The NPR Politics Podcast - Trump tries to sell the Iran war, a month after it started

Episode Date: April 3, 2026

It was a particularly busy week in politics. We discuss President Trump’s prime-time address about the Iran war, Pam Bondi’s exit as attorney general, rising gas prices, and the White House’s request for an unprecedented $1.5 trillion in defense spending.This episode: political correspondent Ashley Lopez, national security correspondent Greg Myre, White House correspondent Deepa Shivaram and senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro.This podcast was produced by Bria Suggs and edited by Rachel Baye.Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.To manage podcast ad preferences, review the links below:See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

Hey there, it's the NPR Politics podcast. I'm Ashley Lopez I cover politics. I'm Greg Miree. I cover national security. And I'm Deepa Shiveram. I cover the White House. And today on the show, we'll try to make sense of another busy week, actually a particularly busy week. And some of the news you may have missed. Let's start with the war in Iran and with you, Greg. I mean, some breaking news this morning. We learned that an American fighter jet has gone down in Iran. I mean, what can you tell us about this right now? Yeah, still a lot we don't know. But what we do know is that, according to a source, who's spoken with NPR, an F-15E fighter jet has gone down. Now, this has a two-member crew, a pilot and a weapons officer. We don't know their status. Now, they would have a transponder on them so that rescuers could find them. But we don't know what condition they're in if they're physically okay. or not. There's obviously a desperate race to try to find them. And open source material online has shown what appear to be U.S. rescue aircraft going after them. That's also a very risky mission. If the Iranians were able to shoot down a fighter jet, then they certainly would be able to shoot down a slower moving plane or helicopter that might be involved in the rescue operation. And it's been on Iranian media. Iran has told civilians to look for these pilots out there. So it's a very fraught moment.

Yeah. Well, we will continue to keep an eye on that. So Trump gave a televised national address on Wednesday night related to the war. D.Ba, this was the first time the president has given a prime time speech about this war, which now has been going on for over a month. What was he trying to accomplish with that speech? And, I mean, did he actually get there? Yeah, I mean, to your point about it being the first time he did this primetime address from the White House, we're on week five of this war. And this was the first time that the president stood in front of the American people and gave a formal address to say, this is why U.S. troops are, you know, involved in Iran.

This is what our goals are. This is what we're doing. He's been taking questions from the press. He's been talking about it, obviously, for the last month. But this was a very important moment that came so late and much later than I think a lot of people. expected. And what Trump said was that the U.S. was going to pull out of Iran shortly, that this operation would end soon, that so far the U.S. military has gone above and beyond in accomplishing the goals that the U.S. set out for in the war. But Trump has been doing a lot of ping ponging

in these last couple of weeks. And so some of the goals that he set out, you know, whether it's opening the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran closed during the war, that's that really critical route that transports about 20 percent of the world's oil. making sure that Iran can't build a nuclear weapon in the future. Some of the goalposts have been shifting here. So I can't really say that he, you know, had a clear message in his speech on Wednesday night, but he certainly did take the time to say that, you know, this was going to wrap up. And Deepa, I do wonder, though, if Trump did enough to justify this war to the audience back home here,

like voters, what do you make of what sort of explanation he gave to people? And do you think he did a good job of saying why we're there and whether we're getting out of this? Yeah. I mean, I will say like for a good part of Trump's speech, he almost was talking like he wanted credit for going into Iran. He kept saying for the first, like, third of the speech, almost talking about how no other president was willing to do this. He took action when nobody else did. He called this war an investment in people's children's future, their grandchildren's future. So that was the picture he was trying to paint. I will say, though, that this address came at a time where this war is. consistently unpopular with Americans. There's a lot of polling that shows that people are unhappy with, you know, Trump's foreign policy moves here. And particularly when it hits their pocketbooks, right? Gas is really expensive right now. This is a president who said he would lower costs. And that's not happening. So at home, this is an audience that Trump had that isn't exactly on board with this. For the most part, Republicans have been supportive of Trump's actions here. But there was a CNN poll that came out this week that said that even among Republicans in terms of Trump's approval rating, those who said that they strongly supported the president and strongly agreed with him, there was a dip in those numbers from January. So things aren't really boating well for the president as he gave this address. And Greg, it's hard to see like anything winding down, particularly right now.

We just talked about a fighter jet being shot down. I mean, how likely is it that this promise of the war winding down in about two to three weeks? Like, how realistic it actually is that? Well, it's very fraught because it's not necessarily a unilateral decision. Iran has a lot of leverage in the way that it's closed, the Strait of Hormuz. It seemed in the early days of the war, and with previous military operations by Trump, he was doing things that he could call off very quickly, whether it was the operation in Venezuela, which just lasted for a few hours, or bombing Iran last June, which just lasted for one day. But the size and

scope of this operation meant that there were things that were going to happen that were unexpected. The war has expanded. It's involved a lot of other countries in the region. So Trump did use the phrase two to three weeks that he thought the war could be wrapped up during that time period. But there's just so many variables in there. And then the question becomes, can you wrap it up effectively achieving the objectives you set? Or would it mean just walking away and leaving Iran in charge of the Strait of Hormuz and leaving it closed. So there's all of these kinds of questions. Yes, Trump could declare it into the war and pull out. But there are issues that need to be resolved. And we don't see peace talks going anywhere at this time. And we don't see any movement toward a military operation that could open the Strait of Hormuz. Yeah. I do want to play a part of Trump speech where he said that the Strait of Hormuz will, quote, open up naturally. Like this is just going to happen.

Magic. And then he said this. So to those countries that can't get fuel, many of which refuse to get involved in the decapitation of Iran, we had to do it ourselves. I have a suggestion. Number one, buy oil from the United States of America. We have plenty. We have so much. And number two, build up some delayed courage. Should have done it before.

Should have done it with us, as we asked. Go to the straight and just take it, protect it. Use it for yourselves. Iran has been essentially. decimated. The hard part is done so it should be easy. Yeah, I mean, at this point, we have talked a little bit about why this might be magical thinking, but what do you guys make about what the president said there? Well, neither of these points are going to be easy. He says buy oil from the United States, which is the world's largest producer, but also the world's largest consumer, and we

still import some oil from Canada, Mexico, for example. So the U.S. doesn't have a lot of extra oil to sell. And the world price of oil has gone up because the Strait of Hormuz is closed. So everybody, including Americans, are paying higher prices. So this is a real problem, number one. And then he talks about develop some delayed courage and open the strait. It's a very complicated operation. If it were relatively easy and straightforward, I'm sure the U.S. would probably be doing it. But there are perhaps two to three thousand ships that are stuck on either side of the Strait of Hormuz. Iran has drones and missiles that can hit these big, slow-moving ships, which are not equipped to fight off an attack. That would be a massive and difficult operation.

Iran has hit a few of these ships, and that's all it needs to do to scare off the others. And so basically they're keeping it closed simply through intimidation. And it's the U.S. that has far more resources, naval, air force, et cetera, to conduct a kind of operation. It would be tough for the U.S. Other countries simply don't have it. Maybe they'd have to put together a coalition. But very complicated. Nothing easy about it.

The thing that stood out to me here, too, is that he didn't specifically name NATO, which is the alliance that he's often threatening to pull the U.S. out of, although that's not something Trump can do that requires action from Congress. But he's constantly unhappy with NATO. And I think something like this points to how the president sees that alliance because he's been really frustrated with England, France, Germany for not essentially jumping into this war with the U.S., for not aiding. NATO is not an alliance that's meant to be like, oh, I'm going to war. Like, you're coming with me. Like that's not how that works.

This is a defense alliance. But he really sees it as this point of like betrayal constantly that these countries are not gearing up and just going into battle whenever he wants them to. And so I thought it was really interesting when he said like the whole. hard part is done. So this should be easy. And to Greg's point, it's obviously not easy, but he really just looks down on so many of these countries for not being as military first the way Trump sees America as. Yeah. And to that end, I mean, what have we heard from other countries? How have they responded to Trump saying, hey, take this straight yourself? Not militarily. We've seen Britain try to organized three dozen or so countries yesterday, and it looks like this will continue to work out

some effort to try to reopen the strait. But at this point, they're not talking about sending military forces there to do it. We'll have to see how that plays out. Bahrain, a very small country in the Gulf that has been hard hit and is just a short distance from Iran. They're putting together a resolution at the United Nations, which would call for the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, with force if necessary, but we're already hearing that Russia and China would oppose that if it potentially involves force. So you see other countries acting trying to find a way out of this, and normally it would be the U.S. leading a coalition of allies. But these other countries are starting to take actions or explore possibilities on their own. So a very different scenario

compared to previous U.S. wars in the Middle East, where the U.S. was leading not only militarily, but diplomatically and economically, coalitions to deal with the conflict. All right, Greg, we're going to let you go there. Thank you for your reporting. My pleasure. We're going to take a quick break, more in a moment. And we're back, and senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro joins us now.

Welcome, Domenico. Hey, good to be with you. Yeah, this week, gas hit an average of $4 a gallon at the pump for the first time in three years. Domenico, obviously, no one likes paying more for gas. But what does this mean politically? I mean, this week, first of all, was just a miserable one for Trump, if you think about it. I mean, he's had a lot of tough weeks considering his approval ratings are as low as they are. He had a new low approval rating-wise in the average of the polls.

He's now below 40%. A CNN poll came out where he's at 31% on the economy. You know, and the war and the economy are intertwined. You know, I mean, this war has directly led to gas prices soaring past $4 a gallon this week. We saw on Thursday was the quote unquote one year anniversary of Liberation Day, Trump's tariffs, where you put in high tariffs on a lot of countries around the world. And those two things, the war in Iran, those tariffs are things that have directly led to higher prices. And people are blaming this president for those higher prices and for making the economy worse. I mean, we launched astronauts to the moon this week. This could have been a good week for this president. And there's so much bad stuff happening that it just completely got clouded. I mean, and one thing to your point about gas prices, Domenico, I've been thinking about this all week as that has just been looming over this White House is that probably around a month and a half ago, six weeks ago, this White House was pointing to low gas prices, right? They were under $3 in some parts of the country as a reason that their economic agenda was

so successful. Like people kept saying, you know, we want to see more from the administration in terms of the economy. Trump's approval ratings on the economy weren't great. But the White House kept like, yeah, but look at gas prices. Like, they're pretty good. They're pretty good. And then this war completely blew that up. And it just has been so difficult for so many Americans. And it continues to be an issue that the president, you know, he doesn't really have a plan for. He's kind of just like, it'll get better once, you know, the Strait of Hormuz is open, which he doesn't really have a plan for either. And look, I mean, he was elected in many respects on a promise to fix prices and not start wars, right? And the opposite is now happening where he's sort of trapped in this situation. And he thinks that he was elected on immigration. And we saw this week he went to the Supreme Court himself. He sat there to listen to arguments about the thing that is clearly one of the most important things to him into his hardline immigration policy, which is, no longer allowing birthright citizenship, automatic citizenship for babies who are born on

U.S. soil to parents who have crossed the border illegally in this country. The arguments, though, were met with very skeptical questions from the justices, including the three conservatives that he appointed. So if he was doing anything to go to the course to try to intimidate them or make a show of force of some kind, he was certainly rebuffed. I mean, already, like three things that alone would have been the news of the week that, I mean, just somehow got buried and everything. I mean, speaking of another news item that was part of this week is President Trump announced that his attorney general, Pam Bondi, is leaving her position. I do wonder from both of you what you make of this. Bondi is obviously a longtime Trump ally. What happened here?

What prompted her ousting? The separation between the White House and the Justice Department used to be very protected by past administrations. That does not apply here in the Trump White House. He has tried to influence the work that the Department of Justice has been doing in many, many ways. And in the last several months, the administration's handling of the Epstein files has been pretty horrendous if you talk to Republican strategists and people who work in Republican comms. They have criticized this White House for kind of letting this story be a drip, drip, drip situation. And I think the president has been increasingly frustrated by that and increasingly pointing to someone to blame who would be the attorney general.

Well, what he's frustrated by is the fact that he is named many times in the files. His name shows up many times. And he has not been able to put the kibosh on this, you know, the sort of fever behind wanting to see these files released. And certainly Bondi was in a very difficult situation. She's somebody who, you know, wound up getting into several controversies that were many times related to the fact that she was trying to. to do the president's bidding. Yeah. So Trump asked a lot of Bondi, pushing her to prosecute his perceived political enemies like the investigation of former FBI director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James. Those cases were tossed out. Deepa, this did not go over well with

Trump. No, it didn't. I mean, this is probably just another example of how the president sees the Justice Department as his own vehicle. He thinks of it as his Justice Department a way for him to control, you know, who he wants to prosecute, who he wants to go after, who turn out largely to be Democrats, people who are, you know, his perceived political enemies, which is not the role of the DOJ. All right. So switching topics this morning, the White House released a budget request to Congress. Deepa, I want to start with this.

The president is asking Congress for $1.5 trillion in defense spending, a pretty staggering number. What else do we know about what he's asking for? Yeah. Well, just to put this into context for a second, the president. releasing the budget is like sort of a glorified wish list. The Congress passes the budget. This is essentially a statement of priorities from the administration. It does not necessarily translate to what is actually going to turn up in the budget. I just want to point that out. But this number is

significant. 1.5 trillion dollars in defense spending is the most ever in modern U.S. history. And that spending boost would be coming along with another requested $73 billion in cuts to domestic spending. So you can kind of see. where this administration's priorities lie. Like Domenico pointed out earlier, a president who campaigned on lowering costs, making life more affordable for Americans, promise no new wars. And this is what, you know, the values of this administration are coming forward in this budget, kind of paint a little bit of a different picture. And there was a moment earlier this week that also highlighted that. Trump gave remarks at this Easter event at the White House on Wednesday.

It was closed to the press, but somehow the White House ended up streaming it a lot. and it was on their YouTube page. And then they subsequently deleted it. But a lot of news organizations, including roll calls, fact base, have posted that video and obtained it. And it's now online. And Trump talks about, you know, some of his beliefs that the federal government really can't invest in programs like daycare for children, Medicaid, Medicare. We can't take care of daycare.

We're a big country. We have 50 states. We have all these other people. We're fighting wars. We can't take care of daycare. You've got to let a state take care of daycare, and they should pay for it, too. They should pay. They have to raise their taxes, but they should pay for it.

And we could lower our taxes a little bit to them to make up. But it's not possible for us to take care of daycare. Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things. They can do it on a state basis. You can't do it on a federal. We have to take care of one thing, military protection. We have to guard the country. I mean, just, wow.

Like, what a remarkable statement. I wonder they deleted the video. I mean, you're asking for $1.5 trillion in defense spending, the most ever for a budget request for a president for defense in the middle of a war that doesn't particularly have any clear end in sight or goals that the president can hang his hat on to say, here's what needs to be accomplished, while also asking for tens of billions of dollars in domestic cuts. And thinking about the fact that people are struggling right now in this country, they continue to say, that the economy, high prices in particular, are their top priority. And the only thing that's happened in the past week is gas prices going above $4 a gallon. And Trump now saying that, you know, he wants to see more defense spending and can't do anything really about these other domestic things, which, by the way, Medicare, Medicaid. I mean, those things are very popular programs that have been considered along with Social Security.

to be third rails in American politics not to touch. So, I mean, we'll see if people wind up noticing. But boy, you know, if there is a week that we look back on and Democrats wind up winning the House or the Senate, this might be the week that where things really went south for this president because Trump is really writing a script for the Democrats. We'll see if they can make a movie out of it. All right. Well, let's end on a kind of high note, I guess. A new jobs report came out today showing that the country added 178,000 jobs last month and that the unemployment rate dropped just a little bit. How does this help Trump and by extension, Republicans in this midterm election year, Domenico, if it does it all? Well, and think about the fact that inflation has also remained fairly steady. Unemployment still remains fairly low. You have to wonder what the economy would be like if it wasn't for Trump's tariffs. If it wasn't for the Iran war, you know, you might see a whole lot more growth. You know, while he's been browbeating, you know, Jay Powell, the Federal Reserve Chairman,

who has been trying to balance interest rates and prices. If you have to wonder, if everyone was working together on this, what the economy might be doing. Yeah. All right. We're going to take a quick break. And when we get back, it's time for Can't Let It Go. And we're back. And it's time to end the show like we do every week with Can't Let It Go, the part of the show where we talk about the things from the week that we just can't stop thinking about, politics or otherwise.

Domenico, let's start with you. Well, I guess what I can't let go of is rats in D.C. It makes me happy I don't live in D.C. But apparently there was a study that showed that D.C. is one of the radiest cities in the country, I guess. Can confirm. How they described it. I am a New Yorker by birth, so I've seen my share of rats. And I guess the rats are now on birth control to try to get them to not.

be so prolific. So ratty. Yeah, but rats have been around millions of years. Like, I don't know that we're going to really stop them. They can chew through mesh and wires and stuff. I actually think this city is maybe more populated by rats than it is by people. I actually am going to die on that hell. That's my new hot take. I'm not that bothered by rats.

I will say my first week of moving here, a rat jumped out of a trash can at me. And I was like a little startled. But that was the only time. I'm actually very excited. I like rats are furry. So part of me is always like all that's kind of cute. I have seen like cat-sized rats in this city. And like you walk around in certain neighborhoods and you're just crossing the street.

And it's like I feel like my friends live on this one street in D.C. where like there's so many like on trash day or like when trash day is coming, everyone's got their like trashments and recycling bins outside. And like if I'm going to their place, I will literally walk on the street with the cars. I will walk on the street with the cars instead of encountering approximately 25 rats in that one square block radius. It's horrible. So anyway, I'm very pro birth control. Yeah, I mean, I saw this story on NBC4 Washington where they were talking about putting them on birth control, your local news channel here.

And I mean, I don't know how exactly that's going to work or who is going to be having to go try to do they're going to be sitting in dumpsters waiting for them or lowering them in or putting them in cages. They do this in other countries, though, where there's like an overpopulation of monkeys. But I feel like maybe it could work. Ashley, what can you not let go of? All right. So in the past week or so, we've had body cam footage come out related to two celebrities, which is always fun. So first, Justin Timberlake was pulled over for an alleged drunk driving arrest about two years ago. This week was so long that I entirely missed that.

It was, you know, it had happened a while ago. The news, like, kind of similar, but we have, like, better, we have, like, more footage now of it. And there were, like, a couple of things. Like a slate write-up of this, I thought was really interesting. There was a part of the back and forth that, you know, was kind of funny. Like, to me, I'm a millennial. Like, Justin Timberlake is a very big, like, pop icon. For sure.

One of the biggest of my generation. And having to explain to this cop that this could, like, interfere with his tour and the cop being like, what are you talking about? And what Justin Timberlake was talking about was a world tour because he has a population. I'm Justin Timberlake, actually, yeah. Yeah. I'm Justin Timberlake. And the guy's like, what? It was just very funny because, you know, anyone my age knows exactly.

Yes. Although I would bet there are a lot of people not only older but also younger who don't know who Justin Timberlake is. It's oldies for them now. I guess none of them think he's bringing sexy back. Yeah. I don't know if Gen Alpha is aware of what in sync is or backshed boys. I fear to know the answer. Yeah.

Yeah. And then there was another, I saw an ESPN right above. Tiger Woods crashed his SUV last week in Florida and cops approached him. This is another alleged possible DUI arrest here. But what was interesting is when he was approached by the cops, he let them know immediately that he was on the phone with the president, which I thought was so funny. We literally cannot escape politics ever. Yeah.

But at first I was like, I don't know that I believe this. Maybe he's just saying that. But I don't know, Dipa, like, do you think, like, it's possible that he was actually talking to the president? Oh, 100%. I mean, Trump is a big golfer, as we know, and is a fan of Tiger Woods. And is a fan of many golfers who I think probably, like, are on speed dial with the president at this point. And we know Trump loves to talk on the phone. So I do think we cannot, we can't rule that out. I think probably Tiger Woods is getting pulled over.

And he's literally, like, whipping out his phone and is like POTUS or whatever his name is for Trump and his phone. Donald. Who knows? It's an immediate. So do you think he was asking for like a preemptive pardon or like what was he like trying to leverage or is it just like a happy phone call? Do you think he was just like going to come to his car window and he was just going to hand his phone and be like here's the president. Here's the commander in chief. You can take it from here.

Yeah. I don't know, man. Maybe you should call your lawyer. Yeah, probably that. Not the president. Probably that's the first call. Anyways. Okay, Deepa, what can't you let go of this week?

I cannot let go of this show that I've been watching. It's called The Capture. Have you guys ever heard of it? I am really into it. Usually when I watch TV, I want to like truly exit my current life. Like I'm not trying to watch anything that's, you know, political or related to like anything I cover at work. But it's actually a show that's very much about foreign policy, very much about national security, and very much about AI and deep fakes in particular. and, you know, a lot of different governments, like in this big cabal.

It's a British show, so it's mostly based in London. The only person I knew in the show was Dua Lipa's boyfriend. Calam, Calam Turner was the only, like, person I would not really sure. Who I would not recognize. Yeah, I'm sure they're probably similar to the JT situation. Like, I'm sure there are after some crazy famous who I don't know. But anyway, that show has been living rent-free in my head to the point where, like, I have not been obsessed with a show like this in a while.

while we're like, I'll be in the shower and I'll be like, oh, my God, I wonder what's coming in the next episode. What is it you can't let go of? They really, like, have thought through so much of the plot. And there's a lot of twists and turns in that I am like have gasped like several times at the end of an episode. It's very dramatic, but like really just differently done. It's not like a, you know, we're up in arms with Russia and we're all going to like fight it out or whatever. There's like a lot of technological warfare happening. And like, it's just very, it's very different. And It hits a little close to home.

It's a little too little. Considering the anthropic opening eye back and forth of the Pentagon. Which is why I was shocked that I was like, no, I actually really want to keep watching it. So anyway, it's on season three right now if you're looking for a new TV show. I highly recommend. I mean, the pit will be done soon, so I will need something. Oh, yeah. Got to catch up on that too.

They do keep putting episodes out, though. Yeah, yeah. There are new days in emergency rooms. Yeah. I mean, I think there's like at least two more episodes coming. But, yeah, anyways. And by the way, Duelipa, it's not her boyfriend. It's her fiancé.

Fiancé? Gosh, you guys, there's too much news going on. I know, I know. Let me catch up on pop culture. NPR. Let me live. All right. Well, that's a wrap for today.

Our executive producer is Mithoni Maturi. Our editor is Rachel Bay. Our producers are Casey Morel and Bria Sogs. Thanks to Dana Farrington. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover politics. I'm Deepa Shiveram. I cover the White House.

And I'm Domenico Matanaro, a political editor and correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast. Thank you.