Trump's Tehran nightmare: Are Republicans done with his Iran war? | The News Agents

[00:00:00]This is where the Iranians are delivering a masterclass in playing Donald Trump.

[00:00:06]>> It sometimes feel that there is no situation so bad where a few well-chosen words by Pete Hegth can't make infinitely [music] worse. Even though he tried to project confidence, you could see there was a man squirming in his chair trying to explain what was very obvious to senators on both sides is clearly some kind of stalemate trending [music] toward Quagmire.

[00:00:30]>> The News Agents USA podcast is brought to you by HSBC private bank, opening up a world of opportunity.

[00:00:40]>> This is a global production. You're asking for literally $1.5 trillion for a war that President Trump said he already won. You're asking for $1.5 trillion, unlimited money for bombs, but insufficient money in the American for the American people for their health care, their food, their housing. The words you have used in the past don't add up. About Iran specifically, you said that we had obliterated quote unquote Iran's ability to create nuclear weapons. The president made the same cla claim. Yet eight months later in February of 2026, the president launched an act of war claiming Iran was within two weeks of having a weapon. So when you say two very different things, the American people don't know who to believe or what to believe. They just know they can't afford their health care, they can't afford their food, they can't afford housing, and our farmers are continuing to suffer. So which is true? Was it obliterated or wasn't it?

[00:01:37]What what's the status? The nuclear sites under Midnight Hammer were obliterated. But Iranians foolishly continued to attempt to pursue nuclear capabilities, which is why we destroyed their defense industrial base and so many of the other capabilities to ensure they can't get to a nuclear weapon. See, we're staying laser focused on the objective and you're trying to make campaign commercials.

[00:01:57]>> It's sometimes feel that there is no situation so bad where a few well-chosen words by Pete Hegth can't make infinitely worse. The situation in Iran is that the death toll is rising. The bill is spiraling. The cost of fuel at the pumps is going up again. And ways out of this are narrowing vanishingly.

[00:02:19]Is this chaotic war getting even worse for the administration. Welcome to the News Agents USA.

[00:02:28]>> The News Agents USA with Emily Mas and John Soapal.

[00:02:34]It's John and there is no Emily today.

[00:02:37]So, uh, Miles Taylor, who was on the show last week, is acting well, not exactly as her body double, but who will be joining us throughout this episode to talk about the situation in Iran and also to talk about what's happening in the Democratic party where its journey to the left is not without its bumps in the road and its own little difficulties that could cost the Democrats at the midterm elections in November. But we've got to start with the war in Iran which supposedly was over. There was a memorandum of understanding. There was an agreement. There was going to be framework talks. They were going to conclude a peace deal which would wrap in Iran's nuclear program. Except for the fact that the last 10 11 nights there has been bombing by America and Iran has been firing missiles that have killed and injured a number of Americans. So, Donald Trump will have to make the grim journey to the Dova Air Force Base where the bodies of American service men and women are repatriated.

[00:03:38]The cost of this is ballooning. Pete Hgse admitted to a bill of $37.6 billion.

[00:03:47]Everyone thinks that is a massive underestimate of what the true cost of this is. And yet, what is their positive to show? The straight of Hormuz is still shut. Iran is still able to fire. The ways out of this, the offramp, as Americans like to say, just seems to be disappearing before our eyes. And of course, the midterm elections now are only three or four months away. And sure, what we heard in the introduction there was a Democrat senator, Kirsten Gillibbrand from New York, having a go at Pete Hgsith, but Republicans as well are furious and desperate about the situation. Furious that the administration has got into this mess.

[00:04:31]Desperate because they see the midterms looming and seeing disaster ahead of them. This is Republican Senator John Kennedy from Louisiana. I'm not trying to get you in trouble. I know your advice to the president is uh is is private, but this is serious as four heart attacks and a stroke.

[00:04:55]Now, what happens if we come home and end the blockade to the world?

[00:05:03]Sir, Iran uh has the potential to continue to be a threat and we're we will need to prepare military strike. I >> sir, that's a hypothetical question and I don't know the answer to that.

[00:05:17]>> Oh, it's not hypothetical. You come we come home. It's not going to be hypothetical. You know that, General, and I do too. And and I I appreciate your discretion, but we're down to it.

[00:05:31]We need some hard answers and some straight talk.

[00:05:35]What'll happen, Pete?

[00:05:38]>> Senator, I would I would agree with the chairman, but the likely outcome is they would try to impose their will on the on the waterways in ways that uh that the world would not like.

[00:05:47]>> Call it a toll, call it a fee, call it an exchange, call it control. They would do something that they would try to hold to that issue. Yes, sir. Would they would they try to uh to to redevelopment again of a nuclear warhead?

[00:06:02]Um part of the reason President Trump had to have the courage to do what he did after Midnight Hammer is that they didn't give up their ambitions even though their nuclear sites had been obliterated. So this is a regime hellbent on nuclear ambitions and President Trump will go after.

[00:06:16]>> We need straight answers, >> guys. We need straight answers. It was uh John Kennedy asking the questions to uh Dan Kaine, the chairman of the joint chiefs, the most senior military officer in the United States first of all, and then of course to uh the Pentagon Secretary uh Pete Hexith or the Secretary of War as he likes to badge himself. And I I think underlines the frustration that is felt across Democratic Party and Republican party.

[00:06:44]But of course, the Republican party with control of the Senate and the House have far more to lose from this than the Democrats who eye a political opportunity here. Well, let's bring in Miles Taylor, uh, former uh, chief of staff to the Homeland Secretary in Trump's first administration, writer and friend of the News Agents USA. Miles, good to see you. How are you?

[00:07:06]>> Great to be with you, my friend. I'm good. It's another day in Trump's Washington over here, which means another day of news. Yeah, always, always. But it doesn't look like the news is exactly the stuff that he would want right now because the frustration and what's happening in Iran just seems to be spinning out of control.

[00:07:26]>> It is. And look, I think there is a sense even among Trump's most fervent defenders that his team is in a very difficult spot when they are testifying on Capitol Hill. In fact, you can you can feel the nervousness of cabinet members when they go up and testify. And nowhere is that more pronounced than with his national security officials.

[00:07:48]And we saw this with Hegsth's testimony.

[00:07:51]You could see the glistening on his face as he was testifying. And even though he tried to project confidence, you could see there was a man squirming in his chair trying to explain what was very obvious to senators on both sides is clearly some kind of stalemate trending toward quagmire.

[00:08:09]>> Yeah. And in a quagmire like that, it's hard to see how you emerge either with a a diplomatic solution because, you know, it's now, I don't know what, day 11, day 12 of successive nights of bombing and no sign that the Iranians are, you know, any closer to surrendering or giving up.

[00:08:28]Um, and no apparent way out of this. And yet you've got a political calendar that is ticking down towards the first Tuesday in November.

[00:08:37]>> Yeah, that's right. And I think that that was very evident in both what you heard in the defense secretar's testimony and what you didn't hear. You know, here here's the rule of thumb in any testimony before Congress during a Trump administration. And I say this as someone who had to prepare multiple cabinet members to go testify before Congress during the first Trump administration. And the rule of thumb is your audience is not the US senators.

[00:09:06]Your audience is not the American people. There is an audience of one.

[00:09:11]Because Donald Trump, he watches these hearings. And if he can't watch them live, he asks for the recordings because he wants to see what his cabinet members say, not because he's keenly interested in the policy nuances they discuss. He wants to know, are they being loyal? And I can't tell you how many times, John, I was on the receiving end of phone calls where Donald Trump heard about something someone said at a hearing and I thought, "Oh my goodness, he's actually paying attention to these hearings." Well, he is paying attention to those hearings cuz he wants to make sure his foot soldiers stay in line and don't say things he doesn't want them to say. And that's why you saw in the hearings uh you know, Hexth bending over backwards to not seem at odds with the president.

[00:09:54]But that's very difficult because you have a president who has repeat repeatedly declared victory in this conflict and it's clear that there isn't victory and there was this exchange John that stood out to me between US Senator John Assaf and Pete Hegseath that showed that dissonance that showed the delta between the things the administration claims and the reality and even Hgsithth wasn't willing to sign up for comments he himself made merely months ago. Take a look.

[00:10:25]>> On day 14 of this conflict, Mr. Secretary, day 14, nearly 5 months ago, you stated that Iran's military had been quote destroyed and quote made combat ineffective. That was on day 14 of the war. Was that an accurate statement?

[00:10:41]>> Um, they didn't have a navy any longer.

[00:10:43]It was completely sunk. Uh, their missiles were buried underneath a lot of their underground facilities and their defense industrial base has been almost completely destroyed. So as far as a a military assessment of Iran's capabilities, it doesn't didn't mean by any stretch of the imagination, absolute zero. But there on day 14 of this conflict, in the second week of the conflict, you stated that Iran's military had been quote destroyed and quote made combat ineffective. Was that an accurate statement?

[00:11:13]>> Yes or no?

[00:11:14]>> Iran's ability to challenge the United States of America at the level at which we're capable of.

[00:11:19]>> That's not what I asked you, Mr. Secretary. said on day 14, Iran's military had been quote destroyed and quote made combat ineffective. Yes or no? Was that an accurate statement?

[00:11:32]>> What the American military has the Iranian military is a historic military ineffective in that context?

[00:11:38]>> Yeah, he didn't really want to answer that question under oath because he knew what he would have to say. I think that's such a great clip to play and I think it shows the dilemma of a cabinet minister I in in Trump's administration.

[00:11:51]But Miles, you also wrote something I thought really interesting this week about how foreign leaders have to play him and how the Iranians are kind of delivering a masterclass in all of this.

[00:12:02]>> Yeah, I wrote this piece in the eye paper. Initially, I was going to talk about how we have seen foreign governments in a second Trump administration really master the art of praising Donald Trump to manipulate him.

[00:12:17]And this is something that we worried a great deal about in his first term inside his administration. We would see foreign leaders come in, they will have practiced their compliments to try to get concessions from the president and then walk out of the Oval Office having gotten those concessions. And there was an enormous degree of frustration among his team on his ability to be played by foreign leaders. But there were two sides to that coin. One side was praise.

[00:12:39]The other side was provocation. Because just as easily as Donald Trump could be swayed by flattery, he could also be swayed by taunts and schoolyard taunts.

[00:12:48]And this is where the Iranians are delivering a masterclass in playing Donald Trump. is, you know, at the beginning of this war, some folks might have said, "Why are the Iranians doing this weird thing where they're producing AI generated videos of Legos mocking Donald Trump? Why are they producing memes? Why do they seem like, well, for lack of a better term, MAGA frat bros on the internet doing all this posting?"

[00:13:14]Well, the Iranians learned that these are the types of taunts that get Donald Trump's attention. Why does that matter?

[00:13:22]Because the recent taunts from Iran, not just the Lego videos, but the murals in Thrron of Donald Trump in a casket of his family members in the crosshairs are the types of things designed to keep him in the conflict to bog the United States down by taunting the president in continuing a conflict that any other rational observer would say the Iranians should have ended. They should have taken this multihundred billions of dollars deal that the administration put on the table. Why wouldn't they? Well, a more seasoned geopolitical observer would say because they have other patrons, the Chinese, the Russians, nation states that would like to see the United States continue to be bogged down in this conflict and the Iranians know that they have a button to push for that and it is taunting Donald Trump and by all accounts it seems to be working.

[00:14:09]>> The other thing that I've always thought about listening to Donald Trump is when he expressly states, "I'm not concerned about this." you know, he is absolutely concerned about this. You know, black is white and white is black and that is the world in which Donald Trump lives. And if he's saying, I've absolutely kind of won here. There's nothing to see here.

[00:14:28]You know, he's invariably lost. And that's the way it goes. And I thought it was really interesting when he got asked again in the White House about the Iran conflict uh about the timeline, whether he was concerned about the midterms. Of course, the denial came. Have a listen.

[00:14:44]>> They don't seem to be able to do anything about it. If they managed their forest, they wouldn't have the fires.

[00:14:53]>> Do you believe that Iran is trying to impact the midterm elections by threatening the street of four months?

[00:14:58]>> They won't have any impact on me. I'm just going to do the right thing. I don't view it as, gee, we're having an election in a period of time. You know, everyone says, "Oh, I'm doing something before." No, the election I I can't think about that having to do with this.

[00:15:14]I think people are very impressed. I mean, we took over Venezuela. We now have a great relationship with Venezuela.

[00:15:21]>> People are very impressed. He says, John, people are very impressed. Let me add to that category of impressed people. The Republican House Speaker, the top Republican on Capitol Hill who this week said basically, "We need to wrap this up." Doesn't seem very impressed with the war. Doesn't seem very eager to go into the midterm elections with a quagmire wrapped around Republicans necks. And he is not the only one. We have seen Republican after Republican indicate that they want to see the administration bring this into the endgame. And that's why it was so interesting to watch this hearing yesterday because the defense secretary was testifying to ask for billions and billions of additional dollars to continue this war. And there was another interesting moment in that conversation.

[00:16:09]I was I was covering the the hearing live on uh MS Now here in the states and there was this moment this exchange with senators where Pete Hegsth admitted that the Department of Defense in the United States has been doing a lot of work domestically for the Department of Homeland Security. This is of course has been very controversial here. Troop deployments in US cities. uh the defense department to try to help secure the border and and and work on immigration issues. And Hegsth admits that the Defense Department is still basically owed billions of dollars by the Department of Homeland Security for that domestic work. This was a rare opening for the Democrats because it shows that the administration could still pay itself from one department to another and maybe doesn't need to be going to Capitol Hill to ask for billions for the war, right? The Department of Homeland Security owes the Department of Defense money. That's relevant because this may be the type of thing some Republicans and Democrats use to say, you know what, we're not going to give you any more money. you've got other pockets of money inside the government you can use to pay yourself. We're not going to support more for this war. Just the type of excuse they need to say no so they don't have to sign up again for supporting this war before the midterms.

[00:17:29]>> The thing that strikes me now is, you know, talking in the framing of the midterms is that Donald Trump has bad options and he has worse options. The bad options are that you almost cut and run. You declare a victory, but everyone will know it's not a victory. You leave the Iranians in control of the Strait of Hormuz, which they weren't beforehand, and a war of choice has made something a whole lot worse. That would seem to be pretty terrible. The worst option is you really go in with an intent to win this war against the Iranians, which would take massive troop commitments and an awful lot more visits to Dover Air Force Base for the repatriation of American servicemen and women and would which would seem to me come the midterms even worse if gas prices are still over $4 a gallon as they are today. Well, I would say that there's potentially a third option, John, and this is one that the administration has clearly not pursued, which is to go lean on Iran's patrons.

[00:18:32]This is something that the Obama administration recognized when they hatched their nuclear deal with Iran.

[00:18:37]And full disclosure, I was uh on the Republican side of Capitol Hill at the time and actively opposing Obama's nuclear deal. But what Obama realized was he couldn't just strike a deal with Iran. that the Iranians would rush to the Chinese or the Russians on anything that they needed to defend themselves.

[00:18:57]And so the Obama administration had to bring those powers into the conversation. This is something Donald Trump has been reluctant to do. He doesn't want to ratchet up the pressure on Vladimir Putin. He doesn't want to ratchet up the pressure on Xihinping. He wants better relations with the two of them. As a result, because he's not putting pressure on those two governments, Iran has a lifeline. It's got a lifeline. It's not under withering pressure from its closest patrons. And that closes off an opportunity to end this war. So, if Trump would expand the international circle of negotiations, put pressure on more than just the Iranians, he might find another way to end this war without a massive ground invasion.

[00:19:37]>> I agree with the ICC that Benjamin Netanyahu should be arrested and tried for his crimes. as I do for anyone else charged by the ICC. My administration has reviewed every avenue available under applicable law to determine whether New York City could execute the International Criminal Court's arrest warrant if Benjamin Netanyahu came here.

[00:19:57]It is clear that we do not have the independent legal authority to enforce this warrant. The federal government, however, does and I call on them to join the ICC and execute this warrant. And I want to be equally clear. Benjamin Netanyahu is not welcome in New York City, [music] nor is any other war criminal at large. While we cannot end the genocide on our own, we can decide whether our silence will become another weapon, and we can examine every tool we have to defend the humanity and dignity of all people.

[00:20:27]>> I got to tell you, John, very interesting to see the New York City mayor making that statement. It says two things. One, we're going to talk about this. We're going to talk about the leftward drift of the Democratic party and how Democratic socialists are on the ascent, but it also shows how ambitious these folks feel. You've got this man who was just elected less than a year ago as mayor of New York City talking about a major issue of US foreign policy and arresting a foreign leader that comes into New York. Now, he says he doesn't have the power, but the fact that that's even talked about shows you the rapid ascent of Manny and the Democratic Socialists.

[00:21:08]>> Yeah. I think what's so interesting is that, you know, you go back to the Biden administration and Biden was on friendly terms with Netanyahu. Yeah. Netanyahu was a difficult son of a to deal with, but you know, the Democratic Party was pro- Israel. and you look at the Democratic Party today. And if you ask the question, is the Democratic Party still pro-Israel, I think you'd have to give a very different answer. I think that is one of the manifestations of the way that the party is changing and has changed. And I go back, you know, I remember sort of being out in the States during the 2016 presidential election and we're, you know, of course it's it's, you know, Hillary, it's Trump, but it was also Bernie Sanders. And Bernie Sanders was this kind of sideshow getting huge support. But it was one guy from Vermont who was, you know, a Democratic socialist who was had a very different message when he was running for the Democratic nomination to Hillary Clinton. And you see the Democratic party today, and it's not just Bernie Sanders. Then it became the squad, these various congressmen and women who kind of were a small clutch of of of Democratic socialists or to the left.

[00:22:18]And now you're seeing it across the country, the proliferation of candidates where they are much further to the left than the Democratic party traditionally is. And we saw the limitations of that when they kind of got Graeme Platner to run in Maine and suddenly it all goes to and they're thinking, "Oh no, oh god, we've got someone here who we need to get shot of as fast as possible."

[00:22:41]>> What a difference a decade makes, my friend. Because, you know, after Bernie Sanders loss to Hillary Clinton years ago in the 2016 race, there were centrist Democrats who tried to write the obituary of the socialists within the party and say it's over. The centrists have won. Now, here we are.

[00:23:01]The momentum is, love it or hate it, with a lot of these folks like Manny in the party. I also want to just say Israel is a very interesting bellweather about how this has changed. You wouldn't normally expect it. You wouldn't say, you know, you would say what what is Israel policy have to do with the leftward shift of the Democratic party.

[00:23:21]Well, I'll tell you because about 10 years ago, uh I sat down with Benjamin Netanyahu a number of times in his office in Israel. And what I can tell you is at that point in time when we were fighting ISIS in Syria, when the United States was dependent on its Israeli allies to go after these terrorist groups, you had a Netanyahu who felt supremely confident in his understanding of American politics. He knew how to play Republicans. He knew how to play Democrats. When I would take members of Congress into Netanyahu's office in Israel, he knew more about US politics than they knew. And I don't even say that as an exaggeration. The man knew races. The man knew results. He could quote chapter and verse, leaving those members of Congress walking out speechless. They would say, "Wow, he's a two or divorce." What you see now with Israel so low in approval polls in the United States and especially in the Democratic party is a country that's lost touch with American politics. But it also shows how quickly the scene has changed, how quickly the mamanis in the movement have ascended. There is one other piece to this though, John, which is that Republican pollsters, many of them will tell you privately they don't see this as a threat. They see it as an opportunity. They will say they want more momanis to enter the Democratic party and Democratic politics. They want more mamanis elected because they think they have a line in running against socialism. I I I think that that's such an interesting place to be now to to to discuss this because it feels to me that the Democratic Party is making a very big bet that the kind of views of the people that you get turning up at rallies in New York City or Boston or San Francisco or LA or are representative of the country as a whole. And it's not clear to me that that is the center of political gravity in America. Sure, they're making a lot of noise and they are winning arguments and they are getting people onto tickets, but is that where the center of gravity is in America? Now, I I probably think the Republicans are right to think there is an opportunity here, unless I've kind of completely misjudged America from my time living there.

[00:25:44]>> You've hit it straight on, John. I mean, some people have described this as blue MAGA, the phenomenon as blue MAGA. Go back to 2016. Donald Trump didn't represent the majority of the Republican party. He wasn't the consensus candidate. He represented a minority of the party that was the loudest minority.

[00:26:03]And he used that megaphone one by one to pick off his rivals and to ascend and to build an odd duck coalition to ultimately become the leader of the party and then once he was a top it to remake it in his own image. Now, their policies in many cases are very different, but the reason people will call this blue maga is you're seeing a similar phenomenon. The mom donnies of the Democratic party by and large don't really represent the majority of it in terms of viewpoints, but they are the loudest. They're the most charismatic.

[00:26:34]They're the most energetic. And they're going to use that faction that they have within the Democratic party to grow their strength and to try to reshape the party in their own image. I'll tell you, I was on set at CNN the day after Mam Donni won, and I was on with one of these Republican pollsters, and during commercial break, I asked him, "What is going to be your number one line in the midterms?" And he said, "Over and over again, we are just going to run clips of mom Donnie and we're going to warn warn about communism and socialism. That's it. That's what we're going to do."

[00:27:08]There was another Democrat on set with me who expressed anxiety about this and said, you know, the problem is the M Donnis really aren't the majority of the party. And we had just seen victories in New Jersey and Virginia from two centrist Democratic gubanatorial candidates, Mikey Cheryl and Abigail Spanberger, who that Democrat said those are the people who really represent the majority of Democrats, centrist, pragmatic, and you could see it in the eyes of the Democratic operative on set that they were nervous about the whole party being painted as Mamani because in middle America that would result in GOP victories.

[00:27:45]>> Yeah. Well, Miles, I heard a, you know, a fabulous clip yesterday of uh Steven Miller, who is Donald Trump's right-hand man in the White House, the guy who kind of puts it normally at its most visceral and raw and black and white. Have a listen to this.

[00:28:01]>> The Democrat party has embraced not only socialism, they've embraced communism.

[00:28:07]Straight up, outright fullthroated communism. They are now electing candidates who want to take private industry over, give it to the government, suspend the Constitution, abolish the Senate, abolish borders, abolish prisons, abolish jails, abolish the jury system, abolish our entire way of life. The contrast has never been more clear. There's President Trump, the Republican Party, and American First, or there are the crazy communist lunatics who will steal everything you know and love in this nation. and they will never ever let you have it back.

[00:28:42]>> Oh, he he left out killing the firstborn. [laughter] >> It's a classic understated Steven Miller. In the two and a half years that I worked with Stephen, uh never never knew him to be a softy. Um let me say this, there is a deep irony in Steven Miller's comments. And I I'm going to be watching to see if this comes up in the midterm elections as Democrats rebut this narrative, rebut this label of anti-constitutional communists. And here's the irony. A lot of the things that Steven Miller just ran through in his list could be said of the Trump administration. Let's start with anti-constitutional and abolish the Constitution. Well, it was Steven's own boss who said in his own words he was thinking about suspending parts of the United States Constitution. Steven mentioned abolishing the Senate. It was his own boss, Donald Trump, who said when it came to the Senate's uh constitutional authority to provide advice and consent for members of uh the cabinet that maybe the president didn't need that, that he preferred acting secretaries so he didn't have to go to the Senate, that maybe he could push away the Senate's authority. And then Steven Miller mentioned juries and those types of rights and how the communist Democrats will abolish juries. Well, it was Steven's boss, Donald Trump, and my former boss in a meeting that Steven was in. Maybe we should get rid of the judges. He wanted to, he literally said this, maybe get rid of judges so that in in the courts where he was losing, he wouldn't have to go to court at all.

[00:30:14]Now, I don't know what the president's plan was to get rid of the judges. We walked out of that meeting scratching our heads. But it's very interesting to see the things Steven Miller is trying to paint the Democrats as are things that he and his ad administration have been accused of doing. It's kind of the thing you mentioned at the top of the show, John, where the accusation is often the admission in the Trump administration. They point the finger at something but simultaneously are pointing the finger back at themselves.

[00:30:39]So it was almost the first thing that Andy Bernham did as Britain's new prime minister was to have a conversation with Donald Trump. And looking at Donald Trump's post on Truth Social, actually it looks as though it went pretty well.

[00:30:53]Donald Trump was quite generous in talking about the issues that they covered and you know the points of agreement and the like. Um Miles, you know, you you talked about there were those people who went in to flatter and there were those people who went in to go or provoke the president. Um what would your advice be to Britain's latest I say latest because we seem to have new prime ministers every 5 minutes.

[00:31:18]>> Well, look, my advice would be this. You have the opportunity to exert more influence over the United States than any British prime minister in decades, perhaps since that. Why do I say that?

[00:31:32]Because Donald Trump, for better or worse, is very susceptible to foreign influence. He's very susceptible. And right now, there are issues of enormous consequence on the table that someone who has Donald Trump's ear can shape him on. Now, like I said earlier in the program, this was usually a point of consternation for us inside the Trump administration because often it was foreign adversaries who were coming in manipulating Donald Trump and getting concessions. But America has long seen in its friend, Great Britain, as another fellow lover of the Western world, a defender of freedom, a defender of human rights. And so you can only say that Great Britain influencing the American president is probably or potentially a force for great good. And right now, not just Britain, but the American people in the Western world need the prime minister to exert influence over Donald Trump in a helpful way as a mentor, as a person of conscience and value. Donald Trump doesn't have a whole lot of that in his ear right now. So there is opportunity. But to get to that point, the prime minister does have to have a relationship with Donald Trump to stand up to someone, you are so much more effective if you build that relationship first rather than being seen as a foe from the outset. And I do think the prime minister is already starting to take some steps to get there. These early decisions on uh allowing US uh basing in the UK as part of the Iran conflict are the types of things that are going to generate goodwill with the White House. but importantly will allow the prime minister if he develops that relationship to be tough with Donald Trump. Donald Trump doesn't respect weakness and whether people agree or disagree in the UK in Kier Starmer he immediately saw weakness. He said it. He said he doesn't believe this guy is tough. He treated him like he thought he was weak. If Burnham shows toughness to Donald Trump, he's also going to be able to stand up to Donald Trump and help contain his worst excesses. But again, that's going to start with building a relationship.

[00:33:41]>> Yeah, I it's interesting. I think that one of the issues is going to be that Andy Bernham is very very focused at the moment on what is happening in Britain and isn't going to be as interested in global affairs as Kstama was. Karmama felt that that was his happy place. That was where he was respected by those around the table. He got a listen, you know, he he got a hearing. He had respect from the other foreign leaders, you know, from MRO and from Zalinsky and the like. I'm not sure Andy Bernham will do that much foreign policy. Sure, he's got to do a certain amount. And he'll leave it to his foreign secretary, Ed Milliband, who I kind of I wonder whether you know Ed Milliband and Donald Trump temperamentally, if you kind of looked at the history of both men, you would say they would not have a whole lot in common. In fact, you would even go as far as to say, "Oh my god, there is not a chance those two can get on."

[00:34:32]And so, it'll be interesting to see what Miban does with that relationship when temperamentally and in every other way.

[00:34:39]He is as far away from Donald Trump as I think as it's possible to be.

[00:34:42]>> But you know what, John, that may be an asset. And this is where we come full circle in the program because Zoron Mdani is the example here. You would have said on paper there's no conceivable world in which Donald Trump would welcome Zoron Manni into the White House unless it's to arrest him and put him in the basement. And yet one of the most glowing receptions we've seen an elected politician have in Donald Trump's second term has been Zoron Mandani going to the White House smiling, laughing, shaking hands. Why is that? Because Donald Trump sort of delights in subverting expectations and having a rel people he considers adversaries. If Ed Milliban plays this right, there may be an opportunity for him to actually have a pretty strong relationship with the Trump White House because he has been such a fervent critic. The mistake Milliban would make though is walking back previous comments about Donald Trump. That's an immediate signal to this man who thinks in two-dimensional terms that he's weak. If he walks back his previous comments, Trump will say, "See, I've already made him cave." If Ed Milliban says, "I stand by everything I've said about Donald Trump, he'll generate more respect from Donald Trump. He might be able to be the effective interlocator you would not expect for Andy Bernham."

[00:36:01]>> Ed, I hope you're listening. There you are. Sound advice from Miles. We'll be back next week. We'll see you then.

[00:36:06]Bye-bye.

[00:36:07]>> Bye, friends.

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