As of this broadcast, the Strait of Hormuz is still closed, and President Trump this morning on social media was not mincing words: "A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don't want that to happen, but it probably will."
00:03:04.860his negotiation tactic is to kill an entire country full of civilians, men, women, and
00:03:11.320children, an American president, so that the Strait of Hormuz will be open? It's just wrong.
00:03:19.080It's not hard to say it. It's not hard to recognize it. I wish he would stop doing this.
00:03:26.020Like, he can't negotiate without doing this? What does that say about him?
00:03:30.280What does that say about the the position that our country is in right now in these negotiations? He's got it. He's got to say this. He can't be a dignified, strong leader without threatening a bunch of war crimes.
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00:03:46.900like he what is he Genghis Khan like what what is he trying to do and why can't he do it
00:03:56.440with strength threats sure go for it that don't diminish and demean the United States of America
00:04:05.740in this way all right the Wall Street Journal reporting that Iran has broken off direct
00:04:12.640communications with America because of the president's threat, but that talks still
00:04:18.220continue through mediators. Who knows? But the hour approaches. So where does that leave us?
00:04:24.360Joining me now to try to make sense of all of this is Glenn Greenwald. He's a Pulitzer Prize
00:04:27.920winning journalist and host of System Update, who is now back on Substack, greenwald.substack.com.
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00:05:51.180Glenn, great to see you. Your take on the president's latest negotiation tactic,
00:05:58.200which is his supporters have run to X and elsewhere to say,
00:06:03.960you can't take him literally, the old Selena Zito. You take him seriously, but not literally.
00:06:11.080That's what the likes of Mark Levin are literally posting on X right now. It's seriously,
00:06:17.200but not literally. This is the same crowd that has been lecturing us. President Trump doesn't
00:06:22.420bluff. So which is it? He doesn't bluff and he really is prepared to wipe out Iranian civilization
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00:06:29.560tonight or take him seriously, but not literally. It's just a tactic. Move on, you hysterical
00:06:37.120panicans. Yeah, I think there's a lot to say. I mean, I want to echo first what you said,
00:06:42.520which is I'm somebody who has spent a decade now insisting that liberals and the left restrain
00:06:48.800their reactions to everything that Trump says, that he purposely exaggerates, that he says
00:06:54.980things to provoke a response. It's part of what made him this big Manhattan real estate salesman.
00:07:01.880You know, you kind of like say this is the greatest building ever in history.
00:07:04.920You threaten litigation. I've seen him do that. I was a litigator in Manhattan for
00:07:08.760more than a decade when he was at his prime and in his tabloid years. And I saw him do that many
00:07:14.260times. So there has been a huge overreaction on the part of liberals to these kinds of utterances
00:07:19.620in the past. That said, there's a big difference between saying when Robert Mueller dies,
00:07:25.840oh, I'm really glad he's dead, even though he's a war hero and ran the FBI and whatever.
00:07:31.460You know, you can understand that. And it doesn't really have any real world consequences,
00:07:34.420even if I just like it. I don't particularly like celebrating people's deaths that way.
00:07:39.740But that is a whole different universe from being someone who is the leader of the most
00:07:46.640powerful country in the world, the nuclear armed power currently at war. We're blowing up Iranian
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00:07:52.040bridges and schools and oil refineries and poisoning their air and their water. We've
00:07:57.860killed huge numbers of civilians starting on the first day when we evaporated 170 young
00:08:03.940Iranian schoolgirls, not deliberately, but nonetheless, they're dead all the same.
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00:08:08.300And this has been going on all throughout. Something for which we still have not taken
00:08:11.700responsibility, even though the American president knows it happened. It was not deliberate. But what
00:08:17.860you do when you make a mistake of that caliber is you own it, you apologize for it, and you
00:08:22.700restate the principles to which we are committed, which does not include bombing civilians and does
00:08:27.540include expressing regret once we've done it. Keep going, Glenn. Well, right. I mean, you apologize
00:08:33.220and take accountability if it's something that you're actually concerned about. But if you have
00:08:37.140kind of a reckless indifference to life, which, again, I don't think the United States government
00:08:42.460or the military, I'm quite certain, would do that on purpose for no other reason than it completely
00:08:46.780undermines their own self-interest. I don't think the U.S. military goes around massacring
00:08:51.340young schoolgirls on purpose. Nonetheless, the whole point of this war was supposed to be
00:08:56.540that we, at least in part, were there because we wanted to liberate and save and bring freedom to
00:09:02.860the Iranian people. This was what we heard in the months leading up to the war, that the Iranian
00:09:06.720government was violent and repressive, had killed tens of thousands of protesters. How many depends
00:09:11.600on the day. But then you enter a war and it's not just, quote unquote, collateral damage or even
00:09:17.600being a little bit reckless. Now we're at the point where we're threatening to eradicate their
00:09:22.720quote unquote civilization. And it's not like this is just a one off today, Megan. He over the weekend
00:09:28.200called a bunch of reporters, including ABC News' Rachel Scott, where he said, yeah, I'm basically
00:09:33.640on the verge. If we don't get a deal tomorrow, I'm going to destroy the whole country. And she
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00:09:37.680said, you mean the whole country? Is anything off the table? And he's like, basically, no,
00:09:41.320very little. He also, as you pointed out on Easter Sunday, said that the next thing we're
00:09:46.180going to do is destroy all of their power plans, meaning we're going to eliminate the possibility
00:09:50.980for energy in Iran, which is what hospitals run on, schools run on, young people who are sick,
00:09:56.560use them on incubators obviously it's necessary for a civilized life and these are not idle
00:10:05.060threats because he has been doing things like bombing bridges but what let's say it is an idle
00:10:10.360threat let because he has made these threats before giving them deadlines and then extended
00:10:14.700them even though Iran really hasn't asked for any extensions let's say we get to eight o'clock
00:10:19.260tonight and he's like haha just kidding I'm not really going to do anything or he does something
00:10:22.940like a tiny fraction of what he vowed to do. What then happens to the word of the American
00:10:28.340president or the credibility of American threats? How does anyone take this seriously in the world
00:10:33.060if we go through and, well, I could see him doing something. I agree, but that's not how it
00:10:37.340happened. This is how it would happen. If history is any guide, what will happen is between now and
00:10:44.520then he will say the Iranians have been totally reasonable and they have come to the table ready
00:10:51.820to negotiate. And finally, we have a chance at real peace with this new, rational, much less
00:11:00.620radical leadership. I congratulate them on a very smart decision. And therefore, the eight o'clock
00:11:06.300deadline is off. He'll back down. There's no doubt in my mind that Trump does not plan on
00:11:12.660eradicating the Iranian civilization. He is not a madman. He doesn't intend on causing
00:11:19.620intentionally millions of civilian deaths. He's just saying it, which is just, I mean,
00:11:24.760that's better than actually planning on doing it. But it's such a crude, inappropriate,
00:11:31.580offensive negotiation tactic. I'm sure there are people sitting in Iran tonight wondering whether
00:11:38.980this is their last night on earth because they don't know President Trump as well as we do.
00:11:43.880And they've been told nothing but terrible things about him. He's not being responsible
00:11:48.140in his messaging. And why is this necessary? What's happened that we are in such a weakened
00:11:55.100position that we now have to start saying stuff like this, Glenn, in order to get the Iranians
00:12:00.720where we want them? Megan, I agree with you insofar as if I were forced to bet or set odds,
00:12:07.520I would set them overwhelmingly against not just Trump using nuclear weapons, which, you know,
00:12:12.400it's just should be unthinkable. But even inflicting the kind of systematic damage that
00:12:18.440would, you know, eliminate all Iranian power because it's just such a horrific war crime
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00:12:22.860that it's irreversible. But I think what's so important to realize here is that whether Trump
00:12:28.580was deceived or whether he miscalculated, the Iranians have demonstrated a kind of strength
00:12:33.940that has put the United States in an extremely difficult position. Trump isn't just saying,
00:12:39.500oh, we have to negotiate. He's saying in a very specific goal, the Strait of Hormuz has to be
00:12:45.620open. Now, obviously, the Strait of Hormuz was open before this war. It only closed as a result
00:12:53.020of the war. It's so bizarre, Megan, that this war now seems to be about rectifying a problem that
00:12:59.000did not exist before the war began, that was created only as a result of the war itself,
00:13:04.520namely the Strait of Hormuz being closed. The Strait of Hormuz was fully open before this war.
00:13:10.180Iran closed it only as a reaction to being attacked by Israel and the United States.
00:13:14.980And the possibility that Iran will reopen the Strait of Hormuz without a full-scale
00:13:21.680cessation of this war and guarantees that it won't happen in the future is basically zero.
00:13:26.460Why would they open the Strait of Hormuz? They're charging a lot of money and making a lot of money
00:13:30.100off it. It gives them a lot of leverage that they didn't previously have. And they've shown the
00:13:34.820ability and it's ongoing to launch cruise missile, ballistic missiles. This is the real danger with
00:13:40.140wars. You know, we almost came to nuclear annihilation with the Russians in 1961, not
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00:13:44.760because either side wanted to, not because either side was crazy or madmen. It was just wars create
00:13:52.040all kinds of misperceptions and miscommunication and fears that if you don't act first, you're
00:13:59.200going to get acted upon. And that's why wars are so dangerous. That's why we ought to oppose them.
00:14:04.340Trump doesn't care what he said before. He has zero commitment to consistency. So he will be
00:14:09.040happy to say, oh, they're being much more reasonable. They've listened to me and they've
00:14:15.060come to see reason. And now we've negotiated, entered into serious negotiations about
00:14:20.740a great settlement that will make everybody happy and it will, my God, make Iran great again. He
00:14:27.660won't, he won't require them to close, to reopen the street because they're not going to do that
00:14:32.340tonight. Um, so it's either that or the beginning of world war three. One of those two things is
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00:14:39.780about to happen and we really don't know which, and that's not great. That's really not great.
00:14:45.540Glenn. I mean, there, there isn't a person in America other than the, the far rabid, uh,
00:14:54.480neocons, Mark Levin, Lindsey Graham, Ben Shapiro, that wants this thing to escalate.
00:15:01.740And yet that is the president's other option. Either he does the taco, you know, whatever,
00:15:08.280save face. I don't care. Do it. Do the damn taco. Or he escalates. And we are in the professor
00:15:15.780pape escalation cycle where it you get trapped into reciprocal escalations that equal a quagmire.
00:15:25.360So, you know, I'll take taco every day of the week. I don't care. But you tell me what you
00:15:31.200think Trump is about to do. Well, I mean, again, I also doubt that that he's going to do something
00:15:38.440extreme or something that is some kind of historic evil. And maybe it's just because in these cases,
00:15:45.460We can't fathom that it will happen. We so want it not to happen that maybe that influences our perception of the likelihood that it will. But I agree with you that he will try and find a way out of this. My big concern is, though, you know, you said that there's other than this, like, very extremist faction, nobody wants this war to escalate.
00:16:04.560The problem is, is that he really does seem to be listening to this extremist faction. I mean, I think a lot of people, myself included, believe that he would never fall into the trap of getting the United States involved in a major Middle East war again, unless some country attacked us first, which of course didn't happen.
00:16:21.220And yet here we are. And, you know, when you talk about people like Mark Levin or Laura Loomer, these are people who have for a long time basically been saying that Iranian civilization needs to be nuked and they need to be wiped out.
00:16:35.060And these do seem to be the people that he's listening to. Now, again, maybe that's part of the ruse.
00:16:40.580Maybe that's part of, you know, he liked having John Bolton next to him in the first administration because he said he was so crazy that it actually deterred aggression or made people, you know, think twice.
00:16:49.380Maybe he likes having Mark Levin and Laura Loomer and crazy people like this, you know, as the face of the administration.
00:16:55.520But it's hard to discount their influence when we are now involved in a major war into the sixth week that has no end in sight.
00:17:07.540I mean, just on Sunday, Trump was tweeting out that the Supreme Court needs to watch Mark Levin's show on Fox on Sunday nights,
00:17:15.760which would double his viewership. It would if if they would, if those nine justices would watch.
00:17:22.040It's incredible. He has absolutely no fan base, none whatsoever, except for the president of the
00:17:28.560United States, who's obsessed with this far rabid. Again, I'm not gonna say far right, far left. He's
00:17:34.400a far rabid neocon who is desperate. He is dripping drool at the thought of seeing more Iranians die.
00:17:42.760And some of us, some of us did care that the Iranians were bombing their own people when they were trying to protest on the streets and said that was deeply wrong and haven't been Iran apologists.
00:17:53.420And some of us continue to care about those same people being threatened by our own president tonight.
00:17:59.660OK, like there's some of us are completely consistent because that's Mark Levin's latest position.
00:18:04.540Like, how dare if you didn't complain about Iran killing its own people, you can't complain about the president's threats.
00:18:08.220First of all, you are not in charge of what people believe and say on the Internet.
00:18:12.980And second of all, some of us have been perfectly consistent.
00:18:16.280We're against killing, against killing.
00:18:27.940He responded to the president's post by saying, writing, a few weeks ago, Trump said he was
00:18:33.660going to liberate the Iranian people from an evil regime.
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00:18:37.280Now he's changed his plan to kill them all.
00:18:40.040The president of the United States in a nutshell.
00:18:42.600I mean, that's really, if you believe what he's saying, and Lindsey Graham says he doesn't bluff, then that is what he's doing.
00:18:49.180He's gone from saying, I'm going to liberate them to slowly upping the ante.
00:18:55.140This week he's been saying they've been asking for more bombings.
00:18:58.100Even the areas that we leave without bombing, we get the intercepts of the people saying, come back and bomb us.
00:19:04.820OK. And to the next step of we are going to a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.
00:19:15.220I mean, if you really do believe the president, if you take him at his word, you know, if we can trust the word of the American president, he is on an escalatory ladder that why wouldn't he use nukes, Glenn?
00:19:25.220If you know if you believe him, why not? I mean, you're going to blow up the whole civilization. Use our best tool.
00:19:30.700I mean, that's the concern. You know, we did use nuclear weapons before and it was World War II.
00:19:36.880And that was because Harry Truman got convinced that fewer people would die if we use nuclear weapons than if we didn't.
00:19:44.620And maybe that calculation was correct. Maybe that that wasn't.
00:19:48.040But that shows you how leaders can be led to believe that the rational and most moral course is to exterminate hundreds of thousands of people with an atomic weapon.
00:19:57.540And obviously the weapons that we have now, even non-nuclear ones, are vastly more destructive than those.
00:20:06.360They're kind of trying to get him to think that he will be the Churchill figure.
00:20:10.280He will be this historic figure who finally brought an end to this Iranian problem.
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00:20:15.420And he can do that only if he really ends the war once and for all instead of allowing it to drag on forever.
00:20:21.240And when you combine that with Trump's desire not to have this war go on forever, which is just a political instinct that he has had for at least a decade, that is a potentially concerning combination.
00:20:35.200The other thing I want to just add, Megan, is we're told in every war that the reason we have to go to war is because the regime that we want to attack is so evil to its own people.
00:20:45.560We heard that about the Iraq War, Saddam Hussein gassed his own people, about the Taliban, how they don't allow girls and women to go outside.
00:20:52.340We heard that about the Libyan War, about Gaddafi was going to massacre everybody in Benghazi, about the Vietnam War, that the North Korea – this is standard war propaganda.
00:21:00.320And the problem with it is, not that it's false, there are a lot of terrible regimes in the world, it's that we don't go to war because a regime is murdering its own people.
00:21:09.440We support and prop up and have installed a lot of dictatorships that do exactly that.
00:21:15.180You think the Saudis treat their protesters or the Egyptians treat their protesters and honor meticulously their civil liberties?
00:25:03.560which could cost us up to 200 billion now,
00:25:06.060between $150 billion, $200 billion that Trump is going to ask for now from Congress. And there's
00:25:13.100no wall, by the way. We did not build a wall down at the center. When the next president gets in
00:25:17.800there, a Democrat, and it's not like we talked about how Rahm Emanuel at least said, I'll leave
00:25:22.140the border alone. I like what Trump did. The others don't feel that way. Gavin Newsom gets
00:25:26.000in there. He's not going to leave those policies alone. His base is going to pressure him to let
00:25:30.280in more potential Democrats. And there's no wall to stop them. Whatever happened to that? Whatever
00:25:34.840happened. We were going to build a wall. Mexico is going to pay for it. That didn't happen. But
00:25:38.960we care about ourselves. Tim Dillon, he's been so great on this. I love him. And he was one of my
00:25:46.780first guests on this show, Glenn. He came after you, the godfather of the Megyn Kelly show.
00:25:51.160Not the first. Not the first. You were the first. And he said to me then, he was making fun of
00:26:00.500himself saying like during the Iraq war, you know, I was trying to like pretend I knew what the hell
00:26:07.340I was talking like, well, you know, the Shia and this and like he was mocking about how we all
00:26:12.840turned into these stupid mini pretend experts on Middle East policies. Meanwhile, it's like to
00:26:20.220truly understand the Middle East. I mean, you need to spend your life like immersed in it. You can be
00:26:24.480like us on the outskirts, like and have seen enough to get some basic principles. But he was
00:26:28.280mocking i love tim dylan and and here he's grown so much his comedy has grown his his insights have
00:26:34.460grown and here he is saying it like no one can on where our heads are at i don't give a fuck about
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00:26:40.520iran either sorry throw him out if you don't like him it has nothing to do with me and the fact
00:26:47.220that that the idea that i have to give a flying fuck you should be standing with iran shut the
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00:26:52.820fuck up will you shut the fuck up if they want to throw the bums who run iran out throw them the
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00:27:01.180fuck out but the idea that the united states of america when people can't afford houses and they
00:27:08.000can't afford health care spends all its fucking time talking about the middle east and fucking
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00:27:13.900arabs and jews and and religion and and the fucking temple and slaughtering the heifer and
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00:27:20.380iran and sunnis and shiites get what the fuck is going on truly what the fuck is going on
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00:27:30.180that we're told well is iran sunni or shia what is that what is happening okay we our own country
00:27:39.140is being destroyed and it's going down the toilet mic drop right there that he speaks for me and
00:27:48.180millions of americans glenn that megan this is why trump won it's so amazing if you watch how
00:27:55.040maga people who are still totally blindly on board with trump i don't mean voting for him but i mean
00:28:01.180just like cheering for this war and everything he does if you see how they reacted tim dylan
00:28:04.900including that clip which you know is something he's been saying for a while they will act like
00:28:09.420he's some sort of leftist or liberal or traitor whereas this was what donald trump has been
00:28:15.720telling the american people maybe not in such colorful language although close to it for a
00:28:20.380decade now i would say it's the major reason why he was propelled to victory was because of this
00:28:25.820sense on on the part of americans very valid that both parties have a whole list of priorities that
00:28:32.940just don't include them they're like includes everybody but the american people these international
00:28:37.380elites and these global institutions and these banks and the military industrial complex and
00:28:42.080foreign wars. Everybody except the American people. Trump called them the forgotten man and
00:28:46.120woman in his inauguration. And the second term of this administration has been about everybody
00:28:50.300except for them, meaning it's just a continuation of the same bipartisan sewer that we've had in
00:28:54.980this country for 30 years where so much of our welfare has been destroyed by foreign wars.
00:29:01.660Yes, that that is how it feels when it comes to war. We cannot win no matter who we put in there.
00:29:07.020Somebody who was like the first to challenge the Republican base, the Republican establishment,
00:29:12.080bearers by saying, what are you doing? The war in Iraq was a disaster. Why are we spending all
00:29:16.540this money in the Middle East? No war in the Middle East. Explicitly said, no wars in the
00:29:22.100Middle East under my presidency. Started, started a war in the Middle East. And now, well, I'll get
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00:29:29.020to the latest report that just dropped from the New York Times, but I want a couple of things
00:29:31.840before we get there, because we're learning more about exactly how we got into this. And it's not
00:29:36.200just Mark Levin. It's also Benjamin Netanyahu, as the New York Times just dropped in a long,
00:29:40.720post. And also I want to talk about nukes because of all the comments and because J.D. Vance said
00:29:47.520something that had a lot of people wondering if he was implying nuclear use. The president has now
00:29:51.760had to come out to say the White House to say, we're not talking about nukes. We're not going to
00:29:54.740nuke Iran. But here is what CNN just reported. Pakistani Prime Minister Shabazz Sharif has
00:30:02.760asked warring parties to observe a two-week ceasefire to allow diplomacy to achieve conclusive
00:30:09.820termination of war. That's a quote in a post on X. He has asked U.S. President Donald Trump to
00:30:16.340extend his deadline on Iran by two weeks and for Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz during that
00:30:22.940two-week period. I don't think that Iran is going to do that. I don't know. I think President Trump
00:30:29.020would love an off-ramp and would love to take this, but I don't think the Iranians are going
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00:30:34.900to say yes to that because, and I don't mean this as a compliment, but it's just a truth.
00:30:39.340They have been some tough MFers in this whole thing.
00:30:43.240They seem extremely angry that they've been attacked and they recognize that their behavior is is successfully ratcheting up the pressure, the political pressure on Donald Trump.
00:30:55.720Now, so let me let me throw that to you, whether you think this Pakistani sort of, you know, olive branch by the prime minister is going to work.
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00:31:03.220here's the problem from the iranian perspective which is you know the united states attacked
00:31:09.880iran last year in one night the israelis attacked for 12 days and trump said afterwards okay the
00:31:16.920nuclear problem is solved we obliterated totally and completely their nuclear program we don't
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00:31:21.920have to worry about it anymore and now here we are eight nine months later and we're right back
00:31:26.900attacking them again in an even bigger war so their concern is that if we have a ceasefire
00:31:32.160And I think this is really crucial. You know, one of the reasons that the Israelis had to stop the 12-day war last year was because they were running out of these anti-missile defense systems that are extremely expensive to produce, that take years in order to get on the manufacturing line, and that the United States has depleted its stockpile in Yemen and Ukraine and with Israel.
00:31:54.420the israelis have and so have the persian gulf states and right now what you're seeing is this
00:31:59.220increase in the number of missiles and drones that are getting through the air defenses of
00:32:04.780saudi arabia and kuwait and iraq and bahrain but also israel and what the iranians are petrified by
00:32:11.540and i don't blame them is that right now they have leverage the strait of hermuz is closed
00:32:15.800they're constantly battering israel and american bases throughout the region in a way that trump
00:32:20.780was convinced wouldn't happen when every article I've ever read over the last 20 years about Iran
00:32:24.880was that that would be their strategy. And they have the upper hand in a sense. And what they're
00:32:30.940worried about is a two-week ceasefire will just give the Israelis and the Americans time to
00:32:35.740replenish, time to strengthen themselves, time to figure out how they want to attack and defeat
00:32:40.500an Iranian attack. And then the attack will just resume after two weeks. The Iranians won't do a
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00:32:45.000ceasefire unless they're convinced that it will stop war, not just now, but into the future. And
00:33:37.920And this guy talked him into sacrificing American blood and treasure for Israel.
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00:33:43.700And I don't care how many times people try to shame me out of saying that. It's true. So that's how we got into this mess. But here's here's the thing. I'm worried that President Trump, even though he doesn't actually intend to that a civilization will die tonight.
00:34:01.880President Trump doesn't handle his temper all that well. And he is getting angry. You can see
00:34:10.280it. One of the reasons why I think he's gotten rid of Pam Bondi and several others are now
00:34:15.920potentially on deck. You know, every day we hear another report of he's looking, he's looking at
00:34:19.920Tulsi. He's possibly looking at Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. We've heard some other names,
00:34:25.600to, his fuse is short because he is seeing the domestic political consequences of the Iran war
00:34:35.940not going well and of all the promises that were made to him by Netanyahu falling apart. I think
00:34:43.320he's angry at Netanyahu for that. I think he's angry at people like Tucker, who he's lashing
00:34:48.680out at now, saying he's a low IQ individual. Okay, sure. Not all of us can be as high IQ as
00:34:54.100Lindsey Graham. But, you know, he'll work on it. He's lashing out. And so, you know, you don't want
00:35:00.240Trump feeling like a caged animal, Glenn, because that is when the president could do something very
00:35:06.400rash and very dangerous. I mean, but Megan, this is what I think is really the heart of it all
00:35:14.180is we like to think of the United States as being this extremely stable power that acts only with
00:35:21.360the most calculated analysis and the most ethical, clear ethical lines. And that's just not the case
00:35:28.480for any kind of human institution driven by human beings. All human beings are susceptible to anger
00:35:35.260and frustration and lashing out. And then you add on to that, and I do think this is a big factor
00:35:39.900both with Netanyahu and Trump, the older you get, like the more into your 80s you get, the more into
00:35:45.340your 90s you get. Trump's obviously 80. Netanyahu's heading there. I really do think it's natural that
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00:35:51.340people start focusing way more on their quote unquote legacy. Like how is history going to
00:35:56.800remember them and less so on the world that they don't have all that much longer to inhabit? That's
00:36:02.360just the reality. And my big concern is that Trump, with this anger and frustration, I mean,
00:36:07.920he's, you know, you have the Iranians who are basically humiliating the United States under
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00:36:12.160Trump and Trump hates nothing more than some inferior power being able to stand up to him
00:36:18.040and defy him and give him the middle finger
00:36:36.900said Caroline Levitt, the White House press secretary.
00:36:38.720A response will come, she said in a statement.
00:36:42.720This, I mean, this has, here's your out written all over it.
00:36:47.940So he gets to sound tough. I was going to get him. And I mean, we'll see. To your point, Iran has no incentive to agree to a ceasefire. They believe that we are just going to reload and regroup. And that's the last thing they want.
00:37:02.900And on the other hand, I don't think I mean, right now what we're seeing in Iran is they're using civilians. Their children are now linking hands and surrounding what Trump said would be the stated targets anyway, the bridges, the power plants.
00:37:18.560And there is no way that General Cain is going to authorize strikes on power plants like this one with a bunch of civilians, including children, standing outside of it.
00:37:28.660So, you know, the Trump defenders say, check chess, not checkers, you idiots.
00:37:35.480That was that was all a diversion from what he's really going to do.
00:37:42.380Like, I'm just so sick of this nonsense.
00:37:44.920How long are we going to be focused on this instead of health care, the border, mortgages, credit card debt and crime?
00:37:52.140Yeah, and re-importing manufacturing jobs and all the other things that we were promised that are the real problems of our country.
00:38:01.120I mean, do you know anybody, Megan, who prior to this war, other than people who are loyal to Israel, who were worried on their behalf, who were waking up and saying, oh, I think the number one problem in my life, the thing that I'm most worried about is what the Iranian government is doing?
00:38:16.300You know, this is why the Democrats failed so spectacularly when they spent years just talking about Russia and Putin and the Kremlin.
00:38:26.340And it just never resonated with anybody because people weren't waking up afraid of the Russians.
00:38:30.800They didn't feel like the Russians were the source of the problems in their lives.
00:38:34.820And I don't believe that people woke up and thought the Iranians were either.
00:38:38.720I mean, they didn't even think the Iraqis were back in 2002.
00:38:41.500and that was why a whole long 18-month campaign was necessary to convince them that Iraq was tied
00:38:46.260to 9-11. But there was no such campaign here. And I think you're absolutely right. Like,
00:38:51.380we can sit here and speculate about, is this just a ruse for Trump to get out? Are the Iranians
00:38:56.940really participating in an off-ramp? Because it's easy for us to sit here and have parlor games
00:39:01.980about whether Trump will use nukes or really follow through. But if you're in Iran, it's not
00:39:06.180actually abstract you're of course worried about that and trying to avert it the last time that
00:39:14.660trump said other deadline extension because they asked for it the iranians said we didn't ask for
00:39:19.320anything we don't we don't want another extension we don't need that maybe they'll say the same
00:39:24.520thing but who knows but as you say look at where all our focus is back on the middle east back on
00:39:30.200a country that cannot attack the united states has not attacked the united states there's never
00:39:34.520been a terrorist attack from Iranian terrorists or she a terrorist. This is all a completely
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00:39:38.660fabricated pretext for a war that Americans just don't want and don't care about for very good
00:39:44.600reason. I'll tell you some, another problem with that Trump tweet, a whole civilization will die
00:39:51.100tonight. That's the kind of thing that will get raised at the primary debates with all of the
00:39:57.780Republican candidates. Do you stand by that? Did you think that was appropriate? Did President
00:40:02.280Trump handle himself well and represent the United States government well with that? I mean,
00:40:07.320I could come up with a, an A plus level hard fastball, uh, using just that phrase alone,
00:40:13.680just to embarrass everybody. And it will happen. So it's like, but I don't think Trump cares about
00:40:18.520that. I really don't think he cares about legacy building or making sure that the torch gets
00:40:23.440carried on. And that brings me to JD Vance. So JD Vance is over in Hungary. And, um, by the way,
00:40:30.460the New York Times article that just hit on how we got into this thing points out that J.D. Vance
00:40:35.140was not there for the Benjamin Netanyahu presentation. He was overseas sent by the
00:40:40.280president. He came back and was there the next day when we met Americans only. And the Times
00:40:45.960makes clear discouraged the war. He believed if we were to do it, that we should do it with
00:40:52.020overwhelming force. So it was over quickly. But it makes very clear in the most explicit terms yet
00:40:56.840that J.D. Vance was against this. And one of the points he raised was it's going to blow apart
00:41:01.640your coalition. Now, clearly somebody close to the vice president spoke to the times because
00:41:07.440as this thing goes south, I think he's getting more open about his opposition. You know, he's
00:41:13.340in a very tight, tough spot because clearly he might run. He needs to be able to tell the base
00:41:19.300I wasn't for it. But right now he needs to be able to tell his boss, I've got your back. It's
00:41:23.880it's impossible. So I'll get you to comment on that. But let me just play you this soundbite
00:41:27.920that he that he gave overseas that then led the White House to come out to say no one's nuking
00:41:34.860anybody. Sat five. This is today. But we feel confident that we can get a response, whether
00:41:40.820it's positive or negative. We're going to get a response from the Iranians by eight o'clock
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00:41:44.240tonight. I hope they make the right response, because what we really want is we want a world
00:41:50.300where oil and gas is flowing freely, where people can afford to heat their homes and cool their
00:41:55.340homes, where people can afford to transport themselves to work. That's not going to happen
00:41:59.300if the Iranians are engaged in acts of economic terrorism. So they've got to know we've got tools
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00:42:05.200in our toolkit that we so far haven't decided to use. The president of the United States can decide
00:42:10.040to use them and he will decide to use them if the Iranians don't change their course of conduct.
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00:42:14.740now i personally think he probably meant some of the stuff that we reportedly used in venezuela
00:42:21.440like some of these devices that messed with people's hearing i don't know but the white
00:42:27.140house had to come out later and say we're not thinking about dropping a nuke and tucker carlson
00:42:32.000has been very very very worried about dropping a nuke i'll get to tucker and the nuke thing
00:42:36.820next glenn because i do that's a separate discussion but can you just speak to the
00:42:39.920position jd vance is in because i know you you do not think it's a good one
00:42:42.900Well, I mean, just on this issue, again, there are ways to completely obliterate Iranian society without using nuclear weapons.
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00:42:50.940We do have conventional weapons in our arsenal that are comparably destructive to certain atomic weapons that we have never used.
00:42:58.940And so it could be that J.D. Vance is alluding to those.
00:43:02.060It could be that he's alluding to the destruction of their power plants, which President Trump has explicitly threatened to do,
00:43:07.280But yet which we have not yet done and just lead that whole country for years or generations without any power, without any power for their incubators or their their any hospitals or any of the things that we've discussed, gasoline, the things that you need to keep society reasonably advanced.
00:43:23.840the problem is you know i mean matthew says you shall know them by be by their fruits
00:43:29.900and so jd vance can kind of leak to as many people as he wants and i know he's doing this
00:43:35.360he's leaking to all sorts of people anyone to get his hands on that he was against this war that he
00:43:39.760was never for it but at the end of the day he's out there tying himself to it he's defending it
00:43:45.240he's actually defending these threats that president trump has made and while yes in a
00:43:51.120sense the vice president looks at the president as his boss in reality that's not really what the
00:43:56.000the president is jd vance could express dissent i mean he would be over for him in terms of his
00:44:02.080responsibilities in the administration but it's not like you could be fired but i don't think
00:44:07.020this middle ground of explicitly defending the war but then leaking that you really were kind
00:44:12.520of opposed to it if anything that makes it look extremely weak like i'm willing to oppose it in
00:44:18.000secret and through leaks, but not through action. And there have been people who have quit the
00:44:23.660government, including Joe Kent, in opposition to this war. Daniel Augsburg almost went to prison
00:44:27.940over the Vietnam War. I mean, that's the act of leadership that I think people expect.
00:44:33.060I don't, I feel like he's in a very tough spot and he's handling it well because he's telegraphing.
00:44:37.500He said directly to the boss, recording to the Times, like, this isn't going to work out the
00:44:41.960way you think it is and the way Netanyahu predicted, which that's his obligation.
00:44:46.980But he publicly, he has to have his his partner, his senior partners back.
00:44:52.320Otherwise, he's got no choice, no chance to succeed politically because he cannot get elected as the next president without MAGA.
00:45:00.360And Matt, while MAGA is a shrinking number, it's like 15 percent of the population and shrinking by the day.
00:45:06.240You need him as a Republican. You do. So he's in a tough spot.
00:45:09.880Another reason why this thing should wrap up ASAP.
00:45:11.720By the way, it also reports that Marco Rubio was not enthusiastic about this thing either.
00:45:16.040You know who was? Mark Levin, Lindsey Graham, some Fox News personalities, and chief of all, Benjamin Netanyahu.
00:45:26.120Yeah, Benjamin Netanyahu was, he couldn't have been more enthusiastic, and I'll get to him next.
00:45:32.260I'm trying to get through my order. I want to talk about nukes first.
00:45:37.660So Tucker is sounding, like, different than he normally sounds.
00:45:43.120He sounds like I don't want to I don't want to put words in his mouth, but I've never heard him so accusatory toward Trump.
00:45:51.920I think he's feeling very angry about this war and very distrustful of this president and his next move.
00:45:59.000And of course, Trump is striking out at him, too.
00:46:01.440But there are two things he he focused in on.
00:46:07.320Yesterday on the show, we talked about Trump's Easter tweet, you know, the F-U-C-K-I-N apostrophe straight on Easter.
00:46:16.480And my own theory was he was trying to call attention to it.
00:46:20.800When he talks like that, it'll get more attention and he's having difficulty getting all the attention he wants on his true social posts these days.
01:02:11.100He started it, and he desperately wants to end it.
01:02:13.660but they get a say. The ones who got attacked also get a say. I got to end on this, though,
01:02:18.300this New York Times article that we've been that I've been teasing, written by Maggie Haberman
01:02:22.280and Jonathan Swan. And the title is how how Trump took the U.S. to war with Iran.
01:02:29.880It's crazy. They they write about the black SUV carrying Netanyahu arrived at the White House just
01:02:35.340before 11 a.m. on February 11th. That was a Wednesday. Netanyahu headed downstairs for the
01:02:40.640main event, a highly classified presentation on Iran for President Trump and his team at the
01:02:44.640White House in the Situation Room, which was rarely used for in-person meetings with foreign
01:02:48.580leaders. But as I point out, these two sat in equal positions at the table. Mr. Trump did not
01:02:54.780sit at the head. Then began the briefing with the head of Mossad on the screen behind the prime
01:03:02.440minister beaming in. That's Israel's foreign intelligence agency, as well as other Israeli
01:03:07.760military officials. And they write also in there were Susie Wiles, Marco Rubio, Pete Hegseth,
01:03:14.440Dan Kane, Ratcliffe, head of the CIA, Jared Kushner, Steve Witkoff, who were the negotiators.
01:03:20.420Vance was in Azerbaijan. Netanyahu made a hard sell, quoting here, suggesting that Iran was
01:03:26.560ripe for regime change and expressing the belief that a joint U.S.-Israeli mission could finally
01:03:31.720bring an end, an end to the Islamic Republic. Okay. At one point, the Israelis played for Trump
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01:03:38.880a brief video that included a montage of potential new leaders who could take over the country if the
01:03:44.300hardline government fell. Among those featured was Reza Pahlavi. Glenn, Reza Pahlavi, who no
01:03:53.420serious person thinks had any shot at any point of taking over as leadership in Iran.
01:04:01.040He's the exiled son of the Shah who has fallen. He's lived his whole adult life here in America.
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01:04:09.180He has no support over in Iran. He barely sends out like a supportive tweet when they have these
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01:04:14.320street rebellions and protests. He's basically an American now. Like there's no support over there.
01:04:21.260who the hell would believe that Reza Pahlavi is a credible potential takeover? I mean, it's truly
01:04:28.180like you might as well go for Jeb Bartlett, who is just as much of a fictional character as Reza
01:04:33.440Pahlavi when it comes to who could take over. Netanyahu and his team outlined conditions they
01:04:39.380portrayed as pointing to near certain victory, near certain. Iran's ballistic missile program
01:04:48.880could be destroyed in a few weeks. The regime would be so weakened, it could not choke off
01:04:54.640the Strait of Hormuz. And the likelihood that Iran would land blows against U.S. interests
01:05:00.560in neighboring countries was assessed as minimal. Pollyanna was beaming in on that screen behind
01:05:10.220Netanyahu, just throwing rosebuds at President Trump, surrounded by a unicorn and a rainbow.
01:05:16.700Okay, so this is great. We're going to get near certain victory. The ballistic missile programs destroyed in a few weeks. The regime so weak, it will not be able to block traffic in the Strait of Hormuz. And there's no chance that Iran is going to be able to strike neighboring countries because they're going to be so weak. Literally, everything was wrong.
01:05:36.520So everything, the only thing they told Trump that was right was, and I think this happened at, I'm not sure if it happened at this meeting or a one that came right before the strike, that the Ayatollah was going to be above ground and strikeable on that Saturday that we did it.
01:05:48.840They go on to say, Mossad's intelligence indicated that street protests inside Iran would begin again.
01:05:58.260And with the impetus of the Israeli spy agency helping to foment riots and rebellion,
01:06:03.760an intense bombing campaign could foster the conditions for the Iranian opposition to overthrow the regime.
01:06:10.700The Israelis also raised the prospect of Iranian Kurdish fighters crossing the border from Iraq
01:06:15.900to open a grand, a ground front in the Northwest, further stretching the regime's forces.
01:06:21.040That also didn't happen. Mr. Trump listened and responded. Sounds good to me, he told the prime
01:06:29.220minister. Then we had our own meeting the next day, just Americans. And they looked at the four
01:06:34.760goals that Netanyahu said we could achieve. One was decapitation, killing the Ayatollah. Two was
01:06:41.400crippling Iran's capacity to project power and threaten its neighbors. Three was a popular
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01:06:47.540uprising inside Iran and fourth was regime change with a secular leader installed. And our team
01:06:53.100told the president three and four are impossible. There will not be a popular uprising and there
01:06:59.160will not be a secular leader taking over, but we can do decapitation and we can cripple Iran's
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01:07:04.960capacity to project power and threaten its neighbors. That was our team's assessment.
01:07:11.280The CIA director used one word to describe the Israeli prime minister's regime change scenarios.
01:07:17.220Farcical, he said. Mr. Rubio said, in other words, it's bullshit. When General Cain,
01:07:24.520the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, was asked, what do you think? The Times reports, he said,
01:07:28.460sir, this is, in my experience, standard operating procedure for the Israelis. They oversell.
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01:07:34.960and their plans are not always well-developed.
01:07:37.020They know they need us, and that's why they're hard-selling.
01:07:42.000General Cain saw no clear path to quickly replenishing the stockpiles of weapons,
01:07:49.200which was another major concern he raised in the meeting,
01:07:53.360that we were already having a depletion of stockpiles of American weaponry,
01:07:59.980And that a major campaign against Iran would drastically deplete those stockpiles, including missile interceptors, which you mentioned earlier, Glenn, which we knew were on the wane, which cost between three and 12 million, depending on which one you have.
01:08:16.780the ones that intercept the THAAD missiles are 12 million. The ones that intercept like Patriot
01:08:21.940missiles or other missiles are more like 3 million. But either way, they're really expensive
01:08:25.880and we're going through them like Pez candies over there. He also, Dan Cain did, flagged the
01:08:33.440enormous difficulty of securing the Strait of Hormuz and the risk of Iran blocking it.
01:08:39.920Mr. Trump had dismissed that possibility on the assumption that the regime would capitulate before
01:08:45.560it came to that, the president appeared to think it would be a very quick war, an impression that
01:08:51.400had been reinforced by the tepid response to the U.S. bombing of Iran's nuclear facilities
01:08:56.480in June. That's it. Hegseth was the biggest proponent in the war. Vance warned it could
01:09:05.020cause regional chaos, that a regime change war would be a disaster, and that Mr. Trump's
01:09:12.060political coalition would see it as a betrayal who had, those who had bought into the promise
01:09:18.040and actually believed Trump when he said no new wars. He also raised the munitions problem.
01:09:24.600It's like, this is like a post-mortem in a hospital. That's what it feels like to me, Glenn.
01:09:29.880You know, where somebody dies and then they have the morbidity and whatever meeting and they go
01:09:37.420through, how did the patient die? Like what happened? What went wrong with the systems?
01:09:41.760And it's us looking at this president who I believed, totally believed, would not start
01:09:47.700another Middle East war and saying, what happened? And it's like some errant maniac was let into the
01:09:54.380OR. His name is Benjamin Netanyahu. And our surgeon, the best in the world, treated him
01:10:00.640as the authority figure instead of remembering it was he who was the authority figure and the
01:10:05.500one who we placed in there and in charge for a reason. He came in and said, instead of taking
01:10:11.900the cancer out, let's put one in. Let's see how that works. Infest this body with the most
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01:10:17.020pernicious cancer known to man. Let's start with pancreatics. Stick it in there and see if we can
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01:10:21.500get it to spread. And others around the doctor said, no, don't do that. That's certain death
01:10:25.480for the patient. But he was so dazzling with the head of cancer research beaming in via satellite
01:10:32.280telling our surgeon, don't worry, we figured out a way around it. You'll be known as the person who
01:10:38.100cured cancer, not who caused it. And then we did it. We stuck the needle in the man's pancreas
01:10:43.260and the cancer spread like wildfire through the patient's body. And that is how he died.
01:10:49.480That's how this feels. A bunch of experts looking at the guy we trusted saying,
01:10:54.620who made him do this? And the answer is Benjamin Netanyahu and the man in the mirror.
01:11:02.280for President Trump, his own hubris that led him to believe he'd get a different result
01:11:07.620than all those other presidents that Dan Cain referenced, Glenn.
01:11:13.300Yeah, I mean, it's so well put, Megan. You know, I was somebody who was very focused on the
01:11:18.220Israeli influence and the Israeli cause of this war prior to its beginning or at the very
01:11:22.380beginning, because I thought it was very important that Americans understand this is not a war in
01:11:26.380America's interest. This is the war in Israeli interest. But at the end of the day, Netanyahu
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01:11:31.500who can come to the White House as many times as he wants.
01:11:34.060He can say to Trump whatever he wants.
01:11:35.720The Israelis knew these things were false.
01:11:39.800They know that it's extremely difficult to foster regime change there.
01:11:44.400That's why they haven't done it, and they needed the United States to do it,
01:11:47.700because they know it's not just a matter of a few bombs and the people rise up.
01:11:51.440But at the end of the day, the choice is Donald Trump's.
01:11:54.800As Harry Truman said, the buck stops here.
01:11:57.060And what's so infuriating about this, this account,
01:12:00.060And, of course, it's something that aligns with everything I'm sure you've heard and I've heard and has been reported.
01:12:05.700We spend hundreds of billions of dollars on our intelligence agencies, the CIA, the NSA, all the 17 intelligence agencies under Tulsi Gabbard's control and supervision.
01:12:17.060and you have this massive apparatus that's supposed to tell you what's true in the world
01:12:22.380and what's not so that as president, you can make the most responsible and informed decisions
01:12:26.240that affect hundreds of millions, hundreds of millions, if not billions of lives.
01:12:31.380And here you have Trump surrounded by people who are telling him everything the Israelis
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01:12:47.060which he refused to leave because he said, I'm going to ask Iranians to be sick to these bombs.
01:12:51.680I'm not going to go into some super secretive bunker. But even if that were some special
01:12:56.180accomplishment that we should celebrate, it achieves nothing. And Trump decided that he
01:13:01.360was going to ignore his intelligence agencies. Let's remember, before the bombing last year,
01:13:05.820Operation Midnight Hammer, Tulsi Gabbard went to the Senate and said, it's the consensus of
01:13:11.060the intelligence community, of our own American intelligence community, that the Iranian government
01:13:15.660has not opted to pursue a nuclear weapon, they're not developing one. Trump went and bombed it
01:13:19.800anyway. And when asked about what Tulsi said, he said, I don't care what she says. She doesn't
01:13:23.240know anything. I know they were, because that's what he heard from the Israelis. So over and over,
01:13:28.020he's disregarding his own advisors, the intelligence apparatus that we spend so much
01:13:34.960money for in order to basically side with Israel. It's depressing. All we can pray is that it ends.
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01:13:45.220it ends soon. I don't care about the terms. I just don't care. I want it to be over. No more
01:13:52.140blood and treasure, no more distractions. And then Trump is going to have some work to do,
01:13:56.840rebuilding the trust and affection of people who are in the America First coalition. I mean,
01:14:03.600I'm getting to where MTG told me she was when she sat on this set a couple months ago,
01:14:07.780months before she left Congress, which was America only. Forget America first. America only.
01:14:17.720Until we clean up our own problems, we need to be our own exclusive focus. We have spent far
01:14:24.440too much time, money, and American lives now focused on places like the Middle East,
01:14:31.420but you could throw Ukraine in there too. It's time to prioritize the concerns of Americans.
01:14:35.960The candidate who says and convinces us he actually will uphold those values as his mission or hers next time around is the one who I think I and many others will back.