Breaking News from Pod Save America - MAJOR UPDATE on Trump’s Risky Move Toward War with Iran

Episode Date: June 19, 2025

Tommy and Jon break down Trump’s potential move toward war with Iran—and why his MAGA base is turning on him over it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All right, John, as we speak, President Trump is deliberating whether or not the U.S. will go to war with Iran. Earlier today, we got some good news and some bad news on the front. Hopefully the good news is that the White House announced Trump is going to make a decision about whether or not to bomb Iran in the next two weeks because there's, quote, a substantial chance of negotiation. Now, I interpreted that positively, as Trump kind of saying, look, I want some space here. Yeah. Don't jam me, BB. Did you have the same kind of take? Yeah, I had the same reaction as well.

I mean, there's always a chance that, you know, he's always playing the 60 chess. So I guess there's a chance that he could be saying two weeks, and that's to surprise the Iranians with a strike tomorrow. But, I mean, I don't know. Hey, Chuck Schumer, don't attack him for tacoing, please. No, yeah. Chill the fuck out. We love a taco in this situation.

I want him taco so hard. Okay, the bad news is that the Secretary of Defense in the head of the U.S. intelligence community are so useless that they're not even part of these deliberations. That is according to a report today in the Washington Post. Let's just show you the image from that. That's a big headline from the post there. Is it bad news? Okay, so this is the question.

I mean, yeah, we should, I feel like Hegsef and Tulsi are both different cases here. Exactly. So the post says, quote, neither Gabbard nor Hegsef are playing starring roles as members of Trump's inner circle of advisors. I hate the way the media is internalized the kind of like reality show framing for this. Instead, Trump is turning to J.D. Van. Dan Kane, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Marco Rubio, and John Ratcliffe, the CIA director, who were described as Tier 1 advisors. Who would have thought?

And some general nicknamed the gorilla? Oh, Carrilla, yeah. The head of Centcom. Yeah, they call them Corr. Yeah, the head of Sancom is a big part of it. So, I mean, well, let's start with Hegsaft. You know, who would have thought that putting a Fox News Week an anchor who was drunk all the time in charge of the Pentagon was a bad idea, right? Yeah.

The exact quote on Heggseth was so funny. I wrote it down because we're doing it for the pod later. But it was one official says, quote, nobody is talking to Hegsef. There is no interface operationally between Hegseff and the White House at all. No interface operationally is so funny. And then, of course, the Hegssef people are pushing back hard being like, no, he's consulting him.

He was in the sit room with him, whatever. Sure he is. And I assume that's just because he's an idiot, right? Yeah, like, right. On the one hand, I'm very glad that a completely unqualified idiot like Pete Hexeth is not part of this process. but my God the opportunity costs. You know, of some actual defense expert,

like a Jim Mattis in the first term, who could talk about the cost of a war with Iran. Yeah, I guess this is what happens when you have a Fox weekend host in the job who has been trying to quit drinking. Insert him throwing axe and nearly hitting a service member here. That's a great clip.

The Tulsi piece I agree with you. It's a little more complicated. Like, I'm not a Tulsi Stan, but historically speaking, she has been opposed to regime change wars and I think would probably be helpful here. Yeah, and, you know, I know she recently testified that the Intel assessment hasn't changed that Iran is not super, super close to getting a nuclear weapon.

Yeah. And it's interesting that she, this has now been going on for a couple days. This is the, oh, the White House is pissed at Tulsi. Yes. At least she said, we're on the same page. But a couple days ago, but she hasn't said anything else. Which makes me think that she's like, no, this is what I believe. And I'm not sticking to it.

Yeah, Tulsi had to testify in March where she talked about the intelligence community's assessment, which is that the Supreme Leader has not made a decision to pursue a nuclear weapon. They paused on that in 2003. There's all sorts of other factors here. There's the amount of uranium. They've enriched. There's the weaponization process. There's the development of ballistic missiles. But the long story short was they haven't decided to get a nuke.

And when Trump was asked about that, he said, I don't care what she said. But Trump is reportedly really mad at Tulsi for releasing this bizarre video on her personal Twitter account. You saw this thing? So weird. She visited Hiroshima. She does this three-minute thing. She warns against the threat of nuclear war, which is like, I'm with her there. But then they showed AI-generated image of San Francisco getting nuked.

And then she suggests that the elites are fine with nuclear war because they can afford nuclear fallout. The call from the elites is coming from inside the house. Rhodes like went nuts on this. It's like, you know who it's got like a nuclear fallout center in New Zealand? Like Peter Thiel. Right. You know, like your base, your financial base. Like the saber rattling is coming from the White House.

Yes, yes. Trump apparently told Tulsi, though, I saw the video and I didn't like it. Yeah, well, neither did we, but it's a weird video. Here's my question for you, the top tier inner circle. A lot of neocons there, not a lot of like Maga America First types, right? You got your Marco Rubios, you got your Ratcliffs. J.D. Vance is part of it, right? And I know that J.D. Vance is, he doesn't like wars,

Are he supposed to be one of the MAGA isolationist types? I wonder if that's going to have any effect or if he's just, you know, anything for his pal Donald Trump. Yeah, it's a really good question. I mean, we got a bit of a window into his role in the policy process during the Signalgate chats when we got to read that where he was basically like telling the kind of principal level advisors that he didn't like going to war with the Houthis, but it didn't seem like he had really made the case to Trump directly. or at least it didn't matter because he was being ignored. Well, then he did another, like, you know, 50-part thread on Twitter about how he's like,

let me tell you how it looks from the inside, everyone. Hello, Tweeps. It's very weird. Then he did on Blue Sky, too. Well, the Blue Sky thing was very funny. So, J.D. Vance, for those who don't know, I joined Blue Sky yesterday and immediately told everyone on Twitter that he joined Blue Sky. And the reason he joined Blue Sky is to post about the Supreme Court decision banning or

upholding Tennessee's ban on gender affirming care for trans youth and basically just to basically just to twist the knife for people on Blue Sky. He just wrote about why he thought it was a great decision from the court. But someone pointed out that he's such a fucking loser

that he announced that he joined Blue Sky. Blue Sky immediately banned him. Why did he do that? I know. That's ridiculous. It's like fucking throwing fish into a shark tank you know. He put JD Vance and Blue Sky. But anyway, he did it during the sit-room meeting. So he has the sit-room meeting on Iran with Trump.

And at the very, right before the meeting and right after, he's just posting on Blue Sky. He's getting suspended-un-suspended. He's just attacking trans people doing his thing. And it's like, I guess he must have not had much to do in the meeting. What do you want to bet he was on the shitter in that little bathroom right next to the sit-room? That's exactly what he was doing. One time I peed at the urinals next to Dave Petraeus.

That was a weird one. Okay, so more on war with Iran. So there was some new polling out this morning from the Washington Post that also made me kind of hopeful. We got it up now. So the overall numbers were pretty bleak for supporters of the war. Only 25% of voters support the war. 45% are opposed, 30% are unsure. That includes 24% of Republicans who are opposed to the war.

And 70% of the country has heard a good amount about the war so far. So, I mean, John, you're a lot more of a polling expert than I am, but a 25% approval for a war before it gets ugly seems pretty bad. Yeah, I want to nerd out on this for just a second because I do think, and you know this very well, that on matters of war and foreign policy more generally, it really depends. First of all, public opinion is hard to capture on these topics, and it really depends on how you ask the questions. And I think that's illuminating here because yesterday, Eschelon had a poll. or they did like a snap poll of a thousand voters. Or the conservative firm. Yeah, more of a conservative firm, but like very good, very good polling firm.

And the way they asked it is they gave people two choices. One, Iran developing nuclear weapons would be an existential threat to the U.S. and its allies and justifies U.S. involvement supporting Israel. And then the other one was Iran developing a nuclear weapon is concerning, but not worth the U.S. getting involved in another Middle Eastern war. and that was 53% support helping Israel, 34% oppose helping Israel. But there is a difference in asking, like, U.S. involvement supporting Israel and the Washington Post, sorry, that you're seeing on the screen, which is a U.S. strike. And as you get closer to a question that says, like, this is going to be U.S. forces getting involved, this is going to be air strikes, this people, voters don't know, the second.

second or third order effects of what happens if we try to launch a strike against the nuclear program and it either goes wrong or it goes well and then Iran retaliates like people just don't know these things. So I do think you have to take like public opinion with a grain of salt and even the polls saying that people support it's it's easy to support yeah a nuclear weapon around with a nuclear weapon is bad right? You're going to get that and if we could just you know snap our fingers and it could go away would you support that? Yes of course. Yeah and it also like the way echelon pulled it it buys into the net in the eye of frame. which is that Iran was on the cusp of getting a nuclear weapon,

which is just not the case. Yes. The other thing that's made me hopeful is that opposition to the war is growing among some really prominent Trump supporters. We've talked about people like Matt Gates, Marjorie Taylor Green, Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon, all being vocally opposed to the war. But it's not just kind of like the professional political class. Here's a clip of pro-Trump comedian and frequent Joe Rogan guest,

Dave Smith from earlier this week. Donald Trump looks, and man, I support. reported him this last year. I apologize for doing so. It was a bad calculation. At the time, it seemed like the right one. But he should be impeached and removed for this one. And not on some, like, not on some ridiculous Nancy Pelosi. Of course, the Congress will never do it because they're all a bunch of, you know, corrupt acts. This is the one thing they support. This is like, though, yeah. Donald Trump should be impeached and removed for this. All of his supporters should turn on him. It's the absolute betrayal of everything that he ran and campaigned on and everything that he stood for.

So that's not good for the White House. I hope that guy gets booked on Rogan soon. Same. And it's not just Dave Swift. Here's a clip of a comedian and podcaster Theo Vaughn. Trying to get us into a war with Iran or not America. If Israel is trying to, I don't trust the Israel leader at all. I don't believe anything that guy says.

And I don't think that our soldiers should have to be. go and defend stuff that they start. I'm not a soldier, so I'm obviously speaking out of turn. I'm not even brave enough to serve, so there's that element. But that is kind of how I feel, I guess. And so it's like, yeah, when do I speak? When do I say that? You know?

Because it feels like you're trying to push Trump to go do that. And it's like, who makes that choice? Does he make that choice? and then what do we get, you know, what's the win for us? We're just involved in some other thing while we have suffering here at home. So good for the Ovan. I mean, people might like I roll at comedians wing and an award, but like these are extremely influential people in the Trump coalition, but also just in media generally now. Like this is how the media has changed.

They helped elect Donald Trump president again, against all odds. So I think it's very important. And I think the part of the macro coalition you're talking about that's at risk here are, some of the people who came over for the first time in in 2024. Because they're fans of Theo Vaughn or Joe Rogan or whoever, and maybe they voted for Biden in 2020 or maybe they didn't vote at all. Maybe they voted a third party. And then they were convinced to vote for Donald Trump. And so you're seeing some people in like the Silicon Valley tech world starting to leave over the tariffs and some of the immigration stuff.

And then you're going to see some people who are more anti-war going to could leave over this. So I do think it matters quite a bit. Like will it affect Trump or not? there was some reporting where he's like, well, I'm in my second term anyway, so who the fuck cares? Yeah, he cares. He probably, he cares. But I do think it is important to, if we have this window,

to try to, you know, Trump's not going to listen to fucking us. No, no, no. But if there's a bunch of people on his side or his voters that are with loud voices and big platforms, like Tucker Carlson, like a Theo Vaughn, who keep talking like that. Like, I think that could be fair.

For the listeners, John literally walked into our office this morning, looks at me, he goes, hey, man, good news. Steve Bannon was just spotted walking into the way. And I was like, holy shit, that's great news. Ban is been vocally opposed to the war. I was like, here is a CNN Kairan that's good news, but you wouldn't think so, Tommy. We're in a weird spot.

Finally, listening to POTS Save the World to know that I'm not a big fan of Israeli Prime Minister, BBN Yahoo. Felt that way along well before the war in God's ever started because he's corrupt. He's a racist and he's a liar. But on top of that, he has been hyping the threat from Iran for literally decades. Check out this great compilation from The Daily Show. that kind of spells it all out. If not stopped, Iran could produce a nuclear weapon in a very short time. It could be a year. It could be within a few months.

They have the wherewithal, the stored up preserved knowledge, to make a bomb very quickly if they wanted to do it. Iran is so dangerous. Weeks away from having the fissile material for an entire arsenal of nuclear bombs. They're very close. They're six months away from being about 90% of having the rich uranium for an atom bomb. Iran is gearing up to have to produce 25 bombs, atomic bombs a year, 250 bombs in a decade.

Ladies and gentlemen, time is running out. Iran will be capable of producing alone without importing anything nuclear bombs within three to five years. I mean, 1995! He just keeps going. And going. Holy shit. Catastrophically wrong. Fourteen.

Like, how does anyone listen to this? This guy, also, you know, we played on Pots of the World, his testimony about Iraq, basically. It was almost identical to, like, we'll be greeted as liberators. The good will reverberate throughout the Middle East. He's just catastrophically wrong. It's just not honest, because clearly what his belief is, is that Iran wants to develop a nuclear weapon and that the Iranian regime wants to eliminate Israel, right? And so, therefore, what he wants to do is eliminate the Iranian regime, which is clearly what

we're seeing right now. But for all these years, he felt like he couldn't say that. He's closer now to just being like, I don't care. I'm not even going to bother showing you intel or anything else. I'm just going to... You're right. He's in his Trump 2.0 Yolo era, where he's now just totally for regime change in Iran. He's for ethnic cleansing of the Gaza Strip.

He just doesn't care anymore. Can you throw this image from the chart from the Financial Times? This is the thing, though, that's just kind of like triggering me through the moon, which is that the JCPOA. I don't just defend it because Obama did it. It's because it worked. Like they shipped out 97% of their. stockpile, they shut down like two-thirds of their centrifuges, the IAEA got to come in,

and Iran agreed not to get a nuclear weapon for a decade. Now everyone's like, oh, the deal had flaws. It was this and it's like, okay, every diplomatic agreement had flaws, but you know what's better? A flawed diplomatic agreement than a fucking war. And yet we live in this country where the debate over the JCPOA was far more intense in knock down, drag out, political fight than the non-debat about whether we're going to bomb around. It's just like Trump in four dipshits, minus Pete Ex-eth and Tulsi Gabbard, just figuring out in the sit-room.

I can't remember which of the pods that you and Ben have been on over the last week this was in, but I think what really hit home for me was, like, no matter how this goes, if, you know, if the U.S. gets involved and tries to strike Fordo, if Israel just does it alone, like, there's no universe where,

now that military action has started, Iran's just going to be like, sure, we'll go back to have an inspectors here, and we'll go back to having this whole, you know, we'll go back into the deal or whatever. So no matter what, even if you take out Fordo, right, like there's going to, even if you take out the Iranian regime, there's going to be another regime in their place, the country of 92 million people, as Tucker knows. It's Tucker taught us. And they're going to try to develop a nuclear weapon at some point. And so the reason that the diplomacy and the deal is better is not because it's perfect, it's because

without a lot of loss of life or potentially catastrophic war throughout the region, you're going to delay, delay, delay a nuclear weapon, which is all that military action is going to do too, except that's going to come with all kinds of other risks. Yes, it will delay and not end the threat from Iran in their nuclear program. It will increase the odds, in my opinion, that Iran will seek some sort of a wrench. And it won't be, you know, military to military. It will be some sort of asymmetric terrorism-like response, probably through a proxy.

and you'll see a bunch of American tourists on holiday in Greece or fucking wherever get blown up in a bus and like that's that is the stuff that like never that those ripple effects never get debated

and like I'm not a fan of the Iranian government I hate these bastards like Jason resigned it's a good friend of ours they threw him in his white guy in jail for years for nothing for just being American

but that doesn't mean we it justifies decapitating the government well and I'm sure you saw, I forget what outlet ran it, but like they talked to all these people in Iran. The Atlantic. Oh, the Atlantic did. Yeah. Who have been, you know, protesting the Iranian regime at great risk to themselves. And they're like, please, we don't want this war. We don't want Israel to do this.

And we hate the Iranian regime. We've been risking our lives to protest their Iranian regime because they know the second third order effects of this. Yes. Brave opposition activists do not want the Israeli government to bomb their government in submission. They know that that is the most likely way to rally people around the Supreme Leader and this terrible group of people in charge. So, all right, well, we'll end where we started, which is a little bit of hope that we got one to two weeks. One good thing you could do in those one to two weeks

is call your member of Congress and tell them to tell the White House that we don't want a war with Iran or to sign on to the Rokana Thomas Massey bill that would prevent a war. Particularly Democratic members of Congress because we can't have it be that Tucker Carlson and Theo Vaughn are the big anti-war voices out there and we don't have a lot of enough

democratic politicians who are willing to do the same thing. Yeah, step up. A lot of you have been railing against wars for decades. Now is the moment. To make your case. And also, I would like to hear a little more about the humanity of the Iranian people. Like, there's innocent civilians in Tehran who are getting bombed and killed. If you should care about them,

they're not all complicit in this. Like, they probably hate this fucking government. It's the fucking 92 million people which is why it was a good thing for Tucker to bring up because it is just like here in the United States where if someone was like bombing the shit out of us because of Donald Trump, we'd all be like, yeah, well, we're in fucking danger too. Yeah.

And you made the point yesterday when we were talking that if we decapitate the leadership of that country of Iran and there's a massive civil war and 92 million people leave and become refugee somewhere else, that is a huge problem for all of Europe and all the people who hate immigrants. So real bad. Okay. Well, thank you guys for listening to this Positive America exclusive on YouTube. Please subscribe to Positive America on YouTube.

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