Trump's Epic Fury...with Indiana Republicans

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1:06Donald Trump sets up Project Freedom. Within hours of him announcing that, some French container ship gets hit. There must be plenty around Trump now who realise that every time he uses a word like surrender and capitulate, all it does is it gets the back of Iran up. I feel I've read this about 15 million times. If you don't do what we say, we're going to blow you to smithereens. Oh, you're going to kill another civilisation. Oh, you're going to wipe them off the face of the earth? Oh, right, OK. I think it just sounds meaningless. You crack on. We'll call The Undertaker. Iran had never exercised that degree of control over the Strait of Hormuz.

1:43The operation is over. Epic Fury, as the president notified Congress, we're done with that stage of it. OK, we're now on to this project of freedom. As far as a negotiation is concerned, I think the president's been clear that part of the negotiation process has to be not just the enrichment, But what happens to this material that's buried deep somewhere that they have still have access to if they ever wanted to dig it out? Marco Rubio announcing that the military operation Epic Fury is over in the tone of someone who thinks we're the stupid ones for not having realised. And saying that it's all about Project Freedom, reopening the Strait of Hormuz with American military hardware.

2:22Except Donald Trump undermined him moments later and said, I'm putting that on pause because a peace deal is close. Really? Welcome to the News Agents USA. The News Agents USA with Emily Maitlis and John Sopel. It's Maitlis. It's, I don't know what I am. John, I think. And Marco Rubio yesterday was at the White House briefing room lectern, standing in for Caroline Levitt, not standing in for Donald Trump. That would be very presumptuous of him indeed to even think about such a thing. But there he was in the briefing room saying, no, no, look, look, look, look. Epic Fury's done. The military part of this campaign is complete.

3:08We've done everything we achieved. and we're now about Project Freedom, which is solving a problem that wasn't there before Epic Fury started, namely the Strait of Hormuz and the passing of commercial shipping through that strait, which is now a huge problem created by the Iran war. And just as a footnote, no, you haven't changed the regime. No, you haven't got the nuclear material and no, you haven't stopped Iran's missile programme. But apart from that, it's all gone really well. Well, I guess there was this flurry of activity and interest, a story breaking big morning from Axios, which suggests that the White House is now on the brink of what they call a memorandum of understanding, a one page memorandum of understanding.

3:55One page in Trump terms sounds quite long, actually, because, you know, it's not a true social post. It's not a tweet. It is something that, if it comes to pass, will number the things that it expects to hit in terms of a peace agreement of sorts with Iran. So the framework suggests there will be more detailed nuclear negotiations, which would involve Iran committing to a moratorium on nuclear enrichment. OK, let's just see if that gets signed off. It would mean the US agreed to lift its sanctions. Again, a complicated one, because, as we know, Scott Besant, Treasury Secretary, started lifting sanctions in the middle of the actual war as a way of trying to get some of the oil through.

4:43So that's confusing. And the US would have to release billions of dollars in frozen Iranian funds. Both sides, crucially to your point, would have to agree to lift restrictions around the transit through the Strait of Hormuz. And so we haven't seen this memo yet. It is just being reported by Axios, which has been sourced, we understand, from two officials inside the White House. But other parts of the press, other papers are reporting this. And Pakistan as well. Pakistani sources have been quoted as saying, yeah, this is real and that maybe the two sides are closer. Apparently it's being negotiated by Donald Trump's two favourite negotiations, his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who I saw at some fancy Miami nightclub with Ivanka the other night, walking in and kind of looking like his mind wasn't entirely on Iran peace talks.

5:41and Steve Wyckoff, the property billionaire from New York. They're apparently the ones negotiating this stuff, but they're not in Islamabad. They're not meeting with the Pakistanis. So, look, this may all be real. It may be that it is about to come to pass that there is going to be a peace deal, that it will kind of result in some kind of nuclear deal, that Iran commits itself to no nuclear enrichment for 10, 15 years. apparently according to this Axios report that the Iranians want to commit to five America want 20 years so maybe there'll be some middle ground phase there there'll be the question of the Strait of Hormuz can Iran start charging a kind of motorway toll for any kind of tanker passing through it America would want to that not to happen but there's also the problem that who are they negotiating with?

6:35Because the leadership has been taken out and it seems that there are rival factions in Iran who may take different views. Apparently the foreign minister, more moderate than some of the others where the Revolutionary Guard are sort of holding sway. So that's a problem. That's one idea. That's one explanation for everything. The other explanation is that Donald Trump sets up Project Freedom, says that there is this red, white and blue dome now over the Strait of Hormuz and shipping can pass freely. And within hours of him announcing that, some French container ship gets hit, crew members get injured, and oops, it looks like that dome is not quite as fireproof as Donald Trump asserted it was.

7:17And just thought, God, I'm going to be humiliated here if I carry on with this. So let's pretend there are peace talks going on and that they're really close to conclusion, which is not the first time this has happened. Yeah, I mean, if you take on some of the numbers that we're seeing, I think it's up to a thousand ships are stuck in the Straits of Hormuz. I think 1 ,500. And there are normally over 100 passing per day through the Strait of Hormuz. And the first day of Project Freedom, two. Two. So that percentage is pretty slight. Now, you can say slow start only day one, but it looks like now there isn't going to be a day two because he has, as you said, halted Project Freedom.

7:59And I guess the question is, did he halt it because he genuinely believes that this memorandum of understanding is going to end the war and it's all going to be fine and he doesn't have to send anyone there? I mean, they've still got, I think, 23 ,000 troops there, so God knows what they do now. Or he's just kind of flailing around and nothing that he suggests actually comes to fruition in the way that he imagines it would. And there is one more detail, which I think is kind of important. This epic fury war has been going on for 60 days. Now, anything longer than 60 days under the US Constitution needs sign off approval from Congress.

8:36So it is perhaps not completely arbitrary that this is all happening now at the 60 day deadline, because on Friday, Trump would have had to send a letter to Congress saying, can I have, you know, the goods approval to go on with this? Rather than wait for that to be turned down, he probably thinks it's easy just to put it to an end. Yeah. So and so you've got people who are Trump loyalists desperate to come up with an explanation of what is going on. That Project Freedom gets launched to such fanfare with Marco Rubio in the briefing room. And then only moments later, it's being put on hold. And so rather than say, does the president know what he's doing here?

9:22You have Fox News anchors like Jesse Watters saying, well, of course he knows what he's doing. At least, I think I know.

9:58a lie. And watching the Americans escort ship after ship out of the Gulf and them not being able to do anything about that was going to be humiliating. Not only were they going to lose whatever military prestige they had left in the region, their negotiators weren't going to be able to fight for their position after they lost their last bargaining chip. The commander-in-chief must believe that the Iranians are serious about surrendering if he's going to pause Project Freedom for the sake of the deal, because you could also continue Project Freedom during the negotiations. You know, you do want to get these foreign ships moving.

10:38The president must know what he's doing. And we're about to find out how insane in the brain the regime really is. I think when he says how insane in the brain the regime really is, he's talking about Iran, not the US administration. It's ambiguous. It could go either way. He sounds like he's trying to convince himself that there is a real rational explanation about what is going on here. It may be, he's absolutely right, it may be that Iran has come up with a really kind of good proposal for peace and that's the basis of an agreement and that Iran is going to sign up to it and America will too.

11:14But what he was saying there about, you know, ships are able to pass through the strait freely and it's just such a humiliation for Iran that they can't do anything about it. No, the opposite is true. Two ships got through with all the American hardware and one French vessel gets hit. I really struggle to know how much the US administration is telling themselves this story because it is important to sort of have the propaganda sort of arm of Fox and everyone behind you when you sort of sail on doing this and how much they realise that they are up, you know, the old shit creek. Shit creek without a paddle.

11:48Yeah, the sort of Hormuz Creek. I mean, Trump said last week, if we leave right now, it would take them 20 years to rebuild, which is technically true in terms of the military damage done, the infrastructure damage done. But he must recognise that amid this destruction, they have found all these new forms of leverage. Iran had never exercised that degree of control over the Strait of Hormuz. People always knew that it could happen. It was a theoretical thing. It was a theoretical thing, ironically, like the nuclear enrichment. Right. It was a theoretical thing. And Iran has basically replaced that theory with this practice.

12:31Right. Which is, oh, it just so happens that this is working really well for us. The country, I don't think, would have been confident that it could have done this without Trump literally giving them the how-to manual. So we are in a place now where Jesse Watters and Fox News are trying to tell themselves that Trump knows exactly what he's doing. The three-dimensional chess grandmaster. As ever, wandering along the sort of, you know, tiddlywinks board, trying to work out what he's actually stepping on. But I think that there must be plenty around Trump now who realise that every time he uses a word like surrender and capitulate, all it does is it gets the back of Iran up to the point where, I mean, if you look, I'm just going back to this, you know, memorandum of understanding.

13:23It says that Iran would commit to never seek a nuclear weapon or conduct weaponised related activities. Now, they didn't sign that off last time in the 15 point plan and they don't appear to be weakened since first talk of that came. Trump is trying to replace the JCPOA, the exact deal that he got rid of, with something which is basically the Trump JCPOA. And this time Iran is emboldened because they've seen that they've had America over a barrel of oil and they don't need to sign it. Well, listen to Donald Trump's latest post. We're sitting in the studio half past one and this was posted just half an hour ago.

14:03Assuming Iran agrees to give what has been agreed to, which is perhaps a big assumption, the already legendary epic fury will be at an end. And the highly effective blockade will allow the Hormuz Strait to be open to all, including Iran. If they don't agree, the bombing starts and it will be sadly at a much higher level and intensity than it was before. thank you for your attention to this matter, President Donald J. Trump. I mean, I feel I've read this. You sound just like him when you do that. Yeah. I feel I've read this about 15 million times. If you don't do what we say, we're going to blow you to smithereens, we're going to wipe you off the face of the earth, we're going to kill a civilisation in one night and you'll never come back.

14:40I mean, how many more times does he say that? And the fact you can say it's so blase now. Oh, you're going to kill another civilisation? Oh, you're going to wipe them off the face of the earth? Oh, right, OK. And it just sounds so meaningless. You crack on, we'll call The Undertaker. Exactly. It just sounds like it's there for effect for his own base. And I think that it's convincing fewer and fewer people. I mean, if you look at his approval ratings right now, look, Donald Trump still has an enormous control over his party. And we'll come to that in a moment because it played out dramatically in Indiana overnight.

15:12But among ordinary Americans, there are more and more people thinking, well, hang on. You said you were going to deal with inflation. The inflation is roaring back because of this. The cost of gas at the petrol station has gone up and up as a result of what's happening in the Strait of Hormuz. And so many other things as well that Republicans are really fearful now that in the midterm elections, it's going to be bleak unless they can somehow cheat the system and massage the seats that are up for grabs. Well, let's hear what Marco Rubio had to say when he was asked precisely that about the gas prices.

15:44Thank you, Mr. Secretary. The average price of gas in the country right now is$4.50. Do you have a thought on how long Americans are supposed to kind of accept this? Do you think it will affect Republicans' majorities in the midterms? Well, I'm not going to speculate on the politics of it. You can tell me. I mean, look, it's obviously being driven by global events. That was true during the Russia-Ukraine war as well, where you saw that come up. Look, we don't benefit from the Straits as much as other countries. I don't know. You've seen what the gas prices are like in other parts of the world that are really suffering big time.

16:13So we're very fortunate that the United States, I believe right now, is like the world's largest net exporter of oil and natural gas as a result. Not because of this world, but because we have this capacity. So we've been insulated to some degree. We're obviously still vulnerable to some extent to global prices and so. But in the end, I mean, we're more insulated than other countries, even though that's not welcome news to Americans that are paying more at the pump, no doubt about it. And it certainly is one of the circumstances of it. There are people that we're predicting would be much higher at this point, but we're not taking that for granted.

16:41Suffice it to say that. Let's pause that little paragraph. So the Secretary of State is saying, I'm not going to speculate on politics. I don't want to get involved in their world. Sorry, you're who? You're what? You're the actual United States Secretary of State. And then he says, it's obviously being driven by global events. Sorry, who is driving? What global events? There is this wonderful, wonderful attempt to make it seem... Nothing to do with us. This is all in the passive. It's all happening around us. And I don't understand how these global events started. Do you? Well, no, that's politics.

17:21Well, yeah. Well, he did say it's just like Russia's invasion of Ukraine when prices went up. Yeah. America didn't have anything to do with that. America has quite a lot to do with the fact that the Strait of Hormuz is shut because it was as a result of American military action with Israel against Iran that the Iranian leadership or the revolutionary guard decided, you know what, we are going to pull this economic weapon out and we're going to see if it works. And boy, has it worked. So when Marco Rubio says, yeah, it's just global events that's led to this price spike in the cost of fuel, the tanks for American consumers.

17:59No, it's your policies that have directly led to that. There's a straight line that leads from the price of gas to what you'd started over 60 days ago in Iran. You don't need to catch the fingerprints here, do you? I mean, it's kind of there. In a moment, we are going to be talking about what happened overnight in Indiana, where the gerrymandering game continues.

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19:55The News Agents USA. In Indiana, just a few moments ago, the Senate there rejected the congressional maps to redistrict in that state. A number of Republicans voted against that redistricting effort. You have spent a lot of time talking about this. The vice president traveled to Indiana. What's your reaction? Well, we won every other state. That's the only state. It's funny because I won Indiana all three times by a landslide, and I wasn't working on it very hard. It would have been nice. I think we would have picked up two seats if we did that. You had one gentleman, the head of the Senate, I guess, Bray, whatever his name is.

20:32I heard he was against it. He'd probably lose his next primary, whatever that is. I hope he does. So that was Donald Trump speaking last December when he was asked by a reporter what happens to that rebellion against the redistricting of seats in Indiana. We've talked before on the podcast about this move that began in Texas, that then spread to Virginia last month, that has hit California as well, to essentially redraw the electoral maps. And in Texas, in the red states, Trump has been a big fan of it because it nets him, he thinks, more Republican representation, Congress people for the Republican Party.

21:14And he's faced suddenly the Democrats doing the same thing in the blue states. So overnight in Indiana, Trump flexed his muscles and something pretty interesting happened. The people that he threatened because they had rebelled against his efforts to redistrict lost their chance to stand in these seats. Yes, they lost their primary race. Donald Trump has asserted control. He has flexed his muscles, as you say, Emily, and it wasn't just flexing muscles. He got like minded supporters, these political action committees, PACs, to pile in a ton of money into Senate seats for the Indiana Senate. This isn't the Senate in Washington.

22:02This is the Senate in Indiana. And these are normally kind of low level races that no one takes any notice of outside of Indiana. but the Hoosier state became the focal point of this redistricting battle. Should we just go back? What is a Hoosier? I keep reading a Hoosier. What is a Hoosier? Is it a bird? Is it a plane? You know what? I've always known it as the Hoosier state. I have no idea. OK, well, I can just tell you, we've just looked it up. There is no definition of Hoosier. It just means... You're from Indiana. It means you've got a hardy frontier spirit and that's it. Have you got a hardy frontier spirit?

22:39I'm a Hoosier. You're a Hoosier. We're all Hoosiers. So what happened last night was that the money was piled in against Republicans. And don't think of this as a sort of battle between liberal Republicans and conservative Republicans. This is about MAGA and the authority of Trump. And Trump wanted this redistricting to happen. There are nine congressional seats in Indiana. The last map was drawn after the census, which is when congressional districts are meant to be redrawn. But Donald Trump has set in train this kind of war between Democrats and Republicans to redistrict as much as possible.

23:15So you can draw a map. And essentially what the Republicans or what Donald Trump wants the Republicans to do is to redraw the map so that there is zero Democrat representation in Indiana. because there are nine seats. Currently, there are seven held by the Republicans, two held by the Democrats. And Donald Trump wants all nine to be Republican. And you do that by just simply redrawing maps so that you take away Democrat strongholds, you put them into even safer Republican strongholds. And hey, presto, you deprive the Democrats of any representation at all in the House of Representatives in Washington.

23:51Yeah, and this is a story about big money and also about small money because the average salary for an Indiana state senator is about 33, 35 thousand dollars. Right. We're not talking megabucks. They're sort of part time jobs you're allowed to keep doing. You know, you're a lawyer or you're a doctor, whatever. You do this as well. And yet these Trump aligned dark money funds groups have spent around seven million dollars on TV ads just this year in Indiana. We're going to play you some of these. Just to put that into sort of context, in 2024, a presidential election year, the entire cycle, less than 500 ,000 was spent on Indiana State.

24:38And in the first four and a half, four months of this year, 7 million. Here is a taste of some of those ads that the Trump friendly sort of packs were running. pathetic rhino jim buck voted against trump repeatedly against trump on china to keep liberals in congress jim buck pathetic old liberal tracy powell endorsed by president trump trump endorsed tracy powell for state senate soft on skin soft on bottoms soft on china state senator greg walker betrayed hoosiers by voting to let chem china own hoosier farmland putting us at risk And Greg Walker was soft on redistricting, voting against President Trump to protect liberals in Washington.

25:22Greg Walker, soft, weak, liberal. President Trump has endorsed conservative Michelle Davis for state Senate. Pro-Trump Michelle Davis for state Senate. Paid for by Hoosier Leadership for America. When you first see that advert on YouTube, you think you're about to press skip ad because the whole thing is set up like a toilet paper advertisement, right? But you see the pictures and and then it basically just wipes, sorry, the floor. You know, it calls an 80 year old public servant who's been in the business for decades old, pathetic liberal. Yeah. And remember, these it's not this isn't Republican versus Democrat.

26:02Yeah. Just this is a primary campaign where one Republican is fighting another Republican. And these guys have given their service, public service, men and women for decades to the state, as you say, Emily, for not very much money at all. But because they believe in their politics and, you know, they're all kind of anti-abortion and they are pro-gun rights. And, you know, they're not screaming weak liberals. These are proper conservatives, but it's a question of control, of do you submit to MAGA? Do you obey what Donald Trump asks? Do you bend the knee when Donald Trump tells you to? And that is what this whole battle in Indiana is about.