BREAKING: Trump delays Iran deadline

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0:34New AirPods Pro and up to$250 bonus daily cash back? Now that's music to my ears. Subject to credit approval. Limitations and spend requirements apply. Apple Card is issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA Salt Lake City Branch. Terms and more at apple.co slash AirPods. Pods. Welcome to The Beat, everyone. I'm Ari Melbert. As we come on the air, we are two hours out from President Trump's asserted deadline to reach some kind of Iran deal or get back to status quo or an energy baseline that the U.S. can live with as he's demanded they reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Now, that part you may have heard about, and that part might sound like normal times.

1:16But I just have to tell you, as we deal with this and report the facts in the news, there is nothing normal or potentially even lawful about the way the president is carrying this out. He has threatened apocalyptic measures. He has talked about actions that if the U.S. were to take them would clearly be war crimes against the civilian population. And these are assertions that made by any major power, let alone the United States, would expect to shock the conscience of the world. And even though people in the United States sometimes say, well, you can't give him too much attention or you tune it out or is he serious this time?

1:57Nobody really has that luxury in the Middle East. This is a war. Life and death. The bombings continue. There have been great losses of life. And we have the president issuing threats, saying a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. Then in Trumpian fashion, this post says that he doesn't want that to happen. And then he says, but it probably will. This even by the serious standards of war, where people are killed, where countries take lethal actions against opponents, against their enemies, against the military structure, even by these standards, this is an ultimatum that has drawn condemnation at home and abroad And really, you have to keep in mind reality and where the lines are, even if Trump wishes they weren't.

2:50Our strongest allies shaken by not only this threat, but what looks like erratic behavior by President Trump. Experts warn that such actions are war crimes and that even the ongoing threat against civilian population violates laws of war. Secretary of State Rubio peppered with questions about this today. All right, thank you. The U.S. administration must be more of a policy. The U.S. administration must be more of a policy. As for how countries operate and prosecute war, I will just say before I show you the receipts, so everyone understands what we're talking about, war crimes are not a matter of opinion in our day and age, but the world went through two world wars.

3:42And after the Second World War, after the horrors that came out of Europe and the great loss of life, there was a set of legal and international agreements made. And while we can all think of examples where they are violated, even in U.S. history, when you talk about My Lai Massacre and other such problems, we have not had in the modern era any president since that time publicly say that they back war crimes or they want to send the U.S. and our very significant military powers out to commit them. So keep that in mind. Here's what the Geneva Convention says. Acts or threats of violence, for the primary purpose of which is to spread terror among the civilian population, are prohibited.

4:26Remember the years of talking about the U.S. fighting a war on terror? One of the main objections that was a true and valid criticism of groups like al-Qaeda and ISIS is that they did not follow the modern Western rules and laws of war, that they deliberately targets civilians. We have a war manual, which all military personnel are sworn to follow, regardless of who is president or what they post online. And it also limits following unlawful orders or violations flatly of the Geneva Convention. Democrats have been obviously condemning Trump's Iran approach. He wants to erase a civilization and punish the entire population of Iran.

5:09He has not said, I'm going to hit their power plants because that is what enables their missile capability. He has, as some sort of like homicidal psychopath, just talked about all that he wants to blow up and kill. This is where we are. And the president was elected to a lawful second term. We are not even at the halfway point yet of that term. For people who think we can just sit this all out, or not have accountability, or not decide as a country through our democracy whether we support or oppose this war, or support the escalation of this war, or a ground war, or a war where the president asks our brave men and women in uniform to go out and commit war crimes if he is serious about that which he has posted, we're going to have to deal with this.

5:57There is no looking away right now. There are lawmakers on the Hill, mostly Democrats, who say if ever there were a time to call the House back into session and deal with it, It is now the president has set this ultimatum tonight. They should vote to end what some call this reckless war of choice in the Middle East. This is a Democrat statement before Trump plunges the country into World War Three. Now, you can always pick your hyperbole on either side. There are a lot of steps between this and an actual world war. And there are many off ramps, as we have seen with Donald Trump before. But those Democrats there are trying to wake people up to the seriousness of this.

6:35and perhaps wake up their colleagues who have given this president a blank check. And the question after starting a war that has made the energy crisis we're living through, has made the energy availability of the United States worse, starting a war that is escalating now as we hear about operations inside Iran to, of course, rescue, but perhaps to escalate soldiers being brought into the region. Now the talk of these apocalyptic attacks. The question is, are we going to have the overdue, delayed debate on whether the country signs on to this war? There are more cracks within the Republican Party.

7:10While some have clearly defended this and said, look, Trump is going to do what he's going to do, or it's only an air war. Others say even now, not even just the Iran policy, which, as I mentioned, is already vague, you know, very unpopular, over 60 percent against the U.S., etc. But just on this issue tonight and these threats, it's too much for some Republicans. The president has to follow through with his threats and also we need to finish it off. I don't support making a whole civilization die. President Trump is trying to actually turn the temperature down. I am hoping and praying that President Trump is this really is bluster.

7:49I do not want to see us start blowing up civilian infrastructure. I support what the president is doing. We just need to press forward because, look, Iran is like a cancer. And sometimes the cure to cancer hurts, but the cancer has to be eliminated. And that cancer is Iran.

8:13That's the best the defenders can do, likening an entire population to a disease or a cancer. It's not internally consistent. if you have tracked the so-called hawks, people on the conservative side of the Iran question, most of them have been saying that the people want something different than this extreme leadership. That's why we heard talk about regime change and hope for some sort of uprising, which now doesn't look very likely. But we cannot dismiss an entire public, even if their government has been, of course, arrayed against us and supported terror and all the bad things you've heard and we've reported about the Iranian government.

8:48We cannot dismiss an entire population as a cancer. We cannot dehumanize people. And as our president of this country stands on the world stage tonight and threatens to do exactly that, to wipe out the civilian population, to target them deliberately in what would be a Geneva Convention violation of war crime, we have to keep in mind what our values are as a country, especially during a war which has no clear plan or outcome at this hour. I want to bring in Tom Nichols from The Atlantic, who's a professor emeritus of national security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College, where he taught for 25 years.

9:26Your view first on the validity and the risk of the president's threats tonight. On whether he'll actually follow through, who knows? I think the problem is that the president, like the rest of us, he's gotten used to being able to say anything he wants and not have it taken that seriously and to have people defend him and kind of explain it away as just the way he talks. But the fact of the matter, he is the president of the United States. His statements are policy, unless the president would like us not to believe him or not to treat him as if he's actually the president. But when presidents speak, their statements are policy.

10:06And at this moment, as we are now less than two hours away from the deadline, the policy of the government of the united states is that unless donald trump gets what he wants he is not going to just commit war crimes he is going to end iranian civilization permanently this is not just a threat to commit a war crime it's a threat to commit genocide and it implies potentially the use of nuclear weapons because i um you know studied military history for a long time i don't know any other way to end a civilization in one night. And so can you speak, I'll jump in to say, this is, I mentioned the Democrats mentioned World War III.

10:48Sometimes the president is so extreme that then describing it or criticizing it perhaps can sound like its own extreme. But you're a very thoughtful person and you, of course, worked in this area a long time. Can you explain to us the ballast, the substance of why you say that taken at his word, he is proposing a kind of Iranian genocide. He said, a civilization will die tonight. You could, as I said in my piece in The Atlantic, you could launch every single munition we have, conventional munition we have, turn, you know, the streets of Iran, firebomb them as we did to the Germans and the Japanese, and it would not end Iranian civilization.

11:33It didn't end German civilization, it didn't end Japanese civilization, and in Japan, we added two nuclear bombs to the firebombing. If you're talking about ending a civilization, that it dies tonight, the president's words, not mine, then you really are contemplating something horrific that goes beyond just an ordinary bombing campaign. Again, unless the president just wanted to communicate his seriousness without the rest of the world or his enemies taking him seriously about what he plans to do. But when the president of the United States speaks, we have to take him seriously, especially, Ari, as you said at the top of your comments, when we're talking about war and peace, life and death.

12:17This isn't just Trump complaining about interest rates. This is Trump threatening to erase a civilization from the planet. And we're not looking for predictions, But what's going to happen in the hours ahead in terms of through the military planning process? And do you see a point, a potential point at which it may be incumbent upon people in the military to refuse what could be unlawful orders? I hope not. But if the president is coming to the military and saying, I want a plan to destroy everything in Iran. And again, so that their civilization dies, that means, you know, water, food, you know, you take your pick.

13:04Those are illegal orders. And I said in the piece I just put out, I hope that starting with General Cain and all the way down, every general officer and flag officer who gets those orders puts his or hers, well, it'd be his because of this, because of Hegsus Pentagon, they'll all be men. And but that each of them puts his stars on the table and says, I'm not fulfilling that order. You're going to have to go to the next guy down. I resign. And that the next guy down says, I'm not fulfilling that order either. Yeah. Tom Nichols on the seriousness of this night. I appreciate you joining us in your expertise.

13:42Thank you. Coming up, we have Congressman Jason Crow, who's a retired paratrooper, a veteran. He has clashed with this administration on exactly the issue I mentioned, where the line is on law and military orders, and joins us shortly. We also are following a MAGA backlash over not only Trump's erratic and bizarre behavior, but many leaders who have been on record against exactly this type of foreign escalation. The new acting attorney general also being pressed for continuing Donald Trump's enemies list, one of the things that Pam Bondi both pursued and failed. I also want to tell you that we have obviously a lot going on in the news.

14:15This is the kind of time that can get your heart going. But we will hopefully offer that in a different direction as we show you Artemis II heading home, the brand new images. This is just one of them, a stunning reflection on the habitat we all share, humanity on that orb by the end of the hour. And for the sweet fans out there, any dessert junkies, we'll show you why Nutella was floating around. We're trying to cover it all tonight. I'll be back with you in 90 seconds.

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16:13Right now, the threats to our Constitution aren't just coming from abroad, but from right here at home. Our laws are clear. You can refuse illegal orders. You can refuse illegal orders. You must refuse illegal orders. No one has to carry out orders that violate the law or our Constitution.

16:33Veterans in the Congress released that video. You might recall it. There are six veterans of military intelligence service to our country. and they were saying something that is, in law school, what's called black letter law, meaning it's basic, uncontroversial. If you get an order from the president to do something flatly illegal, say murder a member of the American government just to pick something completely without a doubt, you don't follow that order. Indeed, you're supposed to resist an unlawful order. That veteran, Congressman Jason Crowe, who you saw there as a Bronze Star recipient, served as an Army Ranger in Iraq and Afghanistan, And while that might just be the normal news introduction for those keeping track of everything, that video, which is obviously both largely accurate, as I mentioned, but also First Amendment protected speech, was the basis of a failed DOJ probe trying to indict him and others.

17:30part of the enemies list we track here. Congressman, welcome. I thought that was pretty relevant given tonight. I actually want to get your view of what's happening at the DOJ at some point in this interview. But let's start with the president's threats in Iran, what you and your colleagues are doing about it tonight. Well, the threats are patently illegal and violations of international law. They're war crimes. There's no other way to put it. as your prior guest, Tom Nichols, who knows this stuff. I mean, nobody knows this stuff better than Tom Nichols does. There's just no other interpretation of what Donald Trump said.

18:06And that's exactly why we filmed the video, because we were afraid that this moment might come, that our service members would be put in a terrible position of having to decide what do they do. So we wanted to be very clear. Your obligation is to the law. It's to the Constitution. It's to the law of war. And if you follow the law and you obey the Constitution and your oath, then we will stand with you and we will stand beside you and we will have your back. Vice President Vance also joining some of this escalating rhetoric turned heads when he was in a strongman country, by the way, Hungary. Take a listen.

18:45They've got to know we've got tools in our toolkit that we so far haven't decided to use. The president of the United States can decide to use them, and he will decide to use them if the Iranians don't change their course of conduct. That's how the vice president sounds. We're also tracking what by many accounts has been a strategic failure of a war. The military has performed with great efficacy, and many experts have told us on this broadcast and elsewhere admirably. But whether gas prices are up or down and whether the United States has more or less control of the Mideast energy supply would seem to be a major strategic failure so far.

19:22And here's what some folks, according to The New York Times, have been saying in Trump's orbit, that even going down this road was farcical, that Rubio has privately said it's BS. advance, who I just showed and why I bring this up now, warned or thought allegedly that it was a bad idea. Your view of all of this, because many Americans are watching this wondering, how do we even get to this point? The president's threats tonight gas prices booming in what seems to be an avoidable war of choice. Well, the president's threats to destroy an entire civilization and to commit war crimes are so staggering and so atrocious.

20:00It's overshadowed the fact that you have the sitting vice president of the United States campaigning actively for a foreign autocrat in Europe. And it's overshadowed the fact that we're still spending$2 billion a day of taxpayer money on a war that Americans don't want. And they're spending$400 million a day in extra energy costs. And the terror threat is skyrocketing through the roof. The cyber threat against America is skyrocketing through the roof. roof. This is an unmitigated disaster by any definition, and it's getting worse by the day. You mentioned what folks can do within the military.

20:38How does that line work? I mean, are we at a risk of a constitutional crisis or if the orders involve something that is so clearly only wholly targeting civilians, either trying to kill them or cut off energy supplies, basic way of life, which Trump has, of course, already posted about. Walk us through how you think that should work internally if it's if it's an unlawful order. Yeah, well, what we were talking about in the video and what remains true. And by the way, what service members are trained on, right, you're drilled on this. You learn the law of war. You learn target discrimination. You learn civilian versus military objectives.

21:17What is a valid military objective versus what is not? This is a part of service. This is a part of training. So you have to focus on what is a patently unlawful order. Right. So that would be kill civilians, you know, blow up a school, blow up a bridge, possibly blow up a power plant or a desalinization plant. Things that are very obviously unlawful in a violation of the law of war. And again, Donald Trump saying he's going to wipe a civilization off the face of the planet is patently unlawful. So that is the focus. And that is where service members have to be in a position of deciding whether or not to execute a mission or not.

21:56I was in that position, by the way. I was a combat leader. I did three combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, and I had to, on many occasions, make a call as the leader of a unit whether or not to strike a target or whether or not to refrain because what are my legal and moral obligations? So that's the position that these service members are put in. You know, under the best of circumstances, that can be very difficult. Donald Trump has made this the worst of circumstances. Yeah. Finally, as promised, I want to turn to your face, which is often on this program, Congressman, on the enemies list.

22:35People can take that for what they will. But you are one of many. It's over 20 probes they've opened up. Your charges there didn't get anywhere. That's green on the left. But I put it in this context because I don't even think your case, which we touched on, had enough legal validity to really get into the details. It was quite clearly an illegal selective prosecution. It couldn't clear even the low bar, the ham sandwich bar people hear about in the grand jury. But I want to get your reaction tonight more broadly to all the other folks on this list, some of whom are awaiting actual federal criminal trials.

23:10Pam Bondi's out partly because she has zero wins on this. Probably a good thing for the rule of law, but was a bad thing for her. What do you say to her, to Todd Blanche, who appears to be pursuing a similar program? What will the Congress do? And if they break laws within the DOJ of selective prosecution, will they ever be held accountable? Well, first off, if you're on the right side of this, leadership requires willingness to throw yourself into the fire and to pick fights like this. There's just no other way to actually lead in the moment than to be very clear, to have moral clarity, and to be willing to punch back when necessary, right?

23:50And yeah, they tried to indict me, but listen, Americans have been murdered. People have been holding the line in Minneapolis, great personal risks to themselves. People are being imprisoned. Our service members are potentially being asked to do unlawful things. There are acts of courage all around this country. People saying that millions of acts of courage are what's going to get us out of this. Right. Courage is contagious. That has been my constant refrain. And when people stand up to do the right thing, it will spread. Yeah. And I could imagine a lot of people being inspired by that. The journalist in me is saying, and what about acting A.G.

24:29Blanche? What about this process? What are you guys going to do? well accountability will come sooner or later you can't hide from that we are taking names i'm creating my own lists of people that need to have oversight and accountability it is so important right now that people understand that if you're in this administration and you're you're asked to violate the law or violate your oath or turn your back on the constitution that you will be judged one way or another at some point or another. You cannot escape it forever. You can't hide behind a mask. You can't hide behind your desk. You can't hide behind your title.

25:08We will seek accountability because that is not just our right. It's actually our duty. It's our duty to make sure that we are enforcing the law and we are upholding the guardrails of our democracy. And I will not shirk from that duty. There is clearly a lot on the table right now for the country, for the world tonight. And I think you've reminded folks about your values, which obviously you also showed in service. We thank you for your service and important to hear your voice tonight. Thank you, Congressman. Thanks, Harry. Appreciate it. Coming up, we will look deeper at the DOJ. I have Emily Bazelon here and next Molly Jong Fast on a MAGA revolt that really is spreading.

25:58How do you stop a war that people already oppose? Well, as with so many things in democracy and politics, there is a spectrum and there is volume. And Trump already has an unpopular war on his hands with a gas price problem, which is part of why he is almost desperately seeking a quick off-ramp, perhaps thinking that his threats will work. We've discussed how they are unlawful either way. But now we're seeing more cracks on the right. Tucker Carlson, who literally campaigned for Donald Trump last cycle, was at the convention giving the speech, now condemning this and something we've also seen criticism of, which is that Donald Trump always has his own style, yada yada, but the profane, vulgar, and increasingly erratic behavior, some of which landed on Easter Sunday.