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Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar
7/8/25: Trump Doubles Down On Tariffs, Tucker Interviews Iran President, Bibi Nominates Trump For Nobel
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Krystal Ball
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Bubba Wallace
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Krystal Ball
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Bubba Wallace
We need your help to build the future of independent news media and we hope to see you@breaking points.com.
- [02:12]
Krystal Ball
Good morning everybody. Welcome to Breaking Points. Just me in the studio today, but I do have some guests to help me out with the show. In particular, I've got Murtaza Hossein joining us to talk about Tucker's interview with the President of Iran. Going to share with you a few key moments there and get his reaction to all of that. And also Bibi Netanyahu back at the White House third time. This time he is nominating President Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize. We've got other developments there as well that we will get Murtaza's reaction to. Then we're going to also have Glenn Greenwald join. He has been closely following what is going on with Palantir, with Peter Thiel going to ask him if what he puts the odds at that Peter Thiel is actually the Antichrist. So there's a lot to dig into there that is very consequential. I also want to get Glenn's view on the Epstein flop and the cope that is going on right now in MAGA world, which I have to say is world historic. I'm actually going to start the show, though, with the newest tariff announcement, sort of like a Liberation Day 2.0. Trump is unilaterally announcing tariffs on a number of very significant countries. We get a little bit of sound from him from Caroline Levitt and sort of parse through what is exactly going on there. We also have updates coming out of Texas as the death toll has surged even higher. Now, over 100 individuals dead because of those devastating floods. We have new information about the response or failures thereof. And also Ted Cruz once again, you'll recall previously he was caught in Cancun during a natural disaster in Texas. This time he was in Greece sightseeing and was spotted as the floods ravaged the state and the response continued apace. In addition, I want to bring you some truly shocking images out of LA as federal immigration agents performed a militarized sweep of the park. Ken Klippenstein, great friend of the show, was able to get leaked documents talking about the goals of this sweep, which indications are may not have actually picked up a single person. It was more a demonstration of a show of force that, hey, these immigration agents armed to the teeth, looking like a military occupation. They can go anywhere and they can do anything and there is nothing that the local government, Karen Bass in this case, can do to stop them. So a lot to get to in this show. Before I jump in to the tariffs information, just want to thank you guys so much for supporting this show. If you are not a premium member and you want to become one, you get the show in your inbox early. No ads. You get access to the premium AMAs. You also get access to the full Friday show. Go ahead and sign up@breaking points.com if that is not for you at this point, money's tight or you just don't feel like it. If you can share the clips and like and subscribe, all that good stuff, that helps us out tremendously as well. All right, so let's go ahead and get to this tariff announcement. So yesterday, about halfway through the day, Trump posts these letters, sort of preposterously written letters to a couple of significant countries announcing new 25% tariffs on those nations. Specifically here we're talking about Japan and we're talking about South Korea. Now, these are both countries that are close allies of the US So it shouldn't have been that difficult to get some sort of a trade deal with them. In fact, previously, Trump had negotiated a trade deal with them in his first administration. And yet because his demands have been so hard to pin down and unreasonable, they have actually been unable to come to terms. So he unilaterally announced this new tariff rate to go into effect. And then later on in the day, we get an announcement that there are additional countries that are also having these unilateral tariffs being placed on top of them. You guys remember back in the early days after Liberation Day, and when we had the pause, we were told we were going to get 90 deals in 90 days. So far, we've gotten two sort of outlines of a deal with two countries. So it certainly has not rolled out the way that it was originally portrayed. When Caroline Levitt was asked about all of this, what it means where we're going, let's take a listen to what she had to say.
- [06:15]
Caroline Levitt
I have the signed letters that went out to both South Korea and Japan today. And there will be approximately 12 other countries that will receive notifications and letters directly from the President of the United States. And weeks ago, I stood at this podium and I told all of you that the president was going to create tailor made trade plans for each and every country on this planet. And that's what this administration continues to be focused on. The president will also sign an executive order today delaying the July 9 deadline to August 1. So the reciprocal tariff rate or these new rates that will be provided in this correspondence to these foreign leaders will be going out the door to within the next month or deals will be made and those countries continue to negotiate with the United States. We've seen a lot of positive developments in the right direction. But the administration, the president and his trade team want to cut the best deals for the American people and the American worker. That's what they're focused on. And in the effort of transparency, these letters will continue to be posted to Truth Social. They will take the letters seriously, because they have taken the president seriously. And that's why the president's phone, I can tell you, rings off the hook from world leaders all the time who are begging him to come to a deal.
- [07:28]
Krystal Ball
So there you go. That is a little bit of what the official White House line was yesterday. Let's go and put this next piece up on the screen so you can get a little bit of a sense of these letters. So White House sent near identical letters to the leaders of Japan and South Korea announcing sweeping new 25% tariffs on all their exports to the US starting August 1st. This is significant because the previous deadline was tomorrow, July 9th. And so there had been some confusion about whether that was going to be a hard and fast deadline. They're now pushing that to August 1st. There is continued confusion about whether the new August 1st deadline is actually a hard and fast deadline. So we'll have to see what ultimately pans out there. But let me read you just a little bit of these letters because it is certainly trademark Trumpian language and sort of preposterous that this is the way that the President of the United States communicates with significant nations around the world. In any case, one of them reads, this is the one to the Prime Minister of Japan. Dear Mr. Prime Minister, it is a great honor for me to send you this letter in that it demonstrates the strength and commitment of our trading relationship and the fact the US Of A has agreed to continue working with Japan despite having a significant trade deficit with your great country. Nevertheless, we've decided to to move forward with you, but only with more balanced and fair trade in all caps. Therefore, we invite you to participate in the extraordinary economy of the United States, the number one market in the world, weirdly capitalized there by far. We have had years to discuss our trading relationship with Japan, have concluded we must move away from these long term and very persistent trade deficits in caps for some reason engendered by Japan's tariff and non tariff policies and trade barriers. And then he goes on to describe how we will be unilaterally implementing these 25% tariffs. Let's go and put the next piece up on the screen here to show you the rates that were announced yesterday on these countries to go into effect on August 1. You've got Cambodia 36%, Thailand 36%, Bangladesh 35%, Serbia 35, Indonesia 32, Bosnia 30, Tunisia 25. And then you've got Japan and South Korea at 25. In addition, he says that any retaliation will be met with increased tariffs. So he said if any of those countries increase their tariff rates vis a vis the United States, then that additional amount will be added on top. So, needless to say, these are quite high rates. These are significant tariff rates. It's easy to become a little bit inured of this stuff at this point because we've had them on and off again and back on, and we're taking a pause and we've got a deadline, and we've got a new deadline coming in. But I think it's worth just wrapping our minds around the fact that if you're talking about 25% tariffs on significant trading partners like South Korea and Japan, that is going to have a significant impact on the economy. And economists will tell you very likely to raise prices on those goods coming in from those countries, not to mention what companies do when they have an excuse to hike prices. They hike prices. So very possible that all that comes down the pike, not to mention the continued level of extreme uncertainty about what any of this is, what any of it's going to be, where we're ultimately going to end up. And as I said before, part of the reason why countries like Japan, that have a very close relationship with the United States, why even they were unable to strike some sort of a deal with the Trump administration, is because they basically came and said effectively like, okay, well, what do you want from us? And no one could really answer. Some of these nations have effectively zero tariffs on the U.S. but because Trump feels like we have a trade deficit with them, that that is just ipso facto indication that something is unfair about the relationship. And so he has to put these tariffs in place. So that's kind of the top line of where we are. You know, I mentioned before that there continues to be questions about, okay, we had the July 9 deadline. Well, that's tomorrow. That's now being pushed down to August 1st. Is it going to be the August 1st deadline? Trump got asked a couple days ago about these deadlines and how hard and fast they are and what they mean, and he was perplexingly confused himself. It really raised some questions about how much, even in this area on tariffs, the area where he seems to be sort of the most engaged and the most enthusiastic in terms of his administration, really raised some questions about how plugged in he is even to this sort of centerpiece of his economic agenda. Let's go ahead and take a listen now to A4. Mr. President, do the tariff rates change at all on July 9th or do they change on August 1st? What are you talking about tariff rates? Do they change on July 9th or August 1st.
- [12:15]
Donald Trump
They're going to be tariffs. The tariffs are going to be the tariffs.
- [12:18]
Bubba Wallace
I think we'll have most countries done by July 9th.
- [12:22]
Donald Trump
Yeah, either a letter or a deal, but they go into effect on August 1st.
- [12:29]
Krystal Ball
So you can see Trump there saying, oh, I think most of the countries will be done by July 9th. This was just a couple days ago that he got asked that and he said, oh, no, I think it'll be done by July 9th. Again, tomorrow is July 9th. And we now have this announcement that, no, actually, in fact, we're pushing that deadline off to August 1st. And you can see Howard Lutnick having to jump in to sort of try to clean things up and say, well, I mean, July, sure, Mr. President, but actually they go into effect on August 1st. So, you know, there seem to be significant parts of this administration that Trump has just checked out from. He seems completely checked out from the immigration piece seems to have just been completely outsourced to Stephen Miller as one example where he has become incredibly powerful within this administration. He also appears to be Stephen Miller, very powerful even within foreign policy decision making. But I really thought that tariffs were the one piece that Trump was really super engaged with with. This is a guy that is playing golf on a lot of days, which is kind of extraordinary given that you would think that this would be a very busy job. And so it was just interesting to me to see him even so sort of perplexed by the question that was asked and so out of sorts on what the answer would be about when this deadline is, which again, is pretty significant question given that he was asked this just days before that deadline was due. So let's go and put the next piece up on the screen because this is significant as well. You know, this was the market reaction yesterday. The Dow slides more than 400 points. That's a significant market drop. I haven't taken a look at the futures yet this morning to see where we are. Oh, it says S&P 500 futures rebound from sell off as investors bet that Trump tariffs will end up lower than what he announced. So Wall street appears to be taking the taco bet again. And, you know, given the ups and downs of this policy, it's hard to blame anyone for thinking like, okay, sure, he's doing Liberation Day 2.0 and announcing these very high rates that would be extraordinarily disruptive if they actually go through. But are they actually going to go through? Who the hell knows at this point? In addition, there was also a significant shot Taken at the so called BRICS nations contained in this as well. Let's go ahead and put this next piece up on the screen. This is from the Wall Street Journal. So they say Trump steps up his fight with BRICS nations China and Russia push back after U.S. president threatened to place tariffs on countries embracing the policies of the group. I'll read you a little bit of this article from the Wall Street Journal. They say President Trump's threat to put new tariffs on countries embracing the policies of the group BRICS group has added fresh uncertainty to global trade prompted pushback from Moscow and Beijing. Trump posted on social media that countries aligning themselves with the quote, anti American policies of BRICS will be charged an additional 10% tariff on top, of course, of whatever he decided he was going to charge them. The threat appeared to be a response to a statement put out by the Group of Emerging Economies, whose members include Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa and others that took a swipe at Trump's policies. The threat comes as his administration faces a crucial week for reaching trade deals. The BRICS group, it goes on to say, has long sought to present itself, sought to present itself as a multilateral counterweight to a US Dominated world order, although internal divisions and differing political and financial frameworks have hobbled its quest for expanding its geopolitical influence. So they have actually all been meeting at a summit in Rio De Janeiro right now. They put out a joint declaration that said they had, quote, serious concerns about the rise of unilateral tariff and non tariff measures. So that may have been what prompted this exchange from Trump. But you know, there is a real concern that the world will move away from the United States of America and the dollar as the global reserve currency. That would be an incredible reckoning for this country and for this economy where we are used to having what's been called the exorbitant privilege of being having the dollar as the world's reserve currency. That effectively means that the rest of the world is financing the debt and the deficit that we have accumulated now over years in which the one big beautiful bill will expand even further. I am not someone who is a big, I'm not a big deficit hawk. I'm not one of these how you pay for it kind of people. Especially because we see the way that that rhetoric is always used just to take away social safety net programs that benefit the poor and the working class and never to question, for example, the massive now trillion dollar defense budget that only ever goes up and up and up. Nor is it used to question how we're going to finance the extraordinary giant multitrillion dollar tax cuts that are being given to the wealthiest among us, the people who least need such assistance. However, if the world truly does move away from the dollar, and that is part of what the BRICs have sort of set up to do, it's part of what Russia and China have been looking at alternatives, you can hardly blame them given how chaotic and unreliable the United States is at this point. You know, if that actually does happening happen, it will be a significant reckoning in this country. So, in any case, you know, the irony here of Trump protesting what the BRICS nations are doing is that with his insane unilateral trade war on the entire world, he is only hastening the arrival and increasing the logic of those countries that would want to move away from the dollar as the world's reserve currency. That, of course, is the irony here. Last thing I've got for you is Peter Navarro got asked about the original promise of the 90 deals. In 90 days that had been pledged, we were going to see deals being made at a pace we'd never seen before. There were going to be so many wins. We get sick of winning. I guess. Here is what he had to say about what happened with those 90 deals. In 90 days. 90 days.
- [18:40]
Bubba Wallace
In 90 days. I'm very happy.
- [18:42]
Donald Trump
I'm very happy. I am very happy with where we're at.
- [18:45]
Bubba Wallace
We have had a global baseline tariff in place of 10%.
- [18:50]
Donald Trump
We're collecting billions of dollars of tax.
- [18:52]
Bubba Wallace
Revenues that are going to pay down for tax cuts. We've got continuing negotiations. And I think this is great.
- [19:04]
Donald Trump
Because the rest of the world has it.
- [19:07]
Bubba Wallace
So good that they're dragging their heels.
- [19:11]
Donald Trump
But the president will not allow that. That's why the letters went out.
- [19:14]
Bubba Wallace
That's all I'll say.
- [19:16]
Krystal Ball
So obviously just a bunch of nonsense. Spin and cope there, needless to say. But just to wrap this up, it all goes back to what are we even doing here. There's never been any clear explanation of what the goal of these tariffs even is originally. Remember, we were told when they were being put on Mexico and Canada that it was about fentanyl. Then we were told at times, oh, this was about bringing back manufacturing jobs. Well, so far from what we've seen, this has been devastating, actually, to manufacturing, especially when coupled with the rollback of industrial policy that was actually put in place by the Biden administration. You're going in the wrong direction in terms of manufacturing jobs. At times we've been told that this was about And Peter Navarro talks a little bit about that there. This is about increasing revenue into the United States Treasury. Well, that goal is actually directly at odds with the goal of increasing manufacturing jobs, because if you're reshoring, then you're gonna have fewer goods coming in, being imported. Then you will be decreasing the tariff revenue over time. So those two things are at odds. Trump seems fixated on the idea of us having a trade deficit with any country, even though in some instances, and we talked about the nation of Lesotho, where it's like they're a poor country, so they just don't buy that much in terms of goods from us, and we buy diamonds and other sort of, like, natural resources from them. There's just naturally going to be an imbalance in that trade relationship. It doesn't mean they're ripping us off. So we continue to have this central question of, like, what are you even trying to accomplish here? What even is the goal here? How could you even measure whether or not this policy is successful when we've never ever gotten any sort of consistent answer about what this thing ultimately is for? In terms of his defenders, I feel like they've just sort of given up on trying to explain this, given up on trying to defend the ins and outs and the ups and downs. I'm sure you guys have seen that meme where it's like, Trump puts the tariffs in place and they say this will bring back jobs. They take some off again and they say this is the art of the deal. I think they've just given up on talking about it altogether, because anytime you go in hard for whatever the current plan is, three days later, there's some other new plan that you're having to turn around and now justify. So that's where things are. What is the goal of this policy? Who knows? What is it going to accomplish? Who knows? Is the August 1st deadline now real? We don't know. Are these new tariff rates, which, again, would be really significant, extraordinarily high. And I don't want people to lose sight of how disruptive it would be economically if these actually got get put in place on Japan, South Korea and other trading allies. We don't really know. So that's where things stand.
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- [24:05]
Krystal Ball
Very fortunate to be joined this morning by Murtaza Hussain of Dropsite News. He's gonna help me cover a couple of topics here. Great to see you, Mata.
- [24:13]
Donald Trump
Hey, thanks for having me.
- [24:14]
Krystal Ball
Yeah, of course. So we mentioned on the show yesterday, Tucker Carlson recorded an interview, a sit down interview with the President of Iran. There were a few different moments that I thought were interesting. I mean, first of all, I just, I think it's important to hear the perspective of the Iranian government, how they're viewing all of this and you know what their position is, which is something you very rarely hear in Western media. So I thought this was significant for that reason. But let me start off by getting your reaction to this particular clip. Tucker asked the President of Iran, do you plan to reenter diplomatic negotiations and of course, previously, these negotiations that the Trump administration was engaged in, which seemed to have some possibility, at least before they drew a hard line on zero uranian enrichment, seem to have some possibility of coming to fruition. The Trump administration then comes out and admits or claims that they were using those negotiations as a ruse to create an element of surprise for Israeli attacks on Iran. So that's the backstory and the context. Let's go ahead and take a listen to a little bit of this exchange.
- [25:20]
Bubba Wallace
Do you have plans to re enter negotiations with the United States with envoy Steve Witkoff or anyone else? And if not, what do you think will happen?
- [25:32]
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We see no problem in reentering the negotiations. Negotiations. But before that, I have to remind you that because of the atrocities by the Zionist regime, by Israel, not just against my country, but in the whole region, we are now facing a crisis. The people are facing a crisis that we need to put it behind ourselves. Our commanders were off duty. They were spending the night at their homes with their families. But they were, and this is considered a war crime according to the international law, because they were off duty, as I said, or our scientists were also killed and assassinated along with their families and their wives and their children. They were also killed, pregnant women, children. They were killed in the atrocities, in the attacks of the Israeli regime. Just because they wanted to kill one single person. They had to demolish and destroy a whole building. And as a result of this, a lot of innocent people were killed. There is a provision for the restarting the talks. How are we going to trust the United States again? How can we know for sure that in the middle of the talks the Israeli regime will not be given the permission again to attack us?
- [27:15]
Krystal Ball
So he says there, how are we going to trust the United States again? Which I think is a pretty reasonable question given not just this most immediate diplomatic ruse, but the fact that previously we had a deal with the Iranians that the first Trump administration backed down of.
- [27:32]
Donald Trump
Yeah, unfortunately, it's been very difficult for the US to engage in diplomacy with Iran for one primary reason, I would say, which is Benjamin Netanyahu. And for over A decade now, Mr. Netanyahu has been working to insert himself and sabotage effectively any sort of form of meaningful diplomacy between the US And Iran. He sabotaged the Iran nuclear deal and he himself takes credit for doing that in 2015 or later in the Trump administration deal that was signed in 2015. And most recently, the US and Iran by no means seem to have exhausted their diplomatic talks over the nuclear program under the second Trump administration. But in the middle of that, Netanyahu intervened. He launched a surprise attack on Iran. There's conflicting reporting about the level foreknowledge that the US had about this attack, but, you know, ultimately it was Israel attacked. And it's very difficult to continue negotiations after. As the President said, there were this. The Iranian president said there was this killings and very provocative attacks in the Iranian capital and Iranian nuclear sites which affected the very subject of the talks had taken place between the US And Iran. So I think that he kind of has an understandable perception that if the US Engages the talks with Iran again, which is very plausible, and the Iranians seem to want to do it, who can guarantee that Netanyahu won't intervene again? He'll attack, escalate, maybe he'll kill Iranian political officials. Do what? Whatever it takes to avoid any deal taking place with the US And Iran. And I think Netanyahu's main issue is actually not Iran's nuclear program. I think he just didn't want there to be a deal between the US And Iran. He wants Iran and the US to remain enemies and the sanctions to stay on and things like that, because that makes it easier for him to achieve his goal of escalating gradually a direct confrontation militarily between Iran and the US which ultimately leads to regime change or heavy destruction in Iran, even if it requires the US Being at war in that country at some point in the future.
- [29:29]
Krystal Ball
Yeah, I think the nuclear program is largely a pre. Tax. Not to say they don't care about it at all, but mostly what Netanyahu's interest is in is in Iran being a weakened or even failed state because he doesn't want any sort of regional rival power to check his, you know, significant at this point, regional ambitions. There was another section I wanted to get your reaction to that I thought was really interesting. You know, as. As the whole debate was unfolding about whether or not we should get involved in a hot war with Iran and what was the threat to US Interests, et cetera. Routinely, people who were in favor of us, you know, going all in for some regime change operation in Iran, they would talk about these Death to America chants and say, how can you allow this regime to persist when they want all Americans to be killed when they're out there chanting death to America? So Tucker actually asked him about those chants, which I thought led to an interesting exchange. Let's go ahead and take a listen to that.
- [30:27]
Bubba Wallace
Americans are afraid of Iran and they believe that Iran would like to strike the United States with a Nuclear weapon.
- [30:34]
Donald Trump
They see video of Iranians saying death.
- [30:37]
Bubba Wallace
To America, describing our country as the Great Satan. What is your opinion of that? Should we be afraid of Iran?
- [30:47]
Unknown Casino Advertiser
I believe that this is a very wrong impression that anybody might have of Iran or the Iranians. I would like to remind you that Iran has never invaded another country in the last 200 years. When they say death to the United States, it doesn't mean death to. They don't mean death to the people of the United States or even to the officials of the United States. They mean death to crimes, death to killing and carnage, death to supporting killing others, death to insecurity and instability. Iranian killing an American. Have you ever heard that? Or a terrorist that was Iranian and he carried out a terrorist attack against the Americans.
- [31:43]
Donald Trump
No.
- [31:44]
Unknown Casino Advertiser
It was your president who confessed that the Americans created ISIS in our region and they were responsible for this wrong image that is portrayed of religion or the Muslims in the world. This is not death to the American people or to the officials. Death to crimes and atrocities, to bullying, to the use of force, and anybody who would like to become an accomplice in the crimes perpetrated by others.
- [32:21]
Krystal Ball
Maaz, what did you make of that response?
- [32:23]
Donald Trump
Well, I mean, to be clear, it's not a great slogan, to be honest. It's kind of lends itself to negative interpretations just out of space. That said, you know, I think it's also important to be aware that in Iran in the past, this slogan of death to X thing has been used for many different purposes. And Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's political campaign some years ago was talking about the price of potatoes, and the slogan became death to potatoes because the price has been very high. So, you know, it seems like that. So there could be some cultural misinterpretation. But yet, you know, still the Iranian government since 1979, and I can go in a long history of the events before that, but it's has a defined itself as opposed to being Americans, America's presence in the Middle East. And as the possession said, they associate that presence with oppression or war or sanctions and all these other negative things, not just directly to them, but directly to others as well, too. So they have defined themselves in opposition to that ideologically. And, you know, it makes it difficult or harder than it would be otherwise to engage in diplomacy with the US because you have, at least at a rhetorical level and the symbolic level, this opposition definition against the US and people have actually asked Iranian leaders about this before, this slogan, and including the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, even Iranians have asked this, and it's been discussed in Iranian television quite a bit. And they kind of give the same answer every time. And they kind of say it almost like, you know, of course, we don't mean hostility to Americans or to America as a country per se. We're talking about certain bad people in America or certain things that the US Is doing in our region, which we don't like. So, you know, that people can take that explanation on its face. I still would say that really probably not an advisable kind of slogan to use because for this reason, but that's what they mean. I think it's reasonable in the sense that there's no U.S. security official who think that Iran is trying to destroy America or using nuclear weapons against America. That's not a serious sort of contention that anyone who follows the subject thinks. But, you know, there is this historical and rhetorical tension between the two countries, which has. Makes it difficult as well to overcome people like Netanyahu or others who would like to engineer direct confrontation militarily between the two.
- [34:44]
Krystal Ball
You know, there was another point, and I didn't pull this particular clip, but there was another point where Tucker was asking the president about their nuclear program and whether they were developing a nuclear weapon, whether they wanted to develop a nuclear weapon. And he indicated that this was all just an invention of Netanyahu effectively. And the Israelis, he specifically pinned it on Netanyahu and said, like, listen, there's a actually religious prohibition against developing nuclear weapons. We have no interest in it. What did you make of that particular comment and that framing?
- [35:17]
Donald Trump
So the current supreme leader of Iran has said before, he's issued a edict saying that nuclear weapons are against our values, they're against our religious beliefs. They're like evil weapons. We don't want to introduce them to the region or use them and so forth. So, you know, that is a position that they've taken before and that they've continued to hold. We don't really know in a sense of what that means per se, but I think that's very clear. If you look at Iran's behavior over the last 20 years, they haven't been rushing to get a nuclear weapon. They could have got a nuclear weapon many, many times in the past. North Korea got nuclear weapons sometime in the last 20 years as well, too. The Iranians have not try to develop a nuclear program for the purpose of getting weapons. They've done it for a different purpose. They've done it to give themselves leverage for the removal of Western economic sanctions. They never Enriched uranium up to weapons grade. They wish it passed the grade which is used specifically for energy, but they kept it in like a gray zone. They never treat this seriously as a weaponized weaponization program, and in a way that endangered the them. Because if you are going to have a nuclear program at all and you're on bad terms with the US you're opening yourself up to scrutiny. And you know, you can either. In my opinion, I think most people would agree with this. You either go all the way and develop a nuclear weapon and get a deterrent that protects you and then no one can attack you, and then you're like North Korea and that people have to deal with you if they don't like you, or you just give it up entirely. Getting a nuclear latency, having a program enriching it, but not weaponizing it, kind of gets you the worst of both worlds. You got attacked by the Israelis, you have sanctions, you have your pariah, everyone's mistreating you, but you don't actually have a nuclear weapon. So they can't actually defend yourself or deter people from attacking. And I think most security experts have assessed also that the Israeli attack that happened last month would not have happened had the Iranians developed a nuclear weapon. And they may or may not do that now. But their policy, I think actually is true. They have inside nuclear weapon to date, but it hasn't really gotten them much, has gotten them in a very bad situation where, as I said, they have the worst of both worlds.
- [37:21]
Krystal Ball
On the other hand, I'm sure they're looking at, for example, Libya and saying, well, when you give up even the latent threat of potentially developing a nuclear weapon, that's what ends up to you, you know, happening to you. So getting rid of it altogether, even if it gets rid of thisyou know, this particular pretext for getting bombed and attacked doesn't mean that Israel and the United States are gonna ultimately leave you alone.
- [37:45]
Donald Trump
Exactly. Giving up capitulating and doing what the US Wants right now, or what Israel actually wants about acceding to a full dismantling of any enrichment capacity. The nuclear program itself, the Libya option, as it's called, is not a very attractive option. It's very dangerous for Iran, actually, because the what it could be interpreted as is, well, you're capitulating, you're weak. Let's keep pushing our advantage further, and let's keep this strike while there's blood in the water and take it all the way. So I think that people who say that, well, you know, things can be fine Give up and we can trade and things like that. That's a very, very risky, contentious and dangerous position. I don't think that. I think the Iranians very much are thinking of what happened to Libya and Muammar Gaddafi and so forth when they think of this option. So, you know, I think that ultimately nuclearizing also not a very attractive option in some ways too. It's very dangerous, very expensive. You have to open yourself up to a whole different range of problems as a result of that. Yeah, but the Iranians have two very onerous options is not really a good option on the table right now. There was the possibility of a mutually beneficial agreement where they stayed and had limited enrichment under international monitoring. The US under the Trump administration initially suggested that they were okay with that. But again, there was this Israeli veto, there was a Netanyahu veto which took place, which said that no, no enrichment can happen. People in the US who were sort of aligned with the new conservative camp successfully interpreted, inserted that condition into later rounds of negotiation. So they kind of closed off the ability, if any enrichment happening at all, or any deal really happening at all. So now there's two options, which is the Libya option, which would probably lead or could lead down the road to more war between the US and Iran, a regime change war, or this nuclearization, which could invite a preemptive nuclear attack by Israel or the US to try to stop that. It could attract other forms of attack. And then if they do it successfully, you have to modernize your nuclear program, you have to expand it, you have to develop it all throughout the country. You're starting a marathon, you're not ending it. And that's very risky as well too, and very costly. So I think that, as I said, there's two very, very onerous options. I think it's very unfortunate that diplomacy was killed in 2015 by Netanyahu and then again more recently under the second Trump administration, because that would have been better for all side, would have avoided a US war with Iran and would have avoided Iran having to fight the US and Israel and all the casualties that have taken place on both sides as a result of that. So, you know, I think that now we're in a much more dangerous and fraught phase of this conflict. We're entering.
- [40:30]
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- [41:29]
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Krystal Ball
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- [42:30]
Krystal Ball
Let's go ahead and turn to Netanyahu's visit to the White House yesterday. You know, obviously all that we're discussing with regards to Iran, that's part of the backdrop here. Also the continued genocide in Gaza, these daily aid massacres, ongoing, you know, cease fire talks which don't seem to be developing very effectively at this point. That's some of the backdrop here. And let me go ahead and start with this clip of Netanyahu there, you know, sitting all sitting across from each other at the dinner table. And Netanyahu makes a big show of presenting Trump with these papers where he says he has nominated him for a Nobel Peace Prize. Let's go ahead and take a listen to that.
- [43:09]
Benjamin Netanyahu
Express the appreciation and admiration not only of all Israelis, but of the Jewish people and and many Many admirers around the world for your leadership, your leadership of the free world, your leadership of a just cause, and the pursuit of peace and security, which you are leading in many lands, but now, especially in the Middle East. He forged the Abraham Accords. He's forging peace as we speak, in one country, in one region after the other. So I. I want to present to you, Mr. President, the letter I sent to the Nobel Prize Committee. It's nominating you for the Peace Prize, which is well deserved, and you should get it.
- [43:54]
Donald Trump
Thank you very much. This, I didn't know. Well, thank you very much.
- [44:00]
Benjamin Netanyahu
Thank you.
- [44:01]
Donald Trump
Coming from you in particular, this is very meaningful. Thank you very much, Bibi.
- [44:05]
Benjamin Netanyahu
Thank you. Thank you for everything you're doing.
- [44:07]
Donald Trump
Thank you. It's a great honor.
- [44:09]
Krystal Ball
And if we can put B7 up on the screen, these are images. So basically, at roughly the same time that this whole you should get a Nobel Peace Prize conversation is going on. This is the aftermath of tents being bombed by Israel on the grounds of a school shelter. This was happening while Netanyahu was arriving at the White House. Of course, it's Israel directly bombing these tenths of displaced Palestinians, and it's the United States of America that is providing both the bombs and the diplomatic cover for these sorts of horrors to continue. So it's just. It's so grotesque. I mean, you almost want to laugh at it, but it's such. So grotesque that these two people who are perpetrating a genocide are patting each other on the back like they're these great peacemakers.
- [45:02]
Donald Trump
Yeah. You know, I feel like the Nobel Prize kind of became a bit of a punchline ever since Henry Kissinger won it. But this is a particularly grotesque sort of example. Crystal, as you pointed out, that was taking place in Gaza right now is so horrifying. It really is a genocide. And we're seeing it live streamed in a way which never seen any genocide in the past depicted and shown to us in the real time. And I think that in Netanyahu's case, he's being. He's being cynical and smart in a way. He's taking advantage of Trump's vanity. And you could see when Trump was given the envelope with the nomination, he almost responds, you know, auditory response.
- [45:44]
Krystal Ball
He ate it up. No, Netanyahu played it exactly right.
- [45:48]
Donald Trump
Yeah, he liked it. So, you know, ultimately, this is an attempt to sort of. It's almost depressing, to be honest, the way that personalities can actually. Individual personalities can drive politics, in a sense. And Netanyahu knows how this game is played very, very well. He's been around in Washington longer than Trump has, really. He knows how to change, manipulate the levers of power. He knows how to manipulate his interlocutors. He knows how to push Trump's buttons, so to speak. So, you know, Trump is not actually the first person to nominate Trump for a Nobel Peace Prize. The Pakistani government nominated him for a peace prize a few weeks ago as well, too, knowing the same sort of van and the desire for this award that Trump has. And I hope, I'm not very optimistic, but I hope that in some sense Trump lived up to the award which he's seeking, a Nobel Peace Prize, and at least declines to engage in further confrontations, at least the sense with Iran. But, you know, irrespective of that, he's doing nothing to stop what's going on in Gaza. He's arming it, he's green lighting it, he's giving it political coverage. And he's also helping bring it to a more extreme stage where potentially the population of Gaza will be expelled from the territory entirely. That's what the Israeli government's saying now we talked about in this meeting as well, too. And I think that is a very, very grotesque and dire escalation of the situation to what you can call full blown ethnic cleansing.
- [47:17]
Krystal Ball
Well, that's a good segue to the next clip that I have for you to react to because Trump got out asked if the, quote, Palestinian relocation plan, also known as ethnic cleansing, which Trump had floated of, hey, let's get all of these Palestinians out of Gaza so that me and my billionaire buddies can come in and develop this beach front property. People call it Gaza lago. Is that still on the table? He was asked and he actually pitches the question over to Netanyahu to get him to respond to it. Let's go ahead and take a listen to that exchange.
- [47:49]
Bubba Wallace
Is your Palestinian relocation plan still on the table? Is there a plan? Have there been any progress in finding countries?
- [47:56]
Donald Trump
Maybe. Why don't I let you answer that question, Mr. President? Wait a minute, wait. He's got answers.
- [48:02]
Benjamin Netanyahu
I think President Trump had a brilliant vision. It's called free choice. You know, if people want to stay, they can stay, but if they want to leave, they should be able to leave. It shouldn't be a, you know, prison should be an open place and give people a free choice. We're working with the United States very closely about finding countries that will seek to realize what they always say, that they want to give the Palestinians a better future. And those who, and I think we're, we're getting close to finding several countries and I think this will give again the freedom to choose. Palestinians should have it, and I hope that we can secure it close by.
- [48:47]
Donald Trump
And we've had great cooperation from surrounding, meaning surrounding Israel, surrounding countries, great cooperation from every single one of them. So something good will happen.
- [48:57]
Krystal Ball
Freedom to choose. Maaz, who could object?
- [49:00]
Donald Trump
Yeah, you know, this is the thing, basically he's saying freedom to choose, but the actual variable here is you can stay and starve to death and be killed or leave. In that sense, it's not freedom of truth, it's duress, Extreme, extreme duress to try to force people out. What they're doing now is they're trying to concentrate, this is the word that they actually use themselves to concentrate the population in a very small southern strip and I suppose eventually make life so difficult and so hopeless over a long period of time that piecemeal people can be gotten out of there. And I think that, you know, regardless of Trump is saying there's not really any country which is going to take millions of people, it would destabilize any of the regional countries. People get very angry. They believe in the two state solution on paper. These governments around Israel as well too, and this will put an end to that forever. What they may try to do is try to get, you know, a thousand people out here and there over a long period of time and gradually, you know, make Palestinians so miserable in this place that, that they send them somewhere else in the world that may take them. But, you know, I don't, I'm skeptical that any country, as I said, has agreed to take large numbers of people. There have been people floating in the Israeli government, sending them to Somaliland or Sudan or Congo or other places like this. And this kind of is reminiscent of, you know, I hate to use the analogy, but In World War II, the Madagascar Plan that did, Germany thought of sending the Jewish undesirable Jewish population, Assad, to Madagascar. Just send them far away somewhere in Africa, somewhere far away somewhere, have to hear about them. That's the way that they're talking about the subject. And again, this is not people leaving under free choices. The way Netanyahu was framing it. They're trying to give them a choice. You can die, you can starve, your family can be killed here, or you can go somewhere we don't have to hear about you again. And you won't really have anything over there either, but that's your choice. You can die or you can leave. That's ethnic cleansing. And his framing of it, which seems to portray it a more benign way, couldn't be more further from the truth. It's a really, really terrible and monstrous thing happening right now. And it's very unfortunate, it's very shameful. I think that the US Government is helping facilitate it. And again, when Trump talks about this, it seems like you've deferred the whole policy to Netanyahu. Seems like NETanyahu is running US Middle east policy because he didn't even get an answer to it. He just said, said, well, Mr. Netanyahu, what do you think about that? And let him effectively define what is US Policy on the subject.
- [51:22]
Krystal Ball
He did the same thing when he got asked about whether a two state solution was still possible. He said the same thing, oh, let me give the question to the best person in the world to answer that and pitched it over to Netanyahu who, you know, gave some answer about how, well, of course we'd love them to have the ability to govern, but he said, said we will always make sure that we have the ultimate security control. So effectively the answer there is no. Which has been, which is nothing new for Netanyahu. I mean, this has been his life's project, political project, is to make sure and guarantee that Palestinians never have a state of their own. And he's used any sort of tactic that he possibly can in order to effectuate that outcome.
- [52:10]
Donald Trump
Yeah, you said that very well, Crystal. Two things, those lifetime projects are preventing Palestinian state and bombing Iran.
- [52:16]
Krystal Ball
And his own political power. That would be the third.
- [52:19]
Donald Trump
Yeah, and his own political power. And he's seen in Trump sort of like a cipher through which he can accomplish these goals that he's long side, you know, and that's. Biden was also giving him as much support as he could as well too. These are both very pliable and supportive administration in the U.S. i think the most important thing here is actually in the historical context, Netanyahu's career, he's fanatically wanted these things for a very, very long time. Whatever beliefs Trump had or Biden had, you know, they seem much more malleable to seem much more bleeding, you could say. Or, you know, they dither to a degree. When you have someone who's fanatically committed to what they want and they know exactly what it is and they're absolutely driven to get it. And you have an interlocutor, some on the other side who is unsure even 10%, I would bet on the person who knows what they want getting what they want. And that's Netanyahu, in this case, he knows he wants to bomb Iran. He knows he wants to stop the Palestinian state, expel the Palestinians. Trump doesn't seem to know what he wants as much. He defers Netanyahu, even though he's questioning to the press. So I would expect Netanyahu to win in this scenario, to get what he wants. And I think it's safe that Netanyahu is almost running these policies in a way in the US and it's unfortunate, but it's what appears to be the case.
- [53:39]
Krystal Ball
Yeah. Which is not to take away agency or blame from Trump because he's the one who's outsourced the policy to Netanyahu, but to say that ultimately our interests are not being reflected here whatsoever, let alone forget about the interests of Palestinians, that doesn't even enter into the equation. And it's all been outsourced effectively to Netanyahu. And actually, that's the last piece I want to ask you about. Let's put B6 up on the screen here. This is one of these Axios reports from Barack Ravid. So this is something that has been leaked to him either from the Israeli officials or from the American officials. In any case, they think that they can get Trump to give them a green light to attack Iran again. They say that Ron Dermer told officials in closed briefing he came away from a recent visit to Washington with the impression Trump administration would back new Israeli strikes on Iran under certain circumstances. One scenario would be an Iranian attempt to remove the highly enriched uranium inside the damaged facilities. Another would be if the Iranians start rebuilding their nuclear program. They go on to say that Dermer met last week with Vice President Janny Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and White House envoy Steve Witkoff. And so I think this speaks directly to your point of the Israelis know very much what they want to do. And so what they feel like they can do is create this framework of like, well, you know, this is this whole 12 day war peace situation. This is great for now, but obviously if Iran goes back to building a nuclear weapon, then we're gonna have to go back in. And then, as we know from the last time, the last war with Iran, you know, mere weeks ago, there was no actual change in Iranian nuclear development. There was just a pretext that was created of, oh, now's the time, we have to go, and this is urgent. So there's nothing to stop them again from producing some sort of intelligence estimate that, my God, Iran is rushing to a nuclear weapon. Not to mention that they may well, do that at this point. Because the logic that this war on them from Israel and the US has created is one that would lead you logically to conclude, I guess I have no choice but to develop a nuclear weapon to give myself some sort of protection against these maniacs.
- [55:54]
Donald Trump
I think the real purpose of this war last month was actually not to stop the nuclear program. It really didn't. As you pointed out, they still have a program they can reconstitute in a year or two. It's not a huge impediment. What they really are seeking is to make it normal to bomb Iran. They wanted to make it like Iraq in the 90s, where the US and other countries could bomb the country whenever they wanted. They can gradually weaken the country, weaken its sovereignty, undermine it, and so forth, forth. Such that maybe in 10 years from now, after that's been done, we bomb Iran all the time and we fight them all the time, you can say, well, we'll just do regime change then let's just take it one more notch further. I think it's about turning up the temperature gradually. That was the purpose of bombing Iran in this case. And when they're saying we want a green light, it's not saying, like, give us permission. That's not the whole question of what it's about. They're saying, you know, you need to provide and support the US arms. These attacks. It gives fuel for them, it gives logistics and intelligence. It's saying that you're committing to being part of this future operations. It's not just about Israelis, it's about the war could not have happened without very, very intensive American support at all levels. Logistical, tactical, strategic, very, very practical weapons and logistics and so forth. It's saying these promises and guarantees, I interpret them as saying that you will commit to giving us that support in the future. Because without that, Iran's very far away from Israel. They can't really carry out the attacks. They can't really do anything they're doing without American, very intensive American backing. So I think that Netanyahu is basically looping America into a forever war with Iran, but he's doing in a slow, gradual way, whereas you get the commitments, first the original attack, then you get commitments, further attacks, and then 10 years from now, who knows? You could see an Iraq type situation gradually develop where the US is forced to ultimately do regime change, maybe put boots in the ground, so forth. And none of us ever really knew how we got to that point. We weren't paying attention to what's happening today. But I think that's what Netanyahu's aim is and that's what the administration is gradually allowing itself to be roped into.
- [57:58]
Krystal Ball
I think, unfortunately, that looks very likely. All right, Murtaza Hussein, thank you so much for joining me this morning, helping make sense of all of these things.
- [58:05]
Donald Trump
Thanks, Crystal. Thanks for having me.
- [58:19]
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- [58:49]
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- [59:13]
Donald Trump
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- [59:18]
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