Episode 5215: War Expands To The Gulf States; MSM Is Losing Grasp On Their Audience
Bannon's War Room Episode 5215 details a strategic Karg Island bombing sparing oil infrastructure while 2,500 Marines deploy amid fears of Israeli-Lebanon ground invasions and North Korean missile retaliation. The host highlights humanitarian risks to desalination plants serving 100 million people and connects a Michigan synagogue attack to Hezbollah, contrasting this with artist Hunan Khalili's call to arm Iranians against their regime. Despite Pete Hegseth's assertion that operations aim to shape conditions rather than widen war, the segment concludes that media outlets are losing audience grasp as geopolitical tensions escalate across the Gulf. [Automatically generated summary]
Moments ago, at my direction, the United States Central Command executed one of the most powerful bombing raids in the history of the Middle East and totally obliterated every military target in Iran's crown jewel, Karg Island.
He continues, our weapons are the most powerful and sophisticated that the world has ever known, but for reasons of decency, I've chosen not to wipe out the oil infrastructure on the island.
The president then adds, however, should Iran or anyone else do anything to interfere with the free and safe passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz, I will immediately reconsider this decision.
Karg Island is where most of Iran's oil exports flow.
It has gone untouched until now.
Also, we should point out today, we learned that some 2,500 Marines and sailors are headed into the region, and though we don't yet know what this Marine Expeditionary Unit's mission is or may be, they are traditionally used for large-scale evacuations as well as amphibious assaults.
The president, as you know, has neither ruled out a ground combat or hasn't ruled it in or out, I should say.
This is a good time to declare victory and get out.
And that is clearly what the markets would like to see.
You are seeing, however, a faction of people, I'd say largely, but not exclusively in the Republican Party, who want to escalate the war and who are calling for things like ground troops or regime change, or they simply want the pounding of Iran to just keep going on and on.
I saw an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal to that effect that we shouldn't try and find it off-ramp.
We should just keep going with this.
And I just want to lay out, I think, some of the risks of what an escalatory approach could entail.
So, first of all, we're all seeing that the Straits of Hormuz are closed right now.
We don't want that to persist longer than it has to.
But there are actually worse outcomes than that.
So, if the Iranians get hit, if their oil and gas infrastructure gets hit, they've already said they're going to engage in tit-for-tat retaliation against the Gulf states.
And we saw there was recently the Iranians blew up this giant oil depot in Oman.
You saw some of those images.
They could continue to target the oil and gas infrastructure across the Gulf states.
And if that happens, it won't really matter if the straits get reopened because you won't be able to restart oil and gas production in the Middle East.
So that would be, I think, a much worse outcome that could result from escalation.
Furthermore, there's an even worse, I think, scenario from there, which is the region is very dependent on desalination plants.
I think something like 70% of Riyadh gets their water from desalination.
I think it's something like 100 million people on the Arabian Peninsula that get their water from desal.
I mean, it's basically a desert, right?
And those desal plants are soft targets.
You already saw there was, I think there was one desal plant in Iran that got hit, and then it caused Iran again tit-for-tat to hit a desal plant.
I think it was in Kuwait.
I could be off about that.
But in any event, if you see that type of destruction continue, you could literally render the Gulf almost uninhabitable.
I mean, you're just not going to have enough water for 100 million people, and human beings just cannot survive very long without water.
So that would be a truly catastrophic scenario.
And we're talking about destroying the Gulf states economically and then also from a humanitarian perspective.
So I think we have to take things like this into account when you hear people preaching for or advocating for escalation.
You also have to, I think, consider the impacts on Israel.
I mean, it's hard to know exactly how much damage Israel is taking right now.
There's a social media blackout.
But what you're starting to hear trickle out is that Israel is getting hit harder than they've ever been hit before in their history.
And we're only two weeks into this.
If this war continues for weeks or months, then Israel could just be destroyed or very large parts of it.
Now, I think Israel is a harder target than the Gulf states.
Their infrastructure is more hardened.
Also, they're further away.
The Gulf states are vulnerable to drones and short-range missiles, whereas Israel is mainly vulnerable to long-range missiles.
Nonetheless, at some point, their air defenses could become exhausted if it hasn't happened already and Israel could get seriously destroyed.
And then you have to worry about Israel escalating the war by contemplating using a nuclear weapon, which would truly be catastrophic.
So there's a lot of scenarios here, a lot of really frightening scenarios about where escalation could lead.
And even though the United States is a much more powerful country than Iran, they essentially have a dead man switch over the economic fate of the Gulf states and even potentially beyond that, you know, the habitability of some of these countries.
Well, the federal government said they had nothing to tie him to Hezbollah, but he was tied through communications, telephone records, and other things to members of Hezbollah.
And this came up when he came back from a trip to Lebanon in 2019.
He was flagged by the system because of that note.
And customs and border protection people, we are told by law enforcement sources, went through his phone and found those Hezbollah members' names in his contact list.
We also now know that his brothers and nephews were killed in an Israeli strike against Hezbollah targets just days ago in Lebanon.
So that really kind of points us to a probable motive for this attack.
One, we need to make sure the border remains closed.
The deportations need to continue, regardless of the Democrat whining about it.
They don't think that a sovereign country should ever be able to tell people, you know, who can come and who should have to leave.
We should not relent on that.
And then also, we need to reform our legal immigration system, Laura.
A lot of these people have come in legally.
A lot of American workers have been displaced by foreign workers.
A lot of American students have been displaced by these visa mills at universities and tax breaks that companies get after the fact.
So we've got a lot of work to do, but we clearly have laws right now that need to be enforced.
Federal law enforcement can enforce those.
And I just want to point out one thing.
The insanity of the sanctuary jurisdictions that they defend.
It literally means that this monster that stabbed the woman in Virginia to death, who has 30 priors and illegal immigrant, that governor will not tell federal law enforcement or ICE when that person gets released from prison.
They will not tell federal law enforcement when rapists and murders are released into our communities.
I mean, one thing we know about Donald Trump is that he does not like a long conflict, right?
We, you know, this is what is so different about this war right here.
Venezuela was planned to be a very short in-and-out operation.
He put a strict limit on his bombing of Iran last year.
This seems potentially much more open-ended.
We're now talking about ground troops.
But if we know Donald Trump and everyone in America is an expert on Donald Trump, we know that he is going to probably balk before he really commits to something that's going to be a long-term presence on the ground.
So I think it's too early to say that we're going to have a marine operation taking one of the islands in the straits or doing something.
But we have to be asking these questions.
We have to try to figure out what their plan is and what the options that people are putting before him are.
Overnight, one of the most intense, and I think you can take it that virtually every day, and this is why we're doing Sunday shows now to match our Saturday show, 10 a.m. to noon, 12 noon Eastern Daylight Time in our traditional morning slot.
Because every day it seems like the kinetic part of this is ratcheting up the overnight, a strategic bombing of Karg Island.
To take out the military infrastructure on Karg Island and not to leave untouched, or virtually untouched, the oil refinery and oil infrastructure capability of the Iranian regime, ordered yesterday an amphibious ready group out of Japan.
The release of they talked about 5,000, but they've only mentioned the USS Tripoli, 2,500 Marines heading to, with support ships and combatants heading to the North Arabian Sea,
the Gulf of Oman, in this bombing campaign at the same time the Israelis leaked to Axios that they were planning the most massive ground invasion for 20 years since 2006 into Lebanon.
And that seems to be in the planning stages.
But the kinetic part of this ratcheted up dramatically overnight, also additional bombing targets in Tehran.
My understanding is Israel did get hit again last night.
I think you heard right there, David Sachs.
David Sachs is the crypto czar, but also the artificial intelligence czar.
And as you know, we don't agree with David Sachs on many, many things.
But I think that was a very, you know, ripped from the pages of War Room walkthrough.
The only thing I would say is that I think off-ramps, and we were ones that discussed off-ramps in the first couple of days of this war, you're in it now, and particularly in the Persian Gulf.
The center of gravity of this war has shifted to the oil and to the Persian Gulf.
We just, we'll have a clip when we get back.
As soon as we came on, it looks like UAE, an oil depot or one of their big refineries, may have been hit just moments ago.
Also, reports from Agency Free Press or Agency France Press that 10 ballistic missiles, experimental or just practice ballistic missiles, fired by the North Koreans overnight.
And we're going to put this all in perspective, but just let's say this.
As we have said many times over, I guess, the last 10 days, I think this is the 14th day of the war.
I believe it's the 14th day of the war.
The center gravity of this, as we've said, has shifted to the Gulf.
Not just Straits of Hermuz, but the entire situation of our allies there.
David Sachs talking about desalination and water, which this could quickly become more of a water war, even than an oil war, of the 100 million people living in the Gulf and the other environs.
Because this regime is, and President Trump, I think, said, or Pete said it the other day, there's a bunch of rats cornered.
Well, these are definitely cornered rats and they're very tough ombres and they come from a messianic apocalyptic culture.
So they're going to fight to the end.
I don't think there's much surrender in these guys.
So you're just going to have to hunker down for it.
But I just don't think, you know, oh, claiming victory, things we could have done could have been possibilities in the first four, five, six days of this war.
I just don't think are possibilities now because this situation in the Gulf.
And of course, you know, the dramatic nature of it because of the calling up of the amphibious ready group yesterday, this bombing.
And look, these things aren't, they don't put these together in a couple hours.
That amphibious ready group is something they've thought through in their planning.
It's down, you go down the, you know, the list of what you do.
And here's what we're going to do.
And maybe we need this now.
That's when you kick it in.
Also, the bombing last night appears to have been so lethal.
And of course, it shows you once again air supremacy, or at least, you know, full-scale, you know, air dominance over certain elements of Iran that the military can pull it off with another tremendous expeditionary evolution, just like the end of the 12-day war.
But this thing gets more and more complex every day.
So Reagan, first off, you're the White House correspondent, you've also got a great piece of substack I'm going to get to in a moment about the Pentagon.
But how do you, I want to give my the RAF team and my own production team a hat tip because every day they are curating everything that's going on in the world and curated down to 10, 12, 13, 14 minutes of the best video and are able to juxtapose what things are saying.
But that takes a team to go through it.
And these young people are very focused on every minute of what's happening in this war.
How does one juggle what's happening between the White House, the press briefings, the Pentagon, when you've got so much else going on that President Trump is doing, in addition that we are now fighting a major conflict, ma'am?
And I think the biggest thing that has happened in President Trump's administration thus far.
And so that is where my focus is.
And I'm bouncing back and forth between the Pentagon press briefings, the White House press briefings.
If the White House has background calls with officials, I'm jumping on those, trying to meet with as many Pentagon sources as I can on the side.
You know, I'll admit it, I'm young.
This is my first time covering a war.
And so there's so much information and there's also so much I don't know.
And so what we're trying to do right now is one, ask the questions that our audience wants to know.
What do they feel like is unanswered about this war?
And then also try to parse through the administration's messaging on the Iranian war.
I think it has been, it's been hard to follow.
I am not completely sure exactly what the objectives are left.
What would we still have left to achieve in this war?
Why did we strike exactly now?
What was the real reasoning there?
We've heard several different things.
So trying to get answers on that front.
And then just on the White House and all the other things that the president's doing, the first press briefing that Caroline Levitz had after the United States struck Iran, everyone asked about Iran.
I'd already been in two Pentagon press briefings at that point.
I was the only one who asked about a domestic issue.
We asked about the SABE Act because that matters to the American people too.
They want to see the president talk about domestic issues and care about those things.
And so just finding that balance of covering this war that is going to impact people back home, but also highlighting those domestic things that the American people desperately need the president to focus on.
No, I think it's, this is what I wanted to show on this morning, because like Breitbart, the Daily Caller, I would say, is a.
Um, an institution that support has supported the president.
You've, I think, had a one-on-one with the president, correct me or wrong, didn't you?
I think you did an Oval Office interview.
One-on-one with the president shows you the esteem that Caroline Levitt and the team over there, Stephen Chung, hold your reporting, and that's why I think it's very fascinating uh to uh this sub stack that you did and I want, if we put the sub stack up, here's what I would like to do.
I want to play a short clip.
Do we have the Pete Hegseth clip from yesterday?
Is that ready yet?
Okay, I need a yes or no.
Okay fine, thank you uh, so let's go to your substack.
You wrote about mondays, you covering the Pentagon on monday yes so, as probably most of your viewers know, the Pentagon shook up their press briefing room.
They had people sign uh, an agreement on covering the Pentagon.
It had its set of rules.
Um, there were only a select few of outlets that chose to sign that agreement and then a lot of people, like the mainstream media, didn't sign that agreement.
We at the Daily Caller, we didn't actually sign that agreement um, but we've been working on our relationship with the Pentagon to make sure that we can still be able to get answers at press briefings and cover events and et cetera.
And so what this has done is now that there are press briefings being regularly held at the Pentagon.
It has put outlets like myself, those who have signed the agreement uh, REAL America's Voice, Lindell TV, etc.
All in the first two rows of the press briefing.
It has put all of the mainstream media outlets ABC CVS, you name it in the back of the room.
And so there have been four press briefings, I believe, at the Pentagon and I have to tell you Steve, it has been so uncomfortable.
I've never experienced anything like this.
Uh, the mainstream media reporters, they come in and they start loudly complaining and saying, oh, i'm in the back of the room again, where's my seat?
Oh, it's in the back of the room.
And they're making all these vocal complaints uh, and then they will walk around the first two rows where me and my colleagues are sitting uh, Daily WIRE is also one of those outlets centers, Square ONE American NEWS and they will look at each seat in the front and second row.
They're looking for their name, they're all assigned seating and they'll, you know, sigh and kind of huff and puff in our direction when they don't find their seat in the first two rows.
Um, there was a comment that was made at the last press briefing on friday.
A mainstream media reporter was remarking how he was excited that that regular media, meaning them, got called on more than the new media and outlets like myself.
And so um, I write in the piece, the White House Press Corps is supposed to be the worst of the worst.
I've been a part of it for three years now.
I have never experienced anything this uncomfortable and this petty than I have in the Pentagon the last couple of weeks because those guys are dug in at the Pentagon.
You'll find out that they're dug into that building at their own ways.
But if I can make an observation, I think that the new media.
And look, you get some softball questions you can tell, or I'm not saying they're planned, but you get some softball questions from some of the new media.
But by and large, I am very impressed with the new media people that have come in of some of the sharp questions and really questions asking for real analytics to come out.
And I think it's made, I think it's made the mainstream media guys even better because they realize that, hey, there's some sharp young people here and they're asking good questions.
So I got to step up for the Wall Street Journal or for the New York Times.
That's my observation.
I don't know how it feels like in the room, but we watch these every day very closely and kind of go through it to curate.
But I think by and large, the new media have come in to like say, hey, we got something to prove.
I think the questions have been great by and large.
And I think it's made the mainstream media less snarky and more to get to the facts of the matter than to give editorial comment.
First, I'll say I acknowledge some of these reporters that are in the Pentagon press briefing of the mainstream media, they've actually been reporting in two war zones and really have been in the thick of it and they have decades of experience.
I don't have that.
I know I don't have that.
But that doesn't make the questions we've asked in the briefing room any less valid.
It's the same way that the White House has brought in new outlets that have a different perspective.
There are questions from a different subset of America that need to be asked that they want to know.
And so while I've been in the Pentagon press briefing room, we have asked about what the actual objectives are of this war.
What are we really trying to accomplish?
If we wanted the names of the U.S. casualties and wanted more details on how they were killed, those are just two examples of the questions that we're asking.
We want to ask more about drone attacks and the Strait of Hormuz and how are you going to secure that?
All of these things are, like you said, getting down to the nitty-gritty of war, but also talk about the things that the Americans are wondering, is this going to impact them back home?
What do they need to be prepared for?
And, you know, the other thing I'll say is I think a lot of the new reporters are probably a little bit younger.
We adapt more to the social media and stuff like that.
And I can imagine that also creates some friction as well, because we're using our phones and using all the different platforms that we have to create content and forcing the legacy media reporters around us to adapt in that way, I think is also causing some friction as well.
No, it's definitely, but I think it's, I think friction often, like on a movie set, friction is actually good.
It gets more creative.
Look, the president still, the fundamental way he puts things out, besides these phone calls with reporters, is put it down on social media.
Reagan, hang over a second.
I want to drill down a little bit on yesterday's press briefing over at the, I think it was yesterday or Thursday.
Kind of all blends together.
We'll get it up in a second.
Reagan Reese is with us.
She is the White House correspondent for the Daily Caller.
Also covering some of the Pentagon briefings.
And these young people, I think, are doing a great job, hustling, finding information, asking tough questions and getting pushback as they should.
It's creative, the creative process of going through and getting to the truth.
Because remember, the truth is the first casualty in war.
Short commercial break.
Joint Drills and Missiles00:02:50
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The United States and South Korea are in the middle of a joint military drill.
And North Korea is not taking it lightly.
Well, earlier in the day, Seoul's northern neighbor fired a round of 10 ballistic missiles towards the East Sea.
North Korea's missile launch was an apparent flexing of muscles against the South Korean-U.S. joint military exercise, according to South Koreans.
And the Japanese militaries, the missiles were launched from North Korea's west coast.
Now, Japan estimates that the missiles reached a maximum altitude of 80 kilometers and flew approximately 340 kilometers before landing near the east coast of the Korean Peninsula and outside Tokyo's exclusive economic zone.
Well, Victor, we've certainly seen the UAE has been singled out for the most amount of missiles and drones over the past two weeks.
And now another threat from Iranian officials that it will be targeted even more.
This is the latest that we have heard from the spokesperson of the armed forces.
It comes after the U.S. attack on Karg Island.
Even though it was military targets that were taken out, we did hear from the U.S. President saying it could be oil infrastructure next if the Strait of Hormuz is not back to normal.
So I'll quote what we heard from this statement saying, We warned the UAE leadership that the Islamic Republic of Iran views it as its legitimate right to strike the origins of American missile launches, those concealed in ports, docks, and shelters used by U.S. forces under the cover of Emirati cities in defense of its national sovereignty and territorial integrity.
Now, it's worth pointing out that the UAE maintains that its defensive posture remains unchanged.
We've certainly not heard anything different to that.
But Iran feeling that some of these missiles are coming from Emirati territory, despite no confirmation or suggestion that that is in fact accurate.
Scott Besson, Secretary of Treasury, in Paris, even as we speak, negotiating with the Chinese over the trade deal.
Looks like the state visit is on.
We'll deal more with that.
You heard the situation in East Asia with the North Koreans during our joint military exercise with the South Koreans.
And the South Korean Prime Minister didn't get a lot of publicity, actually went and met with the president, I think, on Thursday.
Not really an announced visit.
Reagan Rees is going to stick with us and come back in a second.
We'll deal more with the Pentagon and some of the, not just messaging, but actually the action that's taking place versus the description of the action.
Human Khalili joins us now from San Francisco.
Human, thank you very much.
We've got some folks.
Talk to us about what you're doing.
It's a fascinating project.
We haven't dealt a lot with the humanitarian side here in the war room.
Been very focused on kind of the geopolitics, the economics of it all, and what's actually happened, how this thing is going to play out.
But you've got a project, and you're going to be at CPAC next week to unfurl it.
As much as this may, you know, confront us as Westerners, is there, because right now you have not seen any real uprising.
I mean, one of the, I don't want to call it bets, but one of the premises, I think, of a lot of the initial military action.
And you just had Netanyahu on national TV in Israel the other day, although I don't know if his message resonates in Tehran much, but he called for an uprising in the streets.
We haven't seen nearly the uprising we saw a couple, about a month ago in late January, where 20 or 30,000 were killed.
But it is because of the bombing, has this become more of a Persian nationalist and that all of the obviously crimes against the Iranian people, as you show in your art, and particularly against women, focus a lot of it on women.
Is that really moving people right now, or are they kind of dug in and supporting the regime?
Is that the purpose of the murals is to make sure people understand that there are freedom fighters.
There are, let me say it a different way.
There are people that adamantly oppose the Islamic theocracy.
They've lived under for 47 years and they're prepared to act.
But you're saying that they need arms, that somehow either the Israelis or the Americans somehow have to get a massive amount of arms into Iran so they can at least have somewhat near a fair fight.
Do you see any, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, slow down.
Do you see any chance, as you know, people and cousins and other relatives in Tehran, in Persia?
Do you see any chance of us just being able to bomb the Revolutionary Guard or the Mullahs or the Ayatollahs?
Although we've obviously, Pete said we've dramatically injured the replacement, the Son of the Seville.
We got about a minute.
I'll hold you through the break.
Do you see any possibility of this collapsing unless you have either massive arming of the Iranian people to take their fight on or some sort of ground combat that has to take these guys on Mano Amano?
What they're going to take a short commercial break.
Take your phone out.
Now more than ever.
You might want to know why gold is a hedge.
A lot of talk about, in fact, a report, I think it was in Reuters, that the regime is saying that any oil that passes through the Straits of Ormoz, because Scott Besson said they are allowing some through, has to be paid for in the Chinese currency, not U.S. dollars.
He's going to unfurl some of these banners so people can see.
You get to meet him and see his work.
Here's the question.
They have been in Israel and they've been unfurling there.
You've been putting it up there.
Do the Persian people, the people in Tehran, is that helping your cause of getting the message out and really get it back to people in Tehran, particularly women, that there are people on your side?
Or is doing it in Israel look like you're collaborating with one of their tormentors, sir?
So I tried to get these murals up in the UAE and Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Qatar, and they said absolutely not.
You cannot put up a mural with a woman's hair showing.
So Israel is the only country that welcomed me.
This has nothing to do with collaborating with whoever's terrorizing them.
This has to do with letting the people know that they're not forgotten.
Their sacrifices is not for nothing.
And putting a person's face who's been murdered in Jerusalem or Nazareth or the Sea of Galilee, I mean, it warms their heart.
It gives them a hope and a joy that they wouldn't have if that mural wasn't there.
The Islamic regime is really upset with these murals.
I sent you one last slide.
After I did my fourth mural, and I was number 50 or 60 to the game, the Islamic regime unveiled their own mural.
And this is in direct response to the murals I made in Israel.
And this is a picture of an atomic bomb.
And on the atomic bomb, the Islamic regime wrote 400 seconds to Tel Aviv in Hebrew.
Now, they hadn't done anything like this until four murals went up in Israel.
And so these murals provoke a response out of them.
And, you know, look, none of us want a war, but unless you root out.
what's happening with the Islamic regime of Iran, they're going to come back and they're going to come back even stronger.
And I want to say sincere thank you to the fine people at Patriot Mobile, especially the COO, Jenny, because she sees what the women of Iran are dealing with and she's empathizing with them.
And she's saying, we at our company stand with those women.
We do not want what's happening there to come here.
And none of us Persians do.
One of the things you have seen on social media is every Iranian who didn't vote for Trump coming online and saying, thank you, Donald Trump.
Thank you for freeing our people.
Thank you for killing the Ayatollah.
You have more Republican Persians as a result of this.
And they are using their platforms to amplify their joy and their thanks of Donald Trump.
And if you can, look, if you have access to these places and you say, hey, I want this kid to put a woman life freedom mural in your country, I will do it because my goal right now is college campuses.
I want these murals on all the colors.
I got one up at Rice University.
I want it up at Columbia, Harvard, MIT, Penn, Stanford.
You know, I want to cover this country.
If I have access to the federal land and I can get a mural in Dearborn, Michigan, I will go to Dearborn, Michigan and say, these are the modern day real-life superheroes, these women of Iran who have the guts to show their hair, even though they're going to get their eyes shot out, even though they're going to get raped in prison, even though they're going to get shot in the head.
Hunette, where do people go to find out more about your art, more about you, more about your crusade here to make sure that this is shown all over the world, sir?
That's what the press wants to make it look like, like it's widening and chaos isn't suit.
No, we're actually closing in on grabbing hold of and controlling what objectives we want to achieve and how we want to achieve them.
It's called shaping operations and setting the conditions.
But when you shape the environment, you don't always tell, I mean, foolish political leaders and foolish military leaders of the past will hang an exact deadline on it.
Or here's exactly when we'll do what we're going to do.
Or here's how long it's going to take us.
And then, if you meet that, maybe you meet it.
But if you don't, you fail.
And if you're far beyond, we know exactly what we're shaping and why.
We're sending those signals working across the interagency.
The Strait of Hormuz is something we've paid attention to from the beginning.
And the American people can rest assured, we will ensure that our interests are advanced, no doubt.
I know you got to bounce, but I want to ask you to just hold through this next break, too, because it's about a minute away.
But in covering it, Pete comes out and says, hey, we're concentrating this and doing it.
And then, you know, afterwards, they announce an amphibious ready group is heading towards the Middle East, probably for some sort of potential combat operations with these fleet Marines.
You have a massive bombing of Carg Island last night, and the Israelis announced that they're planning on the biggest ground invasion of Lebanon since the conflict back in 2006.
We got a minute here and we'll hold you through the break.
And it also, I think, contradicts what the president is saying.
The president keeps saying that the war is about to wrap up, that the United States is winning.
And one thing I've noticed in all of these Pentagon briefings is that each day, and the president has put these out on Truth Social too, they've said that the war, that they're going to launch the biggest attack that has yet to come in this war on Iran.
And that has perplexed me because if we're so close to ending the war, if we've almost reached all of our objectives, why is every day in escalation and seems to be getting larger and larger?
And so I don't know how you balance those two things.