Tucker Responds to Mark Levin’s Turn on Trump

[00:00:00]You saw yesterday Mark Levin who's, you know, a long-time Trump hater then became Trump's closest political ally start to attack Trump for wavering on the question of backing Israel.

[00:00:15]The second Trump criticized Bibi Mark Levin attacks Trump.

[00:00:21]Can Trump realistically, do you think fight a a battle, a rhetorical battle against Netanyahu and win given that his support now in the United States politically is only Zionists or the kind of only people who still support Trump?

[00:00:37]>> Let me ask you a question. What's the alternative?

[00:00:44]>> Take this to a really, really crazy place.

[00:00:47]You know, where all of a sudden the war comes home. I mean, there's some attack on the homeland and all of a sudden you have to you know, you go full post-9/11 where the whole country is like you know, mobilized against Iran. I mean, that seems more likely to me, but you know >> But even there, what are you going to do? Let's just assume that there's some incident somewhere that incentivizes us to really crush Iran. How do we do that? You want to understand that we cannot do it with boots on the ground.

[00:01:21]>> Right.

[00:01:22]>> Right. That That's out. Number one.

[00:01:24]Number two, in terms of restarting the air war, been there, tried that, did not work out very well.

[00:01:30]>> Right.

[00:01:30]>> Furthermore, we used up huge amounts of our precious weaponry, right? That's another one of the reasons Trump doesn't want to go back to the air war, right?

[00:01:40]So, what are we going to do? Use nuclear weapons against Iran? I don't think so, right?

[00:01:47]Trump has no option. That That's the point here. This is what I'm saying to you. If you think about the situation he's in he he's been unable to coerce the Iranians and the Iranians are feeling their oats. They're feeling powerful and they're not willing to compromise and they understand that the longer this war goes on, the more leverage they have.

[00:02:11]So, they're tough to coerce.

[00:02:14]And the Israelis [clears throat] Trump just has to do something with them as he's crushed by these international economic considerations.

[00:02:24]And if he doesn't, we're all going to go off a cliff economically. The economic and political consequences are going to be disastrous.

[00:02:33]There's just all sorts of evidence of that.

[00:02:36]And if the Israelis really have an in-your-face attitude towards Trump and they start to bomb Iran, what are the Iranians going to do? They'll shut down the Red Sea. They'll go after the UAE.

[00:02:49]They'll go after Saudi Arabia. They'll play hardball and that'll just make the economic situation even worse.

[00:02:56]So, what what can Trump do? I I think, you know, who knows for sure, but my surmise is looking at this is that Trump has really no choice but to play hardball with Netanyahu in ways that he has never done and in ways that no American president has ever done with an Israeli prime minister.

[00:03:18]>> Trump's devotion to Israel is so slavish that it's just it's just hard to imagine how to picture that. I mean, I I pray for that. I pray for sovereignty. We should have a country whose leaders make decisions based on what's best for America.

[00:03:32]I just can't picture that. I can't picture Trump actually threatening to defund Israel, which is what it would take.

[00:03:38]You'd have to say that. We're not no more money for you if you if you keep hitting Beirut. I mean, what are you doing?

[00:03:46]>> Yeah, he would have to play hardball in ways that you're just saying you find unimaginable and which I find in a certain sense unimaginable as well. But what you want to understand and you understood this before February 28th and you told Trump that he would be remarkably foolish to start a war against Iran. He didn't listen to you, he didn't listen to his advisers, he didn't listen to >> His advisers didn't tell him that.

[00:04:14]>> Okay.

[00:04:15]>> They're cowards, but yeah.

[00:04:16]>> But anyway, he started this war.

[00:04:18]>> He knew, yeah.

[00:04:19]>> And he is in deep deep trouble. As is Bibi Netanyahu by the way, right? He's in deep deep trouble, too. Just like Trump is.

[00:04:29]He's in a no-win situation. If he bucks Trump, he's in real trouble. And if he doesn't buck Trump, he's going to be clobbered inside Israel because his critics, the opposition, is going after him for being a pussycat, for not being willing to say no to Trump.

[00:04:46]Uh so if he doesn't say no to Trump, right? Uh he'll get clobbered.

[00:04:52]>> Who are these Israelis who are like the most flagrant welfare case in world history?

[00:05:00]I mean, way more dependent on our government than any like welfare queen in Detroit has ever been. Like without us, they're done, literally done.

[00:05:11]Uh what world are they living in where they're like don't take that from Trump?

[00:05:15]>> Well, the army >> You don't have a job, son.

[00:05:19]>> Look, the army you can make, just building on what you said is that the Israeli body politic, and here we're talking mainly about the Israeli elites, will understand what you just said, which is they can't survive in a meaningful way without American support.

[00:05:37]And that they are running the risk of losing American support if they don't cooperate with Trump. If they don't cooperate with Trump, they run the risk.

[00:05:49]And the threat of losing American support will be sufficient to convince the Israelis to play ball with Trump.

[00:05:59]So, the argument there is that Trump can play hardball with the Israelis in ways that no other president, including Trump himself, have ever played hardball with the Israelis, and that it'll work because of the logic that you just spun out.

[00:06:13]>> I talked to someone in Israel yesterday who's smart and uh very smart who said there's no sense of that at all. Israel the average Israeli support for the war was over 90% in Israel, it's 93% and the average Israeli thinks that they're running the world.

[00:06:31]That they have total control and that they need nobody. And that if the US pulls a you know, we don't need the US actually, there are too many strings attached when in fact there are no strings attached, but they're they're just so high on their own supply that they don't see at all their vulnerabilities.

[00:06:45]They're really at peak hubris.

[00:06:47]This is what this person told me.

[00:06:49]>> Well, there is some of that for sure and there's good reason for them to think that they own us because they have owned us.

[00:06:56]>> Yes.

[00:06:57]>> Uh but I do think we are at a very special point in history here. I think again, you cannot [clears throat] underestimate it underestimate what a colossal blunder President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu made on February 28th and the chickens are coming home to roost now.

[00:07:17]And I believe that Netanyahu who's had a handful of conversations with Trump fully understands the pressure that Trump is under.

[00:07:26]Right? And I believe other people in the administration are talking to the Israelis and telling them that.

[00:07:34]And it's easy for the opposition to Netanyahu who are on the outside and who would like to run Netanyahu out of office so they can move into his seat >> [laughter] >> to criticize Netanyahu. But I think even with regard to them, they will eventually get the message.

[00:07:52]And if they don't, Trump then has two choices. He can basically cut off aid to Israel and distance ourselves, distance the United States from Israel in ways that was unimaginable, you know, a month ago.

[00:08:08]Or >> we can go off the cliff economically.

[00:08:11]That's the choice here.

[00:08:14]>> But either way, we're going to emerge from this with a run the government of Iran controlling the flow of commodities out of the Persian Gulf.

[00:08:24]>> Yeah.

[00:08:25]I mean >> that's crazy.

[00:08:27]That was not true on February 27th.

[00:08:30]But it's going to be true going forward, period.

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