00:02:33.280Iran's foreign minister came out and denied any talks were underway at all.
00:02:37.600And The New York Times, reporting that the Israeli military, no sooner than Trump had issued that true social, began conducting a new wave of strikes today.
00:08:00.820Donald Trump is somebody who the entire world knows campaigned very vociferously
00:08:06.740and very repeatedly on a ticket of no more engagement in foreign wars, which he felt
00:08:13.500was way too expensive, both economically and on human life. And he wanted to focus on boosting
00:08:19.980the American economy. And then a few months before the midterm elections, which are going to be
00:08:24.980difficult enough as it is for any incumbent president, he launches the biggest attack in
00:08:31.460the Middle East that we've seen since the Iraq war, possibly even bigger, given the enormity of
00:08:37.260what is now coming back by way of Iran's response. It's having an obvious massive impact on not just
00:08:45.080the US economy, but the global economy. And none of the predictions that we were given in the first
00:08:51.480few days has come true. In fact, quite the opposite. It looks like the Americans and the
00:08:57.720Israeli combined military has been very successful militarily in destroying a lot of Iranian
00:09:03.800military hardware. But in terms of tactics in this war, the Iranians have basically held
00:09:10.900everybody to hostage because they control the Strait of Hormuz and because they know that by
00:09:16.300attacking their neighbouring Gulf states in places that will really hurt them, to do with their
00:09:21.560energy plants to do with tourism areas and so on, that they can have a stranglehold over any
00:09:27.920military. And that's exactly what's happened. And the constant mixed messaging from Donald
00:09:33.220Trump and the administration, and the very incendiary, gung-ho rhetoric from people like
00:09:38.960Lindsey Graham, the combined effect of all this, when we can all see with our own eyes
00:09:43.420how this war is playing out, and it's quite clear the Iranians have not got the abject surrender
00:09:49.900memo. And I'm not even sure that they have got the memo we're being told about this morning,
00:09:55.320which is that they're all ready to do a deal. They're showing no sign of any of this.
00:09:59.580And so I stand here, sit here, scratching my head in incredulity about what of any of this
00:10:09.100makes any sense at all if you're the President of the United States.
00:10:13.380Mm hmm. Trump's messaging has been everywhere. You know, we've obliterated them. We've basically
00:10:21.300won. Oh, we're about to obliterate you and we will win. It's over. You know, we've defeated
00:10:27.460them. We've achieved all our objectives. And then we may be sending in ground troops to take
00:10:31.580Karg Island. It's they have no defenses left. We've destroyed everything. And then you open up
00:10:38.880the Strait of Hormuz or we're bombing all of your energy plants like you you waited 24 hours and
00:10:44.460you will get a brand new message from our president meanwhile Iran is sitting over there saying we're
00:10:50.300not we are not negotiating we don't know who he thinks he's negotiating with but we didn't agree
00:10:55.140to anything this is a stand down by the president who realized that we meant it that if he actually
00:11:01.220did start bombing our energy plants we were going to start attacking the desalination plants
00:11:08.040throughout the region, which, you know, we've reported in our morning news update this morning,
00:11:13.100is like you've got several of these Gulf countries, these Gulf Arab countries that have
00:11:17.920over 90 percent of their drinking water depends on desalination. I mean, that it would be truly
00:11:23.580catastrophic if the Iranians actually did that, not to mention what knocking out the Iranian
00:11:30.380energy plants would do to world energy prices and oil prices. And Iran hasn't budged on the
00:11:37.200Strait of Hormuz problem. Right. And you've got no sign of any actual regime change. We know the
00:11:43.820Ayatollah was killed. We haven't seen his son. So he's presumed either dead or very seriously
00:11:49.220injured in a way that it's incapacitated him. But regardless of that, the IRGC are still clearly
00:11:54.240firmly in charge of the country. And we know that because there's been no sign of any uprising
00:11:59.480by the people, many of whom are very opposed to the regime. But there are two reasons why we're
00:12:04.960not seeing the uprising. Well, three, I would argue. One is there are bombs obviously flying
00:12:09.440everywhere, which makes it very unsafe to hit the streets. Secondly, they remember what happened in
00:12:14.160January when the regime cracked down in the most vicious and vengeful manner against protesters,
00:12:19.920killing up to 30,000 of them. And three, it's obvious to everybody that the IRGC are completely
00:12:26.320in control. And there are 250,000 of them. There are 400,000 to 500,000 paramilitaries below them,
00:12:34.420heavily armed and then there's nearly a million regular iranian army this is you know you're not
00:12:39.380dealing with some tin pot regime here that's just going to roll over or a regime like venezuela where
00:12:45.500they were quite happy to do a deal uh here you're dealing with an ideological country fueled by
00:12:51.020religion which is pathologically opposed to any american uh rule over them in what in any capacity
00:12:58.620and hates Israel too, who are just not going to be bullied into towing the line in the way that
00:13:04.940Donald Trump seems to think they are. And they have the weaponry to resist being bullied. But
00:13:10.000that weaponry is not just military, they've got a lot of military, particularly ballistic missile,
00:13:15.800which they've now been firing way further than people thought. And that even imperils places
00:13:21.120like where I am right now in London, in terms of its potential reach. But they're doing it very
00:13:26.360tactically, smartly, you have to be honest about it, economically, by controlling Australia
00:13:32.620foremost, where 20% of the world's oil comes through every day, with the way they've gone
00:13:38.020after the neighbouring Gulf states, they're sending a message that we may not have the
00:13:42.400firepower you do, but we can strangle you with the economy. And that is proving to the Gulf states
00:13:49.160and to Europe and to, I would imagine, many Americans, deeply unpalatable and ultimately
00:13:55.760unsustainable the report just hitting now via the jerusalem post is that iranian parliament
00:14:04.200parliamentary speaker mohammed bagar galbaif is leading the talks with the united states so it's
00:14:11.020possible we have found a person to talk to trump had said earlier that um we wouldn't know who we
00:14:18.120were talking with because who to talk to because we killed them all but now there is the parliament
00:14:24.200speaker, Mohamed Bagar Ghalibaf, who apparently is speaking with the United States. And let's
00:14:32.320hope that's true. The latest reports on what the demands were by each side sounded absolutely
00:14:38.920impossible for reaching an agreement, Pierce, though they often do in the beginning. The
00:14:43.940Iranians were demanding a ceasefire. Okay. Guarantees that the war will not resume in the
00:14:49.280future, okay, maybe, and compensation. They use the word reparations for what we've done over there
00:14:55.840so far. The U.S. is demanding no missile program for five years, zero uranium enrichment. That's
00:15:02.760what we wanted beforehand, that they wouldn't agree to. Decommissioning the Natanz, Ifshan,
00:15:06.700and Fordow nuclear facilities, strict outside observation protocols around the creation and
00:15:11.540use of centrifuges and related machinery that could advance a nuclear weapons program,
00:15:15.540Arms control treaties that include a missile cap, no higher than 1,000, no financing for proxies, and those are the basics of the deal.
00:15:26.800Trump sees the demand for reparations as a non-starter, but somebody on his team suggested, well, we could potentially call it the return of frozen money, returning frozen assets.
00:15:38.400There are different ways we could wordsmith it to give them their so-called reparations.
00:15:44.160So let's hope that it is true they're finding a way to start talking to one another.
00:15:50.020The big unknown here and untrustworthy piece of this is Israel, Pierce, who has no desire nor any goal or interest whatsoever in stopping the war.
00:16:05.160In fact, from the beginning, this has all been very much in Israel's interest and literally no one else's.
00:16:10.800Yeah, well, you know, I believe Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State, when he was asked point blank, why did America launch a preemptive strike against Iran? And he replied very unequivocally on camera for the world to see that the reason was that the United States had been informed by another country, clearly Israel, that they were about to attack Iran, and that the implication of that would be that Iran would then retaliate against both the person attacking them and against American interests.
00:16:40.520and that because of that, America had to launch a preemptive strike.
00:16:43.940It sounded ridiculously convoluted at the time as an explanation and excuse for what
00:17:10.080And that reinforced the belief that many have. And I share this belief that I think Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel, had eight different visits to see Donald Trump in the months leading up to this.
00:17:22.200And I think he put increasing pressure on Donald Trump about Iran. It was, as Netanyahu said, very openly.
00:17:28.440They've admitted that. They've admitted that. You don't even have to say you think it. That's a fact.
00:17:32.660Right. And Netanyahu said it's a 40-year dream of his to do what is now happening. But the Israeli agenda here is very different to the United States agenda and the rest of the world's agenda. The Israelis don't care if there's complete and utter chaos in Iran. They would like complete and utter chaos. They want this regime.
00:17:52.440But the United States' national interest should not mean chaos in Iran, because that will be a stick to beat the U.S. economy with for many years to come, if that's allowed to happen.
00:18:04.480Not to mention, fermenting, as we saw with Iraq, you know, I opposed very aggressively the war on Iraq in 2003, because I was not convinced about the weapons of mass destruction defense for doing it, and it turned out to be nonsense.
00:18:18.820And of course, we know what happened in Iraq. Out of the chaos came ISIS, al-Qaeda, all these terror groups who wreaked utter havoc for the next two decades.
00:18:28.960And the worry about Iran is if you actually achieved one of the supposed mission statements of bringing down this regime, well, what would follow is a very high likelihood of all the disparate groups you have rampaging around a rudderless Iran that you would end up with something appalling like ISIS or al-Qaeda and the equivalent in Iran.
00:18:50.480So people have to be very, I think, clear-minded about what is happening here and the potential dangers. It is obvious that Iran's retaliation has been in a way that the Americans and Israelis did not predict.
00:19:04.680It's also obvious from the way we saw Israel target one of the big oil refineries in Iran
00:19:10.820that they don't care about having an energy war.
00:19:14.400But the United States should, and the rest of the world should, because an energy war
00:19:19.200which led to Iran attacking, as we've seen, they attacked one of the refineries in Qatar.
00:19:24.960That was 17% of the world gas, I think, come through that particular refinery.
00:19:30.460And you mentioned desalination plants.
00:19:32.500You know, I read something the other day, I haven't independently verified the exact information here, but it's worth reporting as a sort of overview of what could happen, that somewhere like Saudi Arabia, say take a city of Riyadh, 12 million people, they rely heavily on desalination.
00:19:49.420If you took that plant away and they had no way of desalinating seawater into drinking water, they've only got a few weeks of drinking water available for their entire population.
00:20:01.660It doesn't take a genius to work out how devastating that could be.
00:20:05.520So a war on energy plants has always been seen as a red light.
00:20:09.080But the Israelis have been barreling through that.
00:20:11.100And then Donald Trump says, well, they didn't tell me and I don't agree with it.
00:20:21.420And right now, so now you have the Israelis dropping bombs as Trump is saying, oh, we're making great progress.
00:20:27.120We're doing really well and we're not going to drop the bombs on the energy plants, at least, that we said we were going to.
00:20:31.940Now it comes out that, again, via the Jerusalem Post, that supposedly we've found somebody, the Iranian parliament speaker, to talk to.
00:20:39.700But on the tarmac in Palm Beach, talking about this this morning, Piers, President Trump would not say who Steve Whitcoff was talking to on the Iranian side, saying, quote, instead, quote, I can't.
00:34:36.280even if it's diametrically opposed from what he ran on.
00:34:39.000But America first Republicans don't agree.
00:34:42.460And America first independents don't agree.
00:34:44.040The independents are the ones who decide elections. Republicans don't like it. Democrats don't like it. But it is the truth. And here's CNN's Harry Enten talking about Trump's economic approval rating among independents right now.
00:35:07.180Just one in five independents, excuse me, just one in four independents say that they approve of the job that he is doing when it comes to the economy.
00:35:14.840His net approval rating on the economy among independents, twice as bad as Barack Obama's was at this point, who was 25 points underwater and double digits worse than George W. Bush was among independents,
00:35:25.460according to CBS News at this point when it comes to the economy. Look, these are numbers
00:35:30.360that if I were a Republican running for Congress, I would be shaking in place because there's really
00:35:36.800nowhere to hide if you're a Republican running for Congress. Pierce, you and I both know while
00:35:42.440Trump will scoff at these polls and say they're not real, etc., he'll focus on the MAGA numbers.
00:35:47.420He's not dumb and he sees what we see. And I think it's one of the reasons why he had the reversal
00:35:52.020this morning i think he's looking at the economic outcome here as opposed to what else is happening
00:35:57.420militarily what do you think a hundred percent and so he should you know he came in on a mission
00:36:03.720statement to improve the lives of average americans that's why they voted for him in such big numbers
00:36:09.240uh they didn't like what happened under president biden and the democrats and they saw in trump
00:36:14.500the kind of pie piper figure that would come in and he would not go and attack middle eastern
00:36:20.520countries like some of these predecessors. He would instead focus on domestic issues. He would
00:36:26.740make America safe by sorting out the border, which he did, and he would make Americans more
00:36:32.600prosperous. He'd make them pay less tax. He'd bring down the cost of living. He'd stop inflation
00:36:39.100and so on. Well, none of this is going to happen. I can tell you, they're right up to the midterms.
00:36:43.680unless an absolute miracle happens, I cannot see anything but increased financial pain
00:36:50.880for the average American over the next six months. It just seems to me utterly inevitable.
00:36:56.300And the same will happen in my country, the UK, and across Europe and across the world.
00:37:00.720This seismic shock, this is the single greatest shock to the global energy system we have ever
00:37:07.740seen already. And it's not over. If this was to escalate even further, and I think there's a
00:37:13.040high likelihood, despite all Donald Trump's statements today, to say, look, it's pretty
00:37:17.000much over, they want to do a deal. The Iranians aren't saying that. If this carries on a lot
00:37:40.220Well, I don't know what to believe of who's in his ear or not. All I know is that whoever is telling him this is all going to play out really well, I think needs to probably right now be replaced by people telling him, Mr. President, you have a clear and imminent threat to your ability to control any part of Congress come November.
00:38:01.360I think it's almost certain he'd probably lose the House right now, and more and more increasingly likely, if this war carries on, he will lose the Senate too.
00:39:00.800You know, we haven't made it so crystal clear that something less of whatever that non-crystal clear thing is would be an obvious loss.
00:39:09.300So let's just declare victory and get out.
00:39:12.480I realize it's complicated at this point, but it's only going to be more complicated the longer we wait.
00:39:17.360And one point I wanted to make for you is so now, according to this this poll, this is a YouGov Yahoo poll that shows 24 percent of Trump voters in 2024 do not support this war.
00:39:29.460So it's basically one quarter of the Trump voters who voted for him last time are against this war.
00:39:36.54015% of those say they're strongly against it.
00:39:39.780And they point something interesting out when writing this up on CNN.
00:39:43.820They point out that it took until 2006, three years after the Iraq war began, for GOP opposition to start to creep into the high teens.
00:39:56.520That's where we've started with the Iran war.
00:40:37.940I want to shift because I know I only have a short time with you and I've got to ask you.
00:40:41.960I've got to ask you about what your former place of employment, CNN, is doing to keep up with the Piers Morgans of the world.
00:40:49.720It appears they are jealous of your numbers and possibly my own.
00:40:53.700It's incredible what they are doing. They've decided that if they try to make Jake Tapper and Anderson Cooper and their sets look more like they are podcasters and in digital media, people will start listening to them again.
00:41:14.060They told him, take off your jacket and roll up your shirt sleeves.
00:41:16.860They got him the big microphone that was like Edward R. Murrow style or that you'd see on a podcasting set.
00:41:22.640Jake Tapper literally did his show from his office with his panels squeezed in on his little couch because he says that's where they do their actual journalism from, Pierce.
00:41:37.520So they're getting more authentic, they think.
00:41:40.540And you say what about this desperate ploy to save their ratings?
00:41:45.220Well, I think flattery is the most impressive thing you can have.
00:41:50.080Imitation is the most sincere form of flattery.
00:41:52.800Having just done seven weeks of filming my show from my sitting room at home
00:41:59.060because I managed to fall over and break my femur and need a new hip,
00:42:03.840you and I know, and I've seen, I watch your show very regularly,
00:42:07.160and not that you're in different locations.
00:42:08.360it doesn't matter where you are because you can create exactly the same show from wherever you
00:42:12.540are in the world and i'm the same i've been all over the world doing my show from all sorts of
00:42:16.440different locations that's the beauty of of the nimbleness of what we now do and we know that our
00:42:22.520viewers thoroughly embrace that but the difference is we're not mainstream media and they've been
00:42:27.660very sniffy about all of us and saying oh look at these podcasters no one really cares about
00:42:32.940there's a whole campaign going on now about no one they're all irrelevant these podcasters and
00:42:38.300youtubers no one cares and i'm like i've got four kids from 32 down to 14 none of them watch
00:42:45.140mainstream television at all they all watch youtube they all watch my show your show they
00:42:51.380watch tucker they watch candace they watch all these shows um increasingly interestingly they're
00:42:57.100not watching ben shapiro for example i saw the numbers came out a few days ago about the
00:43:02.620dramatic shift downwards in his youtube numbers i'm not surprised because he's gone from ben
00:43:08.120shapiro the king of free speech to ben shapiro the guy that says if you say anything critical
00:43:13.040about israel you must be anti-semitic and we must cancel you um the hypocrisy is real uh but when i
00:43:18.940see someone like anderson cooper oh i have to say in my experience of working with him and i lose
00:43:25.200that phrase advisedly because he was such a poisonous little backstabber when i worked there
00:43:30.080watching him rolling his sleeves up with his big old microphone trying to be edward morrow was one
00:43:38.200of the funniest things i've ever seen i mean at least with jake tapper i found jake tapper's
00:43:42.820office mesmerizing he's got so much cool stuff in there but really anderson cooper the new ed
00:43:49.060morrow do me a favor uh you know he's i know it's just completely toe curling but like i said
00:43:56.520imitation is the best form of flattery they are trying to look like us but they don't I mean
00:44:02.920Anderson Cooper never expresses an opinion worth listening to anyway but that's why people turn to
00:44:08.800us they know what's happening in the news they want to know what to think about what's happening
00:44:13.360in the news and we tell them we give them strident honest opinion take it or leave it but at least
00:44:19.320no one is controlling us we're our own bosses we say what we believe in the moment we're not afraid
00:44:25.420to change our views if facts change we are unencumbered spirits they cannot say the same
00:44:30.980they're still living are the old the old mainstream media television rules and they are like a
00:44:38.100straitjacket as you and i discovered so look on one level i've got some great friends at cnn so
00:44:43.340actually i've always got on very well with jake i get on very well with people like caitlin collins
00:44:47.640and wolf blitzer and uh erin burnett and others um i've got no issues with a lot of my colleagues
00:44:52.840set. But I do think they've got an extra sensual problem, CNN, about what they are going to try to
00:44:58.180do going forward. Because the average age of a CNN viewer is nearly 70. 70! The average age of my
00:45:04.360viewers and your viewers is about 45. And the reason young people gravitate to us is we look
00:45:10.240quite cool to them. We're not sitting in conventional mainstream media locations,
00:45:16.060preaching a kind of mainstream media quiet.
00:49:47.940But you will not find that when you tune in to CNN or Fox.
00:49:53.240Now we know that Lindsey Graham and Rupert Murdoch, the two people, the guy who owns the channel and the guy who's the face of it now, were the two biggest boosters, not to mention Mark Thiessen and General Jack Keene, the two biggest boosters pushing this war.
00:50:05.520Do you really think you're going to get objective analysis now over there on how it's going?
00:53:56.360Yeah, I mean, the conflicting messages on whether or not they're talking, are they talking?
00:54:01.000That's a little frustrating, but not at all surprising.
00:54:03.720I mean, Iran is always messaging in a very particular way, trying to show strength and be muscular in a context like this.
00:54:10.140But we've got plenty of reporting that gives us a clear indication that there are a lot of various intermediaries who are having conversations between the two parties trying to help here.
00:54:21.140The president mentioned Jared Kushner in particular and Steve Whitcoff, who have been having some conversations apparently.
00:54:27.580And I would fully expect that there are discussions.
00:54:30.880But everything that we've heard so far, apart from what the president has said, suggests that the two sides are pretty far apart and that we're not anywhere near any sort of resolution.
00:54:40.280And thus far, even while these conversations are going on, even while he's extended from the 48-hour deadline to add five more days, strikes are still going on, both from the Israelis, from Iran, from the United States, in Iran, certainly in Lebanon as well.
00:54:59.560So the situation is still pretty precarious.
00:55:02.760I think a lot of people were very concerned over the weekend that we would see a huge
00:55:06.600escalation this weekend with some strikes on Iranian energy facilities.
00:55:10.780And to the extent we're decimating their energy infrastructure, that has huge implications.
00:59:17.060It is interesting that it's the Treasury Secretary who's doing all the defense, like not Marco, not J.D.
00:59:24.100And there is a report now today from Bloomberg that says one of the biggest pushers of this war,
00:59:31.500shockingly, you won't read this in the Wall Street Journal, was Rupert Murdoch,
00:59:35.240who owns the Journal and The Post and Fox News.
00:59:38.900And they report that, this is how they write it, Trump's around war drive exposes limits of yes-sir cabinet.
00:59:47.000Trump's decision to wage war on Iran was partly motivated by pressure from outside allies, while his own White House team stayed more muted.
00:59:55.340Those privately pressing Trump to strike Iran included Rupert Murdoch and some conservative commentators.
01:00:00.640We know that that included Mark Thiessen, General Jack Keene, and Mark Levin, famously, of Fox News, among others.
01:00:08.780Lindsey Graham, I mean, he's in a different category because he's an elected politician.
01:00:13.180Then they write that Murdoch communicated with Trump several times as he urged the president
01:00:17.360to take on Tehran, according to one person briefed on their interactions.
01:00:20.940Then they write some of Trump's closest advisors were more muted, including Vance, Rubio,
01:05:01.600Because if you take a look at the polls,
01:05:03.900So the latest poll, according to Yahoo, YouGov, is 24 percent of those who voted for Trump in 2024 are against this war and the remaining are for it.
01:05:14.600So he's, you know, what's 25 percent of the voters who voted for him the first time might not do it again.
01:05:21.520Those people are the isolationists or the non-interventionists.
01:05:25.860J.D. will be acceptable to them, potentially.
01:05:28.320I'm not saying guaranteed, but he's potentially acceptable to them.
01:05:30.920The other 75 are neocons who hate Trump, but like what he's doing.
01:05:37.200Now suddenly they're warming up to him.
01:05:38.920And diehard MAGA, which will just follow Trump wherever he leads them.
01:05:43.340The diehard MAGA, they won't abandon J.D. Vance for answering a question like that, that way.
01:05:49.040And they will see him as the Trump standard bearer because he was the guy's VP.
01:05:52.760And he's going to have two more years at this point, two and a half, of loyalty to Trump and backing Trump and being another big face of the administration.
01:07:51.340There's no question Bibi pushed Trump into this. Yes, that doesn't excuse Trump. It was President Trump's decision. Totally, of course. But how does that absolve Bibi Netanyahu for being the primary pusher of this war? It was his brainchild. It was his dream for decades. He was at the White House seven times pushing it. He had Lindsey Graham advising him on how to push it, how to manipulate Trump into it. There's just no question.
01:08:13.520And then ultimately, they were the final catalyst of it around when we would do it, according to Marco Rubio and Mike Johnson and Trump.
01:08:20.980So it's like that doesn't neither man is absolved.
01:08:25.540But there's no question that but for Bibi Netanyahu, we would not have done this now.
01:08:29.840I mean, we've just seen reporting that suggests not only Israel, but also MBS Saudis were generally supportive of some sort of effort like this, some sort of intervention like this.
01:08:39.280It's not hard to imagine that the White House, having had its success in Venezuela, having previously had its success with Midnight Hammer, imagined a very short and a brutal assault in Iran could be something that could actually produce beneficial results in the region.
01:08:54.740And maybe they're reading the tea leaves.
01:08:56.680Perhaps they're looking at the situation again with Venezuela.
01:08:59.620You go in, you know that their defenses were provided by two of your major geopolitical adversaries.
01:09:04.620if you can do something similar in Iran now before, say, they get hypersonic missiles or
01:09:10.340something like that from China, you might be better positioned to actually achieve some sort
01:09:15.380of meaningful change and recalibration in the region than by not doing anything at all.
01:09:22.520Is it possible that there are- Theoretically, yes, Camille, that's possible. But that's not
01:09:26.440what actually happened. Like in your imaginary world, sure. But we know that the BB influence
01:09:31.460was real. We know that he was there seven times. We know that he was coordinating with Lindsey
01:09:35.680Graham. We know that Trump was listening to him. We know Marco Rubio said the imminent threat
01:09:41.800was Israel was about to attack them and we realized they would attack us in response.
01:09:47.920Yeah. And I'm not dismissing any of that. I'm also suggesting that it is not entirely,
01:09:53.500it's not unreasonable to acknowledge that countries have aligned interest and it is not
01:09:59.860is a circumstance where the administration hasn't had public and prominent disagreements
01:10:06.180with Israel with respect to the prosecution of this particular conflict, and even with
01:10:10.760respect to the prosecution of the conflict in Gaza.
01:10:13.540So I think it's imperative that we are granting this administration agency.
01:10:18.640I saw Joe Cannon had been making the rounds recently, and in his summary of this particular
01:10:24.640incident and in discussing Syria and Iraq, he puts somehow the responsibility for those conflicts
01:10:31.240on Israel. I think that's a mistake. I think to the extent we want to be critical of this
01:10:35.520administration, and I have been on any number of things and have been here too, I think it's
01:10:40.180important to just speak directly and say the president of the United States made a decision
01:10:44.200to go into Iran. And the president of the United States, to the extent there doesn't really seem
01:10:48.940like there's a great strategy, to the extent the messaging is wrong, to the extent the emphasis is
01:10:53.160in the wrong place. That is on him. He's culpable for that. He made the decision. And what will the
01:10:58.400next administration do? I think that will have everything to do with who ends up getting elected.
01:11:02.860I don't know that the president is particularly vulnerable to power. And I'd say one last thing
01:11:07.620about Joe Kent, since I mentioned him a moment ago, the suggestion that there's somehow perhaps
01:11:13.700some sort of danger to the president and that perhaps that's what he's responding to, that he's
01:11:18.140not just being kind of pressured, as you mentioned, in meetings, which is totally conventionable and
01:11:22.900understandable. But the notion that there is somehow some sort of danger or threat to his
01:11:28.540life or his family's life, and he needs to be concerned about that, and that's why he attacked,
01:11:32.800I think that sort of thing is just so sensational and over the top that anyone who is making those
01:11:38.040kinds of assertions, like there ought to be a huge number of question marks just kind of
01:11:42.500surrounding them and any other statements that they're making.
01:11:46.860I don't, I mean, he said that to Tucker, that he thought that might have been one of the reasons.
01:11:51.000Tucker asked him, how do you take a man who ran for 10 years on not getting us involved in any
01:11:55.340Middle East wars and flip him? How does that happen? And his answer was, you know, the pressure
01:12:01.560that was brought to bear by Israel and Lindsey Graham and others on Trump, you know, made the
01:12:06.220case over and over and over and convinced him this could be done quickly. And the dissenters
01:12:09.980were left out of the room. And now we hear, you know, weren't really saying all that much dissent
01:12:13.940anyway, like the JDs and the Marcos and the Susie Wileses of the world, maybe not have been in favor,
01:12:19.560but weren't really making a strong case against it.
01:12:22.300As far as I know, Tucker was the only one going in there
01:16:30.920The overall audience for the program for the first five days ended March 13th, stood at nearly 3.83 million, and at 468,000 in the key demo between 25 and 54, under 470,000 in the key demo.
01:17:09.800In contrast, World News Tonight, which is the winner in the network evening news shows, is averaging 8.48 million, so eight and a half million, along with about a million in the demo.
01:17:23.040NBC averaging about six and a half million overall, about a million, 946,000 in the demo.
01:17:29.540And then they point out that quarter to date, CBS Evening News has shared, has shed 15% of its viewership in the key advertising demo, which is the most sought after audience because it's what pays your advertising rates, which is the only way that they make money.
01:17:50.500Cable news like Fox gets money from subscriber fees and ads.
01:17:54.580The networks are in a different place.
01:24:27.260I like Jake. I like Jake a lot. I don't think his producers are doing him much favors there. Like that is not a great setup for having a conversation and producing a podcast or doing television. And I don't even know what the distinction between those two things are anymore.
01:24:43.840In fact, the fact that they are trying so hard to kind of lean into the podcaster aesthetic is telling.
01:24:51.200I think it's appropriate that they're trying to find things that work.
01:24:55.120But what they have to understand is that this is not just about aesthetics.
01:24:59.340In many respects, the reason why independent journalists and independent media, independent news commentators are finding success is precisely because they are not CBS, CNN, MSNBC.
01:25:11.940people are interested in getting away from those massive kind of establishment productions they
01:25:18.560they want to know people personally and to the extent anything was working in that clip the fact
01:25:23.280that i get to see jake's office and he's kind of talking to me about the things that are interesting
01:25:27.540to him that's actually interesting and it's perhaps a little bit more engaging than the
01:25:32.860traditional conventional newscast where all of the trappings are similar all of the segments
01:28:17.360But this is the one that they can exploit.
01:28:19.440They have a lot of problems exploiting their natural resources because of the sanctions.
01:28:24.660And that's why they're concentrating on that area, because it's the most workable for them.
01:28:29.460But with this attack, that calls all of that into question.
01:28:32.240What do you think President Trump would say to, according to the reporting, to say to the Israelis to stop going after these kind of facilities?
01:28:43.880Talk about flushing your money down the drain.
01:28:45.020They're embarrassed by the level of resourcing that they have.
01:28:48.320I mean, I would love to be able to have the kind of animation budget, the map technology, the displays that you can touch in our studio so that we can do that sort of stuff all the time.
01:29:00.000It's just, again, the aesthetics aren't the problem.
01:30:31.500There's a lot of people who have tried it and already failed.
01:30:33.440Sure, sure. I'd also say that there's plenty of ways to experiment with podcasts, with independent media, with bringing in new voices, with trying to leverage the CNN or the CBS brand to try to borrow from creators who are already having success in independent media, perhaps bring them into your ecosystem. And I know CBS has been making some strides in that direction. I do think-
01:40:23.960Camille Foster of Tangle News is back with me.
01:40:26.980Just two updates before we resume our Don Lemon discussion.
01:40:30.480Um, this from our news in the first hour, this from the New York times, this hit today. Netanyahu, this is per the reporter, Edward Wong, who wrote it new from the New York times. Netanyahu embraced a plan by the Mossad chief to ignite a regime change uprising in Iran for a quick victory. He used it to help convince Trump to start the war, despite doubts among some senior US and Israeli officials. It was a critical flaw in war plans.
01:40:58.420The headline of the piece is Israel thought it could spur rebellion inside Iran. That hasn't happened. It's an interesting look at exactly how Netanyahu convinced himself and Trump that they could do it. Just a quickie regime change.
01:41:11.600Then there's this, Yashar Ali reporting that the speaker of Iran's parliament, who we reported in the first hour, was, according to the Jerusalem Post, the person with whom we were having these negotiations to like hopefully bring this thing to a close, says no negotiations have taken place and that President Trump is claiming otherwise simply to manipulate markets.
01:41:34.380So that's the update as of 2 p.m. Eastern on this Monday, March 23rd.
01:41:41.200Now back to Don Lemon, weirdest transition ever.
01:49:42.780That's what a dog whistle is, she responds.
01:49:46.780He protested again. Totally not getting it, Camille. Then she responded again. That's what
01:49:54.800a dog whistle is, Don. He turned to me, the author, and cackled, feigning humiliation.
01:50:01.460Don't write that. No, no. I love that. Not a whistle. Only they can hear it. Not a whistle.
01:50:11.320We don't hear it, but they can. That's why we call it a dog whistle. Don,
01:50:18.380this is the best part of the piece. Clearly, the author also believed he is an idiot.
01:50:24.320Again, not the most sophisticated journalist at all. I think there were questions along those
01:50:31.000lines to former colleagues of his that they declined to answer. And look, I want to be fair.
01:50:37.160I try to be as even handed as possible. I've never been a huge fan of Don Lemons.
01:50:42.480I will say at least it doesn't seem that he's completely switched his perspectives now that
01:50:47.800he's gone independent. The same sort of kind of critical line that he was taking, he's taking now,
01:50:53.600I suppose it's a little bit less. There's a little bit less of a pretense that he's attempting to be
01:51:00.040objective when he's covering stories. He's very much a partisan. You saw the enthusiasm and
01:51:04.920excitement when he met with Kamala Harris and tall called her a lemon head, um, which is the
01:51:09.880weirdest name imaginable to your, to your fandom. Um, so, I mean, this is, this is who he is. He is
01:51:16.140at this point, just kind of more partisan activist than journalists. Um, and you know, that's fine
01:51:22.560if that's what you want and that's what your audience wants. That's fine. Again, it matters
01:51:26.820how you go about doing these things. Um, and that is, I think the, the clear takeaway here,
01:51:32.440But I'd also say, again, just from the Trump administration standpoint, I don't know that I saw anything in that particular fiasco at the church that rose to the level of criminality.
01:52:03.080But again, the activists, I think, made a huge mistake going to that church and holding a demonstration during their service.
01:52:09.660And I think Don Lemon made a huge mistake coordinating all of his activities with them and giving them advice on how to go about doing this sort of stuff and then injecting himself into the story in the way that he did.
01:52:28.440He committed trespass 100 percent. And on top of that, knowing that he was not welcome there, that he was violating the law by remaining, he stuck around to justify the protesters behavior over and over to the pastor and others saying this is, you know, this is what the Constitution allows, which is wrong.
01:52:47.180to, then saying trauma is all part of it, watching crying children flee, terrified,
01:52:54.460and actually in tears, being held by their parents and running in other circumstances
01:53:04.920He was a partisan activist inside that church that day, and that's why I firmly believe
01:53:09.440Don Lemon was properly charged and is likely to be convicted.
01:53:13.060And those tears he shed for the New York Times trying to make himself look important and in touch with his emotions are going to come back for real.
01:53:21.680That's my prediction when he actually stands inside that courtroom and has to answer for what he's done.
01:53:26.080All we really need now is a civil lawsuit by somebody inside the church.
01:53:30.400There was one, but there was a question about whether the person was even there against him because he did traumatize them.
01:53:36.440He was part of it and he should be held liable for it.
01:54:15.060We're told that a flight attendant was ejected from farther back in the plane toward the front cockpit, but is still alive.
01:54:23.780One passenger on the flight later telling the media, quote, the pilot was trying to break, to break, to slow the plane down to avoid the crash.
02:10:02.940Shot 646. Shot 646. I know he can't move. Vehicles are responding to you now.
02:10:12.160So, Captain Steve, explain to me, are we hearing him give the truck permission to go on to the Delta runway and then immediately try to take it away?
02:10:19.680Yes. So he's asking, he's on Delta taxiway. He's asking permission to cross runway four
02:10:26.020at Delta is what he says. And then he's going to cross at the other side back onto Delta. So he's
02:10:31.960going to cross the runway. You always have to ask permission before you go on any active runway.
02:10:35.640He's granted permission from Delta taxiway to cross runway four and reemerge at the other side
02:10:42.820on Delta. He never gets there because Jazz, Jazz 646 is the call sign of the Air Canada
02:10:49.180regional jet that crashed into him. They had already touched down at the point where he's
02:10:53.960entering the runway and the two just were on a collision course and it couldn't be avoided at
02:10:57.320that point. And so what we hear is the air traffic controller trying to get the truck to abandon
02:11:03.400because he knows that the airplane cannot abandon. Correct. And so one of the things that I talked
02:11:08.900about in my analysis video is the air traffic controllers and the pilots are trained to respond
02:11:13.720to certain commands. The air traffic controller will say, go around, and I'm trained to go around,
02:11:18.920or he might say, takeoff clearance rejected or takeoff clearance disapproved, and I know to stop
02:11:25.520then on the runway. The conversation that they have with the fire trucks and the crash trucks,
02:11:31.160the pickup trucks and the fire trucks on the airport is a little less formal. It's more of
02:11:36.160just kind of like a talking, yeah, go straight, turn left, turn right. There's not all that
02:11:40.100formal training. And so, but stop, stop, stop is pretty easy to understand. I'm not sure that
02:11:45.920stop, stop, stop would have prevented this at all. He was already on the runway. So at that point,
02:11:50.800if he stops, then he's right there in the middle of the runway. So again, if you don't see that
02:11:55.220airplane coming and you don't know to gun it and get across, then there's really no hope to avoid
02:12:00.520that accident. And maybe not stopping saved his life and the other firefighters' life since,
02:12:08.260as you point out, it was the tail end of the fire engine that got hit, not the front end where the
02:12:12.600driver was. And I think there were just two on board. A little bit more on this. LaGuardia
02:12:18.560Airport has just opened, so that's good. It was closed all day. The airport resumed flights on
02:12:23.920just one runway, reports CNN in line with an FAA operations plan. Much of the wreckage from the
02:12:30.100crash remained on the runway, the other runway. As NTSB officials began their investigation,
02:12:35.000there have been some 600 cancellations at the airport today. And this is such a nightmare,
02:12:39.280Captain, on the heels of what folks are going through inside the airports, thanks to the TSA,
02:12:45.760you know, work outage, and they're not getting paid thanks to this refusal to fund them.
02:12:51.820And these poor passengers now, like they're standing for hours and hours and hours at the
02:12:57.240airport. My husband, Doug, feels so vindicated to going three hours in advance for every flight.
02:13:02.840Now everybody's got to do that. Only it's like eight hours in advance. And then, you know,
02:13:08.240making light of it, but like, then this tragedy unfolds at the airport. This, according to what
02:13:13.160I read is directly related in the view of most to the staffage shortages when it comes to short
02:13:20.800staffing shortages, when it comes to air traffic controllers, sources telling NBC news that this
02:13:26.340air traffic controller was working two positions at the time of the crash. And I think that's
02:13:31.160par for the course for most of our controllers, no? It is. We've known for a long time that there
02:13:36.200was a shortage of air traffic controllers. You just can't snap your fingers and come up with
02:13:39.740new air traffic controllers. It takes a long time to train and to train somebody that can
02:13:45.140handle the traffic at LaGuardia. That's an experienced controller there for sure. And so
02:13:50.340as a result, and people are people, they've got to take sick time and vacation and those sort of
02:13:55.280things. There's going to be times during the day where they go to minimum staffing. So 11 o'clock
02:14:01.680at night, if the traffic pattern is slow and there's not that much going on, again, I don't
02:14:08.140think this was necessarily due to an overworked controller at the time. I think the controller
02:14:14.840just lost track of the site that he had given somebody clearance to land and then cleared that
02:14:20.280truck across the runway. I don't want to assess blame, but I think in the final outcome of this
02:14:25.000is going to be a lot of human error, I'm afraid. That's certainly how it sounds. And these guys
02:14:32.160are only human. It's just so infuriating to me because you think of the amount of waste we have
02:14:39.660and what we spend our government funds on. There's just so much incredible waste. Not to get political
02:14:44.840with you, Captain, but just look at the amounts that we spend on other countries. And here,
02:14:50.000if you made air traffic controllers get a really great salary, you'd have people running to sign
02:14:57.520up to get this training. You'd have to have nerves of steel. You have to be that guy.
02:15:02.160But you'd have people running to sign up to do it. And instead, we just won't incentivize
02:15:07.160positions like this. We just decide it's not a problem we're going to focus on because we never
02:15:12.060see the air traffic controllers and we don't really even think about them until something
02:15:15.800like this happens. And a lot of times, people will say, well, air traffic controller, eventually
02:15:20.300they make a six-figure salary, and that's a lot of money. Well, it's not a lot of money if you
02:15:24.340have to live in downtown New York City or if you have to live in Washington, D.C., you might have
02:15:29.800to get a second job to make ends meet. So again, you're right. You have to be willing to pay for
02:15:35.800things. And if there's money there, the people will come out and take those jobs. If not, they're
02:15:39.780going to go someplace else. The most talented people are. They're going to go someplace where
02:15:43.220they can put, you know, better things on the table for their family. One ironic thing about this
02:15:48.520crash making, because a lot of people are asking me, you know, is it safe to fly? And there's been
02:15:52.760a lot of accidents, and LaGuardia has been in the news a lot recently in this past year.
02:15:56.800The last fatality at LaGuardia was in 1992. It was a U.S. Air Flight, U.S. Air Flight 405,
02:16:04.240went off runway 13 on the takeoff roll and ended up in Flushing Bay. 27 people died.
02:16:09.580That was March 22nd, 1992, to the day.
02:16:15.460This was 34 years ago to the crash last night.
02:16:19.460So it's been 34 years since fatalities at LaGuardia, but to the day, March 22nd.
02:18:13.660And so you've got to put food on the table.
02:18:15.360And at some point, you've got to go, how many times is this going to happen to this job where I might be making at the top end $60,000, $70,000 a year?
02:18:23.540And that's after a bunch of years with TSA.
02:18:26.160You and I are old enough to remember prior to 9-11, there was still security at the airport, but it was private companies that did it.
02:18:32.740Now, part of, I think, the knee-jerk reaction to 9-11 was, well, we have to do something. And so the government took control of screenings at the airport as though anybody on 9-11 would have been caught by a government screener as opposed to a private screener because all of the things that they did on 9-11 were legal at the time.
02:18:53.500They didn't bring the box cutters and so forth were not illegal.
02:18:57.280I think there's a good case to be made for going back to private concerns that do the screening.
02:19:03.440I think you could manage the expense a whole lot more, get it out of the government's hands.
02:19:08.380But remember back in 9-11, there was a bloodthirst for getting something done.
02:19:13.320And so part of it was government takeover screening.
02:19:17.920Let's show the world, you know, we're united and all of that.
02:19:21.000I understand that sentiment. But now, 20, what, five years later, I think it's a time to review some of that stuff. And maybe there's a better path forward.
02:19:30.420yes i i've told the story before but like we've all had this situation where like my kid had
02:19:38.960a bottle unopened brand new still with the seal on of johnson's baby shampoo in the backpack and
02:19:46.540it was like eight ounces instead of four ounces they took it it's like okay you could see that
02:19:51.700it's a kid you can see that it's sealed like do you like to me it always drives me crazy tsa because
02:19:58.100It's like, no, that's why they put humans here to enforce these rules so that they can use their judgment.
02:20:05.500And, you know, a bottle of Johnson's baby shampoo and you say, like, come on.
02:20:10.500Right. It's just ridiculous the way it is now.
02:20:13.400So, Megan, I have to go through the same security of the passengers.
02:20:16.020See this right here? See, Captain, right?
02:20:18.200I had to go through the same security, especially over in London.
02:20:20.420I lost more tubes of toothpaste than I can count because they look at it.
02:20:43.600While they're redoing the air traffic control system around the country, why don't we look at TSA and how we screen passengers getting on and off airplanes?
02:20:56.020If you can't drink it, it's not a liquid and you cannot drink a toothpaste.
02:21:00.540But yeah, they're obsessed with the toothpaste.
02:21:02.120We've gotten nabbed on that many times.
02:21:04.340But then there was there were some more reasonable moments where like our one son had a water gun that looked exactly like a serious firearm.
02:21:15.220Thankfully, they did stop him and they did confiscate it.
02:21:20.000Yeah, that would set off an alarm in any TSA.
02:21:22.600But having said all that, Megan, we just said these people aren't getting paid, they have a thankless job to begin with, they get paid really poor wages, and a little bit of a thank you going through the TSA would be nice.
02:21:35.000I'm sure everybody is exasperated by the time they get up to the TSA screener.
02:21:39.920You know, my ambition, I've flown a lot this past week, is to just say, hey, thanks for showing up to work.
02:21:43.820I really appreciate the efforts you're putting in.