CSPAN - Washington Journal Marc Caputo
Aired: 2026-03-16
Duration: 08:59


=== Is This a War (08:59) ===

[00:00:00]  face about the kids need more to do.
[00:00:02]  Kids have ample programs to do.
[00:00:05]  What we need is accountability for families and children who think that it's okay to treat any neighborhood like that.
[00:00:17]  I guess how do we go about doing that?
[00:00:21]  Do you have any suggestions?
[00:00:23]  Yes, I have plenty of suggestions.
[00:00:25]  That's why we implement ways to keep children from congregating.
[00:00:36]  Thank you, everybody.
[00:00:44]  On Tuesday, FBI Director Kash Patel, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, and CIA Director John Ratcliffe will testify on global threats facing the United States.
[00:00:55]  The hearing comes as tensions escalate amid ongoing military strikes on Iran by the U.S. and Israel.
[00:01:02]  Watch the House Intelligence Committee hearing live at 2 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN 3.
[00:01:08]  C-SPAN now, our free mobile app, and online at c-span.org.
[00:01:17]  Welcome back to Washington Journal.
[00:01:18]  We're joined now by Mark Caputo.
[00:01:20]  He is White House reporter for Axios.
[00:01:22]  Mark, welcome to the program.
[00:01:24]  Thanks for having me.
[00:01:25]  So the war in Iran is at its entering its third week.
[00:01:31]  What is the mood?
[00:01:33]  What's the feeling inside the White House right now?
[00:01:36]  I think both optimism, frustration, and concern at the same time.
[00:01:43]  Optimism because they have the data, they say, from the Pentagon that shows all of their targets are being hit.
[00:01:50]  And according to them, they're ahead of schedule.
[00:01:52]  Lots of missile silos and drone factories and the like being blown up.
[00:01:57]  And the Iranian Navy is at the bottom of the water.
[00:02:00]  So that's the optimism part.
[00:02:01]  The frustration is with a lot of the reporting that and a lot of the commentary on social media that indicates Trump might have gotten himself into a quagmire and what's being commonly called an escalation trap.
[00:02:15]  And then the concern is obviously the Strait of Hormuz, which has closed and causing gas prices, oil prices, and therefore gas prices to rise.
[00:02:24]  If you mix those three things together, I think that sums up the mood of Donald Trump and this White House revolves so strongly around Donald Trump that it also describes not just the White House, but also the administration itself.
[00:02:36]  Now, regarding the Strait of Hormuz and the rising gas prices, was there, according to your reporting, was there preparation for that?
[00:02:45]  Was there knowledge that, I mean, this is what Iran is going to do and this is what's going to be the result of it?
[00:02:52]  I mean, they say there was, and it would make sense that there was.
[00:02:55]  There is an open question about how carefully those plans were made, how widely they were shared, and how quickly a good plan was implemented.
[00:03:06]  And I don't really have answers to those questions, but certainly there is some reporting out there that Trump is frustrated with sort of the pace of this being closed and the fact that other countries aren't helping out.
[00:03:18]  Now he has called on them.
[00:03:19]  He called on them Saturday to help out an international coalition.
[00:03:23]  And the White House tells us, told the Wall Street Journal first, that he expects, Donald Trump expects that he will be able to announce what they're calling a Hormuz coalition of other countries to help escort vessels through the Strait of Hormuz and get more oil to the global market.
[00:03:40]  And when we say escorting through the Strait of Hormuz, I mean it could be mined.
[00:03:46]  So how does that work militarily?
[00:03:48]  I mean, it doesn't help you to have a military escort if there's a mine in the water.
[00:03:55]  Well, certainly it doesn't help, especially if the military escort itself gets blown up.
[00:03:59]  And that's one of the great fears of this White House, perhaps of any Defense Department, is you don't want a multi-billion dollar piece of equipment sunk with a relatively cheap mine.
[00:04:10]  So, exactly what this looks like and at what point they think it's clear is a great question.
[00:04:15]  One of the reasons I think you haven't seen more action faster and more of these ships running through the strait is out of this concern.
[00:04:23]  There are allegedly, or we are told there are minesweepers there.
[00:04:26]  There is also reporting that some old minesweepers that were in the region and were scheduled to be decommissioned were pulled out of the region right before the war.
[00:04:33]  And that's leading some people to think that the planning wasn't so great.
[00:04:37]  What we do know in the short term is there is this chess game now happening between Washington and Tehran.
[00:04:44]  There's some reporting was from CNN that Tehran has said will open the straits, or at least one official said from the Iranian government, that they'll open the strait, but only to cargo oil cargo that is transaction in transacted in Shannon's and not in U.S. dollars.
[00:05:02]  Most, if not all, petrol contracts and oil contracts are used with the U.S. dollars.
[00:05:07]  It's sort of the world currency, so to speak.
[00:05:10]  And China, Iran, and a number of other countries, the BRICS countries, are trying to break that logjam.
[00:05:16]  And so Iran sees this as an opportunity to do that.
[00:05:20]  If you'd like to join our conversation with Mark Caputo, he's a White House reporter for Axios.
[00:05:24]  You can start calling in now.
[00:05:25]  Democrats are on 2027 for eight eight thousand.
[00:05:28]  Republicans on 2027488001.
[00:05:31]  And Independents 202748802.
[00:05:35]  Mark, there's a lot of conversation about the word war.
[00:05:39]  Sometimes we use war, sometimes we use conflict.
[00:05:42]  Is the White House calling this a war?
[00:05:45]  The White House officially isn't, but then the president does at different times.
[00:05:49]  So, you know, it's a war.
[00:05:52]  It's also a conflict.
[00:05:53]  And, you know, pick your poison here.
[00:05:55]  But the United States is spending something on the order or had spent on the order in the first 14 days or so, about $12 billion, expending all of his expensive ordnance, missiles, bombs, and spending it on the planes that have to take off and the personnel to staff the various military bases and the aircraft carriers and related strike groups.
[00:06:19]  So sure looks like a war to the people who are getting blown up, and it looks like a war to everyone else.
[00:06:24]  And whether the White House officially wants to admit that or not, who knows?
[00:06:28]  There is an irony, obviously, that Pete Hegseth was among those who insisted that the Department of Defense be renamed the War Department.
[00:06:35]  He constantly talks about warfighters, and now that war is going on, he's among those who are suggesting, like, well, this isn't war.
[00:06:41]  But then other times, he has said war is hell.
[00:06:44]  So, whatever, it is what it is.
[00:06:47]  It's a war, it's a conflict, and the ending of it is unclear at the moment.
[00:06:53]  And the justification is sometimes shifting.
[00:06:56]  At least that's what the criticism of the administration is.
[00:07:00]  I'm going to play you, Secretary Hegseth, and also.
[00:07:04]  So, this is Secretary Hegseth from March 3rd, and then President Trump last Monday about the justification.
[00:07:11]  So, these are about a week apart, and then I'll get your comment.
[00:07:15]  The campaign has seven times the intensity of Israel's previous operations against Iran during the 12-day war.
[00:07:21]  Seven times.
[00:07:24]  And as President Trump said, more and larger waves are coming.
[00:07:28]  We are just getting started.
[00:07:30]  We are accelerating, not decelerating.
[00:07:33]  Iran's capabilities are evaporating by the hour while American strength grows fiercer, smarter, and utterly dominant.
[00:07:40]  More bombers and more fighters are arriving just today.
[00:07:44]  Our country is doing really well.
[00:07:47]  I mean, at a level that nobody thought we took a little excursion because we felt we had to do that to get rid of some evil.
[00:07:54]  And I think you'll see it's going to be a short-term excursion.
[00:07:58]  How good is our military, right?
[00:08:02]  Amazing.
[00:08:05]  How good?
[00:08:06]  Short term.
[00:08:09]  Short term.
[00:08:15]  Comments.
[00:08:18]  I'm sorry, I didn't catch that first part of your question.
[00:08:21]  I was just saying, what do you make of those two comments from the Secretary and from the President?
[00:08:25]  Well, notably, the Secretary of War talked about the 12-day war and how this current conflict is expanding more ordnance.
[00:08:33]  So by his own definition, this is a war.
[00:08:35]  I do have to say that one thing the administration has been consistent about, the president, not so much, but he said on the opening of the conflict of the war on February 28th that there are four objectives.
[00:08:49]  You can watch this program in its entirety if you go to our website, c-span.org.
[00:08:54]  We're going to leave this here for live coverage of the U.S. House And the internal revenue code of 1986.