'Get OUT of Iran!' Trump vs JD Vance & Midterms Fallout | With Tim Pool + Trita Parsi

If Trump were to launch a nuclear strike or even a ground invasion into Iran, I think he actually faces conviction. He should use the power that he has as the commander-in-chief in charge of the world's sole superpower and pull us out of the region. He has the power to do that right now. Starting today, he should do so immediately. Our strategy of bombarding the Gulf is the right one. The Iranians have shown that they're doubling down. They're not going to capitulate. They're not going to surrender. The whole region is on edge. Blaise, you are the policy VP of the Jewish Institute for National Security of America. Are you looking at me with a straight face and saying you don't know if Israel has nuclear weapons? I certainly know it's reported. I know it's claimed. What do you think, Blaise? No, I don't know for a fact whether it does or not. Blaise, what? You're lying to me! Well, the Iran war played a decisive role in President Trump's midterm elections wipeout. It's true that voters almost never say it's the problem they worry about most, but that's exactly the point. It's amazing. The Middle Eastern war of choice, unpopular from its outset, which has demonstrably harmed the things they do care about most, are the cost of living and the price of gas. The president's Election Day announcement of an end to U.S. military grants for Israel was no coincidence. Whether he follows through with it may depend on the outcome of Israel's own election chaos. And much more importantly, the president has big decisions to make about Iran. Trump is now a lame duck president. That much is indisputable. Congress will defy him at every turn and vice versa. But he's still the commander in chief. Votes were still being counted on Tuesday night when Trump began trailing a new heavy hit on Iran. The war's biggest cheerleaders are urging him to resume the war with venom because he now has nothing to lose. My view is, he has a lot to lose. Namely, his legacy, his party's future, the war itself, and the trust of the American people. The American people have spoken in these elections. They spoke loudly. The president should listen. Well, joining us to discuss this is a former director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Joe Kemp, the CEO of Tim Carr's media, Tim Pool, and policy VP for the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, Blaise Mistral. Well, welcome to all of you on this unseasonably sunny day, although you guys tell me it does occasionally do this in November, so maybe I shouldn't be as shocked as I'm sounding. Just before we started this show, J.D. Vance has put out a lengthy statement in which he talks about talking to pollsters. Who had warned what was going to happen, and it did happen. He's talked to them since the results came in. And he said here, this one in particular I thought was very interesting, where he said that this pollster said a lot of Trump voters from 2024 were angry and planning to vote Democrats. And when he asked, you know, what we could do to get them back, he said there were four answers: end the war, focus on cost of living inflation, put America first, change our relationship to Israel. So, Joe, on those points, I mean, that seems the very least that they should be trying to do. How does he end the war? If Trump is seriously considering that, well, look, I've got the message. This is an unpopular war, and it's got much more unpopular. Uniquely, there's never been an American military action that's been so unpopular from the moment it started. How, if he wants to get out of it, how does he do that? President Trump is still the commander in chief. He can leave today if he says that we need to pull our forces out of the region. We need to lift the blockade. It's done. And then he takes away a good deal of risk. He also takes away some of the leverage that the Iranians have to strike us and bring us back into this war. He's going to hear from a lot of people right now, as you pointed out, that are going to tell him that now is the time to strike, now is the time to go hard, or to, you know, try and get some sort of a diplomatic solution. The diplomatic process has been very stalled. The Iranians are dug in. We haven't seen any progress there. There's no more military options other than things that will lead to this, you know, to drastically escalate even more. So he should use the power that he has as the commander in chief in charge of the world's sole superpower and pull us out of the region. That's going to put the ball back in the Iranians' court to open the Strait of Hormuz back up again to get energy flowing so he can start focusing on the American people. So he has the power to do that right now. Tim, I mean, I would do that if I was Donald Trump. I'd be like, I've got the message. I mean, it's pretty clear when your vice president is putting out a four-point plan to win back support, they've got two years to try and fix the legacy, if you like, to try and improve the mood music so the Republicans can maybe win in 2028. They've got to do stuff pretty quickly to do that. Do you agree with Vance that these are the four things they should do? Oh, yeah. Well, I think that's, especially now, hindsight being 2020, we just saw yesterday, I think one of the risks, you know, you mentioned in your opening that some people are saying Trump has nothing to lose. I've heard this, you know, Tucker Carlson warned about a nuclear strike because Trump has to make something bold happen in Iran. I actually think Trump has a lot to lose because now we're looking at potentially 56 Senate seats, 11 seats, 11 votes to flip, and they will convict Donald Trump in an impeachment. So if Trump were to launch a nuclear strike or even a ground invasion into Iran, I think he actually faces conviction. I completely agree with that. Blaise, look, the Israel story specter, if you like, over this election can't be denied when you've got people like Abdul El-Sayed winning in Michigan and making this a big issue of his campaigning. Israel, you know, I never thought in my lifetime you'd see a situation where a majority of Americans have a negative view of Israel. I have a view about this Israeli government, that it's been hijacked by people like Ben-Gavir and Smodrich who poisoned the well for the reputation of Israel globally. I think it's undeniable. Netanyahu's hanging on by his fingertips to power and may or may not survive as leader. If he doesn't, he's facing a corruption trial. As we know. But there's been a real sea change here in the way Americans view Israel, whether America should support them. I think that's why Trump on the morning of the midterm suddenly blurted out, oh, by the way, we're going to stop sending billions to Israel. It wasn't a coincidence. He knew. Well, let's play the clip and then we'll discuss it. Now, as far as paying Israel, Netanyahu and I have made a deal that we give Israel $4 billion a year. We made a deal months ago that we're stopping. And they're fine with it because, you know, they've become a very successful country. They don't need it. And we won't be paying any more Israel. So it's just a wasted thing. I mean, again, I just didn't think we'd hear that in my lifetime. But there is an American president yanking the American billions from Israel. They're probably right. Israel probably doesn't need the money. But the symbolism of that. It's got to be concerning, hasn't it? Look, I think it certainly suggests a desperate election eve move that I don't think necessarily had any swing one way or the other. But I think it also really obscures both the reality of the relationship with Israel and the reality of U.S. relationships with other countries. Yes, there is about $3.8 billion in U.S. military assistance that goes to Israel every year, which is spent in the United States to buy American weapons made by American workers. We compare that to the $7 billion we spend every year to keep American troops in Germany. The $6 billion we spend to keep them in Japan. The $4 billion we spend to keep them in South Korea. Israel is not a major recipient of U.S. military assistance compared to some of the other countries that we spend a lot to defend. And in turn, it provides a lot more security for us than it does other allies that demand that we send our troops to die for them, which is not the case with Israel. I mean, does it? I mean, people would argue that Israel. Persuaded Trump that Netanyahu and his infamous White House Situation Room meeting with the head of Mossad joining them remotely, you know, laid out a series of events which Trump bought into. That's why he went in with Israel on the strike of February 28th. And most of it never happened. They said, look, you take out the Ayatollah and his top people, we can do that. We're controlling the traffic lights in Tehran. We can follow him and take them out. And if they do, the IRGC collapses from within, then the people rise up and they'll all be far too distracted to worry about the Strait of Hormuz. Well, the first thing happened. But then he got replaced, the Ayatollah, by his even more hardline son who lost half his family in the first strike. So he's not going to be any softer than his father. And none of the rest of it happened. The regime remains firmly intact. They've got control of the Strait of Hormuz. They've caused enormous damage to the global energy flow. Plus, by attacking the Gulf states repeatedly every time they're attacked, they're causing enormous economic damage to the Gulf states. In some cases, potentially existential. There was to be another strike, I think. So, would you, if you were advising Trump right now, knowing all this, would you advise him to attack again? Well, what I would advise President Trump is, look, this war is not finished. We can pull out, like Joe says, but we leave Iran with hundreds of kilograms of highly enriched uranium. We leave it with a deeply buried nuclear facility that they're trying to move their centrifuges and their uranium to. We leave it with thousands of missiles. And we leave it with the convictions of the people. We leave it with the conviction that it has had for over 40 years that it should kill Americans and it should try to destroy Israel. So, what would you do? You would attack? I would say, at the very least, we are in a situation right now where as much oil is getting out of the Strait of Hormuz as it was before the war. That's not true. That is absolutely true. It's not true. If you listen to the U.S. Central Command, if you look at the trackers, we're getting -- Oh, I'm sorry. I'm not taking my lead from U.S. Central Command. The reality is it is not actually coming out as much as it was before. That's the whole point. That's why everyone's being held hostage by it. You can say what you want. That's not true. No. Look, the tankers are coming out. That's what I'm saying. What you said is -- The Central Command is -- What you said is provably untrue. All right. The Iranians control the Strait of Hormuz. of Hormuz, and it's about time everybody accepted the reality of what is happening there. Iran attacks ships in the Strait of Hormuz. Would you launch a new military strike against them? Yes or no? I would say if you look at it. It's one or the other. I mean, you either do or you don't. I think if you want to accomplish the five objectives that President Trump laid out on February 28th when he started this war, yes, it's going to require further military action. Do you think that notwithstanding the utter repudiation of the Iran war and the economic fallout, that the best thing in the American national interest right now is to double down and treble down and do it again only hard? If you want to end this war, if you don't want to go back to the Middle East. Why don't you end the war? If you don't want to end up in another war in the Middle East, then you need to end this war with a victory for the United States that accomplishes the terms and objectives that President Trump set out in February 28th. If you look at the history of the last 16 years, every president has been elected to end wars in the Middle East. Yet every one of them ends up sending troops to the Middle East. Why? Because the region is a problem that sucks us in. Iran is a big part of that problem. If you don't want to have to go fight another ISIS, if you don't want to go fight the Houthis again, if you don't want to go deal with Iranian missiles falling on Middle Eastern cities, it has to end. Otherwise, we'll be back. The fascinating thing is that there are people saying this, right? Not despite what we saw happen last night, despite JD Vance saying, the number one concern of voters who defected from MAGA to vote Democrat was they want the war over. You've got people like Blaise and there are many others. Ben Shapiro, Mark Levin, all these guys. They think, you know, double down, go again, go harder. Two days after the votes were counted, the analysis of political arguments roll on. I suspect they will continue for weeks and months to come. Not a bad thing when you're in my business. Before we dive back into it, a quick story. Paul and Sarah, both 40, healthy, two kids. They had life insurance at a rate they'd never really questioned. Then they shopped around with SelectQuote, made the switch, and over the 10-year term, they saved more than $34,000. Let's think for a moment about the size of that saving. If you've never compared life insurance policies, you're probably overpaying. SelectQuote's licensed agents compare more than 100 products from at least six trusted carriers and find you a better rate for free. It's fast and super easy. On average, you'll save 30% on $100,000. On average, you'll save 30% on 100,000. On $150 monthly policy, that's $45 a month, more than $10,000 over a 20-year term, and that's the point. If you've never compared prices, you've no way of knowing how much you might be overpaying. Paul and Sarah had no idea either. Finding out it's free takes about 15 minutes, and that worse confirms you already have a good deal. Get your free quote at SelectQuote.com/uncensored. At SelectQuote.com/uncensored. They shop. You save. No, that's absolute insanity. I mean, look, if there was a military solution to this, President Trump would have simply executed it by now. If there was a diplomatic solution, I think he would have found it. But with the current blockade, the current situation that we have right now, there's no diplomatic situation. The only thing that President Trump can do is do what the American people asked him to do last night, which is actually end the war. Really, here in the U.S., this discussion is over. The only people that are advocating for a continuation of this war are people, by and large, who are being paid by the President. by and large who are being paid by the pro-Israel lobby to continue to keep us in this war. This war is in the Israeli government's interest to keep us involved in it. However, we can walk away right now. We can reset diplomacy. We can get the oil flowing in from the Strait of the Hormuz. President Trump has the power to do that. I just hope that he listens to what the American people said last night and not the Israel lobby. I just want to real quick throw in it. None of what I'm hearing over here articulates to me why we're involved in the Middle East. I understand this argument of we'll get dragged in. We've got to send troops. And then I'm just like, yeah, yeah. All for what? All for what? I don't believe that anyone, Democrat, Republican or otherwise, has articulated to the American people what the end result of us constantly going there is going to be. Also, and Trump was the guy that said in the 2024 campaign, I'm not going to do this, right? So I think that it was the sense of betrayal a lot of MAGA supporters have that he betrayed MAGA. So when people say that MAGA's dead, it's been repudiated, I'm like, well, I'm not so sure about that. Because the MAGA that Trump sold to the American people in 2024 election campaign was no more foreign wars, America first, get inflation down, get cost of living down, shut the border. He shut the border to huge acclaim, but the rest of it has been the complete opposite. But do you remember what he said in response to when people said no wars? He said, I'm MAGA, and I'll tell you what it is. Right. Right. And I think he changed the goalposts about the strike on Iran. I mean, I think knowing Trump pretty well for 20 years, I think there was a lot of hubris involved in this decision in the sense that he just successfully decapitated the leadership in Venezuela without any loss of life very quick. It was very successful. The year before, I think even more significantly, the 12 day war was very quick over very efficiently. But I remember the president of the United States, Donald Trump telling the world we've put back their nuclear program decades. That was July last year. And yet in February, apparently America and Israel have to launch a massive strike on Iran. And that's what he said. And I think that's what on Iran because they are two weeks away from developing a nuclear weapon. Those two statements can't both be true. So were we lied to last summer, because on the face of it, Iran didn't really respond, which I think was also why Trump bought into attacking them in February. He thought, well, they haven't got much, otherwise they would have attacked us last year. And what a big mistake that turned out to be, because it turned out that Iran had something possibly more powerful than a nuclear weapon, the Strait of Hormuz to control. But what terrifies me now is the 12-day war, unsuccessful. They claimed they got rid of the nuclear materials. They didn't. Couldn't have been successful. Then we launch a war earlier this year to get rid of nuclear weapons, not successful. And now we're hearing Pickaxe Mountain has more nukes. So it's not just the inability or this war continuing, but the message now sent to our adversaries, it has been nearly two years and we cannot stop our enemies. What does that say about our strength? Matt Walsh of The Daily Wire, a big conservative commentator, he said this. Let's take a listen. I don't buy, first of all, that this was really about stopping Iran from getting a nuke or that it will actually accomplish that. But even if it were, I don't, it's not worth handing our country over to communists even to stop Iran from getting a nuke. I'd rather Iran have a nuke than my country be run by communists. I mean, that line, I'd rather Iran have a nuclear weapon than the U.S. run by communists. Quite a line. But, you know, there'll be people that are nodding along there. I mean, Blaise, I come back, I come back to you. Are you sure, when you say that you think that what America needs to do right now is go back in and attack Iran all over again, are you sure, A, it would work, and B, that the Iranians wouldn't respond exactly how they've been responding, which is to ignore the Americans and the Israelis, pretty much, and just go and attack Saudi Arabia, go and attack Doha and Qatar, go and attack Dubai, paralyze their economies even more than they've already been severely damaged, and control the Strait of Hormuz? Shut it down again? Contrary to your claim that it's all under control and it's all flowing like it was before, it's not true. It would be massively worse, the Strait of Hormuz and the Gulf state attacks, if what you want to happen happens. Does that not concern you? So let me start by saying, first, I agree with Tim and you, Pierce, that the messaging and explanation of this war, the previous wars, what the U.S. interests are in the Middle East and the east of Iran, has been horribly mishandled. And I think that's a big part of where we are today. The lack of explanation of why the U.S. is doing what it's doing. That being said, I think if we were to follow Joe's advice and we were to just pull out and tell the Iranians we're done, the message the Iranians are going to take from that is, we won. And it gets results. And so we should do that whenever we feel like we need something. But to win, to win has got to be on a big, big scale. Either you commit hundreds, thousands of ground forces, which is what the military experts say, or you use a tactical nuclear weapon, as Tucker Carlson claimed is actually in the thinking. And I'm sort of aghast at the thinking here, because if you did, if America did that, used a tactical nuke on Iran, well, Vladimir Putin would immediately say, well, I can do one in Ukraine then. In other words, the whole deterrent thing collapses, right? The moment the United States uses a tactical nuke, they'll all start using them. And then basically we all die. I mean, that's really where we get to very quickly. Do you not understand that? Tucker Carlson is the only person I know talking about using a nuke. I don't think that's part of any plan that anyone has put forward other than Tucker Carlson and people who are on the other side of this. How else do you get the victory you're talking about? Because unless you commit huge numbers of ground forces, you've got to use firepower, which is actually going to finally dismantle all the nuclear capability that Iran has. We know what was unleashed last summer, 12 days. That was clearly nowhere near enough. So it's going to be on a much bigger scale. And they're talking about using a tactical nuke on one of these islands. And, you know, that may be where all their nuclear stuff is. But to me, the moment you do that, it's all bets are off. So, Pierce, I've been to Tampa where Central Command is. I've been to Shaw Air Force Base, where our air forces for Central Command are. I've been in Israel, been talking with people from around the region. Based on the military commanders that I talk about, the goals, the goals of trying to prevent Iran from being able to build a nuclear weapon, which requires taking out the hundreds of kilograms of highly enriched uranium they have and demolishing Pickaxe Mountain can be accomplished without hundreds of thousands of ground troops, without the use of tactical nukes. There are plans to do this. It doesn't have to be. require a massive invasion. It does not require using. Joe, it's all terribly easy, apparently. So, look, first off, winning for President Trump is getting us out of this war. That's what the election results said last night. It doesn't matter what the Iranians say. And that's why J.D. Vance, by the way, has come out with this statement. Of course, he wouldn't be staying there without Trump's approval. Right, exactly. And if we have to forever chase some kind of a victory, we will get sucked into a never-ending war. What people need to understand is that the whole idea that Iran was moments away from getting a nuclear weapon is complete and total fiction. The Israelis created this to get us into this conflict. That's why the Israel lobby is still talking about, oh, there's hidden kilograms of highly enriched uranium. And now they're saying they've got chemical weapons they're going to use. There's always something. Yeah, there's always something. So, the Israelis were very effective at getting us to buy into this narrative that there were still potentially weapons of mass destruction, just like we've heard before in Iraq. And that's why we're now looking at a different site. President Trump did destroy the three sites that had highly enriched uranium back in June. That wasn't enough for the Israelis. They were able to suck us back into this conflict. If we keep playing the game of we have to get rid of the highly enriched uranium, we have to get rid of the nuclear dust, we will be sucked into a forever war. President Trump wins when he says this is over, and when he pulls our troops, pulls our blockade out of the region, and then we can start working through our Gulf partners, and hopefully soon, with the Iranians, open the strait back up and resume some sort of normal affairs in the Gulf so that President Trump can actually find a victory by prioritizing the American people and not foreign policy. Hang on one second. Tim, somebody made the joke this morning, and probably weren't even joking, that Trump finally got the regime change he wanted. It's just his own regime. And you could see the end of the Netanyahu regime by that yardstick. I think you posted today that Israel lost. And I think Israel is a big loser in these midterm elections because of the reasons we've been discussing. Well, Trump was joking about how he's got a 99% approval rating in Israel, and that's kind of the joke I'm making. It's like, okay, well then go run there. Again, I hear Iran getting a nuke, and to the Matt Walsh comment, he'd rather they have a nuke than our country be run by communists. I get the point he's making, but my question is still why should I care, again, and perhaps as a reason, why should I care if Iran has a nuclear weapon? Don't get me wrong, I know a lot about, a decent amount about foreign policy, so I get all the arguments, but the American people, it has never been explained to them what the threat is. If the argument is we have to use nukes or send boots on the ground because maybe in the future they might have nukes, okay, let's approach this when Iran actually arms and prepares a strategic nuclear weapon, warhead or otherwise. For the time being, there's no Cassius Belli. The American people were sitting down, minding their own business, and Trump says, okay, now we're going to go to war with Iran. The only nuclear power in the Middle East is Israel. Do you agree with that? I don't think there are any declared nuclear powers. I actually love this when we have this conversation. It's like, what do you mean? Of course you know that Israel has a lot of nuclear weapons. Why did none of you admit it? I don't know. Why didn't you admit it? Because I don't know. You do know. But you know Iran has them? You do know. I never said that. Iran, I don't think, does have one. But Israel has dozens of them. Don't they? Look, the only nuclear weapons I know in the Middle East are the ones that America keeps in Turkey. Certainly no. It's reported. I know it's claimed. From your knowledge as the policy VP of the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, either you are totally ill-suited to that position, or you know for a fact that Israel has dozens of nuclear weapons. We all know that. Why don't you just admit it? I don't know who you are in this case, Piers. People supporting the Israeli government. I do know that if I was a country that was surrounded by other states that were hell-bent on my annihilation. You're a supporter of the Israeli government. No, I'm a supporter of American interests. Which I believe are served by a close relationship with Israel. But you don't know if Israel has nuclear weapons? Blaise, you're lying to me. Aren't you? You're just lying. Look at me straight in the eye, and you're lying. I have been. Yeah. I have been looking you straight in the eye. And you're lying. I'm telling you that I don't know. Yes, you do, Blaise. Don't you? Just like you know what's happening in the Strait of Hormuz and who controls it. I do, yeah. Okay. Well, better than you by the sound of it. Apparently. I'm just curious how you can have this position, but genuinely, either you don't know or you're lying. It's one of the two. I think I've. I don't want it to be awkward, but honestly, I've had this conversation with so many people supporting the Israeli government, a government which I think has gone completely rogue, by the way, thanks to Ben-Yavir and Smodrich, and causing enormous damage to Israel's reputation, which I personally, I hate that that's happened. And for the Israeli people and for Jewish people worldwide, having to pick up the pieces of the damage these guys have caused with their incendiary rhetoric all the time and actions. But this perpetual nonsense about Israel somehow, of all the countries in the world, is allowed to be the only one that doesn't say if it has nuclear weapons. And yet you're demanding to know what Iran has. The Iranians laugh at this and go, well, why have we got to be transparent if the Israelis are never transparent? And here's you, a pro-Israeli spokesman. Would you. I would not characterize myself that way. You wouldn't just. Well, okay, let's call you a title. Policy VP, Jewish Institute. National Security of America. With very good ties to the Israeli government, presumably. Sure. Okay. But you don't know that your Israeli government, that you have close ties to, has. It's not my Israeli government, let's be clear. I'm an American citizen and I support American interests. You just say you have close ties to them, you support them. You don't know if they have a load of nukes. I do not know. I'm willing to grant the assumption that they do. It's widely reported. I would. Why would you assume that? Why would I assume that they do? Yes. Because it's widely reported. Have you ever asked? I have not. You've never asked anybody in the Israeli government if they have nuclear weapons? I have not. Wow. Do you think that sits well with your title? You are in charge of the Jewish Institute for National Security of America. I am. Weren't it worth there being America? I focus on American policy and American security interests. And they are. And Israel being. And they are jeopardized by Iran seeking a nuclear weapon and not by Israel's security policy. But do you see the problem there? I can't say. This entire exchange, actually, is a great example. You have a handful of think tanks that are funded by the Israeli government or Americans who are pro-Israel who are putting out these talking points about finishing the job, Iran having a nuclear weapon, here in Washington, D.C., but you have the majority of the American people last night voting against this war. That is the huge difference right here. And hopefully President Trump listens to the American people. Again, I'll end this by repeating what J.D. Vance was told by his pollsters, that the top four answers to this question are the answers of why MAGA supporters defected to the Democrats in the midterms, end the war, focus on cost-of-living inflation, put America first, and change our relationship to Israel. It couldn't be clearer. Guys, thank you all very much. I appreciate it. Well, joining us now is CNN's chief international anchor and host of the X-Files podcast, Christiane Amanpour. Christiane, lovely to have you on Uncensored. First of all, what is your reaction to these astonishing midterm results? Given the context that many people are saying this is really about the Iran war and the knock-on effect on the global economy and it came to America's door and people were simply paying too much at the gas pump and too much for their food and they punished Trump and the Republicans as a consequence? Yes, I think that's all absolutely correct. But I also think in there is the massive role that corruption has played and the American people really reject it. Remember James Tallarico in Texas. I think he's the first Democratic senator from Texas since 1988, which is a year before he was born. But he said no amount of, and he said, Elon Musk money can buy votes for my opponent. And I think he's tapping into something that the American people really rejected. But I think you're absolutely right that it is the general sense that President Trump has broken all the promises he made to get elected in 2024. In that moment where he had a huge coalition, right? He had all these different constituencies and stakeholders that not necessarily were in his camp, but did go for him. And then they all became disappointed, whether it was over the basic economy, which is good. You're there in Washington. You can see the U.S. economy is going pretty much gangbusters, but guess what? For the billionaires and not for the people. And then forever wars, they don't want to be involved in forever wars, et cetera. And as I said, the corruption and generally their view that they are being sort of moved in a direction that they didn't want to go in. It's very interesting. Yeah. And look, Trump's going to have two calls to make. I mean, he can go either way. He can either double down and strike Iran again, as many on the real hardline MAGA right are urging him to do, or he can get out of the Iran war as fast as he possibly can. Let's just discuss those two. Two possibilities. I think it would be a devastating further error, compounding the original error, if Trump was to order another military strike on Iran of anything like the scale they're talking about. What do you feel about that? So, Piers, look, I know that it's such a complicated situation and there's so many different views, but I think, and I've been told, that the majority of people around Trump actually don't want him to do it. whether it's the JD Vance cohort or, you know, the others who basically said, you know, you've tried this now for what, is it nearly nine months, you know, since the end of February, and it hasn't actually got us anywhere. So don't do it again. The two sort of issues here are, will Trump, like he was the first time around, if all these books and reporting are to be believed, will he get pushed into it by Benjamin Netanyahu, who has his own agenda, which is different from Trump's agenda, at least some of it is, he wants to overthrow the Iranian regime. Or will he do what he told Ed Luce of the Financial Times, just as the polls were closing, he basically played down the notion that he was rushing to strike Iran. As you know, there's a lot of American assets being moved into the region. People say that you don't move this amount of people and hardware, you're not going to use it. But he said, look, we're always prepared. I think the Iranians have shown that they're doubling down, they're not going to capitulate. I think Trump believes that the economic blockade that he has put on the Iranian ports will do the job for him. He seems to say that we're doing really brilliantly. It's all going well and watch they'll implode from within. So it's hard to tell. I was just in the region, Piers, in Doha. And you know, there are the mediators there. And they're all incredibly worried because what happened the first time around really hit them hard, hit the Gulf allies hard. And hit American positions hard. And, you know, we haven't been able to see those. Not even Senator Chris Murphy, who went to try to get into the famous air base in Doha or in Qatar, was allowed in. The Pentagon refused to allow him in. Well, the reason for that, I think, is the devastation was a lot more than we were told at the time. And I think, you know, I've spoken to people in Saudi Arabia, in Qatar, the UAE, and they are all incredibly worried about this because the economic damage they've all had to endure. from the start of this war, has basically been killing their new business model, which is to try and replace reliance on oil with a new business model based around tourism and sport and entertainment and opening up to the world to go and visit these countries and states. And of course, they're not going to do it if they think they're going to get a bomb on their head. So the whole thing is very precarious anyway. And what the Iranians have done strategically, which has been very smart from a strategy point of view, I think, they haven't tried to engage the Americans and Israelis much militarily directly. What they've done is attack the Gulf states and said, if you keep attacking us, we will attack the Gulf states because you've got bases there. And they've also, of course, been using their control of the Strait of Hormuz to strangle the global energy flow, 20 percent of it. And if they were attacked again, I think they would double down on that. So they've been waging an asymmetric war. And, you know, if I were Donald Trump, I think I would just try and get out of this as fast as I possibly can. But that leads me to my next question for you, Christiane. If he wants to get out of this fast, can he or do the Iranians now effectively have him over a barrel, literally, and will squeeze this as long as they can to cause him maximum discomfort, knowing he's now a lame duck president? Well, look, I think the Iranians have made it clear that nothing in the Middle East and in the Gulf anymore without us. Don't think that you can go around trying to divide and conquer like actually U.S. policy has been for decades and decades. And I think the Iranians have made it clear that they've done it for decades, since the Iranian revolution, to try to isolate Iran and build up their other alliances. That, you know, because of this war and because Trump put the Strait of Hormuz in play like it has never been in play before, sort of played into the Iranian hands. Now, it is not to say that the Iranians themselves are brilliant either. As one of the Gulf state officials said, look, some of these people who are in charge, some of the IRGC, for instance, have never been out of the country in 47 years of this revolution. And just, I don't know how the rest of the world thinks. Others do, but it's not clear exactly who's in charge. So those who are the hardest liners, who have been empowered by this war now, have decided that once and for all, we are going to tell America and Israel that you cannot run this part of the world without us being part of it, part of the security, you know, system, and you can't cause us to capitulate. So I think, unfortunately, the U.S. and to an extent Israel have got themselves into a bind. And for the U.S., it's going to take more than sending JD Vance to Pakistan for 36 hours and call that a failed marathon negotiation. Just go back to the JCPOA and realize that it took more than two years, right, to get a perfectly adequate arms control agreement, nothing else, an arms control agreement around what we were told was the most important dangerous aspect, which is nuclear weapons, only for Trump to pull the U.S. out of it and for it to collapse. So that's where we are. That's one other thing, Piers. Before he suffered this stroke, poor Senator Murphy, with other senators, was given a briefing about the war plans, should it happen. Because I told you, the whole region is on edge, not knowing if it's going to happen after the midterms. And he used the word, he used words like, it's insane, it is insanity what we're planning if we do it, and if we do what they're planning and what they've told us, we, the United States, will be outside the realm of, you know, adhering to international law. So that was pretty, you know, pretty, pretty, pretty worrying and sobering. And so, let's see, maybe Trump is going to realize that he got a shellacking over this issue and do what he said to Ed Luce of the FT, perhaps not go off and attack Iran at this precise moment. Unclear. I sincerely hope you're right. I think he may do that. I think the way he's been talking about now trying to work with the Democrats. I think he must be cognizant that actually the Democrats controlling all of Congress now means they can come after him personally, very aggressively, come after his family, come after his business associates. He could get very nasty. And it looks to me like he's trying to create mood music of being more conciliatory and more collegiate with the Democrats than he's probably ever had to be before because he recognizes the weakness of his position. So hopefully that will act as a control valve on his previous intention, perhaps to go back into Iran. And do something else. Christiane, great to have you on Uncensored. Thank you very much. Thank you, Piers. And also your great thing with Vladimir Zelensky, you know, that it was an amazing interview. And he said that, you know, we can't continue to be betrayed by the United States. That's going to be a big issue as well for Trump, who's trying to cozy up to Putin. So well done for that interview. Yeah. Well, praise doesn't get better for an interview of that nature than from Christiane Amanpour. So thank you very much. You've always been very kind. Even when I first joined CNN, I always remember that. So I appreciate it. Thank you very much. Thanks, Piers. Well, Trina Parsi will be joining me in the studio shortly. But first, returning to the show is Shark Tank investor and chairman of O'Leary Ventures, Kevin O'Leary. Kevin, welcome back to Uncensored. Thank you so much. Great to be here. Well, what is your overview of what has happened here? Because in simple terms, it looks like it's as simple as the Iran war has gone very badly wrong. The consequence of that has been a lot of economic hardship around the world, but also to working class and middle class Americans who've been seeing their gas prices rising to huge levels at the pump. They've been seeing food prices rise, and they've been genuinely concerned about that. And they know it's been caused by a war that they didn't approve of. It's been majority disapproval of this war from the start. Piers, not entirely the war. I mean, I read the tea leaves from last night as well, and I have to because, you know, what I care about is I don't, it doesn't matter to me which politician wins where in what state. That's irrelevant. I care about the policy that's generated as the result of what occurred. How will this change what I have to do every day as an investor? The sun is going to rise in January. I'm still going to have to invest, but it's going to be under a different Congress with different policy. My job between now and then is to figure that out. Now, you asked me why this happened. Inflation at 3.5%. Yes, some of it is tied to input costs on energy and warehousing for food, but there's also tariffs that have finally been put through the system, and those costs have been passed through in all 11 sectors. For a while, many companies were absorbing the tariffs, but at some point, they had to put them through, and that's part of that 3.7%. And there's an old adage which has proven to be true forever. It's about the economy, stupid. And in this remarkable situation is, the economy in the United States is doing very, very well, but it has not trickled down yet to middle class, which rose up last night and said, what about me? And so this new mandate is to solve for them, and that's going to be the opportunity that I think America has going forward. What would you do about the tariff wars that Trump's been waging? Because I would argue, we'll never really know if they could have worked or not, but the Iran war and all the economic upheaval that's caused, what would you do about that? The tariff war has skewed it so much that it's become, you know, if you're a farmer in rural America, you've just been hit by a double whammy, the tariffs and then the Iran war, economic fallout and so on. You know, would you, if you were Trump, would you just do a reset on the tariffs? No, that's not going to happen. What is going to happen, what's happening this hour in Washington right now, our Greer, who is really the head of the tariff policy for Trump, and he's well respected with all countries. I mean, Jameson Greer is a rational man, and what he's going to do now is try and solve He'll start in North America, the Canadian dispute, and then tie it to the Mexican dispute so there's a North American agreement by the time the Trump administration is over. That's happening as we speak. Canadians have disclosed in the last 48 hours multiple phone calls from multiple provinces and administration officials there. They're going to fire that up again because now the clock is ticking. There's no question about that. But at the same time, you talk about farmers, you talk about electricians and plumbers. And the people that should be becoming millionaires that are not, and they're the ones that all of these governors and senators and all this change that occurred across the country in all these states, in the next six weeks, they will become the primary focus of policy. And that's what interests me the most. What do you think is going to happen with all the tech bros, particularly the AI big companies? Do you think that now that the Democrats control Congress? They're going to push very hard for tough regulation? No, the exact opposite is going to happen. And here's why. What's going to occur here is now that the this fulcrum, this divisive narrative about AI and data centers and power was used in the election very effectively. Texas is probably the shining example of what occurred there. That's all going to get reversed. And why? Because if you want to make hundreds of millions of Americans millionaires, they're the 52 percent of the economy that build data centers. Build power infrastructure, the electricians, the plumbers, all of the people involved in the unions around that in every state. The number one deployment of capital in America right now is power infrastructure and AI data centers. And so all of a sudden, all of these I'm going to enjoy watching this happen. Watch this happen, Pierce, over the next few months. All of a sudden, oh, that data center project in my state. Let me think about that again for a minute. You tell me there's 3,000 jobs there, very high paying jobs for plumbers, electricians and architects and everything else and builders and construction managers and everything else. I want to rethink that. I think I like that idea. And I want you to build it with new power that you're going to build. And I'm going to employ a lot of people to do that. And then you're going to sell that power to my state to reduce electrical costs. Because there's not a single data center being contemplated in America right now that doesn't have that power. It doesn't have its own power associated with it. So what was a pariah 24 hours ago is the path to wealth for the middle class by the millions of employees. So I don't care what state you're in. You didn't like data centers last night. You love them this morning. And Kevin, just finally, one of the big concerns in the exit polling of American voters in the midterms was about the alleged corruption. So I'm going to ask you to talk a little bit about that. And then I'm going to ask you to talk a little bit about what's going to happen in the next couple of weeks. So I'm going to ask you to talk a little bit about what's going to happen in the next couple of weeks. I anticipate and most people do that there'll be a series of investigations. And if laws were broken, that'll be the light will shine the light on that. But, you know, the Trump administration had some very interesting policy regarding advancing things like cryptocurrencies, blockchain, digital payment systems that were stuck in Congress. For a long time, I remind everybody that the Genius Act, which made stable coins legal, which basically digitized the American dollar all around the world, is actively being used today. And what's missing and I don't think Congress wanted to give Trump a victory prior to the election was the Clarity Act, which makes blockchain and other cryptocurrencies legal. Now, I think that'll become a bipartisan issue. So those were the areas where these claims came that maybe there was that there was something gray about that. And if that's if that's true, then there'll be investigations. But I think the administration advanced the cause of digital payment systems that's going to support all 11 sectors of the economy. I think, Pierce, what's going to be really interesting about this, this outcome, which is definitive by every measure, is there will be some bipartisan action, if you want to call it that. There'll be some work done. I think I would think pharmaceutical is going to happen. Social Security in the next two years will be screwed. Nice digital payment systems probably made legal. Finally, in a way, I think Trump now focuses on his legacy. Certainly it's a wake up call to decide what things matter to him for the next 24 months. And he's going to prioritize those by saying, look, you bring this, I won't veto it. I mean, he still has leverage with the veto. I don't think the American people want to see every veto. They'd like to see some business done. Yeah, I agree with you. Kevin, always great to have you on Uncensored. Thank you very much for taking the time. Take care. Returning to the Iran war with his expert analysis, I'm now joined by Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute. Well, Trita, welcome to us on this glorious, sunny day in Washington. Not quite so sunny if you're Donald Trump, probably. What do you make of the midterms, the message coming out from J.D. Vance and others that the Iran war really is the big deal here, that if it hadn't been for that, there wouldn't be the economic hardship which people are feeling. They wouldn't have felt so angry and resentful of what this government has done in their name. And it may have been a different kettle of fish at the midterms. I think it's undoubtedly true. And I think the fact that Vance tweeted this is in and of itself very significant. It's a data point that probably will make it more difficult for Trump to go down the path of escalation, even though there will be a lot of pressure on him to do so. I think this goes a bit deeper than just this, though. I think it's important to note that this is not just about Trump. Yeah. But I think this goes a bit deeper than just this, though. It's not just a rejection of the Iran war. It absolutely is. But it's more than that. You're seeing this being a rejection of the overarching foreign policy that has been so militaristic and so interventionist. Remember, Biden came in and he said that he's going to pursue a foreign policy centered on human rights. Then he listened to the Israeli prime minister and enabled a genocide, and he was punished at the polls in 2024. Trump famously said that he's not going to start any new wars. He's going to end the endless wars. Then he listened to the Israeli prime minister. And he was just punished at the polls. So there's a clear pattern here. Listen to the American people. Don't listen to the Israeli prime minister. And the American people don't want any more of these wars, even in the case of Gaza, in which it didn't necessarily cost the American public that much financially. The moral cost was so overwhelming that they voted against the Democrats back then. I thought it was very, very interesting that J.D. Vance, he's spoken to pollsters he knew who came up with four reasons why people defected from MAGA to vote Democrat in the midterms. And one, they want the Iran war, he was trying to say how do we get them back, end the Iran war, but also end the, you know, change the relationship with Israel. And we saw that extraordinary revelation from Trump on the morning of the midterms saying Netanyahu and he had agreed no more billions going from United States to fund Israel. There's obviously a lot going on behind the scenes here, but the overarching picture to me seems that the majority of Americans have a negative view of Israel, and that's really palpable. And candidates like Abdul El-Said, I think the over demonization of him, he was able to turn that into a positive and won in Michigan. And, you know, you see a lot of very Israeli skeptic or downright Israeli negative in terms of the government. I mean, not the country, but that was very striking in these midterms, wasn't it? We have entered a new era. You have a person who's running for the Senate, wins and in his victory speech. He says that Israel is doing a genocide and it's an apartheid state and he gets applause. This was completely unthinkable just three, four years ago. We knew that this change was going to come. It's come much faster than most people expected. People thought that the political implications of what happened two years ago with the protests at the university would take five to ten years. It happened in two years. So when the change comes, it comes really fast. And again, I think it goes deeper than just the cost of the war. Clearly, that is very strong. But we had the example two years ago in which it wasn't a financial issue. It nevertheless prompted people to go and vote in such a way that they punished the leader of the United States that was pursuing a policy that was seen as just morally unacceptable. What do you think is going to happen with the Israeli election, in particular whether Netanyahu can hang on to power? Is all this going to have an impact on that, do you think? I mean, do you think that it might be that Israel goes a different direction finally to Netanyahu? And would it make any difference? I mean, I don't think the problem in Israel is just Netanyahu. There's a deeper systemic problem that existed. It's not going to get fixed by just getting him out of office. But if anything, this will lead to a scenario in which the Israelis will push much more aggressively in the next couple of weeks for a restart of the war because they will recognize that by the time the Democrats take over Congress or potentially even before on December 10th when they have to renew the budgets, if they haven't gotten that escalation by then, it probably will not happen. If they haven't gotten that escalation, then the escalation of the pressure for another round is actually going to dramatically go up. That's why J.D.'s tweet was so important. Well, that's why also so significant, surely, because why would the vice president tweet out that the number one reason that people have cited, if you want to win us back from the Democrats where we've now gone unvoted, you've got to end the war. Why would he do that? He would do that because he has a political future beyond 2028. So is he potentially chucking his president under the bus by doing that? Well, I think this is very fascinating. It's fascinating because we've already seen that the distance that he has managed to keep from the policy is unprecedented. When he went on Joe Rogan and essentially didn't deny that he's against the war, but said, "My job is just to make sure "that the president's policy is successful." And then he attacked the pro-war faction. We never saw Kamala Harris be allowed to have the slightest daylight between herself and Biden. And she wasn't an exception. What this is, this is the exception, that a vice president can manage this distance from not only the president, but the president's policy. 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