WATCH TRUMP

“And then over the weekend, it turns out some of us were right and some people were wrong because he didn't cave in. And now he has Iran's feet to the fire, and they have really, really serious problems. So all this began with negotiations in Islamabad where the Vice President of the United States, JD Vance, arrived along with Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff.”

“There was a real belief that he would do something to either order them to do something stupid or leak it. And either one of those scenarios would have resulted in that that F-15 backseater either being dead or being an Iranian hostage. And they realized that it should tell you a lot that the people who actually are on the pointy end of the stick with our military do not trust their commander in chief.”

“The reality is that the Iranian government—people see the attempt to control the Strait of Hormuz as a sign of strength, but that is not the case. Their navy is at the bottom of the sea. Their air force cannot fly. Their government is so discombobulated that you have factions within the Iranian government legitimately arguing with each other fairly publicly.”

“Alex Jones is out like completely fireballing Trump now and says that Americans should hang their flags upside down, which is the universal symbol of distress. I'm like, Alex Jones? Gay frog, Alex Jones? I'm like, Pete, really? Oh, yeah. And remember, Jones is a guy, he has that populist instinct to listen to people at the grocery store, the gas station, the diner, that kind of thing.”

“He does not want something that is going to be very easy to describe as similar to the JCPOA—the Obama nuclear deal with Iran from 2015—that Republicans have been deriding for years and years and years for a variety of reasons. And so one of the first things he did was tear this deal up. He was very proud of that. He has talked about it constantly, and he has talked about why he thought it was a very bad deal. And throughout these conversations... that's what the president knows he wants to avoid.”

“Cash Patel, sec drunk as I call him. Cash Patel is increasingly seen inside the FBI and the administration as somebody with a drinking problem. He is not going to win this fight because he has over a dozen sources who said, He drinking. This isn't good. It's funny because it's like you think about Cash Patel and you think about his deputy, at least until he went back to his podcast, was Dan Bondrino.”

“The people in Nazi Germany who, the Germans who resisted the Nazis, they asked themselves like a very simple question. They said, can I live with myself? And it wasn't about like a set of morals or, they were just like, can I live with myself? Like, can I live with a murderer? You know, and if the answer is no, they just didn't do it. I imagine that for some people, it's that simple.”

“As of this moment, the Trump team is still waiting on a response from the Iranians to a proposal that was sent over to them, which outlined broad deal points, baseline points to start a negotiation, to start a more serious and detailed negotiation, mostly focused on how do we prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, and how do we get the highly enriched uranium out of Iran? Those are the two main issues involved. And Trump is very frustrated right now because nobody on his team... feels he can negotiate properly with the Iranians.”

“Iran's inability to locate its own mines is one reason Iran has not been able to quickly comply with the Trump administration's admonitions to let more traffic pass through the strait. Safe routes are limited in large part because Iran mined the strait haphazardly. It's not even clear that Iran recorded where it put every mine, and even when they recorded the location, they let them drift.”

“I think that's the top line here. He's doing this because Joe Rogan is really mad at him and has been saying that he doesn't support him on his podcast to 80 million people. And so Donald Trump is desperately trying to win him back. And so he's decided psychedelics are the way, which I think all of this should say quite a lot about Trump, quite a lot about how we got here, quite a lot about Joe Rogan.”

“The court, unlike other institutions, they finish up, you know, at the end of the school year, rise and leave, get rid of everything one way or another, and that'll be at the end of June. By the way, everyone will be watching close that day because that's the traditional time to announce retirements, and all eyes will be on Thomas and Alito. ... You couldn't write an opinion upholding this completely countertextual interpretation of the 14th Amendment. So it will continue to be the case, I think, that anyone born here, whoever their parents are, will be an American citizen.”

“Even when you're not the second fiddle for a complete narcissistic sociopath, it's a bad job. Even when you're just the vice president for a normal president, it's not a good job unless you're Dick Cheney. But I think in this case, I think Vance has a number of problems. One is he has this humiliation tour. He's been tasked with bringing peace to the Middle East. ... Trump has really been trying to de-escalate the war in Iran. But the problem is that the Iranians are ideological in a way that I don't think Trump quite understands. So he's not able to back this train up.”

“My son is a pollster, and we talk about this every damn Friday, where we do our polling wrap-up. And this is... It has now reached the point where no Republican in the country can feel safe. In safe seats with a plus 20 now, maybe you feel safe. But we used to define safe seats as being R plus five. I mean, even in the ballpark, we're safe anymore.”

“There is a move within the Democratic Party toward what I call Third Worldism, where the interests of rogue states are prioritized over the interests of the United States and its allies. This perspective sees the United States as a global bully rather than a force for good. It’s a ideology that treats the IRGC with more sympathy than it treats the people who are actually trying to maintain order in the Middle East.”

“If the Straits of Hormuz were to be, let us say, permanently closed or harmed, the chief problem would lie with the people who get their oil from the Strait of Hormuz. That is not the United States. That is jet fuel in Europe. That is most of the oil that is going into places like Japan and China from that region.”

“JD Vance is running for president in 2028 And I don't think he fired Buckley just because Tucker's saying shit about Donald Trump. I think he fired Buckley because he recognizes that when he wants to run for president, Tucker is one of those people, as crazy as you think it sounds right now when we're saying it in broad daylight, Tucker is one of those people who could be a potential candidate in a primary against JD Vance.”

“It is a deeply intellectually dishonest case. So first of all, the wire fraud, the fraud here is supposed to be, and it's got to be all these, a lot of specifics against the donors. The theory of the case is that you went to the donors and said, please give us your money. We're working to fair it out, extremism. We have a great track record, including with the KKK. And a very important way to do it is the way law enforcement always does it. Infiltrate, get a confidential informant, pay them money. ... It's exactly as you say, Molly. If that's true, then the FBI forever has been promoting the mob.”

“Trump papered over all of these disagreements and problems because he was Donald Trump. Now, we're starting to see the first glimpses of what a post-Trump Republican Party looks like. So what you then get is the disagreements, the fights, and all of these fractures. You get a bunch of people who voted for Donald Trump because he thought they were going to keep him out of foreign wars, who are now in foreign wars, angrily disaffected.”

“In fact, I would argue that he is behaving like somebody who thinks that this changeover is probably going to happen anyway. He's kind of ambivalent about it in terms of control of the House, maybe the Senate. And so that only gives him six months to get done the things he cares about. ... He has been talking to allies about how prosecutions can move quicker. You are seeing Todd Blanch now work with—these are people who the president believes are going to do what he wants.”

“The IRGC has decided that the best way to handle their failing economy and their failing legitimacy at home is to lash out at the global energy supply by launching new attacks in the Strait of Hormuz. This is a classic move by a regime that feels the walls closing in, but they are playing a very dangerous game with the world's oil supply. If they think the world is just going to sit by while they choke off the energy lanes, they are deeply mistaken.”

“The Department of Justice announced Friday that it will resurrect federal firing squads as part of its effort to implement Donald Trump's Day One Executive Order to revamp capital punishment. I hate capital punishment. ... Because it's terrible. It's killing people, and it is so terrible. But it's also very stupid. It's expensive. It is a really circuitous way to punish people. It's just so terrible. And like with everything in Trump world, when they've figured out something terrible, they want to make it even worse. So this would be a way to make capital punishment even worse than lethal injection.”

“The Iranian regime is essentially signing its own death warrant by continuing down this path of escalation and refusal to compromise. They are betting that the West is too tired of conflict to respond, but history shows that when you threaten the global economy and pursue nuclear weapons simultaneously, you eventually cross a line that cannot be uncrossed. This regime is flirting with total destruction.”

“President Trump is currently doing what he does best: keeping everyone guessing as to what his next move will be. The media wants a five-point plan, but Trump understands that unpredictability is a form of leverage. By keeping the Iranian regime off-balance, he prevents them from being able to calculate exactly how far they can push before they face a devastating response.”

“We're in like George W. Bush at his lowest ABB territory. And frankly, I think there's probably like 30 to 35 percent of Americans who are never going to abandon any Republican president ever. I should say, yeah, 30 to 35 percent of Americans who will not abandon a Republican president. He doesn't seem to care in many respects. I think, you know, that's because, like, I think he has made just so much money. There has been so much corruption and graft. ... He's losing support. I mean, if I was him, is I would be very worried about losing the Senate because it's one thing, it's not like he has an agenda.”

“They are announcing to the world that they won’t negotiate on nuclear arms or their missile programs, which is essentially telling the international community to go jump in a lake. This isn't just posturing; it's a fundamental rejection of the diplomatic process. When you refuse to talk about the very weapons that threaten the existence of your neighbors, you are signaling that you have no intention of ever living in peace.”

“To watch how much he is going to genuflect the Donald Trump, he has an audience of one. And I think people, you know, he has sold out even those completely perverse, and I think, and warped principles that he had. He has gone full mercenary now. And I think that's, I think for people who were one issue voters, like MAHA people, I think that they're done. They see Kennedy, you know, from their perspective, he, you know, the White Knight went into the city of sin, and he's now like become a swamp creature to mix many metaphors.”

“What Donald Trump is focused on in this term, what he has been focused on, is making himself a capital G great figure of history. The amount of time he's spending on domestic politics pales in comparison to him taking really bold aggressive moves in foreign policy and also putting his physical imprint on the world, on Washington DC, designing monuments to himself, renaming institutions, ensuring that he achieved some level of immortality, building a grand ballroom, calling it the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace.”

“Massive numbers of completely empty oil tankers, some of the largest anywhere in the world, are heading right now to the United States to load up with the best and sweetest oil and gas anywhere in the world. We have more oil than the next two largest oil economies combined and in higher quality. We’re waiting for you. Quick turnaround.”

“There was a cohort of people who voted for him because they wanted a, an unnamed change to the system. And I think for part of that cohort, it has been immigration has appalled them, the immigration policies have appalled them. They didn't realize they were, they were, they were either going to be a target or just like how vicious it would be or that their friend would be a target or their parents or their, you know. And I think for another cohort, it's like inflation's not down. Wages are not up. Gas is now super expensive. I think they're like, what the hell? You're just like the rest of them.”

“Canada is, they have put, they've done elbows up. They are just done with us. We need them for tourism. We need them for trade and we're losing them. And it's just, it's such a dumb, dumb, unforced error. And you know, Donald Trump is dumb. I mean, he's dumb and he's bad at being president. And so here we go. We've alienated this country that we definitely need.”

“Despite all the bravado that you hear from the president and from Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, we have unlimited weapons, etc. They don't have unlimited weapons and they're very, very constrained when it comes to long-range strike weapons. What that means is if they do do what Trump has threatened, which is blow up every bridge and power plant inside Iran, they don't really have the long-range arsenal to do that. That means flying planes in, exposing your pilots to risk, potentially having more shoot downs.”

“Metta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, said it plans to cut 8,000 workers or about 10% of its staff. The company's founder, Mark Zuckerberg, has said he expects much of the work now done in tech to eventually be overtaken by AI.”