Trump is TERRIFIED and he will CHICKEN OUT soon

Is Donald Trump running an illegal war in Iran? What is the actual law? Did Israel bait, goad or trick Trump into going to war with Iran? What is happening behind the scenes in the sense of are there any things that Democratic senators can do to try to restrain Trump's power here and how higher gas price is going to go. I spoke to Democratic Senator Mark Warner about all of that and much more.

Now we will be speaking with Senator Mark Warner representing the state of Virginia. Senator really appreciate the opportunity to speak with you. We're in the middle of a number of calamities, one being what appears to be Schrodinger's war. It is and it is not a war. It is over, but it is also just ramping up depending on whether you listen to the president or to the secretary of defense. Can you tell me just a little bit about what you and your colleagues kind of believe deep down about how

long this is all going to last? Well, David, first of all, thank you for having me on. I appreciate what you do to get help get the word out. Let's start with the fact that this is a war of choice. I'm I'm a ranking member on the Intelligence Committee. I'm a member of the Gang of Eight. If there was any imminent threat to America from Iran, I would know it. There was not. And there was not even an imminent threat to Israel over the longer term, the rise of Iranian ballistic missiles. But this was, didn't have to happen at this moment in time, particularly when there was still some option around diplomacy. That would be the

first part. So the president, because the Israelis were going to move, decided to go ahead and attack first with the Israelis. And what's been remarkable is that he can't seem to get a story straight on what the goals of this war is. And I know at first they tried to deny it was a war. He uses the term war all the time himself, but it was originally gonna be regime change. Right.

Well, that's obviously not gonna happen since the Iranians have picked a new supreme leader who is more conservative than the former supreme leader. And the new guy who was the son of the Supreme Leader, the Americans have killed his father, his wife, and his child. So not a lot of opportunity there. Then the goal was to try to get rid of the Iranian nuclear capabilities, which the President claimed had been obliterated last June.

There was talk and acknowledgement if they were really going to go after the enriched uranium, it would take troops on the ground. That seems to be kind of not on the table right now. So the ability to really destroy Iran's nuclear capabilities is not going to happen. And then on the ballistic missiles, there have been some of those taken out, but they still have, I can't get into the numbers or details, but they still have a lot of capability there. And then they added a fourth criteria recently about getting rid of the Iranian Navy. And while many of the major naval ships that

Iran had, have been sent, some, they've still got lots of these small boats that could really wreak havoc in the Straits of Hormuz where all of the oil goes through. So on all four of those goals, I don't think we're anywhere close to achieving the president's objectives. So we don't know how long this is going to last. I will point out that on Monday afternoon, because I think the president got spooked with the markets going down. It looked to me like he was almost manipulating the markets by going out and saying, hey, we're almost done here. Markets recovered. And then once the markets recovered, he said, you know, he kind of went back to,

no, we've still got more to go. And even today they're saying, you know, Hegsef has said this is gonna be the most mighty attack day yet of the conflict. And I would just point out as well, you know, Iran still has some cards to play. You know, they've really not called on their proxies, the Houthis to attack yet. They've not called on the Shia militia groups

in Iraq to attack. So we are, you know, you know, you know, I don't award with at this point no dependable end unless the president gets so spooked by the gas prices that he just declares, you know, unconditional victory. And if that were the case, I almost feel like Iran might come out stronger than it went into this conflict.

Well, that's a very interesting point, because I do think there are now reports that people around Donald Trump are saying, you've got to figure out an off ramp here. There was a report that Friday Susie Wiles was literally running around the white house screaming about gas prices and they're trying to figure out what to do. It wouldn't surprise me that Trump gets so spooked that he does declare unconditional victory.

I just don't know as you're pointing out that this is necessarily Trump's escalation to end at this point because there is talk of Iran being able to tolerate, you know, Iran is a poorer and less resource country than the United States, but they have a sizable military and they have the ability if they so choose to tolerate a war of attrition to continue making life very difficult for the United States. There's talk of sleeper cells, which Donald Trump was asked about recently. And he said, we're looking into that, which to me suggests he doesn't really know anything

about it, but it is an area of concern. I don't know that it's even Trump's place now to decide when this is really over because the Iranians also have a say in that.

Absolutely. And, you know, again, this is where the lack of pre-planning has been astonishing to me. You know, if we kind of, since this was a war of choice and we knew when the Israelis were going, so we were going, why we didn't do a better job of getting our personnel out of the region, not only at diplomatic and, you know, intel agencies, but just the American tourists who were transiting through the region, you know, we're behind most of the European countries

in getting our nationals out. That's gotten a little bit better, but boy, people were, I got an awful lot of calls from pretty scared Virginians for a number of days about how do we get out of this war zone. Obviously, we didn't pre-wire this with most of our European allies. And then, when they

started asking questions, you know, the President has struck out about against the UK, for example, because the UK was actually trying to follow their own laws that they couldn't participate until there was a, you know, some strike against them. They have participated now since there was a strike against Cyprus. There seems to be a lack of understanding amongst those allies. You know, the Gulf allies, I think it depends upon the country, but many of them are in a vulnerable position right now. And you did raise the issue of whether we call sleeper cells or cyber attacks. Iran's got a pretty capable cyber capability.

And whether there are quote unquote, sleeper cells I don't want to get into, but you could see Iranian inspired individuals in America saying, all right, we're going to take action on our own. And unfortunately, this administration, particularly with Kash Patel and FBI, has degraded and

gotten rid of so many of the senior people around counterterrorism, counterespionage. I don't think anybody who's an expert in this field would say on those fields that we are safer now than we were, say, a year ago.

I'm generally pretty skeptical of claims that the Trump administration has done a to distract from B or B to distract from C partially because I just don't think that they're that capable and well coordinated. But it is true that since the start of this Iran war, the number of Google searches related to the Epstein files have dropped dramatically. And so I'm not suggesting that this was a proactive campaign, but it does seem to be the case that a lot of attention has kind of gone away from that topic. What's your sense of where that issue stands right now? We still haven't gotten the

full unredacted files, et cetera. I still do not understand why these files are still dribbling out, why the FBI, I mean, sorry, the Justice Department has not followed the law other than the fact that our senior people at DOJ trying to slow this process down. I would say though, that while there are a lot of legitimate questions still around the Epstein files,

the idea of going to war and driving up gas prices on average 47 cents a gallon, so Americans are paying $125 million a day more out of their pockets to buy gasoline, that's a pretty wild, you know, wag the dog counter theory

because I'm not sure that puts Trump overall in a better position.

No, no, I agree with you. What is your sense with regard to the oil and gas prices? You know, I often for for over a decade I've been telling my audience presidents have relatively little influence over gas prices. A lot of this has to do with global supply issues, black swan type events, et cetera. One of the things presidents can do is declare a gas tax holiday, which will temporarily

make gas a little cheaper. They can dig into the strategic petroleum reserve. Or the third one is they can get into a military conflict with a nation that is either a big oil producer or controls supply. What is your sense now of the trajectory of oil and gas, which is already affecting so many people, as you said, an extra hundred and twenty five million a day total? Is that the factor that may get the White House to do a 180?

I think is I think your comments are accurate about the president's team freaking out about gas prices. I think back to, you know, when we had high gas prices and President Biden was a little bit kind of betwixt and between. This is where Americans see the most. And when you see such a dramatic increase in such a short period of time, I almost felt bad for Chris Wright, the energy secretary. I was on a Sunday show with him and he was trying to say, hey, no problem here.

Which couldn't pass the smell test. I'm worried on a couple of fronts. The only country that is directly benefiting from this war on oil so far is Putin and Russia. The administration has even given relief to allow more oil sales to India.

This fills up Putin's coffers while the Ukrainians were actually not getting a lot of reporting, but were taking out so many Russian troops that the – I'm not saying the balance had flipped, but the Ukrainians were more than holding their own, so giving a lot more money to Vladimir Putin isn't in America's interest. And I don't think even if there was a cessation of hostilities, that you're going to see the gas prices go down anywhere back to where they were two weeks ago. And the idea that the president said, well, maybe this is a chance for Venezuelan oil to come up

and that will be a new supply source. I mean, the Venezuelan oil infrastructure was so degraded that it'll take at least a couple of years. And even then many of the oil companies are reluctant to go back into Venezuela. And there have been, I don't think we know enough to know,

with the president, some of the strikes on the Iranian oil facilities, how much of that supply could be cut back. And, you know, the just unease that is still gonna remain after the conflict, particularly if Iran's regime is still there,

the unease that will be coming out of Saudi, be coming out of, you know, Bahrain, being coming out of the Emiratis, you know, are they going to go back to full production? And, and, you know, even if the Straits Hormuz reopen, will they reopen at the same flow? And won't there have to be additional protections? And the idea that, again, the President and others have said that you could escort ships through, I'm not a naval expert,

but that's a pretty narrow strait. And if the Iranians still have at least all of these kind of small and mid-sized speedboats that could at least harass those tankers, again, that's not a good sign. So I think we're going to see, you know, is it, even if the conflict, the fighting part comes to an end and Iran still there. I don't think you see oil. You hate to say you it's still going to be probably north of 80 bucks, north of 75 bucks a barrel, and that'll be passed on to American consumers.

When it comes to the question of Israel's role in this, you know, my perspective has been I'm a very big supporter of Israel existing and I am a very big critic of the Netanyahu administration. What do you make right now or what's your best assessment of the degree to which Netanyahu goaded, baited or forced use whichever word you believe is appropriate. Donald Trump into getting involved in this.

And for context, we looked at a secretary Blinken's comments that there were attempts to pull President Obama into something similar, but he understood what the point was and resisted. There were attempts to pull President Biden into something similar. It seems in a sense

Trump fell for it. I am also a very strong supporter of Israel and I've been criticized by someone in the Democratic Party for being such a strong supporter. And I do feel, you know, the October 7th attack was awful and I do think there is a rise of anti-Semitism in America and around the world. But I also think when Americans are being put in harm's way, that we should not be in any way outsourcing our foreign policy decisions

to any other government, any other ally, anywhere in the world. And I worry that, you know, this, the current Israeli administration, along with some allies in Congress, just beat on him, beat on him, beat on him. And I fear that they may have made the argument, hey, Mr. President, look how easy it was in Venezuela, look how easy it was with your strike against the Iranian nuclear facilities, which again, the President claimed that obliterated those facilities. Obviously not that. I can't say, but the idea that he could have been convinced this was going to be an

easy in and out operation, you know, has a ring of truth to it.

It seems the theme is and I'll let you go after this, that Trump is very manipulatable by people who he sees as strong in the sense of, you know, think back to Putin in Helsinki where Trump Trump comes out and he says, forget about what our own intelligence agency said. Putin denied hacking very strongly and I believe them. And then the Kim Jong Un summit where Kim Jong Un makes the same promises that North

Korean leaders have been making and not sticking to for decades. And Trump goes, look at these great promises he just gave me. And he believes it. It seems that that's the theme here.

Yeah.

And it's he obviously is attracted to strong men. He thinks of himself as a strong man, theory. You know, he seems to have a a huge affection for authoritarian leaders. And it's not uncommon knowledge here in DC that, you know, the way to influence Donald Trump is be the last person to talk to him

before he makes a decision or before he goes on TV.

Yes.

And whoever's the last person in his ear ends up those words coming out of his mouth. That's not the way that we ought to be running our country or sure, that should not be the way we should be running our foreign policy when we now are up to eight American service members who've been killed in this conflict. And even with the president, Hex, have some predictions.

Unfortunately, the high probability of more to come. Senator Mark Warner, Democratic senator from Virginia. Thanks for your time today.

I really appreciate it. I really appreciate it.

David, thank you as well.