"MENTALLY Unstable" Trump Slams Pope & Tucker Carlson As US Iran War Blockade Begins

Mr. President, did you post that picture of yourself depicted as Jesus Christ?

Well, it wasn't a picture. I did post it, and I thought it was me as a doctor.

You don't care?

It's a distraction. It's a distraction. I just don't care.

As a Catholic, you don't care?

Galatians 6-7 says, God will not be mocked.

The remedy is not 25th Amendment. The remedy is Congress. Pope Leo's boss got executed and came back from the dead three days later. He's not afraid of a truth social post.

We have a one-man rule, and the one man happens to be crazy.

You block my ships, and I'll block yours. That's the upshot of the US president's latest Iran war gambit. A US naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz is now in force. It will not reduce the global cost of oil and gas, in fact, quite the opposite.

But it may stem the steady flow of cash flooding into Iran's coffers, one of the most perverse unintended consequences of the conflict so far. But surprisingly, in current circumstances, President Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio

spent Saturday night at the UFC in Florida. It's fair to say Pr JD Vance got the short straw, fresh from trying and failing to save Viktor Orban's campaign in Hungary. He spent 21 hours in negotiations with the Israelis in Islamabad.

The bad news is that we have not reached an agreement. And I think that's bad news for Iran much more than it's bad news for the United States of America. So we go back to the United States having not come to an agreement. We've made very clear what our red lines are, what things we're willing to accommodate them on and what things we're not willing to accommodate them on. And we've

made that as clear as we possibly could. And they have chosen not to accept our terms.

Well the biggest red line is Iran's uranium stockpile. Six weeks and $30 billion worth of war have not changed Iran's nuclear potential. There's also no agreement on toll-free access to the Strait of Hormuz and on funding proxies like Hezbollah, without which it's extremely hard to argue the US has achieved anything much at all. Meanwhile, President Trump has added several new fronts in his war of words.

Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Candace Owens and Alex Jones were all savage as low-IQ losers in a truth social rant against his supporters-turned-critics. Carlson responded in a BBC interview.

I feel sorry for him, as I do for all slaves. He is not free in this moment at all to do what he thinks is best for himself or his country. Of course he's free, what do you mean? Well he's not free and we learned that yesterday when Donald Trump announced a ceasefire, clearly with relief and made its terms or most of its terms public and then that ceasefire ended within two

hours because Israel intentionally violated the terms. Well last night Trump

turned his attention to an even bigger target, the Pope. His Holiness has taken a not unreasonable position on the Iran war, namely that threatening to destroy civilization is unacceptable and that God doesn't like war. The president responded by saying

that he doesn't like the Pope. And then a move that angered even some of his most loyal supporters. Trump posted this image of himself as Jesus Christ. Apparently people have been pointing out to the president that the religious fanatics led by a divine strongman are supposed to be on the other side. Just before we came on air, Trump deleted the image of himself as the son of God, which

is about as close as he probably ever got to a genuine apology. Professor Jeffrey Sachs and a stellar panel are standing by, but we begin tonight in Beirut, where all the talk of a ceasefire feels a very long way away. Yalda Hakim is an award-winning Sky News anchor and host of the World Podcast and joins me now from Beirut. Yalda, welcome back to Uncensored.

Thanks so much for having me, Piers.

Well, I'm trying to get my own not quite so massive brain around all this and struggling a bit. So I thought, who better to ask than the reigning Royal Television Society Network Presenter of the Year, which brings with it an assumption that you're going

to give me some answers. What is going on with this war? Because I cannot make head nor tail of it.

Yeah, I mean, you and perhaps the rest of the world, Piers, because it would be a fool's errand to try and figure out what Donald Trump is thinking or what he's likely to do next. But I think what we can see about what's happened over the course of the last 24, 36 hours since those talks took place in Islamabad is that Donald Trump is trying to continue his pressure tactics. So he's basically hoping that Iran will cave

to American pressures and that they will surrender. But that is frankly what the US president and the American administration has hoped for since February 28th, that Iran would cave or surrender or tap out. And frankly, they haven't because as many of your guests have said

over the last six weeks, for the United States, this is a war of choice. But for Iran, this is about survival. For the Iranian government, the authorities, the regime there, this is the one point of victory for them is to stay surviving as a regime.

And they probably have come out of this bruised and battered. And we know that the United States, of course, is a superior military force alongside Israel. And they have hit the IRGC hard, their military facilities and missile launches and their missiles. But the asymmetric war seems to have been won by Iran.

And so, you know, while many would say that the talks that took place in Islamabad just a couple of days ago failed or collapsed, from the Iranian perspective, the 70-member delegation that they took was met by quite a high-level delegation

from the United States led by J.D. Vance, a skeptic of this war and a skeptic of forever wars. So for him to stand alongside the parliamentary speaker, who isn't just any parliamentary speaker, he is perhaps one of the most senior members now of the Iranian regime since they took out the Supreme Leader and various other top leaders, that was quite an image and so while the talks haven't necessarily gone anywhere at this point, that image that we saw is historic.

Ultimately though, if this all ends with the regime remaining in place, albeit with different people at the top, but all from the same regime with the same ideology. If the enriched uranium remains buried underground and the Americans and Israelis can't get their hands on it and the Iranians don't surrender it,

and the Strait of Hormuz is now established as an incredibly effective strategic weapon and Iran maintains some form of control over it, it's very hard to see how a, President Trump claims any real tangible victory here and how the Iranian regime doesn't emerge,

not just surviving, albeit with its military smashed up a bit, which it clearly has been, but actually possibly emboldened by all this.

Yeah, I mean, Piers, we now live in a world where if the Americans and the Israelis do something that Iran doesn't like, it'll just close down the Australian Hormuz again, you know, and this was not the case six weeks ago when this war began. So they do now have something that's a huge leverage that's basically put huge pressure on the global economy. And so in many ways, they are already emboldened by what's happened.

If you think about the negotiations that took place six weeks ago before this war began, and don't forget the Iranians and the Americans were talking, there were nuclear talks six weeks ago. and then of course they say they were attacked and they were attacked by America and Israel in the middle of those negotiations.

They've now come out of this like you say smashed but in many ways they have the kind of leverage that Donald Trump is frankly pulling his hair out, open the damn Strait of Hormuz. So what we saw in those negotiations that took place in Islamabad was, although JD Vance came out and said it was about their nuclear program, they basically talked about money, ships, and the uranium,

because these are now the big talking points for the Americans, and they're trying to put pressure on the Iranians, but the Iranians, frankly, have all the time in the world. They're in no hurry here.

Right. And then you've got, as part of this asymmetric war, you've got the attacks the Iranians have made on their neighboring Gulf states, which I think the scale of it has come as a massive shock to those Gulf states.

I've spent a lot of time in the last couple of years, as have you, travelling around the Middle East, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE. There was a real sense of dynamism about the region, a real conviction that they were moving inexorably from an economy based around oil, which is obviously slowly running out, to an economy based around tourism and sport

and entertainment and all these things. And the big sales pitch was, come to all these states because it's safe, it's sunny, you're gonna see great sport, great entertainment, we're letting tourists come now, come and live here and many people were. But you know in the last six weeks you've seen this slam shut as a business model that's working right now. You see many people, you know expats, expats who've gone and live there,

leaving. Who knows if they go back? Tourism is pretty well collapsing. Real concerns, I would imagine, for the Gulf States about what this means for their economies going forward. But what does that also mean

for the sort of geopolitical relationships between them all and Iran and the United States going forward? Could it, for example, could it propel states like Saudi Arabia to join the Abraham Accords or not?

Well, I think, Piers, you know, I've also spent the last six weeks travelling across the region. I was in Jerusalem. I then travelled to Saudi Arabia. I went to Qatar. I did an exclusive interview with the Qatari prime minister, who described the attacks

from Iran as betrayal. Because don't forget, Qatar is one of the few countries on the planet that had good relations with Iran, that had an open dialogue with Iran, in many ways was acting as a mediator between the Americans and the Iranians. You know, the Iranians were leaning on them to send messages to the U.S. president at

different points. So they felt a sense of betrayal. And we know that the Qatari prime minister has spoken to the Iranian foreign minister about those ongoing attacks. And if this ceasefire that is supposed to last two weeks collapses,

what does that mean for these Gulf States? Because as you say, they've been priding themselves over the course of the last couple of decades of being some of the safest places on the planet, being a tax haven, for example, bringing in all sorts of entertainment and sports

into the country, trying to give a different face and brand to the Middle East. And that, frankly, has been destroyed by this war. As you say, I mean, tourism is at an all-time low. Expats who live there are leaving. And I guess the leadership in the GCC are now thinking, OK, what do we actually have to protect ourselves?

Because we had these American bases here. And actually, that's done nothing to protect us. We thought the Americans would provide us with some kind of cover. And this war that we are not part of, didn't ask for, tried to deter the US president from entering,

has actually turned into our war on our front doorstep, battering our economies as well. So I'm not sure, frankly, if Saudi Arabia will join the Abraham Accords. There is still a lot of ill feeling from Saudi Arabia towards Israel about the war in Gaza, for example. And so they want they still have that card on the table where they say well, we wouldn't be normalizing any relations

Until you you know, there's a two-state solution So I don't think based on what's happening now, Saudi Arabia would suddenly, you know Join forces and be part of the Abraham Accords But certainly all of these Gulf states are going to have to think about how they defend themselves going forward. And that's why they've been talking to the Ukrainians, for example, because you know, it's not just interceptors that they need. They need these drone interceptors,

which the Ukrainians have been extraordinary at being able to create in their factories

to take their war on with Russia. It's fascinating. Let's just end by talking about Lebanon, because you're there in Beirut. I interviewed Danny Danon, the Israeli ambassador to the UN, the other day and he posted something on his ex account, kind of gloating, that he clarified to me in the interview that Israel is not bombing Lebanon. It is bombing, very specifically, Hezbollah, but a bit like the bombing campaign in Gaza in the process of in their eyes going after Hamas they also managed to kill an enormous number of civilians and cause

enormous structural damage to vast swathes of Gaza 70-80% of it virtually raised to the ground and we're seeing not quite the same scale in Lebanon But you're seeing over a million people displaced. We're now seeing the death toll is over 2,000, 7,000 wounded. Many of these are civilians, women, children, and others. Like I say, it follows a familiar looking pattern

to what happened in Gaza. What is your sense about what is happening there?

Piers, the humanitarian crisis in this country is gut-wrenching. When you say over a million people displaced, many of them from southern Lebanon, tens of thousands of homes have been destroyed there. People who had nothing to do with Hezbollah didn't have military installations or facilities in their homes. Homes that have been there for decades,

sometimes for a hundred years, have been destroyed. I've spoken to people who had holiday homes in the south of the country that no longer stand, have been turned to rubble. And so people are moving north. And here in Beirut, an extraordinary city,

a beautiful city, civilians were shocked on Wednesday because they thought when they woke up that they were part of some kind of wider ceasefire deal. And Israel made it very clear, the IDF made it very clear that they were not part of that deal. And within the space of just minutes, 10 minutes, the IDF launched 100 strikes across this country,

many of those strikes here in Beirut, not very far from where I'm currently standing. I interviewed a young girl, a 13-year-old girl who was just mucking about on Snapchat to her friends, going for a walk with her dad, really quite close to where I'm here in central Beirut.

And suddenly, you know, she saw buildings collapse around her. She was minutes away from being killed as far as her mom was concerned. We know, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry, that 99 women and 33 children were killed

during that bombing campaign on Wednesday. It's now known as Black Wednesday in this country. They had a national day of mourning. So civilians here are reeling. They were shocked. They remain shocked that they're not part of any kind of ceasefire deal. And just minutes before I came on air, Hezbollah launched about 10 drones on onto Israeli sites and to target the IDF. And so the war here continues,

but this country continues also to be bruised, battered and left devastated by the growing death toll, which is over 2000 people killed now. And as you say, when we say a million, over a million people displaced, you know, we throw these numbers around,

but that is a hell of a lot of people, a fifth of this country now, frankly, homeless.

Yeah, I mean, the clip that you were talking about, this was this 13-year-old, Naya Faki, I think her name is, who was filming a Snapchat video. Let's just take a quick look at that because it was riveting to watch. Had you experienced anything like that before?

I've of course experienced bombs but I've never seen a building fall in front of me or trying to run away from one.

I mean it just says it all really. I think they can claim as much as they like that they're only targeting Hezbollah, but the video speaks for itself and that's happening all over Lebanon. Yalda, I've got to leave it there,

but that was a fascinating update on it all. Thank you very much. Thank you. Well, my panel's coming up in a few minutes, but joining me now is the renowned economist and global affairs expert, Professor Jeffrey Sachs. Professor Sachs, welcome back to Uncensored.

Here, it's great to be with you.

Thank you. Where are we with this war? What is going on? I mean, as I'm about to talk to you, Hillary Clinton has posted, Trump has become fully unhinged and we should talk about it on MS Now this morning. She added, I read these posts like the majority of Americans both shaking my head

and really just feeling sick that we have a president who is such a disgrace. And this follows another barrage of slightly bonkers posts by Donald Trump, you know, pretending to be Jesus and attacking the Pope and so on and so on. Very familiar pattern to six weeks now,

this kind of thing, attacking NATO, attacking all the European countries, attacking conservative podcasters. Pretty well looking like he's on a rampage of, I guess, trying to find people to blame for what many people now think is turning into

an enormous mess. What is your reading of it?

Well, it certainly is a disaster. It's a disaster of two people, Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump. They are both mentally unstable as individuals, and they both lead ruthless governments. Both are waging war relentlessly, brutally. Donald Trump has said things in the last few days that, of a shocking nature that no president in American history has ever come close to uttering. And he's now attacked Pope Leo and posted a picture of himself as

Jesus Christ. In other words, the man is mentally, this is one of the few times I agree with Hillary Clinton I guess, the man is mentally unstable. The war is a disaster. It is going to create a global crisis. It was a war, not even to say of choice, but of whim of Netanyahu and Trump. Two people got us into this. It's a measure of how completely, completely deinstitutionalized the United States government is, that this is basically a war chosen by one person with a sycophantic secretary of defense, all the

rest of his tiny inside team going along. But knowing that this is tragic and farcical is the word that one of the insiders used and no role whatsoever of Congress no evidence of even a minimal inter-agency consultations other than to hear the objections of the intelligence agencies and the joint chiefs of staff.

So we're in the hands of absolute craziness. What is fascinating actually, as we're talking, he's now deleted very unusually the post of him as Jesus Christ, this image which he posted earlier. He very rarely deletes anything. What is interesting to me is I urged him to delete the post

in which he was raging about ending civilization, which would have involved killing all 90 million Iranians. And I also didn't like his, and I urged him to delete the Easter Sunday message in which he was letting, talking in the most foul mouth way about it all and saying praise be to Allah. None of this is helping anything from what I can look at.

Yeah, usually we have a political issue. Israel and the United States together have created a disaster in the Middle East. Israel has created a genocide. Israel and the United States together have created a disaster in the Middle East. Israel has created a genocide. Israel and the United States together have created this war of whim in Iran that has killed thousands, but has already begun to devastate the entire world.

But we also have clearly a clinical condition. We have an individual mental incapacity. The psychiatrists and psychologists that look at this call it the dark triad, meaning that the man is narcissistic, Machiavellian, in other words, completely untrustworthy in every way, and psychopathic, meaning that killing other people does not have any concern for either of these people. So these are both dark triad personalities. Many people are saying, Pierce, that Trump is also showing symptoms of frontotemporal

dementia as well. In other words, that this personality has always been there, but the loss of impulse control has taken over, perhaps because of dementia added to this. We have a very serious issue. There's never been a president in this incapacity. It's very dangerous.

But I just want to emphasize on top of this is a collapse of our governmental processes. There are no consultations with Congress. Congress, for all intents and purposes, doesn't exist. The National Security Council, for all intents and purposes, does not exist. The intelligence agencies, for all intents and purposes, do not exist. They advised against this.

So we have a one man rule and the one man happens to be crazy.

I mean there will be some who listen to you Professor Sachs and that you listen to your damning critique of Trump and Netanyahu, I call them psychopathic and delusional as you did an interview at the weekend but then you went on to say that only Vladimir Putin, Narendra Modi, and Xi Jinping can stop Trump and Israel with their policies at the moment. And they'll say, well, hang on.

You talk about delusional, psychopathic, and wanting to kill everyone. What about Vladimir Putin? Isn't that exactly the way that he's portrayed himself in recent years?

No, no, I think the situation is completely different. I'm talking of a psychological assessment of Trump. One can discuss, as we have done at length, and I'm delighted that we've done so, how we got into this open conflict with Russia after all of the possibilities of peace.

That is a historical process that lasted more than 30 years, starting with the US cheating on the clearest possible commitment that it made about not expanding the US military, much less to Russia's border. But that's a historical and political issue, and it's a major political issue.

Here, I'm talking about a psychological issue. We have not seen any of those three leaders post themselves as Jesus Christ, take on the Pope, say that they're going to destroy a civilization by evening or use the language that we can't even use, peers, or maybe we can use. I don't know if we're allowed to say close the fucking straight, you crazy bastards,

which the president of the United States, the president of the United States, wrote on Easter morning. This is something we should understand as being different. This is something absolutely distressing because when we also understand the account of how these decisions have been made, they have been made by one person.

Is it not true that on that point, I mean there's gonna be a lot of debate obviously after what Hillary Clinton has said, now there's a lot of debate about whether Trump is suffering some kind of cognitive issues and that will be what it is, we'll see how that plays out. But is there, when you look at what Trump has done with Iran, I mean, I think I'm right in saying,

I'm sure you'll know the answer to this, but since World War II, I don't think any American president has sought congressional approval for any military action because they've never couched it as war. They've always couched it as a military action or whatever,

which means they don't need to actually get pre-congressional approval. Is that the case?

Well, just to say, we've had a huge deterioration of our democracy since 1947, when the CIA was established under the National Security Act. So I won't argue with you there. There have been many attempts to go to Congress and to go to the United Nations for approval, sometimes disregarded in the end. Sometimes Congress has voted approval, like the infamous Gulf of Tonkin revolution resolution in which Congress authorized the use of force in Vietnam on false pretenses.

And similarly, after 9-11, there was a congressional authorization of the use of force. But we've never had a process as deinstitutionalized as the one we have right now, where we basically even the deep state, let's put it that way, the CIA, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Armed Services Committees of Congress, they're not part of this decision making. We know, actually, the kind of tick-tock of how this war took place because of an unusually clear and explicit inside account that The New York Times reported a few days ago.

This was basically Netanyahu spinning a crazy story to Trump and Trump buying it while the rest of the room was saying, you kidding this is farcical but this man I'm sorry I don't I don't know how well you know him or not and I apologize but I observe him I don't know him but he's not very smart this man is

not knowledgeable. I've known Trump 20 years. I would say he has actually pretty good gut instinct normally, which is not necessarily the normal political smarts or huge intellect, or those things. But that his gut instincts have actually often been quite good. What was striking about the New York Times piece was that everybody else's gut instinct was that the the sequence of events that Netanyahu and the head of Mossad were laying out as what would happen if the Americans came in with the Israelis to attack Iran was the Ayatollah would go, the IRGC would start to collapse, the

people would rise up and they'd all be so distracted that no one would pay any attention to the Strait of Hormuz. And only the top bit of that happened. So yes, they took out the supreme leader, but the rest of this did not happen. The IRGC remains firmly in charge. The people have not risen up.

And the Strait of Hormuz has become an enormous economic battering ram, where Iran's found out it can hold the world to ransom. Precisely. We're now in the kind of utterly perverse place where having said that he would blow up the whole of civilization in Iran, so 90 million people, if they didn't open the Strait of Hormuz, he is the one now launching a blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.

A blockade of a blockade. Right. So you literally, I mean, I just scratched my head. Just finally, Jeffrey, before we let you go, the Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has just seen his 16-year rule ended.

Peter Magyar, once a staunch loyalist of his Tisza party, won Sunday's parliamentary election by a landslide. People are seeing it as a significant bellwether for MAGA because Orbán's concept of illiberal democracy and his focus on Christian liberty and anti-immigration policies made him

a hero to MAGA activists. And of course, one of the reasons Donald Trump sent JD Vance to try and save him at the ballot box, which was unsuccessful. I know you've praised the Hungarian government's stance on the war in Ukraine,

specifically it's pushed for peace negotiations and opposition to escalate in the conflict, but is there a bigger sort of signal being sent here by what the Hungarian electorate has done? You know, you've seen a rise of authoritarian leaders around the world since Trump won the election in 2016.

Is this the beginning of the reversal of that, do you think?

I don't think so. I think what we have is people everywhere in Europe and in the United States are very unhappy. So approval ratings of our politicians are absolutely at the bottom. This is true in the UK.

It's true across Europe in just about every country. It's true for Trump. These politicians will lose at each election. This is what's going to happen right now. None of them is listening to the common sense of the public. Stay out of the damn wars. Attend to our problems, which are very real. Stop this escalation towards

World War Three. And Macron, Merz, Trump, Starmer, none of them is going to face an electorate successfully because they're all unpopular. And in the case of Hungary, it's quite clear. Orban was in a very long time. People are unhappy with their economic circumstances. They voted him out.

So at least this is what democracy does. It gives you that moment. It doesn't give you much say in between, but it gives you that moment to vote people out. And Trump is going to face this in November. He knows it. It's the end of the Republican control of Congress.

And the last two years of the Trump administration are going to tie this man up in knots because he's going to be impeached almost immediately, I would presume, by a Democratic majority in Congress, and because he has abused the political system and wrecked living standards in the United States. So this is going to come up for a lot of politicians. I don't think it proves anything about clarity of any trends.

There is no clarity in our part of the world as you know. Everything is confused right now.

I am certainly confused, but as always you bring a bit of clarity to a confused world. Professor Jeffrey Sachs, thank you very much.

Great to be with you, thanks a lot.

I'm joined now by my panel, Vincent O'Shaughnessy, PBD podcast, Angry Patriot, host of the Dan Abrams Show on Sirius XM and YouTube, Dan Abrams, Fred Flights, the Vice Chairman of the American First Policy Institute, and John Fuglesang, author of the book, Separation of Church and Hate. Well, welcome to all of you,

all with slightly different perspectives, I think, on this. Let me start with you, Dan Abrams, if I can. I mean, there's so much going on, almost 98% of it driven by what comes out of Donald Trump's mouth or his social media posts in the last six weeks. I can't get my head around any consistent strategy or logic to pretty much any of this. And I've really reached the conclusion that he got into something, almost certainly at

the enthusiastic behest of Israel, he's got into something that he now into something, almost certainly at the enthusiastic behest of Israel, he's got into something that he now wishes he could get out of, but he's no idea how to get out of it. Am I wrong?

No, I think that's probably right. But I think that we need to separate out, you mentioned sort of getting caught up in the social media side of it, right? What he says, and we all respond and we react, and you're right, we do, right? That's typically what generates the news cycle.

This is different. This is actual action. This is lives lost. This is a billion dollars a day. This is a now situation where the exit doesn't seem clear. And, you know, look, you can argue that, militarily, this has been a success, right? And that's what the administration would say. The follow-up question to that is, okay, that's true.

It has.

But then what? What have we achieved? What were the goals that we were seeking here? And now Iran is standing up to the United States. I mean, think about that. The United States and Iran held sort of face-to-face meetings, equals, and Iran stood up to the United States and said,

no, we're not doing it. And so the response is, all right, well, we may bomb them again. OK. Now, look, the blockade actually kind of makes sense in terms of trying to put pressure on them.

But there's nothing that indicates it's going to work. And that's the question that we have to focus on. What is the goal here? What is the end? What are we trying to achieve?

Yeah. And I don't think we know. And I'm not sure President Trump knows. Vinny, welcome back to Uncensored. Great to have you back. Look, from where I'm looking,

everything Dan said is correct. We were told the New York Times did a big deep dive into this and revealed how Benjamin Netanyahu painted a picture of a sequence of events that would happen if the Americans joined Israel on this mission.

And if they took out the Ayatollah, then the IRGC would be irrevocably damaged. Then the people would rise up and they'd all be so distracted that no one would notice the Straits of Hormuz and it would be irrelevant.

None of that apart from the first bit has happened. The regime is clearly still firmly in place, albeit it's lost a few people, but it's been replaced by like-minded people. You've got the Supreme Leader being replaced by his son, for example, I'm gonna say, apparently wounded,

but is alive and will be the new Supreme Leader. You have the people not uprising at all, not even rising up in the way they did in January when they were protesting. And the straight and full moose has become this extraordinary economic battering ram

being used by Iran to effectively hold the United States to ransom over literally a barrel or a few million barrels.

Where's where's the win here, Vinny?

Well, thank you for having me back on, Piers. I'm happy to see that you're doing a little bit better and a little bit more mobile. Piers, I'm not going to lie to you. It's the article you're talking about, The New York Times. I've read it multiple times. I've spoken about it and you nailed it, Piers. The first two were decapitating the Ayatollah, crippling Iran's capacity.

But then the two main ones, the regime change and the uprising from the people. And one of the best quotes in that meeting, John Ratcliffe said it was farcical. Marco Rubio said, in other words, sir, it's BS. I'm not going to say the word. And then the most important one by the chairman of Joint Chiefs of

Staff, General Raisin Cain, he said, sir, this is, in my experience, standard operating procedure for the Israelis. They oversell and their plans are not always well developed. They know they need us, and that's why they're hard selling. So, Pierce, in that meeting, apparently, it was Bibi Netanyahu with Mossad on like a Zoom call behind, and they pitched. Nobody was on board once Bibi left,

but for some reason, the president went through with it. And having, you know, my family's from Iran, Piers, as you know, we're Assyrian. And the people, like, we forgot about the people. What about the people? Now it's all about the oil. Now it's all about the Hormuz. And I just think Israel just, you know, this is what Israel does.

And at the same time, Pierce, when we're basically, our troops, this all started, let's not forget, Marco Rubio on camera said, all right, he said, well, we didn't want to strike first, but since Israel was going to go and our assets, our soldiers, our soldiers, 13 of them, God rest their souls dead, they're

going to be put in harm's way, so we got to go first, Pierce. That really, really bothers me that he has that much control that since they're going to go, we got to go. And for a nation, Pierce, which bothers me, you mentioned this I believe last week, a nation that we all know has nuclear weapons, but we all have to play this game like we don't know that they have nukes. Do you know how dangerous that is?

The Non-Proliferation Treaty, they're not in it, Pierce. If, God forbid, they use a nuke, we can't even point and say, hey, it was Israel, because technically they don't have it, Pierce. I think the people in the president's ear, you know, they're not giving him good information. They're kind of swaying them that they want to. And Jared Kushner is over there with Steve Whitkoff.

Jared Kushner, does he even have security clearance, Piers? He's married to Trump's daughter and he's known, Bibi Netanyahu, Jared Kushner's family. Charles Kushner has known him since he was a child. So that's a little conflict of interest for me, Piers. And again, when there's American soldiers and our troops are at risk, I'm not offended at all.

It gets very real very, very quickly. Fred Flights, welcome to our session. You're vice chair of an institute called the America First Policy. I'm really struggling to understand how any of this puts America first.

Trump was elected on various big picture promises to the American people. One was he was not going to drag America into pointless, expensive Middle Eastern wars. He's now dragged them into the biggest and most expensive one he could have done. And from where I sit, at the moment, the most pointless. Secondly, he was going to take care of cost of living. He was going to bring down inflation.

Well, the complete opposite is happening. Prices at the pump are raging. Food prices will be next because fertilizer has been held up, as well as oil and gas in the Strait of Hormuz. All of this goes to me completely contrary to the concept of America first that Trump was selling the American electorate.

What do you feel? Well, it's great to be here. President Trump answered this last June after the 12 day war when some of his small number of MAGA critics raised some of these points. And he said, look, I came up with the America first approach to US national security and I decide what's in it. And stopping Iran from getting a nuclear bomb is part of my approach. And most of his followers agree. Some of them may not agree exactly with this, but they trust him.

I mean, I just take a different approach here. I think we are seeing the collapse of another false anti-Trump narrative. You may remember a week ago we heard that Iran is winning and Iran has the upper hand, that the Iranians will refuse to attend talks with the United States unless they got sanctions relief, unless there was a full and complete ceasefire, unless Israel stopped attacking Lebanon.

They didn't get any of those conditions. Instead, they sent a large delegation to Pakistan. They were the ones who were begging for a ceasefire. They were the ones who were begging for a ceasefire. They were the ones who wanted to negotiate a settlement. We had three rounds of talks with them, which I think is very promising. I think the door to a diplomatic solution is still open.

And I think Trump has achieved his objectives. Iran will not get a nuclear weapon now. The capability of making nuclear weapons, all the facilities have been destroyed. Iran's so-called missile shield, which Secretary Rubio talked about, is going to be ended. They still have a missile arsenal. Where is the enriched uranium?

You know what? I have a big difference on that. I've studied this very closely. There may be nine to 11 weapons worth of uranium hexafluoride that, if further processed, could fuel nuclear weapons. I'm happy to leave that stuff in the ground. Trump has said he's bombed the heck out of it.

It's being watched by satellites.

I know there's people going to Fox News and saying,

you have to dig that stuff up and get it out. That's absolutely wrong. We really don't need to do that. We can leave it there. I don't think the Iranians could process it,

even if they could dig it out. isn't it, given that they've indicated the complete opposite. But also, this last summer, the 12-day war, when it ended, we were told, that's it. They have no way now developing nuclear weapons. We've ended that threat. Then eight months later, the United States is launching a full-on war with Iran,

precisely to do what they said had been neutralized eight months earlier. And now you're proposing that the way this ends is the Iranians keep all their enriched uranium, which is 60% enriched and well on the way to becoming maybe 10, 11 nuclear weapons.

None of this makes sense to me. I don't think I'm a particularly stupid individual.

After the 12 day war, we were hoping with this ceasefire, Iran would stop its pursuit of nuclear weapons and stop building its missile program. There was a massive increase of its missile program, which the

president decided to deal with in January. We started negotiations. The Iranians didn't want a deal. Then the attack began on February 28th. And according to Rubio, if

we let them continue this missile program, by the end of the year, there'd be nothing we could do to stop their pursuit of nuclear weapons. They were rebuilding the nuclear weapons program too. Frankly, this all makes sense if you look at what Iran did between June of last year

and January of this year.

And your solution is you leave them with all their enriched uranium so they could just do it all over again.

I don't think people understand what this enriched uranium is. It's a form of uranium hexafluoride. It has to be further processed in uranium metal. Then it has to be put into unfinished and unfueled nuclear devices that probably have been destroyed also. This enriched uranium is poisonous.

There's a lot of probably going on there, Fred. With all due respect, a lot of use of the word probably there.

I just think the idea of sending in American troops to dig this stuff out, when I think it's probably unusable or difficult for the Iranians to get. Trump has bombed the heck out of it. He said we're going to watch it with satellites. I think that's the right approach.

OK. John Fuglestone, welcome back to Uncensored. Great to see you. Lovely to see you all. First of all, just your reaction to what you just heard from Fred Fulight,

so we'll get into the Pope and Jesus Christ.

Yeah, you know, the world had a working, functioning deal to keep Iran from getting nukes, and the US military declared for years that Iran was complying with the terms of the deal. It wasn't just Barack Obama, it was multiple nations that put this deal together. Now I don't trust anything Trump says, I trust nothing Netanyahu says, and I don't trust the Ayatollahs too much either, but I don't think the generals of the U.S. military were lying to us all those years that the deal was working, and they tore it up, and now

they're trying to take credit for solving a problem that they created. This movement has despised the US Constitution as much as they despise the New Testament and right now we're witnessing many Trump supporters begin to realize that for a decade of their lives they've been enrolled in Trump University. They have been hoodwinked, bamboozled and led astray for 10 years. Vladimir Putin is helping the Iranians attack U.S. bases, and Trump is lifting sanctions on the Russians. We're burning through a billion dollars a day on this after years

of promising this wouldn't happen. The Strait of Hormuz is now a toll road. Putin's getting rich every day off of this. And we have a president who's threatening mass death on Easter Sunday. Piers, I always thought the point of Easter was people coming back from the dead, not threatening to send more people there. And as far as JD Vance, I'm shocked that a smug, abrasive, condescending guy like him

failed at diplomacy, but let's be honest, they didn't want a deal because Netanyahu doesn't want this to stop yet.

Well, let's talk specifically then about the two extraordinary religious interventions that Trump has made. I mean, there's actually three because the Easter Sunday post he made, I thought was just appalling. I told him to delete it and everyone was gleefully telling

me, oh, it's on the right. They were saying, Pearse, you don't understand. I thought you knew Trump. You know, he'll never delete it. The outrage is baked in. And then of course today, when he posted a picture of himself as Jesus Christ, a lot of the very same people were saying,

this is outrageous, you should delete it, which he now has. I mean, Ari Fleischer, one of Trump's biggest, most slavish supporters who will literally defend the indefensible, says President Trump's team should never have posted this image.

It's inappropriate and embarrassing. It's offensive. What made me chuckle is it wasn't President Trump's team it's him you know he does this stuff he posted I mean he may not physically press the button but he's the one compiling it and telling people to post it. Riley Gaines another big Trump supporter I can't understand why he'd post this is he looking for a for a response, either way, two things are true. A little humility would serve him well.

God shall not be mocked. And Marjorie Taylor Greene accused him of blasphemy. In fact, she said, it's more than blasphemy. It's an anti-Christ spirit. Then we have the attack on all the podcasters separate to this, from Tucker Carlson, Megan Kelly, Candace Owens, Alex Jones and others, to which Alex Jones responded,

how do we 25th amendment his ass? And I actually had the very uncomfortable thing of Alex Jones agreeing with something I posted about Trump today, which made me question my own judgment.

Thoughts and prayers, Spears, thoughts and prayers.

But let's come to the attack also in the context of us on the Pope, because Trump on Air Force One is

about to board it said this we don't like a Pope that's gonna say that it's okay to have a nuclear weapon we don't want a Pope that says crime is okay in our cities I don't like it I'm not a big fan of Pope Leo he's a very liberal person and he's a man that doesn't believe in stopping crime. He's a man that doesn't think that we should be toying with a country that wants a nuclear weapon.

I mean he added a few other things. He said I don't want a Pope who criticizes the President of the United States because I'm doing exactly what I was elected. I mean as we've just discussed I'm not sure he is. If I wasn't in the White House, Leo wouldn't be in the Vatican, et cetera. The Pope Leo, interesting,

because he is the first American Pope, and Trump has gone to war before with Pope Francis. And I remember it well. He attacked him after Francis had said he didn't like people who wanted to build walls, not knock them down.

He said was pretty rich coming from somebody who has a massive wall around the Vatican to protect him. And also made the point that only 20% of Americans are Catholic, so 80% don't care what he has to say and that he wasn't even American. Well, now he's got an American Pope

and actually 20% of 340 million people is a lot of Americans, many of whom may have voted for Trump. The Pope, interestingly, decided, I'm not having this, and said this.

I have no fear, indeed, of the Trump administration or speaking out loudly about the message of the gospel. And that's what I believe. I am called to know what the church is called to do. If we're not politicians, we're not looking to make foreign policy as he calls it, with the same perspective that he might understand it. But I do believe that the

message of the gospel, the lesson of the peacemakers, is a message that the world needs to hear.

John Fugasang, he also said, I thought really significantly, I'm not afraid of the Trump administration. It was a real statement of you can abuse me all you want, but you're not gonna knock me off my message, which is one of peace and that wars are bad and you shouldn't be killing people.

Yeah, I mean, look, Pope Leo's boss got executed and came back from the dead three days later. He's not afraid of a truth social post. And what we see here are one man who's quoting Jesus and one man who can't stop fighting with Jesus. The Pope is saying, don't bomb civilians.

And somehow that's become controversial. You know, there's two kinds of Christianity, and there always has been since Rome took over Jesus's operation. There are the Christ followers who actually believe in following the words and commandments of Jesus Christ, humility, caring for the less fortunate, welcoming the stranger, individuals and nations have to care for the poor and

the sick and put away your sword, and then you've got the Christian nationalist strain that's existed since Rome took over where they believe they own God, they own Jesus, and they work for us, and anything we do is okay because God likes us better. And Donald Trump has harnessed that energy quite well for quite a long time, and now he's overshot the mark. All Leo is doing is literally Christianity 101.

And Donald Trump seems to think that's political. Starting a war threatening genocide, bragging about it online? I mean, Leo's not the one launching missiles. He's the only guy in this argument who hasn't killed anybody yet. And so I loved Leo's response.

And all he's doing is modeling what the gospel actually says, which infuriates Christian nationalists.

Right, Dan Abrams, we've got to an extraordinary place. I mean, there's so many extraordinary things that have happened over the last six weeks, but the new Iranian president, Masoud Pezaskian, posted today, His Holiness Pope Leo, I condemn the insult to your excellency on behalf of the great nation of Iran

and declare that the desecration of Jesus, the prophet of peace and brotherhood, is not acceptable to any free person. I wish you glory by Allah. I mean, when the Iranian president is racing to support an American Pope, the first American Pope, against an onslaught from the American president,

who is the head of a party, which historically has more Christian voters than any other in America, what is happening?

Well, the question becomes why, right? Why would he do this? And look, you'll have some people on the right who will say, well, we disagree with what the Pope says. Well, we support the president's actions and the Pope doesn't, okay.

But that doesn't mean you gotta go after the Pope, right? You can disagree with the things that he's saying and not call him, you know, weak and then make it all about himself, this idea that, oh, the Pope only got his job because of me. He's talking about the stock market in this response to the Pope. You have to ask yourself, you know, what is the goal?

You know, it's sort of similar to what we were talking about with regard to Iran. What is the goal? What are you trying to achieve? Why are you doing it? You can disagree.

You can be mad at him. You can be upset. There's a way to deal with it. And putting aside all of the religious side that John has talked about, even from a human and political perspective, you have to ask yourself, why is he doing it?

Right, so I've known Trump 20 years. It was 20 years ago I took part in his Celebrity Apprentice show. And we've been good friends over the years. We had a couple of wobbles, but largely good friends. I've spoken to him maybe a dozen times

since he won a second time around. So no, I've known him well and a long time. I just think his behaviour is the most erratic I've ever seen. I don't think you can hide behind, well he's always like this, he likes to, it's more than that. It's almost like he's on some weird frenzied mission now to just piss off as many people as he can humanly do for reasons that I don't... when you put it in totality, it's like, what is, as you said, what is the end game? It does raise a specter which of course the Democrats

are gleefully putting forward because of course it was raised about Joe Biden. But Hillary Clinton posted today, Trump has become fully unhinged and we should talk about it.' On MS Now this morning, she elaborated, "'I read these posts like the majority of Americans, "'shaking my head and really just feeling sick

"'that we had a president who is such a disgrace.'" What do you think, Dan? I mean, you've obviously observed Trump for a very long time too. Is he showing signs of behavior so erratic that there should be legitimate questions asked about his cognitive abilities?

Right, so you gotta separate out unhinged from quote mentally ill, right? I see a lot of people publicly diagnosing Trump as if everyone's sort of a doctor, right? Oh, he's mentally ill. He's I don't know.

You know, I do know that the posts and the responses are a bit unhinged. So I think when people start saying things like, oh, we got to deal with the 25th Amendment now, that's not productive, right? There is going to be no 25th Amendment that is going to action that the Cabinet is going to be no 25th Amendment action that the cabinet is going to take to remove Donald Trump. Right.

The 25th Amendment was basically enacted to deal with a president who's comatose. OK, it's not going to apply. But that doesn't mean you can't talk about what he's saying and how unhinged it seems. The remedy is not 25th Amendment. The remedy is Congress, right? Congress is supposed to be the one in a system of checks and balances saying you can or can't

do this. And in the worst case is impeachment. But at the very least, you would think when it comes to Iran, based on what we've seen, that Congress would be able to pass some sort of legislation to say,

you gotta go through us first. It can't just be the president who's doing it. And it seems up to this point, Congress can't even do that.

Yeah. Vinny, if I was Donald Trump, and I'm very thankful I'm not, I'm sure he is too, but if I was, the sheer volume of people that have been broadly pretty supportive of me, particularly second time around, that are now turning on him, and it's not just conservatives, you've got the Tuckers and the Megyn Kellys and the Candace Owens Alex Jones. We've also got Joe Rogan Theo von Hugely influential podcasters, you know 70 million people what Trump's interview with Joe Rogan before the election

It probably helped get him over the line with young men You know people like me that I like I say, I've always got a while with Trump I try to always be fair-minded him, criticizing when I don't agree, praising when I do. But the last six weeks just felt like we're on this weird spiraling roller coaster, culminating, I'll be honest,

when I read the thing about, you know, wanting to wipe out an entire civilization, I was really appalled by that. I just thought this is just a brazen statement of intent about potentially committing an act of genocide against the Iranian people. And then you look at the logic of this,

which was his fury was because the Straits of Hormuz weren't being opened. And now today, he is the one trying to actively close them, albeit for reasons that some people think are quite smart, potentially strategically. But none of it makes sense, Vinny. But there's a growing number of people close them, albeit for reasons that some people think are quite smart, potentially, strategically.

But none of it makes sense, Vinny. But there's a growing number of people that were pro-Trump who are now turning on him. And a lot of it is being driven by this whole Iran war and his behavior surrounding him.

I agree, Piers. I was one of those people, 2016, in California, supporting him from day one. You know, I love what he did. He came and mixed up the whole system. I got punched in the head in California for wearing a red hat that wasn't even a

Make America Great Again hat. So I was there with him from the beginning. But, again, a lot of people, Pierce, try to say, no, you guys are all magic. You never change your mind. I'll openly say that what's happening right now is unlike him.

It's almost like he has like an evil force around him. I don't know if it's the Paula White, these evangelical Christians in his ear. But I love what John said, Pierce, about, you know, the sad thing is I'm not surprised about his, I don't agree with it,

these tweets about the Pope and Christianity, and by the way, and I'm pretty sure John knows this, Galatians 6-7 says, God will not be mocked. But I'm not surprised. He said he's not a Christian, Pierce. When he got sworn in, he didn't put his hand on the Bible this time.

He said on Air Force One he's not going to Heaven. I just don't, it's supposed to be America first, Piers. It's supposed to be America number one, okay? And it just seems like there's outside influences, Piers, that are more about them and less about us. And it's a really, really messed up thing because, Piers, look around the corner. Midterms are looking like it's going to be a bloodbath.

And then think about 2028 presidential, who the frontrunner, technically right now, is Marco Rubio. This war does not seem like it's going to end, Piers, any time soon, period. There's no uprising. We drop weapons off to the Kurds. The Kurds took the guns.

The Kurds stole the weapons. There's no uprising. And I know I said at the beginning, Piers, this was told it was for the people. The Iranians, after 47 years, took to the streets and they were like, we need help. Please help us, we are done. And the president and everybody was like, we're coming to help, we're coming to help.

And then all of a sudden enriched uranium became the story again, which I think is nonsense. We took that, we took it out. And the fact that we're supposed to believe intelligence that now their missiles can come here, I don't believe it, and Israel has its thing. By the way, Piers, I'm watching videos of they're going

after Hezbollah right now in Lebanon. They're taking down full apartment complexes for what? For one terrorist? For two terrorists? It's not good, Piers, and I just hope --" I mean, I think we're at the point of no return, Piers. I don't see this thing ending anytime, anytime soon. I think it's going to hurt the Republican Party, not only in the midterms, but for the

presidency as well.

So, Fred Flights, when you hear that from somebody who, you know, was a Trump voter, does that not give you pause for concern? And when you hear the same from so many people that were supportive of Trump, that voted for him in the last election, turning on him so rapidly in such large numbers now, does that not worry you?

I don't think they're turning on him in large numbers, but I wanna add that I'm Catholic, I like Pope Leo, I don't agree with him, he's a little too liberal for me, but I expect popes to advocate for peace and against war, and I would advise the president to keep that in mind.

This is what popes do, it's a good thing. But I just look at what the native secretary general said.

Would you criticize Donald Trump for his attack on the pope?

No, I just don't care about this. What I would focus on is that the native secretary general said the world.

You don't care about the American president launching an unprecedented verbal onslaught against the first American pope.

You don't care?

It's a distraction. It's a distraction.

I just don't care.

As a Catholic, you don't care? I'm a Catholic sitting in London. I care.

Our world is safer because of the US and Israeli action.

Yeah, but Fred, Fred, no disrespect,

but just to repeat, you don't care?

I think it's a distraction. I said, look, I like the Pope, he's a little too liberal for me. I expect him to speak out on war and peace.

That's what Popes do.

But you can still care, don't you? He did enter the political debate, and this is the kind of thing that happens when you

do that. But your spiritual leader is described in the way that Donald Trump described him, and he's the first American Pope.

Your only response is, I don't care?

Look, Trump trolls people. You know that better than anyone else.

Nobody's trolling your spiritual leader. And mine, I care.

What I care about is that Trump is winning this war. The world is safer because an Islamist terrorist state is significantly weaker. And I think this war is gonna wrap up in a couple of weeks. And I think there will be an uprising over the next few months when the bombing stops. Do you want to bet on that?

Yeah, let's do it. I'll come back on your show if that happens. Okay, how much do you want to bet?

50 bucks.

50 bucks. That probably represents your confidence in winning this bet. John Fugel saying, I mean, I look as a Catholic sitting here in London at the moment, I care, I absolutely bloody well care because this was an unprecedented attack and it's the first American Pope. And it's like the very, this is my problem with what Donald Trump

does in these things. It's like when people he doesn't like die, whether it's Colin Powell or John McCain or Rob Ryan or whoever it may be. It's like, my mother always says to me, nothing good to say about someone when they die,

say nothing. Just at least respect life and death, say nothing.

Most men have the game to not do that. But again, we have to remember this man can't stop lying. There is no Jesus based argument for Trump support. There is no gospel teaching or commandment of Jesus that he has fought for on a policy level. You have to throw Jesus out, and if you think this Pope is too liberal, you're going to really hate Jesus when you get to the gospel parts of the

Bible. I mean, this is a man who began his political career off a racist lie that the first black president wasn't one of us. He lied to every American you care and love about during a plague. He had cops beaten for a lie on the Capitol steps and then pardoned all those terrorists after he got in a second time and he launched that campaign off a lie. Another racist lie about Haitian migrants being illegals eating pets. You cannot believe anything he says. And again, you can't believe Netanyahu or the Ayatollahs either. If anything, this shows us that it's not the moderate and liberal religious people causing

all the problems. It is the fundamentalist wings of all the world's great religions, the fundamentalist extreme right, Muslims, Christians, and Jews who are causing the violence, oppressing the women, hating the gays, and turning millions of young people off to the concept of religion.

Dan, I'm just very curious, can I?

Can I just, let me just add something there about Israel, right? Is we've been talking sort of broadly about Israel as if it's a monolith, right? And I think John makes a good point, which is if you look at support for Netanyahu

right now in Israel, it's at about 40%, right? Similar to what Trump has here in the United States. And when we talk about Trump's actions, right, here in the United States, we separate Trump from the United States. And I think we have to do the same thing with Israel.

Have to.

Which is we have to identify Netanyahu as the one who is pursuing this. It doesn't mean Israel this,

Israel that. I totally agree. What I would say to that, I completely agree. I've become increasingly critical of the Israeli government because I believe there are some absolute right wing headbangers on that government. Ben-Gavir Smodrich, you know, the spectacular Ben-Gavir last week, cracking champagne open in the Knesset and wearing noose lapel badges because he just celebrated a law which will only execute Palestinians if they determine a terrorist

but not Israelis. I thought it was one of the most revolting things I've seen. So I think that you can criticize the Israeli government without, as some are always keen to do, being branded anti-Semitic. It's got nothing to do with the country actually or nothing to do with the people, and certainly nothing to do with Jewish people. But, and it's a big but, I think I'm right in saying

that although the polling on Netanyahu is at that level, the polling on Israeli support within Israel for the war is very high, very high. So Netanyahu knows that, and he also knows the longer he can keep the sort of war part of his reign,

I use that word deliberately, going, the longer he avoids a criminal corruption trial.

Yep. Right. I think that's true. All of that is true. And I will just add one other piece here, which is this sense, and this goes back to the New York Times article, et cetera,

this idea that, oh, Trump got convinced into this and his team was, I mean, again, we treat, we talk about it as if Trump is like a child, right? It's like, oh, well, you know, he got convinced by Netanyahu and Netanyahu snookered him. It's like, what other president would we talk about this way. This is a decision that Donald Trump made, blaming it all on Netanyahu. Netanyahu this and Israel that. Yes. Is there is that a piece of it? Sure. But in the end, this is Donald Trump's decision. He's now owning it. He's the one telling us it wasn't Netanyahu who convinced him.

He's the one telling us it was his decision. So I just think it's a deflection for people who say, oh, well, you know, Netanyahu or Israel or this convinced Trump of this or that. He, you know, he made this decision and now he's got to live with it.

Well, talking of deflection, just very quickly, hang on, Vinny, I will give you one more, but Dan, just very quickly, I'm about to interview somebody who was an advisor to Melania Trump. She suddenly popped up out of nowhere last week to make this, again, unprecedented statement about Jeffrey Epstein.

Let's take a look.

I am not Epstein's victim. Epstein did not introduce me to Donald Trump. I met my husband by chance at the New York City party in 1998. This initial encounter with my husband is documented in a detail in my book Melania.

Dan, very quickly, before I talk to Mark Beckman, who is a current advisor to Melania Trump, what was your take on that? Why do you think she did that?

You have to believe she did that because there's some upcoming story. I mean, because if there isn't, it makes no sense, right? I mean, if she literally just got up and decided, you know what, I'm now getting tired of this and resurrects the Epstein story, it doesn't make any sense.

The only thing you can think that I can think of is her office was getting calls about some bigger story that's being done about her contact with Glenn Maxwell and with Jeffrey Epstein, and she decided to get ahead of the story

because otherwise it's inexplicable.

Yeah, final word to you, Vinny, very quickly, because I know you wanted to say something.

Yeah, just really quick. I mean, we're not blaming Israel for everything, but if you can't admit that this all started because Israel was going so, Marco Rubio said, we have to go. Miriam Adelson is a huge, huge Israeli sponsor.

She gave him $100 million. And name one leader from another country that has visited the White House seven times in one year. And when it comes to Congress, he has 100.

I'm sorry.

He's not doing that.

He's not blaming the Jews. No, no, no.

He is not.

I'm not saying, don't play that game, please. Yeah, it's the Jews game. You actually, you know what? It's like blaming all Christians for the KKK.

He's not blaming Jews.

Unfortunately, when somebody, Fred, all due respect, Fred, but when you say blame the Jews, at no stage has anybody blamed the Jews, right? We have specifically just made it clear that we are criticizing the Israeli government. By the way, hold on. So you mean to tell me if somebody gives you $100 million, you're not going to lean to what they want?

Are you crazy? And by the way, I'm a semi-Pirs. I'm Assyrian. So don't play this whole anti-Semite. That argument is done and people have woken up to it. Don't play that game with me, please. Don't go down that road.

It's undeniable the influence. But again, the blame the whoever, right? Come on. Blame Miriam Adelson. Whatever Miriam Adelson is, is nonsense. This idea that, oh, she's the real reason, right?

And I think that's sort of the point that Fred is making, putting aside whether you blame the Jews, not to blame, the reality of blaming this Miriam Adelson or these pro-Israel supporters who have access to Trump, again,

the idea that it's their fault.

Yeah, no, I agree. I agree. If you're the president, if you are the most powerful commander in chief in the world and the most powerful world leader, ultimately, and you go to war, the buck stops with you. It is certainly true from what Rubio initially said and from the New York Times piece that

Trump was put under an enormous amount of pressure by Netanyahu and the Israeli government because they painted a picture of a sequence of events that simply hasn't materialized. But ultimately, you're quite right, Dan. If you're the president of the United States, it's on you. It's on you where you take American military. I've got to leave it there.

A fascinating debate.

Thank you all very much.

Thank you.

Thank you, Piers.

Well, thanks to my panel. Turning now to the first lady, Madonna Trump's surprise statement on Friday, addressing rumors online about her links to Jeffrey Epstein. The president said he didn't know she was gonna do it. Well, joining me now is Mark Beckman. He's a senior advisor to the First Lady.

Mark, thank you very much indeed for joining me.

Good to see you, Piers.

Thank you for having me.

So I've known Melania a long time. I've got a lot of time for Melania. Also, she conducted herself extremely well as the first lady. I was bemused and very surprised when she suddenly did this. Were you or did you know it was all gonna happen exactly how it happened? And can you answer the big multi-million dollar question,

which is why?

Well, the first lady accomplished two things, two important things last week. She cleared her record, right? Her record is impeccable, and she let the world know it. And second, she became a champion for the victims, for these women. Your question regarding whether or not this was organized and planned, the First Lady

is not an impetuous person. Everything she does is with deep thinking, strategy, it's very thoughtful. She takes the time to plan everything out and of course, like everything she does, this moment in time was planned as well.

There's been a lot of fallout from this, a lot of reaction obviously. Juliette Bryant was a South African woman who's publicly identified herself as a survivor of sexual abuse and trafficking by Epstein and she posted this video.

Hello Melania Trump, my name is Juliet Bryant, I'm an Epstein survivor. You want Gauls to testify under oath. Well here I am testifying that everything I've said is true. Unfortunately a lot of the Gauls who testified died. Maybe it's about time that you and your husband testified too.

What's your response to that?

Well, first, if you listen to the words of the First Lady's speech, you'll be aware, like everybody else, that the First Lady came out and said, let's give these individuals the opportunity to speak on the congressional record. Since this issue has been so politicized, let's give these individuals the opportunity to speak on the congressional record. Since this issue has been so politicized, let's give them that forum. It has not happened. This has not happened yet.

So that's the first part of it. The second piece of it is naturally, since the first lady just came out publicly and put up a statement out surrounding her position regarding Jeffrey Epstein, I'm sure she would go ahead and defend herself again if she needs to. She does it over and over again. She's equipped herself with lawyers, as you're aware, so that when people lie about her,

she will sue. And she's done so successfully against different entities and individuals, big entities like HarperCollins UK, the Daily Mail, the Daily Beast, James Carville. And I think in this instance, she would stand up for herself again and again

if she needs to.

People were a bit incredulous that Donald Trump said he didn't know anything about her plan to do this. Is that actually true?

Well, look, I have a tremendous amount of respect for President Trump and I'll be the first to tell you that he could speak on his own. I am certainly not going to speak on behalf of the president.

And in response to the direct suggestion that many have made that the first thing he was getting ahead of something that was going to come out, a big story, a big revelation, whatever. What can you say about that?

Piers, sometimes things just are what they are. We've seen over and over the media manipulating things, coming at her, social media attacking her for no reason. She's a woman that is committed to working hard for American children and children all over the world. She's passed legislation.

She's built out an executive order. She had almost 50 nations. It was record-breaking. 50 nations visit her at the White House just two weeks ago. It's the first time in history this happened. It's time for people to pay attention

to her accomplishments and her achievements. And that's it. It's this, just take it at face value. to pay attention to her accomplishments and her achievements and that's it. Just take it at face value. She went on the record, defended herself, and that's it. She deserves the respect.

She works hard for the American people. She works hard for children all over the world. In fact, Piers, this week on Wednesday, she'll be back at the Hill working for her second piece of legislation since 47 started. And again, in this instance, it's for her work that she builds surrounding foster care individuals

here in America. Take it at face value.

It is what it is.

In her statement, she referenced a friendly email exchange she'd had in 2002 with Epstein's now jailed associate, Gillian Maxwell. She signed off a note, love, Melania. Maxwell responded, calling her sweet pea. The first lady said that her reply

was just a casual correspondence, merely a trivial note. Again, people have said, well, it sounds a bit more than that. If you're signing it, love Melania, and she's being called sweet pea in response, it suggests a closer relationship.

What would you say to those that are skeptical?

It was my understanding that that was her nickname. People called her that regularly. But Piers, you said a little while ago that you've known her and the President for 20 years. You know she's very polite. She interacts on a very personal level. I remember that not too long ago she reached out to you to make sure that you were okay as it related to your terrible injury. Like, she's just a polite person and she respects if a person reaches out to her she reacts,

she responds.

Mark, thank you very much indeed for joining me, I appreciate it.

Thank you so much.

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