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Trump’s Attacks on Voting, and on Iran / Start Making Sense · The Nation Podcasts

• 0:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: From the nation magazine, this is Start Making Sense.
• 0:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm John Weiner.
• 0:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: Later in the hour, Congress must challenge Trump's war on Iran and take up war powers resolutions that assert its primacy over matters of war and peace.
• 0:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: That shouldn't be hard.
• 0:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: The latest polls show that only 27% of Americans support Trump's war on Iran.
• 0:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: John Nichols will explain.
• 0:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: But first, Trump's new plan for attacking Democratic voting in the midterms, David Cole will comment in a minute.
• 0:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: Trump knows he's facing a shellacking in the midterms, losing the house maybe the Senate then facing impeachment in the new Congress.
• 0:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: His strategy to block this is to prevent Democrats from voting in the midterms, and now we've learned of a new plan for an executive order different and more threatening than what he's tried before.
• 1:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: For comment we turn to David Cole,
• 1:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's the former national legal director of the ACLU, now teaches law at Georgetown.
• 1:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: He also writes for the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the New York Review.
• 1:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: And he's the nation's legal affairs correspondent.
• 1:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: David, welcome back.
• 1:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: Nice to be with you, John.
• 1:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: A year ago, Trump signed an executive order on voting.
• 1:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: It required proof of citizenship for voter registration.
• 1:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: It greatly restricted voting by mail and required voter idea of the polls.
• 1:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: that executive order was permanently blocked by a federal court in October, which ruled that the separation of powers provision of the Constitution gave Congress some power on voting, but none to the president.
• 1:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: So he did not appeal the heart of that ruling.
• 1:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: They did the right thing and took it to Congress where Republicans proposed the same restrictions on voting in what is now the Save Act.
• 2:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: The House passed it.
• 2:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's now in the Senate where it will be blocked by a Democratic filibuster.
• 2:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: What is next?
• 2:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: Trump has a radically new approach.
• 2:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: The Washington Post reported them Thursday that people in the Trump administration are circulating a 17-page draft executive order that claims China interfered in the 2020 election and could do the same thing again this fall.
• 2:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: And that's the basis for Trump to declare a national security emergency that he says would give him extraordinary power
• 2:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: banning voting by mail, requiring proof of citizenship for voter registration, and requiring voter ID for in-person voting.
• 2:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: No president has ever declared a national security emergency as a basis for restricting voting.
• 2:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: That is a new idea.
• 2:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: What do you think of its chances in court?
• 3:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think it doesn't have any chance to withstand judicial review for the same reason that the earlier executive order failed in court.
• 3:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: The Constitution is very clear.
• 3:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: It sets out authority for the regulation of congressional elections by providing that the states have primary responsibility to set the terms, the manner, the times, the polling places of election.
• 3:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: state rules and sometimes Congress has voting rights act for example, but it does not give the president any power to override state rules with respect to elections and nor is there any emergency
• 3:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: statute that that I am aware of that Congress has passed that gives the President this power.
• 3:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: And we just saw the Supreme Court reject the President's argument that a national emergency gives him extraordinary tariff authorities.
• 4:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think he would fare just as poorly with this kind of argument.
• 4:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: You are absolutely right about the same claim being made for tariffs and the Supreme Court clearly rejecting that.
• 4:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: But if you remember, he declared the tariffs on April 2nd, 2025.
• 4:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: And the day the Supreme Court finally ruled against him on tariffs was February 20th, 2026.
• 4:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: They spent more than 10 months
• 4:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: At this, during which time the tariffs were in effect, the midterms are only six months away.
• 4:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: So the question is, do you think the court would work faster on this national security claim than they did on the tariffs?
• 4:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, absolutely.
• 4:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, the thing about the tariffs is that the government, you know, the lower courts rule against the president on the tariffs, but he sought a stay, pending appeal.
• 5:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: And his argument for the stay was, look, if we're wrong and we don't have authority, we can always pay the money back.
• 5:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's the situation there.
• 5:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now having to figure out how to pay $130 billion of illegally obtained money back.
• 5:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: But you can't really undo an election, redo an election.
• 5:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so I think we're going to try this again.
• 5:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: The lower federal courts would almost certainly enjoy it.
• 5:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: He might seek a stay from the Supreme Court, but I think the Supreme Court would be very unlikely to grant him a stay, because again, there's no free standing emergency powers of the President.
• 5:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: The President's emergency powers to the extent he has them are set forth in statutes that Congress has enacted.
• 5:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: It enacted the National Emergencies Act, it enacted the International
• 5:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: In an act that they're trading with the enemy act, there are a series of laws that give the present emergency authority, but not this one.
• 6:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: And the memo that you refer to doesn't suggest, at least in the reporting, I've seen doesn't suggest that there's some statute that they're relying on.
• 6:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: They seem to be relying on some inherent article to executive authority, but that just doesn't exist.
• 6:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: perhaps we should note that the premise of this claim is a total lie.
• 6:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: China did not interfere in the 2020 election.
• 6:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: They did not try to defeat Trump.
• 6:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: The American intelligence services studied foreign influence in the 2020 election and their study concluded the biggest foreign actor in 2020 was Russia trying to help Trump.
• 6:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: Is that even relevant to this case?
• 6:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: No.
• 6:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: President Trump is the sourest loser.
• 6:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think in all of history, and you saw that with his temper tantrum press conference after the Supreme Court declared his tariffs illegal you saw that in 2020 when he went to 60 courts to file suits to try to change the result of an election that he fairly and squarely lost, and he is still
• 7:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, it can't admit defeat, but I think the courts, you know, as they stood up to him the last time around.
• 7:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think I'm this kind of a fundamental question there likely to stand up to him and no.
• 7:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: If China interfered, you know, then that might be a justification to go to Congress and to say, we need some kind of security measures to be enacted.
• 7:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: that would stop this from happening in the future.
• 7:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: That would be appropriate.
• 7:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: Congress is not, you know, as thus far anyway has not responded.
• 7:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: It also might be appropriate to, you know, engage in investigations and things of that nature and they already are doing some investigations.
• 7:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: My, my, my,
• 7:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: strong senses that they will go nowhere, but he, you know, he just cannot admit that he lost.
• 8:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: He cannot admit that he lost and he's bringing us all down with him.
• 8:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: He tried to, you know, in 2020, to do that failed, and he's still trying.
• 8:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's pretty clear that he is preparing this case, looking for evidence, there was that otherwise inexplicable incident where national security adviser Tulsi Gabbard went along with the FBI when they raided the election center in Fulton County, Georgia, and seized the ballots from the 2020 election and everybody wondered, what's Tulsi Gabbard have to do with this?
• 8:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: that they're going to make a national intelligence claim about the ballots of Fulton County Georgia somehow coming from China.
• 8:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: And in fact, we're told this, I found hard to believe, suspicions of Chinese ballots spread the hunt for bamboo filters in Arizona ballots during a Republican lid audit there in 2021.
• 9:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: They, of course, ended up reaffirming Joe Biden's victory in the state.
• 9:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: Did you know that Bamboo fibers in ballots are the key piece of evidence in this case?
• 9:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: I did not know that good luck to them, but I think the really the more serious threat here is he is going to do, you know, a less things changed dramatically.
• 9:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's going to lose the midterms and he's going to lose the midterms big because the American people are not happy with the way he's running this country and this is our opportunity to say so.
• 9:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: He knows that and he doesn't want to lose big and so he will do whatever he can.
• 9:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think to interfere with people's ability to go to the polls and register their disapproval of him.
• 9:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: And even if you can't do what the executive order suggests, he does have a lot of authority over ice, over the FBI, et cetera, and he may engage in kind of voter suppression tactics that have
• 10:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: playing American elections in the past, but have generally not been directed by the president of the United States.
• 10:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think that's one real fear.
• 10:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: And the other fear is that he's able to gin up enough bogus concern that he's able to push
• 10:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: the senators to override the filibuster requirement, and then they could pass something like the Save Act.
• 10:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: And thus far, he doesn't have the votes to override the filibuster, there are a number of Republicans who recognize that this is not in their long-term interest to get rid of the filibuster, but he may ratchet up the pressure there, and Congress does have authority to set the rules for congressional elections.
• 10:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: but Congress does.
• 11:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: So that to me is the greater the more realistic threat, the sort of enforcement actions on the day and or some effort to get, you know, the Republicans in line to get rid of the Phil Buster so that they can pass something like this.
• 11:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: He did talk about this in his state of the Union speech.
• 11:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: He said that if Congress
• 11:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: failed to pass the Save Act, failed to eliminate the filibuster and overrule the Democrats on this.
• 11:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: He would not quote sit here and allow you to steal the country again, close quote.
• 11:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: He said he would issue executive orders to mandate that states turn over the voter roles to the Department of Homeland Security.
• 11:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: This would be for
• 11:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: Citizenship verification, the blue states have all refused to do that.
• 11:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think only three, even only three of the red states have done it up to this point.
• 11:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: But is there any basis for the executive branch going over the state voter rolls, looking for evidence of fraud there?
• 12:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't think so, and I think thus far, you know, not only have states refused, but the courts have gone along with his states' right to refuse.
• 12:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, he's doing everything he can, again, last time around, he did everything he can and some things he couldn't, and, you know, and the courts, the courts at least stood up to him.
• 12:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: Sadly, Congress did not impeach him, which is what they should have done, given the shenanigans he engaged in after January 6.
• 12:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: But, you know, starting with his pardons of all the folks who engaged in that effort, you know, that was sort of the first play.
• 12:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: And he's sending a message to his people, hey, do it again.
• 12:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: Be with me again.
• 12:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: We need the support, we're going to challenge
• 12:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: these elections.
• 12:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: I, you know, I just hope that people recognize that, you know, when he loses, he loses.
• 12:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: And the American democracy is predicated on the peaceful transition of power and not on those in power doing everything they can to suppress the will of the people so that they can keep their jobs or keep their power in one way, shape of form.
• 13:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's also talked about invoking the insurrection act to send the ice or the military to in his words, quote, surround the poles, close quote, to ensure what he calls integrity.
• 13:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: Of course, you and I are not the only people who have uh,
• 13:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: been worrying about this.
• 13:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: The secretaries of state of the blue states, the attorney generals of the blue states have been reminding federal officials, Trump's people, that the Voting Rights Act makes a voter intimidation a federal crime.
• 13:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: and seems to us anyway, sending ice to blue polling places is pretty clearly an effort at voter intimidation.
• 13:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: I was also very interested to learn.
• 13:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's a law that makes it a federal crime for any federal officer to send armed men to a polling place.
• 14:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: Unless it is necessary to repel armed enemies, maybe you're aware of this, I certainly wasn't at the Civil War era law.
• 14:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: Often referred to, I understand, as the armed men at Paul's law, I don't know if you teach this at Georgetown, a blue state attorney generals are reminding the president and federal agency heads that sending armed immigration officials to a polling site,
• 14:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: isn't just the controversial political move.
• 14:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: It is a felony that carries a lifetime ban from federal service as well as a five-year prison term.
• 14:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: Did you know about the armed minute polls law?
• 14:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, I did not have, I've practiced and taught constitutional law for 40 some years.
• 14:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: It never came up before.
• 14:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that's a sad commentary on this administration that it's now relevant.
• 14:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: So we have the blue state attorney generals, the blue state secretaries of state preparing for all of these possibilities for months, actually for years, they've already done quite a bit, so has the ACLU, so as the Brennan Center, common cause, the League of Women Voters, I learned there's a national election protection coalition with
• 15:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: 300 organizations that serve as a hub for resources from now until election day.
• 15:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: So there's a massive effort to anticipate and prevent Trump from fulfilling his plans.
• 15:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's right.
• 15:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: I've been involved in that when I was the legal director of the ACLU.
• 15:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: For every election, we and our sister organizations and state attorney general in the
• 15:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: for every possible eventuality, because the reality is you have to act, you know, I have to turn around on the dime.
• 15:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: If something happens, it often doesn't happen until, you know, election day or, or you may be early election.
• 16:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: uh, voting days, but that's when it happens and you have to be ready to go into court immediately.
• 16:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: Courts respond very quickly.
• 16:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: They know that, you know, these are big deals and that they have to act quickly, but you have to be ready to go.
• 16:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so, uh, and I think this time, more than, you know, sometimes those preparation exercises seem kind of speculative and yes, we have to do it, but really, is it, are they going to do this?
• 16:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: But this time around, I think every
• 16:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: piece of preparation is absolutely essential because it's clear that this is his, you know, he sees the midterms as the first formal opportunity for the American people to register their disapproval of him to take away his power over the Congress to, you know, take away his immunity from investigations because the Republicans control the
• 16:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: the committees right now that that do investigations in in the House and the Senate and whoever the majority party is has that authority that initiative and he right he knows that and so he's trying to do everything he can to suppress the vote and it never in it always shocks me here we are we are a democracy the legitimacy of our government turns on our vote and yet politicians are willing to
• 17:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: bend the rules in whatever way they can and none more than President Trump to achieve a result contrary to the ones that the people.
• 17:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: that the people want, and that's just not how democracy is supposed to operate.
• 17:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I'm a big supporter of all the organizations that are fighting back.
• 17:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think we all need to be extra vigilant.
• 17:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: And if he tries to do these sorts of things, we should be out in the streets rejecting it.
• 17:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: We have to defend our democracy against a president who will subvert it if it's not going to lead to
• 18:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: One last thing, Trump's idea that the federal government should take over elections has very little public support beyond the mega base.
• 18:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: Washington Post, ABC News, Episodes poll this month found that only 23% of American supported it, 23% support for Trump on this.
• 18:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: So you and I are not alone here.
• 18:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, that's, and that is encouraging, and that may mean that he won't be able to, you know, and the filibuster in the Senate to pass a law that only 23% of Americans are in support of.
• 18:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: But, you know, he won't stop, he won't stop there, so we need to be extra vigilant.
• 18:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: David Cole, he's former legal director of the ACLU.
• 18:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: David, thanks for talking with us today.
• 18:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thanks for having me, John.
• 19:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: Now it's time to talk about Trump's war in Iran and its place in American politics.
• 19:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: For that we turn to John Nichols, of course he's executive editor of the nation.
• 19:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: John, welcome back.
• 19:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: Great to be with you, John.
• 19:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: Our starting point is the recent poll from Reuters and Ipsos, which found that only 27% of Americans approve of Trump's war against Iran.
• 19:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: That means it's not helping with his basic problem, which is his collapsing political support.
• 19:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's the background to what's happening.
• 19:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: The prominence in the news of the Epstein files, his failure to bring prices down,
• 19:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: a lot of people think he's going too far sending ice after undocumented people with jobs and families.
• 19:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: He has had sinking approval ratings, he's facing an electoral disaster in the midterms, the walls are closing in on him.
• 20:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: We've always said that as he becomes weaker, he'll become more dangerous and certainly we've seen that in the last few weeks.
• 20:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, he's deposed of Venezuelan leader, he's menaced Greenland, he's occupied Minneapolis, he's talking about regime change in Cuba and over the weekend he launched a war against Iran that was opposed by the vast majority of the country.
• 20:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: I have heard that Congress has the authority to stop this war.
• 20:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: Is that true?
• 20:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: It is true, up to a point.
• 20:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: But you see, John, this is where it gets
• 20:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: for Congress to exercise its authority to stop this war, it would need first to respect that authority.
• 20:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the problem is that we have had over the last
• 20:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: now better part of 90 years the Congress that does not respect its own authority.
• 21:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: The last president who sought and received a declaration of war from Congress, which is clearly outlined in the Constitution.
• 21:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's how it's supposed to work.
• 21:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: The last president did that was Franklin Roosevelt after Pearl Harbor.
• 21:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: He actually, interested enough that the history on it shows how easy it is to do.
• 21:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: There was an attack on Pearl Harbor and the next day, Franklin Roosevelt said to Congress, you know, you got to come together and give me a declaration of war so that I can deal with this issue.
• 21:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: And Congress came immediately, they had the vote.
• 21:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: There was one vote against it with Jeanette Rankin from Montana, but everybody else did it and he had his power.
• 21:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's how it's supposed to work.
• 21:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: But since then, every president has engaged in military actions without seeking a clear declaration of war, and every Congress has let that president get away with it.
• 21:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: What we've ended up in now with now is a kind of absurd situation where we had a Congress that didn't declare the war in Vietnam.
• 22:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: That war became incredibly unpopular.
• 22:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: And rather than impeach Richard Nixon for wage in that war, or impeach Lyndon Johnson previously for wage in that war, in violation of constitution, as some people proposed at the time,
• 22:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: They decided in the early 70s to enact something called the War Powers Act.
• 22:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the War Powers Act was supposed to put some rules around things so that when a president was inclined to wage war without seeking a declaration, Congress would have some way to push back on it.
• 22:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: No more power's act was not entirely useless, he's a work, but it was sort of an effort to for Congress to get around having to do the thing that we're supposed to do, which is either have a declaration or if a president wage war without a declaration to impeach.
• 22:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: We've had the war powers act now for the better part of 50 years, more than 50 years, and it's rarely been used even to the extent that it could be used.
• 23:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: What's going to happen this week is that some members of Congress, Rokana from California and Thomas Massey in the House, and Tim Kane in the Senate, are going to apply or seek to apply the War Powers Act
• 23:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: President Trump's war with Iran, and the ways in which it might be constrained.
• 23:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: If they could muster the votes for this, then they'd begin a process of pushing back and basically restoring congressional authority if they fail to get the votes, right?
• 23:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: If all their publicans vote against and some Democrats vote with them, and they just don't pass the resolution, then we're stuck where we've been, which is a terrible place.
• 23:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: And one final element of this is of course that Donald Trump has an ability to push back on this because he can veto a resolution.
• 24:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: So it's a murky messy situation, a mess that Congress itself created over many, many decades.
• 24:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: And now there are a few members of Congress that are trying to dig us out of this mess.
• 24:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: We'll see how far they get.
• 24:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's one thing that's not murky here.
• 24:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: And that is Trump's whole case for this war is a lie.
• 24:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: Trump said,
• 24:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: Speaking of Iran, they've rejected every opportunity to renounce their nuclear ambitions, and we can't take it anymore, close quote.
• 24:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: But last Friday, this is before the attacks began on the American news program face the nation, the Omani foreign minister.
• 24:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is the guy who's the lead mediator in the rounds of U.S. Iranian nuclear talks.
• 24:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: he said Iran had agreed to quote never ever have nuclear material that will create a bomb.
• 24:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: And to dilute their enriched uranium into ordinary nuclear fuel, close quote, he said Iran was willing to grant inspectors from the U.N.'s international atomic energy agency what he called full access to its nuclear sites to verify the terms of the deal.
• 25:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: And he said
• 25:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: and full verification.
• 25:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: Close quote, this is the Omani Foreign Minister who's been running the negotiations between the United States and Iran.
• 25:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: So the whole thing is a lie.
• 25:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: You'd think this would be of relevance to a war powers resolution.
• 25:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: Exactly.
• 25:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's no evidence that Iran posed an imminent threat.
• 25:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that's what you're looking for with the war powers act.
• 25:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: You're looking for an imminent threat, something that's very real and very immediate.
• 25:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: We either have been attacked, this country has been attacked, or you can basically see the preparation of the missiles to come here or whatever else.
• 26:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that's always subject to some interpretation, I understand.
• 26:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: The fact is that Iran is a country that has suffered a great deal of economic challenges.
• 26:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: It has internal divisions and all sorts of other problems.
• 26:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the notion that it is preparing to attack the most powerful military force in the world.
• 26:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: is just, you know, it's completely unrealistic.
• 26:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: So what Donald Trump has tried to do, and it's a really, kind of bizarre circumstance here, is he keeps trying to move the goalpost, right?
• 26:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: And sometimes he'll remember
• 26:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: that he has to say the words imminent threat, right?
• 26:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah.
• 26:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: And as he did, and his initial announcement, some other places, sometimes he'll forget that.
• 26:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: Even now, and come up with some other excuse, there's a fluid timeline.
• 26:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: We're gonna do it in three or four days, or maybe three, you know, maybe a month, or three or four months, or, you know, all these other things, there is a incredibly ill-defined
• 27:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: construction for, you know, what you seek to achieve.
• 27:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then we had this bizarre statement by the president that, you know, we sort of had a line of succession there.
• 27:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: We kind of knew who we wanted to have in charge, but it looks like our bombs killed all the people that we thought we're going to be successors.
• 27:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so now we've got to find some new people that maybe we'd be successors.
• 27:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then he's saying stuff like, but we don't know them.
• 27:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: Some people get confused over the fact that the Iatola community was a brutal and repressive leader.
• 27:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: He killed thousands of his own people that were massive demonstrations recently, which were repressed.
• 27:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: And therefore it's a good thing.
• 27:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: that the Iranians now get a chance to form their own government.
• 27:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: And Trump has said he believes there will be an uprising in Iran.
• 27:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think it's going to happen.
• 27:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: He said, we're going to get a democratic uprising in Iran.
• 28:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: But I read that in Reuters.
• 28:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: before the attacks began the CIA came to the conclusion that even if Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Kamini was killed in an operation, he would more likely be replaced by hard-line figures from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard than by a democratic revolution.
• 28:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: So far, is there any evidence that the Ayatollah will be replaced by a democratic revolution?
• 28:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: No, there is some evidence that there has been a celebration of the death of the Supreme Leader in some cases or some places, but there's also evidence of great protests and marches warning the death of the Supreme Leader.
• 28:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: So what you see is evidence of a divided country and you're not quite clear where all the sentiments are.
• 28:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I think that from the reports we're hearing,
• 29:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: The reaction of people on the ground is to do what many folks have suggested, which is stay in your homes, right?
• 29:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: Kind of keep out of the way of the bombs and the president said the other day that the worst of the assault has not or has not yet come.
• 29:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: that there are more bombing, there's more assaults to come.
• 29:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is already an attack on this country that is seeing hundreds and hundreds of people killed, including a huge number of schoolgirls in a school that was bombed and some really horrific results.
• 29:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so the notion that people are going to come out in way to a small
• 29:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: is unrealistic at a point where the bombs are still falling.
• 29:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: Obviously Trump imagined that when the bombs stopped falling at some point that that would happen, but the war has already evolved to a point where it looks like it could go on for quite a long time.
• 30:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so no, to suggest that there's evidence that that's happening, at least at this point I can't see it.
• 30:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: Getting back to the worst place in American politics, there are mega people who remember that they supported Trump because he was the peace president.
• 30:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: And now some of Trump's staunchest allies are in open, revolting the most prominent one as Tucker Carlson,
• 30:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: not surprising.
• 30:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's being consistent on this.
• 30:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: He, on his show, he called Trump's attack on a ram quote, absolutely disgusting and evil.
• 30:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: Close quote, stronger words than we're hearing from our leaders, uh, Democratic leaders in the Senator of the House.
• 30:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: And Trump felt he had to reply to this.
• 30:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: He said, uh, Tucker Carlson's opinions have no impact on me.
• 30:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: Close quote.
• 30:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: So,
• 30:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: So right now, we are seeing this from outside Congress, from the mega leaders in the media.
• 31:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's not happening with Republicans in Congress yet, but I wonder if the Republicans who are facing reelection in six months really want this war.
• 31:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, not if it plays out along the worst of possible lines along the ways that some people fear.
• 31:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: In a country where we're, unfortunately, very familiar with the term forever wars, a fear that this could be something that's very long term.
• 31:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: Secondly, you've got the fact that you're dealing with a country that sits atop, one of the larger oil reserves in the world,
• 31:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: and has control or had control, maybe still has control of the streets of Hormos.
• 31:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: What that means is that we're looking at the prospect of dramatically increased oil prices at a time when Americans are not particularly
• 31:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: happy about prices as it is, and then a final element is that as those oil prices increase, if in fact they do, you end up in a situation where we could actually have, you know, kind of broad inflation, real problems with how the Fed reacts to things and all sorts of other challenges.
• 32:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: Add that all up for Republican member of Congress.
• 32:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think you're likely to be thinking in your head, boy, I wish we weren't doing this.
• 32:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now, if this were to be resolved quickly and with all the positive predictions that the President now there's a debate, you know, for at least many Republicans and Congress that are being
• 32:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: that would reduce their anxiety.
• 32:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: But what we are seeing right now is a reality that there are some Republicans who've already crossed over and said they're with the Democrats on this.
• 32:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: Not a lot, usual suspects, Thomas Massey in the House, Rand Paul in the Senate, but there's others around them who have expressed concern, express skepticism.
• 32:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, one of the big mistakes that we make in this country.
• 33:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: is to assume that our politics doesn't evolve.
• 33:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that's always foolish.
• 33:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: Politics does evolve.
• 33:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: People learn things over time.
• 33:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: One of the things they learned was they didn't like forever wars.
• 33:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: They were concerned about being promised easy results in wars and then getting
• 33:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: very difficult long-term, incredibly painful both human level and an economic level, circumstances extending from a decision to invade some other country.
• 33:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: And Donald Trump recognized that as a candidate for president.
• 33:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: His rank gets all these other Republicans, some of them name Bush, you know, back in 2016.
• 33:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so he says, yeah, I'm against this stuff.
• 33:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't think that's a good idea.
• 33:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't think we should be doing these things.
• 33:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it worked very, very well for him politically.
• 33:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: It helped him to knock out other candidates.
• 33:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: It also evolved it into a critique of the Democrats.
• 33:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: right on a number of fronts that also worked well for them.
• 34:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Then he attaches himself to J.D.
• 34:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: Vance, who, by the way, were not here in a lot from at the moment.
• 34:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: And J.D.
• 34:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: Vance was incredibly prepared to suggest that the Republicans were running as a piece ticket.
• 34:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: And Trump kind of went along with all that.
• 34:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm not sure if he was ever very sincere in this or whether it was just political tactic, but it became very identified with him.
• 34:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: and with a lot of Republicans.
• 34:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: Suddenly they find themselves in a situation that is a complete kind of through the looking glass circumstance where they're now being asked to defend a president who is launching the kind of war that he seemed to always criticize.
• 34:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: Some folks who are not in Congress anymore, like Marjorie Taylor Green recently gone, have been hypercritical.
• 34:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: And you have to believe that Marjorie Taylor Greene speaks for a lot of Republicans and a lot of conservatives and megaphoax and others, just as Tucker Carlson does.
• 35:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: And for Trump, there is the possibility that he has stepped into a circumstance where an already bad political landscape
• 35:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: because they're creating divisions within the base at a time when he doesn't see to be winning over any independence or any Democrats.
• 35:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: So he becomes more isolated politically.
• 35:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now, as you said before, this could be a time when he does things that are even more troubling.
• 35:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: You don't say, oh, it's great.
• 35:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: He's weakened and everything's fine.
• 35:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: But what you do begin to recognize is kind of two important tracks here.
• 35:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: One track is trying to end this thing.
• 35:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that's why there were powers, resolutions, other initiatives, these matter.
• 35:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: The second track is the political track.
• 35:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: Whether it ends or not, it's looking like a year.
• 35:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: When Donald Trump's actions will make him and his administration, more of a drag on the Republican line, more of a drag on Republican candidates, then we even imagined.
• 36:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: So as Congress prepares to vote on the war powers resolution, we noted only 27% of Americans tell pollsters they approve of Trump's military campaign against Iran.
• 36:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: John Nichols will be relying on you for coverage of this in the days and weeks to come.
• 36:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thanks for talking with us today.
• 36:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm honored to talk to you, John, and I hope I can bring you more good news in a future conversation.
• 36:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: You've been listening to start making sense, a podcast from the nation magazine, recorded in Los Angeles at our Blight Avenue Studios.
• 36:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: Renee Reynolds is our associate producer, Alan Minski is our producer.
• 37:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: Ludwig Hurtado is executive producer.
• 37:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: DD Gutten-Plan is editor of the nation.
• 37:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: Boskarschenkara is president of the nation, and Katrina Vandenhuvul is publisher and editorial director of the nation.
• 37:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: Our theme music is from Barcelona, Afro-Beat, licensed by Creative Commons.
• 37:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: You can find out more about start making sense at TheNation.com.
• 37:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: and you can subscribe to start making sense on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
• 37:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm John Weener, thanks for listening.