Brooks and Capehart on the cost of the Iran war and Trump's strategy

For more on the political debate over the war in Iran, we turn now to the analysis of Brooks and Capehart. That's The Atlantic's David Brooks and Jonathan Capehart of MS Now. Great to see you both. So, as we sit here and speak now, as we reported at the top of the show, there's still a U.S. crew member from that downed fighter jet missing. A search and rescue operation underway. We know Iranians were also able to shoot down another aircraft over the Gulf, shot at a Blackhawk helicopter that returned to base safely.

Iranian leaders are looking for that missing crew member on the ground. David, all of this is just two days after the president said in an address to the nation that the U.S. had crippled the Iranian military and the war was nearly over.

What's your reaction to all of this? Yeah, this is one of the disadvantages of having a huckster for president, that he does just, he can't tell the American people that when you're going to war, it's horrible, and that Iran is a serious country that's been preparing for this for nearly half a century, and they're going to fight back, and they're going to make counter moves like this, or like the Straits of Hormuz. To me, what happened, you know, I've been somewhat moderately hoping there'd be some positive outcome.

And I think there has been some. We've had to go to the Middle East for almost every decade for the last 50 years because of radical Islam, which the Iranian regime typifies. But this is clearly the week when the costs of the war are so exponentially larger than the benefits of what we're

getting in these marginal weeks. The cost to Russia is now getting all this revenue. Iran is getting all this revenue. The European economy and the world economies are in crisis. NATO is in shreds. And so the costs are just exorbitant now, not to mention the human suffering.

And so if Trump doesn't see that we're losing, every day he continues this thing, he's going to just face more and more political problems, military problems, and all sorts of problems. And so he just needs to admit what's going on.

And I doubt he has the mental ability to do that.

Jonathan?

I mean, this is a war of choice. We didn't need to take this action now. What's funny, but not funny, playing on cable right now on a loop is Top Gun Maverick. And if anyone has seen that movie, the whole plot is about a US military operation

deep inside Iran and two fighter pilots have to eject out of their planes. I bring that up because there was more of a plan in the fictional plot of Top Gun Maverick than there appears to be in this very real, very live situation in the United States war with Iran. Look, I applaud the president for finally addressing

the American people, but he is a month too late and told us nothing we had not already heard from him, from his administration in various ways. What he should have done was told the American people really why we went, how we're getting out, and then spend more than half a phrase on the 13 service members who lost their lives

in this war of choice, his choice.

David, to Jonathan's point here, that those 19 minutes that the president addressed the nation, right, said this is why we're here, this is what we're there to do, there were some contradictory statements. There's negotiations ongoing, but we're going to bomb them back to the Stone Ages. We're winning, but there's still a lot of work to do.

Did you get clarity on what the goal of this war is from that speech?

I got reverse clarity. You know, if you go back to Trump's first book, The Art of the Deal – I don't know if it was his first book, but that early book, The Art of the deal. He would talk about how he tries to confuse everybody by multiple different options. And I say this, I try this, I do that, and it's all like a weave or a chaotic weave, as he would say. But when you're running a war, when

you're asking people to risk their lives and, in some cases, lose their lives, you owe some clarity to the country. And you owe some clarity on the idea that this is what we're going to try to do. And if he had said, we're trying to make it impossible for Iran to be a regional power, that's a defined aim. I think it's a plausible aim.

But when it shifts every day, you're not just confusing the Iranians. Can you imagine fighting in this war? And when you don't know what the president wants you to do or what the goal here is, it's a horrible position to put anybody in. AMNA NAWAZ, The Cook Political Reporter, The Washington Post AMNA NAWAZ, The Cook Political Reporter, The Washington Post

AMNA NAWAZ, The Cook Political Reporter, The Washington Post AMNA NAWAZ, The Cook Political Reporter, The Washington Post Mr. Take on the speech. DAVID TAKEHORNE, The Cook Political Reporter, The Washington Post

Well, I think I've said a lot about the speech. One poll this week showed that roughly two-thirds of Americans say that the president's policies have worsened economic conditions in the United States. And then there was this video I'm sure you saw. It was the president's remarks at a closed press event that was first posted, then later deleted from the White House YouTube account, in which he talks about some of his budget priorities.

Take a listen.

DONALD TRUMP, President of the United States of America, said, it's not possible for us to take care of the year. DONALD TRUMP, President of the United States of America, said in a statement to the New York Times on Wednesday, July 20, that he would not be able to meet with the president until the end of the year.

It's not possible for us to take care of daycare. 1.5 trillion, one of the largest requests in modern history. What happened to the whole affordability message?

Well, I mean, gas prices went up. They can't keep a model on this. One of the things that strikes me about Trump is a basic loss of basic economic knowledge. So for example, in reference to the Iran war, he said it's not our problem because we don't use oil that goes through the straits of Hormuz. And literally, that's true.

But what he does not seem to understand is that global energy markets are global markets. We have one global economy. And it raises prices here just as it does everywhere else around the world. It's not like we're not being heard. The second thing he doesn't understand, and he's not the first president to misunderstand this, is that it's very, very hard to create manufacturing jobs.

He promised to create manufacturing jobs. We've lost 100,000. Joe Biden tried to create manufacturing jobs. I think one year, Joe Biden lost 200,000. This is a long-term trend. China has lost tens of millions of manufacturing jobs.

As the economy moves forward, you lose manufacturing jobs. And the idea that the tariffs and the other things were going to restore manufacturing jobs without costing Americans money at the cash register that was always a fantasy and yet he just he's like he's living in an economic model of I don't know 1942 or something like that we live in a global economy and he does not know how it works and as a result you get these

policy failures. Jonathan there's so much frustration out there, right, on the economy, on a lot of other issues. We saw a lot of that in the streets, in those massive No King's protests that took place just a few days ago. Larger attendance this time than even last time they were held. The frustration is there. Are Democrats doing enough to tap into it, to mobilize that? I would think so. I mean, I don't know for sure.

They better be. Look, I think this is the fourth No King's Rally. And as you pointed out, each rally has been bigger than the one that preceded it. This last one was the largest of all of them. Put aside whether Democrats are taking advantage

of all this, what we're seeing on the streets of America are people who are angry and frustrated. Most of them are probably Democrats, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were some Republicans, if there were some people who voted for Trump who are not happy with the way he is conducting the economy, the war, the country. We're talking about a president who doesn't have any economic knowledge or his economic knowledge sort of sits firmly in the 1980s.

But you also have an administration that's filled with very rich people, billionaires, people who are saying, one cabinet secretary said that all people needed to have was a piece of chicken, a piece of broccoli, a tortilla, and something else. You had the commerce secretary who is a billionaire say, if my mother-in-law didn't get her Medicaid check

or Social Security check, she wouldn't complain. She would just wait. I'm sorry, you are living in a completely different world than the rest of America. And I think the president, by saying what he said there, doesn't quite understand the people

in the country that he is running.

Speaking of the members of his administration, we have now seen the second cabinet member fired in a month by the president. Attorney General Pam Bondi is out after 14 months in office. There have been a few names already floated as possible replacements, including the EPA administrator, Lee Zeldin, U.S. Attorney in D.C., Jeanine Pirro, the deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, senators like Eric Schmidt and Mike Lee.

David, what do you make of the decision to fire her, and who do you think replaces her?

Our friend Ruth Marcus had a piece in The New Yorker today saying of all the attorney generals in the history of America, she's the worst. That's a very plausible argument to be made. She gutted the agency. Any lawyer with integrity, or most of them, they just can't stomach this.

Her handling of the Epstein files was obviously horrendous. And she was ineffective at doing the illegal things that she tried to do on behalf of Donald Trump. And so the difference with this and the Christy Nome firing was that Nome-

Former Homeland Security.

Former Homeland Security. One got the sense that Trump knew that the ICE policy had gone too far. The Bondi fire, one has the sense he believes the Justice Department and the law affair, the prosecuting political entities,

didn't go far enough. So one assumes that he's going to pick somebody who will go farther. And that's why I would love to see a Mike Lee, for example. He's at least, he's an intelligent man with an independent career. I doubt we're going to see somebody like that.

I think we will see somebody wholly owned by Donald Trump, who will do whatever he wants, which is to further politicize the department.

OK, the one person who, I'm saying it here right now, who will not be the next Attorney General of the United States is Jeanine Pirro. I mean, famously, the famous adage is, you know, a prosecutor can indict a ham sandwich. She literally could not indict a guy

who threw a sandwich, wasn't ham, I think it was salami or something, at a federal officer, could not indict that person. So no, she shouldn't be attorney general. My money is on Deputy Attorney General, now acting Attorney General, Todd Blanch. I don't know if he can actually get there because of legal things, but he is exactly

who David is talking about, someone who is a wholly owned person. He was the president's personal attorney through all of those, his legal fights when he was no longer president, including the one where Donald Trump got convicted. So either Todd Blanch or a member of the Senate,

because those are the only two people who I could imagine could get through Senate confirmation.

Well, wasn't Todd Blanch, 30 seconds we have left, also went down to meet with Ghislaine Maxwell in prison. They want that coming up in a confirmation hearing,

you think?

Hey, look, Trump wants what he wants, although we don't know who he wants yet, so we'll find out.

We will find out. Jonathan Capehart, David Brooks, always great to see you both. always great to see you both.

Thank you.