This is so f*cking dishonest..

Good afternoon, I'm Rachel Maddow. It is 1pm Eastern Time and you are joining MSNOW's ongoing coverage of the United States having apparently started a war with Iran for some reason. For some reason. Don't you love this? sitting at home watching me right now your personal guess is as good as any as to why the president of the united states has just started this war

all my god

uh... in terms of pure rational deduction about what he is doing here yeah Wow. Wow.

In terms of pure rational deduction about what he is doing here. Yeah. We can basically rule out.

Is she retarded? Yes.

All of the reasons he has said he's doing it. OK, why is Iran on the precipice of having ballistic missiles that can reach the United States? Absolutely not.

How do you know that? Number one, number two, even if it doesn't reach the United States? Absolutely not. How do you know that? Number one. Number two, even if it doesn't reach the United States, they could still be a dangerous for other interests in the area. This is a stupid point she's making. I don't know why you would even say this. United States is very

far from Iran. So it's farther away. OK. One might even say it's a whole continent away. Wow. Which means a ballistic missile launched from Iran to hit us here would have to be an intercontinental ballistic missile. Does Iran have ICBMs? Does Iran have intercontinental ballistic missiles? No it does not.

Not yet.

If they did, what do you think they'd do?

There is no known evidence or even serious allegation that Iran is anywhere near developing that technology anytime soon. Even Trump's Secretary of State Marco Rubio has recently admitted that, admitting that the threat is only that maybe quote one day Iran might have that kind of capability. Exactly and that's

why you got to stop it right now. That way it's not even close. Stomp it out right now.

One day? Just like you or I might one day learn to fly? Or to time travel?

You really think that time traveling and flying is as reasonable as Iran being able to get a ballistic missile? God damn, this is embarrassing. Is Iran a weak- Is this really what these people think?

Away from industrial grade uranium enrichment as the president's diminutive real estate friend Steve Whitkoff asserted this week when he was-

Diminutive real estate friend, this is like another statement made to like delegitimize the statement. Even though the actual IAEA, that's the International Atomic, I don't know, Environmental Agency or something like that, right? I don't remember exactly. But like they even said that Iran, so like in order to have uranium enriched to, you know, be useful for any sort of like power, it's at like 3 to 15 percent or something like that.

And they detected Iranian enrichment at 60 percent. So you think about 3 percent, oh is it 3 to 5? Maybe I added a number, right? It's like 3 to 5 percent and then they detected it at 60 percent.

So this is, again, this is another thing that's like literally not even true. Asked about the Iran talks. He is inexplicably part of on behalf of the United States government and the people of the United States, despite his only relevant experience and training being that he is an old real estate friend of President Donald Trump.

This is all more more personal attacks and delegitimization. There's no actual thinking or argumentation that's happening here. 60 to 90 is super easy to do. 90 is for a nuke. Well, and it's also that you can probably make a nuclear weapon below 90, but it might just have, it's basically a dirty bomb.

That and that was the main concern that they had too.

Is Iran, as Steve Whitcoff says, a week away from achieving industrial-grade uranium enrichment for their nuclear program?

I'm sure you know this answer better than he does. Why don't you tell us?

No, they are not.

Okay, well, thank God. Now we have this random person telling us that they're not. Okay, good.

No, they are not. Not only has there been no American or international

evidence or intelligence made public. That's not even true, by the way. As I said, the IAEA already detected that they were enriching uranium way past that. That suggests even that they are

doing that. But even the Trump administration says explicitly that that is not happening. Marco Rubio on Wednesday at a press conference in St. Kitts and Nevis told reporters, quote, they are not enriching right now.

Guys, guys, they're not doing it at this very moment. That means it's probably not going to happen.

So why is this happening? Have we just started-

And also, like, has it ever occurred to you that one of the reasons why they're not enriching is because we blew up their facility? Duh. A war with Iran because they have got some advanced nuclear- And we've also gone and killed their scientists too and Israel has mainly done that. A program that's

rushing toward a bomb? Ask President Donald Trump who insists that the last time he ordered the bombing of Iran in June that quote totally obliterated their nuclear program. Yes. It's hard to say that anything totally obliterated, gone, pulverized, erased from the earth, might now suddenly be back again. And so therefore a war must urgently start today. That's just, is this just

embarrassing? It really is. It's an embarrassing line of argumentation and it's sad to see that this is what, you know, passes for like mainstream media nowadays. It's the idea that, do you remember like whenever we nuke Japan and now Japan is this massive sprawling huge economic powerhouse? And it's one of the most profitable and prosperous countries in the world. It's so embarrassing to see somebody talk like this It really is. So what are we doing here? It's mainstream propaganda. It's not that they're about to get us with mainstream

ballistic missiles. It's not that they are enriching uranium to such a degree that it is dangerous and we

must stop that.

That's already been discussed.

It's not that their nuclear program, which Trump says he obliterated, has somehow unobliterated itself and is now a pressing danger.

Again, why do you think that? How many times have we, like all you need to do is you can do a Very simple Google search or an AI search for the amount of times that America and Israel have taken decisive action either with cyber attacks Obviously bombings or killing scientists in the Iranian nuclear program and this has happened over 20 times so like this entire concept that they're not going to stop doing it is reinforced by every single other time that we tried to stop them and they kept doing it.

Did we just go to war with Iran? The president has said a couple of times in recent days that he just wants the Iranian

government to say the words that they are not- Why do the leftists never talk about the protesters that are killed? Because they're ideologically captured?

Pursuing a nuclear bomb, suggesting that if they would just say that, that would be enough to stop the United States from starting a war with them. Well, the Iranian government, actually, over and over again, keeps saying that they are not developing a nuclear bomb. They will say it- But they said they're not developing a nuclear bomb they will say it.

But they said they're not building the bomb wait well yeah I know they're enriching uranium and they say they want to kill us and everything and they're trying to hire new scientists and they're buying new centrifuges but no they said they're not going to make the bomb oh my god.

Whenever you like they say it whenever they are asked so that does not- Isn't it scary that these people can vote? It's such a huge problem. Not appear to be the reason either. Jesus. So why do you think President Donald Trump has just done this? Why do you think he has just started a war with Iran? Is it because his heart bleeds empathetically on a human level for the protesters in Iran who have been killed by their own government in such huge numbers in January and February of this year?

No, it's not just January and February. It's been dialed up in January and February. If you go against the Iranian government, if you leave Islam, if you do 50 other things, they also kill you and they've been doing that all the time. There's like the normal amount of their citizens that are killing and this is an elevated number of citizens that are killing. They usually don't kill this many of their citizens at the same time.

Because Donald Trump really feels for the Iranian people. Is it because his

heart throbs with a passionate support? She's obviously being facetious here to make Donald Trump look like a bad guy that he doesn't actually care about the Iranians. It's obviously what he's

what she's doing. For the right of free speech and the right of people everywhere to protest against their own government and not face violence because of it.

Is that what you think?

If so, good morning. I hope you have slept well for this past decade in which you've been dead to the world. But I mean...

He's stupid, he has no idea, right?

Suspend disbelief for a moment. Just suppose that the reason the United States of America has just started this war with Iran is because as the president said today in his weird pre-recorded video message in a baseball hat and a suit jacket that the White House released at 2 30 in the morning, the president...

Well yeah they released it at 2 30 in the morning because that's whenever the strikes happened.

Like, duh. Like, this is the kind- like, this is what these people do. They're so dishonest, it's unbelievable

how just blatantly and plainly dishonest they are.

because that's when the strikes happened.

Duh.

He pre-recorded it because he was in the Situation Room running the fucking operation when the strikes happened. Duh. He pre-recorded it because he was in the situation room running the fucking operation when the strikes happened. Like, how do you even... this is... oh my god.

How can you be this dishonest and this stupid? It said in that stilted strange statement squinting at the camera with his eyes shaded by the gigantic white hat he was wearing.

This is, again, more, more, this is like theater kid alliteration in order to make a point that's not real, that's going to make a bunch of the stupid people that watch this show try to think, oh yeah, that's so true.

He said that he's doing this.

It's so pathetic pathetic isn't it? This because he wants the

people of Iran to rise up and overthrow their despotic government. Which is good. At his

instruction. Yes which is good. At his, oh wait a second, at his instruction. No this is something that they were trying to do and the reason why they're trying to do this as you mentioned earlier is the fact that they were getting killed by the government. They were trying to do this for months and they were getting massacred. That's why Iran turned off the internet, is so they could massacre and genocide their own people

for speaking out against them. And maybe, maybe they will. What a disgusting thing to say. Maybe they will try. But Iran is a huge complex country. It is a big country. 92 million people. That is more than triple the population of Iraq or Afghanistan when we started our disastrous regime change wars in those two countries two decades ago. Iran has considerable regular military forces, but it also has a huge revolutionary guard force, which has effectively its own army, its own navy, its own intelligence service, its own special forces.

It also plays a huge role in the massive, suffocating, brutal domestic security services that are happy to terrorize the Iranian people in the best of times and to massacre the Iranian people in the worst of times, which they have done in the last eight weeks. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps has massive economic interests.

They have a huge hold on multiple sectors of the Iranian economy.

Yeah that's the problem.

And to state the obvious, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps is not the kind of force that's the problem and to state the obvious the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps is not the kind of force that's gonna go poof if I

don't uh yeah they are if you drop a bomb on this area they go poof that's how it works you do that five or six times the rest of them are gonna run away what do you mean? This is the same kind of person that says you can't just go poof and get Maduro. Yeah you can. Of course

you can. Donald Trump airstrike manages to kill Iran's supreme leader. If they do kill the supreme leader which appears maybe to be what they tried to do earlier today, then what will happen? I mean, this isn't Venezuela. There's no vice Ayatollah who's going to step in and take over the top job, except she'll take calls from Marco Rubio. What will happen then?

I love how they say this, what's going to happen, even though what's going to happen was very readily outlined and defined multiple times. They've already said what's going to happen 50 times.

You didn't listen.

If you voted for Donald Trump for president because you believed the hype that he was America first, that he was against foreign wars, that he was definitely against regime change wars in foreign country. Well, again, good morning, I hope you slept well. But the president in this case says explicitly that this is a war we are waging for regime change.

Good. Good.

And the existing leader, Khamenei, who has been in place since 1989,

Yes.

there is no other person of that stature to just pop in place? Uh yeah actually there is. Khomeini's uh so this is another thing that that's uh this is another just thing that's just simply not true. Basically Khomeini has and the Iranian government has a support level that is even lower than Maduro's inside of and in this it's very hard to measure this because it's a country that's oppressive that kills you if you disagree with them but if you look at independent

polling you'll see that the percentage of people that support the Iranian government is about 15 to 20 percent of people right it's a very very low percentage of people and if you compare that to the support for Raza Pahlavi, which is the crown prince, the son of the Shah that was exiled, his support by the Iranian people is at about 30 or maybe 35%. That's the last time that I checked.

So not only is that not true, but I don't even know if he's the second most popular. It's just not even true. How do you go on mainstream media and say this? You don't even know what you're talking about.

And say, okay, it's done? We've made that change?

And also keep in mind, the 30 to 35 percent is the floor and the 10 to 15 percent is the ceiling because everybody that didn't probably report that they don't like the government that actually sorry if you're reporting that you like the government and that you you don't like it or whatever you're doing that because you're afraid of being killed for saying that you don't like the government versus all the people that are saying they support the crown prince, every single person that says that is threatened with death if they say that.

So logically, that is an underrepresented group, and logically the people that support the Iran government is an overrepresented group based off of the exterior and external sources and and influences

It's just logical. It's common sense

And so if you really did want the Iranian people themselves To rise up in some kind of popular uprising and totally change their form of government If you wanted if you want a beleaguered and oppressed Iranian people to organize very quickly into a new populist political force to rise up against, among other things, the security services.

It's calling it a populist political force is another, it's more verbal sleight of hand because they always call Trump a populist and what they're doing is they're trying to create a verbal continuity and consistency behind the Iranian protests and Trump and basically giving a implicit ownership of Trump of the Iranian protests by using the same vocabulary to describe both of them. There that have been massacring them by the thousands this month and last. It's so manipulative? Yeah, that's just who these people are. They're just-

and the thing is that there's a lot of people that watch this that aren't discerning and they don't see that, but for some reason, uh, you know, they just- it- it makes me very mad because I view this as very low-level manipulation. This is low-level manipulation and I think that Americans deserve better propaganda. This is honestly pathetic

Wanted that to happen You probably could have taken some steps To help that happening. Yes to make sure they can organize and can communicate he has and

So is Elon Musk? Are you gonna are you gonna give a shout out to Elon Musk for giving Starlink to Iran for free? Oh, let me guess. You're not. You're probably not gonna mention that at all. Because you don't actually care about the Iranians that are getting massacred. You just care about something that makes Donald Trump look bad. Or something that makes Elon Musk look bad. If 50,000 Iranians die it doesn't mean anything to them. Starlink did absolutely nothing by the way, but they tried.

Right? Maybe you would have turned the internet back on. And when you, Donald Trump, in your baseball hat proclaimed on that weird taped message today that the Iranian police and the security forces and the Revolutionary Guard must surrender, they must lay down their weapons as Donald Trump said this morning at 2.30. This is what we saw this morning. If that was what you wanted to happen because you wanted the domestic security situation to become less dangerous for

the Iranian people to rise up and overthrow their government. If you actually wanted to make that happen instead of just saying it, you as the US government, maybe you as the US government in coalition with other allies that you might have bothered to bring on board, you might have given the Iranian police...

We did bring on allies. That's why Saudi Arabia and all these other countries immediately took our side.

And Revolutionary Guard and security services some instructions on how to surrender and yeah this is what I said earlier put your

hands up and walk away from the gun so like what do you mean you have to give them instructions on how to surrender what do you think they don't know how to surrender oh my god lay

down their weapons some path to do that, which Trump did not.

He actually, by the way, by killing their military leadership, he did give them that because now they don't have that central state of command. And so it's easier for them to mutiny and step away from the government because they don't have that consolidated power structure. If you cut off the head of the snake, it's easier for the different groups of those people to fracture off and then not follow orders because you've disconnected the chain of command. It's just, this is not even true. As I say, you might

have taken steps to turn the internet back on in Iran. So the people there, the people, the Iranian people could reach each other and the world, and so the world could reach them too. If you actually wanted the Iranian people—

I'm assuming doing, by the way, doing that would probably require a boots on the ground operation. And so like this is the issue, is like these people create a catch-22. They say, well, you need to go turn the internet back on, but you also can't have boots on the ground. Okay, well then it's a lose-lose.

Either I'm right, or sorry, either you're right or I'm wrong. It's just retarded.

To have a chance, rising up against the regime that has oppressed them for so many decades. You might not have gutted the crucial Farsi language Voice of America communications platform and put it in the hands

of a soft focus election denier local news anchor who is Farsi focused election this is again it's another misunderstanding intentional it says something that's nothing literally nothing to do with it to gut staff of Voice of America U.S. funded organizations again maybe it was being misrun for another reason most famous for proclaiming the fraudulence of American elections.

Yes.

If this is a regime change war, as Trump says-

It is. It literally is.

He says it.

Everybody says it.

We all know this. Because Trump is seriously hoping the Iranian people will complete the job for him.

Yeah, that's correct. They've asked him to do this. I think it's important that she's not adding in this context. They're painting Trump's name on the walls. They're begging Trump to come and help them. Yeah, that's the whole point. Duh.

It is worth knowing that there has been no serious or even unserious effort by the United States to make it possible, let alone plausible, for any uprising by the Iranian people to succeed.

What if I told you that bombing them... what if I... wait a minute. So you're making... okay, so let me get this straight. So you're making this video because america is bombing the leadership and destroying iran's military capabilities and decapitating their military leadership so you know the military is totally disjointed and it's not organized anymore and now you're complaining that they're not helping the iranian people

if they weren't helping the iran people, you wouldn't be making this video. This is so sad.

And so why did Donald Trump just start this war? Why is this happening? Cui bono? Who benefits? It's always useful to start that question in any country. Yeah. Who benefits? Who wants Iran bombed off the map and for their own reasons?

Pretty much everybody except for Iran. Yeah, pretty much everybody.

Who are Iran's rivals and enemies. Perennially, it's the Gulf Arab states. Countries like Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates and Qatar. You know, Qatar. The country that just gave Donald Trump a really, really nice 400 million dollar plane.

Really a gilded flying palace. Great. Great. Maybe we can finally move past this Middle Eastern war thing. Maybe we can finally move past this Middle Eastern war thing. Maybe we can finally stop having these endless wars in the Middle East where we're killing people over there. Finally, maybe we can stop this rather than continuing. And this is the problem that American media has like this, is that they act like they're

anti-war, but they are unable to ever move past the previous grudges. Like, yeah, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, everything, we've had problems and conflicts with these people. When is it going to end? Well, maybe it already did.

And for some reason, they're not happy about that. And also, by the way, this was gifted to the United States government, not to Donald Trump personally. So this is also another misrepresentation again.

For his own use, both during the presidency, during his presidency and after Trump plans to take that plane with him and keep using it after he leaves office, if he ever leaves office.

He never said that he did that. He never said that at all. And the basis on that is a total total, what's the word for it? It is a extrapolation.

And you remember the United Arab Emirates, famous for recently structuring a totally pointless crypto financial transaction so that $2 billion of it would be stuffed into the Trump family's otherwise worthless brand-new crypto financial firm. And of course you remember the Saudis, who stuffed another $2 billion into the pockets of Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, just as Trump's first term in office came to a

close. You might remember enough people were alarmed about that when it happened, that the Trump folks actually sort of bothered to come up with an excuse for what made that okay. They said, don't worry, Jared will never again work for the US government.

He's never coming back to Washington. So it's okay that he's taken all this money

from the Saudis now. We will never have to worry- Yeah, we do a lot of business in the Middle East, that's obvious. Anybody who does international business is probably doing business in the Middle East. Yeah, I mean, this is just what happens. This has nothing to do with Iran.

About having somebody involved in US policy who has also just been given billions of dollars by Saudi Arabia, apparently for no reason. Well, that was the explanation.

And by the way, none of this is actually an argument against attacking Iran. I want you guys to understand this. Like, what she's doing here is she's creating a personal insinuation that Trump is corrupt. He got bribed by Saudi Arabia to bomb Iran. And that's the reason why he's doing this. This actually has nothing to do on whether you're not at any point in this video she has not made a case for

why it is a good or a bad idea to bomb Iran. If anything she's only made a case that it's a good idea talking about the protesters that they killed and so the only thing that she's hanging on to are Trump implications that are like personal attacks that then she hopes that the audience will extrapolate into it being a bad faith policy decision. That's what she's doing. She took all that money from the Saudis at the end of Trump's first term

and now today who has been leading the negotiations on behalf of the United States

government with Iran before we just started this war with them today?

Jared Kushner?

I mean, Secretary of State Marco Rubio was in St. Kitts this week. It wasn't him.

Yeah.

No, it was Jared Kushner.

Yes.

The president's son-in-law. Recently paid billions of dollars by Iran's chief rival, and nevertheless sitting there alongside Trump's tiny real estate friend, Steve Whitkoff, who has sought recently to improve his considerable family fortunes by going to Qatar to seek money from its sovereign wealth fund.

Yeah. This has nothing to do with whether it's a good idea to attack Iran or not. This is more personal implications and creating a link that could or could not be there. Even if they get, like, even if all these things are true, this is where I find to be funny about this, is that even if all these things are true, and there's no way you can prove or disprove this one way or another, it's impossible. But the one thing that is certain is that this has nothing to do on to whether Iran is a good target to attack or not. That's it.

Weird that those talks didn't work, right? Nothing to do with it. Weird that those talks didn't work, right? It's like if you were having a backyard dispute with your neighbor, you know, hey, your new fence crosses over on the property line, comes over into my yard. That tree you just cut down, that hedge you just cut down, hey, that was mine. You're having a neighborly dispute with your neighbor on your block. And the cops break down your door with a

battering ram, they arrest you and your whole family, they ransack your house and then they light it a fire and bulldoze it and they tell your neighbor, hey it's all done, you can take his whole backyard and you can take his house now too. And as you're trying to figure out why this has just happened you come to learn that your neighbor has been paying massive bribes to the police in your town oh that's what's going on now she's just coming

out and saying that instead of the implication now she's acting on this as if the implication is accurate and and she not not once has she mentioned at all that the Iranian people have asked Trump to intervene she has not talked about that at all she hasn't put any coverage at all about the Iranian people thanking Trump for intervening. Nothing about this at all.

It's about an implication. I mean, there's a lot of attention on Israel and indeed Israel and the United States have worked together in the bombing campaign. Not only the one that started today but the campaign against Iran in June.

But it is the Gulf Arab states who are arrayed against Iran, who want Iran removed as their regional rival. Good, yeah, I think that they should. Iran funds terrorism that fucks up all their stuff and it fucks up our stuff because we buy their stuff And it's just fucking up their stuff and then we're buying their stuff that it makes it cost more money Jesus Christ, what a stupid bitch. I can't believe anybody takes this seriously It's really shocking to see this because like the reason why I wanted to cover that and talk about it is to just show you Guys how just blatantly dishonest and in a lot of these cases, just flat out wrong these people are. They're saying things that are just factually untrue.

It's like this is not even- it's not even something that happened. They're just making up these things the entire time. It's fake news, exactly. It's total fake fucking news. You have to be dumb to take it seriously, exactly. And so that's why I want to call it out, is that people like her are just absolute fucking retards. And I actually don't think that she's stupid, I think that she's just

lying. She is engaging in absolute pinnacle dishonesty. She is lying through implication, she's lying directly, and she's also lying in, uh, you know, just basically the way that she's representing the facts and also selectively omitting other facts. Things like, for example, the Iranian people asking for Trump to do this. Things for example, that there are plenty of other countries in Europe that also don't want Iran to have nuclear weapons.

Like there's a million other examples. Oh, them funding terrorism. Did she even mention the fact that Iran funds terrorism? No, she didn't as far as I remember and I wonder why it's because she's trying to create a narrative and that narrative the focus around that narrative is not around what's best for the American people.

It's not around what's best for the Iranian people. It's around what's worst for Donald Trump and that's the entire focus. It's not about whether this is a good decision or not. She never made a single argument about whether this is actually beneficial for us one way or another. It's just creating implications and assumptions based off of that and then selective reporting data and then also assumptions based off of that and then selective reporting data and then also

misrepresenting it. That's what happens.