From Iran Strategy to TSA Chaos: Go Inside With Mark Halperin

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1:03White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles to President Trump in a memo today. Another matter to have on your radar, Joe Kent and Tulsi. You would have been proud of the team yesterday, springing into action for student body right on Kent to bury him in so much opposition research that X has a two-part message that went out and clearly for the world to see with minimal fingerprints. One, this guy is a dirty hypocrite. Two, any other people inside the government who turn against the war better think twice before they make a big deal about it. It's a faux memo. It's in the wide world of news by Mark Halpern who joins me now. Mark talked to me more expansively about Joe Kent, the resignation, and how caught by surprise the White House was. Well, not totally caught by surprise that he was quitting because reportedly he met with the Vice President and Tulsi Gabbard on Monday to talk about his departure. At least some people I talked to were surprised that he put his resignation letter on Twitter.

2:06And no one's now surprised given that he did that. That he plans to do an interview with Tucker Carlson and reportedly one with Candace Owen as well. If he followed Kent's career and the statements he's made in the past and the way he's conducted himself, it's a bit of a surprise what he's saying about Iran because he's made statements to the contrary about the danger Iran poses. It's not a surprise that he's, I would say, no one in the White House has used this word for me, but it reflects their sensibility that he's a bit of a showboat, that he likes attention and that he wants attention as he walks out the door. So we should all want government officials who have a moral objection or ideological or practical objection to government policy. I think we should all want them to when they feel strongly about it to quit. And I think sometimes it's good for the country, for the democracy when they speak out. But certainly the White House does not want him to be the first of many and that's why their allies mobilize so quickly to send a message to him that they're not going to let

3:08him do this cost-free. Iran poses no imminent threat to our nation. It is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby. There seems to be an increasing schism on the right relative to interventionalism, non-interventionalism, and the US policy vis-a-vis Israel. How do you see that? Well, it exists on multiple levels, as you know. Some of it is based on pure motives and pure thoughts and just a belief that the recent history of the United States suggests that too often American presidents have put us into armed conflicts that have way more cost than they do benefits. And then there's clearly a strain of this that has, whether you want to call it anti-semitism or just deep distrust of Israel. There is on the left and the right the belief that Israel is able to manipulate the United States and Israel supporters in the United States. Many of them American Jews are able to manipulate government decisions in America. And he laid it out there for some supporters of Israel, for some who see the alliance

4:12between Israel and the United States as righteous to have someone at the senior levels of the American government say Israel supporters manipulated the President of the United States and took the country into war. That's a painful thing for a lot of people to hear and it's a very resonant thing for a lot of others to hear. Speaker Johnson responded to him yesterday and said, I'm on the gang of eight. I got all the briefings. We all understood there was clearly an imminent threat. This of course relates back to Marco Rubio when he spoke on Capitol Hill on March 3rd. I think the date was going into that briefing with congressional leadership. He said Israel was going to strike. We would have been part of the Iranian response. Consequently, we needed to be, I think Rubio said preemptively defensive. My question for Mark Halperin, how important is it that the administration get on the same page and convince the American people on the imminency aspect of all of this? From my perspective, I said to the audience earlier today, at the top of the list of what we

5:15remember about Iraq is there were no WMDs. And thus far relative to Iran, and I hope in pray for a successful outcome, I think people are mostly going to remember there wasn't an imminent threat that precipitated the war. Your thought? Well, it's the absolute right question. It's a very difficult one to answer. I wish we knew systematically what President Trump and his team knew before the war and which things they keyed off up to decide to do it or he keyed off because he really made the decision. I'm more of the school of thought that says, forget whether you think using force and conjunction with Israel is the right thing to do. This is that's a debatable topic for sure, and it will be debated in our public square now, and by history, regardless of the outcome. I don't think it's debatable that for decades Iran posed the existential threat to Israel and a serious threat to the United States.

6:15And that every President we've had during this period since the fall of the Shah has seen the dangers of Iran and has seen the necessity of making sure Iran did not develop nuclear weapons and was as much as possible limited their ability to develop intercontinental ballistic missiles, long-range missiles, as well as stop them from being the greatest sponsor of terrorism around the world. So it's possible that the administration could simply have said given the uprisings that took place, given that enough is enough, given that negotiations to get rid of their nuclear weapons through an agreement are not fruitful, now we're doing it. Not they were days away from a nuclear weapon, not that they were going to strike the United States first. I don't know whether those things are true or not, but what I'm saying is I don't know that those were necessarily, those had to be necessarily true to justify what has been done in the view of many, many people who might say we can't just saddle every President with this existential problem.

7:22I think it would have been cleaner if they said it in the other alternative as you've presented it because I don't think they're going to be able to meet the imminent standard and it's probably too late for that. I wish the administration had pursued it along the lines that you said because I think that Republicans, according to the data I've seen and you see the same polling that I do, Republicans are still there for him on this issue. Democrats are not, they weren't going to be, but he's lost a lot of ground with independence. And I guess I'll frame the question for Mark Halper in this way. Do you think he can get that ground back? Yeah, I agree with everything he's just said in the run-up tasking me that final question. I think the answer to a lot of these things, can he get that ground back? Will it impact the midterms? What will it say about his the wisdom of his decision? It all depends on the outcome of the war. If the war ends well for the United States, a minimal casualties, and again, we've already seen American loss of life, but given the scale of the operation that's unfortunately priced in in terms of just the reality,

8:27we've already caused Americans billions of dollars in their tax money. But if it can end relatively soon and the objectives of limiting, degrading, seriously setting back Iran's capacity, naval, terror, missile, nuclear, regardless of whether there's regime change or not, I think he'll win a lot of people back because I think he'll be able to present the receipts and say, this was necessary, my predecessors didn't have the courage to do it and I did. If it ends poorly, some sort of quagmire, if the financial and human expense is massive, and if Iran doesn't actually seem to have been disarmed, then I think he will and should suffer a great political cost for making a poor judgment. What's your intel and your spidey sense in terms of how worried the White House is three weeks in? When it comes to what your family eats and drinks,

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12:37that and their various ideas about how to solve it. The president I think can can walk away having suffered losses, tragic human losses and spent a lot of our money. But having achieved a fair amount. Iran is now not just set back in terms of the degradation of their assets, but their command and control structure has been seriously disarmed and destabilized. And any future leader of Iran will have to know that the between the Israelis and the United States they can be killed. They can be killed in terms of the international community can't stop the assassinations because they haven't stopped them here and they barely talk about them as a matter of violation of international law. And they can track them down. The Israelis have the Iranian streets wired and they can find people even if they're in unexpected places. So I think he could do that if he can solve this question of the control of the Strait of Hormuz. And then come back in two weeks or three weeks or four months if he decides that that's what's necessary. I want to ask a question

13:42about what we're missing and what might be under the radar, but one additional follow-up on Iran. Can he shut this down without procuring the enriched uranium? Well, that's the other big thing, right? I think in the short term the big thing is getting the Strait of Hormuz open and fully open again. And then the longer term question is the one you raised. And my sources are mixed on that. Some say, right, there's two ways to fundamentally make sure that Iran is basically back to close to zero. They're not at absolute zero because they have the knowledge, unless I suppose you kill everybody with knowledge about how to do these things. But one way would be to destroy as much as could be destroyed and then to take the material and move it elsewhere. And the other way would be to negotiate it a way and to get some sort of deal where they handed it over. I think that as a matter of politics and reality, the president could

14:48end this conflict without having done either of those two things. But I think he'll try for those two things. And although the news coverage has been very despairing regarding regime change in the last few days, this could be the kind of thing that happens all of a sudden and unexpectedly and a new government might be happy to trade the Iranian nuclear and rich uranium material for a bag of beans or something else we might offer them. What are we missing, Mark? What's going on under the radar? Well, lots of stuff. And that just says, you know, well, the nature of news. First of all, a few months ago, all we were talking about was the Epstein files and what was going to happen there. And there've been a lot of developments, including the Congress that wants to hear from the attorney general about how this has all been handled. So I'd keep watching that story. I'm not sure where it's going to head, but I'd keep watching that. We're in the midst of this partial government shutdown and the question of how the Department of Homeland Security might

15:50operate under Mark Wayne Mullin, the department he runs is dealing with this partial shutdown. So how that gets resolved is important. There's a big housing bill passed by both the House and the Senate with bipartisan votes, but they're bills different. They have to figure out a way to get some sort of compromise there. That's another big story. And then lastly, I'd say, Russia, Ukraine, you know, before Iran started, my sources were saying that there was actually an agreement that had been largely agreed to by the Ukrainians and agreed to by the Russians. And you know, it's an interesting question, whether that deal can be done at all. But if it can, can it be consummated while hostilities in Iran continue? Or is that just too complicated for a variety of reasons? So we could have an Iran deal and a Cuba change. Are Ukraine deal? Are you carrying Russia deal and a change in Cuba all while the Iranian war continues? And that would be quite something. Yes, be huge news. By the way, I question on my mind. I'm going to get into this

16:53probably tomorrow. Those who have to wait in the TSA lines. And I recognize that it's not everywhere. I think people watch the news and might be thinking to fly today is to experience a huge delay. I'm here to say that's not the case. But I wonder who they blame, party-wise, if either. Do they understand the issues? Do they understand why DHS is facing this issue? I don't know, but it's spring break time. A lot of people are about to hit their road with their kids. And I think this is politically a big thing. I just don't know which way it cuts. Do you? Yeah. I don't know which way it cuts. And I would say I don't even know what I would answer to that. Because I think they're both culpable sort of in some ways. Usually when there's a government shutdown, a full or partial government shutdown, I can enunciate a theory about how it will end. I don't really see how this one ends because both sides are dug in. I think Democrats have decided that this is a hill to die on or to fight on and not die. And the Republicans feel

17:58the same way. They both seem content with dealing with it. And people say, well, spring break, when families have to wait in three hour lines, they'll solve it. But I just don't know in this case that that pressure does anything because it's both sides to blame the other side for the three hour waits over spring break. So I don't have a good answer on this one in terms of how it's going to end or whether spring break is any kind of push that forces the hand of the parties to to find some sort of settlement. Mark, we appreciate you being here every Wednesday in the third hour of the program, the third hour of the program. Third hour. Thank you. Have a great day. Thank you, Michael. Great. Great to see you. Thanks. You too. That's Mark Halpern. Hey, may I immediately take your pulse on this? Who do you fall? It all has to do with ice. It's like TSA and yet it's I-C-E. If you flown or even if you haven't flown, you're watching Hartzfield in Atlanta and you're seeing that play out. What are the political dynamics of the TSA

19:02delay issue? And you can respond to everything you've just heard from Mark Halpern. Nice to think that there's a possible outcome where American troops come home because of some handoff that's been negotiated, I don't mean by force, with enriched uranium and truly the Iranian stockpile has been this time obliterated. Trump could say they're new leaders. They know we mean business. We really neutralize their nuclear capability and we'll have to we'll go back if necessary. I think that's probably the best outcome that we could hope for at this stage relative to Iran. This is the Smirconish podcast from Sirius X. At Lighthouse, we make things smarter and more efficient. From helping the VA cut disability exam processing times by half, to already being done with this ad. Lighthouse, making smart smarter. Bringing your business dreams to life takes heart and about a thousand

20:03decisions a day. That's why Atlantic Union Bank's knowledgeable bankers are here for you, with the right guidance and customized solutions to help you reach your business goals. So whether you're planning your next move, upgrading your space, or scaling to meet demand, we make sure your business is ready for what's ahead because we are big enough to support you, yet small enough to know you. Atlantic Union Bank. Anyway, you bank. What do the steam engine electricity and AI have in common? These technologies not only change how we work, they can transform entire economies. I'm Stephanie Wong, host of Where the Internet Lives, a podcast from Google and Latitude Studios about the unseen world of data centers. Explore how data centers are unlocking growth in every sector of the economy. From agriculture, to medicine, to manufacturing, data centers are powering a new era of AI innovation. Listen to Where the Internet Lives, wherever you get your podcast. The Michael Smirconis Program. Listen weekdays at 9 AM East on POTUS,

21:04Syria's XM Channel 124, and anytime on the Syria's XMF. Okay gang, let's do this. A lightning round in response to what you just heard. Frank, you're in North Carolina, what did you want to say? I thought you posed the question to Mark incorrectly, because you asked him, if he thought that Trump could get back the independence from my perspective, he's never really had him any more than he had. He had the Republicans, he didn't have the Democrats, and more people sat out in this last election than voted. I'll say it briefly, and I think accurately, I don't think that he was elected president of the United States based on Republicans alone. I think that independence, especially key demographics, broke for Trump. Chris, you're in Woodbridge, Virginia, tell me one thing. Hey Michael, I just want to say, as you're asking, who's going to kind of voice or opinion about the pain they're feeling? Let's ask the TSA agents who they blame, and I think it's going to be

22:11I think it's going to be interesting, and now that Saul shakes out, because if somebody's feeling the pain, can imagine being an agent, watching somebody go on vacation. Can I tell you Chris, we were just having T.C. Dan and I were just having the conversation during the commercial break. You wonder what we talk about? We were just saying it's so unfair to the TSA agents, and T.C., can I say that Eric X has a suggestion as to how to solve it? You may. Go ahead, you say it. Well, I'm flying out tomorrow at 820 in the morning, and so I will report back on the TSA lines because Philadelphia is making national news. So Eric X's suggestion to solve all of this, just have them say everyone bring five dollars, just five bucks through the TSA line, give it to the TSA agents, they would make more money than they're making now. Everyone would stay on the job, and the lines would move. I mean, can you imagine if we just, of all of the places, of all of the places where there

23:11shouldn't be a tip jar that I complain about routinely. Really, I'm at a convenience store, and there's a tip jar, I'm buying a newspaper, just a big fireman's bucket, and where you make a donation to the fire company for the TSA agents. Because it would be fabulous. Nobody would call out. They would probably never want to go back to the normal pay scale. Exactly. I'm angry about this T.C. only because I should have thought of that. Eric, it's brilliant, it's absolutely, and imagine there'd be, and they'd be working, they'd all show up, and everybody going through, everybody going through that line would have a fiver. Oh, I just think, oh yeah, I think so. Pure, pure genius, pure, pure genius. Steve, you got to do it really fast. What did you most want to say? Steve and Tucson, all right, here we go. This is the administration for people that are the, the administration for the, you ain't cheating, you ain't trying people, right? That's what,

24:15that's the question you need to ask first, and we're honest. That's the discriminator between people that call and complain about Trump, and the people that are like, oh yeah, pro, let's go in Iran. It's not really pro, Trump. They're just like, if you ain't cheating, you ain't trying, you know, that's the question, you know, if you ain't cheating with the move fast and break up. If you ain't cheating, you ain't, I got to mull that over. I'm not even sure what that means. Michael Smirconish for independent mind. Listen weekdays on SiriusXM's POTUS, channel 124, and anytime on the SiriusXM app. Life's busy. Don't let banking slow you down. Whether you're paying bills, setting savings goals, or just splitting the check. Atlantic Union Bank makes managing your money easier. With helpful people and user-friendly tools, we make sure banking with us fits you. Call, visit us online, or drop into an Atlantic Union bank branch today. Atlantic Union Bank. Anyway, you bank.

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