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June 25, 2025 - Uncensored - Piers Morgan
01:11:22
20250625_start-of-a-long-war-daddy-trump-at-nato-after-isra
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Trump's Decisive Strike on Iran 00:06:30
I believe it was total obliteration.
None of us knows if there was an imminent danger because I don't believe necessarily to the Israeli propaganda.
And I think Netanyahu was very disappointed that it was cut short only after a couple of days.
Trump realized that he did not want to walk into that trap.
But we are very possibly at the beginning of another long war in the Middle East.
And this time with goons and fools and cronies in charge of counterterrorism.
Trump derangement syndrome, patient zero.
I'm surprised someone whose entire career has been essentially not just lying, but spreading full-blown domestic propaganda to feel so comfortable being so smug.
What does Hamas do best?
Okay, Guidon.
You want to bring Hamas into the West Bank?
What do they do best?
They kill innocent Israelis and they will do it again.
If it was 1939, Guidon, you would be making peace with Hitler.
I was waiting, when will Hitler come into the picture?
It took this time more than usual because Hamas is Hitler and Khamenei is Hitler.
Everyone is Hitler.
The bombs of rockets over Tehran and Tel Aviv have stopped for now.
And that almost certainly has a lot to do with this.
We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don't know what the fuck they're doing.
Do you understand that?
Well, after 12 days of frenzy of a World War III and cleanse of an Israeli tail, wagging the White House dog, Trump's declaration of a ceasefire was a mic drop moment.
The message to Netanyahu was clear.
We're partners, but I'm Batman.
You're Robin.
President Trump is in the Netherlands today for one of the most consequential NATO summits in recent history.
Under relentless pressure from Trump, NATO's members have now all agreed to raise their defense spending to 5% of GDP over the next 10 years.
NATO's Secretary General Mark Route welcomed Trump with a text message so flattering that he had to post the whole thing online.
Mr. President, he wrote, Dear Donald, congratulations to thank you for your decisive action in Iran.
That was truly extraordinary and something no one else dared to do.
It makes us all safer.
You are flying to another big success in The Hague this morning.
It wasn't easy, but we got them all signed on to 5%.
Donald, you have driven us to a really, really important moment for America and Europe and the world.
You will achieve something no American president in decades could get done.
Europe is going to pay in a big way, as they should, and it will be your win.
Safe travels and see you at His Majesty's dinner.
Well, again, the message is very clear.
Donald is the daddy.
They've had it.
They've had a big fight, like two kids in a schoolyard.
You know, they fight like hell.
You can't stop them.
Let them fight for about two, three minutes.
Then it's easier to stop them.
And then Daddy has to sometimes use strong language to do it.
Strong language.
Every once in a while, you have to use a certain word.
Well, Daddy's not having it all his own way, though.
Today's victory lap has been interrupted by a leaked U.S. intelligence report, which says that the attack on Iran's nuclear facilities may not have obliterated them and may only have delayed their program by a few months.
Mr. President, what's your reaction to the intelligence reports saying that the Iranian nuclear sites were only partially devastated, not entirely.
Yeah, well, they said it was actually the report.
It could have been very, they don't know.
I mean, if they did a report, I could have Pete talk to it because his department did the report.
They really don't know.
I believe it was total obliteration.
I believe they didn't have a chance to get anything out because we acted fast.
If it would have taken two weeks, maybe, but it's very hard to remove that kind of material.
It's very hard and very dangerous for them to remove it.
Well, the reality is we don't know yet, just as we don't know if a ceasefire will hold or if Iran's stage-managed response will be its last word.
It's too early to give Trump his Nobel Peace Prize, although Barack Obama got one in just eight months of becoming president because he was saying nice things about people.
But just as it was too early to declare the end of MAGA and World War III, Trump may have to wait.
And if Trump is feeling bullish about Netanyahu, he could do a lot worse than denouncing the current situation in Gaza.
The AP says Israeli forces and drones again fired on Palestinians, waiting for ages today, killing 44 people.
Seven Israeli troops died just because of a Hamas car bomb.
It's hard to see how anybody gets a peace prize while that atrocious war continues.
We're drawing to debate all this.
It's Natalie Winters, the White House correspondent, Mr Steve Banners-Warham, the former IDEA spokesman and author of When the Stones Speak, Major Deron Spielman, and Gideon Levy, the author and journalist for Hareds.
Welcome to all of you.
Natalie Winters, welcome back to Uncensored.
It's hard not to conclude as things stand that Trump's decisive, undeniably bold action in taking these B-2 bombers over Tehran and attacking the nuclear sites has been, on the face of it, a very successful mission, which has not led to the apocalyptic predictions that some people claimed it would lead to.
Well, thank you for having me back.
I think it's really been a masterclass in brinksmanship.
I think we're probably just up at the edge of that.
I think time will tell.
I think a lot of the sort of MAGA pushback to getting involved in another conflict kinetically is not just contained to the region, right?
It's about what our other adversaries, our real threats are, whether that's the southern border, the Chinese Communist Party.
It'll be interesting to see how this impacts the peace process in Ukraine.
I think the 12-day war is over thanks to President Trump.
But I think the other issue, which I hope we don't see continue to metastasize, is a sort of, I think, after the fact upselling, the sprinkling in of words like the R-word regime change.
Or if we see certain countries, namely Israel, I think trying to push the United States to get kinetically involved in that vertical, that's something that we definitely want to abstain from.
But it seems like these attacks on these three sites were successful.
Even the IAEA agrees I'm not going to take some random link from some staffer over at the DIA, which has a history of leaking against Pete Hex's DOD.
So I think all said and done, major crisis averted.
I think maybe the only crisis left to unpack is that inside of the MAGA movement post-see strikes.
Yeah, Gideon Levy, I mean, do you share the optimism many are feeling that this is all done now, that a 12-day war is over, that Iran clearly blinked and has decided that it doesn't want to continue this warfare because it almost certainly can't win?
Or are you skeptical about what may happen next?
Skepticism Over Gaza Massacre Claims 00:16:03
So, dear Piers, first of all, nothing will be solved in the Middle East as long as the Palestinian problem is still boiling, as long as the massacre continues in Gaza on a daily basis.
By the way, under the cover of the war with Iran, things even get worse there.
Dozens of innocent people on a daily basis.
So where is there room for optimism?
As about Iran, which is an issue by itself, there is some place for optimism, but a very, very careful one, because none of us knows what was really achieved.
None of us knows if there was an imminent danger, if there was a reason for this war at all.
None of us knows it because I don't believe necessarily to the Israeli propaganda.
And none of us knows what was bombed and what wasn't, what remains and what doesn't remain.
Without knowing this, you don't know what was achieved, what was really achieved.
So we have to wait.
But I have to stress it again, Piers.
We are dealing with the margins.
The main core will always be the Palestinian issue.
And whatever Israel will achieve, whatever hilarious victories with all kind of James Bond operations, finally, when we get back to reality, we have 5 million people under a very, very brutal occupation which cannot last forever.
Enough about 9 to 5.
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Major Spielman, you reformer IDF spokesman.
I've been exchanging quite lively posts on X with various Israeli ministers and indeed other commentators, specifically about what has been going on with these very large crowds of very animated Palestinians who've been lining up for the very meagre amounts of food that are available to them.
And I just thought it would be constructive, before I ask you about that, just to go through quickly how many incidents there have been since the end of May, specific to these lines of people who are queuing up for food, where there have been people who've been shot dead and what the IDF said about them.
So 28th of May, one was killed, 48 wounded.
This is according to the Hamas-run Palestinian Health Ministry.
The UN said that most of the injuries were down to Israeli forces.
The IDF said it fired warning shots, but not towards people.
1st of June, 31 killed, 200 injured.
Again, the health ministry figures.
Doctors said around 200 people arrived at hospital with gunshot and shrapnel wounds.
The IDF called the reports false.
3rd of June, 27 killed, 37 wounded.
Hospital director says 37 people arrived at a local hospital with gunshot wounds.
IDF said troops fired at suspects, quotes, deviating from designated access routes.
7th of June, 6 killed, several wounded.
The civil defense agency said that there were six Palestinians killed by Israeli gunfire near an aid center.
Israeli military says it fired warning shots at suspects who approached them in a threatening manner.
8th of June, four killed.
Again, the IDF said it fired warning shots at a group it deemed to be a threat.
9th of June, 6 killed, 99 injured.
IDF said it was looking into the reports.
11th of June, 57 killed, 200 plus injured.
The IDF said it's looking into these reports.
14th of June, 15 killed.
IDF said they fired warning shots at a group they believe posed a potential threat.
15th of June, 26 killed, 117 injured.
IDS said it wasn't aware of gunshots at one site and is looking into events at another.
16th of June, 30 plus killed.
IDS said troops fired warning shots at suspects approaching them and posing a threat.
17th of June, 51 killed.
The IDF said it's looking into the reports.
18th of June, 11 killed.
IDF said troops fire warning shots after a group approached them in a way that posed a potential threat.
The 19th of June, at least 12 killed, 60 injured.
IDF said suspects had attempted to approach forces and soldiers had fired warning shots.
20th of June, 23 killed, 100 injured.
IDF said troops fired warning shots after people gathered nearby.
An Israeli aircraft then struck several suspects who continued walking towards troops.
21st of June, eight killed.
IDF said it's looking in to the incidents.
24th of June, at least 44 killed, dozens injured.
IDF says it will review details of the reports.
Total number of deaths listed above, 352.
The UN says the number is actually higher at 410.
But you can see the pattern there.
And the reason I read them all out so specifically, Major Spielman, is you can see a pattern where an incredibly large number of civilians are getting killed in these lines of people queuing up for food.
And in every case, the IDF either says they fired warning shots, but don't take any accountability for hitting anybody or killing or wounding anybody, or they say we're looking into the reports and then, strangely, we never get any further information.
And at the same time, as I keep going on about, the IDF won't allow international journalists into Gaza at all, unless it's in tightly controlled, very brief periods under their very tight control.
So you put it all together.
And, you know, pertaining to what Gideon Levy just said, there has been a series of appalling things happening while we've had our focus taken to what's going on with Iran.
And I'm just not buying this argument from Israeli ministers that somehow none of this has anything to do with the IDF.
Are you?
Pierce, I think once again we're going back to the situation in Gaza, which we know there's one problem in Gaza and that problem would solve all of this beyond all the numbers.
The problem is very simply what started this entire mess, which is Hamas.
We know that Hamas, as we've discussed numerous times, is hiding behind these civilians.
We know because Gazans have been posting on it, including the Shireen family.
Gazans are filling Facebook, trying to get the word out to us that they have reported that five members of their family, Osama Shaikhin, again and again, people are being killed by Hamas on their way to those food distribution points for one simple reason.
Hamas wants to control the food in Gaza and anyone that takes that food is possibly complicit, according to them, in partnering with the Israeli army.
It's their voices we need to listen to.
Regarding these numbers, I've looked online, the IDF has looked online.
AP quotes a New York Times, that quotes the AP, that quotes somebody else.
There's not a single picture, not a single video, not a single ratified source.
The IDF is not out there just shooting randomly at people.
We are trying to protect the health workers that are handing out the food, which, by the way, have given out 40 million meals over the last few weeks.
But the problem here is essential.
The problem is, Hamas, as long as they are in Gaza, this is going to continue because they use humans as shields.
The moment they leave Gaza, then this is all over.
It's what we've been saying since the very beginning, Pierce.
Right.
But just to be clear, of all of those incidents I laid out in detail, is your position really that the IDF didn't kill anybody?
Again, I'm not at every single incident.
I would assume if the IDF killed somebody or if we targeted somebody, we try to release that information as best we can to the press.
There's probably never been an opportunity to do it.
That's the same situation.
I'm sorry to jump in.
I've been fighting Pierce in the entire world, that's why we're still in the future.
I've had to face this before.
With great respect.
You and I both know that's complete claptrap.
The IDF will do whatever it can not to admit that it's killing civilians.
It constantly deflects.
It constantly blames Hamas for all the deaths.
And yet we have doctors, independent British doctors who have been treating the victims, who all have been saying that actually most of these deaths and injuries have been caused by IDF.
IDF admit they keep firing bullets.
Either they're the worst shots in the world, or we're supposed to believe they're firing them all straight up in the air, or they are shooting at groups of people, perhaps believing they include Hamas, and they're killing people on a daily basis, it seems, and they're killing a lot of people.
And I just think this idea that the IDF can just constantly obfuscate and just say we're launching a review, which then never comes to anything, or we just shot bullets in the air and all these people fell over and had to be treated or died is for the birds.
People are just not believing it anymore.
And the reason I don't believe it is that the very simple way to verify it is to let the journalists in from outside into Gaza.
And the IDF persistently refuses, at Netanyahu's instruction, to let any journalists in.
So there's no way to independently verify this.
We're then reliant on Palestinian journalists, many of whom have been killed, nearly 200 now, or we're reliant on doctors who paint a very different story to the one you've just painted.
But at what point are you going to let journalists in?
I'm not saying you personally, but at what point is the Israeli government going to let journalists in so that these things can be properly verified?
Pierce, I'm sorry, the numbers, I disagree with you completely on much of what you're saying.
The numbers are coming, as you and I both know, from the Gaza Health Ministry.
They say numbers, 5,000 were killed and everybody writes down 5,000 were killed.
And then they reverse their own numbers like they did between March 5th and March 7th, 2024.
You and I both know that the numbers of children who they reported were killed on March 5th were 14,500.
Two days later, those numbers went down to 7,500, meaning 7,000 people that they claimed were killed came back to life against the people.
How many children have been killed?
They are in Gaza and they are reporting these deaths and they are changing their own numbers.
They've been saying for years.
If I could just finish one quick thing, Pierce, can I just say one quick thing?
That we know from this year, just a couple months ago in March of this year, 2025, all of a sudden Hamasi raced names off their list, which when you take those names into account, it shows 72% of the people that have been killed in Gaza are 13 to 54-year-old Muslims that are militant age in Gaza.
This is a completely different picture that they've been presenting.
And we know, unfortunately, 13-year-olds and 14-year-olds in Gaza are given an AK-47 and sent into the battlefield.
The answer is completely complicated.
Of course, people have died.
That's why we don't want war.
We don't want war.
I'll point out several things because I saw Gideon there shaking his head.
And I will come to you, Gideon, for a response.
But first of all, you did let journalists into Gaza in previous flare-ups in Gaza without any problem.
So it's inexplicable that you won't let them in now.
Secondly, the Palestinian Health Authority, Hamas-run, has historically revealed figures which have later turned out verified by Israel to be broadly correct.
So you can dismiss all their numbers as being nonsense.
But actually, the truth is, historically, when they have said casualty numbers, they have largely turned out, and I'm not talking about this war, talking about historically in the last two decades, they've turned out largely to be accurate, verified by the Israeli side too.
So this idea of just making them all up is not true.
But let me come to Gideon, because you were wanting to jump in there, Gideon.
My problem with this is that the IDF can basically just say whatever they want to dismiss any suggestion they've behaved improperly.
And there's no way to disprove it because the journalists aren't allowed in there.
No, there are so many ways to disprove it because there are so many videos coming out of Gaza and very brave journalists who are still alive, who were not killed by the Israeli soldiers, still report and you see the picture.
First of all, I must remind ourselves that when the UN agencies distributed the aid, there were no killed people.
It all started with this monster organization of putting a... two three stations in the Gaza Street for two million people almost as an experiment in human beings in starving human beings.
And then comes the question really about the figures.
Oh, those propaganda people, they love to speak about figures.
Aren't they 1,000 babies less than one year killed?
No, they know it's only 700 babies killed.
Hamas is exaggerating.
And if it is 700 babies killed, can we live with it?
None of them was killed in purpose, all of them by chance, all of them potential threat to the soldiers.
How dare you to spread this propaganda knowing that you are lying?
There is a daily massacre in Gaza now.
Killing in the sake of killing.
Nothing but this.
The last two weeks are horrible because you see the soldiers, you hear the machine guns, you see the people lying on the sand and trying to save themselves.
How can you dare to invent all kinds of statistics instead of saying, yes, this is our army.
The army got a command now to kill as many Palestinians as possible because that's our goal now.
We don't have any other goal in Gaza now.
Natalie, Pierce, can I respond to him?
Okay.
Well, let me go to Natalie first and I'll come back to you.
Natalie, this seems to me, this is why this is such a complex story generally, because I broadly agreed with Israel and its strikes on Iran.
I agreed completely with the Hezbollah attacks, Jesus and the Pages.
I thought it was a brilliantly sophisticated operation against a bunch of terrorists who've been attacking Israel for years.
There are lots of things that Israel has been doing, which I have no problem with.
But this situation in Gaza is being conducted in a completely different manner.
There's nothing surgical about it, nothing precise.
It just seems to be an intent to demolish Gaza, to drive, according to the finance minister Smodric, on the record, to cleanse Gaza of Palestinians.
In other words, get them out.
That is ethnic cleansing.
That would be a war crime if that happens.
It just seems to me that Israel, this big picture of the Israel-Palestine conflict, if Israel genuinely wants to forge relations with Saudi Arabia like it's done with other nations in the Middle East, it's never going to happen until they sort out what is happening in Gaza.
Diplomatic Channels for Hostage Releases 00:17:04
And I don't understand the strategy.
The hostages aren't being released.
More and more civilians are being killed, making more and more people hate the Israeli government.
And therefore, unfortunately, Israeli people get dragged into what their government's doing on their behalf.
It makes the world dangerous for Israelis, for Jews.
I just don't see what they're doing there, which is making any real sense.
Do you?
Yeah, I mean, I think through the fog of war with what you're seeing going on in Gaza, I think we're already seeing the ramifications here in the United States.
I think people certainly remember the really radical Hamas protests that we saw across college campuses, the people who were perhaps rightfully upset about what was going on in Gaza.
I think you've seen really the rhetoric.
I think the universities, they've really become the new flashpoint for that.
But I think what it goes back to, right, when you talk about the MAGA movement, sort of their reorientation of global affairs, I'm not saying I don't care about what's going on in Gaza.
That's not at all what I'm saying.
But I think it's about priorities.
And certainly there's a sect of Americans who are really, really animated about that issue.
But I think Americans care more about the American lives being lost, whether it's because of fentanyl, the open border, frankly, the Hamas proxies, the Iranian proxies that are going on here.
And most importantly, I think the potential for a mass refugee conflict, not just into Europe, but into the United States.
So I obviously have empathy and compassion.
And I think that to some extent, those numbers probably are accurate.
It's also war if you invade a country.
I'm sorry, it's also sort of what's going to happen.
I don't think the United States should be involved at the rate at which we're at.
But my primary concern as an American is that I don't want to see really what will become a snowballing number of refugees end up in the West or the United States.
Okay, let's just bring in another guest briefly and speak to the author of political commentator, Trita Parsi.
Mr. Parsi.
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Thank you very much indeed for joining me.
Thank you so much.
There are mixed reports about just how much damage has been done to Iran's nuclear program, but Iran itself has come out and countered the early reports from U.S. intelligence and said a significant amount of damage has been done.
What is your belief about what has actually gone on here and how much damage has been done?
I do think that a degree of damage clearly has been done.
And I think what we have to be careful about is not to confuse tactical military success with strategic success.
There's still no indication that the stockpile has been destroyed.
And the stockpile of 60% enriched uranium is essentially the main leverage the Iranians have.
That's their crown jewel of their program right now.
As long as that is still intact, we cannot really say that the program has been significantly been pushed back.
However, there's also a self-fulfilling prophecy here in the manner in which the Israelis have managed to push Trump into military action.
Because now they're coming back and telling him, well, this is not finished.
You have to do more.
And even if he does more, there is very little reason to believe that it could completely be destroyed simply through military action.
And that then leaves diplomacy as the only option.
But once you have bombed the country, that country is going to be much more inclined to actually build a nuclear deterrence, which then the argument will be you can't trust them at this point because they clearly want to get a bomb after having getting bombed.
That's why not entering into this cycle would have been a much better approach to avoid Iran having nuclear weapons and actually having a more clear path towards a diplomatic solution.
And yet there is Iran.
It's been directly attacked by not just Israel, who had complete control for a number of days over Tehran's airspace, but then you had the Americans attacking with their B-2 bombers, launching the biggest bombs in the world on these nuclear sites with impunity.
Lots of rhetoric coming out of the Iranian regime about revenge and retaliation and so on.
And here they are after 12 days opting for peace, for a ceasefire, leading most people to suspect that the long, long-held suspicion that Iran's military simply could not cope with a direct attack like this may well have turned out to be proven in the sense that why would you want a ceasefire so early when you're trying to show your people that you're a massive,
strong, powerful nation that won't take this kind of treatment and will respond very aggressively.
They haven't done that at all.
Actually, you're missing one important part of the picture, which is actually two parts.
The first part is they struck back at Israel very, very hard.
And we saw that despite Israel having state-of-the-art air defense systems, they did not manage to take down all of the Iranian missiles and a very large number of them actually went through.
Hang on, it wasn't a very large number.
It was a relatively small number of missiles got through.
They did lead to some loss of life, which again, any civilian life on either side is appalling.
But it wasn't a lot.
And it's now stopped.
And most of the missiles were stopped by the Iron Dome.
So, you know, it just seemed to me...
And then we have a look at the...
Hang on, hang on.
Hang on, I'll just finish my sentence.
Then we had this sort of farce of the attacks on the base in Qatar, where everyone apparently got warnings it was going to happen and when it was going to happen, which seemed to me just complete showpony, pointless stuff.
So putting it all together, I'm looking at it going, well, does Iran have the capability to match the rhetoric, or have we just seen evidence that it doesn't?
So let me complete the picture, though, because what you're pointing to is not false.
I agree with it, but there's more to the picture.
First of all, when it comes to them hitting the Israelis, what you are allowed to see is the things that the Israelis permit to be shown, except for a couple of videos, and you have probably reported as well that some people have been arrested for posting those videos.
The military censorship in Israel does not allow any reporting on all the military sites that have been hit.
So as a result, the statistics that are being thrown out or that the images you see does not account for that.
And based on what I'm hearing from the US side, it does not correspond with your picture of this not having been successful.
In fact, look at what Trump said earlier today about how hard the Israelis were hit.
So that's one part of the picture.
The part of the picture, which I think you are quite correct in, is that clearly, when it comes to the strike on the base in Doha, the Iranians signaled it very clearly.
It was choreographed, it was theatrics, as well as the American strike on Ford, which the Trump administration made clear that the Iranians knew that it was coming to avoid any casualties precisely because of a very simple fact.
Between these three countries, two of them do not want to see escalation.
One of them is the United States.
The other one is Iran.
The Israelis is a different matter.
They have worked 20 years to get the United States into war with Iran.
They finally succeeded.
And I think Netanyahu was very disappointed that it was cut short only after a couple of days.
He would have liked this to go on for much longer to get the United States to bomb far more places in Iran, not just nuclear, but missile facilities, conventional military, in order to restore a balance, an artificial balance in the region that is much more beneficial to the Israelis.
Trump realized that he did not want to walk into that trap.
The Iranians do not want to have a direct confrontation with the United States.
They know that they cannot win that fight, despite whatever their rhetoric is.
But what they did vis-a-vis Israel, I think is a different story.
Just finally, this issue of regime change, I felt when Trump first mentioned that that he wasn't meaning it the way it was interpreted by a lot of people.
I don't think he was talking about the United States trying to effect a regime change.
He was talking about a more organic form of regime change of the kind we saw happen very rapidly in the end in Syria, for example, in December, where the Assad regime was toppled in a matter of two or three weeks.
Could this happen in Iran?
I mean, it's not like this regime is popular.
A lot of young people now, young population, seeing how the rest of the world is going, seeing a number of Middle Eastern countries normalizing relations with Israel, having much more open societies now.
Could you see a scenario where this Iranian regime follows the path of the Assad regime?
Let me just make one point on a minor point that you made in your question.
I don't think there's any countries in the region that are jealous of the ones that normalize relations with Israel, particularly mindful of the genocide that the Israelis are conducting right now.
But having said that, you're absolutely correct.
The regime in Iran is extremely unpopular.
And the population, I'm sure the overwhelming majority would like to see a different regime.
One thing that I think is important to understand, though, at some point, this regime is going to collapse.
But if it collapses in the context of war, it is far more likely that the next regime will come from within this same regime.
There will be more hardline elements from within this regime that will take over in the context of war than it will be some peaceful NGOs and peace activists that will be able to take over.
That could definitely happen, hopefully will happen at one point, but it can only happen in the context of peace.
But in the context of war, it is going to be the forces that have access to weapons and who can use force that will most likely win out if the regime collapses right now.
And I think that's part of the reason Trump, and I agree with you, he has shown no interest in having the U.S. be involved in regime change.
And I think that's a good thing because every time the US has done it, it has backfired, particularly in the Middle East.
He would love to see it if it comes from Iran itself, but he's also worried about exactly what would come and replace it in a context like this is part of the reason I think he said that it could be too destabilized.
Trina Parzi, thank you very much indeed for coming on on Censor.
I appreciate it.
Thanks so much for having me.
Okay, let's go back to the panel.
Major Spielman, you wanted to respond before we broke off there to what Gideon Levy said.
You were putting all the faces while he was talking.
So what did you want to say?
First of all, Gideon is simply telling lies to this entire crowd, and we've seen it with our own eyes.
We've seen the Gazan people as they were lining up to get the food that Hamas had stolen from all the international agencies that they were killed at point-blank range because Hamas stole all those goods and they were selling them on the black market at extortion of prices.
And if you tried taking it when you weren't in the black market, you were killed.
Israel and the United States did not want to put on a secondary mechanism there.
The fact is for 20 months, the United Nations, which were many of them were complicit in October 7th, refused or could not manage to control Hamas.
He's simply spreading lies directly in front of everybody's face here.
Go online and check it.
But I also want to respond right now to what we just heard about Iran.
From what I'm hearing from your previous guest, Iran is like a normalized country that has, you know, good feelings.
The regime's a little bit off.
What are we talking about?
This is Iran that had been racing towards a bomb that had been enriching uranium that since the revolution have been calling the United States the big Satan that killed 241 Marines via Hezbollah in Lebanon that just targeted US assets and that have been claiming have a countdown clock for the destruction of Israel.
They are the largest state sponsor of terrorism in the world.
And I think that we need to step back here and realize that what we're looking at is probably since World War II, there has never been a more justified or successful military mission than what Israel just carried out against the terror regime for one reason.
So look at the major film, Pierce.
All right, but maybe because there's a gun to our heads and a time bomb ticking.
But you just hit on the point I made earlier, which is I agree about the operation in Iran.
I agree about the operation against Hezbollah.
The thing I find completely incomprehensible is why Israel, through its government, continues to pursue a strategy in Gaza, which is making it a global pariah.
I don't get it.
I don't see any evidence of the hostages being released.
If anything, you could say their lives are more endangered by this strategy.
More and more of Gaza is being completely leveled.
You've got members of the cabinet openly talking now about ethnic cleansing, not even trying to hide it, which I found completely horrifying.
And I don't get, I just don't understand why Israel is so keen to be so precise and so careful and so targeted in Iran and in Lebanon against its enemies, the regime in Iran, the Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon, and yet so indiscriminate in the way it's going about its business in Gaza, knowing how many civilians are getting killed.
And this sort of constant everyday, the idea of saying we're doing nothing wrong.
It's the most moral war ever.
And by the way, the ratio of terrorists to civilians, there's never been anything better than this in the world in the history of urban warfare.
But you can't actually tell me how many civilians have been killed or how many children have been killed.
So how you can work out a ratio when you don't know those numbers is completely baffling to me.
But you add it all up and I just don't get it.
And for criticizing the government and for pointing this out, which a lot of people are thinking, you know, I get called an anti-Semite, a Jew hater, all these stupid things.
You're not an anti-Semite.
You're wrong about Israel on many accounts.
You're not an anti-Semite.
That was a ridiculous statement.
But a lot of people, a lot of things.
But you're wrong about many things.
Right, yeah, but now explain to you.
Recently, you condemned October 7th.
Yes.
You can use the condemn it.
I still condemn it.
I'm not sure everyone on the show.
I respected it.
I know you do, but you would ask everyone on the show, do you condemn it?
My question is, what does it mean to condemn?
What are you condemning?
What are your guests condemning?
They're condemning that Israelis were killed.
Well, they didn't die by natural causes.
I know what I'm condemning.
But let me be clear.
Let me be clear.
Hang on.
Let me be clear.
Because I haven't changed my narrative about Hamas one iota.
They are a despicable terrorist group who perpetrated one of the worst terror attacks of modern times on the people of Israel.
They murdered over 1,200 people.
They kidnapped over 250 more Holocaust survivors, babies.
They burned people alive.
They chopped them into pieces.
They beheaded people.
They went to music festivals and gunned down young people in the first flush of their youth at a music festival and so on.
I've made no pretense about my horror about everything to do with Hamas and the fact that they, of course, should never have anything to do with any government in Gaza going forward.
I've never deviated one iota.
Where I've deviated is in how the Israeli government is prosecuting this war because it's not working.
You're just not achieving the aims.
Pierce.
Which is evident.
All you're doing is making Israel more and more hatred.
I'm not watching a movie here, Pierce.
This is not a video game.
What we are looking at here, the same Hamas terrorists that charged over our borders that have no regard for human life, as you and I both know, they're not sitting in the open courageously battling Israeli soldiers on the open battlefield.
They are, as we know, and I'm sorry to repeat it again, hiding in civilian areas because that is the only thing that can protect them.
And therefore, the alternative, Pierce, is that we just leave them in Gaza, which is exactly going to bring the next October 7th, which you are condemning and I'm condemning.
So if we are condemning October 7th, it means making the very difficult decision that Israel is making to fight this war to the end until Hamas is destroyed, to move their civilian population, 1.5 million people, 1.8 million people, out of the way and try to eliminate a terror organization that are holding babies in front of them while the entire world, including you in many cases, say you're not going about it correctly.
If you have another idea of how we can destroy Hamas without killing a single civilian, please do you prime ministers?
I do have another idea.
I'll make a meeting between you and Prime Ministers.
I do have another idea.
And it will become the Pierce plan to get everyone out of here.
That doesn't work.
Here's the plan.
Go to sleep if they're still in Gaza.
Here's my plan.
You do what you did the last time you got the hostages out, right?
In fact, all the hostages have been released were released through diplomatic means, right?
They were done through diplomatic channels.
That's how these things get resolved.
Let me bring in Gideon Levy.
No, that's not how it was done, Pierce.
Pierce, that wait.
May I just say there are two elements to this.
Catastrophic Error Replacing Hamas 00:06:34
One is the diplomatic channel that only exists, because we know that Hamas are not diplomats.
They are terrorists.
The only reason they resort to diplomacy is because they feel like they are about to be eliminated.
Without the military side, the only diplomacy Hamas knows is to convict terrorism and call for the destruction of the state of Israel.
It's not diplomacy.
It's the pressure under military pressure.
Let me bring Gideon in.
Gideon.
So the argument from Major Spielman, former IDS spokesman, is there's simply no other way to prosecute this war in Gaza than the way they're currently doing, which, as I say, is killing more and more civilians and is making Israel more and more of a global pariah.
To me, that is a catastrophic error of judgment by the Israeli government, right up there with Netanyahu years ago deciding it was a good idea to give Hamas billions of dollars and to try and set up a divide and rule between them and the Palestinian authorities.
So Netanyahu's made a lot of very bad errors here and will be held accountable for it at the end of this.
But in answer to that specific question, how else should Hamas be removed?
Hamas cannot be removed.
Israel is trying now for 20 months to remove Hamas and still the major is speaking about the terrorists who are hiding.
Where is the IDF?
After 20 months you didn't succeed to eliminate all of them.
It's a small piece of land.
Look what you have done in Lebanon so successfully.
Because that's not the aim.
The aim is much farther than this.
But let me just make a few remarks about what he has just said.
Hiding, the Hamas is hiding in civil concentrations.
I live in a very peaceful neighborhood in Tel Aviv, surrounded by three military positions or three military offices and headquarters.
So what?
The biggest hospital in Tel Aviv is 200 meters from the headquarters of the Israeli army.
So who is hiding?
Really, those clichés of the Israeli propaganda are already tiring.
That's the point.
Now, above all, I would like to replace you for a moment, Pierce, and ask the Major, is there anything that Israel did wrong in Gaza?
Did Israel kill anyone in purpose by mistake who is innocent?
Weren't they hundreds of babies, newborn babies, killed?
Is it inevitable?
Do you really, I mean, it's an insult to speak about the Israeli.
Gidon, I'll answer your question.
Of course, Guidon, I'll answer your question.
In any war that is being fought in a insanely close-quartered urban combat against a terror army with multiple troops, of course there have been mistakes made.
And if you look, the IDF admits mistakes.
We admitted mistakes that happened with the medics, and it was extremely painful.
And it came out and we admitted it, and we've admitted other mistakes.
And you've had commanders that have been divided.
However, Guidon, I want to say something to you.
The fact that there have been individuals, of course there have been individuals that have made mistakes.
In every war, there are individuals that make mistakes.
Israel as an army calls for the elimination of Hamas.
And I want to ask you a question.
You say that Hamas cannot be defeated.
So what I understand, Guidon, is that you want to raise a white flag.
Hamas can't be defeated.
Since it can't be done perfect, we should go back into Israel, go back to sleep, so that Hamas can regroup and do what they do best.
What do they do best, Guidon?
No.
What does Hamas do best?
No.
No, Guidon, I want to hear what you said.
What does Hamas do best?
You want to bring Hamas into the West Bank.
What do they do best?
They kill innocent Israelis and they will do it again.
If it was 1939, Guidon, you would be making peace with Hitler.
You would be giving into Hitler's terms.
You don't have the courage to stand up and fight our enemies.
You don't have the courage to stand up and protect the Israeli people.
You should be ashamed to call yourself Israeli.
Wow.
Sure.
I was waiting, when will Hitler come into the picture?
It took this time more than usual because usually the Israeli propaganda uses Hitler just in the beginning.
This time it's 50 minutes now until Hitler got in the picture because Hamas is Hitler and Khamenai is Hitler.
Everyone is Hitler and therefore Hamas is Hitler.
Khamenei is Hitler.
Of course they don't.
Do you not think that Hamas is similar to Hitler?
I would love to understand this.
Okay.
This is Hamas denying the Holocaust.
It's called Hamas.
Hitler is denying the Holocaust.
Shame on you.
No, I accept only the Joe entering this.
Yahya Sinwar is the child of Hitler.
And Khomeini is the child of Hitler.
They all want to eliminate the Jewish people.
And you come from a home.
And the fact that you cannot see the talking points.
Your relatives are turning in their graves.
You are a useful idiot for Hamas.
It is painful for me to say that.
Okay.
You finished all the talking points of the Israeli propaganda.
So let me tell you, Hamas is not my cup of tea.
As a matter of fact, Hamas' victims are, first of all, the people of Gaza, who hates them, most of them.
But Hamas cannot be replaced by the people.
But you believe by force.
Let me finish.
Hamas cannot be replaced by force because Hamas is governing there for over almost 20 years and Israel has no clue who can replace Hamas.
No clue except of transferring all the people of Gaza.
We have no clue.
Who is going to replace Hamas?
The Jewish Federation of New York.
Who exactly will replace Hamas?
The paralyzed, corrupted PA, who is going to replace Hamas.
And by the way, even the PA is not good enough for our government.
They want real Zionists to govern Gaza.
Hamas is not Zionist enough.
And I would ask.
And I would answer that, Gideon.
Again, I come back to what Smadri said.
The game plan for a lot of the members of that government is clear, right?
It's ethnic cleansing.
It's get all the Palestinians out of Gaza and for the Israelis to take over.
And that is ethnic cleansing.
I'm going to take a short break again.
Who Will Govern Gaza Next 00:15:51
I'll come back to the panel for a response to this interview with David Frum, writer at the Atlantic and former speech writer for George W. Bush.
Hey, Mike Baker here, host of the President's Daily Brief podcast.
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And on the weekend, we go longer with the PDB Situation Report with excellent guests, including national security insiders and foreign policy experts.
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Also on our YouTube channel at President's Daily Brief.
David, great to have you on Uncensored.
I think you're debut on Uncensored, in fact.
I think so.
Well, welcome to you.
I think I interviewed you many times at CNN many years ago.
Great to have you here.
So I'm going to start with a contentious statement.
As I sit here, Donald Trump has managed to end this war, it appears, in 12 days with Iran and Israel.
He's also got the NATO countries to pledge to 5% of their GDP spending on defense, which is a massive win for him.
By contrast to Barack Obama, who got the Nobel Peace Prize after less than eight months, because he said some nice things about the Muslim world and the West coming together, why should Donald Trump not now get the Nobel Peace Prize?
There are two truths we have to keep in mind, and they're kind of opposite, but the test of our acuity or maybe even of our democratic survival is holding both of these things in our minds.
The first is that the action that the president took to strike the Iranian nuclear program at a moment when, thanks to Israeli ingenuity and daring, it could be done, which it hasn't, which has not been the case before, that was a necessary and correct act.
And I salute him for it.
At the same time, while we hope that this war is over, it may not be.
While we hope the program is over, it may not be.
And Donald Trump now becomes a more dangerous threat to American democracy because he still does not respect the due process rights of citizens, the free speech rights, democratic elections, and basic rules about honest government and conflict of interest and not taking massive handouts from persons all over the world undisclosed to the United States people.
I mean, you made a lot of claims there.
He would, if he was sitting here listening to this, he would counter quite hard on that.
He would say that he pushes the envelope hard on things like, for example, the deportation program, but that he does abide by what courts say.
If eventually all appeals against the courts are against him, he has said he will abide by what they say.
He's also said in relation to the stolen election, which I said to his face wasn't stolen and so on.
The reality is he did leave the White House and he wasn't there for four years.
In other words, Trump will say a lot of quite inflammatory things, but the reality is that the system in American democracy has actually worked pretty well with Trump.
Why are you so scared about him and the potential threat to democracy?
His attempted coup failed in 2021.
That's true, because he made a mistake.
He thought you could overthrow an election with a disorganized mob.
And that turned out not to be true.
As you say, the American state is powerful.
This time around, he's learned his lesson.
And he is federalizing the military.
He has a military presence in the state of California without the request of the state government.
That's unprecedented since the end of armed resistance to civil rights laws in the 1960s.
Yes, when the courts say you cannot withhold due process rights after litigating and litigating something that no previous president would ever think to try to litigate, he says yes.
But people around him are saying, we're not sure we have to respect the due process rights.
Yeah, but he is abiding by it.
And we are seeing some of these decisions being reversed.
We're seeing people who were deported returning.
In other words, Trump will always push it to get what he wants.
But if ultimately he faces a court order to bring them back, it's happening.
Yeah, but this is kind of the, to borrow a phrase from the George W. Bush administration, which I serve, the soft bigotry of low expectations.
So congratulations, Mr. President, that when your attempt to do something illegal, immoral, unethical, unconstitutional is struck down by three levels of appeal, you don't at that point do what you're doing in the state of California and call out the troops.
Congratulations.
But actually, you know what?
The real test for a president is you're supposed to obey the law automatically.
It's not supposed to be something you litigate.
When you set up a lot of things.
See, that's not true.
That's not true, David.
It's perfectly normal for American presidents to challenge the law.
It's perfectly normal.
That's happened multiple times with every president.
It's normal for them to litigate close cases.
The question of whether a person born on U.S. soil is an American citizen, that's not a close case.
The question of whether you can put a bag over a head of somebody and shove them on a plane and send them to El Salvador without any kind of hearing, that's not a close case.
Presidents don't litigate those things because they don't try.
Should the president take a $400 handout from the government of Qatar?
That's not a close case.
Should the president be operating a meme coin business, which has enriched him and his family by hundreds of millions, possibly billions of dollars, from persons totally unknown, many of them foreigners?
That's not a close case.
These are not close cases.
None of these things have been proven to work.
Hang on, none of these things have been proven.
Well, none of these things have been proven.
You may not like them.
They all happen.
A lot of people don't.
They all happen.
They haven't been proven to be illegal acts or acts that you can't do.
And I would also say the only thing that the left were able to stick on Trump in the end in terms of criminal activity was that he shuffled a bit of paperwork around to avoid being open about a one-night stand with a porn star, which frankly was an embarrassment for everybody involved, not Donald Trump.
I thought that was just a pathetic waste of everybody's time.
And it's very demeaning that the first American president to be dragged through a criminal court was done over something so trivial.
The reason John Adams' prayer, let none but wise and honest men rule under this roof, is inscribed in the White House over a mantelpiece is because the presidency is so powerful that it's not much of a comfort say after the president has taken a series of bribes and it's litigated, until it is proven that these things are illegal, he will continue.
By the way, they almost certainly are illegal.
And by the way, the rule against receiving presents from foreign governments is in the Constitution.
The president is not allowed to accept a gift from a foreign government without the consent of Congress.
And this gift from the government of Qatar, maybe a gift, may be extorted.
It's not clear whether the Qataris wanted to do it.
This is massively unconstitutional and also illegal because there are conflict of interest laws and gift laws.
But as you say, he pushes it.
I prefer a president who doesn't push the law.
I prefer a president who's guided by honor.
Give me a name.
Give me a name of one.
George Bush?
I mean, I remember being editor.
I was editor of the Daily Mirror in the UK, which you may or may not know, fought a long and it turned out unsuccessful campaign to stop the Iraq war happening because I believe that was an illegal invasion of a sovereign country.
And it turned out I was right.
And you believed it was illegal and you said so, and no one put pressure on your parent corporation to make a personal present of hundreds of millions of dollars to the George W. Bush family, as has happened to CBS and ABC and Amazon, which paid $40.
But I would argue that a plain gift from a foreign country is one thing.
Invading a Middle Eastern country illegally on a false pretext that the ruler of that country had weapons of mass destruction is infinitely more serious, isn't it?
You know, one of the things that the Trump people do, and I'm afraid in this count, you do count as a Trump person.
I know you have a personal relationship with him, and maybe he's very charming.
And I don't know him personally.
There may be secrets there that are invisible to me.
But they reach for any argument.
They don't deal with the things.
It's not any argument, David.
You were the Bush idiot writer.
Bush waged an illegal war in Iraq, which turned out to be a complete disaster.
And it was based on a pack of lies, or let's just say, wrong information that Saddam Hussein had WMD.
I mean, that seems to me the most catastrophic lie or falsehood which led to catastrophic repercussions of modern presidential times.
And you were right in the thick of it.
Let's all hope that Donald Trump's war in the Middle East goes better and reaches a decisive conclusion.
I certainly do.
But we are very possibly at the beginning of another long war in the Middle East.
And this time with goons and fools and cronies in charge of counterterrorism.
Who is going to keep Americans safe?
Don Bongino, Kash Patel, Christy Noam?
He sacked every experienced person in the counterterrorism wing of the FBI and left those jobs either vacant or filled with cronies.
He has embarked on a war that may be done.
How good a job have those people done?
The ones, the establishment figures.
How good a job did they do when they didn't know that 9-11 was going to happen, for example?
We have done, right now, we have done, 9-11 was a terrible catastrophe, and the United States government had to learn some very painful lessons.
That's what traditional intelligence people have that happened on their watch.
So my argument would be to that.
I know they're unusual picks, these people, but could they really do a lot worse than the traditional jobs are actually completely vacant.
And many of the jobs in the counterterrorism part of FBI and National and Homeland Security are vacant because Trump sacked people who defended the country on January 6th and doesn't replace them unless they will say, I agree with you, sir, that the election of 2020 was a fake.
That's a litmus test.
And so the country is undefended.
I hope to goodness, I sincerely hope this war with Iran is successful and brief.
I really do.
I really do.
But if it's not, you've got a president who has abused power in the past, is ready to abuse it again.
His powers get bigger in wartime than they do in peacetime.
And he's got a domestic security apparatus that is not equivalent up to the job.
He's got Pete Hegseth, for goodness sakes, running the Department of Defense.
He doesn't seem to be doing a bad job so far, Pete Hegseth.
Has he made some catastrophic mistake that I'm not aware of?
Well, he posted the war plans of the United States on this side.
They had an issue with using Signal, but other than that, there was an issue with showing off and bragging and ignoring security wasn't and they learned a lesson.
The Atlantic.
But that was a Pete Hegseth.
That was obviously a dumb mistake.
But in terms of an action he's taking, you know, the kind of person who makes dumb mistakes?
A dumb person.
And that person...
Pete Hegset is not a dumb person.
I know him well.
Okay.
He's not.
We have views.
He's a smart guy.
That person is in charge of this operation.
That person is...
And you look at the other people.
Didn't he go to Harvard and Princeton from memory?
I think he went to at least two of them.
He served 20 years in the military.
It's very funny how snobbish the MAGA people become on defense when they use anti-snobbishness as a weapon on offense.
I'm not MAGA.
That Pete Hegset's academic credential is good for him.
But he called him dumb, just saying he went to two of the finest universities in the country.
He ignored security rules that everyone in his position would ignore.
He made a mistake on Signal.
Yeah.
Repeatedly, repeatedly.
He didn't learn.
And now he's in charge.
And now Christy Noam is at the Department of Homeland Security.
Now, Cash Pell and Don Bungino are in charge of keeping Americans safe at home.
And now they have left the counterterrorism jobs vacant because they won't swear loyalty oaths.
Again, I really do hope I think the president did the right thing striking for the Iranian nuclear sites.
And I hope that this war is brief and successful.
And if the present appearances are optimistic, and I am glad of that.
But we are in a very dangerous position.
And this president has abused power in the past, will abuse it more.
His powers get greater if there is a conflict situation.
And those are the two truths we have to keep in mind.
Both the action is right and that the president is dangerous.
And look, I don't really believe that in your heart you can defend him.
I think that it's exciting.
And I think he is, I'm sure he's charming.
I'm sure he's charming.
It's nothing to do with him being charming or anything.
I've known Trump 20 years.
I've written and said as many critical things about Trump as I've said positively.
But when it comes to his foreign policy, hang on, David, when it comes to his foreign policy, I would say this.
I would rather have an American president, particularly a Republican president, who does not believe in invading countries, which Trump emphatically does not and has not done, who believes in surgical precision strikes when he thinks it's justified, as we saw with Silimani, Baghdadi, the head of ISIS, who he helped dismantle, dropping a big bomb in Afghanistan when he did.
This is not a guy who believes, unlike your guy, George W. Bush, in putting thousands of troops on the ground into countries illegally and causing mayhem and 20 years of terrorism.
So I just think for all the hysteria about Trump, I judge a guy on what he actually does.
I am quite reassured that Trump instinctively wants peace, not war, and he absolutely does not believe in committing American troops on the ground.
There are two big asterisks that have to be put there.
His abandonment of Ukraine, his threats to NATO.
He doesn't abandon him.
Of course.
Hundreds of Ukrainians are dead because of the cutoff he made on the flow of intelligence information to them during a Russian operation.
He has made it very clear that he is no friend to Ukraine.
Ukrainian supplies are in danger.
President Biden did not go far enough to give them all they needed in time, knowing that this dangerous man was coming.
And one more thing we say, he's this man of peace.
Understand that right now, Americans are flying predator drones over Mexico, at first without the consent of the Mexican government.
Now they have bullied the Mexican governments into approving.
There are possibly other kinds of missions being prepared for Mexico.
That there is a war.
JD Vance, the vice president, has often called for unilateral American action inside Mexico without the consent of the Mexican government.
This is not a peaceful administration.
But last time I checked, the Mexican president was cooperating fully with Trump on making the border secure.
And it turns out they've reduced the number of people going over illegally on the southern border by 96, 7%, which is a stunning success, isn't it?
Because Trump is waging economic warfare against every American ally, including Mexico and Canada.
But you agree, you agree he stopped that ridiculous flow of people over the southern border.
Look, I've been writing about the dangers of uncontrolled immigration for a long time.
So you applaud him for that.
I don't apply the way he's going to.
The results are a beginning.
Yes, you have to be sensational.
But you need to obey the law, whatever your policy is.
You don't say, look, President Penguin is assassinating suspected robbers in the streets of Gotham City and the crime rate is down.
Aren't you happy?
So, you know, I want the crime rate down.
I want immigration controlled.
I want the law obeyed.
And I want the president to do this in conformity with law.
And I want him to do it with democratic consent.
And I want him to work with members of the House and Senate.
I agree with you.
And I want him to speak to the American people.
And I don't want him to wage a war in the Middle East as he's now doing and saying, I'm spitefully going to refuse to talk to the members of the party that doesn't agree with me.
And I'm going to make no case to the American people.
I'm going to gamble everything that I can deliver a swift and cheap result, swift and cheap success.
So I don't need the country with me.
And as you know, as you know, David, pretty much every president who's ordered airstrikes in the last 25 years has done so without any pre-approval, without any pre-approval from Congress.
No, they go to the protocol of talking to the leading members of the U.S. Obama, didn't he?
He blitzed Libya without asking anyone.
If it's cheap and easy and successful, you can do a lot.
And if this mission is cheap and easy and successful, and I hope it will be, then none of the things I've talked about will matter.
But if it's not, if he has to go back to Congress for a supplemental appropriation, if the Iranians find some way to strike back, if this war becomes protracted, the things he didn't do and the person he isn't capable of being, those are going to become expensive.
Cheap and Easy War Successes 00:07:49
So those are the two truths, that what has happened so far, I salute it.
I hope for the best.
But if it goes wrong, this is not a person who can lead the country through anything difficult because he doesn't care about consent and he can't mobilize the country.
Okay.
I don't really agree with that, but obviously, as always, the proof will be in the pudding, as we say over here.
And we'll see.
And I think we both hope for the best, as always, prepare for it not to happen.
But I think I actually am encouraged by the way Trump goes about his foreign policy.
Lots of issues I had.
There are also things that you said, which I kind of agree with.
I believe passionately in due process.
Some of the specific cases under deportations, I've been very vocal about this shouldn't have happened without proper due process.
I agree with you about that.
But I look at the Drupal Trump.
The Donald Trump is, he does something like the southern border, which has been a spectacular success, reduce the number of people coming over.
I heard today something like 12,000 last month came over, which was the same number that we're going over every day under Biden for four years.
And you're like, at some point, even if you hate Trump, you just have to go, this has been an amazing success and applause.
You can't look at a series of dots and say, I like this group of dots over here, and I like this, I don't like these over here, but I refuse to see these dots connect into a single picture.
The dots add up to something.
And of course, the president does a lot.
I like many of the things Donald Trump has done, even in the first term.
Many of the things.
That doesn't matter because there are points in a larger picture.
So I can't say, yes, these are good points, these are bad ones, and not see the pattern that is formed of disregard for law, disregard for ethics, disregard for due process, disregard for free speech, self-enrichment on a post-Soviet or post-colonial African scale without, again, regard to law.
This is a very dangerous presidency.
And it does a lot of things, some of them good.
And we hope for the best in Iran.
We sincerely, sincerely do.
But this is a dangerous situation and it may be about to become a lot more dangerous yet.
David Fromm, great to have you on our sensor.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Bye-bye.
Let's go back to the panel.
Natalie, a lot to unpack there from David Fromm.
In a way, I kind of agree with him about stuff like due process and stuff, but I also got the feeling of somebody who just instinctively hates Trump and so is very reluctant to give him much credit for anything and just constantly wants to downplay any good stuff by saying it's all going to go to hell in a handcart anyway.
I'm not convinced that that is the case.
Yeah, Trump derangement syndrome, patient zero.
I'm surprised someone whose entire career has been essentially not just lying, but spreading full-blown domestic propaganda to the American people to pave the way so young Americans can die in foreign battlefields would feel so comfortable being so smug, frankly, even showing his face on TV platforms, especially at this time right now.
I think it was him right back in, what was it, the early 2000s, writing the National Review, condemning, I guess it would be the equivalent of people like myself, like Steve Bannon, like Tucker, and more of the MAGA right for opposing the Iraq war, saying that we were unpatriotic conservatives.
I think that that is projection at its finest.
I just love how the man who was so instrumental in lying about WMDs, he thinks there's such a wide aperture for the lies that you can, frankly, I would say, you want to talk about due process.
That's probably something that David Fromm and his colleagues should have had when it came to lying about Iraq and everything that happened there.
But that there's such, I think, a wide frame for people like him to lie about and engage in law affair and the rhetoric and the propaganda when it comes to getting the United States involved in foreign conflicts.
Anytime we want to try to actually secure the homeland in a meaningful way, whether it's the southern border, not importing tens of millions of foreigners, all of a sudden, his foremost priority is protecting the Geneva Convention-derived rights of gangbanging criminals like Kilmar Garcia.
It's absolutely absurd.
And it's people like him.
When I watch him do interviews, I'm so glad that he is no longer a part of the Republican Party, that we're going in a MA direction.
And I think that that interview, that TDS that you saw in full display, should be a warning to President Trump and people in the MA movement who want to play FTSE and try to cater to people like Mark Levin and David Fromm, who maybe are a little pro the Iran strikes.
They will never give President Trump the support.
Or, frankly, I think that he deserves the MAGA movement because they think they're better than us when in reality, his entire track record is getting everything wrong.
Major Spielman, would you think that Donald Trump is heading towards the Nobel Peace Prize if the normal rules apply?
First of all, I think he should.
And I think from listening to Mark Levin, he's been spot on this entire time.
I just have to say.
Mark Levin understood the moral courage of the United States and the clarity of the United States, especially President Trump, who doesn't want to get involved in foreign wars, but understood that if we do not, if he does not play a role in exerting American strength and helping take out those reactors, we will be facing a bigger war.
Let's not forget that Israel fought this war for 11 days, Pierce, by ourselves.
The fact that President Trump supplied the weapons we needed, gave us the moral support, and came in at the end, not because of Israel.
He came in at the end because he understood America has skin in the game.
Israel cannot do all the dirty work.
The fact that he showed American strength and then brought this to a close quickly is true peace by strength.
That is it.
It was the ultimate, ultimate example of peace by strength.
The alternative is only one thing: tyranny by weakness.
And I think he showed that.
And that's something we haven't seen for, again, decades and decades.
And if there's a Nobel Prize that's to be brought about, the Nobel Peace Prize needs to be understood in today's world at the very least.
Without strength, you're not going to get peace.
That's just the way the cookie crumbles.
He absolutely deserves it.
I would pin it right on his neck.
Gideon Levy, your thoughts on Trump and the Nobel Peace Prize?
First of all, he deserves it more than Barack Obama.
He did, until now, more to save lives than Barack Obama did in eight years, because this strike in Iran saved lives.
It brought the end to this war.
This war could have developed into a war of attrition of months and maybe, God forbid, years.
And here he came and put an end to it, at least for the time being.
So this by itself, I don't know if Nobel Prize, but for sure, some kind of appreciation.
And believe me, it's not easy for me.
I say, by the way, the same things about Netanyahu.
I say it clearly.
I wrote the piece for tomorrow.
The fact that Netanyahu put an end to this war so quickly, this is enough of a reason to send my appreciation, even though there are so many other things in which Netanyahu does such horrible things.
But when they do something right, they deserve appreciation.
And both of them, Netanyahu and Trump, did the right thing.
They put an end to the war just on time.
It's another argument if this war was necessary.
Then we show if it was effective.
Thai will show, but at least they put an end to it.
Now, let's see them do the same in Gaza, for God's sake.
Donald Trump can do it with one phone call, with one phone call, and the Gaza war is over.
But somehow he cares much less about Gaza than he cares about Iran.
I think you will see some action with Gaza and Trump.
I think he will.
I think he understands how badly this is now all playing out for Israel.
And honestly, I feel for Israelis and for Jewish people around the world.
More and more of them have reached out to me and said, I'm glad you're criticizing the government for what is happening in our name in Gaza.
And it doesn't mean I'm anti-Israel.
Ending the Gaza Conflict Now 00:01:28
I'm not.
I'm not, and I'm certainly not anti-Jewish.
A lot of my friends are Jewish.
It's not that at all.
Having supported Israel's right to defend itself, what is happening now has gone way beyond a country's right to defend itself and way beyond anything that Israel's ever done before to defend itself.
And I just don't think they've got a plan for the end of it other than I take Smodrich at his word.
They want to get rid of the Palestinians and take over the Gaza Strip.
I don't think that should happen.
I believe passionately in a two-state solution.
Anyway, a very interesting panel discussion.
Thank you all for.
I'm afraid we've run out of time.
But come back, Major Spielman.
I like having you on the program.
I like having lots of different voices, as you know.
And I like it when it ends without everybody shouting at each other.
It's a blessed relief after the last few weeks.
So thank you very much.
I appreciate it.
We even agreed now.
We even agreed now.
You know what?
We reached a point of agreement.
Guidon, you and I agreed on something.
I can't believe it.
I'm going to cut my winnings while I can and get out of the race today.
Thank you all very much.
I appreciate it.
Thank you.
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