.S. forces and hostilities against Iran. Every single senator needs to go on record. We should say that there's also been one Democratic senator being for it, John Fetterman. He's already been on Fox this morning. So just a lot there, Sarah. I just kind of want to disentangle what we're seeing from the various factions on the Hill. Yeah, I mean, it makes political sense, I guess, that Democrats wouldn't want to be wouldn't want to have to vote on this. And maybe, though, they didn't want to have to vote on it before. They might be more willing to vote on it now. Like the strikes got carried out and now they can like put a chain on Trump as opposed to preemptively then Trump being like, you wouldn't let me do this. They're so weak. I don't know. I just want to throw one sentence. I don't think it made political sense. Again, to J.V.L.'s point at the very beginning, this could go well. Even if it goes well, he did it illegally. I, I, I, the American people don't want it. You know, I don't think the American people are going to reward Pete Hegseth and Trump, even if, you know, there is a positive change in the, you know, like to me, it's pretty clear for like the Democrats should just be against this, but one man's opinion. Uh, I think they should be against it until they force Trump to make a case. Like I think part of what, to your point about him not bringing this up in the state of the union, This is actually very important. The case making to the American people, the case making to Congress, like the reason that you get Congress to approve it is because the Americans people voted for them to be along with the president on these things like that is their natural role. That's right. And I do think that Democrats should be hair on fire, rip shit over the fact that this isn't how Donald Trump campaigned. Like they should be telling everybody all the time. He lied to you about this. He specifically said he wasn't going to do this. I do. Democrats get so timid and afraid to engage on this stuff, especially when it comes to the military. If only Democrats had the bravery of Marjorie Taylor Greene, Sarah. Oh, what's Marjorie's doing, J.D.L.? oh look at my girl did not donate money for this i did not vote for this uh this is heartbreaking and tragic and how many more innocent will die what about our own military this is not what we thought maga was supposed to be shame why don't we talk a little bit about the maga um turnabout on this i do want to come back a little bit to the democrats but since jvl has taken us down the marjorie taylor green lane um let's do it uh that that statement from marjorie taylor green is could have been what she put out if Joe Biden... I guess she didn't support Joe Biden, but the sentiment would have been the same if Joe Biden was president. I mean, there is a consistency about it. I'm just going to pick through a couple of these things from prominent MAGAs in the recent past, prominent people in this administration, actually. Stephen Miller in November of 2024. There we go. Kamala will send your sons to war. There's another Stephen Miller post. to anyone still gullible enough to fall for scummy media hoaxes. Trump said more mongering neocons love sending your kids to die for wars they would never fight in themselves. Liz Cheney is Kamala's top advisor. Kamala equals World War III, Trump equals peace. That was Stephen Miller. A lot of, I would say, left isolationists who in every other context understand that Stephen Miller is a lying twat and that Donald Trump is a liar and don't take them at their word on anything. It was pretty strange that they all took them at their word on this. Something to think about from our left populist friends. Trump himself, or actually, let's go to Tulsi first. Tulsi, this is funny. Please, please. Tulsi in 2020. No war with Iran. Get our troops out of Iraq and Syria now. Here she is also. We do not seek... This is Tulsi on Trump in 2020. 20. He said, she goes, neocons like Graham Bolton are cheering to all who voted for Trump because of anti-war rhetoric. It's time to realize he lied to you. Stand with me against Trump's Iran war. No Iran war. And there she goes. She even sold a t-shirt. That's a cool t-shirt. I wonder if that's still for sale. Maybe we can get one in the secondary market. Currently, the director of national intelligence literally has a post from five years ago. Stand with me against Trump's Iran war. wild. Trump himself going way back 2013. He said, remember that I predicted a long time ago, the president Obama will attack Iran because of his inability to negotiate properly. Obama's not skilled. In 2012, he said that now that Obama's poll numbers are in a tailspin, watch for him to launch a strike in Libya or Iran. He is desperate. So, I mean, we'd go on and on. Actually, I do have one more. This was from summer of 2025, about, I guess, a month or two before he was assassinated. This is Charlie Kirk talking about the possibility of war with Iran. States about Israel and Iran and potentially the United States. On one side is the Lindsey Graham, John Bolton types, where they are actively calling for regime change. Here is Lindsey Graham. This is just lunacy. This kind of analysis is not helpful. This kind of approach, this kind of argument, it has nothing to do with nuclear weapons at this point. This is now that we want to go all in and take out the regime. It's time for us to close the chapter on the Iranian Ayatollah and his henchmen and start a new chapter in the Middle East. That sounds good, doesn't it? But what have we learned when it comes to wars and especially wars in the Middle East? What you draw up on a whiteboard rarely happens. He goes on to call it pathologically insane to do exactly what Trump is doing right now. Charlie Kirk sounding a little bit like you there, General Hurtling. What you draw up on a whiteboard rarely happens. That scares me a little bit. That scares me a little bit. But he's right. He's absolutely right. And interestingly enough, I was on MS Now this morning and Ambassador Bolton came on afterwards and claimed that the Iraq war was a success and we did everything right. And if we had just it would have been much better if we had just thrown a copy of the Federalist papers after our initial attack to the Iraqi people, they would have figured it out themselves and changed the regime. Like airdrops and pocket constitutions? I guess, but I got to tell you. That's a good idea. You should always have a pocket. You got yours. Always, always. Yeah, but that's the kind of thinking that gets us into this when you have a national security strategy that talks about ends, but doesn't talk much about ways and means. You can have those kind of goals of regime change without saying, how do you do that? And how and not understanding and President Trump, I don't think, has a fine understanding of how conflicts either happen or evolve. If you don't have a fine understanding of the implications of that kind of action of going to war, you're going to make all kinds of mistakes because it is going to be chaos on the ground. Mark, I think this case was even crazier than that, though, because it seems to be that Trump settled on means. I'm going to go attack Iran without even having decided what his ends would be. Yeah, I agree with that. It doesn't look like they had a political goal. Yeah, the same thing was true in Venezuela. I mean, they talked all sorts of things about, you know, oil and and narco terrorists and all sorts of other things. And they never really said, here's what we're trying to achieve. I don't know what they're trying to achieve in Iran other than the stated goal of getting rid of nuclear weapons. And as he said in his tweets a long time ago, you know, perhaps you might want to try diplomacy first, or perhaps you might not even want to throw out the JCPOA, which kind of started us down that road a few years ago. Sarah, what do you think, given your time and focus groups with the MAGAs, how do you think this plays out? I mean, Marjorie T.R. Greene sounds a lot like what I assume a lot of the voters you heard from sounded like. Do they stick with her or do we start to, you know, do they're all, you know, at least for some of them, they're probably around for a rock and kind of the old muscles start flaring. The new group of MAGAs, maybe they are different or maybe not. What do you think? So what we're seeing so far in the focus groups is that there is resistance to what Trump is doing from people who are like true believers. And so some of the like red-pilled types, the podcast bros, they feel betrayed by what Trump is doing across a lot of actors. And this is one of them. But I would say broadly MAGA is like, yes, the other side wants to send people to die and it's Kamala's a neocon and loves Liz Cheney. And those are the ones who are going to do seal claps right now for this. In large part because you're going to get the right wing influencer types that sort of tell people how to feel about things will have some rationale that's like this is Obama's fault for reasons. And Donald Trump has to clean up the mess. And, you know, we've got like whatever. They will have some rationale. And also like look, look how he did Venezuela. No one was killed. Look how he did this. Hunter's laptop. What? Hunter's laptop. Hunter's laptop. Valerie Jarrett for the old school type. Yeah. She was in league with Iran, yeah. And so they will tell them that, and I think a lot of people will go – but his is where, like, the reality can catch up with him in a way that – and Mark – General Hurtling. General Hurtling at this point. Mark. We can call him. We're on a live stream, baby. you what was the point you were making before about um uh oh shit now i lost my train of thought while i was thinking of his name um but it was why don't you think about it while i'm gonna rant about the pod boys for a second and maybe it'll come back to you um the uh my political assessment of this is that it is it's a real risk for trump because i think that he is is it is going to solidify the loss of support among the people that he's already lost. I don't know how much more there is to gain, but it's kind of a last one in the boat, first one out type situation. Yeah. Where you've got these libertarian Joe Rogan type guys that are like, they cared about Epstein. They really didn't want the wars. They voted for Obama. They're not partisan magas. And they're like, fuck this guy. Maybe they don't become Democrats. They don't like the Democrats either, but they're off the boat. And then you've got the young, I think that there was a group of young men in particular that really were kind of brainwashed by this and were convinced and you saw Trump gain among young black and Hispanic men in particular but also even expand among young white men and a lot of them were not again, partisan right wingers they weren't going to Turning Point USA type things and they wanted things to be cheaper and they didn want wars and now that they looking at this they like what the fuck is this So I do think like there some demographics that this hurts him with politically but I agree with you I think the core MAGA base starts to backfill rationalizations. Anyway, did it come back to you? Yeah, it did. Which is only like, this can get away from him in a way that some of these other things might not. When General Hortling was saying the enemy gets a vote, like if they start bombing, American embassies or, you know, Americans are killed like this. This one can get away from Trump a lot faster than some of these others. And this is where if it gets prolonged at all or if there is one big set of American casualties, I don't know that as many people hang with him. Like they'll hang with him through Venezuela. They'll hang with him through a bombing of Iran. if it's punctuated, if it's short term, anything prolonged, he starts to get himself in trouble with those voters. Mark, let me come back to you right here. I just want to reset for people that are just tuning in. I know we're going to lose you in a minute. So I want to let's kind of give a state of play of what we know about the military operations. And I'll let Mark kind of get out of here. And me and Sarah and JBL can close out on the politics of it for people that are just joining. So Israel began the strikes last night. The U.S. joined, coordinated. It was late last night in America, early Saturday morning in Iran. There have been some, it's Ramadan in Iran, something that's Ramadan for the entire Islamic world. So that is notable and creates some potential complications. There's some reports that some of Iran's top leaders have been taken out coming from the Israeli side. Some reports say targeted Khomeini. We still don't exactly know what happened with that. Iran has shot ballistic missiles across the region. It did hit a military base in an American military base in Bahrain. Early reports are no casualties from that hit. that they also, somebody hit, I guess, a girls' school. I guess this is the U.S., excuse me. A girls' school in southern Iran was hit in the Israel-U.S. strike. At least five students killed at that girls' school. The number may have risen since initial reports. So that's what we know about where we are on the military side of this. I'm just kind of wondering if you want to kind of pull that all together, give us a sense of where things are, respond to Sarah. Yeah, if I can just make a comment on the girl's pool issue. Again, this is part of the mentality of this part of the world is find incidents like that and reinforce them from an asymmetric perspective in the press to just show how bad the attacking force is. Israel has suffered this over every war that they've had. Now we're beginning to suffer it. Did we hit a girl's pool? I don't know. but the Iranians will take every instance of that and flash it all over the Arab media to show how bad the great Satan is. But going back to, you know, where we are right now, I think we ought to start with what the president said. His speech this morning after the war started was very combative toward the regime of Iran. They were, he was sympathetic to the Iranian people saying, hey, you've got a chance now. You can rise up, overthrow this oppressive regime and do great things. But that's kind of nonsensical from the standpoint of anybody that understands how regime change occurs. It just doesn't happen because you want it to. There's got to be leaders. There's got to be a force in place that counters what remains of not only the Iranian Republican Guard, but also So the Beiges, which can consist of more than a half a million armed people. Then the president prepared the U.S. for potential casualties, military casualties. And in my view, he kind of waved that off. Well, that could happen. So we ought to be prepared for this. And then the last thing he did is he framed this entire thing as morally justified. that we were going to ensure that Iran does not have nuclear weapons. There was no comment at all about Israel, I don't think. I didn't see the whole speech. But he didn't mention the partnership with Israel on this attack. I don't believe. I could be wrong. But, you know, his grand strategy, talking about what JBL was mentioning before, appears to be aimed at, number one, degrading the Iranian military, Number two, pressuring its regime. And some of that pressure is going to be coming by killing them and encouraging internal upheaval in hopes of getting regime change. Now, all of those things, each one of those areas of a strategy is going to bring about significant risk of escalations. And we're already seeing that with Iranian attacks within the area. The last thing I'd say, well, two more things. First of all, there's been a lot of comments about the size of the naval armada in the area. There is also a huge Air Force presence in the area with F-22s, jamming aircraft, refueling aircraft, command and control aircraft that have been moving to the area for a long time. So there is the potential for continuing these kinds of kinetic strikes against precise targets inside of Iran. We've also heard that the U.S. military is also using one-way drones to strike targets. The thing about that, I'll just caution from a geeky military perspective, is we are using a whole lot of ammunition on this fight, as we've done in some of the other seven conflicts that the president has carried out. So it's continuing to deplete the capability of the military force in the U.S. to address other areas around the world. And I'll say specifically Taiwan, North Korea, even given things to Ukraine. So that size of the armada is big. But the one thing it's missing is any ground forces or any civil affairs forces. Who's going to contribute to the regime change that may happen inside of Iran? The last thing I'll say, and this is what we've kind of poked about for a while, is, again, I'm concerned about the reputation of the United States around the globe. There is no rational legal basis for this strike. He can claim, President Trump can claim it's a moral issue, but it's not going to, you know, that's the same thing that Putin claimed when he went into Ukraine, that it's a moral issue. We want to regain our territory. Well, those are problematic things to proclaim when you're going into a conflict without a real reason, saying you're under existential threat. I remember back in the day of the 2003, prior to 2003, a great deal of discussion about preemptive strikes by the United States. This is a preemptive strike on steroids, and there are some moral issues associated with it. All right. Thank you. Let me let General Hurtland go. We're going to have more geeky military stuff from him on this channel, so please subscribe to the channel. He's doing a show called Command Post, which we might have to double the frequency of for a few weeks. So make sure to check back for General Hurtling. Appreciate you, Sarah. We're going to keep talking about some of the politics of this with me and Sarah and JBL. And we're going to take some super chats before we go. So if you have a chat or question for us, I cannot speak to some of the geeky military stuff that Mark Hurtling said. So if you want to give us some super chats on the politics of it, we'll do it. Sarah, were you trying to jump in there to ask Mark? Just the one – yeah, I was going to ask Mark this, but this is easy for us to talk about too, which is this – I had this incredibly unsettling feeling this morning when I got up and the first thing I do is look at Twitter and I see that we've bombed Iran. And I was immediately trying to like learn more, right? I wanted to know what is happening, what is going on. And Twitter used to be the kind of place that you could turn to for breaking news to see a lot of expertise and understand how this was going to go. And like I couldn't find anything. Like it was just like a cesspool. And, you know, you can see like other than people re-upping a lot of the old tweets from Trump himself and members of the Trump administration, all saying over the last decade, some very recent, some longer ago, that, you know, Obama, you know, was just bombing around to distract from his failing poll numbers. And like all of that sort of irony is on there. But like we live in a totally new information environment. Like this might be the first time we go to a war. We go to war. One, where we have a very difficult time being able to make sense of what is happening because of how like crazy the news environment is because of who controls the media environment now. That's one piece. And the second piece is, look, we can talk about Iraq and weapons of mass destruction and feeling misled by a lot of that. That's different than where we are now, where we literally know we cannot trust a word that comes out of Donald Trump's mouth. We cannot trust our government in any way to to give us like the truth. Like they've been lying. The DHS has been lying left and right about what ICE is doing in American cities. why would we get told the truth about what's happening abroad where there's not people with video cameras who can disprove it um and so i've just never felt like we can talk about this in a way that is based on other things we've seen and our expertise whatever but like we should also acknowledge that we have never been here before can i can i put a bow on that real quick tim um so i'd like to put a bow on it so why don't you start rapping and then i'll put a bow okay um So the report about the girls school coming out of Iran, as Mark said, this is the sort of thing that autocratic regimes, especially in the Arab world, do all the time. They invent these horrific casualty stories and often they turn out to be half true or quarter true or not true at all. and previously the American government was able to come out and after the fact say no this didn't happen here's what happened here are the photos this is let us walk you through this I do not believe that this American regime has the ability to do that in a way that anybody should accept because these are the same people who say Rene Good was a domestic terrorist. Alex Preddy was attempting to murder as many federal agents as he could. So if the Department of Homeland Security talks like that and we just simply have to say, no, you cannot trust anything they're saying, then if the Department of Defense comes out and says, this report about the American strikes on a girl's school is not true, actually, here's what happened. And they're like, I'm sorry, we can't trust them any more than you can trust the Iranian regime. And you have to wait for some sort of independent third party to suss out the reality of it. Or nobody actually knows what happened. Yeah. To just add on to that, there's no trustworthy source, right, which becomes very challenging, which is why sometimes I see some of the comments on this. And they're like, well, people are like, I've seen reports that it's 400 people that died in that attack on the girls school. And it's like, you know, we're basing it on what we can think is credible here. We're doing our best to be responsible. Correct the record if we get something wrong and just talk about what we know. But you can't trust what the Iranian regime says. Can't trust what we say. Can't trust what Israel says. And to Sarah's point about on social media, you know, as compared to like 10 years ago, there's so much fake shit. I like the amount of fake stuff that has proliferated. I'm in a blocking spree on X right now because I'll see something and it's coming from pro-US and pro-Iran and everybody, you know, where it's like there's a claim that is made and I'm like, oh, shit, that's bad. And then I go to look at it and it's like, oh, wait, that didn't happen. Actually, this is either an AI photo or it's a photo from a war five years ago or it's just some crazy person pretending to be a blue checkmark journalist and is actually a propagandist. So you can't tell what is happening online. And so like that fought the fog of war. And there's always a fog of war. But like it's so much thicker for us now than it was in the recent past. And just one thing I just feel obligated to say this. It's not as if the American government didn't lie in the past. Like, obviously, we lied at times in the Vietnam War, in the in the Iraq War. The difference now is that the entire Trump regime is aligned in circling the wagons around lies. right like everybody from like the president all the way down to random spokespeople and and you know who worked for undersecretaries of the state i mean you look at go back to iraq like sure ari fleischer lied sometimes of course um but like there were whistleblowers i you know there are investigations scott mcclellan quit quit over this right you know what i mean like you're just we don't have like there isn't really anybody that is trustworthy um and and the one other layer i throw onto that, which I should have mentioned at the top, is in addition to the Iranians, Israelis, and U.S. not being trustworthy and social media not being trustworthy, this is why cutting out, you know, losing people like the Washington Post and other, you know, actually actual journalists, CNN soon, who have overseas bureaus also makes this stuff a lot harder, you know, where it's like we can only do so much, you know, as independent media. There's a lot of areas that we can replace the establishment media, but there's some that we can't. And, you know, having people on the ground in Tehran is one of them. Sorry, Sarah, were you trying to jump in on that? No, I mean, just this is the essential point, is that we're about to go through something for the first time in this new information environment that I think is going to teach us a lot about, to your point about the international bureaus or the Washington Post, like the reason you would watch CNN, this is a perfect CNN day. CNN is the kind of place where they've got people everywhere. You turn them on, they're going to have someone who you don't see reporting that often, but who is like deeply embedded, understands the place, understands the politics. And like, that's going away. Like we are divesting of those things. And it it is possible we could find ourselves in a moment where people are reminded why it is important to have reliable news gathering. But, you know, I talked a little bit about this with JVL, but I was at that semaphore thing about restoring trust in media. And it was just one big shit on the mainstream media for how they have lost trust with the American people. And I wanted to scream for much of it to say there has been a cottage industry for 30 years telling them that you can't trust these people. You can't trust these people. You can't trust us. And so what are we supposed to do now? Are we supposed to listen to Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens? Like is that how people are going to – Megyn Kelly. Megyn Kelly. Is that how we're going to get our information? And so I just I sort of want people to have that in their heads as we go through this to say, like, this is going to be a new experience of how we can understand what's happening around us. I want to bounce on one more topic and we'll take your super chats and then we'll take a little break and come back on as news as news demands it. The last time we're going to hit on is this somehow is tied to Trump's conspiracies about the 2020 election. this was last night Trump is posting this last night like we were bombing Tehran and simultaneously to this Trump is posting Iran tried to interfere in the 20 and 24 elections to stop Trump so maybe this is the rationale for war like honestly maybe we have a pea brained president who has somebody like Sidney Powell convinced him that Iran or maybe Bibi convinced him this is honestly maybe Bibi convinced him that Iran was part of the imaginary 2020 election fraud. And that's why we're in Maduro. Yeah, with Maduro. Maduro was another one, remember? Yeah. Maybe this is why we're in idiocracy. Like we're doing wars based on who can convince the addled president that this bad person was involved in the imaginary efforts to overturn the 2020 election. He was also posting late last night other conspiracies about the 2020 election. Like he was going after a George, you know, it doesn't even really matter. But like, you know, did some Georgia prosecutor was coming out out of me? It's like, why is the president posting conspiracy theories about an election that happened six years ago, an hour after he launched a war in Iran? Like it does not does not bring a lot of confidence, I don't think. But are you surprised? No, of course. Of course, I'm not surprised. But it's insane, though. It's isn't it insane? It is insane. It's insane. But also not surprising, right? This is what is David Frum's, you know, many secrets but no mysteries? Yeah, yeah. Right. This is a perfect, perfect example of that. I mean, can I just say about the Iran attempting to interfere in the elections? That is true. Iran did attempt to interfere in the elections. To elect Donald Trump? No, no, no, no. The opposite. So the Iranians wanted Democrats. for clearly correct reasons. But it is interesting that Donald Trump... The Iranians saw things a little more clearly than the people of Dearborn about who was going to be more reliable. Anyway. But the point is that, so this was bad, and many of us said at the time, this is bad, it's a good thing that the American security apparatus was able to intercept these things. Trump wanted Russian interference in the 2016 election. He welcomed, literally welcomed Russian interference, said, you know, hey, if you're listening out there, hack those documents and release them. And has attempted to say that, well, you know, so long as there's no collusion, everything is totally kosher. And this is but now, you know, we get. OK, so does this mean that if we get President Gavin Newsom, we get to bomb Russia in 2029? Is that what is that what the new predicate means? That if a country has tried to interfere? There we go. Just asking questions. One more news item, I guess, before we get to the super chats. Again, we will believe it when we see his face. It's not an AI person, but there are reports that Iran's Supreme Leader Khamenei is going to give a speech in the next few minutes. So apparently not dead. Not dead. If he's giving a speech and it's really him, not dead. Maybe. You know, we'll see. This is to the prior point. I'll be clawed. The deep fog of war. Yeah, I'll be clawed. We'll be clawed. Actually, before we get into Super Chat, it's really quick on this. This is also, I think, relevant. the fact that like the department that I guess supposedly the person that is in charge of this war Pete Hegseth I mean I probably is not actually but he is the secretary of war secretary of defense here was his day the last two days he did a big video about how he was upset that the Boy Scouts got too gay and that the D was going to be taking over the Boy Scouts This is something that he was spending time on yesterday or two days ago in the last in the 48 hours before we began a regime change war in Iraq Here's another thing that he's spending even more time on than the gay Boy Scouts, was picking a fight with Anthropic over the fact that this AI defense contractor basically gave him two red lines, which is you can use our tool for whatever you want, except a human has to approve any actual kinetic military action. You can't just tell it to bomb whenever. Seems reasonable. If you've watched any dystopian movies about... Ever. ever about our future. And secondly, that you can't use our tool to do mass surveillance on citizens. Notice it wasn't surveillance. You can use our tool to do some surveillance on citizens. You just can't do mass surveillance on citizens. So those are the two things. And Pete Exeth picks this huge pissing match with him. Even if he had legitimate concerns, which I don't think he does, the idea now that we know that that pissing match, he started it 24 hours before they were going to go to war with Iran and it's crazy that so much mental and institutional time was spent on that we don't have to do a whole segment on this but it isn't just a pissing match I mean this is one of the craziest attempts to destroy use the government to destroy a private business that I've ever seen and I mean what Hegseth said was that if Anthropic doesn't allow us to do what we want with their products, then we are going to make it so that no other business that does any contract with the United States can do business with them, which is basically like an attempted corporate murder. And what he did was he said, we're going to designate them as a supply chain risk when clearly they are not. Because if they were a supply chain risk, then the DOD wouldn't be doing business with them now. Right? You see what I'm saying? Like, just abandoning the pretense that the law even means what the law means. Just using the law to try to destroy a company that wouldn't let them do it. It's, again, for people who care about business and free markets and whatnot, this regime seems awfully intent on acting like the Chinese Communist Party. Sorry, I'll shut up now. You don't have to shut up. It's a good point. We're going to get to the super chats. Oh, did you have something on that, Sarah, before I move on? No, other than, well, yeah, all Pete Hegseth. Clearly somebody has put him in like a kid's corner and be like, can you just go yell about woke and robots and, you know, the adults will be over here waging a war. wild okay powering through some super chats here uh marie crabtree uh says can congress immediately stop what djt has started that's that's possibly a deeper question than she intended um and then what the word can which is like yeah i mean yeah like in theory uh right but in practice They can get you or remove him. Yeah. In practice, I think no, right? Yeah. I think no. I mean because part of it is you'd have to – the Republicans would all have to vote to stop it, which of course you could only get – you could get Massey and maybe a handful of Republicans. I don't know. But like then I'm not sure you get all the Democrats. Like this is a complicated one actually. Right. No, it is. I mean, would you get all the Democrats is a good question. I mean, already a couple of them, like Jared Moskowitz and others have said that Fetterman have said that they're for this. Yeah. So I don't there's the can question of like, do they have enough votes? Like that's like the narrow can question. I don't know the answer to that. I mean, in my opinion, the Democrats should certainly try to team up with Thomas Massey. And are there one or two authentic MAGAs left? It's too bad Marjorie Taylor Greene resigned to at least get a vote of kind of a vote of no confidence, if you will, a vote getting on the record that they're opposed to this. But even if they did get a majority vote on it and even if they did get 60 votes in the Senate, which is not going to happen, would Trump listen to them? I don't – probably not. And and also I think that they're one of the worst things about this Congress that the founders, I just don't I don't think that they would know what to do with is the fact that a lot of members of Congress want to let Trump do this so that they don't have to. Right. They're just like, well, if Trump's willing to do it and I don't have to take a tough vote, I don't have to have the blood on my hands. I don't have to take a position. I want that. The founders did not foresee the level of cowardice from members of Congress who wanted to actually abdicate their power and responsibility so that they could avoid any accountability for the choices that they make. Strode asks, when will the Republicans say that we have a problem? That's kind of a never-ending question. I don't think – is there any element that you think starts to make the calculation he's a lame duck, Sarah? I got obviously John Doon and Mike Johnson and the majority in Congress is going to go along with him. Do you start to see a splinter caucus over this? You could. Again, I don't think you're going to see it right away. This is going to be the difference between everybody's going to let Trump do his thing for a minute. But if it starts going badly, you might see a splinter caucus, but not not for just the first strike. I agree with that. Karen Walls, this goes to a point that JV is making JV is making kind of in jest. But let's take it seriously. How much longer is Congress going to be submissive? They need to impeach him now. Hell, he should have been impeached a long time ago. Do you think this does this change the calculus at all about impeachment? If the Democrats do take back the House, I mean, shit, we'd be in month 10 of the war then at that point. So who that kind of who the hell knows what the future holds? But I don't know. Does that change your thinking on that at all, Sarah? Oh, this is JBL. This is for you. No, no, no. Trump, Harry Nibbs. Trump sounds like Lord Farquaad saying some Americans might die, but that's a sacrifice he is willing to make. Tough words from a draft dodger. That's good. I concur. Mackie Hilden. Reminder for those hoping for regime change. Trump cut USAID and VOA programs for civilian aid and outreach. This is a war, not an intervention. This is important. Again, because I do feel like it's important to say like once every 30 minutes when I'm talking about this, which is I would like for Iran to have a different regime. Yes. The Iranian regime is unbelievably repressive. I mean, and think about the outrage that we had on this channel correctly about the two Americans that have been killed by our regime. Iran has killed tens of thousands of their own citizen protesters in the last month, and they deserve to be removed. That said, what is the infrastructure for removing? You know what I mean? Like what? It doesn't feel like we've done anything that you would do to lay the groundwork. There is no Delcy Rodriguez. Right. There is no Delcy Rodriguez. And I mean, again, we have a difference of opinion on this channel and we don't need to relitigate it. But I think in the long run, having Iraq become a basically functional, nascent democracy has been a very good thing. but it was very very hard to stand up and standing up a any sort of imperfect nascent democracy in iran will be equally hard if not harder yeah and some people i think would say like the shah's kid or something you know i mean like they're good luck there's zero legitimacy yeah right um and zero control and zero control of the military because that's what did delci rodriguez have going for her. She already controlled the military. And that's what, you know, her brother was like all of this. Yeah. The center of all this is if we are not going to put boots on the ground to keep the peace in the country and nobody else is going to the Israelis aren't the Saudis aren't the Qataris aren't. It would have to be America going in and providing internal security, which we're not going to do. Then you cannot get from there to here. There is no way to get to a democratic regime. I just I want to like if you are right now trying to make sense of what is happening, like a good place to start is actually thinking about all the things that you and most Americans don't know. Right. Before you form an opinion or or not even before you form an opinion, but like before you are like, yeah, what Trump's doing is great. Like think about all of the next steps that would have to happen. We do have the benefit being a bunch of 45-ish types here. I know, JBL, you're a little older and Tim, you're a little younger, but like we lived through. I know. But like we were in college when 9-11 happened or just out of. And then we watched the – we spent our entire adulthoods in Iraq and Afghanistan trying to do these things. So think about all the things we don't know about Iran, all the different sects, like the religious sects in this very large country, all the political complexities. This is a place where they kill women or arrest women because they're wearing a tank top. There's so much cultural and geopolitical stuff going on that if you think there's an easy way to do this or an obvious way that this goes like, no, there's no obvious way that this goes. And so there's just like an enormous amount of unknowns. And I think we should all be like what you want in a situation like this is to be able to trust your government has a plan, right, that they have, they're explaining to the American people what their plan is. None of that's been done. We don't have a theory of a broader case. What is American foreign policy right now? What is our position? What are our stated goals? It is the most incoherent foreign policy that we've had in ages. And we've had some pretty incoherent foreign policies. So it's just a moment to sit there and be like, man, is there a lot that we can't see, don't know? And we are probably going to have to engage in a very complicated information environment that a lot of people are trying to influence how we are thinking about it from foreign countries, like they're trying to get in our brains right now to tell us how we should think about this. We need to like just we have to understand how unbelievably complex this is and how how not up to a task like this Donald Trump is, who is doing this entirely alone and without Congress. So I disagree. Our foreign policy is actually totally coherent and it is Pay Trump. If you are the leader of a foreign country, it does not matter whether you're democratically elected or authoritarian. If you pay tribute to Trump, then American foreign policy is friendly toward you. And if you don't, then you are at some risk. Is that true? I mean, it literally is that true. But but but is that true? Because now it sort of makes sense in retrospect why Cutter's trying to give him a plane, why lots of these different countries. But like are all of them – is what he's doing right now acting in all of the interests of people who have tried to pay him off? Or has everybody tried to pay him off and he's choosing a side? Yeah, we've talked about a lot of Israel. It seems like the Arab states have a pretty big interest here as well. I mean General Hurtley mentioned the statement Saudi put out. You know, like look. They don't like Iran. Iran is dangerous. Yeah, right. Obviously. Yeah, yeah, obviously. So I know we kind of cut to – you can imagine Arab states like wanting a stable piece over wanting to overturn Iran, but maybe it seems like not actually. And, you know, simultaneously, and this was a sub, sub, sub story in the paramount takeover of WVD, but like their debt is being financed by the countries, UAE and Saudi for that deal. Right. And, you know, and BB said explicitly, he said this, this is not a conspiracy theory. He said that he sees the Ellison takeover of TikTok as important because they're going to use it as a weapon in the information space. He said that. So, you know, I do think that the motivations on that side, JBL, are, I take your point, are easy to see. I guess I just mean that, like, there's no ideological consistency or coherence. No. Right. That's right. Pure gangsterism is what it is. Okay. Back to the superchats. We got excited on that last topic. Sassiest dragon. Will the Board of Peace elect a new chairman? No, they can't. The only way that position can be vacated is death. He has to die. I believe that's in the Constitution. The FIFA Peace Prize. The FIFA Peace Prize, yeah. No, he gets to keep that. Mackie Hilden, this one's for you, Sarah. You said earlier that only Trump is responsible, but shouldn't we blame the GOP and all of MAGA? Yes, of course, we should blame them for the fact that they are taking no responsibility. I guess what I mean is, is that Trump wants to go this alone and Congress is going to let him. And this is always like the blame for Congress is on the fact that they refuse to do their job. They refuse to engage in their constitutional duty. They are not acting as a check on this president. And so we can absolutely blame them for that. My point is that Trump is doing this without Congress, doing it without the support of a lot of Americans, is doing it – this is not his mandate. He ran on the opposite of this foreign policy. And so whatever happens now will be on Trump almost exclusively in terms of waging this war. I'm going to go rapid fire and just do some of these comments. No, no, no. You're good. Sydney says, I think the lack of trust adds fuel to the conspiracy fire across the political spectrum. Totally agree. It's a big problem we're going to have to deal with. Let's see. We've got a girl online is 25 year old in the UK. Perception I had of US growing up is completely shattered, as has my peers and of US cultural hegemony is over. The era is over. Hartling was talking about this. Yeah, totally right. I mean, we do have our new allies now in Qatar, UAE and Saudi. So maybe they have a more positive view of us and El Salvador. And El Salvador. Yeah, but the rest of the world, not as much. Titleist guy said he heard Susan Collins is concerned. Dead. Just wrecked. And I actually hadn't even seen this before we were just talking about this, so shout out to Joy P. Had written, did Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar get a heads up? Is this part of what they're paying off Trump for? So Joy and JVL are on the same page on that. Katie says, what are your thoughts on this war being a ploy to stop the midterm I don't really think that's the rationale we went through all the possible rationales at the top I don't see that one, I don't think it's a 0% chance, but very low chance Sam Muckraker says it's going to turn out great just like the last time the US changed the Iranian leader, well you never know Annalisa shoots back at me, no way in hell, Reza Pavlavi, the Shah's kid that I referenced gets installed, that's just laughable that's probably right alright, let's final word to everybody And then we'll wrap and then we'll come back as news requires it. JBL. Just, I mean, again, we have to hold all of the potential outcomes in our heads. Yes, it is possible that this could blow up and become a regional conflagration. It is also possible this could be over in like two days and that Trump can declare victory and get out. And what we'll wind up with is just a further degraded U.S. position in the world. So not only degraded because Iran will get a better deal in that scenario than they were on their way to getting, but also because we've further alienated the allies we need and given up America's strategic positioning in the global order. Sarah. Just Schumer is calling for Congress to return to D.C. briefing for all senators and a war powers vote ASAP. Why did they go home? Wasn't Schumer and the gang of eight briefed on this? JVL knew this was happening yesterday. Like, why did they fucking go home? It's crazy. I don't know. Like, this is what I mean. Everything about this is actually insane. Every different piece of it is so weird. We are at war. And everybody's just like, whatever. And I also can't find any information, right? I'm so mad that I can't just have a timeline with the serious people I follow. I mean, yeah, and that is like gives me the information about this. Yeah, that's a problem. I will end. Fetterman, man. Fetterman's awful. It would be wrong to call this a positive note, so I don't mean it in that sense. But I do think that I think this is disastrous politically for him. And we talked about the fact that I don't think that this means – and the walls are closing in on Trump and he's going to go down to 12% or whatever. But the key group of people that he needed to put himself over last time are the very people that are the most hostile to this politically. And I just – I think that I do not – I cannot conceive of a rally around the flag around this. Like it's an illegal war that does not have congressional authorization. It does not have a rationale. Like it does not have a key base of support besides Trump cultists. I think you come, you see Monday, the types of alternative media folks that were Trump friendly are going to be overwhelmingly filleting this next week. And I think he's in a bubble. And I think that he might not realize how bad this is for him politically. To your point, JVL, I think that could be mitigated if this really is a two-day thing in a taco. But even still, I think it's just a range of scale of being politically bad for him for being like slightly politically bad and solidifying his opposition to very politically bad. Fingers crossed. JVL, let me offer a potential spin. Sarah, do you want a final word? Yeah. I'm going to lower grocery prices. I am not going to get us into any stupid foreign wars. Like, is there a thing I'm going to release the update? Like, is there a thing that he promised that he's not doing the exact opposite of mass deportations? Now, that's true. That's true. So if you are a mass deportations now, voter, you're happy. OK, we're going to come back. We'll be back later. General Hurtling, keep an eye. He'll be giving updates on the military side. His feed is command posts. You can check that out in the YouTube. different playlists and get him as news requires it. And we'll come back on if more happens. We'll keep you guys posted. So, subscribe to the feed. Thank you to Mark Hurtling, Sarah Longwell, JVL. We'll see you guys soon.