Michael Rubin and David Satterfield analyze the Trump administration's Iran campaign, debating whether standoff attacks suffice or if boots on the ground are needed for regime change, while noting the conflict's regional risks. The discussion shifts to Texas politics, where Ken Paxton's lead over John Cornyn threatens a weak endorsement, and Democrats capitalize on Latino support. Analysts warn that internal Republican divisions between MAGA loyalists and establishment figures, exacerbated by the unpopular war and JD Vance's alignment with Trump, could define the 2026 and 2028 elections. Ultimately, the episode suggests that without strategic post-conflict planning or a cohesive party identity, both foreign policy failures and electoral losses loom large for the GOP. [Automatically generated summary]
Yudkin is the Beacon Project Director at Morein Common, moreincommonus.com or BeaconProject.us.
Both places you can go to learn about his and his group's work.
We appreciate your time on a Saturday morning on the Washington Journal.
Thank you so much, John.
It's been a pleasure.
And that's going to do it for us this morning on the Washington Journal.
We'll, of course, be back tomorrow morning at 7 a.m. Eastern, 4 a.m. Pacific.
Up next, it's C-SPAN's Ceasefire.
Welcome to Ceasefire, where we look to bridge the divide in American politics.
I'm Dasha Burns, Politico White House Bureau Chief, and today I'm joined by two guests with extensive foreign policy experience across multiple presidential administrations.
Michael Rubin, former Pentagon official and advisor for Iran and Iraq under the George W. Bush administration, and Ambassador David Satterfield, former Biden Middle East envoy and former U.S. Ambassador to Turkey and Lebanon during both Democratic and Republican administrations.
Thank you both so much for joining me.
I'm so glad to have you this week in particular.
You both have foreign policy expertise.
You've advised presidents specifically on the Middle East.
I want to first start with your experience and how it creates a lens for you to see today's actions by this administration.
David, let's start with you.
Well, my career with the government, Foreign Service, began with the Iran Revolution and the hostage taking in November of 1979.
Since then, for almost half a century, Iran has been a source of instability, threat, presumed hegemony over its Arab neighbors and over the broader non-Arab region.
It's a threat that has projected to the far corners of the world through its proxies, into Latin America, into Europe, even the United States.
It's a threat which took on a new dimension some years ago with the accelerated progress by Iran towards at least the capacity to highly enrich uranium to just short of nuclear weapon grade.
It has also built dramatically a ballistic missile force capable of and demonstrated through use of threatening states from Israel and the Eastern Med through to the greater Middle East in all of its dimensions.
It's a challenge which has been dealt with in many different ways diplomatically, kinetically on occasion, but never comprehensibly.
And we add to that external challenge posed by this regime what they have done to their own people.
Iran has, this clerical regime has, over a half century, deprived the people of Iran of the most basic sources of livelihood.
Its corruption, its grotesque mismanagement have left Iranians in a position before this campaign ever started, before last June and its attacks, not in a position to serve its own people.
And when the people rose up, they were massacred this January.
So what we are watching is the response to four decades plus of disastrous external and internal policies by this criminal corrupt regime.
Michael, you've also seen so much over the course of your extensive experience.
How does that previous service inform how you view the current situation?
Well, first of all, I agree with what David has said, Dasha.
And as you know, I used to live in the Islamic Republic of Iran.
I had done my doctoral dissertation research over there during both the Razanjani period and under Mohammed Khatami.
But both in government and out of government, what I've concluded is there is no magic formula.
Our political debate might have that each side has a monopoly on the truth, but in reality, the world is complicated.
If we had a magic solution, it would have been found already.
I'm reminded of the old Soviet joke about the difference between also the optimist and the pessimist.
The Russian pessimist is the one who says, things have never been so bad.
They couldn't possibly get worse.
And the Russian optimist is the one who says, no, no, no, they can always get worse.
And so we might actually now be in that situation when we look at what's happening in the Islamic Republic of Iran, especially if our planning moving forward isn't up to snuff.
You were an advisor to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld during the Bush administration.
What America was involved in in Iran and Iraq?
I mean, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are conflicts that Americans now equate to forever wars.
What are lessons learned from that era that can be applied today?
Well, what we encapsulate as the Iraq War was actually a series of specific policy decisions.
Number one, Dasha, was whether or not to go to war.
Number two was whether we should try to make Iraq into a democracy or simply replace Saddam Hussein with another dictator.
And the third policy question was whether we should be engaged in nation building, in development, and so forth.
Donald Trump, it appears, has taken a very different approach when it comes to Iran, much more attuned to the Venezuelan model.
As an analyst, when I look at who our bombs are killing, I'm actually more interested in who our bombs aren't targeting.
Are they on the B-list for elimination, or is this a sign of people that have a free pass because Donald Trump wants to negotiate with them?
I'm also worried about something that came out of both the Iraq war and the Libya war, which is how do you secure the arms depots?
In 2007, the head of the Revolutionary Guard decided that the biggest danger to the Iranian regime would be the Iranian people.
So he put one Revolutionary Guard unit in each province, 32 provinces, each with their own arms depots.
Do we have plans to secure each of those arms depots?
And if you're going to do that, can you do that without boots on the ground?
One final quick point, and David remembers this well as well, but in 2003, during the Iraq War, there was a cleric named Abdul Majid Alhoy who came back in order to take over the shrine of Imam Ali in Nejev.
He was set upon by thugs and hacked to death.
When people are talking about someone being appointed, maybe Reza Pahlavi, the former crown prince, it's one thing to make that appointment.
It's another thing to keep that person alive without boots on the ground.
This is why I'm a Russian optimist.
Well, David, the administration keeps making the point that this is not Iraq.
This is not U.S. intervention in the Middle East of administrations past.
How different do you see what the White House, what Trump is doing now, compared to what we have seen before?
Well, Daja, let me build on all of the points that Michael just made.
There are two goals which are not just in theory, but quite likely achievable by the use of standoff attacks by Israel and by the United States.
One is the further demolishment, setting back of any nuclear enrichment program and all of the ancillary research that surrounds it.
We know where the facilities are.
They're accessible.
They have been struck.
They undoubtedly will be struck further.
Iran's ability to project HEFT, to project strategic weight and theft, HEFT rather, through its ballistic missile program, that's also a major target.
And Brad Cooper, the head of CENTCOM, has said 86% of the capacity to launch missiles has been eliminated.
Drones remain a challenge, but they also are being targeted.
But you can come to a point in the predictable future when Iran will not possess these resources in any strategic sense.
What you cannot, I believe, predictably achieve is a directed regime change that somehow establishes a very different but still coherent, not chaotic, with arms released into many hands, Iran.
That is a much more difficult challenge.
Now, if we were talking just three or four hours previously, I would have argued to you that Donald Trump has left himself, has articulated an off-ramp on this, which is the ability at some point in coming days or a few weeks to say, look what I've done.
I have devastated the resources of this security state.
It's now up to the Iranian people to make their choices.
But the president in media interviews in these last few hours has said, I will have a role in the selection of the next supreme leader.
Yeah, David, he actually said that to me this week.
He said he will have a major impact here, and he is talking to both people in the regime and the people of Iran in the opposition, and that he wants to have major influence here.
I don't know how this translates into actual impact, because right now, I don't think any Iranian interlocutor, for their own sake, is prepared to enter into dealing with the United States.
That could change over the week ahead as their calculations on what serves their interests moves.
But this is not Venezuela, where you can decapitate a single individual and their spouse, remove them from the country, and achieve very specific economic goals, leave the regime intact.
Iran is much, much more complex, as Michael fully understands.
Yeah, Michael, I spoke to the president for about 12 minutes.
We covered Iran.
We covered a whole lot more that I want to ask you both about as well.
But he did keep comparing Iran to Venezuela, and he was also incredibly bullish on the combat operations in Iran so far, telling me that he thinks he's going to achieve an even better result than he anticipated.
Are you as bullish as he is right now?
I'm not as bullish.
The president has said that he's ahead of what he had determined his schedule to be, but that's because no one really expected all the targets to be eating breakfast together on the first day of the bombing campaign.
But as an analyst, when I look at the way our Gulf Arab allies initially sat on the fence, the way I interpreted that is when you have a hornet's nest, Dasha, you have two good options.
One is to leave it alone.
The other is to get rid of it.
But you don't want to sit underneath that hornet's nest, lightly tapping it with a stick and then walk away.
And the reluctance of our Arab allies to get involved, I saw as a barometer that they didn't think that Donald Trump had fully done the planning to build their own confidence.
This is why I think Iran made such a huge mistake by striking at all the Arab allies.
Now, again, I agree with David about Venezuela and so forth.
One of the interesting side notes involving the Middle East with regard to the Venezuela situation is that Del C. Rodriguez's brothers were negotiating with the Americans in Qatar for a time before the operation inside Venezuela.
I wonder whether there's been any of that back channel.
Now, last time I was in Baghdad, I actually had stayed at the same place as Ali Ladajani, the secretary of the Supreme National Security Council.
He's someone whose name has been mentioned quite a bit.
He used to be in the Revolutionary Guards, then he was an advisor to the Supreme Leader.
His daughter actually lives in Atlanta, Georgia, and I sort of wonder whether the seeming immunization that he has had of any consequence is an indication of what Donald Trump is thinking moving forward.
But David has also articulated, this regime is brutal and the Iranian public isn't going to accept basically a regime quizzling after 40,000 people have been massacred in the streets.
So what do you see as the next viable steps here?
If the president does want to have influence over regime change, how viable is that and what should the White House be wary of right now?
Okay, well, my criticism of Donald Trump is consistent across different areas.
When you're a real estate developer, everything looks like a deal.
But when you're dealing with the Middle East, when you're dealing with the Islamic Republic of Iran, there's an ideology at play, and we can't simply project our own understanding of dealmaking on people with an ideology.
You can go into the Revolutionary Guard bubble, Dasha, when you're eight years old, because they run the equivalent of evil Boy Scout programs.
And then you can go into their clubs in high school, in university.
They run their own universities, and so you can be fully indoctrinated.
When you're dealing with people that are that indoctrinated, simply wanting to build big buildings or saying, let's have a deal, make peace, isn't going to work.
One final point.
The reason why diplomacy was always doomed, if you're Ali Khomeini, you've been president, then you've been supreme leader, you've encapsulated the nuclear program, the Iranians have lost up to $2 trillion in sanctions and lost development.
How was he ever going to explain to his own people that made the sacrifice that their sacrifice was worth it if he signed it all the way?
This is one of the reasons why that diplomacy was hitting a brick wall.
Well, David, put your ambassador to Turkey and Lebanon hat back on for me.
Those countries and several others are now being drawn into this conflict.
It's not just Iran.
It is a regional conflict now.
What are your concerns as this expands?
Well, they're very different in terms of the two countries.
Turkey, President Erdogan, will be very careful not to become drawn into this conflict in a way that either alienates Donald Trump, who is a vital personal connection ally for President Erdogan, and also not prompt Iran to target Turkey as a hostile state.
He has bridged this kind of issue very adroitly with Russia during the course of the Ukraine conflict in which he has maintained a critical relationship with Putin while contributing significantly to the armament of Ukraine.
Imminent Threat in the Middle East00:12:30
Lebanon is completely different.
Look, Lebanon, and here I go to Michael's point about ideology triumphing over what we would say was rational judgment or self-interest.
Hezbollah had a clear message from the Israelis that they were not going to strike Lebanon unless they were hit by Hezbollah.
Very clear.
Hezbollah suicidally launched three missiles into the Galilee, two of which landed in empty fields, third of which was intercepted.
And in response came the campaign which is underway as we speak with the latest Israeli declarations calling for the evacuation of all of Lebanon south of the Latani, it's about 500,000 people, as well as the so-called Dahia, the southern suburb of Beirut City, where Hezbollah's headquarters and many assets are located.
Hezbollah brought this on itself.
Is it rational?
Is it self-interested?
No, but it is the product of ideology, both Hezbollah's and Iran's.
David, could I actually ask you a question about Turkey since we're virtually in the same room?
When Ali Khomeini, the supreme leader, was killed, only two leaders mourned him publicly, Vladimir Putin and Regattayeb Erdogan.
Is Regib Tayyib Erdogan making a mistake?
I mean, is this something that someone has whispered into Donald Trump's ear saying, maybe you shouldn't trust this guy as much, or is he going to remain the president whisperer and seemingly get away with everything?
Well, Michael, there was a third leader, Aliyev of Azerbaijan.
Yes.
Yeah.
Who should not be separated from Erdogan?
Look, this is Erdogan in his I am the leader of the world's Muslims, Shia, Sunni, Arab, non-Arab.
That's his presumption of authority.
It's wholly a presumption.
Those kinds of remarks aren't taken all that seriously.
I do not believe Donald Trump reacts to them in any meaningful strategic fashion.
He's still the whisperer.
Let's talk about the justification from the administration for this war because the administration officials, Marco Rubio, Secretary State included, briefed members of Congress this week on combat operations and explained why they struck Iran preemptively.
And then after an initial explanation publicly from Marco Rubio, he then clarified the following day.
Take a listen.
And was there an imminent threat?
Did you tell Honor Group that there was an imminent threat?
There absolutely was an imminent threat.
And the imminent threat was that we knew that if Iran was attacked, and we believed they would be attacked, that they would immediately come after us.
And we were not going to sit there and absorb a blow before we responded.
Because the Department of War assessed that if we did that, if we waited for them to hit us first after they were attacked by someone else, Israel attacked them, they hit us first, and we waited for them to hit us, we would suffer more casualties and more deaths.
We went proactively in a defensive way to prevent them from inflicting higher damage.
Yesterday you told us that Israel was going to strike Iran and that that's why we needed to get involved.
Today the president said that Iran was going to get involved.
Yeah your statement is false so that's not what I was asked very specifically.
Were you there yesterday?
Yes I am.
Okay.
No did you were you the one that because somebody asked me a question yesterday did we go in because of Israel and I said you were asked me that you that follow-up and I said no I told you this had to happen anyway.
The president made a decision and the decision he made was that Iran was not going to be allowed to hide behind its ballistic missile program, that Iran was not going to be allowed to hide behind its ability to conduct these attacks.
So Michael, what do you make of these two responses from Rubio and just what we've heard overall over the course of the week from the administration about the justification for these actions?
Well the Trump administration, frankly like the Bush administration as well, is doing itself harm with its lack of consistency.
That said, one issue that we're not talking about, but which I think determined the timing to some extent, remember that in April and October of 2024, Israel attacked Iran and took out Iran's anti-air system.
The timing of the 12-day war in June 2025 was determined by Iran reconstituting its air defense.
When we talk about diplomacy and the window for diplomacy, the fact that the Russians were shipping anti-aircraft missiles to Iran and the Chinese were even talking about shipping carrier-killer missiles, I think really narrowed the window of opportunity.
It's not all about Israel and the United States.
We're not the only players in the sandbox.
David, do you think all other efforts diplomatically were exhausted here?
What do you make of the administration's justification?
I agree completely with the comments that Michael made.
has not effectively and coherently, consistently communicated what is a genuine justification for efforts to at least dramatically mitigate the threat from the nuclear enrichment program and the missiles and the very real potential,
if not certainty, that both those threats would progressively grow with time, whether indigenous or assisted by external elements.
It's a communications problem of a fundamental level, but the substance of the threat is not something I believe is challenged and I don't believe there was any diplomatic resolution possible.
Indeed, I think the Iranian regime probably preferred that this campaign come.
They believe they will survive it, much as Hamas was always convinced it would survive the Israeli campaign in Gaza and that they would emerge with a different set of options before them than they possessed beforehand.
Dash, I actually think it's also important to differentiate between the American threat perception and the Israeli threat perception.
When it comes to America, oftentimes critics of this action now will say, look, even if Iran went nuclear, they're not suicidal.
They wouldn't use it.
But from an Israeli perspective, that was always a straw man argument because Israel's concern wasn't that Iran was suicidal, it was that they were terminally ill.
Let me play for you both a soundbite from Democratic Senator Mark Warner after being briefed by Secretary Rubio this week that touches on exactly what you mentioned here.
There was no imminent threat to the United States of America by the Iranians.
There was a threat to Israel.
But if we equate a threat to Israel as the equivalent of an imminent threat to the United States, then we are in uncharted territory.
Then the president was asked about this and asked if Prime Minister Netanyahu forced his hand on Iran.
Take a listen.
Mr. President, did Israel force your hand to launch these strikes against Iran?
Did Netanyahu pull the United States into this war?
No, I might have forced their hand.
You see, we were having negotiations with these lunatics, and it was my opinion that they were going to attack first.
So, Michael, whose hand was forced here, if anyone's?
I don't think anyone's hand was particularly forced.
I think that Iranians have agency.
They were pursuing this program.
What my point is this.
If Iran developed nuclear weapons, they would be in the command and control and custody of the most ideologically pure units of the Revolutionary Guards.
Now, if you have a protest movement and these protests have been accelerating in Iran, so it looks like the regime is about to collapse, how do you actually then stop the regime in the last 24 hours of its life from launching these nuclear weapons?
When we look at what happened in 2024 with the attacks on Israel, a lot of people say Israeli air defenses were good.
They shot down all but seven of 300 missiles and drones.
But if any of those seven that got through had radiological, chemical, or biological warheads, it would be a whole different story.
And what always struck me as an analyst as well is while Iran said they needed enrichment for their own nuclear power station at Bushir, it's been refueled eight times.
And in each case, it was refueled by the Russians.
The Iranians have never used any of their own enriched uranium to refuel their own civilian nuclear program.
David, can you explain Israel's role in working with the United States, either pushing for action or working with the United States?
I mean, how does Netanyahu's desire to see this regime in Iran toppled play into what we are seeing the United States do today?
Look, let's walk the clock back to September of 1980, around 2024, way back, no, to September of 2024 when the PAGERS went off in Lebanon.
The extraordinary events that followed, the decimation, literal decapitation of Hezbollah's leadership, the extraordinary, rapid and 11 days overthrow of the Assad regime after 50 plus years of power, all of this transformed the region and what Michael referred to, the Israeli strikes that showed Iran was naked to its enemies.
It had no ability to control its own airspace.
All of this has shifted the strategic balance in the Middle East and the threat picture very dramatically away from the challenges Israel has historically faced to a much better position.
But Iran remained.
And I absolutely agree.
Whether Iran pursues a nuclear weapon or not, the threat that it could, that it possessed the enriched, highly enriched uranium, 60% plus, which has no purpose other than to be further enriched to bomb fissile material, all of this posed a major challenge, not just to Israel, but to every Gulf state.
And you saw hedging behaviors beginning.
And I've got to draw attention to that.
The Saudis over the course of the past year took a series of steps, you can call them de-risking, hedging, which indicated a certain lack of confidence in the U.S. ability to come to their aid and a certain greater recognition of the threat Iran posed.
They made a separate peace with the Houthis, whom MBS started out along with MBZ and UAE as a violent opponent of.
And he was making steps to reconcile with Iran.
I believe Iran's own misjudgment, although I understand it strategically, of attacking the Gulf states has changed all of that.
But there were lines underway, lines of action, which weren't in the favor of the U.S. or Israel, were in favor of Iran.
But I want to make a comment here that goes beyond Dasha, the issue of Israel's role in all of this.
And I'll go to Senator Warner's comments.
I regret profoundly the introduction, albeit obliquely, of Israel has succored us into this campaign.
And what is a threat to Israel is not a threat to the United States.
If there is a sea change in thinking, it is a senator expressing exactly that thought.
It is one I find deeply regrettable, and it starts one down a slope, the end of which we all understand and is not desirable at all for the United States.
Support and Domestic Politics00:14:47
We've got about 30 seconds, and I'm going to ask a very simple question here.
How would you define the Trump foreign policy doctrine?
David, we'll start with you and we'll wrap up with Michael.
What can produce acquisitions or declared victories for Donald Trump?
Thank you, sir.
Michael?
I would say Donald Trump doesn't want to be a lame duck president.
He is going to do what he thinks is right, regardless of what procedures and precedent may hold.
All right, gentlemen, thank you so much.
We really appreciate your expertise today.
That's all the time we have.
Former Pentagon official Michael Rubin and former Ambassador David Satterfield, thank you both so much for joining Ceasefire.
All right, we turn now to this week's C-SPAN flashback where we look back at moments from our archives that connect to today's headlines.
In 2006, five days after President Bush addressed the people of Iran during his State of the Union speech, Iran's now exiled Crown Prince, Reza Pahlavi, joined Washington Journal to talk about Iran's nuclear program and potential democratic reforms.
Of course, he also took calls from viewers, including one from Tehran.
Take a look.
First call for our guest is from Tehran, Iran.
Welcome to the program.
I would like to tell America that we are not like our neighbors.
We are a proud nation.
We are Persians.
You're not Arabs.
And you might think, yeah, we're a bunch of terrorist Muslims, but that is not the true Iran.
Our reputation has been dragged in dirt for the last 28 years by these mullahs who have taken over our nation.
I think atomic energy is our right.
How are you watching this program right now?
Illegal satellite.
Illegal satellite.
And how are you getting news about the nuclear situation?
Well, we're watching CNN and basically listening to every radio.
As Kohler indicated, you can clearly see the difference that our own compatriots are making between our right as a nation to acquire nuclear technology as opposed to have the current regime in control of such technology.
The message that we can hear here resonated very well from inside the country.
We want the outside world from the beginning to make a difference between the people of Iran and the regime ruling it.
Today, Pahlavi has been very supportive of the mission in Iran and is hopeful he can help lead a transitional government in his homeland.
And to discuss the latest news on Iran and other political news of the week, I'm joined by two political pros from both sides of the aisle to discuss U.S. foreign policy and other top political stories.
Republican strategist Reena Shah, she's a former senior aide to multiple Republican members of Congress, and Democratic strategist Joel Payne, Chief Communications Officer for Move On, and former Deputy Press Secretary to former Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
Thank you both so much for joining me today.
A busy, busy week.
My goodness, we have so much to talk about.
Now, on Iran, aside from being a huge geostrategic and military story, it's also a really big political story here in Washington.
The primary season, of course, kicked off earlier this week, and there's a question over how much this war will have an impact on the midterms.
I had Mercedes Schlapp, who worked in the first Trump administration and the George W. Bush administration on the show last week.
Take a listen to what she had to say.
If the administration moves towards what you would say more military tactics, a more aggressive posture into Iran, I think that that could be detrimental for Republicans going into the midterm elections.
Now, Rita, when I spoke with the president this week, he was very bullish on Iran.
He feels he does have the support of the American people.
What is your perspective on how this is impacting domestic politics?
His posture is unsurprising to me because this is what he has to do in the aftermath.
But now, when we enter week two, week three, week four, how does he change himself?
Because decisively, the American people have said, we don't want more foreign wars.
We don't want a nation-built abroad.
And that is coming from his base.
He had a mandate from the MAGA faction as well as the America First faction to not create new conflicts, new zones for us to enter into.
This hasn't been created for us.
I would just say this is an opportunity that presented itself and he took it.
Now, he knew he was taking a risk.
But when you have this great opportunity to go get this bad guy, and Iran is the largest state sponsor of terrorism, I think he would have been foolish not to take it.
And so I would say this is not a war.
This is a combat operation for now.
The president and a lot of his aides have referred to it as a war, though.
I mean, Joel, for Democrats, what is the risk and opportunity here on how your party handles this?
Well, look, I want to pick up with that last point.
It is a war and it's a war of choice.
And I think that what President Trump and Republicans, I think, are missing here is this is unlike recent foreign policy, national security, and bruglias that we've seen, because the public is starting off underwater, meaning the president does not have broad public support on this the way that, say, President Bush had.
When you look at Iraq, when you look at even Barack Obama, with Syria, with other presidents, with other international quagmires in the past, those things often started with the public more broadly supportive of what the president wanted to do.
That's not where Donald Trump is.
The public at best is very split and very, has very complex, complicated views about involving yourself in a Middle East country in this type of a foreign policy challenge.
And so just related to the whole topic of how Democrats react here, there is no support within the base of the Democratic Party to move forward.
And I actually think that tracks to the broader public as well.
And I think if you're a Democrat who has future ambitions, not just for 2026, but 2028 and beyond, you cannot get on the wrong side of your base here.
I look at an example of a recent Sunday show appearance with Mark Kelly, a senator from Arizona, where he somewhat waffled on whether or not he would support the war powers resolution, which of course was of topic in Congress this week.
Mark Kelly, pretty shortly thereafter that appearance, made it clear that he would be with the base on that decision.
And I think you're going to see a lot of those types of, you know, calculations among Democrats who want to have a future within the party and within the coalition.
You think they need to be clear?
They need to be clear that they oppose this war.
They oppose this as a war of choice.
They name this as Donald Trump's war.
And they name this as something that the public is not with.
I cannot register how unpopular this already is.
And the best day of this war, of this interaction, was the first day.
Killing the Ayatollah and having a strong U.S. military presence the first day, that's the best day.
Yeah, Rena, there's the president's messaging on this, and then there are Republicans who are campaigning in competitive districts and swing states right now in this midterm year.
How do Republicans at large handle the messaging on this?
The messaging has been fumbled.
I agree with that because there was an opening for Donald Trump to come out and do this the right way.
Say, hey, our intelligence has led us to this.
We've been looking at this for weeks on end, and this is what it led up to.
Instead, he came out and said, well, they teed us off.
And so we walked away and said, we're not going to take any more.
And we're going to bomb them.
And I just don't think that that sort of rationale worked in his favor.
In fact, I think it worked against him.
And particularly at a time where he should be looking for the buy-in of Democrats in Congress to look like he's a very unity-driven president.
He hasn't done that.
Now, look, I'm not advising the White House, but for a few days, they called this a combat operation.
I personally, if I were advising the White House, which I'm not, would continue with that verbiage.
Because when you say war, again, you leave an opening for the Democrats to say this is Donald Trump's war.
So I think every day that passes, the American consciousness starts to feel that why is my country doing this abroad and why are things the way they are at home?
So he's making it tough for Republicans in Congress.
But I still think there's an opportunity to win here.
I still think there is a way for American military might to win.
Right now, operationally speaking, things are going extremely well.
Our forces, in conjunction with Israel's forces, are doing the type of, I would say, military exercises from the air and in a cyber way that I didn't even know that we could know about.
And we are learning of that in real time.
Now, the minute a foot hits the ground, when you get an American body on the ground, that is where everything changes.
Yeah, and that's where the message from the White House is going to matter even more.
Can he bring the American people along here?
I do want to move us to another element of midterm's impact because there's so much going on this week.
We learned this week that DHS Secretary Christy Noam will be stepping aside and that Senator Mark Wayne Mullen will be taking her place.
Of course, immigration has become a very controversial and challenging issue for the White House.
What do you make of this timing, Joel?
Yeah, she was voluntold to step aside, which I think in Donald Trump's Washington we know is that she was fired.
I think with the timing is you cannot miss the fact that this comes on the heels of a disastrous appearance that Christy Noam made in front of Congress the same week where essentially even Republicans, and there were notable Republicans on the Senate side who gave her really tough questioning and really signaled a loss of faith and even President Trump's base in Christy Noam. comes after weeks of the administration stepping back from their elevation,
their escalation of ICE all around the country that Christy Noam was responsible for.
The corruption at ICE, the controversial decisions, the close relationship with she and Corey Lewandowski.
I think that Christy Noam was always the kind of emergency cord that Donald Trump could pull if he wanted to reset the conversation around DHS and around ICE.
He will obviously have to continue to tweak policy and tweak prioritization of what this agency is doing to have the public reverse their disapproval of how ICE is being run.
But I think this is a big step towards Donald Trump trying to reset the narrative.
Only time will tell if he'll be successful.
Was this a good decision by the president?
It was the right decision.
It's one I believed he would make as far back as when he replaced her with Tom Homan, essentially in Minnesota.
He put Tom Homan right there in Minnesota.
And that's where the friction began.
And I could see it right there.
When Tom is brought in to be sort of cooler, calmer-minded, that's a bad look for Christy Noam.
And I believed her unraveling began then.
What do you think of the replacement, Senator Mark Wayne Mullen?
Yeah, I think, you know, Senator Mullen is interesting because I observed him in the House quite a bit.
He is very proud to do what Donald Trump wants him to do.
He believes in having a strong plan for curbing illegal immigration.
And I know that much, but that's not what he's going to be tasked with entirely.
He's going to have to give a better look to the agency.
He's going to have to, again, do what Tom Homan did in the face of chaos in Minnesota.
Say, hey, hey, hey, we're capable of being adults here and we're capable of not descending into chaos all the time.
Mullen is in lockstep with the president.
So I think he'll actually take orders directly from the president and maybe even Homan to some extent.
He'll be a figurehead, I think, in a way that Noah, I think she thought she could do better than she did.
And I was watching for a while, but she was also then turned into a figurehead.
So I think only time could tell is what I'm trying to say.
This is just such a contentious issue.
The biggest thing I'm concerned about, though, and that never gets talked about in the national conversation, is how we have so many visa overstays.
How come nobody's tackling that part?
So maybe this is an opportunity for the department to do better.
Yeah, look, I think that this becomes immediately a proxy vote on Donald Trump's immigration approach and regime for Democrats.
So whether or not Mark William Mullen might have the support of some of his Senate colleagues, I think it is, again, a non-starter for the base of the Democratic Party to support anyone in the Trump administration who is going to execute his immigration policy the way that it's been executed for the last year and a half.
To have any chance of anyone beyond John Fetterman getting support beyond John Fetterman, you as a nominee to join Donald Trump's cabinet are going to have to show a significant break in policy to get any Democratic support.
Do you think that there's a world in which Trump making this move could help with the DHS funding fight with the shutdown?
I imagine that Donald Trump probably sees this as an opportunity to reset the conversation there.
Again, if Mark William Mullen comes out and resets some policy priorities, reset some talking points about what DHS is going to be focused on, what ICE is going to be focused on.
I mean, I suppose there's a possibility that there are some Democrats who might shake loose, but I will just tell you, as someone who works for an organization that represents millions and Democratic base, the appetite is not there to support any part of the president's agenda.
I get it.
There's been cruelty in certain moments.
And I'm somebody that believes in compassionate conservatism.
And I don't want to see families split apart.
But I will say, there really is, with this administration, a sense that they could deport more people instead of hold them in detention centers.
I realize they are building more detention centers.
But could Democrats come along at some point and say, you know what, we need to be a nation of laws?
The president has lost a lot of public trust.
He's certainly lost trust in the Democratic base that he has good intentions here.
And I think he's lost broader public trust.
This was his strongest issue coming into his presidency, plus five, 10 points.
He is now well under 15 points.
And with the moderate Republicans, too, I certainly have had a lot of concern about how these policies have been deployed and essentially implemented in certain places.
But there is a tension between state and federal.
In Minnesota, you have that because some of the policy is on the books.
So I don't know that it can get any better simply because of what is going to exist in certain states.
Well, it's going to be interesting to see because we've got immigration that's going to impact the midterms.
We have this war in Iran that's going to impact the midterms.
Texas Politics Primer00:15:50
But then the number one issue that voters keep saying is going to drive them to the polls is affordability, the economy.
And take a look at this headline.
Trump concedes Iran war may push up oil prices for Americans.
The president says higher energy costs will be temporary as markets react to the conflict.
And the White House faces questions about strike's rationale.
Now, in my conversation with the president, he dismissed the idea that oil prices would have an impact on the midterms.
He believes that the American people are with him on this.
Reena, do you agree with the president or do you think the price of gas could be a problem?
I completely disagree with the president.
I mean, if we tick up towards $4 per gallon as we get towards November, then that is the kiss of death.
That means Republicans, we lose our majorities.
And I think the president already kind of set the stage for that.
He's kind of conceded in certain talks that maybe the trifecta won't hold.
And so that's something that I don't know why he speaks that way because that really It's not the strongman that he wants to show, right?
It's almost kind of conceding that there's nothing he can do.
At this point in time, I think other countries who could get with us could certainly help us with the straight and foremost, but I'm not really sure geopolitically how this plays out in the next two weeks.
Yeah, Joel, Democrats, one of the challenges for your party has been having to be so reactive to so many of the different things that the president is doing.
But again, voters are really focused on those kitchen table pocketbook issues.
Can Democrats keep hammering the affordability message, especially as we are looking at these possible higher gases?
I've talked about this publicly.
Democrats have to do everything.
This is not the type of information ecosystem where you can just silo a conversation and say, we're going to talk about National Security Day, we're going to talk about the economy tomorrow, we're going to talk about foreign policy next week.
You got to talk about it all and you have to tell one continuous story.
I think Democrats are getting better at that.
Related to Trump, here's the problem, Dasha.
These are not exogenous events that are causing these economic challenges for his administration or for the public.
This is a war of choice he's taken on in Iran that is going to have knock-on effects on oil prices.
The tariff war that he has waged, that is a decision of choice that Donald Trump has taken on.
All of the conflagrations that we're experiencing in this country seem to be the result of Donald Trump's whims.
These aren't exogenous events like COVID five years ago that Donald Trump could point to and say, I have no control over this.
These are all of his control.
And I will just tell you, if you're a Republican, not just in the frontline seats, say, trying to win in North Carolina, trying to win in Maine, if you're Susan Collins or trying to win in Ohio if you're Houston, but if you're Dan Sullivan in Alaska going against Mary Peltola, potentially, you are feeling much more concerned.
If you're in Iowa and you're trying to win that open seat, you are feeling much more concerned.
So I actually think what Donald Trump has actually done, he's put the Senate in play for Democrats with his choices.
Well, how about whipping out states?
I mean, Texas this week, that was wild to watch.
Republicans are now in a runoff there.
The president has said that he will endorse in that race.
So you have the incumbent Senator John Cornyn.
You have the sort of MAGA superstar firebrand, Attorney General Ken Paxton.
He told me in our phone call that Ken Paxton coming out saying he won't drop out even if Trump endorses Cornyn might actually push Trump to endorse Corner.
And he said that was bad for Paxton to say.
Rito, what do you make of the results?
I mean, I think Cornyn did a little better than folks expected, but it was still quite a split among the Republican Party.
And what should Republicans be hoping for there?
Well, Republicans should be hoping that it could be Cornyn because I think Cornyn could peel off Tallarico pretty easily.
But I think, look, this is also a bigger conversation.
Tallarico is an excellent candidate.
And that is something I think Texans haven't seen for quite some time.
For a Democrat to win statewide would be really something.
You know, the 90s is when we last saw it.
And so I think 94, I believe, is the last time a Democrat won statewide office.
But for Cornyn to not have gotten Trump's stamp of approval, I think, was especially telling of the times and just kind of shows how the president operates these days.
He really flies by the seat of his pants most days of the week, as we always know.
But I think Ken Paxton was a very, very complicated candidate, a very bad candidate.
And I think Trump would have been better off just to say, you know what, Cornyn, just go ahead and have it.
Let's get rid of Cornwall.
My theory is why D.C. Republicans want Trump to weigh in right now, because they know if Ken Paxton continues to hammer away at Cornyn, there's a very good chance that the early polls and that runoff will show Paxton continuing to be ahead.
And what Donald Trump does not want to do, and Dasha, you know this very well, he does not want to get behind a loser.
And if John Cornyn is seen as someone who cannot win a general election, that is going to make Trump reticent.
Or at a minimum, the type of endorsement he will give will be a weak T endorsement that actually doesn't give the boost that Cornyn needs.
Democrats feel very bullish about Texas.
And looking at that Tallarico-Crockett primary, I think a key point that I would bring up, a key data point, Latino voters.
That's why James Tallarico won that race, because Latino voters went in large droves to him.
And if he can activate and engage and continue to stay relevant with Latino voters in Texas, who, by the way, probably feel very alienated by Donald Trump's first 15 months in office, that is the type of thing that Republicans are going to be dealing with all over the country.
And I think in a place like Texas where Latinos play an overwrought role, I think that could be a key indicator of what we're going to see that happen.
What do you think Democrats learn from Jasmine Crockett's loss and Tallarico's win here?
Well, I know that the lesson that people are going to try to overlearn is that, oh, well, we shouldn't try to turn out the base or we should only go for candidates who can talk to the other side.
I think I'm going to sound like a broken record.
Democrats need to do everything everywhere.
Meaning in Texas, James Tallarico probably has a slightly higher ceiling.
I actually think Jasmine Crockett could probably win definitely against Ken Paxton and even against Cornyn in 2026 because Trump is so unpopular.
But what Democrats have to get good at and what I think they have gotten better at, find candidates that fit the place and the time, match the parochial issues, understand the culture of their localities and their states.
I think Tallarico does that, which is why Republicans have spent a lot of money, whether or not it's Cornyn or Paxton in that race.
Meanwhile, also in Texas, Dan Crenshaw became the first sitting member of Congress to lose in 2026.
What does that say about where MAGA is at?
Yeah, it just says that he wasn't Trumpy enough for them.
I mean, let's remember, it's a primary, so you're going to get your most ardent Republican supporters.
You know, these are the people that turn up in primaries, and they just didn't feel that Crenshaw was enough in line with Trump.
I think that was really the moral of the story.
I was just going to add, too, it feels like there's a whole class of Republicans like Dan Crenshaw.
These are people without a country.
So if you're Dan Crenshaw, you need to turn up enough of the MAGA base and you need to have them trust you enough for them to turn out.
But your true whims might be actually more of an establishment Republican, and there's not enough of that vote to outweigh the MAGA.
And you're going to turn off independents and Democrats.
So you're kind of stuck in the middle.
You got to pick a lane.
You have to pick if you're going to be super MAGA or if you're going to be super establishment.
And you've got Republicans like Crenshaw, and I think there are others like this around the country who are finding this out.
That's why you're seeing so many retirements, I think, on the House Republican side.
They cannot run without Donald Trump, but Donald Trump is the rainmaker on the Republican side.
But that's also what makes the Paxton-Cornyn dynamic interesting, right?
Because Cornyn is seen as establishment.
Paxton is seen as MAGA.
And there have been some people warning me that if Trump snubs Paxton, that could actually really get him into some hot water with the MAGA base.
Well, I don't think he's that worried about that.
I think he's not worried about the blowback from them because what's it to him?
At the end of the day, he's probably not going to be on the ballot next time.
So I think for him.
Yeah, that probably.
Well, let's never say never with Donald Trump.
But I think that the real deal here is that he wanted somebody that would really almost kiss up to him.
And Cornyn really never did it.
And so that's what it was about from early days.
And I think it just went a little too long.
And again, Paxton being so complicated, but having sort of the ingrained goodwill, it was very messy.
I see how it turned into a runoff.
You bring up the 2028 ballot, and there's some debate about what the war in Iran means for the potential contenders.
And talking, of course, the names that everyone knows, JD Vance and Marco Rubio, and what this means for them.
I want you to take a listen to something that former Meet the Press host Chuck Todd had to say about this.
Listen.
Whatever identity JD Vance had going that was different from Donald Trump's is gone.
And now you own everything he does.
And he is certainly, and this, there's been nothing that he's, you know, it's clear he's a little uncomfortable with this, right?
Of course.
It's exactly the opposite of what he advocated.
But he cannot ever run against this.
So he has lost the one thing that made him an indifferent is gone.
The differentiator is gone.
His America First credentials are just non-existent.
There is no, for him, there is no recovering from this.
All right, what do we think of that hot take?
I completely agree.
I think JD Vance is not going to be able to recover from this moment.
And that is perfectly fine with President Trump because I don't think he feels particularly great about J.D. I've seen J.D. sideline for weeks on end.
He's been sent out to jobs that probably nobody really wants.
I don't see J.D. as a fixture because if he were a fixture, if he were really going to be the one that carries Trump's legacy forward and hold the MAGA banner, he would be next to Trump every day of the week.
And he's not.
I think the folks who are among the biggest Louisiana Republican side are Vance and Rubio.
We talked about JD Vance, of course.
This goes completely against everything he is purported to believe about U.S. foreign policy intervention.
But also Marco Rubio, who had disastrous media availabilities this week talking about the reason why the American military went when they went is to be reactive and responsive to Israel and offensive strikes that they would make.
I mean, things that not just, again, the broad public would disagree with, but that Donald Trump's base would disagree with.
It cannibalize.
It makes Trump look bad.
So it makes Trump look bad.
It also just cuts at your base.
I don't think Donald Trump's successor is in his administration right now.
Meaning, I don't think the next Republican nominee is in Donald Trump's administration.
I think they're outside.
And I would just say, related to the Democratic race, I made this point earlier.
Again, you cannot be a viable Democrat in 2028 and be anywhere near this war.
This war is deeply unpopular and it will only get more unpopular.
And I think you are going to see Democrats who are wanting to be viable in 2028 race to get to the flank of each other.
Wow.
About who can be more opposed to this.
We are only in the first days of this, the first weeks of this.
We will see how things play out.
I want to bring in our weekly feature, not on my bingo card, before I let you guys go.
This is where we highlight a funny, offbeat, or downright weird political or cultural moment.
During a Medal of Honor ceremony in the East Room of the White House on Monday, President Trump brought up the construction outside to build a White House ballroom and indicated the First Lady is eager to see the work completed.
I believe it's going to be the most beautiful ballroom anywhere in the world.
And when you hear all that hammering out there, you know why the First Lady is not thrilled exactly.
She said, will the pile drivers ever stop?
You know, they go from 6 in the morning till 11.30 in the evening.
Can you imagine?
Here?
You know what?
To me, that's a beautiful sound.
She doesn't like it.
I love it.
When I hear that sound, that beautiful sound behind me, it means money.
So I like it.
But my wife isn't thrilled.
She said, this is getting crazy.
I said, don't worry about it.
We'll be all finished up in a few months.
That Medal of Honor ceremony, there were a lot of hard pivots from the warrant Iran to the drapes in the White House to the ballroom.
How would you feel as First Lady if you were getting disturbed all day night?
Maybe moved to one of the suburbs of D.C. as it's long been rumored that the First Lady does live outside, perhaps.
Now, I think this is typical Trump.
I laugh, but I'm sad on the inside that our president spends time talking about such trite things.
But hey, to the average American, it seems relatable.
He talks about the details and gives you a look inside and takes a moment to maybe not talk about this.
Will should Democrats put some construction caps on or what?
I do think a question Democrats are going to have to deal with whenever Donald Trump exits the White House and maybe there's a Democrat that succeeds him.
What do you do with all the changes, the cosmetic changes that Donald Trump does?
Do you take down the gold?
Do you break the marble?
Come on, what are you going to do?
I think just as much as the American people may not care for Donald Trump's focus on it, they probably wouldn't care for Democrats being overly obsessed with pulling it back.
So that's a real challenge for Democrats.
All right.
Our real estate and design experts here.
Thank you so much, Republican strategist Rena Shaw and Democratic strategist Joel Payne.
Really appreciate your time today.
And let's close this week's program with our Ceasefire Moment of the Week, highlighting what's possible when politicians come together as Americans, not just partisans.
Two Connecticut state representatives sat down to discuss the issues facing their communities and how they might work together despite differing viewpoints.
Here's a portion of Republican Greg Howard and Democrat Jillian Gilchrist's bipartisan conversation with NBC Connecticut.
When it comes to politics, we have certain differences.
By the way, more so in common, I think if you look at our voting records, I think we vote together far more than we vote opposite one another.
It's important to highlight that.
But of the things that we vote opposite about, she just sees the world a little bit different than me.
She represents a little bit different constituency than me.
But I think very highly of her.
She's a mother who loves her children.
I'm a father who loves my kids.
We both care about the institution that we are involved in in the legislature.
We care about the institution of our government, both at the state and the federal level, as far as separation of powers and the power of people and things like that.
As he said, we disagree, but it's actually very helpful to be able to share our various perspectives and hear what the other has to say.
And it isn't, it's coming from a good place and we can have good conversation.
And I think another thing that helps us both is our humor.
We laugh a lot, so it's not seen as confrontational.
And then what brought us together on policy, the policy we directly worked together on, was training for law enforcement.
That's all the time we have for this episode.
Ceasefire is also available as a podcast.
Find us in all the usual places.
I'm Dasha Burns.
Remember, whether or not you agree, keep talking, keep listening.
Corps Surrender Talks00:02:37
Coming up, we'll take you to Chicago where Stevie Wonder and other artists are performing at the homecoming celebration of life for the late Reverend Jesse Jackson.
Live coverage from the Rainbow Push Coalition when it gets underway here on C-SPAN.
One week into U.S. combat operations in Iran, we're joined by retired Colonel Pete Mansoor.
He's currently with the Ohio State University's History Department Military History Chair.
Colonel Mansoor, as someone who spent 13 months in combat in Iraq, what are you watching for right now in Iran as we all try to figure out how long the fighting is going to go on for and how long the Iranian regime can stand up to these strikes?
Well, the operation right now is going tremendously successfully in terms of the tactics and the operations and the air campaign.
According to Admiral Brad Cooper, they're ahead of schedule in their list of targets that they're trying to hit.
They have air dominance over Iran, so they can fly legacy platforms like the F-16 and F-15 and B-52 bombers overhead without getting shot down.
That opens up the array of munitions that they can use and makes it a much less expensive war.
You can use gravity bombs with laser-guided warheads rather than these more expensive tomahawk cruise missiles or flying B-2 bombers overhead.
But that's only the tactics and the operations.
Strategically, I think the administration potentially could be making the same mistake that the Bush administration made in Iraq in 2003, in that they put a lot of effort into the combat operations, the so-called phase three of the operation, and put very little thought into phase four operations, which is stabilizing the regime or the nation after surrender.
It's not clear that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps is going to surrender, the IRGC.
It's unlikely, in fact, because they're so embedded into the fabric of the politics and the economics and the ideology of that regime and the nation.
About 20% of Iranians are, you know, are for the regime and benefit from it.