Situation Room

The fact that they couldn't understand that the first thing the Iranians would do is lock off the Strait of Hormuz, which would put pressure on international oil prices, drive gas prices up at home, shows the incompetence not just of Hegseth, but the president.

Part of the president's job when you're sitting in the Situation Room working through these issues is to ask the questions as to what could go wrong and prepare for that.

Obviously, the president didn't do that.

He is an unserious man who – clearly, I don't say this lightly.

And let's put some percentages on it.

And let me bring you into the Situation Room, because I would guess on Monday, Tuesday, the president will be presented with options.

Option one, walk away, total frustration, pull the troops out, go home.

Really bad idea.

In 2018, an outside White House advisor told Vanity Fair this, quote, Stephen actually enjoys seeing those pictures at the border.

My former colleague Julia Ainsley and I reported on a meeting that same year led by Miller in the White House Situation Room.

Two officials who were at that meeting told us that Stephen Miller asked officials to literally raise their hands and vote on whether thousands of little kids should be separated from their parents.

According to the officials, Miller accused anyone opposing what they called zero tolerance, of being a lawbreaker and being un-American.

Because what she was really saying was, We're taking Trump off the board for the next year in terms of actually being involved in the geopolitical mess that he's made.

If you're in the middle of a war with Iran, you can't close out the war in Ukraine with Russia, do you really want the commander-in-chief, the president, just spending that entire year lily-pad hopping from city to city, holding rallies, and spending three or four hours every night speaking to crowds? Or do you want him in the Situation Room, nose to the grindstone, getting things done? So...

And the fact that she would come out and say, this is what's going to happen, and Trump doesn't even know it yet.

Not only was she pulling the strings of the White House, she couldn't help but brag about it.

And of course, it was over the files.

And you might also remember that Thomas Massey had this clip on Tucker Carlson's podcast in which he said, after Lauren Boebert was called into the Situation Room, for J.D. Vance and Pam Bondi and Todd Blanch and Kash Patel and Carolyn Leavitt.

By the way, all of those people should be prosecuted for obstruction of justice.

But when those people called Lauren Boebert into the Situation Room to say, hey, don't vote on this discharge petition for the files, Lauren Boebert, and good on her, said no.

She voted for it.

That was important.

Okay.

Why would he be tweeting at noon today, 1 o'clock, that a meeting in the Situation Room is over, a slight step has been taken back from the brink? It's just a little more time has been added to the clock.

Why would he be getting leaks from the White House Situation Room about

decisions

about whether to go to war?

In Safer, a playbook turning fear into action and crisis into community, Dr. Raj Panjabi draws on a career spent confronting crisis at nearly every scale.

from the White House Situation Room and global public health emergencies to moments of upheaval within his own family.

The book asks not how we eliminate uncertainty, but how we respond to it with clarity, trust, and connection.

Dr. Punjabi served as White House Senior Director and Special Assistant to the President at the National Security Council, led the President's Malaria Initiative, and founded Last Mile Health.