← Deadline: White House
Deadline: White House
“A betrayal of the base”
00:42:04
Nicolle Wallace covers how the latest attack within Iran is yet another betrayal of the MAGA base, who wants America to be put first. Back before the 2024 election, Stephen Miller, now Homeland Security Advisor to Trump, called Kamala Harris’ campaign “war-mongering neocons [who] love sending your kids to die for wars they would never fight themselves.” Fast forward to 2026 under a second Trump presidency, the United States has upended Venezuela’s regime, conducted air strikes in the Caribbean, and struck Iran, killing its Supreme Leader, all of which puts the U.S. military at risk.
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- [00:02]
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Narrator / Host
Every Mazda SUV offers you an elevated driving experience and refined performance. Discover it at your local Mazda dealer today.
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Tom Nichols
Why have I asked my electrician I found on Angie.com to bury my pet hamster Nibbles in our yard for me? Because I was so moved by how carefully he buried my electrical wires, I knew I could trust him to bury my sweet Nibbles after his untimely end. Huh, Nibbles gone too soon. May he scurry in peace.
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Mark Elias
Hey, sorry about your pet, but I just wire stuff.
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Tom Nichols
Nibbles would have loved you like a
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Narrator / Host
brother Connecting Homeowners with skilled pros for over 30 years Angie the one you trust to find the ones you trust Find pros for all your home projects@angie.com.
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Donald Trump (Quotes)
Our current strategy of nation building and regime change is a proven, absolute failure. We have created the vacuums that allow terrorism to grow and thrive. These globalists want to squander all of America's strength, blood and treasure, chasing monsters and phantoms overseas while keeping us distracted from the havoc they're creating right here at home.
- [01:35]
Vaughn Hilliard
Hi again everybody. It's five o' clock in New York. That was Ben this afternoon with all the force of a rock splitting crack of lightning. Donald Trump's rank betrayal of more than a decade of foreign policy promises is cleaving a first of its kind fissure inside the MAGA movement. Not that his supporters are strangers to betrayal by any means. He's broken his word with them and to them before, and he'll undoubtedly do it again. But the military action Donald Trump took in the early hours Saturday morning in Iran, the war he started, is a sort of reversal, fundamentally different on an atomic level than anything we've seen him do since he's been in our politics over the last 10 years. The best way to fully understand the depth and scope of that betrayal today might be to hold our noses and submerge ourselves in the now broken promises of Donald Trump's no new wars mantra. It starts with his 2016 campaign for president.
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Donald Trump (Quotes)
You can't fight two wars at one time if you listen to him and you listen to some of the folks that I've been listening to. That's why we've been in the Middle east for 15 years and we haven't won anything. We've spent $5 trillion in the Middle east because of thinking like that. In the Trump administration, our actions in the Middle east will be tempered by realism. The current strategy of toppling regimes will, with no plan for what to do the day after, only produces power vacuums that are filled simply by terrorists. Gradual reform, not sudden and radical change, should be our guiding objective in that region.
- [03:12]
Vaughn Hilliard
You don't say. In 2016 and then again in 2020 and then again in 2024, Donald Trump tapped into a fatigue on the part of the American people in both political parties. To be honest, that fatigue and that grief and that exhaustion that was associated with sending our men and women in uniform into harm's way. Watch.
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Donald Trump (Quotes)
We had no wars. They said, he will start a war. I'm not going to start a war. I'm going to stop wars. I was the only president in modern history who did not have any new wars. No new wars. Under Trump, we will have no more wars, no more disruptions, and we will have prosperity and peace for all.
- [03:57]
Vaughn Hilliard
At the time, it was Trump's advisor, Stephen Miller, who described the campaign of Kamala Harris like this as a, quote, warmongering neocons who love sending your kids to die for wars. They would never fight themselves. End quote. It's a sentiment that rhymes, so to speak, with a number of other top Trump figures who might not be in government at all had they not shared that worldview with Donald Trump. President Trump campaigned against regime change wars when he ran for president, but now
- [04:30]
Narrator / Host
he bows to the wishes of the
- [04:31]
Vaughn Hilliard
neocons who surround him, clamoring for regime change wars that he claimed to oppose. This time in Venezuela and in Iran. These powerful politicians dishonor the sacrifices made
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Mazda Commercial Voice
by every one of my brothers and sisters in uniform.
- [04:51]
Tom Nichols
Sometimes we're gonna have overlapping interests, and sometimes we're gonna have distinct interests. And our interest, I think, very much is in not going to war with Iran. Right. It would be huge distraction of resources. It would be massively expensive to our country.
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Vaughn Hilliard
Just let that sink in. J.D. vance and Tulsi Gabbard work for Donald Trump now and just work for him. They subverted everything they've ever said publicly that they believed. And they serve a commander in chief who made the decision to do precisely what they publicly built their political identities around and warned against. It is an epic generational stabbing in the back, not just for those officials who've been made to look like fools. That's being kind of for the American people again, who Trump continues to make fools of people who voted for him because they actually believed him when he promised he would not start any new wars. People who, as we said, have felt the sting of Donald Trump's betrayal before, rather recently on Epstein, on the economy, on inflation, on Second Amendment issues. We could go on and on, but never, frankly, quite like this. It's where we start the hour with our senior White House correspondent, Von Hilliard. Also joining us, political analyst and host of the Bulwark podcast, Tim Miller. Also joining us, staff writer at the Atlantic, a contributor at the Atlantic Daily Newsletter. Tom Nichols is here. He's a professor emeritus of national Security affairs at the U.S. naval War College, where he taught for more than two decades. Since you have the fanciest and most impressive title. Tom Nichols, I start with you.
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Tom Nichols
Okay, I'm sorry I missed the beginning of the question.
- [06:41]
Vaughn Hilliard
Just your reaction to this dawning reversal. Well,
- [06:48]
Tom Nichols
the thing that's amazing is that this might be the only other thing besides the Epstein files that will give traction within the MAGA coalition to breaking with Donald Trump or at least criticizing him because they didn't care about all
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Narrator / Host
the
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Tom Nichols
years ago where one of his voters said to a reporter, we know he's lying. We don't care. He's a kind of a cruise missile that we aim at the establishment and hope he does a lot of damage. But there were two things that he could never really get away with lying to them about. One was about Epstein, which he made part of his campaign, and now he's hung up on that. And the other was this drumbeat about how stupid other presidents were to get involved in foreign wars, and not just to get involved in foreign wars, but in regime change wars. And what is he doing now? This is a war. I know Secretary Rubio today said, no, no, this is about the missiles and the nuclear program.
- [07:43]
Narrator / Host
No.
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Tom Nichols
Donald Trump keeps telling the Iranian people, rise up. Take your government, seize your freedom. This is your day. This is a regime change war. This, as I said the other day, this is the most neocon war that ever neocon'd. You know, this is practically Operation Iranian Freedom at this point. And he just turned on a dime. But I think that they counted on him for just two things, not to lie about just those two. And this is an immense betrayal of his own base and of an American public that didn't want this war, even though it may actually be that some good may come out of it. The public didn't want it. He hasn't explained it to Congress. And so it's not just the MAGA base that's been betrayed. But I think this one might have a little bit of traction, especially if there are, as he seems worried about, more casualties.
- [08:37]
Vaughn Hilliard
Von Hillier, Donald Trump has said a couple times now that there will be more casualties. We have learned from the military this hour that six service members have lost their lives. You have been to more Trump rallies than anyone I get to talk to on this show every day. So I want to ask you, did he ever deviate from that script we looked? Did he ever say, I will start a war with Iran to change that regime? And did people ever clap if he
- [09:03]
Von Hilliard
did in an attempt to explain and answer your question? No. But I think that what we did see over the course of these last years was, at a minimum, a generous misinterpretation of what Donald Trump, the candidate, was pledging when he said no wars. This was a man who often touted the military might of American military forces under his direction. He called stupid generals, ones that he fired and replaced them with individuals that he said would represent the ethos of what America should be. During the campaign, I would talk to folks constantly who said that they wanted Donald Trump to be elected because our enemies would fear him and his leadership and his military. And in so many ways, when Donald Trump said no new wars, right, he sort of would try to explain that the Russia, Ukraine war wouldn't have happened if he had been president. He said that Hamas wouldn't have attacked Israel if he was president, really kind of honing in on that ethos and the bravado, bravado and the hubris that Donald Trump has exemplified, really kind of in a way that we have seen from strongmen in history's past. And so I think when you go back to October 2024, right, there was Iran launched 180 missiles toward Israel. And I was actually with the president or the candidate at that time in Wisconsin. And just before a campaign event, I asked him, if he were president at that time, would he have moved forward in using US Military forces to strike Iran? And he told me, I don't want to say what I'd use because I don't want to give up negotiating abilities because. So I don't want to say exactly, but they understand where I stand. And so in so many ways, it was easy for them to put a placard on these signs and carry this no new wars mantle. But really what that was constructed around was the idea that enemies would fear the United States. And instead, what you have now with Donald Trump as the president, I think is Somebody who feels like he hasn't suffered consequences for the killing of some of. For the capture of Maduro or for last year's strikes of those three nuclear facilities. And so until there is consequences beyond these few American casualties, I think it's a deep question as to how the president and whether he is willing to change here over the next months or years.
- [11:23]
Vaughn Hilliard
The Atlantic reported that Donald Trump believed that men and women that lose their lives are, quote, suckers and losers. And Tim Miller was one of the most sort of electric pieces of journalism in his first presidency. He disputed it. He fought it. It was confirmed and corroborated by Sarah Matthews around my table and by generals who went on the record in the subsequent years and confirmed that he had said that. There's also some really deeply disturbing reporting about him refusing to go to a cemetery to honor veterans of World War I. He was visiting France. His military, leadership of the military, and his chief of staff, who was then John Kelly, went in his stead. He's someone who said about John McCain and that he, quote, liked people who weren't captured. He made a similar smear against George W. Bush. His disdain and hatred for the idea of sacrificing your life for your country is well documented. And I wish that wasn't the first thing I thought of when I saw the news. First of the four deaths and today of the additional two. But I pray for some conversion on his part that he doesn't believe that people die serving their country are still, quote, suckers and losers.
- [12:42]
Narrator / Host
Yeah, I had a related thought, which was thinking back to the 2016 Democratic convention and Khizr Khan, and I don't want to get the quote exactly right. I'm paraphrasing it where he's talking about how his son, who was lost, and how Donald Trump doesn't care about anything or anyone besides himself, essentially. And that is just the reality of this situation. If you just look at. Listen to what Vaughn said. Another way of putting what Vaughn said is that Trump has this megalomaniacal belief in himself. He believes that he's the tough guy or the bully on the playground and that he can go around and do this stuff and not suffer any consequences. And there's this machismo that goes along with it that has been part of the fascist impulse forever. This is what Umberto Echo wrote about Mussolini, right, Was that there's just this machismo. It's like, I can do this, this bravado. And he, I think, has found himself a situation that he can't spin or demagogue his way out of with his own base. I mean, he could leave right now and you would still only have the sixth deaths, which would be tragic of Americans. Obviously there have been Iranian deaths and others in region and so I guess maybe that people would just forget about it and move on. But I think this is just a fundamental betrayal. And I hear what Tom was saying about how it's similar to Epstein. I think it's totally a different category than Epstein. I mean, it was essential to the rise of Trump. It was. I hate to ever admit this. Sometimes being an adult means admitting you were wrong. His impulse might have been wrong, but he was right about where the American people were in 2015 and 16. I mean, you showed that old clip of Jeb, and that's traumatizing for me to think about the 2016 debates. Like, I was wrong, he was correct. Like people were sick of it and they were willing to turn to somebody as vulgar and unserious as him because what they were being offered otherwise was Clinton, Bush, and a similar foreign policy that the American people had decided had failed and that they didn't want anymore. And so it was the central item, maybe in addition to immigration, to his rise. And so for him now to get involved in a regime change war in the Middle east, that has no rationale at all. Like, he can't even give his people a fig leaf about what this is for. You know, look, I think that some of them will stick with him for a little bit because, you know, people don't like to admit that they're wrong and that's a team jersey and all of that. But if this, if the, if this continues to get worse and he gets into a quagmire like this could really be the issue that doesn't. You know, we spend a lot of time on here talking about issues where it's like, well, could, could he go from 85% down to 80 with his base? So, you know, could he go from 92 down to 80? Like, this is the issue that could, that could split the base in half. That could split his party in half because it is the central thing that he promised to his voters. And he is just doing exactly the opposite in a way that is kind. That is hard for me to really even understand how he could have judged this to be something that his own base would accept.
- [15:55]
Vaughn Hilliard
It's also a good window into how little he consumes, how exploitive he was of the manosphere and right wing media, because this is a hot war of words. Tom, this is Mark Levin talking about Tucker Carlson. And let me just stipulate they are tarantulas in a bowl. There's no one to root for. But in terms of how what Tim's talking about, the solidarity behind Trump and Trumpism, is why he wins the Republican nomination three times in the presidency twice. And in terms of how unpopular he is, he's well below 80 on this issue. GOP support for attacking for the strikes over the summer was 69% in June. It's 55% now. It's 15 points more unpopular today than after the strikes that, quote, unquote, obliterated Iran's nuclear program. Trump's attack on Iran has a 27% approval rating among the public and just 55% of Republicans. I think that's the lowest approval rating among Republicans out of anything he's doing. I think even tariffs high poll higher than 55% among Republicans, but I'll check that. So here's what Mark Levin said about Tucker Carlson. Two pretty giant figures in MAGA media. Quote, one day soon, Benedict Arnold's name will be replaced with Tucker Carlson as the greatest traitor to our country, and his name will become a term of derision and contempt, disloyalty and sabotage. And that is about Tucker Carlson saying things. I'm not going to play it, but I'll read you a little bit of this. He's calling Mark Levin's warmongering quote pure insanity. What people like Levin, who I'm not attacking, I feel sorry for because he's clearly living in hell. What they're trying to do is a species of witchcraft. And it's really simple. You repeat something until it becomes true. Khomeini must die. We're going into war. We're going to knock off the government. This is good for us. Anyone who's against it is an anti Semite, a Nazi should be expelled. Benedict Arnold not allowed in the White House. You keep repeating those things that are untrue until they become true. Now, do the 2020 election, Tucker, and then we could maybe be friends. But the idea that these two figures have a public torrent of vitriol toward each other feels like the most significant political development, I guess, since the manosphere broke up with Trump over Epstein. Tom?
- [18:21]
Tom Nichols
Yeah, you know, I never thought I'd have an ounce of sympathy for Tucker Carlson, but, you know, Levin once called me a communist, so I. Tucker, welcome to the, welcome to the family. You know, part of the problem is, of course, that these guys all live in the attention economy. So having this kind of fight is good for both of their brands. The problem is that there are millions of people following each of them, trying to figure out, you know, where they are on this issue. And you're right for once. This is, you know, they're no longer. Not even in lockstep. I mean, it used to be that when you saw these kinds of fights in Mega World, except for things like Green versus Boebert and things like that, normally they kept it kind of giving each other side eye or shade. I mean, this is. Now they're just exchanging, you know, nuclear bombs back and forth. Because I suspect the people that went with Trump on this feel like fools. And nothing, you know, nothing makes you angrier than to have something like this put over on you. As I said, you know, I take Tim's point, by the way, about Epstein being kind of a qualitatively different thing. But in all these cases, again, these were people that were willing to say, I know Trump lies to me. I know he's going to do tariffs, even though he said he wouldn't, you know, and that I didn't think he would, or, I know he's going to lie about the Second Amendment. I don't care. But on a couple of things, they. The lie hits them at such a deep level that they look completely hoodwinked. And you're going to see a lot of. You're going to see a lot of rage about that, especially as this goes on.
- [20:03]
Narrator / Host
Because.
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Tom Nichols
And I think the difference is one last thing. The difference between this and Midnight Hammer was people woke up. Trump said, we hit their facilities one and done. It's over, no casualties. Iran's learned its lesson. And they could say USA and do the chant and all that business. Trump did nothing to prepare the ground here. He could have really set up something at the State of the Union. He could have dared Democrats to, you know, stay sitting for Iran, whatever, but he didn't do any of that. And then we begin these operations and it kind of trickles out and you start hearing that it was the Israelis. And then Trump confirmed, yeah, we were involved. And then in the middle of the night, he puts out this very weird video, you know, this kind of tired old grandpa ranting on. And I think that the more he just. Just as with COVID the more he rants on, the less secure people feel. The more he says, the actually the shakier it gets. And I think that's true of Mega World as well.
- [21:06]
Vaughn Hilliard
I'll show you a little bit more of what this looks like. F bombs and everything in MAGA world. They're bleeped out. They're bleeped out. I don't want you to stick around if that's what you're waiting for, but I'll show it to you anyway. Don't go anywhere. Also ahead, much more on how Donald Trump committed this betrayal we're talking about by starting a new foreign war, this one in Iran after promising for years he'd be the president to end all wars. Later in the hour, the absolute crazy reason you might have missed that Trump gave to help justify launching war in Iran. And like so much that motivates Donald Trump, it has to do with his defeat in the 2020 presidential election. Our friend Mark Elias will try to make sense of that later in the hour. Deadline White House continues after a quick break. Don't go anywhere,
- [21:54]
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- [23:01]
Vaughn Hilliard
We're all back. Vaughn. The other remarkable thing about the betrayal is how quickly it happened. Like it wasn't hard to find any of the tape of Trump on all of these manosphere podcasts. And it was even easier to find them sort of clapping back. This is podcaster Dave Smith, who endorsed Donald Trump's presidential campaign in 2024.
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Narrator / Host
I hope the Republicans lose the midterms this year. They need to for the country.
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Mark Elias
They need to be destroyed.
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Narrator / Host
And no one from this administration can be supported in 28.
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Mark Elias
JD Vance Marco Rubio, Tulsi Gabbard. She hasn't resigned yet.
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Narrator / Host
Tulsi Gabbard dude, the no War with
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Mark Elias
Iran shirts that she was selling. How much money you make off those shirts, Tulsi? How can you not return that money?
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Vaughn Hilliard
Well, and I'll find the picture and show it to you. They sold no War with. Oh, there it is. No War with Iran T shirts. And that is Tulsi Gabbard. G A, B, B A R D. Yep, that's her. No war with Iran. Get our troops out of Iraq and Syria now, Tulsi. No war with Iran. What do these people say now, Vaughn?
- [24:19]
Von Hilliard
You know, I think that that's one of those where at the least bit there must be a reckoning or a sober detailing of the position change. You know, And I think J.D. vance is the other one, right? I was on the campaign trail with him when he was running for Ohio Senate seat back in May of 2022, and he'd talk about this. But then even in 2023, J.D. vance, he had a long Twitter thread in which he was very clear. He talked about, I hope we do better in the future, referring to the Iraq war. And I know that we won't until the people who led us into Iraq are scorned and ignored across the spectrum. Iraq was a disaster, yes. But the best way to do justice, to be honored dead, is to learn the lessons purchased by their blood. There were 7,000American men and women that lost their lives over the last 25 years in the Middle east, more than 53,000 injured. And by J.D. vance's own telling, he was 18 years old when the Iraq war began and he enlisted in the Marines just one month later. And he saw and lived the experience that so many other millennials did in terms of their loved ones paying the price with their own blood. And I think that that is where, here in this moment, in these first 72 hours, there has not been a sober detail by the President of the United States or J.D. vance in terms of laying out in responding the difference, the beginning of the first Middle east wars and what we have seen play out here over the course of the last 72 hours. Because in so many ways, there's so much conservative backlash online here, including by one is the writer, conservative writer Matt Walsh saying, I can't take the gaslighting, guys. I really can't. Conservatives now running around saying Iran has not been waging war on us for 47 years. Then why didn't any of you call for an attack Iran on any other point till now? A lot of these same voices, from Megyn Kelly to Marjorie Taylor Greene to Matt Walsh, these are the folks that were very key to lifting up the likes of J.D. vance into prominence and really holding on for Donald Trump and carrying his political water over the last decade.
- [26:20]
Vaughn Hilliard
Tim Miller, what does it mean for Democrats?
- [26:25]
Narrator / Host
They should be very clear in opposition to the war. And I think that, I understand in the past, Democrats, I think when it comes to national security issues, they sometimes wrap their head around, they sometimes get wrapped around the axle on it thinking about how they don't want to seem weak. The Republicans are more comfortable being jingoistic and pro military. And so Democrats don't want to kind of cede that ground to them. And so you see this sometimes when folks are talking about this in the past, but even now, this war, you see some Democrats saying things like caveating it and, you know, talking, you know, focusing on how terrible the ayatollah was. It's okay to talk about all of that. I wish the Iranian people were free. I wish the women of Iran had freedom. I'm, I'm not upset that the ayatollah is gone. But these clowns aren't going to do anything to fix it. And we cannot trust them. They are liars. They're incompetent. And Democrats should not give any, give them any off ramp for any political off ramp, at least for covering up that incompetence. And so to me, I think if you're a Democrat, you just should be very clear about how we do not support war with Iran. We do not support Donald Trump and Marco Rubio and Pete Hegseth unilaterally taking us to a war with no rationale, without offering any compelling case to the American people, without coming to Congress and letting us vote on it or authorize it. No, it's no, no, no, no, no. And I think in this case, that puts Democrats on the right side of the American people and on the right side of the policy in this because, like, these guys don't know what they're doing and they're risking getting us into a big quagmire. And I think frankly, the best thing probably is to just cut bait at this point. And so I don't think the Democrats should feel at all compelled to try to find the middle ground here or sound tough on foreign policy vis a vis Iran.
- [28:38]
Vaughn Hilliard
Tom Nichols and Vaughn Hilliard, thank you for starting us off. Tim sticks around a little bit longer. When we come back, Donald Trump has, as we've been discussing, given many public explanations about why he launched a war with Iran. But the one he suggested shortly after the initial strike Saturday morning might have been the most fat bleep crazy thing he said in about a week. And of course it has to do with his defeat to Joe Biden in 2020. Mark Elias will be here to unpack that next.
- [29:13]
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Narrator / Host
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- [29:35]
Mark Elias
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Narrator / Host
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- [29:42]
Tom Nichols
Why have I asked my electrician I found on Angie.com to bury my pet hamster Nibbles in our yard for me? Because I was so moved by how carefully he buried my electrical wires, I knew I could trust him to bury my sweet Nibbles after his untimely end. Huh, Nibbles gone too soon. May he scurry in peace.
- [29:59]
Mark Elias
Hey, sorry about your pet, but I just wire stuff.
- [30:02]
Tom Nichols
Nibbles would have loved you like a
- [30:04]
Narrator / Host
brother Connecting homeowners with skilled pros for over 30 years Angie the one you trust to find the ones you trust. Find pros for all your home projects@angie.com Close your eyes. Listen to Monday.com Feel the sensation of an AI work platform so flexible and intuitive it feels like it was built just for you. Now open your eyes, go to Monday.com, start for free, and finally breathe
- [30:30]
Vaughn Hilliard
We've been covering the varying explanations offered by Donald Trump and his cabinet for the war. Well, hours after launching the war in Iran, Donald Trump took to social media and seemed to link the military strikes to conspiracy theories that Iran was somehow responsible for his defeat in the 2020 presidential election. Those claims could be dismissed as wackadoo or bogus, but our next guest warns that it is actually a sign of what Donald Trump will try to do in our upcoming elections. Mark Elias writes in Democracy Docket this quote, Donald Trump is planning to use his attack on Iran to justify a power grab over voting in the 2026 midterms. He adds that Trump's posts about Iran in the immediate aftermath of the strikes are, quote, just the latest instance of Trump citing foreign interference as the motivation or justification for unilateral executive action. Trump is setting the stage to claim extraordinary powers to take over the 2026 elections, from banning mail in voting to imposing new obstacles to voting registration. All of this will be justified on the grounds of national security, an area where presidents enjoy their broadest powers and typically receive the greatest deference from the courts. I want to bring in voting rights attorney, founder of Democracy docket, Mark Elias. Tim is still with us. Well, every week, Mark, I keep thinking our conversations can't get darker or more disturbing and it feels like they have say more.
- [31:59]
Mark Elias
Yeah, look, I don't want people to be discouraged by this. We know that Donald Trump is going to try to figure out every advantage that he has to try to cheat in 2026. That's what he did in 2020 and the aftermath. It's frankly what he's prepared to do in 2024. But I think we'd also be naive and we would not be doing a service to free and fair elections if we did not recognize that. You know, at about 2:30am, Donald Trump posted on his social media platform, Truth Social, that that he had launched a military campaign against Iran. Now, that's weird that he announced it at 2:30 in the morning on his social media platform. But the very next post, like literally the next thing back to back that he posted just two hours later was a connection tying the 2020 election. And he claims that interference in the 2024 election to Iran. And I just don't believe that that's a coincidence. I don't believe that that's a coincidence. At the same time that he is trying to access voter files around the country. I don't believe it's a coincidence. By the way, at the same time that he is telling Anthropic, one of the largest AI companies, that if they don't allow the Department of Defense to conduct mass surveillance on US citizens, that they're going to be blackballed. I think that all of these things are need to be viewed through the prism of the one thing that Donald Trump cares most about, which is not losing power. And the greatest threat to his power right now is that Democrats take control in the midterm elections. Now, I don't think Donald Trump's going to get away with this. I think he's going to issue some new executive order that's going to claim foreign interference as a premise for him having power. And it is where courts have traditionally given the most deference to presidents. But I also say in that piece that it's transparent what he's doing here, and I don't think any court's going to go along with it. And as soon as he issues that executive order, I'll sue him. And we will win as we did last time, and we continue to litigate against the Department of Justice in their efforts. And so we got to steal our spines for what's ahead, but we shouldn't give up hope.
- [34:05]
Vaughn Hilliard
A sober message. And I can hear how careful Marg Elias is being in articulating the gravity of the threat with the prospects for protecting ourselves from it. But you know, Tim, it's insane that the current president is trying to sabotage our elections. And I take the importance of, especially at this moment where Minneapolis seem to unlock something in people, that we still have agency, we still have power, we still have each other. And you've seen artists and athletes follow, and that's all really important. But his reaction has been to tighten his stranglehold on our democracy. Your thoughts?
- [34:46]
Narrator / Host
Yeah. Two thoughts. One, to echo Mark's last point of not having people not get too discouraged, I like to steal a line that Trump used to say with the 2024 election, which is pretty rare for me, but it's gonna be too big to steal, too big to cheat. All right. Like, the victory is gonna be too big.
- [35:04]
Vaughn Hilliard
Yeah.
- [35:04]
Narrator / Host
For the Democrats, for these guys to steal it. And I think that the Iran war, which we talked about in the last segment, is going to contribute to that. I think people being pissed about this and turning out and being engaged, as we saw in Minneapolis, is going to play into that. That said, yeah, it's extremely crazy that this is where we are. And the fact that these life or death geopolitical decisions are tied up in his adult brain conspiracy theorizing about the 2020 election and their plans, whatever they are, for meddling in the 2026 elections. The Venezuela case is the same. And One of the OG conspiracy theories that was floated about the 2020 election on the MAGA, right, was that, you know, the Dominion machines were Venezuelan and Hugo Chavez was. It's not even worth getting into all of it, but Venezuela was tied up in it. And so for him to float Iran now, again, whether or not, like the President of the United States is so insane and so detached from reality that he thinks that Venezuela and Iran colluded to prevent him from winning in 2020. Why they didn't do it in 2024, I don't know. I wish they would have been better, I guess. But either the president is so confused and deluded that he really believes this, or as Mark is saying, he is creating this preposterous conspiracy theory and as a pretext for meddling in the election. And either way, it is totally bananas. It's not even Earth 2. It's like Earth 19 type, you know, Behavior from a president who has a lot of serious choices ahead of him. So, yeah, it's alarming and crazy.
- [36:48]
Vaughn Hilliard
I mean, it also costs Fox News almost a billion dollars to settle because it's lie. But I guess, Mark, the calculation is that people won't rewind the tape that far.
- [37:01]
Mark Elias
Yeah, and just if you did rewind the tape, Tim, you've left out some countries. Yes, he said that he and his cronies and his allies blamed Venezuela and the deceased Hugo Chavez, who died in 2013 but was somehow involved in rigging the machines for 2020. He Also, don't forget his allies floated the idea that perhaps Italy and some satellites were involved. What are they mad about involving Cuba, China and Germany? So Iran's got a lot of company. You know, this is not just a bilateral effort to undo elections according to the, the broader election and IR conspiracy. It's a lot of countries. But this is all very serious stuff because he's going to package all of this up for two audiences. The first is his aggrievement audience, the people who want a permission structure to deny the outcome of elections that they lost. And then the second is, as I point out in the piece, the courts, because the courts are most deferential, like two presidents when it comes to foreign policy and national security. That's a real thing. And we have seen a lot of damage be done. Look at the migrants who were shipped to the Gulag in El Salvador. Until that unravels, there was a lot of damage done to those people. So I don't think this is going to be a smooth process. I'm optimistic that in the end we will fight this back and we will win in court as we did in the aftermath of 2020. But everybody needs to keep in mind that there were moments of touch and go in 2020, and there were moments of touch and go in the post election 2020. And ultimately, when Donald Trump didn't prevail in court, he incited a violent mob to storm the Capitol to try to overturn a free and fair election. So, you know, I'm optimistic, but I'm also realistic. And we need, Nicole, we need to make sure that all of their institutions and all of our leaders have their spines steeled. Like they are not driven to pessimism, they're not driven to hopelessness, but they're also not blinded to what is in front of them. And the challenges we're going to face,
- [39:08]
Vaughn Hilliard
right, or talking about return to something normal, we're so far beyond that. We'll have that Conversation on the other side of a short break. Stay with us. We're back with Mark and Tim. Mark, I want you to say more about living in reality. I saw that the Trump Justice Department will no longer defend their illegal and unconstitutional executive orders against law firms because they are legal and unconstitutional. Judge Beryl Howell, who was the first judge to weigh in on them, described them as, quote, sending a chill down her spine. All the same, law firm after law firm after law firm, I think starting with Brad Carpet, Paul Weiss, who isn't even running Paul Weiss anymore, capitulated and are now working for Boris, doing I don't know what, at the Commerce Department. Donald Trump will do whatever he can get away with doing. And a lot of it isn't legal, an alarming amount of it is unconstitutional. And he will move on and bully someone else if people stand up to him. Why isn't that lesson sort of internalized writ large on the pro democracy side?
- [40:14]
Mark Elias
Yeah. So look, I think today is going to be remembered as one of the most important days for the opposition movement against Donald Trump. I realize that there's a lot of other stuff going on in the world, but today was the day that the law firms that stood up tall and said to Donald Trump, we will not bow down to you. We will not obey. We will not bend a knee. Today is the day that the Department of Justice dismissed their lawsuit against them or dismissed, I'm sorry, stop defending. The victory that the law firms had against the Department of Justice. And what that means for everyone listening is that the four law firms that stood their ground, they can proceed on and have government contracts and enter buildings and do all of the things that Donald Trump tried to deny either. And for the nine or 10 law firms that capitulated and collaborated, they still have to provide free legal services to Donald Trump. They still have to look at themselves in the mirror and explain why they settled a case that wound up getting dismissed and that the Department of Justice then dropped. They have to explain to their clients why anyone would hire them when they were so cowardly, when they lacked even the basic spine expected of any lawyer, no less one who charges thousands of dollars an hour, and they settled a claim and groveled in the Oval Office rather than standing up to fight. And most importantly, they're going to have to explain to their children and their grandchildren and future generations that will remember them by name when democracy was under attack, when large institutions were asked to do the bare minimum, to stand up, not to show the courage that the people of Minneapolis showed, not to show the activism of millions of people at no King's rallies. But to show the basic minimum amount of decency and backbone, they'll have to explain to their children, grandchildren and future generations why they couldn't muster that. And history will remember them as the great villains and the great cowards of this era. And so I hope we celebrate today as a victory for everyone who stands up and tall and does not bow down to Donald Trump. But I also hope we redouble our efforts to remember who the villains were, who the cowards were who had every advantage in life and yet refused to bear any burden to do the right thing.
- [42:40]
Vaughn Hilliard
We won't forget around here. Mark Elias and Tim Miller, thank you both for joining me today. Really important conversation. One more break for us. We'll be right back. I know there's a lot going on, but trust me on this one. This week for the Best People podcast, I got a chance to finish a conversation we started on this program. Some of our favorite guests, Princeton professor Dr. Eddie Glad, former New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu, and the Atlantic's Tom Nichols, who was on our program earlier in the hour. Shall we say it was a little less structured. Everyone let their true feelings fly without interruptions from breaks. They joined me to try to make sense at this very moment in our country and what our response to it should be. Take a listen.
- [43:28]
Narrator / Host
We exceptionalized Maga and Trump and say
- [43:32]
Donald Trump (Quotes)
that something's wrong with them.
- [43:34]
Narrator / Host
But I keep thinking about a lineage. How many of these folk are the children of the children of Nixon, Right? The way in which they think of the imperial presidency. And now it's on steroids. How many what, what's the soil that gave root to, that gave birth to this stuff.
- [43:53]
Donald Trump (Quotes)
And if we, if understand the acidity
- [43:55]
Narrator / Host
of the soil that produced it, then maybe we can not exceptionalize them, but could understand what's at the heart of what we've produced. Because Donald Trump is just the boil.
- [44:08]
Donald Trump (Quotes)
The rot is underneath.
- [44:09]
Tom Nichols
Can I take issue with some of that, though? I mean, Eddie, I sure expected you to, Tom.
- [44:14]
Narrator / Host
That's why I said no, no, no.
- [44:15]
Tom Nichols
I mean, well, no, that kind of taking issue, say, no, no, everything's fine. You know, everything is not fine. But I think it's dangerous to say almost in a kind of national original sin sense that this is everybody. Because the other thing we've been talking about today is how many Americans really are fundamentally, when faced with this, their impulse is to be fundamentally decent and good.
- [44:46]
Vaughn Hilliard
There is a lot more where that came from. It was a wide ranging conversation. You won't want to miss it. You can hear the whole thing on this week's episode of the Best People. Just scan the QR code on your screen or download it wherever you get your podcast. Be sure to let me know what you think on Instagram or bluesky. One more break. We'll be right back. So tomorrow the battle begins for control of Congress with primaries in Texas, North Carolina and Arkansas. I'll get to join Rachel Maddow and our primetime friends for analysis throughout the night with Ali Velshi breaking down results. Special coverage begins at 7pm Eastern tomorrow night on Ms. Now, our thanks to you for letting us into your homes. We are grateful.
- [45:27]
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