Is that true, John? Is that what what's going on here? Donald Trump doesn't want to lose and Todd Blanche is trying to help.

Yeah, I mean, every member of the cabinet, I mean, for any president, technically serves the pleasure of the president.

These guys in particular, they do whatever Trump wants.

They're simply, they're true believers and they're not going to push back.

Just a moment ago, in fact, President Trump, while leaving the White House, heading to Florida for an event, was asked about this particular matter and said it was his instruction.

He said, you know, in his words, I told them to do it.

So he's pushing the DOJ.

Anything else bubbling?

Jonathan, I guess, how are Republicans who support Ukraine reacting to all of the president's overtures to Putin and Russia? And what does this mean to their broader efforts to pressure Moscow?

Well, there's a few things here.

I mean, first of all, there was, there's still largely bipartisan support for Ukraine.

There are some holdout Republicans who don't want to do it.

And there's skeptics, even in the administration, like obviously J.D. Vance was a loud one.

But Ukraine's biggest champion on the Hill was Lindsey Graham.

And I think Graham also played an important role as a conduit to Trump about their plight.

What will you be looking for as this situation kind of continues to develop throughout the next week and on into the midterms?

Is there a risk to this?

There is.

There, there's certainly, I mean, the corruption angle, but also the Trump economy, despite what the president says, is really only working for those at the top, and Elon Musk is at the tippity top.

And if he has the ability to try to in- throw, open up his checkbook and throw his money around for this race while there's so many in Texas are struggling with energy bills, you know, the price of groceries and gas, the list goes on, yeah, there is a risk here.

It's also, let's just be clear, not good for our democracy when one person-

This does seem to reveal something that we haven't seen a lot of this go-around, which is that sort of chaos and infighting that defined 1.0.

Yeah, that's what this feels like.

It's the first moment we've really gotten where it does feel like Trump's first term.

Was there any indication, any reason to believe that you could have just guessed and made billions of dollars back then on Donald Trump, uh, reversing himself?

No, this was in the early days of the war where he was a little less haphazard, uh, in his decision-making process.

I mean, he is now, we've seen him tease a strike and then pull back any number of times.

It became a punchline, 'cause frankly, it would be timed often to the markets.

We'd get news on a Sunday night before the markets opened on Monday.

So that's obviously less obviously corrupt, uh, but people were making money off of that too, 'cause they used to, they used to time it and recognize that, hey, Trump himself really cared, uh, about how this would be received on, on Wall Street.

I mean, I think frankly the only surprise, uh, in your discussion here with, with Katie, uh, Katie and Lisa, um, is that there have been any incidents at all where people have got in trouble because that is definitely the exception and not the rule.

Mm-hmm

Are they really planning on doing something before the midterms?

They're at least considering it.

There's been a debate within the administration, quiet debate for the last handful of days, week or two about the timetable for possible strikes.

Now, President Trump has been pretty open.

He's mused publicly and privately about the idea of reigniting the war afterwards.

after the midterms, you know, because so many Republicans, look, they can see the polls.

They can see this war is deeply unpopular.

But before we get to that, John, is there anyone in the White House talking about just pulling up stakes and leaving?

They have to get their donors to be a little bit more bullish on races outside the box.

Yeah, and Mara, I mean, I wrote on this last week about the growing Republican anxiety that simply they don't feel like the president has given them anything to run on here.

And now our closing argument this weekend appears to be about daylight savings time and that there are so many who are just scrambling to make sense.

And they do say, Joe, you and I have been talking about this for a long time, of course, that when things tip, they tend to tip one way and one way hard.

And there are Democrats who, despite their inherent pessimism, are starting to feel very optimistic and are looking to expand the map.

And yes, When in places that six, eight months ago would have been unlikely, that's Iowa, Kansas, and the like.

But David Drucker, there are a few states where they're taking a different tack.

Are they really planning on doing something before the midterms?

They're at least considering it.

There's been a debate within the administration, quiet debate, for the last handful of days, week or two, uh, about a timetable for possible strikes.

Now, President Trump has been pretty open.

He's mused publicly and privately about the idea of reigniting the war after the midterms, you know, because so many Republicans, look, they can see the polls.

They can see this war is deeply unpopular.

And yes, um, they also recognize that renewing hostilities might send, uh, energy prices, oil prices even higher.

But before we get to that, John, um, is there anyone in the White House talking about just pulling up stakes and leaving?

I think actually what it suggests, folks, is just how low this president has taken himself and his party after 10 years in American politics, that people in that audience laughed at the prospects of 10 million or so other Americans being wiped off the face of the earth by a nuke from Iran.

Yeah, there's no bottom here.

I mean, President Trump is going to take shots at his political foes.

And those often he just deems them.

There are other Americans.

He's never tried to be president of the entire country.

He's never tried to be president of blue states and red.

Because a great trip starts with the right support.

These are like all of the other political or public service announcements you see.

I mean, that was worthy of throwing your pen in disbelief or anger or frustration, whatever you want to do, because it is just yet another moment.

I feel like we're almost a daily crystallization of this era and Republicans in the Trump universe.

And we saw it with Senator Schmidt the other day and that hearing where he thought he had his gotcha moment with Jack Smith didn't.

and then proceeded to go along with it, proceeded to act with his interviews with the right-wing podcasts afterwards as if he had nailed the special counsel.

No apology, no acknowledgement that he was wrong, just a lot of gloating.

And then this here, I'm glad you played those two ads back to back.

John sounds like he didn't really understand what he was doing when he banned news networks from the White House.

What is this accomplishing for this White House, John?

Oh, very little.

But this is yet the latest example of the way it works in the second Trump term, where he made this decision sort of impulsively last week to kick out the three outlets because he didn't like some of the stories he was seeing and her reporting.

Some clips of MSNOW anchors criticizing him or his policies.

So he instinctively, just impulsively said, well, let's get them out.

And he didn't consult staff.

He just pushed forward.

Talk to Todd Blanche about this.

We're the only industry named in the Constitution.

Yes, exactly right.

This is a First Amendment situation.

So today's development is, I find, heartening.

What happened on Friday with MSNOW and CNN and Politico thrown out of the White House, our colleagues' press passes do not work.

Their hard passes do not work.

They cannot enter the complex.

stay on this, okay?

What is going on, John? Is he just did he see a photo and then did he transpose himself on it? Is he just is his is he losing his memory? Does he not know what he actually did during that time or is it a deliberate lie? I guess that's kind of a hard question to answer.

Well, I'll answer it this way.

He is 80 years old, so that's possibly part of this.

But more than anything, I think we can actually connect it to our previous conversation, what's happening in Dallas.

Trump has to put himself in the center of everything, even when it's, frankly, he provides no evidence that that's the case.

And he has made himself part of the September 11th story.

when there's simply no sign that that's true.

Maybe not everybody, but voters are connecting to because they understand them as real people.

OK, Jonathan, please reveal what you think that real reason is.

Well, first, let's talk about the stated reason, which is to bring Iran to the negotiating table in a real way.

And there's some validity to this.

We know that the military strikes have not worked.

We know that Trump, when he blusters and threatens more kinetic attacks, Iran has learned to call those bluffs.

And yes, there has been exchange.

There have been some days of hostilities, relatively low-level stuff in recent weeks.

The real Natalie Harp scandal is that she is the gatekeeper for the media that he actually sees, a lot of it, and she tends to curate only things that support his worldview and make it look like he's already doing a great job and has a tremendous amount of public support.

The article, your most recent article, unless you dropped another one in the last hour and a half or so, is called "The Real Reason Trump Wants Economic Sanctions in Iran." Okay, Jonathan, please reveal what you think that real reason is.

Well, first let's talk about the stated reason, which is to bring Iran to, to the negotiating table in a real way.

And, and there's some validity to this.

We know that the military strikes have not worked.

We know that Trump is-- when he blusters and threatens more kinetic attacks, you know, Iran has learned to call those bluffs.

And, and yes, there have been, you know, exchange-- there have been some days of hostilities, relatively low level stuff in recent weeks.

So if war's not working, and the negotiations long ago broke down, and frankly, most observers believe that Iran got the better of that MOU, that memorandum understanding that was signed a couple of months ago.

There's a national throughline and strategy that El-Sayed as a Democratic candidate and Watters as a pro-Republican media figure are both displaying for their sides, you think?

well.

Yeah.

I mean, he doesn't like it, of course, when anyone in the Republican Party tries to tries to create a little deadline, a little daylight from himself.

But we are seeing that from Cruz.

I think it is right.

I think at this point, one of the criticisms that even.

of Trump right now, and even some in his own party are making this, quietly, to be sure, is that he has lost touch with what actually voters care about, including in his own base.

I mean, he won Iowa in 16.

Can you make sense of it?

Not really.

I mean, I think that you hit it.

You're right.

Secretary of Defense, of course, should, you know, a time of war.

And this remind viewers that this incident happened when hostilities with Iran had sparked back up after a few weeks of relative calm during the NATO summit in early July, about a month back.

You know, there was an element to committing to the ruse, I suppose, that you wanted to have some cabinet officials on the plane.

Is this now have we crossed another Rubicon?

[laughs]

Uh, everyone has said the right thing.

We saw even in the footage we just showed of his press conference yesterday, uh, Ms. Zamora, who had previously run, was right behind him.

Uh, Haley Stevens has said that, you know, she is on board.

They, they exchanged a rather warm, uh, pleasantries on Twitter yesterday.

Uh, expect the governor, I'm told, w- Governor Whitmer, to do the same.

There's some meetings, unity meetings in the days ahead.

How do you think this is gonna go?

Can you go into the political cost of this? Yeah.

Certainly can.

And one further note on the military aspect, you're right.

Not only have we sort of run out of targets in Iran, but the president in that meeting on Friday was told that even the strikes that he had authorized for the previous 13 days really hadn't made much of a difference.

There was no sign that it was changing the Iranian regime's behavior.

But there is certainly a political cost as well.

And that is at the center of the debate right now.

What does Zelensky have right now that Netanyahu doesn't?

What happened?

Well, there are a number of things at play.

President Trump, for months now, has been trying to put this war behind him.

It has not gone nearly as he thought.

He was promised that it would last a few days, a handful of weeks at most.

As you just said, we're now entering the fifth-- well, now, it's now been five months.

Um, after the memo- memorandum of understanding was signed in Versailles, uh, there, a tentative and fragile ceasefire did take hold for a few weeks, but it was punctuated by, you know, sporadic violence on both sides.

Jonathan, I'm wondering if, if you hear those similar questions, how you think about it.

Is there any tension between them and the president?

Not much, because they keep those thoughts to themselves for the most part, or at least they don't bring them to the president.

And that's a feature of Trump 2.0, where in 1.0 there was tension on his national security team and his political staff, that they would sometimes overrule, or at least try to overrule what he wanted, thinking to making decisions for the betterment of the party.

Instead, that just doesn't happen this time around.

Trump is a firm believer that he's always right.

He points to his incredible political comeback in 2024 as... validation of his instincts uh and he ignores the poll numbers that show that he's the american people right now don't think he and his party are doing a very good job and he seems more interested in having loyal mega warriors rather than actual republicans who have a better chance to win in swing districts or in statewide districts and some more toss up and toss up battlegrounds.

And I think that it also raises the questions.

Is this a rose by any other name situation?

Is America shaping up to be the worst host ever for the World Cup?

That went away as soon as the games began.

The stadiums are full.

Americans are delighted to welcome international visitors, and what's been so refreshing is, at a time when America's relationship to the world has become so strained, people from all over the globe, including Europe, have come here and just been delighted.

They're almost falling back in love with the United States.

[bagpipe music] We had these wonderful scenes across the country.

Scotland literally took over the city of Boston and, frankly, drank all of its beer.

Has there been a kind of complementarity there, Jonathan?

Jonathan, I mean, Jake gave us the lay of the land here, but I wonder how worried these senators should be about just the optics of the president being allowed to shield himself from tax liability.

I mean, you'd like to think they'd be worried about the optics.

You'd like to think they'd be worried about the morality and legality.

But I think Jake's point is exactly right, that the president, through his own actions, has created more free agents.

I've written about, we've talked about.

The idea that because Trump declared war on incumbents, you know, Cornyn and Cassidy, two of the names you just read, lost their jobs in the Senate because Trump didn't like them and backed their opponents.

And therefore, they seem less inclined to go along with at least some of what he's proposed.

Will Donald Trump listen, John?

What do you think, Jonathan Lemire?

I think he is not wrong.

I mean, the headline of my last piece for The Atlantic is Trump in defeat.

I mean, he leaves this war weaker than he began.

As noted, he was convinced himself that the U.S. military was unstoppable after what was undeniably a very successful operation to remove Nicolas Maduro from Caracas back in January.

Certainly, in the early days of the conflict, a lot of damage was inflicted upon Iran's military.

But we have seen yet again, an air campaign can't win a war alone.

What were the stated goals of the U.S. in terms of the nuclear program of Iran?

And there are all sorts of contingencies that say maybe there's not a huge threat to that yet, but it can't just continue to stay in this posture.

No, I mean, Clayton, first of all, was seen as a more palatable choice for Democrats.

I mean, he's embraced some election conspiracy theories as well, but he is not the spear of the retribution campaign like Pulte has been.

So there's a sense that Clayton would have gotten through.

That wouldn't have been much of an issue.

But Trump, who has convinced himself that the Save America Act is the Republicans' best chance to win this November in the midterms, is still trying to force that forward.

Ali, as you well know, that many of the Republicans on the Hill are very unhappy with this prospect.

This is Trump just throwing more confusion into the waters, as I think Republicans broadly on the Hill are trying to say, hey, can we just do a little bit less so that we can figure out how we're going to run and try to win our reelection battles in an already choppy water season coming to November 3rd?

What is with this White House and putting Donald Trump in these perilous optical positions?

I think most of it is Donald Trump's own choosing and he doesn't care.

I think that a number of Republicans have voiced this privately and even some White House aides at times have speculated that Trump has sort of lost his feel for what people really care about.

And whether you agree with his politics or not, Trump, you know, we saw it in 2016 and we have seen it at various times in the decade that followed that Trump does have the ability to put his finger on the pulse of the nation.

You can read a poll.

He understands at least what his base cares about, that he's never really tried to govern for all the people, but for his supporters and has been largely in tune with them.

That has changed this term with a few, first of all, broken campaign promises, like not to start wars in the Middle East.

What's the deal with the ballroom, John? And The Washington Post reporting regarding the funding is eye opening, especially because that funding and those estimates came before Donald Trump was making proclamations about how it was going to be 100 percent paid for by private donations.