The Daily Blast: Trump Press Sec Seethes at Media as MAGA Trashes His Iran Deal Fiasco

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“This is the Daily Blast from the New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR network. I'm your host, Greg Sargent.”

Now that Donald Trump and Iran have agreed to a very fragile ceasefire, the administration is facing mounting questions about his threat to wipe out Iranian civilization.

White House press secretary Caroline Levit lost her temper under tough questioning about this topic. Pete Heggseth also tried to spin about this threat, and he too flopped miserably.

All this comes as even some of Trump's own allies are questioning whether he got a good deal out of this fiasco.

“We think this all reveals deeper failures. Trump and Heggseth sought to show that the threat of overwhelming military force can accomplish literally anything yet that too failed.”

We're talking about all this with a great commentator on national security affairs, Georgetown's Rosa Brooks. Rosa really nice to have you on. Good to be your Greg. So we have a ceasefire now, but it's a little hard to see what we got out of it. The US largely destroyed the Iranian military and killed some of Iran's senior leaders. The state of Hormuz might be reopening, but it was open before the war and Iran's grip on it appears tighter now. The basis for the new talks seems to be somewhat more friendly to Iran than before. Rosa, is that about the size of it? What's your reading?

It's not even clear that the state of Hormuz is in fact open. It sounds as though two ships have gone through as of the time we're recording this podcast, but that then it reclosed again. So it's not even clear we have a ceasefire and already there are disputes. The Israelis are continuing to attack targets inside of Lebanon, the Iranians are saying, well, then we're closing the straight again because that wasn't the deal. You're supposed to stop the Israelis are saying, no, no, no attacking Lebanon wasn't part of the deal. So this this may be collapsing as we speak. It's it's a little hard to know, but yes, I think even even if even if it held.

It's not entirely clear what we've accomplished aside from killing a lot of people, which we have certainly done.

We have eliminated several layers of Iranian leadership arguably the remaining members of the Iranian leadership are even more hard line than their predecessors in terms of domestic repression of the Iranian people. So I don't know that we've done the Iranian people any favors. It's sort of a little too soon to say we've obviously eliminated a lot of Iran's stockpile of offensive weapons, which is overall probably a good thing on the other hand. We've also eliminated up great deal of our own stockpile of both offensive and defensive weapons, which is definitely not a great thing given that Iran was not an imminent threat and there are a lot of other places of the world where we face ongoing challenges.

The entire rationale for the war was bullshit. Exactly. Yes, bullshit. There we go. Right. Exactly. So okay. Let's recall that Trump threatened to wipe out all of Iranian civilization. He threatened to destroy a nation of 93 million people, which would have of course killed tens of millions of civilians. He threatened to bomb all of Iran's power plants and bridges. All of this would have constituted massive war crimes.

“Rosa, can you explain why it's bad to simply make these threats? Never mind acting on them. The simple act of making the threats is bad. Can you explain why?”

So the idea that any world leader much less than American president would threaten to wipe out an entire civilization. Those were obviously Trump's words, not mine. Is is partly it's shocking because as you say, there's the international law and US law draws a very clear distinction between lawful targets in wartime and unlawful targets and the entire civilization is an unlawful target. I mean, that obviously an entire civilization sweeps in everything from cultural sites to every little baby sleep in its bed in Iran.

And that would be a crime against humanity, it would be a war crime would be genocide, pick your, pick your shocking moral offense and it would it would qualify. I think that just the

I don't, I don't know if it's possible to sort of overstate how shocking that is. I also think, and this is frankly a lesser concern of mine. You know, it, it also further undermines any ability of the US to negotiate an incredible way because we're at a point where nobody has this latest idea, whether they should believe anything Trump says. You know, he will go from, we're all pals now. We've got a great deal too. I'm wiping out your entire civilization and back again. And nobody really knows why or what is motivating him frankly. And it's one thing to add a level of strategic uncertainty into your negotiations to keep your adversaries on their toes.

But when you just become this erratic actor who, you know, you might have a temper tantrum, you might be happy happy happy happy mode and no one has any idea what will put you in which state or keep you in that state. It becomes a, we become a threat to the entire world, frankly. Well, it's not just the madman theory of how to do this stuff. It's also the pathological lyre theory, I guess that's supposed to keep people off balance or something. Trump and the White House are now facing intense questions about this threat, as they should. Caroline Levitt lost her cool with a reporter who pointed out that Trump threatened to destroy the Iranian people, not its government, which was absolutely correct. That's what Trump did. Listen.

“How can the president claim that America can ever have the moral high ground if he's threatening to destroy civilizations and not casting more as fights against other governments?”

I think you should take a look at the actions of this president over the course of the past six weeks and the actions of our brave men and women in our United States military who have taken out the, essentially taken out the military of a rogue Islamic regime that is chanted death to America for 47 years that has killed in maimed thousands of American soldiers over the course of the last five decades.

The president absolutely has the moral high ground over the Iranian terrorist regime and for you to even suggest otherwise is frankly insulting.

What's really insulting here is this garbage answer from Levitt. Rosa note how she simply leads the part of the question about Trump's threat to attack the Iranian people as if that didn't happen.

“And just pretend that Trump was only talking about the regime. It's just disgusting. What, what did you make about it?”

I mean, look, Levitt is kind of young woman. I hope my daughters will not become, which is to say that she is also perfectly comfortable lying through her teeth.

And I think the single nicest thing one could possibly say about Donald Trump is that he, he lives through his teeth and he just says whatever random insane offensive thing comes into his tiny little brain. And any given time and the result of that is that it's not actually clear that Trump gave a milliseconds thought to the distinction between the people versus the regime or that he has any understanding or interest of the fact that it sort of matters. So the nicest thing you could say about him is maybe he didn't actually mean it. Maybe what he meant was regime, but he certainly said entire civilization. That is what he said and and the ridiculousness of Levitt acting is so this is so offensive and so mean spirited to raise any questions about lovely president Trump words is just bizarre in this context. We've got one person in threat into civilization and her feelings are hurt.

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Why does Levitts call for young kids? I don't know, 10,000 electro-fahrzeuges and it's always more.

Yeah, exactly. Levitt kept raging about this as well, listen to this.

“I think we should take on the substance of this directly. Yes, the Iranian regime is horrible, but that doesn't give us license to threaten and perpetrate mass atrocities or selves. Can you talk about this basic point?”

Yeah, I mean, and of course, that's not what the question was. The question wasn't, who's more horrible the Iranian regime were Donald Trump, which is, you know, that's a really tough one, frankly.

But that wasn't the question. The question was about the US leadership and US moral standing in the world in general.

Iran does not have any ability to be a global leader or have any influence whatsoever or have any moral standing precisely because the Iranian regime has done terrible things, including to its own people over many decades. It's not clear to me why we would want to join them in that exclusive club of asshole nations, frankly. But the world went through the 20th century and thank neither of us were born or out of these periods, but you know, two cataclysmic world wars that left tens of millions dead, both military and civilians, and devastated huge ways of Europe and in the case of World War II, other parts of the globe as well.

Humanity had hoped that as a species, we had maybe learned a little bit about why it is not a cool idea for great powers to threaten to obliterate entire civilizations, because that way lies not just madness, but that way lies reciprocal cataclysm. And there is a sort of basic reciprocity and international affairs, which is that you keep, if I know you'll keep your promises, state I'll keep my promises more or less most of the time doesn't have to be, you know, people cheat on the edges and so on, you know, you don't obliterate my population, I want to obliterate your population.

And that's the way the world keeps itself, keeps itself from blowing itself up and destroying humanity itself, and Trump seems to have missed this sort of fairly basic lesson of human history, which is that you go in that direction, and all help breaks loose, and you know, is that what he wants, you know, I sometimes think listening to certainly to people like Steven Miller, that is what they want.

“I think there is a strand of evangelical Christians who think, awesome, you know, let's bring on the apocalypse, and they're cool with tens of millions of people dying.”

I think most of the rest of us would sort of prefer that that not happen.

Well, there's a lot to say about Pete Heggseth's theology in this Heggseth also offered his own spin, by the way, on the on the threat to annihilate Iranian civilization, he said Trump's threat is what got Iran to the table to negotiate. He said, quote, that type of threat is what brought them to the place where they effectively said, we want to cut this deal.

“That's just bullshit as well. Iran was negotiating with Trump before the war. There are other problems with this nonsense. Can you explain what's wrong with that line?”

There's so much wrong with it. It is hard to know where to start. I mean, for one thing as, as you just said, it didn't seem as though this particular threat had any real bearing on with the Iranians did the Iranians were already, you know, good and upset and then generally distressed. And to some extent, looking for a way out of it wasn't even clear what the Iranians were planning to do. It's still not clear, right? And I think one of the problem with the strategy we've had of like let's continue to kill every layer of Iranian leaders is that you run out of people to negotiate with

And the people who are left may or may not have any authority to do much of anything, so you end up getting contradictory mixed messages and and we've certainly seen that from the Iranians. So it's not particularly clear what if anything. They had been willing to agree to or offer or what if anything, they then did agree to offer. There's there's not a lot of transparency on any of this and there's there's no particular evidence that Trump's latest crazyness did this, but but you know, I think I think both from a moral perspective and from a strategic perspective.

You know, again, threatening to wipe out whole civilizations is is both deeply deeply immoral and offensive regardless of your your whether you're a Muslim a Christian Jew of Buddhists, whatever you are right deeply morally offensive to any sensible human being, but but also just again as a strategic matter.

Just is wildly foolhardy.

“Well, there's no doubt about it. I want to switch gears here. Some of Trump's biggest allies are not happy with the outcome that Trump achieved here. Fox News host Mark Levin said the Iranian regime is quote still surviving close quote.”

Maga personality Laura Lumer said this quote. The negotiation is a negative for our country. We didn't really get anything out of it and the terrorists and Iran are celebrating. I don't know why people are acting like this is a win close quote. And Lindsey Graham, who's a very staunch Trump ally was clearly not happy with how things turned out he put out a very long tweet in which he essentially said about the Iranian proposal and the war, which seems to be the basis for these talks. He said I'm going to review it at the appropriate time. He certainly wasn't willing to say that it was a positive and perhaps most tellingly what Lindsey Graham also seemed to be skeptical of was what's going to happen to all of the highly enriched uranium that Iran still has.

I said this must all be controlled by the US and then he closed with time will tell clearly Lindsey Graham doesn't seem to think that we're going to end up in control of the nuclear situation the way he'd like. What do you make of all this this is pretty serious criticism from his top allies.

You know, um, there for once this is the broken clocks or even broken clocks are right twice a day theory of life like every now and then Laura Loomer is going to say something sensible.

It'll talk her Carlson and so forth. I mean, no, they're they're they're appropriately highlighting the fact that as we've discussed this this isn't a win for anybody.

“And the US is now worse off than we were before this began and Iran is now worse off than they were before they began, you know, which of us is more worse off than the other is a question. I think we may not know the answer to for years to come.”

Just to close this out, I want to clarify that we're recording this on Wednesday late afternoon. So by the time people hear this, the fragile ceasefire could already be in tatters. We don't know from where we're sitting. It looks pretty shaky, but it's still kind of alive. How do you see this playing out over time? I think there's a very real possibility that Trump, if he can find something that he really feels like he can call a victory that he declares victory and says, okay, we won we're going home and that clearly would be best for the world.

Not a great outcome, but a better than the alternative outcome. You know, it's it also remains perfectly possible that that he will be so incensed that he will follow through on some of his more insane and illegal and immoral threats. That we will have a, you know, utter catastrophe in the region, which will spread around the globe and translate not only into chaos and the global economy, but terrorists attacks around the globe for for for decades to come.

That's still a very real and very frightening possibility.

“I think the big takeaway from that is that his threat to wipe out Iranian civilization, which is basically a threat to kill millions is absolutely very much alive right now.”

Rosa Brooks, awesome to talk to you. Thanks so much for coming on. My pleasure.