Pod Save America - “A little noise from Iran.”

Episode Date: January 6, 2020

Trump starts a new conflict in the Middle East by assassinating an Iranian general, John Bolton says he’s willing to testify in the Senate impeachment trial, and the primary is too close to call with less than 30 days until Iowa. Then Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) talks to Tommy about what Congress can do to restrain Trump’s actions towards Iran.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor. Welcome back, guys. How are you? Good to be back. It is good to be back. I was excited to come back here and record today. Lots of news. Start your new year off with a war. First, we'll talk about the global crisis that the president precipitated when he ordered the assassination of Qasem Soleimani, the latest on Trump's impeachment trial, and the state of the 2020 race with less than 30 days until the Iowa caucuses. What? That is a lot, guys.

This primary has been going on forever. And now we're under 30 days. And it's about to begin. Yeah, exactly. Oh, my God. Two quick housekeeping notes. If you want a fantastic primer into what's at stake with the Iran crisis, please go listen to the Pod Save the World that Tommy and Ben recorded on Friday.

It's excellent. Thanks. I promise you'll learn a lot. I did. I did. And one big announcement from me. The second season of The Wilderness premieres Monday, January 13th, and the trailer is out today. For the last few months, I talked to all kinds of voters, organizers, strategists, and candidates

in some of the battlegrounds that will decide 2020 looking for a path to victory. And I did find that path. Oh, good. What is it? You have to subscribe to find out. That's it. I know.

Mandalorian over here. Or something. A lot of Baby Yoda in this. All right, so check out the podcast. It's going to be six episodes total. We're going to release two each week starting on Monday the 13th. So go subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Is it on the Wilderness feed? Is that where I look? It is on the Wilderness feed. Yeah, so go subscribe and you can just go to thewildernesspodcast.com to go right and subscribe there and you can listen to the trailer on that website as well,

wildernesspodcast.com. Thanks for reminding me, Tommy. Sure. Forgot the website. All right. Let's get to the terrifying news of the day. President Trump essentially started a war with Iran when he ordered the assassination of Iranian Major General Qasem Soleimani, who was the second most powerful figure in

the Iranian government. In response, Iran has vowed to retaliate against the United States and U.S. forces serving abroad. They've announced that they'll be restarting their nuclear program. The Iraqi parliament voted to expel all U.S. troops from Iraq. And we've been forced to suspend our operations against ISIS in Iraq. Meanwhile, Trump has responded by sending another 3,500 troops to the Middle East and tweeting that if Iran retaliates, quote, we have targeted 52 Iranian sites representing the 52 American hostages taken by Iran many years ago, some at a very high level and important to Iran and the Iranian culture. And those targets in Iran itself will be hit very fast and very hard.

Targeting cultural sites is, in fact, an internationally recognized war crime. So lots to unpack here, guys. Tommy, let's start at the beginning. What do we know about, so far, why this happened? Why did Trump make this decision? Well, it depends on who you believe. The Washington Post reported that Mike Pompeo has been pushing Trump to do this for many, many months. And back in the day, there were a bunch of senior officials in the Trump administration like Jim Mattis and Rex Tillerson, the Secretary of State, who were cautioning a less caustic line on Iran. They didn't want him to pull out of the Iran nuclear deal. But over time, all these reasonable people

got pushed out. The right wing hardliners are in. And so here we are. Now, the stated reason that the Trump administration did this is they said that there was an imminent threat from Qasem Soleimani, from Shia militia groups in Iraq that were going to attack and kill U.S. forces. Everyone who has seen that intelligence so far, people quoted in newspapers, people I've talked to said that that does not hold water, that they've seen nothing that indicates there was some imminent threat which would justify this strike legally or, you know, rationally. So it just seems like something that a bunch of nuts wanted to do. What immediately precipitated the decision was the fact that there had been, there was an attack that killed an American contractor in Iraq, right? Well, this is the problem.

The explanation is all over the place. One of these militia groups, KH, a Shia militia group in Iraq, killed a U.S. contractor and wound service members in Kirkuk. In response to that, the U.S. military hit a couple of sites associated with KH, training sites, weapons depots, et cetera. So you would think that response was to killing the US contractor, but then they went and they killed Qasem Soleimani. And the justification for that was an alleged imminent threat of another attack. But even in the way Pompeo goes on television and lies, obviously, but even in the way he's lying, they seem to be admitting that that's not totally true because he said something along the lines of he was in the process of planning attacks against American interests. And two things about that. One, that seems to have been a good part of his

job for the better part of decades. And the second part of that is he's not the actual, he's not pulling the trigger. He's not wearing a suicide vest. Right. Yeah. He's, he's, he's just a, he's involved in the chain of command. And one other part of this that no one has been able to answer at all is how does killing this figure prevent those attacks? Why aren't those attacks more likely and not less likely to happen now that this person is dead? It also seemed like there was reporting in the New York Times and Washington Post as well, that in retaliation for the contractor being killed, Trump ordered those set of strikes. And then there were protests outside our embassy in

Iraq. And it said that apparently Trump was watching those protests and then got really mad and decided he wanted to do another strike. What a surprise that Trump was watching cable TV and it made him angry. Although this time, well, this time it sounds like what happened was Mike Pompeo and Secretary of Defense Esper flew down to Mar-a-Lago and they pitched Trump on a sort of menu of ideas to further respond. And the New York Times reported that on the menu was killing Soleimani and that that very extreme proposal was only put on there to make the other ones look more reasonable. And everyone was shocked when he ultimately decided to do it. But no one apparently pushed back. That was the craziest anecdote of all in the New York Times.

Yeah. That they were like, we'll just put this on as an excuse. So and, you know, some people may have seen this, but both the Bush administration and the Obama administration basically passed on this option at times as well. did is because they were too concerned both administrations even the administration that took us to war in iraq were concerned that this would escalate tensions in the middle east into full-blown war yeah um before we talk about what a stupid and dangerous move this was tommy what do you think about the debate over whether it was legally justified whether we should call it an assassination and how much did these debates matter i mean they matter if you care about international law right so from that like it's a complicated case uh there's sort of like a

common sense like lexical what's in the dictionary definition of an assassination and then there's the definition of assassination which has been banned by the u.s government under executive orders that date back to like when we used to give Fidel Castro explosive cigars in an attempt to take out political figures. Right. You're not supposed to assassinate political figures, period. The debate about, and so like, but Soleimani is a complicated case in that he's like the number two guy in their system, but the Quds Force, the organization he ran is a U.S. designated terrorist organization.

So there's no doubt that he helped play this big role in creating and supporting these militia groups and other malign acts across the globe, basically. But there's no formal state of war between the US and Iran. So there's no basis to target him on that level, right? I mean, during the Iraq war, the US targeted Saddam Hussein. Remember the deck of cards, the senior figures that they'd go after, right? So the legality of whether or not it was legal or justified to take out Soleimani hinges on this intelligence that none of us can see because it all is about this imminence question. Got it. But I mean, I think like reasonable people should say this was an assassination.

So I mentioned some of the consequences that are already playing out. What are some of the potential consequences that worry you the most, both in short term, medium term, long term? I worry about Iran directly targeting forces in Iraq or Jordan or Kuwait or diplomatic posts in Lebanon. I worry about these Shia militia groups. I mean, Lebanese Hezbollah came out today and said that their targets are going to be U.S. military personnel and they're not going to target civilians. So when the head of Hezbollah

sounds more reasonable than the president of the United States on Twitter, that's telling you something. There's also these militia groups that might just sort of pay fealty to Soleimani and not coordinate their actions with the Iranians and take action that way just because they're pissed. And then there's also the fact that we had to stop the counter ISIS operations at a time when ISIS has had a bit of a resurgence because of our pullout

from Syria. So there's just a lot of ways this can manifest. How serious do you think the concerns are about cyber attacks against the United States or potentially a terrorist attack against the homeland? It's hard to know. It's hard to know. I mean, look, you look at what they've done, what they've said already about their nuclear program. They announced that they're no longer going to abide by the enrichment restrictions in the JCPOA and the Iran deal, but they said they're going to continue to work with the IAEA and allow them access to inspect sites and things. So in that instance, if you're looking at that as a signal, they're sort of tiptoeing out of the Iran deal. They're not immediately announcing that they're enriching the 90% to create a bomb.

So it seems like there's sort of an incremental response and not some big blockbuster thing. It seems that there's some effort on their part to seem reasonable to the international community, to try to seem as though they are the victims in this. Absolutely. I think you're right. Well, we didn't mention this yet, but it does seem like the inciting incident for this entire crisis is Trump ripping up the Iran deal back in 2018, right? Yeah. I mean, I thought Ben Rhodes on our Pod Friday walked through the timeline from Trump pulling out of the Iran deal to today. And I think it's a very compelling case. He also wrote a piece for The Atlantic. I mean, I think we would be in a stronger position today if the Trump, if Iran's nuclear program was being managed by a diplomatic agreement. The fact that it's not makes everything more complicated.

Well, and I think an important point here is however you felt about the Iran deal in the first place, whether it was a good deal or not, once the Iran deal was in place, even Trump's own administration, his own national security team warned him not to get out of the deal. People who weren't necessarily fans of the deal at the first place said once we're in the deal, you shouldn't get out of the deal. And he fucking did it anyway against the advice of most people in his administration and the whole global community. And now here we are. Yeah, right. But by the way, one of the reasons to not pull out was the fear that it might lead to this crisis, right? Yeah, I mean, look, John Bolton, now that he's left the administration is very clear that his goal all along has been regime change, right? So they pull out the Iran nuclear deal, where Iran agreed to all these restrictions on their

nuclear program in exchange for economic relief from sanctions. And instead of getting that relief, they get more sanctions in an effort to crush their economy and lead to regime change. So of course, over time, they're going to start lashing out. It shouldn't surprise anybody. So let's talk about how the administration is responding to all this. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was out on all the Sunday shows when he was asked by Chuck Todd about the potential for Iran to retaliate by killing Americans, Pompeo said, quote, it may be there is a little noise here in the interim, but that America will be safer in the long run. Later, Donald Trump was asked the same question and said, quote, if it happens, it happens. Tommy, I know you have some strong feelings about Pompeo's Sunday show appearances because I was texting you about it yesterday before i melt down i'm just i'm just curious what you guys think

would have happened if susan rice had said there was a little noise in the interim i was saying like i this those statements both from pompeo and then trump saying if it happens it happens like this president obama would have been impeached within a day yeah for saying that i just can't even believe there's such a There's such a glibness to it, but it is also, it is their kind of whatever. They're sort of cosplaying as tough guys. And so for them, they're trying to go out there and seem as though they're not worried about the retaliation because they're trying to send a message not only to Iran, but to domestic policymakers just to say, look, we're in this for the long haul.

This is part of a coordinated strategy. We're not going to show weakness. We're not going to show as if we are vulnerable to Iranian counterattacks because we are trying to project strength, but because it's been managed in this incredibly chaotic, incompetent, and glib way, beginning with a fucking flag gif and ending with all of these comments, it is, you know, it's frightening. Yeah. I mean, look, it's too early and too difficult to tell

how the politics of all this play out for Donald Trump and his administration. But I can't remember a situation in history where, God forbid, if there is a retaliation by Iran and American forces or any Americans are killed, you'd be able to draw such a direct line from the president's action to the retaliation itself. And then going out there and saying, well, if it happens, it happens.

There's some kind of retaliation. Most people who woke up and didn't even know who Qasem Soleimani was suddenly see that the United States assassinated this guy, and then however many weeks later they retaliated against us. I think that the blame and responsibility is going to lay at the feet of Donald Trump. Of course it is. They clearly did nothing to prepare for the potential fallout to the strike, you know, and you could tell that because the press release they finally put out that night misnamed the IRGC. They got the name

of the organization wrong. And so watching these Sunday shows yesterday made me despondent because of the media's failure to be tough on these guys. So I dealt with that by accidentally blaming Ellen Pompeo for U.s troops being pushed out of iraq no it's it's a land it's it's her time on twitter it's her time in the barrel yeah you know she knows what she did katherine heigl as well but like i guess what i'd say is like mike pompeo does not deserve to be treated with respect or deference right i mean trump is a pathological liar pompeo's his foot soldier one of the last times we all saw him on these shows he was lying about Trump's call to Ukraine

to extort dirt on Joe Biden, pretending he didn't know anything about it. He's implicated. When he was listening to the call. He was on the call. In the scandal. Right? And so like, I was just listening to,

you know, Chuck asked him, Pompeo meet the press. Like, are you really targeting 52 sites that are cultural in nature? It's like, that's not the question, man. It's like, how are you okay with putting forward war crimes? How are you okay with targeting civilians? And then on CBS, he was asked if he really thinks Iran will negotiate. He has no idea. They are not questioning the administration's intelligence basis for this war.

They're not questioning the strategy. There's not nearly enough scrutiny on the obvious lies these guys are putting forward and the obvious fact that their own foot soldiers lindsey graham said this is going to increase the risk to u.s personnel so how does that meet the stated rationale of your of your action i was gonna say the only person who did a good job of this was jake on the sunday shows when he sort of uh pressed him on the bullshit statement that this makes america safer in some way like their administration has been telling people to evacuate ir, American citizens to evacuate Iraq and leave the embassy because they all think

that a retaliation is coming. How does that make us safer? Safer is a state of mind, John. It's actually what they write. It's definitionally, it's ideologically makes us safer to use force in this way, even if in the short term, which lasts for fucking ever, the short term, which lasts for fucking ever, the short term of

our military interventions have now lasted more than almost 20 years since 9-11. The short term lack of safety to achieve some utopia of national security in the future never seems to come. In watching this unfold, you know, I was trying not to tweet and I succeeded. Good. Good for me. Good job. And but I was watching all this unfold and it's hard to unpack all the ways in which what's happening is wrong. And I think that's why some of these interviews become such a muddle, because there's the escalation and the risks and danger of that decision. There is the incompetence and chaos of the implementation. There are the glib and ugly and awful tweets that claim the reason, you know, he's retweeting people saying the reason he didn't notify Democrats in Congress is because

they were on the same side as Soleimani or, you know, just tweeting an American flag as if that's what the American flag is to you. It represents the successful killing of a foreign leader, USA. And then on top of all of that, there is the barrage of lies that go into the defending of this policy to make it all go down smooth. Pompeo has to go on television and lied and lie because the only way to make all of this work, right, you cannot go on a serious television show and speak honestly about Donald Trump. It is not possible to be coherent. The only way to be coherent is to lie, avoid the hard truths, find different ways to be almost true in your description of what would happen to try to make it all go down. Yeah. He pretends reality doesn't exist. He's

like, oh, Trump didn't say he's not he's not really going to hit cultural sites. Then Trump gets interviewed on Air Force One. He does a gag. He's like, hell, yes, we are. It's not fair that they're allowed to kill our guys and torture people and all this shit. We can't hit their cultural sites. That's not how laws work. You fucking sociopath. Which how many times has that happened? That Donald Trump says something. Then his administration is asked on TV whether he said it.

And they say, no, he didn't. He didn't say what you heard him say. And then they follow up with Donald Trump. And he goes, oh, no, that's exactly what I said. The story. Yeah. Donald Trump's defenders. People go out and they lie for me all the time, just like I lie all the time.

And you're all supposed to believe that Donald Trump is like, take a couple of steps out on that branch for me a little bit further, a little bit further. He just saws it off. But but, you know, just I think that's why it's sometimes hard to kind of separate out the kind of the tweets and what they portend, what he's implying, what the kind of threats he's going to make in the actual policy. But then you see it sort of come together. You know, I saw a lot of people noting this, that what, two weeks ago there were massive

anti-government protests in Iran. And then we kill Soleimani, and then there are massive protests against the United States in Iran. And you know, it's wrong to destroy cultural sites. And there's all kinds of reports as to whether or not the Pentagon would go along with it. You know, the kind of whatever, Trump says something insane, and then we find out whether he really means it, or even if he really means it, will the people in his government really go along with it?

The words matter regardless of what ultimately happens in this case, because it sends a message, because for so long, our policy has been about trying to signal to Iranians and to signal to places where we have strong disagreements with the government that our beef is with the leadership, our beefements with the government that our beef is with

the leadership. Our beef is with the regime. Our problem is with the regime. And when you tell a country that we are going to bomb your cultural sites, you are telling that country it is about the people. I think saying cultural sites doesn't get, I mean, like, imagine if there was an attack on, you know, the Statue of Liberty was blown up, Mount Rushmore was blown up, right? there was an attack on, you know, the Statue of Liberty was blown up. Mount Rushmore was blown up. Right. And like, how would you feel suddenly if it wasn't just, I mean, it is.

NPR had a journalist out on the streets with some of these protesters yesterday, and she was interviewed this morning. And she said she talked to a travel agent who was like, I never do this. I never come out to these protests, but they killed Soleimani. This is about Iranian pride. This is about like our standing in the world, right? Like this has awakened all these people who are now enraged at us when previously they not, they weren't necessarily. And yes, imagine if Qasem Soleimani said he was going to take out the Washington monument, we'd all be ripped shit. Right. And also, and you alluded to this, I mean, we're talking about the Iranian government officials and the head of Hezbollah saying like, okay, we're not

going to target American civilians and we're going to target American U.S. force and stuff like that. But who knows how many people are all over in Iran and throughout the Middle East, this action has radicalized. They may just take action on their own now because of what Donald Trump decided to do for, again, a reason we don't know. A reason that's not been justified by any intel whatsoever. Like you said, Lovett, we have no idea why taking out Soleimani was what would have stopped the attacks that he wasn't going to carry out anyway, as the guy who might have been planning them. And you also just sort of step back and you're like, all right, we have lost untold trillions of dollars in the Middle East since 9-11. Thousands of Americans have died. Hundreds

of thousands of people in the Middle East have been killed and millions more displaced because of the instability that we have wrought. All to put a democracy in place in Iraq. Then as a result of this president's action, that democracy votes to expel our troops. And the first move on the part of the president is to threaten them with sanctions unless they fund our base, because that's what we want. How is it that this, how does this make us safer? How does it serve our national security interests to be in a position now where we have to threaten Iraq? Pay us back or we'll sanction you. Are you crazy? This is what it's all come to. is what all that that money and fucking death has

led to all the all the things we couldn't do in the united states all the health care we couldn't provide the schools we couldn't build the roads we didn't pave all of it so we can kind of fucking threaten the iraqi government to keep our troops so we can kill solomani to make us safer everybody feel safe of course they expel the troops and the troops leave you know trump will be like i brought the troops home i know i know but like this is why i was just despondent watching these shows yesterday because it's like what will it take for everyone to recognize that these wars are a bad idea do we need another iraq do we need another vietnam how many times are we going to fuck this up before we learn something and before we fix some of the messed up incentives that allow like countries to get bloodthirsty and

jingoistic and go to war it's crazy it's not even in the past we're still in afghanistan we're still in iraq let's talk about like lessons learned from something that happened a while ago we're still fucking there and just one other one other just to the point about the legality of it too it's like the justifications are all over the place it was an imminent threat oh but also it's justified because of the uh authorization for the use of military force after 9-11 to take out al-Qaeda. Soleimani is not involved in that. Iran's not involved in that. It's a different sect of Islam. It's a different country. And they're going to try to use that as a justification. And so I do think, too, one lesson we have not learned

is that we need to take Congress's prerogatives back in control of the military and in control of decisions of war and peace. We have to take the power back from the executive. A bunch of people have been trying. It's just... Well, I talked to Chris Murphy about that for a while. I mean, look, yes, some have been trying, but when Barack Obama tried to get Congress to vote on whether to go strike Syria, everyone in Congress hid, Democrats and Republicans. Yeah, nobody wanted, they don't want to vote. Right. They don't want the prerogative. They don't want to vote yes and they don't want to vote no.

But to their credit, Bernie Sanders, Ro Khanna are pushing legislation that would prevent any money from being spent on offensive operations in Iran. Pelosi came out this morning,

said they're going to do something with respect to the war powers. Tim Kaine has been pushing for a repeal of the AUMF for a long time. So there are people trying to do the right thing. They just need our support.

And you do have some odd allies on the Republican side in some of these issues, right? Matt Geitz and Ro Khanna put a bill forward that would have blocked offensive action on Iran. It got attached to the NDAA, the defense authorization bill, and then stripped out in conference.

And Rand Paul is one of these guys in the Senate who's sort of a non-interventionist. So you might have some coalition there. I just have something nice about Matt Geitz. I know. You know how bad that felt? It's fucking human frat gates or geitz i don't care he sucks he sucks either way he sucks let's turn to the second most important topic this week which is that donald trump has been impeached by the house and is awaiting his trial in the Senate.

That's the second. That is topic number two. That's what we covered right before we all left for that six month vacation. Feels like six months. Nancy Pelosi has so far held back on sending the articles of impeachment to the Senate as a way to highlight the fact that Mitch McConnell is refusing to hold a fair trial with relevant witnesses and evidence. trial with relevant witnesses and evidence. Meanwhile, some pretty damning emails about the Ukraine scandal came to light over the break, including one where a budget office official tells a Defense Department official that there was a, quote, clear direction from POTUS to hold the aid to Ukraine, even after the Defense Department approved it. An even bigger development broke this morning. Former White House national security advisor and Iran bombing enthusiast John Bolton said this morning that he's willing to testify at Trump's impeachment trial if he is subpoenaed by the Senate.

Guys, why the change of heart from Bolton? What do you think? And what happens next here? Look, I don't. It's actually been. I was going to make a joke. It's genuinely been very difficult to understand what John Bolton's motivations have been. I've sort of operated under a basic assumption that John Bolton cares about two things, Middle East entanglements and

himself and money, which I put under his self-interest category. Self-care. Maybe he got his war. He's got his warmongering now and he's like, all right, that's all set. So now I can go just shiv Trump. It's baffling. I mean, apparently, you know, he's also seems he's definitely more interested in book sales than he is in the national interest. But there are places where those may align. That's right. And maybe in testifying, they align.

Tell me, what was your reaction? I mean, look, I think we all were maybe a little confused about this strategy to delay sending over the articles. But now I do think it's been proven to be to be smart, because I don't think you can have a fair impeachment trial without hearing from the people who actually had conversations with Donald Trump. I mean, it sounds so obvious, but of course, they need to hear from John Bolton. Of course, they need to hear from Mick Mulvaney. That is critical to understanding his mindset and whether he had this aid held up. I mean, we now we have these emails that indicate clearly that he was involved in every step of this extortion effort. So I think that, you know,

unfortunately, I think we are going to have to be relying on some Republicans to vote to do the right thing. But, you know, and I think to that point, that's exactly what Pelosi's strategy was about was to and Chuck Schumer said this over the weekend on television, which I thought was smart. If if Pelosi had immediately transmitted the articles of impeachment to the Senate, Mitch McConnell could have potentially held a vote right before Christmas to shut the whole thing down. Maybe not because maybe he couldn't have gotten those every single Republican on board, but he might have. What this did, what keeping this open did, was sort of highlight the attempt at a cover up by Mitch McConnell. And so what happened over those weeks where the where the spotlight was on McConnell and the Republicans? Well, you had Susan Collins come out and say, yeah, you know what?

Even though at first I was sort of going along with this, I think Mitch McConnell working too closely with the White House. That's a problem. Use how Lisa Murkowski say the same thing. Neither of them said that earlier on. It sort of took the extra pressure and the extra time for them to both say that. And then, of course, you had these emails come out. In addition to the ones we read, a New York Times Freedom of Information Act lawsuit unearthed the existence of 20 undisclosed emails between top officials in the White House chief of staff's office and the budget office. So we have those two. And now we have john bolton saying he's willing to accept a senate subpoena it was interesting because he didn't say he'd accept a house subpoena he said he'd accept a senate subpoena presumably

that's because the trial has moved to the senate impeachment has moved to the senate but it does sort of make me wonder if if they refuse to call him in the senate if mitch mcconnell refuses can adam schiff still send him a subpoena or jerry nadler and have him appear in the house well yeah i mean it seems to me he's saying i will be part of a senate trial i will not be part of a house inquiry we don't really know do that well i mean he can do it every one i think once yeah once you go to court legally that would be problematic well i'm going to comply with a senate uh subpoena not a house and then we're problematic. I'm going to comply with a Senate subpoena, not a House one. And then we're back to are we going to wait out the courts to find out the outcome,

which is why I think maybe he's saying he's more willing to obey a Senate subpoena because there's a possibility that a Senate subpoena is implemented much faster because Chief Judge John Roberts is sitting at the top of the trial. I think the most interesting piece of what's been happening is what Schumer said, which is his willingness to now say that he is hopeful that he can get four Republicans and believes it may be possible to get four Republicans to vote for a fair trial. You know, one thing we said before the break was it seemed like it might be a mistake for Mitch McConnell to be so brazen and go on television. Clearly was.

It clearly created distance between him and the caucus. It's clear every day it seems to have gotten harder for people like Cory Gardner, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, others, Romney, to just vote for a trial with no witnesses.

Just Bolton reminding people he could be a witness does a lot of good work to make a Senate trial more possible. It's also notable 538 re-upped some polling that they did from December

that showed 57% of Americans want to hear from new witnesses. So this is a pretty popular thing. Yeah, look, it's hard to trust a ton of polling over a break like that. And there wasn't a lot. But I did notice because I check it all the time. The support for impeachment, which had almost become even right before we left, has now sort of widened a little bit more so that more people are supporting it than opposing it after the vote. And so it's sort of ticked up a little bit. It may be stabilized now. And I think, you know, part of that is people saw that the House of Representatives actually went forward and voted for it, right? They voted for the impeach the president and people who don't pay a lot of attention to politics might look at that and say,

oh, yeah, the president was impeached. Maybe he did do something wrong. And so but I think you're right, Levitt, like it is going to be incredibly difficult. They still might do it, but incredibly difficult for Susan Collins or Lisa Murkowski or these people to say, John Bolton's out there saying, I have information about the president. I was the president's national security advisor, and I have information about what you're impeaching him for. And you're not going to say that he should testify. You're going to say, no, we don't want John Bolton. We're just going to cover it up and move on. I mean, if you're Susan Collins running in Maine, you're Cory Gardner running in Colorado.

That's a hard thing to say. Yeah, I mean, a couple of them have consciences. Consciences are not. Just pure politics. Talk about running in a purple state. That's what it should be about. Regardless of the point I'm making is they don't even need consciences. That's the beauty of it.

So let's talk about 2020. The Iowa caucuses are now less than a month away, and the race remains both oddly stable and wildly unpredictable. There has been way too little. Like our president. Unstable. There has been way too little polling over the last month, but we did get a pair of CBS polls over the weekend

that shows a three-way tie in Iowa for first, with Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden, and Pete Buttigieg all at 23%, Elizabeth Warren at 16%, and Amy Klobuchar at 7%. In New Hampshire, it's Bernie at 27%, Biden at 25%, Warren at 18%, Pete at 13%, and Klobuchar at 7. We also got fourth quarter fundraising totals with Bernie Sanders way out in the lead at $34.5 million. Pete's at 24-7, Biden 22, Warren 21. The next Democratic presidential debate takes place in Iowa on January 14th. Jesus, next Tuesday. Wow. So we talked about this a few times before the

break, but if you look at the numbers in the first four states and Super Tuesday, it looks like Biden has held on to his frontrunner status, but Bernie Sanders is now in probably the strongest position to challenge that frontrunner status. What do you guys think accounts for Bernie's growing strength and what's his path here i mean bernie is the front runner i think he's the front i i think he's winning in iowa and he's winning in new hampshire i don't know how to describe a front runner any other way and he's he raised 34.5 million dollars this quarter without doing any fundraising events yeah it's impossible to overstate how valuable that is to a candidate if you have a strong performance in

iowa and you just get tens of millions of dollars just rolling in online, like he's a juggernaut. Yeah, I think I would not call him the front runner because I still think at the very least, national polling, Biden's still, if you look at the average of all the Iowa polling, he's up at the top.

Bernie's clearly in the lead in New Hampshire. We have an early state primary process where it goes Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina, and he is winning when you sequence it that way. Let's talk about Bernie's path. Bernie's path is winning Iowa or at least being right at the top, which is very possible according to the polling right now. Winning New Hampshire where he is ahead. Winning Nevada where there has been fucking no polling whatsoever.

But it is a caucus state. It's about organizing. Bernie has the best organization hillary only won it by six hillary yeah so you could see bernie doing well there south carolina joe biden is far far ahead so you could see joe biden winning south carolina then you go to super tuesday um the sanders campaign is is betting strongly on a big win in california which is the biggest prize on super tuesday it's like 10% of the delegates. Yeah, and I think the polling currently bears that out. You look beyond that, there's Texas on Super Tuesday.

Joe Biden has been far ahead in Texas. There's places like, there's New York. There hasn't really been a lot of polling there. But there are quite a few states in Super Tuesday that have both heavily African-American and Latino populations. And according to the national polling, Bernie is still very far behind among African-Americans and still fairly behind among Latinos, but not as much. So the question is, you know, Bernie's base beyond white voters is probably bigger than any other candidate in the

race. It is bigger than any other candidate in the race besides Joe Biden. But Joe Biden's is still bigger, which is why I would sort of give maybe the edge to him still. And yet it's the it's the two of them out there. And I think the question now is what for the other candidates, what a Pete Buttigieg or Elizabeth Warren do to sort of break their stranglehold on one, two from Bernie and Biden and beyond them. Look, like maybe possibly I'm not going to call their campaigns dead at all. But like Amy Klobuchar, Cory Booker and Mike Bloomberg, I would say, are like the longest of shots right now. They might still do it, but they're pretty long. It's one of those four that is probably going to be it. You know, Bernie has really benefited, I think, from the from first always had just really strong debate performances.

He's just an incredibly consistent campaigner. really strong debate performances. He's just an incredibly consistent campaigner. Obviously, we've said this from the beginning that he's one of a few of the candidates that's had a clean and easily identifiable message and mission as a candidate from the beginning. But he's benefited from the scrutiny that has been going towards Warren, that's been going towards Buttigieg, that's been going towards Biden. I think that there are a lot of Bernie fans who are critical of the mainstream media saying, you don't treat Bernie like a front runner. You don't take Bernie seriously. You don't take us seriously. You don't talk to Bernie supporters because the people in your life look more like Warren supporters or Buttigieg

supporters or what have you. But he's also benefited from that in that he hasn't had the same kind of negative, I think, coverage. Right. Especially on policy that has come for Warren, that has come for Pete, that has certainly come for Biden. And I think in that quiet, when Warren had her surge, there was Bernie just waiting for that scrutiny to kind of bring her down. And when she faced that kind of health care month or six weeks that hurt her numbers, Bernie wasernie was just chugging along and he's sort of peeking at a good moment for him and i think that helped him then and i think that is now his challenge because he'll get uh he'll potentially get more media scrutiny um but certainly i would imagine that at this next debate

um bernie will there will be a few contrasts drawn with Bernie. If not, I don't know what people are doing. I mean, maybe they want him to be the nominee. Yeah, right. I mean, the reality is like there's like a couple states where the campaign has actually been happening, right? There's Iowa, New Hampshire, some of the other early states. I would rather be ahead in the states where the campaign has been happening than the ones where it hasn't, right?

I mean, I think that if Bernie does really well in Iowa, New Hampshire, there's a strong likelihood that the South Carolina numbers shift and shift quickly because of name ID, because people want to be with the winner for a million reasons. Now, like the question is, Bernie has this huge field program, apparently, reportedly, like 250 staffers in Iowa, a huge organization back at his headquarters. Question is whether that organization and this group of supporters that he had that when you look at the Iowa polling, his support is just rock solid and consistent over time. There's some pollsters that re-interview the same people over and over again. They just are with Bernie. They're ride or die for Bernie

and not considering anybody else, apparently. The question is, do those people show up? Are they right about the caucus universe? We don't know. But I mean, the thing that would concern me for Biden is whether the money, that organization and momentum can beat out the obvious lingering affinity for Joe Biden in a lot of communities and the overwhelming desire people have to just pick someone that is, quote unquote, electable and can beat Trump. I don't know. Like you guys said, a month is a long time. There's a bunch of debates. There's a lot of negative attacks that will happen. No one has touched Bernie, strangely, to date that's going to change i think on the question of how effective are the early states in shaping the rest of the race is and this has been the whole the question through the whole primary is this 2007 2008 or is this more like 2016 and in 2006 2008 is exactly what you said, Tommy. Barack Obama wins Iowa

and suddenly all the numbers everywhere else shift and he gets a huge bounce and he doesn't sort of waltz his way to the nomination. Then it's a drawn out fight for months and months. Months and months and months. Worst waltz I've ever seen. Slog. Crawling.

But anyway, he ends up winning. Or is it like 16 when Bernie doesie did does really well in iowa almost beats hillary beats her in new hampshire but then the south carolina numbers don't move hillary's demographic firewall stays and it's just a demographic game for every and so you could tell which states bernie were going to win and you could tell which states that she was going to win i think one difference might be that bernie wasn't really running hard for most of 2016 he was a protest candidate until they realized, oh my God, something's happening here. And then they really dug in. That ain't

true this time. He's got a big organization. He's putting money into building a field program. He's better equipped to capture that momentum this time. And I think on the other side, the other thing that's different though, is what you pointed out, which is the fear that has pervaded this entire electorate of beating Donald Trump. Now, I will say, though, that for Bernie, the Bernie Sanders campaign has been very smart about this from the beginning. They have been making electability arguments for Bernie from the beginning of this race, knowing, I think, that that is on a lot of voters' minds as someone who can beat Trump. And they show it's very unlike a campaign to just go show polls of you beating Donald

Trump, especially when you're like a lefty guy like Bernie Sanders. But they have been doing that from the beginning of the race. If you look at the three, you know, three leaders in the polls now, right, with Warren slightly behind them. But look at look at Buttigieg, Biden and Bernie. They're each offering a prospective electability argument, unproven electability argument. Right. Biden's is that basically, you know, I have this appeal to moderates. I'm this long, I'm this stable figure. So, you know, I'm the guy that can win. Check out the Wisconsin polls. Those will hold up, trust me, despite the withering attacks I'm going to take, despite the fact that deep down,

you know, that I'm not as live a candidate as maybe I would have once been. Stick with me. I'll get us over the finish line. I'm the safe, stable choice. Buttigieg is offering more of a rhetorical and kind of a contrast argument and kind of saying, I'm the smart one. I'm the guy that knows how to do this. I put together this campaign, you know, generational change. Bernie's has been offering this sort of working class revolution argument. But again, it is, I think, now that he is leading in the polls, I think the big question for him at the debate, I think for Democrats considering whether to make Bernie Sanders the nominee is, are you ready to throw your lot in with that argument? Do you believe the strength of his coalition, which is incredibly strong, the passion he brings to the table,

the new voters he brings in, the young people he brings in, the money he brings in, do you believe that that is enough to overcome the attacks on bernie as a far left candidate who might alienate some people uh and who will be attacked as a socialist every single day and look it's a it's a very easy thing to prove it's once the voting starts right right if it turns out in those cbs polls it you know bernie had more first-time caucus goers in that poll than anyone else. If Iowa comes and he brings out a bunch of new caucus goers, if the coalition looks diverse and big, if as other candidates drop out, he can sort of get some of that support from other Democrats and doesn't look like a factional candidate, then his case will be proven correct. If not, his case is wrong. So it's just very it's very it's we're going to know pretty quickly when the voting starts. So it's just very it's very it's we're going to know pretty quickly when the voting starts.

And until then, I mean, Biden's, I think, been quite cleverly trying to make this electability case for himself. For example, this weekend, he had Congresswoman Chrissy Houlihan, Elaine Luria and Congressman Conor Lamb out there with them. And Abby Finkenauer. And Abby Finkenauer. Some recently elected Democrats were far more moderate, were part of the wave that got swept in in 2018. And, you know, we need those people to stay in Congress to have Nancy Pelosi be speaker. And, you know, I think Biden's making an argument that I can win in their districts, which means I can win across the country. I do want to talk briefly before we go about how the candidates have handled the Iran crisis. Biden was out with a video the next day that played up his experience in foreign policy and with world leaders. Bernie came out very forcefully against the killing and hit Biden sort of indirectly and directly for his Iraq war

vote. Buttigieg talked about his military experience. Warren talked about stopping endless wars. How do you guys think this crisis could affect the primary, if at all? Obviously, it is very early. I mean, the anecdotal evidence I've seen from following like Dave Weigel and other smart reporters who are out in Iowa and in New Hampshire is that it's just not coming up very much. It's unlikely to really materially impact things. Now, there were some reporters who said that this just upended the entire campaign. And, you know, the question now is whether Biden's experience can outweigh Bernie's, you know, better record on not invading places.

That may be true. I think they've like I'd like to see all of them make a bigger case against Trump on foreign policy. It should be about how he's not ending wars. He's starting them. And by the way, North Korea just said that they're going to completely pull out of what they pretended to agree to at the Singapore summit and resume their nuclear program. So we have risks on all sides. So that should be part of the case. But I think it's fundamentally like an electability argument. It's going to be to me also just determined by events. If the situation

in Iran escalates and we are involved in a protracted, some sort of military engagement, it will become a bigger part of the uh campaign if not uh then uh we have memories like goldfish and it will not be part of no i mean i think so right where it's going to come up the most is this next debate and i and i think it's they'll all be asked about it and what will be fascinating there is to watch the judgment versus experience argument the redux of of 2007 2008 when ob said, I had the judgment to oppose the Iraq war. And Hillary said, well, I have the experience to be president. He doesn't. And now Biden is in that Clinton role and Bernie is in the judgment role.

So they go to Biden. And then there's Pete Buttigieg, too, who's going to say, my experience is actually being someone who served abroad and I was against the Iraq war. And so he's going to try to, you know. He didn't really take a position on this recent strike, though. Biden is going to ask about it, give a mostly fine kind of halting, but good answer on on Iran, followed by Bernie just hitting him on the Iraq war. need to be prepared for this because i think where biden has the most vulnerability is bernie hitting him on iraq and biden becoming very defensive about his iraq war vote or sort of you know a little bit of rewriting history of when he was against it what he said i mean i saw john kerry go through this in 2004 like and hillary clinton go through this and does everyone who's voted for

that war and they look the easiest thing to do was also the right thing to do. I was wrong. I was wrong about that vote. Yeah. Redefining that vote is a tough road to hoe, John. Credit to Bernie, though. I mean, he's put out legislation that would prevent funding from being used to go to war with Iran. And I think that's the most important thing Congress can do. And so he's got a pretty important how to point to point to there. It's also interesting that Warren was sort of making a wag the dog case on Iran and saying the timing is suspicious that this would happen during impeachment and pointing at that. I mean, I think all of our minds probably

went there, but I don't know that that's, I don't look at it. It's an interesting case to be made. We'll see what voters think. I would make a bigger strategic argument as well, which she has also been doing. And look, I mean, you don't have to be defending Trump to say that it's not potentially a wag the dog thing. All you have to know is that this guy is fucking childish and impulsive. And if he sees a couple of cable clips of people storming an embassy or protesting outside an embassy

and then orders the assassination of someone, you can draw the direct line from one to the other. Like he's impulsive and fucking just says crazy shit and does crazy shit all the time he doesn't need ulterior motives this guy yeah you know it's just okay uh when we come back we will have tommy's conversation with senator chris murphy On the line is Senator Chris Murphy. He's a U.S. Senator from Connecticut. He's a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and one of the best in the business about explaining complicated foreign policy matters. Senator, thank you for doing the show. Yeah, thanks for having me. So there's been a lot of justifications about the Trump administration's strike against Qasem

Soleimani in the past few days. The White House said the strike was justified because there was an imminent threat to U.S. personnel. The Washington Post last night, I believe, reported that Mike Pompeo, the Secretary of State, has been actually pushing this Soleimani assassination idea to Trump for a long time, for several months. Have you seen this underlying intelligence that the administration claims showed an imminent threat to U.S. personnel? And do you buy that rationale? It's four days after the attack. We're talking on Monday afternoon, and I have still not seen any intelligence to suggest that there was an imminent attack against U.S. forces. And I can also tell you this, I just came from reading the classified

war powers notification to Congress. And there's two things that I can say. One, there's no reason that it needs to be classified. There's nothing in there that hasn't been publicly reported. But second, there is no intelligence inside that document about this supposed imminent attack. So I remain open to being convinced that there was an imminent attack, but the fact that they haven't delivered that information suggests that the information might be as strong as Secretary Pompeo was suggesting. But of course, their burden is not just to show that there was an imminent attack, but to actually show why the assassination of Qasem Soleimani not only prevented that attack, but will lead to less harm being done to Americans

in the long run. And of course, today, we are deeply worried that this ultimately is going to lead to much more harm to American personnel than would have occurred if this attack had not happened. And we are already seeing all of the spillover effects of this massive escalation, both in Iraq and through some of these early decisions, particularly the one to walk away from the nuclear program in Tehran. Yeah. So Secretary Mike Pompeo was asked about this increased threat to U.S. personnel, and he dismissed it as a little noise here in the interim. Do you agree with that assessment that the risk to U.S. personnel serving abroad is just a little

bit of noise? I'm curious what your reaction is to the Secretary of State's comments, given that he's the person in charge of protecting thousands of Americans serving abroad, and he sounded pretty smug and dismissive. What has happened in Iraq already is not a little noise, right? Let's just go through what's already occurred. Already, we have evacuated all American personnel from a U.S. ally in the Middle East, Iraq. We have shut down our counter-ISIS program. NATO has suspended its training mission of Iraqi troops who are out there fighting ISIS as we speak. So what has occurred already is grave to U.S. national security interests. And what you saw

today was not tens of thousands of Iranians on the street. You saw millions of Iranians on the street who are not going to allow the Iranian regime to sit on the sidelines. There is going to be a serious and perhaps asymmetric reprisal against U.S. forces, U.S. civilians, or perhaps U.S. political leaders back in the United States. There's a reason why Bush and Obama, as you know, didn't carry out an attack on Soleimani. It was because they feared that ultimately that was going to put more U.S. interests in the crosshairs. And that's not a little noise, right? That's potentially in the end hundreds, if not thousands of American lives. And what's happened already is not a little noise. It's serious harm to our security interests, in particular, our fight against ISIS. I'm just trying to imagine what would have happened if

Susan Rice had said an increased risk to U.S. personnel serving abroad, including our military, was a little noise. Mike Pompeo would have called for her head. Yeah, I thought the exact same thing. So I was in the Face the Nation studio yesterday listening to him say those words on a pre-tape. And the first thing that crossed my mind was there's no way anyone in the Obama administration could get away with that kind of cavalier attitude about U.S. lives abroad. And listen, that's been the case from the very beginning. It's not as if this administration didn't have fair warning that pulling out of the Iran deal was going to ultimately escalate into a military conflict that could get Americans killed, right? We've been saying that for a year

now, and they have brushed those criticisms aside, and now they are reckoning with the consequences of an escalation by choice that started not just a few weeks ago with rocket attacks against U.S. personnel, but a year ago when this administration, against all of the advice from people inside the White House, not the administration, when the president, against the advice he was getting from his own secretary of state and Department of Defense pulled out of the Iran nuclear agreement. Yeah. I want to talk about Congress's role for a minute. So I saw this morning that Speaker Pelosi said the House is going to vote this week on a war powers resolution that she thinks will limit Trump's action on Iran. I don't know that the text of that resolution is public yet, but Congresswoman Alyssa Slotkin, who served in the CIA and the Defense Department, is apparently going to manage that process. And then I know that Bernie Sanders and Congressman Ro Khanna want to or have dropped a bill that would prevent money from being spent on offensive operations by the U.S. military against Iran. They previously put that legislation forward before it actually got attached to the NDAA, a big funding bill for the Pentagon with, I believe, 27 House Republican votes, but got

stripped in conference. So I guess my question to you is, what can Congress do to constrain Trump with respect to taking further military action in Iran? And what should listeners do if they want to encourage Congress to take such actions? Both of those initiatives that you outlined are important. A war powers resolution essentially clarifies that the president can't take offensive action without congressional support. The worry, of course, is that the president will, A, veto that resolution or ignore it. Polling funding is perhaps more consequential because by polling funding, you establish a pretty airtight case in court if the president were to try to go around Congress and use monies appropriated to him to

fight a war overseas. Of course, the danger here is that the president is going to continue to rely on this absurdly outsized authority he has under Article 2, which he would claim doesn't require him to come to Congress because he's just responding to imminent attacks or attacks that have been launched. And so at some point, Congress is going to have to likely do something that's even stronger than either of the measures that have been introduced thus far. The measures introduced thus far say you can't use U.S. funds to launch preemptive attacks against Iran. At some point, Congress may have to just cut off all funding for any military force against Iran if the president continues to go around us and use this Article II authority. And listen, to be

honest, a lot of us had reservations about the ways in which the Obama administration used Article 2 authority without coming to Congress. The Obama administration was much more, I think, attentive to congressional authorization, but it wasn't uniform. The administration has been making the case for maybe a year that the 2001 authorization for the use of military force that was passed after 9-11 somehow authorizes military action in Iran. Do you think it's time to repeal or replace the AUMF? It is. We should be redoing the 2001 AUMF. We still have al-Qaeda elements that exist in the Middle East and in other places that the United States has to fight, but it has now been bastardized to be able to justify fights against all sorts of enemies that weren't contemplated in 2001. You saw Mike Pence just make this absurd argument over the

weekend that Iran was providing shelter to elements that attacked the United States through al-Qaeda. So we need to do a new authorization of military force against terrorist groups, but then we need to just repeal the authorization of military force in Iraq and for the Iraq war. That authorization may also be used by the administration to try to justify taking the fight to Iran because Iran threatens U.S. forces in Iraq. But that was an authorization to oust Saddam Hussein. Our interests in that country today have nothing to do with the vote that took place in 2003. So that authorization just should be outright repealed. Senator, have you considered authorizing funds for all members of Congress to get memberships to Mar-a-Lago so

that you can get poolside briefings from the president about upcoming military strikes? So when my kids were born, I sort of just foreswore golf. I stopped playing. But now I feel like I have to pick it back up again. And that would maybe allow me to just sort of go down there and linger around the golf course. And maybe I'd find a Trump official or Trump himself walk by me on the tee to the first hole, and I could get the kind of briefing that I thought I was going to get when I ran a $15 million campaign to get elected to the United States Senate. Maybe you can get a contract with Fraud Guarantee, too. You can meet some nice Russian officials. It's just something to chew on. I don't want to tell you to do your business. I would love to meet those guys. I mean,

they seem like fascinating individuals. So at some point in my life, coming across people like Lev Parnas might be worth a laugh at least. So less of a laughing matter. So the coalition to fight ISIS, you talked about some of these lingering Al-Qaeda elements in the Middle East. The coalition to stop ISIS has said that we need to stop all of our counter-ISIS efforts, stop all of our training, because the forces in Iraq conducting those missions need to protect themselves. They need to protect U.S. personnel in the region. They need to protect our bases. Can you talk about what this strike against Soleimani and the pausing of that mission against ISIS will mean for our efforts to just fully root out the organization?

So I was in Iraq less than a year ago in the spring of last year, and what we heard was really alarming. ISIS is regrouping. We knew that would happen, but it's happening in part because the United States hasn't done enough to help Iraq rebuild from the massive destruction done to parts of that country, Mosul at the top of the list, when we took out ISIS's caliphate. ISIS, of course, is also regrouping in Syria as we speak today, a consequence in part of our withdrawal from that country militarily, also the fact that we allowed hundreds potentially of ISIS fighters to escape from prison. And so this is a moment when ISIS is coming back together. It is the worst moment possible for the United States and our allies to stand down in the fight against ISIS. ISIS still has intentions to hit the United States and U.S. targets as well as our allies in

Europe. And the fact that we are now shuttering that mission in Iraq after having just effectively shuttered that mission in Syria and stopping the training of Iraqi forces. It's just a gift to ISIS at a moment when they were starting to get a little traction again. And I hope that Republicans who today are cheering this execution of Qasem Soleimani will at least find some way to put some pressure on the administration to walk and chew gum at the same time. We have to get back to this anti-ISIS mission and we need to do it soon. Yeah. Senator, you've mentioned a couple of times President Trump's decision to withdraw from the JCPOA, the Iran deal back in 2018. from the JCPOA, the Iran deal back in 2018. I think back to that time in 2015 when Obama proposed and then passed the deal and the amount of scrutiny from the media, from Congress, the amount of fighting and recrimination that happened around a diplomatic effort to stop Iran's nuclear program versus how little scrutiny from the media and Congress there has been to date about an already started war with Iran. How do we fix that imbalance?

Because it seems like there's a whole bunch of incentives set up for people like Donald Trump to take military action before they will conduct diplomacy. Well, I mean, you know how I feel about this. I think this entire town is hardwired to understand American strength only through a military lens. And it seeps into the decisions we make about how we fund the U.S. national security infrastructure. We still today have more folks working in military grocery stores than we have diplomats in the State Department. grocery stores than we have diplomats in the State Department. And the responsibility for that imbalance, that imbalance of funding, but that imbalance of emphasis, lies at the feet of both Republicans and Democrats, right? We have all been responsible for making America think that the only way that you protect this country is by firing a rocket. And that is simply not true.

And of course, the diplomatic achievement of the Obama administration to take away a path to nuclear weapon from Iran was the seminal example of how you protect American interests with diplomatic power. But I still remain confused as to why all of us here continue to celebrate these dramatic increases in the military budget every year while we flat fund effectively the State Department and both Republicans and Democrats. And the Democrats running for president have to start talking more fulsomely about how you rebuild the State Department, how you rebuild diplomacy, and how that is absolutely essential in the long run to protecting the United States. I totally agree. And you've put forward a comprehensive

plan for how to do that that I think people should check out, frankly. Rethinking the battlefield, it's a proposal to double the size of the State Department over five years and USAID. And that sounds like a pie-in-the-sky proposal, but doubling those two budgets is less than the annual increase in appropriations that we give to the Defense Department every year. And we just have to recognize that the threats posed to this country today are by and large not conventional military threats. The way that Iran throws its power around the region is, yes, often through conventional military attacks, but through propaganda, through the way in which they use their oil, through the way in which they use information networks. And we just don't have the capacity to meet those capabilities that when Iran uses them, when Russia uses them, when China uses them.

So, you know, at some point we have to step back from this management of U.S. foreign policy crisis by crisis and ask ourselves why we're getting beat over and over again, right? And the reason is, I believe, that we are just badly misresourced. Yeah, agreed. Last question for you. So John Bolton this morning, the former National Security Advisor, said that if the Senate issues a subpoena for his testimony in the impeachment inquiry, he is prepared to testify. For listeners at home, who gets to decide if Bolton is subpoenaed? And do you think that the Senate should call him to testify? I wish the answer was different, but I think the answer is Mitch McConnell. Now, technically, 50 senators, 51 senators get to decide that question, right? If we have 51 senators who

agree to vote in favor of a resolution to subpoena John Bolton or Mick Mulvaney or the emails that are still sitting in the White House that I think very clearly likely give further evidence to the size of this conspiracy to defraud taxpayers, then those subpoenas are issued. But my guess is that Mitch McConnell isn't going to let four of his senators vote with Democrats and that ultimately it is his decision and the leadership of the Republican Party in the Senate's decision as to whether John Bolton comes and testifies before us. But like Bolton is now, you know, this giant blinking red light as to why we can't rush this trial without any witnesses. I mean, it would just be criminal. trial without any witnesses. I mean, it would just be criminal. It would be senatorial malpractice if McConnell now, in the face of the offer for Bolton to tell us everything he knows,

tries to speed this to an end process. But I thought the same thing about not giving Merrick Garland a hearing. I thought that would be senatorial malpractice. It was, and it didn't matter. So nothing is beyond Mitch McConnell. Yes, that's why everyone listening needs to pick a Senate race to volunteer for or give money to and vote accordingly. None of this is outside of the realm of politics, right? I mean, we can all sit here and be scared stiff as to what is going to happen ultimately through this blind escalation with Iran. But the reason we might not be able to check his authority is because we're down three votes in the Senate. And if we correct for that, then everything changes.

Agreed. Senator Murphy, thank you so much for doing the show and for everything you're doing to constrain this lunatic who lives in the white house same thanks to you guys thanks to chris murphy for joining us today and uh you know good to be back it's great to be back look as i learned at the guy fieri restaurant at the cancun international airport it ain't no thing but a chicken wing and that's just something we all should just keep in mind. Wow. I did not expect that. It's a good one.

I hope you enjoyed it. Still am, John. I hope we're all here to... Cut that. Cut that. Leave it in. Cut that. Happy New Year. Pod Save America is a product of Crooked Media.

The senior producer is Michael Martinez. Our assistant producer is Jordan Waller. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin is our sound engineer. Thanks to Carolyn Reston, Tanya Sominator, and Katie Long for production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Narmal Coney, and Yael Freed, and Milo Kim, who film and upload these episodes as a video every week.