Iran Ceasefire Crumbles as Trump Loses Plot

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1:01Welcome to The Beat, everyone. I'm Ari Melville. We begin with this Iran war escalating. We have other countries implicated again. And while this has been a sort of slow-rolling failure of Trump's ceasefire and the timeline that he promised, it is something that, especially with everything else going on, is easy to lose track of. We actually are marking today as the 10th straight day of U.S. airstrikes, a sign that the ceasefire obviously is not holding. and, in very serious news, three more American troops killed over the weekend. So the region, the people following this, the experts, are bracing for what looks like an escalating return to a war footing between these two countries.

1:41The Army released photos of two of these slain Americans, Private Isabella Gonzalez and First Lieutenant Tyler James Feehan. The service members were killed in what appears to be a missile strike against a U.S. base in Jordan. Again, the spillover in the region is a reminder that while the United States does have a mightier military than Iran, something that was demonstrated in the initial strikes, we are not impervious to being hit in the region and elsewhere. Trump had claimed within a few weeks ago that Iran would have missiles, that this was going to get worked out, that the danger was going down.

2:18That is obviously not what has happened. And it's a contrast to Secretary Rubio's comments after this strike. So we lost people in Jordan after there was a strike. A missile got through. We shot down almost all the missiles. One leaked through, hit the wrong place. And tragically, and it's heartbreaking. The press conference, you said you don't mind Iran having ballistic missiles. Can you elaborate on that? I want to make sure we understand your opinion. No, I'm saying that if other countries have them, it's a little bit unfair for them not to have some. this administration does not speak with one voice.

2:55It does not have one agenda for this war. It never explained what the mission or missions were. And if there is a sort of tragic irony that speaks to the anger that Trump faces across the country and from his base as well, it is that Donald Trump himself, whatever you think of his inability to make good on his promises, he clearly understood that the wider view and the opposition to our Mideast escapades over time made him a candidate who campaigned against the very thing he's doing now, against the open-ended commitments in this region. And that is to say nothing of Donald Trump's many broken promises about the timeline for this war.

3:37He said it would end in weeks. He said it'd be very soon. He said we'd be out of there by now. And he also said this partial ceasefire that they started would be a quick road to the end of the war. It is not. As mentioned, we're in the 10th day of strikes. Trump has been pressed on all this, including over the weekend. Around this attempt, he said at the start of the war, it would be four or five weeks. Well, you can't bet him in. This is a far bigger job that we're doing. If you look at it, after a week and a half, not four weeks, a week and a half, two weeks, we stopped them from probably, but I don't want to have the word probably.

4:17Gas prices are back over$4 a gallon today. And there are pockets of opposition on the sort of mainstream conservative media to say nothing of the podcast and digital space, which we've reported for you even before the ceasefire crumble. The Iran war, obviously, the Iran war has been as big a fissure on the right online as the Epstein story. And we have seen folks like Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, and of course, the big one, when you look at Joe Rogan, a kind of combined agreement that this is Trump's sort of biggest, most ongoing error. And a lot of Republicans privately say it is dooming their chances in the midterms where they already felt they had an uphill battle.

5:00I say all that to say that's sort of out in the conversation. Then you have mainstream voices sort of on the traditional network, like Fox's Maria Bartiromo, who are just sort of reminding their audience what many people are already angry about, that there is a inability to reconcile the claims that Iran was effectively defeated under the opening Trump operation and their ability to hit and kill U.S. service members now. Tom says that there will be outsized action in retaliation, but I don't understand how it's possible that Iran has the capabilities to fight this way and continue to try to lash out at Gulf countries and U.S.

5:41military bases because the U.S. has obliterated Iran's military and the president continues to reiterate that. That's just sort of one of the premises of the questions that you're facing over there. The wider question 10 days in is the question we started with. Why are we in this war, how do we get out safely? I'm joined now by Tom Nichols, who writes for The Atlantic. He's a professor emeritus of national security affairs at the prestigious U.S. Naval War College. His new piece is Trump owes Americans a better explanation about Iran. Tom, let's start with where we're at. Americans have been told a lot of different things by their government.

6:19Are we now at war with Iran? What level war is this just in the context of since it started? we've been at war with iran now for 20 weeks um we launched major military operation um with the express goal of regime change which is what the president was talking about on the first night of the war um when that didn't happen of course now the the president and his team invented all kinds of other reasons including um this really you know just fanciful idea that without this war Iran was two weeks away from a nuclear bomb, which nobody really believes. I'm not even sure the president believes that.

7:04And so we've been at war. It's not some different flavor of war. It is two militaries, two relatively large countries fighting for their political goals. And so far, only one of them is achieving those goals. That is, the Iranians, their goals are to survive, to maintain control over the strait, control they didn't have before this war started, and to come out of this in charge in the region and maintaining power over their own people. The United States has put forward all kinds of goals, stop Iran's nuclear ambitions, you know, open the strait, defang the Iranian military. The Americans have achieved none of their strategic goals, but make no mistake about it.

7:56We can call we can talk about ceasefires and major operations and incursions and excursions and, you know, day trips and whatever the president wants to call it. This is war and it's a war the Americans right now are losing.

8:12The president sold the partial or first step ceasefire as a reason to kind of wrap this up and the people could look away. The oil markets could be calmed. We heard all of that. Can we say now where the ceasefire stands? Obviously, it's failing, but can it can it be sort of pulled back together as an operating agreement? Or what are the off ramp options for the United States at this point? Well, the problem with the ceasefire is that nobody ever ceased firing. That, you know, undermines the whole structure of a ceasefire. A ceasefire means that people stop shooting. The Iranians didn't stop. We didn't stop.

8:55And so the ceasefire instrument itself was multiple points that basically were capitulations to the Iranians in order to get them to agree to talk about negotiating. And I think really it was just another sign of how desperate the White House has been to get out of this thing that they never thought was going to go the distance. I mean, I think we always have to bear in mind that everything you're seeing now is all the same, not to steal a legal metaphor from you, Ari, but it's all the same fruit of the poison tree, which is that the president really expected regime change in those first days.

9:32And when that didn't happen, everything else fell apart. And so now it's trying to keep the straight open. It's trying to bring the table. It's trying to get gas prices down. What are the off ramps to do that? the Americans could stop shooting, I suppose. But that doesn't really change anything. Whether we keep bombing or don't keep bombing, that's not changing the reality in the Strait of Hormuz. And it's not going to dislodge, at least not yet, the Iranian regime. So I don't think there are any good solutions. I don't think there are any good off-ramps at this point. Yeah, I appreciate your candor and clarity.

10:14That's sort of the big problem a lot of people see. In your field, they sometimes talk about civil-military relations. In Congress, they would always talk about how any serious foreign policy initiative, let alone a war, needs the informed consent of the American people. We seem to be up against that very problem now, apart from how people feel about Donald Trump, politically, his style. Just the baseline of a U.S. president, forget his name, starting a war in the Middle East without any consultation with Congress, without any interaction with the public of the American people. And what we have from that, I'll put this striking headline on The Economist, which is sort of a centrist outlet, if you want to call them that.

10:56Iran war is America's least popular since the advent of polls. They note net approval for the decision to attack Iran by Mr. Trump stands at, quote, 30 percent among Americans. The war in Vietnam took six years to become as reviled as the Iran war has become in six months. Can you speak on just how striking that is in a country that often gives the military and these kind of operations, some benefit of the doubt at first, especially if there's a presentation to the country and the Congress, and what that does for sort of the leverage going forward? Well, first, I don't think anybody in this country is blaming the United States military.

11:36They're doing they're executing operations that they've been ordered to execute. They don't really have a choice about that. If the president says go, they have to go. The problem here is that this for the first time really ever in the modern era, the president has launched a major war. This is not, you know, a Venezuela type operation. This isn't, you know, Eisenhower in Guatemala or something. I mean, this is not something far away and a small, faraway operation. This is war with a major country of 93 million people that is traditional enemy of the United States for a half century. If you're going to do that, and there are arguments to do it, the Iranian regime is one of the worst, most ghastly regimes on the face of the earth.

12:32If you want to go to the American people and say, listen, this cancer has to be excised from the global body. And here's why I think we have to do it now. And here are the risks. Here are the costs we may pay. here's what I'm going to ask from Congress. Okay. You know, he, then maybe you can actually get some kind of consensus for action instead. He, and again, this goes back to that, that poison tree. He said, I don't need any of that because this thing's going to be over before it even starts. This thing will be over in a week, two weeks. I don't need to, you know, go. But then And he had in 20 weeks, he he's found time to go on TV and carp about elections on prime time.

13:20But he's never taken the time to go into prime time and say, my fellow citizens, here's what you need to know about this war that we're in. Yeah. It's world away. Well, the headline banner we have on the screen refers to the point you made or did a second ago, war in the forefront as his election propaganda falters. I mean, that contrast is so striking. And he's, as you mentioned, not only trying to relitigate his past loss, but carping about the TV networks, not giving him his precious airtime because they didn't deem it newsworthy. Obviously, if he was giving an update about the newsworthy and trouble in the war, in my experience in the news, most networks carry that war address.

14:02He hasn't found that to be on his priority list as Americans are killed in this war. Tom, as always, we appreciate your perspective and background. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Appreciate it. Coming up, we'll look at this clash over keeping ICE agents out of the polls for these midterms. Trump finding that the opposition to him in America and beyond stretches from politics to sports and culture and the most watched sporting event in the world. We'll show you some of that. He didn't like it. But coming up, we turn to Trump's DOJ, going after a journalist's mother, Emily Bazelon and Josh Marshall, on the stakes.

14:45While we don't normalize this, we do scrutinize it when we're back in 90 seconds.

14:58Turning to attacks on the First Amendment and the freedom of speech in the press in this country, which at this point are right out of one of those dystopian novels. We are reporting on, by all accounts, what looks to be an extreme, excessive effort to misuse investigative powers by Trump's DOJ because of accurate reporting in the New York Times that I guess just embarrassed him. We have reporting that the DOJ is seeking the phone records of not only New York Times journalists, which the Times is fighting in court and those might get quashed, but also their relatives, including at least one reporter's mother and two of the reporter's spouses.

15:36These are subpoenas to third party phone service providers. So there will ultimately be a clash in the United States and in court over these third party companies. It's not like it's even only up to the people surveilled in the New York Times. This is part of an effort to go after confidential sources who provide information for articles about the security capabilities of President Trump's new Air Force One jet. I'm reading from The New York Times ongoing coverage of a story that they have been thrust into, apparently because of the accuracy and impact of their journalism. It's an addition to subpoenas also trying to get those reporters to testify.

16:13Trump was also pressed by other reporters about this ongoing debacle, which many people foresaw, that there was a corruption problem with him taking this jet from a foreign government. There was also a security problem with not doing it the normal, safe way. And here is some of that exchange. This way does not have anti-discrimination. Well, it has a lot. And, you know, it has a lot of capability. But as I understand it, in about a month or so, they're going to send it to have it be maxed out. So they're going to be sending it and they'll have it be maxed out. And it'll take about a month. Yeah, in about a month, it might be up to par.

17:04But again, that just brings back the absurd situation we are in That the President of the United States Who is involved, of course, in running this country And we all have a stake in that And his team and a lot of other people You could call them all, you know, innocent people Public servants otherwise On a subpar plane that he admits is a month away from being operational Also, he could take a gift from a foreign government You might remember all of that talk in the first term about how the Constitution bars this kind of thing. There's an emoluments clause, and it was for far smaller items than a jet and far less risky items than the idea of using the foreign jet and getting people potentially hurt.

17:46This is just one of several legal controversies for Trump at DOJ. The department has also been, quote, pulling back on its normal role prosecuting white-collar corporate crime. In other words, leave the elites and the Wall Street folks alone under Donald Trump's elitist government. The DOJ gutted the Public Integrity Unit, and there are scandalous reports that it doesn't even want the FBI to investigate ICE confrontations, which could include the killing of American citizens. All of that is just the recent headlines. Then there's the wider enemies list we keep showing you and updating. This should not be normalized.

18:24Many of these cases are ongoing. There are members of Congress awaiting trial in Donald Trump's America. I want to bring in the New York Times Magazine's Emily Bazelon and Josh Marshall, founder and editor chief of Talking Points Memo. Emily, it doesn't ever just stop with Trump exercising an abuse of power. It appears to proliferate. We had the civil lawsuits against the papers. We had the attacks. We had the enemies list I showed you. We had some journalist subpoenas. Now it's going out to family members. A lot of experts say this has the makings of unlawful harassment rather than a real investigation.

19:03What do you see playing out here? You know, one thing that strikes me is what a normal kind of reporting story this is, right? You get a tip that this plane doesn't have all the defense capabilities it is supposed to have. The president's on it. Of course, you run down that tip. And of course, you protect your sources because they are telling you something confidentially because they are concerned about the national security implications of what they're learning. You know, all the reporters who have been subpoenaed are hardworking, excellent journalists who are doing their jobs. And the idea that they would receive subpoenas is surprising and shocking enough, but that this would extend to their family members.

19:47I really can't remember hearing about something like this before. It also just seems like a strange move to make. What reporter makes calls on their mom or their spouse's phone? That's like not how we do it. So I also just kind of don't get that part of it. Well, that's why I mentioned the harassment, that the pretext against the reporter, where there are times, to be clear, that there can be lawful investigative means used to try to locate people who are breaking the law. So to track down a government leaker as a usually last resort, those investigative means can be used. This happened so fast within a span of about 48 hours, the Times notes, and now involves people who have no known link that it looks more like an effort to rattle people that you might be very brave having chosen to do a certain job.

20:36But when your parents start getting freaked out, it affects you. I mean, this is Josh. This is stuff we see in all kinds of tin pot countries. I'd like your reaction on all of that. And I want to flag some of the reporting from your outlet on a prosecutor at the J6 March running this so-called task force. Brian Lynch, months into a new job as a federal prosecutor in Maryland. He attended the march on the Capitol. His presence that day was not reported until this account. But Lynch remained a DOJ in this second administration, got the promotion of running in this so-called task force to prosecute left wing political violence.

21:16The DOJ has indicated that he did not enter the Capitol, and therefore they don't view him as liable for any criminal conduct there. Your reporting and your reaction to these crackdowns, Josh? Well, it's a great piece, the exclusive that Josh Kavinsky had last week. You know, the best I think you can say about Brian Lynch is that he seems to have a decent amount of experience with domestic terrorism and political violence. So I guess, you know, that's that's a humorous way of looking at it since he was at January 6th. As you say, there's no evidence he actually broke into the Capitol, but he was part of that part of that whole insurrection trying to overthrow the U.S.

22:00government. So that's that's definitely worth knowing. On the other point with this, with the thing with the plane, you know, what we're seeing here is this slow, faster than we'd like, but ongoing process of the Department of Justice just gets melded to the psyche of Donald Trump. You know, there have been there have been other stories over, say, the last six months that involve real national security issues where there where a where a federal government might have some real questions about, you know, did you get access to classified information here? That's always a delicate matter. But we know what this is about.

22:45This is the thing that Donald Trump is really the most excited about in his whole presidency, getting this fancy plane. And this embarrassed him. And that is why we are seeing this. Not because there's any question that national security was endangered or that there's any kind of issue of classified intelligence. So it's of a piece with all the retribution indictments, kind of ongoing harassment. And it's the same thing with, you know, basically getting out of the white collar crime business. Because those people are all Donald Trump's friends. And when you're operating at the level of corruption that you currently see by this president, by people around him, by his family members, it's going to get awkward.

23:35to be, you know, having white collar crime prosecutions because they're going to look very similar to what the president himself is doing. So you just you just see on all of these fronts, the Department of Justice, Justice just gets basically whittled down to what serves the immediate whims of Donald Trump. And that is punishing and retaliating against the people he perceives as his enemies, keeping his friends out of prison and getting in the grill of people who generate headlines that make him feel bad. Yeah, and Josh, I mean, the plane is something that he cares about because he plans to take it home with him.

24:23He plans to keep his personal property. He leaves office. Yes. A reminder that for all the bluster of Bannon in 28, Donald Trump knows that, as you know, the phrase, Josh, as Drake said, the jig is up. He wasn't the first to say it, but it's up. This will be a lame duck presidency. They may do all sorts of things to try to help other Republicans in 28. Jack Smith is warned about that. We can all take that seriously. But Donald Trump understands, and he's seen the Supreme Court deal him a bunch of losses lately. If he couldn't get them to come along for the ballot excapade, they're certainly not going to just chuck the third term limit.

25:02And so he's leaving. And like someone who greedily wants to do all the corruption he can on the way out, he really wants this this plane and wants to take it with him. It is, to borrow a phrase, Josh, it is the swamp undrained. You know, it's some people will remember the bust out episode of The Sopranos, right? We're a mafia family kind of they have a business and they just want to leech it of all its value, you know, kind of sell off all the property. And when everything's gone, you just burn the place down. You pocket the insurance money. And that is really kind of I think we're seeing an analog of that in the way that Donald Trump is kind of treating the presidency and the country right now.

25:47Whereas on the one hand, his popularity is declining. The big things that he is trying to do are not going terribly well. But he's not doing any kind of big adjustment to try to manage what's going to happen in the midterms or anything like that. But he's kind of into a, you know, the YOLO stage of his presidency, right? I'm going to kind of leech as many dollars out of this racket as I can and take as much with me as I can. And then the plane is just part of that. Yeah, it's a big plane. Yeah, Emily, this gives you a brief commercial break to come up with your Sopranos reference. but I wanted to also turn to the very reporting that Josh mentioned coming out of the Wall Street Journal on the other corporate enforcement.

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