What is the president actually saying there? Is he saying, oh, if we lose those two American cities to defeat Iran, the price is still worth it?

Well, he's not saying what a lot of Democrats and the liberal media have accused him of saying, which is that he's inviting a nuclear attack on Los Angeles and San Diego.

You saw at the beginning of the clip, he was saying that the oil prices, which have spiked as a result of the Iran war, are a small price to pay for preventing Iran from attacking the United States with nuclear weapons.

And then when he's saying, let them take out Los Angeles, let them take out San Diego.

He's saying what would happen if he didn't launch this war against Iran.

And I want to notice a couple of things here that are interesting.

First, the context of this is this is a campaign rally in Nebraska.

And Trump and others just don't understand it.

So there, there's obviously a lot in there, Andrew, but I wanna get to what, you know, kinda caught fire, of course, is where he says, "Let them take out San Diego and Los Angeles." What is the president actually saying there? Is he saying, "Oh, if we lose those two American cities to defeat Iran, the price is still worth it"?

Well, he's not saying what a lot of Democrats and the liberal media have accused him of saying, which is that he's inviting a nuclear attack on Los Angeles and San Diego.

You saw at the beginning of the clip he was saying that the oil prices, which have spiked as a result of the odd Iran war, are a small price to pay for preventing Iran from attacking the United States with nuclear weapons.

And then when he's saying, "Let them take out L- Los Angeles, let them take out San Diego," he's saying, what would happen if he didn't launch this war against Iran? And I wanna notice a couple things here that are interesting.

First, the context of this is this is a campaign rally in Nebraska.

It's part of Trump's red state tour.

Why is he campaigning in Nebraska for a Senate candidate in the midterm elections? Why is he campaigning in Ohio, Texas, other red states? It's because the midterms are gonna be a bloodbath for the Republicans, and they have to focus on these ruby red states which normally should be a lock, which are not a lock in large part because of the Iran war, because the Iran war is so incredibly unpopular, and deservedly so.

So i-i... d- is there a lack of policy understanding of, like, the reality of the situation here? Maybe JD Vance is the only one who's ever read a book on Iran and just understands kind of what the reasonable approach is, like how, how the, the nuclear i- issue is handled under the Non-Proliferation Treaty and things like that, and Trump and others just don't understand it?

And so this has always been the card that Iran was going to play if they were backed into a corner.

Yeah, I totally agree with that.

I mean, for as long as there are some guys who have speedboats and shoulder weapons and who work for the Iranians or represent their interests, there's going to be potentially a problem here because they can harass ships.

And it's not just a matter of whether a ship can freely transit and kind of make a run for it and get through it.

It's a matter of whether the captains of those ships are willing to take that risk.

And it's a matter of whether the insurance companies are willing to take that risk.

And what we've seen, even when the U.S. said it was going to be helping transit, helping them transit and coordinating that, giving them an escort.

Are there pieces from it that could be brought forward? forward potentially? And really, when it comes down to it, what are the impediments to peace here? It seems to me like the administration and the Gulf allies are very interested in turning the page on this.

So, Andrew, What's going on with the situation in the Middle East?

So we are in a new phase of the Iran war.

President Trump has called the new strategy economic D-Day.

Treasury Secretary Scott Besant earlier this week laid out the strategy and called it Operation Economic Isolation, I believe.

I mean, they're pretty good at thinking up these bold nicknames, but I don't know if they're so good at thinking strategically about how to get Iran to do what they want.

And it's not even clear to me that they're very good at communicating what exactly it is that they want.

What is the objective? In any case, right now, the strategy is to strangle Iran's economy under the terms that Scott Besson laid out on Monday.

And Ukraine is actually hitting quite a few significant targets in Russia, including large energy facilities.

So as you look at the tensions, ongoing tensions with Iran, what impact directly are you going to see? Are we going to see in the midterm elections? And are there particular parts of the country that may be more greatly impacted as we go forward?

Yeah, I agree with you that the Iran war can have these political effects that you're alluding to.

I mean, it's kind of interesting.

Everyone in America knows that oil comes from the Middle East and gas prices are prominently displayed across the country.

So when President Trump authorized this war and then when the gas prices went up, people can make that connection really easily.

And it's really striking if you look at the issue level of polls today.

For President Donald Trump, his favorability ratings on particular issues, he is negative 48 on the issue of high prices.

Well, as we look to the midterms, do you think the GOP, the current administration, has done a good job articulating to the American people why Iran and why now?

What are the secondary sanctions you're looking at as most critical of a very real effort to cut the regime off from their economic lifelines?

That's exactly right.

Treasury Secretary Scott Besant wants to isolate Iran, cut them off from their trading partners.

I think the most important country to pay attention to in this regard is definitely China.

China buys most of Iran's oil exports.

And so I think about 90% of... oil exports from Iran, actually.

So that's probably the main country to watch.

Other than Libya, which I don't think anyone would hold out as some great example of how things turn out rosy, is there any example you could think of on the planet Earth where some combination of leadership executions, a bombing campaign, and crippling economic sanctions has led to regime change?

So Andrew, what's going on, uh, with the situation in the Middle East?

So we are in a new phase of the Iran war.

President Trump has called the new strategy Economic D-Day.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent earlier this week laid out the strategy and called it Operation Economic Isolation, I believe.

I mean, they're pretty good at thinking up these bold nicknames, but I don't know if they're so good at thinking strategically about how to get Iran to do what they want, and it's not even clear to me that they're very good at communicating what exactly it is that they want.

What is the objective? In any case, right now the strategy is to strangle Iran's economy.

Under the terms that Scott Bessent laid out on Monday, I believe, that will entail getting Iran's trading partners to stop trading with Iran.

Why wouldn't Iran start attacking US allies, countries that are cutting off trade, or US bases in the region? I, I mean, what do you think the Iranian response to this will be?

How do you see the regional nature of this with the various fronts in Lebanon and in the Red Sea impacting the art of possible in the Straits of Hormuz?

I mean, I think that that's a very important point.

I mean, the situation in Lebanon really preceded Iran going hard in the Strait of Hormuz.

They wanted to hold on to their leverage in the Strait of Hormuz specifically because Israel was still attacking Lebanon, still had their troops in southern Lebanon, and Iran considered this a violation of the MOU right off the bat.

So they didn't want to let go of Hormuz, which they saw as a chance to put pressure on the U.S. to pressure Israel to end the broader regional war.

So that's a major part of the context here.

And as far as the elements of the deal that Iran wants, I mean, a lot of the new, supposedly new hardline demands that they're making, we've already seen them before.

So how is Iran supposed to go back to the MOU and believe that the United States can constrain Israel and Lebanon if we can't even constrain Israel and Gaza where we have an extensive amount of diplomatic effort invested in the Board of Peace?

Anyway, future historians will or will not look into this.

It's also bound up with the idea of leverage.

And it's part of a bargaining process, right? So both sides were starting to see Hormuz as a crucial source of potential leverage for them.

And I think that Trump didn't feel comfortable with He didn't feel comfortable with Iran apparently deciding to use its leverage over Hormuz to extract concessions.

And he's always getting all of this pushback from people on the right, you know, people on Fox News who feel like he's basically capitulating and he needs to do Operation Project Freedom to get the ships through.

And that's part of the story.

I agree with you guys.

Do you guys have a reading on this?

Are there pieces from it that could be brought forward potentially? And really when it comes down to it, what are the impediments to peace here? It seems like the adminis- it seems to me like the administration and the Gulf allies are very interested in turning the page on this.

Yeah, totally.

I mean, I think that the entire MOU potentially could still hold.

I mean, there is a chance that Iran and the US return to the MOU and maybe clarify some of its language so that there's not this misunderstanding or ambiguity on the issues at the Strait of Hormuz and Lebanon.

That's one possibility.

I think that that would probably be a good thing.

It would lock in Iran's nuclear program because I believe under the MOU, they committed to not advancing it, which is difficult for them to do now anyway because the Trump administration genuinely did a lot of damage to their nuclear infrastructure.

And so this has always been the card that Iran was going to play if they were backed into a corner

And so this has always been the card that Iran was going to play if they were backed into a corner.

Yeah, I totally agree with that.

I mean, for as long as there are some guys who have speedboats and shoulder weapons and who work for the Iranians or represent their interests, there's going to be potentially a problem here because they can harass ships.

And it's not just a matter of whether a ship can freely transit and kind of make a run for it and get through it.

It's a matter of whether the captains of those ships are willing to take that risk.

And it's a matter of whether the insurance companies are willing to take that risk.

And what we've seen, even when the U.S. said it was going to be helping transit, in helping them transit and coordinating that, giving them an escort.

Are there pieces from it that could be brought forward potentially? And really, when it comes down to it, what are the impediments to peace here? It seems to me like the administration and the Gulf allies are very interested in turning the page on this.

The only difference, of course, is that, of course, the Spa- the Spanish socialists are telling the military to stand down.

down.Absolutely.

I mean, if these migrants who overwhelmed this border at Ceuta had met a military instead of a bunch of aid workers, the situation would be very different.

They would've been deterred from overrunning the border, obviously.

And really, I agree with you.

The situation is so simple, it's so straightforward, but you have to see what's in front of your nose, [laughs] if I can use that phrase.

This should be a wake-up call.

The problem is, is that obviously we have this issue of migrants on our, on our roads and, and driving these big rigs, but the bigger issue of course is going to be the price of oil and the price of gas

The only difference, of course, is that, of course, the Spanish socialists are telling the military to stand down.

Absolutely.

I mean, if these migrants who overwhelmed this border at Suta had met a military instead of a bunch of aid workers, the situation would be very different.

They would have been deterred from overrunning the border, obviously.

And really, I agree with you.

The situation is so simple.

It's so straightforward.

But the bigger issue, of course, is going to be the price of oil and the price of gas.

Has Trump changed? Has he abandoned principle? Has he adapted? Has he been persuaded that something different than what you might have expected from him out of 2016 is appropriate to the moment? It is a decade after all.

So I don't really think that the story I would tell about this is that Trump's personality changed.

I mean, I think certain salient features of his personality have become activated in a dangerous way.

With the Iran war, it's a big part of the story, actually, of this perception that Trump has betrayed MAGA, has betrayed maybe the country, has reneged on his promises made on the campaign trail.

I think basically what happened is that Trump had some success striking the Iranian nuclear facilities last year.

If you go back to that moment, you might remember it was really just an Israel-Iran war.

I mean, we were supporting Israel in various ways, but it was mostly a war between those two countries and kind of a continuation of a long-running conflict between those two countries.

What could Netanyahu and the IDF and the Mossad have been saying, whispering in Trump's ears to overcome what I would imagine otherwise would have been a reticence to go down this path from the professional elements of his own government?

We all, as American citizens, have an obligation to oppose that, especially when we're talking about a war that is clearly not in American interests, and as I suggested earlier, is actually contrary to our strategic interests.

Yeah, I mean, I, I can't really improve upon that off the top.

I mean, I think, uh, as to the war itself, um, I think, you know, the war happened.

It was a mistake, uh, but the war is still very much, uh, you know, half formed and could re-escalate at any moment.

And so you have an administration, uh, that is sort of, I guess, unlike the Bush administration in this respect, in the sense that there is the at least conceptual chance that they're pliable and persuadable to take an off-ramp.

Um, you know, you could argue this is actually worse.

Trump is doing something that he doesn't fully believe in or, you know, to further fuel views that he feels pressured to, et cetera, et cetera.

[chuckles]

But how do you read what's going on in Lebanon right now as informing the prospects for peace in Doha and between the United States and Iran.

You're right that those are the two main issues, the Strait of Hormuz and Lebanon.

And Lebanon is probably the biggest sticking point at this point.

I mean, what we have basically is two parallel diplomatic tracks.

We have the U.S.-Iran track, the MOU track.

That's led on the American side by Vice President J.D. Vance.

And then we have the Lebanon track, which is led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

Do you think that Iran is having to play a balancing act here, the current government, so as to not look overly compliant with the United States or risk pressure from their right?

And do you, can you talk a little bit about what Brad said too, in terms of, it may be this all starting a lot earlier than Woodrow Wilson and the progressives during World War I.

Yeah, I mean, it seems a little speculative to me, but I can I can see how America's kind of evangelical bent.

You know, there were Puritans like Calvinist Puritans who opposed the Church of England because they thought it was too Catholic.

Like those were part of the story, obviously, of the first wave.

of European migration to the United States.

So maybe this kind of primed the American people to think in these kind of universalist concepts and to apply those universalist concepts politically and geopolitically.

I can see how there could be a lot of truth to that.

And can you talk about why we should revitalize him and why is so difficult to engage pro-America first arguments when talking about and talking against war today?

Andrew, what chapter of the book are we in when America announces ceasefires and Netanyahu just ignores them in Lebanon?

Well, it's a familiar chapter.

This has actually been a story that's been going on for a long time.

I think what we can say is that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dragged Trump into this war with Iran, and now he's holding on tight to Trump's ankles and not letting him get out of the war.

And that's what we're seeing in Lebanon.

It's a consistent, conspicuous pattern.

Whenever Trump and Iran are making diplomatic progress, whenever Trump announces that we're nearing some kind of memorandum of understanding or hopefully a peace deal of some kind, we see an escalation by Israel and Lebanon.

How do you see each of these sides evaluating the importance of the Lebanon front?

here.

And he had to go to the microphone and he stood up at the microphone and he said, ladies and gentlemen, the next president of the United States, the great Donald J. Trump or something like that.

So Trump knows how to put people in this situation.

And we all kind of experience it in our regular lives, especially with a certain type of man, alpha male, who's charismatic, who just kind of sucks all the energy out of the room and gets the attention on them.

And Trump can kind of do this at like a global level or something.

He's obviously a very weird guy.

Most people... don't have this kind of business aspiration to build towers with golden towers with their name on it all over the world.

But why don't you talk us through that a little bit? Is it too simplistic to say, yes, they were one and now they are not, and this is why? Or has it always been a bit more complicated, the interplay between MAGA and America First?

That's monetary-metals.com/woods.

Sure, I mean, it was exactly that kind of statement that I was responding to with that tweet that you just quoted, the idea that we have to finish the job, and, and you're right, this is rhetorically different and kind of logically different than those who say, "Oh, this is all going to-- according to plan.

It's good that we did this." Now we're hearing more people, and not just Continetti, who you were just quoting, who is, like, the son-in-law of Bill Kristol, I believe, and could be expected to say this kind of thing.

Even Steve Bannon is saying stuff like this right now.

You know, I don't think it's necessarily, like, inherently insane to make this point that we shouldn't have gone to war, but now that we're in there, you know, this is a mess, and the only way out is through.

But I really do disagree with this argument because, one, what is the plan that we're supposed to be trusting? What is the job that we're supposed to be finishing? The administration has done a truly abominable job of telling us what the strategy is, what the strategic goals are.

Whenever Hegseth, yeah, he hasn't given one in a while.

That's ineedseo.help. Easy to remember, powerful for your small business.

Is this something that Israel ever comes back from, or is it over?

Yeah.

I mean, I think the first thing that I would say is the Israel lobby in some ways is not totally unique, right? Ethnic lobbies exist in the United States.

Lobbies that clearly are advocating for the interests of foreign nations exist in the United States.

The Israel lobby has been quite good at politically.

But if you think about, for example, this action in Venezuela, the raid that led to the capture of Maduro, the general policy of knocking down these left-wing governments in Latin America, a lot of this has to do with this little Havana community in Florida.

They have a big, powerful representative in the White House in the form of Marco Rubio.

Yeah.