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00:00It was only, what, 24 hours ago that the president said the U.S. is winning big in Iran,
00:04and we'll see the fruits of that labor very shortly. It does seem like we are far from
00:09this getting tied up anytime soon. Well, thanks for having me. Certainly the
00:13president continues to profess U.S. victory in this conflict. But at the same time, we are seeing
00:21tit-for-tat strikes between the U.S. and Iran. And we're not quite at the point of an escalation
00:30to a return to full-scale conflict, but we certainly are seeing more damage and expansion
00:36of targets by the U.S., both geographically and in terms of the types of sites that are being hit.
00:44Courtney, what is the threshold for saying we've returned to a full-scale conflict?
00:49Well, I don't know that there's necessarily a quantifiable level, but certainly with the
00:58number of targets that the U.S. has been hitting, you know, where SACOM is reporting strikes in the
01:05dozens, you know, early in March, in April, at the peak of the fighting, we were seeing
01:11hundreds of targets hit per day. Many of those targets are no longer viable because the U.S.
01:17has destroyed them. And so I think now that there is a sort of a vanishing number of sites they
01:23can
01:23hit, you're seeing the U.S. striking further into the country and going after bridges and
01:30infrastructure that, according to SACOM, is still used to support military operations,
01:36Iranian strikes on ships in the strait, et cetera.
01:39Joshua, let me get your perspective on how the White House is looking at this conflict now. It does
01:43seem like there's still an element here where the White House feels like it can kind of win this
01:47war of attrition just by staring Iran down. Do we have any more nuance or detail about
01:51the strategic direction of this conflict from the White House?
01:56It's a great question. I think President Trump has pretty clearly been told by his advisors that
02:00this blockade puts more pressure on Iran than these activities and, you know, the overall situation
02:08puts on the American economy and the American armed forces. In other words, he thinks time
02:13is on his side in his public remarks. He seems to have kind of moved on from it, like he
02:18doesn't
02:18talk about it as much anymore. And so I think right now we're just sort of in the status quo
02:22indefinitely. And of course, the question is what that means for him. There were a lot of
02:27Republicans who wanted a quicker end to this or for the president to at least be serious about
02:32pursuing any deal that was actually there. You know, the American negotiators would quibble with
02:38how serious the Iranians were about making a deal at points in time. And so we seem to just basically
02:42be here indefinitely. And what that means for the president is sort of an ongoing focus on whether
02:47they can continue to escort ships through the southern part of the strait. Remember, of course,
02:52that was the big pressure point Trump saying when they announced their previous deal. Look,
02:58you know, some countries only had four weeks left of reserves or that kind of thing. And so if I
03:02think
03:02if Trump can be confident that oil markets and energy markets more broadly can withstand the status
03:08quo, then I think the status quo is going to remain the status quo for some time. And, you know,
03:12we'll see where that goes. We have not seen a lot of pushback from Republicans in recent days
03:17or, frankly, from within the administration itself and some of the more isolationist voices,
03:23including the vice president. Yeah, Josh, I'm wondering about I don't know if there is one,
03:27but if there's a strategy to the messaging here, because it seemed prior to that NATO meeting in
03:31Ankara, the president had kind of washed his hands. He'd even said he was a bit over it.
03:36And then there were those threats to his security. He ended up having to take the old Air Force One
03:39plane, which caused a bit of a kerfuffle, a lot of pushback from the White House on that report from
03:44the New York Times. But if you're inside the White House, I mean, we've been talking for months about
03:48how exactly what you just said, advisors to the president, Republicans running in the midterms want this
03:53off the books when they go to run for office in November. If this is going to stretch out and
03:59have this indeterminate timeline, is the strategy just don't talk about it and maybe people will
04:04forget it's happening in the background? Is that kind of what's happening here?
04:08I mean, I suppose you and I can come to that conclusion. I don't think that there necessarily is,
04:15you know, a grand multi-week plan. I think they're just sort of rolling with how it goes and trying
04:22to create an ecosystem that would be, you know, get Iran back to the table and get to a situation
04:28where that makes sense. And so, you know, we'll see. We don't expect to hear from the president
04:32today. I should say that I'm sorry I'm not. I'm in purgatory here. I'm in New Jersey. I'm not quite
04:38with Trump. I'm not quite at the World Cup. I'm not quite with you all. I'm sitting here waiting in
04:42case Trump needs his press corps. Class of New Jersey story. Yeah. I know. It's a pleasure to
04:48be here. Courtney has the right Bloomberg backdrop. I have a Marriott landscape. It's, you know,
04:53I was going to say, I know what hotel you're in. I've seen that. I've seen that picture in many,
04:57many hotels. Exactly. Exactly. So we don't think Trump in his public remarks has not been placing
05:05emphasis on this. This is a fact. And so I think from that, historically with him, we can tell that
05:11he's sort of moved on in his mind to other things. Remember, there are brewing questions
05:15about America's capacity to continue doing this, or at least the effect that it would have on American
05:21munitions reserves. Courtney is an expert on this. So let me stop there and refer to her and defer to
05:26her. But, you know, there's sort of the ripple effect of doing this indefinitely and carrying out
05:31strikes on Iran indefinitely is not nothing. And so we will see how long the president's appetite
05:36is for that. But so far, it's full steam ahead. Yeah. Chief of Naval Operations telling us last week,
05:40he is concerned about how long those ships have been out, including ships like their big battle
05:44cruisers who've been out a record number of days at this point. So let's move on from Josh Bonvoy
05:49Wingrove to Courtney McBride here. And Courtney, let's pick up on what we were just talking about
05:53there, the degree to which this war can continue in perpetuity. So Josh rightly referencing the fact
05:58that there is such strain here on the military as this lasts longer and longer. How manifest is that
06:03concern in the halls of the Pentagon, among the president's national security advisors,
06:07that this really, there are limits to how long that this can go on?
06:11Sure. I mean, certainly there's the public messaging that the U.S. has everything it
06:16needs to continue this war as long as the president decides to do so. That being said, there is certainly
06:25behind the scenes concern about munition stockpiles, particularly for certain high-end weapons.
06:30The Pentagon does have a plan to ramp up production, but we're talking years before
06:35some of that bears fruit. That being said, I think the strikes that are happening now
06:41may be using different types of munitions and those that were relied upon early on that are
06:48multi-million dollar missiles and are in much shorter supply. So at this level, short of that high-end,
06:58full-scale operation that we saw in early March, in April, this could continue at this level for quite
07:09some time.
07:10Wow. I want to pivot a little bit, well, quite a bit actually, Josh. And I do want to ask
07:14you about
07:14this speech the president made on Thursday. There was a lot in there, but among other things,
07:19he accused China of interfering with the U.S. elections in 2020, saying the Chinese government
07:24stole about over more than 200 million voter files. But it was unclear in all the documents
07:29that were released what they really did with them or what the argument was, how they used them.
07:34Why make this speech now? What are the objectives here, especially ahead of this upcoming Xi visit
07:39to the U.S.?
07:42Yeah. Let me start by saying that I and other reporters have been going through these documents
07:48since they were released. The president has been upset there isn't more coverage of it.
07:53What I have seen in there is not a lot of new material. Many of these claims were debunked not
08:00only by American intelligence agencies, but under the Trump administration in the first term. A lot
08:05of the dates that you see on these documents are 2016, 2020, even earlier than 2016 in some cases.
08:12They're heavily redacted. They're sort of cherry-picked. It's not really clear what they're
08:17saying. And some of them also reveal Russian attempts to influence the election in the favor
08:24of President Trump, whereas the Chinese sort of breadcrumbs here are that they prefer that
08:30President Trump did not get reelected. And so I think broadly, there's bipartisan concern about the
08:37security of American elections, including foreign interference, not only with China,
08:41but with other countries. Specifically, I think the question is whether the president is using
08:45this as a narrative or a pretext to push again for changes to the voting systems in this year's
08:52midterm election. Of course, he's been pressing for passage of the Save America Act, which would
08:56make a lot of changes. There's been zero or next to zero appetite in Congress to do that. He's trying
09:00to
09:01strong-arm it through. I think there are a lot of open questions about what steps he might take
09:05in the run-up to and during the voting period in sort of a lot of crucial districts as he
09:10tries to
09:10cling to the House. Of course, we all know that they've redrawn the map to try to maximize their
09:15chances of bucking the historical trend here where presidents tend to lose the House in their
09:18midterm elections. And so I think the question of Chinese influence is not new. The concerns about
09:27it remain valid. There was not a lot of new information from the president that I heard
09:32personally on Thursday. I think, you know, there are concerns broadly about foreign interference,
09:38but the question, I think, is the domestic context and how the president is doing these
09:43midterms and what Libras he might try to pull in the run-up to them.
09:47As we wrap up here, Courtney, let me turn to you on the issue of Ukraine. President Zelenskyy in the
09:51midst of this 40-day campaign, and we've seen another cabinet reshuffle. There's a new prime minister
09:56as well. But I'm struck by the protests that have emerged after he removed the 35-year-old defense
10:01minister from his position there, he who was really a pioneer of and advocate for more drone
10:07warfare in this conflict.
10:09Very effective.
10:10Very effective. And we see, you know, long-range drones now targeting Russia, as we've talked
10:13about on the show, Moscow, St. Petersburg, seeing them train at the Sea of Azar as well. What do
10:19you make of this? What should we make of this? What does it say about the broader kind of strategic
10:21direction of this conflict, the latest cabinet reshuffle, Courtney?
10:25Well, I mean, this is an approach that President Zelenskyy has taken before in terms of reshuffling
10:32the cabinet. But, you know, the decision to oust Defense Minister Fedorov certainly has struck
10:40a nerve and I think has raised some very serious concerns about the battlefield impact. You know,
10:48it remains to be seen what is going to happen in terms of permanent leadership. One of Fedorov's
10:54allies has declined to take a position at the ministry. And so I think there's a real concern
11:00that you could see a backslide in terms of Ukraine's innovative and really effective approach
11:07to striking Russia.
11:09Do you know what prompted this decision, why he did this now?
11:13That is a mystery, I think, for a lot of people. Fedorov had been clashing publicly with some of the
11:19the sort of military old guard. And I think there's a lot of speculation, but nothing definitive.
11:26Josh, last question to you. I'm not going to make you respond as a Canadian to the President's
11:31allegations about these fires, but you did have a scoop this week that's Canada-related,
11:34having to do with this bridge that's come in surrounded in controversy between the U.S.
11:38and Canada. Get us up to speed on what you've learned here through your reporting.
11:41Yeah, very, very quickly. This is, I mean, I don't know how quickly to do this. This is like a
11:46decades-long saga. This Gordie Howe bridge is sitting there waiting to open. And Trump,
11:50Latinx specifically intervened to block it from opening because they wanted a bigger share.
11:55This deal was struck in 2012. The Canadians agreed to pay for everything
12:00in exchange for getting their money back. And so Carney, Prime Minister Carney, has been under a lot of
12:04pressure domestically because questions are swirling whether Canada will get its money back
12:09and about what price he sort of paid to Trump to get this bridge open for a bridge, again,
12:14built with Canadian money in the first place. And so we have viewed the document, the sort of
12:19confidential agreement. It is simple. It is one page long. And what Carney has agreed to do is kick
12:23the equivalent of net profits after operational costs for 15 years of this bridge. He said that
12:30that might not be a lot of money. In fact, it might be negative at the start. And so this
12:35contradicts
12:36some of the Prime Minister's previous remarks on it. And that's why it's sort of become an issue
12:41back home. But this bridge, it just, you know, continues to be this saga. And so what they've
12:45done now is essentially set up an incentive where the more money and more traffic that goes through
12:49this toll bridge, the more money will go to this U.S.-controlled regional development fund.
12:54The current bridge, it's privately owned. It's kind of a wacky story. You know, it's an incredibly
12:58busy trade bridge. Trucks, you know, taking every car part you can think of over and over all the
13:03all the way. So they want a second bridge.
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