Chris Meagher Assesses Outcome of Iran Strikes

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0:30Ben Meiselas:Let's just take a look at the timeline. Donald Trump leaves the G7 hearing right after he's there for a few hours on the 16th. He runs back to the United States where he holds this press conference where he says he's putting up these polls on the north and south lawn. But when he's asked about Iran, he talks about how he had a conversation with Putin who offered to mediate the dispute at that time. This was before the U.S. struck Iran between Israel, Iran and the United States. He says he spoke to Putin here. Play this clip. You know, Russia, Ukraine is so stupid. Would have never happened if I was president.

1:08You guys agree with that. Would have never happened if I was president. Putin would have never done it. And I spoke to him yesterday and I said, you know, he actually offered to help mediate. I said, do me a favor, mediate your own. Let's mediate Russia first. OK, I said, Vladimir, let's mediate Russia first. You can worry about this later. But I think that's going to work out, too. But it's so many people have been killed. The big thing with that one is far more people are dead than have been reported in the Ukraine, Russia. Many, many more people. A building falls down. They say nobody was hurt.

1:44You know, so we get to.

1:47Ben Meiselas:I just want to put this in perspective. So he leaves the G7 on June 16th, rushes back to the White House, where then he has a phone call with Vladimir Putin, who offers to mediate at that time what was going on between Israel and Iran before the U.S. gets involved. The U.S. then gets involved. It strikes three sites. We now know from our own intelligence, from European intelligence, that these sites were damaged but not fully destroyed. We've seen recent satellite footage that shows a lot of activity and excavators right by the ventilation shafts as well. It seems that they're restoring the facility or at least working on the facility based on recent satellite footage there.

2:32Ben Meiselas:We believe the Iranians now from our intelligence were able to move the uranium away before the strikes. No one knows where this 900 pounds of uranium even is. And then Donald Trump's been asked, well, you know, what should happen now to Iran? Are you going to do maximum pressure and put sanctions on them or what? And Donald Trump's like, no, like, let's let China do better deals now with Iran. Like, it's over. It's good. Iran's cool now, according to Donald. You know, our B-2 bomber struck. Donald Trump claims total obliteration, which is contradictory to what the intelligence official says. He says, let China says this over and over again.

3:08Ben Meiselas:Let China buy the cheap oil now from Iran. Let's make China and Iran great again. Here, play this clip. Thank you so much, Mr. President. Yesterday you said China can now continue to purchase oil from Iran. Are you giving up on your maximum pressure campaign? With who? Because there are sanctions right now. With who? On Iran. No, look, they just had a war. The war was fought. They fought it bravely. I'm not giving up. They're in the oil business. I mean, I could stop it if I wanted. I could sell China the oil myself. I don't want to do that. they're going to need money to put that country back into shape.

3:47We want to see that. Huh?

3:49Ben Meiselas:What? He went from saying regime change exclamation point. We need a total surrender to encouraging China to buy oil from Iran. So if you just take a step back and look objectively at this, wouldn't Iran be in better shape than before the strikes? Isn't China stronger right now? Oh, And go back to what I said before, when Donald Trump rushed back from the G7 in Canada, and his first phone call was with Vladimir Putin, who offered to mediate the dispute. And you have to ask yourself, is Russia benefiting from this? Well, America's had to now use 20 percent of its THAAD missile system to shoot down the Iranian missiles that were targeting Israel, which cost the United States about a billion dollars.

4:41Ben Meiselas:Over the past week, I know it's not getting a lot of attention here. Russia was able to take over one of the areas in Ukraine that has some of the largest lithium deposits. Remember that rare earth deal that Donald Trump was bragging about? Well, we were supposed to give Ukraine things in exchange for the rare earth minerals. But now Russia has those rare earth minerals. So let me just say this. If I was Russia and I was acting as a biased mediator who wanted to help myself, you know, in the usual suspects, Kaiser Sose, it all leads to him. It leads to Vladimir Putin, who benefited from all of this.

5:17Ben Meiselas:It was Putin benefited. It was China that benefited. It was Iran that benefited. Donald Trump, I guess, got his propaganda. He could post the photos on Instagram looking all tough and distract from his unpopularity here in the United States. And Benjamin Netanyahu, you go, well, did Israel benefit from this? Well, Donald Trump is now bragging that the Israeli courts have postponed the criminal case against Netanyahu at Donald Trump's request because Trump says, look, we're in a war. He's a wartime president. And so now if you keep prosecuting Netanyahu, the U.S. is going to extort Israel and not give Israel any weapons.

5:56Ben Meiselas:So I'm just saying, I'm laying out the case there. You can agree with me or disagree with me there, but it seems to all benefit Russia, Iran, and China right there. Let's bring in Chris Marr. Chris, good to see you. Chris is the former assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, Undersecretary Lloyd Austin, an actual former four-star general who became the Secretary of Defense, someone who was actually qualified. I laid it out there. I try to avoid hyperbole and conspiracy. But when you just add up, I think when you were doing your job, when you were working in the government, you know, I think you have to ask, what were the objectives?

6:35Ben Meiselas:Were the objectives achieved? And who benefits, who loses, right? I mean, I think that's a fair assessment. No, I think that's completely right. And I think, you know, one thing that we always took a look at was our force posture around the globe where we were focusing our resources as the Department of Defense. And I think it's clear if you are focusing more resources in the Middle East with what's happening in Iran, then there are less resources focused elsewhere. So Putin continues to go into Ukraine and do tremendous damage. There was just reports that one of the biggest strikes in the last couple of days was one of the biggest strikes ever.

7:18and we have time and time again, Donald Trump has capitulated to President Putin on Ukraine. Our pacing challenge, the country that we're supposed to be competing with and keeping up with, China, we're less involved over there. We have less resources and less assets because we've had to shift them over to the Middle East to protect our forces there. There's no indication that Donald Trump, that Pete Hegseth, that others have the focus that they need to be having on the Indo-Pacific at a moment where tensions are really high over there and our partners and our allies are really worried about what China is up to.

8:04So yeah, I think you did hit the nail on the head. Obviously, this is all very complicated and complex, and we have to figure out what is happening in the Middle East and how we're going to respond to it. But we can't do that in a silo. There are implications for what's happening going around the rest of the country as well.

8:25Ben Meiselas:You know, I just try to look at the objective data, right? So the first thing I showed was in the G7. Then Trump was at NATO in that second clip that I showed. So who didn't show up at NATO? Granted, Japan and Australia are not formal members of NATO, but that would be something that they were invited to that they would show up to. Usually it's not like Japan and Australia are going to be like, yeah, we've got better things to do than show up at NATO. But this is one of the first times they decided not to show because they were worried that I think Trump was going to try to extort them or shake them down or bring up new terms and try to say your defense spending needs to look like this or that.

9:07Ben Meiselas:And and so and they've gotten so many mixed messages that a Shiba from Japan doesn't show. Anthony Albanese doesn't show or send someone. That's odd. We went from Biden building NATO and and bringing more people together to now people saying, I'm not sure we want to be around Trump if he's at NATO. That's what happened last week. Yeah, we left the world safer and stronger. We left NATO larger than ever before and the most capable defensive alliance in the history of the world with the United States playing a strong leadership role. You know, if the United States is not leading, then there's a vacuum for others to step in and cause trouble.

9:54And I think you hit the nail on the head with Donald Trump as our president. It's hard for our partners and allies to take this administration at their word. There's so much chaos and confusion consistently being inserted into these conversations, into how we're talking about what we're doing in the Middle East, how we're talking about how we're dealing with China from one day to the next. We could completely flip our foreign policy position just because of a post on Truth Social. You know, he has lied and distorted the truth so often in the past that not just our partners and our allies, but the American people, Congress, and perhaps most importantly, our troops don't know that in a time of crisis, we need to be able to rely on the president as a trustworthy source of information.

10:48And we just can't.

10:49Ben Meiselas:You know, and I'll give you just another example where whether this is helpful or makes things even more difficult is you'll have multiple voices now speaking and people will pretend to be like the Trump whisperer, like I've got his ear. So like this weekend, Lindsey Graham, you know, horrible person. But Lindsey Graham was like, I was golfing with Donald Trump. And I told him that we've got this great package that we're putting together in the Senate that's going to sanction any country that that does investments that find that that's money can be traced back to Russia. and this is going to be massively helpful for Ukraine.

11:31Ben Meiselas:But when I show you this clip and when I show our audience the clip, you have to watch as Lindsey Graham says, yeah, but there are waivers. It's going to be up to Donald Trump ultimately. And to me, it sends this mixed message where you have the Senate delegations act like they support Ukraine and then they tell someone like a Ukraine, but just extrapolate this further. Japan and Australia, we got you. don't worry, he's not going to be that way. And then these countries and their leaders outside of even a Zelensky, use Ashiba, for example, or use Albanese, for example, they then tell their government certain things.

12:07Ben Meiselas:Hey, we had a great meeting. Here's what's going to happen. And then Trump does a social media post and blows it all up and they just look stupid. And so the only strategy that seems to exist is to just be like, we can't meet with this guy. We got to avoid him. We got to hold on tight in this roller coaster for the next four years. We just got to avoid. Here's an example of what Lindsey Graham said over the weekend. Let's play. Now, I want to ask you about Russia because you're pushing this bill to impose severe new sanctions on Russia. Have you gotten Trump on board with this? Big breakthrough here.

12:38So what does this bill do? If you're buying products from Russia and you're not helping Ukraine, then there's a 500 percent tariff on your products coming to the United States. India and China buy 70 percent of Putin's oil. They keep his war machine going. My bill has 84 co-sponsors. It would allow the president to put tariffs on China and India and other countries to get them, stop them from supporting Putin's war machine to get him to the table. For the first time yesterday, the president told me. You were playing golf with him. Yeah, I was playing golf with him.

13:10Ben Meiselas:He says, it's time to move your bill. So you know what it's like when you try to like bribe a kid with candy, right? Because Lindsey Graham knows that Donald Trump likes tariffs the way a kid may like chocolate. he's like what you know and look lindsey graham is wrong on a lot of things protecting ukraine he's he's right on yeah but he pretends that donald trump's not the guy causing all of the all of the issues there right but then he's like okay well i'll give you this tariff and maybe we can tariff you know it's like don't you get it no trump wants to help what more do we need to say that trump is literally doing everything he can to help putin he he doesn't want to sanction Putin.

13:51Ben Meiselas:He wants to do trade with Putin. I'll give you the final word on this before we go. No, going back to something I said earlier, what our allies and partners need is consistency and to be able to trust the word of the president of the United States. Inserting chaos and confusion and going back on your word and flip-flopping from one day to the next does not provide that certainty, that organizational leadership that our countries that are looking to the United States for leadership need and deserve. And the proof will be in the pudding. Lindsey Graham likes to talk a big game. We'll see if he can actually get these sanctions on the Senate floor and passed into law and actually signed into law by the president.

14:40So.

14:41Ben Meiselas:Chris Amara, thank you for joining us, man. We appreciate it. All right. Everybody hit subscribe. Let's get to 6 million subscribers. The truth is more important than ever. Check out our new truth over lies collection at store.midastouch.com. All 100 % USA union made.

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