Trump Says War Is Over, Vows to Keep Fighting

12:03Tommy Vietor:one thing we've learned for sure is that we're all going to be paying a lot more for gas until who knows when the price of oil spiked to around$100 a barrel over that. Then the price of gas hit an average of$3.48 on Monday. Then by the end of the day, the price had dropped. The market rallied. Although right before we started recording, it went back over$90 a barrel again. So now it's climbing back up after it went back down. More volatility, higher prices expected as long as the war continues and who knows how long after. By the way, the war is also costing us, taxpayers, about a billion dollars a day.

12:39Tommy Vietor:Trump said higher gas prices are, quote, a very small price to pay for, quote, safety and peace. And if you disagree with him, you are, in his words, a fool. Wow. That's a good quote. I guess the White House just assumes the prices will come down when the war is over and Americans will forget this all by November. I don't know. What do you guys think?

13:01Jon Lovett:I don't know what they're thinking. I don't really understand how they think or make their decisions. A billion dollars a day is a lot of money. People have been pointing out that just over the course of the year, that's enough to ensure 20 million Americans, provide healthcare for 20 million Americans with enough leftover to buy Christine Ohm one sex plane per day. That's how much money we're spending. That's a lot. That's a lot of sex. Yeah, for sure. So, yeah, I just like I am sure they are hoping that this settles down and the oil prices come down and gas prices come down. And there's not a long political hangover to what they've done here.

13:43Jon Lovett:But they don't just need there to not be a problem. They have a problem they need to solve before this began, which is people don't believe they're focused on bringing down the cost of living. In fact, they've come to believe that Trump is doing the opposite of helping this with tariffs and now with this. And so they may not, like, I don't know what the long-term political ramifications of this conflict will be. Nobody does because we're not entirely in charge of when it ends. But at the very least, they made their huge midterm problem worse.

14:08Jon Favreau:Yeah, I think they probably managed to calm oil speculators and future sales and traders in the near term. But, like, nothing is solved in the long term, right? I mean, again, we killed the new supreme leaders, father, wife, mother, and son. He's probably pretty pissed off. We killed half the IRGC. We don't really know who's going to be in charge of the military. And so Iran has a say in this. And if they want to keep the Strait of Hormuz closed, they can do so. If they want to keep firing off weapons at the Saudis, they can do so. And ultimately, the producers in Iraq and Kuwait and other places, they're running out of places to store the oil.

14:40Jon Favreau:If they have to fully stop pumping from the wells, it can take a really long time to get the wells back pumping again. And sometimes the wells never return to their original form because they get stopped up with minerals and shit and lose pressure and whatever else. And so maybe he solved the problem, but we don't really know that.

14:58Tommy Vietor:You see the IRGC put out a statement saying that any country can now use the Strait of Hormuz as long as they kick out their American and Israeli ambassadors and a European. OK, guys. So that's happening. Sure. Also, I mean, the reason that prices are spiking because of this is like a fifth of the world's oil goes through the Strait of Hormuz.

15:24Jon Favreau:Through the Strait, but also the producers had to stop down. They had to like, the Rockies shut off 70 % of their production.

15:30Jon Lovett:Yeah, also, and all of this is like, these are not one-to-one. Like, it's not like the price of oil is not set by the exact amount coming in and out of the Strait of Hormuz. It's a prediction of what oil will cost. It is based on people's expectations of the availability, of the instability, of what the future might look like. And a world in which we're in an endless kind of quiet on-again, off-again conflict in the Middle East is not one in which people have confidence in the stability of the system, all of which drives prices not just for oil but for other things like fertilizer and other things up over time.

16:03Tommy Vietor:You know, fuel costs for companies transporting food. So food prices get hit. And as we have seen with the tariffs, these things take a while to fully work through the system. It's not just like the price of gas this week when you have supply shocks like that. There's one economist. It was quite, I think, a Times story that said, this administration is just a series of horrible supply shocks, meaning the tariffs, immigration, labor supply for immigration, and now oil. Just fucking up the economy. Good stuff. And we are getting, you know, it is March. The election is in November, but you start having economic effects that pile up on each other, and we still have inflation anyway.

16:43Tommy Vietor:People were struggling with higher prices before this. You throw this onto the whole pile, and it's – I don't know. They're betting on a lot. They're betting on a lot, or they just don't know what the fuck they're doing, or probably a little bit of both.

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20:13Tommy Vietor:Trump's war is already quite unpopular with most Americans and a portion of his base, including a range of high-profile right-wing media stars. Nick Fuentes and Alex Jones had a conversation where they called the war a, quote, utter and complete betrayal and said that MAGA is dead. Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly have been very critical. Even Laura Ingram has been urging the administration to address the strike on the Iranian girl's school. But the Republican, who apparently has Trump's ear on Iran, is one of the party's biggest warmongers, Lindsey Graham, who's been taking something of a victory lap in the press.

20:47Tommy Vietor:Graham bragged to the Wall Street Journal that he got briefings from Israeli intelligence to help him make the case for war to Trump and that he coached Netanyahu on how to persuade Trump to go to war. Over the weekend, Graham unleashed his war boner on Maria Bartiromo's show. Let's listen. Which is funny because not a billion dollars a day. Oil prices up 27 percent in a week. How are you going to answer?

21:12Jon Lovett:Best money ever spent. When this regime goes down, we're going to have a new Mideast. We're going to make a ton of money.

21:19Tommy Vietor:Israel and the United States, you just wait to see what comes in the next two weeks.

21:24Jon Favreau:The next two weeks meaning what?

21:27Tommy Vietor:We're going to blow the hell out of these people. Phrasing.

21:32Jon Lovett:And then we're going to win this war.

21:37Jon Lovett:He also at some point says Iran's down, Cuba's next. He had some kind of a hat on. He said he said that that that Trump is Reagan plus. We're going to march across the world.

21:49Tommy Vietor:Getting rid of all the bad guys.

21:51Jon Lovett:I'll get rid of all the bad guys. Unleash a glorious new future.

21:54Tommy Vietor:How does Donald Trump care more about what Lindsey Graham and Bibi Netanyahu tell him than all these MAGA influencers who he knows are closer to his voters?

22:06Jon Favreau:The way Lindsey Graham described his conversations with Trump are exactly what I thought they would be, which is it's an appeal to ego. You will be greater than Reagan. You will be Reagan plus. You will be whatever it is. And then the court is Reagan plus. Reagan plus, which is, I think, how you cook a steak. Yeah, it's Reagan, but you also get Ted Lassam. Medium rare plus. The coordination with the Israelis. And so I think, look, Trump cares about his base to an extent, but he also thinks they're stupid. and you always can go back to like, I could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and they would never abandon me part.

22:40Jon Favreau:And so I think what he cares most about right now is being a historic figure, building monuments to himself, even if it's politically unpopular, the ballroom, the Iran war, whatever else.

22:50Tommy Vietor:Yeah, he doesn't have to face the voters again. Yeah, he doesn't give a shit. All he wants to do is for the rest of his life, go to the Kennedy Center, the Trump-Kennedy Center when they rebuild it and with the fucking marble armrests and then have people be like, oh, Donald Trump, the greatest president in the history of the world who's made the world safe for freedom and peace. And even if only like his sycophants are saying that, that's good enough for him. And then he can feel good about himself.

23:13Jon Lovett:Yeah, I also think he's learned.

23:16Tommy Vietor:Yeah, because he doesn't have to face his voters anymore.

23:17Jon Lovett:Yeah, I think he's also learned from Soleimani. He learned from the previous Iran strikes. I think he learned from Venezuela that he can give the hawks what they want without pissing off the base too much as long as the conflicts end quickly and there aren't troops on the ground and there's not too much economic consequences why i think to tommy's point why he's out there today saying it's an excursion which by the way again is a despicable word to use to describe something which you know you know 175 kids were killed among many others among seven americans to describe it as an excursion like we're just sort of the the the the amount of glib and and un-american language coming from him as he describes this like aside he wants to get out of this because he thinks he can give the Graham people what they want without losing the people that he needs who don't want American misadventures around the world.

24:08Jon Lovett:Yeah, an excursion is when you go on a zip line at Club Med.

24:11Jon Favreau:It's not like

24:12Jon Lovett:Yeah, it's when you get on the tender to go to St. Croix from the cruise ship. That's called an excursion. That's right.

24:20Tommy Vietor:The White House propaganda machine has kicked into high gear over the last week. They've been pumping out war porn videos that cut together airstrike footage with clips from popular movies and violent video games. They're also getting help from the OG war propagandists at Fox, who dealt with the criticism Trump got over the weekend for wearing a baseball hat during the dignified transfer of fallen American soldiers, by simply showing old footage of Trump saluting different coffins with no hat on. The move was so obvious that it led to this rare apology from Fox.

24:51Jon Favreau:Before we move on, we want to acknowledge a mistake made earlier on our program. During our coverage of yesterday's dignified transfer, we inadvertently aired video from an older dignified transfer instead of the ceremony that took place yesterday. We deeply regret the error and extend our respect and condolences to the service members' families. I don't believe him. There's no way. How is it possible to make that mistake? You have to go find it. You have to go find the footage. The tape came in that day. Yeah, you have to go find the old footage. Like, it's so clearly, like, everyone was talking about him wearing the hat.

25:22Jon Lovett:And how embarrassing and wrong it was for him to be wearing a USA hat at such a somber place. Like, I both don't understand.

25:32Jon Favreau:I think they're lying, but I also don't understand how they think they could get away with that.

25:36Tommy Vietor:Yeah. You know what I mean? My take is I'm surprised that they apologized. Yeah, same. It's very unusual. Because I didn't even think, like, yeah, he's a jackass for wearing the hat. He's a jackass for a million other fucking things. That's, like, at the bottom of my list. But, like.

25:49Jon Lovett:The problem is he's the guy that would wear the hat, not that he wore the hat. The guy that wears the hat is the problem.

25:54Tommy Vietor:What do you make of the propaganda strategy so far? I think what enraged me more than the hat, these fucking White House videos that they're putting out, or they're just like, you know, like a Tom Cruise and Top Gun and all this other bullshit in the video games. And it's like, it's fucking war. What are you doing?

26:10Jon Favreau:I talked to Pat Ryan about this. He said, like, from a lot of his veteran buddies, this is one of the things he's heard about the most is how offensive and gross it is. Like, meme-ify or game-ify war. It's just wrong. I mean, I think it's interesting to me that big chunks of MAGA have genuinely moved on national security stuff. Like it's not just Tucker Carlson opposing the war because of Israel. It's like Megyn Kelly, as you mentioned. It's Daily Wire people. It's Charlie Kirk used to talk about his opposition to the war in Iran. And then there's the fringy types like Alex Jones and Nick Fuentes and stuff.

26:38Jon Favreau:But at Fox News, it is 2004 every single day. It is 100 % pure, uncut, pro-war propaganda. It's Fox and Friends. is like Brian Kilmeade this morning was essentially calling oil tankers who won't go through the Strait of Hormuz pussies. You catch that? Yeah. That was interesting. And there's Mark Levin, just like pure hardcore regime change guy. And so - Lindsey Graham going on Sean Hannity tonight,

27:01Tommy Vietor:of course, to keep up the fucking media tour.

27:03Jon Favreau:Why not? And so the White House is like trying to meme its way through the war. It's like SpongeBob, it's video games. I actually don't think it's working with the audience they need it to work with, which is these young men who are in that world. and like normally that's how you'd appeal to them, but they were like, this is gross, it's a war.

27:20Jon Lovett:Yeah, I would bet too that Fox News's audience being old looks more like those old kind of old school Republicans that would like this kind of chest thumping stuff as opposed to the younger generation that is actually more online and consuming people that are more isolationist. Yeah, the propaganda video, somebody said this about Quentin Tarantino once that always stuck with me, which is that he makes movies that glorify violence from the point of view of someone who's never experienced violence. And that's what you feel when you see these videos, when you try to turn it into a game. It's not a game, it's really serious.

27:53Jon Lovett:And it's why in previous administrations, you would never have anyone do anything like this. Because even if the people that are in charge of the media, the PR strategy, social media, what have you, haven't served themselves, they would at the very least have some sort of respect or humility on behalf of those who do because they would understand how high the stakes are. But that's not what you get with these people. Honestly, these videos, to me, To me, forget the hat, the videos, Pete Hegseth saying that the media are putting the deaths of Americans on the front page because they want to make Donald Trump look bad.

28:24Jon Lovett:To me, throughout all of this is for me the most despicable and revealing statement anyone has made because, hey, man, it's not all about you. It's not your Pentagon. It's not Donald Trump's Pentagon. It's not even about him.

28:36Tommy Vietor:It's like he's trying to protect Donald Trump of all people. It's not even about Pete Hegseth. Like you're fucking debasing yourself and dishonoring the memory of these Americans who gave their lives so that you can protect Donald Trump's fucking political reputation. What are you doing? Like Hexeth fought in wars. He had friends who died.

28:54Jon Favreau:The fact that he would say that to us is like, what happened to you?

28:57Tommy Vietor:Yeah. He's with Lindsey Graham. I'm like, why doesn't someone drop Lindsey Graham off in fucking Iran and he can go get the enriched uranium and bring it back. Or fucking Brian Kilmeade can jump on a ship and try to go through the straight of four movies.

29:09Jon Lovett:I don't understand why the people on these tankers aren't willing to die to keep the price accrued a little bit lower. Shame on them, the pussies. How dare you?

29:17Tommy Vietor:All right, let's talk about the Democratic response to this very dangerous and unpopular war. Chris Murphy's calling on Senate Dems to block everything they can until Senate Republicans agree to a vote authorizing Trump to wage war. Then there's the funding angle. The administration is expected to ask Congress for another$50 billion with a B to fund this war. And what's even more infuriating is that some Democrats are still open to supporting that request. Senator Chris Coons of Delaware said outright that he would support it, saying he wants more information from the White House, too. And presumably John Fetterman and some of the more centrist House members may say yes as well.

29:56Tommy Vietor:Even Hakeem Jeffries won't rule it out. He said on Meet the Press Sunday that Trump would have a, quote, difficult case to make, but that, quote, we'll cross that bridge when we get to it. Tommy, would you like to tee off on this one?

30:08Jon Favreau:Yeah, I just my message to Democrats is if you oppose the war in Iran, you have to oppose funding. And if you try to split the baby, you look like you either believe in nothing or you are too cowardly to vote your conscience. Because, first of all, the Pentagon's 2026 budget is nearly a trillion dollars. They don't need more money. They're good. They're good. Also, this is second, like this is not the Iraq war fights from 2004 to 2007, where you had Democrats who voted for the war, then trying to argue that they're going to vote against supplemental. Right. I can understand that was tough politics.

30:38Jon Favreau:It's also not a situation where you have, you know, a bunch of Marines at a Ford base in Iran on the ground who might not get an MRAP if we don't vote for this funding. This is we're talking about a military campaign built on lies with no clear strategy or objectives that Trump, as we just heard, could end like that. Right. And so if you vote to give more money to Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth to extend this war, I think you should have your fucking head examined. It's like you are an idiot. And it's also bad politics. Like Americans already don't support the war. There's a new poll today. 53 % opposed the war.

31:10Jon Favreau:74 % opposed sending ground troops into Iran. This was the number that really jumped out at me. 77 % of voters think it's very or somewhat likely there will be a terrorist attack on U.S. soil in response to the Iran war. Those numbers are not going to get better as this thing drags on. Oppose the war on the merits and vote against funding. Do not try to do both. You look ridiculous. Yeah.

31:33Jon Lovett:Yeah. If the president can start a war lawlessly without Congress, and then Congress feels obligated to fund it on the back end as if it had been approved, we don't really need a Congress after that. We could just shut the whole place down. Also, Coons said, well, I'm going to support the troops. You know, I have questions, but I'm going to support the troops. I can't think of a like it is not supporting the troops to embolden and enable Donald Trump and how he's running this military. I don't know how anybody who has just watched how Donald Trump just described this military campaign and can think it is supporting our troops to to fund it, to provide tacit approval for what he had done as if you had approved it in the first place.

32:17Jon Lovett:What about the next conflict and the one after that and the one after that? If we don't have a Congress that's willing to say, or at least on a Democratic side, because we don't know with how they may need Democratic votes to do this, that says Congress has the authority to declare war, that Congress is going to reassert that prerogative. If we don't have that, then what about the people killed in the next conflict? They're already talking about Cuba. There are other places Donald Trump would like to bomb. I'm not saying there aren't like there's no there are tradeoffs in any decision. I can all hear the arguments like, well, however it began, we have we have to fund the military.

32:52Jon Lovett:We have vulnerabilities elsewhere. It's hurting our interest elsewhere. There's no good outcome when Donald Trump is president. You can either do the hard thing now and try to rein Donald Trump in now where you can borrow against the future and push that problem down the line where it only gets worse and it only gets harder. It is so obvious to me that the right thing to do here is to say no more and to draw a line and to hold as many people to that line as possible.

33:18Tommy Vietor:It has nothing to do with the troops. No one thinks that voting against this funding bill is going to somehow lead to someone flying a plane over Tehran and then all of a sudden the fuel runs out. They run out of gas. Yeah, and so the plane crashes because the fuel ran out because no one supported the troops. That's what we're talking about. We're talking about$50 billion. Do you want to spend your tax dollars buying more bombs and more missiles that may hit another girl's school in Iran or, you know, be hit Iran and then use another retaliation against American troops? Or do you want to spend the money at home?

33:51Tommy Vietor:That's it. That's all. That's the only question. I don't know what other what are you thinking if you're a Democrat? It's crazy.

33:56Jon Favreau:I'm not going to run out of bullets. By the way, his claim on the Tomahawk missiles, the idea that the Iranians could have got a hold of one because we sell them to other countries. Is he suggesting the Iranians like stole a Tomahawk from I think the UK and the Australians are the only other countries that have them?

34:08Tommy Vietor:This is what Sean McCree, a reporter, asked him at the press conference. He's like, are you saying that they stole it? And he was like, I'm saying we're investigating it. We're investigating it. So that's all I'm saying.

34:18Jon Favreau:Dan Cain put up a map, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, that had a marking on it of U.S. airstrikes that included the town where this girl's school was hit. Like, there's no question. Clearly it was a U.S. It was a U.S.

34:30Tommy Vietor:munition.

34:31Jon Favreau:Unbelievable.

34:32Tommy Vietor:But then Trump was like, well, I'll accept whatever the report says. Which is good because you know that he's thinking to himself like, well, if it says that we hit it, then we hit it. Then I'm just going to say that's what happens in war. People die. Mistakes happen.

34:42Jon Lovett:Just even here that there is just we've kind of left reality behind. I remember when in Bosnia, the U.S. inadvertently had bombed a Chinese consulate or Chinese building in Belgrade. I believe three people died. It was a huge deal. It was a massive, massive scandal that went on for a long time. How did it happen? How did they make this mistake? Who was responsible? What were the repercussions? We're talking about a military conflict that was not debated in this country. The goals are unclear, where it seems as though the U.S. killed 175 people, most of whom were children. And the president is riffing about how maybe the Iranians did it to themselves based on nothing.

35:27Jon Lovett:The idea that anybody could, the only thing to do is to put a leash on Donald Trump. Any ways that Congress can put a leash on Donald Trump, whatever it may be, whatever the cost is, what we have to do. We're not getting through this without there being, like one way or another, America is going to have a lot of negative consequences for Donald Trump being president. The question is, do we want those to come from Donald Trump fighting wars abroad and his misadventors, or do we want it to come from the political fights we have to have domestically now to rein him in?

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37:31Tommy Vietor:Let's talk about Trump's war against people who live in this country, which continues full speed ahead, even though Kristi Noem and Corey Lewandowski got shit canned. The Wall Street Journal ran a must read investigation over the weekend about how the government has been assaulting and arresting American citizens for peacefully exercising their constitutional rights to free speech and assembly and then falsely smearing them as violent agitators and terrorists from the journal. Quote, of the 279 people accused by government officials on X of attacking federal officers in the past year, 181 were U.S.

38:04Tommy Vietor:citizens. Close to half were never charged with an assault. None have been convicted at trial. ICE also just arrested a couple days ago a Nashville journalist who had been reporting on ICE for a Spanish language news outlet. Estefany Rodriguez-Flores is married to an American citizen, has no criminal record, a work permit, and a pending green card application. But they grabbed her after she and her husband said goodbye to their daughter when she was on her way to school. So Noam, Lewandowski, Bovino are all gone. Minneapolis has faded from the headlines. It seems like ICE hasn't been as noisy about their raids and arrests.

38:41Tommy Vietor:But I worry that like nothing has really changed at all in terms of how they're carrying out mass deportations. Maybe they're a little quieter now. Maybe they're not doing as much, you know, deportation porn videos on from DHS now, but still happening. What do you guys think?

38:58Jon Favreau:Yeah, I mean, Christy Nome is gone. Greg Bovino was demoted. Is he back in California or something? I think so. Yeah. Still tweeting. The brutality is less on display, but I think in practice, that means maybe the tactics have changed, but the strategy hasn't. And the strategy is still being driven by Stephen Miller out of the White House. Trump's base still wants more deportations. They like the harsh policy. And I think like ultimately, like the lesson is fascism will always come for all of us. It's not just going to be the immigrants. It's always going to come for American citizens. And this is a good example of it, the story.

39:29Jon Lovett:Yeah, there's one there's one example in the story. This woman, Sydney Laurie Reed, she was recording outside of a jail and she was accused of assaulting an officer. uh she had caught it on video and her phone kept recording in her pocket after so there's a lot of evidence because of that it was just clear as day that this ridiculous charge nevertheless they went to three grand juries three grand juries to bring a felony charge that didn't work uh a felony assault charge then they went back at her with a reduced charge of a misdemeanor took that to trial and she was acquitted whether or not they believe they had any case it is clear they were using the process to torture this person for the audacity of filming them as they were transferring people out of this jail.

40:18Jon Lovett:And like, first of all, she pointed out that if she didn't have the video, she would 100 % be in jail herself. And because her phone was still recording, it has her kind of bravely kind of talking to the officer that grabbed her. And what the officer said is something like, people can't mind their own business. And she says, I mean, isn't that what makes America great? And he responds, removal of criminals out of this country, that's what makes America great.

40:40Tommy Vietor:Yeah, I mean, you get this in the whole piece. It's like all these officers clearly have been trained to arrest anyone. You can arrest as many people as you want who even touch you. That's what Bovino says directly. Bovino says that to them. ICE agents telling protesters, you should have stayed home. You should have minded your own business. You should have all this. They are being trained to go after anyone who, forget about like, some people might imagine when you hear these stories, like protesters in the streets screaming at ICE agents, which they can do. But also this is just people holding up their phones, quietly recording.

41:15Tommy Vietor:And they're going, Alex Pretty. Alex Pretty. And they're tailing them and they're following them and they're threatening them. The ICE officers are these people. They're arresting them. They're trying to scare them. And you're right, like if we only know about the situations where DHS and ICE is blatantly lying because it's on video. and even with all that, even with just those situations, they're lying a ton of times. So imagine all the situations out there where there's no video, which just has to happen a lot.

41:42Jon Lovett:Well, even just the, where Bovino says like, if somebody touches you, like we're all now, I think we see videos all the time on our phone of like, sort of the algorithmically, like riling each other up of like two people arguing at a store or something and somebody will have the phone in somebody's face and then somebody will like swat at the phone or hit and they'll always say the same thing. You touched me. You touched me. That's assault. You touch me. That's assault. And like, that's just internet narc behavior. But like law enforcement, no, if somebody, like one example from the piece had somebody had been knocked over by an agent as the agent was going to lift him up.

42:15Jon Lovett:He like swatted his hand away. They try to get this guy. 71 year old man, 71 year old veteran. They try to get him for assault. That's not assault. That's just not what it is. And no, like if somebody touches you, like there's supposed to be some amount of like forbearance for understanding that like, no, no, we're not going to just grab anyone who brushes by you off the street. That's not what a government and a civil society does.

42:37Tommy Vietor:It's also pretty obvious that they grabbed that reporter, Stephanie, in Nashville, because she had been reporting on ICE and she'd been reporting on all their arrests. And they had been following her for some time, her and her husband. And the idea that the government would detain her family and lawyers say without a warrant, they're now making up the fact that there was a warrant, but detain someone, take them away with who has a work permit, who's in the process of getting a green card, who's married to a U.S. citizen. Just they did it because they can and because they're pissed and they're like, oh, well, this journalist who's writing shitty stories about us, at least she's technically not a citizen so we can go grab her.

43:14Jon Favreau:I remember how this all started. It was like people here on student visas getting arrested for writing op-eds in favor of Palestinian rights. This is a natural progression that should worry all of us.

43:25Tommy Vietor:Well, you know, Mark Wayne Mullen, who will be the next or who's been nominated to be the next DHS secretary, the hearing for him will be now be Thursday, the 18th week from this Thursday. And I just hope that Democrats come ready with like a couple points that they want to make and really hammer home and make this tough for him. And like, I think, you know, he's probably going to get enough votes, I'm sure, if all the Republicans join in, but make it difficult and use it as an opportunity to highlight the abuses that are very much still going on at DHS.

43:55Jon Lovett:Worth pointing out that the person that will chair that hearing is Rand Paul, who is no fan of Mullen, and Mullen is no fan of his. And Rand Paul has some genuine and sincere ideological beliefs. He actually made this point about the Iran war, that saying, this is a Congress without ambition. This is a Congress without a belief structure in defending legislative prerogatives. And I hope that he brings, because that applies here too, right? That the failure to hold the administration accountable for just lying through their teeth about assaults on civil liberties, that's why Congress exists too.

44:24Jon Favreau:Yeah, there's some suggestion that he's going to sail through because usually, you know, senators like other senators and confirm. Like he might be a good guy. I don't know. I don't care. Just please ask hard questions about the policy for God's sake and just push him on stuff. Like, you know, give like one minute speeches. Just don't use your whole time grandstanding. Ask tough questions. Pin them down. Get them to make commitments.

44:44Tommy Vietor:Like, let's do this. Yeah. Because they're gluttons for punishment, House Republicans held their annual retreat in Florida so they could listen to listen to Trump today. get some in-person advice from the man who's going to cost many of them their seats. Trump spoke today at a moment when Republicans are trailing Democrats in the generic ballot by five or six points. The party is desperate for anything they can point to that would convince voters they care about affordability concerns. They are reportedly considering another budget bill with some goodies in it, though Punchbowl says they have no idea what to include or how to pay for it.

45:16Tommy Vietor:Off to a good start. Trump's also making their lives even more difficult by promising he won't sign any bills until the Save America Act gets to his desk. Hammered that home today a couple different times, even though Senate Republicans just don't have the votes to pass it at all. What options do Republicans realistically have to get out of this hole?

45:36Jon Favreau:They could extend ACA subsidies and reduce healthcare prices and then tax the rich and figure out ways to provide services to poor people, the actual working class populism. I think they'll go for voter suppression. i i don't really think they have a lot of options we don't know what's going to happen but like they don't i think they have a lot of like proactive options besides trying to keep people

45:56Jon Lovett:from voting yeah trump trump said this to them where if uh if if they pass the save act we'll win that's the only like that's how we win we win by passing but that's not why we're doing it but if we pass the save act we'll win uh and if we don't i don't know i don't know what will happen yeah they really are um not sure what to do you you hear them also saying well we just got to figure out how to sell the big beautiful bill from last year better which is always the we've been there yeah you can't sell the bill from last year better you've already been sold biden era

46:21Tommy Vietor:concern and this well you don't you don't feel the difference in your own life that things are better well let a politician tell you that they are that'll do it in a couple months trump's gonna be like i'm the guy who didn't undo august it's a deep cut for the nerds in the audience the uh

46:37Jon Lovett:the other part of this is they don't just have the votes to do a lot of to do really much of anything because this is not a con the house freedom caucus is not going to spend money without pay-fors. That's really difficult. There's this idea that they're going to grab all the stuff they couldn't pass through the one big, beautiful bill and pass it now, but it got harder to pass things, not easier to pass things. They could try to do some kind of reconciliation thing. But again, I don't even think they have the votes to do that, especially when they're about to be asked to send$50 billion to the Iran project.

47:05Jon Lovett:And I actually think they have a lot of House Republicans that won't really want that either. So they really don't have a lot that they can do. Yeah, zero.

47:13Tommy Vietor:That's what they're going to get done, I think, this year. I think they will get absolutely nothing passed. Save America Act won't get passed. Thune, you know, last time we talked about this, I think they had been floating like a talking filibuster, making the Democrats talk the whole time and filibuster that way on the floor in order to like tire them down and get around the filibuster that way. Thune today was like, no, that's not going to work. I've studied it just like the Democrats studied it with the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. It just doesn't really make that much of a difference. It's not happening.

47:41Tommy Vietor:They're not passing the Save America Act. they're not going to get a reconciliation bill done because they barely have any majority in the house they have a bunch of right wingers who are not going to fucking vote for more spending and who are going to want a bunch of other shit themselves democrats aren't going to offer any votes to pass anything like I think these people are just going to fucking sit around and hope that you know daddy trump like does a bunch of eos and sends out tariff refunds or whatever I don't know what the fuck they think

48:08Jon Favreau:and he doesn't care about their political future he's a selfish prick He wants to make money off of crypto. He doesn't want to get impeached. Get praised and launch wars from his country club. And so sure, maybe he'll annex Cuba and that'll solve our economic problems. But I don't see anything going through Congress.

48:24Jon Lovett:Yeah, it's funny. The threat too, the threat felt hollow. It's the kind of threat he makes and gets himself out of it in two weeks. But the truth is, it's like, what are they going to pass without the threat? Nothing. They can't do anything. So it's like, oh, you're not going to pass any bills until I remove this threat? Okay, I've moved the threat. You're still not going to pass any fucking bills. Exactly.

48:41Tommy Vietor:It's a free threat. It is funny. Yeah, he doesn't, on one hand, he doesn't care at all about them individually and what happens to them, but he really doesn't want to lose the election because he doesn't want to get impeached. He doesn't like losing ever, but yeah. Most presidents wouldn't want to lose the midterms because they would want to pass more legislation. No. For him, I think it's all personal. He wants to abuse his power unchecked, which is why we got to win the House back. Also, a good time to bring up a very important new initiative at Vote Save America called Project 218. Who wants to talk about Project 218?

49:16Tommy Vietor:Very secret.

49:17Jon Lovett:Project 218. Not anymore. It is Vote Save America's campaign to win the House. We are asking everybody to sign up for Vote Save America and to get five friends, family members, colleagues, co-workers, enemies, whoever, to sign up for Vote Save America. In 2018, when we started Vote Save America, We were part of that effort to win the house and we flipped, it was like 40 seats. This is our chance to win the house again. And so we need to get to 218 seats in the house. We can do it if everybody gets involved. We won't spam you. We won't send you endless texts. This is a way to figure out how to be the most effective going into these midterms from a team that's gonna only tell you the best ways to get involved, to donate, to volunteer, to use your time wisely and to get your friends to do the same.

50:08Tommy Vietor:sign up sign up at go to votesaveamerica.com check it out and and you know get your friends to sign up too because it's March you know it's November's gonna be here before you know it and you could lose a lot the Democrats on the ground in all these races could use a lot of help and they are expanding the map but you know these things are still gonna be close and so it's gonna be really important plus you don't know

50:29Jon Lovett:how many of the old ones are gonna die between now and then

50:32Tommy Vietor:exactly and you want to get ahead of that you want to get ahead of that for sure yeah alright All right. Last thing before we get to Tommy's interview with Congressman Pat Ryan. Don Jr. and Eric Trump continue to find ways to cash in on their dad's presidency. The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday that the brothers are backing a new venture that's planning to sell drones to the Pentagon, which, because of their father, can no longer buy any foreign-made drones. And so we're going to need more American drones. So into the void step Don and Eric. The specifics are that a company called Power Us that buys smaller drone makers is merging with a golf course company controlled by the Trumps.

51:11Tommy Vietor:I read the whole piece. I still don't know why that is. The whole thing's fucking baffling.

51:15Jon Favreau:It's basically a SPAC. Basically, you merge with a public listed company so that you're on the exchanges and you can raise capital by selling shares without going through the formal process. It's like a SPAC where you didn't raise money to purchase stuff with the SPAC. It's crazy. It's stupid.

51:30Tommy Vietor:Cool. Cool. Yeah. Well, in response to the journal story, Eric Trump tweeted, quote, I happen to believe drones will be a much better investment than companies that still print newspapers. Well, sure. I mean, he's correct. It's not going to community note that, but still. It didn't take Nostradamus to figure that one out.

51:45Jon Favreau:Yeah.

51:45Jon Lovett:It's also like, oh, wow. A lot of bluster from a guy. How did you first make your money, my man? Where did the money come from? Where did you get that first million from, you think? Like, oh, yeah, you think the newspaper business isn't great? Yeah, nobody thinks the newspaper business is great. You think you're the Warren Buffett of your family? I don't think so. I don't think so.

52:03Tommy Vietor:Unbelievable. It's also just direct. I mean, like, they're able to do this because their father made a decision. No, no, no, no.

52:10Jon Favreau:Hey, hey, what kind of thing to say? December of last year, the U.S. government bans these Chinese-made drones. That creates a financial opportunity. Then another one emerges with this war, and these patriots stepped into the void, implemented an almost SPAC with a golf course holding company, and here we are. And then also last year, the Pentagon gave a$620 million loan to a startup that Don Jr.'s VC firm had just invested in. And the loan was more than twice the entire company's valuation. So these lucky things keep happening and we should just be happy. Hey, guys.

52:45Tommy Vietor:You think the Pentagon's excited to buy the quality drones made by Power Us?

52:52Jon Favreau:Isn't it like in West Doral or something? It's a brand new company right where the Trumps live.

52:58Jon Lovett:Yeah, I was about to say, hey guys, listen, if we just dropped all those golf clubs over Tehran, what the fuck are we dropping on Mar-a-Lago? I think we screwed up, guys. I think our golf drones and our war drones got fucked up. I don't know what you're talking about either. I like it. I like the idea that you got a drone that's bringing your clubs around like a caddy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Except in this case, the three series is like a caddy, caddy drone.

53:24Tommy Vietor:Also, the plan is to white label the drone technology from Ukraine to make these drones.

53:30Jon Favreau:Well, so actually this morning for Pod Save the World on Wednesday, I talked to a technology AI and drone expert who used to work in the Biden administration about this. So we're running out of these interceptor missiles that cost millions of dollars to pop, like the Patriot missiles and shit. And so what the Ukrainians have done, because we won't give them any more interceptor missiles, is invent drone technology that can basically hunt and kill the Shahid drones that the Iranians and the Russians are using. Because the Iranians get the Russians the Shahid drones and they've been firing them at Ukraine.

53:59Jon Favreau:So basically now the Ukrainians are providing us this technology to take out drones, Iranian drones, in a much cheaper or at least more cost effective way.

54:08Tommy Vietor:And what a boon it will be for the Trump boys.

54:11Jon Favreau:Yeah, in the circle of life. The poor Ukrainians. well we hang their ukrainians out to dry we won't give them any more like the pack threes and the patriots so dark this technology and now we're getting it back from them and the kids trump

54:22Jon Lovett:kids profit there's no amount of money that can fix them and that's i think that's a reason to be

54:30Tommy Vietor:uh i don't know i don't think they want to be fixed i know that's part of the problem i'm

54:33Jon Favreau:probably pretty happy that's part of the problem intergenerational problem the youngest ones at era one as we speak that's right good times good times oh and also guys if anyone did not

54:46Tommy Vietor:see the melania documentary in theaters streaming which i realize everyone probably did but in case you didn't streaming on hulu i'm gonna watch it i think it was always on was it on amazon oh sorry prime are they yeah amazon amazon i mean it would actually be really funny just to give it the wrong plug because we don't like it. Streaming now on Netflix. The Melania doc. Anyway, anyway, when we come back, Tommy's interview with New York Congressman Pat Ryan.

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56:42Jon Favreau:My guest today represents New York's 18th congressional district. He served two combat tours in Iraq and is a graduate of West Point. Congressman Pat Ryan, welcome to Pod Save America. Thank you for having me. So as we speak, it's about 3 o 'clock on Monday Pacific time. Trump is given this rambling press conference. It sort of sounds like he's trying to suggest that he's going to wrap up the war with Iran. We don't really know. As you and I were just talking, you mentioned that the Department of War had literally just tweeted a graphic that they have only just begun. So there's not a lot of clarity.

57:12Jon Favreau:So we'll try to just talk around that. Let's start with some basics. I know you opposed Trump's war with Iran. Can you just tell listeners why? from when we knew this was coming, when he stood with Lindsey Graham and had a hat, this was two months ago, that said, make Iran great again, which is insane in and of itself. We knew, I knew where this was going. I've seen this movie before. And I thought it was really important right out of the gate to be clear. Of course, there are process, major process problems in violating the constitution, but that is not the main argument. The main argument that this was a bad decision for the safety and security of the American people, the region, our allies, and the world.

57:53Jon Favreau:And I think it's critical at a moment like this that everybody be saying that. Certainly those who have experienced shitty foreign policy over the last few decades from a bunch of chicken hawks who have no clue what this is about are ready to send our best and brightest young working class Americans from across the country while they've dodged the draft multiple times and their kids have no skin in the game. And I'm just sick of it. So I think it's important that we call that out loud and strong and continue to do it. Yeah. And I'm grateful that you are not focusing on the kind of process points and they should have briefed us this and that it's like, no, this is a bad idea for national security reasons, period paragraph.

58:35Jon Favreau:The public case for the war has been all over the place and incoherent. You know, it's like one day, you know, it's the chairman Kane is like, we're eliminating their ability to project power. in the region. Rubio is saying, oh, it's about to take up the ballistic missiles, the nukes, the Navy. Then Trump will talk about regime change. So there's kind of like all over the place. Are you guys getting more detail or clarity in a classified setting or behind the scenes setting, like direct communications with the Pentagon? Well, we got nothing beforehand, which is just, again, a violation of the constitution and stupid.

59:06Jon Favreau:I mean, they're actually just smart people that would ask hard questions that would make you come up with a better plan if you were to do this. Not that I think we should have. Since we've gotten several, I've been in several classified briefings, one for the committee I'm on, which is armed services, which was much deeper anyway, relatively, and then a whole of Congress one, which was a joke. And they ran out the clock on us rather than giving us a chance to ask the hard questions on behalf of the American people. So we're getting a little bit more, but I mean, several of my fellow veteran colleagues and I walked out of this Classified Armed Services Committee briefing, which was two hours last week, and said we were just blown away at the lack of any understanding of, like, yes, tactical success.

59:53Jon Favreau:We are destroying targets. Our military is exceptional at executing tactical and operational plans, but no ability to link that to any strategic or political aims. And this is where we've seen the president all over the place. Like the first night at 3 a.m., it's regime change. Then it's not. Then it's, well, maybe we just want another Venezuela and we're going to replace one horrible dictator with another, which is what happened. But then he's saying, no, actually, we want to retake the Straits of Hormuz and I'll choose who the next leader is going to be. But also I killed all the choices. I mean, it's just such a mess.

1:00:30Jon Favreau:And it's so important to maintain focus on the fact that while that is all playing out, we're seeing it. It's our, our kids, like it's, it's our troops that are over there. We've now lost seven young Americans, not in Iran, but in what is a war zone. They are boots on ground in, in this case in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. And like the American people need to understand we're already boots on ground because of the way this war has escalated. And it's tragic. Yes, I totally agree. I mean, there's a lot of Americans, both members of the military and also tourists or business people who are stuck in a theater of war unwittingly and got no warning.

1:01:11Jon Favreau:And apparently the State Department was offering them basically no help getting out. So just a horrendous execution all around. So again, we don't really know what the Trump policy is. Maybe he's going to wrap up the war, maybe not. One challenge of that is the Israelis may have a say in this matter. The Iranians will certainly have a say in this matter. There was some, until today, Trump was refusing to rule out putting boots on the ground in Iran. And there was a report over the weekend that made me nearly lose my mind where the Trump administration said they didn't view a commando raid to secure Iran's nuclear material in Iran as, quote unquote, boots on the ground or an invasion.

1:01:49Jon Favreau:I was hoping we could just like unpack that for a minute because we're talking about a mission to get, I think, 900 pounds of nuclear material out of Iran. Some of it is reportedly buried deep under rubble because we bombed it. That material would have to be secured in these secure containers and then shipped out hundreds of miles. What's your sense of what a US military plan to execute a mission like that would look like? And how is that not an invasion or boots on the ground? Why are we torturing the English language? Where's this coming from? Well, I think it's obviously just politics and it's just straight up lies at that point.

1:02:27Jon Favreau:I mean, it's just trying to deceive the American people. This would be an incredibly complex, very high risk operation, which I imagine our special operations have been training for these kinds of contingencies, both in Iran and other places. But it would require like multiple layers of likely taking some sort of airfield or like forward operating location of some sort and staging location deep into Iran. uh, Iran, it would require, um, still great risk of their air defenses and other, uh, they still retain significant, both sort of conventional think missiles and, and weapons and, and unconventional ability to strike their drones and other things like that.

1:03:13Um, and I think this is

1:03:15Jon Favreau:where Trump, like in a lot of ways took the wrong lessons from Venezuela, where that was an incredibly dangerous mission. And we almost lost an entire aircraft. And if those exceptional special operations pilots from the 160th hadn't pulled off a miracle, and rightly one of them was given the Congressional Medal of Honor for it, that would have been really, really bad and likely deadly. And so the risk of something like you're talking about here to get out highly enriched or in them would be orders, like an order of magnitude more dangerous than that. And that is just, I think, an unwise risk for us to take, especially when we don't know the locations, to your point, of where these sites are.

1:04:00Jon Favreau:And just worth saying, and I know you know this, we used to know where all this material was because we actually had an inspections regime under an agreement. And when Trump ripped that up, it's actually now harder to track where this material is. And in a week to two weeks, they have enough highly enriched uranium to make up to 11 than nuclear weapons the size of what we dropped in World War II in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Yeah, you're referencing these reports. I mean, actually, Trump talked about the State of the Union that one of the lead helicopter pilots on the Venezuelan operation, I think, got shot in the lake four times.

1:04:34Jon Favreau:And this guy still somehow managed to land the aircraft, take back off again, just like extraordinary heroism. And you're right, he was rightly rewarded the Medal of Honor. But if that goes differently, a lot of people are dead. Yeah, on this mission, I mean, we know where the three nuclear sites are. We don't know if anything's been removed from those sites. Like, I would imagine that, you know, there were some reports over the weekend that the 82nd Airborne was told to be on standby. That is a force that you might send in to secure an airport or runway nearby. So I think we're like, more likely than not talking about a mission that would involve hundreds of U.S.

1:05:16Jon Favreau:service members who are on the ground in Iran for an extended period of time to get all this stuff out of the ground to the rubble versus a short commando raid like we saw in Venezuela, which was incredibly risky in its own right. So yeah, it's all quite complicated. And I think it's important to not just look back at the most recent conflicts. Of course, this echoes Iraq and Afghanistan to a certain significant degree. But remember, Vietnam started with this slow trickle of, oh, this is just a small initial mission and we're going to do advisers. And then, oh, well, we need to take one additional escalatory step.

1:05:52And then each time, more and more Americans sent.

1:05:54Jon Favreau:Of course, we know how that went. And so Iraq started differently with a huge initial amount of troops. but regardless it's so easy to get sucked into this escalatory ladder and that's what i think we're seeing happening here and trump just does not know he is so far out of his depths he does not know how to put this back in a box and and the people who pay for that are our troops but also all of us i mean oil prices from 70 a barrel to over 100 a barrel i think today's press conferences are clearly him freaking out as he understands that the American people will not tolerate skyrocketing gas prices for a war that nobody wants.

1:06:37Jon Favreau:Yeah, he clearly wanted to say something to a reporter before the stock market closed to try to chill everybody out, prevent there being a mass sell-off. But who knows what this is going to look like in 24 hours. And one thing that could happen if the war continues is Congress could face a request from the Trump administration for more money for the war in Iran. Politico speculated that it could be around$50 billion, but we don't really know. That is on top of the Pentagon's nearly$1 trillion budget for 2026. So they got a lot of money. CNN's Jake Tapper asked Senator Chris Murphy about this request over the weekend.

1:07:12Jon Favreau:Here is a part of their exchange. Let's watch.

1:07:14Tommy Vietor:The administration is reportedly weighing Congress to approve an additional$50 billion in funding for these operations. You have said you're a hell no, not just a no, on funding the war. We have seen this movie before. We know that that vote will be cast as, especially if you run for higher office, you voting against the troops. Oh, come on. I mean, the American people don't want this war. They don't want this war. They have seen what happens when American troops go into places like Iraq, places like Afghanistan. Ultimately, we get a lot of people killed. We waste a lot of dollars. The one thing the American people are clear about is that they do not want the United States dragged into another long term war in the Middle East.

1:07:57Tommy Vietor:If you support the troops, then you should be voting against funding this war so that we get our troops out of harm's way. Virtually nothing good happened from sending thousands of Americans to die inside Iraq in the 2000s. And if we don't learn that lesson, then shame on every single one of us.

1:08:14Jon Favreau:So, you know, look, I'm a fan of Jake Tapper's. He's a friend of mine. I actually don't think we've seen this movie before at all. I mean, how would you vote on a supplemental funding bill? And what is your response to this suggestion that this is like Iraq in 2004 and that a no vote would be called not supporting the troops? I agree. Absolutely. Hell no on a vote for whatever the amount is. And we've already, by the way, spent over a billion dollars a day up to this point, which could have gone towards people's health care, lowering housing costs, lowering food and grocery costs. And instead, we're doing more bombing around the world, which no American wants.

1:08:52Jon Favreau:I agree with what Senator Murphy said. This is where I get just so pissed off, where that is such a bad faith question, frankly, to be very candid. and having been on the receiving end of those kinds of back and forth here in DC from a bunch of people who were in air conditioned rooms while we were getting shot at and sweating our asses off and burying our friends like that's exactly backwards 180 degrees wrong the way to think about it is as I think Senator Merce said like asking the hard questions is the most patriotic thing to do because like those troops trust us. They sign up and they raise their hand because they trust us, like me as a member of Congress and all of us elected officials.

1:09:42Jon Favreau:And the way to honor that trust is to ask the hard questions, to push, to make the military be accountable, to make the president certainly be accountable. And how could you after the last week, how could any American in good faith say, yeah, it seems like we have a coherent plan and we should just keep going with this. Like that is crazy. And to portray it as disrespectful of our troops is, is one of the most cynical, cowardly political things in a city, in a place full of a lot of that stuff. Yeah. I mean, like we also talked about this in the main show, but like, I just hope Democrats listening realize that we are not talking about 2004 to 2007.

1:10:21Jon Favreau:Like Democrats are not voting against funding for a war. They may have voted to authorize. They are not voting against funding for a war where, you know, there's thousands of U.S. service members sitting in bases in theater, you know, in Iran who are wondering if they're going to MRAP or not, right? Like the, we are, this war could end tomorrow. We know this because Donald Trump just suggested as much. And I think the way you support the troops is make sure that we don't prolong it. And also the political context is entirely different. I mean, there was just a new poll that came out. 53 % of voters oppose the war, only 40 % support.

1:10:56Jon Favreau:74 % oppose sending ground troops into Iran. 77 % of people asked in the survey think it's very or somewhat likely that there will be a terrorist attack on U.S. soil in response to the Iran war. It seems like the American people writ large think this war is a bad idea and are very worried that it is going to harm them down the road if we continue it. And the American people are smart. They pay attention. They've been paying attention for the last few decades, while lunatics like Lindsey Graham keep beating the war drums and and either bringing Trump along or lying to him or whatever the combination is.

1:11:36Jon Favreau:And they're smarter than that. And, you know, talking to my constituents, they feel exactly as you said. You know, I do think people always want to honor the sacrifice of those that are serving, especially those that we've lost. And I've said multiple times this last week, I've been very loud and vocal much more than I normally am, and said, like, I think about my friends that I lost, some of whom were killed by Iranian weapons. And I think the best way to honor them is to not send another generation of young, brave Americans to another open-ended, ill-defined regime change war in the Middle East.

1:12:14Jon Favreau:And I do think your point is super correct about, Like, there's a lot of rat comparisons, but this not providing any additional funding here would not pose that immediate danger in any way because the DoD has more than enough funds from the$150 billion supplemental that they jammed through as well, if needed. Again, I don't think we should continue this another day, though. Yeah. I'm glad. First of all, everyone should be grateful to you and everyone you serve with your service. I'm sorry that you've been thinking about this horrible stories of the people you've lost. And I know that from my time and experience working in the NSC, like that a lot of veterans that I had the chance to work with and be friends with who are veterans of the war in Iraq really, really, really hated Iran because the Iranians would provide these weapons to these Shia militias in Iraq called EFPs that were incredibly deadly.

1:13:13Jon Favreau:They killed a lot of U.S. service members and were able to take out American armor. So I know this is like it's complicated. Right. And there's probably like there's no no one's crying for the supreme leader or, you know, or the downfall of the regime. But at the same time, I also would imagine that a lot of those same veterans are like sitting head in hands being like, didn't we learn a lesson about the wisdom of regime change wars in the Middle East and how stupid they are and like how fraught this all seems. And I'm just wondering what you're hearing from veterans and family members and friends who are like kind of dealing with those complicated emotions and feelings in this moment.

1:13:47Jon Favreau:Yeah, you put it exactly right. I actually had a town hall last night and an Iraq war veteran who had actually been fired by the Trump administration. He worked at the VA, came home, decided to serve the country again, got fired. And it was a really emotional moment at this town hall where I had shared how I was feeling. He shared how heavy this was hitting for him. And, you know, he basically said, like, between getting fired this year while trying to help his fellow veterans from a prior war and then seeing us going to war again, that like it really. That he had had some really dark moments in this last week, and I've heard that from a lot of friends, and it's just.

1:14:32Jon Favreau:It's not necessary. We didn't need to be in this position. and to see Trump like at his fancy beach club throughout all this, by the way, is just like such a split screen. And I think the American people see that at this point and they know he's just full of shit and he's about himself and he will leave anybody hanging out to try American soldiers in this case and the Iranian people. I mean, like we just replaced one dictator with a younger, more extreme one. Is that what we're, is that what we're doing? Yeah. With a guy's son, a more extreme version of himself. Yeah. And like in hearing you talk about this and the thoughtfulness and the like seriousness with which you take these questions makes me think all over again about like the messaging coming out of the White House.

1:15:15Jon Favreau:It's the Pentagon and the White House. They're releasing videos that are like airstrikes that are literally cut into scenes from movies or like clips with video games like Call of Duty. And it seems like they're trying to like like, memify war, like, make it seem cool or fun. And I'm just wondering what your reaction to that has been and whether you think, like, that is something that veterans appreciate or want to see. No, in fact, actually, a lot of my very conservative and Trump-supporting friends, veterans, have specifically said that that was the thing that most infuriated them, was seeing Peg Seth, who's such a joke, and Trump and others, like, try to make this out like a video game.

1:16:01Jon Favreau:And several have actually remarked about Trump wearing the cap at the dignified transfer, which I agree was just incredibly, incredibly wrong and disrespectful to those that we lost. And those are the things that veterans notice. Like, we appreciate someone that you know like cares about the country and says he wants to protect folks and try to give them the benefit of the doubt but when they straight up lie and then they try to like make light of it or um do things like this it it just further roads trust and and i do think it's worth saying like the bush administration tried to do the same things with like 20 different technology 20 years ago, but they tried to kind of like release these tough guy macho on the surface, performative things, just like Hags S daily press conferences have become.

1:16:55Jon Favreau:And it's so disrespectful and people see through it. Yeah, it is. It is embarrassing. It really is just like, what are we doing here? Congressman Ryan, thank you so much for doing the show. Thank you for your service and trying to give Democrats in Congress some backbone on this funding question. And I hope we don't get there. But my God, this feels black and white to me. And it's just glad to get a sanity check from you on this. I really appreciate it. Everybody should vote against the supplemental. And just to be clear, it was pathetic that it was four Democrats that stopped the War Powers Resolution from passing.

1:17:30Jon Favreau:And I'm not afraid to say that. I think I've heard that from a bunch of folks. And we need to say that. and voting to send money would be just a further mistake. Agreed. Insult to injury. Well, thank you again. Thank you.

1:17:51Tommy Vietor:That's our show for today. Thanks to Pat Ryan for coming on. Dan and I will be back with a new show on Friday.

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