The Daily Blast: Trump Iran Tirade Visibly Rattles GOPers as Leaks Expose New Blunders

I'm your host, Greg Sargent.

“Republicans are growing increasingly frustrated with Donald Trump's war with Iran.”

Three GOP senators just voted with Democrats to stop the war, and numerous news accounts report that GOP cracks are growing. This comes as an extraordinary New York Times expose, shows that Trump's war has been substantially less successful than he and Pete Hegg's death had claimed. Meanwhile, Republicans are running away from Trump's bizarre tirade yesterday, in which he

admitted he isn't concerned with how inflation from the war is impacting ordinary Americans. Here's the bottom line. All signs are that this will get substantially worse politically for Trump and the Republicans. So we're checking in with Nicholas Grossman, a professor of international relations who has a new piece for MSNow, arguing that the economic fallout from the war is only just

beginner. Thanks for coming on, Nick. Hi, thanks for having me, Greg, to be here. So let's start with the news from the U.S. Senate. Three Republicans joined with Democrats to support a resolution that would end the war in

keeping with the War Powers Act, which requires a congressional vote after 60 days of past. The three senators are Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and Rand Paul. As political reports, there's new frustration and deepening divisions among Republicans over this. Nick, what's your reaction to all that?

I'm not surprised that some of them are starting to move away from it because the economic liabilities and associate political liabilities are rising. The senator who ended up making the vote fail was John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, which is unfortunate. So it was a 50 to 49 vote if he had gone the other way it would have passed.

But also the War Powers Act, the way that they're acting now, is a sign of America's Democratic backsliding of shifting power towards the executive branch.

And this actually happened in Trump's first term, because the way the War Powers

Act is supposed to work is the president is allowed to use force in an emergency or itself defense without Congress's permission. And then, if he doesn't get congressional permission in 60 days, it automatically ends. And what happened in Trump's first term is when the U.S. was supporting Saudi Arabia's campaign against Yemen against the Houthis and doing things like midair refueling

so actually directly involved to not just a sending weapons. But the Senate passed the resolution saying that Trump had to stop that. He vetoed it, which is not supposed to be the way it's supposed to go. And then enough there were enough maga loyalists in Congress to prevent a veto override. So already the War Powers Act is not really acting like it's supposed to.

“But now when we have Congress trying to assert itself, I think that that would be a positive”

thing more this power, supposed to be in Congress. And it would be positive if they can get a resolution saying that we assert our power under the War Powers Act. I don't know if Trump would listen, but even so it would be a good step. Well, it would be a good thing, but it doesn't look like it's going to happen anytime

soon Trump meanwhile is very rattled by any hint that the war isn't going as well as he's claimed. He erupted on truth social saying this, quote, when the fake news says that the Iranian enemy is doing well militarily against us, it's virtual treason. Trump continued that the media is aiding and abetting the enemy.

And he called the media American cowards that are rooting against our country. He called them losers, ingrates, and fools. You know, Nick, it's going to be harder for Trump to continue claiming that anyone who

“questions his war is a traitor when even Republican senators are now doing so, right?”

It makes it more politically difficult, and also just the objective reality of it makes it really difficult. Because Trump seems to be approaching the war as if the goal is to get the US media to speak positively of it, or to successfully lie to the American people, as if lying to the

American people is as most important foreign policy goal, whereas the realities of the

war are going to continue, whether or not he gets the US media to say differently. So Iran has weapons. They are able to fire them to block the straight-up or moods that is creating massive shortages in things like oil and gas and fertilizer and other essentials. Those will damage the economy.

It doesn't matter what Trump is able to believe the media into doing, and yet it seems like that's his priority as if he can somehow virtual treason is such a great term for it. If this is all of virtual reality, a reality show, whereas it's clearly not real treason, but if he can shape the narrative, it's not going to make the situation better. Well, it's a sign of political desperation.

He knows it's going badly, and his only hope is for the media to stop informing the American people of it. Yeah, that shows a desperation about the politics because the facts of the war are just so bad.

report, which used leaks from senior officials to demonstrate that Iran has access to nearly

“all the 33 missile sites, it maintains along the straight-up or moods.”

The Times reported also that Iran has 70% of its pre-war missile stockpile. Nick, this is a disaster. I've made this point on here before, but in addition to the content of the leaks, which is bad enough, it's also devastating for Trump, the top officials are doing the leaking of this kind of thing, because it shows that there's really serious descent inside the administration

about how this is all going. What do you make of all that? It's not at all surprising that people inside the U.S. intelligence community and inside the U.S. military are leaking information to the American people, because the war was

a really bad idea in the first place.

It was bad in ways that we're widely foreseen that have been foreseen for really years that in particular, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netyah, who has been advocating the U.S. war on Iran since he was first Prime Minister in the late 1990s and Clinton Bush Obama, Biden, all turned him down. It was only Trump that in this term was willing to do it.

And in doing so was not really articulating any type of strategic goal. He moved around so many times and eventually settled on something that was pretty small, which was degrading Iran's missile program, and degraded that they would have fewer missiles. And even that is not any sort of strategic victory. All it would do was, at absolute best, set them back where they would then have greater incentive

to build up weapons into possibly go for a nuclear weapon, and to build up their missile stocks. And now we find not too surprisingly either that it's not true. And that's because Iran has been, and I'm very frustrated by this, but Iran has been fighting a lot smarter than the United States.

In the beginning, they under the American and Israeli assault, they reduced the amount of launches that they were doing, they more or less turdled and kept a lot of their capabilities in reserve, so that they could do things like continue to block the straight-of-war moves as they did in the, when the U.S. briefly tried that failed attempt that they called project freedom to get ships through it.

And it's not working, and that's because Iran retains its military capabilities, and it's because they were paired to fight the United States where it looks like the Trump administration, prepared to do something quick and easy and get praise for it.

And that situation in Iran was always much more difficult than they appreciated.

“To stay up to date on all the news that you need to know, there's no better place than”

right here on the DSR network, and there's no better way to enjoy the DSR network than by becoming a member. Members enjoying ad-free listening experience, access to our discord community, exclusive content, early episode access, and more. NewsCode in DSR 26 for a 25% off discount on sign-up at the DSR network.com.

That's code in DSR 26 at the DSR network.com/buy. Thank you, and enjoy the show. And you sort of see this same mistake being duplicated over and over by Donald Trump. It's almost like he's caught in this weird mental loop. He just keeps tweeting over and over. If Iran doesn't do what I say, he's not a bad guy. He's a bad guy. He's a bad guy. He's a bad guy.

And you sort of see this same mistake being duplicated over and over by Donald Trump. It's almost like he's caught in this weird mental loop. He just keeps tweeting over and over. If Iran doesn't do what I say, then the bombing will really start. And it's a little hard to keep escalating that. We're sort of treated to the comic spectacle. I guess comic is quite the right word for it. But the spectacle of Donald Trump threatening to obliterate Iran in civilization entirely, which would kill 90 million people.

And then when that didn't bully Iran into opening the straight of Hormuz, he said, well, I'll tell you what.

“The bombing is going to really start. How can you actually top obliterating Iran in civilization?”

You can't. And so you can sort of see that we're trapped in this fun house where Donald Trump won't learn the lesson. That forced by itself can't solve the problem, right? It's not even forced by itself. It is threats that he's trying to solve the problem with.

That the one of the problems of this war is, while there was never a good idea in the first place, Trump did not deploy the type of force.

So, being necessary to accomplish it. That they sought bombing from afar. And the thing about bombing from afar is it has literally never won a war. However, bombing on its own, that you can damage some stuff, but you can't really win big concessions from a country. And so, the U.S. didn't put things like the large invasion army that Bush did to invade Iraq.

And then he quickly reverses course and lies that there's been some great progress in talks.

“And that may be job bones, the markets, get stocks to rise. It gets headlines saying that there is, you know, peace imminent or progress in talks or anything along those lines.”

And then those things collapse because the Iranian position has not changed. It is based on the hard realities of the war, what they controlled. The fact that they can block or move, isn't that the U.S. needs it open. And so, Trump by is in the situation where his only two options are a humiliating surrender. That leaves Iran decently stronger than it was before, getting to charge tools for all these ships that used to be able to go through freely.

Or that needs to do a military escalation. And he's clearly afraid of that. And really, he should be because there is no good military option.

That more bombing won't do it. That, you know, he's already killed the Iatola's family, you know, the his father and daughter and mother killed a lot of the leadership. That killed a lot of the people who were more prone negotiation inside Iran that they have empowered revolutionary guard hardliners and those hardliners can see that they have a strong military position and want to get something out of it. So bullying won't do it. And then even trying to do something like invade the ground around the straight of our moves would be very militarily costly, difficult risky and has no endgame the problem of trying to do a regime change war with boots on the ground.

And so forth looks even less appetizing now that we've learned that Iran still has a whole lot of its capability. And for a grounding vision that the capabilities then would multiply because then if there are US troops on Iranian soil, there are a lot of different ways that Iran could get to them that they don't currently.

So even it's worth noting that with the projects free to my dear that the US destroyers did shoot down the projectiles that Iran shot at them. So the US a big weapons platform is able to do that.

But if putting in boots on the ground that they are a lot more vulnerable vulnerable, it will definitely lead to American casualties if they do that and that will not only most likely not resolve the war. In fact, it's probably ended in a more costly humiliation. It is also adds to the political liabilities that domestic political liabilities, which already given that the war is so unpopular, even at the start it was the most unpopular war since we have been measuring these things since World War II.

The more unpopular than Iraq at the start, more unpopular, you name it then Obama's intervention in Libya. And then with the economic cost mounting, then trying to do a, you know, trying to sell the lie that this is already over and he's already won and that was such a great job and the Iranians are given him everything.

“And you can't sell that lie if you have to go and escalate to putting troops on the ground. So he really is stuck. He's gotten the US into a terrible position and there is no good way out.”

Republicans also have an additional problem here on Monday as everyone is heard by now Trump admitted that he doesn't think about the economic impact of his war on Americans at all when thinking about the situation. Let's listen to how Republicans try to spend their way out of this. Here's JD Vance. Do you agree with the president's position that Americans financial situations should not be a consideration in that decision making process? Well, I don't think the president said that I think that's a misrepresentation of what the president said, but look, I agree with the president that Iran should not have a nuclear weapon.

Here's Mike Johnson. I don't know the context in which he made that comment, but I can tell you the president thinks about the American financial situations. I talked to him on average twice a day, sometimes three or four times a day. Here's Senator Roger Marshall. I would have to find out the context of it. I'm sorry. Here's Senator Cynthia Lumis.

“Did he say that? I don't have a comment about that, mostly because I think he actually does care.”

Nick, I got to say a lot of them are claiming they don't know the context, but the context is not exonerating in the least. No, and it's a very typical Republican move to pretend that they haven't heard what he said or that they don't understand the context as a way to try to duck being tied to it or some responsibility for it. But the weird thing about this one is, while I think it is almost certain that Trump personally does not care about the finances the American people, except in a way that it might be a political liability for him, which of course he thinks then he could lie his way through and just say it's great, you know, and that it's not an issue.

But I think that one's actually tied up in his understanding of and misunderstanding of negotiations and why he was burating the media, so that Iran's leverage over the United States comes from the economic damage that it's causing. And now when asked effectively, so does Iran have leverage over you because of all the economic damage, very quickly defaults to no, no, no, I don't think about that. I don't care about it, but in the process, so it's probably revealing some of his personal beliefs and looking absolutely terrible politically.

And that statement from Trump seems like it is tailor made for democratic ads.

“Okay, Nick, so what are you predicts going to happen in the end here?”

It sure looks like Donald Trump is going to have to accept something soon enough.

We're stuck in this dynamic where he only is willing to accept something that looks like he's pulled off this world historically,

you spend this accomplishment and yet at the same time he can't actually get such an accomplishment out of the situation, so he just keeps lying his way through it and bluffing his way through it, but at some point he's going to have to accept some sort of deal with Iran, right?

“What does that look like potentially and how bad does the economic situation get in the United States in the long run after that?”

So he'll probably have to accept something at some point although he always could try for a military gamble to try to attack them or either follow through on some of these threats or who knows, escalate all the way to a ground invasion. That I find it almost impossible to try to predict which one of those he's going to do, but what I can tell you is that the pressure is mounting, so this is a hard calendar, it is not something you can lie your way through it. It can't be bullshitted away, that the ships that came out of the Strait of Hormuz have reached their destinations, they have unloaded.

The result men now is kind of like a shell game where companies and countries are drawing down on their reserves and they're able to keep the price of oil from spiking and to keep some of the commodities flowing. But that is going to run out and in not that long, a lot of the oil analysts I read seem to think it is probably sometime in June, where those resources are being depleted, that they're being drained, the storage at a fastest rate in history. And all of this adds up to a oil shock that is larger than the one in 1973 when OPEC put the United States under an oil embargo in response to the US supporting Israel in the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

And that set off a recession that lasted over a year, it's a big stock market decline, although interestingly, the stock market didn't really decline until after that embargo was lifted. And so what that suggests is that a lot of these things are being strong along for now, and even a one crazy one, as I saw this line from JP Morgan that their latest guidance on the oil market is that they expect this to be solved by June kind of because it would be stupid if it weren't. And the problem is that the people running the United States are not acting smartly there, acting quite stupidly in this, and so the pressure will continuously mount on Trump and he's going to have to either do something that is so clearly a surrender to Iran that gives Iran some sort of concessions and gets maybe a fig leaf of Iran kind of promising to restrict their nuclear program in ways that are less than the JCPOA, the nuclear deal that Obama negotiated.

And that Trump tore up without cause and let Iran out of nuclear restrictions in exchange for nothing, which set us on this path to war or nuclear Iran. So yeah, I mean, I really wish that there was a way I could say, oh, this is the way it's going to end up, but it is it's just a terrible position, there's no way out, and he doesn't seem like somebody who is willing to accept something that will be so widely acknowledged as a loss that cannot be spun away. You know, Nick, it just seems like the built-in dynamics of this situation are really formidable and terrible in every conceivable way.

“The only way out is going to be the midterm elections, and even that might not help that much, unfortunately.”

Nick Grossman, awesome to talk to you as always, thanks for coming on.

Thanks so much for having me.