Donald Trump receives Iran war briefings as two-minute "things blowing up" compilations, creating a dangerous disconnect between his perception and reality. Hosts argue this method reduces complex conflict to toy soldier play, allowing Iran to win by fighting smarter than the US and Israel while bombing fails to achieve success. Citing Trump's history of laziness and hubris, they contrast him with presidents like LBJ who knew war details despite lying, labeling Trump a "dying king" treating the conflict as a market manipulation tool rather than a serious engagement. Ultimately, this superficial oversight suggests the President cannot effectively direct operations, leaving the war's true source of leaks unexplained while military decisions rely on others. [Automatically generated summary]
Do you hear how I, Nick, did you hear how I really went after that?
Like, really, like, paced it out?
You know, it's sometimes not easy to open a can.
I got one for you.
Wait.
Oh, wow.
Oh, that almost did it.
Those listening at home, Nick is drinking a Coke, a full-flavored high-octane Coca-Cola classic.
Our boy, he's on the sugar.
I'm on the road.
I'm at a gas station that sells steaks behind, you know, glass.
I got to tell you, it looked like kind of nice steaks.
I don't know.
I don't know where I am.
Some place, some ranch place.
This is such for people, and obviously we don't have a video of this.
This is such a California moment, a Nick California moment.
He's charging his electric car and he's at a gas station that sells steaks.
Yeah, it is.
I mean, I wouldn't want to say it's like a Texas moment, but either way, wherever I am, you know, at least the steak part.
But yeah, listen, God bless America.
There you go.
I mean, you got to find something to be proud of.
We have a lot of show today because there are problems in this country.
This is a jam-packed.
I can't even really wrap my mind around half of the things that are happening.
There are reasons to be absolutely dejected and angry and reasons for hope and excitement.
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Nick, we start with an interesting little tidbit.
NBC News has revealed, and there is a lot of information and a lot of revelations that I think our analysis is going to point towards here, that President of the United States of America, Donald Trump, the main way that he is receiving briefings on the war in Iran is through two-minute compilations of, and this is a direct quote, things blowing up,
which I think speaks pretty accurately to what you and I have both felt about how his engagement with this war has worked, why there seems to be a disconnect between what Donald Trump is saying and what everybody else is seeing, not just the fact that he's a fucking liar.
But hearing this, I don't know about you, but it really clarifies something for me to hear it so explicitly and also like really communicate something really, really wrong here.
You got to picture, you know, a five-year-old that has those little toy soldiers with the feet that are grounded, you know, what are those called, you know, when they move around.
This is what he's doing.
He is making the sound effects probably by himself, right?
And there's probably no sound on the side of the moment.
Exactly, right?
He's doing all that.
We know this is the case, even if it's not like lockdown verified third source reported, whatever, because this giving briefings the entire time.
He can't handle reading anything.
He has to have some sort of visual in like a comic book.
So of course, they're going to just show him, yeah, things blowing up without any sort of tactical information that you can glean from that.
I mean, I don't know for what it's worth.
I asked a few people in Israel who might know a little bit about what's going on as far as what's happening there, because I'm kind of curious, how would you measure success, right?
What are we measuring success by?
Let's ask that question first, okay?
Because that's what he's touting.
What is success?
Yeah.
And, you know, we're going to talk about like the supposed ceasefire negotiations, which have revealed what anybody actually paying attention to this is realizing, which is it doesn't matter how much you bomb Iran.
It doesn't matter how much of the leadership that you kill, destroy, disable, whatever it is.
Iran has an advantage in this situation, is fighting a smarter war than the United States and Israel.
And everybody looking at this sees absolutely disastrous things on the horizon because they're not interested in ending this war.
So who's winning?
Iran is winning this thing.
And I think for me, Nick, I'll fess up here.
We've done this for years.
You've known me.
You've been my friend.
We've had more than enough political conversations.
I'm a pretty cynical guy when it comes to American politics, correct?
Cynical?
That's a word.
Sure.
That applies.
Well, I mean, you know, I err on the side of, you know, sort of believing that a lot of these Cretans are absolutely corrupt and incapable.
And I've documented Donald Trump.
Like one of the main things is from the beginning of his political career, I knew who he was.
I knew his pathologies.
I knew where all this stuff was going.
There was still a part of me.
And Nick, just a quick aside, I'm a child of divorce.
Okay.
Like I had a dad who basically in most of our relationship had a PhD in letting me down.
You know what I mean?
But guess what?
No matter how many times he let me down, I kept hoping the next time would be different, right?
Charlie Brown trying to kick the football.
In this situation, as a political analyst who is taking this war very seriously in my larger analysis of American history and what's going to go on going forward, which is my job, I at least thought the most important and consequential war of modern history that this guy could kind of give a shit.
Do you know what I mean?
Like there's even a part of me that's like, maybe he would have snapped awake and been like, oh, okay, we finally need to take this seriously.
But that, to me, I know better than that.
That's not who this person is.
In the entirety of his presidency, his first term and second term, they've had to create briefings that constantly say his name so that his attention won't wander.
Like, obviously, there is a disconnect here, which speaks to the larger thing, which is we have a president who has control over the military.
The people around him are, if not lying to him, they're giving him a very tailored and a very altered perception of what's going on in the ground.
That, to me, is wild on a level that I don't, my mind doesn't exactly know how to make sense of.
So you're saying that it would be a good idea if we had a president presiding over a war that actually had empathy, could care about human lives.
Is that what you're saying?
Not only just empathy, but like if he could give a shit enough about a gigantic consequential war.
Nick, the point of this is, and we've talked about it, we're in this situation and shouldn't be in this situation.
No one wanted to be in this except for him and a handful of his corrupt cronies and our client states who let us here.
Meanwhile, we're just a hop, skip, and not even a jump, a hop and a skip away from a possible, not just regional war, but World War III.
That is the depths of this man's laziness and the depths of this man's hubris.
It's incredible, really.
I don't know anybody could ever compare to it.
Absolutely.
And well, I mean, there are, there are probably, you know, rulers in the past that we can compare this to.
So, but the thing I found interesting is that he had was touting this gift that Iran was going, was giving them.
And it was related to money, related to the straight-up war moves.
I think that we figured out what that gift was.
I'm willing to say, can I go on a limb and say what we've seen in the little reporting?
Absolutely.
It was that Iran said, okay, we'll let a couple of ships go by that are not directly related to Israel and the United States.
We'll let them go through the strait.
And, you know, to him, that means it's another minor, the smallest.
You know what it's almost like?
Because imagine the ships, the captains on these ships going through Nila.
kind of like there's that bit about people trying to cross the street in Philadelphia, I think it was.
And then the car drivers are like, hey, Joey, he's going to try and make it.
You know, like, that's the kind of guy I would feel like if I were trying to, you know, cross, even if they said it was okay.
But it's just more than just the corruption, right?
It's the sheer corruption of market manipulation, where if he can get the slightest bit of what he would consider good news, we know perks up the market.
And we know verifiably that there are people who are now making billions on these micro trades that are happening within like 15 minutes of those announcements.
So this is really what's, you know, the most frustrating thing about this to me is that that's what he's treating this like.
It's just like some sort of way to manipulate markets and make more money.
I mean, that's the only thing that he actually concerns himself with.
Like, I would guess the majority of the meetings that Donald Trump's take, probably most of them are the ceremonial, right?
It's the, you know, here comes the chief type shit where he goes out and he's like, congratulations on your championship.
Here are some burgers to eat.
And then the other meetings that he's actually engaged in primarily are probably ways to grift and make money off of the presidency.
Those are probably the times that he actually cares about.
And I want to add one more thing while we're on this subject, Nick, because again, it is really wild because it was like LBJ and Nixon lied about Vietnam, but they knew what the fuck was going on.
You know, like they, they at least had the reports.
Right.
And, you know, Nixon, probably half of the reason why he was drunk was because he felt bad, right?
Yeah, he was a miserable fuck who was, you know, presiding over war crimes on the daily.
Here, Nick, I just want to add this because we have a subplot that's running throughout this entire war and this entire developing crisis.
Where'd this leak come from?
Was it someone in Trump's inner circle?
Was it someone in the White House?
Or was it likely someone in the military who was providing the material for this quote unquote briefing?
Which brings us to another point, which is it is obvious that this man is not trusted by the military.
He isn't locked in on this thing.
He's not actually directing what's going on.
He's, he's a, we talked about like a dying king is what it is, who's just kind of like having other people make decisions about what he sees and what decisions he's making.
This has to come from someone in the Pentagon or someone related to the military, which they are, they are leaking like a like a busted boat at this point.
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