Breaking News from Pod Save America - Trump and Hegseth Blame BIDEN for Ballooning Cost of Iran War

Episode Date: July 22, 2026

Pete Hegseth revealed to Congress the Iran war has already cost $37.5 billion. Then blamed Biden for why the Pentagon needs $80 billion more. Wall Street Journal National Politics Reporter Sabrina Siddiqui joins to break it down. CHECK OUT THESE DEALS FROM OUR SPONSORS: ACTBLUE: https://www.actblue.com/crooked Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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The Pentagon's tab is still very much wide open. And the Secretary of Defense slash men's grooming went to Congress a few hours ago to ask for an eye-watering $80 billion in supplemental funding. to fight the war in Iran. And he also went there to convince lawmakers that the fight is worth paying for, given that it is apparently a conflict with no end in sight. Joining me today is Sabrina Siddiqui of the Wall Street Journal, one of my favorite reporters. This is the first time you've been on Runaway Country. But this isn't the first time we've talked. Isn't Sabrina? No, we go back, way back to. Well, you've done like cable news with me, right? MSNBC. Oh, my God. Yeah, I'm well enough to remember when that was. I haven't had a chance

to join you on the pod, though, and I'm really excited. Yeah, this is your first time on the runaway country enterprise. And let me tell you, it's still barreling down the track in an unsafe speed, this country of ours. Let's talk about what just, I mean, it's ongoing, I will say. Hegset is being, I don't even think grilled as the right word, discussed. The Iran war is being discussed with the Secretary of Defense and the Senate Appropriations Committee. He is fairly desperate to get some more money, another infusion of cash because it sounds like the Pentagon is real short on it. There has been a lot of reporting that the Pentagon reserves are essentially depleted and they're having to play kind of a shell game to get through the end of fiscal year of 2026. Republicans sound sort of

skeptical insofar as Republicans can ever sound skeptical. I wonder what you made of the president helping Heggseth make his case to Congress when President Trump weighed in on the conflict earlier today in a press availability with the White House press court. This is what he had to say. So what is the plan? Is the plan to just keep bombing until they give up? Well, do you know something that I don't know? Well, they continue to attack our allies. You don't know what the dialogue is behind the scenes that they want to meet desperately to try and end it because they're getting decimated. You don't get that when you listen

to your fake station. It's never a good sign when the president of the United States says, do you know something? I don't know. Well, what did you think about Trump's Trump's assertion that Iran has been decimated and if they wanted to end it tomorrow, it would be a great victory for the United States of America. I mean, that's something that the Trump administration keeps on saying that they've really decimated Iran's capabilities. At the same time, as you pointed out, there's really no end to this war in sight. And if you just look at the events over the last few weeks, you know, President Trump on

July 8th declared that the ceasefire was over. And since then, hostilities have resumed. And it's had a real cost to the U.S. I mean, just late last week, you had this Iranian attack on a base in Jordan that killed two U.S. soldiers and left another missing. And that was the fourth strike in just five days on U.S. troops in Jordan. So I think there are a lot of questions that lawmakers have that you're seeing directed at Secretary of Defense Pete Hexeth during this hearing around what the administration's long-term plan is and how much of a dent they have truly made with respect to Iran's missile capabilities. Yeah, I mean, it's hard for me to hear the president say that Iran's capabilities have been decimated as the DOD is asking for 80 billion more dollars, right? Like, the, it's almost,

I mean, it reveals at least to me this, the sort of the ego has very much not left the building, not that it ever even goes for a walk in the Trump administration, but that like the president is so loath to admit that Iran remains a, you know, a real adversary, a deadly adversary, if we're to believe the reports that American soldiers continue to be killed, a hundred of them injured in the last 10 days and that the war hasn't, they haven't been decimated far from it. We need more money to keep fighting them. Do you feel like when you hear, when you see the kind of split screen of Trump saying they've been decimated and then Heggsat explaining that they need 80 billion more? I mean, how much do you think that that, uh, like affects the way at least Senate Republicans

think about whether to approve this request or not? I mean, do you think Trump's sort of stubbornness on this undermines his case or what? Well, I don't think that the administration has necessarily been able to build an effective case, right? Because you have had a handful of Republicans from the outset who have been skeptical of the administration's decision to pursue this war in the first place. And this was one of the most high profile splits that you saw within the MAGA wing, right? Where you had, you know, these pretty influential commentators who are supporters of the president who broke with the administration on the, the war. But what we have also seen time and again is that Republicans in Congress are famously loathe to actually object to anything that the administration wants, right? So I don't think that

you're necessarily going to see the Republicans in Congress not be willing to meet what the administration says it needs, but there are very narrow majorities, of course, in both chambers. so they don't have a lot of room for error here in building the case. I also just want to point out that you talked about how the Trump administration is asking for about $87.6 billion in supplemental funding, give or take, most of which is going to go toward the costs of the war. One of the big headlines that came out of this hearing is that Higset said that the war has cost $37.5 billion so far.

And that's the first time that the estimated cost of the war to date has been publicly disclosed by Pentagon officials. Which is insane. That is an extraordinary amount of money at a time when the war has already proved to be unpopular with the American public. And you have midterm elections around the corner that are still largely centered on inflation and costs of living. and when this war has had a direct impact on the kind of prices that voters are paying at the gas pumps. So I think even if Republicans and lawmakers in Congress do meet this funding request, that doesn't change the politics and that this has been challenging for Republicans as they are defending their majorities in Congress.

Well, yeah, and let's just keep in mind, I believe, Sabrina, you can correct me if I'm wrong on this. The $37 billion, that figure that was floated by the Secretary of Defense today, doesn't include the cost of rebuilding U.S. bases that have been destroyed or otherwise affected by the military strikes, right? I mean, the price tag by all outside accounts is considerably higher than that, at least in the reporting that I've read. So I do think that what we've heard from independent analysts is that the price tag is likely to be a lot higher. To your point, that's in part because they haven't necessarily disclosed what the cost of rebuilding those U.S. bases in the Middle East that had been damaged by the airstrikes

would be as part of that total price tag. That's a lot of money. I mean, well, okay, but at least, I mean, there are two parts of it that are galling to me. One is, this is the first time, how many months are we into this war that the Secretary of Defense has actually put a price tag on it? And the price tag itself is exclusionary, shall we say. Like, I would liken it to trying to putting a restaurant bill and trying to figure out the tip when none of the food is actually on the bill. You're like 20% of like a fraction. Anyway, I don't need to explain the math, but it's not mathing in this equation. Potsave America Breaking News is brought to you by Act Blue. With so much at stake, campaigns need the right foundation. For over two decades, Act Blue has been the

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The other part of the Hegg-Seth hearing that I thought was just astounding was the constant drumbeat or the refrain from the Secretary of Defense that the reason they needed more money was because Joe Biden. And that somehow Lloyd Austin, Biden's Secretary of Defense and Biden himself were effectively just twiddling their thumbs and burying their heads in the sand and not funding the K-hole, the budgetary K-hole that is the Department of Defense. and that all the supplemental money is needed because Biden just really didn't pay attention to the military the way he should have. Here's an exchange to that end between Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois and Pete Hegsa. No, this is rebuilding our military from what was not funded in the past under the Biden administration. So this is from 2026, one big beautiful bill, which helped move the president's priorities like Golden Dome for America, move away from all the woke priorities of what the Biden administration was pursuing. I mean, the Biden administration ignored hypersonics.

They just decided to pretend like that technology didn't exist and we shouldn't invest in it. There are a thing. I don't know what Lloyd Austin did for four years. I really don't. The amount of neglect, the amount of stale thinking. The TLDR is the Biden Pentagon was so woke, they forgot to spend money on the things they should have been spending money on. So now we need another, I don't know, they have a trillion dollar budget already. They did another 88 billion.

Sabrina, is there any? I mean, do you think? think there's any merit? Do you think anybody is buying that somehow this is a result of the Biden administration's misguided spending priorities? Well, I think that there are probably Republicans who are going to side with the administration's assessment just because the easier thing to do when you're on the defensive is to blame your predecessor, right? And so, you know, I don't think that that's going to pass muster, of course, with Democrats. And frankly, privately, I don't think that Republicans will see that as a sufficient case that the administration is building at a time when

even Republicans have a lot of questions about the war, about the spending, about the long-term strategy. And you know, you saw Senator Jack Reed, a Democrat who, when Hexeth was kind of on this steady drumbeat of blaming the Biden administration, say, and I quote, that it was a very, very obvious excuse for what I think is probably, as you described, so often gross negligence. So kind of turning Hegsseth's words about the Biden administration back on the Trump administration. And ultimately, ultimately, if you're talking about public opinion, I don't think anyone when you're thinking about Americans who are watching from home and who are going to turn up in November and cast their votes at the ballot box are thinking much about the Biden administration right now.

Exactly. They're seeing what's in front of them. And you have polling showing that nearly 70% of Americans said that the Iran war was not worth fighting while just under a third said it was. And so if you have to go up there and your secretary Hegsteth and you have to build your case and you have to defend the administration's posture, I don't think they're going to change a lot of minds by pointing to the Biden administration when the entire funding request and the source of all the scrutiny is a war that was launched by the Trump administration. Can we play that clip with Jack Reed? There was no conflict. We went losing personnel as a result of Iranian actions.

So your fallback to the Biden administration is just a very, very obvious excuse for what I think is probably, as you described, so often gross negligence. Having the courage to ensure that crazy Islamists can't have a nuclear weapon to hold us at issue. And he's been willing to stay to that regardless of the challenges. Excuse me. So he should be praised. He should be praised for shouting a war without authority, creating a situation in which the world economy is suffering tremendously. We have to have extra money for our farmers. And we have no outcome. Yeah. I mean, nice try. I think that's my reaction to that. Like, look for plausible deniability. Give cover to your Republican colleagues in the Senate who might need to fund this war by blaming it on Joe Biden. But like, the American public is going to somehow

by that this is all Joe Biden's fault once again, try again. I also think that one thing that's sort of striking is at least when the Biden administration took office, they actually got criticism from progressives for seeking an increase in the pension's budget. I mean, initially, this is again, when the Biden administration took office. So not necessarily when they left office, but when they first took office, they asked for $715 billion. for the Pentagon, which was an increase over the previous Trump administration's $704 billion

defense budget, rather than moving back toward what the levels of defense spending had been under the Obama administration. So if anything, I think there are people on the left who would argue that President Biden increase the Pentagon's budget by far too much. But again, I think this is because we've kind of been talking now since this war broke out months ago about, you know, whether or not there's any end in sight. And for a while, it was just like we're, the administration saying, we're almost, we're closer to a ceasefire, we're closer to a ceasefire, and it'd be the same sticking points. Then they announced a ceasefire,

and they have this preliminary agreement, but ultimately it's the same sticking points that unraveled the ceasefire. And here we are back to square one. And I think that is really what members of Congress are seeing, including some Republicans. And that's what the American public has been seeing. And it's part of why, a big part of why, frankly, this war remains, the one popular today. Do you feel like, I mean, it feels like it's Groundhog Day, right? Like every time they say there's a ceasefire, we sort of go back to fighting. And I don't mean every time, every time the president says the war is over or suggests that Iran has been decimated and they have no more military capabilities. They start shooting. We start shooting. It just goes

on and on and on. And yet, you point out the political fallout from all of this, the looming midterms, the rising gas prices, the fact that the American public sentiment is very much on the other side of this war, which is to say Americans don't support it. Do you think that Trump is going to change his calculus at all? Like, are we at, as Playbook suggested this morning, a fork in the road where he either goes all in and really tries to destroy Iran and Carg Island and pull the, you know, take the nuclear options, pardon my metaphors, but really tries to just annihilate the government and the country in service of just ending this once and for all, or we go back to the diplomatic route as, you know, supported by other regional partners. I mean, do you feel like we're on the cusp of an actual

decision being made one way or the other? Well, you were talking about President Trump's comments earlier, and he gave a very bleak view of diplomatic talks because he said that the U.S. has no interest in meeting until Iran is ready to engage in a meaningful way. But what does that mean, right? Because we always come back to the same sticking points and not. either side has necessarily moved off of the kinds of concessions that they're expecting in order to get to a true breakthrough. And so I think when it comes to what comes next and that fork in the road, it's a key question because what we've been hearing in our reporting is that the Trump administration is signaling that they're potentially preparing for an even wider conflict.

Yeah. Now, one thing that has not led to this being an absolute catastrophe in the eyes of the public is that there have not been, you know, a massive amount of casualties within the American military. But what I've heard from people I've talked to from the beginning is that if that number grows considerably, then it could become a real catastrophe for the administration. So if the president is talking about perhaps, or if the administration is preparing for an even wider conflict that would potentially see even more casualties among U.S. service members,

then I think you could potentially see an even larger swing in public opinion and a much bigger problem for the White House. It is striking, having said that, that all the economic, challenges that have been associated with this war and the kind of impact it's had on on day-to-day consumers when it comes to gas prices, that that alone has not necessarily been enough for the administration to recalibrate. Once again, just given that affordability and cost of living is the number one issue, it's going to decide if the president still is going to be able to have his party in control of both chambers of Congress. It's almost like he doesn't

care, including the fact that he said he doesn't care about the midterms. I mean, I would also say I'm not a host of Pod Save the World, but I do read the headlines and know that part of the reason gas prices haven't even gone higher is because the Chinese have cut their demand and the Houthis have allowed passage through the Red Sea. And like now there's a passage of oil tankers. If that waterway is cut off, as it may be according to news today, if China increases its demand on the oil markets, then you could see gas going considerably higher than $4 a gallon. You could see a $5 a gallon gas. You could see something higher than that. But the question remains, how does this conflict end? And the answer is that nobody knows. But you can blame Joe Biden.

Sabrina Siddiqui, I am sorry that my microphone didn't work and that this was delayed, but at least it gave us time to watch more of Pete Hagseth, making a mockery of the second the defense Department on Capitol Hill. My word's not yours. Thank you for joining me to rapidly respond to this breaking news, something that clearly I'm a bit still rusty at. It's great to see you. Thank you so much. Hope this is the first of many more conversations. And fewer ones about Pete Hagsath. If you're not subscribing to this YouTube channel, what are you doing? Please do it. Please do it. You get more of this. Thank you, Sabrina. Go in peace. Thank you. Take care.