4/20/26: Trump Threatens Iran, Trump Scared Of Being Jimmy Carter 2.0, Israel Humiliates Trump On Ceasefire

19:11Ryan Grim:Futures are down. That's right. That's right as well. We can talk about that in a minute, too. So he said, you know, that's our view is the longer this goes on. And that's part of the thinking behind going to these negotiations is it basically means like the clock is ticking for Trump. For us, OK, we're not being bombed. But that economic reality is becoming increasingly real. The other thing that he said is, you know, we don't really believe that they're serious about these negotiations. He's like, we didn't believe they were serious last time leading up to this war. We didn't believe they were serious before the 12-day war.

19:45Ryan Grim:We were right about all those things. But we wanted to go to demonstrate that we are operating in good faith and basically put out a sort of message to the world of like we're willing to negotiate. We don't want this war. But they suspect, again, this is according to him, they suspect that these negotiations aren't serious and that they are planning to, in Hexess words, reload and go back to war. They also felt, it seems, that J.D. Vance did not have authority last time around to really negotiate. He was constantly on the phone, having to call Trump. They allege calling Netanyahu as well. I don't know if that's true or not.

20:20Ryan Grim:But they felt that J.D. Vance did not actually even have the authority to be able to negotiate the deal. And then you add to that the fact that you've got the same morons who didn't understand the first nuclear physics offer that was on the table. And it doesn't really seem like a recipe for success here. and then what I got from Jeremy's article too, Ryan, is that even though basically the only actual agreement between the two sides is that they would like to find some sort of a deal. But in terms of the terms of that deal, there has been really no progress towards coming to an understanding of what that would look like.

20:54Ryan Grim:And it's very easy to understand why because the US has effectively strategically lost this war, but it's not willing to accept the humiliating terms that, you know, acknowledgement of that reality would entail. Yeah.

21:07Emily Jashinsky:Well, it sounds like there's, on both sides, competing factions who have different ends for what that settlement should look like. And Al Jazeera reporting Trump may be seeking, quote, a Gaza peace-style framework agreement. So that gets us to this question of, as they're trying to determine whether the negotiations are serious, I mean, the big question is serious about what? Serious about what? Like a vibes-style ceasefire? And I kind of feel like that's what, I don't know if Ryan or Crystal, you would describe what we have now in Gaza as a, I'm not trying to downplay it at all, but as like a vibe style agreement, which was the agreement is that we have an agreement and whatever's happening beneath the surface, don't worry about it.

21:47Emily Jashinsky:If the terms are being carried out, don't worry about it. We're going to keep pushing. We're going to keep figuring it out as we go. But, you know, it's a vibe. The vibe is that we agree. And, you know, you can spin things different ways as they happen on the ground. So what is that actually, what are you serious about at the end of the day? Are you just trying to get a PR win, which is what it seems like Trump wants more than anything? I mean, obviously he wants gas prices to go down. So that's why he's obsessed with the strait and should have been obsessed with the strait before he launched the war.

22:15Emily Jashinsky:But yeah, it's like on the Iranian side, there are two competing factions in the U.S. It's like there are a million competing factions about what is acceptable and a way to end the war, because Trump is just waiting to see what he thinks is the right vibe. Yeah, and with the Gaza deal, the Israelis in the U.S. have refused to move to the next phase. It's supposed to be reconstruction. They haven't allowed in the amount of aid that they're supposed to allow in for it. They claim it requires disarmament of Hamas, even though it's not in there. So they lie about the terms. They don't stop the ceasing of fire.

22:47Ryan Grim:But the media talks about it as a ceasefire. Thousands of violations of that, quote unquote, ceasefire. And they arm these militias, these gangs that they send in to carry out action on their behalf.

22:59Emily Jashinsky:But from Trump's perspective, everyone in the press is calling it a ceasefire. Right. But from the Iranian's perspective, they're like, that doesn't look like what we would agree to at this point.

23:06Ryan Grim:To state the obvious, Hamas and Iran are not equivalent actors. You know, I mean, Iran has real state power. Yeah, seems obvious. Real capacity. It's not clear that we approach it as obvious. Yeah, I mean, Trump certainly doesn't approach it as obvious since he thought this was going to be over in four days. Right. So do you know, I don't think there's any possibility that Iran is going to accept some Gaza style approach to be imposed upon them. That's not that's not reality. And, you know, I think that tension between Arachi and Goluboff and some of the other sort of more moderate, hey, let's you know, let's try to work something out versus the IRGC hardliners.

23:44Ryan Grim:You know, I think that is very significant because it means when they're at the negotiating table, they are under pressure to not cave too much, to hold the line in terms of the, you know, the demands that they've been consistently asserting since the beginning of the conflict.

23:57Emily Jashinsky:And Lindsey Graham is mad at Trump right now, too. He's mad about that Barack Reved report. It's been a long time without war for Lindsey Graham. He's itching. He's ready to move on to Turkey. No, he's upset about the Barack Reveed report about$20 billion cash for uranium deal and saying, you know, I support President Trump's desire to end the conflict. But any sanctions relief has to be earned by a complete and total acceptance by Iran of President Trump's reasonable demands, which are, and he goes on the list of all of the obvious points, no enrichment period, turning over the 900 pounds of highly enriched uranium to the U.S.

24:29Emily Jashinsky:So good luck.

24:32Ryan Grim:And Ryan, what is your sense of, you know, what the Israelis might do? because they certainly want to go back to war. This is an unacceptable, you know, if there was a deal reached at this point, it would be totally unacceptable to them. What sort of actions might they take to try to undermine any potential peace deal? I think continuing to fight in Lebanon is probably the thing that works for them because they like to fight in Lebanon. They're trying to seize all of this territory, which as we've talked about, pushes them up past the control of the gas fields off the coast of Lebanon as well.

25:08They're destroying all of the towns and villages. They're claiming that they're going to draw a yellow line similar to Gaza and that this is going to be theirs, plus then a buffer zone. Then you have to move people further up to settle the buffer zone. And then you need a buffer zone above the settlement and then on and on and on. So I think they'll continue to do that. And that creates the conditions to restart the war. though a lot of elements within Iran are fine with that. So that's not, it's not what Trump wants, but it's not clear how much it matters what Trump wants.

25:45Ryan Grim:Lastly, let's put A14, guys, up on the screen. This is something that you had flagged, Ryan, that this Rosneft's oil depot and export facility in Krasnodar, Kray, Russia, sorry for the terrible pronunciation, currently ablaze with dozens of tanks seen burning as thick black smoke pours in the sky following a large-scale drone attack by Ukraine against oil infrastructure across southern Russia. Yeah, this is their Black Sea export facility. So at the same time that the U.S. once again lifted sanctions on Russian oil to try to keep oil prices down, so the U.S. wants Russian oil on the market to keep oil prices down.

26:29At the same time, they're getting their oil infrastructure and their export capacity smashed by Ukraine, which is, you know, it's interesting because it kind of helps Iran. Like that, if the U.S. is to be believed that we want oil prices to be low and that Iran is correct, that higher oil prices, higher gas prices make it harder for us to wage the war, that this doesn't serve us.

26:56Emily Jashinsky:You never know when you're in August of 1914. Like you just you don't until you do. You never know. And like when you have these two hot conflicts with similar parties involved, it's in the U.S. fighting, obviously, a proxy war in Ukraine and in Israel via military support for both of those countries. It's can pop into something much, much, much bigger at basically any time.

27:21Ryan Grim:um what is your sense ryan if you had to guess are there going to be further negotiations this week ceasefire going to be extended i would say yeah i they'll have some talks and they'll extend i think there'll be another response from iran related to this ship but that the u.s but that it'll be more of like the last year kind of thing we're going to hit this place and then heads up we're going to hit this because we have to respond yeah uh and then they'll extend it that kind of requires the IRGC to go along with that kind of strategy, though, doesn't it? It does. But I think, you know, they're, they, I think the IRGC has not, they're not like fully in control and determined to go back to war.

28:01I think there, I think there's a lot of pressure in that direction, but they, but they don't necessarily totally disagree with the leadership that is saying, no, no, there, there is a chance for a good deal here. Let's get it. Because then there's the other condition of what if the U.S. takes Joe Kent's advice and just walks away, leaves sanctions on, then what? Then they don't get, you know, they don't, then what does Iran do at that point? So it's not obvious. So a lot of them would prefer a deal if it's possible. I think they just think it's not possible.

28:38Ryan Grim:Gotcha. Okay. Well, we will see what the next days bring. Now, Emily and I are going to talk about Trump's mental state, and Ryan's going to go away for a while. It's returned when we bring the topic of Zoran and Obama back. So, Ryan, we'll see you then.

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30:58Ryan Grim:So let's turn to this very juicy piece from the Wall Street Journal about what's going on internally and what Trump's mindset is to the best that anyone can divine. We'll put this up on the screen. The headline here is behind Trump's public bravado on the war. He grapples with his own fears. The subhead here is the president's impulsive style has never before been tested during a sustained military conflict ruminating on Jimmy Carter. I like that aspect of it. Let me read you a little bit of the lead here and then I'll get some of Emily's reaction and her understanding of what's going on behind the scenes.

31:29Ryan Grim:It says, it seemed like Donald Trump's appetite for risk had run out. His fears were ramping up. It was Good Friday afternoon in a nearly empty West Wing soon after the president learned an American jet had been shot down in Iran with two airmen missing. Trump screamed at aides for hours. The Europeans aren't helping, he said repeatedly. Gas prices averaged$4.09. Images of the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis, one of the biggest international policy failures of a presidency in recent times, had been looming large in his mind. If you look at what happened with Jimmy Carter with the helicopters and the hostages, it cost them the election, Trump said in March.

32:05Ryan Grim:What a mess. Trump demanded the military go get them immediately, but the U.S. hadn't been on the ground in Iran since the government overthrew that overthrow that led to the hostage crisis, and they needed to figure out how to get into treacherous Iranian terrain and avoid Tehran's own military. Aides kept the president out of the room as they got minute-by-minute updates because they believed his impatience would not be helpful, instead updating him at meaningful moments, a senior administration official said. So we can just start with that. First of all, I mean, just in these opening graphs, Emily, you have him thinking about, oh my God, I'm turning into Jimmy Carter.

32:38Ryan Grim:Like this could be a total disaster. Of course, he only cares about like the political ramifications of that, not like the moral ethical ramifications of what he's doing here. It's great for you. How so? I'm a Jimmy Carter fan. Trump could transmogrify into Jimmy Carter of all people. I would be very happy if Trump was doing a Jimmy Carter presidency right now. It would be vast, vast improvement over what we've actually got. But the other piece here is the military literally having to keep him out of the room because of what a like mess he is. That doesn't seem like a great sign either.

33:08Emily Jashinsky:No, I mean, it's obviously not. And what I'm curious about, when Trump won, we got all of these stories constantly about the interior and how his own aides didn't trust him. Well, he doesn't have John Kelly. It's not like he's full because his advisors right now are potential skeptics of him or people who are just like reluctantly on board because they think they can steer him. Like he's surrounded by people who are true believers. Yeah, absolutely. On a daily basis, he's surrounded by the true believers. So how these stories are getting out is interesting enough. I think they were pretty there was a pretty quiet occurrence of stories like this in the first year of Trump 2.0.

33:47Emily Jashinsky:It was not often that you got high-level leaks, especially high-level damaging leaks to this extent. And you can tell these leaks aren't necessarily trying to make Trump look bad. That's what's interesting. Like, they're not trying to take him out. They're just trying to explain what happened. Because at least that's how I'm reading it. Because we keep swinging back and forth wildly from A to B. It obviously makes Trump look bad. But, like, just this weekend is the best example, as we already talked about today, of how we started where we were on Friday. with everyone taking their victory lap about Trump making his big announcement.

34:21Emily Jashinsky:And then to Monday, it's like night and day, as we predicted on Friday that it would be. Yeah. But I think what people are trying to just do is when reporters call them up, explain how you get from point A to B to C to D to E to F and then all the way to Z in the span of 48 hours. And it's clearly that Trump is A, negotiating in public, and B, doesn't have an absolute strong wrong, this is what I want to happen type of mindset at the end of the day because he's willing to just sort of make deals.

34:53Ryan Grim:Yeah. And also, I mean, I don't think this would be a surprise to anybody, but, you know, behind all the public bravado, because obviously he never shows any doubts about whether his strategy is like, oh, we're going to negotiate today or, oh, I'm going to murder your entire civilization today. He never displays any sort of like personal insecurity about the strategy, even when the strategy is all over the place. But clearly behind the scenes, he's not stupid enough to think this is going well for him from a political perspective. He recognizes there are perils. I read into these leaks people who want to establish the narrative pretty clearly that this is all this guy, right?

35:28Ryan Grim:Trump is, he is driving the train. He is piloting the aircraft. He is the guy. And, you know, we're all, it reminds me of the New York Times leaks where you had the TikTok of, you know, basically everybody in the room expressing some kind of concern about the idea of starting this war and Trump deciding to do it anyway and bringing Netanyahu into the situation room and all of that. So to me, that also serves the narrative of like, it really is on the sky so that if you're a Marco Rubio or you're J.D. Vance and you want some sort of future in politics, now I don't think this strategy is going to work, you have the, you can reserve the opportunity to later on be like, well, listen, I told them that it wasn't a great idea.

36:07Ryan Grim:And sure enough, we were vindicated. Let me go ahead and put this next quote up on the screen here to dig a little bit more into this piece. They write in the Wall Street Journal when one advisor, this is about the praise be to, praise be to Allah Easter Sunday tweet.

36:23Emily Jashinsky:By the way, people, when Crystal reads this, you could also imagine in your mind as Crystal reads this, that someone is talking about a 13 year old. So load that into your head as

36:34Ryan Grim:Crystal goes. Very true. When one advisor later asked Trump about that tweet, he said he came up with the Allah idea himself. He said he wanted to seem as unstable and insulting as possible. Believing it could bring the Iranians to the table, senior administration officials said, it was a language he said the Iranians would understand. But he was also concerned about the fallout. How's it playing, question mark? So he, you know, I guess his idea is to behave like a lunatic. And, you know, if he is, in fact, just acting like a lunatic, he is doing a convincing job of that because many people, even within this administration, are like, maybe he genuinely is a lunatic with the many truth socials that he's been putting out.

37:19Ryan Grim:We just had another whole 37 in a small period of time, and a bunch of them were repeat posts where he's just posting the same thing over and over again. So he does act like a maniac. I will give him that.

37:31Emily Jashinsky:Well, yeah, and I think actually to your last point, that is the key. He is acting, and when you see people, he's acting for the sake of a negotiation on truth social. And is there, I mean, like in theory, a way to do that, that in some fantasy utopian world where, you know, you have to go about these negotiations in public in one way. Yes, of course. First of all, that always happens. World leaders are always using the rhetoric as part of negotiations. But secondly, this reminds me so much of why he did the Kim Jong-un button tweet. He thinks he's speaking the language of an actual crazy leader.

38:05Emily Jashinsky:And that somehow gives him the upper hand because he's the only other world leader who's willing to talk to them in their own language. But again, the whole idea of cheering for the United States, if you're a MAGA person, is that we're supposed to be better, right? We're not supposed to be having the civilization that chants death to Iran. We're not supposed to be the people that say death to an entire civilization. And he's just, in the course of these mundane negotiations, wiping that out with now Iranians who don't even need to be propagandized to say this is what the president of the United States just posted.

38:40Emily Jashinsky:You don't even have to take it from state TV. That's literally in his words on true social. You don't have to come up with some type of North Korean state TV fabrication. It's right there.

38:49Ryan Grim:Yeah. Very hard to moralize about, you know, Iranian attacks on civilian infrastructure or even position yourself as like on the moral high ground when the president of the United States is literally threatening to kill an entire civilization and threatens war. And now it's just routine that he threatens overt war crimes on a daily basis. Him, Pete Hegg sets, et cetera. That's just part of their approach here. And so, look, it's one thing if you're like using hardball tactics in some sort of a development deal. But the words of a president, even this president, they are consequential. Now you have normalized the idea of us overtly threatening genocide and acting like that is fine and, you know, and insulting a religion here, you know, and we have, you know, millions of Muslims who live in this country.

39:39Ryan Grim:I'm referring to the like praise be to Allah tweet. And the more you frame this war as some sort of religious blood feud, the less likely you are to be able to get out of it, which is why it's so troubling, you know, from the Israeli side, from the U.S., all of the insertion of all this religious language and use of religious imagery into, you know, what is a political dispute is, I think, a really, really troubling development in this too.

40:09Emily Jashinsky:It's, I mean, it's obviously for Trump, who is not really religious, just a tool of manipulation. That's what he's trying to do in the praise be to Allah tweet. And it hits everyone the wrong way. I mean, it's not, It's literally not landing with anyone except for online MAGA who equated it to his own explanation here, which is that he's just speaking their language. I was like, oh, wow, that must be really difficult to do. Brilliant. Like pat on the back. You're Henry Kissinger. Like well done. It's also stupid, but it explains how on Friday he has this victory post. And then by Monday, it's all falling apart.

40:48Emily Jashinsky:We had to shut down the engines on an Iranian vessel and take it over, which could have gone so badly for us. Every second we're still in this, we could be looking at losing dozens of soldiers and something like that. I hope that isn't the case, but it could happen at any moment. And Trump seems to be, I wonder if some of this is driven by him knowing how fragile the situation is now for him. that it's much easier to start a war than get out of the war, which is what everybody was saying when it happened. But now it's reality for him. And it should have always been reality for him. But by every minute, this could turn into a catastrophe.

41:27And especially, especially when you're posting as negotiations

41:31Emily Jashinsky:in these insane rhetorical flourishes that people don't know whether they're supposed to take seriously or not, which is his point. So he just takes that one step further. He wants people to take him seriously. Like you said, this is consequential rhetoric. that's what that's the point of the rhetoric from his perspective yeah so what does that mean long term it's like I was thinking of this morning he's trying to write the history as he goes so like he gets this beautiful ceasefire Friday he bullies the Iranians into you know they have no cards everything's good straights open they've basically capitulated he's doing public relations for

42:11Ryan Grim:history in real time. And by doing so, let's put A12 up on the screen because this is true to Parsi's analysis, which I think really speaks to what Emily was just saying there. In doing so, with all of his bluster, he is actually undercutting the negotiations that he himself desperately wants to succeed. So what Dr. Parsi says here is to understand how Trump is undermining his own diplomacy by quickly declaring victory and trying to humiliate Iran whenever Tehran takes a deescalatory step. It's instructive to remember what happened when Iran and the GCC had negotiated new guardrails for the war.

42:44Ryan Grim:That was early on when there were some strikes against the GCC. There was a moment where it appeared there was going to be an agreement between GCC member states and Iran. Okay, we're not going to attack each other. And then Trump undercut that and said, oh, Iran's surrendering. And his triumphalist rhetoric humiliated them and they walked away. So what Trita goes on to say is, in short, Iran and the GCC were in the process of agreeing to a deal that would see the end of Iranian attacks on the GCC as long as their territory ceased being used for attacks on Iran. Tehran would first message steps in that direction, followed by GCC reciprocity.

43:17Ryan Grim:But before the GCC got a chance to respond, Trump declared victory on true social, insulted and humiliated Iran, even issued further threats of complete destruction. On top of that, U.S. Israel also attacked a water desalination plant at Keshem Island. Needless to say, this sabotaged the sensitive de-escalation talks and a promising opening was destroyed. Trump's need for the optics of victory trumps what should be far more important advancing U.S. interests by ending this war and reaching a longer term deal with Tehran. It appears the same phenomenon occurred in the past few days. When the Iranians, in a very vague tweet, declared the strait is open as a de-escalatory step, in their terminology it's never been closed though, Tehran is only determining who can pass and who cannot while charging tolls, Trump failed to reciprocate and instead could not resist the temptation to declare victory and insult the Iranians.

44:05Ryan Grim:What was designed to become the beginning of a mutual off-ramp was instead turned by Trump into an escalatory ladder, resulting in additional threats by him this morning to knock out every single power plant, every single bridge in Iran. Trump's lack of discipline and focus and his infantile prioritization of optics over reality are becoming significant obstacles to him achieving his own goals, exiting the war, and striking a strong deal with Tehran. This is not art of the deal. It's art of the self-sabotage. So whenever there's sort of a tentative step taken by Tehran in the direction of, okay, let's de-escalate, let's get back to the table, or let's have some sort of step rather than right up the escalatory ladder, let's take a step back.

44:48Ryan Grim:Trump has to go in and tweet something insane and threaten them more and humiliate them and declare, oh my God, see, they're surrendering, blah, blah, blah. And so of course they're like, okay, well, screw you. We're going to go right back to it. And that's kind of where we find ourselves now, where I think it was looking very plausible, especially with the sort of ceasefire in Lebanon, that that gave Iran enough cover, their negotiators, who were under a lot of pressure, by the way, from the IRGC, to not come to some sort of deal at this point. That gave them enough cover to say basically like, look, this was our demand.

45:20Ryan Grim:They met our demand to get back to the negotiating table. And now that is all very much up in the air and very much in doubt. Right.

45:28Emily Jashinsky:And the point that Dr. Parsi makes about optics versus reality is so interesting to me. And I'm not trying to armchair psychologize Trump. And I don't think you actually have to to understand. I mean, he puts this in Art of the Deal. He believes that optics are, and we all know this is true, but like he looks at optics and reality as being blurred together, that what you project optically is more likely to become reality if you project it that way. But at the same time, then, he's doing the Wipeout Civilization tweets, right? So it's like what he's putting out is a huge part of an insight into his mind.

46:03Emily Jashinsky:It's not a clear insight into his mind. But he's obviously trying to project victory. He immediately, after the war started, said we had won. He says it constantly. He said it would be four to five weeks. Then he's like, oh, six to eight weeks. First it was a couple days. He keeps going. And it's, I think, because he has to keep moving his own goalposts, but he's still trying to project victory because he thinks that gets him closer to it. And he thinks that the public relations are the substance, that you can manifest the substance with your public relations. And that only goes so far. I mean, it's not ridiculous.

46:43Emily Jashinsky:There are obviously times that there's some merit to that, but obviously not right now.

46:49Ryan Grim:Yeah. No, I think it's worked for him in most of his life. You know, I think this is the lesson he's learned from his life. One of the most revealing things that I saw reported is when Tucker Carlson was expressing concerns to him, he was like, don't worry, it'll be fine. And Tucker was like, well, how do you know that? And Trump goes, because it always is. It always is. It always is. But you get to a point like you can't, you know, you can't envision your way or BS your way or propagandize your way into millions more barrels of oil flowing through the Strait of Hormuz. At some point, there is a hard reality.

47:21Ryan Grim:And I think the Iranians also, you know, we came in totally arrogant, did not think about their perspective at all, did not plan for, OK, what will their response be, did not assume any level of strategic planning or rationality on their part, overestimated our own capabilities, underestimated the strength of their government and how resilient it would ultimately be, how much these actions would actually strengthen the Iranian government. Meanwhile, they've been studying us closely. All you need to do is look at the like very culturally in tune Lego propaganda videos to know that they understand, they understand the way the American people think, they understand the way that Trump thinks, the way he operates.

48:02Ryan Grim:And so when he throws out all of these insane praise be at all and we're going to destroy your civilization and whatever, it reads, I think, more desperate than it does actually threatening. Because at this point, we've seen the possibilities of, you know, huge destruction from the U.S. military, but also the limitations. And one of those limitations is certainly political. Put A13 up on the screen, you know, new polling about the lack of support for this war. So you've got 61 % of U.S. adults who oppose any further military action in Iran, including 74 % of Americans under 30. 23 % support considering all options, including ground forces, and 16 % back airstrikes only.

48:44Ryan Grim:So if you're talking about, you know, if we go back to war, you know, total war with Iran, what is very likely to happen next would be some sort of ground invasion because we've seen the limits of airstrikes only. That's not going to get Trump to whatever victory narrative he needs to be able to sell. And so if you're talking about support for ground forces, less than a quarter, that's smaller than the MAGA base, 23 % who are open to ground forces. So the political landscape is also a huge limiting factor for him, especially as gas prices continue to be a problem. This morning, oil has gone back up because of all of this mess and the fact that the The straight formula is actually now completely closed in a way that it actually wasn't before.

49:31Ryan Grim:Stock market futures are down, all of that. So, you know, those are metrics he pays attention to and continue to put pressure on him to find some way to bring this mess to an end.

49:41Emily Jashinsky:Yeah, and it's so similar to, again, what was happening with the tariffs last year where he's trying to just will reality into existence rhetorically. And for the public now, what they've heard is so like it's your point about it coming across as desperate. that's actually what I felt like on Friday when he put out that aggressively victorious post that we keep referencing. It was so aggressively victorious that it seemed like something was deeply wrong. Yeah. Because it seemed like he was trying to make something better, that he was trying to, what's the right word? He was trying to, I don't know what the right word is here.

50:24Emily Jashinsky:He was trying to make something really bad look really good, which he always tries to do. But in this case, it was just glaring. And I think that's what turned out to happen over the weekend, unfortunately, because obviously the Iranians went right back by the end of the day. So if you're the American public and you're watching this and you hear it's going to be over quickly, minimal casualties. We have 13 dead Americans, many injuries. We are in week eight, if I'm counting correctly. Started February 28th. It's now April 20th, so coming up on two months. And what you've heard the president say is that we've won.

51:01Emily Jashinsky:You've heard him say it's going to take a few more weeks to win. You've heard him say, we just need to keep doing this for another couple weeks. That was several weeks ago, by the way. Yeah, exactly. And so even if you were supportive of this at the beginning, your patience might be running thin. And that's even more disastrous for Trump as gas prices go up here in the U.S. and then the higher gas prices start to affect the cost of everything. Everything. We haven't even seen the worst of that, like, at all yet.

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53:33Ryan Grim:Let's go ahead and move to what the Israelis are up to in all of this because obviously a very important factor, for better and mostly for worse, is what the Israelis are thinking and the way that they definitely do not want the war to be over right now. So Trump last week was able to secure this sort of ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon. This was one of the Iranian demands. They said, we are not leaving Lebanon behind if we're going to come back to the negotiating table. The bombing, the destruction, Lebanon has to stop. So that was one of the things that looked promising. was Trump was able to secure this agreement between Israel and Lebanon.

54:12Ryan Grim:OK, we're going to, I think the words that he originally used, they're going to be more low-key. So I think that was actually kind of the appropriate terminology because we could put B1 up on the screen almost immediately after this, quote-unquote, ceasefire is announced. And Trump actually posted on True Social that Israel is, quote, prohibited from bombing Lebanon. Israel then went ahead and launched a drone strike in South Lebanon, killing someone on a motorcycle. This is the Al Jazeera posting Israeli drone strike kills one in Lebanon. And Dave DeCamp, who's a great libertarian thinker, anti-war thinker, definitely someone who's worth a follow.

54:50Ryan Grim:In any case, Al Jazeera says the civil defense in southern Lebanon has told Al Jazeera that one person was killed when an Israeli drone targeted a motorcycle. So almost as soon as Trump says this is prohibited, Israel goes ahead and continues with their murder campaign in Lebanon. Let's go ahead and put B2 up on the screen. You can see some of the images of the bombardment in Lebanon. I mean, this level of destruction is just really, truly unbelievable. Just imagine. Just imagine this is your home. Imagine this is your neighborhood. You're going to tell me these are all Hezbollah targets, that this was all chock full of Hezbollah.

55:26Ryan Grim:Well, no, we know it's not. And in fact, if we can put the Barack Ravid tweet up on the screen, I think it's worth it. Look, Barack Ravid is himself former IDF. You know, I think he's been fairly sympathetic to the Israeli perspective. And he says here, the IDF continues to destroy buildings and villages in southern Lebanon during the ceasefire. Commanders in the army testified in a conversation with At-Yani V. Koub that systematic destruction of civilian buildings is being carried out in villages where the forces operate, including near the border with Israel. According to the commander, civilian contractors receive daily pay or are compensated based on the number of buildings destroyed, similar to what happened in the Gaza Strip.

56:07Ryan Grim:The activity is characterized by the widespread demolition of homes, public buildings, and even educational institutions in the IDF. This policy is referred to as the money plow. And this is from the Hebrew language version of Haaretz. So this is what's going on right now. during the ceasefire, the quote-unquote money plow. And he really started going back and forth with some people on Twitter over the vote that happened in the Senate last week to block the shipment of these armored bulldozers to Israel. This was something that was led by Bernie Sanders. Forty Democrats voted to block those bulldozers being sent to Israel.

56:49Ryan Grim:And you had Mark Dubowitz in particular who was like, oh, you're putting Israeli civilians at risk, blah, blah, blah. And Barack Ravid really went in and said, this is what these bulldozers are actually used for. And this is one perfect example of what they're doing, which is total and complete destruction and not of, you know, targeted military infrastructure. No, this is mass raising and demolition of entire villages. And, you know, the money plow, cash for destruction.

57:17Emily Jashinsky:And Trump also told Barack Ravid they were on the phone yesterday. No surprise. Quote, the concept of the deal is done. I think we have a very good chance to get it completed. So we are back to concepts of a plan. Like almost exactly.

57:30Ryan Grim:How'd that concept of a health care plan go?

57:33Emily Jashinsky:Concepts of a plan can never go wrong. I mean, it's just completely, this is, I was too young during the Iraq war to be like following the daily news. It's remarkable to have the benefit of hindsight in Iraq and watch so many of the same errors play out in real time while people are calling it out in real time. And that's one of the differences with Iraq, obviously, is that the country, there were some really brave lone voices who were warning and presciently. You know, Barbara Lee, if you go back and look at what Barbara Lee said when she did not vote for the war, I mean, that aged really well in very specific ways.

58:15Emily Jashinsky:But at the time, everyone was consolidating around the Bush administration or support was consolidating around the Bush administration. This time you're watching people say in real time, this is a mistake, here's why it's a mistake. And then within 48 hours, abundant evidence of that playing out. Yeah. I mean, it's really remarkable.

58:34Ryan Grim:Well, and Israel is like a toddler always trying to test the limits of what they can get away with, you know? And so when Trump comes out and says any sort of firing on Lebanon is prohibited, prohibited, right? So it's very clear. Not like you can do a little bit of, you know, continue a little, there's a little bit of drone strike, a little bit of bulldozing entire villages. No, prohibited. And then Israel instantly is like, well, let me see. Let me see what I can get away with. And look, Trump, like Biden before him, it's like basically you can get away with whatever, apparently. And again, very important to keep in mind, there is zero doubt that Netanyahu and the Israeli public want to go back to war.

59:13Ryan Grim:Because currently, if it ends how it is right now, utter disaster for Israel, utter disaster for Netanyahu and his political prospects. He's again had his like trial delayed because they're still at war because they're always at war because that's his only strategy for ever doing anything is one war bombing campaign away from, you know, total peace and victory, et cetera, et cetera. So they will continue to try to undermine in any way they can. And what we saw from the early decision to go to war is that Trump really believes them. He really trusts. He trusted their intel and their military assessment over our own intel and military assessment.

59:50Ryan Grim:So that's why it's very important to keep our eye on that. At the same time, I wanted to highlight this became a major scandal for the Israelis. Put this image up on the screen, B3, of this statue of Jesus that is being desecrated here. You can see an IDF soldier has toppled this statue. It's on the ground and then smashing the head of Jesus with a mallet. And then this gets posted, which shows you, again, they, you know, they see this as this is part of what we're here for. This, you know, sparked massive backlash. Of course, this went super viral. And we got a response from the IDF. First of all, I mean, most important thing here is they verified it.

1:00:31Ryan Grim:Because I will say when I saw this, I was like, is this real or is this AI? Because it's too much on the nose. Right. Right. So, no, they verified. This is real. This is an actual thing that happened. This is the IDF's response, and Netanyahu put out a response himself. But in any case, they said, following the completion of an initial examination regarding a photograph published earlier today of an IDF soldier harming a Christian symbol, it was determined the photograph depicts an IDF soldier operating in southern Lebanon. The IDF views the incident with great severity and emphasizes the soldier's conduct is wholly inconsistent with the values expected of its troops.

1:01:04Ryan Grim:Oh, really, is it? The incident is being investigated by the Northern Command, is currently being addressed through the chain of command. Appropriate measures will be taken against those involved in accordance with the findings. Furthermore, the IDF is working to assist the community in restoring the statute to its place. The IDF is operating to dismantle the terrorist infrastructure established by Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, has no intention of harming civilian infrastructure, including religious buildings or religious symbols. Square that last part with the reporting from Haaretz, you know, relayed by Barak Ravid about the way that they are doing the money plow and destroying entire villages, not just, quote unquote, military infrastructure.

1:01:37Ryan Grim:And then, of course, you know, throughout the campaign, bombing campaign in Gaza, genocide in Gaza, obviously they were attacking churches. They were attacking so many mosques. And Benjamin Netanyahu had the gall to come out and say, oh, Israel respects religious freedom. And, you know, we believe in everybody's ability to worship how they want. It's just nonsense when you look at their overall behavior. It's just this one sparked a backlash that was strong enough. And because it was Christian and not Muslim, and they felt this administration might be sensitive to it, they had to at least say something to pretend like they care.

1:02:08Yeah, and the Christian perspective on this, you know, what this can't undo, them apologizing and investigating it.

1:02:15Emily Jashinsky:I mean, there's a lot it can't undo, but it's not going to bring back dead Christians in Lebanon after all of this is done. And when you have public opinion tanking with regard to Israel in the United States, particularly on the right, you can't undo what happened in that picture in their minds. You can apologize, you can investigate it, but obviously here you have a soldier in the IDF who not only yanked Christ off the cross, it appears, or maybe that was done by munitions, something to that extent, but you then have someone taking a sledgehammer to the face of Christ. So that image won't go away.

1:02:54Emily Jashinsky:You can investigate it. You can apologize. And I'm glad, by the way, I think it actually is important that Netanyahu and the government is investigating it and that they have apologized for it. I think they apologized for it because they're very concerned about public support in the United States cratering and they're doing everything in their power to make that problem worse by the day. And I don't even think they're intentionally trying to make it worse. I think they're actually trying to rescue it and they're going about it in all the wrong ways. So this is the worst possible image to come out.

1:03:23Emily Jashinsky:And it's not just a symbol. It's a symbol of something. It's not just a symbol of nothing. It's a symbol of something real, which is that Christians are being killed in Lebanon and the American media barely ever talks about it. Obviously, lots of people are being killed in Lebanon, including many Muslims. So people should care about that period. But, you know, it's just a very heavily Christian country. So Christians are now hearing from voices in the media who are anti-war about something that I don't think a lot of Christians understood was happening, especially a lot of Christian conservatives understood was happening in places like Iraq and in the course of the war on terror.

1:04:00Emily Jashinsky:And so this picture could not possibly have come out at a worse time and it could not possibly be something that's more profound in the moral conscious of a lot of Americans who are now reevaluating our foreign policy?

1:04:16Ryan Grim:Yeah. I mean, Israel counts basically on Americans to be Islamophobic and for us to not pay attention to the fact that it's also Christians who are under attack and assault by Israel and having their symbols and their lives taken by Israel. We know that's part of their strategy is basically like to spark Islamophobia and hope that that allows, you know, people allows them to get away with the horrors and the crimes and continue the support from within the U.S. And so that's why they see this as a particular problem, because they're like, oh, we don't think we can convince Americans that these like Christians and their symbols are scary and weird.

1:04:55Ryan Grim:You know, it will hit closer to home. And so that's why it's an issue. But, you know, in terms of their, oh, our respect for religious liberty and tolerance and our Western values, blah, blah, blah. I mean, this is the same government that was warning Christians and others in the region not to hide Shia Muslims. I mean, they're just completely blatant about how they want to completely ethnically cleanse and eliminate any threat from any Muslims that are in this part of southern Lebanon. So meanwhile, though, let's go ahead and put B4 up on the screen. Trump going out of his way, even after Israel, you know, immediately defies the prohibition on doing anything in Lebanon.

1:05:37Ryan Grim:He says, whether people like Israel or not, they have proven to be a great ally of the United States of America, Emily. They're courageous, bold, loyal and smart. And unlike others, they've shown their true colors in a moment of conflict and stress. Israel fights hard and knows how to win.

1:05:50Emily Jashinsky:Who wrote that for him? I mean, he doesn't need anybody to write it for him, but it almost reads like somebody trying to put Trump's voice into it.

1:05:59Ryan Grim:There's a lot of suspects for who might have written this pro-Israel post within this administration.

1:06:05Emily Jashinsky:Again, he doesn't need anybody to write that for him. He has proven that he is sincerely with Netanyahu and Lindsey Graham for this cause. He's proven that over and over again. And now he's a little bit more willing to be publicly like joust a little bit.

1:06:23Ryan Grim:Do a little public pushback with the prohibition tweet. Yeah, totally.

1:06:28Emily Jashinsky:Yes. The prohibition tweet in all caps that was just about offensive operations, which you can read between lines on that as soon as it came out. It was still, I think, kind of a landmark type of thing for U.S. president to say, but it was Trump. So again, he's trying to say something to create a reality that's not always like replicated on the ground. And yeah, that's, of course, whenever you see these aggressive Trump posts, you know something else is happening under the surface because he's trying to project a public relations image against something else.

1:07:01Ryan Grim:Yeah. And lastly, let's take a look at the Western values of our great ally and wonderful friend Israel that knows how to fight and how to win. This reporting has been building for some time. That rolls off the tongue, by the way, What does?

1:07:15Emily Jashinsky:America's greatest ally that knows how to fight and knows how to win. You just rattled it off.

1:07:19Ryan Grim:It's their new name. Yeah, that's how I feel about them. All right. So this reporting has been building for a while, but it's one of those things that's too horrible to really like when you first hear it, you're like, I can't wrap my head around this being a real thing. But at this point, it's fairly undeniable. You have instances, documented instances of Israelis using dogs to rape Palestinian inmates. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen. This is from Al Jazeera. I'll read the subheads here. They say they came and took one of the other men. They beat him. After they beat him, they forced him to the ground on his belly.

1:08:00Ryan Grim:They tied his hands and tied his feet. There were about eight or nine soldiers.

1:08:09Ryan Grim:They stripped him of his underpants. A captain came and sprayed something on his backside. There was a dog there. They unleashed the dog on him. The dog raped the young man.

1:08:28Emily Jashinsky:It raped him.

1:08:29Ryan Grim:Literally speaking, raped. So this is, I don't even know. It's, it horrifies me that there's a mind that could come up with something so disgusting and depraved. But, you know, this is, this is the reality. And it's one of those things where, you know, you, you literally couldn't make up this level of, of evil. And this was in, you know, a prison that was known, that's known for torture. Sure, this is the prison that was the scene of the right to rape protests where there was video of IDF soldiers surrounding a Palestinian and sort of shielding the video. But that Palestinian ended up with horrific injuries consistent with his account of being raped with a metal rod.

1:09:21Ryan Grim:And this is the type of thing that goes on here. And because it's predominantly Muslims, it gets very little attention here in the U.S. It gets very little pushback. We haven't had Netanyahu coming out and apologizing, the idea of coming out and apologizing, even though the reporting has built to a point where it's undeniable at this point.

1:09:41Emily Jashinsky:Well, I was going to say, I mean, I think some of it is so horrific that the average American doesn't believe it or doesn't want to believe it. Yeah, I understand that. Yeah. And I think American media is, I mean, I don't know, Chris, I'm curious what you think of this. I think American media is hesitant to even get into it. And that's part of the way these things metastasize and happen is that when you when you create this Manichean dichotomy that ostracizes everybody who disagrees with you as necessarily anti-Semitic, you're categorizing all of your critics as anti-Semitic. Then this is what happens internally.

1:10:21Emily Jashinsky:It creates a really dangerous culture because all of your critics have been labeled as bad people and bigots. And so it just, I mean, this has been a problem for a long time, but this is just one example of like, how could something in a country with these purportedly Western values that is an ally of the United States, how could something so depraved happen? You have a mountain of reporting. In the year 2026, people, the mind reels. And I really think it's because it's a culture that just has purged dissenters as anti-Semites or self-hating Jews or anything of the like. And that creates a really, really dangerous environment.

1:10:59Ryan Grim:They built up all these rationalizations of, oh, you know, this is propaganda. Can, you know, Israel has all these enemies and they're always looking to get them and lie about them and blood libel, et cetera. And so, you know, for people who are still trying to run cover for Israel, you just I think they just either don't care or just assume that, oh, it must be a lie. And then, you know, at its core, I think there's the real evil is this supremacist ideology that effectively says because we're the good guys and they're the bad guys. Anything we do, anything we do is justified in that fight. that's really the core of you know what is a genuinely evil ideology which ends in horrors like this and all sorts of other horrors besides

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