Iran War Continues with New Strikes

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0:49Got cash stuck in overdue invoices? Get Stute and start collecting in days. Go to stute.ai. That's S-T-U-U-T dot A-I today. Welcome to The Beat. We are picking up exactly where MSNOW's coverage and Nicole Wallace's discussion there had just left off because we have just seen the ending of this Senate hearing with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and General Dan Cain. This is one of the most significant reviews of the ongoing open-ended war with Iran that the president did not seek Congress's authority or approval for. And yet we know he still needs Congress's money, which is, of course, at the end of the day, your money.

1:32And that's to continue this. This was Hegseth's first time there in months. He wants the money to pay for this war. It's about$70 billion more. Pentagon is, of course, doing their best. And as many experts and veterans have pointed out, the Pentagon, the military, the people actually carrying out the war do what they are told by the president. That is the system. And yet on the political side, this war that the president did not get approval for or build support for is now languishing. And you can see that in the hearing. If you've been watching MSNOW, you've probably seen some of the exchanges, which included some tough ones with Republicans.

2:11We have a budget issue here. It is an urgent budget shortfall, as some have put it. Lines of funding would run out within weeks, the Washington Post reports, and that's from the Iran war. That is just one way to describe the cost. When you get into the human cost, it's already 17 Americans dead, 100 troops injured in the last two weeks. These are real people. And I will note, having followed along with the hearing today, that many of the lawmakers in both parties discussed and paid tribute to that human cause, to the people actually fighting this war. If there was agreement on something today, it would be, of course, a tribute to those people, Americans, who are braving the war.

2:56But the second thing we saw was some unity on the idea that this is not going well. Republicans traditionally, of course, softer on that, saying it in certain ways, sometimes diplomatically, sometimes almost in the mode of excuses on behalf of Trump. But you didn't hear a lot of voices today saying that there's a clear objective, a clear plan or a clear exit path. Hegseth also, because he's under oath, had to give up a little more factual transparency than I would say he or other officials in the administration are known for. And so he said straight up something that's pretty unpopular when you think about the high prices, cost of gas, people having to change or cancel summer plans because everything's more expensive right now.

3:33He mentioned the war has already run up a tab of$37 billion. Here's some of those exchanges today. What has actually been achieved? We hear a different rationale for this war every few days. Your fallback to the Biden administration is just a very, very obvious excuse for what I think is probably, as you described, so often gross negligence. At what point do you stop asking Americans to foot the bill for a war they don't support? Well, Senator, I obviously don't agree with your characterization. I think your first strategic mistake was to not consult the American people in Congress and make a clear case for the reasons behind this war.

4:18I think the American people to deserve a definition of what it means to win in Iran. President Trump has, by any objective measure, failed to achieve his goals. Guys, we need straight answers. We need straight answers. That last voice, Republican Senator Kennedy, basically all but accusing the Pentagon and the administration of not giving straight answers today as well as in the lead-up to today. if you watch these type of hearings or their excerpts and you're watching the news, so you're probably familiar, you might have noticed that there was a seriousness, a sobriety, even at times a kind of a hardheaded kind of calm energy, if you want to put it that way, in the room, because this is not some other political thing, even by the lower standards of the MAGA era and some of the people that Trump has put in charge of major operations who still seem like they're making, you know, internet content or trolling or want to make points on social media.

5:17This was a serious hearing about a serious topic. And Secretary Hegseth, who is presiding over a very unpopular war and a lot of questions, I will say as an observer, he struck a more serious tone, at least in style, than many other Trump officials. And perhaps they know that this is only going to get worse and look worse if they do anything to minimize what I mentioned, the loss of life, the unpopularity around the country, and what are frankly bleak choices ahead. Anyone in this country who might be against the war isn't rooting for demise. They're rooting for this thing to end. But how? We are reading reports that Trump is considering two options now that his ceasefire is basically broken.

6:00One would be a new 10-day ceasefire to just reopen the strait. You'll recall that would be still trying to get back to where we started before he launched this war. Option two, reportedly, would be a massive joint military campaign with Israel to force Tehran's capitulation. Now that's Axios' reporting. The Post says U.S. intel believe that strikes are unlikely to move Iran and that it's unlikely to soften its negotiating position because of U.S. military action. Another way to say that is what commanders have said throughout and what Kane mentioned today. The United States has extraordinary bombing capabilities, but it is a matter of strategic reality and modern military history that the United States has never run a bombing campaign or an air war to total victory.

6:53That is to say, if you want to take out a major country, you end up having a ground war. That's what we had in Iraq. Very few people think that's where we should go. So option two, if it is just more and more bombs, according to, again, the current general in charge under the Trump administration, even by his testimony today, that's not going to solve this thing. Now, Republicans are worried about the blowback. Many Republicans say they're now boxed in. The Times reporting the collapse of the ceasefire presents them with a political worst-case scenario months before the midterms. Politico quotes one ex-Republican saying this whole thing has become a persistent dark cloud over the whole GOP.

7:32Here's what we were hearing recently on Fox. The clock is ticking for President Trump to get out of this war before voters head to the polls. He promised to keep us out of endless wars or unsatisfactory wars. And now he's in one. It's making a lot of Republicans nervous. It's already, as we know, unpopular. Unpopular, nervous, bracing for a rout. We began with the substance, the lives lost, the cost, the way this war was launched without congressional authorization, something that, after enough time, can become a violation of the War Powers Act and other limits on the executive's power. That's the substance.

8:13What I'll tell you tonight from observing this hearing, and we're about to bring in our expert guests, is this is one of those times where the substance is also driving the politics. Rare, I know. But the substance, the problems with no exit ramp, the problems with Donald Trump's approach to the war, the lies or mistakes he has made thus far because he said many things that aren't true about the duration and the exit and the U.S. strategic position, all of those substantive failures are now stoking a political failure for the Republican Party that may explain the very different tenor we saw in this relatively tough hearing today.

8:51I want to bring in Reverend Al Sharpton, host of Politics Nation here at MSNOW, president and founder of the National Action Network, and New York Times contributing writer and MSNOW analyst Molly Jong-Fast. Welcome to both of you. Rev, I mentioned that because we got a lot of news viewers who follow this stuff closely, and they're used to some, frankly, clownish hearings. This one was pretty serious. It had Republicans also asking some at least medium-tough questions. What does that tell us about where we're headed? It tells us that I think that the Republicans all the way up to the White House realizes they're in more serious trouble than they thought and that the performative kind of glib way of dancing through a hearing was not on the table today at all, which shows they feel the vulnerability.

9:40I mean, when you are now back with rising gas prices again and other things, they can't play with this. Their constituents are talking to them. Their candidates in midterms are talking to them. When you have a Senator Kennedy from Louisiana implying that they're not telling the whole truth, nothing but the truth, so help me God, then they know this is no time to clown. You have to really try to appear serious. The problem is that the serious stuff is damaging, no matter how they try and verbalize it or go around it. The facts are the facts and the facts speak very ill of them that had no strategy in the first place.

10:24And that I really think people forget Trump came in this war when he saw the Iranian people marching and he thought the government was going to topple. and they'd ride in and help push them over the cliff. The people already brought them there. It didn't happen. They killed the Supreme Leader. They went through all of that. It did not destabilize them. They totally underestimated and had bad intel on who they were fighting. And now they don't know what to do. Yeah. And the questioning from, say, Kennedy out to Democrat Murray, Mali was, don't tell us the war is won or Iran is boxed in completely when we can see them projecting strength.

11:08I mean, it just becomes and it has echoes of Vietnam or other times where governments, Vietnam, you had both parties over time involved in line in the country about that, Democrats and Republicans. Here it happens to be one party, it happens to be the Trump Republican White House doing it, but don't tell us that they're decimated and cowering when look at how they can project force. This was an exchange here. I want to play with Senator Murray. Take a look. On April 8th, you said, and I quote, their missile program is functionally destroyed, launchers, production facilities, and existing stockpiles depleted and decimated and almost completely ineffective.

11:50Mr. Secretary, Iran has been firing at U.S. military bases in the region and ships for the last week. How is it possible if their capabilities were, quote, functionally destroyed three months earlier, as she claimed, for them to be doing this now? Senator, Iran is at the weakest point militarily it has ever been in in the past decade. I mean, that's the problem with having a secretary of war who's also a weekend cable news anchor, is that he talks a lot. And what these Democrats did, which I think was effective, was that they brought up things he had said previously and then the contradictions that had happened since then.

12:34And there's so much public record of him saying one thing and then another and even Trump, too. But I think what's so interesting about this and so important is when you think about the Vietnam War and the regulation, the legislation that came after that, that post-Nixon anti-corruption War Powers Act that was meant to prevent something that's happened now, which is these endless wars with no buy-in from Congress. And this Congress has centered this administration on that already. Yeah. And Rev, sometimes with Trump, to fact check him, you say, oh, we got to go check the data. Military and foreign policy issues can be complicated.

13:14You got to check, oh, what is the state of the Iranian military, right? And what are the reliable sources for that? But with the lies about the timeline, all you need is a calendar. It's very easy to fact check this. We have here starting March 1st, we'll put this up, four to five weeks was the claim. March 7th, a little while. Then we got very soon. Then you got the Vietnam-esque moving of the goalposts. Actually, tough talk as long as it's necessary. April 5th, days, not weeks. Well, if you have a calendar rev, we are more than days away from April 5th now. April 15th, very soon. May, talking victory.

13:52June, close to having a deal. That deal, of course, came and went. they're at war again right now, and some say they've never really stopped being at war because the ceasefire deal didn't hold. What do you think about how that calendar is in the minds of the American people going towards the midterms? There's only one way the calendar could, in my opinion, say to the American people is that we are being misled consistently, and the more we're being misled, the more they are taking us for fools. You know, I had an old friend that had an expression of fish wouldn't get caught if they kept his mouth shut.

14:25I think that the reason that they... Never heard that one. Yeah, well, neither did Donald Trump. Because if they had not talked so much, they wouldn't be caught where they are now. They are being ensnalled by their own words, not the Democrats, not what somebody leaked. This wasn't in somebody's book. They've said it on mic, on camera, over and over again. They set different dates, different goal posts, and they were not able to reach what they announced. When you look at groceries, which fits into this, and gas, Americans' feelings, would you describe the cost of groceries as affordable or unaffordable?

15:05Now, that's one of those questions they ask, not can you afford groceries? Some people have the money for the month. They have their budget set. But a vast majority, which statistically includes a lot of Trump voters, Molly, at this juncture say they would describe it now unaffordable. Yeah. And you have gas again for over four dollars a gallon. And that is the thing is, even if you're not completely read in on the nuances of the Iran war, you have to fill up your tank with gas. And so you go to the gas station and gas is more expensive. And that is just the lived experience of voters. And we all know you cannot tell voters that their lived experience isn't real or isn't happening.

15:45And Republicans are cruising into the midterms. We're in the summer travel time and people are trying to fill up their car with gas and they can't afford it. Yeah. Really a bruising day for the administration on the Hill. Rev Al and Molly are with me. We're going to do our short break, 90 seconds, and continue with our great guests.

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16:46The roof? Elevated. Windows? I mean, wow. The process? Smooth. The neighbors? Jealous. Choose Power Home Remodeling and remodel how you think about remodeling. Schedule your free quote on windows, siding, roofing, and doors at powerhomeremodeling.com. Power. Our work shows. This is Stute calling about your overdue account balance. You owe$9 ,000,$17.86. How would you like to pay? That was the sound of Stute, the AI coworker that collects your cash for you. Stute's collecting over$200 million a month for its customers autonomously. Got cash stuck in overdue invoices? Get Stute and start collecting in days.

17:31Go to stute.ai. That's S-T-U-U-T dot A-I today.

17:42Come around, Mr. President. You said at the start of the war, it would be four or five weeks. Well, you keep betting, man. 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 stop them from probably. But I don't want to have the word probably. Donald Trump struggling with the timeline that hung over the difficult hearing today for Secretary Haig says, as I mentioned, questioned by Republicans, Democrats alike at times pressed on the timeline. Rev. This is Trump as a wartime president. This is not Venezuela, where whatever you want to call it, I would say in all fairness that it was an act of war, and we wouldn't look kindly on a country coming in and trying to take any of our leaders.

18:29But ultimately, the administration avoided a war. So they went in, they had an act of war, but the ensuing government kind of let it be. This is not that. We are at war, much longer than the president said, and this is him as a wartime president, your view? This is him at a wartime president that got elected saying we would not have wars, that he would not have engagements. So it's not only that he's the wartime president, it's the opposite of what he promised the American people. That's A. B is he cannot show where our interests are being served. The American people are the ones paying the higher gas prices.

19:06The American people are seeing other things increase in terms of the consumer goods and necessities they need. So, one, you told us there would not be a war. Even if I was going to adjust to you, Mr. President, because you give me a good reason, you haven't given me a good reason. And the timeline you announced keeps going further and further and further away. So how much do you expect even the most staunch Republican or MAGA person to take before they understand? I've run out of paper on these timelines and I can't afford the gas. You know, Molly, on the politics, I'd love to go big picture with you because, you know, what's interesting is we spend a lot of time looking ahead at elections.

19:51But it's very clear that we rarely know what the big issue is until right close to it or during the election. Right. The idea that a year or two out, you know. So I was thinking, you know, in 16 leading up to it, there were all sorts of different ideas. The truth is that Trump won the Electoral College and went a long way on the wall, immigration or whatever you want to call MAGA division, which a year out wasn't what either party thought that race was going to be about. 2020 ended up being about COVID. Right. And the public seeing Donald Trump as a failure on that crisis. 24, where a lot of Trump's critics thought that should have been about continuing a restoration of the post-Trump era.

20:34They wanted it to be a post-Trump era. Or that he was disqualified by his indictments and other failures. Ended up being, and there's a lot of data on this, about prices. That's what that race really boiled down to for a lot of Americans. Could the 26 midterms, instead of being about ICE or Trump or corruption or all these other things, could they end up being about this war? I mean, I think they certainly could be. And remember, the prices have to do with the war, because Donald Trump said in 2024, I'm going to make things cheaper for you. And people were like, great. I mean, that is that, you know, he once again got elected on economic populism because remember in 2016, he was like, you're being cheated.

21:21I am for you. She is for them, which was a similar message, you know, about other stuff, but a similar message in 24. So I do think that this war affects prices. And remember, we have no historical precedent for someone who runs for president on two things, right? I'm going to end foreign wars. We're not going to have any more foreign wars. And I'm going to make things cheaper. And what does he do? He immediately gets into numerous foreign wars and things because of those wars become more expensive. And let's not forget, I remember as a teenager when I started getting very active, one of the most solid presidents in the United States history that in terms of the things I cared about was Lyndon Johnson.

22:08Did the Voting Rights Act, did the Civil Rights Act, did open housing. What brought him down was the Vietnam War. And the same people that cheered him on were marching in the streets against the Vietnam War. One, because we didn't want war. And two, we didn't see what we were gaining. And every day we're seeing more and more. So it happens on either side of the party. These kinds of things could be your debacle. If Lyndon Johnson could not run again after all he did for civil rights and other things because of a war, I think that whomever the Republicans bring behind Trump is going to have a hard road to travel.

22:47It's like they always say where Rev and I grew up. Fish don't have to learn how to swim. They're born in the water. I like that one. You like that? Can we make that stick? Yes. We're doing a lot of fish things tonight. Do you have a fish aphorism for us? Fish got to swim. Birds got to fly. Something. Something. It's something. Yeah. I'll workshop it. The interesting thing about Rev's aphorism is the fish usually, I believe, opens its mouth because it thinks it's hunting. Yeah. So it's trying to get the—and then it finds out that the fly was actually— They found out they're the hunted. They're the hunted.

23:25So there's something there. That's right. Okay. Well— A warfender. Yeah. We like to learn together. Rev, Molly, thanks to both of you. We have a lot coming up in the show, including the heat on RFK Jr. and alleged election meddling. The DOJ is in crisis because several of Trump's legal demands are hitting those brick walls we've told you about. The system is under strain, but at times it is holding and working. And that brings us to a very special guest. We have seen the New York Times reporters really break a lot of key stories in ways that have upset Donald Trump. We recently had two of those authors on from the Times.

23:58Well, now he is subpoenaing not only Times reporters, but their families running into problems in court. and I have a New York Times reporter next.

24:12Discover Scottsdale, Arizona, a premier destination offering unparalleled relaxation. Experience exceptional service in world-class resorts. Indulge in high-end shopping. Then explore the scenic walkability of historic Old Town. Unwind with a masterfully curated dinner alfresco. Then take in an artisanal craft cocktail at an exclusive rooftop lounge. This is luxury. blended perfectly with adventure and refinement. Start planning your vacation now at experiencescottsdale.com. Exterior Remodels Inner Monologues, brought to you by Power. The house looks good, like really good. That siding, stunning.

24:52The roof, elevated. Windows, I mean, wow. The process, smooth. The neighbors, jealous. Choose Power Home Remodeling and remodel how you think about remodeling. Schedule your free quote on windows, siding, roofing, and doors at powerhomeremodeling.com. Power. Our work shows. This is Stute calling about your overdue account balance. You owe$9 ,000,$17.86. How would you like to pay? That was the sound of Stute, the AI coworker that collects your cash for you. Stute's collecting over$200 million a month for its customers autonomously. Got cash stuck in overdue invoices? Get Stute and start collecting in days.

25:37Go to Stute.ai. That's S-T-U-U-T.ai today.

25:49We are tracking the growing fallout and legal pushback to Donald Trump's efforts to get the DOJ to target and allegedly harass journalists and even their families. Now, a judge has temporarily halted subpoenas that were seeking New York Times reporters' phone records. The subpoenas, we've learned, also targeted spouses and the mother of one of these journalists. And that matters a lot because if there was not a valid good faith legal reason to do so, if that was rather part of an effort at collective punishment or harassing the family members, that itself could be illegal. Now, Thursday, there'll be a hearing on this.