The Daily Blast: Trump Blurts Out Damning Iran Admission as MAGA Turns Harshly on Him

I'm your host, Greg Sargent.

Donald Trump undermined his own case for war with Iran in some odd comments to reporters on Tuesday. He admitted that the worst case scenario is that Iran might be ruled by terrible leaders later, and acknowledged that the leaders the US wants in charge are already dead. The casual nature of these comments accidentally revealed how poorly thought through all this truly is. And all that comes as MAGA opinion leaders have turned hard against Trump over the war.

We think there's a good reason to track MAGA opinion on this.

Along with the markets tanking, the splitting of the MAGA base might be something that could get Trump to declare a victory and go home and put an end to all this. So how real is all that MAGA anger? We're parsing all this with the Zeteo Senior Political Carrespondent Assoin, who has written a lot over the years on MAGA's supposed anti-interventionist tendencies. Swin, good to have you on. I wish you could once have me on to talk about something sunny and not fucking infuriating, but here we are.

“Every single time you invite me on your pot, how's it going, Greg?”

Good, but Swin, there will never be a day that you're invited on to talk about good news.

So let's start with Trump. As of now, Iran's Supreme Leader has been killed along with some other leaders in the regime. Trump was asked by a reporter what the worst case out coming Iran is. Listen. I guess the worst case would be we do this and then somebody takes over who's as bad as the previous person, right? That could happen. We don't want that to happen.

It would probably be the worst you go through this and then in five years you realize you put somebody in who is no better. So would like to see somebody in there that's going to bring it back for the people. Swin, you'd think he would have thought about before. He says here that he doesn't expect that to happen. I guess he suggests he doesn't expect it to happen, but it seems to me that what he really revealed here is that he hasn't even bothered to imagine what additionally could go wrong from all this.

“Badly undermining his case. What did you make of it?”

Look, American lies online. Americans not to mention other people, but even just talking about Americans and American military personnel have already perished completely unnecessarily in this thing. And President Trump and the rest of the gang running the federal government right now are going about this with the exact same level of nobility and care and solemn posture that you or I would take while we are flipping through Hulu trying to find something new to watch. For months, according to our reporting at thezateo.com, for months and months in the run up to Trump launching this illegal war on Iran.

He was briefed repeatedly in classified briefings, senior intelligence personnel, other senior administration officials, but look, we have spent time gaining out these different scenarios of what would likely happen. If you took option A, B, C, D, D, whatever on what kind of war you want to launch. A smaller scale conflict, days, weeks or maybe the spirals and goes protracted. Here are different potential U.S. casualty estimates. Here are ways where things could go sideways, including the regime installing some one or something worse than the current Supreme Leader.

These were all things that if he cared to pay attention, we're put in his ear and in front of him over and over again in the weeks or months, even leading up to this thing.

“And you know what? Donald J. Trump said and decided firmly, "I'm the desiderer. I think it's worth it.”

Fuck all that noise that you're putting in my ear right now. We're doing it. Let's just do it and be legends." And he pulled the trigger on it. He was giving us about the war and all he did was just tune it out. He just closed his ears to all of it. And that's why right now he looks like he's surprised when he, you know, moles the sort of stuff in public. And gets even better with him, by the way, he was also asked who's going to replace the current Iranian leaders who are getting killed, listen to this.

And most of the people we had in mind are dead. So, you know, we had some in mind from that group that is dead. And now we have another group, they may be dead also based on reports.

So a couple things here, Swin, again, he undermines his case by basically admitting to how poorly thought through the aftermath of this truly is.

And then know how he says it's a good thing that the leadership in Venezuela was left virtually intact.

“So does Trump want to change at the top in Iran or not? Does he want regime change or not? This is something they just can't answer. What's your reaction to that?”

He does want full blow regime change in Tehran. In the same way that you or I would want to have a body that looks like Dave Batista's or Dwayne the Rock Johnson's without doing an ounce or barely an ounce of heavy lifting. Literally have the lifting that it would require to get there. This is a maga imperialist bloodthirsty wannabe god emperor who wants all the things that a god emperor would have if they were willing to throw 500,000 American lives, it's something to get done.

But he's not willing to do that because he is very, very lazy.

But that was his position in all these other invasions and conflicts, including with Venezuela. And the reason that seemed quote unquote successful to him in a way that he could stomach is because he cut a corrupt deal with the maduro regime such that he could preserve the repressive violent maduro regime while just getting his man. And he's getting his oil deal and being able to say, ha ha I have maduro in handcuffs, but you leave the regime in time. That is was never going to be the kind of options that he would have if he launched a war as he's doing right now with the Israeli government on the Islamic Republic.

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[Music] [Music] [Music] Well, here's where a leading mega figures enter the chat. They're turning pretty hard on Trump over the war. The bulwark had a good roundup of different voices. First let's listen to Megan Kelly who's a very big mega personality. I mean, I don't know about you, but I have found that explanations lacking. I woke up on Saturday morning like the rest of you to his video taped announcement where he was wearing the hat, did not walk away with a clear understanding of what we're doing.

It was re-statements of things we've known for years. Yeah, we hate around. They hate us too. We've known that. Why are we doing this now? What is the catalyst? Obviously, President Trump does not want to say we did it because of Israel. What he said instead was, quote, "Our objective is to defend the American people." Okay, so far that sounds good. Why do we need defending by eliminating imminent threats he said from the Iranian regime? Okay, we're under imminent threat now. What is it? What's the imminent threat from the Iranian regime?

So obviously a big part of this is that MAGA doesn't want the U.S. to be doing Israel's bidding as she hints out there. And I want to get to that part in a bit, but let's put that aside for now.

First, Swint note that she says directly there that the core rationale Trump has offered that Iran posed an imminent threat is bullshit.

“I think the idea that MAGA is anti-war or anti-interventionist is sort of generally nonsense, but here you do have a pretty direct questioning of Trump. What's going on here?”

Well, because this particular engagement is already thoroughly unpopular, he launched this war while the concept of this war was pulling fairly aggressively for a lengthy period of time. I believe in the 20s or low authorities, absolute shit show disaster territory, and he did it anyway. Even after the war was launched, there was a hope or expectation more of a hope within certain parts of the Trump world elite.

They're opposed to things in concept kind of to the point degree that any of them have a form of cohesive ideology or quote unquote principles, but once the want to be God King Donald Trump does it, usually that inspires a calculus shift. This has not shown all that much in the polling, even with just Republicans, not even Democrats or independents, but now that the war is well underway, do you support it, Republicans are hovering at half, do not support it. But that is astounding for a major Trump initiative when it comes to the people who have more flexibility, like the Mickey Kelly's or the Tucker Carlson's out there, to criticize this war public, they know where the winds are headed on this including with the model orbit, which is not at all anti war, which is not an all anti interventionist is just that they are looking at this and diagnosing the juice is not worth the squeeze on this.

“And this could fuck up the US economy, this could mess up gas prices, and this could get a lot of people killed including US service members and for what?”

And and it could tank Trump's presidency and they really don't want that to happen, which is a real possibility.

And I want to bring him the Israel angle here because it's so big for MAGA, Marco Rubio the secretary of state really stirred the pot here by saying that the US new Israel is going to attack Iran, and then he said quote, We knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn't preemptively go after them before they launch those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties close quote.

I'm stating the hodge twins who are a pair of brothers MAGA influencers said quote, we are at war for Israel, thanks for confirming.

Here's Tucker Carlson quote, this happened because Israel wanted it to happen, this is Israel's war.

“Swin can you explain what's going on here, what's the MAGA animus towards Israel, how does it really work?”

Well, there's a good amount of people in the MAGA coalition who still love this Israel, Israeli government are okay with that, but there is a growing contingent of people in the America first movement, who I would put it this way.

They would be willing to back and have that a great deal of mass murder and mayhem that the Israeli government in Israeli military has perpetrated in recent months and years.

They just do not like the perception or reality, whatever you want to call it, that Benjamin Netanyahu is able to dogwalk the United States into major foreign policy entanglement and expensive both in terms of blood and treasure activity that is not directly in the America first interest. So if the Israeli government were just saying, okay, we just want to bombard Gaza as much as we want, can you please support us that would get a lot more purchase in the MAGA order and has. But when they feel that Donald Trump and the US military and American government are being dragged into something for the interest of someone like Benjamin Netanyahu, I mean there are a lot of good non MAGA reasons to be opposed to a concept like that.

And more and more MAGA influencers are not impervious to not just feeling those emotions, but also noticing that they're online audience, they're bread and butter really really don't like that. So they are chasing that high, not all of them, but I really, you really do get the sense of people like Megan Kelly or kind of chasing their audience on this. In fact, she is sort of admitted it when she's talked to people in past months like Tucker Carlson about how she started to get more skeptical of the Israeli government.

Well, I will say that there is a major contingent of MAGA right now that's pretty openly anti-Semitic. We've seen Nick Fuente's traffic and that sometimes Tucker dips his toe pretty deeply into it.

“That's really roiling MAGA in a big way. It's kind of tearing it apart. And I just think that's an interesting dynamic. I think a lot of these guys have to walk a very careful line.”

The ones who don't want to appear overtly anti-Semitic, yet they know that they're dealing with a mass constituency out there that's really kind of, you know, trending in that direction pretty hard. They want to hold on to those people without kind of making it too obvious what they're doing right.

They would much rather have the might of the Trump administration and the US military and our on forces aimed inward, particularly on immigrants, then they would on places like the Islamic Republic and terror.

“So what Donald Trump is doing right now is he's effectively taking a little bit of a break from invading certain parts of the mainland United States. So he can focus for a while on bombing and going to war on a rock.”

A lot of people MAGA who are thinking in themselves, wait a minute, that is not the resource allocation that we signed up for. You're supposed to be making war on the Twin Cities in Minnesota. And Mexico when we when when we got when we get a lunch break, what are you doing with all of this bombing and potentially invading Iran bullshit. And it's basically you know what stick to the dark people in our hemisphere, go after them, they're the real problem, that's what they're saying. Yes, and they had barely any problems, it was some problems like Tucker Carlson did not like the operation in the middle of last year when Donald Trump was bombing Iran wasn't big fan of that.

There are MAGA figure heads out there and America first influencers who aren't, weren't happy with that. But by and large, the Republican party in MAGA were okay with that.

And they are okay with potentially invading Mexico soon, what they do not like is what we can all seeing unfolding every minute of every day recently that Donald Trump is intricately close to plunging us into a rock war 2.0. So for barely any reason at all when it comes to his war in Iraq, he and his administration did not spend any time trying to sell this to the American people to such a degree that even a good number of prominent Trump allies who I've spoken to in recent days, even they who are accused be aware of what kind of personality Donald Trump is were a little bit surprised that they spent such little time trying to sell the American people on this war and then they just went ahead and immediately started it.

So, I mean, not every single invasion is the same and this thing which is looking more and more like a firemire with every passing hour is something that they do not want because they don't want it to make them look like a bunch of fucking losers and that's what Donald Trump is risking doing to them right now. Yeah, it's really interesting and just to underscore your point note that MAGA is absolutely over the moon every time the Trump blows up a few people in a fishing boat, these are civilians, they're alleged to be running drugs, but they're not getting any kind of due process, of course, they're just getting blown to bits by the US military and MAGA just loves that.

I want to close out by reading something from Matt Walsh who's a big MAGA influencer, he said the following to his fellow conservatives, he's here addressing people who are supporting the operation and Iran.

“I can't take the gaslighting guys, I really can't conservatives are now running around saying Iran has been waging war on us for 47 years. Okay, then why didn't any of you call for an attack on Iran at any point until now?”

You know, it's a pretty good question that, you know, I got to give a to him so any he's right about that one thing and what I take from that is that you're going to really see some very deep schisms open up here because a chunk of the conservative movement is absolutely getting with excitement over the blowing up of of, you know, targets in Iran and the killing people in Iran and so forth. And yet MAGA, there is a contingent that just won't have it for all the reasons that you've said, given that Trump's own kind of, you know, lines about all this that we listened to earlier show how unprepared they are for what's about to come.

I mean, it seems like we're looking at a quagmire potentially and we're looking at MAGA getting even more pissed off at their fellow conservatives who are going to continue to support it no matter what happens, right?

“Trump wanted was a very successful, very quick gangster like drive by shooting something you may see in one of the grand theft auto playstation games. That's what he wanted something like that is what he envisioned going into this.”

And now he is getting drawn into a protracted costly spiraling bloody mob war with different factions in different countries where he and his administration are not the only ones who control the timeline of how far this goes and when's this stops and that is what is really pissing off a lot of his supporters in the MAGA upper crust.

Well, I'd be saying that this is going to be a real fun thing to watch unfold as they kind of go at each other's throats viciously, but unfortunately this is all a potential catastrophe for the United States and all kinds of ways as someone who's saying always good to talk to you man. Thanks for coming on. Peace out. We're here for you. Thanks for watching.