And talk about how in Europe that concern has reached almost a fevered pitch.

Yeah, I mean, actually allies right around the world.

I was in Hong Kong last week, um, talking to some business people there, and they are watching what is happening and feeling the gas prices, the rice prices, the bread prices that have risen as far away as Hon-- uh, as Asia because of what's happening in Iran and, and they are all so confused about what America's strategy is at the moment.

Well, maybe we'll get a better sense this week because President Trump has a packed diplomatic schedule this week beginning in New York for the United Nations General Assembly, and that's where the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, along of course with artificial intelligence and the future of the UN itself, are gonna be expected to dominate discussions.

Trump will arrive in New York today.

He's got a meeting planned with Mayor Zohran Mamdani before he addresses nearly a hundred and thirty world leaders at the UN tomorrow.

On the sidelines of the General Assembly, Trump will meet Ukrainian President Zelensky.

And find more on the MS Now app.

Do you wanna explain that example and the, what you see driving that?

Yeah, I mean, we, we really did not expect to get into marriages.

We do, you know, politics and economics and leadership.

We had not touched marriages before, and we didn't expect to go there.

But it became clear pretty early on in our research that we were gonna have to look at this because women will never really get power outside of the home unless we do something about what's going on inside relationships.

Um, and, and it is between men and women because that seems to be where the gender, gender kind of biases, and stereotypes, and blockages all are.

I mean, you know, kinda extraordinary things like...

What are some of the steps listeners can take, um, if they are, say, someone who recognizes what power can do, but they're apprehensive about gaining power? If they are leaders in organizations, how can they rethink how they're approaching their conversations around diversity, for example? Um, how can partners start having these conversations about their home life and how it impacts attaining power? What would you leave people in s- in, in these different sort of contexts before we go?

So what exactly is going to change?

Yeah, I mean, I think what the Labour Party is hoping is that charisma can get somebody a long way.

I mean, a lot of what Keir Starmer lacked was, you heard him just there, right? Perhaps some people have called it a moving speech that he gave as he left.

But actually, he lacks charisma.

And there is a hope that if you get a charismatic candidate, they can fend off the challenges that are coming from the right in the form of Nigel Farage, who's much more of a populist, charismatic character.

And they can fend off the challenges that are coming from the left, from the Green Party, which is also led by somebody far more charismatic.

And I think we're seeing some of that in American politics, the premium on charisma.

Yeah,

Uh, the future of, uh, the Secretary of Army said, "The future of warfare is, is revealing itself right now in Ukraine," and the Europeans, they made a, a good and timely bet on the future, while the United States continues dragging its feet behind.

Yeah, I mean, there's an, a report in The Economist just come out that the Ukrainians have taken 130 kilometers of frontline territory just in the course of the last few weeks, and that they are making gains, like you say, Joe, on the battlefield.

They got that $100 billion as well, uh, from the European Union, so they have more cash.

They're doing deals in the Middle East, which is also replenishing their cash supplies.

They have the capacity to produce more of these drones, they just didn't have the money to do so.

So they're getting that now, so they're looking in a much stronger position.

I think it's still gonna take a while for the Europeans to be able to supply Ukraine with everything that

This is what we do instead.

But Republicans, when are Republicans going to see that they're on the wrong side of this story and that it is a real story, affordability?

Well, a- and healthcare costs are a huge part of that, which is why you're seeing candidates in Michigan in this, in the Democratic primary, like Abdullah Syed, who's running almost entirely on a universal healthcare platform.

You're seeing candidates like Graham Plattner talking about affordability.

Y- when Joe-

Mm-hmm

... talks about the three Cs, cost, confusion, and corruption, or cost, chaos, and corruption, the cost is a big part of that.

Republicans will realize this, I think, when it comes to elections, when people go to the polls.

I mean, it's so interesting, Steve's, uh, numbers from the state of Georgia.

Thank you

... doesn't have the face of the president on it.

Um, uh, it, it's been remarkable to see all of Washington, and to watch last night, Joe, in Congress, Republicans and Democrats alike stand and applaud things that normally Republicans would be pretty horrified by at the moment.

I mean, the fact that they stood, uh, and cheered when he said, talked about the polar ice caps melting, uh, and protecting our planet, and protecting nature.

When he talked about those checks and balances, it wasn't just Democrats who stood up in Congress, it was Republicans as well.

And part of me started thinking is, are they listening to what he's saying? Are they hearing what he's-

Mm-hmm

...

This war is impacting them, and now leaders are being much more vocal in their criticism of the Trump administration than we've seen them on other matters.

Yeah, because Europeans are feeling the impacts because of high gas prices, because there's a l- lack of jet fuel.

Lufthansa, for example, has had to cancel thousands of flights coming up over the summer.

That's the German airline.

Um, so the Germans know what is at stake here.

I mean, we're in a situation where there's a kinda game of chicken going on between the US economy and the pressure that that puts on the president and on Republicans, and the global economy and how long that can withstand the closing of the Strait of Hormuz.

President Trump said on Sunday, well, the Iranians have only three days before their pipelines explode because they've had to shut down production, and the pipelines are under so much pressure because they're still full of oil.

And the insight was we have become so numbed to the craziness in Washington, the craziness in this country over the past, I'd say 10 years, but especially the past year and a half, that Americans are just numb to it, and they don't really care what happened 10 blocks away, even if it could have a significant impact on America's politics.

Your thoughts?

Look, the, the White House will argue that anything that they hit, uh, is something that the IRGC could have used either to transport nuclear material, transport missiles, whether it's a bridge or a road, that a power plant could have dual use as well.

It would be for the International Criminal Court to look at it afterwards, to which of course America's not a signatory, um, to determine whether that was the case or not.

My understanding from my reporting is that CENTCOM is today, uh, locked and loaded, as the American expression goes, ready to resume bombing, and that they do have a list of targets, and that they w- are not planning to attack every bridge and every power plant, as the president, um, has suggested multiple times.

That...

Part of the confusion, I think, that we're all dealing with and that the American people are dealing with, which is why his approval ratings are so low, and which is why approval for this war is so low, is that the president says one thing one day and then says something else the next day.

Three times he's said he was going to attack power plants and bridges, and then three ti- with a deadline attached to it, and then three times he's backed down from that.

I mean, it's, it's a, it's a, it's a... it's the most unflattering portrait of Donald Trump perhaps to date as, as a person who's taken the country to war, has no appetite for the war, no interest in defending it to the American people, and no capacity to stand there before the men and women of the military and align himself with public statements about the sacrifice that 13 men and women have already made.

Mm-hmm

... amount of confusion as we head, hopefully, to the end of this war, but that's also not in sight very clearly.

We don't know exactly who's in control in Iran.

We don't know exactly who's gonna be at the negotiation table.

We don't know exactly if the negotiations are gonna take place.

We don't know if the Straits of Hormuz are open or not open or only sort of open.

Um, so it- it's very hard to see how the administration gets itself out of this.

So that was what we were trying to show and the reporting target that we had for this piece.

Um, so is this a moment in time, or does it seem that some MAGA people, because of the war, because of some of the things they've seen even on immigration enforcement, are drifting away from a guy who, as Joe said, will not be on the ballot anymore and may not be as inclined to come out and support, say, a candidate that he endorses or someone in 2028?

Yeah, I, I take Ben's point that to some extent people like Megyn Kelly and Tucker Carlson are mirrors of the audiences who listen to them as much as they are leaders of those audiences.

And so maybe they are reflecting something that is a growing movement.

But you look at the polls, Willie, and up until very recently, the latest polls over the last weekend showed that MAGA was still pretty much with Donald Trump, even over Iran.

I, the, the bigger problem, as you point out, is the one for Republicans in the midterm elections when Donald Trump is not on the ballot, and then up until 2028, when he's effectively a lamed out president.

And if the Democrats take the House, we'll be going through all sorts of hearings that won't make him look so great.

And, and that is why it's interesting.

Right

There's a lot to be go- uh, l- uh, there's a lot that still has to happen here, and we're a long way from being able to come back and claiming any sort of victory.

And Nancy, uh, General Henderson listed a few of the very critical metrics of what a successful operation would look like that are still, have still not been achieved.

Do you think Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth, um, have underestimated Iran's capabilities? I mean, Iran was by far the most formidable opponent in the Middle East that the US was going to ever, uh, face.

They have been preparing for this moment.

They came up with a defense strategy.

They have decentralized their capabilities in the event of a decapitation strike.

And you had the President of the United States say that this war was gonna be over in maybe a few days or maybe a couple weeks, and here we are, five weeks into it, with the president saying maybe two or three more weeks, and American service members being shot out of the sky.

Um, the, it, they focus s- more so on, um, a military campaign, which is just one part of this.

So a lot of this simply isn't adding up.

Yeah.

I mean, the president will obviously try to paint it as a win.

He'll say, "We've decimated their missile, uh, production capacity," which is true.

That really has been damaged, and that Iran is weaker than it was before February the 28th when America went in.

But I think I've been trying to reach out to economists and oil experts and people around the world and in the UAE to find out what would happen if America pulled out, and it's pretty unclear.

I mean, it would seem that Iran would be left with this ability to charge a toll, which would have some impact on the price of oil for consumers around the world, but not very much.

Amen

The next regime is mostly dead

deadThe third regime, we're dealing with different people than anybody's dealt with before.

It's a whole different group of people.

So I would consider that regime change.

And frankly, they've been very reasonable.

So I think we've had regime change.

The last handful of days, the markets seemingly haven't listened, despite the good news coming out of Trump's mouth like, "Oh, we're winding this down," the price of oil only going up.

Yeah, the President keeps saying, and has done several times over the course of the last few days, "We've won," putting that in the past tense, and that there has been regime change.

Very soon.

Yeah, so well, let's not talk about Liverpool and Man City 'cause we might jinx it for one or other households.

So let...

We'll-

[laughs]

Uh, the Italians, brava.

Well done, Italy.

I mean-

There's real economic concern as well.

Yeah, and speculation that oil could even go to $150 a barrel.

There's a line that people, oil traders can see that.

I think this is the week where the market's forces, uh, clash up against Donald Trump's own intentions here, um, and his own desires to go big on this one.

And he may find himself restrained just because the economic hit globally, but particularly to the United States, is too high.

It, it's pretty quick.

When you start...

Once again, claiming, with no evidence, Putin wants peace and Zelenskyy doesn't.

So Katty, the question is, what kind of off-ramp can Trump live with as he is clearly in legacy-building mode, believing this is an entry for the history books?

Yeah, and we heard Caroline Levitt, who was sort of vying with Pete Hegseth there to defend the president, um, a- a- and attack the media at, at any possibilit- at any possible moment.

I think the off-ramp depends exactly on what President Trump wants it to be.

And if this is moving in the direction that Joe is hearing, that you're hearing, that the reports from the press about the number of missiles being launched from Iran might seem to suggest the diminat- diminution of the number of those, then if there is some kind of a victory, have no doubt that Donald Trump will claim it as exactly that.

Even if this falls far short of regime change, the losers in all of this may be the Iranian public.

But I think Donald Trump will be able to say, "Look, we have, we, we have a regime that was threatening the world, much diminished militarily, angry perhaps, um, at the position that it's in." There's, doesn't need to be any indication within Iran that we're moving from, ah, hardliners to moderates quite yet.

But I think it, it'll all depend on whether this, it, it has some sort of a resolution militarily quickly, and whether Donald Trump can then turn around and say-

I'm curious, what i- what, what, what, what's the attitude toward Keir Starmer right now, uh, with the White House angry at him and, uh, Iranians shooting at British, uh, bases in the region?

What is the reaction there to this, uh, step by the United States and Israel, and to the scramble to find a justification for it?

Well, I guess now we know why it was called the Department of War, not the Department of Defense, because there seems to be, and that's the perception, I've just returned from, uh, Munich, Germany last night, there seems to be a perception in Europe that this is an administration that is set on this kind of, uh, gunfire diplom- uh, gunfire operations where it can go in and take out leaders.

It worked in Venezuela, as you've been pointing out.

It might not work here.

But the, we know from Iraq how important it is to have a clear rationale, to have a clear reason, and to articulate that, both to the American people and to the rest of the world.

Because if you don't, if the reasons keep changing, it was because Israel was going to attack, it was because we were under imminent threat, um, then you undermine confidence in other countries around the world.

And other countries around the world will then start to say, "Well, what do we need to do now-

They're just screaming out for both parties to focus on them and not foreign wars.

Yeah

... somebody who's close to the prime minister just today, who said to me that, you know, Keir Starmer is absolutely furious, and that Peter Mandelson, the former Ambri- Ambassador to the, to the United States, lied point-blank to him.

I, I don't know, though, that we can claim in the UK that we have massive amounts of moral superiority just on the Epstein issues.

I mean, you've seen people in Norway falling over this.

A former crown princess is now feeling the heat.

An ambassador has stepped down.

A former prime minister is under investigation.

100%

Talk about it.

Uh, yeah, it is conc- causing concern and certainly the Danes are taking the threats that are coming towards Greenland very seriously.

I mean, I think two months ago you might have been able to dismiss this as owning the libs.

I don't think anyone in Europe is doing that anymore.

And you're seeing this rare display at the United Nations of, uh, European leaders who have worked very hard, fallen over backwards to try to accommodate Donald Trump and be nice to him and flatter him in public, also take a pretty hard line, including, uh, Finland, which has been pretty close to Donald Trump, saying, "Look, Denmark ha- is the one that has authority o- w- over Greenland and the Green- the people of Greenland don't want America to be in there and this would be a rupture of NATO." So you're seeing this kind of movement in Europe to, of, I think, of some alarm about the state of Greenland.

But you only have to l- you mentioned the Stephen Miller interview yesterday.

One of the most striking things, and it's worth reading out, "We live in a world, in the real world, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power.

Uh, Katty Kay, uh, obviously there were protests over Venezuela, um, uh, Greenland, uh, would- would- would be something altogether different, talk about how badly, uh, any action, again, any hostile action against Greenland, whether it's mili- uh, military intervention or, uh, something less, uh, would splinter, uh, the United States', uh, m- alliances, uh, with- with Europe, uh, with NATO, with the EU.

go? Katty, when?

(laughs) I mean, I think Peggy Noonan points to something very smart in her column this morning, which is that there is a, the, the president just isn't alive, is the way she phrases it.

The anxieties of American people, and even when he's there touting the stock market, which yes, is booming, it is what economists are calling this K street, this case-shaped economy, he's pointing to people at the very top.

But over a third of Americans don't even own stocks.

So they're not reassured by the fact that the thing that he touts as a success is helpful to them, because they don't own shares in the stock market.

And at the meantime, he's out there in the Poconos saying that any talk of affordability is something of a hoax and belittling it, and saying that the way they should handle it anyway is to buy less dolls when Politico had that great survey of the economy recently.

Americans are anxious about everything from their, their missing healthcare trips, their missing prescription drugs, they're skipping them because the prices are too high.

If they believe that's true, they could put him through a process and seek conviction, but that's not what they've done.

But for so many civilians, and we know there are tens of thousands, estimated 30, 40, 50,000 or more, many of them women or children, killed there in the last two years, today also brings a sense of some relief.

Yeah, the latest estimates are about 67,000, uh, Gazans have been killed during the past two years.

And of course, as foreign journalists, we haven't really been into the Strip very much.

There have been the odd, uh, accompanied visits, but it'll be...

We don't understand totally the scale of what's been happening in Gaza, and maybe we will now get a chance to do that.

There are some alarming, uh, reports.

I was listening to Brett McGurk yesterday on television saying that he had been hearing reports of Hamas reasserting control already in some areas of Gaza, even executing Palestinians as a way of reasserting control, uh, in some parts of Gaza.

Uh, "The prime minister thanked Trump for his efforts around the circle of peace, peace through strength." What is your analysis here that Trump intervened, got Netanyahu a seat at the table, and the prime minister said, "No, thanks"?

Mm-hmm.

... which is another thing that has happened recently, and that something is Donald Trump, that he is pushing people who would not necessarily be allies around the world into alliances with each other in order to enact a show of force against Donald Trump.

I mean, w- when it comes to the war in Ukraine, the war in Ukraine suits the host of this summit, China, very well.

They would like to have, uh, America's attention split between Ukraine and Europe and Asia, and not be fully focused on Asia.

So Chairman Xi has no interest other than keeping the war in Ukraine going, which is why he's sending missile parts and weapons parts, not weapons necessarily themselves, but weapons parts, to Russia.

But I g- I guess, David, the question is, what does Donald Trump do in reaction to this show of force? He's already had the Europeans come over and said, "Okay, we are actually united President Trump.

We're not gonna be s- you can't split ranks between us." Now he's got the Asians effectively saying the same thing.

Mm-hmm.

So going into this next one-on-one meeting, do you think there will be more hostility and less trust because what's happened in the past?

Look, so I think President Trump goes into this having expressed more frustration with Vladimir Putin than we've seen in previous encounters, right, Jason? So this has set the tone for possibly saying, "Okay, we're gonna have certain conditions coming out of this." The question is whether, as Peter Baker says, what are the consequences if, uh, Russia doesn't stick to those conditions? And then I think importantly, are those conditions measurable? I mean, does he go into the meeting and say, "Okay, look, we actually do need to see that you are not attacking energy infrastructure," or, "We do need to see that you are not attacking, um, civilian infrastructure," and then measure Vladimir Putin against those results? That would probably be quite a positive outcome from, uh, this conference.

It's interesting that a lot of people around the world, particularly in Europe, were alarmed enough about the prospect of Donald Trump walking in one-on-one with Vladimir Putin without the kind of usual process of having had the National Security Council or the State Department negotiate the grounds and the terms beforehand that they summoned this emergency meeting.

I mean, they were alarmed, right? Clearly, that kind of emergency meeting doesn't normally happen.

So I, I think people are feeling a little reassured this evening that at least he listened to the European perspective, he listened to the Ukrainian perspective.

But then the question is, what does Vladimir Putin do to try to...... woo back Donald Trump? What does he offer him to try and woo him back into that, kind of, friendship that Peter's talking about?

Right.

...

But state officials and national officials just brushing away any questions, it's only going to make matters worse.

Yeah, I mean, there is a tendency, isn't there, Joe? And we've spoken about this before after a great tragedy, whether it is a fire, whether it is a school shooting, for...

to hear that response, "Well, this is too soon to ask the question," but this is exactly the time to ask the question.

And in a world where we know that one tragedy is followed by another tragedy is followed by another tragedy, actually we have to ask the questions as soon as possible and launch the investigation as soon as possible and try to get the answers as soon as possible to try to prevent this.

One thing that we do all know is that, ask any American insurance industry, we know that we're going to get more of these tragedies.

There's... as the world-

So this is a time when, uh, Netanyahu arrives in Washington a- as successful in this long, bloody, terribly painful war, uh, and I think there will be an effort, appropriate one, to see how do we turn this into as broad a peace ag- agreement as possible? How do we take the idea behind the Abraham Accords of reaching out across the region and make that bigger and more permanent?

Yeah, adding the Saudis to that, um, Abraham Accords, of course, was something that President Trump wanted the first time.

Uh, and then as... as Jonathan said, he did, uh, a bit of a head fake talking about two weeks, uh, to buy a little bit of operational security, uh, while those B-2s sped toward Iran.

Yeah.

Now we have two big questions.

How much damage was done, and what are the Iranian options? So where are we on this Monday morning after this dramatic weekend? Well, President Trump now says that three key nuclear sites in Iran were completely and totally obliterated on Saturday after United States joined Israel's offensive aimed at dismantling Iran's nuclear program.

The American strikes involved more than 125 military aircraft, including seven B-2 bombers in a mission dubbed Operation Midnight Hammer.

The aircraft dropped a series of 30,000-pound bunker-busting bombs, the most powerful non-nuclear weapons in the US arsenal.

It was the first time that they'd ever been used in combat.

Thank you.