1129: Why Democrats Must Oppose Trump's Iran War

13:35Unknown Senator:Too many, like, sing-songy, like, not a regime-changed war, but the regime sure did change. Death to America, but we gifted them death to that.

13:43Jon Favreau:Yeah, not a regime-changed war, but the Israelis killed the supreme leader of Iran, who is in charge of the country since 1989 and also seen as a religious figure and the leader of the armed forces and the, you know, final say in all political decisions. But, you know, regime evolution, I guess, is what we're saying.

13:58Jon Lovett:Yeah. And that the attack is surgical and not utopian. However, Iran, take back your country. We're not just going to destroy their missile capability or the nuclear capability, but their ability to, quote, project power.

14:11Jon Favreau:Right. So whatever that means. means anyway so yeah the new line is that they're on the cusp of like seemingly making so many ballistic missiles that they would have a quote conventional umbrella that would allow them to pursue nuclear weapons that's just that's not a thing right the country's got a nuclear umbrella that means you can use a threat of nuclear retaliation to deter attacks that's what the north koreans do um the idea that iran could have enough ballistic missiles to prevent the u.s from intervening to take out a nuclear program it's just made up bullshit and the magical force field yeah and the reason you know it's made up bullshit is because like the u.s and israel over the past year have had their way with the Iranian military whenever they wanted.

14:45Jon Favreau:They bombed them repeatedly and no conventional deterrent has changed that. So I don't know why they're trying these new lines. I don't know why they're trotting this bullshit out. The messaging changes are so stark. Like you were saying, like on Saturday, we're talking about a regime change and the people rising up. Now that's gone. Trump's like, clearly has no plan for the future. He talked to like 10 reporters and one of them, he was like, oh, I got a list of three guys who should take over. Then And he called another reporter. It's like, oh, those three guys are dead now. So they're just winging it.

15:14Jon Favreau:Yeah.

15:14Unknown Senator:Why do you think there's all these shifting explanations for the rationale for this war?

15:21Jon Lovett:Who fucking knows? It's really it is. Well, so Rubio also underscored what Hegseth said. He said in Iran, in about a year or a year and a half would have crossed the line of immunity. I don't know what the line of immunity is. There's no such thing. They would have so many missiles that they could hold the whole world hostage, which is, of course, quite a claim because I have, are we suggesting that the Iranian conventional arsenal would have been unable to be defeated by the United States of America? I don't think that's what our military would say about it. But then, okay, that's a year and a half.

15:52Jon Lovett:And so then he's asked, Rubio's asked, like, is it imminent? And he says, yes, because we were aware of Israeli intentions and understood what it would mean for us and understood what it would mean for us and had to be prepared to act as a result of it. So he's saying it was imminent because Israel was going to strike imminently. And if Israel striked Iran imminently, Iran would strike back at us. So, but Cain, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs says in that conference with Hegseth that Israel acted on U.S. intelligence when it did the strikes against Iran's leadership. We were not only aware of it, we were instrumental to it.

16:24Jon Lovett:And so the argument is now from directly from Rubio, we had to strike because Iran was going to strike after we struck. Like that's where they're at, which I It feels like actually the closest to the truth.

16:35Unknown Senator:Well, we talked about this in the last episode, but that random administration source, or it was in and around the administration source to Politico that basically said the hope within the administration was that maybe Israel would go first because then Iran would retaliate and we could retaliate against Iran. And it turns out they thought that that was a possible scenario and then said, yeah, instead of letting Israel go first, let's just go with them because that's going to happen anyway.

17:00Jon Favreau:Yeah. That political leak was that they thought it'd be better politics. for the Israelis to strike first. Which was also insane. Yes, completely insane. And then Rubio today, there was a leak over the weekend that there was an imminent threat, right? That the US had to preemptively strike Iran because the Iranians were going to hit us or hit our bases in the region and lead to a mass casualty incident. And who's that idiot over at CNN, that fucking goober who's always yelling on the panels? Scott Jennings tweeted this out credulously, which was like not believable, not credible in any way. And what Rubio did today to clarify it was to say, we knew the Israelis were going to strike, which meant the Iranians were going to strike back.

17:35Jon Favreau:So we had to be involved on the front end to preempt that or keep American forces safe, which I think kind of like cuts out the step where maybe you could talk Israel out of doing something that would put US personnel in the region at risk.

17:48Jon Lovett:Well, also, traditionally, the United States doesn't publicly say we are only going to full-scale bombing across a Middle Eastern country because kind of Israel dragged us into it.

18:01Jon Favreau:Let's get that in a second. But on this missile point, the Iranians have a lot of missiles, but they do not have an ICBM. The Defense Intelligence Agency did an assessment last year that found that if Iran decided to have one, they could have an ICBM by 2035. So that assessment has basically been the same since the 90s, that they're a decade away from having this technology. So the suggestion that Iran was on the cusp of having a missile that could hit the United States is a lie, and it is undercut by the US intelligence agencies, period.

18:31Unknown Senator:It seems like all of these lies have all been undercut by now, too. You know, it's always like they throw out a bunch of lies at the beginning and then they stop trying to defend them. Like, because now now where we are is the Rubio rationale. Right. Which is not an ICBM, which is not they were a week away from having a nuclear bomb or nuclear material, whatever the fuck they were trying to say. It was not any of this. It was just, well, Israel was going to do it. And so we decided to just go with Israel, which also, by the way, if you read the long New York Times piece, and we can get into like how Trump got to this, got to yes on war.

19:04Unknown Senator:It was Bibi Netanyahu who played a huge role here. And the two of them were talking about this since, I guess, December was the first time Bibi brought it up to Trump. And then they kept talking about it. And then Trump was going to go after the regime started murdering all the protesters. And then Bibi was like, no, no, we're not quite ready yet. So just wait a little bit and then we'll do it together. So this idea that like, oh, and Israel just went. We had to we were going to they were they were intent on going. And so we just had to go with them like Bibi and Trump were planning it the whole time.

19:35Jon Lovett:Well, and just again, the chairman of Joint Chiefs said that Israel acted that when Israel struck the leadership of Iran, they did it with U.S. intelligence. So it was with with our participation. We are instrumental to this happening. We are aware that it is happening. that is a joint effort. So I don't understand how this is. We created, we had to, the imminent threat was from the campaign we were starting. That's what made it imminent. We are the imminent. We did the imminence.

20:03Unknown Senator:I wouldn't think too hard about it.

20:05Jon Favreau:Yeah, I think there's two, I think the conflicting rationales come from, look, I think the reasons we're at war with Iran are Trump's ego and Netanyahu. The ego point is, I think, Graham, Lindsey Graham, people like that, and the neocons are saying, take out Maduro, take out the Iranian regime, And we'll get the Cuban government next. And he'll be this grand historic figure. And Trump, I think, has seen like the capabilities of the U.S. military. There's one story that said he thinks he has like godlike powers or they have godlike powers and he wants to use them. And then there's Netanyahu, who has been pushing Trump really hard to act like you guys were saying, and put out a statement, I think yesterday, saying this coalition of forces allows us to do what I've yearned to do for 40 years.

20:45Unknown Senator:You just said it.

20:45Jon Favreau:So last June when I said, you know, I thought I feel like the United States got dragged to war by Netanyahu. Jonathan Greenblatt at the ADL said that was anti-Semitism. And now this is what Marco Rubio was saying. And this is what Netanyahu was saying happened here, which is he talked the United States into joining him in this insane war of choice that doesn't actually directly threaten the United States.

21:05Unknown Senator:Yeah, I realize there's a lot of folks, especially on the right, who say, you know, the Israeli government controls U.S. foreign policy. And then people say that that's like vaguely anti-Semitic and certainly anti-Zionist. But like in this case, it seems pretty clear the administration is saying that Israel helped. Now, I do think, Tommy, to your point about Trump's ego, I'm sure that Bibi fed into that during his like was he's trying to make the case to Trump. Right. Because I'm sure Bibi's not just like, I really want this. please do this for me for sure be like sir you could be the greatest president of all time i also think that the that obama and the nuclear deal the uh is a big part too because they probably told him that pussy obama he did this terrible deal and you can you can show him up yeah by actually showing that you did this the right way and it'll be easy and so i'm sure that obama was a part of it too and did you read i'm sure you read the new york times story about this vance of all people convinced trump to do this because he was leaning towards remember he was thinking about doing a quick strike and then maybe saving the big one for later or he was going to do the big one and vance was like well if you're going to do it go big and go right away and then trump apparently after that meeting started thinking about what vance said and was like okay that was a good idea the other part of this too jd vance though who wrote that op-ed uh yeah all these the best well the best part what was the best part about donald trump is that he's not going to get us in any more foreign wars.

22:23Jon Favreau:Yeah, no new wars.

22:24Unknown Senator:Yeah.

22:24Jon Lovett:And then I do think part of this too is Trump, you have Rubio out there saying they were a year and a year away from having a hyper advanced conventional umbrella that would made them immune. But meanwhile, the lesson they took from Operation Midnight Hammer is that actually Iran's capabilities are not something we have to worry too much about. They're actually in a weakened position. Now would be the time right in the wake of these protests. Look, the idea that like Benjamin Netanyahu with US intelligence is not decapitating the entire Iranian regime without US, if not encouragement permission, right?

23:01Jon Lovett:And so even Rubio going out there and saying, well, Israel was gonna do it, so he had no choice. I don't think they needed encouragement. Well, I'm not saying they would need encouragement, but they're not gonna start the campaign unless they feel pretty confident the US is - You can support. Yeah, support, encourage, yeah, I mean, support. Right, and like, so Rubio going out there and saying, well, the Israelis were going to do it, and therefore that was going to create some kind of imminent threat. I don't understand why in this moment they feel the need to act as though they were dragged into it.

23:26Jon Lovett:Maybe that's in part because of their own politics about not wanting to seem like they were just choosing a random day to start a giant new conflict in the Middle East. Maybe they are worried a bit about their own politics, but that's the only way I can see to kind of undercut the idea that we weren't dragged into this, in part because Benjamin Netanyahu has been gunning for a war with Iran for the entire time he's been in public life.

23:44Unknown Senator:I thought another notable detail in that story was that Intel officials had predicted that a popular uprising against the regime after a strike was a remote possibility, which is interesting in that Trump, when he first announced this, was like, take your country back. Yeah, I mean, it's like a large unarmed population is just going to rise up against rise up against the security forces that look, they have no plan.

24:07Jon Favreau:Like they're just winging it. Like, I, again, like there's all these people talk about what the options are. Like people are like, well, maybe there's a Venezuela option where you find like the vice president. There's like a Dulce Rodriguez of Iran. Like, I don't think that exists. Iran has stronger power centers. There's IRGC. There's the Basij militia. There's all these groups that are, that are armed. And to tell an unarmed population to rise up and take those people on is laughable. Like they're, the people are going to get killed. Also like Iran, tens of millions of Iranians vote for the hardline government, right?

24:36Jon Favreau:We see the videos of people in Tehran celebrating the death of the Supreme Leader, but we don't know what the whole country thinks. And so the suggestion that there's some uniformed opinion about what happened here, that everyone will support what the US just did, is just wrong. And then there are also ethnic and religious minorities who might see this as their moment to rise up and take their own space. There's the Kurds, there's the Baluk separatists, there's Sunni minorities. And so I'm sure there's some listeners who are Iranian listening to this, yelling at us through the phone, being like the regime was bad, we needed a regime change.

25:07Jon Favreau:And like, I hear what you're saying, but like, I obviously hate this regime too, but like it couldn't get worse from here. We've seen it happen before. And like, that's the concern. And also ultimately you're trusting Trump and Pete Hegseth to manage a war with Iran, which seems bad idea to me.

25:22Unknown Senator:Taliban was a murderous repressive regime. Saddam Hussein ran a murderous repressive regime. Like Kim Jong-un, Vladimir Putin. We don't, we don't go to war with governments that aren't repressive and dangerous. so far this year. Yeah, used to.

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28:15Unknown Senator:So looking forward, Trump's been all over the map on what an exit strategy might look like and has basically had a different answer for every reporter who has randomly dialed his number, which apparently happens quite frequently now. There's the, as Tommy mentioned, the Venezuela type outcome where he gets his Delcy Rodriguez of Iran. who's willing to work with the U.S., I guess, because I don't know what they're promised, like oil money, corruption gets them, gets to grease the wheels there, and then they just oppress their people. There's also, you know, telling the Iranian people to overthrow the regime entirely, which, as we discussed, is pretty remote.

28:50Unknown Senator:And then it's like, well, maybe it's fine if we just degrade their military capabilities to the point where they can't cause any real trouble for at least a few years. Do you think, Tommy, that the administration is trying to be strategically ambiguous? Is there any chance on the outcomes or do they just have no fucking idea what they actually want?

29:07Jon Favreau:No, I mean, look, I sort of think I walked here a second to what I think. I don't think they have a plan. I don't think they have a plan for what comes next as Trump, you know, like we were saying before Trump called a reporter and said, I have a short list. And then he said, they're all dead to the next reporter he talked to. So even if they find a Delce Rodriguez type, I think that person is likely to get killed by the IRGC or other existing power structures, unless we have boots on the ground to support that person. Like just saying, rise up and, you know, take your country back. Like, that's not a plan.

29:31Jon Favreau:They're just winging it. They don't know what will happen next. I think they're just letting rip.

29:37Unknown Senator:What are some of the different ways this whole thing could go south really fast? Anyone want to walk through some of those? Aside from the fact that just, you know, more Americans could die in the prosecution of the war.

29:49Jon Lovett:So what you feel from what Hegseth says there, when he says, like you know this is not a rock and what what trump is saying ruby like there's this idea that as long as we don't claim ownership of the consequences we're not going to be responsible for the consequences right as long as we don't we're not they're they're avoiding saying we will not put troops uh like boots on the ground they won't say that explicitly but obviously they don't want to put uh boots on the ground and all of their language around like this wasn't regime change but the regime changed whatever whatever it is it is around saying we're doing what we're going to do for their military capacities, for their capacity to deploy drones and do damage to our bases and our allies in the region, Iranis are going to own the consequences of that, right?

30:33Jon Lovett:Like that's what they're kind of saying. And whatever chaos comes next, if there's a civil war, there's violence in the streets, if a new repressive regime emerges and puts down anyone who tries to fight it, whatever happens next, like not our problem, not our problem. But of course, it will be our problem one way or another. We will be dealing with the ramifications of it. our allies will be. We will, Israel will be. U.S. bases in the region will be. The impact on oil and gas prices, we will live with the consequences, even if you don't claim them.

31:02Unknown Senator:Yeah. Trump does not seem like he wants to live by the pottery barn rule. Opposite. Yeah. Opposite that.

31:08Jon Lovett:If you break it, sue the pottery barn.

31:10Unknown Senator:For those of you who weren't alive during the Iraq war, that was, who said it? Was it Colin Powell? Powell Doctrine, yeah. Yeah. Powell Doctrine. If you break it, you bought it. Not so for Donald Trump. I mean, look, there's this concern that, first of all, we've already seen like violence and chaos spill out, not just in the Middle East, but all over the world. We've seen at our embassies in Pakistan, I see Iraq, Jordan, right? There's like protests outside the embassies. There is this idea that like if Iran becomes a failed state, it's not only a haven for terrorism and civil war, but it precipitates another refugee crisis.

31:44Unknown Senator:There's, you know, the oil shocks all around the world. How many fucking tens of billions of dollars will this war cost the American taxpayers? There's also like the idea of terrorist attacks against American interests, American troops abroad. And even here inspired terrorist attacks here. We saw a shooting in Austin over the weekend. Potentially the shooter was sort of inspired by what happened in Iran. So this just like and this is just what a couple of days into this thing.

32:08Jon Favreau:I mean, yeah, started on Saturday. I mean, Iran has decided to attack everyone. They think there's been attacks on like 11 countries or 12 countries. They're firing at all these Gulf countries, the UAE, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait. Some of those shots are fired at where we have US bases, but some are just like civilian infrastructure and The Iranians use ballistic missiles and then use these cheap drones called Shahed drones It costs like 20 grand 50 grand a pop. They have tons of them They could fly 2 ,000 kilometers and they basically just like GPS to a point and then detonate when they hit it the interceptor missiles we use to take them down are In short supply and they're really expensive.

32:44Jon Favreau:So those things cost 20 to 50 grand the Shahed drones our interceptors cost a million bucks, a couple million bucks a pop. And so we're running low on them. The UAE is running low. Qatar is running low. And this whole thing is a big war of attrition, which is to say, what's going to run out first, the interceptor missiles or the Iranian ballistic missiles and drones? So that's a big thing we're all watching. There's the economic cost, which is the Iranians said they would close the Strait of Hormuz. They haven't mined it, but they've been firing at ships. 20 % of the world's oil goes to the Strait of Hormuz.

33:15Jon Favreau:that will have a huge economic cost. Including to their allies, by the way. What's that? Their allies also rely on the Chinese. Yeah, the Chinese, everyone does, yeah. And then, you know, the longer term, like the longer this goes on, the more likely there is to be civil war, sectarian conflict, some sort of failed state, some sort of refugee flow. And again, we're talking about a country of 90 million people.

33:36Unknown Senator:And the administration from Trump on down has repeatedly in the last couple of days since this started, refused to rule out boots on the ground in any like significant capacity, which is also pretty terrifying.

33:48Jon Favreau:They won't rule it out. They won't rule it out. Trump didn't just refuse to rule it out. His comments were very weird. He said, I don't have the yips with respect to boots on the ground. Like every president says, there will be no boots on the ground. I don't say it. I say probably don't need them or if they were necessary. So I don't know what he's trying to signal there. Like I could imagine a commando raid that includes the US and Israel that is designed to get the HEU or the nuclear materials that they think are somehow buried somewhere. Beyond that though, it's like, what are we talking about?

34:16Jon Lovett:I really like so much of what this is, is in response to the things they don't like about Democrats, right? And they always felt like the date certans around Afghanistan were kind of projecting what we were gonna do to our enemies. And so I think they're incredibly reluctant to put like a troops on the ground, not to like excluding kind of short sort of like tactical, like deploying small units to do small tasks, but boots on the ground. Trump is clearly worried about it, but he kind of feels as though in order to project strength, I'm not going to tell you what I'm going to do. I need to have...

34:45Jon Lovett:That is, I think, him trying to be... kind of leave his options open to not sort of forswear a scary option to the Iranians.

34:54Jon Favreau:But... Or it means we have boots on the ground right now. And we may also have boots on the ground. And I think there's a very good chance that there are like special forces contingents who are on the ground. And then maybe they're not... Maybe they're deployed under like Title 50. So it's deniable. And, you know, that's kind of what he's getting at here. I agree with you that like in Venezuela, there were boots on the ground, right? It was very short term. And I think what J.D. Vance focuses on, what Trump tries to focus on is we're not doing long term occupation and nation building. But I think the response to that is it's not necessarily up to you.

35:20Jon Favreau:If Iran remains a threat, if they keep firing drones and missiles, if this regime in some form or fashion stays in place and the threat is not gone, the threat is not gone. The Israelis won't see the threat is gone. So what then?

35:31Unknown Senator:I mean, also, you know, George W. Bush kept saying that they were going to get troops out of Iraq by the spring and summer of 2003. Sometimes like these, the intentions to not have boots, like one thing leads to another. And then suddenly you feel like, okay, well now I got to stay in there and now they're firing on us here and now we got to put in more. I mean, it's, it's, it's fucking slippery slope.

35:50Jon Lovett:It was just like the arrogance of believing you're in control of events. You've launched a war. It's destabilizing. The world is a dangerous place. You're not in charge of all the consequences you've unleashed. And, you know, there's this sort of like kind of macho thing that Hegseth does is a way Trump gets kind of puffed up by the people around him. But yeah, man, like managing delicate relationships with regimes that are despicable and murderous to try to get deals to protect your interests without destabilizing, like it is unsatisfying on some level. It is hard to live in the real world and accept compromise and long-term strategic thinking where the outcomes aren't certain.

36:34Jon Lovett:But you choose that over instability because you have respect for how dangerous the world can be, how much worse things can get, even against your best intentions. And there's just that is to me, that is the connection from the way they talk to the substance, which is like these people are cavalier about American lives because they are just not thoughtful or careful. They are decadent about history. And it is dangerous to have people like that and just charge in moments like this. Incredibly dangerous. All right.

37:00Unknown Senator:Let's talk about how the politics of this war are playing out so far. One joke I saw going around on Twitter this weekend was, good thing Congress isn't alive to see this. That was a good joke. Sure enough, with a few exceptions, the Republicans who run Congress are all on board with whatever Trump wants to do in Iran. Democrats being Democrats have split into a few camps. You've got your very pro-Israel hawkish types like your Josh Gottheimers and your John Fettermans, who are so far fully supportive of the war. That's definitely a minority position in the party. You've got progressive Democrats and even a lot of mainstream Democrats like Ruben Gallego, who is going to talk to later.

37:37Unknown Senator:John Ossoff, Tim Kaine, who've come out strongly opposed to the war. And then you've got the most Democrat response of all from a group of Democrats who start their statements with a lot of throat clearing about how the Iranian regime is bad. You must you must prove that you are not grieving the Ayatollah with your first couple sentences, because someone out there, apparently there's a bunch of liberals out there grieving the Ayatollah that we I haven't seen them, but they're out there. We've got to condemn them and we've got to make sure that we're not grieving for the Ayatollah.

38:09Jon Lovett:Every statement has to start with Iran is brat. And that's where it goes.

38:16Unknown Senator:And then after you do the throat clearing about how awful and terrible and oppressive and murderous the regime is, then you've got to mainly criticize Trump for not consulting with Congress first. And then you kind of just do a bunch of mealy mouth shit from there. You think some of these Democrats are scared of the politics here? And if so, why?

38:31Jon Favreau:I don't know why they would be scared of the politics. Like, this is not a popular war. There's not a close to a majority of people who want this war. Not Democrats, not independents. I think, like, what I want from Democrats is go after the war on the merits, not on the process. The process ship has sailed. Focus on what's happening here, which is Trump lied about the threat. Trump, Iran was nowhere near close to getting a nuclear weapon. He's lying about the threat from Iranian ballistic missiles. They are nowhere close to hitting the United States. Hammer him on that. He lied. And then talk about the cost.

39:04Jon Favreau:Now, six service members are dead. More are gravely wounded. It's going to cost us tens of billions of dollars. No one wants to be spending money this way. It's not a popular thing to be doing. And then I think we should just highlight the chaos around the world. Since this action, the war is not happening in Iran. It is terrorizing populations in Israel, in Lebanon, in the Gulf. American diplomats are less safe. Embassies are getting overrun. Americans, either the gunman in Texas might've been inspired by what happened in Iran. Like Trump is making us less safe. And like, just hammer him on that.

39:37Jon Favreau:Go for it. Talk about the substance.

39:39Unknown Senator:Yeah.

39:39Jon Lovett:Yeah, I asked Diego about this and he said the same, like we should be focusing on like, why are we at war with Iran? Like why? What was the goals? What is the objective? Why is it worth sending, risking American lives in this moment for this conflict? And all these people that are defending this, if you would have asked them a year ago, would you like to see the U.S. in a regime change war with Iran in the next year? They'd all have said no. They'd all have said, of course not. And no one wants that. And no one saying that Republicans want that should be believed. We never would want that. Of course not.

40:15Jon Lovett:But now that it's here and it's happening, all these people feel obligated on the Republican side to support it. And then Democrats, who I think there are some that I think genuinely feel there are, I think, reluctant both because of the politics and because on some level they support the policy and they know that those politics aren't good either. I think on some level they're like, you know what, I wouldn't have done it this way, but I hope it works. And I don't want to go out there and say, I think this is a bad idea if they can remove the Ayatollah.

40:42Jon Favreau:There's two flavors of that. There are some who just quietly do actually want to see the Iranian regime toppled. and a lot of them are kind of the closest individuals to APAC, for example. And then there's the other group, the old folks, of which there are many, who think about like Gulf War I in 1991 and the people who were against the first Gulf War and felt like they looked stupid afterwards when it was popular and successful and had 90 % support.

41:08Unknown Senator:It's just like, have we not lived through enough of these wars that we're still thinking and responding in the binary here, which is like, oh, well, so then if you're opposed to this, you must love that Iran is the number one state sponsor of terrorism around the world and has killed Americans and has destabilized the region. Because if you if you're against that, then you'd be for this war. There's no like, oh, yeah, I want to see the Iranian regime topple, too. I don't want to see the fucking Ayatollah there. I don't want to see a murderous regime in Iran. I hope that like, you know, the hamburger from heaven falls from the sky and takes out the whole regime and then democracy flourishes in Iran.

41:44Unknown Senator:Yeah, of course. That is something to hope for.

41:48Jon Favreau:Some stone cold moron at the free press tweeted, if you call yourself a progressive and you're not even a little excited by the prospect of a woman-hating, gay-hating, Jew-hating Neanderthal regime that in no way represents the will of its people being crushed, you're not actually a progressive. I like that. No one ever saw the Ayatollah?

42:04Jon Lovett:Pride.

42:07Jon Favreau:So put it on your progressive checklist. Medicare for all, death to the Ayatollah. Like, what are you talking about? No, it's OK to talk about the downside risk of a regime change war of choice, even against a bad guy.

42:19Unknown Senator:Yeah. Look, sometimes when you're trying to murder an 86 year old Ayatollah, you have to also kill over a hundred young schoolgirls. Yeah. And that's just the way. And I guess if you're a progressive who likes women's rights, don't you? Oh, I guess that doesn't work there.

42:34Jon Favreau:Just like we have to ignore all the other stuff. ridiculous well they it's just this thought that like that after a couple strikes that democracy

42:43Unknown Senator:is going to flourish in iran and there's going to be no cost to do that like what the fuck are

42:47Jon Lovett:we talking about here we just did this in iraq and and like it starts out less popular than any previous conflicts in part because there was no debate like the country's waking up you know the country it's friday night you know people are like what what we're at war with iran but it's the weekend. Like there's just like no debate about it whatsoever. We learn about it from the press over the weekend. The president doesn't give a big speech, as you said. And if it starts out in this way, and then you look at what people say and they say, well, like, you know, there is ambivalence in the polling for sure.

43:21Jon Lovett:Like that's always there because people don't like the Iranian government. But you say like, oh, is it worth American lives? No, the sport starts to drop. Would you be OK with continuing the conflict if gas prices are rising? No, they wouldn't. People aren't in people weren't in the market for sacrificing American lives and our tax dollars and having the economy be hurt for a war with Iran, in part because no one ever made the case for that. No one ever signed up to make that sacrifice as a nation. That just didn't happen.

43:50Unknown Senator:I'll just read off some of the polling. There's been a bunch of polling so far. what stood out to me. Washington Post did a poll. They did a thousand person poll. They also did that thing where they text them as well. 39 % strongly or somewhat support. That was it. 52 % strongly or somewhat oppose. In fact, strongly oppose was 39%. So the number that strongly oppose is the same as total strongly and somewhat support. Why are we there? They ask people, why are we there? To take control wins at 14%. unsure is in second at 13 percent regime change at 12 percent stop them from getting nuclear weapon at nine percent getting their money and oil at nine percent distract from the epstein files at eight percent and then at the very bottom protect the united states at seven percent coming in coming in after distract from the epstein files they have not really uh sold people

44:44Jon Favreau:in a clear vision for what we're doing here there's also they ask are you concerned about a

44:48Unknown Senator:full-scale war, 74 % concern, 25%. Which, pause.

44:52Jon Favreau:We're having a full-scale war. What is that question?

44:55Unknown Senator:I know. Well, I think maybe when the strike started, they were like, maybe it's a few strikes. Who knows? I don't know. But I know I had the same thought about that.

45:01Jon Lovett:What is full-scale? I do think if you want the generous interpretation or whatever to give it meaning would be soldiers on the ground fighting on the ground in Iran.

45:10Unknown Senator:Yeah. And then Reuters did a poll. They found only a quarter of Americans approved of the strikes. Among Republicans, the total was 55%. Still not that high. And 42 % of Republican voters said that they will be less likely to support the Iran campaign if it leads to U.S. troops in the Middle East being killed or injured. Well, there you go. That has happened now. Yep. So that is the point. I just like here's the thing. If you're a Democrat and you're I mean, Chami, you brought up the George, the first Iraq war with George Bush. Right. So let's say for principled reasons, you come out against the war strongly right now.

45:43Unknown Senator:and then, I don't know, Trump somehow gets the scenario where the regime falls or they get some other Iranian leader who's in the regime to actually start working with the United States and be more pragmatic. And it's not full democracy in Iran, but it looks more like, I don't know, Saudi Arabia, one of these Gulf monarchies or something. And it's not great, but it also doesn't like threaten the rest of the world. And you were opposed to the war. I don't know. What do you think is going to happen? You think you're going to lose your next election? You think that when someone says that you weren't for the war that was like, that left sort of an okay middling situation that we don't know about?

46:19Unknown Senator:You think that you'd be like, yeah, well, I didn't want to go to war and risk American lives in the world. You think that's going to be a problem for you in politics? Like, I don't think that's going to be a fucking political problem. Just say what you believe.

46:28Jon Lovett:If the United States were attacked and Donald Trump responded to some kind of an attack by taking the country into war, and then there was a congressional vote and it got behind it, I would be terrified to have Donald Trump in charge of our military during a time in which we were dragged into a war, truly if that were the situation, actually brought into a war that we didn't choose. Donald Trump should be impeached and removed from office for his various crimes. He's the most corrupt president in American history. He's profiteering off the office. He is destroying and lawlessly dismantling government agencies, unleashing ISIS, spending money without congressional approval.

47:09Jon Lovett:He is a menace who is abusing his office every day. Of course, you should not support Donald Trump choosing to take our country to war because he should not be in charge of our military. He should be nowhere near any of these authorities. It is a great crime. It is a shame of history that he is in this job and that we have not been able to keep him from returning to it. And the fact that even when Donald Trump is president, you can't muster the ability to say, no, I'm not in favor of going to war with Iran. I will vote no if there's a war powers resolution. I will vote no if there's an authorization for the use of force.

47:38Jon Lovett:We are certainly not it is not necessary for us to go to a war with Iran right now. And certainly I would never support giving this president even more authority than he's already had an abuse. Like the fact that we can't make that it's ridiculous what we're talking about. Donald Trump is prosecuting a war that we did not have to fight. And Democrats, a lot of them are afraid of their own shadow to come out and just say this is fucking stupid and dangerous. Like that is ridiculous, ridiculous.

48:02Unknown Senator:Putting everyone down for a no.

48:04Jon Lovett:Out, really unbelievable. And then these fucking like, all these guys like obtusely saying, I don't see how anybody can, like how anybody can watch what's happening and not be just proud and not just be proud. Fetterman's like, why can't we,

48:17Unknown Senator:no, Fetterman's like, why can't we just be celebrating what happened today? He is just insufferable.

48:20Jon Lovett:Kind of like, well, why don't you answer your own question? What do you do, this performative idiocy, this sort of like fake obtuseness where you pretend to not understand that there was a very legitimate argument against what you're saying from colleagues you see every day and presumably have some respect for.

48:32Unknown Senator:I mentioned that Republicans in Congress support the war with a few exceptions. Rand Paul, Thomas Massey, basically. Beyond Congress, at least so far, beyond Congress, there are plenty of MAGA influencers who aren't happy about this war and have already criticized Trump. The Daily Wire's Matt Walsh, the Federalist Sean Davis, which is some new ones there. Steve Bannon. There were also reports that Tucker Carlson had been personally lobbying Trump not to attack. Do you think these guys eventually get on board or at least just sort of quiet down? Or do you think this could be a problem for Trump and further down the road, Vance?

49:06Jon Favreau:I think Bannon tends to get on board. Matt Walsh and Sean Davis probably will too. I don't think Tucker will ever get on board. He's been consistent about opposing the war in Iran since last June and did not come around when others came around and started praising Trump for Midnight hammer. I also think, look, Tucker knows his audience and he knows there's a big mega audience out there for folks who want to hear criticism of regime change wars. And some of it has to do with us support for Israel. And he will be making the case that Netanyahu pushed Trump into going to war and he's going to have a big, I told you so he's got a good case.

49:40Jon Favreau:He's going to, he's going to play that Rubio quote, uh, over and over again today and have a big, I told you so. Um, but like, I think, you know, the J.D. Vance element of him not only no longer opposing regime change wars, but pushing for the biggest, boldest version of them, I do think will harm him in the long term if, you know, MAGA's isolation history continues to grow. Yeah. Yeah.

50:05Jon Lovett:I don't like I don't even if some of these people get back in line, I just I actually think the comments from Rubio today will be really important. There's just there is a big overlap between the America first anti interventionalist mindset and the conspiratorial anti Israel mindset. that the fact that now we have the Secretary of State basically saying we had to do this because Israel was going to bring us into this will like have a life of its own in those spaces and there will be people that will go back to trying like nothing nothing anti-semitic is true and if it's true it's not anti-semitic and so like if this is what what Rubio is saying like it's going to give a lot of purchase to that argument on that that and and like that is going to have a lot of of power.

50:51Jon Lovett:And I don't care what the Republicans in Congress or the powerful influencers say. I think from the bottom up, people are going to be enraged by this.

51:21burnout.

51:21Unknown Senator:We want to remind you that you matter.

51:24Jon Lovett:And if you're out there listening and if you weren't sure you mattered, but we're waiting for a podcast host to tell you, I'm sorry that that's the world we're in. I'm sorry. And maybe that's why you need therapy.

51:33Unknown Senator:We all do. We all do. Women, not women. Yeah.

51:36Jon Lovett:Close your eyes and picture a person. Are you picturing a woman? Why not? If maybe you should go to therapy.

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52:35Unknown Senator:Two other related stories before we get to Levitt's interview with Gallego. First, we talked last week about Pete Hegseth threatening Anthropic because the AI company won't let the government use Claude, their AI model, for mass surveillance on Americans or fully autonomous weapons. Turns out Anthropic held firm and Hegseth carried through on his threat, except he didn't decide that the government just wouldn't do business with Anthropic anymore. He designated the company as a risk to national security and essentially blacklisted them, saying that, quote, no contractor, supplier or partner that does business with the United States military may conduct any commercial activity with Anthropic.

53:13Unknown Senator:This decision is final. Unsurprisingly, Elon Musk's XAI, which makes Grok, and then Sam Altman's OpenAI, which makes ChatGPT, agreed to Hegseth's demands. Anthropic has pledged to fight the government in court over Hegseth's decision. Anyone want to go off on how insane this is?

53:32Jon Favreau:Yeah. I mean, just like, again, Anthropics had two asks. One was don't use our software to do bulk mass surveillance of American citizens. And then it was, don't use it in autonomous killer robots yet because it's not good enough yet.

53:45Unknown Senator:Yeah, they can't do it.

53:46Jon Favreau:It wasn't even like that clear of a moral stand. You just said the AI wasn't ready. And so it's not - Oh, I'm sorry, you're right. That was France. Right.

53:54Unknown Senator:And so we learned over the weekend that - Honestly, don't beat yourself up over it.

53:59Jon Favreau:Claude, Claude was, Claude, you're fine. Just kill away.

54:03Unknown Senator:You felt something strongly and you went for it. And you went for it.

54:06Jon Favreau:Yeah, yeah, that drone wasn't going to fly itself. It turns out it was. So they use Claude against in the Iranian operation over the weekend. We learned somebody reported that. But in response, like you said, two things happens. One, the Trump administration, they didn't just like pull Claude out of their classified systems. They're trying to destroy the company. Like designating them a supply chain risk is crazy. That is what the United States has done to Huawei. A Chinese state backed telecommunications system could provide a backdoor for the Chinese, you know, spies to get into all of our communication.

54:36Jon Favreau:and Kaspersky Labs, which is a Russian antivirus company, which, you know, you probably don't want to put Russian antivirus software on your computer. And then also that craven, craven fucking dork, Sam Altman and OpenAI just swept in to gobble up the contract afterwards just to show that he is the most amoral, money-focused, like deplorable little schmuck.

55:01Jon Lovett:So the position of the Pentagon is that Anthropic is so essential to our national security that the government can dictate how its product is used and it can't be stopped by Anthropic. But also it's a national security threat at the same time that can be banned from every company. It doesn't really make sense. Don't know that that'll hold up. And the great thing about a democracy is the Secretaries of Defense don't get to decide when decisions are final. So good luck with that. with that. The issue here is like, okay, Anthropic in this case is at least publicly, as far as we know, like what they're demanding is pretty reasonable.

55:37Jon Lovett:It is more ethical than what the Pentagon is suggesting. The Pentagon argument is, all we ask of our contractors is that we use your product, we will follow the law, but the law right now is not caught up to what AI is going to be capable of. It's not caught up to what AI can do right now. There are not laws that really govern this, certainly not at the national level. That said, like, no, I don't think Anthropics should be making decisions about when and how our military can use AI. I'm pretty uncomfortable with this administration making those decisions. These are novel issues. I've seen people saying, well, if Raytheon makes a missile, Raytheon doesn't get to decide how the Pentagon uses the missile.

56:17Jon Lovett:It's like, okay, that's an analogy you can use for AI if you want. AI is like a missile now. These are genuinely difficult and new and very scary questions about how AI is going to be deployed inside of our military. They're meant to be taken seriously and carefully and debated over time. And instead, we have a dunce Fox News host making domineering, kind of sneering threats at the company. You have kind of opportunistic, valueless people like Altman and Musk trying to come in and kind of take their market share and kind of punish their adversaries. Meanwhile, it seems we're sort of like kind of sleepwalking into employing a new and incredibly powerful technology that we don't fully understand in charge of life and death decisions inside of our military.

57:01Jon Lovett:So like it's the same response to this as to the fucking war on the whole. Like these are people that are not responsible enough to be helping us figuring out how to make these difficult decisions over the long term.

57:11Unknown Senator:I mean, it's also what this says is if you start a company and you create a product or technology that the government decides it wants to use and you don't want it to use it the way that they want to use it because it will create or could lead to great harm, potentially catastrophic civilizational collapse. Yeah, this Terminator 2 Judgment Day kind of stuff. Yeah.

57:31Jon Lovett:That's on the table, I suppose.

57:33Unknown Senator:The government can just come and destroy your company. That's what it is. So here's one reaction. Quote, this is simply attempted corporate murder. I could not possibly recommend investing in American AI to any investor. I could not possibly recommend starting an AI company in the United States. That is from Dean Ball, who wrote the Trump administration's AI action plan. Yeah.

57:54Jon Favreau:So these guys just have to go to like DEF CON 5 on everything. Everything has to be all out war. They can't just have a difference of agreement, a lack of alignment with Anthropic and say, OK, well, we're just going to part ways on the use of this software. or they have to destroy the company.

58:12Jon Lovett:Well, the other, like the, and then the long-term issue, right, is what, if they're worried, they're worried about mass surveillance, they're worried about these tools autonomously deciding, like on targets and things like that. You know, one protection we have had against mass surveillance is just the amount of data, just the amount of data that's been, encryption and the amount of data, right? Like just, there's vast, vast amounts of encrypted data that's hard to get at. And there's just too much that's collected for human beings to parse. Like that's a protection. And AI says there's actually a world in which you don't have to worry about that anymore because it can process vast amounts of data far beyond anything we can imagine today.

58:45Jon Lovett:And the fact that they are not willing to make, so even a temporary kind of willingness to say, these will not be used in that manner. And if they are, we under control of Congress, anything to that effect. They just want to kind of dominate and say, no, you don't get to tell us. We will do whatever we want. Like it just tells you what kind of people these are. And like, we are going to have to have this debate. We will have to do it when they're gone, I suppose. But this is a frightening moment, given how much, it doesn't take much imagination to see where this goes. And we just don't have the right people to have that debate.

59:18Unknown Senator:In other authoritarian news, Trump's billionaire political allies just expanded their regime-friendly media empire to include, among other properties, CNN. The Ellisons finally won their bid to acquire Warner Brothers Discovery by overpaying for it in an offer that Netflix couldn't and wouldn't beat. The result is that Paramount Skydance, under the leadership of the Ellisons and Barry Weiss, their favorite conservative journalist, will now control both CBS News and CNN. Over the weekend, Weiss responded to a tweet criticizing Zoran Mamdani's opposition to the war in Iran with a fire emoji. She's a straight shooter, respected on both sides.

59:53Jon Favreau:Yeah, there was also a tweet from CBS referring to, like, Iran's nuclear weapons, which they don't have and they've never had. I think CBS this weekend, the Sunday show had like all pro war voices on its panels. So good stuff. I don't watch a lot of cable news anymore. I imagine you guys don't really either. We have it on in the office, but like when I'm home, except for times like this, like when there is a war, when there is a crisis, I'm putting on CNN or I'm putting on MS now because they're doing real time reporting. They have people like in Tel Aviv. You can see the missiles falling. They have people in Lebanon.

1:00:26Jon Favreau:They like, right? Like that, that is invaluable in a time of crisis. and like the idea of Barry Weiss kind of thumbing the scales at all times on all the news gathering is really unnerving. Like bigger picture, I'm more worried about the TikTok US operations now being majority owned by Oracle. Another Ellison. Another Ellison thing. The Silver Lake Capital, they're like conservative backed investor group and then MGX and Abu Dhabi based investment company, right? Like I think that's going to be more impactful in terms of their ability to impact sentiment about politics in this country and do it secretly.

1:01:01Jon Favreau:But yeah, it sucks.

1:01:03Unknown Senator:Well, they're hitting every demo, every age group, that's for sure.

1:01:06Jon Lovett:What a move by Netflix. You're just gonna get a couple of billion dollars for having just kind of negotiated up this deal to a crazy degree and like kind of thirsty, fucking Paramount paying just a huge, huge premium to take on this like asset, like CNN, like whatever its ideology, Like it's kind of like, I don't know what the future looks like, but they have a lot of, they have a lot of threats at CNN that aren't the free press and Barry Weiss. So like I worry too about, my bigger worry is the same as Tommy's, which is like, okay, there's like whatever the specific like kind of ideological tilt of CNN over time.

1:01:44Jon Lovett:I hope the independent journalists and anchors there get to continue to do what they do. I hope that the places that have a strong culture like HBO don't suddenly have to run anti-woke versions of their shows to go along with whatever industry. More than that, here's just sort of a drip, drip, drip of like, okay, now TikTok is going to be controlled by right-wing allies. CNN is controlled in that way. Fox News, of course, always was. And like bit by bit, you kind of lose these access points and the noise and all the kind of churn in the algorithm. Even if you are independent, you're kind of like kind of stuck in that to reach people as well.

1:02:20Jon Lovett:So it's just a sort of bad sign. Bad sign.

1:02:23Unknown Senator:It is a bad sign. It's a bad sign. Yeah, well, and, you know, authoritarian takeovers of the media aren't always neat and tidy and just coming in and shutting them all down and having state media and stuff like that. You get, you know, it happened in Orbán's Hungary as well, right? They start, you get a few that there's direct state TV, and then you get some that are the billion, the, you know, leaders, billionaire friends that own the media stations. And it's just, you know, so that's what they're trying to do. They're trying to cobble together a regime friendly media empire here. It's a little TikTok, a little CBS, a little CNN.

1:02:52Unknown Senator:They're just, I do think they'll fail.

1:02:53Jon Lovett:Ultimately I do. Like I just, this is not hungry and we're a big fractious country with a lot of different ways of getting information.

1:02:58Unknown Senator:And one of them is crooked media, crooked.com slash friends. Please subscribe.

1:03:01Jon Lovett:Yeah. Like, well, I mean, you're not, if you're, but if you are, but like, seriously, if people are subscribed to what we're doing, right, the algorithm matters less. They're going to get this. They can share this with other people. Like it will be incumbent on people to build an alternative that we want to be a part of. Like that's real. All right.

1:03:15Unknown Senator:When we come back from the break, you'll hear Lovett's conversation with Senator Ruben Gallego about Iran and how Democrats are doing, including today's Senate primary in Texas, where Jasmine Crockett and James Tallarico are facing off. We'll be right back.

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1:05:34Jon Lovett:Joining me now to discuss this weekend's airstrikes is Arizona Senator Ruben Gallego. Senator, welcome back to the pod. Thanks for having me. So let's just start. What are your initial reactions to the strikes in Iran that began over the weekend and the deaths as of this recording of six U.S. service members in the campaign? Just what your overall response is to it.

1:05:54Tommy Vietor:Well, before coming on here, I was just reading a statement that Rubio said that we had to attack because Iran was going to attack because they were about to be attacked. So basically what Rubio is saying is that Israel was attacking – going to attack Iran. And because Israel was going to attack Iran, it was the assumption of this country that we had to also join on the attack. So we're essentially giving up our war making, our war making decisions to another country. I mean, did everyone did anyone even try to say, hey, don't do that? Did someone try to tell Netanyahu, like, you're going to start a regional war that we don't want to be a part of right now?

1:06:35Tommy Vietor:Or did we just now are we just now allowing Netanyahu to make these decisions for us? What what is going on here? What are we having in America first? and I'm the kind of guy that understands I actually do believe Israel is an ally I do believe we should help protect Israel and our allies but this is not this is ridiculous we lost six men and women so far and I'm not sure there was what kind of pre-planning and planning was actually created in enough time to actually be able to even execute this correctly like right now I'm hearing that our stockpiles are running low and it takes forever for us to redo and rearm ourselves ourselves all because Israel wanted to take a chance at the fact that, you know, Iran was weak and we just had to follow them through.

1:07:21Tommy Vietor:If this is actually what happened, this is what Mark Reba just said to everybody. That is an absolute abdication of leadership by Trump and by everybody in his cabinet. The fact that we were basically pushed into the war by Israel. That is not what should be happening at all. That is not our national interest. And now there's six men, six men and women dead. I don't know how many people are injured. Who knows how much of our depleted stock is now gone, or how much of our stock has been depleted, how much is going to be drawn away from Europe and from Asia where it's needed, all because we decided that we need to hand over our foreign policy to Netanyahu.

1:08:04Tommy Vietor:It's just disturbing and disgusting.

1:08:07Jon Lovett:Yeah, so I was actually going to play you the clip, but you just sort of got into it before I could. It's sort of a shock. No, no, no. It's a shocking thing to hear, in part because there have been so many different rationales for doing this. So you have Rubio basically saying the reason we had to do this is we were preemptively preventing further damage because Israel was doing this. But certainly Donald Trump would not say he's being led into this by Benjamin Netanyahu. He said that they were trying to, it's at times a regime change operations, at times it's not a regime change operation, at times it's about the nuclear program, at times it's not.

1:08:51Jon Lovett:What do you make of these shifting rationales?

1:08:54Tommy Vietor:Well, the rationale is probably Rubio's actual rationale was a real reason. and now they're coming up with the actual other reasons because they know that that is not good reasoning. They know that even people that are pro-Israel, that they want to see Israel continue as a sovereign state, know that that is not what Americans want to hear and that we just got involved in another Middle East war because Netanyahu decided that this is the best opportunity for Israel. What does that have to do with our national interests? how does what like how is this worth the the blood of our our men uh and and women and you know that is the rationale and now they're going to come up with all these other rationales because they're going to try to basically make it uh you know easier because it's not the democrats are going to have problems with now it's their america first base that are going to have problems with i've never heard of any other country essentially having to react in that manner and use their their national prestige, their weapons, the whole war-making capability because another country is starting a war and therefore we are going to have to react.

1:10:01Tommy Vietor:Did somebody even try calling Iran saying like, hey, this is not us. We're going to be staying out of this. No, we just decided that we're going to let Netanyahu choose our wars. It's very disturbing to me. It's very disturbing. Everyone should be really mad about this. And I don't even think this is not a left-right issue. This is not like, are you a pro-Israel person or are you whatever these other people are, right? This is like the fact that our country gave up its war making, started inflicting damage on another country because of another country's decision. That is not leadership. That is not what you want to see leadership doing.

1:10:41Tommy Vietor:And it's absolutely horrendous.

1:10:44Jon Lovett:so uh there is a debate and you're right there there there is a divide that isn't like strictly democrat versus republican that's playing out in congress these strikes were carried out without congressional authorization you've said the senate should not hold any votes until it votes on a war powers resolution but uh as of this moment a war powers resolution uh wouldn't have the votes to pass so so what what what would be the value of having a war powers resolution when the outcome would be Rubio and Trump and all these people holding it up and saying, see, they couldn't disapprove it and therefore they approve it.

1:11:20Tommy Vietor:Well, we have. So we do know that there's one coming up, I think, tomorrow or the day after. So at least we know that there is. I do think we also need to have a very different approach to this. This is not a very popular war. Like, let's just put it very plainly. It's only supported by about 30 percent of the population of this country. It's deeply unpopular with kind of the MAGA base of the Republican Party. The value in this would be that there is men and women put on record that will have to go forward and defend this when they go home during recess. And I think there's going to be a lot of people that are going to have a very tough time doing this, especially now that we understand the rationale, the real rationale behind this, right?

1:12:04Tommy Vietor:There was no imminent threat to our country. Imminent threat means that it was going to happen. What we just heard from Marco Rubio was essentially that we were going to get attacked because someone else was going to attack. They were going to eventually attack us, and therefore we decided to preempt the attack. In what world does that word salad actually justify us going to war and risking our men and women? And that's what we have to put on the record when it comes to Republicans and some Democrats coming up pretty soon.

1:12:35Jon Lovett:So one argument, and it's an argument that Senator Chris Murphy has been making, is a war powers resolution gets it a little bit backwards. It suggests that somehow the vote would kind of retroactively suggest support from Congress when what's actually needed is an authorization for the use of military force. a failed war powers resolution, the absence of disapproval is certainly not approval. That really what we ought to be doing is having a Congress that asserts the president cannot conduct war without a vote in Congress that authorizes the use of force as we did in Afghanistan and as we did in Iraq.

1:13:17Jon Lovett:What do you make of that argument?

1:13:18Tommy Vietor:He's right. But if we're in the majority, we have that. But that's like an AUMF is not a privileged resolution. I'm sorry I'm getting all dorky with you guys. No, no, it's fine. But that's the reason why we're doing a war's power, because that's the only option we have that will actually bring a vote to the floor. Because if we try to introduce AMF, then it has to go through the process, and they're just going to kill it in committee, right? But if you do a war's power, it gets to skip all the bullshit that the Republicans can use to actually slow it down. And yes, you're right. It doesn't immediate end it, but it does put certain timetables that actually restrict at least some of that executive power.

1:13:54Tommy Vietor:So no, this is not the best solution at all. But it's the only solution that we have when the Democrats are in the minority. In the majority, there's actually a lot more power we have. But we have to do what we can with what we can right now. And this is actually the best kind. You force a debate, by the way. You force the – you have to – you take up time on the schedule. It actually forces the conversation, the national conversation to focus on this. But Senator Murphy is not wrong. It's just that that's not an option that we have immediately.

1:14:22Jon Lovett:So Politico reported over the weekend that some Republicans in Congress are hoping to use the conflict as a way to pressure Democrats around the Department of Homeland Security, claiming that the military action in Iran increases threats and therefore it ought to increase pressure on Democrats to fund DHS. That's been held up because of what ICE has been doing. Are you buying that? Is there any truth to that argument? How do you respond to that?

1:14:47Tommy Vietor:When all the FBI agents that are now looking for immigrants at Home Depot go back to their desks, when HSI goes back to looking for money launderers and especially international drug cartel money launderers and potential terrorists go back to actually doing their jobs and actually doing money laundering instead of looking for women and children at bus stops. when they actually start deploying all these 45-day trainees to the border to help make sure that no terrorists are crossing over the border, then we could be serious about this. But right now, DHS has$175 billion, more money than the Marine Corps.

1:15:30Tommy Vietor:They have enough money. As a matter of fact, they have enough money they could be using a lot of these guys who are doing a lot of other things. For example, backfilling the ATF right now. The ATF right now doesn't have enough men even to do a lot of the background checks that you need. The guy that shot up, potentially the terrorists that shot up people in Austin, bought a weapon legally, by the way. If there was a fully staffed FBI ATF, they may have been able to flag that this guy was potentially dangerous. But where's ATF right now? Either they've been fired because of political reasons. And by the way, also a lot of FBI agents that specialize in terrorism have been fired.

1:16:02Tommy Vietor:Or they've all been put as provisional ICE agents. And instead of them doing the things they're really good at, like background checks, investigations, trying to track down bombs, weapons, things of that nature, they're chasing migrant workers through the fields and trying to hit the Stephen Miller quota. So these guys aren't serious, right? They're not serious about national security. If they were serious about it, then these people would all go back to the work where they're supposed to actually keep our country safe. They just want to actually put public pressure so they could get their way and they could get an extra$30 billion on top of the$175 billion they already have to go and do these mass deportations and hit the Miller quota they want every day.

1:16:43Jon Lovett:So I saw you endorsed Maine Senate candidate Graham Plattner this morning. Why, what'd you do to jump on the Plattner train?

1:16:52Tommy Vietor:There's a Plattner plane or something like that. Look, two reasons. Right now, we're in war, right? As a matter of fact, Graham and I actually were in Iraq at the same time. He was down closer to Fallujah. I was up closer to the Syrian border. We need veterans that actually understand that. Number two, Janet Mills can't win. It's just that simple. There's no way that we are going to get Janet Mills to actually win in a year when people want authenticity, want some level of populism. It's a change election. And to think that we're going to send a 80-year-old nominee versus, I don't even know how old Senator Collins is, the appropriations share, and that's going to have a good outcome, I think is fanciful.

1:17:41Tommy Vietor:And the elections is in two months right now. Sorry, early ballots drop in two months. we need to consolidate around Graham. Like Graham has lived real experience. He was a young Marine. He was dumb. He did dumb things and he has actually apologized for them. He's learned from that. Right now we have so many people that are expecting this perfect candidate and we end up looking for these perfect candidates that don't know how to connect with everyday voters and we figure out, oh my God, I can't believe we lost. Well, we need to win. Democrats can't just win in North Carolina, which I think we're gonna win.

1:18:13Tommy Vietor:We can't just defend in Georgia. we need to pick up seats or else we're in the minority. It doesn't help us if Susan Collins is a little more moderate. She still gives power to John Thune to have the power to appoint Supreme Court Justice, to have the power to actually do another reconciliation so it can super charge ICE. And so Graham's the only one that can win. That's it. It's very simple. And everyone else, you could have your excuses, everything else like that. There's only two candidates on the ballot right now. There's only one that could win and we need to win the seats. And that's the pathway we do it.

1:18:48Tommy Vietor:And the man has lived a real life. He's a lobster man. He's a working class man. He knows how to communicate. Not everyone's perfect. Welcome to politics, but we will get him there. And he certainly will be better than Susan Collins.

1:19:02Jon Lovett:So he's under fire today. He had done, and sorry to belabor the details, but I think they matter. He went on a YouTube channel, did a live stream with a guy. It's a pretty big channel. He mostly talks about guns, military culture, military life. He also does delve into some conspiracy theories, including anti-Semitic conspiracy theories around the killing of Charlie Kirk, for example, among others. He also is somebody that went on another channel that is virulently anti-Semitic. Okay. Plattner goes on the first channel and has an hour-long conversation, talks about the values of immigrants and his friends in the immigrant community in Maine.

1:19:41Jon Lovett:It's a completely fine conversation, represents his message. But people who are already suspicious of Plattner because of the tattoo, because some of those previous comments, as you mentioned, are saying, oh, this is just too much. There's too many signs here. There's a person that's comfortable in these anti-Semitic environments. At the same time, they exist. They exist. And he He goes and speaks on those platforms.

1:20:05Tommy Vietor:Let's back up. Who's gone on Joe Rogan's show? I don't have to mention names, but there's a lot of Democrats that have gone on Joe Rogan's show. Joe Rogan has said anti-Semitic, anti-Jewish conspiracy and tropes. But because there's been these very sophisticated Democratic politicians, no one has a problem with those guys going on there, right?

1:20:24Jon Lovett:Some people do, but yeah, I take your point, but I actually think some people do.

1:20:27Tommy Vietor:Some people do, but not to the outcry that's happening here, right? A working class man goes and has a conversation on a platform that is very similar to what Joe Rogan talks about, not necessarily guns and stuff like that. But everyone freaks out on this guy. Why? Because the establishment doesn't want him. I mean, this is very simple. The establishment does not want him. So they're going to make sure that he looks bad. No one actually talks about the fact that he got that tattoo as a young man and then re-enlisted twice. And every time you re-enlist, you have to go through a physical. When you go through a physical, the Marines and the army, which he went and joined later, they check for tattoos and they check it against a database of anti-Semitic and gang tattoos.

1:21:07Tommy Vietor:Never, ever was hailed there. Then he actually went and got a security, a very clear top security clearance to protect the ambassador of Afghanistan. Also, you have to get checked for that. So clearly, you know, him and his mates, when they were young and stupid Marines, like I was a young, stupid Marines, got a tattoo that looked like a cross and skull bones, which we have a lot of those in the Marine Corps, like pirates. But what happens is years later, when he finally gets into politics, someone like, you know, points it out. And what does he do? He gets rid of it. But now because he's running against the establishment, he's tainted, right?

1:21:40Tommy Vietor:Because he was a young Marine, young, dumb Marine. He wasn't perfect when he was young. Now that he's, you know, in his, you know, late 30s, early 40s, you know, it's always going to hold against him. But he's the type of person that actually understands how young, stupid people are and how people change. And he's the one that actually connects with not, you know, this governor who's 80 years old. But you don't hear about that. You don't hear about the fact that, like, for all these times he went through all these vets and he kept on passing the vet. Right. All you hear is just the fact that, oh, it's a it's an SS mark.

1:22:08Tommy Vietor:No, if you look at it, it looks like skull skull and crossbones. And, you know, if you're a Marine, you know, we get stupid tattoos. We get tattoos in different languages don't even make sense. And we get tattoos of things that look cool, especially when you're young, that young and dumb. And the man has actually made, you know, amends for it. But, you know, there was a, you know, there's already a movement. There's a movement of people that want to continue helping these elite people win, even though they can't win the election and hoping that it will, instead of looking at the fact that, you know, the U.S.

1:22:39Tommy Vietor:government basically said that there was nothing wrong with the tattoo for years. So why would this young man think there was anything wrong until finally politics pointed out to him? And good thing they pointed out to him. And what did he do? He got rid of it as soon as he could.

1:22:49Jon Lovett:Yeah, look, people want to be suspicious of Graham Plattner. They don't like these associations. I'll just say I watched the whole conversation and it was a great conversation where it was good to see a Democrat in that space being able to kind of have that conversation. And after he gets off the live stream, which nobody watched all these people telling Graham Plattner, nobody watched. After he gets off the live stream, he's on this sort of conservative libertarian pro-gun channel that does engage in conspiracy theories that I do not like, which is why I don't consume them, don't like them. He polled his audience and they liked him 90-10.

1:23:22Jon Lovett:They liked him 90-10. And so if you have a problem with him, fine. If you don't think you should be a senator, fine. But boy, I wish you had a better answer for what we do about not having people who can speak to these audiences.

1:23:33Tommy Vietor:Also, by the way, you can question. Like, you know, I'm not the kind of person like, oh, you shouldn't question this. Like, absolutely question, right? I think it's legitimate people. have some concerns right like why wouldn't you right but also don't let's not also like lie ourselves into this situation where somehow this this guy is some evil being because number one he's gonna win he's gonna win that primary number two once we realize you know the full scope of what people are talking about once people look at the old tattoo once people understand that the us government gave this guy very very very very high security clearance knowing that he had that tattoo and also assuming that it was also not anti-Semitic, it all kind of starts making sense.

1:24:11Tommy Vietor:Yes, maybe he was a stupid young man, but now he wants to serve his country and he's learned and he's grown. And guess what? The majority of Americans are not a bunch of student council presidents just being perfectly distilled people waiting to run for governor, president, Senate, whatever someday, right? People live real life.

1:24:30Jon Lovett:You're gonna get in trouble with some of your colleagues.

1:24:31Tommy Vietor:Some of your colleagues are student council presidents that have been running for president since they're five years old. I was a dorky studio concert president. So I'm one of those people too, right? But I'm saying in general, there's a problem in this country where we want authenticity, but we only want the authenticity that's not that authentic, right? We want someone that could cross over and talk to these Republicans and conservatives and bring in these young men, but we want to do it in a nice, clean, neat way. We want this perfect candidate to be able to bring all these people that aren't perfect into our coalition.

1:25:05Tommy Vietor:That doesn't exist. You have to accept a lot. You have to accept that some people are going to be at fault, that they've made mistakes, that they said stupid things. Have they grown? Have they learned from it? then that's what matters. But if you want that person that can figure out how to get those bros in, how to get that disaffected voter back, how to get that Republican to cross over, we have to have people that are authentic first, number two, and have some real lived experience to be able to go talk to that person and connect. Because if not, you're going to find ourselves in a situation where we run these cookie cutter candidates in these tough races.

1:25:41Tommy Vietor:I'm not saying you shouldn't, there's some definite races where you could have a cookie cutter candidate, the perfect candidate. but some of these races you're going to have to have someone that could actually reach across the way and actually touch somebody because that person has you know lived your life understands your struggles uh understands you've made mistakes and it's is is willing to accept you into this coalition provided that we all understand that we're here to make sure that democrats win that we have control of the agenda and that we're not going to have another you know two years potentially of donald trump in control of the senate and the house

1:26:14Jon Lovett:last question because you're on such a roll on these on these uh democratic primaries where are you in the texas senate democratic primary when this comes out people will be voting in texas have you weighed in on talarico versus crockett where's your head at i mean i i think they're both

1:26:28Tommy Vietor:great candidates i think they're both they both have a chance uh to win uh i'm going to you know help out whoever wants to to be helped uh come tuesday yeah tuesday uh and uh you know i'm going to be very excited. Texas is, you know, the Arizona of this year. I feel like what's happening in Texas, what happened in 2018 in Arizona, where we just had a huge surge and got people elected to office up and down the ticket. I think you're going to see that also in Texas. And look, you know, my endorsements are all over the place. If you want to do one through line is I'm helping people get elected that can make sure we win.

1:27:06Tommy Vietor:We need to have control of the House. We need to have control of the Senate. And sometimes that's going to be people that I think are on what people consider on the left, right, that are populist on the left. Some of it's going to be people that are kind of your middle of the road. Some of them may be a little on the conservative side. I don't understand. People don't see the world we live in right now. We're in a very dangerous situation. We need to make sure we have control. We need to take anybody into a coalition that can help us win control of the House and the Senate. And then once we actually get out of this craziness, then let's have a little purity battles, right?

1:27:37Tommy Vietor:But this guy is the guy that nearly killed a lot of us on January 6th. I was there on the House floor, right? This is the guy that just got us into a fucking war with Iran, right? This is the guy that is already taking ballot boxes and stuff out of Atlanta, Georgia. And we're here trying to have this purity battles when we should be looking to see who's going to help us win these elections and by big margins for us to actually reset the agenda, push the democratic agenda forward and and that will be you know in the end of the day if you have never noticed it's always ends up being a fairly progressive agenda and then hopefully in 2028 we could deliver that democratic president uh democratic house and a democratic senate but you don't get a democratic senate for that president if you don't win some seats by the way in 2026 because 2028 gets harder and then after it gets harder right so people need to understand that we need to win first.

1:28:32Tommy Vietor:And people, there's some candidates right now that just aren't going to make it through. Time is running out for them. And I want to win. I want to win so we can protect this country. We can protect them from Republicans. And you have to make some tough choices. And that's just how life is.

1:28:47Jon Lovett:Last question. I just want to end because this is obviously on Iran. You know, there's Democrats that have been saying this didn't go through Congress. There's Democrats who oppose a War of Powers vote at all, which I think is strange because even if you believe Iran, the Iranian regime was a terrible government, shouldn't Congress have authority? But do you think Democrats on the whole are doing enough talking about why preemptive wars are dangerous in and of themselves?

1:29:14Tommy Vietor:No, I don't think they are. I actually think we need to get off this process question. You know, I think voters are really smart. And, you know, I'm not saying that they won't understand this process question, but I think before they even get to the process question, they want to have a values conversation and they want to know like what do you what do you think about this right and you know maybe you know and i didn't pull but i knew exactly what i felt because of my horrible experience with the first iraq war um or second iraq war can't remember anymore but like that makes a difference like people right now want to see like strong leadership they want to see like oh you know what this guy knows what he's talking about or this gal knows what he's talking about they know that the war is bad for this country and then the process question kind of will take care of itself, right?

1:29:58Tommy Vietor:But we really need to show strong values when it comes to whether or not we're willing to commit our men and women to war, to potentially death. And not just for us, but also for Iranians or for other civilians in the world, whether it is Israelis in Israel or Jordanians or Saudis, you know, Saudi civilians that are all, we've all kind of exposed to this regional breakout, right? These are the things that we need to be considering before we get into these big process questions.

1:30:26Jon Lovett:Well, Senator Ruben Gallego, thanks for your time. Thanks for talking to us. And we'll talk to you again soon. Appreciate it. Adios.

1:30:37Unknown Senator:That's our show for today. Thanks to Senator Gallego for coming on. If you live in Texas, hope you get out and vote today. Last chance. Dan and I will be back with a new show on Friday. If you want to listen to Pod Save America ad-free and get access to exclusive podcasts, go to cricket.com slash friends to subscribe on Supercast, Substack, YouTube, or Apple Podcasts. Also, please consider leaving us a review. That helps boost this episode and everything we do here at Cricket. Pod Save America is a Cricket Media production. Our producer is Saul Rubin. Our associate producer is Farah Safari. Austin Fisher is our senior producer.

1:31:10Unknown Senator:Reed Cherlin is our executive editor. Adrian Hill is our head of news and politics. The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Jordan Cantor is our sound engineer, with audio support from Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis. Matt DeGroat is our head of production Naomi Sengel is our executive assistant Thanks to our digital team Elijah Cohn, Hayley Jones, Ben Hefcoat, Mia Kelman Carol Pellaviv, David Tolles and Ryan Young Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East