Trump Plans Surrender to Iran after Putin Call

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2:39Ben Meiselas:Donald Trump is panicking and he appears ready to surrender to Iran. Donald Trump called up CBS an hour or so ago, and he spoke to Ouija Jang over there. And Trump said, I think the Iran war is pretty much complete. He says, pretty complete, pretty complete. They have no Navy, no communications. They've got no air force. He says the United States is very far ahead of its initial four to five week estimated timeframe. When asked about Iran's new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khomeini, who Trump is openly criticizing, Trump's like, we won. I have no message for him, none whatsoever. Donald Trump said that he had someone in mind to replace Khomeini, not Mojtaba, but he said that he's not going to discuss it now.

3:30Ben Meiselas:As for the Strait of Hormoz, Donald Trump said things are great. Ships are moving through it. But he's thinking about maybe taking it over himself. And then Trump warned Iran that they've shot everything they have to shoot and they better not try anything cute or it's going to be the end of that country. Now, obviously, Donald Trump called Weijia Jiang over at CBS to try to manipulate the markets, which were crashing. Predictably, he manipulated the markets. The S &P erased its losses. We saw the markets rise on Donald Trump, saying that essentially the United States is surrendering to Iran. The U.S.

4:12Ben Meiselas:has not achieved any of the goals that the Trump regime stated, which is get rid of the regime. In fact, we put in someone even more extreme than the original Ayatollah Khomeini. We put in his son, Motaba, who's more extreme. We do not eliminate their ballistic missile threat. We do not eliminate their ability to enrich uranium. But when Donald Trump surrenders, when he taps out, some people have called it taco, the markets actually perform better. So here he's doing that. And the markets reacted. The S &P erased all of its losses. Oil prices started declining, right? The oil prices were reaching$115 per barrel and they declined like 30%, which is what Donald Trump wanted.

5:02Ben Meiselas:As Julia Love says, Weijia, you're an amazing reporter, but we all understand that Trump called her, he called you this afternoon so that he could report this vague but promising comment in the afternoon so that the markets would rally and erase the day's drop. You realize that, right? Now, one of the things that we learned as well is that before Donald Trump announced that, I guess he's essentially declaring the war to be a victory and that everything is great. Donald Trump spoke with Putin today. And Donald Trump in this phone call with Putin heard from Putin where Putin shared his proposal, how to end the war quickly and how Putin thinks that this war should be brought to an end.

5:47Ben Meiselas:The Kremlin, notably Putin, released the first readout of the call, which Trump, no one from his Trump's regime disputes. And so Putin was very quick to say, Donald called me and I'm going to be working with Donald to figure out a solution now to end the war in Iran. I just want you to think about how utterly dangerous that is, especially when you account for the fact of how well Russia has done in this war, right? The surging prices of oil created a windfall for Russia, especially as the United States dropped a lot of critical sanctions against Russia, allowing it to sell oil. And by the way, after that phone call with Putin, we learned that the Trump regime is considering removing much more sanctions, allowing Russia to sell more oil potentially to other places.

6:44Ben Meiselas:Just, again, process all of this together because it all needs to be taken in context with each other. Now, John Hudson writes, so which is it? This is, quote, just the beginning of the U.S. war in Iran, which is what Hegseth, Donald Trump's secretary of defense, told 60 Minutes on Friday, or the war in Iran is very much complete. We're pretty much done, as Trump told Ouija from CBS today. Just so you can see the data points, here is Hegseth on 60 Minutes on the Iran war, just so you see for yourself. Let's play it. What was the Iranian Navy is largely no more. There'll be more boats to be sunk for sure.

7:26So their ability to project any power in that area in a naval sense is diminishing. Diminishing and will be increasingly diminished.

7:33Ben Meiselas:Again, what I want your viewers to understand is this is only just the beginning. Here's another clip of Hegseth from that same interview. Let's play this clip right here. But I would also remind your audience it's early. It's six days into this campaign. Six days. So we're going to have a lot more options over time on critical waterways like that to ensure that we can safeguard them and make sure safe passes. Also, it should be noted that France's President Macron stated earlier that he expects the war to last a few more weeks. You know, Iran has a say in when this is going to end. And when you've heard from the Iranian foreign ministers and the Iranian National Security Council advisors and leaders, they say they don't plan on stopping their actions in the region anytime soon in response to Donald Trump and Israel attacking Iran.

8:27Ben Meiselas:I mean, we're learning this morning, for example, according to CBS News and two U.S. officials with knowledge on the matter, the U.S. lost two additional MQ-9 Reaper drones during operations against Iran, bringing the total losses of MQ-9s during the conflict with Iran to 11. And these are massively expensive drones, the MQ-9s. And we've lost 11 of them so far. We're learning that the Israeli officials are growing concerned about the escalating war with Iran and suggested possible exit ramps. This is per the Washington Post. Details include exit ramps are being discussed amid concerns over the region and the global economy.

9:12Ben Meiselas:Talk of an end game is early, and the decision Israel says is with Trump. Trump has wavered among several conceptions of the outcome. I'm not sure it is in our interest to fight until the regime is toppled, said an Israeli official. We posted this on the Midas Touch account, this photo of Donald Trump, with what he said to CBS. I think the Iran war is pretty much complete. He's in front of the mission accomplished banner right there. And one of the things that Trump has also said, and I mentioned it before, is that he's now considering taking over the Strait of Hormuz himself, whatever that's supposed to mean.

9:53Ben Meiselas:The Department of Defense, which calls itself the Department of War, posted the following, we have only just begun to fight after Donald Trump said our mission is largely complete. Alex Ward reports the following, Trump has told aides he would back the killing of the new Iranian Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khomeini, if he proves unwilling to cede to U.S. demands, such as ending Iran's nuclear development, current and former U.S. officials say. The White House declined to comment, but Trump on Monday told the New York Post he was not happy that Khomeini was selected to lead Iran. He called Khomeini unacceptable.

10:29Ben Meiselas:I'm not going through this to end up with another Khomeini, Trump told Time Magazine last week. Israel would likely execute an operation aimed at taking out Khomeini, who was named as the supreme leader on Sunday. A current and former U.S. official said, noting that Israel is taking the lead on targeting Iranian leaders right there. So you've got that. Then Donald Trump moments ago gave a speech at the Republican retreat at his resort in Doral. He has the Republicans, of course, all go there while we're in this war, while Congress refuses to work or do its Article I duties. They're hanging out with Donald Trump and using their money to pay for hotels at Trump's resort at the Doral in Miami.

11:15Ben Meiselas:And then Donald Trump said the following on Iran. He called the war an excursion. This is just a short term excursion. You can see how weak his language is here. It's better, stronger, and our country is doing really well. I mean, at a level that nobody thought. We took a little excursion because we felt we had to do that to get rid of some evil. And I think you'll see it's going to be a short term excursion. How good is our military, right? Amazing. How good. Short term. Short term.

11:55Thank you. They're great. Then Donald Trump lies and says that, you know, if we didn't do this in Iran in a week,

12:06Ben Meiselas:they would have deployed nuclear weapons all over the Middle East. Play this clip. Had we not done the B2 raid and have we not done this one where we said, you know, it's time to go in. We have to go in. Have no choice. Number one, if we didn't go in, they would have come in after us because I see the Democrats trying to justify it. And they're failing because the voter on the street is saying you've got to be kidding. But I see where they're going. Well, they're always saying, no, no, there was no reason. Well, I'll give you the best reason of all. Within a week, they were going to attack us 100 percent.

12:40They were ready. They had all these missiles, far more than anyone thought. And they were going to attack us. But they were going to attack all of the Middle East and Israel. And if they had a nuclear weapon, they would have used it on Israel. And this was going to be a major attack. They had all of those missile sites and all those launchers that we got rid of about 80 percent of them right now, by the way, got rid of.

13:02Ben Meiselas:He starts making noises. Play the clip. It's the easiest thing we have. I can't. It's the easiest thing we have. He then says that Chuck Schumer is a registered Palestinian. And then Donald Trump says that the Iranian people are quite nasty, referring to Iranians in general. as a general matter, he refers to the people of Iran as quite nasty. Yeah, I don't think you are helping your cause, Donald, of building any kind of coalitions in Iran when you say they're quite nasty. Here, play this clip. And I've watched them. I watched Schumer, who's horrible. What a horrible politician. He is now a Palestinian officially.

13:43He is registered as a Palestinian. He's a proud, he's taken the biggest turn of any human being I've ever seen. He's gone from totally pro-Israel to totally pro-Palestinian. He wants to protect the Iranian people that are quite nasty.

14:03Ben Meiselas:Donald Trump then says we have to crush health care in this speech. Let's play it. I inherited that one of the first targets must be the crushing health care. We have to crush the and take over the health care situation, which we can do for the first time we can do it. And then even though we know who's leading Iran right now, the new Ayatollah Mojtaba, Donald Trump says nobody knows who's running it right now, which is false. We know who's running it right now. And we've heard from the foreign minister. We've heard from their national security advisors. We've heard from all their top people pretty much.

14:41Ben Meiselas:But here's what he says. Their terrorist leaders are gone. We're counting down the minutes until they will be gone. Think of it. We had leaders and they're gone. We had new leaders and they're gone. And now nobody has any idea who the people are that are going to be the head of the country and will not relent until the enemy is totally and decisively defeated. Then we have MAGA Mike Johnson says this is the golden age. Listen for yourself. When we were here just last year, we were talking about being on the edge, on the verge of the dawn of a new golden era in America. And my friends, that is exactly what we are in the middle of now, the new golden era, new golden age.

15:25Ben Meiselas:More from Mag and Mike. He says that Donald Trump never sleeps. I'll share this with you right here. He is the most active president, the most energized president, the most successful president, I believe, in my lifetime. And he's proven it over and over and over. And part of it is because he doesn't sleep, thankfully. He's got so much to do. And I know that because I get calls from him at 2 a.m. and 7 a.m., sometimes in the same day. He doesn't require a lot of sleep, thankfully. And he is the man for the moment. And just so you can hear from what the Iranians are saying, here's the foreign policy advisor to the office of Supreme Leader, Kamal Karazi.

16:06Ben Meiselas:Here's what Kamal Karazi says about, you know, is there any desire to reach any negotiated resolution with the United States? What happens next? I mean, just listen for yourself what he says. Here play this clip. Iran has a new Supreme Leader. What does that mean for your military effort and the confrontation with the United States and Israel? That means the system is quite functioning. So the United States says it's drastically degraded the Iranian military, the capabilities as far as missiles is concerned, drones is concerned. How much longer can you do this? That is one of the false narratives that the United States government is producing.

16:50The Iranian military is quite strong, as you see, because they have the motivation, they have the arms that they need, which are produced in Iran. As a matter of fact, we are not dependent on any other country for weapons and arms. So your side is ready for a long war if the United States and Israel choose that. Do you consider this an existential threat to the Islamic Republic? It is an existential threat. to the Islamic Republic, and therefore we have to stay with full might as we are doing now. Is your side seeking or will you seek a ceasefire with the United States at this point in time? And with Israel?

17:39I don't see any room for diplomacy anymore. Because Donald Trump had been deceiving others and not keeping with his promises. And we experienced this in two times of negotiations, that while we were engaged in negotiation, they struck us. How does all of this end then? If you say right now there's no room for negotiation, President Trump says he wants complete surrender. What does that lead to? There's no room unless the economic pressure would be built up to the extent that other countries would intervene to guarantee this termination of aggression of Americans and Israelis against Iran.

18:26Ben Meiselas:And here's what Marco Rubio had to say. And you'll note that there's, as Jimmy Rushton explains, there's no mention of removing the regime, no mention of destroying the Iranian nuclear program, no mention of destroying Iran's ability to project power via proxy forces. And, you know, the regime's war aims just constantly change. You can listen to it for yourself here. Play this clip. The goals of this mission are clear, and it's important to continue to remind the American people of why it is that the greatest military in the history of the world is engaged in this operation. It is to destroy the ability of this regime to launch missiles, both by destroying their missiles and their launchers, destroy the factories that make these missiles, and destroy their Navy.

19:07Ben Meiselas:That's the current update we have now. We'll keep you posted every step of the way. As always, hit subscribe, and let's get to 7 million subscribers. And thank you for watching.

19:18Ben Meiselas:MidasPlus.com. You'll get daily recaps from Ron Filipkowski, ad-free episodes of our podcast, and more exclusive content only available at MidasPlus.com.