‘I COULDN’T CARE LESS!’: Trump loses interest in Iran peace talks because they became 'BORING'

[0:00] Somebody said today, they said, oh, well, if the president wants to do it really quickly after that, he'll get bored. [0:06] I don't get bored. There's nothing boring about this. [0:12] I don't get bored. I just text all night for kicks. [0:16] Hi again, everybody. It's 5 o'clock in New York. [0:18] For every Trump soundbite, if you just give it a minute, like a week max, [0:23] sometimes it's as short as a few hours or a few weeks, always by a few months, [0:29] there will come a point where he will contradict himself completely and say or do the opposite. [0:35] He made that comment in March regarding the war with Iran, a war which has now dragged on for months. [0:42] And yesterday, following reports that Iran was pulling itself away from, out of peace negotiations, [0:48] Donald Trump said this to CNBC, quote, I couldn't care less. [0:54] He went on to say he thought the protracted discussions, quote, started to get very boring, end quote. [1:01] So much for there's nothing boring about this, which was also a Trump quote. [1:06] Today, Donald Trump said the reports of stalled negotiations are fake. [1:10] But no matter what, he has reached what David Sanger of The New York Times describes, quote, [1:16] the stalemate phase of his presidency. [1:18] There is, of course, the ongoing war with Iran, not to mention the Ukraine war, [1:22] which he said back in 2023, he would, quote, end in 24 hours. [1:27] That war is now in its fifth year. [1:29] David Sanger writes this, quote, [1:31] Perhaps all of this is the inevitable result of a president with huge ambitions running into the brick walls of global realities. [1:39] Perhaps it is the result of overreach. [1:41] Trump, as Trump, infused with the success of his first two military adventures into Iran and Venezuela, [1:47] assumes that there is no task too big for the U.S. military. [1:51] Some experts suggest that it arises from a fundamental misunderstanding of American power. [1:56] As one of Trump's close aides said recently, [1:59] destroying nuclear sites from the air is what America does best. [2:03] And controlling political events in nations like Iran, Russia and Ukraine is what the United States does worst. [2:09] And a further display of the flailing by the Trump administration. [2:14] Secretary of State and National Security Advisor Marco Rubio was up on Capitol Hill today, [2:19] appearing before Congress for the first time publicly since the war with Iran began, [2:24] a war which she did not acknowledge at all in his opening statement to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. [2:31] Here is Senator Chris Van Hollen calling Rubio and the Trump administration out. [2:37] Netanyahu said he's been waiting 40 years to do this. [2:41] Turns out he finally found a president who was both stupid and reckless enough to join him. [2:48] The war has killed 14 American service members, wounded hundreds more, and killed thousands of civilians. [2:55] It's driving up the price of gas, food, and much more. [2:59] Trump obviously doesn't care. [3:01] He called high gas prices peanuts and said, [3:05] I don't think about Americans' financial situation. [3:08] That's from the president of the United States. [3:10] And all for what? [3:12] The president told us 91 days ago that we had, quote, won the war in Iran. [3:17] Last year, he told the country, [3:19] Iran's key enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated. [3:26] Was that false? [3:28] Let's face it, Mr. Secretary, the Trump foreign policy has become a dumpster fire. [3:33] A dumpster fire is where we begin the hour with senior national security reporter David Rhodes [3:41] and former ambassador to Russia and international affairs analyst Michael McFaul. [3:47] Ambassador McFaul, let me come to you first on what stands out to you in terms of the story [3:55] that Americans are getting from their government about a war. [3:59] It was a war in which 13 American service members, men and women, lost their lives. [4:05] What do you make of what the American people and those families are hearing about it? [4:13] Well, they're hearing from the president one thing, but they're hearing from everybody else another thing. [4:18] And they don't have to hear it from anybody when they go to get gas for their car about the cost of this war. [4:23] You know, Nicole, I had a book come out last fall, so I've been on the road. [4:29] I think 50 talks I've now given all over the country about American foreign policy. [4:34] And everywhere I go, you hear anxiety. [4:38] It's what are we doing? [4:40] Why did we start this war? [4:42] Why haven't we achieved our outcomes? [4:44] Why are we not doing more for Ukraine, the stalemate there? [4:47] Why are we blowing up our relations with our allies all over the world? [4:51] Why did we start trade wars with everybody that has led to tremendous uncertainty? [4:57] So when you put it all together, I think, as you were just talking about, overreach is the right term. [5:03] But I want to add personalized, unilateral overreach, because what you have under President Trump [5:10] is somebody that's doing things in very personalistic terms. [5:14] He doesn't talk about American national interests. [5:17] He doesn't talk about our security and our prosperity. [5:20] And he never talks about our values. [5:23] It's always Trump. [5:24] President Trump, this and that, and his personal relationships with other leaders. [5:29] And that, as a strategy, is not working for the rest of us. [5:34] I want to read you, David, what Axios reported on this line of all foreign policy being wrapped [5:42] around Donald Trump's personalizing every decision and every interaction on behalf of the country. [5:48] This is from Axios. [5:50] He says, you're effing crazy, Trump fumes at Netanyahu and call on Lebanon is the headline. [5:56] President Trump lashed out at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over Israel's escalation in Lebanon [6:01] in an expletive-laden call Monday. [6:04] Two U.S. officials and a third source briefed on the call told Axios. [6:07] Summarizing Trump's remarks to Netanyahu, the U.S. officials said, quote, [6:11] you're effing crazy. [6:13] You'd be in prison if it weren't for me. [6:15] I'm saving your A-word. [6:17] Everyone hates you. [6:18] Everybody hates Israel because of this, end quote. [6:22] There's so much there that it is undeniably news. [6:25] It's struck a chord inside the MAGAverse. [6:28] It's incredibly important to know what our country's leader says to another country, [6:35] especially as the reporting bears out that other leader was instrumental in convincing Donald Trump [6:41] to take this country to war in Iran. [6:43] What do you make of the state of the war? [6:48] In terms of that specific story, I mean, my sense is that someone in the White House wanted that to get out, [6:56] and that may have been even the president himself, [6:58] that he wanted to be seen, I think, as standing up to Netanyahu. [7:01] Who knows if the exact wording is right? [7:04] But I think it's an effort by Trump to try to appear strong, [7:07] where if you look all over the world, the various countries and challenges you've mentioned, [7:12] Trump looks very weak. [7:13] He's sort of failing on every front. [7:16] So it's an extraordinary leak. [7:19] Israeli officials have denied it. [7:21] But I think I just was meeting, actually, with an intelligence official here in Washington, [7:25] a former official. [7:26] They felt like Trump sort of created an opening and said to Netanyahu, [7:30] maybe you can, you know, do some more in Lebanon. [7:32] And Netanyahu overdid it and went too far. [7:35] And it just, again, shows that Trump blinked. [7:39] When Iran said, you must stop this fighting in Lebanon, the Israelis have gone too far. [7:45] Donald Trump realized this was all escalating out of control and contacted Bibi. [7:49] And whether he used those exact words or not, he said, stop this. [7:52] And then he spoke to Hezbollah, reportedly, to try to, you know, ease tensions there. [7:57] So, again, it's Trump putting out fires. [8:00] It's not the world listening, you know, and fearing him and doing what he says. [8:04] It's just him sort of reacting over and over again. [8:07] Let me show you, to your point, David Rode, [8:10] this is how it's playing inside his political coalition. [8:13] This is a MAGA-friendly former military podcast host named Sean Ryan talking to, [8:20] I don't even know what we call her, Megyn Kelly. [8:24] We're going to pull that up. [8:29] But to your point about the political, dire political straits he's in, [8:33] it's undeniable that the political pressure isn't just a pressure cooker, it's a vice. [8:39] Democrats are completely on offense. [8:41] Let me show you, or here it is. [8:42] Here's a clip from Sean Ryan and Megyn Kelly. [8:45] I just don't see any positivity coming out of this administration. [8:53] It seems very self-serving. [8:55] I have a list of s*** printed I could go through, but what was the last one? [9:00] He f***ing made it so he had Todd Blanche do the dirty work [9:03] so that him or anybody in his family could never be audited by the IRS. [9:08] What the f*** is that s***? [9:09] The drone company, the $400 million jet from Qatar. [9:14] Yeah. [9:15] The, what is it, the Executives Club. [9:18] You know about that? [9:19] Yeah, yeah, that they started in D.C. [9:22] You don't hear about any of the s***? [9:23] Does this s*** look like he's serving the f***ing people? [9:27] No. [9:28] You don't get sort of higher up in the influence in the MAGA media echo chamber [9:36] than those two, two of the most listened to podcasts. [9:40] And again, that's on the MAGA side of the country. [9:44] No support, no ambition, no contact, no sort of touch with his base [9:49] is how he's being assessed by those two influential figures, David. [9:52] And what struck me is how much the corruption is resonating. [9:58] Everything that Sean Ryan listed was something about Trump enriching, you know, his family. [10:04] And I think the danger there, and I've talked to other folks in the MAGA world recently, [10:08] there is a deep sense that he has betrayed his base. [10:12] You know, he was the last best hope of sort of, you know, working class white Americans [10:15] who felt the rest of the country had left them behind and globalization left them behind. [10:20] And there's just real anger at him. [10:23] And then I think in more mainstream Republicans, it's the president constantly, you know, [10:27] bringing up these things like this, the retribution fund. [10:30] And then, you know, moments ago, Todd Blanche, you know, [10:32] confirmed that the president is abandoning that fund. [10:36] And that's, this is again, weakness. [10:38] The president is giving up on this fund. [10:41] He was told by Republicans in Congress it was untenable. [10:45] And he's backing down. [10:46] So on so many fronts, he just looks increasingly weak.