B (3:09)

a campaign talking about maybe the deportation of the family separation policy and just

A (3:14)

the rally, the rhetoric at the rallies and you know, mocking, you know, a disabled reporter, really early stuff when Carolyn Levitt was like 14 years old. So it's kind of amazing that she, that, that she even has access to the deep lore in that way.

B (3:27)

But what's funny is that she, she deploys it when talking about TSA lines.

C (3:34)

For the Democrats in Congress, the cruelty of this shutdown is the point. Nearly 500 TSA officers have quit since the Democrat shutdown began. President Trump, to alleviate this pressure, made the decision to send some of our amazing ICE agents to help alleviate that strike stress and address the long wait times.

B (3:52)

Her position seems to be that the Democrat Party, she never misses an opportunity to say that they have purposely done this to make TSA lines worse. And I have to say, if you saw the tweet going around today of Bill Barr in the normal tsa, not even the TSA preach it's the norm sitting there. It looks so cruel, such hardship.

A (4:16)

The other part of the thing, in addition to sort of like the consumer difficulties is the, is the paychecks for the agents themselves. Right. Which is like the cause of, the cause of the, the snarled traffic. There, there are a lot of people who are not showing up. Well, they're not getting paid. There are some agents who are quitting and obviously we're going to, we're going to talk about all of this. But the, the bizarre split screen of Carolyn Levitt still trying to carry out the administration's line here that this is all the Democrats fault. Obviously that's just what you do in a shutdown. You blame the other side. But it has been pretty substantially undercut by many things the President himself has been saying and other Republicans have been saying. I mean like the, the Republicans in, in the Senate and the Democrats in the Senate have reached a deal to reopen all of the parts of the, of the Department of Homeland Security, except for ice, which would get, you know, most obviously which would get TSA back to work. They've, they keep saying this, they keep saying, you know, we've got it, the deal's right there. We just kind of need the President to buy in. And the President keeps going out in public and saying, you know, that that deal is not going to really work for me. I'm sure we're going to talk about all that stuff. But it's just, it's strange. I mean, it's strange to see Carolyn Levitt come out to the podium for the first time in a number of days and just sort of act as though all of the developments we have gotten in this story had just, just never, never actually took place. And it's still just purely the Democrats fault that all this stuff has happened.

B (5:32)

It's amazing. So let's, let's, let's back up. Let's talk about Iran first. So she talked about how great the war is going that, I mean, I know that before this war began, the Iranian navy was the talk of the town. All anybody ever did was talk about the Iranian Navy. And she has made the point that we have done to the Iranian navy. What, I, I don't even know. And she, she had some historical parallel. You know, NO Navy since 1342 has ever been so decimated the way we have decimated the Iranian Navy. I mean, good for us, I guess. She had a lot of things to say about Iran which were sort of interesting. And I don't know where you want to go first. Do you want to talk about J.D. first and his, his role. Do you want to talk about her, her suggestion that actually the negotiations are ongoing and they're real serious, they're happening right now, or do you want to talk about how regime change is mission accomplished? We have actually had regime change in Iran.

A (6:35)

They're all great. Let me just take one second with, with the thing you started with there, with the destruction of the Iranian navy, the, the fastest three week destruct destruction of any navy, as you said. I think, I think she said Since World War II or something like that, it was just kind of this amazing thing. I mean, everyone all along has known that when you stack up the military of the United States of America against the military of Iran, it's not really a fair fight. It's not any fight at all. Actually. It's been very obvious since the very first bombing raids that we were going to have like total military supremacy when it came to just our ability to put, you know, ordinance on targets. Right. And that was going to be pretty easy for us. And everybody acknowledged that like immediately. And yet as all these other problems have piled up, you cannot see any White House person come to any podium ever without Them, them opening things up with a lengthy diatribe about how unfair it is that nobody will acknowledge this point, that 9,000 targets all along. Yes. It's like, don't you guys realize, don't you, don't you see how much destruction we're wreaking and how good the fight is and how, and how, you know, how, how effortless it is to project American power? And what's interesting is I had kind of thought that this was only like a, like, kind of boob bait for Bubba all along, that this was just purely sort of like their PR strategy is like, don't look at the economic consequences, don't look at, you know, the Strait of Hormuz or, or the price of oil or anything. Just look at these fun little like, sizzle reel videos of, of our guys, like drone striking things. Isn't that great? Isn't that awesome? Don't you love that? And I had thought that was like an outside PR messaging strategy. And then today, interestingly enough, we got some reporting this morning that it actually is not just, just boob bait for Bubba out there. It is also boobait for Bubba in the Oval Office that Donald Trump on a kind of daily basis is getting his war briefings and they are featuring two minute sizzle reels of all the targets that were hit the day before in exactly the same way. And that is like crucial to Donald Trump's own personal information diet of how this conflict is going. So I just wanted to get that out there. I mean, I, it's, it's, I guess they're just going to keep doing it because it is the only, like, exciting, cool, good fact for America is that, yeah, I guess. I mean, I, I like that we can hit our targets without suffering a lot of, you know, direct military pain. That's a good thing. It's nice to be in that situation militarily, you know, that's, that's nice, but it's not really the main thing right now. And I think that the fact that they keep redirecting to it is pretty cool, you know?

B (8:59)

Okay, sidebar. Do you think they are giving him unproduced clips? Because those things come, they're silent and the resolution on them isn't great? Or do you think they're adding a soundtrack and a Foley mix so, like, with the sound of explosions layered into it and like some thumping club music? Because I gotta see. I think if they just showed like the normal, like plain vanilla gun cam. Sir, Sir, Here's a, here's a 5,000 pound bomb hitting a radar site, sir, here, I think that he probably wouldn't be able to stay engaged.

A (9:32)

It is not as much fun, I would imagine. I mean, if you're going only by the sizzle reel clips that they're putting out on the Internet, it's not only like the club beat and the sound of the explosions, it is also, you know, interspersed clips of like NFL Patrick Bateman, like knocking out of a wide receiver who's going up for the ball. He got blowed up. Yeah. So who knows, who knows how much, how much of that you need to keep in front of the President of the United States to be like, hey, hey, man, there's a war. Here's how it's going to. But, but yes, apparently more than you would hope for. How much more than you would hope for is unclear. But it's more than, than you should. More than the President should need. How about we put it that way?

B (10:09)

All right, so we are winning very hard. We are also desperate to negotiate. And the White House is insisting that despite what the Iranians have said. So, so we had leaked that There was a 15 point plan that the, the President had presented to the Iranians through intermediaries. I don't know if this is if you've read Art of the Deal, but I'm pretty sure that make the first offer is not Art of the Deal. Pretty sure that in like the whole history of negotiations, you're supposed to not make that. If Jack Donaghy taught me anything from 30 Rock, it's that you got to be quiet, use the power of silence. So we, we seem to have presented a 15 point plan to Iran through Pakistani intermediaries. This first offer was actually pretty good for Iran anyway, but they have subsequently rejected it. And Carolyn Leavitt insisted. No, no, no, no, no, no. We're having ongoing talks, still talking just

D (11:13)

within the past few hours. Iranian state TV has said that Iran has rejected the U.S. s 15 point plan to end the war. What's the White House's response to that?

A (11:23)

And have these talks hit a dead end?

C (11:26)

They have not. Talks continue. They are productive, as the President said

B (11:30)

on Monday, very productive negotiations. Is that a sign that you're winning?

A (11:34)

It's not great. It's not a great sign that you're winning. The way that she always messages these things too, is, I mean, she has kind of the same move for, for pretty much any situation that involves sort of like lengthy negotiations with, with anybody overseas where she kind of like looks at the reporter who asks about it and is like, like we would clue you in, like we would tell you anything about what's going on and there's, there's, there's sort of this, this sort of like contempt to it and obviously the president does this as well.

D (12:02)

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A (13:14)

Upwork.com it's one of these sorts of things that, that I think you could argue played in their favor in a different political time. You know, like, like I just think back to like this time last year when, when they were kind of in the, in the full flower of their first like all out assault on American institutions. They were just trying to sideline the press and you know, their popularity wasn't great, but it's a lot better than it is now. And they were, they were charging forward, forward, forward and they were, you know, striking this posture from a position of like domestic strength. And now it's so much the opposite. Like the bottom has fallen out of their support. They're shedding, you know, members of their coalition left and right. Obviously they have no plan for how to extract themselves from this conflict that they find themselves in. And yet there's no other playbook from, from, in terms of messaging to the press. I mean like, like you could imagine a different White House that would acknowledge that there are some real American concerns about how the negotiations are going. Right. The price of oil has gone berserk. We were not in great economic straits before, but right now it is looking really, really bad for everybody, for everybody all over the place. We're embroiled in a Middle Eastern war that nobody signed up for, that Congress never voted to authorize. And that, that the second we got in there, Donald Trump knowing that there was no domestic appetite for this, you know, the bombs had barely even begun to fall before these people were like, don't worry, don't worry. This is like a little blip. It's a tiny little thing. We're in, we're out. It's going to be no problem at all. It's going to be great. And yet here we are weeks and weeks along and, and when the, when the spokespeople of the administration come up to the podium and you ask, hey, we've been hearing some concerning stuff about these negotiations, how are those going, by the way? And she and that the fact that they have a gall you word you would come into this room and you would dare ask us how the negotiations are going. I mean, like, it's, I just don't think it flies. I'm sorry. I don't think there are that many people out there who see that and they're like, you know what, Carolyn, that sounds great. I'm actually incredibly reassured by this.

B (15:21)

Some, some interesting things from this part of the press conference. She, she said this is not a war. It is a short term combat operation.

A (15:31)

Short term and getting longer. I don't know.

B (15:33)

She said that he's doing this for the young people, speak a lot to

A (15:37)

young voters, many of whom voted for President Trump for the first time in 2024. You're hoping to have no more wars and to have lower prices now with the war taking place and with gas prices going up. Curious what President Trump's message would be to those voters who kind of swung into his coalition in 2024, but maybe don't feel the administration is going as they had expected.

C (15:54)

Ms. President Trump is doing this for you. He's doing this for young people so that we are no longer threatened by a rogue terrorist regime in the Middle east that seeks to kill the brave men and women who serve in our country in the Middle east, many of them young people themselves, young men and women who serve this country honorably in uniform and have been threatened, killed and maimed by the rogue Iranian terrorist regime for 47 years. President Trump finally has had the courage to step up and do what's right by our national security, our homeland security.

B (16:24)

Just like, wow, that's amazing. He's doing it for the young people. Do you think the young people, the young, I mean, I, part of me has like the Steve Buscemi clip in this, you know, hello, young people.

A (16:36)

So that, that was the guy, he was in the new media seat this morning. He got the first question at the briefing was Gabe Fleischer, who's like a kid reporter with like a journalistic pedigree. And now he's there in the new media seat. So he has, he's, he's a pretty good egg in my, in my sort of limited exposure to him. And it's a good question, right? I mean, like, it is, it is actually the case, and we've seen this in a lot of public polling that, that young men in particular were a really big part of the Trump coalition in 2024. Extremely important to his victory. Spent all of last year kind of being like, oh, gosh, I don't know about all this. And in particular, we knew from the polling were worried even last year that, that Trump was far more focused on foreign entanglements than they had expected him to be, than he had carried himself as though he were going to act when he was on the campaign trail. And that was last year. That was just, you know, when we were doing limited strikes on Iran's nuclear program and when we were going into Venezuela. And now we have opened up this gigantic new can of worms in terms of the possibility of another long military entanglement over there. You know, we have, you know, army special operations units currently in transit to the Gulf to just give Trump a few more, you know, arrows in his quiver, a little bit more flexibility in how he and how he approaches these negotiations. And so the question is this isn't what young men were promised from the, the, you know, no more wars pro peace president. So like, what gives? And yes, the answer, as you just mentioned, utterly unsatisfying. They are, they are, they have no new news. They have nothing to say to these people that were so important to them before and are abandoning them, abandoning them in droves.

B (18:10)

So I guess a couple questions here then to follow up. First of all, does it look like he's trying to wriggle out? So she, there was a question about regime change and Carolyn Leave it's position seem to be that yes, we did regime change. I don't know that she knows what the word regime means or maybe she is trying to lawyer it out. Like, you know, well, it depends on what the definition of is is or what the meaning of is is. Like there is a different person who is the head of the Islamic Republic, but It is still the Islamic Republic. It's not a new form of government. And her, her position seems to be with, you know, we did it. We got our. The president said he wanted regime change and we did it. Is that trying to set the, like, walk back his. Because he had said on like day four, I think, of the war or something in the first week, you know. Oh, yeah. You know, I, we have to have new leadership and I have, I have to help pick the leader. He does seem to have backed off of that. Ent. So this seems to be her way of saying, no, we didn't back off. We did it. Yes, we won.

A (19:17)

Yeah. And she's channeling the president himself as she's, as she's doing this. Right. I mean, he, he got up in the Oval Office yesterday. We have really. Regime change. You know, this is a change in the regime because the leaders are all very different than the ones that we started off with that created all those problems. So, like, he is.

B (19:36)

He's even got a different name. Khamenei, right? Oh, yeah, yeah.

A (19:41)

I mean, I do think, and this is just, let me go off on a bit of a speculative jag here. I do wonder how much of this is the fact that they are actually locked into a little bit of ambiguity here because it's not American bombing that has been actually targeting the regime officials. It's been, you know, it's been the Israelis who are, who are continuing to, you know, pulverize more and more and more of the actual, like, upper structures of the remaining, you know, Iranian regime. And so, like, I, you could imagine a situation where, like, Donald Trump doesn't want to say, you know, we're good actually, like, we now have the set of leaders that we want. If then, you know, the next day we're all going to wake up to a headline that Israel has killed yet another, you know, remaining top regime leader that could cause some, some interesting friction. Again, I don't know if that's the case. I just. That's, that's been one interesting sort of like a, a asymmetry in Israel and America's war aims that we've seen over the last couple of weeks. But of course, the other, the other element of, is of it is just, you know, this weird kind of art of the deal stuff where, where, where Trump continues to say, like, they're on the precipice of agreeing to everything we want, and don't worry, we're going to be done in two days. And that obviously requires a certain amount of, like, underpinning assumptions about the people who are making those decisions over there, even though every bit of reporting that's actually sourced to the Iranian leaders is, Is essentially the biggest, most maximalist pile of demands you could ever expect. I mean, there was reporting in the Wall Street Journal just this morning that's like Iran is sort of coming up to our intermediaries at the negotiating table and basically saying, all right, we need all Americans out of the Gulf region. We need reparations paid. We need to be able to charge a toll in the Strait of Hormuz from here until Judgment Day from now on. We've never done before, but that's the price to reopen it. And we need security guarantees from America that America and Israel will never, ever, you know, come attack us again. And we need to be able to keep all of the ballistic missiles that we currently have. I mean, like, there is no indication from that public reporting that there is that this is anything close to the truth. And obviously, you know, that's. That could just as easily be bombast and smoke and mirrors as anything that the White House is saying. But I think the bottom line is that none of these statements from any of these people on any of these sides are actually giving us any sort of illumination into what the actual, actual kind of pressure points are when it comes to this negotiation. And when you are sweeping the rhetoric aside and just looking at the behavior, as you just mentioned a minute ago, it is America that continues to basically say, don't worry, any minute now we'll be done. We're going to get out of their hair. You don't need to worry. And it's Iran that's basically saying, we will fight this war for a thousand years and the global economy will suffer. And that's just okay with us. So, you know, that's. That's the showing part of it all.

B (22:26)

So the, the most canny thing the Iranians have done in the last 24 hours seems to be floating. The idea that actually they're not going to deal with Jared, just Jared and Wyckoff anymore. They want J.D. vance to be the negotiator and the mediator, which, I'm sorry, even if it's just trolling, is fantastic. Do you have thoughts on putting J.D. vance in charge of negotiating a treaty for the war he didn't want, that he can't support, but also can't run away from?

A (22:57)

It's a little bit like when Joe Biden, you know, four years ago, dumped the border situation on Kamala Harris, where she was like, here this, I'm going to put this in my vice president's portfolio. You know, like, she doesn't have, she doesn't have enough going on. I'm going to, I'm going to put, you know, the single most politically toxic, you know, issue that I have. I'm going to say that's hers. That'll probably never come back to bite us in any political way whatsoever. It's obviously a little different since it's Iran. I mean, like, who knew, who knew that Iran was, was so online that they would be able to sort of like tweak the Vice President in this way? But, but that's just in terms of JD's whole role in the war. I have kind of seen that as sort of like a parallel thing. He wants to be able to run in 2028. It is not clear what outcome of this war facilitates that in the slightest at base. Basically, no matter what, he's going to be running sort of, in spite of everything that's going on right now. And, and Iran apparently sees fit to put, to, to ratchet up the pressure on him in this way.

B (23:59)

And for him, he needs there to not be ground troops and he needs it over sooner, like yesterday. Right. Is that, is that about right, do you think? The longer it goes on, the worse it is for jd?

A (24:11)

The longer it goes on, the more all of these guys who are like supposedly big anti war thinkers, you know, the more they, they box themselves in because they need to draw, you know, brighter and brighter red lines. You've seen this, like, from, from, I don't know, like the president of the Heritage Foundation, Kevin Roberts and things like that, where, where they are, they are required to split hairs. And the fact that we have gotten embroiled in this war with Iran, they have to say, well, you know, this wasn't really like, this wasn't the kind of, the kind of, you know, regime change war that we spent the last several years insisting was like the single worst thing you could do as an American political leader. Like, bar none of. Because the difference is those bad kinds of wars had boots on the ground, right? But now maybe we're going to get those boots on the ground. And it's not like three years ago statements from Kevin Roberts and J.D. vance and all those people, it's like two weeks ago statements. So, so, you know, JD can't even really do that, which is part of why he has completely vanished from the limelight. I mean, it would be, you know, Donald Trump doesn't want JD burnishing JD's future political prospects by boxing in rhetorically the behavior of, of him and his administration right now. So it's a real problem. I mean, JD has, there's a reason why he has suddenly, finally broken his Internet habit.

B (25:23)

It would be sort of canny for Trump to force JD to carry this water, wouldn't it? I mean, that way, if you're, if you're at all concerned about J.D. going off the reservation, making him eat this, that's not bad, right? Or is this just me being too helpful?

A (25:40)

I can see that. I just think, I think Trump has so much contempt for all of the people in his immediate orbit. I'm not even 100% sure. It occurs to him like, you know, like Adolf Hitler used to spe a lot of time playing his different viceroys off one another so that they would never, you know, form a pact. And he was far from the only one to do this. It's kind of standard authoritarian behavior. I, it's never been super obvious to me that Trump has those, like, that particular collection of neurons, that it even like, occurs to him that he would get stabbed in the back. Because I just, I really do think that he, he probably correctly believes that these are all just sort of feckless toadies and they don't have it in them. But, but, but, you know, there's probably a universe in which, in which, you know, a version of Trump would, would try to do that and would be correct to try to do that. So who knows, maybe, maybe I'm misreading the Big Guy, but that, that's kind of how I have seen him.

B (26:27)

It's funny you mentioned Hitler, because I was thinking about the, the bunker scene from Downfall when Caroline said she used a phrase which had clearly been workshopped to talk about gas prices, she talked about a temporary short term fluctuation in gas prices.

C (26:50)

As for the temporary short term fluctuation in gas prices, the President has said once these combat operations are over, this administration is going to continue to unleash American energy dominance.

B (27:02)

I really, I just imagined, you know, her and Miller and all them down, you know, just what are we, how are we going to vote? What are we going to call this? Well, it's temporary, obviously, and, you know, and it's short term, and it's a fluctuation. You know, it goes up, it goes down.

A (27:19)

Which way is it fluctuating? I'm eager to know. I'm eager to find out.

B (27:22)

That's kind of fun. Do you think that works?

A (27:26)

Nothing works. There's no way to spend gas. I Mean, like that's what did we, what did we spend. All of Biden learning is like, you just, you can't spend your way out of it. You know, the number on the pump goes up and you suffer politically. And it wasn't just Biden. It was everybody all around the world, right? It was, you know, every, every world leader coming out of post Covid inflation threw the bums out, including Americans. They threw out Joe Biden. And the COVID or the, the, the gas prices stuff was a big reason why. And even that was like, not exactly. You know, there were like, maybe small ways in which Biden's energy policy had like, you know, secondary order effects on, on the gas prices. But like, it wasn't like this, it wasn't like, you know, Joe Biden went and, and stuck a cork in key energy, you know, like through, through ways around the world in the way that Donald Trump has done right now. So I mean, any way they slice it, they are really, really cooked on this stuff unless it goes back to normal fast. And, and there's just no indication that even if they were to, you know, strike some kind of deal tomorrow that that is what would happen. So it's hard to blame Carolyn Levitt. You know, she's got to go up to the podium and say something, and it's not like there's any other thing that she could have said that would have worked better. But, but, but I, I'm not convinced that this was, this was necessarily even the best option. That's, that, that's a good phrase, though. We should, we should keep that one in the word bank.

B (28:46)

All right. Anything else? Any other dealer's choice here for you from the, from the, the show?

A (28:52)

No, I don't know. I, I, I used to think last year I was pretty much of the opinion that Carolyn Lett was actually pretty good at this job. She, you know, she was, she, she's a good press secretary for Donald Trump from a position of strength. She's good at twisting the knife. She's good at deflecting with a laugh. You know, she's, she's good at hitting her marks and showing contempt for the press and all those things that, like the White House really values and that the MAGA base really values. It is not necessarily clear to me that she has any other speed. It's not really clear to me that if the White House wants to make up any political ground, wants to win anybody back between now and the midter, that she has a single tool in her rhetorical arsenal that is conducive to that, but neither do any of the rest of them. This is not an administration that is, that is big on introspection or big on, you know, what's the median voter have to say or think about all of this? So I'm, I don't know. I guess they'll just keep trotting her out there, you know. More power to you, Caroline.

B (29:47)

Fantastic. Well, we'll get more. Donald Trump himself is going to keep speaking. We're going to keep bombing and exploding with our maximum alpha toughness. Can't wait. In the meantime, hit like hit. Subscribe, Follow the channel. Stay with us at the Bulwark. We'll be back soon. Good luck, America.

A (30:04)

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