Share This Podcast

Over a week into the war with Iran, the casualties, global economic fallout, and incoherence of the Trump administration are all growing. This week Alex speaks to Senator Adam Schiff about Democrats’ attempts to put Congress back into the decision maker’s seat and how to bring transparency to a conflict costing American lives. Then, she speaks to Rachel Maddow, NYT Bestselling author and host at MS Now, about what a political and moral catastrophe the war is, how we got here, and why the only winner so far seems to be Vladimir Putin.

 

TRANSCRIPT

 

Alex Wagner: Hey everyone, I am back. And I gotta say, I had a feeling Trump would pull some crazy shit as soon as I was out for hip surgery. I did. Did I expect that to be the start of the third Gulf War or the beginning of what might be World War III? No, I did not. But here we are. 20 countries have now been pulled into the war started by the US and Israel. At least 12 civilians have been killed across the Gulf nations, most of them migrant workers. Add to that 600 victims of airstrikes in Lebanon, where Israel is targeting the Iran-backed terrorist group Hezbollah, 13 Israelis have been killed by airstrike, 7 American soldiers have been kill in the line of duty, and another 140 have been wounded. But it is in Iran where the situation is extremely bleak. More than 1,300 Iranians have died as of this recording, including at least 168 children and 14 teachers. In what multiple investigations have concluded was a U.S. Tomahawk missile strike on an elementary school. A moral catastrophe, which Donald Trump is trying to pretend is not his own.

 

[clip of Donald Trump]: Whether it’s Iran or somebody else, the fact that a Tomahawk is very generic, it’s sold to other countries. But that’s being investigated right now.

 

Alex Wagner: Thousands of people have died, and for what exactly? No one really seems to know what the point of all of this is, which makes ending it sort of complicated. Trump has said the war is to obliterate Iran’s nuclear program, which he also said was obliterated last year. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said that the war was started because Israel was going to strike Iran anyway, and so America had to follow suit which Trump publicly denies.

 

[clip of Donald Trump]: So, if anything, I might have forced Israel’s hand.

 

Alex Wagner: Trump says the war was started to help the people of Iran overthrow the regime and Iran has now replaced its former leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, with his hardliner son, Ayatollah Khamanei. Here’s all Trump could say about that one.

 

[clip of Donald Trump]: You know, I was disappointed because we think it’s gonna lead to just more of the same problem for the country. So I was just disappointed to see their choice.

 

Alex Wagner: Yes, this is a moral and strategic catastrophe. But you know what else it is? An economic catastrophe. Crude oil and gas prices are skyrocketing. Iran is threatening to put landmines in the Strait of Hormuz, which is where a fifth of the world’s oil travels through. And the global economy is in a tailspin, which gets me to the last point in all of this, the political catastrophe. Americans are looking out at all this and shaking their heads saying, no, we sure did not ask for this. A New York Times poll shows only 41% support military intervention against Iran, which is lower than support in the early days of almost every other American war. In addition to the moral stain and the geopolitical wrecking, this whole thing is a nightmare as far as the one thing Trump is supposed to be focused on, rising costs. Forbes reported this week that the average price of a gallon of gas is now $3.58, which is a lot more than the $1.85 gallon of gas that Trump was touting at the State of the Union just a few weeks ago. All of this failing is taking a toll on the president and his minions who either have no idea what they’re doing, think the American public has no idea what’s happening, or both.

 

[clip of Donald Trump]: We’re winning the war by a lot. We’ve decimated their whole evil empire. It’ll continue, I’m sure, for a little while. We took a little excursion because we felt we had to do that to get rid of some evil. And I think you’ll see it’s going to be a short-term excursions. We’ve already won in many ways, but we haven’t won enough.

 

[clip of reporter]: You said the war is quote very complete, but your defense secretary says this is just the beginning. So which is it and how long should Americans be—

 

[clip of Donald Trump]: Well, I think we could call it a tremendous success right now as we leave here, I could call it. Or we could go further and we’re going to go further.

 

[clip of reporter]: You promised the Iranian people you would help them, but it sounds like you’re willing to end this fight after your military objectives have wrapped up. Is that- isn’t that a betrayal of the people?

 

[clip of Donald Trump]: Will I help them? I’d like to have they can behave, but they’ve been very menacing.

 

[clip of Pete Hegseth]: Today will be, yet again, our most intense day of strikes inside Iran. The most fighters, the most bombers, the most strikes. I see in the media banners that say, you know, war expanding or war spread. It’s actually the opposite. It’s it’s actually quite contained.

 

Alex Wagner: What the hell is happening here? And when and how does this all end? Or do the president and all his men actually have no idea? [music plays] I’m Alex Wagner, and this week on Runaway Country, Donald Trump’s moral, strategic, and political catastrophe in Iran. There is a whole lot to unpack here, and there is no one better to do that than our guest this week, the great Rachel Maddow. She is going to tackle all the hard stuff. Why Rachel thinks Trump got into this war in the first place, what lessons we have learned or not learned from our last bid at regime change, and how that could and should inform what we do now, and the ways in which all the rest of us should be fighting against all the fighting.

 

Rachel Maddow: If Trump was waging this for a more noble cause, I think Democrats would have to really, you know, thread the needle in terms of what they said. But in this case, you can just gesture meaningfully at what he’s doing and people know how wrong and how bad it is.

 

Alex Wagner: But first, I wanted to talk to someone who’s in the middle of all of this, one of the people that the United States Constitution actually designates to decide whether we go to war or not. Senator Adam Schiff of California. Republicans in Congress may be content to hand their power over to Donald Trump, but a handful of Democrats are decidedly not. Senator Schiff is dropping in to explain why he’s part of the crew demanding a proper War Powers vote? And to weigh in on what Democrats can do, particularly ahead of the midterms, to hold the president accountable to the American public and, oh yeah, the U.S. Constitution. First of all, Senator Schiff, thank you for joining Runaway Country, the podcast, the podcast not the nation for which you were part of the legislative branch. You know, I’m just curious, because a lot of the show is dedicated to people who are in the center of the headlines and you very much are in your day job. Where were you when you found out that Trump had launched these attacks in Iran? And what were you doing?

 

Adam Schiff: I think that I was just waking up, if I recall, to the news because the attacks, I think, began late in the evening.

 

Alex Wagner: Yeah.

 

Adam Schiff: So you know when you wake up and you look at your phone and there are a ton of missed messages that something is going on, and generally, it’s not something good.

 

Alex Wagner: Right.

 

Adam Schiff: I think it was a rude awakening, literally.

 

Alex Wagner: What was your first thought? I mean, technically, you’re not the last person who should be finding out about this. You guys are the ones that are supposed to be authorizing any sort of wars, but we’ll get to that in a second. But what was your concern as you looked at all those missed messages and realized what had happened?

 

Adam Schiff: Well, my first concern was that we were getting into another potentially endless conflict in the Middle East, that there had been no consultation with Congress, no authorization from Congress, that we would be putting our service members’ lives at risk. And I had very little confidence in the administration to know what even the aim of the war would be. Sadly, a lot of those initial fears have come to pass. But I think in the beginning, just… Astonishment that we were yet again at war, that we had bombed Iran last year. We had supposedly obliterated their nuclear program and while I knew that not to be true, nevertheless, it seemed extraordinary we were back to war with Iran. And it also seemed that the founders very much had Donald Trump in mind when they gave the power to declare war to Congress, not the executive because they feared that the president might grow too fond of making war, and given how many countries we have bombed in the first year of the second Trump term, it seems a very accurate concern and prediction of the future.

 

Alex Wagner: Do you feel, so I’m hearing incredulity, like, oh, we’re doing this, disbelief, anger, and maybe a little bit of depression thrown in there too. All the stages of, I don’t know, not grief, but something, something not good. I mean, you mentioned the fact that the Constitution really designates Congress with the power to send the country to war. You’re in the middle of, I guess the only fight there is to have on this. You and five other Democratic senators are lobbying for public committee hearings on the war, and you’re really pushing for an actual war powers authorization. First of all, what do you think the public has to gain from public hearings? I mean, and why is that important for the American public?

 

Adam Schiff: Public hearings can be very powerful. When you put people under oath, they don’t feel as free to simply lie as we have seen others of this administration do when they’re not held to account. The president, for example, with the strike on this Iranian girls’ school, not under oath but on Air Force One, made the statement that on the basis of what he had seen, he believed that Iran was responsible for bombing their own school. That seemed very implausible, but what was he looking at? Well, he can get away with a statement like that on board Air Force One, but you could see Hegseth very uncomfortable standing behind him. You put Hegseth under oath and you ask him, what did you show the president? What did the intelligence community show the President that led him to that conclusion? And the answer may very well be nothing, that he just made that up. And so, putting people under oath, compelling answers, even when they evade the answers. Can be powerful. The Senate hearings just a week ago cost Kristi Noem her job. And so they can be a means of holding people accountable. But here, I think there’s the additional purpose that if you go into this war as they did without a common understanding of why we’re even there, and you press them under oath and they’re unable to answer, or the answers are conflicting. Then I think it tells the country something about this conflict and the necessity of bringing it to an end.

 

Alex Wagner: Well, I mean, yeah, all their answers have been conflicting already. I mean they’re not under oath, but there seems to be no consistency to the most basic and fundamental questions of this war. You um, Semafor’s  reporting that you’re you’re trying to force Majority Leader John Thune to open up the committee hearings, which again, are happening behind closed doors, or you guys are going to hold a public debate and a series of votes on the administration’s war powers on the floor of the Senate. So can you walk me through? How you imagine that happening.

 

Adam Schiff: So what should have happened, first of all, is the president should have come to Congress and come to the American people and sought support from the public to go to war with Iran. That was the approach that we saw with the Iraq war and the Afghanistan war. At least they sought congressional authorization. They sought to make the case, even if in the case of Iraq it was a faulty case. But here there was no effort to make a case to country or to Congress. They just went to war. And they’re making their bones about it. I mean, there are some still trying to call this something other than a war. And you heard the president called it an excursion the other day, but they proudly proclaim the nation at war and they talk about the risks of war, but they’re not willing to actually come ask for the votes for war. So one of the tools we have is something called a war powers resolution, and that is something that allows the Congress, when the president uses force. And that’s generally in response, or theoretically supposed to be in response to an imminent attack or an actual attack, the Congress can use this device to end the use of military force. And it’s privileged, meaning even if you’re in the minority, you have a right to bring it before the Senate and compel a debate and a vote. So we’ve been using these, first to try to stop the boat strikes in Venezuela, and now to try and stop this latest war in Iran. And we can use those to force the Senate to confront this issue. There are other tools that we can also use to force debate. And we hope through a combination of different tactics and tools, we can compel the majority to hold hearings, to not just hide behind classified briefings where we’re restricted in what we can say, but to tell the country under harsh questioning what this is all about and why it’s worth the lives of our service members.

 

Alex Wagner: You know, what’s so crazy about your efforts is it’s just only Democrats. Like Republicans are also in the legislative branch. They have been designated this power and yet they seem completely fine with being cucks to literally cuck hold themselves for the Trump administration in terms of their legislative power in Congress, whether that’s the power of the purse or war powers and does that I don’t, I know it’s like, oh yes, no one should be surprised at the way in which the Republican Party has bent the knee for Trump. But to see the power designated you by the Constitution is a betrayal of the oath of office in a way that should stun the conscience. Does it surprise, I mean, what sense do you get on the Hill when you’re surrounded by these Republican senators who are just completely okay with the fact that they have castrated themselves. To give Donald Trump all the power that he needs and wants.

 

Adam Schiff: Well, this has been one of the terrible shocks of really the last decade it began in the first Trump administration. That is that I had a lot of Republican colleagues who I had respected and even some I had admired because at least I believe that they believe what they were saying. And I would have imagined before this whole period that if you asked me whether I thought there would be Republicans who would stand up to a president who wanted to be king or dictator. I would have said, I’ll bet you there are 100 Liz Cheney’s and 100 Adam Kinzinger’s among the Republicans. And as it turned out, there were very, very few. And it is deeply troubling to hear Majority Leader Thune, for example, say that we’ll get around to having hearings in the normal process when we take up the budget or other things as if we’re not at war. I mean, it would be fine to say, well, the Secretary of Defense will come in when the Pentagon budget is before Congress or. The Secretary of State will do the same when we have the State Department authorization bill. But we’re at war. You think there’d be more interest in actually doing oversight, but they are so cowed by this president. They are so afraid of this president that they won’t stand up for their own institution, their own constitutional responsibilities. And you’re right, Alex. We have two main powers the power of the purse and the power over war and we’re not exercising either power. And it’s basically use it or lose it, and right now we are losing it.

 

Alex Wagner: I just, I mean, they’re the ones on the ballot in November. Right. Like if you’re looking out at the landscape and you’re like, hmm, this person has started a war without congressional authorization, a war that’s costing billions of dollars, a war, that’s killing thousands and thousands of people, or that is a moral stain on the fabric of our democracy when you think of a US Tomahawk missile killing 143 children. And a war that has political catastrophe written all over it with spiraling prices. The one thing he’s supposed to be focused on is cost of living. Why in God’s name are you still making your bed with this person who, by the way, is term-limited and won’t be president next after 2029? I just, the calculation here, it’s like Stockholm syndrome, I guess.

 

Adam Schiff: You know, I think it’s a couple of things. I think, you know, first and foremost, they don’t want a primary challenge. They’re not going to speak out. They are not going act out. They are going to raise their head above the parapet if they’re afraid Trump will endorse a primary opponent. I mean, you see in Texas these two Republicans who are running for the Senate, they’re falling all over themselves to out-MAGA each other to get, you know Trump’s blessing. Um, so I understand it at that very practical level. What I don’t understand is what are these people going to tell their kids one day? When or their grandkids when they ask you know what did you do with an awful man was running the country please tell me you did something to stand up to him. I don’t understand why many of them are even here if they’re not going to do their job as our founders intended us to do. I do think it explains why they don’t want an authorization to use force. They don’t wanna direct vote on this war because they know they’ll be held accountable.

 

Alex Wagner: Yeah, they don’t want to be on the hook.

 

Adam Schiff: Yeah, exactly.

 

Alex Wagner: If you trotted, if you were able to get Secretary of State Rubio or Secretary of Defense, I refuse to call it Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth up to the hill. Do you think they actually know what’s going on? When I hear Pete Hegseth talk, I think of the bat computer and the old batman. It was like he’s being fed the continuous form paper. Like whatever the data that Trump wants him to spit out, he is given notes. By this administration and does no apparent independent thinking of his own to say nothing of critical thinking. I just wonder if the guy actually has any insight into the thing he’s supposed to be overseeing. What’s your sort of assessment of his awareness of the situation?

 

Adam Schiff: You know, I think there are different cases, uh, Rubio and Hegseth. Uh, Hegseth strikes me as a bad actor playing a part of a real person who’s playing the part of an actor playing, a real-person it’s hard to tell which is which, um, but basically whatever speech talking points he’s given, um punches them up to be the most macho sounding stuff he can, he can pronounce. Uh, it becomes really like cartoonish in a way. Uh, his, uh, where this is not a war of regime change, but the regime certainly changed and we punch them while they’re down. Well, wow, that’s great. We punch, we punch while they are down. Um, so, you know, I don’t think he’s the sharpest tool in the shed. Uh, Rubio on the other hand understands exactly what’s going on. He understands how incomprehensible the president has been. On this, the shifting series of rationales, and he shifts with them. He’s made a bargain. They all do when they audition or accept a part in the Trump cabinet, and that is they’re going to follow the leader, no matter how inconsistent it is with their own views, no matter consistent it is what the president said the day before. They will do their best to rationalize what cannot be rationalized. There is some also sense that, well, if I don’t do it, I’ll be replaced by somebody worse. So there’s that rationalization as well. But I do think Rubio understands the situation. He’s just made his bed with Donald Trump and he’s lying in it now.

 

Alex Wagner: Marco Rubio. We hardly knew you. We’ve talked a lot about Republicans. How unified are Democrats on this? I mean, there have been outspoken Democrats. There have been Democrats that have remained more quiet or more sort of accepting of the notion of regime change, whatever that means, given the fact that it’s one Ayatollah Khamenei for another Ayatollah Khamenei. Are Democrats united on withholding funding for this war if the Trump administration comes to request, I don’t know, 50 billion from Congress?

 

Adam Schiff: You know, I think at the moment, Democrats are pretty united in their opposition to the war and their critique of the war and the lack of clarity about why we’re even at war, as well as the recognition of the terrible cost of the War. You know I think all of us feel a little bit of tension in the fact that we’re glad that the Ayatollah is gone and we hate that murderous regime and we would all love to see the Iranian people rise up and take control of the destiny of that country. But we also share the fear that, as has happened in the past, when the president has urged them to rise up, they rise up and get mowed down. And we’re not in a position to support them. So I think we’re united in all those things. When it comes to the funding issue, one of the things the Republicans may try to do is take a war funding bill and add disaster aid to it and add farm aid to. Basically try to put Democrats in the position of if you vote against this because you don’t support the war, then you’re going to be voting against all these other things and they’ll show up in negative attack ads. So, you know, there will be that potential complexity to deal with. But this is you know what leadership is required to do is to try to hold us together and make sure that we are unified. We’re obviously in the minority in both houses, locked out of the White House. We don’t have a Supreme Court that is anything other than a partisan actor now. And under those circumstances, our only power comes with our unity. And we have to be, I think, locked up with each other and locked together with our House colleagues and unified in our approach to all this.

 

Alex Wagner: Well. Here’s to linking arms in the face of just a president, a mad king gone even madder. Senator Adam Schiff, who has many more important things to do today. I super appreciate your time and your wisdom and your thoughts as we try and navigate these very choppy waters. You’re the best. Thanks for joining me today.

 

Adam Schiff: Great to be with you.

 

Alex Wagner: After the break, we’ll put all of this into context with Rachel Maddow.

 

[AD BREAK]

 

Alex Wagner: I’ll just go ahead and welcome my friend, America’s Encyclopedia of Soul. I just made that up. Just made that right there.

 

Rachel Maddow: You know, if we’re gonna have a Queen of Soul, we oughta have an Encyclopedia of Soul.

 

Alex Wagner: Yeah, it’s well when we’re looking and thinking like where is our where is our conscience? Where is our soul? Who can help us find our, you know, our true north? We know where we go.

 

Rachel Maddow: Well, that is very nice. And I am going to write to the estate of Aretha Franklin and alert them.

 

Alex Wagner: Rachel, thank you for doing this.

 

Rachel Maddow: Sure, it’s good to see you, my friend.

 

Alex Wagner: You too. Here’s my first question to you. We’re on day 12 of this war, and we’ve had a shifting series of explanations from this administration about why we’re in this war. And I wonder if any single one of them has made sense to you? Has any one of these resonated as why we actually might be at war and what we’re looking to do here?

 

Rachel Maddow: The closest, I think, we got to one that I believe is when Trump called Jonathan Karl and said, essentially, like, are you tired of all the winning? Like, what do you think of my performance? Isn’t this great? Like, Venezuela, amazing, right? And now look at this. Like, I, I that he thinks war is easy, and that it makes him look strong, that he doesn’t need anybody else to be involved in any decision-making process around it. Like he’s been manipulated into thinking that he decided to launch this war. And I think he sees it as only upside because he doesn’t actually have any concept that there could be any unforeseen consequences of a war. And so I think the closest that I, like just in my heart of hearts, It’s the thing that feels most… Possible is just that he thinks this makes him look good. I heard today on day 12, he said just offhandedly to a reporter, I didn’t know they had such a big Navy. And I was just thinking, you know, if I was gonna start a war of choice, I might Google that.

 

Alex Wagner: Yeah.

 

Rachel Maddow: Yeah, it wasn’t like they had it—

 

Alex Wagner: Or ask someone to Google it.

 

Rachel Maddow: You have the disposal of the entire US military, US intelligence apparatus, and US government at your disposal, and nobody mentioned they got a Navy? And you don’t recognize, you’re not self-aware enough to recognize that you admitting you didn’t know the size of their Navy before you started the war with them might make you look like—

 

Alex Wagner: A fucking asshole. I’m just saying it. Because the New York Times has some damning reporting, which I’m sure you’ve seen this week, about just how ill-prepared this White House was for the war.

 

Rachel Maddow: I mean, they didn’t know, they don’t have a point and they have not thought about what might happen. They didn’t even have a plan to get people out of our embassy.

 

Alex Wagner: Yes. That they were completely flat-footed. They did not think the Iranians would close or threaten the Strait of Hormuz. And so now Trump’s having a tantrum, for people who haven’t seen this clip, I’m gonna play it. He’s having tantrum and just saying, like, go for it. Like, who cares if it’s dangerous? They’re just like, man, stack up. This is Fox News Brian Kilmeade regurgitating his conversation with Donald Trump about this very thing.

 

[clip of reporter]: So, Brian, you did a phone interview with the President of the United States. What is his read on this?

 

[clip of Brian Kilmeade]: So I asked him, how do you get the prices down? I know how much you care about oil and gas, and he says… Tell these tankers to get themselves, get to it. We’ve wiped out most of their launchers. Here’s exactly what he said. These ships should go through the Strait of Hormuz and show some guts. There’s nothing to be afraid of. They have no Navy. We sunk all their ships. He went on to say, he said, look, yeah, there’s risk in the region. The region’s volatile. They are launchers, there is just about 150 left. That’s just about 20% of totals. They can’t regenerate. They can make any more. And we are in the reason. We’re ready to act quickly.

 

Alex Wagner: Okay, just show some guts, Rachel. I mean—

 

Rachel Maddow: Like him, like, well, he’s shown a lot of a lot a lot first. Yeah, a lot of physical courage, a lifetime of demonstrative, like peacock displays of just his immense physical courage and selflessness.

 

Alex Wagner: [laughs] And then, in addition to just telling oil companies to sack up and maybe, I don’t know, risk their lives to get oil through the Strait of Hormuz, there’s reporting that certain military advisors warned, hey, Mr. President, Iran could aggressively retaliate. This could spiral. But Trump decided to listen to other advisors who were very confident that killing Iran’s senior leadership would lead to more pragmatic leaders taking over, like Ayatollah Khamenei. So instead of Ayatollah Khamenei, you’ll get Ayatollah Khamenei. So, okay, Rachel, like just, I know nothing should surprise us, right? But this is where when, you know, we have, as we have talked through Trump One and Trump Two, at least in Trump One, there were some people with, I think, some modicum, like a grain of sense, who might have sounded a more cautionary note. This is the full fruition, I think, of having a cabinet and a leadership panel that is comprised totally of bozos.

 

Rachel Maddow: Oh yeah. I mean, the problem from Trump One that they needed to fix for Trump Two was anybody stopping Trump from doing what he wanted to do at any second of the day. And so they’ve stopped that. There’s no, all of the things that they’ve, everything from like the Russell vote agenda and the Stephen Miller agenda and everything else that they have done has been about making sure there’s no barriers to Trump’s whims. And so this is what you get. I mean, him saying to, not even to like the US Navy, right? Not even saying to like people who have signed up to put themselves at risk for the country, not talking to them. He’s talking to people who are commercial, who work on commercial vessels, right, and telling them that they need to be brave because the Navy’s gone. We’ve destroyed the Navy. Subsequent to that, the United States then is bragging that it blew up another 16, the day after that blew up, another 16 ships. Wait, I thought the Navy was obliterated. And then subsequent to that, the day after that Trump is saying, I had no idea they had such a big Navy. Like who, the biggest mystery to me right now about what Trump is doing with Iran is why the stock market responds to his words as if his words have any connection. To his own actions, let alone any wider reality.

 

Alex Wagner: I completely agree. I mean, and we’re going to get to the sort of the energy secretary, Chris Wright, and how he’s managed the markets and the way in which Trump himself is literally just, he’s talking for separate audiences. There’s like the global audience that’s, and I guess the audience in Iran or Tehran, that’s sort of wondering what’s happening here. And then there’s the financial markets. And on one, there are two distinct audiences with, I mean I guess that nobody really wants the war. So that’s the common thread. But. Trying to speak as the president of the United States largely to calm the markets is not actually how you run a war. That’s not what a commander-in-chief does.

 

Rachel Maddow: No. And it helps if there is a point to the war, like if there something he’s asking for, A, you need to be able to ask for it in a way that’s coherent, but also B, people need to know that there is some connection between your actions and your words. And with Trump, all the way back to the very beginning, right, it’s been like my mantra in covering him from jump, you know, watch what he does, not what he says, because what he says is almost guaranteed. Always complete, not just not just complete untruth, but misdirection. And so to have like supposedly sophisticated business sectors, right, like financial analysts, I don’t know who moves markets, right? Listening to his words and being like Trump burped in the key of C. So that means that, you know, the Strait of Hormuz must be about to reopen! I just…

 

Alex Wagner: [laughter] I would actually like to hear him burp in the key of C, but that’s neither here nor there. I got to ask when we talk about the disconnect between what is being done in our name and what Trump says, the strike on the girls’ school in Iran, which quite clearly seems to have been from a U.S. Tomahawk missile, despite whatever Trump’s protestations are, to me seems like, obviously, over 1,300 dead Iranians and, you know, Lebanese and the collateral damage of this is a moral stain on us, right? Especially since we have no end game here. And even if we did, it’d still be a moral stain on us.

 

Rachel Maddow: There’s no goal. There’s literally no reason to have done this. There is nothing we are trying to achieve by doing this.

 

Alex Wagner: So we’re doing this, we’re killing children and their teachers on a school day, not admitting to it, suggesting it’s the Iranians. At the same time that we are sinking Iranian naval ships, which are doing essentially what we believe to be a diplomatic exercise in India, at the same that we’re kidnapping leaders in Venezuela and slaughtering, murdering, committing war crimes in the Caribbean, and our support of Israel’s campaign in Gaza, all of these things. Make it not a great time to be an American, in my opinion. And I wonder what you think when you put all these things together, we’re in still like, basically, you’re one of this second administration. What do you think the immediate fallout is for our country on the world stage? I mean, I know that’s a huge question, but these these we are now assassinating leaders, kidnapping them, targeting civilians openly, you know, committing war crimes unapologetically. This is just a new stage of bloodthirstiness. To me.

 

Rachel Maddow: I mean, I think there’s a sort of a worldview thing to take into account, and then there’s a domestic view to take of it. And on the worldview, America, whatever pretensions we ever had to be the leader of the free world. That’s no longer operative. And the question is then what’s going to happen in the free world? Who’s going to rise to leadership? What kind of leadership is it going to be? And do we ever get back in? I do think that there is still a global confrontation between the authoritarian states of the world and the small d democratic states of the world. And America is siding with the authoritarians. And is, in fact, our government is trying to turn us into a post constitutional republic, effectively authoritarian state, if not dictatorship. And so we’re not part of the good guys anymore in that global conflict. And so that creates space for other entities in the free world to step up, which is I think why Mark Carney’s remarks at Davos were so important. It’s really important to see, I think, what Macron is doing. It’s important to really see what Germany is doing and what’s happening in Germany’s domestic politics. Britain is in a very interesting position right now post-Brexit with this. So it’s gonna be, I think that that is more. Wide open than it’s been in any time in either of our lifetimes. Domestically, I think that we just need to get our heads around the fact that we’ve really entered the sort of Mad King phase, right? That we, when you study other authoritarians or autocrats or dictators in history, if they have sufficient resources to do it, they almost always go off on mad quests like this. Um, and the question is how much of their country they bring with them versus how much they’re doing. It is sort of their own excursion. I think that’s the word.

 

Alex Wagner: Yes it is the word.

 

Rachel Maddow: And how ruinous it is to the rest of the world based on the resources that they bring to bear. And so to have both Russia having started the largest land war in Europe since world war two within the past five years, and now to have the United States taking on this really like mad king adventurism while he, I mean, we think it’s stupid, but he really is threatening Canada. He really is, threatening Greenland. He really has effectively ended NATO. He has, you know, what we did in Venezuela, what we’ve done in the Caribbean, what we’re now doing in the Middle East, having set off what effectively feels like, you know Gulf War III, certainly if not World War III. He’s got no constraint on him at all. And there’s no reasoning with him. And he’s passed already, one year in, it’s passed the point where he’s even trying to create pretextual lies that’s purportedly explain what he’s doing. So we’re there, like we’re, there we’re. There’s no use warning about what’s happening. Like we’re they’re, we’re living it. And it’s a question of how the American people will stop it by removing him from power. And that’s a very live question for us right now, right here in 2026.

 

Alex Wagner: Um I want to I want to get to how you think the democrats and specifically congressional democrats have handled the moment because they’re best positioned to do something and I say that with an asterisk because they obviously don’t have control of either house, but. You know when it gets to the American lust for um punishment or like this punitive streak that we seem to have within us that Donald Trump is a vain Donald Trump’s mind I’m drawn to this new reporting from ProPublica that details the way in which Hegseth, when he stormed into the Pentagon, essentially dismantled a new harm reduction effort that they had launched and basically gutted that sector and reorganized our national security around two basic principles, more aggression and less accountability.

 

Rachel Maddow: Mm-hmm.

 

Alex Wagner: I give Pete Hegseth credit as a singular clown. Like, I’ve not been treated to someone so comedically villainous in a long time, and I write about it often on my Substack. But I do think he is expressing, or at least at the beginning of this administration, he is the expression of some sort of lust we have in this country to be less kind, to be more cruel, to be freed from the shackles of, I don’t know, not even political correctness, but empathy or something. And I kind of wonder how you think about it. Like, it’s not that it’s like the Manosphere was like, dismantle the Pentagon’s harm reduction effort sector. But I worry about the wickedness within the American character and how much of that still like remains or whether you think this moment kind of cleanses us as of that because it’s so clearly the wrong path.

 

Rachel Maddow: Yeah, I mean, I think we saw some of this coming in Trump’s campaign letter. And it was true when he was first running for 2016, but it was like amped up and amped up and really like his language at rallies ahead of the 2024 election. It just got more and more distilled into these violent tableau, you know, like he would just describe crime and murder and dismemberment and injury. And it’s like he did at his State of the Union. He spent like a quarter of his time at the State of Union talking about, you you rivers of blood and stabbings and people being shredded. And I mean, and the people, the human beings who he’s talking about, their loved ones are there sobbing while he’s kind of wiping the fat off his chin while he is going through this like bloodlusty horror show that he thinks is politically potent. And so that sort of thing, which again, is like kind of a hallmark of dictatorships throughout history, and not all of them, but a lot of them is designed, I think, both to activate our sort of emotional rather than rational brain. Like you’re supposed to have an emotional visceral reaction to what he’s saying and to follow him emotionally and viscerally rather than through any process of deduction or reasoning. But it’s also designed to disinhibit us in terms of what we are willing to both see and tolerate and also do ourselves. And that’s really dark stuff, but that’s what totalitarians do. I don’t think that Trump has it in him to be a totalitarian leader in the United States, but I think those are his instincts. And that is something that, you know, you’ll get gleeful assistance for. And Pete Hegseth is a very, very enthusiastic. Uh, assistant for him in that. I mean, the, the when they’re trying to get you, not just to hate somebody, but to imagine like unbelievably bloody violence while you’re doing it, they’re trying to you to participate in violence.

 

Alex Wagner: Sack up and go through the Strait of Hormuz too, while you’re at it. We’ve already destroyed their Navy.

 

Rachel Maddow: Oh, turns out they had a really big Navy.

 

Alex Wagner: Also we obliterated their nuclear program, but it’s very much still intact.

 

Rachel Maddow: It’s gonna have a bomb in a week. Yeah.

 

[AD BREAK]

 

Alex Wagner: When it comes to death, I am so, I should.

 

Rachel Maddow: That’s a really good segue.

 

Alex Wagner: It’s a great segue. That’s how the pros do it, Rachel. You can borrow that for your show. [laughter] So seven American service members have been killed and there’s been a lot made of the fact that Trump wore a baseball cap to the dignified transfer of those killed and then he skipped the ceremony, I believe, all together for the seventh member killed. Fox News, at least, I think, understands that this is an issue. They played a fake clip—well, it’s a real clip, but it’s not from the actual Dignified Transfer. Let’s just take a look at that fake news, quite literally. From Fox.

 

[clip of reporter]: President Trump, First Lady Melania Trump, Vice President J.D. Vance, and Secretary Lady Usha Vance attending a dignified transfer to honor the final homecoming of the six U.S. Service members killed in Kuwait. President Trump promising the nation that they will all be remembered as heroes. Before we move on, we want to acknowledge a mistake made earlier on our program. During our coverage of yesterday’s dignified transfer, we inadvertently aired video from an older dignified instead of the ceremony that took place yesterday. We deeply regret the error and extend our respect and condolences to the service members’ families.

 

Alex Wagner: Okay, I just, I’ll just, what do you think of this?

 

Rachel Maddow: I mean, I think your point is right, that Fox News instinctively understood that showing him in his baseball hat, standing there with his, not only with his hat on, not removing his hat as a sign of respect, but also wearing that hat, like his merch hat, that you can buy through the, you know, whatever it is. I mean they understood instinctively like, oh, that’s not a good thing, that doesn’t look like a president. We want this to seem like a good thing that Trump is doing. So we can’t show that. Do we have any other footage that we could possibly swap in here? I mean, it’s just—

 

Alex Wagner: I mean we’ve been in the news business long enough to know that it’s like, you don’t just stop. It’s not like, oh, it’s all the dignified. It’s all that dignified transfer to it’s like, no, you’re looking for a specific day. It’s like a Google search. Anyway, I do think though, it also, I mean, aside from the mendacity of Fox news, which is another subject of another podcast, another time, it is indicative of someone who actually doesn’t really care about those fallen. And it makes you wonder given the news we have. I think there’s some reporting about potential retaliation against American civilians. As you point out, there was no plan to evacuate Americans in embassies all over the Gulf region. Federal authorities say they are detecting broadcasts of a coded sequence that could be triggering sleeper cells on U.S. Soil. There’s real questions about retaliatory terrorist attacks. I don’t feel like our country is keeping us safe in part because I don t think the President of the United States really cares.

 

Rachel Maddow: He said that he doesn’t care. I mean, he said as much, you know, yeah, people might die, people die in wars. You know, should the American people be concerned about potential retaliatory attacks here at home? You know? I guess. None of this stuff matters to him. I remember that one of the first things he did, it might’ve even been like day one, it was certainly week one of his second term, is he took the security details away from Mike Pompeo’s deputy, and John Bolton. All three of them only had security details because of Iranian hit squads trying to kill them. And you know, there’s a guy who tried to kill John Bolton, like was charged and convicted. You know, just last week in Brooklyn, in EDNY, there was a trial of an Iranian hit essentially targeting Trump, right? These are live issues. Like Iran has proven over decades, Iran has proved that it can project force and particularly carry out assassinations and assassination attempts all around the globe, including trying it in the United States. And Trump’s like, oh, I have the Secret Service. I don’t care. Like they’re not gonna get me. And so who cares if they get. John Bolton and Mike Pompeo and all these other people. I mean, those are live active threats from a known adversary that has a history of succeeding at stuff like that. And Trump just cut them off. That’s how much he cares about even people who he knows.

 

Alex Wagner: Apparently. One of the reasons he was convinced to go to war is because they said, hey, Mr. President, they want to take you out. And he was like, I’m take them out. So when it’s a threat against Trump, we can launch a multi-thousand casualty war and endanger the entire global market.

 

Rachel Maddow: Yeah I don’t believe that. I don’t believe that that’s the reason that he did it.

 

Alex Wagner: Oh, I don’t I think it’s I have who knows I’m just saying it has been reported that that was

 

Rachel Maddow: One of the things they told him while they were telling him about the start of war with Iran, he was like, Oh, another war. Good. My last one was awesome. So there are no negative consequences for war.

 

Alex Wagner: Okay, you mentioned this before when we talk about negative consequences, which we are bearing the brunt of the global community, Iranian school children. But Russia is certainly the, it seems like the winner in all of this, right? And I know you talked about this on your show this week. Oil prices are skyrocketing, right. Our military stockpiles are being depleted, but the munitions cost more, who knew? They got a big Navy. Trump is talking about easing sanctions on Russian oil because—

 

Rachel Maddow: He already has. He has. He’s sanctioned some Russian oil. Yeah, Russian oil, I mean.

 

Alex Wagner: And Ukraine is having to send interceptor drones away from its own front lines to assist with the U.S. War effort in Iran. So can you talk a little bit more about the way in which Putin is the victor and whether or not you think anybody in the White House foresaw any of the way they would be directly handing him some W’s.

 

Rachel Maddow: I mean, literally the only winner in the world, possibly with the exception of China, we’ll see. I mean China has huge oil, doesn’t have huge oil supplies, but it has huge reserves. They’ve got a massive reserve capacity for hundreds of days of their own use. And so China is very insulated, even though they’re a buyer of oil and gas, they are insulated from the price shocks there just because they’ve built up such storage infrastructure. So China’s sort of not. If you grade on a curve, as everybody else’s economy gets whacked by fuel prices, China’s won’t. And so that will put them in a competitively better position. So maybe China’s up there as a victor here as well, but really it’s gotta be Russia. Russia has essentially one industry, which is oil and gas, and they are not Persian Gulf based oil and gas. And so they’re not, their oil isn’t going through the Strait of Hormuz. And as their competitors in the world, oil and guest market get wiped off the map or shut down. They are sitting absolutely pretty. Russia has been broke. And part of that is because oil and gas prices have been low. That’s solved. And the other reason they’ve been broke is because they’ve be constrained by US-led sanctions in terms of who they can sell their oil and glass to. And it hasn’t constrained them that much because they haven’t actually been very tight sanctions. But Trump has just in the middle of this, as we are absorbing the reporting that Russian intelligence has been giving targeting information to the Iranians. To assist them in killing American personnel and targeting US military sites in the Middle East, Trump reduces sanctions, eases sanctions on Russia. So they can get, they can not only benefit in all of the other ways that you just described, but they can also get wicked rich in the middle of this and be rewarded for helping Iran kill Americans. I mean, we went through a long convulsion as a country. Over this president’s bizarre love affair with Vladimir Putin. And much of that hinged on the question of whether you could technically say that Trump was Putin’s employee. But whether or not he’s on the payroll, he is certainly employee of the month.

 

Alex Wagner: I think there’s a gilded sign. It’s the Hall of Heroes, Kremlin style.

 

Rachel Maddow: He put up a picture of Putin in the White House.

 

Alex Wagner: Cool. Right next to the auto pen picture of Joe Biden.

 

Rachel Maddow: Oh, God.

 

Alex Wagner: What the fuck? Okay. I do want to ask you, as we turn to, I don’t want to say winners, because I don’t think anybody really wins in this, but the opposition and the resistance to this, obviously the Democratic Party and people interested in, I dunno, having a functioning democracy that doesn’t. Extrajudicially kill people and commit war crimes. Democrats. Do you think Democrats, in the way that they talk about this, have learned that you can be both pro-democracy and anti-regime change? Like, did we learn any lessons from the Iraq War? That just by saying, I don’t want this war in Iran, it doesn’t mean you are anti-American.

 

Rachel Maddow: I don’t think the Democrats have to like innovate on their messaging here. I think the public gets it. I mean, you look at the public opinion polling on the war and the public, it’s not like the public is against this war because they liked the first Ayatollah and they don’t want him replaced by the younger Ayatollah. I mean what’s so far the sum total like beneficial effect of this war is that we’ve taken a few decades off the Ayatollah and traded them in for a younger, more virile model. Great! I mean, the old guy was 86, finished him, got his son in there, he’s in his 50s, great.

 

Alex Wagner: Hey, don’t you tell our president that 86 is old.

 

Rachel Maddow: [laughs] Seriously. But I mean the public understands instinctively that this is a really, really dumb war to have started, let alone to have carried it out the way they have. And that there’s nothing. In those numbers that is infected by some sort of sympathy for the Iranian regime, right? Maybe they would have, Democrats would have to get more innovative or more careful in their language and their messaging around this thing, if Trump had in fact done anything to assist the Iranian people in their opposition. But he hasn’t even turned the internet back on. I mean, he’s done nothing to help in any meaningful way. The Iranian people except suggest that they should, you know, rise up and be massacred by the besieged militia, right? That’s it. And so if Trump was waging this for a more noble cause, I think Democrats would have to really, you, know, thread the needle in terms of what they say. But in this case, you can just gesture meaningfully at what he’s doing and people know how wrong and how bad it is.

 

Alex Wagner: It’s not a heavy lift.

 

Rachel Maddow: I don’t think so. I mean, what do you think?

 

Alex Wagner: I have been asked a number of times, like, is there a split inside the Democratic Party? Do people feel like they need to, you know, offer a preamble of, I was no fan of Khomeini One but it’s, but Khomeini Two is in there. So it’s like, to your point, I don’t think the, I do think the American public understands what’s happening here, despite whatever Pete Hegseth and Marco Rubio and Donald Trump say about it. It’s a fucking catastrophe. And if they don’t understand the sort of foreign policy of it, they certainly understand the fact that gas prices are going up and that goods across the board are going up and that he’s made a mess of the American economy. And there’s going to be fallout from all of that.

 

Rachel Maddow: And there may be a way for Democrats, sophisticated Democrats, to make an argument for the U.S. Government actually doing something to help the Iranian people know. Like, first of all, maybe have Kari Lake not running The Voice of America, and maybe reinstate our global communications service that does Persian language stuff. Like, maybe reinstate our support for democratic opposition efforts in the Middle East, including countries like that. Maybe support opposition leaders. Maybe. You know, I mean, you could, as a Democrat, I think, make a State Department case in terms of what we ought to be doing to meaningfully help the Iranian people take control of their own destiny and position themselves better with regard to this regime. But Trump is not only not moving the regime he’s just I think worsening the plight of the Iranian people by not assisting them, by promising them that he would assist them and then not doing it. And by now, bombing the hell out of residential buildings in Tehran. You know, I mean, what’s the plan here? What are you doing?

 

Alex Wagner: That’s a good case for staffing up the Pentagon’s harm reduction effort once the Democrats in office. Not saying, just saying.

 

Rachel Maddow: Or having a national security council. Who’s the national security advisor?

 

Alex Wagner: Marco Rubio. He’s the Viceroy of Venezuela as well.

 

Rachel Maddow: And the Viceroy of Venezuela is about to become the President of Cuba.

 

Alex Wagner: Perfect.

 

Rachel Maddow: And you know National Security Council is supposed to be like an integrative body right in terms of all the deconflicting between different national security entities and interests within the US government. Like they fired everybody and said Marco Rubio was in charge just as an F-U, right just as a one-finger salute to the very idea that this president would ever need advice or to be able to tap expertise of any kind. Yeah, maybe it was—

 

Alex Wagner: They had a big Navy, Rachel,  no one could have known.

 

Rachel Maddow: Maybe it would have been a good idea to keep that stuff, I don’t know.

 

Alex Wagner: Maybe an advisor could have told you that.

 

Rachel Maddow: Maybe they shouldn’t have fired all the counterintelligence Iran experts in the FBI the week before we started bombing Iran.

 

Alex Wagner: Kash Patel, as you pointed out on your show, was very busy drinking beer with the U.S. Men’s hockey team. He couldn’t be focused on terrorism. What do you want out of your FBI director, Rachel?

 

Rachel Maddow: That’s a good point. I am I am being unreasonable.

 

Alex Wagner: [AD BREAK]

 

Alex Wagner: I just want to point out some behaviors that have happened from the people who are tasked with helping the president run the government, not that he needs anybody’s help. Energy Secretary New York Times reports Chris Wright caused market commotion on Tuesday when he posted on social media that the Navy had successfully escorted an oil tanker through the Strait of Hormuz. His post drove up stocks and reassured oil markets. Then when he deleted the post after administration officials said, no escorts have actually taking place. Markets were once again thrust into turmoil. With energy secretaries like these, Rachel, who needs energy secretaries?

 

Rachel Maddow: Who told Chris Wright, like, where did he see it? Did he see on Twitter?

 

Alex Wagner: Must have been.

 

Rachel Maddow: Did he it on Twitter, did he it see it on TikTok?

 

Alex Wagner: Truth?

 

Alex Wagner: Did somebody Signal group chat him? And was Pete Hegseth’s wife and lawyer on the chat? Is there an alternate reality inside the Trump administration in which the Navy—

 

Alex Wagner: Yes.

 

Rachel Maddow: Did escort ships through—

 

Alex Wagner: We’re getting somewhere. We’re getting somewhere. [both speaking] It’s a small Iranian Navy and a large American Navy that’s escorting ships through the Strait of Hormuz.

 

Rachel Maddow: It’s like they Grand Theft Autoed it, right? And they like, they, somebody acted it out in a video game and used their phone to take a video of the video game happening and then sent it to Wright, sent it Secretary Wright and was like, LOL, right. And then he was like oh, cool, it’s done. I don’t need to check this with anybody. I don’t need, I’m not in a position of responsibility. I’m just gonna put this out, first I’m gonna put a few bets on Polymarket.

 

Alex Wagner: Yeah, totally.

 

Rachel Maddow: In terms of what’s about to happen in the next fifteen minutes to oil prices.

 

Alex Wagner: And then there is so much cabinet betting on Polymarket right now.

 

Rachel Maddow: Yeah.

 

Alex Wagner: Okay. Another, another section of the cabinet worthy of just a few comments, Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, who are apparently Rachel, and just to remind everybody, because we often forget the two real estate, I don’t want to say tycoons, two real-estate guys are basically running American foreign policy around the globe, right? Trump says they don’t have too much. They actually have capacity for more, to be honest with you. Reminder, they were tasked with negotiating a nuclear deal with Iran, which obviously didn’t come to fruition, at the same time as they were brokering an end to the war in Ukraine, which is now in its fifth year. And they still play these central roles in negotiating a very fragile peace process in Gaza.

 

Rachel Maddow: Well, to be clear, the way they are negotiating, the way Jared and Steve are negotiating an end to the Ukraine-Russia war is that just every few weeks, Steve just goes to the Kremlin and sits on Putin’s lap. [laughter] Like they just, like we don’t even find out that he’s going and then there’s like another picture of them like touching.

 

Alex Wagner: Slow circle. Slow back circles. Maybe a little light scratching on the back. Harder. Up to the left, Vlad. To the left.

 

Rachel Maddow: So it’s not like that one takes a lot of time. It’s just the time in the air to go see Uncle Vlad. And that’s it.

 

Alex Wagner: Well, and I can, the Trump, you know, Club Trump, Gaza, Club Trump, Tehran, these are going to be incredible resorts when they’re done with it. Just you wait, Rachel. We’re the big winners then.

 

Rachel Maddow: Do you remember when Trump won and Jared left the White House and then he got two billion dollars from Saudi Arabia?

 

Alex Wagner: Oh, I sure do.

 

Rachel Maddow: And remember the explanation for why that was okay is because Jared was never, yes, yes, yes. It looks like a bribe.

 

Alex Wagner: Yeah, and also his investments are totally fucked and nobody actually wants to spend this money on what he thinks we should.

 

Rachel Maddow: And the like due diligence committee for the Saudi Sovereign Wealth Fund was like, oh no, no, we can’t do this, this is insane.

 

Alex Wagner: It’s a terrible idea.

 

Rachel Maddow: And they overruled their own due diligence folks to be able to say, no no no, we’re gonna give this money to Jared. And it’s definitely not a bribe that we are paying him for what he’s done in the first term. Not at all, it’s because he’s such an investment genius. And a lot of people said like, well, if Trump’s gonna stay in politics, the him having a son-in-law who’s completely bought and paid for by Saudi Arabia. That seems bad in terms of any sort of future role any Trump family role in governing and the role was the explanation was don’t worry, even if Trump comes back in politics Jared never will Jared is definitely done with politics he and Ivanka they they they have a their social life has really suffered and they’re not gonna do this again. So the fact that he’s got literally I mean a billion dollars is a lot of money. He’s got like two billion dollars from the Saudis, plus other Gulf states have stuffed more money into his pockets. And now he effectively is the Secretary of State. I mean, he’s running US foreign policy in Russia, Ukraine, Gaza, Israel, Venezuela.

 

Alex Wagner: Iran. I’m going to throw it in there. Keep it in the case.

 

Rachel Maddow: And with, I mean, you know, we have our own interests vis-a-vis Iran, I guess, but you know who really has interests vis a vis Iran?

 

Alex Wagner: Don’t tell me. The Saudis?

 

Rachel Maddow: The millennium like millennium long rivals of the—

 

Alex Wagner: Millennial rivals, I think, is how they term it. The Sunnis and the Shias, they term…

 

Rachel Maddow: It’s very heated. Yes. I mean, if Saudi Arabia wants one thing in the world, it’s to make sure that Iran is, you know, weak and divided and battered. And they bought Jared. And now the United States military has been rented out to them free of charge to accomplish that goal when we have no interest approaching that potency whatsoever.

 

Alex Wagner: But don’t believe any of the Washington Post reporting on it at all, for sure. It’s just a coincidence, Rachel.

 

Rachel Maddow: It is, that’s right.

 

Alex Wagner: This administration is filled with insane coincidence and synchronicity.

 

Rachel Maddow: Jared is just the world’s most talented man, which is why he—

 

Alex Wagner: Extraordinary. He landed a Trump. What’s better than that? Okay. This is the last one. This is for everybody who we started out on like, you know, we’ve covered some heavy topics but we could not end this podcast without I think going to the most riveting portrait of a cabinet Well cabinet member since Doris Kearns Goodwin’s team of rivals and that is the SNL parody of Peter Hegseth our Secretary of Defense. Let’s just take a listen to this one—

 

[clip from SNL]: As you may have seen from our epic pentagram meme drops, we’re treating Iran like the breathalyzer in my car and blowing it the hell up. [laughter] The good news is, our operation couldn’t be going better and everyone loves it. [laughter] To quote my personal hero, Papa Roach, cut iron into pieces. [laughter] Make it a Trump resort.

 

Alex Wagner: It is funny, even though it’s true. Here’s my thing. I talked to Adam Schiff earlier for this podcast and he said, we are going to use every lever we can to try and have public committee hearings about this war. It’s shameful and wrong that the American public cannot hear for themselves from the horse’s mouth, from these cabinet secretaries, why the fuck we are doing this. He didn’t use the word fuck. I’m just using it for emphasis. Rachel, if Pete Hegseth goes to the Hill and actually has to face real questioning, does he end up working for the shield of the Americas like Kristi Noem?

 

Rachel Maddow: Can he get through a hearing. Yeah, I mean, I will say, first of all, Colin Jost’s suit for his parody of Pete Hegseth fits better than Pete Hegseth’s suit.

 

Alex Wagner: True, true, true.

 

Rachel Maddow: But the one thing that he does nail, which is, like, they’ve just Xeroxed it, it’s just exactly right, is the fact that Hegseth carries a handkerchief that is an American flag. What do you use a handkerchief for? What are handkerchief for? [laughter] There’s a reason that you’re not supposed to use the actual American flag, like I was putting.

 

It’s not supposed to touch the ground. But specifically, you’re supposed to not use it as something with which you, you know, that you blow your nose into. But that’s… The kind of, I mean, that’s the kind of performative American-ness and depth of thought that these guys are putting into it. You know, here’s what I want to know about Kristi Noem. Does the U.S. Coast Guard Commandant get the house back? Because remember, she took the Coast Guard commandant’s house and does the Special Envoy to the Shield of the Americas also get dibs on the Coast Guards Commandant’s house? We just found out that Pam Bondi has moved into military housing as well. Um, I don’t know if that means that she’s got claims on the Coast Guard Commandant’s house now that Kristi Noem maybe has been moved out of it. I don’t know.

 

Alex Wagner: Real housewives of the Coast Guard Commandant’s house.

 

Rachel Maddow: Pete Hegseth is also living in military housing. These guys have, I mean, this shows you the respect they have for the military, that they’re just like looting it for themselves. Listen, I don’t know how long this Iran conflagration is going to burn. I don’t know how Long Trump is going to consider his, quote, excursion to be a live thing. The consequences of what he’s done. Um… Have changed the world I think uh… Uh… Indelibly.

 

Alex Wagner: Yeah.

 

Rachel Maddow: How much of it is going to look like something he needs to answer for, I think is yet to be determined. And to the extent that he’s gonna wanna blame somebody, Pete is gonna be Pete, like I know him. Mr. Hegseth is going be the obvious guy to blame. I do think there’s a risk though. I mean, I think that, I mean talk about alcohol content, I mean I think it’s possible he’s flammable, like if you, if you push them too hard with too much friction,

 

Alex Wagner: The hair product alone is.

 

Rachel Maddow: He has magnificent hair, you have to admit.

 

Alex Wagner: I do, but you have magnificent hair. [laughter] Thank you for doing this. You are the greatest.

 

Rachel Maddow: Great to see you, my dear. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

 

Alex Wagner: Thank you. That’s our show for this week. Do not 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 like this week’s rapid response video with MS Now’s Stephanie Ruhle. It’s MS Now week.

 

[clip of Stephanie Ruhle]: Where the hell is Congress, OK? AI is going to change every element of the way we work, live, and operate. And Congress has been absolutely absent at creating any regulation. In fact, the only bill that is in front of Congress right now is the one the president’s pushing. And that bill says states are not allowed to regulate. So it’s even less regulation.

 

Alex Wagner: Last but not least, if you like this show and you want to get more involved in defending democracy, Vote Save America is launching a new campaign to take back the House, Project 218. Flipping the House shuts down Trump’s agenda in Congress. It gives Democrats subpoena power to investigate Trump’s overwhelming corruption and abuses of power. It allows us to never think about Mike Johnson as Speaker of the House again. Good, good, and all caps good. Small actions, sharing information, talking to people you know, and donating to places that aren’t bullshit can decide the outcome of this election. So sign up at votesaveamerica.com today. And if you can, get five of your buddies to sign up too. That is Project 218 at votesafeamerica.com. Hope to see you there. [music plays] 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.