Sean Spicer and Chuck Rocha dissect the White House shooting fallout, arguing over whether left-wing rhetoric normalizes violence while debating the Louisiana redistricting ruling. They analyze Trump's contentious NATO stance versus King Charles's alliance defense, the high $25 billion daily cost of Iran operations, and the strategic risks of diverting forces from China. Ultimately, the episode suggests that current political polarization and disjointed foreign policy threaten national security and global stability. [Automatically generated summary]
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Civics Classes and Common Ground00:14:32
250 years later, so you never go wrong telling young people to read the Declaration of Independence, and we just need more civics classes and government classes so people understand this remarkable 250-year journey.
Watch America's Book Club with Douglas Brinkley Sunday at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. Eastern and Pacific.
only on C-SPAN.
Welcome to Ceasefire, where we look to bridge the divide in American politics.
I'm Greta Bronner in for Dasha Burns.
Joining me now on either side of the desk, two guests who've agreed to keep the conversation civil, even when they disagree.
Democratic strategist Chuck Rocha, a veteran of several Democratic campaigns, including senior advisor to Bernie Sanders' 2020 presidential campaign.
And Republican strategist Sean Spicer, former White House press secretary during the first Trump administration.
He's also the author of a new book, Trump 2.0, the revolution that will permanently transform America.
I will look to you guys to peel back the curtain on news of the week as strategists, not surrogates.
Deal.
All right.
Let's begin with the White House correspondents dinner and talk about the political rhetoric that came out of that shooting last week.
Are leaders on both sides doing enough to calm tensions right now?
Sean, let me begin with you.
No, absolutely not.
Look, and I know, obviously, we're trying to keep this civil, but there's a difference.
I think there's a lot of comments that have been made on the right and people can object to them.
But I think when you demonize another side and you talk to them over and over as a threat, like in 27 years in the military, when you tell someone there's a threat, the reaction for most people is, how do I eliminate the threat?
And the Democrats have branded Donald Trump a threat to democracy, a threat to the country, a Nazi, someone who's Hitler.
And at some point, you can't get surprised when people take action.
We look at what's happened to not just Donald Trump three times, Charlie Kirk, the healthcare CEO, the CEO of United Healthcare, right?
The left has normalized violence.
When the CEO of United Health was killed, not just the political piece of this, people set up a legal defense fund for Luigi Mangioni.
They made it acceptable because he was in pursuit of something that they found to be a policy goal that they all achieved.
And that's where I think it should never be acceptable, ever, that we are promoting violence.
Is the right doing it?
Some people on the right do it, but I think frankly, I know myself and others will call it out and say this, and I have.
I mean, I think through at least the last 10, 15 years, I've been very clear about where I stand on that.
And in instances that people have gone over the line, I think I've done a pretty good job.
But I think there's been a normalization, and the polls show it.
Young people in particular on the left believe it is acceptable to use violence as a means to achieve their goals.
And that's a problem, I think, that is distinct to that group of people on the left that we don't share.
There are some bad apples on the right.
I'm not saying we're perfect as a party, but I think you're not seeing that level of acceptability to violence as a means.
Now, I've been told on the left that Democrats is weak and that we got no backbone and that we're puny men.
Now, I don't know how that can make that we're the violent party, but I'll let you have that for now.
Your boys are the ones that are violent.
You can debate the boys and the men.
I am not on here, but I'll say this, that I think anybody with two brain cells will know that there's been a lot of rhetoric on the internet on both sides.
I'm on both sides of this thing.
I take responsibility for Democrats like Sean takes responsibility for some of the Republicans and both speak out against it.
I remember in the days of Barack Obama, or that, does this sound familiar?
Joe Biden is too old to even know what's going on in the White House and that we should do something as a country.
Again, could be interpreted either way you want to interpret it.
But here's the key to this that Sean didn't talk about that I'm fixing to say right now.
There are pieces of the internet right now and people on the internet whose job it is to divide us.
For me to hate him because he's a Republican and him to hate me because I'm a Democrat.
No matter the color of my skin, if I got a hat and he don't, because we're DNR.
That's the biggest difference in my 36 years of running campaigns.
And we profit.
Folks profit off of the hate.
So if you're a congressman, a junior congressman, Democrat in California, junior congressman from Georgia and you're Republican, to say the most outlandish, crazy stuff on the internet, you get more likes, you get more dollars, you get more clicks, and you're making money off of it.
That's the difference.
And Chuck, do you get more wins?
Do you win at the ballot box?
We'll talk about the Supreme Court here in a minute about congressional races, but this is also the problem.
There's 435 congressional seats behind us, and only 30 of them maybe are marginal.
That means everybody else only has to worry about a primary from the right or primary of my party from the left.
So you're rewarded for being that crazy person.
After the correspondence dinner, White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt was quick to point the finger at Democrats, which drew sharp reaction from House Minority Leader Hakeem Jefferies.
Here's a portion of both of their statements.
This political violence stems from a systemic demonization of him and his supporters by commentators, yes, by elected members of the Democrat Party and even some in the media.
This hateful, inconstant, and violent rhetoric directed at President Trump day after day after day for 11 years has helped legitimize this violence and bring us to this dark moment.
I think that what's interesting to me, as you've pointed out, is that this so-called White House press secretary, who's a disgrace, he's a stone-cold liar, had the nerve to stand up there and read talking points being critical of statements all taken out of context that Democrats have made and didn't have a word to say about anything that MAGA extremists have said or done.
And this so-called White House press secretary wants to lecture America and lecture us about civility.
Get lost.
Clean up your own house before you have anything to say to us.
Sean Spicer, you had Caroline Levitt's job.
Does the minority leader have a point there about she didn't call out what some MAGA supporters say?
This whole thing is so fascinating to me.
When Republicans point something out, the answer from Democrats is: you didn't do something in the past that we should have.
Okay, first of all, he hasn't named a single incident there.
What is he referring to?
Right?
But the idea that he can't say, yeah, we probably shouldn't say that he's a Nazi, a threat to democracy, Hitler.
What do you think is going to happen over and over again?
We've had three assassination attempts on President Trump's life that we know of.
And Charlie Kirk was killed at a college campus for trying to actually bring people together to have a dialogue that Chuck kind of referred to, i.e., bringing people and saying, no matter where you are on the spectrum, come down and let's debate it openly, honestly, let's have an open airing of this.
And he was killed for it.
Where are we?
Then the majority leader says, I mean, the minority leader says she's illegitimate.
He so-called, she's despicable.
I mean, I'm sorry.
Like, at what point, if we're going to point fingers every time in the media at Donald Trump and MAGA supporters, where is the accountability for him?
He got no backlash from anyone in the media.
Not one comment that I can find scouring the media and legacy media outlets.
These guys can say this kind of stuff with impunity.
People are literally, by the way, just one other fun fact for your audience here.
Do you realize that a good chunk of the senior staff, not the elected officials, not the Senate confirmed officials, staff in the White House now has to have a security detail for the first time in history?
My counterparts on the Democratic side in the Biden administration and the Obama administration could walk the streets freely, right?
This is a new dynamic where staff must be protected because of the vitriol that exists on the left.
I've faced it myself.
This isn't theoretical.
I know what it's like to walk into a grocery store or another outlet where people come at you and attack you.
They believe violence is acceptable and they won't accept, they won't confront their own people.
Two points on that.
Same instance as Sean's talking about.
This weekend, I know we talked about the White House Correspondence Dinner.
I host a big brunch, the annual Chuck Brunch, on Saturday to honor Hispanic journalists.
And while I was there, a congresswoman came and there was a large man with her and I knew it wasn't her husband.
And I went to my staff and I was like, I don't know that guy.
Who is that guy?
And they said it's her security.
She's a freshman congresswoman and she has security.
It made me just think, oh my God, now we're living in a time where a freshman congresswoman that only I thought I would recognize in a crowd has security.
The second point is, is I was watching both of those statements and we were talking about bringing down the rhetoric as me and Sean's voices get more and more elevated.
If you look at the minority leader and you look at the White House spokesman and you watch the way that they are presenting both cases in a vitriolic way, both of them were.
If either one of them, think about this and what we're talking about.
If the minority leader or if the spokesman gets up and says, look, we've all got to do a better job.
We have to find common ground.
We have some blame.
Democrats may have more blame if I'm the Republican or vice versa, but we should just calm the rhetoric and let's all figure out how to work together.
They are vilified, either side, on the internet and beaten down by their base of their own party, my party, I'll take my own responsibility, and Republicans if she was to do that, because I see it every day in congressional races that I'm running all across America.
If you try to find middle ground in this environment, folks will say that you're not standing up to a, we need a real fighter, we should get rid of you.
And I don't think that's what our government should be doing.
I never got my invite, by the way, to the Chuck Bruns.
We're going to make that happen next year.
That could have helped ease this divine.
I really could love a good brunch.
Next year.
Do you think invites will go out for another White House correspondence dinner?
Do you think in this political environment that there should even be that dinner?
So it's funny.
You mentioned the book.
I have a chapter on the White House Correspondents Association and the dinner.
I think they should have whatever they want.
They're a private organization.
They should have a dinner.
They can have a gala.
They can have a party.
I don't really care.
If they want to have, like the First Amendment isn't just about the media.
It's actually about all of us, our freedom of speech, our freedom of assembly.
If they want to gather, give themselves awards, pat themselves on the back, God bless them.
They should have one as many times as they want.
But it shouldn't be up to the White House or our party or anyone else.
That group is a private institution.
They should gather as they wish.
I wish more conservatives didn't go.
I think we are complicit with when we point out problems in the media and then we go to dinners like that, we are part of the problem as conservatives.
And so I've not attended the dinner in years.
I wish most conservatives didn't go.
I actually wish the president hadn't gone.
The organization should go, give out its awards, gather, celebrate themselves.
God bless them.
But we shouldn't be complicit in part of it.
And first, on a security-related note, should so much of the line of succession be in that room?
Well, again, just keep in mind, Chuck Grassley was not there.
Technically, he was the fourth in line, so it's speaker, vice president, speaker of the house.
But I do think that's a good point.
There should be, it's not just this line of succession.
It's all those people.
I'm sure there were serious, I mean, there are Democratic leaders as well, that many people gathered in a room.
But there's a balance, Greta.
At what point do we have to start thinking, what invitations do I accept based on who's going as a free society?
And that's a problem that we need to think about.
But I wish conservatives didn't go to the dinner, period.
Now, Chuck Grassley don't go just like Chuck Rocher don't go.
Chuck Grassley's 95 and I may be 92 because it's past our bedtime.
That's why Chuck Grassley was not going to be able to do it.
He wasn't standing in there.
Now, the second piece is I agree is that at my brunch, we gave away awards to Hispanic journalists.
It's my brunch.
I can do what I want to do.
It's the same in the White House correspondents' dinner.
I was, though, I'll say that with all the catastrophe going on and the sadness, I was really looking forward to seeing what Trump had to say.
Like, I'm not, I throw all the bombs at Trump and administration policy all day, but I make political ads for a living.
I run actually campaigns for a living.
So I was really interested because I am a DC nerd, like a lot of folks watching this to see what was going to happen.
It was going to be a spectacle.
So no matter, I also like wrestling.
So it's going to be like world-class wrestling for me.
Like, who's going over the top rope tonight?
So I'd like to see it.
I mean, I do find some of the, I would have watched the speech, and I had actually been with Ozimentalist that on Friday for a warm-up that he said.
I was actually going to be fascinated by that.
I actually give the correspondence dinner credit for not having the standard comedian that tries to tell mean jokes about Republicans.
I thought it was a smart move.
That being said, I think it would be interesting to see if Trump ever delivers the speech because from what I understand, it was going to be rather funny and pointed.
On the lack of a comedian, following the shooting, First Lady Melania Trump and Caroline Lovitt blasted rhetoric used by the late night host Jimmy Kimmel and called for ABC to fire him.
Here's the joke Kimmel made before last weekend's dinner during a sketch where he pretended to be the hired comedian for the correspondence dinner and the White House's reaction.
Our First Lady Melania is here.
Look at Mel, so beautiful.
Mrs. Trump, you have a glow like an expectant widow.
Just two days prior to the shooting, ABC's late night host Jimmy Kimmel disgustingly called First Lady Melania Trump an expectant widow.
Who in their right minds says a wife would be glowing over the potential murder of her beloved husband?
And having experienced what I did with the first lady on Saturday night, I can tell you that she was anything but that.
It was a very light roast joke about the fact that he's almost 80 and she's younger than I am.
It was not by any stretch of the definition a call to assassination.
And they know that.
I've been very vocal for many years speaking out against gun violence in particular.
But I understand that the first lady had a stressful experience over the weekend.
Melania Trump Expectant Widow Insult00:15:46
Chuck, does the White House have a point here?
Look, the White House hates Jimmy Kimmel.
It ain't nothing new.
And he stepped right into it by telling a joke.
And he's damned if he does and he's damned if he don't.
In this instance, he told a joke.
It's free speech.
But Donald Trump is one thing.
Like he is ruthless when people he don't like and you get in his sight.
This is what happens to you.
The thing is, look, what I found ironic about this is, do I think that Kimmel was in any way trying to foreshadow a potential assassination attempt?
Probably not.
But we do know that there's been two previous assassination attempts.
So what I thought was rich on Jimmy's behalf was this idea that everybody supposedly knows what he meant.
And yet, if you listen to Jimmy over the last 10 years, he doesn't give or extend that same grace to anybody else.
He'll take their comments out of context, make fun of them, not necessarily in his monologue when he's being funny, but his political commentary.
So he's now asking for a degree of grace, saying that's not what I meant, and everybody knows it according to him.
Well, when he talked about a lot of the things that Trump has said in the past, and he knows, same way that supposedly everyone knows what the intent of his joke was, he doesn't give the same grace to anybody else.
And that's what I think is ironic about the comments that he made, is that he wants everybody else to assume that he had the best intentions.
He was just trying to be funny.
And yet, when he attacks everybody else, he impugns their integrity, their reputation, their motives.
Moving on, following the shooting, several people from the White House pointed to the need for the ballroom.
Pennsylvania Democratic Senator John Fetterman voiced support for the president's plan for this ballroom following the scare last Saturday.
He posted on X in part, that venue wasn't built to accommodate an event with the line of succession for the U.S. government.
After witnessing last night, drop the TDS and build the White House ballroom for events exactly like these.
TDS referring to Trump derangement syndrome.
Chuck, is he right?
I don't think so.
What I've seen around the ballroom with the American electorate is if you've got a Donald Trump flag on your boat, like my sister-in-law does, and you think this is the greatest idea in the world.
If you're a resistor and you've got a Chuck Rocha tattoo on your arm because you think I'm cool, you probably hate everything that he does.
It's these folks in the middle that's just trying to make it work every day.
And when we talk to them in focus groups, we talk about the ballroom.
They really don't go down the rabbit hole far enough to know about the lines of succession like all of us here in D.C. They're just trying to figure out how to make it every day.
They see this just another form of waste, in their opinion, or a rigged system of something we really don't need while they're struggling.
Can I just say this?
As a Republican, as a Trump supporter, we need a ballroom.
We don't need it to host a dinner.
So I'll be clear.
What do we need it for then?
Oh, I mean, last night was a state dinner, or two nights ago was a state dinner.
And all sorts of events.
I mean, I've been in and out of the White House.
I've never been to a state dinner, but I've been in the middle of the day.
Neither have I, Chuck, just to share that.
You can come to the brunch.
Maybe if we expand it, I'm just hoping for an invite.
But the bottom line is that we need a venue at the White House.
I've served there as White House press secretary.
I've been there before as a participant.
There are plenty of events when sports events, you know, they're honoring a group, whether it's a winner of a league or a school group or whatever, where you need something that's bigger than 150 or so people that can fit in either the East Room or the State Dining Room.
So should we have one?
Of course.
But we don't ever should have the White House Correspondence Center in a government room.
Following the shooting, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham and other Senate Republicans propose a plan to help finance the White House ballroom, which previously indicated it would be mostly funded with donors.
Take a listen to the senator.
We've paid for it by offsetting it with custom fees, but the estimate is $332 million.
We're going to do $400 million because I think it's probably going to take more.
Private donations can be used, but I think they should be used for buying China and stuff like that.
And the sooner we get the ballroom built, the more hardened it is, the better for the country.
That was Senator Graham.
Florida Republican Senator Rick Scott responded to him telling NBC News this.
I don't know why you would do it with taxpayer money if it's all funded, said Senator Rick Scott, a Trump ally and spending hawk.
We have $39 trillion in debt, he added.
Maybe we ought to stop spending money.
To Chuck's point, I mean, how do we do it?
100% of this.
No, they didn't.
They shouldn't.
Senator Scott's right.
I mean, first of all, can I just say this with what Lindsey Graham said is so wrong with what's wrong with America?
You know what?
The estimate is $332 million, but let's just round it up to $400 million.
That is absolutely what's wrong with Washington, D.C. You know, throw in an extra $70 million and round it up.
That's the problem with Washington right now.
Senator Scott is right.
The president was raising this money through private donations.
I am wholeheartedly in support of that, but zero tax dollars.
All right, back to the topic of rhetoric.
Former FBI Director James Comey was indicted this week over a social media post of seashells spelling 8647.
The Department of Justice says it's constituted a threat against President Trump.
What do each of you make of this crackdown by the administration on what it deems a threat toward the president?
Chuck?
Now, look, I am no Comey sympathizer.
That would not surprise folks.
And any of you Democrats out there, you shouldn't be either.
And remind what he did to Hillary Clinton, whether you loved her or not.
He had a lot to do with that.
But I will say this, and I was on a show with a lawyer the other day.
I'm not a lawyer.
That won't shock nobody.
When I said, can you actually take a picture to a grand jury to show intent to actually get this done?
And they were like, well, you know, a grand jury is a grand jury.
The point of the matter is, is that you have an attorney general, an acting attorney general right now, who would like to be, who's Donald Trump's personal lawyer at one point, who wants to be the attorney general.
And he's doing what any smart person who's trying to get in front of Donald Trump doing by saying, guess what?
Look at what I did with your boy.
I got him up here right after the shooting to show you can't do this because you have been people trying to kill you every other day at the White House, to Sean's point, like there's been multiple tries to kill him.
That is a way to get favor with Donald Trump as the Democrat judging from the outside.
I'll tell you this, though.
I think it's going to backfire on who?
On Blanche and those guys.
Because, look, Comey was the chief law enforcement officer of the country.
To say that I didn't know that I just took a random seashell picture that I saw on the beach of 8647 and say, I didn't know what it was.
I just randomly posted either he's the dumbest guy ever or he's lying, right?
But does that make you guilty of posting a picture or whether you made the seashell?
No, look, is it stupid?
Is it wrong?
Yes.
Is it indictable?
Probably not.
And that's why I think that where it could backfire is, I think if you indict the guy, you arrest him, and the court throws it out, the president might say, what were you doing?
Like, why did you make all this happen?
And it could actually backfire on Blanche.
Obviously, I don't know the law.
I'm like, Chuck.
My entire legal experience is watching Law and Order.
So I don't know what the grand jury may or may not do, but I think that two things can exist at the same time.
One, Comey was stupid doing this.
The idea that he's denying he had any, I mean, why would you post a picture if you don't know what?
I mean, to be like, wow, it was just random seashells on the beach.
I mean, that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard from a guy who supposedly is the nation's top law enforcement officer.
But is it against the law?
Again, as a non-lawyer, I think it's stupid, not probably illegal.
And you agree with Chuck that Todd Blanche is auditioning for the job?
Well, I mean, I believe Todd Blanche has the job as far as I'm aware of.
He just, it hasn't been formally given to him.
So he's probably trying to show.
But I think what you've got to be careful of is if you try to audition for a part and you don't do a good audition, meaning it backfires on you, you probably haven't done yourself.
Yeah, it could come back to haunt you.
So I'd be very careful about the audition.
All right.
Speaking with staying with politics, the Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dan Kaine, testifying on Capitol Hill this week, here's a portion.
The biggest challenge, the biggest adversary we face at this point are the reckless, feckless, and defeatist words of congressional Democrats and some Republicans.
For the safety of the American people, Iran cannot have a nuclear bomb.
We are proud of this undertaking.
I am proud that President Trump has had the courage to do it.
I owe the President, the Secretary, and the Congress the truth at every term.
My blueprint for this role is General George C. Marshall.
His commitment to civilian control of the military and nonpartisan military remains a constant standard and something I borrow from often.
I strive daily to emulate his candor, delivering the facts to our leaders and telling them always what they need to hear, not always what they want to hear.
Sean, the juxtaposition of those two men, has the Defense Secretary made that post a political one?
Yes, but...
Should it be?
Well, it's a political appointee, right?
General Kaine is chairman of the Joint Chiefs military officer.
They have separate roles.
I've done three tours in the Pentagon.
There's a very clear difference between the politicals and the military officers.
And so the chain of command is separate.
Your role is separate.
But Hegseth has a job to do.
He serves the pleasure of the president.
His job is to communicate the political objectives of the commander-in-chief.
General Kane's job as the senior military advisor to the president is to give him the best military advice possible on behalf of the various branches.
And I think they both play the role well.
How do you assess the job that Hag Seth is doing?
Because there's headlines out there, GLP senators losing confidence in Hag Seth amid Pentagon turmoil.
I think he's definitely an outlier of what we're used to norms, but I think we threw all the norms out with Donald Trump with lots of things.
Some for the good, most for the bad, in my opinion.
But I do think that this is the first time in my 57 years of being on this earth that I've seen the American electorate again of those 36 years running campaigns.
I've never seen an electorate more tuned out of a war.
They tune in every time they fill up their gas tank because they see that immediately.
They feel that, but they don't know the line of succession just like they don't know what $1 billion versus $100 billion means, except on their everyday paycheck.
So I don't know if it's good or bad.
I just know I've seen them not engaged.
Let's turn to the midterms and the electorate.
Big news out of the closely watched Senate race in Maine.
The Democratic governor dropped out of the primary.
Fox News writes, Maine gov Janet Mills drops out of Democratic Race for Senate, signaling she struggled to raise enough money.
Mills' withdrawal clears the way for Maine leftist Graham Plattner to challenge Senator Susan Collins.
Chuck, was this the right call by Janet Mills?
And is the happy, is the party happy with this move?
Well, she was recruited by the leader in the Democratic Senate.
So I still think that Democrats are happy because what we're seeing is what the Republicans have lived through, and this is the Democrat talking, of like the people on the ground are frustrated, right?
We have lost working class voters like me.
I grew up in a trailer house in East Texas, went to work in a factory when I was 19.
Most folks know my story.
There's very few Chuck Roaches in a cowboy hat who grew up on a farm in the Democratic Party, and we're desperate to get those folks back or we're not going to win in the future.
Graham Plattner is a flawed candidate, but he is an American who served our country.
And with all of his flaws, the Maine voters have said, that's the guy we want to see, and that's why she wasn't raising any money.
Sean Spencer, did Republicans have a preferred candidate here?
It's actually a great question.
Because I said this about, we do a morning show on YouTube every morning at 8:30 called The Huddle.
And two months ago, I said she's going to drop out.
It was great about that video because you can always go back and show people that you actually did it.
Janet Mills, as Chuck said, she was recruited by Chuck Schumer.
She's a two-term governor.
And this oyster farmer, who is, as Chuck admits, very flawed.
He has said some pretty outrageous things about women, Nazis, all sorts of stuff.
He was able to best her.
It wasn't just a fundraising.
She was struggling to gain any kind of traction with Maine voters after being a two-term governor.
Look, I think it was a late primary that they're going to have in Maine.
So her dropping out, she was going to lose, full stop.
So her dropping out early at least gives Plattner more time to raise money to make that case for the general election against Susan Collins.
So one thing about Susan Collins, though, is that she always pulls it out.
She's been, I was up in Maine, I don't know, six, seven months ago.
She has her pulse on the electorate in Maine.
She really understands the people there.
It's a small state, New England state, where you get to know your elected representatives.
She's been in office for quite some time.
So I still feel good about it.
But I think Plattner, despite all of his flaws, is going to raise a ton of money and make this a very competitive race.
But given Janet Mills' age, is her dropping out and Graham Plattner's candidacy, is it a warning to Susan Collins this time around?
Well, she's had tough races every, I mean, ever since she was a member of the United States.
She'll pull it out every time.
She's Canada.
She'll be down five, six points, and she'll pull it out by three, four, five.
And my reason is you can only buy so many TV commercials in Portland.
Again, campaign guy here.
Like $10 million and $1 million ain't much different.
So you can go there and spend all the money you want to win.
If you start learning enough, you can go talk to enough people.
Well, and that's the other thing: she's not a spring chicken.
They know her.
They're like, that's not the Susan Collins I know.
She was at my birthday.
She went to my dad's retirement party.
She showed up at my son's bar mitzvah.
Like, they know Susan Collins, right?
They don't know Graham Plattner.
And every time they start to hear him, and remember, this has been a Democratic primary issue.
Mills trying to dump Oppo on Platinum.
Now we're going to really rip the bark off the guy.
I mean, this is where it gets good.
And we're really going to brand that guy from the Republican side for all the things that he said and done.
They started today.
The RNC put out a commercial on him today.
So you don't think this time around it's any different?
You think Susan Collins waits?
It's a different political environment that we're in.
We should all be clear.
We have spent this entire half hour talking about all the political news of the week.
We haven't brought up once the price of groceries, the price of gas, or what we're going to do either side to make you make more money.
That's where the American people are right now.
Wars, platinum, whoever, they're at home desperate to figure out how I'm going to make the next paycheck and how I can pay less for things and make more money.
That's what the American people want.
And nobody in Washington is talking about that right now.
More political news.
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court threw out a Louisiana congressional map that added a second majority black congressional district, calling the map an unconstitutional gerrymander.
It marks a big change for the Voting Rights Act.
President Trump weighed in on the ruling.
Some states don't need to redraw, and some do.
I mean, I know what the concept of the ruling is, I just haven't seen the result.
Yeah, I would say generally, I would think that they would want to do it.
Some are greatly helped, and some, you know, it didn't make much difference.
Yeah, I would say they would do that.
I'd like both of you to help our viewers understand, make sense of the implications of this ruling by the Supreme Court.
Is it back on the war, the redistricting wars?
Well, yes and no.
By the way, kudos to Rachel Bade, my colleague in my morning show, The Huddle.
She was the one who asked the president that question.
Not just asked him, actually informed him that the court had ruled.
So it was a great moment for our show.
I think sort of yes and no.
I think we've already been in the redistricting wars.
Last cycle, the Democrats started this in New York.
The court ruled that they couldn't do it mid-cycle.
We went back at it this year, started in Texas, then California.
We've been going at it state by state.
There's a big difference between redistricting mid-cycle and the pluses and minuses of that and what the court ruled on, right?
Supreme Court Redistricting Ruling00:04:15
So voting rights districts exist not just in southern states.
Massachusetts has one in the Boston area.
A lot of Illinois has one, right?
So what they're doing is making sure that they can't draw districts purely on race.
And let's face it, these all benefited the Democratic Party.
Black Republicans, Byron Donalds, John James, Wesley Hunt, they all, Burgess Owens, all win in majority white districts.
This ruling just protected black Democrats.
And I think, by the way, beyond this, this is going to be a real reckoning for the Democratic Party in terms of what do they do to the congressional black caucus?
What part, what role does that have going forward?
Because it may be a much smaller caucus than it has been today.
Black caucus has 67 members.
If this table is a state and each one of these beautiful arrows is a congressional seat, let's say that there's four congressional seats.
That one in the middle is the city in that state.
And there's an equal amount of people in all three of these congressional districts in this city in the middle that is majority black with a black mayor and a black city council and have elected a black member of Congress because this is in Mississippi and the Supreme Court said you had to have a black congressman.
They just did away with this.
And what the Republicans will do now is go in and say, based off of demographics, not demographics, alpha partisanship, which is legal with the Supreme Court.
They split that district into four pieces and divide it up amongst here, getting rid of that.
So the question becomes: what will Democratic states do in response to that?
What we've seen so far in California and Virginia is the same, except for in those states, those Democrats had to take it to the voters because that was the law and the voters voted on that.
That's the big difference.
But I think this is not behind us yet because if you're walking down the street and some old boy just comes up and cold cocks you, you're not just going to lay down.
You're going to get up and fight back.
And that's what the bases demanded.
And so what do you expect for 2028 and 2020?
I think there'll be two or three seats now that will happen before it have laid primaries.
For 2026.
For 26.
There's an estimate up to four, but I think it'll be more like two.
But then after this year, they go right back to the drone board because now they're not beholden to that.
And there'll be some more redistricting people.
I'll be surprised, by the way.
Louisiana is a definite one.
The court ruled they had to do it.
So that picks you up one.
Alabama, I think Governor Kay Ivey's going to be under a ton of pressure.
State and national Republicans are telling her to call that special session.
Tennessee.
She's refusing so far.
She is so far.
I think the pressure is going to mount, but that's potentially two seats for Republicans.
I'm not so sure it happens.
Memphis?
No, no.
So that's the one.
And then you've got to go Tennessee, South Carolina.
Again, those would be the other two states.
Florida was going to happen regardless.
So that has nothing to do with this ruling.
But those are the only two other states.
I reported this two months ago, by the way.
The dissent on this got no attention.
You remember, this is a 6-3 decision that was heard twice.
The last time, on October 15th, 2025, the court's minority slow-rolled the dissent on this intentionally to prevent additional states from redistricting ahead of the midterm.
So there's a whole bunch of stuff to unpack here, but I think that I agree with Chuck.
I mean, maybe an additional two.
And the big additional question that still has to get asked is what happens in Virginia?
Because right now, the lower court has said that the election that was held was not valid.
They violated on four different occasions Virginia law to redistrict.
Well, won't there be legal challenges in Florida as well?
There will be, but I think the way that Governor DeSantis and the state legislature have crafted this, those arguments are going to be a lot harder because the basis is not the same.
In Virginia, they didn't do the 90 days.
The state legislature didn't have an intervening election, though, the way the law says it, the constitutional question wasn't fair.
It didn't give voters.
I mean, there's multiple violations of Virginia law that the court, the Virginia Supreme Court, because that's where it lies, will have to rule on.
And I actually feel somewhat good about it.
The voters don't like this.
They don't like this.
No, that's true.
They don't like where they're having to be moved around.
Folks that live out in the country don't want to be in a congressional district that now goes into a city.
And what I described earlier is the object of all the problems in Washington, D.C., is there's not enough of those guys, mainly guys in Congress right now, that have any kind of worry about being beat by the other party.
And that's either side.
That's what's wrong with our fighting right now in our democracy.
I'll agree with Chuck on this.
I wish we hadn't gone down this path.
I think it's not helpful.
I mean, you do it every 10 years for a reason because you don't want voters having to figure out who their member of Congress is and vice versa.
NATO Alliances and Protection Rackets00:14:48
That's all we have time for today.
Republican strategist Sean Spicer and Democratic strategist Chuck Rocha.
Thank you both for lending your experience today.
Thank you.
Let's turn now to this week's C-SPAN flashback, where we dig deep into the video archives to show you a moment in political history that is eerily similar to what's happening today.
This week, the White House held a state dinner honoring King Charles III and Queen Camilla, part of the royal state visit ahead of America 250 celebrations.
Back in 1991, Charles' mother, Queen Elizabeth II, visited the United States during the presidency of George W. Bush, H.W. Bush.
Here's a portion of their shared remarks at the state dinner.
We've got a lot of things in common.
Americans share the Queen's love of horses.
And I often wonder if I'd be standing here today if it weren't for a horse fancier named Paul Revere.
I was delighted to be able to accept your invitation to pay this state visit to Washington and to renew my acquaintance with Blahaus.
It seems that Winston Churchill spent three weeks in the White House as the guests of the Roosevelts over Christmas in 1941.
And the story goes that very late one night, or more likely very early in the morning, he tried to persuade Mrs. Roosevelt to let him talk to the president.
And Mrs. Roosevelt is supposed to have decided then and there that henceforth the president's guests should be accommodated elsewhere.
Light-hearted moments in 1991, similar to this week's state dinner, except for one particular moment.
To talk about that and other top stories, I'm joined by two foreign policy pros, Michael Allen.
He has worked for the House Intelligence Committee, as well as the National Security Council during the George W. Bush administration, and Dan Shapiro, former U.S. Ambassador to Israel during the Obama administration, and former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East during the Biden administration.
Thank you both for joining me.
Thank you.
I want to start with the moment from the toast that I was alluding to on Tuesday's state dinner when President Trump was talking about the war with Iran.
Take a listen.
We have militarily defeated that particular opponent and we're never going to let that opponent ever.
Charles agrees with me even more than I do.
We're never going to let that opponent have a nuclear weapon.
They know that and they've known it right now very powerfully.
The moment made headlines across the pond as it is considered a faux pas to put words in the king's mouth.
Here is The Guardian.
King Charles agrees with me on Iran nuclear weapon ban, claims Trump.
Remarks by the U.S. President likely to cause embarrassment for aides of UK monarch, who usually remains neutral.
Mike Allen, clean up on aisle nine.
So in the diplomatic world, is this a big misstep?
Well, it's a big controversy over there, but I guess what the king and the queen before her usually do, I think, is merely repeat what they know to be the government's position or the long-standing position of their government.
So I think he probably said such a thing because it's so inherently non-controversial.
Now, the president probably shouldn't have quoted him, shouldn't have repeated it, but I don't think it's a long-lasting, something that will have bad effects on our special relationship with the British.
Dan Shabiro, you agree?
I agree.
The value of this visit is to restore some of the good feeling about a long-standing partnership where there has been some tension.
It actually shows the very formidable soft power of a kind of silly and archaic institution like the British royal family.
But he reminded in other remarks what binds us, our history, our values, including some of the democratic principles like limits on executive power, and that the United States benefits from this close partnership with the UK and with other NATO allies.
Those were important points.
At the end of the day, we do actually agree with the Brits that Iran can never have a nuclear weapon.
We may have some specific disagreements about this war and how it's being conducted, but I agree with Mike.
This is kind of a low-wattage dispute.
Are state visits like this important?
And if so, how do they contribute to that special relationship that we have with the UK, especially when we're in the middle of a conflict like we are now in the Middle East?
I actually think for the Brits, and frankly for Europeans more broadly, this was important because the President is not shy about expressing his dissatisfaction with various allies in NATO, the UK itself, others who he does not feel have responded to his call.
That's not really how alliances work, but for him to come, the King, to come and over several days speak about our bonds, speak about our history, pay tribute to our shared losses and our shared victories, speak in Congress and get standing ovations from both sides of the aisle when he talks about how the United States will benefit by NATO being strong, by supporting Ukraine's fight for freedom.
Those, I think, are beneficial for helping make sure the partnership remains durable when it goes through a lot of turbulence under President Trump.
Yeah, President Trump said he was jealous that he had so many standing ovations.
Well, this was something of a triumph.
I mean, I think things in our relationship with Europe generally, but the British in particular, have not been great.
And a lot of Anglophiles, I think, have been disappointed in the last few years about the state of the relationship.
Charles came over here.
He was funny.
He was charming.
He seemed to have all the right moves everywhere he went.
So to me, this sort of restored some of the traditional good feelings between our two countries.
During his address to the joint session of Congress, the king talked about the U.S. and NATO.
Here's what he had to say.
From the depths of the Atlantic to the disastrously melting ice caps of the Arctic, the commitment and expertise of the United States Armed Forces and its allies lie at the heart of NATO.
Pledged to each other's defense, protecting our citizens and interests, keeping North Americans and Europeans safe from our common adversaries.
De Shabiro, the U.S. and NATO have had a rocky relationship as of late.
So what did you make of the king's words here?
Usually the monarch tries to be subtle about any sort of political messaging.
You know, in his understated British way, he wasn't very subtle.
He was reminding the United States and the Congress there that the United States benefits from this alliance.
He also got in his lines about climate change, talking about the melting Arctic gap, but mostly about the beneficial effect of this alliance.
And that's at odds with how President Trump thinks about the alliance.
He thinks of it as kind of a protection racket.
We provide defense, they pay us tribute.
And he gets to issue orders and they have to obey.
It's not really how alliances work.
Obviously, our allies benefit from the security we help provide and they should do more.
And President Trump was right to encourage them to spend more on their defense, but we benefit too.
We benefit when they came to our defense in Afghanistan after 9-11, the only time NATO's Article 5 has been triggered.
We benefit by the bases that we are able to operate out of in Europe, which now President Trump is calling into question.
That doesn't just defend Europeans and deter Russia from further aggression.
It gives us platforms for power projection into the Middle East, into the Mediterranean, into Africa.
So these are good reminders of very strategic issues in that very soft, understated British style.
Mike Allen, indeed the king brought up 9-11.
We are approaching the 25th anniversary.
When he made the argument for NATO, he pointed to that day.
He did, and I think Americans needed to hear that, that the only time that Article 5 has been invoked was after September 11th, this incredible tragedy that befell the United States.
And so I think it was good that he said it.
The other powerful moment for me in his address is when he said, we can't only rely on our past achievements.
We need to talk about what we're going to do together in the future.
And I think that's really the key at the end of the day.
Everyone loves our shared World War II history and even the American Revolution.
But to hear, like, we still have things we are going to do together, I think is where people need to come out of this visit thinking, you know what, they're still good allies and they're still capable.
And as they say, they can punch above their weight.
So do you think this was overall a success for future relations, both of you?
Definitely, because it gets it out of Starmer's just about Starmer versus Trump.
Starmer, I hate to say it because I'm generally a fan of the British, is an especially weak prime minister.
Doesn't really give anybody over here a lot of good feelings.
And so to transcend him and go back head of state to head of state, I think helps, at least in the short to medium term.
Short term, for sure.
It helps.
It reduces some of the tension.
But I think it probably has a limited shelf life.
President Trump has a lot of personal animus toward leaders that don't follow his dictates or that he feels are not responding the way he wants.
Obviously, the British didn't agree to join the Iran war when they weren't consulted beforehand.
More recently, we've been able to do what we usually do operating out of their bases, so a lot of that has been resolved.
We briefly heard the suggestion the United States might back Argentina if there were another war over the Falklands Islands that the British claim.
That seems like completely unnecessary tension in the relationship.
So I think for now it's below the surface, but I don't rule out that given President Trump's style and how he feels about these foreign leaders, it might not come back.
Well, let's turn to Iran.
President Trump rejected a proposal from Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for the U.S. ending its naval blockade and tabling nuclear talks.
The president says the blockade will continue until a deal on Iran's nuclear capacity is reached.
Iran responding, The Guardian reports Iran Supreme Leader issues defiant statement on Strait of Hormuz.
He says Tehran will eliminate enemies' abuses of the waterway and guard its nuclear and missile programs.
Dan Shabiro, your reaction.
We are stuck.
We are stuck in a war that didn't have a clear strategic objective when it started.
At the beginning, it was about the nuclear program, or it was about the missile program, or it was about creating the conditions for regime change, or it was responding to the protests that the Iranian regime crushed in January.
It was unclear why we were doing it, or it was because the Israelis were going to strike, so we had to get in there before they did.
It's been a military operation in search of a strategic objective.
And then what became the actual most important thing for the United States interest, and really global economic interest, is the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
So when the Iranians close the strait, responding with a blockade that puts economic pressure on them makes sense.
But at some point, we've got to cash that in and get the strait flowing again.
Otherwise, we will all be dealing with $150, $175 oil prices, $6, $7 gas prices, and stresses across the global economy.
I think the important thing is to get that open.
Iran is not going to capitulate much as I would like them to on every aspect of their nuclear program.
It was well contained by the 12-day war last June, which I supported because that was clear and limited and made sense to destroy those nuclear facilities and make sure they couldn't enrich and create a weapon.
But now we probably are going to have to put that off and come back to negotiate it later, keep sanctions on, of course, keep pressures on.
But the most important thing is to get things flowing through the strait.
Well, then, if that were to be the outcome, what was accomplished here?
Well, I agree there have been a lot of problems on the strategic messaging from the get-go here.
But I would argue that several of our national objectives have been achieved or at least furthered.
I mean, first of all, we've continued to degrade their nuclear program.
And the Israelis in particular seem to be hitting every military nuclear weaponization lab and R ⁇ D lab across the country.
We obviously hit a few sites that either popped up after the June action or that Israel couldn't get to last time.
I think we substantially degraded their ballistic missile program, and I think we've really annihilated their defense industrial base.
Now, I don't think that because they still have capability in all of these areas, that necessarily means the United States deserves some failing grade.
I think if you were just looking at that, you could give the president pretty high marks.
It's just the Strait of Hormuz that is just this black mark across what we've done of late.
And that's what I think and hope we're going to be able to break open, if not through the blockade.
Then I hope the president will think about going to an escort mission like we've done in the past, where we actually try and get a convoy of tankers to go through the Strait of Hormuz, literally with U.S. warships, shutting down any attackers.
Mike Allen, I wonder if that's possible because the U.S. is set to lose some military support in the region.
The Washington Post writes, U.S. aircraft carrier to leave Mideast, reducing military might amid Iran war.
So how does that impact the strategy that you're just talking about?
Well, so for this brief moment, we've got three in the theater.
And as I understand it, the Gerald Ford has been out a long time and is going back to port.
We've still got two.
We've still got plenty of horsepower and flight power in the region.
I mean, if anything, more things have flown in since the end of the war, or at least the ceasefire.
So I think we're better postured to take on this mission.
It will still be risky.
I'm not saying it's easy.
It's close to Iran.
They still have drones.
They have fast boats.
They have seaborne drones.
They have mines.
But I think at the end of the day, to get us out of this predicament where Iran basically has more leverage over us than at any time that they've had since the hostage crisis is totally unacceptable.
Iran War Costs and Risks00:07:48
And we've got an likely blockade or fight our way out of this before we declare it over.
Dan Shapiro, your take?
Well, this all bespeaks the fact that the president really thought this was going to be quick and easy.
You know, he was deluded by the success of the 12-day war, by the success of the extraction of Maduro from Venezuela, that he could take a quick strike, two, three days, and have the Iranians cry uncle and capitulate.
That didn't happen.
And now we are stuck with this major force in the Middle East, pinned down in the Middle East.
You know where we don't have an aircraft carrier deployed right now?
Is in the Indo-Pacific.
We've got one in dry docks in Japan.
But there's no U.S. aircraft carrier strike group in the water in the Pacific Ocean.
Now, the United States, the U.S. government had declared that their strategy was focused on hemispheric and homeland security and on deterring China through strength in the Indo-Pacific.
Instead, we've pinned down huge force in the Middle East.
We've expanded a significant amount of our stockpile of exquisite munitions, interceptors, and tomahawks and the like that were intended to be used to help defend Taiwan if that became necessary.
So this is a real scrambling of our strategic focus and our strategic prioritization.
It may require a longer-term duration to either escort tankers or otherwise break that blockade, but there might be a way to do it diplomatically, which is sort of a mutual stand down.
And then we can kind of get back to our broader strategic interests and still keep pressure on Iran and still keep watch on the nuclear program.
We can't let that get out of hand.
But otherwise, we could be stuck doing what we are doing for weeks or months with all the economic disruptions that that's causing.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was on the Hill this week and sparred with Washington Democratic Congressman Adam Smith about Iran's nuclear ambitions.
Take a listen.
Their nuclear facilities have been obliterated.
Underground, they're buried and watching 24-7.
So we know where any nuclear material will be.
Claiming my time for watching a second here.
We had to start this war, you just said, 60 days ago, because the nuclear weapon was an imminent threat.
Now you're saying that it was completely obliterated?
They had not given up their nuclear ambitions, and they had a conventional shield of thousands of people.
Well, Operation Midnight Hammer of the moment nothing of substance.
It left us in exactly the point we were before.
So much so.
Their facilities were bombed and obliterated.
Their ambitions continued.
And they're building a conventional shield.
Let me try again.
It's the North Korea strategy.
You know this very well.
The North Korea strategy was use conventional missiles to prevent anybody from challenging them so they could slow off their way to a weapon.
President Trump saw Iran at its weakest moment, took an action to ensure in a way that only the United States of America could do with our Israeli partners to ensure their conventional shield.
Mike Allen, has the messaging from the White House been clear?
No.
Throughout, I think the President's been trying to message the oil markets that all will be well, domestic audience.
And I think he's confused the American people about why we're fighting.
I think worse, we've confused the Iranians into thinking that maybe we're going to cut and run earlier than we truly will.
So I also didn't love the fact that the White House said the threat was imminent when we went after this 60 days ago.
I thought that was the wrong argument completely.
You know, so I think they could have been better.
I think it was going to be a case study in poor strategic messaging.
And you know what?
I wish you had given addresses to the nation.
I wish you were briefing Congress more.
I wish you were doing a lot of other things to bring the American people along because even though this war wasn't on my to-do list for this year, if we're going in, I think you generally have to ask the American people for permission and they'll respond to you usually positively if you have a good case, but we haven't done a good job of explaining.
No explanation or very little confusing.
And on top of that, the price tag keeps adding up.
The cost of the war with Iran has been a big question.
Lawmakers got some clarity on the issue this week when the acting Pentagon financial chief testified.
Here's what he had to say.
So approximately at this day, we're spending about $25 billion on Operation Epic Fury.
Most of that is in munitions.
There's part of that is obviously O ⁇ M and equipment replacement.
We will formulate a supplemental through the White House that will come to Congress once we have a full assessment of the cost of the conflict.
Dan Shapiro, can you give us some perspective on this?
The price tag that we heard there, that's not the full cost.
That's certainly not going to be the full cost.
He talks mostly about munitions, but several of our bases in the Middle East were significantly damaged and maybe beyond really salvaging.
So there's going to be a big bill to pay to replace that.
The maintenance, the long-term recovery of the naval deployments that are long overdue is going to have another long tail.
And obviously to replenish what was already used and we needed to have for future contingencies is another big price tag.
They're talking about from the Pentagon something like a $200 billion supplemental or they're now talking about a $1.5 trillion defense budget.
That's about a 40% increase from last year.
So the bill on this is huge and it's not really, I think, straight with the American people exactly what that is.
And again, I agree with Mike very much.
If you want to have political support for a difficult conflict once it gets complicated, if it's not going to be a two or three day simple engagement, you need to have buy-in at the beginning.
You need to breath Congress long.
You need to have allies on board.
None of that happened.
Let's turn our attention to the role Russia's playing here.
Russian President Vladimir Putin met with Iranians' foreign minister this week.
Reuter reported that he praised the Iranian people for battling to stay independent in the face of the U.S. Israeli pressure and said Moscow would do all it could to help Tehran.
Mike Allen, what do you make of this role that they're playing here?
Well, I mean, they have, as everyone calls it, they're members of the axis of upheaval.
It's, of course, China and Russia, but North Korea and Iran are right there in the middle of it.
Of course, they're rooting for them.
They've been sharing intelligence with them.
They've likely shared weaponry with them.
They've shared know-how as far as it pertains to drones.
And so this is about the 50th exhibit of Russia is not a friend of the United States.
He's trying to simultaneously, by the way, also work President Trump by having a phone call with him this week and saying, I want to be a part of this uranium enrichment resolution.
So I think the president properly said, by the way, why don't you hurry up and end your own conflict?
And I don't need you in the Iran context.
But, you know, Putin is up to no good everywhere.
And the more Republicans come home and remember that, the better.
Dan Shapiro, final thoughts.
I think President Putin was trying to use that as a way of relieving pressure to end the war in Ukraine.
He, of course, is benefiting from higher oil prices because of this conflict.
And so that's going to fuel his war machine.
In fact, it's really the United States that has not used all of the levers of pressure and sanctions that it has to try to convince Russia to end the war with Ukraine's Ukrainians, who have fought boldly and fought creatively and innovatively with new technologies, which they're now sharing with partners all over the world against Russian drones, which are of Iranian origin.
So Russia is looking for a way to benefit from this war, and we shouldn't allow that to happen.
That's all the time we have.
Michael Allen, former senior director for the National Security Council, and Dan Shapiro, former U.S. Ambassador to Israel.
Thank you both for your time.
And we'll close this week with our Ceasefire Moment of the Week, highlighting what's possible when Americans come together across political lines.
Democracy Unfiltered Civil Conversations00:03:23
A new initiative called the New Hampshire Forum is aimed at doing just that, bringing people from different backgrounds and parties into the same room for constructive civil conversations.
The project is led by former Democratic State Senator Donna Souci and former Republican U.S. Senate candidate Kevin Smith, who say the goal isn't to erase differences, but to work through them.
There's a lot of areas where we agree and we say, man, if we could just get together and talk about these things civilly, we could probably find solutions to these things.
We're not asking people to shed their political labels, but instead what we're saying is come to the table, let's talk and let's find solutions.
Oftentimes the loudest voices do rule the day.
This is a way to sort of tone down some of the rhetoric, but to have thoughtful, open conversations.
Similar efforts are reportedly taking shape in other early primary states, including Nevada and South Carolina, as organizers look to expand the model nationwide in hopes of lowering the temperature in today's political climate.
That's all we have for this episode.
Ceasefire is also available as a podcast.
Find us in all the usual places.
I'm Greta Bronner.
And remember, whether or not you agree, keep talking and keep listening.
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Medicare Weight Loss Drugs Initiative00:00:23
While speaking to senior citizens at a retirement community in Florida, President Trump announced that weight loss drugs would become available for Medicare patients.
He also talked about his administration's initiatives and his handling of the Iran conflict.