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[AD BREAK]

Alex Wagner: Hi everyone, hello from the world where Brent crude oil is currently $108 a barrel, up from a pre-war bargain of $73 a barrel and the president of the United States has lost complete control of the war he started by choice. But don’t tell that to Trump’s Secretary of Defense or War or whatever it is that Pete Hegseth does.

[clip of Pete Hegseth]: The President has his hand on the throttle and will decide ultimately when they’ve been reached that serve the purposes of the United States of America, American interests first. [overlapping chatter]

Alex Wagner: Hand on the throttle, eh? The plan, quite clearly, is no plan. And that is the way it has been from the beginning of this. Otherwise, Trump and his cabinet might have considered that this war would disrupt the global oil supply and drive up gas prices here at home, which have now gone up by over a dollar per gallon on average. But American taxpayers are paying a lot of bills for Trump’s bloody excursion. The war’s first week alone cost them over 11 billion dollars. How’s that for affordability? Because the plan is no plan, Trump’s favorability has continued to sink. According to YouGov polling, independents who disapproved of Trump’s war by 53 percent last week now disapprove of Trumps war by 63 percent this week. They are getting the same news that President Trump is. This is a deadly conflict with no ultimate goal and no clear end in sight. And those are all things that happen when there is no plan. 13 American service members have died. Israeli strikes have killed over 800 people in Lebanon and displaced nearly a million more. And over 1,300 people have been killed in Iran, including 175 people in the bombing of Shajareh Tayyebeh Elementary School in the city of Menab. Over 100 of them were elementary school students. It’s the deadliest accidental American attack in decades. Perhaps if there had been a plan, the architects of the strike would have had the time and resources to see that the school was walled off, as in completely separate from a nearby Iranian naval base that was probably the U.S.’s intended target. Or they might have noticed that the schools soccer field was clearly visible from satellite imagery and has been for the last 10 years. Maybe they would have noticed that if there was a plan. Or, you know, maybe not. Because if you look around at the Pentagon these days, there are a lot more empty chairs than there were before Trump took office, including seats that were once filled by trained personnel whose jobs were to protect civilians from American military activities. As ProPublica puts it, the U.S. built a blueprint to avoid civilian war casualties. Trump officials scrapped it. So not only was there no plan, the people who could have helped craft a less deadly plan were all gone. From the market turmoil to the rising gas prices to the staggering civilian deaths, it is abundantly clear that Donald Trump put no thought into his strategy for this war. But the more we find out about what’s actually been happening inside this administration, the more it’s apparent that not caring about collateral damage, making a distinct decision not to care about any of it, is actually the only strategy that Trump has had this entire time. [music plays] I’m Alex Wagner and this week on Runaway Country, we’re looking at the ways the Trump administration almost intentionally brought this misery upon the country and the global community.

Master Sergeant Wes Bryant: Analyzing the strike from the outset and you know from the first information I had it was very clear to me one this was a deliberately targeted compound, had to be conducted at either by the US or Israel. This is this very clear case of misidentification. I knew that immediately.

Alex Wagner: That is retired Master Sergeant Wes Bryant. Until last spring, Wes was working as a senior advisor in the Pentagon’s Civilian Protection Center of Excellence, a program created in 2022 to reduce civilian harm during defense operations. But as Trump’s cronies began to gut his department, Wes felt he needed to speak out, so he published op-eds in the Boston Globe and the Washington Post. The Pentagon retaliated by putting him on leave, and Wes resigned from his post shortly thereafter. According to reporting by ProPublica, Wes’s program, which was designed to protect the lives of innocents, now essentially exists in name only. Only Congress can formally end the program, so it lives on, basically, as a ghost. Pentagon officials say the program was redundant since civilian protection is already integrated into its work, but try telling that to the families of the over 100 schoolchildren who were killed in South Iran. And then later in the show, we’ll be talking to former senator and current MSNOW analyst Claire McCaskill about whether the mounting tally of dead and increasing economic calamity and global humiliation and otherwise unmitigated nonsense coming from the Trump administration might be enough to both stop the war and stop Trump.

Claire McCaskill: I do live in a state that supported Donald Trump by big numbers, so I am exposed to some of the rationale they have and the defensiveness they feel about defending Donald Trump and frankly their vote for Donald Trump. There has been more of, I screwed up, in the last two weeks than I have ever heard.

Alex Wagner: But. As we do on this show, we start with someone who can offer us firsthand perspective on all of this. Retired Master Sergeant Wes Bryant, welcome to Runaway Country.

Master Sergeant Wes Bryant: Thank you for having me.

Alex Wagner: So. I’m very curious to understand your experience in the Department of Defense. You used to work for a program inside DOD called the Civilian Protection Center of Excellence. And last year, the Washington Post reported that the center included dozens of staffers worldwide who worked alongside commanders to refine targeting operations along with a center overseen by the army that outlined best practices and training for military leaders to follow. Sounds like a useful center, I’m just gonna say. It was subsequently gutted and basically effectively shut down. You no longer work there. Your position isn’t there anymore. It’s been hollowed out by Secretary Hegseth. For people who don’t understand what was happening there, let’s just break it down in layman’s terms. I mean, first of all, what does it mean to refine targeting operations?

Master Sergeant Wes Bryant: Well, it means, I mean, first and foremost, we can point to the strike on a school in Iran on the outset of the war. It means preventing such tragedies as that from even occurring in the first place or at least mitigating the incidence of cases of what we call civilian harm or civilian casualties.

Alex Wagner: Let’s talk about the strike because I immediately thought, you know, when that news came it was like how the hell could this have happened? When you first heard about the strike giving the experience and the expertise you have what was your first thought?

Master Sergeant Wes Bryant: I was analyzing the strike from the outset, and from the first information I had, it was very clear to me, one, this was a deliberately targeted compound, had to be conducted either by the US or Israel, of course we’ve figured out since it was the US, and two, it had all the hallmarks of a case of misidentification. It was clear to me right off the bat that okay, we’ve got a a Iranian Navy compound here missile headquarters, and they characterized, what we call characterized when you’re talking about building targets, this school that was adjacent to it as part of this broader compound. Very clear, and I’ve seen that occur in the past. I’ve never seen a situation this tragic come out of it, but this is a very clear case of misidentification. I knew that immediately.

Alex Wagner: How does that happen? I mean, the only reporting we have, and it’s been scanned, is that they were basically using outdated information. But like, how could the Civilian Protection Center and the work that you guys were doing, could that have helped perhaps mitigate this, if not outright prevent it?

Master Sergeant Wes Bryant: There’s several avenues here. There’s several perspectives to look at this from. One is that the Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Enterprise, I know that’s a big clunky kind of acronym, it’s called CHMRE. So that was what was created at the Pentagon under first Secretary Esper, that’s what under the first Trump administration, and then codified into law under Congress with Secretary Austin under President Biden in 2022. And we’ll get to that later, but of course it was gutted under Hegseth, I mean, near immediately. What we had there was the stand-up of an enterprise, an institution, an architecture DODY that was working toward really getting better at true precision warfare. And when I say precision warfare, I’m not talking the way that Hegseth speaks precision warfare. He seems to believe that precision warfare equals that you’re using thousands and thousands of precision-guided munitions. Or precision warfare equals using minimal force to achieve strategic objectives and precisely targeting enemy targets and safeguarding the civilian populace, which we frankly don’t see in Iran. That’s that’s really the entire impetus for what this civilian harm mitigation and response architecture was. And it was based off a, you know, consider the timing. About 2022 is when it was put into action. We were coming off the war on terror. Military leadership, even lawmakers, were conducting look backs on the war and terror. What did we do right? What did we do wrong as a military force? How we go about mitigating civilian harm? Civilian casualties, damage to civilian infrastructure, how we go about actually responding to and assessing and investigating that harm, you know, look at the withdrawal from Afghanistan and the fact that, you know Secretary Mattis insisting that this was a strike on a high value ISIS target. And it took an excellent investigation by the New York Times, by the way, to tell the military, the US military that no, you actually hit civilians and children here. We were created to stop that from ever happening.

Alex Wagner: I mean, I can only imagine emotionally. First of all, I think the slaughter of 150, roughly, children in school is a profound moral stain on our country. And just as citizens, this is being done in our name. But for someone who literally was working inside the nerve center to prevent something like this happening, and then was subsequently, you know. Effectively pushed out and the place you worked was gutted and the work, the essential work that you were doing ended. How did it feel to you to see what has happened in the aftermath of the effect of closure of the center? I mean, how did it feel when you read about what happened to that, those children?

Master Sergeant Wes Bryant: You know, I’ve been doing analysis on Israel’s genocide in Gaza since this current conflict in Gaza began, and all of that’s hard to deal with. I’ve dealt with this my entire 20-plus year career in the military. I have seen a lot of death and tragedy. I mean, I’d say this is among the worst. Not only getting word that a school was hit, that’s bad enough. And then when the word came down first, it was, you know, up to 60, then 80, then 100, then now up to 170 young school girls at the school on top of their teachers and other civilians. And it’s just, frankly, you know, heart wrenching. And to see the response from this administration. Not just the administration, you know, on the political side of the house, but senior command in the military. You know, the central command commander, General Caine, the Joint Chiefs, and then so-called Secretary of War Hegseth, to not only acknowledge, fail to acknowledge the tragedy in and of itself. I mean, they truly don’t seem to care in their response. It’s more of a defense mechanism. Oh, we don’t target civilians. Next question. But to not even be able to tell us at this point what the U.S. targeted, whether or not we dropped bombs or missiles there, completely unacceptable. These were all problems that we were approaching from this civilian harm mitigation and response enterprise. Even if you take the center that I was a part of, if you took that out of the equation, the strike was a violation of fundamental practices and doctrine.

Alex Wagner: And yet, in the days that followed this strike, and I would say more broadly in every day since this war began, we get these just garbled answers from both the president and his cabinet secretaries and the commanders leading this war about what the targets are, who did what. But specifically as it pertains to the strike on the girls’ school, I just want to refresh everybody’s memory of how the president  has mangled the response to all of this. Let’s just take a listen to his explanations in the days that followed.

[clip of reporter]: A new report says the military investigation has found it was the United States that struck the school.

[clip of Donald Trump]: I don’t know about it. Based on what I’ve seen, that was done by Iran.

[clip of reporter]: Is that true, Mr. Hegseth? It was Iran who did that?

[clip of Pete Hegseth]: We’re certainly investigating. Still investigating. The only side that targets civilians is Iran.

[clip of Donald Trump]: But tomahawks are used by others, as you know. Numerous other nations have tomahawk. They buy them from us. But I will certainly, whatever the report shows, I’m willing to live with that report.

Alex Wagner: Okay. I mean, you said that you could tell immediately that it was a case of mistaken targeting. What did you think of the sort of varying explanations that this was all Iran’s fault, that Iran’s the only ones that target civilians? What did you make of that from the White House?

Master Sergeant Wes Bryant: You know, it sounds like the kind of propaganda that authoritarian dictators put out. To. Deliberately lie, regardless of what kind of enemy Iran is, before this war even started, what kind government Iran is. We’re supposed to be the honest ones. We’re suppose to be good ones. This is literal propaganda that’s being spread. And in this case, just to essentially save face and try to make the claim that somehow the US was not responsible here. It’s frankly disgusting. Good analysts will always rule out that one of the first things I was looking at in this strike before all the other amplifying information came out was whether or not this could have been an Iranian ballistic missile that went short. Very improbable, and we see now, very likely not. And then to state this blatant lie about Iran having tomahawks, I would return that, the tomahawk missile is a highly export controlled weapon. I mean, it’s critical in our inventory and very few nations are given it. Look at the arguments that we had internally in our government over giving tomahawks to even to Ukraine in the fight against Russia. So I would say that, you know, if you’re saying as the president, Iran has tomahawks, you better answer to the American people as to how they got those tomahawks. But we know that’s just not true, of course.

Alex Wagner: Yeah, we also know he doesn’t answer to the American public, but I digress. There are sort of like two fundamental moral questions embedded in all of this carnage. One is could the administration, could the commander of chief, can he do a better job of protecting civilian lives? And then does he want to? And you sort of touched on the ways in which Secretary Hegseth has brought with him a different spirit to the Department of Defense, right? He decides to close the Civilian Protection Center because he wants to focus on lethality. And he has been all about what he terms a warrior ethos at the Department of Defense. How does that sit with the people who are actually tasked with carrying this stuff out? I’m sure you still have people on the inside or people who were once on the side, now on the outside, but generally, can you give me some… Insight as to as to what the culture change and the shift and the deprioritization on saving civilian lives means for the people who are actually tasked with like carrying out missile strikes and actually waging the war?

Master Sergeant Wes Bryant: Well, I’ll say there’s a twofold answer there, and one, there is that population, and I believe and I very much hope that it’s a small minority, you know, that are the Hegseths that are rallying behind us, because the military is comprised of the American population. And so they’re just like there’s those in the American Population that support any and everything this administration does, there’s in the military. Those were always kind of the types. Just like Hegseth himself, these were the types that in my experience, when they kind of reared their head of ugliness and lawlessness, you know, the chain of command and the leadership culture in the military and the law in the military tended to suppress them, you put them back where they belong. You know, you’re out of line here, that these aren’t the standards that we uphold. Just like what happened with Hegseth and his removal from National Guard duties. You know, he was removed years back and he should have remained removed from any military duty. And so now you have that small population that is emboldened. We have to face that. And some of those could be senior commanders. But we have the rest of the population of the US military, which I have to insist is most of it, that in large part, a lot of them are incredibly mortified. You know, we’ve seen a lot of reports of people having kind of internal threads, even senior commanders, senior leaders, internal communications, constantly just making fun of Hegseth and all of his exploits. That’s too light of a term. But, uh… You know, and then there’s that portion of people who are just incredibly mortified and ashamed with how the military is not only being portrayed to the American public and to the globe, but even worse, how it’s being utilized now. I mean, our military forces, our people are being used as pawns. I blame senior military leadership that’s not stopping it. That’s either, aligned with what’s happening or they’re just on their knees complicit and scared because of all the firings and of course I blame Hegseth and and above him. But as far as the rest of the military force, you know, I’m just I feel really bad thinking about how it must feel to be wearing a uniform for a lot of them right now.

Alex Wagner: I want to put this in context because when we talk about people not following illegal or immoral orders, right, first of all, it bears mentioning that General Dean Cain, who’s the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and U.S. Navy Vice Admiral Brad Cooper, two men who were leading this war in Iran, were in support of the civilian protection center that you used to be involved with, right? And totally just stood by as the program was gutted and have done Trump’s work overseas. At the end of last year, Senators Mark Kelly and Elissa Slotkin and a few Congress people, among others, made a video urging people in the armed services not to follow illegal or immoral orders, right? It was a very strong statement. And the president responded by effectively accusing these Congress people of sedition and suggesting that they needed to die, effectively issuing a death threat. The back and forth has continued. There have been lawsuits, there’s been, Trump is very angry that anyone would resist or be given the advice to resist orders coming from the White House no matter whether they were legal or not. Do you think people can still speak out inside the military when they see something going wrong? I mean, given where the leadership is at and where the commander chief is at and the explicit threat environment directed at people who step out of line as far as this president’s concerned.

Master Sergeant Wes Bryant: Absolutely not, I know firsthand from people I know across the force that are still in, some people in senior positions, both in the operational forces and at the Pentagon, that there is this incredible climate of fear. Even to the point of, I’ve gotten messages like, hey, I love what you’re saying and doing and what you putting out there, just let you know I support you, keep going. But I’m not even going to react to what you put out on social media. I’m, not even gonna put a little like because people are looking at our personal social media pages and seeing just even what we react to. I mean, that’s, that authoritarianism, even for military personnel, you know, who are restrained in some manner, as far as their, their speech, their public speech, but, um, yeah, this is just unprecedented. And then the Trump administration operates. Kind of in a gray area, and I’ll say that as far as the law goes. Though most, if not all, of the military operations that have been initiated under this administration have been unlawful, per either or, either or both international law and U.S. Law. However, we’ll take the drug boat, so-called narcoterrorism, drug smugglers that the registration began hitting. In the Caribbean and in the Pacific. When you’re an operational task force and you’re tasked with carrying out a strike against now what’s coded as a narcoterrorist and a drug smuggler, you at least know fundamentally, okay, this is kind of a bad guy in some respects. This is a drug-smuggler. The administration isn’t asking you to, here’s a village of women and children, go drop a ball on it. At the operational level, anybody should rightly say, no, that is illegal. But in this case, it’s task force lawyers up to the combatant command, up to the secretary of defense and the president himself saying, don’t listen to what everybody else is saying out there. This is completely legal. And that’s your order. Kill this guy now. So even though these are illegal strikes, you know, for that’s the gray area they operate in. That’s just one example. That applies across the board. Iran, of course, Iran is not a friend of the United States or the West or even many in the Middle East. Of course, it’s an oppressive regime. That’s not the question here. The question was, is this even a legal war per US and international law, right?

Alex Wagner: It’s not authorized by Congress, that’s for sure.

Master Sergeant Wes Bryant: Yes, but now you have the military being charged with, well, they’re being told the same thing here, right? Same thing with the June strikes against nuclear infrastructure, which were also a huge violation and occurred in absence of any real actual intelligence against even U.S. Intelligence on the nuclear weaponization threat, as we know.

Alex Wagner: I got to ask you before we go, you know, I’m sure your mind races with possibilities given what you know and what you’ve heard. But when you think about this president, who’s been totally erratic and is now engaged America and much of the rest of the world, whether passively or actively, in a war of choice, doesn’t seem to be listening to the saner voices in the room, doesn’t have an endgame, doesn’t have an off-ramp. We don’t even know why we’re fighting the war. Like, what do you worry most about in all of this?

Master Sergeant Wes Bryant: Well. This is really not an effort at rhetoric or hyperbole when I say, you know, we have been our country, our nation, and by extension, our military, has been gripped by fascism. I mean, the Trump administration, everything that Trump stands for says and does now, and then by extension Hegseth, fits within the exact definition of fascism. So that’s what I worry about the most. We are now the enemies that we have historically stood against. That’s what we’re representing as the United States. That’s, what I fear the most and with that comes, you know, a loss of American security and credibility, mind you, a lost of global security. I mean, the world is in more chaos than it ever was at this point. In recent history, and then innocent lives. I mean, innocent lives are at stake, both in the Middle East and across the world, and domestically. I mean we could do a whole few podcast series on what’s been going on domestically with the use of force, not just with military, but with paramilitary forces.

Alex Wagner: Well. That is a cold splash of water on our proverbial faces today. It’s always invaluable to get different perspectives on the war, but to have your perspective in particular, given your background, to hear about how you’re thinking about this and what you’re worried about is eye-opening and alarming. But also there’s an urgency in all this, which is we can’t. Like blind ourselves to it. We need to stay engaged and hold people accountable and make sure we don’t do this again. Retired Master Sergeant Wes Bryant, thank you for coming on Runaway Country.

Master Sergeant Wes Bryant: Thank you for having me and giving me a voice on your platform. I appreciate that. [music plays]

Alex Wagner: After the break, putting this all into context with Claire McCaskill.

[AD BREAK]

Alex Wagner: Oh, Claire McCaskill, one of my favorite people to talk to. I say that genuinely. I’m so thrilled to have you on Runaway Country. Thank you for doing this.

Claire McCaskill: Absolutely, my pleasure. You’re my pal. I love it.

Alex Wagner: We are pals. We’re destined to talk. Okay, so it’s an economic disaster. It is a moral failing. It is political catastrophe. The regime is still very much in control in Iran. The first week of the war cost American taxpayers $11 billion. Claire, what do you imagine is happening in the White House right now?

Claire McCaskill: You know, it’s interesting. I do think there is, I smell a little panic. I don’t think it’s really seeped out. But where you really sense it is you sense it when you talk to members, Republican members of the Senate. Many of whom I would consider my friends, especially before they lost their spine somewhere along the road. Um, but there is more of a willingness to push back. I mean, not just Thom Tillis, but not just people who are leaving. But I think a lot of them feel trapped now because after you have allowed someone to totally take over and dictate every single thing without any pushback, then you have trained your base to basically accept everything he says and to believe what he puts out. So I think there is some political panic that I’m sensing right now, especially by those who are up for election. But I also, Alex, want to caution. You know, we have a tendency sometimes when those of us who have never supported Donald Trump and who have always seen him as somebody who has a lack of character and a lack of integrity, someone who is a narcissistic personality. Frankly, you know, just so taken with himself that it’s sickening, I think we’ve always underestimated him. And I think he became president twice, because we underestimated him in terms of his ability to manage communication to a segment of America that feels like they’ve been screwed over.

Alex Wagner: Yeah, I know I agree with that and I think from talking to people who are Trump supporters a lot, there’s a complete bubble in some ways that people who I think probably have a more decent sense of what a democracy should look like. That is its own bubble though But on this one, I gotta say I genuinely and generally believe in Trump’s um political acumen and kind of gut instinct but on this I wonder if you are surprised in the way that I am that he has, he did not try to sell this war to the American public beforehand. And even now, I’m with Susan Glasser in the New Yorker who says he’s not, he doesn’t really want to talk about it. And I think that’s indicative of someone who’s not who’s A unsure of his political instincts, I think for the first time in a very long time, and who is not even trying to do the thing that he’s arguably quite good at, which is sell at least to his base. An outlandish proposal that he’s embarking on. I don’t know. Are you surprised at his salesman job on this?

Claire McCaskill: I am. I was surprised that, but I think there is some truth to the reporting that Bibi hoodwinked him. And I think we underestimate what an impact the smash and grab in Venezuela had on Donald Trump. I mean, he loved that. He loved being able to order it. He loved the execution of it, even though the person who’s running Venezuela was a highly ranking official under Maduro and loyal to Maduro. He was able to sell, but somehow he had changed things in Venezuela. And I think he thought, naively, even though I’m sure Caine was telling him differently, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, I think Hegseth is so into this you know, video game 12 year old warrior ethos bullshit. That I think Trump listened to Hegseth more than he listened to Cain and thought it would be another smash and grab. I don’t think he really understood that Iran is not Venezuela. This is not a guy who hasn’t spent a lot of time understanding geopolitical reality and history. So I.

Alex Wagner: Or any.

Claire McCaskill: Or any, right. So I just think he um completely underestimated what Iran’s reaction would be and how this thing would wind down.

Alex Wagner: Do you think that, I mean, Trump himself lives such in a vacuum of facts and information, he has surrounded himself by enablers and stooges. Brendan Carr, I’m sure, goes in there and changes the channels on all the White House TVs to make sure it’s like the correct state propaganda. Do you thing Trump understands, like, how badly this is going?

Claire McCaskill: Well, I know he gets data. I don’t know to what extent, and people who cover the White House more closely might have a better idea, but I don’t know what extent they are giving him good data. I mean, obviously we have a painful memory of the fact that I don’t think the Biden White House was always getting good data, especially in the couple of years before 2024, and I think in 2023 and 2022, there was not. You know, great data that Biden was getting. So maybe he’s not getting his accurate data. Maybe they only show him the outliers and he doesn’t realize how he’s dropped like a rock, not just with independent voters, but Hispanic men and other swaths of voters that really put him in the White House. He may not know to the extent that he is losing ground with them, but he’s gotta know he always understood gas prices. He always understood that gas prices were the key to the kingdom. I remember my staff, when I run for reelection, we’d have a thing we’d do where I would always make sure I knew exactly what the price of eggs and bread were every week, because you get so into a campaign, it’s very hard for you to stay in touch with real.

Alex Wagner: You’re not going grocery shopping.

Claire McCaskill: You don’t have time to do as much grocery shopping as, for example, as I do now. But I always said, forget about the bread, forget about the eggs, I just need to know gas. I just to make sure I know the gas prices every week. Because that is really the leading indicator of how pissed off people are at the economy and their inability to make the paycheck come out even at the end of the month. And Trump knows that. That’s why he’s always been all about energy, always been about drill, baby, drill, more oil, all of that. So, and even Venezuela. He said, Venezuela is such a great thing because we’re getting the oil. Even though we didn’t need it. And now he’s blowing up oil and there’s no oil getting through the Strait of Hormuz and we’ve had the biggest increase in gas prices in 30 years over a very, very short period of time. That’s gonna kill him and he’s got to know that. There’s no way he’s avoiding it.

Alex Wagner: I want to call to attention our great Crooked Media superstar, Dan Pfeiffer, who has a missive on his Substack, The Message Box, this week, where he points out he talks about the Obama years and how they, too, were focused like David Plouffe was like, we’re going to lose elections if the gas remains this high. I’m paraphrasing. But Dan writes, gas prices tend to be even more politically damaging than higher prices for food or housing or health care for a few reasons. One, gas is a fairly inelastic part of a family budget. You cannot skimp on it. You still have to drive to work and get the kids at school, and there is no generic alternative to shop around for. Second, the price is omnipresent. It’s displayed on giant signs at every highway exit and every street corner, going up a little more every time you drive by. Even so, and this is what’s interesting, I think, voters generally don’t directly blame the president for price increase. They usually blame oil companies, global affairs, or the general shittiness of greedy capitalism. And yet, Claire McCaskill, A morning consult poll asks who or what was responsible for the rise in gas prices. 13% of respondents blamed global market forces, 16% pointed at oil and gas companies, and 48% said President Trump. That to me seems like a very big problem.

Claire McCaskill: That’s a very big problem.

Alex Wagner: Right?

Claire McCaskill: Huge. And he can’t really avoid this because it is so obviously cause and effect from the Iranian war. And it’s not like we had any indication that anybody wanted to go to war besides Donald Trump and Bibi Netanyahu. So he’s so good at sloughing off. He’s so good at misdirecting. He is so good blaming others, you know, and his famous, Well, I hear people say… Or you know some people are saying this he can’t do that with this he cannot say this is not his war so he really is stuck if he can’t figure out a way to get the gas prices down before October. I think I think this will be much worse than they think it could be at this point if the gas prices continue to climb and I don’t I don’t know if there’s some way he can get out of Iran and they can recover by then. But I guarantee there’s a whole bunch of people in Washington that are sweating bullets over this.

Alex Wagner: Yeah, and I want to get into the ghost coalition over re-opening the Strait of Hormuz. But, I mean, I also think in addition to this being the American public seeing through quite clearly that this is a Trump created problem. He has no messaging on this. I would like to redirect attention to a clip that went a little viral this week of Senior Jabroni, that’s not his actual title. He’s the director of the National Economic Council of the United States, Kevin Hassett. Well, like, I don’t know, what do we call this messaging on behalf of the Trump administration? Let’s play the clip.

[clip of Kevin Hassett]: But the fact is that the U.S. Economy is fundamentally sound and that if it were to be extended, it wouldn’t really disrupt the U S economy very much at all. It would hurt consumers and we’d have to think about, you know, if that continued what we would have to do about that, but that’s like really the last of our concerns right now because we’re very confident that this thing is going ahead of schedule.

Alex Wagner: Oh yeah, oh yeah, no, consumer prices, we’re not worried about that. With the surrogates like this, these, Claire, who needs surrogate? I mean, because you point out, first of all, gas prices. If gas prices stay elevated, by the way, I love the side by side of Kevin Hassett and then Brent crude oil is like over $100 a barrel, it was $73 a barrel before the war. If gas prices stay elevated, that means. Everything’s going up, right? Like fuel power ships that move goods across and around the world and therefore there’s going to be increased prices at a moment when this White House is supposed to be focused like a laser on affordability and yet you have the director of the National Economic Council saying consumer price increases are the last thing we’re really worried about in all this. We’re fine. Everything’s fine here. Whistling past the graveyard, Claire?

Claire McCaskill: Definitely whistling past a graveyard, but not surprising when you realize that this is the tariff administration.

Alex Wagner: Right.

Claire McCaskill: I mean, if there’s one thing Donald Trump really believes in and really thinks is he’s a genius about, this is not some passing fancy with him, tariffs. And clearly Econ 101, for any college graduate that had to take an economics course, it is pretty simple about tariffs. They raise prices.

Alex Wagner: Mm-hmm.

Claire McCaskill: And when you’re in a consumer economy, like we are in the United States of America, one of the reasons the economy has been so robust is because people buy shit. They buy a lot of stuff, and a lot it came from other places that Donald Trump doesn’t want to bring into our country anymore from products in those places. So first you have the tariffs and they are that pressure is continuing. Now, you have gas prices, which means the cost of moving those goods has gone up, which means the costs of those goods go up. So you have the tariff and the gas prices one-two punch. I don’t know how they get a handle on the inflation with that kind of backdrop in the economy. It is very, very difficult. We haven’t even talked about the impact on food prices because of what’s going on with farmers. You’ve been around the country, Alex. You’ve talked to people. I think one of them biggest untold stories right now, and I think the network that both of us are honored to work with, we should do more to cover it, is what’s going on in rural America right now. Because there’s gonna be a bunch of people lose their farms over the next two years. It is really bad, and farmers are really pissed off. So that’s just a really ugly stew for anybody who campaigned on the notion that he could bring down prices for America because he was such a fricking brilliant businessman.

Alex Wagner: Yes, it is a slap in the face, a dose of cold water, a kick in the nuts, I would say even.

Claire McCaskill: Yes.

[AD BREAK]

Alex Wagner: To the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. This is like where all of Trump’s bullying and threatening and otherwise erratic and incomprehensible behavior really, those chickens come home to roost, right? Like, I’m gonna invade Greenland, fuck you Europe, but also come help me fix a problem that I completely created on my own. Denmark, you got shipping lanes, you know shipping. Maersk is headquartered in Denmark. You know all about shipping routes and the shipping industry. Sorry that I basically threatened your sovereignty. But you need to help me now. I was struck yesterday or earlier this week by the president’s comments sitting with the Irish PM, Michael Martin, and talking about the NATO alliance like they’re a bunch of idiots. I mean, it’s like these people have memories and they don’t even need to be long. Let’s take a listen to how Trump characterized NATO’s position on his war of choice.

[clip of Donald Trump]: Well, we don’t need too much help, and we don’t need any help actually. In fact, we just put out a notice. I was watching over the last couple of weeks, and all of our NATO allies were very much in favor of what we did. They thought it was very important — we were just discussing it actually — very important that we take out the nuclear threat from Iran, and we’ve done that.

Alex Wagner: Oh, yeah. No, I mean, NATO, they don’t need their help. And also NATO was fully on board, except for the fact that the president didn’t give any Western allies any heads up about this. They’re going to they’re going to be footing a lot of the energy bills because they’re affected by this gas shortage as well. And it’s diverting a necessary and potentially like game changing resources from the war in Ukraine, which is a war for democracy in Western Europe, but otherwise, Claire, NATO is totally on board with this. Um, do you, do think Trump is, is humiliated by Europe’s response? Is that what’s to account for his boorish behavior in and around NATO and the fact that he needs their help?

Claire McCaskill: Well, he’s really been one note about NATO from the very beginning, you know, kind of sending a signal it’s worthless, don’t need it, we do it all, it’s all about us. I mean, this is a guy who is surrounded by mirrors and he’s just looking at the reflection of himself rather than reflecting on the reality that he is in a world where you need friends. I mean, it is, you know, it just. It is so ironic to me that he believed somehow after insulting everyone and basically calling them shit bums. And by the way, JD Vance was a chorus of Me Too’s on this, the speeches he has given and the words he has uttered in front of our best friends in the world who believe in the same values that America believes in. You know, it’s so stupid that he would think they would all then start risking the lives of their military when they weren’t even talked to about this.

Alex Wagner: Yeah.

Claire McCaskill: I mean, it’d be one thing. I mean yes, if you ask everybody in Europe, should Iran have nuclear weapons? Of course everyone would say no, they shouldn’t. But. That is a lot different than, you know, calling them and explaining why you’re doing what you’re doing and why it would work and what the exit strategy is.

Alex Wagner: And who’s going to take over.

Claire McCaskill: And yeah, and the help that would be needed and would they be willing? I mean, this is what presidents do, normal presidents, not this guy. And so I don’t know if he’s embarrassed or not. I don t know if he’s capable of embarrassment. He doesn’t get it that a huge portion of America, maybe not the complete majority, think he is mostly buffoonery.

Alex Wagner: Yeah, I mean, well, I think it’s, we began this conversation, you were telling me about how people in Congress who are, you know, part of the Trump’s alliance on this, right, are out to sea with no paddles. I mean they, I, mean, if they’re not panicking, they’re, I think, at least flummoxed or they’re definitely intimidated by what’s happening and how to talk about it. And I draw everybody’s attention to the speaker of house Mike Johnson. Who was asked, I think, very normally, if there are ever going to be public hearings about this, so that the people who are in charge, who are tasked with the Constitution, who were given the authority to have control, power of America’s purse, can explain why it’s worth it to be spending $11 billion a week, or whatever it is, to engage in this war, just to raise prices on Americans and see Americans die overseas and see, you know, just morally alarming, staggering, devastating attacks like the one on the Iranian girls school. I mean, like someone needs to explain why it’s worth spending our money on this. And so here’s Mike Johnson being asked like, Hey, like, could we get a briefer publicly at some point? And that’s what he had to say.

[clip of reporter]: It’s been more than two weeks since this war was launched by the United States against Iran, yet the House has not had a single public hearing with the Cabinet official across American taxpayers and to American service folks. Why has the House not heard testimony from the Cabinet official about this war?

[clip of Mike Johnson]: I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but they’ve given us multiple briefings. Well, it’s still, we’re in the midst of a couple of weeks long operation that’s very sensitive in its mission and scope, and you cannot go outside of the classified briefing to give to the public the information because it would adversely affect our mission. They have well explained this to members of Congress in multiple briefings, both before, during, and after the operation commenced. We had the auditorium full of House members. Just let’s, the American public is getting, I’ve just relayed to you the summary of the non-classified information. All members are out talking about it around the clock. You’re following them around with microphones, getting their clips and insights and their opinions.

Alex Wagner: Nope, that doesn’t count. That’s not a briefing. That is not a briefing. And explaining that you can’t have a public hearing is not explaining a briefing, like that you’re not giving people information there. You were in the Senate. You are on the Homeland Security and Senate Armed Services Committee. Like tell me Claire, is there a way to talk about what the United States is doing in Americans names and and and not compromise the mission? I would hope there is.

Claire McCaskill: Well, that was just a bunch of, you know, just bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. It is so unbelievable to me that this guy can stand there with a straight face and basically say that this operation is so classified when the White House is putting out clips daily of bombings, where we are seeing maps of the Straits of Hormuz and hearing information secondhand about what our military is doing. But somehow we can’t have a public hearing that would allow Congress not only has the power of the purse, Alex, they’re supposed to be the ones to declare war.

Alex Wagner: Exactly I’m sorry, an oversight on my part. Yes, the two things they’re supposed to be doing is authorizing war and the spending.

Claire McCaskill: And these guys love the Constitution, and they love strict textualism until they don’t. And it is, you know, the precedents that they have overturned, the legislating that they have been doing by executive order instead of by legislation, all of the things that have gone on in this administration are so against the Constitution and the notion that we would be at war. And he keeps wanting to say, they keep wanting to call it a war and say it’s a two-week operation. Well, no, it’s not. It’s not a two-week operation. And, you know, people in America, most people in American don’t understand, they couldn’t point out the Strait of Hormuz on a map.

Alex Wagner: Right.

Claire McCaskill: They don’t know where it is. They don’t understand the strategic importance of it. And a public hearing helps. It helps them understand why the gas prices are going up. That should be something Mike Johnson would want to have happen. What are they so afraid of? Is there so little reason for what they’re doing that they are frightened to have the American people hear from the very people that are engaging in this war, whether it be the chairman of the Joint Chiefs or, you know, one of the high-ranking admirals in the Navy?

Alex Wagner: Or men’s grooming expert, Pete Hegseth.

Claire McCaskill: Or we could actually have, you know, who’s supposedly the only adult in the room, the guy with his shoes too big, Marco Rubio. [laughter] You know, I mean, somebody ought to be… [both speaking] I mean Little Marco Rubio’s got shoes too big and clearly—

Alex Wagner: He’s like Pinocchio.

Claire McCaskill: And JD Vance has kind of disappeared off the scene a little bit, right?

Alex Wagner: Yeah, he has. You know why he’s disappeared, right, Claire?

Claire McCaskill: Yeah, because he doesn’t think this is gonna end well.

Alex Wagner: This ain’t his bag. This ain’t his bag. And also, he’s the guy that’s no regime change, no foreign adventurism. And by the way, he is joined in that chorus by Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly and Joe Rogan. Here’s what MAGA Right, because now we have to, I guess, have MAGA Hawk versus MAGA Right. This is what MAGA Right has been saying over the last couple days. Let’s listen to how the president’s stalwarts have been, I don’t know, clanging the bells.

[clip of reporter]: I think most people, no matter how they feel about Israel, whether they love it or hate it or doesn’t matter something to do with this specific country issue with any country that I’d be leading us around particularly to our destruction and putting its interest before hours. / If you want to bet on the future of the Republican Party and keeping people in it, you would side with the isolationists because there’s not a person under the age of 40 who’s a voting Republican who’s in favor of this. / Insane based on what he ran on. I mean, this is why a lot of people feel betrayed, right? He ran on no more wars and these stupid senseless wars, and then we have one that we can’t even really clearly define why we did it. / Trump has betrayed every last single one of us. Okay, make no mistake about that. Trump is now an ever-Trump-er. The very people that we had to fight to get Trump into office, he is now partnered with and insulting us, and he thinks, that we’re too stupid to notice or something?

Alex Wagner: I hear the word betrayal, and I think this seems different than other criticism. And I bundle it with Epstein because it seems like a foundational betrayal that they cannot trust this person. He promised to drain the swamp and take down the cabal of the elites and not spend American blood and treasure on foreign intervention. And he has sold both of those principles up the river. I don’t know. I think that’s a serious. I think this is a legit split.

Claire McCaskill: I think it is a legit split. And by the way, I mean, some of this is anecdotal, but I do live in a state that supported Donald Trump by big numbers. I do have acquaintances and I have, you know, dear friends who have family members that were big Trumps, folks. So I am exposed to some of the rationale they have and the defensiveness they feel about defending Donald Trump. And frankly, their vote for Donald Trump. There has been more of, I screwed up in the last two weeks than I have ever heard. I have a sister of a dear friend of mine who acknowledged to her on the phone, I made a mistake. This is not what we thought he was. And you know, it is interesting to me that little Lindsey Graham, speaking of little Lindsey Graham and little Marco Rubio. You know, he is probably one of the biggest hawks and always has been in the Senate. But, um, and he’s has been around doing the most cheerleading for this of anyone. And, and clearly he’s talking to Bibi Netanyahu, maybe more than the folks that work at the White House and in the Pentagon. And he is leading this charge, but I don’t really see that many senators, you know standing up when they got a microphone in front of their face, They’re not saying… It’s a big mistake and he’s made a mistake, but they are running from microphones. And that’s always a sign that, you know, whether it’s Epstein or whether it is the Iranian war, when they run from the microphone, that tells you that they are not comfortable, that they feel more like J.D. Vance feels about this than Lindsey Graham feels about it.

Alex Wagner: That it’s hard to find the upside. More with Claire McCaskill right after a quick break.

[AD BREAK]

We’ve talked about, you know, the political and economic implications of, but I do want to talk a little bit about the sort of moral failings here, because we began this episode speaking with retired master sergeant who was in the now effectively shuttered Pentagon center for the protection of civilians. And he was talking to me about just the sort of gutting feeling he had when he saw. The bombing of the Girl’s School, which is I think the largest American civilian accident in like decades overseas, right? Just a terrible, for which we’ve gotten still no explanation from the White House. We’ve just gotten this, this effectively lies and propaganda. But in addition to that, you know, we’re losing service members. And Jonathan Lemire in The Atlantic points out that the U.S. Has lost 13 service members since the war began, which is the same number of service members killed outside Abbey Gate in August of 2021, when a suicide bomber detonated at the Kabul airport as the U.S. withdrew forces from Afghanistan. Trump, of course, blamed that loss of life on President Biden, whose presidency, and I agree with this, never quite recovered, and Republicans denounced the military evacuation plan as rushed and chaotic. That moment lived, now there was a sort of cinematic or cinema quality to the evacuation of Afghanistan, right? We’ll never forget the images of people holding on to the planes as the U.S. is pulling out. The loss of life is pointed to constantly on part of the right as an example of the Biden administration’s moral and strategic failures. And I kind of wonder where you think Democrats should be on this. Because if Republicans, and I’m not saying it’s just about political opportunism, it is about pointing out when an administration is failing and doing the unconscionable, which is sending people to die. In this case, for a war that has no purpose and no obvious end. What do you think Democrats should be saying? Because they’re not running from the mics, but I’m not sure we have a unified or coherent party message on this other than look what a bozo Trump is.

Claire McCaskill: Yeah, I think that they are probably trying to focus on the real life implications of this war on Americans. And obviously if moral failings was going to win the day, Donald Trump would never have entered the White House in the first place. I mean, he is a, you know, in the hall of fame of moral failings. Uh, you know, that’s all one of the big ironies I always dwell on with this president is how all these Christians reconcile the way he’s lived his life. I mean, this is a guy who changed his wife’s like other people change shirts, you know? And, and this is guy who thought adultery was just, you know, part of the gig. And this is the guy who clearly is corrupt, stealing money and using his public position. So. The morality here is gone. And so I think there is a reluctance on the part of Democrats to think morality is gonna win the day. Having said that, we do know, based on the people that are still at the Pentagon, we do now, and based on reporting, that this was a mistake by our military in terms of the data they had about that school being there. Now, the saddest part about that, Alex, is that you could see from Google Earth the playground equipment.

Alex Wagner: You could see the soccer field.

Claire McCaskill: You could the soccer fields. So it wouldn’t have been hard for someone to double check, but under Pete Hegseth, he’s glorified killing. I mean, you know, it’s not about defense. It’s not being careful about civilians. It’s what that smiling Tom Cotton says, you know it’s just war.

Alex Wagner: Yeah.

Claire McCaskill: Um, and that smiling was in quotations because I’m, I have a reward for anybody who ever sees him smile. Um, I don’t think he’s ever smiled in his life.

Alex Wagner: I don’t think he is physically capable of it.

Claire McCaskill: Although I will tell you, he did zing me back. Cause I said that on a social media post one time that he could never be president because we’ve never elected a president that’s incapable of smiling. He did zing me back and said immediately, you know, clear. I, I definitely smiled the night you got beat. So. And give them a point on that one, but.

Alex Wagner: Zing.

Claire McCaskill: It is the moral failing of, this is where we apologize and this is when we say we’re sorry and this not who America is, but not with this president. This president wants to pretend that someone else. One of our allies that has Tomahawk missiles snuck in there without us knowing.

Alex Wagner: Or Iran and their Tomahawks missile arsenal, which is non-existent.

Claire McCaskill: Which is just non-existent. So it was pretty obvious from day one that it was us and it was pretty obvious that we screwed up. The fact that they cannot apologize is another black mark across the world. I mean, I don’t think Americans realize the damage that has been done to our image across the word. If you travel internationally, you figure it out. But if you don’t travel internationally, and that’s the vast majority of Americans, I don’t think they realize the damage that has been done. And by the way, electing a Democratic president won’t fix that right away because now the rest of the world goes, well, you came back for more with this guy. You know, really? You want to tell us that you believe in the things that we thought you believed in? And how in the world did happen and I don’t have a good answer for them.

Alex Wagner: I mean, the vast majority of the country may not travel overseas, but according to Trump, everybody’s going to need a passport in order to vote. So I say go to your US passport office stat if they pass the Save America Act, which is currently what’s occupying Senate Republicans and Democrats this week. I just want to leave us on this because, you know, Trump’s numbers are kind of hovering in the same place. Like I think as of this week, his net approval rating, according to Nate Silver is, uh. 13.9 points underwater and at the beginning of the month it was 13.5 underwater. So that’s like not a massive change. And yet, if you look at the numbers in terms of approval on this war among independence, it is a fucking disaster. That’s an official polling term. YouGov this week, 53% of independents disapproved of the war last week. 63%  disapproved of the war this week. There is an election coming and you point out it’s not just hemorrhaging support among independents, it’s people of color, Hispanic men, Latino men and women who have watched their sisters and brothers and mothers and fathers and sons and daughters live in absolute fear of immigration dragnets or who care about, you know, cost of living. This is, it is a perfect storm of betrayal on all fronts and among groups of voters that Trump had did not have firmly in his corner. Who were kind of Johnny-come-lately’s to the MAGA coalition. And I think that that poses a real big question for Republicans, not just in the House, but in the Senate too, which is not something I used to say, right? I would just say Senate’s off limits. Nobody get their hopes up. Nobody get there dander up about what’s gonna take place there. But I don’t know. How do you feel about Senate prospects?

Claire McCaskill: Well, listen, the polling let me first quickly tackle that. I think people need to realize there’s a lot of defensiveness about people who voted for Donald Trump. It is very hard for them to say to a pollster, I disapprove of Donald Trump.

Alex Wagner: Yeah.

Claire McCaskill: They can say I disapproved of the economy, I disapprove of the war, I just approve. But it’s hard for them because they have been under attack from their families and friends. They have been underway attack. How in the world could you vote for Donald I mean, the polarization that has occurred. Has made people very defensive in their positions. The other thing about polling I want to point out, because I don’t think we’ve done a good job of pointing this out on our network, the disapproval of the Democratic Party, everybody, the Republicans like to say, oh, the Democratic party is in the tank, everybody hates, that is because the Democrats are saying bad things about the Democratic part. And that is the hardcore base of our party is so frustrated because they do not want to understand that math, is about a majority and you can’t really fight Donald Trump without a majority. So they’ve been so frustrated because the Democrats haven’t fought them enough. We haven’t done enough. So they have been saying bad things about Democrats in polls. But if you take that out, the Democratic party is in as good a position as it’s ever been to win a midterm. And I will tell you, I think the gerrymandering thing has gone south on them in many ways. Watch carefully what goes along the southern border of Texas down there in that area. Watch carefully, what goes on in the purple districts in Arizona and Florida. I really think Hakeem Jeffries is not out of line if he’s measuring the curtains right now in the speaker’s office. I do not think he’s out of the line. And I will tell you, watch Alaska, watch Ohio.

Alex Wagner: I agree.

Claire McCaskill: Watch Ohio, watch Iowa, and even watch Texas. The fact that Donald Trump is playing games when there is a bitter, bitter split in the Republican Party in Texas. It is bitter. And I don’t care which one ends up winning this runoff. The ones that were for the other guy, I cannot believe they’re going to be enthusiastic about voting.

Alex Wagner: Cornyn V. Paxton.

Claire McCaskill: Yeah. Yeah. So if you’ve got a couple of those that go the Democrats’ way, then we have the fun challenge of. Of having the majority floor leader being a Democrat and dealing with very close numbers with Donald Trump still as president. But let’s hope that happens. Let’s hope we have a Democratic Senate and then you would actually have the kind of hearings that I think America needs to see right now about what’s really going on.

Alex Wagner: Maybe a briefing if we’re still fighting the war in Iran.

Claire McCaskill: Yeah, maybe some more exposure on the corruption.

Alex Wagner: Maybe a congressional or maybe a war authorization vote retroactive. I don’t even know how that would work.

Claire McCaskill: Maybe we figure out who’s actually paying for the East Wing redo and maybe we actually find out what the hell’s going on at the Kennedy Center.

Alex Wagner: Maybe, a lot of maybes, but I like the optimism. I like to bullishness. I like that daring do. I like you, Claire McCaskill.

Claire McCaskill: I like, you kid. You’re good.

Alex Wagner: You’re good, you are the best. It’s a joy, it’s truly a joy and a privilege to get your wisdom. Claire, thank you for taking some time from your day to talk to us.

Claire McCaskill: My pleasure, and let’s do it again soon.

Alex Wagner: For real. That is our show for this week. Don’t forget to check out the show and our rapid response videos on our YouTube channel, Runaway Country with Alex Wagner. We’ve got a bunch of YouTube exclusive content up there like this week’s rapid response video with The New Yorker’s Susan Glasser.

Susan Glasser: Trump and if you look at some of his advisors, what are they out there doing while they’re dumping on Kent? They’re saying, oh yeah, we knew he was a leaker and that he, uh, you know, really was a problem security problem. He wasn’t read into our secret plans. Well, then why did you appoint him in the first place? If you, if you knew he was a threat, why did he leave him in office for months?

Alex Wagner: Last, but certainly not least, if you have been impacted directly by the Trump administration and its policies, please send us an email or a one minute voice note at runawaycountry@crooked.com and we may be in touch to feature your story. A huge and sincere thank you to everybody who has written in already. Runaway Country is a Crooked Media production. Our senior producer is Alyona Minkovski. Our producer is Emma Illick-Frank. Production support from Megan Larson and Lacy Roberts. The show is mixed and edited by Charlotte Landes. Ben Hethcoat is our video producer and Matt DeGroot is our head of production. Audio support comes from Kyle Seglin. Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Adriene Hill is our Head of News and Politics. Katie Long is our Executive Producer of Development. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writer’s Guild of America East.