3/5/26: Trump Preps Forever War, Hegseth Rages At Media, CIA Kurdish Psyop, Congress Backs Iran War

Summary

Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar

March 5, 2026: Trump Preps Forever War, Hegseth Rages At Media, CIA Kurdish Psyop, Congress Backs Iran War

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti dissect the rapidly escalating U.S. war with Iran, explore the mounting political and military fallout, and expose the bipartisan establishment’s complicity. Key topics include Trump’s open-ended war posture, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s inflammatory press statements, reports of a CIA-backed Kurdish insurgency operation, and Congress’s refusal to restrain the executive branch. The hosts critically analyze war propaganda, information censorship, economic blowback, and the stark contrast between elite rhetoric and the human costs of war.

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1. War Escalation: Timeline and Justifications

[05:23] Saagar Enjeti & Krystal Ball

• Pentagon and administration officials are constantly shifting the expected war timeline, from “a few days” to potentially “eight months or more.”
• Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s press conference is highlighted for its hawkish tone:

  "It means we will fly all day, all night, day and night, finding, fixing and finishing the missiles...death and destruction from the sky all day long." (Hegseth, [05:39])

• Krystal and Saagar compare this to Donald Rumsfeld’s infamous uncertain timelines before the Iraq War, emphasizing the lack of exit strategy.
• Press Secretary Caroline Levitt refuses to rule out U.S. ground troops, signaling open-ended military escalation ([07:29]).
• Saagar points out the propaganda cycles—pretexts for war (nuclear threat, Israeli pressure, “mushroom cloud” fear-mongering) are regurgitated despite clear refutations by U.S. intelligence ([12:27]).

Memorable Quote:

“So if you’re tracking: six months ago they were close to a nuclear weapon, two weeks ago they'd also have been two weeks away...They’ve always been just one week away from a nuclear weapon. It's a meme, but it's not funny.”
—Saagar Enjeti ([12:29])

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2. Realities on the Battlefield & Economic Fallout

[08:00] - [11:58] Analysis of Current Military Situation

• Oil market turmoil as the war disrupts production: Gulf storage running out, reduction in Qatari LNG, Iraqi oil fields closing.
• Munitions shortages force tactical changes—B2s and bombers must fly deeper into Iranian airspace, increasing risk.
• Unconfirmed but “solid” reports from Dropsight of a U.S.-flagged oil tanker being struck, compounding economic fallout.
• Internal reports of disputes among U.S. policymakers (e.g., Hegseth vs. Rubio) over pushing for ground invasions.

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3. Media Censorship and Manipulation

[13:00+] Information War and Censorship

• U.S. and Israeli censorship of war coverage intensifies, limiting open-source video and on-the-ground reports.
• Saagar warns that the appearance of “uncontested” success is due to information control, not actual battlefield realities ([09:00]).
• CNN admitting on-air: “We’re not showing you that because...the Israeli government does not allow us.” ([50:33])
• Krystal notes that Western media's compliance is more automatic with Israeli demands than it would be with direct U.S. government censorship ([51:40]).

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4. Civilian Casualties and “Israelification” of U.S. Policy

[16:41] - [24:26] Civilian Harm and Strategic Shifts

• Ongoing investigation into a U.S./Israeli airstrike on a girls' school in southern Iran—unclear who is directly responsible, but official denials are slow and telling.
• Krystal details the “double tap” strike method, targeting not just the schoolchildren but first responders and parents ([19:20]).
• "This is the total Israelification of the United States of America…to the extent that Israel would ever get pressed on [civilian casualties], they’d say: ‘We’re going to investigate it. We’ll get back to you.’”
  —Krystal Ball ([19:20])
• U.S. tactics have shifted from precision to broader, less discriminant bombing, echoing Israeli strategies in Gaza.

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5. Raging at the Media: Hegseth’s Disgraceful Chastisement

[27:00 - 34:59] Media, Morale, and Military Accountability

• Hegseth scolds the press for reporting U.S. troop deaths:

  “This is what the fake news misses. We’ve taken control … but when a few drones get through or tragic things happen, it’s front page news. I get it. The press only wants to make the President look bad, but try for once to report the reality.”
  —Pete Hegseth ([27:21])

• Saagar and Krystal fiercely reject this: reporting on troop deaths is public accountability, not unpatriotic.
• In-depth, emotional coverage of individual service members killed, the inadequate preparation of bases, and the disproportionate sacrifice borne by non-elite Americans ([27:49] - [34:09]).
• White House social media edits war footage with video game aesthetics, trivializing loss ([34:59]).

Memorable Quote:

“These American soldiers are dead at the decision point of the United States President, of the Israeli President and their blood — it’s on our leadership.”
—Saagar Enjeti ([32:09])

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6. CIA-Kurdish Psyop and the Syria/Libya Model Redux

[40:32] - [48:19] CIA Involvement, Kurds, and Information Psyops

• Trump administration pledges “extensive U.S. air cover” and support to Iranian Kurdish separatists—mirroring the “Afghanistan model.”
• Saagar: This is essentially a gambit to stir civil war, Balkanize Iran, and force regime collapse (“Syria, Libya model”).
• Reports about an imminent Kurdish invasion are revealed to be CIA/Israeli information operations (“psyops”) rather than real events—per Drop Site News, Kurdish leaders deny any such move.
• “They want the impression of a civil war to happen, to widen the war, to collapse the regime… None of this is consistent with current public statements from administration officials.”
  —Saagar Enjeti ([48:19])

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7. Israeli Influence, U.S. Compliance, and Strategic Dissonance

[51:40] - [55:37] Netanyahu’s Role and U.S. Deference

• Israeli leaders and media openly rooting for “coup, people in the streets, or even a civil war in Iran.”
• FT report: “Israel could not care less about the future or the stability of Iran…if we can have a civil war, great.” ([51:40])
• Krystal: “Think about how destabilizing. You’re talking about a country of 90 million people… what could possibly go wrong?”
• Despite widespread knowledge of the dangers, U.S. goes along with Israel’s destabilization-first war aims.

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8. Domestic Politics: Congressional Complicity and Broken Checks

[73:45] - [86:31] Congress Fails to Assert Its Power

• Senate War Powers Resolution to reclaim Congressional authority fails, with only Fetterman breaking from Democrats and Rand Paul from Republicans ([73:45]).
• Republican base largely backs Trump’s war, despite some online MAGA dissent; Saagar emphasizes that “the base is always going to stick with him” ([75:41]).
• Congressman Thomas Massie voices rare GOP opposition:

  “The President says we had to strike first because an Iranian strike was imminent. Meanwhile, the Department of Defense conceded there was no evidence...” ([77:47])

• Democratic senators protest the war rhetorically but refuse to rule out approving a $50 billion supplemental military funding package ([78:52]).

Memorable Quote:

“If you oppose the war, you oppose funding the war. It is that simple. And so the amount of capitulation...from the Democratic Party is insane.”
—Krystal Ball ([82:30])

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9. The Human Cost & Protest

[86:31 - 87:57] U.S. Dissent and Brutal Repression

• Video of a retired Marine protestor being forcibly removed from a congressional hearing (“nobody wants to die for Israel”), arm broken in the process ([86:31]).
• Krystal: “The people who have been the most relentless in pushing for this are all of the most hardcore Zionists in this country and… the Israeli government themselves.” ([87:27])

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10. Final Reflections & Big Picture

The hosts conclude:

• U.S. is irretrievably embroiled in a forever war—with no off-ramp, spiraling civilian and military deaths, and catastrophic economic and geopolitical blowback.
• Both parties relinquish oversight; Congress defaults to the executive, echoing post-9/11 pathologies.
• The real agenda is neither publicly debated nor honestly disclosed; instead, Americans are bombarded with propaganda while bearing the crushing costs.
• The “holy war” and “Israelification” of U.S. tactics now dominate, with Trump acting as a willing conduit for Netanyahu’s agenda.

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Notable Quotes & Timestamps

• On Endless Pretexts:
  “They’ve always been just one week away from a nuclear weapon. It’s a meme, but it’s not funny.” — Saagar ([12:29])

• On Israelification:
  “This is the total Israelification of the United States of America.” — Krystal ([19:20])

• On Troop Deaths and Patriotism:
  “These American soldiers are dead at the decision point of the United States President, of the Israeli President and their blood—it’s on our leadership.” — Saagar ([32:09])

• On Information Control:
  “We’re not showing you that because…the Israeli government does not allow us.” — CNN, cited by Krystal ([50:33])

• On Congress:
  “If you oppose the war, you oppose funding the war. It is that simple.” — Krystal ([82:30])

• On Israeli Strategy:
  “[The Israeli government:] If we can have a coup, great. If we can have people on the streets, great. If we can have a civil war, great. Israel could not care less about the future or the stability of Iran.” — Financial Times via Krystal ([51:40])

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Key Takeaways

• The U.S. war in Iran is spiraling, with shifting justifications and no real plan for exit or stability.
• Congressional attempts to reassert constitutional war powers have failed; funding for escalation is likely forthcoming.
• Israeli interests dominate U.S. strategy, openly advocating chaos and destabilization.
• U.S. tactics increasingly mirror Israeli methods seen in Gaza: from military strategy to information control.
• The true human cost—civilian and military—remains obscured by propaganda and elite indifference.
• Both parties, despite rhetorical differences, are complicit in abdicating oversight and fueling a conflict with no end in sight.
• Dissent, both public and in Congress, remains marginal and harshly repressed.

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This summary strives to preserve the original tone: urgent, critical, and unflinching in confronting power, war propaganda, and the failures of America’s political class.

Transcript

[Krystal Ball]

This is an iHeart podcast.

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[Saagar Enjeti]

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[Saagar Enjeti]

hey guys, Sagar and Krystal here.

[Krystal Ball]

Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election and we are so excited about what that means for the future of this show.

[Saagar Enjeti]

This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left and the right that simply does not exist anywhere else.

[Krystal Ball]

So if that is something that's important to you, Please go to BreakingPoints.com, become a member today and you'll get access to our full shows unedited ad free, free and all put together for you every morning in your inbox.

[Saagar Enjeti]

We need your help to build the future of independent news media and we hope to see [e-mail] Good morning everybody. Happy Thursday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal?

[Krystal Ball]

Did we do a lot of updates for you? A lot of comments from Trump and Hegseth and others with regard to the war raising more questions than they're answering. Continuing in that direction. We've got lots of updates with regard to the kinetic action in the war, specifically including what appears to have been a significant psyop from our government and the Israelis about a Kurdish invasion of Iran. So we'll break down for you what we know there. We also had the war powers resolution vote in the Senate yesterday. It went down effectively along party lines. We're also looking at a potentially $50 billion supplemental funding request from the White House for more arms to fund this war effort. And Democrats, number of them apparently going along with this or open to going along with this. In any case, we're gonna take a little trip down memory lane. Look back at some of the very clear cut comments that were made by, oh, I don't know, Trump, J.D. vance, Stephen Miller, RFK Jr. Tulsi Gabbard and others saying we will not go to war with Iran. Pretty funny that that's what their line was then and obviously we are where we are now. And also more and more American politicians are framing this as a religious war. So Emily is gonna join us to tell us what the hell is going on with that because this is not our area of expertise. So she's gonna break it down.

[Saagar Enjeti]

She's our religion correspondent. Thank you to everybody who has been supporting our show. BreakingPoints.com we do have our free trial going on right now. Let's put it up there on the screen. You can sign up right now with the code BP free [e-mail] for a free month trial. We really appreciate all of the support for our show, the ability to have our ensemble cast with Ryan and Emily, who are integral parts of our team, in addition to all of the incredible guests that we've been able to field, all because of your support. Sincerely, thank you. But more importantly, I think Crystal, now is a time more than ever with the mainstream media. We're gonna play a clip later on in our show where they're like, oh, we can't show you that cuz Israel doesn't want us to. Where we're trying our best. I know that there's so many people here and around the world doing their best to digest what's going on. We take this responsibility really, really seriously. And at a time like this, like, I feel like this show has never been more important than ever.

[Krystal Ball]

I mean, I feel that weight for sure and feel really fortunate to have the partnership with Dropsight as well gives us access to exclusive news from around the world. And yeah, if you're watching cable news, I think we don't really need to make the case for why it's important what we're doing here. We've had a huge surge of both people tuning into the show and also premium subscribers. So thank you and welcome to those of you who are newly in. That's right, let's get to the latest.

[Saagar Enjeti]

That's right. Let's go ahead and start here with some latest comments from the Secretary Hegseth about the timeline of this war. It's supposed to be a couple days. Then it was supposed to be a couple weeks and now it might be eight weeks, might be eight months. Who knows? Here's the secretary at a press conference yesterday at the Pentagon. Let's take a listen.

[Various Officials (e.g., Thomas Massie, Pete Hegseth, Press Secretary)]

In a few days, in under a week, the two most powerful air forces in the world will have complete control of Iranian skies. Uncontested airspace. I hope all the folks watching understand what uncontested airspace and complete control means. It means we will fly all day, all night, day and night, finding, fixing and finishing the missiles and defense industrial base of the Iranian military. Finding and fixing their leaders and their military leaders. Flying over Tehran, flying over Iran, flying over their capital, flying over the irgc, Iranian leaders looking up and seeing only US and Israeli air power every minute of every day until we decide it's over and Iran will be able to do nothing about it. B2s, B52s, B1s, Predator drones, fighters controlling the skies, picking targets, death and destruction from the sky all day long.

[Saagar Enjeti]

So the direct quote, you can say four weeks could be six, it could be eight, it could be three. Let me read you a quote from February 7, 2003, Donald Rumsfeld. It could last, you know, six days, six weeks, I doubt six months. There you go. So if you all want to know exactly the situation that we're in right now already, boots on the ground remain on the table. Here is the press secretary, Caroline Levitt, refusing to rule that out at the White House podium. Let's take a listen. Could you tell us about the President's current thinking about ground troops and whether

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they could be used if they were

[Saagar Enjeti]

to be sent into Iran, what would

[Public Ad]

they be used for?

[Saagar Enjeti]

What's the situation?

[Krystal Ball]

Ms. Well, they're not part of the plan for this operation at this time, but I certainly will never take away military options on behalf of the president of the United States or the commander in chief, and he wisely does not do the same for himself. I know there's many leaders in the past who like to take options off of the table without having a full understanding of how things could develop. So again, it's not part of the current plan, but I'm not going to remove an option for the president that

[Saagar Enjeti]

is on the table.

[Krystal Ball]

The president had a feeling, again, based on fact, that Iran was going to strike the United States was going to strike our assets in the region.

[Saagar Enjeti]

What was that last part? What did she say? The president had a feeling again, based on fact, that Iran was going to strike the US because by his own admission, Israel was going to strike them, quote, unquote, no matter what we were going to do. I mean, this is full fledged open ended conflict. We're gonna spend a lot of time, I think, in the remainder of the show just to show everybody how the war continues to widen. The oil markets are already roiling. There is a matter of days, only days, while oil storage in many of the Gulf countries will run out, which will significantly hinder the production facilities. Qatar LNG already bringing down production and downstream production. Iraqis have been closing their oil fields. They only have six days before their entire storage is taken up. The Saudis have two months. Interceptors are all running low. Boots on the ground are one of the last things that might be able to change the tactical picture. As it is, Secretary Hegseth, we didn't play this clip, but it's important for him to say that he noted that we'll be shifting in munitions to the type that we will be using, which will require US Aircraft to spend much more time deeper inside of Iran and also within theoretical range of Iranian Air defense systems. So previously, you know, these B2s and others are flying from very, very high up. Now they're gonna be moving to different. This highlights the munitions problem which we've been beating the drum here on the show every single day. There is not a single off ramp, quote unquote. Both sides are leaking. The Iranians say they've rejected three different overtures from the President. The President and his team have been leaking that they've re multiple calls from the Iranians. Who knows what is true. I also think we should really caution everyone the censorship in the Gulf and Israel is out of control right now. The number of videos we're able to get open source are dramatically lower. That's being taken as evidence that the war is going better. Not true. It's that censorship is ramping up in all of these countries to make sure that we have no idea what's going on. Pay attention to these statements. The fact that they're having to shift munitions means that they're running out in some cases. If you're looking, look at the prices of oil, look at the statement specifically about production. And then later on in the show, we're going to show everybody some satellite imagery which uncontested, shows some of the damage the Iranians have already been able to make on our own basis.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, that's right. And you know, there are indications that they were able to strike inside of Israel yesterday. You know, there had been this whole like, oh, the pace of their missile launches has slowed down, but it looks like they had consolidated a larger launch yesterday. But again, it's very hard to confirm any of this, very hard to confirm exactly the damage was within Israel. There are also not fully confirmed reports, but a little more solid drop site is reporting this, that there was a US flagged oil tanker that was struck and oil is leaking now. So again, with regard to the water wider economic fallout, that is significant. And there was also a report that in terms of boots on the ground, which you'll recall there are a bunch of senators, Democrats included, who went into a briefing and came out of it indicating we're really even more frightened and concerned about where this is going, seemingly indicating that the possibility of boots on the ground was floated there. So there is a report that there's a dispute between Marco Rubio and Pete Hegseth. Hegseth who's a total psycho pushing for a ground invasion. And Rubio more concerned about getting dragged in to yet another forever war. Is that report accurate? I don't know. I mean, supposedly they're at each other's throats, et cetera, et cetera. This is the palace intrigue, but that is what is being reported. And at this point, given the number of officials who will not take it off the table and these indications coming from the briefings that senators are getting, there is no doubt that this is a live possibility. I'll put one more thing out there that I was seeing this morning. We haven't even gotten to cover all of what appears to be more insider trading on Polymarket with regard to, oh, this guy happened to call that Maduro was gonna get kidnapped that day. We happen to also call the date that Iran would be attacked. Well, now he's placed a bet on US Ground troops, invasion. So read into that what you will.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Well, and I can. Look, we'll get to that in a little bit in our update on the Kurdish surge. But we do wanna make unambiguously clear what the President and his administration have now said is that this war is a result either of failure, inability or support for an Israeli preemptive strike on Iran. The President said just yesterday, repeating Israeli propaganda that Iran was two weeks from a nuclear weapon. Take a listen.

[Various Officials (e.g., Thomas Massie, Pete Hegseth, Press Secretary)]

If we didn't hit within two weeks,

[Saagar Enjeti]

they would have had a nuclear weapon. If we didn't do the B2 attack a number of months ago, they would have a nuclear weapon. And when crazy people have nuclear weapons, bad things happen. So we're in very good shape now. I want to let you know that and we will continue forward. So if you're tracking six months ago they were close to a nuclear weapon, two weeks ago they would have also been two weeks away from a nuclear weapon. And 47 years ago, they were all also one week away from the nuclear weapon. AKA they've always been just one week away from a nuclear weapon. I mean, it's a meme, but it's not funny. Because one of the things that we've seen now is that when the administration is pressed on this and they'll say, why now? Right, why now? Obviously, one of the why nows is Israel was going to do it. Allegedly there was nothing we could do about it, bs but that's their explanation. If you dig further, they go, well, their ballistic missile shield was a immunity shield from the ability to stop a new. It's like this Galaxy 60 chess level nonsense. But Donald Trump is now saying unambiguously, look, I know that, you know, nothing matters or whatever, but like two weeks away from it's literally not true. The IAEA says it's not true. US Intelligence does say, it says it's not true. Not even the Israelis were claiming that they're a week or two weeks away from a nuclear. This is the first time in history they're not the ones who are even giving that level of pretext. And this is now being parodied, you know about by the President of the United States, bandied out by the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of State every single time that they're out in public and going on the record in a WMD style propaganda. I even saw somebody use the term. We don't want to see a mushroom cloud as evidence which is, I mean, oh my God. Look, I know a lot of the people who are watching right now were literally not even alive to see all that. In fact, I'll talk about this later. One of the troops who was killed was literally not even alive whenever that propaganda was made. He was born four to five years after 911 and he just died in Kuwait fighting in another Middle Eastern war. But just to think about how the recycling of the talking points of the personalities of Dana Perino. I saw a screenshot of her yesterday. It was like war in Iran going so successful. I think it was Tommy Viter, he's like privileged to be alive to watch her shill for a regime change war as a Bush flack. And now on Fox News, Brit Hume who was there for both is doing the same nonsense Condoleezza Rice was on yesterday on Fox talking about oh President, Mr. President finished the job. The same cast of characters who are here to sell us the same lies.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, which is why it would have been really important to excise all of these people from public life. But the vast of the majority of them just failed up and are still with us and in some cases in control powerful institutions today. So no, I mean it is so insane that we are now in this rapidly escalating out of control escalation, regional war with unknown cascading damaging impacts and the President of the United States cannot even tell us why, can't even tell us why, can't tell us why, can't tell us why. Now every day from a different official we get a different explanation. Now to be clear, I'm opposed to all of those explanations but it is utter insanity that they launched this without even having their story straight about what we're doing, why we're doing it and why we're doing it. Now you were asked the American taxpayer to foot the bill for billions of dollars. The estimate is a billion dollars every single day that this goes on you are asking these service members to risk their lives for a conflict that you cannot even explain why we're doing it and why now it is so insane that we are at this place and yet here we are. I mean, there is very little public support for this. We have all sorts of problems here at home. You know, they just refuse to extend the ACA subsidies as one example. You know, the cost of this war already could have covered the cost of the increase in premiums for millions of Americans. So that's where we are. And every day the President comes out and has some new story about what the hell is going on here.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Yeah, and new Pentagon estimate from Nancy Youssef. She's a longtime Pentagon reporter. I've known her for years. She's very good. She says the Internal assessment is $1 billion per day that the war continues to go on. That's probably on the low end, cuz it doesn't even factor in all of the downstream costs about moving a carrier strike group. I mean, I've talked about this here on our show before. A single carrier strike group operating cost just to be able to keep them where they are is about 100 to 200 million dollars. There are two carrier strike groups that are currently there in the region. Not to mention all of the munitions. Not to mention then all of the lost munitions and the ability to replace them, which we can't even do at the current rate where hundreds of billions of dollars of equipment, of man, military are already there. And then the actual cost just of ramping things up is now some $1 billion per day. It's absurd. Let's also take an update here on this girls school bombing that happened on the first day of the campaign. Yesterday during the Pentagon briefing there was a, there was a map that was displayed to the public and actually on that map was a specific red diamond which was on both sides of Minam, which is exactly where that girl strikes. That girl school strike took place. So there's a lot of questions now as to whether it was actually the United States and not Israel that carried out that strike. They're saying that there's an ongoing investigation, but he was asked about it by the BBC. Let's take a listen. Can you give us an update on what the administration knows, what you know now about the reported strike on a girls school in southern Iran on Saturday?

[Various Officials (e.g., Thomas Massie, Pete Hegseth, Press Secretary)]

All I know, all I can say is that we're investigating that. We of course never target civilian targets, but we're taking a look at investigating that red tie in front just on

[Saagar Enjeti]

the basis that with the information you would have your reconnaissance abilities, ability to gather information. I mean, it's several days on now, so is there any clarity on whose munition this was?

[Various Officials (e.g., Thomas Massie, Pete Hegseth, Press Secretary)]

We're investigating it.

[Saagar Enjeti]

We are investigating it. And again, to make clear, if you look at the map that was there and you plot the scroll right there, it's literally right in the cluster zone. Now, obviously, I mean, the Israelis, I've already seen their own propaganda. They're like, it wasn't us, but if it was us, it would have been fine because it was an IRGC base. In fact, there are some questions here because apparently it was near an older IRGC base as to whether this was updated intelligence. But this is exactly the problem. I mean, who knows put together that strike package. Was it AI, you know, that was used to say plot all of the known places and then feed that into the military. The fact that they're not ruling it out immediately. I will tell you, having covered many of these things, that's a problem. That's a big, big problem.

[Krystal Ball]

So this is the total Israelification of the United States of America. I mean, this is exactly the type of, to the extent that Israel would ever get pressed on, you just murdered a bunch of children, you just murdered a bunch of patients in the hospital, whatever, when it would actually become a problem for them. This is what they would say, oh, we're going to investigate it. We'll get back to you. And then do they ever investigate it? Do they ever get back to you? Let alone, are there ever any consequences for anyone who was part of that decision making? You know the answer to that. And we can put the next piece up on the screen because we now have more reporting about exactly how this strike went down. And again, the Israelification of the US it was apparently a double tap strike. And you guys know what these are intended to do. You hit an area once. This area happened to be a girls school with children, you know, age roughly like 7 to 12, who were murdered. Okay? Then people gather. They, you know, they get the survivors, parents rush in, first responders to try to help, to try to staunch the bleeding and help anyone who can be rescued. And then once they've gathered, what do you do? You hit them again. That's apparently according to reporting here from Middle East Eye. That is what happened in this case. And I just want you all to remember that five seconds ago, this president and this whole regime was talking about how much they care for the Iranian people. They want the Iranian people to be free. They want the Iranian People to throw off their oppressors. They stand with the protesters in the streets, and now here we are murdering their little girls. And, you know, furthermore, to the Israelification of this war, what appears to have happened is initially there were, you know, these precision strikes that took out a bunch of the Iranian leadership, including assassinating the Ayatollah. And they were hoping that would just lead to some sort of regime collapse, which I think also was the hope when Israel initially went into Gaza casinos. Cause he talked about it all the time, and that didn't happen. So now what are they doing? They're just carpet bombing Tehran. They're using fewer precision munitions, more just dumb bombs to drop on a location and cause severe damage. And there is an irony here as well, because some of the regime's biggest opponents, the Iranian regime's biggest opponents, are in Tehran. Like, that's where the more secular, more highly educated, more liberal, like the various protest movements have largely started in Tehran. There are other areas of resistance to the Iranian government as well within the country. But Tehran is a hotbed. And that's the place where the most death and destruction and chaos, which Pete Hegseth is out there bragging about. That's where they really focused these bombing campaigns.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Look, like I said, we don't know if it was us or not. I can just say, having covered the Pentagon usually these investigations and all, if it's not us, they usually say pretty quickly. And if it is, it drags on for a while before somebody does eventually admit it. And it will be a gigantic sandal, and it should be. And I saw some of these in Afghanistan, in Iraq, covered. Do you remember that hospital that was struck in Afghanistan? I covered that entire thing. It was a total nightmare. A lot of the initial statements that came out from the military were totally not true. A lot of the investigation later that followed up, it was horrific what actually ended up happening. I really hope that it wasn't us. However, you know, part of the danger is that between us and Israel, it's going to be a big, you know, it's like, are we going to just come out and say, actually it was them? And then they're, you know, they're very happy to say, actually, no, it was us and somebody did it. You know, and initially there was some Israeli claims. They're like, oh, it was a failed IRGC missile and all of that. There's no evidence now currently to suggest any of that. But this will be a major, major hit to the prestige of the US Military. And I mean, even if it was Israel. And if it was done in a joint conjunction with US Israeli strike, there's a lot of complicity that comes in that too for not just selling the weapons, for supporting or being part and attached to something like that. And it does show you even the dangers of a so called precision bombing campaign which Professor Robert Pape has really been warning about.

[Krystal Ball]

I mean between it being a dot on the map of the strike locations and the fact that they will not say that it was not us, I mean it seems pretty there are two suspects, Israel or the US and the fact that we're not denying it at this point I think makes it pretty clear what ultimately happened here. And your point about AI I think is a really important one. Just to pause on for a moment. Part of why Gaza was so deadly and so horrifying is because it was the first AI enabled ultimately genocide and the amount of target generation that was created is what helped to enable the death and destruction in Gaza. And now you have, you know, they're still using Claude, they're still using Anthropic even though they're having some whole spat over that. And you know Anthropic as much as they have this brand that they've publicly created. Oh, we're the good guys and we care about humanity, blah blah blah. Well that's the AI that is being used to generate strike packages and presumably to help create the level of death and destruction and the deadly nature of what's going on here. You know, the estimates are at this point somewhere around 1,000 Iranians who have been killed. Though it's very difficult to know precisely what the numbers are for them.

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[Saagar Enjeti]

so let's then turn to what I thought was one of the most single disgraceful utterances by US Secretary of Defense ever. Here is Secretary Hegseth who is chastising the media for covering the deaths of American soldiers and not appropriately cheerleading the war on Enough. I couldn't believe it whenever I saw this happen live. Let's take a listen.

[Various Officials (e.g., Thomas Massie, Pete Hegseth, Press Secretary)]

This is what the fake news misses. We've taken control of Iran's airspace and waterways. Without boots on the ground, we control their fate. But when a few drones get through or tragic things happen, it's front page news. I get it. The press only wants to make the President look bad, but try for once to report the reality. The terms of this war will be set by us at every step.

[Saagar Enjeti]

And so he is saying that the fake news does their part by trying to make the President look bad because some tragic things happen. Can you imagine a more disgraceful statement where he is chastising us for covering the deaths of American soldiers, American soldiers, by the way, who it appears were not in a properly fortified tactical operations center, who by their own admission, I mean one of these women who was killed in the strike had apparently spoken to her husband, according to his own interviews, about how she was worried about what was going on. She was working here in the tactical operations center. And what they had done is that they were fighting like the last war. So they put up these walls that were around the operations center which were designed for suicide bomb attacks. But anybody who has watched literally anything about the now four year long war in Ukraine knows that that's not how it was going to come any sort of attack. It was going to be by a suicide drone. And that is exactly what happened. Which appeared to have a direct strike directly on here. Which raises a whole number of questions. Number one, why was there no counter drone stuff that was even prepared? Right now the US military is scrambling and is going to buy counter drone technology from the Ukrainians. Not sure why we have to buy it since we're the ones who paid for it. But okay, so we're gonna buy all of this counter drone technology stuff from the Ukrainians, which means that we didn't do any studying. We actually didn't prepare properly for a lot of the bases. By Donald Trump's own admission, they have said that they were not prepared for some of the strikes that were on the Gulf. So that means there wasn't an active planning that happened inside. And now six of these Americans are dead. And what's worst about it is that they keep saying, oh, that's just the first of many to come. They keep saying, oh, more casualties, could be more. I mean, God only knows. Are there more that they haven't told us about? Hope not right? Having covered this for a long time, usually they just come out within 24 hours, but at the very least they're expecting more. And the fact that they're expecting and preparing the public for more and this is the way that they want to cover it is beyond disgraceful. Beyond disgraceful. So let's, you know, they don't want us to cover, apparently these troops, cuz it's bad for morale. It's not our job to do morale. That's not, not our job at all. Let's put some of these up here on the screen. The Pentagon has now ID'd six of the soldiers who were killed in the Kuwait attack. Many of them were attached to this Army Reserve unit out of Des Moines, Iowa. And actually from their ranks you can see that many of these were very senior US army personnel. But the one that sticks with me is this one, Sergeant Declan Cody. He was 20 years old. He was a student. He was a student who was studying information systems, who was taking classes online from Kuwait, and again, a member of the U.S. army Reserve. And I want this to also show everybody too. These are people who, I mean, look, they volunteered. I'm not stepping away from that. But it shows you the problem of our overextended empire is that our bases have to be staffed by U.S. army reservists because we don't even have enough troops to be able to staff all these bases, even in a potential active war zone. And here you have a 20 year old kid who had his entire life ahead of him, who was born and I can't, I just can't get away from this. Four to five years after nine, 11, who just perished in another American war in the Middle East. How does that not break your heart? I've covered so many of these over the years, written obituaries for kids younger than me. I wrote my first obituary for a kid who was younger than me nine years ago, who stepped on an IED in Iraq and know so many people who were wounded or even families of the people who were killed who were over there. And now we have another one and the Secretary of Defense is telling us that it is Basically this is 2002, 2000 era BS. Freedom isn't free. The only way to support our troops and mourn our dead is to support the war, is to support the President. And there is nothing less patriotic actually than that. And we're not falling for this bullshit again. We are not falling for this bullshit again. I just think it's so. It's not just about disgrace, if you ask me. There hasn't been enough media coverage actually of these people because we should learn the cost. We talked about the girls. They're dead. Okay? Little girls are dead. Who knows who killed them now These people, they're dead. I mean, these American soldiers are dead at the decision point of the United States President, of the Israeli President and their blood. It's on our leadership.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah.

[Saagar Enjeti]

And we should be able to say that without being denigrated as Cowards or anti, you know, anti war, anti American. It's anti American to mourn the Deaths of a 20 year old kid who was in Kuwait. Right. It's just, it really, really gets me.

[Krystal Ball]

It reminds so much of how they were trying to, during the Iraq war, hide the coffins coming home. They didn't want photographs, they didn't want pictures of that because. Yeah, they don't want people to actually grapple with, with the cost. And you know, the elites of this country, it's not their sons and daughters, by and large, who go and fight and die in these wars. Barron's not gonna be headed over there anytime soon. And they seem to view all of this like it's some kind of game

[Saagar Enjeti]

or a TV show.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, TV show is. I mean, obviously we have a reality TV president, but Pete Hegseth too is primarily TV personality and he's a man who is clearly out of his depth and he knows that. And so he has adopted this Persona that he thinks makes him look like a tough guy. And he's adopted these sort of like habits of discourse that he's drawn from what he thinks Trump would say. And Trump's the ultimate daddy figure for the maga. Right. And so he thinks that by lashing out at the fake news media, trying to make the President look good, look bad, rather that he's going to look like a big man. He's gonna look like he's doing the right thing here. And, and I mean, this whole presser where he's talking about we're gonna rain down death and destruction, he's playing a character, he's decided he wants to adopt this Persona of a comic book villain. And that's his whole approach to this because he does not know what he's doing before this. I mean, at the very beginning of the administration, we were reporting about how the Pentagon is total chaos under him. Like he has no business being in this position. And what a disgrace that now we have American service members dead, we have Iranian civilians dead, we have people dead throughout the entire region.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Kuwaiti soldiers who've been killed.

[Krystal Ball]

Absolutely.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Guards, random personnel, airport guys.

[Krystal Ball]

I mean, the Israelis are blowing up the police stations in Iran because they want to foment chaos and civil war and some sort of uprising. And the President of the United States cannot even give a straight answer about what the hell the goal is and why we're doing it. Just think about that. And you know, I keep coming back to some of the emails that reveal the way that these people just do not see others below the elite class as being truly human. So they're happy to throw your sons and daughters into a meat grinder because for whatever reasons, because Israel pressured us, because I wanna look like a big tough guy, because I feel like more of a man when I can send American fighters in potentially to their death. And you know, that's. It's sick, it's depraved. And that's exactly what's going on here.

[Saagar Enjeti]

I want to call now for a video which was put out by the White House where they literally edited war that is currently happening with an intro from a video game just to show you the entertainment value. Let's take a list. So there you go. They're literally tweeting out. That's an actual video. We're released by the White House of the United States of America with the title courtesy of the Red, White and blue country music lyrics and video games. It's not a game. It's not a game to the family of a 20 year old. It's not a game to a mother of two. And think about, you know, some of these people there, you read their stories in this NBC News article. They're like, oh, she loved gardening, you know, and these people are dead. Not to mention some of these girls and others in Iowa, they're mourning him. You know, the university this kid went to, they're talking about, oh, he was so great, loved his work. Is it his father and sister talking about this? His sister was talking about how upset she was, thinking about how scared he was near the end. People shouldn't have to think that or if their lives are gonna be on the line and everyone's like, oh, they volunteered for it. I mean, look. Yeah, I think they volunteered, you know, with the theory at least. I think the theory that their lives would not be fodder for video games and for, you know, egomaniacal power plays or being jerked around or weird religious Israel or weird religious holy wars. Exactly. And so that is the ultimate, you know, screw you, I think, to an all volunteer military force.

[Krystal Ball]

And look, the military brass, the chair of the Joint Chiefs was warning, like, it's not like they didn't know. Right? I mean, we're not rocket scientists over here. And we've been tracking this problem with the stockpiles of weaponry and interceptors in particular. You know, this drone technology has been used extensively in Ukraine, these shahed drones. And so this was all known, it was all very predictable. And yet, you know, these individuals, these service members were in, completely unprotected in like a triple wide trailer and the US rushes into this thing because of whatever basket of weird reasons, many of which we still don't even know. But with this yeah, this holy war justification now increasingly coming out. And of course Hegseth's got his crusader cross tattoo, et cetera, et cetera, Trump who knows what's in the Epstein files and what his and the money he's taken from Miriam Adelson and what all is going on in the background and he feels like such a big tough guy after Venezuela and all of that fuels now us being pushed into this conflict that the American people do not support. And so yeah, it's sad. These, these individuals trusted the American government to take their lives seriously and to not risk their lives without a good reason. And ultimately, you know, they were betrayed. Yeah, that's the bottom line.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Exactly. And I don't, I think everybody should be able to say that.

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[Saagar Enjeti]

turning now to some updates on the battlefield, a huge decision leaking out now from Washington. Let's put this up here on the screen. Do keep some of this in mind that things are fast moving and this itself could be a bit of a change. But what they are reporting is that Trump calls on the Kurds to aid US effort in Iran, quote offers support. In my opinion they're dramatically underplaying this because they say quote in calls this week to Kurdish minority leaders in Iran and neighboring Iraq, President Trump has offered quote extensive US Air cover and other backing for anti regime Iranian Kurds to take over portions of western Iran. This is basically the 2001 Afghanistan model and this is the closest that we are going to come now so far of an admission about boots on the ground. In fact Kristala, if you pair some of the fear of those Democratic senators, I believe that this is what what it was about because just to explain if you weren't following the way that it worked is that we had these so called like special forces advisors that were on the ground with the Northern alliance. They were calling in airstrikes. We had air cover that would come in support the army, CIA. Actually I believe a CIA officer was the first person who was even killed in the war in Afghanistan. So you could see that this is exactly the way that this would happen. We know from some previous reporting already that many of these Kurdish separatist groups inside of Iran have had CIA munitions provided to them now for weeks, in addition to Mossad. It would make sense too because we know from the Mossad and from others that there was a lot of smuggling to inside of Iran during the protest movement, which would make sense. Now we also know in northern Iraq, which is where all the Kurds is, Kurdistan as part of that country, that many of these groups, you know, it's like transnational in terms of moving back and forth. There's a lot of loyalty, of course, and support from the military. There's a military base. So if there was a U.S. support Civil War effort, this is exactly what it would look like. This would of course be a direct effort to Balkanize and destroy the entire country. That's what you do. This is civil war. This is the Afghanistan, Libya, Syria model. What you do, you pour a bunch of weapons into a group and you basically say we've got your back. You don't actually have their back, as the Kurds I think have learned for many years. But you will be a useful tool. Yeah, they probably have, I don't know. This time we promise, right? This time. So what we're going to do is give you a bunch of weapons, we'll give you some air cover, we're gonna use you as a tool, as a cudgel to basically try to destroy the regime in the interim. Who's gonna take that laying down? Oh, Ankara. I'm sure that the Turks will just be like, oh for sure. We'll allow an independent Kurdistan to happen there. Nope, not going to happen. There will be some funneling itself of weapons, perhaps their own use of airstrikes. Everything I'm talking about already happened in Syria literally within the last decade. We know that this will happen. And then what's going to happen? Well, that's gonna inspire some sectarian conflict which usually goes super well. Right. For the United States we've definitely got a handle on that. Nationalism, let's say amongst the Iranian population, which is still loyal to the regime. They'll call up young people. It's as if the Iran Iraq war, one of the bloodiest conflicts in human history, had never happened before. Look at their capacity for suffering, for death, to be able to absorb all of these losses even whenever we're striking them from the air. So this is not just an effort at regime change, it is an effort at regime collapse. A full blown insurgency. 92 million people live in this country. So many different Popul Azeris and all these Other who are all talking right now, they'll get involved, their proxies and others will funnel weapons and it will look like Syria or Libya completely collapsed, failed state, except with 10x the population refugees going everywhere. Already seeing reports about people trying to leave the country of Iran. Yesterday somebody was talking to me about this Pakistani faction on their border and their own funding that we could potentially use as a cudgel there. This is a nightmare. I mean prepare to get acquainted with terms like Balokis and Kurds and now there's a Christian population Azeris. It's not just one homogenous population who all hate us. Regardless of what, what the Trump administration is trying to sell us. This is the most dangerous turn yet. This is the Syria, Libya model. They don't wanna declare victory. And I think this is why the Democratic senators were sounding the alarm. There is no possibility of some sort of armed incursion where you just give them the weapons where there aren't US special advisors on the ground. That's a boot on the ground regardless of how they wanna define it or not. Happened in Afghanistan, happened in Libya, happened in Syria as well. Then that's why we just withdrew all of our, why do you think we had all those bases in Syria for exactly operations like this. So this is, I mean also last thing, this is a absolute confirmation this is gonna happen forever. Like you don't six weeks, eight weeks. No, this is a years long commitment at this point if they're gonna go down this road. So we don't know. I mean some sources claiming that it's already happening, some saying no, that that's fake news. But regardless from the very top, the President of the United States on the phone with regime change activists saying oh, we're gonna give you air cover. That's it. That's you know, as long as it gets in terms of foreign inflation entanglement.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, there's a lot to learn from this. I could put B1 up on the screen because initially there were these very certain reports from all of the like regime stenographers like the Barack Ravids, et cetera, that Kurdish forces in Iraq had launched a ground military offensive into Iran, that this was happening, they had crossed the borders, they were in Iran. And we covered before how, you know, we had taken out a bunch of these border guards along the border to enable exactly this. So it felt, you know, it seemed credible and it's exactly the kind of shit that we do all the time. And that the Israelis would be interested exactly for this reason to try to collapse the state. This seems to have been based on what we can tell put B2 up on the screen more of a psyop and wish casting than it was an actual reality in terms of facts on the ground because the leaders of various of these Kurdish factions denied that any of this was happening. So this is from Drop Site News. Some exclusive reporting from them. They say multiple media reports, including some citing anonymous US officials have indicated Kurdish militants have now crossed from Iraq into Iran in order to seize Kurdish territory and spark an uprising. The reports follow claims the CIA has been seeking to arm Kurdish fighters to destabilize Iran. Such an incursion remains a future possibility but well informed sources tell Drop Site News no such evasion has yet to take place. Journalist Alexis Dalumi who is in Syrian and Iraqi Kurdistan reporting for Drop Site. Incredible. They have. This person reports that three sources from the Kurdish Liberation Movement with knowledge of the situation have told him no such invasion is underway and that pjak, the only Kurdish organization with robust military capacity that is part of the coalition being discussed is unlikely to make such a move at this moment. Now what have these reports done? Well, for one thing, they create the idea in the public that you are going to have this uprising, that you have these forces coming in, that there's this ground invasion. And by the way, of course they don't talk about our direct involvement in any of this, that there's this natural organic uprising. It also makes these Kurdish forces targets for the Iranians. And in fact there were reports yesterday that the Iranians started bombing some of the Kurdish forces and factions as a result of this reporting saying that a ground invasion had already begun. All of this is a long way to say there are already multiple psyops that are being operated by our government, by the Israelis, no doubt by the Iranians as well, and so be very, very leery of any of the information that comes out. Wait until things are confirmed with evidence. Because the information warfare is just as thick and just as heavy handed as the actual warfare on the ground.

[Saagar Enjeti]

That's exactly right. It's very important. But also you can gleam and you can gleam this. What you can gleam is that they want the impression of a civil war to happen to widen the war, to collapse the regime, to get them afraid inside. None of this is consistent with any of the current statements, at least that are on the record, from the Secretary of State, from the Vice President. They're like, look, we just wanna degrade their capacity and we would prefer if somebody took over who was better. But we're not gonna do very much about it. That's not the same thing. That is not what we are watching all happen in front of our eyes. Let's actually take a look now at some of the strikes that are coming out from Tehran from a limited amount of video that we've been able to see. By the way, we should get some better video. We have a couple international journalists that just crossed the Iranian border this morning. But you can see, I mean, it's a disaster. I mean, this is in broad daylight just blowing the crap out of buildings.

[Krystal Ball]

The city of what, 10 million people?

[Saagar Enjeti]

Yeah, millions of people in a highly urban area. There's some reporting, I've seen that a large portion of the city has been evacuated. But what you could really take away, I think, from that is that these are. Look, we. Again, we don't even know if it's us or if it's Israeli strikes. The US Government has already said, oh my God, you know, so much is happening. We haven't even cut this. Did you notice the Secretary of Defense and General Kaine brag? They said, some of you may remember Iraq 2003. We have dropped twice the amount of bombs from 2003. Shock and awe. And I was like, wait, we're bragging about that? I was like, do we look back on that as a victory? Did anybody at the White House go, do we really want comparisons to shock and awe? So they're telling us, you can literally take their own word for it. We've dropped two times the amount of bombs in Shock and Awe in the middle of Iraq. If you remember what all of that looked like. So remember again about censorship and about some of the video. Very limited amount that is already coming out. We should hopefully be able to get a little bit more information as some of these international journalists continue to cross into Iran. Let's also again just underscore that point. Here's a clip from CNN where they're openly saying, hey, we would show you this, but the Israeli government doesn't want us to. Let's take a listen.

[Krystal Ball]

We're not showing you that because we're not gonna show.

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The Israeli government does not allow us

[Krystal Ball]

or want us to show where they that may have come up, that interceptor.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Okay, so we're not gonna show you that. I mean, thanks for the honesty, I guess. But it does demonstrate. And we've seen this from Trey Yanks, from Jeremy Dimon, now from CNN and others. They're very consistent about, hey, we can't show this to you. Cause the Israeli government won't let us. In fact, there was a CNN Turk crew filming crew who was arrest detained on camera while they were filming in the middle of Israel. And the Israelis were like, hey, hey, you gotta stop. And they like took the camera down and they started taking it. You remember during the 12 Day War, they did the same thing when you were showing some of the damage that had already happened. We do know from just from the ballistic missile alerts that there were tons of alerts last night. And I wake up this morning, nothing. There's no video at all. It's like, really, you intercepted all of them? I don't think so. And yet that's what the level of war reporting is right now. Remember in Gaza too, that they would often take journalists on a ride and then confiscate or check their footage whenever they were coming out. And they said, you're only allowed to report whatever we tell you. So everyone be extremely wary of what that looks like.

[Krystal Ball]

They're still not allowing international journalists inside of Gaza. So I mean that, yeah, that's the level of control. And look, it goes without saying, it's crazy how these quote unquote journalists, they just accept this. Like, they don't even feel ashamed when they're telling you like, oh, we're not going to show this because the Israeli government, government doesn't want you to. I feel like, I mean, they definitely would feel more sense of upset if it was the American government telling me, if it was Trump who's saying, oh, you can't film that. They'd be like, screw you, we're gonna film it anyway. Press freedom. But when it's the Israeli, oh, we've got to listen to the Israelis, can't show that, et cetera, et cetera. It's crazy. To that point, let's put B10 actually up on the screen because it's clear that the person who really has the broader plan in mind and is driving the train at this point is Benjamin Netanyahu. So it's very important to pay attention to the Israeli press, to statements from Netanyahu and his crew of total psychos that are over there in Israel, that are driving the show, that have their own biblical religious blood feud ideas in mind here as well. But in any case, this was an important article from the Financial Times because it has some reporting about the way the Israelis are thinking about this. It says Israel expects weeks long war against Iran. In other words, not some quick in and out. There was some reporting that Netanyahu was concerned that Trump may have been talking to the Iranians through back channels and had to check in and make sure that there's not any possibility that this war is gonna end anytime soon. I'm not sure that those back channels were open anyway. But Netanyahu had to check in and make sure that the war was gonna keep going. We need more death, more destruction, more chaos, more refugee crisis, et cetera. In any case, an analyst told the Financial Times, summarizing the Israeli government's position, quote, if we can have a coup, great. If we can have people on the streets, great. If we can have a civil war, great. Israel could not care less about the future or the stability of Iran. That is a point of difference between us and the US I think Washington is more concerned about nation building and threat, threats to their regional partners. So put that together with the reporting about the at least arming of these Kurdish factions and trying to push them to invade and spark some sort of a local uprising, and you can see whose plan is in control now. I don't know what the Israelis sold Trump. I don't know what Trump is dumb enough to believe in terms of what could be accomplished, whether he really did buy that. If you just take out the Ayatollah, then, and they're gonna greet us as liberators with flowers in the streets, and we're gonna have this great democratic Iran that's going to love the United States of America and wanna do all sorts of business deals with you and the Trump Tower. Tehran is gonna be going up any minute. I don't know if he was actually dumb enough to believe that, but now that he has certainly been disabused of that notion, if he had that notion before, well, what other plan can there possibly be other than we want to collapse this entire state? We just want chaos. We just want mayhem. The literal quote here is, if we can have a civil war, great. Think of how sick that is. Think of how destabilizing. You're talking about a country of 90 million people. Think about the blowback and spiral effects that we can't even contemplate at this point. I mean, we just have the roadmap of, like, Iraq and what we saw happen there, Libya and what we saw happen there. You know, it's incredibly unpredictable when you destabilize or when your goal is to thoroughly destabilize a country as large and as diverse and as important for the global economy as Iran is. And yet, you know, that's what Israel is aiming for. And by, you know, for whatever reason, the US has decided to go along with that plan. So that is the actual plan that is in action now. And to Sagar's point, there is no way this thing is going to be quick. We are not going to be getting out of here anytime soon.

[Saagar Enjeti]

There's only one. Trump would have to make the heroic decision, the actual heroic decision of saying, I fucked up and this is over.

[Krystal Ball]

Well, you know, he could have. That's the only decision he could have after they assassinated the Ayatollah, just declare victory. He could have claimed that this was some glorious victory. And they're gonna, you know, they're not gonna do a nuke. And so we can. Mission accomplished, see you later. Let's just not talk about this again. And he didn't take that, you know, he didn't take that opportunity for, you know, reasons that continue to remain somewhat shrouded in mystery.

[Saagar Enjeti]

And let's just say now that all, at this point, we're in it, you know, now Americans are dead now. Installations, bases are hit. Let's put B6 up here on the screen.

[Krystal Ball]

Fighter jets falling out of the sky, right?

[Saagar Enjeti]

Yeah, Three fighter jets which have all been shot at least.

[Krystal Ball]

There are some reports accidentally.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Accidentally by the Kuwaitis apparently. Shows you the level of coordination. This from the New York Times, which we're showing you. Some of these images demonstrate some of the bases which have been hit. And you can actually see the various different structures, all of which have either been wiped out. These are very sophisticated suicide drone strikes by the Iranians. Very targeted at radar systems and communications specifically because those are the coordinating radar for much of the interceptors and others. This could explain perhaps why we've seen some of the strikes that have already happened, Iranian strikes inside of the Gulf countries, because they rely on some of these communication infrastructures and radar to be able to coordinate their air defense. And they say US military communication infrastructure, highly classified, making it difficult to determine what exact systems. But the targeted locations seem to indicate Iran was aiming to disrupt the ability to communicate and to coordinate. And I mean, look, we've already seen problems with that in Kuwait. They say Iran has attacked the military communications capacity even recently as June. Whenever it tried to hit Qatar in multiple of these instances, we saw. And that Kuwait, or, sorry, that Qatar base is really troubling. Cause you could see a big impact that happened in one of those images. And just to beat the drum on our stockpiles, let's go to B7, please, and put this on the screen. This is the clearest sign yet so far that things are not nearly as rosy as they're trying to paint. Defense executives are now planning to meet at the White House as strikes on Iran diminish. Stockpiles. So basically, basically, it's like an emergency summer. It's basically like an emergency summoning to the White House where the White House is gonna read them the riot act. And they're like, hey, you guys need to create more missiles. And they're like, we can't. Because it's not just a process which gets spun up overnight. It actually takes years. Which is why people like us have been talking about this for years. It's all out there. It's public record. They have to show this. Literally. They have to show and allocate the number of missiles and interceptors and all these other things that they buy. In Congress, I've gotten so much pushback. They're like, as if, you know, it's not about me knowing. It's like they published the document. Literally. Congress can even tell you that's cause they have to report to them. It's all in files. You can go and check it for yourself if you want to. What we see inside this report, this summoning of these defense executives is that even if we try to throw the money at them, that the timeline for production takes years. Like, you could literally try to nationalize the industry. And even with that, you could not x the capacity enough to be able to fulfill already what we have used in this conflict. So that means that we have a couple of options. You have to use, as you were talking about dumb bombs. It's not exactly right, but like, we have a large stockpile of these JDAMs, but what we don't have are these interceptors, these Tomahawk missiles, or nearly as much. And this capacity to replace them is extremely difficult. And they're massively expensive. So that means while we do have stockpiles elsewhere, that you have to take it from there. Well, there's already a huge shitstorm in the military because a lot of the people who are in charge of defending the Pacific are like, we can't give this up. Because if we give it up to you, a, that leaves us super, super unreliable over here to all of our allies, Japan, South Korea, all of these actually massively important countries to the United States, China, Taiwan, all of these problems that we're having. I was listening to Brandon Weickert this morning in an interview, and he was speculating that it's based on some reporting or things that he had heard that there are Chinese and Russian intelligence that are being shared could explain why the Iranians have the ability to hit some of these things. I mean, can you put it out of the question? The United States is basically doing all those strike packages for the Ukrainians. We're spying on the Russians and then giving the coordinates to them. Why do you think they wouldn't want to. And this is great. They get to test all of our munitions, deplete them, see exactly how they work and strike at our capacity. And what are we doing all of this for? I've seen all this 5D chess. Oh, this is all about a message to China. This is what, a joke Nonsense, right? This is one of the best things.

[Krystal Ball]

Message to China that we're pathetic and allow our service members to be blown up in triple wide trailers with no protection.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Right. And the Chinese are like, oh, okay. They're like, this is great. They're like, we could turn this into their Vietnam or their Afghanistan. Let's flood as much of this as we possibly can. Make it difficult, bog them down. There's nothing they could want more. It's the same thing that we used to argue about, about in Ukraine. They argued it was some sort of deterrence. Nope. If anything, it actually depleted as they already are admitting. They are literally admitting the United States military that we sent a huge number to Ukraine and we don't have the capacity to backfill some of the people in the Gulf. And of course we haven't even talked enough about the hundreds of Thousands if not 1 million plus Americans who are basically stranded all across the Middle east who have no way to get out. The State Department is like is emergency, trying to create an evacuation scenario now. And now they're competing though with the military for military aircraft to be able to use to get them out. There's no planned evacuation as of right now. So we have almost a week of hostilities that are happening and people are sheltering in place if they want to leave. I read a story about some mother who had to take a bus for seven and a half hours and it takes six flights to be able to get back to Chicago. Can you imagine? She's a pregnant lady, she's sitting on a bus for seven and a half hours from Israel to Egypt and has to catch a flight like to nine different places before she can come back to Chicago. That's one person she's lucky enough to be able to get out. So think about the number of people that can, with small children or others. It's a nightmare. It's a total nightmare.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, absolutely. And just to go back to that, that article about them Rushing into defense execs and demanding that they produce more is really extraordinary. Cuz also, keep in mind, Trump was just posting on Truth Social about how our stockpiles are virtually unlimited. We could do war forever if we want. I mean, the man is. He is just such an incredible liar. And then you see the panic behind the scenes of like, my God, we gotta get these guys in here and hope that yelling at them somehow magically creates more stockpiles. It doesn't work that way. And somehow Trump, I think he. Because he has faced so many times where he is, We've said it before, he's like the luckiest man on the planet. So often things just the ball happens to bounce his way. And, you know, all the critics said that Venezuela would be a disaster. But look, I kidnapped Maduro and it went fine. In his view, this was no problem whatsoever. All of the tariffs, they said they crashed the economy. Well, they weren't great for the economy, but the stock market kept going up. So he looks at that and he was like, they were wrong. Everything was fine. I think he just doesn't live in a reality where anything matters. So when he hears these generals who came in and were like, listen, we have no answer for these drones. These 30 to $50,000 drones that they scare can spin up like crazy and produce mass quantities of. We really have no answer for that. Our stockpiles are already low. We cannot protect all of our allies in the region. Like our Gulf allies are also running low on interceptors. This is a bad idea. He just does not take that seriously because he thinks, well, these type of experts have said I was wrong before, and I've always proven them wrong. I know more about this. And by the way, my friend Netanyahu is telling me that this is all gonna be great. And BIBI here in D.C. all the time, talking to Trump on the phone, talking to other officials on the phone all the time. And when you have someone like Netanyahu and his government with a really clear goal and a very clear ideology and they know what they want, and you are working on someone who is as stupid and easily manipulated and without any sort of grounding principles as Trump. That is part of why, from the beginning, I thought that this was very. That we were very likely to end up in this place. Not to mention the fact that in the first term, Trump was extremely hawkish towards Iran as well. That they in different ways tried to foment a coup and a regime change in Iran as well in the first term. That was why I was Fairly confident that unfortunately we would at some point end up in this place. And here we are.

[Saagar Enjeti]

It's really bad. Let's put B9 up here on the screen just to highlight some of the issues about a broadcast in conflict. So we had actually a very troubling incident yesterday where it appeared an Iranian missile was actually fired at Turkey. So at a US base which is in the country. US Navy destroyer shot down the missile. But this was one of the first times other than the British military base which was struck in Cyprus, there are NATO allies which are already being ensnared. Now remember, I mean Turkey, this is a very difficult problem for them. You've got air bases of the United States in Turkey. At the same time the Turks have okay, relations with the Iranians. They apparently summoned the ambassador over this strike and there was even some report that they may have had another one. But they're also gonna be very against any sort of Kurdish uprising which is in the country. But you can see how very quickly these things can spiral out of control. Another censorship thing I wanna notice is we haven't seen video of this but Qatar, Kuwait and others keep talking about Iranian fighters which they're able to shoot down, which come very close to striking U.S. bases. So that's very significant for a number of reasons that they still have the ability to take off. Let's say, you know, a couple of days into the conflict. You would expect that'd be one of the first things to go. And so far the air defense systems and others have all been able to hold up. But it only takes one for it to create like, like a serious mass casualty or crazy style event. Last thing on here before we move on. We wanted to flag weird incident B11. Let's put it up here on the screen. This is from the UK media. They are saying that a drone attack on their base in Cyprus was hit by a shahed like drone on Sunday, but confirmed it was not launched from Iran. So where was it launched from? And they haven't been able to tell us. So serious questions here. Cypriot authorities said that the assault executed was an Iranian drone, most probably deployed, they think from Hezbollah from Lebanese territory. But that shows that you've got drones that are not just in the country but also being able to spread out, let's say either in Syria via proxy Hezbollah, they could attack in Israel they could attack other bases, other territories. So that's, I mean what is, isn't Cyprus, it's hundreds of miles away from Iran. Just to show their, their own limited power projection and The Houthis haven't even gotten fully involved yet. Do they hand their hands on these drones and their ability to try and go after the United States said they were going to escort ships in the Straits of Hormuz that would put them much more in the, you know, in the launch range of some of these anti ship ballistic missiles and also potentially some of these drones as well.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, this drone situation, there's two possibilities. One is that it was Hezbollah and two is that it was a false flag from Israel, which I don't put either one out of. Yeah, I don't put either one out of the question. And, and both possibilities raise alarms about the escalatory nature of what has been unleashed here. Because Iran has deployed this mosaic defense where, because they anticipated that there would be an attempt to decapitate the government, they really spread decision making out among these different military units. So their military commanders are authorized to sort of freelance like they have whatever is in their purview and they are allowed to make decisions on their own independently. They don't have to wait for some order to come down from the top. What does that mean? It means you've got a bunch of military commanders out there who are freelancing, who perhaps are firing missiles or using drones in ways that if you had a cohesive top down military structure, they may think better of because of the possible escalatory nature. Now I also think based on what we're seeing from Iran, that they have calculated that since this is an existential threat threat. They also need to make the Gulf countries feel some pain and recognize that this is a problem for them in the hope that they will put pressure on the US to pull out and end this war. So I do think that is part of their strategy. And then with regard to Israel, they have the same incentive to broaden and spread this conflict. They want as many countries engaged in this war as possible, which is why I don't think it's insane to float that, you know, you could have false, whether this was one or not, that you could have false flag attacks from Israel. We talked earlier about that report from Tucker that you had Mossad agents in Gulf countries that were caught trying to foment terrorist attacks or trying to commit terrorist attacks. The Gulf coast, yes, there's denials all around, but again, these are things that you cannot put out of bounds because that is the interest that the Israelis have. They want this to broaden and spread as much as possible. Drawing Turkey in. Absolutely. They're all for that. All the Gulf countries, they Want them brought in. They want everybody engaged in this fight, because that's what serves their interest. And so that's why the only country that maybe even theoretically has an interest in not allowing this thing to spread is us. But when you have the Iranians and the Israelis both wanting this to escalate and spiral, that is very likely what you're going to get. And of course, that is already what we see in terms of the direction of this going. And I mean from the US Too. We sunk this Iranian frigate that was over in the Indian Ocean, that was not armed, actually, and we shot a torpedo at it from a submarine. Pete Hegseth was bragging about it. We didn't go and try to rescue any of the sailors either, which apparently is something even the Nazis did during World War II would go and rescue sailors after they struck their boats. But in any case, it's not like we're really trying to contain this thing and de escalate it either, because that. That was quite far from the main theater of action.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Yeah, actually, that's. The submarine thing is actually kind of a political problem in India. There's a lot of discussion around it, I'm sure.

[Krystal Ball]

Well, because they had invited them there

[Saagar Enjeti]

for some naval exercise. So there was a naval exercise. So in the Indian diaspora, actually, or, sorry, in the Indian, like, discourse over there, they're like, hey, are we going to allow this? Like, we're going to invite people over here? Are we going to talk to the United States? They're like, yeah, it was international waters. Should we have had an escort? These people saluted our own prime minister. You know, they're worried about their own threat to the prestige. I was literally reading some of the Indian papers this morning. So it's. Look, I mean, it's already spread. There's a cut. You know, literally insane to think about torpedoes being launched. They're saying, I think for the first time since World War II, which is insane. And yeah, I mean, the level of how it's already spread and impacted global gas prices, which are already ticking up. Diesel prices actually went over $4. I think there was some reports about California jet fuel futures and others. Like the level of economic damage that this could inflict in a matter of weeks is going to be immense. And the President and his team appear to only be waking up to that now. It's not as if they really planned for any of it by their own admission. And that will only further extend, let's say, the US Military having to escort ships into. In the streets of Hormuz hey, it's

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[Krystal Ball]

so the Senate voted yesterday on this War Powers Resolution. We could put this up on the screen. It failed effectively along party lines. You had Fetterman voting with the Republicans, Rand Paul voting with the Democrats. And So it failed 47 to 53. And you know, I think it's. I think it's noteworthy both that you had all the Democrats except Fetterman hang together. But more importantly, you know, there's been a lot of talk and you see a lot of kind of like MAGA influence or some number of MAGA influencers. Megyn Kelly, right. Obviously Nick Fuentes and Alex Jones are opposed to this. You see some people like that, the war room people are uncomfortable with what's going on. So you see a lot of loud voices who are on the right who are opposed to this war with Iran. But if you look at the polling, the Republican base, they're largely on board with it. Oh yeah, it is more of an online phenomenon, the opposition, than the reality among the Republican base, which just says basically, oh, Trump is doing this, so we support it. So I think the fact that the Republicans hung together and did not remember this is not even about like authorizing war. This is a vote to say, like, this power rusts with us, that even the Susan Collins of the world, who is very likely to get her clock clean by Graham Platner in the fall, even they felt like the right political calculus was to vote against this. Now you have to factor into that not only the like political base and the fear of Trump and his ire, you also have to factor into that the money from AIPAC and other ideology, Israel lobby types. And the ideology too that's a great point too is some of these people just genuinely believe in endless war. Many of them genuinely believe in endless war. And so that's how you end up with a situation where even though you have some 70% of the country that is like, no, we don't want this, you still have every Republican senior, save for Rand Paul saying, we're gonna let the president do whatever he wants.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Right? And that is the scary part, you know what's. I mean, to stick on that. One of the things I personally hate is people wishcasting analysis. So there's been, like you just said, there's a lot of people like, oh, this is a screw you to the base. And I never use those words. You know what I say? I say it's a screw you to the country because the base is always gonna stick with him. I grew up in bush country. 5,000 U.S. troops were killed. They didn't care. Okay? They all stuck with him till the end. He's my president, I'd like to have a beer with him. You remember all that. They say that till 09. That's what a lot of these people were saying today. They would all claim that they were all against it. Not true. I remember. But that's the reality. The base, they'll stick with him. Now the rest of the country, independents, the 51%, let's say who voted for him, that's a whole other story. Those are the people who are much more on the fence. People who are not self identified actual Republicans, many of them. One of the things that can explain this number is when you start self identifying other than as a Republican and then you disagree, it shoots the Republican number support up for the war. But let's not make any mistake that all of these people are loyal to Donald Trump and to party ideology itself. I will say in the Senate case vote. What you see with the Susan Collins and the Murkowskis and all of them is I actually think Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, they vote against Trump all the time. All the time. Right. And they've been able to survive. It's very telling to me that the one thing they won't vote against him on is Iran. Cuz they support the operation line. I don't think think that we can adequately describe the way that in Washington brain this is a justified operation. To the extent that it's gone bad, it's because Trump hasn't done it the process way properly. He didn't brief us, he didn't brief us properly. It's like that's all they care about. They don't care about the fact that we're in a bad conflict. Period. End of story. This is gonna be just like 2004. The war democrats, they're already emerging and we're seeing some of this. And yes, just like 2003, there are only extremely limited, extreme like count on one hand the level the type of people who will speak out either against party or against ideology say this is ridiculous. One of them is Congressman Thomas Massie. Here he is. Let's take a listen as to why

[Various Officials (e.g., Thomas Massie, Pete Hegseth, Press Secretary)]

we launched this preemptive war. The President says we had to strike first because an Iranian strike was Imminent. Meanwhile, the Department of Defense conceded there was no evidence of a, an imminent Iranian strike. Some told us this war was about nuclear weapons. But six months ago, we were assured our last strike on Iran decimated their nuclear program. So which is it? I think the most candid answer came from the Secretary of State who told the press that Israel forced our hand and dragged us into this war.

[Saagar Enjeti]

There is Congressman Thomas Massie. He's going to be one of the very few Republicans, if at all, who end up voting against it. And look, this is a valiant effort from Congressman Massie and from Ro Khanna, others, Tim Kaine, who forced the War Powers act vote. But look, now let it all be on record. It's out there now. We can hold these people at the very least accountable. You did not even want to vote for the ability to vote. Whether this is something that you have an interest in. Okay, we got you. We hear you loud and clear. What's gonna come next? Is this supplemental funding, though? That's the big question.

[Krystal Ball]

Well, and that is the purpose of these votes. I mean, they're not even. So let's imagine a world where they actually did pass the War Powers Resolution. It's not like we really think that that would constrain Trump. What this is about is putting people on the record for history so that forever it is marked down in the history books who did what, when, because again, you're gonna have so many people after the fact when this thing, I mean, it's already gone bad. I don't know how anyone's supporting it already, but when it is an undeniable complete catastrophe and Americans reject it overwhelmingly in a way that is again, undeniable, you're gonna have all kinds of people pretending they opposed it from the jump. So at least for these politicians, we can get them on the record. Where did you stand? What did you do at the beginning? Did you even have the guts to claim the power for Congress to weigh in on this thing? Or did you just say, yes, sir, Mr. President, whatever mayhem and madness you wanna do, go ahead and go for it. So let's go and put C3 up on the screen. Cuz to Sagar's point, the next battle is over funding. Now, have you heard anyone in the media say, how will you pay for it? How will you pay for it? The roughly billion, probably more dollars a day that are being spent currently, the $50 billion reported supplemental funding that they're going to ask Congress for. This is Mike Johnson, speaker of the House says Congress will pass Iran war funding when appropriate. So $50 billion more. What else could that $50 billion be spent on? Do you have any ideas in your head? Maybe healthcare, maybe housing, maybe education, maybe infrastructure, maybe jobs. All kinds of things that could be done with this $50 billion rather than killing little girls in Iran or risking our service members lives in the Middle East. Seems like the American taxpayers probably have some better ideas of how they would like these funds to be spent. And yet from the quote, unquote opposition party, you can put this up on the screen. Politico reached out to a bunch of senators on the Democratic side to say, hey, you have expressed some concerns about this war. And all of the Democrats, save for Fetterman, have expressed those concerns. And all of them, save for Fetterman, voted for the War Powers Resolution. What about the supplemental funding, Schumer? Before you can feel satisfied about a supplemental, and I haven't seen it, you have to know what the real goals are and what the end game is. You see there, he's not ruling it out. He's saying, we just need more information, we need a better briefing. Okay, again, process concern, not opposition. Delaware Senator Chris Coons, who absolutely sucks all the time, a senior Democratic appropriator, says he expects the Pentagon will send Congress a supplemental funding request and vowed to, quote, quote, make sure we are making all the investments we can to keep US Troops safe. Coons said the Trump administration needs to testify at an open hearing so American people can get questions answered about the failures in planning that led to the sum of the challenges, losses and mistakes in this war. Okay, so again, process. They need to speak to the American people. But ultimately he's going to fund it is bottom line, what he's saying there. Our friend Alyssa Slotkin, she said, I don't rule anything out, comma, I mean, we're in it. Tim Kaine also said something similar. Even though he's been great on leading the push for this War Powers Resolution, but when it comes to funding the war that you claim to oppose, you're open to voting for the funding of the war. I mean, this makes no sense. If you oppose the war, you oppose funding the war. It is that, that simple. And so the amount of capitulation, the amount of, frankly, ideological support from the Democratic Party is insane. They are so disconnected from the base of the party. And so with their vote on the War Powers Resolution, the fact that they stayed lockstep, except for John Fetterman, that is a proof of how strongly, adamantly the base is opposed to this thing, and not just from a You didn't brief us concern but outright directly opposed to this thing. They knew they could not vote against this war powers resolution because there would be hell to pay from the base. You saw Mark Kelly say like oh I don't know how I'm gonna vote on this thing. And I guarantee you he got slammed with phone calls and next thing you know, guess how he voted. He voted for it. So they are under tremendous pressure from the base and yet they think they can get away with voting to fund this thing. It is absolutely insane to me.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Well you know trip down memory lane back in oh 07 Nancy Pelosi, you might remember this where she tried to fund the Iraq because it was right after the 2006 victory for the midterms. Pelosi was negotiating funding with the Bush administration. And what she did is she put a withdrawal timeline on the funding for the administration. But even that was something that many of the progressive Democrats who were inside at the time. So we're saying what they were saying is like no, you need a much faster withdrawal timeline. Cuz they didn't wanna support the surge. Bush ended up vetoing it and they did eventually win that entire funding battle which of course kept American forces in Iraq. What they wanted to do was they wanted to fulfill their claim that they had right was basically we ran on ending the war in Iraq and the President now wants to surge troops in Iraq. We cannot then continue to fund what we ran against. But the moderate leaders in the Democratic Party so called like Nancy Pelosi and others who became the speaker said no, no, no we can't do that cuz we have to play ball with the Bush administration. And so what they ended up doing actually was kind of knifing what had happened and continuing to fund that. Not to mention what happened with Barack Obama. You're watching the exact same thing now play out is you can't say, especially in this case, Iraq was a whole other story, right? Cuz we had our troops on the ground, et cetera. Like you know, obviously many Democrats had voted for it. In this case, if you're gonna be against the it then how can you continue to fund it? It's ridiculous, right? If you're saying that the best possible thing would be to force the administration's hand by saying no, you can't have more money to continue operations, you need to figure out some sort of diplomatic solution that is the best way to go about it. But they failed to do that under Bush. They also failed to do it multiple times under Obama. This is how the bipartisan consensus keeps going and the more that the money is flowed, that's the only thing that allows the administration to continue to operate. That's the disaster I think that we're seeing in all of this. So we have no war powers. I mean Glenn made this point, I thought it was so good. Is that when the framers put together this idea of the Constitution, they actually theorized that the co equal branches of government would fight as hard as they possibly could for maintaining their own institutional power within the system. And they actually never could have imagined that you would have an entire branch that would just hold up its hand and surrender to what was going on in the White House House. And this is a political culture now which has been normalized over the last 25 years from Bush onward because, and I wanna make this the most because they do not want to bear the political consequences of their actions. Even the Democrats, like you're saying, Mark Kelly and all these people, they'll vote for the War Powers Resolution, but the real fight is gonna be on funding. The real fight is gonna be on how you're actually working to make sure that this doesn't continue to happen. They're happy to take the vote to tell the base they didn't vote for, but are you actually gonna do everything to keep it away? No. And then same with many of the so called anti war Republicans. I mean Josh Hawley, some of these other guys, they all voted for this. I mean it's ridiculous. I mean this is the most consequential war vote you will ever take as a member of Congress, at least so far in your entire term. And you're like, nope, actually not only does the President have the ability, we don't even have the ability to weigh in. It's ludicrous to hold that position.

[Krystal Ball]

Yep. The only Republican who voted against it was Rand Paul. And then in the House you've got Thomas Massie. And we'll see if there are any other others who join him whatsoever. I wanted to show this as well. This is a Marine, retired Marine who protested in a Congressional hearing. And let's put this up on the screen, guys. This is C5 and you can see him being wrestled out. That guy in the suit, that is a freaking Senator Sheehy. And in the process of doing this and trying to remove this man who, I don't know, I don't know if you heard what he just said there. He said, nobody wants to die for Israel. I think that's a pretty salient point. In any case, they broke this man's arm, including this senator who for some reason gets involved here with the police trying to remove this retired Marine. I mean, just wild to see that whole scene play out. And man, reminds me of my childhood.

[Saagar Enjeti]

That's what it rats me.

[Krystal Ball]

Absolutely. I mean, a retired Marine having his arm broken because he says, nobody wants to die for Israel. Poll the country, ask them, do people wanna die for Israel? Is that because that's what Marco Rubio tells you is going on here? He said it plain that that's what's actually happening here. Now, I think that is not the entire truth, but there's no doubt that the people who have been the most relentless in pushing for this are all of the most hardest core Zionists in this country and obviously the Israeli government themselves.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Do you remember Tim Shea? Do you remember the little factoid about him?

[Krystal Ball]

Is he the one that got in the fight with that reporter?

[Saagar Enjeti]

He's the one who, with Megyn Kelly, got into that whole dispute about the circumstances in which he was shot and the whole.

[Krystal Ball]

In the national. Oh my God. Yes, that's the guy. Yes, that's right. Bizarre story.

[Saagar Enjeti]

The whole set was very, very strange where a national park ranger was like he shot himself and he claimed he got shot. And anyway, there's stuff just saying the

[Krystal Ball]

bottom line is he shot himself and then lied about it. Is the tltr of how that.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Yeah, that seems to be the evidence as to where things currently point.

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