Trump ‘not fit’ for the job — officials shut him out of Iran military plans over meltdown fears

Added: 2026-05-05

[00:00:00]Also, the president's people have said, "We had no idea they would begin bombing people like the UAE." Well, they sure did. So, there were clearly there were clearly no thoughtout plans here. If we do this, they will do that. They were just in this cowboy drunken cowboy mentality. It was dangerous at the beginning and it's dangerous even more dangerous every day that this goes on.

[00:00:32]Hello and welcome to the Trump Report.

[00:00:33]I'm Maddie Hail. I'm delighted to say I've got an inerson guest today to really talk about everything that's happening right now in the Iran war and a few things happening on the domestic level. Maryanne Williamson, a political activist, author, and former Democratic presidential candidate. Thank you so much for joining the Trump Report.

[00:00:49]>> Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.

[00:00:50]>> I want to go through the latest on the Iran war and get your thoughts. As anyone watching this show, anyone really following knows that this really does develop on the hour. So, we'll try and keep it as timely as we can. So, here is really the latest in the last few days.

[00:01:04]Austral is effectively shut uh with ships being turned away or being fired upon. The US seized an Iranian vessel.

[00:01:12]Iran called that armed piracy and a stupid blockade. Iran has today in the last few hours threatened retaliation, calling the US seizure of the cargo ship aggressive, saying Washington is not serious about peace talks. while regret uh rejecting this new round of negotiations that are meant to take place today and tomorrow. So this ris the strait reopened and then it shut uh in the space of a few hours just showing how fragile this situation is. 20% of the global oil supply is now at risk and has been. The ceasefire is close to being collapsed. It's meant to finish in the next day or so. Both sides have accused each other of violating it.

[00:01:47]Talks are stuck. Donald Trump has been saying that they're very good while Iran has said that there is a big distance. I mean, doesn't it feel to you like this is winding down anytime soon?

[00:01:56]>> No, of course it doesn't feel like it's winding down anytime soon. And you know, you're in trouble when the government of Iran of all places actually makes more sense in their conversation regarding these uh talks than does the American government. So today, after uh the president has seized that ship, uh Iran is I've I've heard it both ways. I've heard them say, "We're not even going to show up in Islamabad." So, we have JD Vance going over there. Uh Jared Kushner, Wickoff, you know, the real estate guys, real estate guys showing up for these talks and now uh Iran saying that they're probably not going to be there.

[00:02:34]>> Well, let's get into really what they want out of these talks because yes, as you mentioned, we at this present stage don't know if they're actually going to go ahead. So, JD Vance is uh I think he's in Pakistan right now. Islamabad uh C Witoff Jared Kusher have you said they're there to broker a cease a deal before the ceasefire runs out which is on Wednesday. So here's what they want.

[00:02:56]So the United States still wants Iran to stop nuclear activity longterm and reopen the street of Hamoose. Iran wants sanctions lifted and they want fewer restrictions on their nuclear program, especially the right to be able to enrich uranium. Uh Trump is pushing talks while also threatening these strikes and Iran says the US US's demands are unrealistic. Uh if tomorrow results in neither side agreeing on these core demands or even Iran showing up, uh does the United States find themselves stuck in a war that they clearly thought would be over with the assassination of former Supreme Leader Ali Ham?

[00:03:32]>> Well, this is a pattern. Uh the United States has this delusional perspective.

[00:03:37]By the way, when I say the United States, I do not mean the American people. We're not stupid. We're as decent and as as smart as any other people, but the US government has propagated for decades now. This delusion about the power of our military. This idea that we can just go in there and make it happen. This did not work in Vietnam. It did not work in any meaningful way in Iraq, and it certainly didn't work in Afghanistan.

[00:04:01]So, what we did so far in Iran is the same thing that we did in Iraq. We go in immediately with a shock and awe. Shock and awe in Baghdad. Here in Iran, we kill Kmeni that first day. Yay. Yay.

[00:04:12]We're so good. We're It's like a Rambo movie. And then the real stuff begins.

[00:04:18]And now Iran has proven that it can withstand these military assaults. Now, nobody, no thinking person, I believe, certainly no one thinking person in the United States thinks it's in any way a good idea. In fact, it's a very bad idea for Iran to have a nuclear bomb.

[00:04:33]However, military intelligence has told every president for decades that are just going in there bombing with a bombing campaign is not going to remove that regime. The only way you could do it with boots on the ground. This is why no president has been willing to do it before this one. And as you know, everybody complained about Obama's nuclear deal, but right now it looks like a stroke of genius. These people have proven over the last several weeks, haven't they, that they can withstand a lot from the United States. So, right now, Kushner, Wickoff, um, Vant on behalf of Trump going in there and making these demands, uh, the entire world is is is looking at us and saying, on what basis do you think that you have that upper hand in these negotiations?

[00:05:20]So, yeah, we we don't want them to enrich their uranium. We want them to turn the uranium over. Obviously, that would be a perfect world, but they have already proven that that's not um going to happen right now. And uh so we are in that quagmire situation. Also, politically uh the president knows that this war is not popular. His own base uh so many of them, I don't know how they could have thought that, but people saw him as the peace president who was going to keep us out of forever wars. Uh politically, it's a very bad idea.

[00:05:53]morally it's a terrible idea um to actually u you know prosecute the kind of war that it would take to even begin to have that result. I do want to say this however >> to me what I find the most difficult to take is the position of the Iranian people.

[00:06:16]Most certainly in the United States most of the coverage about this is about the oil is about the straight of hormuz is about and I'm not minimizing what that means you know 23% of the world's oil supply there are people who are hungry already because of this I'm I'm not in any way minimizing the importance of the uh economic uh uh consequences of this internationally however what's most important here to me is the horrifying horrifying position that the Iranian people find themselves in. Let's not forget President Trump said, "Take to the streets. Help is on the way." He said that, >> you know, he to him, this is like a reality TV show. This is not a reality TV show for the people of Iran. There's no break for lunch here. People have lost their lives because they believed him. And they said early in in the prosecution of the war, US officials said what US officials have known for decades, which is that regime change just with military power, the way they're using it now, is not achievable.

[00:07:22]Which means even though the president likes to say, "Oh, we got rid of the Kamini." We got we we did. But his son, who was there now, had his mother killed in that? No, I don't think his mother was killed, but his wife was killed. One of his sons was killed. And of course his father was killed. They are meaner now. They are meaner. And what is already happening in terms of these public executions of these young, creative, beautiful people in Iran, that to me is the major heartbreak and the humanitarian concern that we should all be discussing.

[00:07:52]>> I wonder if you think that Trump effectively lied to the Iranian people originally when he stated these objectives, saying that regime change, uh, you know, a prosperous Iran was his goal. And now we hardly even hear about that. The only thing we hear about regime change is the Trump administration claiming that it's effectively a regime change now because it's just a different set of dictators.

[00:08:14]>> Of course it is. Of course it is. And unfortunately many Iranian people and I understand it the desperation for some level of hope. But people in the United States were already very clear by that time that our president is a pathological liar. And there's no reason pretty much to believe anything he says.

[00:08:31]He will say on any given day what he feels will give him the shortterm win.

[00:08:37]Not even a short-term win for the United States, a short-term win for him, for his cronies, and for his family.

[00:08:43]>> Let's get into some of the rhetoric from Donald Trump in the last few days. So Trump, he was reacting on the weekend to Iran firing bullets in the street of Hermoose. He said that wasn't nice, was it? At the same time as declaring that his US delegates are on the way to Islamabad as these, you know, talks are meant to be kicking off today and tomorrow. So he said, "We're offering a very fair and reasonable deal, and I hope that they take it because if they don't, the US is going to knock out every single power plant, every single bridge in Iran. No more Mr. Nice Guy.

[00:09:10]They'll come down fast. They'll come down easy. And if they don't take the deal, will be my honor to do what has to be done, which should have been done to Iran by other presidents for the last 47 years." He then told Fox News correspondent Trey Yinst, he said, "If Iran does not sign this deal, the whole country is going to be blown up." The president went on to say that we are preparing to hit them harder than any country has ever been hit before but because you cannot let them have a nuclear weapon. I mean that is around the seventh or eighth major threat Trump has made against Iran. I mean what is your reaction to this tactic that he uses where he goes after Iran in such a big way. I mean he should probably specifically say the IRGC but he's saying I'm going to blow up this entire country. He coped so much backlash the other week for saying he was going to blow up an entire civilization. He hasn't learned from that. He said it yet again.

[00:09:57]>> The president is very big on, as I said before, it's like he treats it like it's a TV show. You're fired. He makes these threats. I remember a week or so ago when he said by 8:00 p.m. tonight. And we were all wondering is it what's going to happen at 8:00 p.m. tonight? And then he said, "Oh, a ceasefire." So, I think we're living in a moment, not only with how the president treats Iran, but how the president pretty much acts around anything and also other players here.

[00:10:24]Literally anything could happen with these comments. We're going to blow up Iran.

[00:10:28]>> Would you We don't know if these threats are real because of course he backs out of quite a number of them, but they have struck Iran multiple times and started a war.

[00:10:40]If Donald Trump gives the go-ahad and says the defense secretary go in, do you think that US troops, Marines, Navy need to say, "No, we're not doing it."

[00:10:53]>> Well, it's interesting because already there's a lot of talk about the reaction of the military commanders to the president. Remember, the president is the commander-in-chief.

[00:11:02]Remember, he was already getting rid of of of some generals. There was a lot of talk about, oh, isn't it interesting he got rid of the black ones, he got rid of the women.

[00:11:12]But it seems to me that the bottom line is he's getting rid of anyone who doesn't agree with him. But the people who are the head of the US military are not stupid people. They know what they're doing. They know what's possible and they know what's not possible.

[00:11:26]Towards the beginning of the war, the president said, "I was told by generals that we could just go in there and handle it from the air." Those generals then just said, "We never said that."

[00:11:35]Already there are reports uh from W uh Wall Street Journal that when they were doing the rescue operation of the airmen who had gotten lost uh betwined behind you know Iranian lines that the president was so out of his mind and unhinged during the whole thing that they actually left him out of the room.

[00:11:53]So I'm sure that they are trying to contain this very unreasonable person in their midst. This was not a war that began with any kind of long-term strategy. This is a war that began. The president has acted from the beginning like he's a little boy with a set of Lettos Legos. He's excited by his by his toy soldiers, what he perceives to be toy soldiers. And let's not forget millions of us in America are very seem feel very strongly that the only reason this happened was because the the circle of Epstein file information was getting closer and closer around the president.

[00:12:31]This was perhaps and I believe so a huge distraction technique. The president and his Fox News host much much of the time drunken secretary of war Pete Hgsth themselves were enrolled in this illus illusion that we are such big deals we can just go in there bomb these guys.

[00:12:55]Hillary Clinton and others have said that what do you mean they couldn't imagine the Iranians taking the uh straight of Hormuz. She said anyone who has dealt with this issue over the last few decades knew that we have to be careful because the first thing they'll do is close the straight of Hormuz.

[00:13:11]Also, the president's people have said we had no idea they would begin bombing people like the UAE. Well, they sure did. So, there were clearly there were clearly no thoughtout plans here. If we do this, they will do that. They were just in this cowboy drunken cowboy mentality. It was dangerous at the beginning and it's dangerous even more dangerous every day that this goes on.

[00:13:34]>> Well, it's funny that you say that how Trump said nobody could have predicted the straight of moose would close. Every time I've had a military war expert on the show, a war game expert has come on and said there is no way in hell someone didn't say to him. This is the first thing they'll do. But you said that they had no strategy. Marian, do you think they have a strategy to exit?

[00:13:54]>> No, they clearly don't. That's why on any given day he's doing like today it's that he sees that ship. He sees the ship the day before they were to have these talks in Islamabad.

[00:14:04]>> So clearly there's no thought out strategy.

[00:14:07]>> What are your thoughts on the idea that there are really two options? One of the options is to exit out and accept the losses, accept the gains that they've made, which is of course, you know, uh, debilitating quite a lot of their military capabilities. exiting out, maybe potentially leaving the straight of Hammoose as it is or to the the Gulf States to figure out just to deescalate the situation or the other option is to escalate this to such insane levels of conflict where you either have boots on the ground seizing K Island. who have a team of Marines that are tasked with finding the enriched uranium and uh either taking it or destroying it uh and basically not leaving until the straight of Hermoose is returned to international order.

[00:14:51]>> Well, the president knows that the idea of putting boots on the ground is terrible in terms of his political base.

[00:14:58]Uh I I think I read somewhere that what 15% of the American people are strongly in favor of of of that war period. So the president knows that that would be a a huge hugely risky move. Um when you say take the gains, what gains exactly?

[00:15:14]>> The the way that they say gains is that they've destroyed a lot of their >> air defense.

[00:15:19]>> Okay. So let's talk about how about the psychology of this president. You know, there was a movie called The Apprentice.

[00:15:24]I don't know if you saw it about the president's uh relationship with Roy Conn. He was Roy Conn was his mentor.

[00:15:31]And one of the the points that he made was deny deny deny. No matter what's happening, say what you want people to believe is what happen is happening. And the president is known for having told many people. Uh if you just say a lie enough times, people would believe you.

[00:15:47]The other thing that's part of that that playbook of the president psychologically is that there are no facts except what I say. That began in his first term when after his inauguration, his then press secretary Sean Spicer came out and said this was the biggest crowd ever at an inauguration. People journalists took the pictures of Obama's inauguration and said, "Uh, this was bigger." Said this was the biggest. And that's the way the president acts. So, we're not dealing with a president who tells the truth at this point. I don't even know if he himself realizes that's how pathological this is when he's telling the truth and when he's not. So he will call this a victory. That's what he's looking for now. He's looking for a way to call this a victory. He he's bored with the war.

[00:16:32]He he clearly recognizes this is not going according to plan. He wants out, but he needs to get out in a way that he will be able to then claim a victory.

[00:16:42]And this is why I said before, it's looking now like what Obama had done with with his deal. Far from perfect. Uh we're going to have actually less um to show for our efforts. Let's get into that Wall Street Journal article that you mentioned earlier. It is a really interesting and damning piece. It explains kind of what was going on behind closed doors when the United States was running this highstakes operation to rescue that downed um airman in Iran earlier in the month. I think it was over the Easter weekend actually. So, privately, Donald Trump was shaken by the downing of the US jet, reportedly shouting at his aids for hours and hours, uh, angrily reacting, wondering about the escalation that could potentially spiral out of control.

[00:17:23]He was particularly scared about casualties and the risk that the captured pilot would cause a political disaster for him, which it really would of because, of course, we have Jimmy Carter, uh, his administration to look for as, um, I guess evidence of how this could go. So, this resulted in senior officials limiting what they shared with Trump, keeping him out of the most sensitive real-time planning for the pilot rescue. There were concerns that he would be impulsive. Uh he would reveal details and key decisions were handled by military leaders without fully informing him. I mean, this is the US president who was acting so erratically that he wasn't fully briefed on this military planning because officials were so concerned that he would act impulsively and that he would leak information. What does that say to you? Is the president fit for the job?

[00:18:09]>> The president has never been fit for this job. If in fact the operation went the way we've been told it went, then the US military deserves a lot of credit. It was brilliant. There's also a lot of uh people who believe that that's never what it was actually about, that actually it was a plan and an effort to get that uranium. So, I I it's very um uh a lot of people feel that what we're told by the legacy media about pretty much anything these days is uh not necessarily to be accepted at face value. If it did go down the way they said, then they were obviously uh very smart to leave the president out of the uh out of the room. It was a precision operation, a brilliant one. Once again, if it happened the way they said it happened, and I can understand why you wouldn't want a personality like Donald Trump in the room while you were trying to pull that off.

[00:18:59]>> If you looking back on history and you kind of compare situations, we probably won't know about half the situations that, you know, troops get involved in, but would there ever be a situation where the president isn't involved in these high stakes?

[00:19:13]>> No.

[00:19:14]>> No. There's never been a president like this, fortunately, in the United States.

[00:19:18]Um and um uh no this is there's nothing normal about this. This is uh very unfortunate, very >> uh we're not dealing with anything like we have dealt with before and obviously it's having repercussions not only in my country but all around the world certainly within the Western Alliance.

[00:19:39]>> Well, let's talk about your country because this political poll that you referenced earlier in the interview was conducted asking Americans basically how they feel about the Iran war and how they feel that Donald Trump's handled it. So 52% of voters disapprove of Trump's handling of the war. 40% approve over law overall of him. 15% strongly approve um of the war. 55 to 60% say the war is hurting the US economy. Six and 10 voters are concerned about escalation. Nearly half say there's no clear strategy from the administration and independents are breaking against Trump on the war. I mean, when you're speaking to people, you can look at a poll and you can see what's happening around the world, but when you're speaking to people, how concerned are they about this war?

[00:20:18]>> Oh, it's not just the war. The war is one of many things that are going on.

[00:20:22]You know, his his support is eroding.

[00:20:25]Even among MAGA voters, it's eroding.

[00:20:27]He's losing a lot of the major voices such as Tucker Carlson, even Candace Owens, even uh Megan Kelly who are not happy with the president. As you said, the independents have broken and now uh he really offended the evangelicals recently with that meme basically positing him as Jesus. He's taken off after the pope. This is what he does. He starts the war in Iran to get us to not think about the Epstein trials. And then he does these posts and he takes after the pope to get us not to think about Iran. This is the level, this is the superficial and almost perverse level of his thought processes. Well, mentioning the Pope, he says, Pope Leo says he has no interest at all in debating Donald Trump, insisting that his role is to preach peace, not fight him politically.

[00:21:12]So, he's dialing down this, you know, clash, but he still believes the war is not a good idea. Um, this, of course, happened after Trump called him weak and said he was bad on foreign policy. But, it's clear that the Pope wants to deescalate things. He doesn't want to be involved in whatever this is with Donald Trump. But I wonder, do you think this is a dangerous road to go down when Catholics made up around 22% of Trump's overall uh 2024 voters?

[00:21:35]I wonder if this could come back to bite him. Well, first of all, the conversations that we are having now and that this is how politics works is we're talking about what's a good idea in terms of the polls, what's a good idea in terms of what people are thinking, whether they will vote for them. America's problem was that we stopped talking about what is the right thing to do. We we this is the main course correction that has to happen.

[00:22:00]It's not just whether or not Catholics will like Trump seeing him attacking the Pope. Many of them are so conservative they didn't even like Pope Francis. They felt he was too woke. So some Catholics won't care. Some Catholics will care.

[00:22:14]And I'm not sure the polls mean anything in terms of American politics long term in the United States right now. The point is bigger than that. The the point is the very idea of of a US president attacking the pope. You know, when the pope was called to a meeting at the Pentagon, there were stories about how uh spokesman at the Pentagon, there was not the pope himself, but the ambassador of the Vatican was even someone even mentioned a time in history when there was military action taken against the pope. You don't bully the pope. I'm not a Catholic. like you don't bully the pope. So there's a bigger issue here than just whether or not um Catholics like it. The issue is the lack of dignity, lack of reasonableness uh and lack of trustworthiness of the current US president. Just in terms of right now, we don't really know what's going to happen with the 2028 presidential election and we're obviously months away from the midterms, but we will start to see a front runner from the Democratic party come out in the next, you know, 9 or 12 months. Yeah.

[00:23:21]>> Do you have a thought on who that would be? Well, I I I know who I like that I I the the person who to me has demonstrated the kind of gravitas um and seriousness and maturity that I think will be necessary number one to beat Trump or Vance or whomever is running. Um and number two has the consciousness that could possibly begin to write this horrifyingly listing ship of the United States would be Governor Pritsker of Illinois. in terms of the people who are already out there talking. But something much deeper than that has to happen. We need to move from a conversation about short-term wins to long-term understanding. The Democratic Party has still not deeply reckoned with the mistakes that were made, namely the suppression of democracy itself, which means we didn't allow a robust pro primary. And I know a lot about that. So that so that the the real possibility of a genuine opposition party standing on deep democratic principles, standing for a genuine alternative to what Trump offered was not presented to the American people the way it needed to be.

[00:24:35]So it concerns me that there has not been that deep reckoning uh on a cultural level uh within the Democratic party. And I I see the same forces uh suppressing that possibility as suppress the primary itself. So yes, we have to win and I think that if there are free fair and fair elections, we will win.

[00:24:55]Now what's happened? This is very much our hungry moment. You know, uh the Hungarians were able to push back Orban and if we are able to, we will push back Trump. Um Orban tried to rig that election, but the people the will of the people overwhelmed him. Trump is already trying to rig the midterms. Hopefully, the will of the people will overwhelm him. So, this is number one. We have to win the midterms and I think there's a possibility and will happen if there's a free and fair election that we will take back the Democrats will take back both the House and the Senate. Then, of course, 2028. But even there, if we win the midterms and even if we win the presidency in 2028, if that's all we're doing, remember the president was not a cause of this. The president is a symptom. The cancer is deep in the bones. So the Democratic Party needs to itself course correct. Get back to a level of unabashed advocacy for the working people of the United States on such a level that genuinely challenges the oligarchic rule that now dominates our politics.

[00:25:58]>> What do you think? What do you think those things are that Americans need right now that they're lacking? I think that we have lost our emotional and psychological connection to the principles on which we purport to stand.

[00:26:11]The Democrats, what I said when I was running, I said that the the Republican party as it now stands represents a nose dive and clearly I was correct. But I said that the corporatist element of the Democratic party represented a managed decline. This was this was a problem that was uh that was brewing for a long time and if it hadn't been Trump, it would have been someone else. So yes, who are the thieves? The thieves are the white supremacists, the uh Christian nationalists, the techno uh bros who want this corporate feudalism. All of that is there, but the Democratic Party failed to make sure that the conditions were not ripe for that. Anytime you have large groups of desperate people, and we have had a a over the last 50 years, a $50 trillion transfer of wealth from the middle class in the United States to a small group of Americans sitting at the top. Anytime you have large groups of desperate people, it forms a petri dish out of which all manner of both personal dysfunction and societal dysfunction is almost inevitable. The British, the Europeans, the Americans, the Allies learned this after World War I. This gave Hitler, the fact that the that the Germans were so crushed after World War I made the German people easy prey for Hitler. So attraction to political strongman, attraction to or vulnerability to ideological capture by genuinely psychotic forces is always present unless you make sure as Franklin Roosevelt said, "We wouldn't have to worry about a fascist takeover in the United States as long as democracy delivered on its promises." And democracy has not been delivering on its promises for the majority of the American people in a slide, a slippery slide for the last 50 years. That's what the Democratic Party has to do. That's going to be bigger than just winning the midterms. It's going to be bigger than just winning the presidency. is going to mean that the Democratic party takes a good look in the mirror and that the American people are led by people who say we have nothing to fear looking in the mirror seeing how we have we have become prey to these corporate forces which have a financial investment in these huge tax cuts for the rich in making sure that uh so many of the resources of our country are just put into the hands hoarded really by the very richest among us While 70 to 90 million people don't even have health care or underinsured at the very least a million people rationing their insulin.

[00:28:47]People having such a difficult time getting higher education and tech school. We have to get down into the granular level and address the deep suffering of so many millions of Americans. Until we do that, we will always be prey to a group of people, a massive group of people willing to go for false hope over no hope. And if it's not Donald Trump, it could be someone else. And if we just win the the midterms and win even win the presidency and don't get to that level of course correction, what does our Declaration of Independence really say? What do our Bill of Rights really say? We need a much deeper conversation among the American people, among ourselves. If we do this, if we get down and get real, then then we will be okay. Otherwise, we will only have a temporary break from the insanity that we're seeing now.

[00:29:36]Maryanne Williamson, thank you so much for joining the Trump Report.

[00:29:39]>> Thank you.