00:00Tim, I'm going to start with you.
00:01What is the president doing here?
00:03Why is he doing it now?
00:04And does he care about the midterms?
00:07Let's see.
00:08Definitely he cares about the midterms.
00:09But before we get to the midterms,
00:11I think Trump always has goals,
00:14but he doesn't always have a strategy.
00:15And it's important to separate the two.
00:17And generally, the goals revolve around
00:19wanting to appear he can act unilaterally,
00:22at will, whenever he feels the need.
00:25And there's a large amount of performance
00:27that are associated with it.
00:28And in small venues, that's OK.
00:30If it's a reality TV show or it's a real estate deal,
00:34it has less impact on the world.
00:35Obviously, it's become more consequential
00:37now that he's president.
00:38And I think he sees Iran as a flex.
00:41And I think he primarily went into it as a flex.
00:44And that's problematic.
00:45Times is on the administration's side
00:47to an extent right now.
00:49It's a short-term war.
00:50Trump keeps referring...
00:51Hopefully, possibly.
00:52Well, that's the issue, right?
00:53Because he keeps referring to oil prices
00:56will come back down.
00:56And we have enough missiles to see this through.
01:00But all that is predicated on the idea
01:02that it is a short, quick strike.
01:03And he comes out of it showing that
01:06when he feels that his allies, in this case Israel,
01:09or the White House's own interests are threatened,
01:11he will take action quickly and unilaterally
01:14and on very short notice.
01:15That's going to get much harder to defend
01:19and to answer to as time goes on.
01:22Because if oil prices stay elevated,
01:25businesses are affected by that
01:26and consumers are affected by that.
01:27If missile supplies dwindle,
01:31it limits our actions in Ukraine or against China.
01:35And so all this stuff is going to start to weigh more heavily.
01:37Abby, you looked like you wanted to add to that.
01:38Absolutely.
01:39When he acts unilaterally,
01:42this means that no one else shares the blame.
01:44So if you go back to the Iraq War
01:45and the Bush administration had Congress vote on this.
01:48So Senator Hillary Clinton, Senator John Kerry,
01:51owned some of the blame of the political fallout of this.
01:53And as someone who's obsessed about the midterms,
01:55I don't think he has that much time.
01:57Republicans are already freaking out on the Hill
01:59based on what happened in Texas this week
02:02where more Democrats turned out.
02:03And so this gets more complicated and tenuous for him
02:07based on the price of oil
02:08and if there are more American casualties.
02:11He used the word excursion, Tim.
02:13We've heard that a couple of times now
02:14over the course of these last eight or nine days.
02:16And I'm curious how you see that reverberating
02:18around the halls of Congress.
02:19Indeed, across the country,
02:20as a lot of these lawmakers are up for re-election,
02:22when does an excursion become something more intractable?
02:24Yeah, it's not a good word.
02:25You know, it is not a round on the golf course.
02:29That's an excursion.
02:30This is a military attack with enormous consequences.
02:35And I think he takes it more seriously
02:37than just an excursion.
02:39I don't think he understands the implications of it
02:42beyond being an excursion.
02:43I think he sees it as something he can go in and get out of.
02:47But if the goal actually is to reduce Iran's stockpile
02:51of enriched uranium, that's still beneath the ground
02:54in Isfahan, which we bombed last year.
02:56But in order to get it out and make sure
02:58that it doesn't remain available to the Iranians,
03:01we're going to have to commit ground troops.
03:03And the second-
03:04So that's not a remote action.
03:05You can't have a drone do that.
03:06No, you can't have a drone.
03:07You know, we used heavy-duty bombers to try to take it out
03:11and maybe completed 90% of that job.
03:14But according to intelligence reports, it's still available.
03:17It's about 970 pounds.
03:19It's about 60% enriched.
03:21It would have to get to 90 for the Iranians to be able to use it
03:24in a nuclear weapon.
03:25But it's there.
03:26And so once Trump commits troops, all bets are off.
03:30This is the thing he criticized about both the Bush
03:34and the Obama administration, is that we got committed
03:36to long land wars with no endgame.
03:38Abby, since you are obsessed with the midterms,
03:41I'm going to give you a little room to run here.
03:42OK.
03:43All right.
03:43So before the midterms, there is a Kentucky primary in May.
03:47And we've just heard that President Trump
03:49is going to be heading to Thomas Massey's home district
03:52on Wednesday to stump for his primary challenger.
03:55Massey, one of the rare Republican critics of the president,
03:58has also been involved with a Democratic colleague,
04:00Ro Khanna of California, trying to bring forward
04:01those Epstein files.
04:03What are Massey's chances, given his position?
04:05And then what are some other races, before we get to the midterms,
04:08that we need to keep an eye on?
04:10I think Massey's political standing is to be determined.
04:13They've come after him before, and he's come out in flying colors.
04:16But the problem is that they're just going to unload the fuselage
04:19of advertising against him.
04:21But on the issues he is in contention with the president
04:27are issues that are popular with the base,
04:29most specifically the release of the Epstein files.
04:32I think going forward over the spring,
04:35there aren't that many Republican primaries
04:37because Donald Trump is able to endorse and clear the field.
04:40But I think that the Texas primary runoff between John Cornyn
04:44and a state attorney general, Ken Paxton,
04:46is the World War III of the GOP civil war
04:50that's been going on for the last 15 years.
04:52And whether John Cornyn can secure that endorsement,
04:56which it appears he's about to,
04:57and is that enough for him?
04:59And so every Trump endorsement is not just about getting the endorsement,
05:02but what do you do with it?
05:04Tim, I want to ask you some other news that happened this week.
05:07Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem,
05:09relieved of that position by the president.
05:11Curious, A, how surprised you were by that.
05:14This hasn't been a cabinet that's gone under many undulations here
05:16over the first year of the president's second term.
05:18And second of all, what does it say to you, if anything,
05:21about the way directionally that department changes
05:23if Senator Mark Wayne Mullen of Oklahoma were to be confirmed?
05:26Well, I think they've learned a lesson
05:28in terms of how much patience the American public has
05:31with Americans getting shot and killed
05:33on the streets of American cities.
05:35It's a shame that it had to go to that place
05:38before policy changed.
05:40I think in Noem's case,
05:42it's another reminder of what irks Trump.
05:44He stayed with her during a number of other marketing stunts.
05:47He stayed behind her during all of the problems
05:50associated with the deportations.
05:52What tripped the wire here was that she shifted blame
05:56for a $270 million ad campaign
06:00that appeared to also benefit Corey Lewandowski
06:03onto the president.
06:04An aide of hers.
06:05An aide of hers.
06:06At least.
06:06Or more possibly based on her testimony before Congress.
06:10We don't know.
06:11But she didn't deny any of that either during her testimony,
06:14which complicates it further,
06:16makes it more embarrassing, potentially the administration.
06:19But the line she crosses, she didn't take a hit for Trump.
06:24She essentially threw Trump under the bus in a public forum.
06:28And that is basically a death warrant
06:30in the Trump administration.
06:32You've seen it time and again with people,
06:33and I think that's what happened here.
06:35And Abby, quickly before we have to go to break,
06:37does taking Markway Mullen out of his seat
06:40compromise Republicans at all,
06:41or is that a pretty safe district?
06:42It's a pretty safe district.
06:43I find it hard to see that end up being competitive.
06:47All right.
06:47But it just doesn't seem like there was a lot of strategy there.
06:51They're just confident enough that it's a road district.
06:53He literally got the call, what, like a minute before?
06:55Yeah, he's going to find out shortly after reporters.
06:58Yeah, and I mean, Oklahoma is as red as it gets,
07:01so I will be shocked if that becomes a competitive seat.
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