Readback: Iran war fallout on Capitol Hill

0:00Hello and welcome to the Punchbowl News Readback Podcast on your host, the Racial Reporter Max Cohen, and this week I'm joined by Brianna Riley, who is one of our defense reporters here at Punchbowl. Of course, it's been a very busy week in the defense base with the ongoing war in Iran. Brianna, to start off with, tell me how you found out the news that we were bombing Iran and basically everything that's happened since then. Thank you so much, Max. This is also my read-back debut. I'm so excited to be here, but so I was I wasn't bad, you know, it was a Saturday morning. I actually slept until like 8.15, woke up to many, many texts on my phone, and then as I was trying to read and catch up on everything, I realized some concerning things. One Diego and our team was awake at 2.15 a.m. Did you hear us? Did you see that? That was nuts. And then on top of that, on top of that, I finally posted around 8.28, 30 that I was up and at my computer and Jake was like, welcome to war or something like that.

1:01So that's that's how I really got involved, you know, and it's been non-stop covered ever since. Welcome to war. Well said indeed. Let's talk about how Congress is responding to said war. Based on your reporting this week, one of the main takeaways you were saying to me is that Congress is not exercising. It's oversight authority. It looks like it's not going to exercise. It's war power is authority. Explain to me how lawmakers are responding and has that surprised you anyway. Yeah, as we saw on Wednesday and Thursday, both the Senate and the House just declined to sort of move, move forward with advance of war powers resolution on Iran. So that really led us to look at the House Armed Services Committee, House Foreign Affairs Committee, Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Senate Armed Services Committee to see how they're responding specifically because as the committees of jurisdiction, of course, they have the ability to hold public hearings if they so choose. And lawmakers from all of those committees, I didn't have a chance to catch up with Senator Wicker directly on this on the SASQ run, but lawmakers from the other committees

2:03indicated that they don't really see now as the time to hold public hearings. It's not clear at what points they would want to maybe start doing that, but it sounds like there is a satisfaction, I guess, from members of Congress about having this war and Congress's involvement remained behind closed doors for the time being. So that'll, of course, change once we see a supplemental request from the White House in terms of backfill and munitions costs and things like that. But for now, Congress is really content with just continuing to get updates from Rubio and Hegseth in a classified setting. The updates that Rubio has provided, at least publicly, you know, in these gags outside of the skiff, he's offered a number of shifting rationales for why the United States started bombing Iran. What is your best sense of the administration's current rationale for getting involved in the war? Yeah, I think that's a really interestingly times question, because we saw the White House on, I think it was Tuesday, maybe it was Wednesday,

3:07senior Trump administration officials came before reporters and talked to us and tried to explain and play up the nuclear threats that Iran posed. And what they talked about specifically was their stories of enriched uranium and gave us, for the first time, very specific figures about where they were at and sort of achieving weapons greater radium to eventually make some sort of nuclear bomb or nuclear weapon. So it seems like Secretary Rubio is, you know, saying one thing, the White House is trying to push this other narrative forward. And there's not a lot of clarity from lawmakers themselves about whether regime changes the ultimate goal and if so, what the US is role actually will be in that. President Trump has indicated that he wants to have some hand choosing Iran's next leader as well. So I think we're all sort of in the dark publicly at least about what that actually looks like. Yeah, because I remember earlier in the week, there was

4:07criticism from Democrats about something Rubio had said where he alluded to, you know, Israel told us they're going to strike first. So we felt Israel striking Iran's going to respond anyway. So you guys will do it. And that got a lot of Democratic lawmakers upset saying, I thought we were America first. What's going on here? Just to take us back on the conflict, you know, this is another international intervention by Donald Trump who campaigned on ending forever wars as Democrats are mining everyone now. Do you see this as a betrayal of a Trump promised on the campaign trail? Or do you think he's always kind of been this interventionist? Of course, we saw that as well. The major intervention this year and he also the strikes on the Houthi rebels, right? So what's your take on this kind of debate like is Trump backtracking or is this who we always has been? I think what's great about that question is that's the debate we're actually seeing play out in front of the House Armed Services and Senate Armed Services Committee this week. The Pentagon policy chief Elbridge Colby has had two chances now to testify publicly

5:09before those lawmakers about his national defense strategy. And that document actually talks about in relation to the Middle East, the US taking a step back from that region. Not necessarily drawing down forces that it doesn't commit to that, but it does talk about empowering allies and partners to sort of contain Iran. Obviously that led to Colby getting a lot of questions from members of both sides of the aisle. I mean, including on Thursday, House Armed Services Committee chair Mike Rogers about how that contradiction exists in what we're seeing play out right now. So I think, yeah, I mean, even if you're looking at this strategy document, which what I think is 40 days old at this point, it came out at the end of January, there's a clear, there's a lot of questions to be asked about how this is consistent across the Trump administration. But on Hegseth, he had a lot of heat during the confirmation process. He almost didn't get confirmed. Of course, he did get confirmed. And there were numerous junctures throughout his tenure where

6:13they had been reporting that Trump was sowering on him. Sitting here today in March, 2026, how would you evaluate his standing within the administration? I think the Trump administration had to put a lot of work into getting him confirmed in the first place. So I think there was reticence from early on about the idea of abandoning their guy after they expended so much political capital to get him over the finish line. Remember, he, he, I think after Secretary of State Marguerubiro was confirmed, he was like number two, right? It's like, it was like the one, two punch of these two nominees. So it's like, he's been serving in this role now for what a year and two months, a little over a year and two months. And I don't, it's, I remember all of the sort of the, the media hype about whether Hegseth would last. It seems to have died down, right? He hit a fever pitch sort of in the summer fall time period. And since then, it's really just, it, it seems like he's settled into the role.

7:15It seems like he is taking a very political stance, a very political posture towards this job and leaving a lot of the sort of serious military campaigning in terms of like the public messaging on that too, um, general downcane. And while there's been a lot of hype paid to sort of army secretary dangerous goals role in negotiating with Ukrainian allies, um, and of course, dangerous goals, uh, relationship with, with Vice President JD Vance, it hasn't really born out yet. So I mean, we're not seeing necessarily clear indicators that the administration is trying to force out Hegseth anytime soon. Really appreciate your insights, Brianna, always great to have you talking about defense, which you cover better than anyone else. You and Anthony are the dream team. So glad to have you on the pod. Before I let you go, though, we have to ask our punch on news read back question, which is what are you watching, listening, reading this week?

8:17What's on your media diet? I love this question. I, um, I'm embarrassingly in a very, uh, big reality TV hole right now. Um, I will say I'm watching Love is Blind. Um, when I have time, other than that, I cannot pick up a book and it cannot, it does not hold my interest. I don't know if you have the problem right now, Max. Probably not. You seem to always be reading somehow. Tell us how you do it. Um, well, yeah. So I, for the last couple of weeks, I've been totally reality TV billed. Can't, can't get off of it. Fair enough. When the news cycle is so crazy, it can be hard to go home and then dive into something, which is also demanding. So I, I'm not, I'm just always watching sports. Yeah. That's what I think. Even in my, e-rebacked news, I will say the books I'm reading, but the majority of my time is watching sports. And March Madness is approaching. So I know we're both Wisconsin Badger fans. So I, I know we're not going to get a super high seed, but I'm looking at a seven eight seed for us in March Madness. And we've been some of the best teams in the country, Michigan, Illinois, Michigan state. So

9:18I think we can make a run. We'll see. As, as, as UW Badger alum, I mean, as long as we get out, get Marquette out, I'm fine with it. Marquette cannot, cannot prevail. Well said, well, Brandon, thanks again for joining me. It was a really great conversation for those listening at home. I do want to note the read back newsletter will be out in your inboxes this morning. I have an article on our presentation at the Australian Embassy and Anthony, your defense colleague has an article on your interview with Elbridge Colby. So be sure to check that out. Hope everyone has a great weekend and stay safe.