Morning Joe - This does not scare the Iranians: Joe reacts to Hegseth's 'We negotiate with bombs' remarks

Episode Date: March 25, 2026

This does not scare the Iranians: Joe reacts to Hegseth's 'We negotiate with bombs' remarks To listen to this show and other MS podcasts without ads, sign up for MS NOW Premium on Apple Podcasts. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

We have a president of the United States that when he sends his warfighters out to fight, he unties their hands to actually go out and close with and destroy the enemy as viciously as possible from moment one. And that's why we see ourselves as part of this negotiation as well. We negotiate with bombs. You have a choice as we loiter over the top of Tehran, as the president talked about, about your future. The president has made it clear that you will not have a nuclear weapon. The war department agrees. Our job is to ensure that.

And so we're keeping our hand on that throttle as long as as is hard as is necessary to ensure the interest of the United States of America are achieved on that battlefield. As long as it's hard. Yeah. You know, it's right. Yeah. Okay. Well, I guess. Put the throttle down, right?

Go like that. You know, it's very interesting to me that, you know, Donald Trump, any minute, has ever talked to him while he's so like to me, he always talks about central chemistry. Okay. I was scared. I was uncomfortable. This guy, about the throttle? This guy is the opposite of central casting.

Like, he's a kid. We negotiate with bombs. I mean, do you think an Iranian, like a member of the Revolutionary Guard just can go, oh, this scares me very much? No! You're going to want a clown. You put the generals up with all this, you know, medals, and they talk about it.

We're going to, da, da, da, da. But what was he saying? I don't know. I don't know. We'll talk about that later. Okay. But do you get what I'm saying? This guy is the opposite of Central...

This guy isn't Norm. Norman Swartz cough? Right? Oh, no. This guy isn't like those guys that were up in the Gulf War, the first Gulf War, we've degraded. I mean, he's a kid, and I don't even say that. Not comforting.

It's, well, you don't want to be comforting. up there. You want to scare the hell out of people. Well, you want to feel like the person really has a grasp of the situation. He's got a grasp of the throttle. He says, but Willie, it's so childish.

He's a kid. Yeah. And why, this guy's not from Central casting. You want to scare the Iranians. This does not do that. Guys, I just, we're going to go shit with bombs. We.

He. He thinks that he's saying the things that will make dad proud behind him. Right. He talks like a podcaster and he gets in the briefing rooms and he attacks the media and he attacks Joe Biden and Barack Obama. You're the head of the Department of Defense. You want to host a podcast. Go host a podcast. You'd probably be good at it and have a lot of listeners.

Well, I'd be able to follow. Absolutely. I'm sure. But you're running a war right now. He's head of the Department of Defense. And that kind of bluster feels unconvincing, I guess, to put it mildly, it feels like he's trying to play a part. and say the thing that will get him a pat on the back from the guy standing behind him. Trying too hard.

It's frat boy rhetoric. It's fret boy rhetoric. And there is a clip that zeroes in on President Trump's face as Hank says is doing the throttle. His eyebrows, he just can't keep him control. He's like, okay. Oh, my gosh. But this is the rhetoric we've gotten at Pentagon briefings and yesterday from the Ovalanche. By the way, does it matter yet?

It matters. The medium is a message. And when you're at war, you actually want people that look confident that are not only briefing Americans, but also briefing the world. and for your friends and your enemies to see. On that front, of course, Willie, we just keep going on. Two things happening at once. The president tries to reassure the markets. Oh, yeah, I'm ending the war.

The same time the 82nd Airborne is coming in. It's almost if the president's talks about peace might have more to do with the markets, as the Wall Street Journal editorial page suggests, than it does with actual peace talks. Yeah, and putting out these vagaries that he hopes will calm the markets. We're going to play in a minute. He said something about receiving a present from the, Iranian regime wouldn't get into detail about what that gift was. Do you think they gave back the

pallets of cash that pissed Republicans off so much years ago? Maybe the Iranian said, we didn't spend it. We haven't even spent it yet. Take your 14 billion in the garage. Take it. Maybe they did that. Yeah, but he's putting out these, there's no detail, of course. We said, we got a present from Iran. They're behaving well. They want to end the war. They're going to give up their nuclear weapon, which was breaking news mostly to the Iranians, who came out and said, we absolutely are not. No, we're not. He's just trying to, he's riding the wave of $100 a barrel of oil. All right. So also, I had long security lines continue at several airports as the funding fight over the Department of Homeland Security drags on. We're going to bring in the latest

from Capitol Hill. And flights keep getting canceled. Yes. Situation keeps getting worse. Yes. We'll also dig into the landmark verdict against meta for failing to protect young users from child predators and a look at the surprising special election victory in Florida, where a Democrat won a state house race in a district that includes Marilago. And Ben, that's been happening. A lot of special elections, whether you look at congressional elections, all the way down to state house elections, it seems that there's been quite a break for Democrats time and time again over the past year. Yeah, I mean, you just see enormous energy on the Democratic side, kind of blinking red lights for Republicans.

that really just seems like it's totally national. It's, you know, Latino voters, as they were talking about in the last hour, but it's also just everywhere. There's this energy around Democrats that is this blinking red light for a Republican Party that, you know, fundamentally is led by Trump and is focused on the war right now. Co-founder and editor-in-chief at Semaphore, Ben Smith is here. Also with us columnist and associate editor at the Washington Post, David Ignatius, joins us and decorated combat veteran and former commander of U.S. Army Europe,

retired Army Lieutenant General Mark Hurdling. He would always go up to the front line and have a cigar in his mouth and chop, and go, boys, we don't negotiate with words, we negotiate with bombs. No, he did never say that. He's the author of the new book, If I don't return, a father's wartime journal. And let's get right to our top story this morning. General, let me ask you what you think about that. Let's not, actually.

We negotiate with bombs. Would that worry you if you heard that coming from the enemy? Joe, far be it for me to critique the Secretary of Defense, but truthfully, it was not very comforting. And in fact, what I'll say is more what my wife said. During Desert Storm, my first ever deployment back in 1990, and then subsequent deployments into Iraq multiple times, there was always a sense of calm when she watched the defense. defense head and the president in terms of what they were saying. Didn't always agree with what they were saying, but at least they provided a plan and what was happening. I said I wasn't going to critique the

Secretary of Defense, but I didn't find it very enlightening with the, you know, loitering over Tehran and the throttle down approach. I'm not sure what either one of those do to represent what the Secretary of Defense is supposed to do. Yeah, that's a nice way of putting it. Now to our top story, the United States has now sent Iran a 15-point plan to end the war in the Middle East as fighting rattles the region and economic fallout escalates. That's according to the New York Times, citing two officials briefed on the diplomacy who say the plan was delivered by way of Pakistan. The paper notes it is unclear how widely the plan has been shared among Iranian officials. It also remains unclear whether Iran will accept. Any offer, or if Israel is on board with the proposal.

I would say those are two key areas for this to work. Officials tell the Times the plan addresses Iran's ballistic missile and nuclear programs. The Wall Street Journal, meanwhile, cites officials who say the document calls on Iran to dismantle its three main nuclear sites and end any enrichment on Iranian soil. Suspend its ballistic missile work. curb support for proxies and fully reopen the strait of Hormuz. The officials add that Iran would in return have nuclear-related sanctions lifted and the U.S. would assist while monitoring the country's civilian nuclear program. The journal also reports that mediators from Turkey, Egypt, and Pakistan are pushing to have a meeting arranged between U.S. and Iranian officials

in the next 48 hours, but both sides remain far apart. And in a sign of that distance, shortly after the 15-point plan was submitted to Iran, the country's military mocked the attempts for peace, speaking in a pre-recorded video that aired on state TV. An Iranian military spokesman put it like this, quote, have your internal conflicts reached the point where you are negotiating with yourselves? He added, quote, our first and last word has been the same from day one, and it will stay that way. Someone like us will never come to terms with someone like you.

Now, not ever. Now, you see, you say it that way, and sort of a chill goes up your spy. That's the way you do it. However, in the Oval Office yesterday afternoon, President Trump continued to claim that negotiations were happening. And that those talks involved, Vice President J.D. Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Jared Kushner, and Steve Whitcock. The president was then asked about whether he could trust the people the U.S. is negotiating with, leading to this exchange. Why do you say, what makes you try? Do you think I trust them? I don't trust them. Then why bother talking to them? Because they're going to make a deal. They're going to make a deal.

They did something yesterday that was amazing, actually. They gave us a present. And the president arrived today. It was a very big present worth a tremendous amount of money. And I'm not going to tell you what that present is, but it was a very significant prize. And they gave it to us, and they said they were going to give it. So that meant one thing to me would deal with the right people. Is that nuclear related? No, it wasn't nuclear related.

It was oil and gas related, and it was a very nice thing they did. but what it showed me is that we're dealing with the right people. I'm reminded of the scripture. We are looking through a glass darkly. Because David, David Ignatis, you need to break this down for us. And one thing, the only thing I am sure, have assurance with is the president says you're not going to trust the Iranians. That has been a pretty smart move since 1979. But David, break this down for us because we have two things happening at once.

We have the president, as the Wall Street Journal opinion page suggests for markets, the president talking about peace. At the second, same time, you got Marines, the 80 second airway. You got a lot of people that are moving, a lot of troops that are moving toward the region. So a discordant moment here where the words aren't matching the action. So break it down for us, what's going on, best as you can tell, are these talks of peace plans more about calming the markets and keeping oil below 100? Or is the president really moving in that direction?

So, Joe, the first thing to say is that we don't know. The mismatch between different messages is characteristic of Trump and knowing which one is the real message is part of the struggle of dealing with him. We're in what the Wall Street Journal calls this morning the fog of diplomacy. We often speak of the fog of war. But in this case, it's the diplomacy that's hard to understand. What we do know, I think, with some confidence, is that Trump administration's set a 15-point list of its proposals for a settlement to be delivered to Iran via Pakistan. There's hope that there'll be an actual meeting in Pakistan involving U.S. and Iranian negotiators on Thursday, as you mentioned earlier.

the gap between the positions in the U.S. 15 points and the Iranian positions are still wide apart, but that doesn't mean that negotiations couldn't bring them together. I think the discordant part, as you mentioned, is that as this discussion by the president, emphatic call for peace goes forward, so does a plan, it seems to deploy the 82nd airborne and two marine amphibious units. many thousands of troops, what are they going to do? Are they going to seek to occupy Card Island or other parts of Iran? If you send that many troops to the Middle East, there's obviously some plan for how they'll specifically be used. Admiral Brad Cooper, the head of

Sentcom, has rehearsed this so many times. So I think it's just a situation that Trump likes, where he wants a deal. He said that, but he thinks using military force at the ready, Sending all these troops is the best way to get to the deal. And I think the honest truth is we just have to wait a couple days and see where he is. So, General, on the military side, tell me where you think we are. I mean, we're, every day Israel wakes up and is surprised by the attacks that happened the night before, wondering how Iran continues to have the ability to strike them. I had somebody then tell community tell me a couple days ago that hearing us going out and talking about the number of missiles and launch sites we've destroyed, reminds him of Vietnam War where we had the body counts every night.

And just at the end of the day didn't matter. I'm wondering about, again, the ongoing asymmetric warfare, whether you're talking about cheap drones, non-launch boats, drones, missiles, boat swarms, you can go down the list. You know, we're shooting down, we're shooting down, you know, million, our thousand dollar drones with million dollar missiles, something else that he told me a couple days ago. I just look at what's been happening with Ukraine and Russia. And I wonder if this administration didn't have so much contempt for Zelensky in Ukraine,

if they might not have seen that as the biggest warning sign, not to fight the last war, but to fight the war that's actually going on right now, showing that Ukraine, even all these years later, is pushing back a huge country that thought they were going to take them over in three days. Yeah, Ukraine has very effectively countered not only conventional forces, but also that asymmetric warfare that Russia uses. They even offered some advice to our Department of Defense and the president and President Zelensky stepped forward and said, we can help you with this counter drone effort and we turn them down. Now, we have learned a lot of lessons from them on the periphery, but this sure would have been

helpful. The other thing I'd say, Joe, is there's a lot of talk about what's deploying there. And I've got a little bit of experience with these kind of units. You know, a marine expeditionary unit, a MU, as they call it, which is two of them are deploying there, they provide immediate crisis response to the combatant commander, in this case Admiral Cooper. They serve as a rapid on-call force, and they're small. I mean, we're getting energized about the fact that we're deploying forces, but both the MU and the individual response force, the IRF, or what's called the Ready Brigade from the 82nd

Airborne Division, they're relatively small forces, and they can't move around a lot. They have specific missions that it's understandable why they would go in first, but this is a first effort. You know, the 82nd deploys worldwide with that Ready Brigade, deploys within 18 hours, their wheels up out of Fort Bragg or Fort Liberty now. They conduct forcible entry. What that means is they parachute in somewhere conducting an airborne assault to seize key terrain, like an airfield or a weapon site or critical infrastructure.

But they can't move around a lot. And neither can the Marine Expeditionary Unit. Once they go ashore or drop in from the sky, they are stationed. And a long time ago, I heard a comment that if you forget logistics in war, you're going to lose. Now, these two forces may be the entry-level forces, but it indicates that there's plans for others to come in, but those others coming in will come in very, very slowly. When you're talking about the rest of the 82nd Airborne Division, still, that's a relatively small force, about 15 to 18,000 soldiers, depending on how many you bring.

in with the entire division. In a land that's as big as Iran, with the kind of terrain they have and the geography, even supported by a massive number of overhead aircraft and Tomahawk missiles, these two forces can form a lodgment, as the military calls it, but they can't do a whole lot more until more follow-on forces come in. So I'm scratching my head trying to figure out what these two, actually three, two mews and one brigade are going to do. Now, the 82nd Airborne has also deployed their command post, which indicates to me that more are going to come in. But first of all, where are you going to put them as they all pull together? Because you can't put them immediately into Iran. They don't have the logistics support to go in there. Where are

they going to go? What are their missions going to be? What are the following, follow-on forces? because these three forces, two mews and a brigade, are designed to open a fight, but not to finish one. And so we're thinking about putting forces a lot of forces on the ground. This is an opening gambit, and it's interesting that it's taking place while we're still bombing and conducting peace talks in Pakistan. So David Ignatius, as the president said again yesterday,

the war is basically won. We've won militarily. Now it's all just in the negotiations. a settlement deal, Iran rejects that out of hand, knowing it's got a big chip that it's playing in the Strait of Hormuz. But this morning, the New York Times front page piece above the fold says that MBS, that the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, now along with the Israelis, putting pressure on President Trump to keep going with this war, that the war actually will not be won until the Iranian regime is destroyed and that a new one is put up in its place.

So what is your sense of those pressures that the White House, that President Trump personally may be feeling from two of his friends, MBS and B.B. Netanyahu. So I think those who've been in the Iranian firing line, the Israelis, most obviously, the Saudis, the Emirates, want Trump to finish the job. They don't want to be left exposed to Iranian missiles and drones indefinitely. So you can hear that from Gulf leaders very explicitly. We may have been ambivalent about whether you should be. go to war, but now that you've gone, now that we've been attacked again and again, we want to make sure that you finish the job. President Trump, looking at economic costs, both the United

States directly and in terms of the financial markets, seems to be pulling back from the kind of decisive victory that some of our allies would like to see distancing himself a little bit from from Israel. If you look carefully at the 15 points that the administration is said to be delivering to Iran via Pakistan, they're not all that different from the demands that we were making in the final round of negotiations in Geneva before the war began. It's pretty much the same list. It talks about permanently dismantling the facilities at Natanz and Fordo and Isfahan. It talks about the IAEA taking control of the highly enriched uranium that Iran has buried. The U.S. wouldn't go in with its own troops, but the IA would take it over and presumably diluted so it was no longer threatening.

I noted one thing that may explain what the president was talking about with that strange comment about getting a gift from Iran in the oil and gas area. Iran released a statement in the last two days that I'll just read one passage from it, saying the Strait of Hormuz remains open and maritime traffic has not been suspended. It goes on to say that non-hostile ships are being given free passage to the strait, but it's a clear statement by Iran, to my reading, that it's prepared to negotiate the terms of reopening the strait, if they're favorable to Iran. So perhaps that's what Trump was talking about,

since the Strait of Hormuz is really, I think, the key issue in terms of stabilizing financial markets, the one he's got to resolve to calm this crisis down and begin to get a reduction in oil prices. It was a fascinating statement, especially when they added the Iranians, like, don't blame us. It's the insurance companies. The insurance companies.

They sounded like trial lawyers. There's a bit of a different tone than this one. Our first and last word has been from the same. Someone like us will never come to terms with someone like you. Not now. Not ever. That's pretty clear. All right.

Coming up, we're going to get Jonathan Lemire's latest reporting from the White House and also Ben Smith's new piece for Semaphore, which is why the future of war still eludes U.S. leaders. Not a good time for that to be happening. We'll have that straight ahead on Morning Joe. We're in negotiations right now. They're doing it along with Marco, J.D. We have a number of people doing it.

I don't want to say in advance, but they've agreed they will never have a nuclear weapon. We are at, as they would say, a war. They call it a war. I call it a military operation. A very successful one, like successful like nobody's ever seen before. We've won this. This war has been won. The only one that likes to keep it going is the fake news.

Okay, thank God. I'm reading this statement. Let's go home. Hey, can you turn off the lights, y'all? Someone needs to tell them. It's, okay. Wait, but they say. They say, someone like us will never come to him for someone like you, not now, not ever.

Okay. Ben Smith, you have a new piece for some of four entitled, we're not keeping up why the future of war still eludes U.S. leaders. And you write in part, quote, there are any number of frameworks and factions across two decades of defense officials, panicking about the direction of the U.S. military. The U.S. and its allies in the Middle East are using million-dollar missiles to shoot down $20,000 drones. Vast investments in cutting-edge platforms to fight in the air and at sea have come at the expense of the American ability to produce artillery shells for Ukrainian allies. Perhaps the strangest part of the whole debacle,

the transformation of the U.S. military from basic manufacturing to high-level strategy stalled out despite near-total bipartisan agreement in Washington and an almost unique line of continuity from the Obama administration through Trump, Joe Biden, and Trump. Some point fingers, others are resigned. Stasis in U.S. government is a social science phenomenon, laments Dan Pat, a former top of at the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency. So we read the whole article so you don't have to. Yeah. That was great.

It sounds like you wrote what I heard from an intel official, but this is really, this is an ongoing problem. And again, I'm so glad you said this isn't like a Trump haggseth issue. This is a cultural issue that's been going on now for 10, 15 years. We're fighting the last wars. We're fighting what may have worked militarily in Iraq. But again, if we had looked to what was going on in Ukraine, we would have understood why a superior military power got stopped in their tracks. Asymmetric warfare. Yeah. And as Hegseth said, we are, we're successfully, mostly shooting down these cheap drones

with extremely expensive missiles. And, but it is just this remarkable thing where people like David Ignatius, General Hortling, jumping up and down for 15 years about this, saying, hey, we ought to produce more, you know, just more basic artillery. And the, you know, and, but in peacetime, nobody felt the urgency to shift that way. So we're currently, I think, producing, you know, about as much in a year as Ukraine shoots in a month of artillery shells. You know, I think, I think even our, and even, you know, this administration is pushing really hard to make more drones. But our budget, you know, we're a pretty rich country, is less than a tenth of the Ukrainian drone manufacturing budget. And we're just, it's just very hard to persuade the penitimate.

to give up on very expensive fighter jets and carrier groups in exchange for warfare in which Starlink is incredibly important and you have cheap drones crashing into other cheap drones as sort of the central front of the battlefield. Well, and Willie, it's not like that we haven't had an advance notice. The Houthi's shut down shipping in the Red Sea with cheap drones. Drones. Yeah. And the irony of all this, as Ben writes, is that Zelensky, while fighting for his own life,

John, against Russia now for four years in change, is offering the drones to the United States to fight its war in Iran, saying, you're not helping us the way we'd like to be helped, but here, we can help you move into the new era of war fighting. And yet we keep rebuffing those offers and continuing to side with Russia, at least rhetorically, in that conflict. When President Trump has asked about the ongoing fight between Russia and Ukraine, he can usually say that it's Zelensky, not Putin, who is the impediment to... You know, they also, I think more importantly, he and everybody in the administration keeps saying, and they've been saying, and I've been hearing it, Oh, the Russians are about to win. They're about to take the Donbos.

They're about to take the Donbos. It's like Heim and Roth dying of the same heart attack for 20 years. When are they going to take the Donbos? They're losing ground right now. And again, I only bring that up to say, because they're so blinded by Ukraine's success, they went into this blind, not understanding what Iran could do with them. And if they didn't hate Zelensky so much, they would sit down with him and say, okay, tell us everything you're doing. Because I'll tell you what, the White House may not do it.

be doing it, but our allies in the region are starting to do it. The UAE's doing it. The Saudis are doing it. Others are doing it because they understand Ukraine is on the cutting edge of war fighting. Yeah. And what we're seeing here, though, is still a reflexive sort of deference to Russia. And this has actually been Russia's worst stretch of months in the war in a while. Ukraine's made progress. In fact, there's a new think tank analysis out that Russia's casualties are even higher than believed. And we already thought that they were asked. astronomical. But this does come, it's an inflection point rapidly approaching for this president and this war. The deadline that he pushed back is now Friday. They hope to have some

talks in Pakistan later this week, maybe as soon as tomorrow, it might extend to the weekend. The gift that was the president was talking about yesterday, which is mysterious even to senior White House officials I was talked to yesterday. There's speculation in those who have been talking to them in the Pentagon that there are a few ships, to your point earlier, about the Strait of Hormuz that have gone through, a Chinese ship has gone through, one bound for Thailand has gone through. So the president seems to be grasping at that as, okay, that's a sign that they're willing to talk about ships.

Also, in terms of China, the president still wants to have his meeting with Xi Jinping in six weeks or so. So he's looking to build some momentum there. But this is, you know, with the other assets heading to region, ASEC and airborne and the like, that would be a bloody fight if the U.S. would do that, something the president to this point has been unwilling to do. Some speculation, maybe this is just attempt to pressure Iran. Look, we're sending even more.

assets to the region, time for deal. So, Ben, is there any acknowledgement from the administration, and you're reporting for this piece that we are fighting asymmetric war and that at some point it's going to catch up to us, a million-dollar missiles for $20,000 drones, and perhaps we should take some advice from Ukraine about how they've held up so well against Russia? Yeah, I think in the Pentagon, actually, and the deputy, Stephen Feinberg, very focused on remaking the way America manufactures, things like this. The challenge is people in that job been trying to do that for 15 years, and there's just huge

stasis in that building in making these changes. So, David, I think looking at all the clips, hearing all the things that all sides are saying, people who tuned in 34 minutes ago may be more confused now than they were 34 minutes ago, because, again, we're hearing all things from all people all at once. So break it down for me, your best guess, the president talking about peace, He's talking about gifts. And yet, you've got our allies in the region saying, fight this till the end. You've got the Wall Street Journal editorial page saying, fight this to the end.

You've got other people telling the president that are close to the president, fight this to the end. What do you think the president's thinking right now based on your reporting and what direction are we going? So I'm going to guess that the president is thinking today, the same thing he thought the day, the war began, which is that the overwhelming military power that the U.S. is sending, has sent to the Gulf, and has been using against Iran, will force Iran to make concessions that it now says it's not prepared to make, and that the U.S. will get a settlement that's acceptable that meets basic minimum U.S. demands. I think he still believes that, you know, as he keeps saying, this war, and by conventional military standards, he's right. The problem is that the military campaign

has consolidated power in Iran around the worst of the worst. The hardest-line people in Iran, tougher in many ways than the people who were running the country before, are now in charge, and they don't want to make a deal. So I think truly we just have to be cautious over the next few days and see how this proposal for peace, the 15 points that Trump has sent, how that's received by Iran. There's a new deadline. Trump has said he's going to wait five days to get an Iranian answer. So that clock tolls Saturday, as I understand it, so there's not much time left. But as the Wall Street Journal said in an editorial this morning, even Donald Trump today doesn't know the answer to your question, Joe.

He doesn't, I don't think he knows how this plan is going to land. So, General, I was going to ask you to list your greatest concerns, but I realize that would keep us here for quite a while. So let's reverse that. You're sitting in the Oval Office and the president says to you, I think I can keep fighting this war for another three to four weeks. I think that's what my Republicans on the Hill will support before there's open rebellion. the markets may be able to handle that. Maybe I'll be able to keep oil under 125 a barrel. I've got three to four weeks, General.

What do I need to do to get out and get out with Iran's military machines so degraded that I can declare victory and come home? What are you telling? Joe, there's a huge difference between declaring victory and actually having victory. And I'd also like to comment on Ben's article, but I won't because we, We've seen those same kind of things over the last several decades where when we get ourselves into a mess, the military, there are those that claim the military isn't prepared. One of the things I'd suggest is in this particular conflict, we went into this conflict after

the president filed a national security strategy and the Department of Defense filed a national defense strategy that had nothing to do with these kinds of conflicts. They were going to limit what the U.S. military was going to do. And because of that, the military starts shaping this broad spectrum of missions and operations into a narrower set. And that's one issue, I would say, and I'll get to your question in a second. But the other issue is we are not using all of the elements of national power. We are depending on the military element to overcome failed diplomacy, failed, policy and failed information policy from a national perspective.

So those are the four elements of national power, and yet our elected officials, not just President Trump, but others, seem to keep relying on the military to execute things. And they stretch them in 18 different directions or more. So back to your question of how do we get out of this? I personally don't think, and I'm hesitant to say this, there is no wins. scenario. There is only potential draw scenarios, but in more cases than that, there are loose scenarios. You put troops on the ground. I'm hearing the last couple of days, and it infuriates me. A lot of people talking about the economic results of this conflict, the

markets down, oils up, things like that. We're now getting ready to put America's sons and daughters into a conflict where we did not have plans and branches and sequels to those plans, which is what the military does. But they also depend on those other elements of national power to help get us through these things. So what I'd say is the president can declare whatever he wants, but the reality of the situation I've seen before when I was in combat. It's not a victory.

It's a draw. and that's the kind of conflict we've been putting ourselves in without proper strategic guidance over the last several decades. So, General, are you saying, so you're saying the job can't be done in three to four weeks? No. Would your recommendation to the president be then? You're going to have to stay there for three to four months? What is your recommendation to the president this morning? Well, I don't know because I don't know the intelligence details of what he's operate under,

Because intelligence drives your operations. What is the tipping point? What are his people really saying to him that reflect the reality on the ground? And I don't think we have a firm grasp of the reality on the ground. I saw that in Iraq. I saw that in Afghanistan. One of the things that we really have to focus on is what are you trying to do? And only when you determine what you're trying to do, can you determine what an end state is going to be?

And no, I don't think any of the courses of actions that we currently have right now will allow this to be finished in three to four weeks. It's just impossible. Wow. Retired Army Lieutenant General Mark Hurling and the Washington Post's David Ignatius and co-founder and editor-in-chief of Semaphore, Ben Smith. Thank you all very much for coming on this morning. Let's keep Ben on. I want to ask him a couple of meaty questions, try to make everybody around the table uncomfortable. A lot going on. Oh, yeah, we'll do that. Also, coming up, a Democrat flips the Florida House seat

that represents the area home to President Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort. We'll run through the results of that special election. Plus, we're digging into new reporting on Donald Trump's potential motive for taking classified documents to Mar-a-Lago after leaving the White House following his first term. MSN now, senior investigative reporter Carol Lennox joins us ahead with the details. The answer may shock you. It's about money. Oh, boy. And as we go to break, a quick look at the Travelers forecast this morning from Accuethers, Bernie Rayno.

Bernie, how's it looking? Mika, it's a warmer Wednesday, your exclusive ACUther forecast. 51 in Boston, 53 New York City, clouds, breaks of sun. Warmer, though, Charleston 72, Pittsburgh, 64. Now, speaking of warmer, how about all this heat in Texas, 88 in Dallas? That'll be spilling east over the next couple of days. some sun in Charlotte and Atlanta. Watch out for the thunderstorms in Tampa and Orlando and Jacksonville today.

Other than those thunderstorms in Florida, the East Coast is good to go, travel-wise. To help you make the best decisions and be more in the know, download the ACUweather app today. Enjoy the view. All right. Beautiful look at Washington. Yeah, welcome. Welcome back. Beautiful look at washing.

Finn Smith. So give us a quick media update. Everybody wants to know what's going on at CBS, what's going on at CNN, Aaramount, Warner Bros. Discovery. What's going on? Wait, wait, wait. How's that all shaking out? What's standing out to you? I mean, I think, you know, the big story is that basically, you know, Larry Ellison, one of the richest men in the world, essentially in a loose alliance with Donald Trump, has succeeded in getting a hold of Paramount, of Warner, includes CNN, includes CBS. And now we're sort of in the hard part of now you own a cable news business, a broadcast news business. These are incredibly hard businesses. CBS struggling to keep its ratings up, basically, as it, you know, as it experiments.

You know, I think you've seen this across the board. You have leaders who say the problem with this network is it is too left-wing, it is too woke, or it's too right-wing, there's some ideological problem. And really, like, a lot of the challenges are that particularly broadcast TV is in secular decline. Right. And it's not something that moving it four inches to the right is going to fix. And in fact, maybe what's left of your audience, what was not looking for a Fox News competitor.

And so there's a real gap between this idea that you can fix, that the fix is basically ideological. And the reality, there's this huge technological wave of disruption in media. And so then you saw on CNN the other strategy, which is that they tried to make all their shows look like podcasts last week. They brought in these giant microphones, which you may remember from your radio days. And to sort of convey, we're fresh, we're new, we're not like these old TV. guys, which I don't know if that's going to work. Boy, good luck with that. All right, Ben Smith. Thank you.

Thank you. To our other top stories this morning. All right. Good luck. All right. Newly released records from special counsel, Jack Smith's investigation into Donald Trump suggests prosecutors believed they had identified a possible reason for why

the president kept troves of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago club after leaving office. In a progress memo reviewed by MS Now, investigators write, quote, Trump possessed classified documents pertinent to his business interests, establishing a motive for retaining them, adding we must have those documents. Let's bring in the co-author of that piece, MS Now Senior investigative reporter Carol Lennox. Carol, what more can you tell us about this motive that is being uncovered here?

Well, you know, one of the biggest mysteries, Mika, I mean, for most of a serious fact-based journalist was like, what is the reason Donald Trump engaged in something that was so incredibly risky and put him at huge criminal exposure, taking hundreds and hundreds of pages of classified documents, some of them so top secret, so restricted, that only the president could authorize people to review them. Why did he take these things from the White House in January 2021 as he left office and Biden assumed control of the presidency? And now we know from this January 2023 memo that appears to have been accidentally released by the Department of Justice under Donald Trump, now we know this memo shows Jack Smith's team was working with the FBI reviewing

this as a possible motive and finding that he, Donald Trump, kept all these documents that pertained to his global business interests. Now, I wish I could tell you, Mika, I really do and Joe, that I know which business interests. Those documents sort of shed some light on or help Donald Trump. But, you know, we've known for a long time that Donald Trump is laser-focused on his. his business, said he basically separated himself from it in his first presidency, but never really did. And now we have evidence that Jack Smith believed this was a very possible motive for Donald Trump in putting himself in the crosshairs of a criminal prosecution. And you know, Carol, the other thing these documents remind us of is just how extensive and serious the smuggling of

these documents to Mara Lago was Congressman Raskin writing this letter to the Attorney General that some of these documents are so sensitive, only six people in the United States government had access to them. And the idea that since then, this story has been an attempt anyway to be whitewashed by President Trump and his administration saying that there was an FBI raid while the FBI executing a legal search warrant after months and months and months of the National Archives asking politely to have these classified documents back. It just shines another light. on how serious this story is. Totally. Totally.

I will. And, you know, another wrinkle to that that I'll emphasize. The FBI postponed and resisted and waited on that raid, that court-approved search, unannounced search of Marlago in August of 2022. They waited for months and did not want to do this search because they felt that it was going to come back and bite them. that searching a former president's home was going to have bad optics, quote, unquote, according to some of the FBI supervisors.

But they were ultimately pressed by the FBI director, Chris Ray, and the deputies because they had a witness inside Trump's Mar-a-Lago office who had pictures of multiple boxes of records. So they knew that Donald Trump, they knew very certainly that Trump had not complied with a federal subpoena to return those classified records. Again, raising the question, why in the world would Donald Trump both take and then lie about having these records? Now we know at least that Jack Smith thought a business interest was at the heart of this. All right. The new reporting is online at MS. dot now.

MSNAL, senior investigative reporter, Carol Lenig, thank you so much for coming on the show this morning.