Iran War Hits Six Month Mark

0:00Most ice cream is good, but not Jenny's. Jenny's ice cream is more like an obsession. What you get from over two decades of tasting and tweaking and throwing it out and starting over, chasing flavors until they feel alive. That might sound crazy, and that's because it is. Jenny's. Often imitated, never duplicated, always splendid. Everyone talks about how challenging it is to raise kids, but what about protecting them? Outlet covers, kitchen cabinet locks, baby gates, where do you even start? Well, protecting your home and auto is a great place to start. Progressive offers customized coverage options so you can be sure you have the right coverage.

0:41They're basically the baby gates of insurance. Get a quote at Progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company affiliates and other insurers. Not available in all states. Welcome to The Beat, everyone. I'm Jackie Alamany, and for Ari Melber and Tonight, we'll break down Donald Trump's new loss in the fight over male voting. We'll also show you how women are voting with their feet and running away from Trump in the midterms. And you'll hear from Darth Vader, who's been wading into the backlash against big tech. But we begin this hour with the war in Iran. Major news sources marking the sixth month of the war by noting Trump's failures.

1:17The New York Times reporting that Iran's regime stands, U.S. goals remain unmet. Reuters calling the current situation a, quote, costly stalemate. The Washington Post and Associated Press noting that Trump broke his promises of a short war. Trump vowed in March that the conflict would last only four to five weeks. Then in April claimed it would end in, quote, days, not weeks. In June, he said he was very close to having a deal. But six months in, there's little signs of progress. And Americans aren't happy. Nearly two-thirds disapprove of Trump's handling of his war of choice in Iran. Here's what voters in the key swing state of North Carolina, where Trump won in 2024, are saying.

2:03How is this war impacting your life? Well, inflation's up a bit. Things are costing a little more. Definitely has an effect and just makes it more real with people's lives being adjusted. Cost of everything is going up and stuff like that. You know, family members and stuff, you know, it takes a toll on your family. That's for sure. If we're talking about American first, then we need to do American first. And I feel like right now, as Americans, we're suffering. The numbers back them up. economists estimate that this war has cost the average American family over$700 in fuel prices and more than$1 ,200 in household costs.

2:44But throughout the six months of this war, Trump has repeatedly downplayed that economic reality. I don't think about American financial situation. I don't think about anybody. I think about one thing. We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon. That's all. This is peanuts. And I appreciate and everybody putting up with it for a little while. It won't be much longer. We don't want to have them have a nuclear weapon. So remember that when you have to pay a little bit more, you're at$4. It's OK. I mean, I'll never apologize. I did the right thing. Republicans fear that that attitude will drag them down in the midterms, as early voting will begin in some states in just a few short weeks.

3:27Joining me now is Eugene Robinson, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and MSNOW political analyst, and Jeff Mason, Bloomberg White House correspondent, who is fresh off of the new Air Force One, just in Houston today. So we appreciate your hustle. Thank you so much for joining us. And Jeff, I believe because I was at the White House while you were shuttling back and forth across the country, and I did not hear the president make any mention of the war in Iran and this six-month anniversary that we are all watching closely today. Am I wrong about that? Did he bring it up at all? I didn't hear him talk about it either.

4:04And in fact, he didn't take questions from the pool today so that we didn't have a chance to ask him about that. But I will tell you - And he didn't take any questions on Air Force One? No, he didn't take any questions on the plane. No. Well, OK. So when you're taking a step back over the past six months, taking stock of everything that President Trump has said from February through now, do you feel like this is a story about a war or is this a cost of living story? And does it matter what voters think when they're walking into the booth in November? Well, I think I think it's both. And so to that extent, it doesn't really matter politically anyway.

4:37I mean, voters have made clear over decades that they care about their pocketbooks when they're going to the polls. And those two things are intertwined, as your introduction made clear. The president has long liked to blame inflation on his predecessor, but this is now his economy. And it's the Iran war as well as the tariffs that have led to increased prices. So that is his political albatross. That is the Republican Party's political albatross. That doesn't mean that he doesn't have other things that some voters are going to like. And one administration official who was on the trip today did talk to a few reporters afterwards and made clear that oil, more oil is coming through the Strait of Hormuz.

5:15That's something that the administration is proud of. But that doesn't mean it's where it was before the war. That is despite the threat of more economic devastation from the administration, although the specifics of that have yet to be announced. I want to get back to the albatross of it all, but first get to these pretty startling approval rating numbers, Gene. I mean, these numbers are lower than when Trump left the White House post-January 6th in 2021. I believe it is one percentage point lower. What does it say about this erosion that it is worse than an insurrection? Well, look, this second Trump administration has been an onslaught of stuff, right?

5:52And a lot of it, as Jeff said, has raised the cost of living for people and especially has really defaulted on his main promise. You know, what's supposed to be make America great again, America first? That's not what people are seeing. And I think there's disillusionment about that in addition to anger and voting enthusiasm on the part of the opposition just because he has, it's been so outrageous some of the things that he's done. But the war clearly is politically an own goal. It really is because it was a war of choice. He didn't run on this. Nobody really saw it coming. And he stuck with it.

6:45You can't just end a war by snapping your fingers. Yeah. Well, what do you feel like the strategy is from the White House here? And do you get the sense, Jeff, that anyone in the White House understands what a real world and political quandary the president has gotten himself into? I mean, are they just trying to simply lower the temperature on the conflict and make voters forget about it temporarily, despite the prices that they're seeing reflected when they go to the gas station, when they go to the grocery store, by just making sure that there's not more military action? Or is this new economic pivot to applying more pressure on the Iranians and trying to, you know, cast them into an economic subjugation?

7:32Is that a real strategy that you feel like advisors within the administration actually might work and not just be a prelude to more fighting? Well, there's again, one of the hallmarks of this war from the White House has been mixed messages. Yeah. And I think that applies to this week's strategy as well. Well, and I think that's manifested in what Secretary Bestin said at the beginning of the week with regard to an economic D-Day, because he said President Trump would be making calls to other countries who are doing business with Iran and telling them, cut it out. And I referenced that administration official earlier.

8:07We asked him that earlier, or I asked him earlier today as well. So what calls has the president made? And he said he hasn't made any. So was that either Treasury and the White House aren't on the same page or this was another step in the effort to isolate Iran, but it doesn't have a whole lot of teeth. Either way, it's a political weakness again as regards to the war and this administration. He's definitely not going to make the one call that would matter, which would be to Xi Jinping, to China. China is Iran's biggest trading partner. Well, he tried to pull the China lever a few months ago when he continued with that visit, and it didn't really get anywhere.

8:51He actually came out of it saying Xi was being a great partner. Well, exactly. And is he going to, you know, do something, take dramatic action against, say, a big Chinese bank on the eve of the summit that's planned with Xi Jinping, which, you know, Trump wants to be able to announce some sort of trade deal or whatever. I just don't see that happening. And without China, which seems to be just kind of sitting back and chuckling and enjoying this whole show. But without China on board with this this sort of, you know, divorce Iran from the world economy strategy, it doesn't work. And Jeff, I do want to mind your experience covering presidents.

9:32George H.W. Bush on the six month anniversary of the Iraq war, not exactly on the day, but a few weeks before that, made a primetime address to the nation where he made the case for why this was a war on terror, along with pushing to secure at the time, which was a massive supplemental funding request for the operations that were taking place in Iraq. in Afghanistan. George W. Bush. Sorry, George W. Bush. Is this something that you would have expected to come from President Trump or something that you understand or have heard is in the works at all? Well, I haven't heard of anything in the works.

10:14And I'm smiling a little bit because we have to remember that President Trump is just he's a nontraditional president. I remember at the very beginning of this conflict that we wondered if he would do an Oval Office address to talk about why the U.S. and Israel were going into war against Iran. He ended up just doing a video that was shared on his Truth Social account. Much, much different. So are they wanting to bring attention to this anniversary? No. Is he planning a speech of some kind? I don't think so. I mean, do you think that a speech would help his case at all? I'm not sure it would. Look, George W.

10:49Bush had a completely different situation. For one thing, there was a Congress that even when it was in Republican hands was like curious and skeptical and practiced some degree of oversight. This Congress doesn't do any of that. So he doesn't have to worry about that. And as Jeff said, I mean, Donald Trump prides himself on that being like other presidents. Yeah. And last question before we are out of time, but, you know, some of the criticisms that have come as a result of this new economic strangulation strategy that the White House says that they're going to implement is that it's effectively toothless without a defined endgame.

11:29Jeff, do you get the sense that the administration has defined the endgame? Is this, are they gunning for now the collapse of the Iranian regime, the capitulation, or some sort of compromise? Oh, I think they'd be happy with both of those endgames. But it's just that the strategy so far hasn't led to that. And whether the president was was given false or poor information at the beginning or not, he expected this to go differently. I mean, he said in the beginning he thought the Iranian people would rise up and take over their government. That didn't happen. The time frame hasn't happened. A lot hasn't happened the way he envisioned.

12:01Now, if anything, the Iranian people are worse off in this moment. Yes, they are. But coming up, Tom Nichols on the strategic failures of Trump's war with Iran and its effect on the U.S. military. Plus, a new twist in Trump's attempt to limit mail voting in the midterms. And later, the big tech billionaires and the political backlash against AI. We're going to be back in just 90 seconds.

12:27Today marked six months since Trump launched a war in Iran that he said would last four to five weeks back. But it's not just the timeline that's gone wrong. The U.S. and Israel had hoped to topple Iran's clerical leadership and replace it with a pro-Western government. Instead, they've ended up with a hardened and very radical regime. That hard-line regime is still able to launch attacks and against U.S. bases and allies, and it effectively controls the Strait of Hormuz. War is also depleting U.S. weaponry, with two officials telling the AP that Patriot missile stocks in Europe are now beyond critical.

13:04Vladimir Putin now sees the U.S. as weakened by the war. That's according to U.S. intelligence assessments. And several thousand Iranians have died, along with 18 American service members. And Trump's stated goal of obliterating Iran's nuclear program has remained elusive, as PolitiFact puts it. Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. We're not going to give them a nuclear weapon. They will not have a nuclear weapon. The only thing that matters when I'm talking about Iran, they can't have a nuclear weapon. it. Joining me now is Tom Nichols, writer with The Atlantic and professor emeritus of national security affairs at the U.S.

13:43Naval War College. Exactly six months ago today, at the start of the war, Nichols wrote about Trump's, quote, enormous gamble on regime change in Iran. Quote, unfortunately, the ways that all of this can go wrong are more numerous and more likely. Tom, we want to give you the opportunity to take a victory lap here. I just can't, Jackie, because I don't want to see my country fail. But it was, you know, it wasn't a hard bet to make that this was going to go badly because the president listened to some bad advice from Netanyahu and Pete Hegseth. I think one of the things that's interesting is that we're finding that almost no one else in this administration wanted to do this because they all understood what I and other critics warned was likely.

14:39So, you know, it's just a tragedy. I mean, it really is leaving us weaker, more vulnerable, leaving us in, I think, distinct danger in Europe and in Asia. But this whole thing was premised on such a flawed belief. And it really was a kind of a faith-based concept that, you know, if we just hit the Iranian regime hard enough, it'll collapse. It's ironically the same mistake Putin made in Ukraine. And so here we are. And I don't think there's an end in sight for this. not only has it not collapsed but if anything at least the hardliners have become strengthened while the Iranian people have suffered even more but I am curious what you make of some of the I don't know if restraint is the right word but the red lines that the president has seen to have implicitly drawn by deciding to go now this new route of more economic instruments used against the regime as opposed to an all-out military campaign against them.

15:44And where you think that's coming from, and if you feel like that's good advice that he's actually getting now. Well, it would have been good advice six months ago if he decided that his new policy was going to be to put the screws to Iran. He probably should have started with an all-out economic campaign. But, you know, it's hard to sanction a country that's already under sanctions, especially when other countries, you know, as Eugene pointed out in the last segment, he's not going to call China and tell the Chinese, you know, to, I mean, that's a pretty leaky regime to begin with. I think what you're seeing here is that the president and his advisors are improvising because the president, and I remain convinced of this, he went into this war still surfing the buzz of a successful operation in Venezuela, thought that this operation was going to cover him in glory and make him a hero and make him the liberator of Venezuela.

16:40And when that, excuse me, of Iran, and when that all fell apart, he started going through other, down his checklist, you know, of, well, it's about nuclear weapons. It's about terrorism. It's about proxies. And that was a foolish move because he hasn't been able to achieve any of those either. So now I suspect I guess you can call this good advice to go this route because there's nothing left. And the red line about major military action, think about, and I think, you know, the people around him have warned him about this. Think about what that entails. I mean, are we really going to put ground troops in a pretty large country of over 90 million people?

17:19And, you know, how many troops will we commit and to do what and for how long? And I don't think anybody wants to do that. And I think the president probably doesn't want to do it either. And now they're just out of they're out of stuff. They're out of ideas. Right. And the Treasury Secretary's announcement earlier this week left much to be desired in terms of, again, the actual economic instruments they did plan to use to try to apply more pressure on the Iranians. But I'm wondering how much of this move and this announcement you feel was also a pivot that was tied to the fact that U.S. stockpiles have been diminished in recent months.

17:56Well, yeah, that's, I mean, as I said, you know, even if we were going to try one more time with a massive military effort, how do you do that when you're running out of things? We've stripped away our only carrier in Asia. We've taken weapons that were facing much more dangerous opponents in other parts of the world. You know, part of the problem is that when people like the Treasury Secretary or anybody else talks about these things. They're not really talking to the American people. They're talking through the camera to Donald Trump. And so we're not, you can't really gain any real information or any sense of strategy about what they're doing because they're not really talking to us.

18:38They're talking to him. And I suspect, again, that that was an oblique way of saying, good job, Mr. President, you're doing great. Let's go ahead with this while having to tacitly admit that, You know, what else can we do at this point? And I think we're in significant danger because of this at this point. Right. And he's talking to Natalie Harp. But Tom Nichols, thank you so much for the prescient writing. As always, thanks for joining us. And ahead, new heat on MAGA tech billionaires as the backlash to AI widens. Plus, I'll explain this. How will the people trust this city council when this city council continues to vote for surveillance technology that imprisons them?

19:23Ms. Campbell, you must work on your Jedi mind tricks.

19:30Also, Trump's DOJ suffers a bruising new courtroom loss as critics warn of a widening attack on elections. But first, a key demographic is turning on Trump and Republicans with the midterms looming. most ice cream is good but not jenny's jenny's ice cream is more like an obsession what you get from over two decades of tasting and tweaking and throwing it out and starting over chasing flavors until they feel alive that might sound crazy and that's because it is jenny's often imitated never duplicated always splendid hey what's up guys it's hayley bailey okay i need to tell you about something. I just got YouTube Premium.

20:13It's got tons of awesome features like offline downloads so I can download my favorite videos before I travel and watch them whenever I don't have Wi-Fi because we all know airplane Wi-Fi is the worst. I get ad free, I get backroom play, and there's like a ton more in there. You should try it. If you like YouTube, you'll love YouTube Premium. Try it now for two months free at youtube.com slash premium. Trial eligibility varies. Terms apply. Cancel anytime. That's a mouthful. Here's what happened when one journalist reported on DEI programs. I decided to just focus on the University of Michigan.

20:46I obtained internal documents that showed that the school had spent about a quarter of a billion dollars on DEI programs. I spent two weeks in Ann Arbor talking to everybody I could find. The unintended consequences of these programs, they had sort of left everybody dissatisfied. And this expensive machinery the school had built just imploded. If you're a journalist, you are not on anyone's team. All you're trying to do is figure out as many of the facts as you can gather. The facts are going to guide you to where the story lands. You're not taking sides. I'm Nick Confessori. I'm an investigations reporter for The New York Times.

21:24Journalists like Nick follow the facts wherever they lead. They go where news breaks, get answers firsthand, and publish what they find. That's fact-based reporting. Seek it out if you don't already.

21:42Tonight, Donald Trump is weathering backlash from women, including those who voted for him. A new poll shows that one in four women who voted for Trump now disapprove of the job he's currently doing. With the economy and cost of living ranked as the most important issues among all women in this survey, Democrats have an 18-point advantage over Republicans among women on the so-called generic congressional ballot. And among white women specifically, Democrats are ahead 47 % to 39%. Republicans won the demographic in both 2022 and 2024. All of this says many Trump voters now say that they're feeling duped.

22:23Warning sign for Republicans just over 60 days from the November midterms. I voted for Trump and every day I regret my decision. more and more. You voted for him three times. Are you disappointed? Very disappointed. Very disappointed. Why? Because the prices haven't gone down. What's happening isn't what I voted for. It isn't what I expected to happen. I'm over it, I think. Over the Trump thing. The Trump wagon. I think what Trump's doing now, I'm kind of having a look about face. Joining me now is the wonderful Juanita Tolliver, MSNOW political analyst and host of the Archival Podcast. Hello.

23:04Thank you so much for coming to the table this evening. This administration has spun so much and tried to blame Joe Biden for so much. But the one thing that he, the president, cannot beat and cannot change and cannot spin is the grocery store test. Right. Which is the most important thing, I think, going into this midterms, which is when voters walk into a grocery store, do they feel like they can manage their life, keep a little bit more in their pocket than they did before Trump returned to office? And I think I know what the answer is, but what do you think the answer is? I'm sure we agree, Jackie, that no, Donald Trump fails this grocery store test.

23:44And I'll take it one step further, not just walking and feeling good, but when they're watching that tally go up with every item that's scanned, are voters feeling anxiety? Are they feeling concerned about what's available in their accounts? Are they shuffling through multiple credit cards about thinking about how to pay this off. And so that is something that is absolutely going to trump any type of language or message, even transphobic messaging, that Republicans try to throw out to draw Republican women or women writ large back to their party. I looked at that polling that you highlighted, and I feel like when you have 50 percent of women who oppose your ICE strategy, you have two-thirds of women who are opposed to Trump's tariffs, which he continues to escalate even just recently with Canada and two thirds of people in this country rejecting the war in Iran, as you were talking about earlier.

24:36This is something that is front and center because voters, women in particular, who control a lot of household spending, are looking at Republicans asking a famous question from Janet Jackson. What have you done for me lately? In our house, it is the cost of the growing years' milk, which I think I am being punked on. But I pay almost$8 a gallon for our extremely large baby boy. But anyways, let's pull up that polling that you were messaging, that you were just reciting about the policies that most women oppose. 68 % oppose the White House ballroom, 63 % tariffs, 61 % data centers, and 51 % ICE deportations.

25:21I want to zoom in on that ballroom, too. Because here, what you have not only is just opposition from women to Trump's frivolous project, but it shows that they're opposed to things that he's spending his time and attention on instead of what matters to them. The cost that they're paying at the pump, the cost they're paying at the grocery stores, the cost they're paying for their electricity bill. Like, all of that is what they would much rather Trump and Republicans pay attention to, but they haven't. And if anything, they've made matters worse. We talked about Trump's tariffs. We talked about the war on Iran.

25:51Mentioned Republicans and Trump cutting health care tax subsidies, which raised premiums on health care. And so I think when you have this plethora of issues, it's fully reasonable for women to ask the question, why should I vote for you? And let's be real, that question isn't just for Republicans. Democrats have to make their case. I was going to put you on the spot about that. And you mentioned it, to be fair, during the break. But are these voters that are abandoning Trump? And at one point, we're probably Democrats at some point in their lives. Let's say it somewhere. Are they swinging back?