During the 2024 election, one of the things you’d hear online a lot was vote for Trump if you want to avoid World War three. And it’s like, I don’t know if I were trying to start World War III, this is the kind of thing I’d be doing. Guys people were anticipating some kind of attack on Iran for weeks. As of this taping, we’re six days into “Operation Epic Fury,” as the Defense Department has named it. Given all the buildup, is it playing out as you expected. I honestly didn’t know what to expect, but we had been told nothing. The president is in front of the State of the Union, all of America. He has an opportunity to explain. He has an opportunity then to declare that he’s going to go to Congress. We then would have an opportunity to learn what would be the war aims. For example, why would we be doing this. What’s the objective. Is it attainable. What’s it based on. None of this happened. And so what’s happening is you and I and Jamil, we’re watching a build up. And the people who pay very close attention to the news are watching this build up in the Middle East. So we know something is coming. But buildups in the Middle East are not unusual, Michelle. I mean, controversy and turmoil in the Middle East is not unusual. So from the standpoint of is this something that’s going to lead to the kind of war that we’re watching right now. No, I did not fully expect that in any way. And so what we’ve had here is one of the strangest sensations of my entire life, which is we’re living in a war that was sprung on us by our own government. I mean, we’ve been in wars before that were sprung on us by opposing governments, but this is one that was sprung on us by our own government and not as a very short, limited operation. But this is indefinite duration with not clearly defined objectives with the potential not just of blowback against our troops in the region. This is also something that risks civilians in a way that maybe many of our other conflicts haven’t. Because Iran is a state sponsor of terror, and there are a lot of questions about whether Iran could activate terror networks, for example. And so we’re dealing with greater risk to American civilians. We already had what looks like a terror attack in Austin, Texas. We have huge risk to American service members. We have risks to the global economy. And this is it was just popped right on top of us. It’s a remarkable a remarkable turn of events. And this is not supposed to be the way this constitutional Republic was designed, I actually was I think sitting around, I can’t remember if it was Sunday night or Monday morning when my sister, who lives in Texas, just texted me. She’s like, so we’re in a war now. I was like, yeah, yeah. Well, welcome to the show. Like, they had no idea this was coming. Really and they too, they’re in Texas. The Austin shooting made them very nervous. Where will this go. Jamelle, what about you. What’s your introduction to all of this been like. What has you scratching your head or wringing your hands. I mean, I feel compelled to say that most Americans learned of this Saturday when they woke up in the morning. I woke up my kids woke me up at 7:00 o’clock. I went to go look at what was going on. And it’s like, oh, we’ve started a war in Iran. And to me, I feel like it’s been brushed off, just like, oh, what a quirky thing the president’s doing. But I think it gets to the core of the absolute contempt for Democratic accountability and just explanation that the administration has, that if you look in the past to when American presidents have announced conflicts and it’s from the Oval Office prime time. It’s talking directly to the American people or in the case before television. It’s F.D.R. on the radio time when people are tuned in, talking directly to the American people, saying, this is the conflict, this is why we’re doing it. These are the war aims and an open public thing, because going to war is supposed to be an open and public and Democratic decision. The reason why the Constitution gives Congress the authority to declare war and not the president, is precisely because giving putting that authority into a single person, it makes it opaque, makes it subject to their whims and impulses. And war is such it is one of the most consequential decisions a state makes. And so that in a self-governing country, that’s supposed to be something that the public and its representatives discuss amongst themselves. And there’s a conversation to have about how the United States has over the last 50, 60 years, kind of moved away from formal declarations of war. And the executive branch has adopted a lot of prerogative about the use of military force. But even setting that aside, it is really striking that rather than look, figuratively, I suppose, rather than look the American public square in the eye and say, we’re doing this because of X, and Z. He goes under cover of darkness at Mar-a-Lago. Not the White House, not the Oval Office, not some place that belongs to the American public, but to a private resort in the dead of night and announces this conflict that has already claimed the lives of American soldiers. And that, to me, is such an abdication of the president’s responsibility to the public. And it’s such a reflection of this president’s, again, contempt for the idea that he’s answerable to the public. The lives of courageous American heroes may be lost, and we may have casualties. That often happens in war. But we’re doing this not for now. We’re doing this for the future. And it is a noble mission. The other thing I’ll say to wrap this up real quickly is that the fact that there is no the administration cannot articulate any kind of coherent war aim or strategy, that every time you ask them, they say something different. That, to me, should be a sign that the actual process in the White House is convoluted and confused and has no particular order. They can’t speak clearly because there is no clear process, because they have not planned, because there is no strategy. You’re gambling with people’s lives. And if you are spending people’s lives, you have an obligation to be absolutely clear and certain and have a plan and a strategy for what you’re doing. That’s what you owe those people. Well, that strikes me as a very key point, especially with this administration, because a key piece of common wisdom about Trump was that until this past year, he was pretty wary of foreign entanglements. That is no longer true. Whether you’re talking about the ouster of Venezuela’s president or now this war. So I want your thoughts, aside from the execution so far on what Trump has been projecting as a leader this past week, David, and how you see that landing with the American people. As Jamelle was talking about, who were basically kept in the dark until it was sprung on them Yeah and one thing just to amplify on Jamelle, I think excellent explanation of why we have this system. I think we can easily overdo this argument that says, well, he’s just standing at the line of recent presidents who have expanded war powers. We don’t have a comparable situation where a president has taken us into this kind of conflict without Congress in a long time. I mean, Bush. He had a congressional authorization for Iraq and U.N. Security Council resolutions. He had a congressional authorization for Afghanistan W. Bush had congressional authorization. And U.N. Security Council authorizations and Desert Storm. So we’re now seeing what it looks like when a divisive president in a divided time fights a war without trying to rally public support. And it falls on the American people just in an almost perfectly partisan way with 80 percent or so or of Republicans supporting this because they’re going to support whatever Trump does. Overwhelming opposition from Democrats. It looks like independents are against this as well. This is already majority disapproval from day one by most polls. Majority disapproval. And some of the defenders of the administration might say, well, so what. He’s got to get this done. This just has to be done. I’m like, hold on a second. Do you not understand how democracies fight wars. Let’s just suppose this had to be done. Let’s just suppose, let’s just grant the argument for the moment that this had to be done at this time. Still, you have diminished and minimized your chances of a successful operation by not doing this the right way. Democracies that go to war with public support are very strong. Democracies that go to war without public support. The war effort is very fragile. But again, to circle back to some of the earlier comments, we don’t yet know what success looks like. We have heard three, four or five different articulations for the purpose, and this matters. I mean, if you’re going to go for a regime change war, that’s one kind of strategy. If you’re going to go to destroy a nuclear program, that’s another kind. If you’re going to diminish a ballistic missile capacity, that’s something else. And so there is no situation, I think, where we should say, well, the technicality of congressional approval wasn’t followed. But now that doesn’t matter. Now let’s unite. That’s just not the way this works. And look, when I say I’m very critical of Trump, I am not in any way saying that I want the mission of the United States military to fail. What I’m saying is he has set us up. He has created the conditions here for failure by what he is doing. And that is very alarming. It is very dangerous. O.K I just before we go on to goals, which I want to get to I just want to say that when you talk like that, it gives me bad flashbacks. I did not support the Iraq War. And the reason that it made me so nervous is I did not have confidence that the Bush administration was going to execute it well, and you’d get this whole well, you’d support it if anybody else were doing it. And I’m like one, I don’t know that that’s true, but two, it doesn’t matter. It’s this administration that’s doing it. And if you have questions about the way they are executing it, it just is central to how you expect things to go. And I just every time I hear people talking about confused motives and confused goals and not really laying out the case openly. And all this backroom stuff, I just have these horrible flashbacks to oh my God, we’re going to land ourselves in another forever war. Which was central to Trump’s appeal was that he was going to keep us out of these forever wars, at least for certain segments of his base. So anyway, now on to goals. What do we know. Like, as you pointed out, they keep telling us different things. What have you heard that strikes you as the real story here. Or is it just impossible to tell. I don’t know if there’s a real story here. As David noted, if this is a regime change war. The idea here is to change the leadership, change the nature of the Iranian regime, not just the leadership, because I mean, I think the thing that’s important to understand, and I’m not an Iran expert, I basically know enough to be able to follow a conversation. But from what I understand, Iran isn’t a personalist dictatorship. This isn’t a country where you can take out the leader and everything kind of falls apart because the countries are tightly tied tightly to the leader, as was the case in Iraq. This is a fairly sophisticated state, revolutionary state where there are multiple power bases where large segments of the population are actually kind of tied in to the regime itself and very material ways, which is part of state ideology, it’s to prepare for an attack by the United States. If the goal is regime change, then you can’t really do this with missile strikes, right. Like a regime change operation is going to require ground forces. And the administration has not even begun to make the case for that. If it’s just airstrikes, then it kind of raises the question, what’s the point here. Is it to take out the nuclear program or you tried that once, didn’t work out. So why are we striking. And the way I’ll put it, one of the first accounts of civilian casualties was a girls’ school. So how many girls schools do we have to destroy to attain whatever objective you’re trying to obtain with these airstrikes. And there’s no attempt to explain anything in that regard. There’s a point I want to make really quick, and that relates to how Hegseth – Pete Hegseth, the Defense Secretary, has been talking about this in particular. So he has been discussing this conflict in terms such as we’re unleashing maximum lethality. How he talks, maximum lethality American fighting men are pursuing their mission, and they kind of like macho language. If you’ve ever seen that movie with Tom Cruise playing the men’s rights style, motivational speaking, that’s “Magnolia.” That’s “Magnolia.” Yeah, yeah yeah, yeah. That’s whole vibe. Oh, God. And so that’s his vibe. And that, to an extent, that’s the president’s vibe a little bit. Not as much. And then they cannot articulate a strategy. And this just has me thinking how much of this is actually less about strategic objectives and more about we have these toys. Let’s use them and let’s demonstrate our strength and masculinity on the world stage. How much of this is that and how much of it reflects the way that the administration understands the world as not like a complex system where you move one thing and hundreds things happen in response, but as equivalent to almost like a board game as to risk where we have lots of guys and they have fewer guys be big, they small. And if we roll the dice and move our guys there, we win, right. A very kind of flattened barely two dimensional vision of how the world works and in a sense that other people, other states, other leaders are, the term is non-playable characters or N.P.C.s. They simply react to us, the protagonists of reality. To me, just observing how they’re talking and behaving, this fits this vision of the world, which is for lack of a better term, insanely dangerous. Well, what’s the one thing that everybody knows about the game of “Risk.” It lasts freaking forever. You can play that game for days and get nowhere. So that’s not soothing, Jamelle, I have to say. David, give us your reaction to that. So, yeah, I think if you’re going to really boil down what is the goal here, I think just to be perfectly blunt, they’re trying to pound the Iranian regime to such a degree, hit it to such a degree, damage it to such a degree that it makes it vulnerable to falling, that it makes it very difficult to reconstitute nuclear weapons. And then if an uprising occurs and there’s a democracy that breaks out, great. If not, well, then Iran is very, very, very damaged. And I think that one of the problems that let’s just take that even on their own terms, that starts to sound a lot like the strategy that Israel took with Hamas before October 7. So if you go back and you look at Israel’s military approach to Hamas before October 7, it was these periodic strikes that were designed to degrade Hamas constantly be degrading Hamas. And in the absence of any permanent peace or any permanent agreement or actual forced regime change, that’s what you end up doing when you take this approach. You just end up hitting them and then they reconstitute and then you have to decide, do you hit them again. And for a long time, people thought in Israel that was a sustainable strategy with Hamas until October 7. And so I think the best way to say it is the administration’s just hitting them as hard as it can and seeing what happens. And I do want to say, look, none of my arguments against the administration are defenses of this Iranian regime, which is loathsome evil. And look, if I were in the Senate and you came to me with an attainable goal about how you could destroy their nuclear program, or you came to me with an attainable goal about what you believed you could do to save their ballistic missile program, which is incredibly threatening. There are circumstances where I would absolutely approve of if I were a Senator, the use of force against Iran. Not in this circumstance, not like this. Can I say real quick as well, just in terms of even being in the situation to begin with is that the origin point of this is Trump in his first term tearing up the Iran agreement that the Obama administration negotiated around a nuclear program, a very stringent agreement that wasn’t really given a chance to play out, and plenty of voices at the time when Trump withdrew from it, said that there’s two possible outcomes from ending this attempt to resolve this peacefully through negotiation and diplomacy. And they are Iran either actually successfully builds a nuclear weapon or we go to war to prevent them from doing it. And I think that this is like vindication of that when the administration tore up that agreement. And I would say an ideologically driven decision to do it. There weren’t really many choices left on the board, and neither the Trump administration in its first term nor its second term, really seemed to be seriously all that interested in trying to find some diplomatic resolution to the question of the Iranian nuclear program. All diplomacy appeared to be maybe really just like a cover for pursuing this military option, which to me feels ultimately less about strategic necessity and more just they really wanted to attack Iran, in the same way that I’m really looking forward to going on vacation, right. Like they really wanted to attack Iran. All right. So we’re here, we’ve done this. However it happened, people are increasingly using the term metastasizing sizing across the region. And let me just say that never is that word a good thing. Like there’s no good context for metastasizing. So that’s clearly telling you something about how it’s being looked at. But going forward, how do we expect all of this to affect our credibility with our allies in the region. Thoughts, feelings. First, I want to say war is a highly contingent exercise. It is something that is extremely unpredictable. And there are few better examples of that than the very month that Trump launches his war against Iran. We got the message that Ukraine reclaimed more territory than it lost for the first time since 2023, in this past month. You want to talk about an unexpected development. Oh my goodness. Virtually every expert, every person who immersed themselves in the balance of power and military forces would have said this was not possible four years ago, just not possible. So huge grain of salt, huge dose of humility. Let’s look at some outcomes. One reasonable best case is the strategy works to some degree. Iran has hit so hard that it either cries uncle, or there is some kind of uprising that creates a new government or provisional government. I think that is not the most likely circumstance. I think it is a possibility. It is not the most likely possibility. I think the most likely possibility here is that regardless of the duration of this war, this particular phase of it, we should not think of it as ending anything with Iran. Iran is a nation that when Iraq invaded it right after the revolution, they righted the ship in that war in part by using mass wave human wave attacks of young men running over minefields to clear minefields. This is a regime that does not care how many people it loses. This is not like a Venezuela where you have a lot of people in this thing for money. Perhaps this is a world in which a lot of people are in this for deep seated, radicalized theological reasons, willing to expend lives at a level you can’t imagine. And so I think the most likely case here is we have expanding chaos. We do an enormous amount of damage to Iran. We do not topple the regime. We do not end the war. And then we’re now going to be at a much greater risk for Israel gets I think, for a time being, a much greater sense of security. We push a nuclear weapon way down the timeline, but with unforeseen second and third order effects. And then the worst case scenario is spreading chaos, that we’re at the front end of something that looks like a August 1914. One thing leads to another, leads to another kind of cascade. And this is something I just wish people would have more cognizance of. We are in a time of heightened tensions around the world, with a massive Chinese military buildup that Xi Jinping had talked about being ready for war by this year, next year and some reporting. And here we are touching off additional large scale conflict pulling multiple world powers in. This is inherently dangerous Yeah I mean, I can’t say it better than David there. This is tremendously dangerous. The August 1914 kind of comparison point, I think is it sounds frightening and it should sound frightening. The Balkans of the early 20th century were the Middle East of the 21st century. It’s the same kind of pressure cooker of rivalries and interest. Earlier in our conversation, Michelle, you mentioned that – you mentioned twice that Trump had ran on being kind of a peace candidate. And I do want to say that I always was. I always thought that claim from the president was like obviously made up, obviously fake that during his first term. Although he did not commence a new war, he was very eager to use American military force for strikes and saber rattle. And his conduct in this administration is of a piece with that previous administration, except now in the past, where he may have been, he may have had voices in the White House who could say no or advise him to not do these things. Now, the White House is geared towards fulfilling his every whim and impulse, and so there’s no one really to say no. He seems to view the use of military force as an almost an expression of his own will. And so he wants to do it to demonstrate his own toughness of some. And during the 2024 election. One of the things you’d hear online a lot was vote for Trump if you want to avoid World War III. And it’s like, I don’t know if I were trying to start World War III. Yeah, this is the kind of thing I’d be doing. This is basically what you’d be up to. O.K So what viable options do the American people have to have some say in this. I mean, Congress seems to have just thrown up its hands, or at least the Republicans in Congress. But what is to be done for those people who really thought this was going to be a president who wasn’t a warmonger? And what say can they have. And what happens next or other possible conflicts moving forward. So if I can just on the political end here, if I can jump in real quickly. Last I saw had some Democrats who were like, maybe we’d vote vote to authorize military action in Iran now that it’s already started. And if I were advising Democratic members of the Senate in particular, I’d be like, what are you talking about. This is already unpopular. This is all. It’s this. Like, we’re not even a week in. And this is about as unpopular as the Iraq War was in 2005. Already unpopular. So there’s no political thing to gain here. And I think this may be a sense of responsibility is like misguided. What Democrats can do is put forth a United opposition to this war, to make clear to the American public that we are against this war, we are against this conflict. We are obviously for the safety of American soldiers, but we’re against the war. And when it ended as quickly as possible. And if you put us into office, if you give us majorities in the House and the Senate, we will. If it hasn’t already ended, we will end this war. That’s the political strategy. It seems incredibly simple, but these are Democrats who are talking about so. Oh, no, don’t start that. David? Yeah I mean, look, one of the core problems we have here is that as we’ve been talking about, this launching of a war without articulating goals, without articulating really a plan isn’t, as I’m going to say it again, it’s not just a technicality. This is fundamental. This is fundamental. And so I would say, even if you are somebody like me who is pretty hawkish in my approach to Iran, this is intolerable. This is utterly intolerable. Once you initiate hostilities all on your own, you’re the president. You do it without consulting Congress. All of a sudden, you create a situation where it becomes incredibly difficult for Congress to unwind your mistake without creating additional risks for soldiers who are downrange. How do you say stop when everything is on unrolling American men and women are in mortal danger. All of this. And so you begin to create a situation that has its own momentum. And so I think what you would have to do is you would have to go to the administration and say, we’re going, we’re unwinding this thing. And here, here, here is how we’re going to be unwinding this thing. Step by step. But again, I take a back seat to no one in my anger at this Iranian regime. Iranian backed militias killed men I served with in Iraq. But when we’re talking about launching a war all on one man’s whim, with no articulated goals, with often contradictory objectives, this is intolerable in the constitutional system. It’s intolerable. And Congress has to exert control over this situation. That’s the way I would put it. And that means running on this thing. All right. So I am not I am not terribly optimistic about this all. My position on this is November is coming. We are in a big election year, and everything that’s going on should factor in to what people do at the polls come November. And, I understand that’s a long way off, but this is the one kind of foolproof check on an out of control party at this point. So if the Republicans in Congress can’t be counted on to make any kind of demands on an out-of-control president, then it’s time for a little electoral punishment. I’m sorry. So before we wrap, speaking of I just want to take us back. The primary season has begun. Texas started us off with a bang. There were a couple of other states North Carolina, Arkansas, but Texas primaries, especially the Senate we talked a lot about. It was kind of a litmus test for each party, or a canary in the coal mine for where they’re going. We have some answers at this point. James Talarico won the Democratic nomination outright, beating Jasmine Crockett. While the Republicans are headed to a runoff between John Cornyn and the state’s attorney general, Ken Paxton, Trump is expected to now jump in and do an endorsement. What are your top takeaways from this. I mean, I was there, I looked into it. I followed a little bit, Paxton and Cornyn on the trail. I saw how their supporters were sorting themselves, kind of like the old school Republican, last of a dying breed. Paxton strapping himself to Trump as hard as he could, but wildly scandal ridden. And then on the other side, you had a kind of equal split, with Talarico being a more unifying figure, lower key with his style and Crockett just being the ultimate bomb thrower. So from how this all shook out. Give me your top takeaways. But keep it tight. My top takeaway is just the astounding Democratic turnout in the primary, considerably more than the previous Senate primaries, and a real sign that Texas Democrats are at least energized and excited. And you can’t make predictions about general election turnout based on primary turnout. But it is noteworthy that having a competitive primary between two young and exciting candidates really got Democratic voters, ready to go out and vote and participate. And I think that’s a lesson to Democratic parties across the country that people are looking for fresh faces, and they want to be inspired and excited by their candidates. Not only will that not only that produce real energy. But you can carry that energy over into November. Like you, anytime you get participation levels up. I feel like the country is doing what it’s supposed to do. David so a couple of things. I mean, what Jamelle said about turnout, I mean that really surprised me to see that. And because I’ve always been the one that says are Democrats, this is Lucy with the football for you guys. You’re always thinking, we’re going to turn Texas blue. You dump an enormous amount of money into a race that was never going to be that competitive. I mean, the closest was Beto against Ted Cruz in a wave year. Could Talarico do it. It’s quite possible. I mean, it’s quite possible those turnout numbers were something that were surprising to me. But I will tell you, my main takeaway was on the Republican side that Paxton did not get that plurality. It was like a one point gap. I know you grasp for any little ray of light here, Michelle. You grasp because the conventional wisdom he was going to come out of this maybe five or seven points ahead. And then the pressure would be on Trump to endorse Paxton. And then Paxton would roll to the general. And then even though there was polling showing Paxton and Talarico with Talarico in the lead. Texas Republicans had a lot of reason to be confident that whoever they put forward is going to win. And we came one step. We stepped one step further away from a Ken Paxton as a U.S. Senator. And no matter what else happens, if Ken Paxton can be celebrating, become a U.S. Senator, that’s a win for America right there. On that happy note, David, reason for optimism here. Let’s just roll right on in to recommendations this week. Jamelle what do you got for us. I’m reading a really interesting book called “The Containment: Detroit, the Supreme Court and the Battle for Racial Justice in the North” by Michelle Adams. And it’s a book about the battle to desegregate Detroit’s schools, and how that produced a Supreme Court case that really shaped the nature of school desegregation efforts across the country. So a really interesting book looking at mid-century Detroit, looking at the kind of Northern civil rights movement. It’s extremely well written and really fascinating. So I would recommend at the containment. David? O.K. The latest season of dark winds has come out so good. This is a series about a Navajo tribal police chief named Joe Leaphorn. And I think it’s set in the 1970s. And it’s murder procedurals in the Navajo reservation, and it’s so good. It is such a great show. And the actor who plays Joe Leaphorn, the lead, is just phenomenal. And so season four is out. Three episodes have dropped. It’s really good. You will not regret this. I mean, I do not lead you astray, Michelle, I do not. You do not. You’re very good. All right, so I’m going with a book. Although I’m going with a very weird book. It is called “More Weight.” It is by Ben Wickey, and it is a 500-ish page graphic novel about the Salim witch trials. I think it took about 10 years for the artist to get all of the artwork done, and I’m only a few chapters into it, but so far it is a very strange but a very good read. So I’m just going to go out there. Go get yourself a 500 page graphic novel about the Salem witch trials. That’s it. And with that, guys, we’re going to land this plane. Thank you. It has been a crazy head spinning week. I rely on you to guide me through these things. Thanks, Michelle. Thank you. Michel
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