The Chris Cuomo Project - Trump Is About to Make a Big Mistake on Iran

Episode Date: April 7, 2026

Chris Cuomo breaks down President Trump’s escalating threats to strike Iranian infrastructure if a deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz isn’t reached — and why he argues that approach would hurt civilians far more than the regime. He explains why bombing power plants, bridges, and critical systems is unlikely to trigger regime change, how the deadline strategy risks backfiring, and why the U.S. may already be stuck in a conflict with no clear exit. Cuomo also argues that both parties are missing the political reality at home — that voters care more about affordability, stability, and domestic priorities than another prolonged conflict abroad. Join The Chris Cuomo Project on YouTube for ad-free episodes, early releases, exclusive access to Chris, and more: https://www.youtube.com/@chriscuomo/join Follow and subscribe to The Chris Cuomo Project on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube for new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday: https://linktr.ee/cuomoproject Get 20% off your DeleteMe plan at https://joindeleteme.com/CUOMO with promo code CUOMO. Get 25% off Cowboy Colostrum with code CUOMO at https://www.cowboycolostrum.com/CUOMO #news #cuomo #trump #iran Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Go to Quince, Q-U-I-N-C-C-E dot com slash Cuomo, and you'll get free shipping and 365-day rest. returns. Quince.com slash Cuomo. Don't do it, Mr. President. Do not bomb the infrastructure in Iran. Deadlines are meant to be changed, especially in your world. You need to find another way to get out of this rather than punishing the people who need you the most in Iran. You're already punishing the people who need you the most, the American people, because they did not sign up for this. It's costing them money. It's costing focus. It's costing focus.

It's costing us economic hardship back here at home and increased angst that just nothing's going to get any better. But let's deal with one country's complete just deprivation at a time. You can't bomb Iran's infrastructure, and I'll make the case why. And the reason I'm making this case is obviously not to the president. It's to people who want better. If you want to win the midterms, this is your moment. and not because this is going to give you the ultimate Trump sucks. That doesn't win the midterms.

Fix America first. That's what wins the midterms. And Trump has given that away. I'm Chris Cuomo. Welcome to the Chris Cuomo Project. Let me lay out what's happening here. This deadline for Iran is really not. It's actually deadline for another bad idea from the Trump administration.

There is no world where hitting infrastructure in Iran is worse for the regime than it is for the Iranian people. Now, part of being a critical thinker is that multiple things can be true at the same time. Okay. The Iranian people do want us to attack Iran because they think we're there to remove the regime, even though the president keeps saying he doesn't really care about regime change and he'd be okay with a theocratic regime. So I don't know why the Iranian people are holding out hope that he's going to get rid of the regime when he keeps saying he is not. And I know he said he'd have their back, but they have to know by now that that was a hollow promise. I mean, look, since I said that the war is over when he gave that speech, okay, to the nation, why?

Because he clearly doesn't have a strategy. They may, look, it may be true. Every source I have says, of course we knew. that the regime would mess with the straight of Hormuz. It was in every simulation we did. Well, then why didn't you have any plan to stop it or make it in sooner than this? I don't get it.

If you knew they were going to do this, and I get it, it doesn't seem like you should have been surprised, which is why it was surprising that you did seem like you were surprised, and you seemed like you were surprised because you didn't have any plan in place. But why is it still happening then? If you were so ready, if you knew, you know, something's wrong here. You know, and what I think it's suggestive of from my reporting is this was part, seemed like a good idea at the time.

The regime sucks. They won't really negotiate. You know what they need is a good punch in the nose and to remind the world who the big shot is. And it was a distraction from Epstein and all the problems at home. And that is really pathetic. And it's really insulting to the American people who voted for. him and who believed in something better. How we got here is in the past. There is no advantage in just beating up on Trump for this being a bad decision because I don't think it moves the needle

past. If you want to believe in Trump or, you know, if you're part of MAGA, well, the regime is bad and they needed a punch and they were about to do something really bad and they had more capabilities than ever. So we had to do it now. Rubio says that. Trump says it. The whole administration says it. Do I believe that? No, but it doesn't really move the needle versus you suck. You screwed up this whole thing. It's been a disaster from the beginning. You hit a girl school. You lied about it. You just hit a university. You lied about it. You know, you keep apologizing for things. You keep extending things. They keep embarrassing you. You've gotten to a point where the American people don't know whether to believe a bunch of tyrannical religious zealots or their own president.

I mean, how fucked up is that universe, but that's where we are. I don't see the advantage in that fight personally. I think if you look at what has happened since he gave the speech. He gave the speech, I came out of the speech, what did I say? It's over. Why? There is no strategy or ambition to get anything better for America than what has already arguably been achieved, degrading, screwing with the leadership,

scrambling their eggs, helping them understand that now they've got to be different and do differently. Otherwise, this happens again. All very weak, in my opinion. But that's it. You're not getting, there's no more good that can come out of it if you're not in the regime change game. And I'm not saying you should be. You suggested it in Magaland. Not me.

Okay. But since that speech, when I said it's over, no more good can come. plane shot down, pilot almost captured, and now we're bragging about getting our guy back like, you know, oh yeah, great. Yeah, he was shot down and you got him. Thank God. Imagine if you hadn't. You hit a university. You tried to hide it again. You allowed Israel to hit this gas thing that drove the regime crazy and they hit Cutter and cutter got upset.

And you had to apologize and yell at your ally and tell them, don't war like. that again. You said you don't care about hitting schools repeatedly, but you do care about hitting gas depots, which is disgusting. You don't care and openly admit that the Kurds may have stolen the guns that you gave them to help overthrow the regime. Now, I don't know that to be true, but I think it's a really screwed up thing that you said that and you did say it. You're now threatening to plunge the entire Iranian society into darkness and thirst. This has all happened since I told you it was over because there's no other good that can come out of this. And it's been a week.

Look, this is a sinkhole. We all know it. The president knows it. He's looking for an exit. He's given them another deadline to make a deal. They know they have the leverage. But remember, it's not because they're better in any way. It's because they have nothing to lose except their lives and they see a perverse sense of glory.

that. The advantage here is not in beating the obvious to death, which is Trump you suck and what you did here sucks. That's the typical move, right? Do it on Twitter or do that. Telling you Twitter doesn't win the midterms. Twitter is overweighted, right fringe. And now this insurgent left resistance, let's call it. But it's still dominated, especially Twitter and a couple of the other major platforms by righty, aggressive, revenge, porn, slash rage bait. Okay? What wins the midterms is we can do better than this. You know they can't.

You know MAGA can't do any better than what they've done already. This, this, they shot their shot. We can do better. We got that you think we were a little crazy and we were talking about things you don't care about and you were talking about them in a way that frightened you. We get it. That's not us. Those guys aren't running. We're running. And here's where we are. We can fix. We can fix. We can fix America first. We can fix America first. Health care affordability. We can do it. Fix ICE. Fix the asylum laws. So that immigration really works for this country and for the people who want to come here and for the jobs that we need to fill and the dreams that we need to satisfy of those already here and those who want to come to make this country what it can. can be. We're going to take these things on. We're going to take it on here. If they won't work with us and we know they won't, we need to have a margin where we can make it happen. And if we have

to, we'll blow up the filibuster. Now, I don't believe they should blow up the filibuster. I think it's a huge mistake. I think we need something like consensus in the Senate. I don't think it should be an echo of the House. I believe in the idea that the Senate should be the saucer under a hot cup of tea. I forget which president said that, but whoever said it was right. And I think that you shouldn't even play with that, but I'm just laying it out there because I believe Democrats are going to want to hear that. I hope not, but I got to lay it out there for you so you can use it as food for thought. Support comes from Delete Me. This is so important in our digital age. What's our big concern? People are going to steal our stuff, right? They're going to take our information.

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The only way to get the 20% off is to go to join deleteme.com slash quomo. All right, enter the code Cuomo at checkout. This deadline, therefore, this I'm shooting for the Tuesday that the deadline expires. It must be extended. I hope he lies. Or really, I hope he doesn't have to lie. I hope there is some movement on the regime side and they want to make a deal on the straight. But if he doesn't, I hope he does lie to give himself more time and get out of this.

Because hurting the Iranian people, the Iranian people aren't going to be happy forever that you're fucking up their whole world when there's no regime change on the other side of it. And that becomes abundantly clear to everybody. Because look, what I'm being told by people who are part of these sympathetic groups who are talking to people on the ground and working for people in. Iran, they believe there is going to be regime change, that Trump is saying that, but it's some master bluff. I don't buy it, okay? I think boots on the ground, I think if he knows anything now, he knows that's a dead letter. I think it's a death sentence for him.

God forbid, it's a death sentence for the people he sends in. I mean, you know, that's a reasonable enough assumption. You're not going to get in and get out. Nobody's going to get hurt. They're shooting down our jets. I mean, we've already had people die and who knows what numbers they're hiding from us. you got to let this deadline go. Hitting the infrastructure is just, it's the wrong proportionality.

It's the wrong proportionality. Let the Israelis go in there with some secret commando Mossad force and kill a bunch of the leaders or one of their beeper tricks or one of those deals. But punishing the Iranian people, I mean, how long do you think destroying what semblance of life they have there is going to work? in terms of hurting the regime more than it hurts the surrounding population. Doesn't make any sense.

It can't keep being the case that the Iranian people are happy to suffer when there's nothing better coming their way. This deadline has to go away. I don't like saying this because I do believe in helping the Iranian people. I know that that's not that popular thing. I just think the American people owe them for how they got into this mess in the first place.

because America did have a hand in allowing the Islamists to come in to Iran. They just did. Look at your history. But I'm not saying that we had to help them this way. What happened the old running guns and using the CIA and disinformation campaigns and spy stuff and spy craft and all that stuff? And, you know, giving them the money, giving them the stuff. Sure, sure.

But soft power. Why'd we have to do it this way? I'm fine with helping the Iranian people to overthrow that regime. The regime is toxic and dangerous. there and here. But not like this. I never said anything like this. I never even imagined anything like this.

I thought they would just bomb and leave. I mean, you know, this sustained campaign and effort in the Stradahor moves. I mean, I didn't ask for any of this. I wouldn't want it any of this. So I don't think it's wrong to say that the Iranian people deserve help and overthrowing this despotic regime that we helped install. But how you do it, and I've been saying that from the beginning and it's not a nuance point.

And now this deadline, otherwise they're going to hit the infrastructure, how did it work hitting that bridge? It changed nothing. These people are crazy zealots that are generations deep. Okay? Generations, they've been doing this. They've been in there almost 50 years. And the guys who were behind Khomeini was old, man. He was old. He didn't have the ambitions that these other guys who were coming into power now,

half. I'm telling you, the French president saying you opened a Pandora's box, he's not the only one to say it, but man, look, how you got here was a really ugly path that you shouldn't have taken, but you did. Where you go from here is where the focus is for two reasons. One, because this could get worse. He could put boots on the ground. That's how desperate this guy is to look good. And don't tell me, no, this is how desperate he is to keep us safe. If you, you're not, were that certain that you needed to do this to keep us safe, that the regime was that big a threat, you would take the regime out. I'm not saying that would be popular. I'm not asking for that, but I'm just telling you right now, if you or I had the power and we believe that the regime

was dangerous enough to have to do something about it, I would either hit it and then, you know, what do you call it hurt than wait um and you know hurt wait you want to talk now hurt wait you want to talk now kill comaney you want to talk now i would have done it like that and much less commitment much more randomized than we're going to war ignoring congress and if i really thought no man these guys are just too dangerous and it seems like they had more stuff than they even knew because they keep pulling out big guns every time I say I got all their big guns, then remove the regime. I'm not asking for that.

I don't think there's political will for that in America. I don't even know how doable it is, to be honest. Why? Did we do it with the Taliban? Did we do it with ISIS? I watched Trump crush ISIS. The Taliban is still in control in the same regions. What are you talking about?

Nothing's destroyed. You're fighting an idea. They reform. populate, they rearm, and they return to the same bullshit. Hamas is still there, Hezbollah is still there. I mean, regime change is hard, man. Killing people's easy, especially when life is cheap to you and you've got the biggest muscles in the world.

I mean, this is easy what we're doing. We're making it look hard. But, you know, they don't even have an air force in this place. I mean, imagine if they did. They're shooting down fighter jets. now by luck. Support comes from cowboy colostrum. What is colostrum? It helps your gut. And why does it help your gut? Because it is actually mother's milk. You ever hear that? It is the first nutrition that comes from the mother cow to the calf. And it has all of the nutrition and supplements and

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The deadline is dead on arrival. Okay? Deadline, I think you're dead if you cross the line. I do. I don't think bombing the infrastructure gets you anything, except more people in pain in Iran. And this regime has responded to none of that. You have to get out.

Look, call it a win. Say you degraded and this and that and you're going to keep helping the Iranian people, but they've got to do it themselves. And when they make their move, we're going to be there. And America's going to help them the way no one has ever helped before, the most help, the best help, all the help. however you want to sell it however you want to sell it but you need to get out and you're going to have to pay really to reopen the straight I don't know I don't even know how it goes but I know that

you broke it and now you got to pay for it and you're going to have to get out and call it a win whatever but here's the race in American politics right now to get home Trump needs to get home and get out of Iran but for the Democrats you should be all

in on the domestic agenda. I don't know why every day the Democrats aren't saying, why are we talking to health care? Here's another idea. Why are we talking about this? Here's another idea. He wants a 42% increase in the defense budget. Not us. We want to cut it by 35%. Redo it this way and this way and take that money and do this and this and this. Instead of destroying all these programs for the poor and for veterans and for really everybody but the military industrial complex that he seems to want to feed wonder why oh look at the donations oh look at the lobbying oh look where his sons are making their money i mean come on the opportunity is in fix america first the opportunity is not in destroying society in iran that is not going to make anything better for america it's not going

to collapse the regime it's not going to do that what's it going to who's it going to hurt most the people we're supposedly trying to help, which I don't really believe. I don't really believe we're trying to help them. I don't because this isn't what they need. They need somebody to take out the regime or to give them what they need to do it. And Trump is like offhandedly saying, yeah, I think the Kurds stole all the guns. He's like Rodney Dangerfield. It's pathetic.

Fix America first. That's the opportunity. I know the temptation is to say what I'm saying right now and say it repeatedly until November that he sucks. what he did broke his promise spent all this money became another neocon and it's just crazy and now he wants to go to cuba pivot back to home own the fight to make things better and to fix america first that's what the american people want not twitter fuck twitter the american people want better at home they want someone at least focused on what's happening at home i'm telling you if i'm the Democrats, end the shutdown, end it.

Show you can do what he can't. Make a move. Say, look, this was wrong. We had a hand in doing it, obviously, but for the Democrats' initial resistance, you wouldn't have a shutdown. We got to reopen it. We're going to reopen it. We want to negotiate about ICE. They won't.

We have better ideas. ICE is an embarrassment. They're hurting all of law enforcement and the perception of law enforcement in this country. There's no reason for them to not have body cameras. There's no reason for them to not identify. You want to punish people for doxing. Go ahead and do it.

I don't think people should be doxing the law enforcement officers. I don't. You want to punish it? Punish it. But they need to operate on a call of authority the way other law enforcement does. They've got to show who they are. They've got to show their badge number. They've got to identify themselves.

They've got to be visible. They've got to be recording. And they've got to respect the Constitution. End the shutdown. Put your ideas out there. Say you want to work on the domestic agenda every damn day. That's how you win the midterm. And I'm not pitching this simply because I want to see the Democrats win the midterms.

I want to see you win the midterms. I want to see you be the focus. I want to see people in this country to be competed for by these two poisoned bullshit parties that we are stuck with. They should be competing. You shouldn't be competing for who's most loyal to one side or the other and who's easiest to convince that the other side is worse, so I have to keep swallowing all of this so that I don't have to swallow that.

That's even worse, which probably isn't, right? Probably isn't. One side tells you how terrible the other thing is, and then they get in there, they don't seem any better, right? I mean, really, do you think we're killing it right now? Are you really tired of winning? Really? You think what's happening to our prices is winning? And you really think they're going to go away

when the war in Iran end? You think it's going to be like that? I don't. Why? No economist agrees with that. Look, the deadline should come and go, and the president should find a way to get out of there. And look, the Iranian people are going to be disappointed and scared and disillusioned. And there's going to be a lot of destruction and devastation there.

And the regime will probably use it to its advantage. And that all sucks. And I hate that. And I don't want Trump to lose more than I want the Iranian people to win. That's just not Trump. I just knew from the beginning that the Iranian people were never going to win because the president was never going to do what it took to remove the regime. And I'm not calling that weakness. I'm just saying he shouldn't have said help is on the way. He shouldn't have said it because this is not the help they needed and he knows that.

But this deadline should be dead in the water. Bombing the infrastructure there and making their more pain doesn't, do anything to get the regime out. I mean, because look, here's their theory. Destroy the infrastructure. The regime can't deliver for the people. The people go crazy and remove the regime. The Iranian people already have more than enough reason to go crazy and try to destroy the regime. They don't have the means. They die by the tens of thousands just to protest. They are real ones. There are a lot of people willing to die for what they believe in for a chance at better in this world. in it in Ukraine every day.

See it in Israel. What we don't want is to have to see it here. But the longer you're there, the more bad things are going to happen. Look what happened in just a week. The deadline should be dead on arrival. Make a deal.

Get the straight opened and get the fuck out of Iran. Keep messing with them any way you want. Help the Iranian people. Give them money. Give them guns. Give them organization. give them mercenaries, whatever you're going to do. But don't do this.

Do not put us all in where our focus is a military campaign and a place where we can't win. Where you can win is at home. Now, Trump has done himself no favors, created a lot of opportunity because there's no way you look at MAGA, look at the chart of white non-college educated workers and how their support of the president has dipped. It's not because they'd like it.

the regime in Iran, it's because they want to help their kids. They don't want to have to work multiple jobs and multiple shifts to make less money than they used to on one job and one shift. And they know that it doesn't have to be that way. They know that it's choice. They know it's who we reward and how in this country. We know that. We know that we've allowed the investor class to dominate,

that we've allowed Wall Street to eclipse Main Street. Donald Trump used to say that to me when he just had presidential ambitions. Now he's doing that same mistake. Oh, look at the markets. Look at 401ks. 401ks. Half of American families can't put together $1,000 for an emergency. You think that they're looking at their portfolios.

You're talking about the few, not the many. Fix America first. That's the opportunity. Let the deadline go. Make a deal. Get out. Democrats, you want to win the midterms. Sure, call out the obvious about the president

and what he's doing here right now in another part of the world that he was supposed to never go into. But remember what people want most, not Trump sucks, but that we can fix America. We can fix what's not working right now. It can be done.

We've done it before. We know how to do this. Who has the will? Who has the way? I know where there's a will, away. Yeah, that's probably true. But right now, the Democrats have to show that they have a leadership and they have the leaning to want to focus on the domestic agenda and do better, not just you know, won't wait for Trump to become Hitler. And I get there lots of reasons to be really

scared by a lot of what's going on. But the question is, is how you win. And I don't think you win on fear alone. You went on being fierce to your principles and your determination and your that you can do better than this at home. Prices don't have to be like this. Purchasing power doesn't have to be like this. Opportunities for your kids don't have to be like this. We can do better than this. We have the money.

We have the money. You got a billion dollars a day to fight a war that you can't win. You have the money. You have the money. It's how you want to use the money and what you want to use it for. We can do better than this. And the person who makes you believe that, just a little bit more than what you believe right now is the big winner. Let the deadline go.

It's been one week since I told you the war in Iran was over. Only bad things have happened since. And that will continue. No more good can come out of the war in Iran for you back here at home. He doesn't want to remove the regime. The people aren't going to rise up and just overtake it in the near term. We see no indication of that. It's time to get out.

It is over, and it is time for the war at home to begin over who has the ideas to fix America first. What do you think? Chris Cuomo here. Thank you for subscribing and following. Thank you for wearing your independence and buy in the gear. That's why I'm selling it so that you can extend the brand of being in. independent being a critical thinker showing you a free agent, not some lemming that's just going to cater to which side is worse. Right versus left is killing us. Right versus wrong will get us back

to where we should be in this country. It is time to move out of Iran back to America and have the fight that matters to fix America first. I'm not saying you don't help Iran. I'm not saying you don't help other people. I'm not saying that you don't have foreign policy. Trump's the one who cut all the aid. I'm saying that what's happening there leads to nothing good. And doing nothing here is making nothing better. What do you think? Subscribe and follow.

I see you at SXM every morning, 7.9 in the morning, Eastern. I'll see you on News Nation every night, 8 to 9, Eastern, 8 p.m. And I'll see you here twice a week. And I'll see you on social media more often than I like to count. It's the season of rebirth and renewal, man. I hope that means something at this White House. Start doing things differently. Democrats start seeing the opportunity and jump on it, man.

We are desperate for better. And things have gotten so shitty that better is a very low lift. Let's get after it.