Breaking News from Pod Save America - Trump Is Totally Losing Control Of The Situation In Iran

Episode Date: July 31, 2026

Jon Favreau and Tommy Vietor react to Trump’s comments at Camp David on the status of talks in Iran and providing advanced technology to Ukraine. They also discuss Director of the National Economic Council Kevin Hassett’s defense of data centers in small towns and Vivek Ramaswamy getting booed at a young conservative event in Ohio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

President Trump called the cabinet meeting today at Camp David. They billed this as like a historic moment for transparency for some reason. Did you see this? Sure. Absolutely. In reality, it was like your standard North Korea style dear leader suckfest, followed by a couple reporter questions. John and I watch this crap so you don't have to, which by the way is why you should

subscribe to Potsave America here on YouTube because we're going to give you a fact check version of what this idiot said and we're trying to get it to the masses in the YouTube algorithm. So please subscribe. But let's start with what you had to say about. Iran. Here's a clip. On Iran, Mr. President, you said they do have some capabilities left. Should Americans be prepared for these back and forth attacks to continue until Iran simply

isn't able of striking back? They'll get weaker. They'll get a little stronger maybe now, but they'll get weaker and then they peter out. Yeah, sure. I think so. I'm going to be foolish to say no. You know, you always have to keep your guard up. What is the status of talks? Who from the administration is talking to the Iran? But they break their words so often. Steve is talking Jared we have very good people JD's involved very strongly involved we have great people talking Marcos involved because they say talks aren't happening very good people

with the best people but and they'll make a deal as an example we'll talk about nuclear and we'll be in there talking about nuclear for seven hours I say once in what do you need seven you can take 10 minutes you have five minutes but seven hours and then they'll go out and I'll say they discuss nuclear and they'll go out and they'll go out and they'll go out and They'll say, we never discussed nuclear. And I say, what do they say? All they do is make me angry. You know, you just make me angry.

Who would have guessed? He's, like, shocked the Iranian negotiators, aren't straight shooters. Well, you know, I mean, J.D. Vance and others, I thought it was the coolest thing about this five-month war, is that they got to be the friends we made along the way? Yeah, he had some great relationship with some Iranians. I wonder how that's going for J.D. Do you think they still chat? Five months.

Five months. This war has been going on five months now. Five months. The Associated Press has a poll out this week. about the Iran War, John. So they asked voters if the war was worth fighting or not. Sixty-four percent of the U.S. adults say the war was not worth fighting. That includes 68 percent of independence and 37 percent of Republicans. Trump's approval of his handling of the Iran war, right, people who think he's doing it well, is down to 28 percent. It was 34 percent in June. I'm trying to think of the best way to message all things Iran for the midterms. I think that I would lead with

kind of like a value statement, like Trump said he was. wouldn't get us into Middle Eastern wars, and he lied. But I don't know, maybe that's wrong. Maybe it is just like all gas prices. Like, how are you thinking about it? It's interesting you said that because Navigator had a poll this week too, and they talked to people who say they regret voting for Trump. And they asked them why they regret voting for Trump.

And they did a word cloud. Biggest word in the word cloud. Dush. War. Oh, yeah. Good. Second, economy. And then same with economy promises.

Oh. So war economy promises. are the big three. And then Iran's in there, inflation's in there, not kept about promises are all in there as well. So I do think that you're onto something with the promises kept thing. I do think it's a combination of that and the money thing. It's like, why do we keep paying more out of our own pockets for Trump's stupid war? You know, like your money shouldn't be going to Middle Eastern dictators. The money you pay at the gas stations, the money you pay for food, the money you pay in taxes, and the wars, bring the money home, invest in America. Yeah, I, yeah, hopefully

that people are feeling. I mean, look, not hopefully. People will be feeling the economic burden every time they go to the pump. So maybe that's kind of like implicit in some of this. That's interesting, though, that those are the words that came up in the kind of the word cloud responses. Because I've also been thinking about like the way to get more Republicans to just either stay home or vote Democrat. Earlier in the week, Love it. And I played clips from Alex Jones, Info Wars founder.

I heard that. I heard that calling on Trump to be impeached. And then we also played an interview that Sean Ryan did. Sean Ryan is a former Navy CLE turned kind of like conservative or maybe right wing even podcaster who was a Trump supporter and is soured on him big time. He was interviewing an MMA guy, ultimate fighting championship guy who was a Trump fan and now was soured on him big time. And the lies about the war were like the primary driver of what was making them mad. So I'm like, I mean, first of all, that like those two like Alex Jones obviously a flawed person. But that conversation happening on those networks is a great way to burst some information bubbles that don't often get burst.

And seemingly that messaging about Trump being a liar is working on those guys. One other thing I'd like to see is in a lot of these Democratic primaries, which are thankfully ending soon, there is usually an attack on the more pro-Israel establishment candidates that we shouldn't be sending U.S. tax dollars to Israel. We should be investing them here. And I think that's a fine message. I happen to agree with it. But I would like to see as we get into the general election, it's not just Israel. Like, we have a whole war going on and around

that is bankrupting the country. And I feel like you should combine both of those together in your message and not just make it about Israel. Yeah. Also, I mean, there's reports this week that Trump is considering launching another war in Mali against Al-Qaeda affiliates there. So, yes, we're bombing a lot of places at the moment. There was one more weird clip of Trump talking about Iran

that I did want to play for you before we move on. Let's watch up. Iran doesn't control the straight. I control the straight. And quite frankly, we have to prevent them from getting a nuclear weapon, which we did last year,

totally obliterated it, but it's like an annual subscription of some sort. They're begging for a deal. Even though they bombed our bases last night. When did he change his clothes at the cabinet meeting? I thought he was more of a suit guy. That's actually, that's obviously AI. Kyle Kalinsky.

Gosh. My algorithm is just so many AI versions of that woman. For those who don't know we're talking about, There's a sort of an influencer named, what's her name? Savannah Cannon, I think is her name. She is really someone who is trying to promote her only fans page. She used to do like gym videos. She pivoted to political content.

Surprise, surprise, a bunch of maggot chuds ate it up. Genius marketing move from her. Let me just tell you. It's like, how do I get people to come to my only fans page? What will make me go viral? You know, what if I sat like that? Yes. Will Summer at the Bullwark called it a pelvis-centric

framing. I listened to Will's take on it yesterday. They did like a thing on the boltwork feed and it's so funny because he's trying to be serious, but he's so deadpan, but he's trying to describe what she's doing. Yeah, no, I mean, I talked about this with Brian Tyler Cohen. It does feel like the natural end state of the creator economy and the attention economy and how thirsty everyone is online these days is going to be like, you know, Tucker Carlson episodes, fully newt, full penetration. Don't expect that from us. Yeah, no.

Another reason to subscribe to Plots of America. We are not there yet. Can I vent for one second? Have you heard of the name Mark Thieson? Is it Tissan or Thesson? It's Tison. Have I heard of him? Tell us about him.

So he was George W. Bush's final head speech writer. So when we got to the White House, there is a tradition of the people who had your job right before you taking you around. And so I had lunch with Mark Tee's. My first time ever at the White House was having lunch with Mark Tison. What a treat. Like, honestly, nice of him to do that. Yes. And I think back then he was a little, right.

But even then, when he was trying to be nice and having lunch, he was like, now here's the thing when you're writing a speech for the president. You have a whole bunch of different audiences. And the American people are your audience. And the allies, our allies around the world are your audience, but also. And then he like leaned in and looked at me really intensely. And he goes, you have to remember, the enemy is also listening. What's such stupid?

And I was like, wow. Yes, I am having lunch with a George W. Bush war hawk. Yeah, he's a super hawk. Well, that's a good pal. I think Rhodes was telling me that after he like took you guys around, he then like day one of the Obama administration, us taking over, like forwarded you guys a column he wrote just eviscerating Obama in the most ridiculous. It was for bringing laptops into the Oval Office and like dressing down on the weekends.

Oh my God. There's a whole news cycle about whether we wore sport coats in the Oval Office. Literally, that was like Tison that was doing that, yeah. I hate these people. So, okay, former Bush speechwriter, now a columnist of the Washington Post. Mark Tiesin wrote a column the other day where he unloaded on J.D. Vance for trying to negotiate an end to the Iran war while talking about how great all the advice Trump is getting from the war hawks has been, like Pete Heggseth, all the generals. And he's like, he tweeted the following about the column to promote it. He blocked me, so I had to see it to others.

I tweeted, the time has come for Trump to take a good, hard look at the advice he is getting on Iran. What has worked, what has failed, and who is responsible for those successes and failures. Now, what you need to know, listeners, is that Mark Thiessen has been advising Trump on Iran. He's written up as one of like the top three kind of outside advisors pushing Trump to go to war. That is not disclosed in the piece. And he has zero self-awareness that the bad advice is coming from him. Right. How is the, like, how is trying to stop the war worse advice than continuing the same failed strategy that has led what was supposed to be a one to two week engagement into a five-month fucking huge spiraling war in the Middle East that is bankrupting America?

Yeah, he does like the yada, yada-y-y-a-y-a-a-a-thing with the plan to win. It's like, look, all we got to do is kill all the rest of their leaders, then blow up all the rest of their missiles, then blow up all their defense. infrastructure and then we're good. Then we end war. Then we take control of the straight. It's like, hey, buddy, have you been watching for the last five months where everyone has tried that plan and it has not worked for a bunch of very predictable reasons that we don't have to get into? How does the how many... How many... How many other wars that we have... that the country has got into the past have started just like this?

Yeah, slippery slope. Like, all we need to do is just kill a few more people, just have a few more troops in there, a few more bombs. Send a couple more guys to NAM. A couple more advisors. Yeah. You're Trump today's idea doesn't like calling it a war. He likes calling it a military operation.

Oh my Jesus Christ. Yeah, the branding is really the problem. Yes, it was very annoying. Ben and I, Ben Rhodes and I were at the Aspen Security Forum. The panel the night before us was Mark Tieson. And it was like the most bloodthirsty pro-war, pro-regime change thing you've ever heard. One last thing just worth mentioning from the cabinet meeting at Camp David today. It is a little, I mean, I guess you, you know,

have cabinet meetings at Camp David. I guess they're just looking for a new venue to make it seem interesting. Yeah. I've never, we never, I don't think we had one at Camp David. Yeah, they were definitely like, we had the G7 there. Yeah. That was actually fun. Um, I wonder if they just like drive up and drive back. Seems like a huge waste of time. It does seem like it. Well, and like you got to get the heloes and everything. Yeah, they take him. Yeah, that's a lot of, maybe he's just there for the weekend. Yeah, maybe he's going to hang out. It is a lovely place. Uh, one last thing. So there have been a much news reports that Iranian hackers were behind this cyber attack of like 36 municipal water systems in Minnesota.

It's obviously a big deal if the Iranians could just, you know, destroy our water supply. Yeah, not good. Officials in Minnesota, like, they took a well offline. They took a well offline. They took a bunch of stuff. They had to deal with this attack. The Washington Post specifically says that U.S. spy agencies

believe that Iran did it. But Trump was asked about this, and he's such a brain-dead partisan dick that he blamed Governor Tim Walsh. Fucking weird moment. Like, this is Minnesota because of the fraud there. What is he saying, like, the Somali immigrants that he hates? Like, somehow hacked. into the, like, saying that a state that is involved in, that had a cybersecurity attack,

is a, it's crazy. It really was weird. It's just like a weird, terrible moment that I'm sure will get no attention, but I wanted to mention it because it just seemed like, it's just so gross. It is gross. And it's also potentially dangerous, like that is cyber attack. Like, so now foreign adversaries know that if they launch a cyber attack on a blue state, good point. That Donald Trump won't blame them. Yeah. Yeah, no, yeah. That's basically just holding it saying, attack us more. Yeah, take over the nuclear plants in California. Right. been on Gavin. Yeah. Great. Kevin Hassett, Trump Economic Advisor. My favorite. My favorite advisor. The gift who keeps on giving. Yeah. You've probably seen him on TV. In-kind donation to DNC.

He looks like an anthropomorphized chipmunk that is also kind of a beta bitch. Is that fair? Yes. He was on Fox business this morning. He was talking about AI data centers. Let's watch. Because it's local officials, local selectmen and mayors and so on that are negotiating these deals. And they've been negotiating. the deals, you know, pretty generously in the sense that they've been happening all over the place because the data centers are very good for towns because it creates so many jobs, bring people in with high incomes that could buy houses and stuff like that. And so if you take a sleepy town that hasn't really seen much in the last 20, 30 years and put a data center there, then they're going to be a whole bunch of happy residents of that town.

Alvin! Is that your sense of how small towns feel about data centers? If they play that clip at town meetings where the data centers were coming, there would be like... The building would burn. Yes. Yeah. Like, he should never go to any of these towns. It's crazy.

I mean, that's like a, he said it in such a like, I'm your accountant who tells you that like you suddenly you're not getting a tax return, but you actually have to pay more to the government. Like that's, he says it with that like kind of nice tone. But that's like the most villain like these towns where nothing's been going on for a while. Suddenly you bring the data centers in. in and a bunch of rich people come in, drive up the property races, buy a bunch of houses, and everyone else, they're just happy. And maybe, if you're lucky, they use up all the water and they're so loud that you can't hear yourself think.

Right. Yeah, your utility bills go up and they create a few jobs for the construction and then like two guys man the data center as security guards. And then other than that, that's, you should be great. It does stuff like that like makes you wonder how tone deaf and in their own bubble these guys are because data centers have become a huge issue in a bunch of race. around the country. Like there's a Michigan congressional race where it's sort of like one of the key issues in the primary. Wisconsin governor's race. And in that context, you see clips like that from

Hacett. And then I think Trump did a big AI data center event the other day. And like I get the counter argument, which is if we don't build the AI data centers here, they're going to get built abroad. And wouldn't you want to control the data blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Doesn't mean people aren't really pissed about it in practice. Yeah, I just talked about this with Dan yesterday, and I brought up the point you just made about China, which is like the answer to every concern that the American people have about AI cannot be. I'm sorry, we can't do anything because, yeah, we don't want China to beat us.

It's great. They're like, okay, yeah, we don't want China to beat us, but also I don't want the fucking data center in my town. And I worry now that the AI industry is onto this, and they're going to try to, like, buy people off by just giving like so many, you know. Tax breaks. Yeah, tax breaks. slow your property taxes, all this kind of shit. But people don't want them. Yeah, we heard from

someone the other day who'd seen some polling that suggests that if the data sender comes with a big property tax cut, suddenly they're a little more popular. So something to be aware of progressives who are messaging this stuff. But yeah. Speaking of data centers, let's talk about Vivek Ramoswamy. You might know him as one of the most annoying people in all of politics. He was so annoying that Elon Musk ran him out of Doge before Doge existed. Vevac is now. in Ohio. He's running for governor. Earlier this week, he spoke to a group in Cleveland called Young Americans for Liberty. It was supposed to be a 30-minute speech. He only made it 14 minutes. Here's a sense of why. The truth of the matter is, you know, no matter what happens in whichever

direction we go, people my generation have already made it. We're going to be fine. It's going to be your generation. You're a political cretan. You're a political, cretan. And you're a political, You need to get the fuck out of here. Summer heats up in FX's The Shards. Set in 80s, Los Angeles, the Shards follows a group of beautiful, privileged prep school students who are preyed on by The Trawler, a serial killer targeting teenagers across the city. This fever dream of youth, beauty, sex, and mystery is a must see. FX's The Shards, streaming August 5th on Hulu on Disney Plus.

Sign up now at Disneyplus.com. You're a political cretan. So funny. Okay, so I just watched, I watched the whole thing before we started recording. He's literally booed walking on stage. He's booed from the first moment. And then his, like, bit was, the divide in America is not red or blue. It's between winners and whiners.

I mean, that's his message to young people who feel screwed by the economy. Vivek Ramoswamy saw two terms of Trump winning an election, to Trump victories and thought to himself, I need to be more like Mitt Romney. What if I did the opposite? Yes. I need to have the stink of MAGA on me, but also do a message that was like Mitt Romney from 2012.

Yeah. What if I was just a rapacious capitalist with the worst personality you could imagine? And I only do tennis videos. Those are supposed to be like right-wing young people who are some of the most right-wing people in the Republican Party is the younger you get. And for them to boo Vivek Ramaswami?

Yeah, though they may be booing them. because they are insanely racist. I was going to say that is a huge factor as well. New York Times Sienna, in their poll, has it at 47-47. Amy Acton is the Democrat. Speaking of Data Center, she called for moratorium on data centers in Ohio. So that's a big issue there as well. But, you know, running for governor in Ohio, like a Republican should win.

But she's ahead of him in some of these polls that New York Times poll had them tied. She's ahead by three and a couple other ones. So it's a real race there. Man, that'd be amazing. It'd be really nice if you lost. Imagine if we won the governor's race in a Senate seat in Ohio and Iowa. I mean, it'd be like 2008. Yeah.

And then. I don't know. Sorry, I shouldn't fantasize like that. No, careful. One last thing from that Trump cabinet meeting at Camp David, the historic moment for transparency in government. Earlier this week, Trump met with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine. Zelensky was in town for Lindsay Graham's funeral. Remember that?

Yeah. When we all came together and through like essentially a state funeral for. For Lindsey Gunwin, the big Mar-a-Lago in the sky. Just because everyone was like, you know why this guy needs a special funeral? Because he loved wars. He is super bloodthirsty and he wanted to just invade out. He wanted to send your son or daughter to die all over the place. Therefore, we should fed him.

Well, that was Trump's eulogy. Hannity says, not so much, not so fast. What a wild thing. Now, Hannity was like, he didn't like wars. And Trump's like, fuck yes, he did. Anyway, it's ridiculous. Back in July at the NATO summit, it, Trump said the U.S. would allow Ukraine to have a license to manufacture Patriot missiles.

Those are the missile system used to intercept Russian ballistic missiles that have been hammering Ukrainian cities. Then Zelensky was here on Tuesday. As Zelensky said, Trump had agreed to give them the license. But then today, Trump said this. We have not agreed to that. We're talking about it. But it's a hard thing to give away that kind of technology. And I don't think this would ever happen. But, you know, there's people that you give that technology, they can someday turn on you. You know, that is possible. You look at war, it's happened a couple of times over the years, right?

So we have to be very careful. I mean, we guard that. We have the greatest military in the world, but we have the greatest weapons in the world. Now we have to make them a little bit faster because we've given a lot of way. I'm sorry, these are the same people who were just about to let the Saudis enrich uranium. Yeah, we're giving the Saudis a nuclear program with no inspections. But we can't license Patriot? What's the problem?

Do we license that to other countries? Yeah, the Germans do it. There's a couple other countries that have a license to produce Patriot missiles. And so the weird thing about this, first of all, I just like don't know why he's jerking them around on this. It will take them years at best to kind of get this revved up because it's just a complicated fabrication process and you have to build out the infrastructure. But we just have this whole new cycle about actually Trump likes Ukraine now and thinks Zelensky is

good now because they're winning on the battlefield. We had Laura Lumer. I was going to say, can we send our new ambassador back to Ukraine? Special envoy. I mean, you joke, but I don't want to say good for her. You don't have to hand it to Laura Lumer, but like, I've listened now to her a couple times on this and she feels

you know, she seems very genuine. For those you don't know who Laura Lumer is, she is a right wing nut. She wants... She's a bad. She's a bad person. She wants to change herself to the Twitter office in New York because she had been kicked off the platform virulently racist Islamophob too. Yeah. And she had a star of David on her own shirt and compared herself to the her treatment

by Twitter to the treatment of Jews during the Holocaust. So that's, you know, she's out there. She keeps things in context. All of a sudden, she used to be super anti-Ukraine. Now she's super pro-Ukraine. A lot of people think it's because all of a sudden, you know, Tucker Carlson is pro-Russia. So she's like zigging where she zags. But I did see in the Wall Street Journal reported that she talked to Trump at least twice during her trip while she was there. Like, that's her level of influence. It's so sad. But also, I guess, can be useful at times. But anyway, so she needs to get them back on the right page here for the Patriot missiles. I'm guessing that Trump is just trying to, like, shake Zelensky down and, like, route this through truth social somehow or

something. Yeah. Probably like Don Jr. has an investment in a Patriot missing company. Yeah. I guess the question I wonder about is, is there any way to make him pay a price for saying he would end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours and obviously that hasn't happened. I mean, going back to where we started, I think it is, I think we have to broaden the war message as we head into the midterms, which is it is chaos all over the world. It is a war in the Middle East that is spiraling out of control, bankrupting the country. There's chaos in Ukraine. He hasn't, like there's, there's chaos all over the world because of him. And all it's doing is making us less safe and costing us more money. Yeah. I feel promises and lies. Yep. And also, he's just kind of a dick. He's kind of a dick.

Yeah. He's a moron. And he's very annoying. And with that, thank you for watching this episode of POTSave America here on YouTube. Please subscribe. Talk to you soon.