“He’s a MADMAN!” Donald Trump Threatens To Wipe Out Iran ‘Civilization’

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I didn't think it was presidential. Someone should step up to something like this. The optics are very important, and you really can't say you're gonna wipe out an entire civilization.

A lot of this is propaganda. A lot of this are things that we've seen before. The U.S. was already in a hole, and this makes it infinitely worse.

Don't always believe what he says.

What, he's threatening genocide? I don't think he's threatening genocide. I think he's threatening to remove the Iranian regime. What I hear on the panel is a lot of people being triggered by Trump. And I think that's what happens when someone with a backbone comes in and says, no, you know what, we're going to stand up to evil.

Here we are on the precipice of a nuclear holocaust because this baboon is in office and he's like, oh, BB, how can I make you happy? Can you please give me more money? Am I going to be a hero, baby?

You know something? You're all taking the bait.

The US president had two enormous success stories to celebrate and give thanks for this weekend, besides Easter itself. First, there was Artemis II, a US-led mission to send human beings further from the Earth than any living being has ever traveled.

It's a precursor to returning to the moon and even reaching Mars. By any measure, it's a breathtaking triumph and a tribute to American ingenuity. Second, the daring and audacious mission to save a stricken US Air Force colonel

who was forced to eject from his fighter jet in central Iran. More than 150 aircraft spent 50 hours in a race against Iranian forces deep inside enemy territory. The US military is probably the only military that could have pulled that off and make no

mistake, it was humiliating for Tehran. Instead, most of the world's attention and energy, however, has been absorbed by Donald Trump's expletive-laden Easter morning statement and the carnage it foreshadowed. And as I'll come to shortly, today he's gone even further and made things even worse. In just 48 words, on Easter Monday, Easter morning, the president managed to threaten Iran with war crimes while sounding frankly utterly unhinged, contradicting his own strategic

aims and offending both Christians and Muslims.

Who do you think you are? You're tweeting out the F word on Easter morning? You'll be living in hell. Just watch. Praise be to Allah. So obviously you're mocking the religion of Iran. Okay. If you seek a religious war, that's a good idea. But by the way, no decent person mocks other people's religion.

The president doubled down yesterday, reiterating that if no deal is reached with Iran by tonight, there will be an all out assault on civilian infrastructure in which, quote, very little is off limits. Well, some of this was delivered while standing alongside the Easter bunny. But this is no joke. This morning, Trump issued a post which does nothing less than threaten the Iranian people

with genocide. A whole civilization will die tonight, he said, never to be brought back. I don't want that to happen, but it probably will. Those words should be chilling to not only the Iranian people, but to everybody.

US presidents don't threaten genocide because the U.S. is not capable of genocide. At least, that's the world we all grew up in. If you break with that principle, you break it with it, any moral authority the U.S. has, and the world becomes a very different place. I understand the argument that Trump is unique in politics, and that many in his core base enjoy the fact that he says and does what he feels like. But war isn't about appealing to a base. It's about building consensus for the most expensive and deadly gamble any leader can

make, especially as the U.S. now prepares to escalate hostilities to a level which will shock the world. Not so very long ago, we documented with precision the incoherent ramblings of President Biden. And not long before that, there were enormous scandals about the dignity of the office because President Obama saluted with a latte, wore a tan suit and used a selfie stick. Are people now just being intellectually inconsistent

or downright dishonest? Or has America's sense of right and wrong really changed so much in such a short space of time? If the next wave of US attacks is anything like the President is warning, we'll soon have a definitive answer. Well, to debate all this, the host of System Update, Glenn Greenwald, the former US Deputy National Security Advisor, Katie McFarland, the founder

and CEO of the Young Turks, Cenk Uygur, and the former US Air Force combat pilot, Ryan Bodenheimer, known to many as Max Afterburner. Well, welcome to all of you. Well, let me start with you, Glenn Greenwald. I've got to say, you know, there's this whole thing about, you know, you shouldn't take everything Trump says literally, shouldn't take it overly seriously. But what else are we supposed to do when the president of the United States literally posts a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don't want that to happen, but it probably will about Iran and the 90 million people that live there. What else are we supposed

to do with that but take it seriously and literally?

If you don't take that extremely seriously and literally, then you're acting with unbelievable recklessness. And this is not the first statement that Trump has made that has suggested this. He was talking to reporters over the weekend and essentially saying that there'd be nothing off the table in terms of what he would do to Iran, what he would destroy. We're talking about civilizational annihilation. That's not my interpretation.

That's literally what Trump himself said. And even if it turns out that doesn't happen, he finds a way to get out of it this time. He probably postpones the deadline again. The fact that we have an American president in the middle of a war threatening to annihilate permanently a thousands-year-old civilization over a country that did not attack the United States, has never attacked the American homeland, has not tried, is one of the most disturbing and morally reprehensible things I've ever heard an American president say.

And the last point I'll just make is that, you know, we're so inured as Americans and even in Great Britain and parts of Europe to war, where we fight wars so often, so frequently, it's kind of like a natural state of affairs that, oh, which country are we going to go to war with? There's a reason we say war is a last resort. It's not like a cliche. It's supposed to be the highest human moral mandate. And it's because things like this can spiral out of control very quickly in ways

that people didn't protect and didn't plan. It does things to human beings, war does, that make them act in all sorts of extraordinarily destructive ways. And we are at a moment of grave danger simply by the fact that Trump issued this threat, let alone

whether he follows

through.

Yeah, I meant to, I'm sorry, Rob O'Neill has also joined us, former US Navy SEAL, of course he killed Osama bin Laden. For some reason your name didn't appear earlier, Rob, but probably because we elevated you to a VIP level of panel member, given your service to your country. So my apologies. Let me go to you, Rob, because both you and Ryan

obviously have served in combat. In fact, only last night I was watching a riveting Netflix documentary about the raid to kill Osama bin Laden, and of course, you were the man who finally pulled the trigger that killed him.

So you are the best person imaginable to ask about several things that have happened in the last few days. Let's start with a big positive, which was the incredible rescue mission to get this colonel who had obviously crash landed

and then there was a hunt to get him. The more detail I read about this, Rob, the more incredible it becomes. What did you make of this operation?

Yeah, this was a rescue of a downed aviator and or air crew like we've never seen before. Just the amount of assets that we had. What was unique about this though, is we're able to see exactly where they are pretty much all the time.

There's other air assets, other intelligence assets in the air watching. When they're hitting, they eject. Obviously it must've been at high altitude. I don't know the exact details of the elevation but they separated by a couple miles and at that point everything stops and we need to find them. So just they ended up going in with the tier one unit with

SEAL Team 6 and they flew in some C-130s with a lot of people. The guerrilla package is what it is and that I mean they can do pretty much stuff. They're at a forward operating base that they made there on an airfield. There's other stuff they could be doing there too, because it was a few days on the ground. I'm not sure what it was, but I know with that many people, that many assets, you know, they're in there. The pilot did a great job with the encryption and the survival radio that he did have, because it's sending encryption stuff. I don't want to get too A lot of counterintelligence with the three-letter A's. He's in there, and then the pilot get into a spot and not moving. When people are in a major stress like that,

distressed as well, they have a tendency to run away from things. It's best to find high ground and let the good guys come to you, which he did. Good on him, because he's hurt, he's wounded, he's bleeding, making it to the high ground and then not falling for any of the tricks. Hats off to everybody. So much going on, a lot more than the time we have today.

But for the men and women involved with all of this, seeing what will, I've seen it firsthand, the assets that we will use to get a single American back says a lot about our country. It also delivers a message that when we want to go anywhere in the world,

the United States can do it. Yeah, I mean, look, I thought that was an astonishing rescue mission. I read the full New York Times account of it, and honestly, it was breathtaking. And I give great credit to Donald Trump for sending in literally the whole kitchen sink to rescue this guy, and they got him out with no loss of life on the American side. Incredible. But it begs the question, Rob, and I'd be very interested in what you feel about this. Trump could have taken a victory lap over that,

and everyone would have applauded. Trump could take a victory lap over Artemis, and everyone can applaud this astounding achievement we're watching of human beings going further than they've ever gone before in space. These are two great American achievements

in the last few days. But what most of the world is talking about are two posts on social media by Donald Trump. One in which he says, open the fucking straight, you crazy bastards, or you'll be living in hell. Just watch.

Praise be to Allah. And the other one, a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don't want it to happen, but it probably will. And I've known Donald Trump 20 years. He's always shot from his mouth. He's always shot from the hip. He says you know he's a he's a trash talking New York real estate guy. OK. But now he's the leader of the free

world. He's the president of United States. He's the commander in chief of the American military. Would you have felt comfortable if you were still serving with the commander in chief-chief posting like that? I have to be honest, Piers,

I went to Truth Social to see if they were actually posted. I didn't think it was presidential. And I know that it's very difficult to be around President Trump and tell him something you disagree with. I know the man, I've had dinner

at the White House with him. But someone should step up to something like this. The optics are very important, and you really can't say you're gonna wipe out an entire civilization. It's, I mean, you're already teetering on what rules the Geneva Convention has, and you start talking about,

if you're hitting a vital infrastructure for civilian survival, that's against the Geneva Convention, you can't do it. Now, if it's dual purpose, which a lot of the higher-ups to decide, but I don't think it's proper to get on social media and say you're gonna wipe out an entire civilization like that. It's just one of the – look, you know he's angry.

He's mad at NATO. He's mad at our so-called allies for not helping, and he's yelling at his phone, you need to take a deep breath and realize you're the commander-in-chief of the military. free world, the most powerful man in the free world, something just shouldn't be said even if you want to. For me it's one of those things and trust me as someone on social media who the next day wakes up and says maybe I shouldn't have said that, there is a time to type something

up or even hand write a letter, put it in a drawer and forget about it. If it doesn't bother you in 24 hours it shouldn't be put out to the world.

I think as the top boss in the military, inappropriate. Yeah I completely agree. Stay with me panel we'll come to the other members for their response to this in a second. Just joining me now briefly is Ro Khanna, Democratic congressman in California. Ro Khanna welcome back to Uncensored. I mean to even hear Robert Neal, a highly decorated US Navy Seal, obviously the man who killed Osama bin Laden, even he is very uncomfortable with the language being used here. I think that is a view shared by many in the American military. Why is Donald Trump doing this?

Who is he appealing to with this kind of language?

Well Donald Trump needs to be removed from office. Even if this is a threat and he doesn't plan on following through. It shows the utter contempt and inhumanity that Trump views people in Iran or in the Middle East or in the developing world with. It's not the American way of valuing the dignity and life of every individual.

I mean, he's calling them animals. That's the same thing Gallant said about the Palestinians. He has a fuel blockade on Cuba, starving people there because he doesn't care about their life. And now he's talking about civilization annihilation. I am tired of the Democrats just using procedural language.

We need to say this is a moral crime. We need to call for his removal. And we need to stand up for American principles which is the equality and dignity of every human life. Those are Christian values, they're constitutional values.

Yeah, I mean I'm seeing people who are more expert than me in the legal aspect of some of what he's saying and they're saying that even signaling an intent to commit what he's suggesting a whole civilization being killed, in other words, presumably every Iranian, 90 million people, even an American president signaling an intent to do that could be a war crime. It could already breach international law.

Is that your understanding?

I do believe that. And this is what, of course, got Netanyahu's government into trouble with the ICJ and the U.N. They had all of these ministers making statements of intent, of treating people like animals, of starving them. And now you have Donald Trump echoing the same language.

Look, Americans view ourselves as deeply good. We want to be a force for good in the world. We're the nation that defeated Nazism. We're the nation that defeated Nazism. We're the nation that defeated communism. We're the nation that goes in and rescues people when they have enemies attacking them. We're not a nation that is out there to destroy civilizations.

It goes against the very essence of America's self-conception as a nation dedicated to equality and liberty and enlightenment and ideals. And Trump is doing something so corrosive to who we are as an American nation.

I hope other Republicans will start to call for his removal.

Well, you know, I was telling Robert Neal, I watched a documentary about the killing of Osama bin Laden and that incredible raid. Al-Qaeda, his terrorist organization, this is the kind of language they would use about America. Death to all Americans, death to America. This is terrorist language. And I'm just astonished that Donald Trump would post this

publicly and expect there to be no legal fallout from that whatsoever. I just want to move generally. There's a big split going on on the Republican side of this. We're going to come to some clips later in the show from Tucker Carlson railing against Trump here.

Marjorie Taylor Greene has attacked him, calling, like you have, the 25th Amendment to be implemented. So we cannot kill an entire civilization. This is evil and madness. One of the biggest cheerleaders for Trump has been Mark Levin, who has also taken time out

to call you a Jew-hating, America-hating demagogue, and says the media continuing to give you airtime as if you're some kind of legitimate politician is outrageous. I'm very happy to give you airtime. What is your response to Mark Levin?

Well, I had to Google who he was. I didn't know who he was. And then I looked up, I guess he's a blast from the past, someone who was cheerleading us into the Iraq war and this militarism. But he doesn't represent the new generation. And it appears it's really important, I think, that people who watch your show around the world understand there is a new generation. And it appears it's really important, I think, that people who watch your show around the world understand there is a new generation of Americans. We're tired of these wars.

We want to build a cohesive multiracial democracy. We want an America where everyone has an economic shot. And we're going to come to power in 26 and 28. So for those who think that Trump is America, they're just wrong. It's a dying gasp at a nostalgia and a past that many of the new generation reject. And Levin represents the worst of that tradition, but he's kind of irrelevant.

I mean, it's, I almost shouldn't have responded. I gave him, probably now more people know him than ever knew him before. And I would pay attention to where the future of this country is.

How do you feel about the fact that you and Tucker Carlson are pretty well in total agreement about what is happening with the Republican president?

Well, I appreciate that Tucker has actually been speaking out against the war in Iran. I mean, he has, you know, interviewed Ted Cruz. Cruz didn't know there were 90 million people there. Tucker has said that these wars of choice in the Middle East are making America less safe. They're strengthening China.

We should be focused on rebuilding our industry. We should be focused on our people, child care, health care, and that this is not in America's interest. But he's gone further, as has Marjorie Taylor Greene. This is not who America is. If you believe in a nation that has been influenced by Christian teaching, how can you be for these kind of posts on Easter Sunday?

If you believe in a nation that has been influenced by Locke and Rousseau and Enlightenment ideals, how can you believe that every human life doesn't have dignity? Of course, America first means we take care of our own people. It doesn't mean that you don't recognize the life and dignity of every human being. And so what Tucker is speaking about, or Marjorie Taylor Greene is speaking about,

are basic understanding of American founding values. And Trump is making a mockery of everything that makes America exceptional. But fortunately, he is a chapter that is going to be soon in the past. I fundamentally believe we're going to become a cohesive multiracial democracy.

And this will be seen as something that America overcame.

Congressman Ro Khanna, thank you very much for joining me. Appreciate it. Well, let's go back to the panel before we go to the panel members.

You haven't spoken yet. I want to play this clip from Tucker Carlson, which has gone viral today. Who do you think you are? You're tweeting out the F word on Easter morning? No, this is a mockery not just of Islam, it's a mockery of Christianity. To send out a tweet with the F word on Easter morning promising the murder of civilians and then saying praise be to Allah without explaining any of it, You are mocking me and every other Christian because we're Christians. We can't support that. That is evil. That is an intentional desecration

of beauty and truth, which is the definition of evil.

OK, well, let's go to Katie McFarlane, former U.S. deputy national security adviser. What do you feel about this? I mean, as an American, do you feel comfortable about the president

of the United States posting this kind of rhetoric? You know something, you're all taking the bait.

Donald Trump is in the final hours of a negotiation that could prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons. Iran having nuclear weapons would be like Adolf Hitler having nuclear weapons in World War II. You bet he's tough. You bet he's not playing by the Marcus of Queensberry's rules. He is in the middle of a negotiation, and he is threatening the IRGC. He's threatening the Iranian regime, or what's left of it,

with you come to me, you make a deal with me, and here's the deal, no nuclear weapons.

But he's not, though, is he? He's threatening the entire Iranian population. That is what he meant by a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. He's not just threatening the regime or the IRGC. He is being very specific that this will involve the removal of the entire civilization in

Iran. That is genocide. That is a war crime.

You know, I guess I would think that what President Trump is doing now, don't always believe what he says, because he says different things.

When he's threatening genocide?

I don't think he's threatening genocide. I think he's threatening to remove the Iranian regime. He doesn't say that. Well, I think that that's what he's talking about. He's removing the Iranian regime.

Why doesn't he say that?

If you look at the press conference that he gave yesterday, what did he say? We are now negotiating with new Iranians. We are now negotiating with a new Iranian.

Who he's now threatening to kill along with every other Iranian tonight at one o'clock in the morning, English time, 8 o'clock Eastern time. I mean he couldn't be less ambiguous if he tried. It couldn't be more crystal clear. I understand you don't

like the words but let me just ask you in 24 hours... How could anybody like the words?

I mean all due respect Casey McFarland, explain to me who would like these words

and why you would like them. Do you like them? Of course I don't like them. But the point is not whether I like them or not, it's whether the Iranian regime believes them. Do they believe it's a legitimate and credible threat?

They don't. They've already come out and said they're now stopping all negotiation with the Americans over these posts. They want nothing to do with them. They're not negotiating. And in fact, they're coming out now saying we're more than happy to give our lives for our country and our cause. Which of course many people understand that is what the Iranian regime ideology is all about, right? So why would

this kind of threat ever work? And also what happens if we get to 8pm tonight Eastern and Trump doesn't follow through with his threat? Then he's the boy that cried wolf, then he's the emperor with no clothes. So I don't see how this works on any level. Then he's the boy that cried wolf. Then he's the emperor with no clothes. So I don't see how this works on any level. Either he commits a genocide and will be damned for eternity and probably start World War III, or he doesn't do it.

The Iranians ignore his threats and Trump is made to look impotent as a leader. How does this work as a victory for him? I don't get it.

I think you've just made your point. That Iran, you've talked about the leadership of Iran, you talked about the murdering they want. How do you feel if Iran has nuclear weapons? You know, there's a cost to doing nothing. There's a cost to doing a lot.

I don't want them to have it, but my understanding of that issue issue is that we were told last summer after the 12-day war that all threat of a nuclear weapon being developed by Iran had been taken out. Now within 10 months we're told this, we now have to have threatened World War III to stop them getting a nuclear weapon that we were told only 10 months ago we have stopped them getting.

All the enriched uranium is buried deep below the ground. Most military experts I've heard talk about this, say there's no way to get it without committing ground troops, which could lead to catastrophic losses on the American side. So again, I ask, how does any of this stop Iran anyway

from developing nuclear weapons? If we're not gonna get the enriched uranium without blowing up the entire population, explain to me how we stop them developing a nuke.

Well, what you've just said is that you're willing to live with a nuclear Iran. I am not willing to live with a nuclear Iran. No, I didn't say that. For the very reason that you've just said, well, you said we can't, we can't find the enriched uranium. How do you know we can't find the enriched uranium?

You know, one of the problems that President Trump saw is that we thought we'd obliterated everything. And what did the Iranians do? The very next day, they started rebuilding. I taught nuclear weapons at MIT in the 1980s. What do you need for a nuclear weapon? You need three things. You need highly enriched uranium, which we know they've got. We're not sure where it all is.

We don't know if they've already destroyed it all. You need a plan to take that highly enriched uranium and turn it into a bomb. a missile to deliver that nuclear weapon. What do we do with Iran? So they've got the missiles, we've just seen that they've demonstrated they have the reach to reach Europe from Iran. We know they've got highly enriched uranium and we're pretty sure they've got the blueprint

that's gonna pull it all together. So they're close to a nuclear weapon. If the United States waits until after they have a nuclear weapon,

can you imagine the blackmail that Iran would do, not just to the region, but to the world? OK, let me bring in Cenk Uygur. I mean, Cenk, I was pretty horrified when I saw the post today. I was pretty horrified when I saw the post on Easter Sunday, to be honest with you. I just thought it was so inappropriate. And, you know, I always have an allowance for Trump to do a bit of trash talking. I don't like it when he trash-talks about people who just died. I think that's inappropriate and wrong. I wish he wouldn't do it. This is a whole different level of trash-talking. This is basically threatening public brazen genocide. That's what he's doing. There is no defense for this. But I just find it astonishing that there are any people prepared

to defend it. Yeah so I think what Katie McFarland was just saying is absurd and listen to what she said. She said what if the Iranians get a nuke? First of all, preposterous. They don't have any ability to deliver that enriched uranium. She knows it. This is all about regime change.

It's for Israel. We all know that. In fact, Israel has nukes, and they're a super dangerous country. Ben Gavir, on TV just yesterday, was joking around about nuking Iran and how he would like to do that. So, and she says, oh, my God, can you imagine if the Iranians had nukes?

They might want to wipe out our entire civilization. That's what Trump just said. Trump is—like you said earlier, Piers, he's talking like a terrorist. So this is the Israelification of our policy. They're pro-genocide. We're not pro-genocide. We're the good guys.

And so this is unbearable. This is—look, I reach out to all voters, including Trump voters, all the time. I'm the last person to rub it in and go, ha-ha, you made a mistake. I love it when people come to the right side. I'm the guy who said Marjorie Taylor Greene, Massey and Tucker Carlson would do the right thing on war and Iran, and I'm relieved to see that they did, and I really appreciate it. But, guys, this is why I was forced to vote for three corporate Democrats I can't stand,

because the alternative was this madman, Donald Trump. He's always been a madman. He's always been a spoiled child. His father gave him $400 million and he blew it. And then his second daddy, Jeff Zucker, gave him $400 million through their apprentice and he blew that.

So when he gets into this quagmire, he just said yesterday, oh, he didn't think that they were going to close thisrait of Hormuz. We all knew they were going to close the Strait of Hormuz. How could you not know that? So he gets frustrated. He got talked into it by Israel. So now he can't find a way out.

And so he starts screaming into the abyss like a spoiled child. Give me what I want or I'll destroy you and I'll take my ball and go home except I'll nuke you first. This is disgusting talk. And look, I think there is a third alternative to what you just said. There's a possibility, Pierce, that he's threatening to blow up the power plants and the bridges and to nuke them or do whatever he's madman talk that he's doing.

And then he's instead going to put in ground troops and go, ha-ha, I'm so clever, you were expecting the bombing, but I put in ground troops instead. But we didn't want ground troops. None of these choices are good. We shouldn't be in this war in the first place. There's nothing but disastrous choices for us. And of course, meanwhile, Israel is laughing and laughing, because, number one, they want a mess and

chaos in Iran so that it debilitates them and they can't fund Hamas and Hezbollah. And number two, they have the Leviathan pipeline now. It is a giant gas field. So if we bomb Iran's gas fields and they bomb the Gulf gas fields, the number one winner economically is Israel. So they can't wait for this kind of death and destruction.

He should have, I mean, he fired Chrissy Noem and Pam Bondi. He should have fired all the Israel first advisors that are surrounding him, which is literally everyone at the White House. Clean house, get Americans in there, not people serving a different country and especially a genocidal country like Israel. That's why you get the kind of talk that you're

seeing today.

Okay. I mean, the only big-

And by the way, one more thing.

Yeah.

Yeah. Just it's whether he does it or not, the mere fact of saying that America would destroy an entire civilization and commit genocide or a Holocaust like this puts a moral stain on us.

We cannot bear that moral stain. We're supposed to be the good guys. This kind of language, even if he doesn't follow through on it, is a terrible mark on America and we shouldn't tolerate it. Okay, I'm a bit

concerned about you, Cenk. You're losing your voice. I'm not sure the American

people could suffer that blow at this particular time. Don't worry, Katie says one more thing. I'll show you what voice I have left.

I'm just worried if you do one of your regular blow-ups, this could be it. We could have the silencing of Cenk Uygur in real time. Let me come to Ryan, Max Afterburner. Max, what do you feel about this? I mean, you've served in combat. You're a US Air Force combat pilot.

I presume you would share Rob's view and my view that the rescue mission was unbelievable and incredible heroism, both by the pilot and by the teams that went to get him. It was remarkable. But rather than talking about that,

we're all talking about this threat from Donald Trump. What do you feel about that?

Yeah, good to see your peers, good to see everybody else as well. So I think Rob would agree with this. There's never a good time in the middle of the night to come face to face with a Navy SEAL unless you're the weapons systems officer getting rescued. So overall, just a great operation.

I'm so proud of all the rescue forces and the WIZO himself. And again, what a great day for America, getting that aviator back safe. But the thing I want to talk about that I want to highlight and add some context to everybody talking about a whole civilization will die tonight, if we just go to the bottom of that truth post, it says, 47 years of extortion, corruption, and death will finally end. God bless the great people of Iran. So as you can see right there, he's not saying he's going to have a genocide on the people

of Iran. What he's saying is the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps that took over 47 years ago is who he's focused on eradicating. And remember, he's dealing with terrorists. This is a terrorist regime. So for 10 years, I studied the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and back bolts for the US Air Force, and we always knew this is what they were going to throw at the end game of this war, which are terrorist proxy tactics. So that's going to be the first brief that President Trump got from General Raising Cain is, hey, look, at the end of this, when their military is decimated, their Navy's decimated,

they're going to rely on proxy tactics to cause pain on the global economy and the Straits of Hormuz. And so we're seeing that play out. Now, could the president have used some different choice words instead of a whole civilization? Maybe that can be taken out of context. So, yeah, he could have changed

that. I mean, seriously, Max, I appreciate you translating the president's words into a far more benign wording. But the reality is, had he started by saying, I want to get rid of this IRGC regime. OK, that's one thing. But he didn't. He used the words, a whole civilization will die tonight.

Right, that could be taken out of context.

You might have wanted him to say what you've just articulated. And if he'd said that, there wouldn't be the outrage there is, but he didn't say that.

Well, he did at the end.

He brings it home and says he cleans it up. He says something that is completely contradictory to what he said at the start, which is classic Trump in this war. You know, one of the things...

Well, I think you've got to interpret both pieces.

You've got to look at both sections. I would say to you, Max, I would say to you, but should I call you Max or Ryan, by the

way?

Ryan's fine. Commander in chief sending such mixed messages all the time in real time

Publicly, right? I mean this is not good for anyone serving in the United States I can understand why it's confusing but the art of war So that's one of the tactics that has been used in military operations for thousands of years The art of war is you keep them guessing you don't want to tell the Iranian regime when this war is gonna end You don't want to tell them what's coming next. You don't want to tell them what you will or won't strike. So deception is a huge part of warfare. And that's something that's hard

for the civilian population to understand. But at the end of the day, you're dealing with a terrorist regime. So you have to sometimes fight fire with fire.

Okay, before I come back to Glenn, I want to just ask Rob O'Neill something that Tucker Carson also said. He publicly urged United States military and Pentagon officials to actively defy Trump and refuse orders if he attempts to launch nuclear weapons against Iran.

If you work in the White House or in the US military, now is the time to say no, absolutely not, and say it directly to the president, no. In case you're thinking about using some weapon of mass destruction against the population of Iran in whose name we liberated Iran, we killed their religious leader for their benefit. Do you remember that?

This was last month. Those people who are in direct contact with the president need to say no.

What do you feel about that, Rob? I mean, the idea that people serving a high level in the military or the Pentagon would defy an instruction from the commander in chief to launch a nuclear weapon.

Well, I mean, that's not going to happen. Those are they're going to have to be they'll need to be lawful orders. And the whole thing with deciding what order is lawful is completely against the uniform code of military justice. It never happened. Plus, if you notice, he didn't say nuclear weapons.

We do have weapons more powerful than nuclear weapons. People are going to get wrapped up in that 80s style of Russia versus United States. We have stuff there. And just other things you got to consider, yes, the true socialist social media is using it sort of as a bargaining chip. You got to figure, look at the amount of time we've got tier one operators on the ground. Who's to say we didn't get the uranium already? I mean, there's a lot of stuff that we do.

It's not just a shoot from the hip. We have very talented people doing a lot of talented stuff. Yes, he's doing stuff with the negotiations. I mean, I don't think say you're gonna wipe out an entire civilization, but, you know, different words, yes. He always goes a little bit further saying,

okay, we're gonna take Greenland, we're gonna take Greenland, and it's okay, maybe we'll have a few bases in Greenland. He's gonna take the long shot, but then back off. I just saying you're gonna wipe out a civilization,

bad choice of words, I think, and I was really struck. I was really struck. For example, you know the the biggest mission in modern American history post-second world war is The mission that you were on to kill Osama bin Laden in terms of the importance I think to Americans and to the country and to the people To finally see him get justice for what he did on 9-11 and it was an incredible mission But what was the theme of that mission?

Utter secrecy. Absolutely everybody involved, tiny number of people at the White House knew about it. Very small number of people in the military knew about it, even though all you top-level guys were all being brought together,

highly unusual for that to happen. But there was a wall of secrecy because people understood that careless words cost lives, the famous World War II thing. Here with Trump we have the complete opposite. He just spews out all this stuff like a machine gun, a verbal machine gun, all day long. And I don't understand how any of that helps. I don't think it's duping the enemy. I don't think the Iranians take any of

it that seriously. I just don't understand why he feels the need to do this.

Well, I mean, I don't think he's giving away any secrets. Everything is extremely close held. It's hard for me to find out any information about who's involved in anything. And that's talking with sources in Washington, D.C. and Congress. They're keeping it very compartmentalized. And the bin Laden raid is one thing we can tell anybody, because if we even tell the host nation,

because Pakistan was involved with that, they're going to run into safety. Stuff like this, we knew they were shot down. Now, we didn't know there were two pilots there until someone in the Pentagon leaked it, someone close by. So they're not giving away stuff they're doing right now.

I mean, even knows now? We could, the United States could, we could take all the oil and keep it. So I don't think he's giving away secrets. I mean, appropriately having fun with it, inappropriately having fun with it, I guess is what I'd say.

Glenn Greenwald, I mean, it seems to me that the, if you look at what Putin has done in Ukraine, if you look at what China is believed to want to do in Taiwan, for example. The moral authority that Cenk Uygur talked about is incredibly important here. If America cedes any moral high ground whatsoever

by openly threatening genocide as Trump has done today, whether he meant it or not, the fact he's gone on record as saying it, how can America, when another nation commits an act which they view as morally reprehensible, how can they play the moral card with it going forward?

Well, they can, and it wasn't just today, it was long before this. There have been American hawks who have gone to Europe and warned people in Europe that the reason China is rising so greatly and displacing Americans in all the regions where

we used to be dominant, like Africa and Latin America, is because the world perceives that the Americans and the United States government is a bully and just uses military force and war and weapons anytime it feels like. Whereas China was able to rise to a world power even though they haven't fought a war in 48 years. The last war they fought was 1979.

That was a one-month border dispute with Vietnam and yet we're fighting wars constantly and now with the American president threatening civilizational annihilation. I don't think we need to sit here and like dissect the true social post as though it's like some hieroglyphic from ancient civilization and we have to decipher what it really means. Trump has repeatedly made statements like this. As you said on Easter, he vowed to destroy every power plant in Iran and every bridge in Iran. That wouldn't just affect the regime.

That would destroy the lives of millions of people who were in Iran, people that were supposedly there to represent. I just want to add one last point, which is it's so bizarre to have to sit here and listen to people like Katie McFarland say, oh, we have to go to war to stop them from getting a nuclear weapon when these were the same exact people who said the same exact thing about Saddam Hussein, that we had to go to war because Saddam Hussein was going to get a nuclear weapon and pass it to Al Qaeda and they were going to detonate it, all of which turned out to be happened. And even this rescue mission, like I'm glad the pilot was rescued,

but I do think we have to be a little bit aware as well that there's a lot of propaganda disseminated in a war. We were told at the very start of the war, you may remember this, that there was this soldier named Jessica Lynch who heroically fought off Iraqi fighters

and gunned a bunch of them down and was finally taken and tortured in the hospital, and U.S. forces rescued her in a daring raid, none of which turned out to be true. The media told this story over and over. So a lot of this is propaganda. A lot of this are things that we've seen before, and we do have a major problem,

even before Trump started with these insane threats, not just in this true social pose. And we didn't just threaten it. We have blown up their bridges, which obviously affects the population. We blown up their refineries that poisons their air and water. These are things we're actually doing. And the US was already in a hole morally and geo-strategically,

which is why China is rising, because countries would rather deal with them. And this makes it infinitely worse, even if Trump doesn't follow through on these monstrous threats.

Yeah, I mean, Casey McFarland, you know, I remember the Donald Trump campaigning to be elected in 2024, who couldn't have been clearer. He was going to stop taking America into these Middle Eastern wars. He thought they were ruinous for the economy. They were ruinous on life. He just didn't understand them. He kept telling us how he thought Iraq had been a terrible mistake.

And he wanted to stop all this. This was America first meant looking after American interests in America. And my God, there are lots of stuff that he could be doing to improve the lives of Americans right now.

And he made a good start. He shut the Southern border. I thought that was an excellent thing to do after what happened under Biden for four years. But ever since now, it seems like he's been on a mission to contradict his own campaigning. And what could be a bigger contradiction of,

I'm not going to drag America into these pointless Middle Eastern wars than dragging America into the biggest and most potentially dangerous and ruinous Middle Eastern war imaginable? And now he's talking about wiping out whole civilizations. How does that sit with Donald Trump, the campaigner?

Vote for me and I won't do this.

You know, I guess I would take great issue with what Glenn has just said about people like Donald Trump not supporting the Iraq war. I ran for the US Senate in 2006 because I didn't think the Bush administration was doing the right thing with the Iraq war. President Trump is not against war. He's not afraid of war. He's not afraid of using the

military force. What he doesn't want is a forever war that goes on for decades that the United States can't win, that costs us in blood and treasure. And if you listen to what he said in the last 48 hours even, he said, we're not going to make Bush's mistakes. We are not going to go into Iran. We're not going to fire all the military. We're not going to get rid of everybody in the government. We don't want to occupy. We don't want to run the place. We want a Venezuela model where we can go and maybe decapitate the senior leadership and then get whoever is left in the leadership to do a deal with develop their oil, they'll get rid of their nuclear weapons, they'll open the Strait of Hormuz. So I think you're all basically taking the bait. Donald Trump negotiates from strength.

So what he does is he goes in and the first position out of his mouth is the extreme position. And then he negotiates backwards. And then in the end of the day, he gets the result he wants.

So you go out there and try to-

Well, let me put a different argument to you, which is I think, and I've known him a long time, Donald Trump, I like him personally. We've been friends for two decades. But knowing him as well as I do, and you know him well too, I think he has massively miscalculated with this war in Iran, which no one wants to call a war,

because if it was called a war, you'd have to go through Congress. No American president likes to do that with war. But they should, actually, for another point. But looking at Donald Trump's behavioral pattern in the last few weeks, I think that he thought this would be like Venezuela.

They would go in. The Israelis said, we've got the Ayatollah. We've got all these top people in the same room. We can take them all out. And he thought, decapitate them. The people would rise up, that's what Netanyahu told him, and it would all be over very quickly. And the complete opposite has happened.

And where the real miscalculation came was in Iran's ability to withstand enormous military superiority against them, but to then exercise a sort of parallel universe war, an asymmetric war of an economic kind with the Straits of Hormuz, effectively shutting that down,

causing enormous damage to the global economy, which we felt now for many months, whatever happens, and then attacking the Gulf States in a way that has paralyzed their business model. So attacking all refineries in the Gulf States, its neighbors, attacking tourist centers and so on,

this has been a disaster for them. And so you add it all up and I think where's the win here? The regime is still in place. They've got, you know, they've got way more IRGC people that can come through the ranks and fill the gaps. So that hasn't changed. The people are not uprising for a number of reasons. Probably fear of bombs. The Strait of Hormuz is closed. The Strait of Hormuz is closed. And they're charging you for it. And they're charging you for it. As Dende said, the Straits of Hormuz remain pretty well closed to anyone that the Iranians don't want to leave them open to.

I just am struggling to conclude anything other than Trump has miscalculated, probably because he's been misled by the Israelis, that this would be indeed like it was in the 12-day war last summer, and like it was in Venezuela, a quick, sharp shock and get out. And now I don't think he knows how to get out. And the Iranians know they can hold the Straits of Hormuz as this bargaining tool, which is almost impossible

to take away from them.

So what you're saying is that because Iran is using this bargaining tool, which is using this blackmail tool, the economic tool, that they would somehow, that we're supposed to let them do that and then potentially have nuclear weapons and let them blackmail the world again?

No, I don't believe there was. I don't believe. I know. I don't believe there was an impending threat of nuclear weapons in Iran. I think that was a totally misleading reading

of their situation and flies completely in the face of what we were told happened after the 12-day war. So I think that this was a genuine desire by the Israelis to have a regime change in Iran and they persuaded Donald Trump to join in. That's why Antony Blinken said they tried to get Biden to do it, they tried to get Obama to do it, they both said no and Israel did not attack. This time they got third time lucky. As Marco Rubio said, the Americans got involved

because they were told another country was going in and they knew that there would be retaliation so we better get in first. It came out of the Secretary of State's mouth. So the beauty of this whole war, if there can be such a thing,

is the clarity coming out of people's mouths. They will be judged accordingly. Let me bring Cenk back in here. You know, I keep going back to that Rubio moment because to me, that is at the core of this war. I think Trump got bamboozled into doing this by Netanyahu, who made eight visits to America in the build-up to this.

And we saw JD Vance say similar things only last week.

Yeah, so there's three different factors with Trump and the Israelis. Number one, the Adelson family alone has given Trump over $300 million in campaign contributions. So anyone saying that Trump is not affected by $300 million lives on a different planet.

So they literally bribed him. That's legally possible in America. Miriam Adelson is an Israeli. She's the one who flew out Jonathan Pollard in a private jet to congratulate him back to Israel, gave him a hero's welcome. So these people are not for our country.

They're the opposite, right? On top of that, let's be honest, there might be blackmail. But let's go past that. And they did. Netanyahu came and talked to him eight different times and whispered sweet nothings into his ear.

And he said, oh, you're going to be a hero. You're going to conquer the whole world, Donald. And you know what? We're going to do it anyway. You'll be a spectator to history. That's a direct quote that they used. So you better not be weak. And the thing is, guys, you know,

Piers, the one thing I can't agree with you on is Trump is a baboon. I mean, he's so stupid. It's like talking to a child. I mean, if you told me, oh, you're going to be a spectator to history,

you better attack Iran before we do, I'd be like, shut up up and get out of the American White House and but Trump's like oh okay daddy am I going to be big and powerful so I can't stand the guy and I can't stand him

talking as if he's a rational person. Honestly when you called Trump a baboon you're kind of falling into his rhetorical trap of you know getting in the gutter with him and

I don't think that... What is this what is this Piers? I mean I mean Can you agree that he's a stupid man-child? No, I don't think he's a stupid man-child. I mean, what is this screaming into the air, I'm gonna kill them all! I'm the new Hitler! He's basically saying he's the new Hitler.

I find these posts... He's either a monster or a monster and a man-child. I find these posts reprehensible. But Donald Trump is not a stupid man, I can assure you of that. He's won the White House twice. Oh, are you crazy? He's the dumbest guy we've ever had in office. Well, he's managed to win the White House twice.

He's not stupid.

Yeah, that's why he can't stand the corporate Democrats.

He's not stupid. I mean, to be fair, you're right. I would say, I would say. You're right. elitist, let's draw this pro-corporate and let's embrace Dick Cheney. All right, but I don't think he's stupid, but I do think his foreign policy generally actually has been one of his stronger points until this. This makes no sense to me.

It hasn't made sense from day one.

He has no strong points. His foreign policy has been a disaster. So let's get back to the main issue here. So he said he was against the wars, you're absolutely right about that, especially against Middle Eastern wars, and he said he was worried that Kamala Harris and Joe Biden were going to take us into World War III, okay? And now what do we have? Ben Gavir threatening nukes, and by the way, if you haven't heard, China and

Pakistan have said that if Israel nukes Iran, they will nuke Israel. So here we are on the precipice of a nuclear holocaust because this baboon is in office and he's like, oh BB how could I make you happy can you please give me more money am I gonna be a hero BB I can't stand this guy. Doing the exact opposite of what he promised. The exact opposite. One more thing that Glenn, a point that Glenn made that is really important. So Russia goes and destroys their army and their treasure in Ukraine.

Now we're going to destroy our treasure. We spent $300 million on the rescue alone. It was a brilliant operation, but $300 million. We're spending $1 to $2 billion a day. So we're, both Russia and the US are destroying themselves in these totally needless wars and China is laughing their ass off.

How did they get this lucky that they were wasting our treasure and our military on wars for other countries? It's insanity. Let's go compete with China and India economically. Stop this military madness.

Get someone who's an American and who's a decent person back in charge of America.

OK. Let me bring Ryan back in charge of America. OK. Let me bring Ryan back in here. I found a quote from retired Lieutenant Colonel Rachel Van Lindingham, who said on PBS, threatening to bomb every bridge and power plant in Iran in itself is a war crime, not just reckless talk, a crime.

Why? Because terrorizing a civilian population through rhetoric violates the law of war. And the law of war is US law. So that seems pretty clear there, that actually this kind of rhetoric

can have very serious real world consequences for Donald Trump.

Yeah, so a lot of this is a bargaining position. It's a lot of leverage that Trump is getting. And when it comes to actually targeting these structures, like a flu combat in Afghanistan, and there's a rule of engagement that you go through for every release, and you do everything you can to mitigate damage to civilians in the area. But if you look at some of these plants that have been struck so far, like PARS energy plant, Sharif University,

PARS is basically powering the ballistic missile program for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. So that makes it a legitimate target. Sharif University is a nerve center, a data center, where the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has built and designed their missiles and their drones. And what I hear on the panel too is a lot of people being triggered by Trump. And I think that's what happens when someone with a backbone comes in and says, no, you

know what, we're going to stand up to evil. And if you don't stand up to that evil, you're kind of like that person.

But what if you stand up to, what if, as Tucker Carlson said, what if in standing up to evil, you start to sound evil yourself? I mean, that is... Well, maybe you do have to fight fire with fire. You know, I've always, I've always said this many times, I don't want to bore people, but I come from a lot of military in my family, right? And they're horrified about this

because there's supposed to be a moral code. I'm sure you abided by it when you served. Absolutely. I know for a fact Rob did, right? He's been on some of the biggest missions in American modern military history. And there's a strict moral code that abides along the way with these guys, right?

It's what makes the American military one of the finest in history. It's what makes the British military. Fine, the moment you lose that, the moment you abandon all pretense at morality or being a superior moral force,

and you just decide to fight evil with evil, and you fight people threatening to annihilate you by annihilating the entire country, you lose me.

I think he's threatening to annihilate the IRGC and the regime. I don't think he's threatening to annihilate the entire country. I think that's pretty clear from what we can see.

You're being very forgiving, but maybe you should be his digital producer

because that's not what he posted. Well, I'll be the person that reads the second part of his truth social post. I mean, it's pretty clear right there that he's just talking about the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Forty seven years ago, the Islamic Revolution happened and brought in a terrorist regime run by radical Islamic clerics who want a nuclear weapon. So my question to the panel is, yeah, it'd be nice if we don't have to do anything.

I would prefer that we're not in war. It would be great, Cenk, if we could not have to deal with this situation and we could just all go on with our lives, run our businesses, make money. That'd be great. But to me, you're coming across as someone

who's putting a blindfold on hey there's a cliff up there yeah it's nice out today so we're just gonna walk away with lift and that cliff is the biggest state sponsor of terrorism in the world what happens what happens

Ryan look there are many people that share your view that the Iranians had to be dealt with and that Trump's a trash talker and he's just negotiating. But let me ask you Ryan a specific question. What happens if the Iranians call his bluff? If 8pm comes and goes tonight, Trump does not wipe out the whole country and is then looking as I said earlier like the emperor with no clothes. The guy that threatened to do all this stuff and then they called his bluff and he didn't

do it. That's the problem. You can exaggerate when you're selling a building in New York City. You can pile them high. You can exaggerate a lot of things when you're president, actually. You can trash talk your rivals or you can trash talk Hollywood people when they die,

whatever. That has no real world level of consequence other than people might find it disagreeable. But when you do this and you don't act on it, he is relying on the Iranian regime caving. I don't think that ideologically they will do that

because they are basically nihilists. They've already said publicly in the last few hours, we don't care if we die, we'll die if we have to. And I'm sure they mean it. Of course. So what happens if his bluff gets called?

His presence is out. I think it's a fair point. I mean, some of the choice words, the words probably could have been stated differently. I think you bring up a fair point there. However, in warfare, there's also deception. So if you're deceiving the enemy, you're doing warfare correct. And so if 8 p.m. comes tonight and the bombs don't drop on specific facilities,

then it'll drop somewhere else and Trump will pivot somewhere else and use our military in a moral way to start to systematically destroy the IRGC's ability to fund themselves. And we saw we saw Karj Island get hit this morning, late last night, and so they took out military infrastructure there while not targeting the oil infrastructure. So there's a strategic 4D chess plan. So again, pivoting and adapting can happen even when this claim has been made by the president.

Well, the thing is, we're gonna find out. I mean, somebody said to me last night, I first got to know Trump when I appeared on his Celebrity Apprentice show.

And if someone said to me last night... Can I just add one thing, Pierce? Yeah. So I think there's a narrative out there that everybody's blaming Israel for everything and it comes across as a mainstream corporate news talking point to me. But if you look back at the 80s, President Trump has an interview where he says,

Iran needs to be bombed, they need to be taken out,

they're a dangerous regime. said that before, but there's also no question because Marco Rubio spelled it out for us on camera that the incentive for America to get involved this time was because the Israelis said we're going to attack.

I mean, obviously Israel has an incentive for us to do this. That's obvious. That's clear they benefit from this. However, America benefits a lot as well.

But the problem, you know, my problem, the point I was going to make was, having appeared on The Apprentice, someone said to me last night, this is like watching The Apprentice. This is my problem with the way Trump is conducting this war. War is not a game. It's not a reality show. And when people are waking up for the new installment from Donald Trump about the Iran

war and almost when you add all the memes that the White House has been putting out and the Hollywood style Video stuff and so on none of it sits easily with me because there is nothing worse in the world The war but as you know here's I agree and as Rob knows better than anybody Wars are the about as real as life and death get right and the idea that the whole thing is treated like a kind of reality show sits really badly with me.

Even in prime time, 8 o'clock, 8 o'clock p.m. Eastern, prime time is when he set the time for it.

That's my point. It's like, it's all what you would do if you're promoting a reality TV show.

I hear you, but again-

Because that's trans background, background it's even more uneasily and I wish he wouldn't do it like this. I think there are different ways to do it which are more respectful. There are, I think you're right, there could be a

more respectful way to do this but at the end of the day, Pierce, you know better than anybody that this is a propaganda war. I mean look at the IRGC's propaganda, this battle also plays out in the media and so I think President Trump is fighting it in the media as well. OK, well, we're going to find we will find out.

Thank you very much to my panel. I really appreciate it. Thank you all very much. Piers Morgan Uncensored is proudly independent. The only boss around here is me. If you enjoy our show, we ask for only one simple thing.

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