Breaking News from Pod Save America - Trump HUMILIATED by Tentative Iran Deal After Months of CHAOS

Episode Date: May 28, 2026

After months of threats, reversals, and chaos, the US is reportedly moving toward a tentative deal with Iran under humiliating terms for Trump. Jon Favreau and Tommy Vietor break down the latest. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Yeah, close to a memo. Close to something. Here's the latest headline, scoop. US and Iran reached deal, but need Trump's final approval. Officials say, the so-called deal here would be the U.S. and Iran agree to a 60-day memorandum of understanding to extend the ceasefire, such as it is. We'll get into that and begin negotiations on Iran's nuclear program. However, as it says there, Trump has yet to approve the deal per the usual anonymous officials. So, okay.

Here's a quote for you. This is an agreement to get everybody to the table. We will work out the details in the negotiations. Which is, look, when Trump launched this war, he said, we need to go to war with Iran. And what we're hoping to achieve in this war is to talk to them. To talk. That's what we're hoping. Couldn't have done that without the war.

He's like, and remember when he said, I don't think about Americans' financial situation and all I think about is Iran not having nuclear weapon. Yeah, yeah. Seems like he's nailing that one. Nail in that one. In the interim, what this deal will achieve is that shipping through the Strait of Hormuz will be, quote, unrestricted. I will believe that when I see it. Iran will have to remove all mines from the Strait of Hormuz within 30 days. Remember when we were told they didn't know where they were? Good luck with that. Weren't they just laying mines yesterday? Tuesday. Two days? Tuesday. Yeah. Iran agrees to negotiations over what to do with the highly enriched uranium in concerns about its nuclear program. So again,

agrees to negotiations. Status quo ante. Is that now what we've been doing for the last? And the U.S. will agree to discussing sanctions relief and the release of frozen Iranian assets. So we'll give them a bunch of billions of dollars. It sounds like here. So literally, the only thing that would change from this agreement is that theoretically, Iran allows more ships to pass through the straight. And if that happens, then the blockade then the U.S. Naval blockade will ease. If they can find all the landmines, the naval mines, that they apparently lost track up. And they're saying no tolls, but also the other day, Iran said they will do no tolls,

but they're going to call it like a, it's like an environmental fee. It's like a green new deal. It's like if you live in California trying to build a multi-fayment. Yeah, yeah, okay. So there's like a carbon tax. Yeah, great, great. But so what triggered the hell out of me this morning. Actually, there's a long list of things that I'd like to go through with you.

was this, this was reported by Barack Ravid. He's a reporter at Axios who got the scoop. He exclusively announced something similar like half a dozen times than it sort of never comes to be. But then Reveed, Reveed retweeted Scott Jennings, the fucking hack from CNN that you always see on the panel like yelling at Adam Mockler or some 21-year-old

using the F-Bomb on air. Scott like mindlessly regurgitates White House talking points all the time in his Twitter feed and everywhere else. And Scott said in this case, looks like a huge win for President Trump in the U.S. Hearing from a senior administration official, this report is true, and the U.S. appears to be getting everything we want.

John, do you agree this is a huge win? Are we getting everything we want here? Well, yeah, like I said, it's always been the coveted agreement to talk more about the nuclear program over the next 60 days, possibly. That's everything we've ever wanted. I don't like, didn't Scott and Clay Travis and all the rest of those fucks embarrass themselves over the weekend by. literally tweeting the same exact spin from the White House with sirens, with the same talking

points. Like, why did they even bother running their own Twitter accounts? Why don't they just give the keys to whoever in the fuck it, like to Stephen fucking Chung in the White House communications office? And they could just tweet for them. Yeah, maybe Claude could just do it. Scott Jennings, have you ever had a thought of your own? Yeah. So just do whatever the administration tells you to do. Brock Ravid, he gets a lot of like, I guess there's scoops. He does a lot of copying, of like verbatim Trump truth social posts or emails from, you know, Jared Kushner or other White House officials. And like sometimes there's value to that, right? Sometimes there's value to just like making public the White House view on something. But like in this case, I think he looks like a

fool and he looks like a stenographer because, I mean, I guess like his argument is, well, Jennings confirmed my report. It's like, well, does Scott Jennings have any credibility to your point? Right. Over the weekend, like, first of all, Jennings has no background in foreign policy. He's a hack on TV. And over the weekend, he posted, I think it was like verbatim language as, as you say, Clay Travis, right? Jennings. And then I think I got Andrew Colvitt from TPUSA. Yes, that's right.

Like verbatim. Verbatim. Language. And then earlier in the war, John, you remember this one? Scott Jennings is the one who tweeted that the U.S. started the war with Iran because we had intelligence that Iran was planning, quote, preemptive missile strikes against U.S. military targets in the region. That didn't turn out to be true, did it? There's a defensive war.

Here's the thing with Judy Miller looks scrupulous in this case. Here's the thing with Barack Ravid. Like, I think he does some really great reporting. And I also totally understand reporters who need to talk to the White House and tell us what White House sources are telling them. I think the problem is maybe this is the fault of smart brevity, which doesn't seem so smart in this instance. But like, if you're going to say that Scott Jennings confirmed a source,

then you just tweet, Jennings hears the same thing. heard from the White House. Just like say it like that. Remember our teas are not endorsements? Like when you just read Scott Jennings and your reporter, someone's like in my feed. It said Barack Reveed Scott Jennings. We got everything we wanted.

Like what? Is that? Does Barack Reveed think we got everything we wanted? I don't think he thinks that. Right. Like I guess are we really breaking news here when we're just mindlessly regurgitating that some officials say there is a deal, but Trump still isn't agreed to it. And it's an agreement to keep talking.

It's also like when you see all the Iranian state news agencies tweet something out, you're like, oh, this comes from the Iranian aligned state news agency. So this must be the talking points directly from Iran. That's just what you think. But now that's what I think about Barack Reveed when he tweets stuff out. It's like, oh, I guess this is the administration's take on it as opposed to a neutral reporter's take on it. I tend to honestly put more credibility into a lot of the Iranian state stuff because they're cutting through the bullshit. And also there's like one other quick piece of media criticism. I keep reading in news reports that there is a ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran and a ceasefire in Lebanon between Israel and Hezbollah.

And it will be in like literally the same news copy is it'll be like on Tuesday, the U.S. launched airstrikes on four Iranian boats in the Strait of Hormuz and put them at the bottom of the ocean because they were because they were laying mines. But the ceasefire holds. Seas fire holds. And then in Hezbole, in Lebanon, it's even worse. it'll be like Israel launched 120 air strikes Tuesday into southern Lebanon. The ceasefire still holds. It's like I think what you're trying to say is that at least in the case of the U.S. and Iran, like the conflict hasn't restarted to like full-scale hostilities.

Fine. That is true there. But didn't Netanyahu just say this week too we're like putting our foot on the gas? Foot on the gas. There is no ceasefire in Lebanon. There literally isn't. And calling it one is crazy. What there has been is like a little bit of restraint in terms of bombing the shit out of

downtown Beirut. but even that is kind of going away. But everyone's just calling it a ceasefire. They're still like pushing people out of towns that are like 100,000 cities that are like 100,000 strong and saying that like they've got to evacuate and leave their home. Israel's pushing ground troops deeper into Lebanon. There's six miles into Lebanon at this point. But sort of like here here's what's enraging with. It's not just us like whining about Axios or whining about spart brevity.

That is fun. They need to hear it. It's useful. But like it's that you remember this. like the JCPOA, the Iran nuclear deal was nitpicked to death. Like to this day, right? Every Democrat you hear talking about it's like, well, the deal was flawed, didn't cover some things, blah, blah, blah.

It's like all this throat clearing. But then wars get started and it just like, it just happens. And then like Fox News covers it like it's a fireworks show in Tehran. I also think I think the reason this is so frustrating is when we talk about like domestic economic stuff, it's sort of funnier because you're like, they can spend however they want, but like Americans are going to notice high gas prices. Right. This is, what's happening here is different because Donald Trump started a war that has clearly

turned out to be a fucking catastrophe by any measure. And he is now trying to get out of it. And he's trying to get out of it in a way where then he can lie to everyone and say, War was good. War was good. We did everything and all. And most Americans actually aren't going to pay attention to the finer points of the deal. And what Donald Trump assumes rightly is that if he can just get the straight open,

and give them whatever he needs to get the straight open, then gas prices will come down and his problem will be over. But the idea that we are somehow safer in any way, that Iran's nuclear program has been pushed back in any way since the original strikes, or the idea that the Middle East is more stable in any way is fucking fanciful. Like Iran won this by any stretch of the imagination or at least survived an attack and now has new leverage that they can keep.

And so it's important for reporters and others to like make sure that the American people know that because the administration is going to lie about it. That's exactly right. Like Donald Trump touched the stove and he needs to get burned politically because otherwise, we're just going to get pulled into another quagmire, another deadly expensive quagmire. And like, again, we need to compare whatever deal he ultimately gets to the fact that they could have just renegotiated the JCPOA and made it a little tougher. Yes.

But instead it's 13 U.S. service members dead, hundreds more wounded. All our bases in the region were blown to shit and we don't even know what happened. And by the way, we are negotiating another JCPOA about how to get rid of the enriched uranium that they enriched since they pulled out of the JCPOA. We wouldn't be talking about the fucking nuclear dust. There wouldn't have been nuclear dust to take away had they not gotten out of the JCPO in the first place. Now we spent, what, 50 billion, maybe more on this operation. The munition stockpile that we would need for a future conflict is like, it is way, way, way down.

We're unprepared for years for a conflict with China. Now the Iranians know they can close the straight or Hamoos at any time and cripple the global economy. And by the way, I know no one gives a shit about like other countries, but countries in the Gulf have had their economies just crushed like the GDPs down like 10, 15% in some places. And then countries in Southeast Asia, they've been rationing fuel for weeks. And there might be a food crisis around the world. And then like no one even talks about the Iranians, thousands of people dead, thousands more wounded. And there's like a more hard line like IRC led leadership. And like Trump was like, we're going to ride to the rescue all these protesters.

And now we've, like, decimated their country and installed more, like, awful leaders. And now what? We just walk away. Yeah, he famously cares about the right of civilians to protest their government. He's really, he's on their, he's on their side, usually. But, yeah, we got everything we wanted because Scott Jennings got a call or an email and a group chat saying it so. Unbelievable.

It's like, it's like, maybe the Axio story is accurate, but it's just like, give me a break, man. What are we doing here? Yeah, and it's like, it's fine that the story is accurate. That's not the problem, whether it's accurate or not. the problem is context. Yes, is context and how you sell the deal and how you shape the deal and how you report on the deal. Yes, it is profoundly frustrated. I'm also very triggered this morning by another totally different report.

I don't know if you've seen the reports about Jill Biden's book. Yeah, you can bet that I was triggered as well. Former First Lady for those that are know, wrote a book. Apparently the point of this book is to dispel this idea that she was part of a cover-up of Joe Biden's broader health problems or cognitive decline. I'm not sure that's. Basically, basically what she says is, no, no, no, I was just part of the cover-up about the debate performance. Yeah. So she talks about her candid reactions to the 2024 June Trump Biden debate. Well, this is from this. I think they gave the exclusive to the Atlantic or the Atlantic got the book. First lady, Jill Biden wondered if her husband had unknowingly ingested drugs or was having a medical episode on live television. Quote, is he short-circuiting? Jill Biden thought, is this a stroke? That's another quote. I felt like we were watching an AI hologram. of the man we knew and the hologram was glitching. Has he been drugged?

So despite thinking your husband had a stroke, great job, Joe, you answered all the questions. They went to a rally. They went to Waffle House. Like, do you didn't want to take him to a doctor if he thought he had a stroke? People, I tweeted about this yesterday. I've been, we've both been mad together about this. And, you know, a lot of people are like, let it go.

Who cares? It's in the past. Zade Jelani actually captured how I feel about this in a tweet. He was like, to me, it's an underrated factor in how distrusted Democrats are that they systematically lied about Biden's condition and in some cases still are. I totally agree with this. I totally hear it all the time. I totally disagree with people who are like, no one's going to care about Biden in 2028. Everyone's putting in the past. Most democratic primary voters like Joe Biden. No, I think most Democratic primary voters think that Joe Biden accomplished some great things as

president and appreciate that he beat Donald Trump in 2020. I don't think they appreciated being fucking lied to by Joe Biden, Jill Biden, in their entire fucking campaign, who didn't just lie about the debate performance, but gaslit everyone and told us we were all overreacting bedwetters, that their polls were fine, that the fucking debate was fine. And now Jill Biden's like, oh, yeah, we were lying the whole time. Yeah.

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Yes. Which was like very, very stupid on their part, political. because that dumb fucking email they wrote. Self-important podcast. Yeah, they also attacked their vice president. And like, all that did was make me more mad and dug in. I went from feeling kind of bad about the whole situation to be like, oh, okay, fuck you then. Let's go.

So there's some personal part of this. The people who are saying, why don't you let it go? Why are you talking about this? I didn't make Joe Biden write a book. I didn't make Hunter Biden pop up occasionally and launch a Twitter account and like tweet out like a two-hour documentary about himself or he's like, my story's never been told. Meanwhile, he wrote a book in 2021. I interviewed him for it. We had a lovely conversation.

Now he hates me. But I think what makes me so mad about this is the tone and all this stuff from like Hunter Biden or like senior official around Biden is to kind of pop up and then whine about how Joe Biden was mistreated by our podcast. Nancy Pelosi, the party, right? And who was mistreated? The American people. There was never a second of remorse or an apology for their utterly disastrous decision to encourage him to run again. and how it set the table for Donald Trump to win the election and do what he's doing now to the country. I want to hear that from them.

And then I'll move on. I want to hear that from them. And I want to hear some reflection from every Democrat who elected Democrat and other party officials who after that debate went out on TV and not even just that night, but in the next week and was like, he's fine, move on. You're all bedwetters. Like, I'm not saying that they are as much a part of the cover up as Jill Biden was and the campaign. but like you were fucking wrong and you should admit that you were wrong. Yep. And you should admit that you were spinning and you should admit that you were just being part of the team and that part of the team was apparently deceiving people.

Lying. And it's a lot of people and people who, if you run for president in 2028, I want to hear you talk about it. If you were someone else who were fucking spinning on TV, I want to hear you talk about it, you fucking lied. And people don't trust the Democratic Party and it's not going to bite us in the ass in the midterms, but it will bite us in the ass in 2022. I promise you. I've worked on a lot of campaigns. I've worked in government. I'm not acting like I'm a Puritan. I'm not acting like every word from a politician is perfectly true with all the facts and all the context, right?

Like every campaign spins. They offered their version of events, right? Like there's ways to deflect and avoid answering things and no commenting on things when it's true. But they actively went out and lied. And they said, you're a moron if you think that this man isn't the best one to run when the entire country, even before the debate was like he is too old, right? Hunter Biden's problem is not with what Potsave America said after the debate. occurred. It was with what voters thought before the debate ever started. And they just like refused to

engage with that. That's the other thing that the trick that they played and now the, you know, the DNC, Ken Martin defenders are playing at everyone, which is they're like, oh, the DC insiders, bedwetters, establishment are so mad and jealous and they're talking about this. But like we're on the side of the people. It's like, you know what? What we fucking said about that debate was what every American with eyes and ears could see. It wasn't like we were some fucking small, you know, we weren't like courageously saying what no one thought. Everyone fucking thought that. The only people who wouldn't get it through their thick fucking skulls were in the Biden campaign

and at the DNC and the Democratic Party. We were watching from some secret insider bar in Washington. They were sitting on couch horrified about what it meant because everyone knew watching that debate. You knew it was over. We knew it was over. And that Donald Trump was going to be president again because Joe Biden made this utterly selfish decision to run again.

And also there's this suggestion that like there was not some health care cover up. This poor man is now like battling cancer, right? Like he's had a series of health problems since. I'm not like, the problem is that he was not okay. It was not okay. They jumped on the worst caricature painted by the right, which was that he's some he was some invalid. And it was like popping up.

Yeah. And he was like declining, had dimension, all that kind of shit. And it's like, no, that wasn't true. The guy like was able to do his job. But he was old enough that he could not communicate for shit. And that was true not just in the debate. It was at its worst that's ever been in the debate, but it was true for a whole bunch of other speeches that we all saw.

Yeah. And it's like, look, I don't want to be talking about this either. I'm happy to let it go and move on. But do not gaslight me. Do not release a book and then tell us again that we can't say what our eyes told us at that time or that it was okay to fucking lie and deceive the country and lead us down this path to Donald Trump's second term and fucking baby step creeping into fascism that we've washed every day since. Yeah, my deal is like I will I promise not to talk about it again.

if the Biden stopped talking about it. Yes. And I'm just like, I cannot hear that he was great and he just didn't get enough credit for all the stuff he did and everyone else is wrong. And it's exhausting. So good luck on a book tour. Great idea. I think and get this one out there. Okay. This felt better. Yeah, I actually got some things off the show.

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