Update: Trump Breaks Silence About Iran War

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on tuesday for a wednesday morning release per usual and we'll use that episode i think to geek out on you know iranian succession plans maybe concerned about sectarian violence and civil war and much more so if you have not yet please subscribe to pod save the world on youtube and wherever you get your podcast because you know as we said on saturday ben a lot of the coverage of this war so far has been absolutely horrendous it is giving me ptsd from 2003 and watching the iraq war coverage i don't know if you caught pete hegseth's press conference with uh raisin cane the chairman of the joint chiefs but um seeing him there take questions from like the new fake pentagon press corps absolutely demoralizing we got a little taste of what it's like to have a compliant state media with a fox and friends weekend anchor as your secretary of defense like the the convergence of those threads was not very reassuring to me no it was uh profoundly demoralizing so again please subscribe to pod save the world on youtube wherever you get your podcast because we're trying to do uh real coverage here so we're recording at midday pacific time on monday um centcom says that u.s forces have destroyed more than a thousand targets so far iranian ships subs irgc command centers missile sites the israelis have hit hundreds of targets as well especially that first wave of regime change targets that included top iranian political and military officials since we recorded saturday ben iran has confirmed that the supreme leader is dead he was killed i think an israeli strike uh with intelligence provided by the u.s or you know that's what's been reported since so this is just this is a seismic event in iranian history as this guy has been in charge since 1989 and it will now set off a succession process that will probably take a while um it also seems like the president of iran was incapacitated in a strike to the point where he can't run the country anymore as that authority has been delegated to somebody else four service members are confirmed dead american service members i believe all were in the army and were hit by an iranian drone in kuwait three american f-15s were shot down over kuwait as well reportedly in a friendly fire incident they were shot at by kuwaiti air defenses thank god all six of them ejected safely um trump and his various messaging opportunities we'll get into that in a moment i said the operation could last four more weeks or maybe five more weeks so he refuses to put a specific timeline or goal behind that estimate he's also refused to rule out putting u.s boots on the ground in iran so that's something to look forward to you could certainly imagine some sort of future u.s or israeli like commando operation to get uh iran's nuclear materials for example um hezbollah is now involved they're firing rockets at northern israel the israelis are responding in kind there have been some very scary incidents at u.s embassies and consulates uh where uh those facilities have gotten attacked in places like lebanon or other muslim countries like pakistan hundreds are dead in iran at least 10 people have been killed in israel by iranian missiles and drones iranian drones also killed three people in the uae injured dozens more there uh they killed one person in bahrain two in iraq one in kuwait and dozens in lebanon I assume the lebanon casualties banner a combination of israeli and iranian fire um a number of people have been wounded in qatar and oman as well and by the way those casualty stats were coming from a running tally by Al Jazeera President Trump did not deliver a major address to the nation about Iran over the weekend the White House did not book any senior officials on the Sunday talk shows they just released these bizarre video messages from Trump and then Trump you know sporadically took calls from reporters and offered sort of incoherent lines of messaging uh Trump finally did an event where he spoke publicly today as did Secretary Hegseth and Chairman Kane we'll play all that for you in a minute but this really has been like a case study in how not to uh communicate um so Ben we'll get into the Iranian Nest uh response deeper in a minute but any initial reactions to from you to like what you've seen since Saturday I think the initial reaction is that all of our concerns about this war are playing out in the sense that there's a total lack of coherence from the U.S from what Trump's saying what Hegseth is saying about what the objectives are and there just seems to be something to keep doing stuff that the Iranian response is chaotic but widespread uh you know it's like a machine gun being dropped on the floor firing in all directions uh and that nobody knows where this is going which is what happens when you decapitate a regime with no plan for what comes next and that regime is much deeper and more heavily armed than say the Venezuelan government was so it's a very unsettling moment right now Tommy yeah the machine gun firing on the floor is an exception of what Iran has been doing because they continue to Target not just U.S bases in the Middle East in Israel but also these Gulf countries on Monday Iran attacked energy sites in Qatar and Saudi Arabia and then over the weekend Iran fired hundreds of missiles and drones at the UAE Qatar Kuwait Bahrain Jordan I think when we talked on Saturday Ben they had not fired at Oman yet but now they have um and Iran even fired a drone at a British military base in Cyprus although Britain the majority of these missiles and drones were intercepted by uh missile defense systems but not all of them a lot of the targets were civilian infrastructure like high rises and hotels um again that's led to a bunch of casualties including in uh in Iran Ben but it just seems like again it seems like the Iranian calculation here was shoot at all these Gulf countries get them to pressure the U.S and Israel to stop the war but I like time will tell but this seems to have catastrophically backfired as far as I can tell like countries that seemed initially wary of what the U.S and Israel were doing are now denouncing Iran um there's some sense that the Gulf countries that initially had barred the U.S from flying anti-Iran missions out of their territory or through their airspace might be reconsidering those views um maybe some of this has to do with Iran um not having command and control anymore there's not like centralized decision making so you have some random group of you know commanders firing at Cyprus for no reason but I do think you know the big question still remains how long will Iran have the capacity to respond will they run out of ballistic missiles and launchers and will they run out of them before the places they're targeting run out of Interceptor missiles because as we discussed on Saturday those Interceptor stockpiles are very low um and they are very expensive so like an Iranian drone costs between 20 grand and 50 grand while many of these U.S Interceptor missiles cost several million dollars each um finally on the Iran front Ben uh traffic through the Strait of Hormuz is down 85 percent according to some energy analysts I saw this morning crude oil prices are up between five and eight percent which is a lot but not catastrophic um Iran has attacked ships in the Strait of Hormuz I don't think they have mined it yet though uh which would be you know really stopping things up um so Ben I don't know I just continue to be surprised by Iran kind of unloading the clip on every single country in the region um I guess the idea was just to create chaos but what do you make of of their strategy well I think the message is that is that so long as uh violence and chaos is being rained on us we're going to bring violence and chaos to everybody uh including all these Gulf countries uh nearly all of whom have some U.S military presence in them I'm not saying it's a good strategy it's certainly reprehensible in terms of the indiscriminate targets that they're uh shooting at um but if there is a logic it's that it's that we need to make this war so destabilizing to the region to global energy markets that there's just a pressure uh to make it stop uh and look they may not be inflicting you know tremendous uh physical damage because of the interceptors but they are inflicting tremendous damage psychologically if you are Dubai, that city relies upon security, you know, security for international business travelers and tourism that is shattered right now. I mean, that could have long term effects for Dubai. I saw that they also hit some data centers in the UAE. Yeah, we're certainly firing at them. Well, the UAE is trying to get, you know, and is getting, as we've talked about, hundreds of billions of dollars in investments to build data centers there. How do you feel about that investment these days? You know, you're looking to build data centers in the Gulf. So there is kind of a strategic logic in the sense that they're creating an insecurity. So long as our regime is not secure, you know, we can burn it all down and nobody's secure, which again is dangerous, but there is some rationale. It's also the case that the Gulf is just closer, you know, so with drones in particular, it's an easier shot for the Iranians. And then to your point about the interceptors, it's a bit of a race against time because I presume that what Israel and the United States are trying to do is just take out as many ballistic missile sites, whether it's production facilities, launchers, before they basically run out of interceptors. Because the longer this thing goes on, if Iran can continue to fire things, ballistic missiles and drones in these kinds of waves, they're going to get through more and more of the air defense systems because the air defense systems are just depleted. And so that's a real risk too here. I mean, Trump, you know, people keep talking, about this as if when might Trump stop the war. I also don't think there's any guarantee that Iran, like as in the 12 day war, although I think it's one war, that Iran just stops because Trump stops. Just because we may run low on interceptors and say, all right, timeout guys, let's pause, the Iranians could keep firing. So it is a question of how much their ability to manufacture or store or hide drones and missiles can weather this initial onslaught in terms of how much damage they can do going forward. Yeah, we don't even know who would make the decision to stop if it were to Iran right now. Well, you made a, I think the command and control point you made is essential because it feels like there were delegations made by the Supreme Leader anticipating you might be killed. And I think Abbas Arachi said as much on like some TV show he was on that like, well, look, you know, we no longer have centralized command and control because we knew that if you killed, you know, top leaders that we wanted these guys to be able to act independently. So we just really don't know what's happening. Well, that's right. And look, I don't, there was the inevitable story in the Times about the killing of the Supreme Leader and all this great intelligence. I mean, he was in his office. I mean, I have no disrespect to the CIA, but it'd be like, you know, wow, we figured out that the president's in the White House, you know, but it almost seemed like if the Supreme Leader wanted to survive, like, you know, he might have wanted to be quote unquote martyred, you know, I don't know. I mean, he's a fucking asshole. I don't, you know, it's not at all someone you have any sympathy for, but it may be that he delegated down and said, you know, unload the clip, you know, in anticipation of this happening in some decapitation, they might've said to every IRGC commander with a drone or a missile, the orders to you are if we die, just unload the clip. And cause that's what it feels like is happening. Yeah, it is. I don't know what intelligence collection the CIA did. I had the same reaction to you, which was like the Supreme Leader knowing the threat he faced was above ground in his own office and adjacent to him was a meeting of all the top like Iranian political and military leaders. It's hard to overstate how stupid that was. I mean, it's obvious in hindsight, but I can't believe they didn't realize it in the moment. I mean, it does, maybe that does, I think explain why the strikes happen in the daytime, why they happen on the weekend. I also was talking to someone over the weekend who said Trump doesn't like to start wars during the weekday because he doesn't want to rattle the markets. I bet that is true, but you're right on the race. I mean, it is, I think, from what I've read, it sounds like the ballistic missile launchers are the choke point. So I think the US and Israel are probably rushing to take out as many of those as possible. That said, I mean, I was just watching the Fox News, I think, and one of their big chyrons is that the drones, Iran's drones, have proven harder to intercept. And ultimately, like those are easier to fly from a lot of places. Iran has more of them. You just sort of like set the GPS coordinators in these drones, which, you know, they're like lawnmower engines and they can, but they can fly like 2000 kilometers and just follow a GPS to a point. So that threat could take a long, long, long time to fully neutralize. And remember that those drones, those Iranian drones have been used in Ukraine by the Russians, and the Russians were firing those drones at Ukrainian targets and there were air defense systems there too. I mean, these things, we've seen them on the battlefield in Ukraine have a huge amount of damage that they can cause. So this is the point about the long, this keeps dragging on. It's going to be impossible to eliminate all their drones. These are like, you know, toy airplanes essentially, but can do a lot of damage. And so this, you know, yes, they can, their ballistic missiles are a, you know, a tool that is going to run out at some point, but I'm not sure that these drones will. Yeah. The ballistic missiles can do more damage, but right in the long term, like who knows how long they'll have these drones. So on Monday, President Trump finally spoke about the war. He started on Saturday morning in public. It was not a major address to the nation. It was like a little Iran war topper at a, I think, pre-existing ceremony to award the medal of honor to three people. Here's a bit of what he had to say in his remarks. I was very proud to have knocked out the Iran nuclear deal by President Barack Hussein Obama. That was a horrible, horrible, dangerous document. They would have had nuclear weapons three years ago and they would have used them for a lot of other things. This was our last best chance to strike what we're doing right now and eliminate the intolerable threats posed by this sick and sinister regime. We're already substantially ahead of our time projections, but whatever the time is, it's okay. Whatever it takes, we will always, and we have from right from the beginning, we projected four to five weeks, but we have capability to get through it. And we have the capability to get through it. And we have the capability to go far longer than that. We'll do it. Whatever somebody said today, they said, oh, well, the president wants to do it really quickly. After that, he'll get bored. I don't get bored. There's nothing boring about this. We also projected four weeks to terminate the military leadership. And as you know, that was done in about an hour. So we're ahead of schedule there by a lot. We have a lot of great service members here with us, too, in this beautiful building. Isn't it beautiful? We're adding on to the building a little bit. We're improving the building. See that nice drape? When that comes down right now, you see a very, very deep hole. But in about a year and a half from now, you're going to see a very, very beautiful building. I picked those drapes in my first term. I always like gold. Michael, specifically led with the JCPOA criticism to trigger you. And as our greatest president said, mission accomplished, my friend. So, Ben, look, I think what listeners should take away from that supercut is just the incoherence. It gets worse when you look at the totality of Trump's statements from Saturday till now. On Saturday, he talked about regime change as a goal. He told the Iranian people to rise up. Today, that was just not part of the messaging. The Saturday video statement about the war went through these greatest hits of Iranian aggression and grievances with the two countries starting in 1979. The new spin on Monday is that Iran was trying to rebuild its nuclear weapons program, which I don't know, may or may not be true, but it certainly wasn't an imminent threat. And then he tries out this new line that we'll later hear from Hegsath, which is that Iran's ballistic missile program would provide a shield for its nuclear ambitions, which is complete and total bullshit, as evidenced by the fact that the US and Israel are pounding the fuck out of Iran's military targets now and would have been able to do so in the future. So everyone should write that off. And then on top of that, Ben, Trump told one reporter that he had a list of three people who might run Iran going forward. And then later he called another reporter and said, just kidding, they're all dead. So I don't know, I don't have a ton of faith in the team running the show at the moment. No, I don't, Tommy. And actually, the Iran nuclear deal has never looked better, which may be why Trump is trashing it. I think most Americans, almost all Americans would rather that we be in year 10 of the JCPOA than we be in this kind of incoherent war with Iran that is costing us tens of billions of dollars, has already killed American service members, and is wreaking havoc on the global economy. And just one quick point on that, Ben. People would be like, well, the deal would have sunsetted by now. The goal would have been to renegotiate it. And Trump could have gotten it a tougher deal if he'd wanted, if he did a good job in the negotiations. Yeah. And the whole deal wouldn't have sunsetted. The strictest provisions would have sunsetted. Frankly, Trump could have negotiated it two days ago. I mean, it is worth just saying that they are completely full of shit about the need to do this now. There was no imminent threat from the nuclear program. There was no distinct threat from the ballistic missile program that was any different than the, you know, how many ever many years Iran has had ballistic missiles, you know, 20 years. This happened now because Bibi Netanyahu wanted it to happen now. I mean, there's no really other explanation. It was the Israelis who started going to Trump being like, now's the time, they're weak. And then in Lindsey Graham going to Trump and saying, you can be the man that took out the Supreme Leader and be historic and Reagan on steroids and all that. It's like the timing was determined by kind of Israeli interest in Trump's ego. Like that, that's the convergence of timing here. And by the way, Jonathan Greenblatt from the ADL called me an anti-Semite for saying as much during the last Iran war. And I'm sure we'll do so again to the both of us. But again, like it's fully reported. Netanyahu, there's tons of reporting on this in The Times today and other places. Netanyahu is like taking credit and bragging about getting Trump to fight for him. This is such an insult to our intelligence, Jonathan Greenblatt to the world, because Bibi Netanyahu put out a video like yesterday in which he said that he's wanted to do this for 40 years and he finally got a U.S. president to do it. He said it, not us, not us. Are you going to call Bibi Netanyahu an anti-Semite? I guess so. Like this is totally absurd. Does he have dual loyalty? Is that what we're learning today? You're not allowed to say that Israel wanted this to happen. It's crazy. What Israel keeps saying that before they said they wanted to happen, now they're saying it. Anyway, break, break. The other things that I take away, the incoherence about what comes next inside of Iran. He's calling reporters, I mean, The Times one is a journey. He had a six-minute conversation with The New York Times that in and of itself is a journey because on the one hand, he's saying the Iranian people can rise up and it can be this regime change. On the other hand, he's saying we can do the Venezuela model and just deal with somebody in the regime. This is a guy who has no idea what his own plan is because first of all, the Venezuelan model is impossible inside of Iran. This is a much more ideological, heavily armed regime and it's far more likely to fracture than if there's one individual who raises their hand to be the Delcy Rodriguez, that's the Venezuelan vice president who took over. The person who raises their hand in the Iranian system to be that person probably doesn't have a very long life expectancy inside of Iran. Yeah, they'll get shot up by 150,000 members of the IRGC and then a million or two best siege militia members on the outside. So yeah. So when you take the totality of the scale of bombing that they're doing and the destruction that's being wrought and the absence of a plan, it just feels like some regime implosion or some kind of cornered, angry IRGC type regime is most likely to emerge. We'll see. The only other thing I want to say about Trump, Tommy, is that, you know, you can say this anytime he opens his mouth, but every other US president who's launched a war, you can kind of feel the gravity on their shoulders, you know, the degree to which this guy doesn't give a shit. I mean, right now he is killing probably thousands of Iranians. I mean, there's some preliminary estimates in the high hundreds, but I mean, you can't hit hundreds and hundreds of targets and not kill thousands of people, including, by the way, civilians. And we've already seen, you know, reportedly over a hundred. I mean, we've already seen, you know, we've already seen, you know, we've already seen kids killed at that girls' school. That doesn't seem to bother him in the slightest. And, you know, Americans are dying. Already have had four Americans dying. Every American on a base in that region knows that they're being targeted by drones and ballistic missiles. And he's joking about curtains, you know? I mean, we cannot allow that to be not reprehensible because it is. And he's, you know, dropping the hits of Barack Hussein, Obama. Okay, we get it. You know, he has a Muslim middle name. I mean, give us a break, man. It's all politics. And on your Israel point, I mean, there is. There's all this reporting also that the Israelis are worried Trump might wrap things up sooner than they want to. So it's just like, it's not just that Netanyahu pushed him to start the war. It's that he's pushing him to continue it. Should we all be taking creatine? I don't know if you've seen creatine content online. Whenever you talk about it, you get no less than a hundred different questions about it. Like so many questions. Yeah. 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Your move. Learn more at yourmoveohio.com. Just to kind of continue to nail this point, here's a clip of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth from the press conference he did this morning. That press conference also included General Kane, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, who frankly, seems to conduct himself in a far more professional and kind of like by the book way that you'd expect. So we're not including any of that. Obviously, he's part of this idiotic, crazy policy. There were reports that he was more critical about it, but we're just going to play Hegseth for you this morning. So let's watch. Iran was building powerful missiles and drones to create a conventional shield for their nuclear blackmail ambitions. Let me say that again. A conventional shield for their nuclear blackmail ambitions. Our bases, our people, our allies, all in their crosshairs. Iran had a conventional gun to our head as they tried to lie their way to a nuclear bomb. It almost worked under Obama and his terrible deal, but not under this president. To the media outlets and political left screaming endless wars. Stop. This is not Iraq. This is not endless. This operation is a clear, devastating, decisive mission. Destroy the missile threat. Destroy the Navy. No nukes. No stupid rules of engagement. No nation building quagmire. No democracy building exercise. No politically correct. Wars. We fight to win and we don't waste time or lives. As the president warned, an effort of this scope will include casualties. War is hell and always will be. As it pertains to the U.S. casualties, that particular incident was, you know, you have air defenses and the lot's coming in and you hit most of it. And we absolutely do. We have incredible air defenders. Every once in a while, you might have one. Unfortunately, we call it a squirter that that makes its way through. And in that particular case, it happened to hit a tactical operation center. So, I mean, look, saying no stupid rules of engagement when you just reportedly bombed a school full of little girls is like fucking disgusting. Again, though, like he's lying. There is no such thing as a conventional shield for Iran's nuclear program. But wait, Tommy, he said it twice. Yeah, they had a gun to our head. The second time, really. Yeah. Yeah. A conventional gun to our head. Again, the U.S. could annihilate like whatever this conventional shield would be. Second, the bloodless, like fatalistic ways that he and Trump are trying to talk about American casualties to kind of, I don't know, spin it away. It's like this. This war did not need to happen. I think that is the important way. This wasn't a squirter. I don't even know what that means. This is an Iranian drone that killed American service members because you assholes launched a war of choice that we didn't need to start. And then finally, man, like again, like you said earlier, like Hegseth does not get to decide when the war ends, like the Iranians could decide to fight this for a generation. And it would just might be sporadic. thick, but people are going to die. That's yeah. I mean, I'm glad you said that because they can say this is not another endless war, another forever war, because we're going to stop bombing at some point. But that doesn't mean that the war ends at that point. The people in Iran could still be killing each other and dying. They could still be firing things at people in the region. I mean, the 12-day war was not a 12-day war. It's still going on. We don't describe World War II as a series of 100 different wars because at times we weren't, you know, this is a stupid fucking way that they're trying to make the American people and their MAGA base in particular feel like they didn't just open Pandora's box because they did. And look, Pete Hegseth is, you know, you want the secretary of defense to be kind of sober and reassuring. That is anything but. And qualified. That's a guy who's, you know, looks like, I mean, maybe he's not drinking, but like he had to fucking take some Adderall and like repeat, you know, the- The conventional shield line to himself in the mirror before going out, you know, so he could look tough or something. Like he doesn't know, he's not qualified to be managing this. He doesn't know, you know, it's all buzzwords with him and no rules of engagement and this and that. What is the plan? I mean, this is another thing I've been thinking about, Tommy, and we can talk about it on the podcast a little more, but if you're the Gulf allies, right, who rely on the United States for your existential security, if you're Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE, let's just take those three. You're probably like making up plans to buy a nuclear weapon, you know, because you're like, I can't rely on these, as are a lot of countries. A lot of our adversaries probably are too. Yeah. North Korea's got nukes and an ICBM and no one's messing with them. Kim looks, you know, like he's ripping cigs and looking at stuff and he's just fine. Right. And, and, and so I, I, the, the lack of, I, who wants that? Because the MAGA audience doesn't even want this. Who is Hegseth talking to? Right. I mean, that's not reassuring allies. That's not reassuring Americans. That's not intimidating Iranians. Like he's like literally performing for Fox News and Lindell TV and whoever else is in that, in that briefing room without giving any coherence or clarity about, you know, because what he said about the mission, that it's not about democracy. Well, I don't, I thought they'd been telling us for weeks that this is because of peaceful protest or is that we had to come to their aid and Donald Trump telling the Iranian people to rise up. If you're one of the Iranian people that is thinking of rising up and then you hear Hegseth say, this is not about democracy. It's about killing. It's about destroying their missiles and Navy. Does that incentivize you to rise up? I mean, like it makes no sense. It is totally incoherent. Yeah. I mean, it's incoherent for the people in Iran who aren't clear whether Trump is fully pushing for regime change or not. The distinction in the goals is pretty important to the Gulf countries you just mentioned. I just mentioned too, because the worst case scenario for them is, you know, we bomb a bunch of stuff, but then Trump kind of just gives up and leave some, you know, rump version of the regime or like a next up IRGC led government that hates, you know, their countries just as much and are just as caustic and terrible. I mean, maybe they won't have the capacity to support proxies. Maybe they won't have the capacity to do things that we're worried about, but I don't know. I wouldn't want to bet on it. Well, and, and that, cause that's the most likely scenario. Doesn't that feel like the most likely scenario now that like, essentially we bond them for a few weeks, kill more and more people. Uh, but then there's maybe some civil conflict, but the IRGC and the Basij just massacre people and horrible numbers. And then there's this kind of crazy rump IRGC regime. And you can say that they've been defanged, but it's still a giant country. Um, and they'll rebuild some capacity and they might be more dangerous. They'll certainly try to get a nuclear weapon. I mean, um, like that, that's, that's gotta be less than they take. So the, the, their desire to run this war by the news cycle is so a historical, because when you decapitate the regime of a country of 92 million people that is heavily armed, it's not going to end when you try to turn the news cycle off, uh, which is what they'll do in four or five weeks or whenever it is. And that it's just astonishing to me how much they think, I mean, that Venezuela thing must have gone to their head, um, that, that, that they thought that you could do the same thing in Iran, which is a fucking wildly different country and a wildly different part of the world where there's been a lot more war conflict and civil conflict. And it's a lot more coherent, cohesive of a country. I, yeah, I think that like, there's almost certainly a scenario where Trump will, and the Israelis will bomb the shit out of a lot of like advanced military infrastructure that will in the near term, at least reduce the threat to the U S or Israel, but it will not in any way reduce the threat to the people. That we are telling to take to the streets and rise up because you don't need an ICBM to kill a protester. You just need a gun and they are all over Iran. Um, Ben, speaking of kind of incoherence. So the democratic party's response, a bit a little all over the place. Um, some Democrats have been great and we can talk about them if you want. Uh, some Democrats have fully endorsed the war, which is just absolutely insane to me, given the recent history in Iraq, in Libya, for example, or more generally that you would trust Donald Trump. And Pete Hegseth with a task like this. I, I think you have lost your mind if you are, you know, co-signing this process, but we'll find out. Um, and then you have a bunch of Democrats like we discussed over the weekend that have focused their condemnation on the process. They need to get a vote from Congress to authorize a war or the need to clearly spell out the goals to the American people. And obviously I agree with both of those criticisms, but the ship has kind of sailed there. So, you know, we're in a tough spot. The one thing I would just like, I want to implore Democrats listening to loudly condemn the war. I want to implore Democrats listening to loudly condemn the war on the merits. Like it is not popular. This does not pull well, it will not pull well as time goes on. And then the things I would just focus on though, are Trump is lying about the threat, right? Iran is nowhere close to having a nuclear weapon. Iran was nowhere close to having a missile that could hit the United States. He lied. He is lying. Hammer them for it. This talk, talk about the cost for service members are dead already more gravely wounded. Um, the conflict has already cost tens of billions of dollars. Trump ran against regime change wars. No one wants us spending money this way. Not the MAGA right, not the left, nobody. And then I like, I would highlight the chaos all over the world because this war is not just happening in Iran right now. It is, it is terrorizing populations in Israel and Lebanon. It is killing people and spilling it to all these cities in the Gulf. Um, it is making American diplomats and tourists less safe all over the world. There were some reports today. I don't know if they're confirmed then that this terrorist gunman in Texas, might've been motivated by what's happening in Iran. Things could happen in the U S like it is making us all less safe. And I, I don't get the hesitation to just take on the war on the merits on the substance and focus on that. But what are you looking for from Democrats? And we should say, you know, the, the Senate might have a war powers vote this week. Uh, the house won't be in session until Thursday to have any kind of deliberation or vote on this. I think there's some us senators who are concerned, um, that a war powers vote actually might just kind of like be taken care of by like Trump might be able to, uh, push away the kind of concerns over congressional authorization too quickly. Um, and what we really need is a vote in the debate about an AUMF and authorization for the use of military force in Iran, which would actually be harder to get because it would take a 60 vote, uh, a threshold versus 50 votes, but that's a bit in the weeds, but what are you looking for from Democrats? A spine and a pulse would be the two things I'm looking for. And again, I want to be clear. There are a lot of Democrats. Probably the majority of Democrats in Congress who have been very good. And, you know, again, uh, Chris Murphy, Ruben Gallego, like the progressive caucus in the house, like many people, right. But, you know, there's, there's some people that are outwardly supportive and then there's some, some people who are kind of so anodyne as to, you don't know where they stand. Look, the point is that we are, you know, a few days into this war, it's clearly a shit show. Trump started on vacation. Um, the, the reason he, one of the reasons that he doesn't pay a bigger price for this kind of incoherence and insanity and doing something that is so against public opinion is that there's not a unified opposition party that is being vocal and aggressive and coherent and holding him accountable. Um, and so it, it, it lets him escape some of the accountability that he should be facing for what's happening there. There's a couple kinds of Democrats here that the people that are supportive, I said this on our last episode, but there's a, a overlapping Venn diagram between who takes a lot of APEC money, you know? Um, but if you're going to be supportive, even if you hate the Iranian regime to your point, Tommy, like the, the Donald Trump and Pete, that you would trust them with anything, um, is, is beyond the pale, but there's another kind of democratic response that I think we need to name, which is people who are like nervous. Like, what if this goes okay? Like, I don't want to go, I don't want to be too, Oh, he killed the Supreme leader. I don't want to look, you know, like, look, it's like a Gulf war one hangover. It's crazy. And here's the thing. We should just be anti-war full stop. Like unless there's an imminent threat that absolutely compels this nation to take military action, the democratic party should be morally, legally, ethically priority wise. Cause we want to spend money at home instead of abroad. The easiest political message in the world to deliver. That is not a hard message to deliver. I should, I, we are spending more money on munitions in the Persian Gulf right now than on the ACA subsidies that were cut. Like, You don't need to be Dan Pfeiffer to decipher this one. Yeah. Shout out, Dan. But the point. Yeah. The point being is that like even if this is the best case scenario, which I don't think it's going to be for all the reasons you said, I would still be against it because as a matter of principle and frankly, to be in line with public opinion, particularly the public opinion of our own people in the Democratic Party, like we need to be against this. And so I just really hope we start to see like more of a pulse from the Democrats and not just like we want to have this vote on this, which I'm props to Ro Khanna. It's not against him. But the concern that you have one vote that fails and then you want to pivot to your economic messaging, you know, well, your economic messaging is this. It's like, let's not keep fighting dumb wars so we can spend money on the things that people actually care about. I just would like to see Democrats like want to have this. Yeah. Lean into this. The Washington Post did a flash poll. Fifty two percent of Americans oppose the war. Thirty nine percent support it. But like the opponents are far more passionate. And that's the high watermark. Yeah, that's high watermark. And it's 40 percent like strongly opposed and an overwhelming majority of independents oppose this war. So like you are on sound political footing. You are on 100 percent sound legal. And moral footing. Trump is lying. He's a bunch of the staff by fucking idiots. This administration, like just come on. What are we doing here? Yeah. And that's the thing is that the day that the the supreme leader is killed is there's not another thing that Trump's going to do in this war that is going to drive up public opinion about this war. You know, I cannot imagine. And even if it ends like how much to your point, like get the answers to how much this costs and what's the. And what was the economic cost? Because all this is already are things that have already happened and that are ongoing. And another reason to be vociferous. And I have a piece out in The New York Times if you want to check this out today. But he's going to do this again. So so one reason to really oppose him here is I don't do trust that this is the last war Donald Trump's going to start. Lindsey Graham is again on air on TV over the weekend, like near orgasm, talking about how Cuba is next. So it's like this is again, it's going to happen again. Yeah. Sucks. OK. OK. That's it for us for today. Again, we're going to record again Tuesday for Wednesday. No more release. Thank you guys for watching this. Sorry, this is happening in the world. Absolutely sucks. But here we are. So we're going to cover it. And thanks for watching and subscribing. Pots of the world is a crooked media production. Our senior producer is Alona Minkowski. Our producer is Michael Goldsmith. Our associate producer is Anisha Banerjee. We get production support from Saul Rubin. Our executive producers are me, Tommy Vitor and Ben Rhodes. The show is engineered, mixed and edited by Jordan Cantor. Audio support by Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis. Thank you to our digital team, Ben Hethcote, Mia Kelman, William Jones, David Tolles and Ryan Young. Matt DeGroat is our head of production. Adrian Hill is our senior vice president of news and politics. If you want to listen to Pots of the World ad free and get access to exclusive podcasts, go to crooked.com slash friends to subscribe on Supercast, Substack, YouTube or Apple podcasts. 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