Trump Says War Is Over, Vows to Keep Fighting

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Let's start with a test for another Euro-Promonet on Chopper.de/recorder. Welcome to "Politic of America", I'm John Favre. I'm John Lava, and I'm Tommy Nitor. On today's show, we'll talk about the latest with Trump's War in Iran, which, according to him, is both almost over,

and just getting started. Great. We'll also talk about DC's gidious Warmonger Lindsey Graham. The Magamedia Stars were feeling betrayed by Trump, and why some Democrats still haven't ruled out funding this war.

We got some post-nome DHS news to cover, a new war profiteering venture from the Trump kids, and then Congressman Pat Ryan talks to Tommy about all this maddening news from the perspective of someone who's actually fought a war in the Middle East.

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“Allison's haven't bought yet. So, you know, we don't do over here, what do we do too?”

We don't book "Lindy Graham" on our shows. Yeah, we don't. You're right, let's go as to come on. I mean, we probably would have Mom Jericho himself off, to talk about Invading Cuba or whatever. I mean, I don't want to do that on our shows, but I think we give them a top

time in the Maria Bada Ramon. Mr. Cricket.com/friends, go subscribe today. All right, we are on week two of Trump and Netanyahu's war in Iran, that's left nearly 1,500 dead, including hundreds of children, and now seven Americans, set off a global energy crisis,

and brought to power the late Ayatollah Sun, a hardliner who may be even more extreme than his father. Around continues to launch retaliatory strikes across the Middle East, and may be activating sleeper cells around the world, according to ABC News.

The Daily Mail also reported that the White House is blocking our intel agencies from warning local law enforcement, that Trump's war has led to an elevated threat of terrorist attacks here in the U.S. Trump, he doesn't seem too concerned about any of this, and has reportedly expressed interest in deploying ground troops to Iran,

according to NBC. Then on Monday, he had more of a mission accomplished vibe, sure did, in a pair of appearances in front of House Republicans, and at a press conference at his club in Darrell, Florida.

and I think you'll see it's going to be a short term excursion.

Sure term, short term. We had leaders at their gun, that we had new leaders in their gun, and now nobody has any idea who the people are that are going to be the head of the country. We've already won in many ways, but we haven't won enough.

“And that's what it was, because it won enough, and he was asked about that quote,”

and other statements at a press conference immediately following the event. We're achieving major strides toward completing our military objective, and some people could say they're pretty well complete. You've said the war is quote very complete, but your defense secretary says, this is just the beginning, so which is it, and how long should Americans be going?

Well, I think we could say it both. We could call it a tremendous success right now, as we leave here. I could call it, or we could go further, and we're going to go further. Clear is day. What are we doing? Then later he's asked like, is it going to be over this week? And he's like, no, but it'll be over soon. Soon, very soon.

Two weeks? He was asked, how can it both be only just beginning and almost over? And he's like, in a way, both are true.

“Okay. Yeah, it's really, it's gone real meta here.”

He also was like, you know, we could have done it. So look, if we didn't, if we, they're like, they asked him to define success, and he said, well, so, you know, the mission's over when the next day, they don't go back to building nuclear weapons the next day. And then he said, look, we could have done this the easy way or the hard way, and we did it the hard way, but I actually think the hard way is the easy way.

What? What does that mean? It really, it was wild. It just like, clearly what happened today is he woke up, he saw the price of oil going through the roof. He saw the stock market getting spooked. He was like, I got to say something to calm the waters here, but like, I don't know that that means it's actually going to end the war sooner than later. Like, the Israelis are going to have to say, the Iranians are going to have to say,

and by no objective measure is mission accomplished, right? Like, that there's nine hundred pounds of enriched nuclear material sitting in Iran that everybody says they're the most concerned about. Someone's going to want to get their hands on that, whether it's us or Israel. They still have a ballistic missile program. The supreme leader has been replaced by his more hard-line son. Like, I want this word to be over, right? This is why it sucks to be

Democrat. I want the word to stop right now forever, but like, by no means have we accomplished anything. Well, in the way I'm sure that I'm sure that the son of the idol I will be in a pretty conciliatory move now that he's murdered his family. Yeah. US dollar strikes killed his father, wife, mother, and son. So, yes, I'm sure he'll be a big. They'll stop those death to America chance now. And this guy is more hard-line and he's close with the evolutionary guards.

And this is another thing. So, let's take a couple of these things at a time. Number one, the new Iotola. Trump, a couple times today now has said, we don't even know who their leadership is anymore. We killed off the first leadership and the second round of leadership's gone. And they don't even know who's running the country. And it seems pretty clear that

there is a new leader, Iran. And the president was never killed. It's the same president's president

position. So, I don't really know what's going on there. He's just trying to make it seem like it. And they asked him at the press conference as well. Does the new Iotola have a target on his back? And Trump was very like, "Well, that would be inappropriate for me to say that," which makes me think that something's probably in the works already. Yeah. The Wall Street Journal said he's okay with killing the new supreme leader. So, there's that. And then you mentioned the

enriched uranium to the extent that Trump has that there's been discussion about sending in ground troops. It seems like Trump has not envisioned a full-scale invasion, but it seems like he may want to, or he's contemplating sending in special forces to get the uranium? Is that? Yeah. But again, I talked to Pat Ryan about this. We're talking about nine hundred pounds of nuclear material that's buried under a mountain that we bombed that you'd have to get out of

the country hundreds of miles. You don't have to listen to your pockets. It's like a criminal.

“No, and you have to put them in special containers. You don't die. And so, this is serious operation.”

You probably have to send in like the 80s, like an airborne to secure airfields and things to be able to facilitate this kind of transfer. So, like, it is an invasion. It is boots on the ground. I don't understand why the media kind of takes it face value of these claims. Like, oh, it's not boots on the ground. Yes, it is. Yeah. What we just saw was the most visit. Like,

we've never ever seen a president talk so casually and vaguely in ways they contradict itself

about putting Americans in harm's way. We've never seen anything like this. Never had someone who seems to either not be able to retain the information he's given, not want to retain the information he's given, not be honest about what he knows and what he doesn't know. We don't even write now. Like, in the last what 48 hours, we've been told that the goal is to destroy the Navy and the missile program, but also the only acceptable outcome is unconditional surrender. We've been told

and we still don't, like, forget knowing why we were doing this before. We don't know why they did this

“after they did it. We still don't know. And that was after the three of us, as part of our jobs,”

watch the president talk about it for about 90 minutes. We have no idea what we're talking about coming into this studio. We watched the president in the head states, the commander in chief, spending an hour and a half talking about a national security and national interest. And we do not understand why we went to Iran, what success in Iran looks like, how we get out of it, what the goal is, any of it. That is madness. What we're dealing with is madness.

It does seem like what they want to do if you, you know, because whenever you listen to Rubio, he tries to be, you know, he's like Trump, not quite as fucking stupid and crazy. Maybe it's crazy. But anyway, you know, you wonder if they'll say at some point in the next week or two, we've destroyed X number of ballistic missiles and the sites that build them. We've destroyed, you know, the Navy and we feel pretty good that the nuclear program has been

obliterated and bubble by and then they just, and then that's it. And then they say they're done. And then Iran has learned what happens if they pursue a nuclear weapon, right? They're like kind of some forward-looking threat. Yeah. And then someone says, well, then what about the and returning him or you're going to go get that? Whatever. And then they just say, and then Trump does his usual, like, I'm not answering that question now. And what Iran will have learned

is that until they get a nuclear weapon, they will never be safe from getting bombed by the U.S.

or Israel. That is going to be the takeaway for a lot of states from this. We can destroy their missiles, we can destroy their launch sites, we can hit the factories, they will rebuild

“all of that. We can destroy their Navy, they'll rebuild that. I think the takeaway will be”

tripling down on trying to get a nuclear weapon. Well, I know where they ever enter into an negotiation with the United States again, which they basically said today as well, which the quick, but every time the United States is like under Trump, they're like, yeah, let's negotiate. We want to peaceful into this, then they attack us in the middle of the negotiation. So why would they ever negotiate? So there's no more negotiations with the Iranians after this. There's just,

I guess, bombing them again when we think that they might start building another nuclear weapon or restarting the program? I don't know. It's just, like, people inside the Trump administration, you consider why video goes back to Sicily. That's all. One thing we've learned for sure is that we're all going to be paying a lot more for gas, until who knows when? The price of oil spiked around $100 a barrel over that,

then the price of gas hit an average of $3.48 on Monday, then by the end of the day, the price had dropped, the market rallied, although right before we started recording, it went back over $90 a barrel again. So now it's climbing back up to impact down more volatility, higher prices expected as long as the work continues and who knows how long after. By the way,

the war is also costing us taxpayers about a billion dollars a day. Trump said higher gas prices are

quote, a very small price to pay for, quote, safety and peace. And if you disagree with him, you are in his words, a fool. Well, that's a good quote. I guess the way those just assumes the prices will come down when the war is over and Americans will forget this all by November. I don't know what you guys think. I don't know what they're thinking. I don't really understand how they think or make their decisions. A billion dollars a day is a lot of money. People have been pointing out that that

just over the course of the year, that's enough to ensure 20 million Americans, if I'd healthcare for 20 million Americans with enough left over to buy a Christian home, one sex

“plane per day. That's how much money we're spending. That's a lot of sex. Yeah, for sure.”

So I'm sure they are hoping that this settles down and the oil prices come down and gas prices come down and there's not a long political hangover to what they've done here, but they don't just need there to not be a problem. They have a problem they need to solve before this began, which is people don't believe they're focused on bringing down the cost of living. In fact, they've come to believe that Trump is doing the opposite of helping this with tariffs and now with

this. So they may not, like I don't know, with a long-term political ramifications of this conflict, we'll be nobody does because we're not entirely in charge of when it ends, but at the very least, they made their huge midterm problem worse. Yeah, I think they're probably managed to calm oil speculators and future sales and traders in the near-term, but the nothing is solved at the long term. Again, we killed the new Supreme Leader's father, wife, mother, and son. He's probably

pretty pissed off. We killed half the IRGC. We don't really know who's going to be in charge of the military. And so Iran has to say in this, and if they want to keep the street of Hormuz closed,

they can do so. If they want to keep firing off weapons at the Saudis, they can do so. And ultimately,

the producers in Iraq and Kuwait and other places, they're running out of places to store the oil.

wells back pumping again and sometimes the wells never return to their original form because they

“get stopped up with minerals and shit and lose pressure and whatever else. And so maybe he”

solved the problem, but we don't really know that. Just see the IRGC, put out a statement saying that any country can now use the straight of Hormuz as long as they kick out their American and Israeli ambassadors for any European. Okay, guys. So that's happening. Also, I mean, the reason that prices are spiking because of this is like a fifth of the world's oil goes through the straight of the straight one. Also, the producers had to stop down. They had to like,

the Iraqi shut up 70% of their production. Yeah. Also, look, and all of this, it's like, these are not one to one. Like, it's not like the price of oil is not set by the exact amount coming in and out of the straight of Hormuz. It's a prediction of what oil will cost. It is based on people's expectations of the availability, of the instability, of what the future might look like. And a world in which we're in an endless kind of quiet, on again, off again, conflict in the

Middle East is not one in which people have confidence in the stability of the system, all of which drives prices, not just for oil, but for other things like fertilizer and other things up over time. You know, fuel costs for companies transporting foods, food prices get hit. I mean, this is, and as we have seen with the tariffs, these things take a while to like fully work through the system. It's not just like the price of gas this week. When you have supply shocks like that,

like there's one economist, it was quite a think of a time story that said, this, this administration is just a series of horrible supply shocks. It was meeting the tariffs, immigration, labor supply for migration, and now oil. Just fucking up the economy. Good stuff. And we are getting, you know, it is, it is March, the election is in November, but you know, you start having economic effects that pile up on each other, and we still have inflation anyway. People are struggling with higher prices.

Before this, you throw this on to the whole pile, and it's, I don't know, they're, they're bent on a lot. They're bent on a lot, or they just don't know what the fuck they're doing. Or probably a little bit above. Pot say America is brought to you by Zbattix. Let's face it. After night with drinks, I do not bounce back the next day like I used to. Or at all. Or at all. There is no bounce. There is no bounce. Just me sitting on the floor. Where's the bounce? Where's the bounce? Not from me. So you

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conversation where they called the war a "utter and complete betrayal" and said that MAGA is dead.

Tucker Carlson and Megan Kelly have been very critical even Laura Ingraham has been urging the

administration to address the strike on the Iranian Girl's School, but the Republican who apparently has Trump's ear on Iran is one of the party's biggest warmongers Lindsey Graham, who's been taking something of a victory lap in the press. Graham bragged to the Wall Street Journal that he got briefings from Israeli intelligence to help him make the case for war to Trump and that he coach Netanyahu on how to persuade Trump to go to war. Over the weekend Graham unleashed his war boner on Maria

Bartromo show, let's listen. Just funny, because not a million dollars a day. Oil prices up 27% in a week. How are you going to answer? Best money ever spent. When this regime goes down, we're going to have a new mid-East. We're going to make a ton of money. The original in the United

States, you just wait to see what's comes in the next two weeks. The next two weeks mean you want.

We're going to blow that hell out of these people. phrasing and then we're going to throw going to win this war. He also at some point says Iran's down cube is next here. Some kind of bad. He said that Trump is Reagan plus that we're going to march across the world. Get rid of all the bad guys. Get rid of all the bad guys, unleash a glorious new future. How does Donald Trump care more about what Lindsey Graham and BB Netanyahu tell him than

all these mega influencers who he knows are closer to his voters? What the the way Lindsey Graham described his conversations with Trump are exactly what I thought they would be, which is it's an appeal to ego. You will be greater than Reagan. You will be Reagan plus you will be

“on every season. And then the current Reagan plus Reagan plus, which is I think how you cook a steak.”

It's it's it's Reagan, but you also get Ted Lasso medium rare plus. The coordination with these rallies. And so I think like Trump cares about his base to an extent, but he also thinks

they're stupid. And you always can go back to like I could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and

they would never abandon me part. And so I think what he cares most about right now is being a historic figure building monuments to himself, even if it's politically unpopular, the ballroom, the Iran war, whatever else. Yeah, he doesn't have to face the voters again. I didn't give shit. All he wants to do is for the rest of his life go to the Kennedy Center, the Trump Kennedy Center, and they rebuild it with the fucking marble armrests, and then go to the end and have people

be like, oh, Donald Trump, the greatest president in the history of the world who's made the world safe for freedom and peace, and even if only like his sick of fans are saying that, that's good enough for him, and then he can feel good about himself. Yeah, I also think he's learned because he doesn't have faces voters anymore. Yeah, I think he's also learned from Soleimani, he learned from the previous Iran strikes. I think he learned from Venezuela that he can give the

hawks what they want without pissing off the base too much as long as the conflicts and quickly and there aren't troops on the ground. And there's not too much economic consequence.

“That's why I think to Tommy's point, why he's out there today saying it's an excursion, which by the way,”

again, it's a despicable word to use to describe something, which you know, you know, 175 kids were killed among many others among seven Americans to describe it as an excursion. Like we're just sort of the the the the the the amount of glib and un American language coming from as he describes this like aside, he wants to get out of this because he thinks he can give the gram people what they want without losing the people that he needs who don't want American misadventures around the world.

Yeah, excursions when you're going to zip line it club med. It's not. Yeah, it's when you get on the tender to go to to go to, you know, Saint Croix from the cruise ship. That's called an excursion, right? The the White House propaganda machine has kicked into high gear over the last week. They've been pumping out war porn videos that cut together air strike footage with clips from popular movies and violent video games. They're also getting help from the the OG war propaganda

disset Fox who dealt with the criticism Trump got over the weekend for wearing a baseball hat during the dignified transfer of fallen American soldiers by simply showing old footage of

rare apology from Fox. Before we move on, we want to acknowledge a mistake made earlier on our program during our coverage of yesterday's dignified transfer. We inadvertently aired video from an older dignified transfer instead of the ceremony that took place yesterday. We deeply regret the air and extend our respecting condolences to the service members' families. I don't believe him. There's no way, how do you make, how is it possible to make that

“mistake? You have to go find it, but they'll find the footage. The tape came in that day. Yeah,”

you have to go find the old footage like it's so clearly, and everyone was talking about him wearing the hat and how embarrassing and wrong it was for him to be wingering a USA hat at such a day. I said, like a somber place. Like I both don't understand, I think they're lying, but I also don't understand how they think they could get away with that. Yeah, I mean, I'm, I, my take is I'm surprised that they apologize. Yeah, you understand? There's that's very, very unusual because I don't even think,

like, yeah, he's a jackass for wearing the hat. He's a jackass for a million other fucking things.

That's like the bottom of my list. But like, the problem is he's the guy that would wear the hat,

not that he wore the hat. The guy that wears the hat is the problem. What do you make of the propaganda strategy so far? I think what enraged me more than the hat, if he's fucking White House videos that they're putting out, they're just like, yeah, Tom Cruise and Top Gun and all this other bullshit in the video games and it's like, it's fucking war. What are you doing? I talked about Pat Ryan about this. He said, like, he hit from a lot of his veteran buddies. This is one of the

things he's heard about the most is how offensive and gross it is. Like, neemify or gamify war. It's just wrong. I mean, I think it's, it's interesting to me that big chunks of manga have genuinely moved on national security stuff. Like, it's not just Tucker Carlson opposing the war because of his real. It's like, I can tell you as you mentioned, it's daily wire people. It's Charlie Kirk used to talk about his opposition into the war and Iran. And then the frinci types, like Alex Jones and Nick

Point doesn't stuff. But at Fox News, it is 2004 every single day. It is 100% pure, uncut, pro war propaganda. It's Fox and friends. It's like Brian Kilney this morning was essentially calling oil tankers who won't go through the straight-of-war moves. Pushes. Yeah. You catch that? Yeah. That was interesting. And this Mark Levin just like pure hardcore regime change guy. And so Lindsey Graham going on Sean Hannity tonight, of course, to keep up the fuck of course. Why not? And so the

white us is trying to neem its way through the war. It's like SpongeBob, it's video games. I actually don't think it's working with the audience they need to work with, which is these young men who are

“in that world. And like, normally, that's how you do appeal to them. But they feel like this is gross.”

It's a war. Yeah. I would bet to that Fox News is audience being old, more like those old kind of school Republicans that would like this kind of chest thumping stuff as opposed to the younger generation that is actually more online and consuming people that are more isolationist. Yeah. The, the, the propaganda video, somebody said this about Quentin Tarantino once

had always stuck with me, which is that he makes movies that glorify violence from the point

of view of someone who's never experienced violence. And that's what you feel when you see these videos when you try to turn it into a game. It's not a game. It's really serious. And it's why in previous administrations, you would never have anyone do anything like this. Because even if the people that are in charge of the media, the PR strategy, social media, what have you, have enserved themselves. They would, at the very least, have some sort of respect or humility

on behalf of those who do because they would understand how high the stakes are. But that's

“not what you get with these people. To honestly, these videos to me, to me, luckily, forget the”

hat, the videos. Pete Higgs-F saying that the media are putting the deaths of Americans on the front page because they want to make Donald Trump look bad. To me, throughout all of this is for me, the most despicable and and revealing statement anyone has made because hey, man, it's not all about you. It's not your pentagon. It's not Donald Trump's pentagon. It's like, he's trying to protect Donald Trump of all people. It's not even about your

right Pete Higgs-F. You're fucking debasing yourself and dishonoring the memory of these Americans who gave their lives so that you can protect Donald Trump's fucking political reputation. What are you doing? Like, Higgs-F thought in war. So he had friends who died the fact that he would say that to it's like, what happened to you? Yeah, he's a Lindsey Graham. I'm like, why doesn't someone drop Lindsey Graham off and look around and he can go get the enriched uranium, bring it back or

be great. Fucking Brian Kilmead can jump on a ship and try to go through the Trump's get why was straighted for me? I don't understand why these why why the people on these tankers aren't willing to die to keep the price accrued a little bit lower. Shame on them. The posterior. All right. Let's talk about the Democratic response to this very dangerous and unpopular war. Chris Murphy's calling on Senate Dems to block everything they can until Senate Republicans agreed

to a vote authorizing Trump to wage war. Then there's the funding angle. The administration

is expected to ask Congress for another $50 billion with a B to fund this war and what's even

more infuriating is that some Democrats are still open to supporting that request. Senator Chris Cunes of Delaware said outright that he would support it saying he wants more information from

may say yes as well. Even Hakeen Jeffries won't rule it out. He said I meet the press Sunday that Trump would have a quote difficult case to make, but that quote will cross that bridge when we get to it. Tommy, would you like to take off on this one? Yeah. My message to Democrats is if you oppose the war in Iran, you have to oppose funding. And if you try to split the baby, you look like you there believe in nothing or you are too

cowardly to vote your conscience. Because first of all, the Pentagon's 2026 budget is nearly

a trillion dollars. They don't need more money. They're good. They're good. Also, this is second like this is not the Iraq war fight from 2004 to 2007 where you had Democrats who voted for the war then trying to argue that they're going to vote against the supplemental, right? I could understand that was tough politics. It's also not a situation where you have, you know, a bunch of marines at a forward base in Iran on the ground who might not get an M-Rap if we don't vote for this funding.

This is we're talking about a military campaign built on lies with no clear strategy or objectives that Trump, as we just heard, could end like that. Right? And so if you vote to give more money

“to Donald Trump and Pete Hegsef to extend this war, I think you should have your fucking head”

exam. It's like you are an idiot. And it's also bad politics. Like Americans already don't

support the war. There's a new poll today. 53 percent opposed to war. 74 percent opposed sending

ground troops into Iran. This was the number that really jumped out of me. 77 percent of voters think it's very or somewhat likely there will be a terrorist attack on U.S. soil in response to the Iran war. Those numbers are not going to get better as this thing drags on. Opposed the war on the merits and vote against funding do not try to do both. You look ridiculous. Yeah. Yeah. If the president can start a war lawlessly without Congress.

And then Congress feels obligated to fund it on the back end as if it had been approved. We don't really need a Congress after that. You could just shut the whole place down. Right? Also, Coon said that they said, well, well, I'm going to support the troops. You know, I have questions, but I'm going to support the troops. I can't think of a like it is not supporting the troops to embolden and enable Donald Trump and how he's running

this military. I don't know how anybody who has just watched how Donald Trump just described this military campaign and can think it is supporting our troops to fund it to provide tacit approval for what he had done as if you had approved it in the first place. What about the next conflict and the one after that and the one after that? If we don't have a Congress, it's willing to say or at least on democratic side because we don't know what the help we may need

democratic votes to do this. It says, Congress has the authority to declare war that Congress is going to reassert that prerogative. If we don't have that, then what about the people killed in the next conflict? They're already talking about Cuba. There are other places Donald Trump would like to bomb. I'm not saying there aren't. There are trade-offs in any decision. I can all hear the arguments. However, it began, we have to fund the military, we have vulnerabilities elsewhere,

turning our interest elsewhere. There's no good outcome when Donald Trump is president. You can either do the hard thing now and try to reign Donald Trump in now or you can borrow against the future and push that problem down the line where only gets worse and it only gets harder. It is so obvious to me that the right thing to do here is to say no more and to draw a line and to hold as many people to that line is possible. It has nothing to do with the troops. No one thinks

that voting against this funding bill is going to somehow lead to someone flying a plane over Tehran and then all of a sudden the fuel runs out of it because they end this so the plane crashes

“because the fuel ran out because no one supported the troops. That's what we're talking about. We're”

talking about 50 billion dollars. Do you want to spend your tax dollars buying more bombs and more

missiles that may hit another girl school and Iran or hit Iran and then use another retaliation against American troops or do you want to spend the money at home? That's it. That's the only question. I don't know what other, what do you think if you're a Democrat? It's crazy. It is claim on the Tomach vessels. The idea that the Iranians could have got a hold of one because we sell them to other countries is he suggesting the Iranians stole the Tomach from I think it's the UK

and the Australians or the only other countries that have them? This is what Sean McCree's reporter asked him at the press conference. It's like are you saying that they stole it and he was like I'm saying it's investigating it. We're investigating it. So that's all I'm saying. Dan Kane put up a map the chairman of the joint chiefs that had a marking on it of US air strikes that included the town where this girl school is hit. There's no question.

Clearly it was a US munition. Then Trump was like, well, except of whatever the report says. Which is good because you know that he's thinking himself like well if it says that we hit it

“and we hit it then I'm just going to say that's what happens in war. People die may act and”

mistakes happen. Just even here that there is just we've kind of left reality behind. I remember when in Bosnia the US inadvertently had bombed a Chinese consulate or Chinese building. We've

for a long time. How did it happen? How did they make this mistake? Who was responsible? What were the repercussions? We're talking about a military conflict that was not debated in this country. The goals are unclear where it seems as though the US killed 175 people. Most of whom were children and the president is riffing about how maybe the Iranians did it to themselves based on nothing.

“Like the idea that anybody could the the only thing to do is to put a leash on Donald Trump.”

Anyways, the Congress can put a leash on Donald Trump. Whatever it may be, whatever the cost is, what we have to do. Not getting through this without there being like one way or another, America's going to have a lot of negative consequences for Donald Trump being president. The question is, do we want those to come from Donald Trump fighting wars abroad and his misadventures? Or do we want it to come from the political fights we have to have domestically now to reign him in?

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which continues full speed ahead, even though Christy Nome and Cori Lewandowski got shit canned. The Wall Street Journal ran a must-read investigation over the weekend about how the government has been assaulting and arresting American citizens for peacefully exercising their constitutional rights to free speech in assembly, and then falsely smearing them as violent agitators and terrorists from the journal, quote, "Of the 279 people accused by government officials

on X of attacking federal officers in the past year, 181 were U.S. citizens, close to half,

were never charged with an assault. None have been convicted of trial. Ice also just arrested a

couple days ago, a national journalist who had been reporting on ice for a Spanish language news outlet, as Stephanie Rodriguez Flores is married to an American citizen, has no criminal record, a work permit, and a pending green card application, but they grabbed her after she and her husband said goodbye to their daughter when she was on her way to school." So, Nome, Lewandowski, Pavino, or Algonne, Minneapolis has faded from the headlines. It seems like ice hasn't been as noisy

about their raids and arrests, but I worry that nothing has really changed at all in terms of how they're carrying out mass deportations, maybe they're a little quieter now, maybe they're not doing as much deportation porn videos from DHS now, but still happening. What do you guys think?

think so, yeah. Still tweeting. The brutality is less on display, but I think it practice that means maybe the tactics have changed, but the strategy hasn't, strategy is still being driven by Steven Miller, or the White House, Trump's base still wants more deportations. They like the

“harsh policy, and I think like ultimately, like the lesson as fascistism will always come for”

all of us. It's not just going to be the immigrants. It's always going to come for Americans.

It's in this a good example of a story. Yeah, there's one, there's one example on the story. This woman, Sidney Lewy Reed, she was recording outside of a jail, and she was accused of assaulting an officer. She had caught it on video, and her phone kept recording in her pocket after us as a lot of evidence. Because of that, it was just clear as day that this ridiculous charge. Nevertheless, they went to three grandjuries to bring a felony charge. That didn't work.

A felony assault charge, then they went back out or with a reduced charge of a misdemeanor, took that to trial, and she was acquitted. Whether or not they believed it had any case. It is clearly that they were using the process to torture this person for the audacity of filming them as they were transferring people out of this jail. First of all, she pointed out that if she

didn't have the video, she would 100% be in jail herself. Because her phone was still recording,

it has her gravely talking to the officer that grabbed her. What the officer said is something like, people can't mind their own business. She says, I mean, isn't that what makes America great,

“and he responds, removal of criminals out of this country. That's what makes America great.”

Yeah, I mean, you get this in the whole piece. Like all these officers clearly have been trained to arrest anyone. You can just rest as many people as you want. We've been touched you. There's a Bavino says direct Bavino says that to them. Ice agents telling protesters, you should have stayed home. You should have minded your own business. You should have edited all of this. They are being trained to go after anyone who, forget about like, some people

might imagine when you hear these stories like protesters in the streets screaming at Ice agents, which they can do. But also, this is just people holding up their phones, quietly recording, and they're going, and they're pretty. Now, they're pretty, and they're tailing them, and they're following them, and they're threatening them. The ice officers and these people, they're arresting them, they're trying to scare them. Anyway, like if we only know about the

situations where DHS and Ice is blatantly lying, because it's on video. And even with all that, even with just those situations, they're lying a ton of times. So imagine all the situations out there where there's no video, which has to happen a lot. Well, even the Bavino says,

“like, if somebody touches you, like, we're all now, I think, we see videos all the time on our phone”

of like sort of the algorithmically, like, riling each other up of like two people arguing at a store or something, and somebody have the phone in somebody's face, and then somebody likes a lot of the phone,

or hit, and they'll always say the same thing, you touch me, you touch me, that's a salt,

you touch me, that's a salt. And like, that's just internet, nark behavior, but like, law enforcement, no, if somebody, but one example from the piece had somebody had been knocked over by an agent, as the agent was going to lift him up, he like, swat it his hand away. They're trying to get this guy's 71-year-old man. 71-year-old veteran, they're trying to get him for a salt. That's not a salt. That's just not what it is. And no, like, if somebody touches you, like, they're supposed to be

some amount of like, for parents, for understanding that, like, no, we're not going to just grab anyone who brushes by you off the street. That's not what a government, a civil society does. Those are pretty obvious that they grabbed that reporter, a Stephanie, and Nashville, because she had been reporting on ice, and she had been reporting on all their rests, and they had been following her for some time. Herner has been, and the idea that the

government would detain her family and lawyer say without a warrant, they're now making up the fact that there was a warrant. But detain some one, take them away with who has a work permit, who's in the process of getting a green card who's married to US citizen, just they did it because they can, and because they're pissed, and they're like, oh, well, this journalist who's writing shitty stories about us, at least she's technically not a citizen, so we can go grab her.

I mean, remember how this all started? It was like, people here on student visas, getting arrested for writing op-eds about, you know, favor of Palestinian rights, you know, like this is a natural progression that should worry all of us. Well, you know, Mark Wayne Mullen, who will be the next, or who's been nominated to be the next DHS Secretary, the hearing for him will be now be Thursday the 18th week from this Thursday, and I just hope that

Democrats come ready with a couple of points that they want to make and really hammer home and make this tough for him, and like I think, you know, there's probably going to get enough votes, I'm sure if all the Republicans join in, but make it difficult and use it as an opportunity to highlight the abuses that are very much still going out of DHS. We're putting out that the personal chair that hearing is Rand Paul, who is no fan of Mullen and Mullen is no fan of his

the Iran war that, like the same, this is a Congress with that ambition, this is a Congress with

that a belief structure and defending legislative prerogatives, and I hope that he brings, because that applies here, too, that the failure to hold the administration accountable for just

“lying through their teeth about assault on civil liberties, like that's why Congress exists too.”

Yeah. Yeah, there's some suggestion that he's going to sail through because usually, you know, senators like other senators and confirm comedy, like he might be a good guy, I don't know, I don't care, just please ask hard questions about the policy for God's sake and just push him on stuff, like, you know, give, like, one minute speeches just don't use your whole time, grandstanding, ask tough questions, pin 'em down, get them, make commitments, like, let's do this.

Yeah. Because there are glattens for punishment, House Republicans held their annual retreat and Florida so they could listen to Trump today, get some in-person advice from the man who's going to cost many of them their seats. Trump spoke today at a moment when Republicans are trailing Democrats in the generic ballot by five or six points. The party is desperate for anything they can point to that would convince voters. They care about affordability concerns. They are

reportedly considering another budget bill, with some goodies in it, though punishable says they have no idea what to include or how to pay for it. I'll do a good start. Trump's also making their lives even more difficult by promising he won't sign any bills until the Save America Act gets to his desk, hammer that home today a couple of different times, even though Senate Republicans just don't have the votes to pass it at all. What options do Republicans realistically have to

get out of this hole? They could extend ACA subsidies and reduce healthcare prices through and tax the rich and figure out ways to provide services to poor people to actual working class, you know, populism. I think they'll go for voter suppression. I don't really think they have a lot of options. We don't know what's going to happen, but I think they have a lot of proactive options besides trying to keep people from voting. Yeah, Trump sent this to them where if they

“pass the Save Act will win, that's the only thing like that's how we win. We win by past it,”

but that's not why we're doing it. But if we pass the Save Act, we're friends. And if we don't I don't know, I don't know what will happen. Yeah, they really are not sure what to do. You hear them also saying, well, we just got to figure out how to sell the big beautiful bill from last year,

better, which is always there. You can't sell the bill from last year, better, even sold by

Nera concern in the West. Wait, you don't you don't feel the difference in your own life, the things are better. Well, let a politician tell you that they are. That'll do it. Like how much Trump's going to be like, I'm the guy who didn't undo all this. The deep cut for nerds in the audience. The other part of this is they don't just have the votes to do a lot of do really much of anything because this is not a the house freedom clock is not going to spend money

without pay for. That's really difficult. There's this idea that they're going to grab all the stuff. They couldn't pass through the one big, big, beautiful bill and pass it now, but it's got harder to pass things on easier to pass things. They could try to do some kind of reconciliation thing, but again, I don't even think they have the votes to do that, especially when they're about to be asked to send 50 billion dollars to the Iran project. And I actually think they have a lot of

house Republicans that won't really want that either. So they really don't have a lot that they can do.

“Yeah, zero. That's what they're going to get done. I think this year, I think they will get”

absolutely nothing passed. Save America Act won't get passed. Soon, you know, they were we last time we talked about this, I think they had been floating, like a talking filibuster, getting it, making the Democrats talk the whole time and filibuster that way on the floor, in order to like tire them down and get around the filibuster that way. Soon today was like, no, that's not going to work. I've studied it just like the Democrats studied it with the John

Lewis voting rights act, like it just doesn't really make that much of a difference. It's not happening. They're not passing the Save America Act. They're not going to get a reconciliation bill done, because they barely have any majority in the house. They have a bunch of right wingers who are not going to fucking vote for more spending. And we're going to want a bunch of other shit themselves, Democrats aren't going to offer any votes to pass anything. Like, I think

these people are just going to fucking sit around and hope that, you know, daddy Trump does a bunch of eos and sends out tariff refunds or whatever. I don't know what the fuck they said. And he doesn't care about their political future. He's a selfish prick. He wants to make money off a crypto. He doesn't want to get impeached. Get praised and launch wars from his country club. And so sure, maybe he'll annex Cuba and that'll solve our economic problems. But I don't see anything going through Congress.

Yeah, it's funny. The threat to the threat felt hollow. Like, it's kind of threat he makes.

Yeah, it gets himself out of it in two weeks. But the truth is, it's like, what are they going

to pass without the threat? Nothing. They can't do anything. So it's like, oh, you're not going to pass any bills until I remove this threat. Okay, I remove the threat. You're still not going to have any fucking bills. Exactly. But he does. Yeah, he doesn't. He doesn't care at all about them individually. And what happens to them? But he really doesn't want to lose the election, because he doesn't want to get impeached and losing ever. Yeah, it is. Most presidents wouldn't

want to lose the midterm because they would want to pass more legislation. Yeah. For him, I think it's all personal. He wants to, he wants to abuse his power on check, which is, which is why

It votes a America called Project 2018. Who wants to talk about Project 2018? Very secret. Project 2018. Not anymore. It is votes a America's campaign to win the house. We're asking everybody to sign up for votes a America and to get five friends, family members, colleagues, coworkers, enemies, whoever to sign up for votes a America in 2018. When we started votes a America, we were part of that effort to win the house. And we flipped, it was like 40 seats.

This is our chance to win the house again. And so we need to get to two hundred and 18 seats in the house. We can do it if everybody gets involved. We won't spam you. We won't send you endless tax. This is a way to figure out how to be the most effective going into these midterms from a team that's going to only tell you the best ways to get involved, to donate, to volunteer, to use your time wisely and to get your friends to do the same. Sign up, sign up at GoToVotesaveAmerica.com,

check it out. And you know, get your friends to sign up too, because it's March. You know, it's November's going to be here before you know it. And you can lose the Democrats on the ground and all these races could use a lot of help. And they are expanding the map. But you know,

“these things are still going to be close. And so it's going to be really important.”

Plus, you don't have many of the old ones going to dive between now and then. Exactly. And you want to get ahead of that. I want to get ahead of that. For sure. Yeah. All right. Last thing before we get to Tommy's interview with Congressman Pat Ryan, Don Jr. and Eric Trump continue to find ways to cash in on their dad's presidency. The Wall Street Journal reporter on Monday that the brothers are backing a new venture that's

planning to sell drones to the Pentagon, which because of their father can no longer buy any foreign-made drones. And so we're going to need more American drones. So into the void, step down and Eric, the specifics are that a company called power us that buys smaller drone makers is merging with a golf course company controlled by the Trumps. I read the whole piece.

I still don't know why that is. It's an awful. It's basically a spec. Basically,

you merge with a public listed company so that you're on the exchanges and you can raise capital by selling shares without going through like the formal process. So it's like a spec when you didn't raise money to purchase stuff with the spec. It's crazy. It's stupid. Cool. Cool. Yeah. Well, in response to the journal story, Eric Trump tweeted quote, "I happen to believe drones will be a much better investment than companies that still print

newspapers." Well, sure. I mean, he's correct. It's not going to community note that, but still. Yeah. It doesn't take no extra damage to the figure that I want to talk about. Yeah, it's also like, oh, wow. A lot of bluster from a guy. How do you first make your money,

“my man? Where do the money come from? Where do you where do you get that first million from?”

Yeah, you think like, oh, yeah, you think the newspaper business isn't great? Yeah, nobody thinks the newspaper business is great. You think you're like that? You're the Warren Buffett of your family? I don't think so. I don't think so. Punk. Unbelievable. It's also just direct. I mean, like, they're able to do this because their father made a decision. Hey, it's lucky time to say December. Of last year, the US government bans these Chinese made drones that creates a financial

opportunity than another one emerges with this war and these patriots stepped into the void implemented and almost spat with a golf course holding company. And here we are. And then also last

year, the Pentagon gave a $620 million loan to a startup. The Don Jr's VC firm had just invested

it in the loan was more than twice the entire company's valuation. So these lucky things keep happening and we should just be happy. Hey, guys. You think the Pentagon's accepted to, um,

“to buy the quality drones made by power us? And like, isn't it like, in West Dorale or something?”

It's like, it's a brand new company, like right where the Trumps live. Yeah, let's just say, if uh, hey, guys, listen, if we just dropped all those golf clubs over to Ron, what the fuck are we dropping on Mara Logo? I think we screwed up, guys. I think our golf drones and our war drones got fucked up. I don't know. I don't know. Talk about anything. I like it. Well, I mean, they got to a drone that's bringing your clubs around the world. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because they're in this case. They're like, you're a daddy, you're a daddy, you're also the plan is to like,

white label the like drone technology from Ukraine to make these drones. Well, so actually this morning for a pot say the world and Wednesday, I talk to a technology AI and drone expert who is to work in the Biden administration about this. What we're so running out of these interceptor missiles, the cost like millions dollars to pop like the Patriot missiles and shit. And so what the Ukrainians have done, because we won't give them

anyone interceptor missiles, this is invent drone technology that can basically hunt and kill these

shaheed drones that the Iranians and the Russians are using, because the Iranians get the Russians, the shaheed drones, and they've been firing them at Ukraine. So basically now the Ukrainians are providing us this technology to take out drones, Iranian drones in a much cheaper or at least more cost-effective way. And what a boon it will be for the

pack through this in the Patriots. So dark. This technology now we're getting it back from them in the in the

kids Trump kids profit. There's no amount of money they can fix them and that's I think that's a reason to be I don't know. I don't know that they want to be fixed by now as part of the problem probably pretty happening. That's part of the problem in your generational problem. The youngest ones that are one as we speak. Good time. Good time. Good time. Good time. Oh and all so good. If anyone did not see the millennia documentary in theater, which I realized everyone probably did,

“but in case you didn't stream it on Hulu, I'm not watching it. I think it was always on. Was it on Amazon?”

Oh, sorry. Tim Prime. Are they out? Yeah, Amazon. Amazon. I mean, it would actually be really funny just to give it the wrong plug because we're not like streaming now in Netflix. The millennia doc. Anyway, anyway, when we come back, Tommy's interview with New York Congressman Pat Ryan. Podsate America is brought to you by him's. ED doesn't mean your love life is over. It means it's just getting started. With personalized treatment options to help you take back control and spot

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“And that's why I'm glad I can't wait to see you in the waiting room.”

My guest today represents New York's 18th congressional district he served two combat tours in Iraq and as a graduate of West Point. Congressman Pat Ryan, welcome to Potset America. Thank you for having me. So as we speak, it's about three o'clock on Monday, Pacific time. Trump has given this rambling press conference. It's sort of sounds like he's trying to suggest that he's going to wrap up the war with Iran. We don't really know, as you and I were just

talking you mentioned, that the Department of War had literally just tweeted a graphic that they have only just begun. So there's not a lot of clarity. So we'll try to just talk around that. Let's start with some basics. I know you opposed Trump's war with Iran. Can you just tell listeners why? From when we knew this was coming when he stood with Lindsey Graham and had a hat. This was two months ago that said make Iran great again, which isn't saying, you know,

itself. We knew I knew where this has gone. Seeing this movie before and I thought it was really important right out of the gate to be clear. Of course, there are process, major process problems in violating the Constitution. But that is not the main argument. The main argument that this was a bad decision for the safety and security of the American people, the region,

or allies in the world. And I think it's critical at a moment like this that everybody be saying that.

Certainly those who have experienced shitty foreign policy over the last few decades from a bunch of chicken hawks who have no clue what this is about are ready to send our best and brightest young working class Americans from across the country while they've dodged the draft multiple

“times and their kids have no skin in the game. And I'm just sick of it. So I think it's important”

that we call that out loud and strong and continue to do it. Yeah, and I'm grateful that you are not focusing on the kind of process points and they should have briefed us this and that. It's like, no, it's a bad idea for national security reasons period paragraph. The public case for the war has been all over the place in the coherent, you know, it's like one day, you know, it's the Chairman Kane is like we're eliminating their ability project power in the region.

then Trump will talk about regime change. So there's kind of like all over the place.

Are you guys getting more detail or clarity in a classified setting or behind the scene setting, like direct communications with the Pentagon? Well, we got nothing beforehand, which is just a gan of violation of the Constitution and stupid. I mean, they're actually just smart people that would ask hard questions that would make you come up with a better plan if you were to do this,

“not that I think we should have. Since we've gotten several Ivan and several classified briefings,”

one for the committee, I'm on, which is armed services, which was much deeper anyway relatively, and then a whole of Congress won, which was a joke and they ran out the clock on us rather than giving us a chance to ask the hard questions on behalf of the American people. So we're getting a little bit more, but I mean, several of my fellow veteran colleagues and I walked out of this classified armed services committee briefing, which was two hours last week and said,

we were just blown away at the lack of any understanding of, like, yes, tactical success. We're destroying targets. Our military is exceptional at executing tactical and operational plans, but no ability to link that to any strategic or political aims. And this is where we've seen

the president all over the place. Like the first night at 3 a.m., it's regime change, then it's not,

then it's well, maybe we just want another Venezuelan. We're going to replace one horrible dictator with another, which is what happened. But then he's saying, no, actually, we want to retake the streets of Formus and I'll choose who the next leader is going to be, but also I killed all the choice. I mean, it's just such a mess. And it's so important to maintain focus on the fact that, while that is all playing out, we're seeing it, it's our, our

kids, like it's, it's our troops that are over there. We've now lost seven young Americans, not in Iran, but in what is a war zone? They are boots on ground in, in this case in Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia, and like the American people need to understand, we're already boots on ground because of the way this war has escalated. And it's tragic. Look, yes, I totally agree. I mean, there's a lot of Americans, both members of the military, and also tourists or business people,

who are stuck in a theater of war unwittingly and got no warning. And apparently the estate department

was offering them basically no help getting out, so just a horrendous execution all around.

So again, we don't really know what the Trump policy is. Maybe he's going to wrap up the war, maybe not. One challenge of that is he's really may have a say in this matter. The Iranians will certainly have a say in this matter. There was some, until today, Trump was refusing to rule out putting boots on the ground in Iran, and there was a report over the weekend that made me nearly lose my mind where the Trump administration said they didn't view a commando raid to secure

Iran's nuclear material in Iran as quote unquote, boots on the ground or an invasion. I was hoping we could just unpack that for a minute because we're talking about a mission to get,

“I think, 900 pounds of nuclear material out of Iran. Some of it is reportedly buried deep under”

rubble because we bombed it. That material would have to be secured in these like secure containers and then shipped out hundreds of miles. What's your sense of like what a US military plan to execute a mission like that would look like? And how is that not an invasion or boots on the ground? Like, why are we torturing the English language? Where's this coming from? Well, I think it's obviously just politics and it's just straight up lies at that point. I mean, it's just trying to deceive the

American people. This would be an incredibly complex, very high-risk operation, which I imagine our special operations have been training for these kinds of contingencies, both in Iran and other places, but it would require like multiple layers of likely taking some sort of airfield or like forward operating location of some sort and staging location deep into Iran. It would require still great risk out their air defenses and other that they still retain significant

both sort of conventional think missiles and weapons and unconventional ability to strike their drones

“and other things like that. And I think this is where Trump, in a lot of ways, took the wrong”

lessons from Venezuela, where that was an incredibly dangerous mission and we almost lost an entire aircraft and if those exceptional special operations pilots from the 160 if hadn't pulled off a miracle and rightly one of them was given the congressional medal of honor for it. That would have been really, really bad and likely deadly. And so the risk of something like you're talking about here to get out-high-end mission and it would be orders like in order of magnitude more dangerous

know the locations to your point of where these sites are and and just we're saying and I know

you know this like we used to know where all this material was because we actually had in inspections regime under an agreement and when Trump ripped that up it's actually now harder to track where this material is and in a week to two weeks they have enough highly in return to make up to 11 nuclear weapons the size of what we dropped in World War II in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Yeah, you're referencing these reports. I mean I actually talked about the state of the union that

“one of the lead helicopter pilots on the Venezuelan operation. I think I've shot in the like four”

times and this guy still somehow managed to land the aircraft take back off again just like extraordinary heroism in your writings. Rightly a reward of the Medal of Honor but if that goes differently a lot of people are dead. Yeah on this mission I mean we know where the three nuclear sites are we don't know if anything's been removed from those sites like I would imagine that you know there were some reports over the weekend that the 82nd airborne was told to be on standby. That is a

force that you might send in to secure an airport or runway nearby. So I think we're like more likely than not talking about a mission that is would involve hundreds of U.S. service members who are on the ground and Iran for an extended period of time to like get all this stuff out of the ground to the rubble versus you know a short commando raid like we saw in Venezuela which you know was incredibly risky in its own right. So yeah it's all quite complicated. And I think it's

important to not just look back at the most recent conflicts. Of course this echoes a rock and Afghanistan to a certain significant degree. But remember Vietnam started with this low trickle of oh this is just a small initial mission and we're going to do advisors and then oh well we need to take one additional escalatory step and then each time more and more American sent of course we know how that went and so a rock started differently with a huge initial amount

“of troops but regardless it's so easy to get sucked into this escalatory ladder and that's what”

I think we're seeing happening here and Trump just does not know he is so far out of the his depth. He does not know how to put this back in a box and the people who pay for that are troops but also all of us. I mean oil prices from $70 a barrel to over a hundred dollars a barrel. I think today's press conferences are clearly him freaking out as he understands it. American people will not tolerate skyrocketing gas prices for a war that nobody wants. Yeah he clearly wanted to say

something to a reporter before the stock market closed to try to chill everybody out prevent there being from a mass cell off but who knows what this is going to look like in in 24 hours and one thing that could happen if the work continues is Congress could face a request from the Trump administration for more money for the war and Iran. Politico speculated that it could be around

50 billion dollars but we don't really know that is on top of the Pentagon's nearly one trillion

dollar budget for twenty twenty six so they got a lot of money. CNN's Jake Tapper asked Senator Chris Murphy about this request over the weekend here is a part of their exchange let's watch. The administration is reportedly weighing Congress to approve an additional fifty billion dollars in funding for these operations. You have said you're a hell no not just a no on funding the war. We have seen this movie before we know that that vote will be cast as especially if you're

run for higher office you voting against the troops. Come on I mean the American people don't want this war they don't want this war they have seen what happens when American troops go into places like Iraq places like Afghanistan ultimately we get a lot of people killed we waste a lot of dollars the one thing the American people are clear about is that they do not want the United States dragged into another long term war in the Middle East if you support the troops

“then you should be voting against funding this war so that we get our troops out of harm's way”

virtually nothing good happened from sending thousands of Americans to die inside Iraq in the 2000s and if we don't learn that lesson then shame on every single one of us. So you know look I'm a fan of Jake Tappers he's a friend of mine actually don't think we've seen this movie before at all I mean how would you vote on a supplemental funding bill and what is your response to this suggestion that this is like Iraq in 2004 and that a no vote would be called not

supporting the troops. I agree absolutely hell no on a vote for whatever the amount is and we've

already by the way spent over a billion dollars a day up to this point which could have

gone towards people's health care lowering housing costs lowering food and grocery costs and instead we're doing more bombing around the world which know American ones I agree with what

question frankly to be very candid and having been on the receiving end of those kinds of

back and forths here in D.C. from a bunch of people who were in air conditioned rooms while we're again shot at and sweating our asses off and burying our friends like that's exactly backwards 180 degrees wrong the way to think about it is as I think Senator Murphy said like asking the hard questions is the most patriotic thing to do because like those troops trust us they sign up and they raise their hand because they trust us like me as a member of congress and all of us elected

officials and the way to honor that trust is to ask the hard questions to push to make the military

“be accountable to make the president certainly be accountable and how could you have to the last”

week how could any American in good faith say yeah seems like we have a coherent plan and we should just keep going with this like that is crazy and to portray it as disrespect for our troops is is one of the most cynical cowardly political things in a city and a place full of a lot of that stuff yeah I mean like we also talked about this in the main show but like I just hope Democrats listening realize that we are not talking about 2004 to 2007 like Democrats are not

voting against funding for a war they may have voted to authorize they are not voting against funding for a war where you know there's thousands of U.S. service members sitting in bases in theater you know in Iran who are wondering if they're going to end wrap or not right like that the we are this war could end tomorrow we know this because Donald Trump just suggested as

“much I think the way you support the troops is make sure that we don't prolong it and also the”

political context is entirely different I mean there was just a new poll that came out 53% of voters opposed the war only 40% support 74% opposed sending ground troops into Iran 77% of people ask in the survey think it's very or somewhat likely there will be a terrorist attack on U.S. soil in response to the Iran war it seems like the American people writ large think this war is a is a bad idea and are very worried then it is going to harm them down the road

if we continue and the American people are smart they pay attention they've been paying attention for the last few decades well lunatics like Lindsey Graham keep beating the war drums and and either bringing Trump along or lying to him or whatever the combination is and they're smarter than that and and you know talking to my constituents they feel exactly

as you said I you know I do think people always want to honor the sacrifice of those that are

serving especially those that we've lost and I've said multiple times this last week I've been very loud and vocal much more than I normally am and said like I think about my friends that

“that I lost some of whom were killed by Iranian weapons and I think the best way to honor them”

is to not send another generation of young brave Americans to another open-ended ill-defined regime change war in the Middle East and and I do think your point is super correct about like there's a lot of right comparisons but this not providing any additional funding here would not pose that immediate danger in any way because the duty has more than enough funds from the 150

billion dollar supplemental that they jam through as well if needed again I don't think we should

continue this another day though yeah I'm glad like a first of all you know your everyone should be grateful to you and everyone who served with your service I'm sorry that you've been thinking about this horrible stories that the people you've lost and I know that from my time and experience working in the NSC like that a lot of veterans that I had the chance to work with and be friends with who are veterans of the war in Iraq really really really hated Iran because the Iranians

would provide these weapons to these shea militias in Iraq called EFPs that were incredibly deadly they killed a lot of US service members and were able to take out American armor so I know this is like it's complicated right in this project there's no no one's crying for the supreme leader or you know the or the downfall of the regime but at the same time I also would imagine that a lot of the same veterans are like sitting head and hands being like didn't we learn a lesson

about the wisdom of regime change wars in the Middle East and how stupid they are and how like how fraught this all seems I'm just wondering what you're hearing from veterans and family members and friends we're like kind of dealing with those complicated emotions and feelings in this moment. Yeah you you put exactly right I actually had a town hall last night and in Iraq war veteran

decided to serve the country again got fired and it was a really emotional moment at this town hall where

“I'd shared how I was feeling he shared how heavy this was hitting for him and you know he”

he basically said like between getting fired this year while trying to help his fellow veterans

from a prior war and then seeing us going to war again that it like it really that he had had some really dark moments in this last week and I've heard that from a lot of friends and it's just it's not necessary we didn't need to be in this position and to see Trump like at his fancy beach club throughout all this by the way is just like such a split screen and I think the American people see that at this point and they know he's just foolish it and he's a

bad himself and he will leave anybody hanging out to drive American soldiers in this case and the Iranian people I mean like we just replaced one dictator with a younger more extreme one

is that what is that what we're doing yeah with a guy's son a more extreme version of himself

“yeah and like in hearing you talk about this and the thoughtfulness and the like serious”

nits with which you take these questions makes me think all over again about like the the messaging coming out of the White House it's it's the Pentagon and the White House they're releasing videos that are like air strikes that are literally cut into scenes from movies or like clips with video games like Call of Duty and it seems like they're trying to like memeify war like make it seem cooler fun and I'm just wondering what what your reaction to that

has been and whether you think like that is something that veterans appreciate or want to see

no in fact actually a lot of my very conservative and Trump supporting friends

veterans have specifically said that that was the thing that most in theory to them was seeing headset who's such a joke and Trump and others like try to make this out like a video game and and several of actually remarked about Trump wearing the cap at the dignified transfer which I agree was just incredibly incredibly wrong and disrespectful to those that we lost and those are the things that veterans notice like we appreciate someone that you know like

cares about the country and says he wants to protect folks and try to give them the better for the doubt but when they straight up lie and then they try to like make light of it or do things like this it it just further roads trust and and I do think it's worth saying like the bush administration tried to do the same things with like 20 different technology 20 years ago but they tried to kind of like release these tough guy macho on the surface

performative things just like hay excess daily press conferences have become and it's so disrespectful and people see through it yeah it is it is embarrassing it really is just like what are we doing here but Congressman Ryan thank you so much for doing the show thank you for your service and trying to give Democrats and Congress some backbone on this funding question I hope we don't get there but my god it feels black and white to me and it's just glad to

get a sanity check from you on this I really appreciate it everybody should vote against the supplemental and and just to be clear like it was pathetic that it was for Democrats that stopped the war powers resolution from passing yeah and I'm not afraid to say that I think I've heard that from a bunch of folks and we need to say that and voting to send money would be just a further mistake agreed insult the injury well thank you again thank you that's our show for

today thanks to Pat Ryan for coming on Dan and I will be back with a new show on Friday

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