Hegseth WHINES About Trump in OFF THE RAILS Press Conference

We are now three weeks into Donald Trump's war with Iran. It is not going well. Thousands of people are dead. Gas prices are way up. The fighting has expanded to more places and riskier targets.

And unfortunately, John, the war is still being run by a drunk former Fox News anchor in a skin tight suit who sounds like a homicidal Dr. Seuss. Let's watch.

I stand here today speaking to you, the American people, not through filters, not through reporters, not through cable news spin. A dishonest and anti-Trump press will stop at nothing. We know this at this point, to downplay progress, amplify every cost, and call into question every step. Sadly, TDS is in their DNA.

They want President Trump to fail, but you, the American people, know better. The world, the Middle East, our ungrateful allies in Europe, even segments of our own press, should be saying one thing to President Trump. Thank you.

He just did the J.D. Vance meme. He did, he did. He literally did. That was, of course, Secretary of Defense Pete Hexhouse speaking at a briefing on Thursday. Do you think all the people in Dubai getting drone-striked by the Iranians are thinking, thank you, Mr. Trump?

Thank you. Thank you, the families of the fallen soldiers. Thank you, all the children who have been killed or displaced, families of them. Thank you, all of the people who are paying higher gas prices.

A lot of thank yous. Yeah, TDS to BDS.

TDS and BDS.

IBS. And my DNS. What are we doing? What the fuck are we doing? It's written remarks.

It's so weird.

Imagine writing in that as a speech writer. It's just a fuck, it's his war haiku thing. I love war haikus. War haikus or something. The irony here too is they've kicked out all the real reporters. like un-American these reporters are, then it's like, sir, One America News, Mike Lindell, MyPillowTV.

It's a farce. Ungrateful European allies just like taking shots at people for no good reason. No reason. And meanwhile, the chairman of the FCC is threatening to strip the licenses from real media who actually do good coverage of this war. It is.

I mean, I know we've gotten used to it, but the Secretary of Defense talking about, like going out to a briefing in the middle of war and without even answering a question, proactively saying that any kind of criticism of the war is Trump derangement syndrome. Just crying about press coverage.

Just a whiny little baby. By the way, we here at Pod Save America will proudly say fuck you to Brendan Carr and all his efforts That's why we would ask that you please subscribe to Pod Save America here on YouTube. It helps us grow the show and it also helps us displace the pro-war propaganda and crap

for people like Ben Shapiro or Fox News that unfortunately dominates YouTube right now. So please subscribe to Pod Save America. Or micro penis Mark Levin. Okay. America or micro penis, Mark Levin. Oh my God. OK, Hexeth was also asked about reports that the Trump administration is going to request an additional two hundred

billion dollars for the Iran war. That's two hundred billion with a B. Here's Pete the Skeet's answer. Hopefully it's in a ambic pentameter or something of some sort.

As far as two hundred billion dollars, I think that number could move. Obviously, it takes it takes money to kill bad guys. And I think, you know, we're also still dealing with the environment that Joe Biden created, which was which was depleting those stockholds and not sending them to our own military, but Ukraine, which is when every time we reach back and look at any sort of a challenge we have, it

goes back to, well, send it to Ukraine. Ultimately, we think this should be these these munitions are better spent in our own interests at this point. And this kind of funding bill is going to ensure that we're properly funded going forward.

Okay, John, members of Congress, they take a lot of tough votes. I literally cannot think of an easier vote than saying no to that guy and Donald Trump for their $200 billion request for more bombs to drop on Iranian schools when you could spend that money on literally anything else. Speaking of which, can I give you a few quick examples of where you could spend what $200 billion could buy? It could restore Obamacare subsidies for 22 million people for six years. Six years.

$200 billion could eliminate all medical debt in America. Every person's medical debt. Seems like a better use of money. Community college could be free for two decades for people in this country. That works. Free community college for two decades. 1.3 million affordable housing units, food stamps for 42 million Americans for two years

and school lunches, free school lunches

for every kid in America for five years.

Or.

Or like two and a half F-35s. Yeah, instead of feeding kids here,

we could kill kids over in the Middle East.

Seems like a good idea.

Which is what we've been doing. Blue Rose Research did a bunch of polling on the Iran war. The thing that most concerned voters was Trump spending a billion dollars a day on the Iran war while cutting Medicaid, food assistance and education funding. 66% of voters, I think 60% of Trump voters were like, yeah, that sounds like a bad idea. I mean, you just mentioned the Medicaid thing. They cut $100 billion from Medicaid

in Trump's bill last year. So double that, you could reverse the Medicaid cuts and then expand Medicaid by all the people that you cut Medicaid for from last month. Nate Silver tracks Trump's polling average. This week he reached a new net low

at 15.3 points underwater. You gov has a poll out on Thursday. Today, they found 24% of Trump 2024 voters disapprove Trump's approval rating. Usually not popular. Also, by the way, this, like you see what he did there. He's like, Trump rebuilt the military in his first term. Thank God. But then Biden depleted it.

So now we need more. By the way, Biden, his total spending on Ukraine was $180 billion. They're requesting 200 billion.

Yeah.

And they've already spent how much? A billion a day. And by the way, that's their first request. Right. Right, like we have no idea. And this is after the Pentagon's budget went up by quite a bit. Yeah, the 2026 budget is like a trillion dollars and they just got more supplemental funding.

It is insane what we're spending over there. Before we get to the next section, I wanna read to you from a Trump Truth Social Post from Wednesday night. You have a second for that? Sure do. So he says, Israel violently lashed out at a major facility known as South Par's gas field in Iran. By violently lashed out he means they bombed it.

They didn't do like, they didn't like post a tweet. Yeah, they were just like, it wasn't like an all caps truth social. Gassy ass field. It was bombs. Yeah, it continues. It continues, the United States knew nothing about this particular attack. Barack Reveed over Daxios immediately repeated that that was he tweeted that that was a lie.

The US not only knew about the strike, but approved it in advance. Of course, he continues, Trump continues. Unfortunately, Iran did not know this or any of the pertinent facts pertaining to the South Par's attack. In unjustifiably unfairly attacked a portion of Qatar's LNG gas facility. The CEO of Qatar Energies today said that that attack did $20 billion worth of damage and wiped out 17% of their capacity for three to five years.

That's quite a portion. I mean, that is the energy prices on Europe and everywhere else is going to be insane. By the way, all these European countries we asked to stop buying Russian oil and gas with the Qatar, South Par's gas field and an amount of strength and power that Iran has never seen or witnessed

You can't just like bomb a piece of it Well, I mean I have never seen someone so concisely summarize the faulty attitude around the ladder of escalation Before than in one tweet it was like Trump, right? Because he said it's so horrible that this gas field happened. And like now that's because he's worried

about the energy prices, we can't do that. And if you do that again, we'll make it even worse. Yeah, we'll bomb it all. We will make it even worse than the problem that you just created that I'm mad about. We don't know the extent of the damage right now, but they don't seem deterred, as you

just noted there.

No, they've been hitting the Saudis too.

I mean, they're just like, this is what, of course, this is Iran's play now. Yeah, they're just going to fight as hard that they can make it hurt for everyone and that the war will end when they decide it ends. Pod Save America breaking news is brought to you by ZipRecruiter. What's the latest trend in hiring? It's skill-based hiring, which emphasizes capabilities over education and direct experience. According to experts, this leads to faster hiring and better job performance.

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within the first day. And now you can try it for free at ZipRecruiter.com. That's ZipRecruiter.com. So Joe Kent was the head of the National Counterterrorism Center, NCTC. It's a very senior, important job. You have access to all the most sensitive intelligence the US has about threats to the US.

Kent resigned on Tuesday. Rhodes and I, Ben Rhodes and I went deep on this on Pod Save the World, if you want more detail. But last night, Kent did a two hour interview with Tucker Carlson that was fascinating. Now, let's just stay at the top. We know that Tucker and Kent are like flawed and complicated messengers here. Both pin way too much of the blame for the war on Israel, as opposed to Donald Trump. Kent in particular included some

things in his resignation letter that are just nuts, like blaming Israel for the Iraq war. Pretty sure that was a Bush-Cheney joint. But I think the thing to remember is, until two days ago, this guy had access to the crown jewels of US intelligence, right? So he is well briefed. So I think we should listen to those comments. So here's Tucker asking about whether Iran was on the cusp of getting a nuclear weapon. And remember, Trump said a couple of days ago or a couple of weeks ago that Iran was two weeks away from getting a nuke.

Let's watch.

Was Iran on the verge of getting a nuclear weapon?

No, they weren't three weeks ago when this started and they weren't in June either. I mean, the Iranians have had a religious ruling, a fatwa, against actually developing a nuclear weapon since 2004. That's been in place since 2004. That's available in the public sphere. But then also we had no intelligence to indicate that that They wanted the ability to enrich. They wanted the ability to have some components so that they weren't completely stripped of it. And we always assess that they were either several months or a year, two years away from actually being able to develop a nuclear weapon.

is based on a lie, but also that last June, the midnight hammer strikes were too.

Yep.

And his former boss, now former boss, Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, testified before the Senate yesterday and testified before the House today and would not refute anything that Joe Kent said about Iran building a nuclear

weapon.

She went full Bill Clinton on him. It's like, depending on what the definition of imminence is, you know, it's like only the president can determine when something is imminent. You tell him if they're X number of weeks or months away from getting a nuclear weapon, you might say it with degrees of confidence. You might have low confidence that you know the answer, but like you of course you're

telling us if something's imminent. Yeah. And, and, and Ken goes on to talk about, you know, how the Israelis were briefing the U.S. and Trump and, and giving them intelligence and saying, no, no, no, they're much closer, much closer. And it's like, yes, I'm sure they were, or I could see that happening. But also, you've heard all these arguments before from neocons in this country, even some Democrats, right?

Stretching as far back as when Obama did the nuclear deal.

They're always a couple of weeks away.

Yes. I always said the Iranians are on the cusp of getting a nuclear weapon. We'll talk more about this Israel piece again, because it's interesting, but complicated. So Trump presses him on this question again, like, was there any intelligence of an imminent threat from Iran? Like you're just saying from Tulsi Gabbard, like, was Iran about to

get a nuke? Were they about to launch conventional airstrikes or missile attacks on US troops in the

region? Because remember, that was basically what Marco Rubio said just days after before trying to blaming the Israelis. Here's that exchange. So imminent threat, you're saying that there was no intelligence that you saw with the highest level clearance, obviously involved in this conversation, that showed an imminent threat from Iran to the United States?

No. Unless we took certain actions, unless we came after them in a way that they thought

threatened the regime, then we basically knew what they were going to do. Well, okay. right, of course. But like any country, so if you attack any country,

we know that they're gonna have a reaction.

We face an imminent threat once we attack you. Yeah, exactly, but there was no intelligence that said, hey, on whatever day it was, March 1st, the Iranians are gonna launch this big sneak attack. They're gonna do some kind of a 9-11 Pearl Harbor, etc. They're going to attack one of our bases. There was none of that intelligence.

And just to be clear, there was no intelligence that showed an imminent threat. There was no intelligence that showed they were on the cusp of building a nuclear weapon. There was no intelligence, indeed, that showed they were trying to build a nuclear weapon.

I did not, no.

These lies, like they're more egregious than even the Iraq war lies. They will, I mean, they're not even trying to lie in a really effective way or believable way here. Yeah. but anyway, Tucker lays this out

at the beginning with him too. Like all this stuff was out there publicly. Like we all heard what Rubio said. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, and remember what folks, what Rubio said was,

well, we knew the Israelis were gonna strike, which means the Iranians will respond and attack our troops. So we had to preempt that and blow up all their military assets so they wouldn't kill Americans. And he just sort of like leaves out the part where you could say to the Israelis, what if you didn't strike?

Right.

And the idea that we couldn't persuade the Israelis not to strike seems fanciful. Yes. I think we provide them a lot of support, which Kent goes through in this interview, that I think enables their very aggressive military operations. And if we pull back on some of that, they would not have the capacity to be as reckless. Now this is where it gets complicated.

So again, he says something interesting, which is that US intelligence didn't reflect a nuclear threat or an imminent threat of an attack, but he believes that the Israelis are passing their own intelligence along to Trump through unofficial channels, and that Israel pushed narratives through friendly media and think tanks that changed the debate in the US and hardened the negotiating line from one where that Trump had some like wiggle room to one where the US was telling Iran, our red line is zero enrichment.

And honestly, that rang very true to me, because that's something I watched happen in real time. You could have gotten a JCPOA but tougher deal that allowed Iran some sort of face-saving enrichment capacity with verification, inspections, and all the things you would need.

But they went to zero enrichment, which to me was just a way to ensure you never got a deal. Again though, it's like, I know that people are, you know, maybe reluctant to buy this because it's like, well, we don't want to blame Israel and it's all blame Israel. And there's all kinds of, you know, there's a lot of layered political issues with that. Right. But neocons in this country did the same thing around Iraq,

have been doing the same thing with Iran. Like, of course they push, you know, their idea. Like, we saw this in intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq war, right? Like, you don't have, like, it just happens to be Israeli intelligence

that's doing it this time. But like, there's all kinds of right-wing assholes in this country that have nothing to do with Israel who do the same kind of shit. So why wouldn't we believe that that's happened? The Israeli government, Benjamin Netanyahu has wanted to go to war in Iran for 40 years. He said that just recently.

So of course they're gonna, it's beyond us that a government and an intel agencies within a government would push intel that's favorable to a political objective. Yes, of course that's favorable to a political objective. Yes, of course, that's believable.

It's happened here.

Yes, it's happened all the time. Yeah, I think where they cross the line is suggesting that Trump has no agency, right? He's both a strong man. That's their huge weakness. And this like little poor subject who gets pushed and pulled and like battered

by the forces of the world like, no, he's the president of the United States. If he wants to go to war, he'll go to war. If he doesn't, he should say he fucking doesn't and be a man and own the decision. Now, the parts of that interview where my eyes rolled so hard is them just being like, and Trump is a, he's a smart, like there's no one smarter than him on stuff Yes, it's the end. You're like, okay, that is where this whole thing goes off the rails. Like they basically suggest that the Israelis were trying to spy on Trump and maybe we're trying to threaten his life or his family's life. And it's like, OK, get get out of here with that shit.

They get into like Charlie Kirk and blaming Israel for Charlie Kirk's death. I'm like, you guys are like destroying your own credibility here because they can't because the truth is that Trump is a gullible fucking moron. Yes. But if they admit that, they'd have to admit that they have worked for and campaigned for a gullible fucking moron for the last however many years. Yes, Trump thought war was easy because the Midnight Hammer operation was discreet and no one got hurt. And then the Venezuela operation was miraculously, you know, a situation where no service members were killed either. And so far it's going OK, we'll find out in the long term. Now, this is very different. And Iran is predictably turning

into an unmitigated disaster in ways that were not only predictable, but predicted. Literally, there's a guy named Nate Swanson who is an Iran director under, I think, Biden and then Trump who got Laura Luhnberg and pushed out. I wrote a piece four days before the operation that predicted all of these things and I used to work in the NSC.

The idea that this was like no one thought that they were going to attack the Gulf allies. Everyone thought that they said they were going to do that. It's just like, like Trump could be persuaded by, um, BB and the Israelis pushing, uh, you know, false intelligence and persuading them that way, or by watching a TVO segment between Mark Levin and Sean Hannity. Either could get him. Or a round of golf with Lindsey Graham, where Lindsey tells him he's Reagan, plus, plus, plus, plus. Yeah, we don't have to pull out the red string

on this one, guys.

Yeah, we don't need any red string. Should we call Trump?

Yeah, let's call him, let's call him. All right, we're gonna call Trump. What are we gonna ask him?

I know, I know.

I'm looking nervous about it.

Bummer.

Please leave your name. Next time I guess.

He should record his own voicemail.

This is Don.

Yeah, what would he say? You just got schlonged or whatever with his weird expressions. Thank you for your attention to this matter. Thank you for your attention to this voicemail. Please leave your message after the tone because he's an old school voicemail guy. Thank you for your attention to this matter, DJT.

Leave a message on my machine. I'll get back to you. All right. I think that that's all I had. Anything else you want to yell about? No, that's all for now.

No, that's all for now. Thank you for watching this Pod Save America episode on YouTube.