Panel: Is Trump hyping a nonexistent deal with Iran?

[0:00] I'm not necessarily sure that I take the Iranian regime's word over President Trump's word. [0:04] And I do think... [0:06] On True Social today, he was calling it the Straits of Iran. [0:09] We never give Trump the benefit of the doubt, but the experts, we always give him the benefit of the doubt. [0:13] And the way that we know they don't have a strategy is because the strategy changes every day. [0:16] Are we in a better position than we were after the Obama-Iran nuclear deal that Trump tore up in 2018? [0:25] Tonight, he said, they said, and it didn't match in the middle of a war. [0:29] Early in the day, Iran said it would open the Strait of Hormuz, a positive, welcome development. [0:35] President Trump began essentially declaring victory, saying Iran has agreed to all of America's demands. [0:40] Iran, though, then said that's a lie. [0:43] Trump says Iran will forever stop enriching uranium. [0:46] He says the U.S. will be getting their nuclear stockpile. [0:51] He also said Iran has agreed not to help groups like Hezbollah. [0:55] Iran says all that isn't true. [0:58] And on the Strait, Iran Tonight says it will not reopen the waterway if America's blockade continues. [1:04] Trump says he will not end the blockade until they get a deal. [1:08] So after a day of optimism, things are once again on shaky ground as negotiators race to strike an agreement before the current ceasefire expires next week. [1:17] I'm going to start with you, Josh, because you're deeply steeped in international relations. [1:22] What do you make of what you've seen so far? [1:26] I think we're witnessing a couple of different things. [1:28] There's the jumble of what Trump is saying and the negotiations. [1:32] He's putting out the U.S. position. [1:34] No one really thinks we're there, but he's expressing confidence that this is where they're going to get to. [1:39] Iranians don't think so. [1:40] It's not likely to happen. [1:41] That's part of it. [1:42] Another part of it is that somebody shorted the oil market today by hundreds of millions of dollars exactly 20 minutes before Trump made his announcement that everything was going to be great. [1:53] And if you see that once, it could be a coincidence. [1:55] But that's happened at least three times, if not more, since the war began. [1:59] That's a pattern. [1:59] And what that suggests is that there's rampant corruption and insider self-dealing going on with the president's up and down predictions of what's going to happen tomorrow in the negotiations and in the markets. [2:11] And I'm sure that that's being investigated. [2:14] We can't prove it. [2:15] But it seems like the corruption that we're seeing in our government, maybe not the president, but people who are in the know and the markets, is having a priority over the actual negotiations to end the war. [2:26] And that's a crazy thing that our system has never seen before, and that we have a lot of time processing and a lot of problem solving. [2:34] Joe, how do you respond to that idea that something seems fishy when it comes to what keeps happening with the market? [2:41] You know, I consider Josh a friend, but in all due respect, that is a baseless accusation based on the way you ended that statement. [2:47] We have no proof of this. [2:49] We can't say it actually happened. [2:50] But because it did happen, it must be rampant corruption. [2:53] No, I'm being careful. [2:54] I'm just saying that that's a pretty big stretch from from you don't think you think it's a coincidence. [2:59] That's your that's your view. [3:00] I have no idea. [3:00] But I'm not going to a news network and say I'm 100 percent confident or something. [3:04] But I didn't say I was 100 percent confident. [3:06] So I'm saying we should check it out. [3:07] Are we are we better today on this Friday than we were last Friday? [3:11] I think the answer is collectively yes. [3:13] Right. [3:14] The blockade has been the leverage. [3:17] There's obviously talk about who controls the straits, whether it's open, whether it's not. [3:20] That's all fine. [3:21] The president has implemented the blockade a couple of days ago that brought Iran back to the negotiating table. [3:27] And we are in a better position today than we were a few days ago. [3:30] And frankly, you know, I know where this conversation is going to go. [3:33] It's going to go into the he said, she said about what Trump said versus what the Iranians said, [3:37] even though there's a lot of discord within the Iranian regime as to what's actually happening. [3:42] I'm sick of giving the benefit of the doubt to the experts because I've been sitting at this table long enough listening to the quote unquote experts who said the oil. [3:50] Well, it's going to be two fifty a barrel because this war gas prices will be eight dollars at the pump. [3:54] We're going to have immediate ground war. [3:55] There'll be immediate Russian intervention. [3:58] There's going to be everything. [4:00] But the question really is because all of this has been wrong. [4:03] So why are we always are you in a better position? [4:06] Why are we getting Trump? [4:07] We never get from the benefit of the doubt. [4:08] But the experts will always get the benefit of the doubt. [4:12] Are we in a better position than we were after the Obama Iran nuclear deal that Trump tore up in 2018? [4:21] That's the question. [4:21] The question is, you know, Trump said, well, they were very close to a nuclear weapon. [4:26] But we don't know that because the inspectors were kicked out of the country when they tore up the deal. [4:31] So we had eight years of not having inspectors on the ground, which we would have had if they had not torn up that deal. [4:38] So now we go into this situation where you have Trump saying they're very close. [4:42] The Israelis saying they're very close. [4:45] But the intelligence community here in America under Donald Trump in March of 2025, just last March, [4:52] were saying they were not developing and that the Ayatollah had told them not, [4:57] that they had not endorsed this idea of developing a nuclear weapon. [5:00] So we have to now trust either the president is lying or the intelligence community is lying. [5:06] One of them has a history of lying. [5:07] The JCPOA would have sunset anyway by its own provisions. [5:10] It was a delay tactic, not a solution. [5:13] Is this not a delay tactic? [5:14] Charles, I'm at Watson head. [5:16] Don't even believe me. [5:17] Believe the current leader of the Democratic Party in the Senate, Chuck Schumer, [5:21] who said the JCPOA was a feckless waste of a deal, right? [5:25] That was his position. [5:26] That was a number of Democrats in the House. [5:28] President Trump won the first election in large part because people saw the reality of this deal [5:33] as not being effective long term. [5:35] Fact. [5:36] No, another fact is that they were able to get, I think it was 97, 98 percent of the nuclear material [5:43] out of Iran under that deal. [5:46] And they had inspectors on the ground to monitor whether or not Iran was living up to its end of [5:51] that deal, which was to not enrich uranium at a large scale. [5:55] I think they were doing something like, able to enrich something like three, four percent of what [5:59] they had before. [6:00] Those are also facts on the ground, provable facts. [6:05] And now we went from that to having no one there watching. [6:10] And now we have to watch from across the ocean and listen to the Israelis who've been pushing [6:14] for military eviction for over many presidents. [6:18] But this one fell for it. [6:19] And now we're in war, not with all of our kind of international colleagues, which what the [6:25] last deal had, it had the U.S., U.K., France, China, Russia. [6:31] India, the whole European Union was supporting it. [6:35] So all that reporting would have come back to everyone. [6:37] So now we're in by ourselves, start a war by ourselves. [6:40] And now we're expected to pat this man on the back because he is trying to bring to a [6:45] close a war that he started. [6:46] Annalise, do you see this as a quagmire? [6:48] I mean, we had this moment today, early today, this morning, where it was like, OK, the Strait [6:53] of Hormuz is open. [6:54] There were ships that started to move and then they moved back because the blockade was in [6:59] place and Iran said, OK, if you're going to block us, we're going to keep it closed. [7:04] Yeah, I mean, I'm not necessarily sure that I take the Iranian regime's word over President [7:08] Trump's word. [7:09] And I do think. [7:10] Well, you don't have to take anybody's word. [7:12] All you have to do is look at the number of ships that moved through the Strait of [7:14] Hormuz today. [7:15] And the ship trackers report it was eight. [7:17] Before the war started, it was about 130 every single day. [7:20] So clearly, the Strait of Hormuz is not actually open. [7:23] Well, certainly. [7:23] But what I'm saying is they're saying they're not going to reopen it. [7:26] I think we need to continue to watch to see what happens. [7:29] I think this is a negotiation. [7:31] And that's what Donald Trump does. [7:32] And this is sort of, Josh, to your point, he lays down what he wants to have happen. [7:36] And there's going to be a push and pull. [7:39] And, you know, I do think this has gone on longer than he initially thought. [7:43] I agree with you, Max, there. [7:44] You know, but I think that this next round does feel a little bit different and promising [7:49] and maybe like there is an off ramp. [7:51] And I think that that is what Republicans want. [7:54] I think there is this end of, you know, this sort of sense that, OK, we've gone in. [8:00] We need to wrap things up. [8:01] And we need to focus on these domestic issues. [8:03] But here's the problem, right? [8:04] Here's the problem. [8:04] You take out the entire leadership. [8:06] You leave a vacuum there. [8:07] They said they were going to go in for regime change. [8:09] Regime change did not happen. [8:11] The people who are there are still part of the old thinking. [8:14] And you have people filling the void who may be more hardline than the people who were [8:19] killed already. [8:20] So you make it an Iran where it's even more dangerous. [8:23] You have the straits of Iran moves that we had never thought of Iran controlling. [8:28] Even in Trump's tweets or posts on True Social today, he was calling it the straits of Iran [8:34] instead of the straits of Iran moves. [8:36] It is without a doubt that they are now controlling it. [8:39] They are saying whether or not it's open or not. [8:42] And that is a change. [8:43] That is a negative change. [8:45] Well, I think what's also a change is that they have an entirely decimated Navy. [8:50] I mean, we have obliterated their military capabilities. [8:53] So I think if we're talking about what's changed, that's a huge change. [8:56] We clearly haven't obliterated military capabilities. [8:59] We still have thousands of missiles. [9:00] We clearly haven't done that. [9:00] Thousands of drones, dozens of ships, and the ability to attack all of our allies and [9:04] all of our bases in the region. [9:06] And not only that, the world economy is getting worse and worse. [9:09] And I'm not sure what experts Joe is referring to when that were wrong. [9:13] But I wish the Trump administration had included a few more experts on this negotiating team [9:17] because it's pretty clear that they misunderstood the negotiation. [9:20] I'm rooting for them. [9:21] I think not just Republicans. [9:22] Everybody wants this war to end. [9:23] I want Donald Trump to succeed in ending this war. [9:26] But I can't ignore the incompetence in which he's prosecuting that negotiation because it's obvious. [9:31] And the way that we know they don't have a strategy is because the strategy changes every day. [9:34] So if the strategy changes every day, that means there's no strategy. [9:36] And now they're bumbling through it, as Max said. [9:39] And yeah, I hope they accidentally solve the problem and get us out of this mess. [9:42] Because not only is the world economy getting worse, not only is the prices for Americans [9:47] going up, but Americans are in harm's way. [9:49] And they're dying and getting injured. [9:51] And we should hit 7,100 today. [9:53] We saw a V-shaped recovery in the economy. [9:55] The S&P hit 7,100, like I said today. [9:57] I don't think that's indicative. [9:59] I don't think the markets were indicative of your outlook on... [10:02] No, I always think it's a problem to gaze the economy. [10:06] It's a huge problem because it is not dealing with the average person who's out there having [10:12] to fill up the tank. [10:13] And they're manipulating the markets. [10:14] That's the other point. [10:15] With their friends who are controlling the markets. [10:18] So and then you point to that and you're like, everything's great to the markets, say it's okay. [10:21] That's the same people with the same logic.