Transcript of At War in the Middle East, Again with Christiane Amanpour and Amb. Wendy Sherman

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Hello, everybody. Welcome to the Weekly Show podcast. My name is Jon Stewart, and I will be your host and pilot for this evening's flight. It is Tuesday. It is March third, and we had a banger, a banger planned for you. We had election experts. We had experts in dark money. We had experts in social media. The point of the conversation was going to be that there's all this focus on undocumented people that are completely throwing our elections and all that. And yet everybody ignores the billionaires who are putting $350 million and changing algorithms to reflect their own political ideologies. And what's really, out of those two things, the one that is more damaging to a free and fair election in our democracy. And it would have been decisive. It would have been informative, decisive, entertaining. I think it would have been exactly what you were all looking for. And then this motherfucker bombed another country. And so We once again, the best laid plans of mice and men. Man plans and Trump laughs, or I don't know if he can laugh. All he can really do is look at the drapes. So we are going to talk about Iran and everything that is going on there, and with two people that I think have both wonderful areas of expertise about Iran, and I think can help us get through a little bit of some of confusion and lack of justifications and all those different things that are flying around in the moment right now.

Let's get right to them. We've got Christian Amampur and ambassador Wendy Sherman. As we try and navigate through these somewhat chaotic times and these somewhat malleable justifications for a war that we have just launched, or maybe not a war, perhaps. It is not a war, in fact. It is just merely a long distance explosion hello. We are joined by Christian Amampur, CNN Chief International Anchor, Ambassador Wendy Sherman, former Deputy Secretary of State and Lead Negotiator of the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran. Thank you both for being here. I can imagine that you guys are burning up the wires with people talking you all. Christian, can you give us just very briefly any real-time update about where this all stands right now as we're entering days four and five? What are you hearing?

Well, for me, the most important signifier of where we are right now is the order given by the United States for all Americans to leave the Middle East, but do it on your own dime, do it on commercial. We can't get you out. For me, that speaks volumes. It means it speaks to me to a lack of planning, to a lack of having talked about this war in any public forum. Certainly, they didn't go to Congress, but there was no speech to the American people. There was no advice to Americans, civilians, businessmen, and women, tourists, and all the people who live out in the Middle East and in all those areas that are vulnerable, which host US bases, to leave. And now they're panicking. So I don't know what that... I can't say that they're panicking inside the White House or the Pentagon, but that was a panic message to me. And the whole thing is very different than people expected. There are civilians dead in many places, not to mention in Iran, more than 500, plus some of those were children, about 160, according to the Iranians, at a school. There are allies targeted.

There's shifting reasons for this about why they're doing it Not only that, what they want to achieve. In one 24-hour period, maybe even less, 12 hours, Hegset, Trump, Vance, Rubio all gave different and I don't know what justifications. And Rubio ended last night by saying, actually, he didn't say it like this, but he implied that Trump was essentially rumbled by Netanyahu into this.

He was bullied. But the thing that strikes me about it, and Wendy, maybe you can speak to this, is in the chaos of all that, in the idea that maybe we didn't understand the justifications, also buried in the briefings is this has been planned for months. They and the the Israelis have planned the attack meticulously. And so they may not have been prepared in any way for the aftermath or the collateral effects of all this. But they've clearly put more effort into this than they did to any negotiation for a nuclear deal. Is that fair or unfair?

I think that's absolutely fair, John. I think that our military is extraordinary, and they plan for plans for plans. There is nothing they do not plan for and do it meticulously. And that's what we're seeing, a meticulous military plan. But the objective, as Christian pointed out, keeps changing on a minute-by-minute basis. And as a result, there was no real political strategy. There was overall strategy, there certainly was no regard for people, whether those were our diplomats who now have to leave embassies or American citizens who are told, as Christian pointed out, Leave, but we're not going to help you. The State Department has just now- Is that unusual? I don't know. I'm not in a war zone. Yes, extremely unusual. If you recall, John, the first day of the Afghanistan withdrawal was tough, and it was brutal. Utter chaos. It was not done well, and we got excoriated for it. No question. We then got our act together, and that was very sudden and very unexpected. But we got our act together and we got out 125,000 people. What this administration has done is called a NEO, which means everybody has to get out, but they did no planning, no preparation.

They have axed the State Department budget. In those 14 countries where Americans are to leave, eight do not have confirmed US ambassadors. That matters because it makes it harder to talk to governments. Who do you go to? Exactly. This is truly outrageous. The first responsibility of the Department of State is to protect American citizens.

I have friends that happen to have been in Dubai who fled on foot. Really? Wow. Who walked because the bombs started dropping.

Where are they walking to? Because there's all the air spaces being closed around the Gulf.

Yeah, they had to get, I guess, to the border and get out of there on land routes and that thing. I mean, that's how chaotic it's gotten.

Well, there you go. I mean, usually we would see military planes deployed or the government renting big transport carriers or big airlines.

And this is all for employees. This is all for American personnel, not necessarily just American corporate.

It's It's for everybody. It's for everybody. Oh, everybody. The Europeans have chartered airplanes to take their people out.

Oh, man.

The United States has not chartered airplanes, and we have done this in every other circumstance. We pay to get airplanes to difficult places to help get people out, not just our diplomatic personnel, but Americans.

Right now, the American government has basically given the order, Get out of there, and God speed, good luck.

Yeah, pretty much.

And airports are all closed, as you just mentioned.

That's incredible. Now, Christian, is that an indication, though, that the United States believes that the escalation is this is going to spread to a variety of... That it's not just going to be the Iranians targeting an American base in these areas, that this actually may spread?

Well, look, I think it is an indication because of what happened in the first 24, 48 hours. There was response immediately, and then there was more response after they had buried Kharminei or the remains of Khamenei and done some official prayer ceremony, because like Jewish people, Muslims get buried immediately. So that's basically what happened. And some of my contacts said that, wait for an even bigger response once they've got that out of the way. But the thing is, again, to Wendy's point, when you plan for war, you plan for the day after and you have an exit strategy as well. Of course, reality hits against reality and things change, but you're meant to have a plan going in. And the problem exemplified by, a, the surprise and shock that Iran has retaliated, number one. I'm sorry. They said they were going to do exactly this.

That can't be a surprise.

Well, it is, obviously. They are saying, how could this be? These are countries that didn't want this war to happen. Iran could have maybe had them on side. But they're not just targeting the Iranians now with their missiles and drones, the American bases. They're also targeting some of the economic hubs. And at one point, very sadly, a civilian hotel in Dubai. Now, some of these hotels are housing military and other personnel. So I don't know what Iran's justification is, but it's not allowed to hit civilians. So there's that.

Forget about justification, just strategy-wise. If you're already being overwhelmed by a two-on-one fight, you've got the United States and Israel who both have vaunted militaries seemingly who got married and blended into each other, and now they all fight together. Why in God's name would they then provoke the Saud and any other country that has our military equipment to get into this? Wouldn't they want to limit the participation? Or is the idea that if they cause economic damage in these other countries, that that will put pressure on the United States to back off.

It has put pressure on the United States. The stock market is way down today. Energy prices are way up. This is only going to get worse. Lng as well. That market is off because it comes out of Qatar. I think the idea is to sow chaos, to sow economic damage. We know Donald Trump. We know the President of the United States now. We know that if he sees the stock market go way down, if energy prices go up. After all, he has bombed, I think now, Christian, I know better than I, seven or eight countries.

Well, but he stopped eight wars. So right now, he's even. He's even, I guess. Right now, we're even, Steven. Stopped 8, started 8. We seem to be even.

Yes, but in that bombing of all of these countries, what he's always focused on is how the stock market has been doing, and it helps him to avoid dealing with the real affordability issues in the United States, to deal with the Epstein issues.

Well, we saw the same thing with the tariffs. As soon as he levied the tariffs, when he saw that the bond market was about to crash, he suddenly backed off of that. Does that give him a justification? Because they're being so all over the place for what the aims of the war are, does that then make it easier for him to declare, Oh, my God, we won. We did everything we intended to do. Now I can leave. Is that where he's going? With this, Christian?

To add to Wendy's analysis of why all these flashing outs by Iran, many Iranian experts have said that when Trump killed Racem Soleimani, the head of the Rods force, back in 2020, Iran practically telegraphed a very limited response.

They gave us a heads up beforehand.

Yes. And then in the so-called 12-day war, and even before that, the actual encounters with Israel, Iran really didn't land a punch. Israel was doing really well, and its allies were doing well, helping it with a defensive shield and all the rest of it. So this much vaunted, Iran will wipe us off the face of the Earth, didn't even come close to happening. And Iran was, in my opinion, revealed as either not having the wherewithal or the ability or the desire to go further. So then that became an issue within the Iranian regime. We were limited and restrained, they say, last times. Now, if we're attacked like this, we're weakened because of all the Israeli and US strikes in this past year. We're weakened because of the, I'm saying legitimate uprisings of people in Iran. They're weakened from the outside, they're weakened from the inside. A war now was going to be existential for them. I think they decided no more proportional. Now we have to give it all that we've got because it didn't work the last time. And now they're after us. And they know that because both Netanyahu and Trump and everybody else was saying this is about regime change.

You remember, we can quote left and right Trump and Netanyahu. They even were saying it in the opening hours of the war.

Netanyahu very explicitly said in an address, I've been working on this for 40 years.

Forty years.

Think about it. As long as my people were in the desert, I've been working on changing the regime. I mean, this is the greatest this moment for his political career. It's the only way he, I think, probably had a prayer of staying in power in the first place. Look, the algorithm is killing us. The algorithm, the way that it incentivizes the hostility and weaponizes ideology and all that, it's not right. But the antidote is information, and that's where ground news comes Ground news, it's this website app. It's designed to give readers a better way, an easier way to navigate the news. It pulls together every article about the same news story from all outlets all over the world and puts them in one place and not incentivized for the worst, most hostile, most partisan take. It tells you where it's coming from. You can see starkly in black and white how these different organizations and algorithms are manipulating the information that we get. They show you how reliable the source is and who's funding it. Who's funding it? Follow the money. Know who's behind the headline. Oh, who is this Rupert Murdoch fellow? He seems delightful.

He seems to have a somewhat pointed view of the world. I'm telling you, man, the Nobel Peace Center has even mentioned the Ground News is an excellent way to stay informed. Nobel Peace Center. That's, I think, the one that Trump started. I think it 3D prints Nobel Peace Prizes. It just hands them out. The platform is independently operated, supported by its subscribers, so they stay independent, and they stay mission-driven. They don't get sucked into this slop. If you want to see the full picture, go to Ground News. They can help you through the noise. Get to the heart of the news. Go to groundnews. Com/steward. Subscribe for 40% off the Unlimited Access Vantage subscription. Discount available only for a limited time. This brings the price down to like $5 a month. That's groundnews. Com/steward, or scan the QR code on the screen. What I'm curious about, and Wendy, maybe you can speak to this, I feel like the hubris and arrogance of the Trump administration is reflected in the idea that they think they cracked the code on regime changes. We all remember, what was it? Four weeks, five weeks, they went into Venezuela. They took Maduro.

And what they did is they just basically decapitated the leadership. And rather than trying to foment a democratic revolution or bring more liberty to the people who've been suffering, they just cut a deal with the next in command, basically by saying, You see what happened to that guy? If you don't want to get two to the back of the head, you'll cooperate with us. Is that the strategy now that they think they can deploy on any other nation? Like now with Iran, Hey, we took Al Qamenei. The next guy up, you'll just make a deal with us. We're not necessarily going to free the people. We're just going to get a slightly less reactionary dictator to work in American interests.

Right. One of the things of the many objectives laid out that worried me the most was Trump saying that Venezuela was a template. If Venezuela is a template, then he somehow believes of the various scenarios the CIA offered, he's choosing the one that somehow he can find a pragmatic person in Iran who will cut a deal with him, maybe give him access to Iranian oil or economic possibilities, and all of their enrichment and their missiles and somehow control the economy of Iran, but help out Donald Trump. This is so naive. Christian has looked at Iran and been in Iran for many, many years, and she knows as well as I do, there are many layers of Iranian leadership, many plans for succession. It is a culture of resistance. Ostensibly this morning, there was a hit and comb against the council that was meeting to elect the next Supreme Leader. Another effort to decapitate the leadership of Iran. That will not stop Iran. That will just double down to try to keep going. Maybe this time, they won't have a public meeting. They'll do it in a bunker somewhere to make sure that they get a Supreme Leader.

If, in fact, everyone was killed in this attack, I don't know yet. But the bottom line here is a total misunderstanding of what Iran is, who Iran is, and If a deal is made, that freedom for the Iranian people is not going to happen. Remember, that's how this all started. President Trump said to the protesters who were being killed, We have your back.

Sure. Rise up. We're not going to give you weapons, but we have your back. Christian, can you explain a little bit about... So what is the power structure? When we talk about the Iranian power structure, this is obviously post-1979 Revolution. It was very different when the Shah was there, still autocratic, but not dogmatic in the theocracy sense. What is the power structure there beyond the Supreme leader? Then there's a council of Mallahs. Can you walk us through that a little bit?

I can walk you through it, but it's really complex. So I'm going to give you a general picture. It's based on what's called the Veleate Fadi. Essentially, the Supreme Leader, so-called, is the representative of God on Earth. That's like a Pope in the Catholic faith. And therefore, what he says, because it's always a he, it's a muller, is their state policy, both religious and military and economic and foreign and domestic and everything. Under that, there are various councils. There's the Council of Experts, there's the Assembly Council, there's the Guardian Council, there's a number of different councils which are so medieval to try to pick through, but they have a certain internal logic and a bureaucracy and an administration that works to put the next leaders or to map out the policy or to do all the things. I know Wendy's familiar with this because she would have had to go through all their machinations when they did the JCPOA, the Iran nuclear deal. But suffice to say, immediately, Khamani was killed. The state television and Ali Larhjani, who I know very well, he is currently the National Security haunt show. He comes from a very hard-lined family Family of Lari Jhanis, and he used to be speaker of the parliament.

He can be described as pragmatic, but nonetheless, he's a true believer, and he's in charge. That's all I'm telling you. That's what I've been told. He's in charge, along with the current speaker of the Parliament who is named Barger Galibaaf.

But Lari Jhanis, he's not eligible to be the Supreme Leader, then.

No, but right now, he's running the country because of what has happened. The leadership has been decapitated. They're trying to get a Supreme Leader. And so all of this stuff is going on, and it's very unique to that place. But the real issue for me, no matter how much we talk about whether America will succeed, whether Israel pulled America into it, what the retaliation is, the real issue for me, as an Iranian and as a journalist, is the promises made to the Iranian people. And as Wendy says, I have covered this place for an eye on 35 years, ever since the first Gulf War. Obviously, I grew up there, but then fled with the revolution, et cetera, but went back and continued to cover it. These are the most extraordinary people I've ever met in my life. And you just had a conversation with the Iranian director, Jaafal and are he who showed you how extraordinary the Iranian people are. And all they want is freedom, democracy, a standard of living that they can actually afford to live and survive and have three meals a day, pay their rent and send their kids to school, not to mention, try to travel and be normal human beings.

That's what they want. And in every opportunity they've had, whether it's these so-called elections, they've always, in the last 30 odd years, chosen the lesser of the two evils, the more pragmatic, the more reform, except for Ahmadinejad and Raisi. But that's where they are.

But even then, they chose really Mosavi and not Ahmadinejad.

That's exactly right. It just wasn't allowed. You're right because you know it, the 2009 And that's the last time I got banned from there for explaining and showing with CNN's new technology how all the people were in the streets saying, This time we're going to rise up, madame, we're going to take our country back. And they were crushed. So the people, John, have risen over and over again, and they've been crushed by their heavily armed IRGC, Republican Guard, Revolutionary Guard, the Foot soldiers, the Basiege. They have the guns. Then Trump said, Help is on the way. And Reza Palavi said, Help is on the way. And then they got crushed again when help didn't come.

So now- They were massacred. I mean, they're saying now 30,000, 40,000 people.

Now there are a faction of people there who are desperate and hoping that this will liberate them. But there's another faction which are also on the streets that are pro-regime. Now it's smaller, but it's very fervent, and it's backed by the thugs with the weapons. So this, to me, is what we're going to wait and see. Who is going to win the battle of the streets if there's a military resolution to all of this?

Wendy, you've dealt with them in a slightly different capacity when you're negotiating with these. When Christian We're talking about the power structure and there's the mullets, and it's dogmatic, and it's theocratic. What layers are you having to walk through to get agreements that can hold? Are you walking with the pragmatists first to create these frameworks, and then they are pushed up the ladder to the mullets to make sure that they abide by a different standard?

Exactly. The current foreign minister, Abbasarachi, was my counterpart during the Iran negotiations, and his deputy, Majid Takra Vanchee, also was my counterpart. They, particularly, Arachi, speaks perfect English, writes perfect English. Most of these folks spent time in the United States. Foreign Minister Zarief at the time, who built a relationship with Secretary John Kerry, had lived in the United States for 30 years. He understood us very, very well. But even though these folks understood us very well, Arachi and I both became grandparents, and we shared photos of our grandchildren, at the end of the day, they answered to the Supreme Leader and to this layered bureaucracy and theocracy that Christian laid out. And so for months, we could not put anything on paper because if we put it on paper, they had to send it up the chain and they would be told no. We had to do everything in all kinds of machinations way to get to a deal. When we finally thought we had parameters that we'd all agreed to, and we really thought we on the glide path to a deal, the Supreme Leader gave a speech and changed every threshold, every single one.

So the red lines in a deal for the bureaucratic state are different than the ones for the theocratic leaders?

Without a doubt. Without a doubt. And so then we had to twist ourselves into pretzels to figure out how to meet the Supreme Leader's parameters while staying true to what had been agreed in this multi-party negotiation.

What are the types of parameters that came from on high that complicated? In other words, what would we have to do to satisfy their vision?

Their vision was much stricter. A lot of it was on technicalities in the deal. One of the things I think people need to understand is, Wykow and Kushner did a drive-by negotiation.

Well, they're also real estate It's a different state, guys. I mean, they're viewing this as a development scheme. Exactly. It's just a different animal. Right.

If you can't build one building, you just go on to the next building. This is national security. This is the politics of the world. And so their drive by, they said, well, Iran wouldn't agree to anything. They didn't understand Iran's need to hold on to its dignity, though we all find that strange. They didn't understand Iran's need to have a deterrence. What sovereign country doesn't want a deterrence, even if we hate and find an anathma what this country does? And so they wanted a quick fix because Trump always wants a quick fix. They couldn't get a quick fix. Negotiations are tough work, really hard work.

But I'm really interested to ask Wendy, because you mentioned the the last drive-by negotiations in your words. I was stunned, and I'm sure you were, John and Wendy, I'm sure you were. Last week, just before the war started, Witkopf said to Fox, the President, and we were, I don't want to use the word frustrated, but we're frustrated. I don't want to use the word capitulate, but because they haven't capitulated, which in one word to me said, They just don't get it. Wendy, you never got a capitulation. And it seems that for Trump and the Trumpies, negotiation means zero sum game. I win, you lose. And that's not what this lot in Iran are all about. But again, I also want to ask Wendy and John to respond to something that I can't answer to. But Vance and Trump and all the others have been now they're basically saying that this negotiation process was rubbish for the longest time. You all talk, talk, talk, talk. Iran was never going to do X, Y, or Z. We had to get to this point today. That's their latest justification. And maybe they really believe it that 2015, JCPOA wasn't good enough.

Well, they didn't believe it was good enough, Christian. They were critics at the time. What we said to them is, We have a choice. We can stop their program. We can verify it and monitoring it to the nth degree, or we face the prospect of an Arab-Persian war. We Which is what we're getting.

Oh, wow.

Well, that's the question, Wendy. When you talk about in that nuclear deal, the big trigger was that international inspectors were going to be going. This is the JCPO.

Yeah, JCPO.

That international inspectors would go in there and that they would be able to monitor the Iranian nuclear program. Iran was saying, For our national sovereignty, we have to be able to enrich uranium, not for weapons, but for energy and other types of things that seem to be very crucial to them. Now we've expanded the aperture to the development of missiles. I don't know if that was in the JCPOA, and also their support for proxies and other things within the region. I don't know if that was also... So they've include... It's a much broader negotiation, it seems.

And get rid of their navy. So it's a long list of things that we're doing now.

So it's basically, though, in some respects, a castration.

Absolutely. Absolutely, without a doubt.

But here's the thing, and this, again, I don't understand, okay? Because it's different words being said in public. So after the 12-day war, Israel and the United States brought all the intelligence images and all the pictures and said, We have obliterated their nuclear program. And by and large, I think most people agreed that they'd at least put it out of commission, that they have not been able to enrich since the 12-day war. And a lot of the main production centers and enrichment centers have been obliterated or at least extremely badly put out of action. And we also read in the lead up to this war that these aerial satellite photos and things had shown that the Iranians were not, in fact, going to enrich and doing that. They weren't doing that. They were plugging some of the holes, but what they were doing was trying to rebuild their missiles and all the rest of it, which, as Wendy said, is their defense thing and deterrent. But even now, Rafael Rossi, who's the head of the IAEA, the UN Agency to Monitor the Nuclear Issues, said that in this round of bombings, the nuclear stuff has not been touched.

So it's just really confusing.

Well, it appears, Christian, that they may have gone after Natan's today. But the tell is exactly what you said. President Trump said that We obliterated all of their facilities. Clearly, we said it way back, but we did not obliterate it. And did I think that Iran would try to start enriching again? Yeah, probably they would. But as you pointed out, The real way to ensure that you know what's going on is to have the inspectors inside. And we had the most unbelievable monitoring and verification mechanisms that didn't exist anywhere else in the world that Iran agreed to. We had eyes on everything. We had for 25 years what's called uranium accountancy. Whatever you take out of the ground, you follow it through the process, and you know that what comes out the other end is exactly what you put in. It hasn't been taken off to some covert supply chain to create a nuclear weapon. There was just tremendous work because we had an amazing cadre of experts. Obviously, as you know, Secretary of Energy, Ernie Moniz, who was just completely brilliant. None of that existed in these negotiations. None of that hard work existed.

We're in a really tough place.

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New subscribers only varies by plan. One free breakfast item per box for one year while subscription is active. Are we searching for answers that maybe aren't even there, that this is a much simpler... They've decided, and this happens sometimes, they did it with Saddam Hussein, they are bad actors, Gaddafi, Saddam Hussein, Hamaleya, and the Americans decide in a somewhat Cavalier manner, in my opinion, these are bad actors, and we're going to take them out. And whatever comes next will probably be better than these bad actors. Somehow we didn't do it to Sad, but we're going to do it now in Iran, and we set terms that we know a country cannot meet. Similarly to what Netanyahu is doing Hamas, basically saying, I'll just bomb you till you disarm, knowing that, well, and now they won't. So it just turns into this weird siege. But is it simpler? Are we looking for justifications and strategies that don't actually exist.

Go ahead, Christian.

Look, you have the broader, more governmental. I have the more on the ground reportorial view of this. Look, A number of things have struck me in the aftermath of the launch of this war. The United States says, the US officials say, there is no international law. There is only American law, and we do whatever we want for our own national interest. And that's what they're going by right now. In Britain, and in most of the other parts of the democratic world, there is international law. So why did Britain decide not to go with Trump in the initial opening salvos? Because there was no legal justification for it. There was no imminent threat. They call it the US and Israel preventative, preemptive, and all the rest of it. But that implies an imminent threat of which there was none, despite the false claims of many of the Trump administration and their foot soldiers. So Britain then, now it's expanded. There are reasons, and Britain is now letting the US use some of its bases. So that's one thing. The other thing is that what's really, I I think you're right, the President has decided that might makes right.

And this is what has been playing out since last January. Since his inauguration, I was at the Munich Security Conference of last year when J. D. Vance read the riot act to his allies, not his adversaries, his allies, and basically said, We're going to do what we want. You're a bunch of pussies. You don't even enable your far right, and all the rest of it. I mean, it was mad. And then, cozy up a little bit, as you saw, play out in the White House to Putin and Zalensky and all the rest of it. So yes, I think they think that they can decapitate whoever. But here's where it's a problem in Iran. There is no known, modern or ancient example of regime change from the air. Okay? It doesn't happen. Maybe this is an exception, but right now it hasn't happened yet, and it hasn't happened before. It takes an invasion.

Would Libya be that?

No, it wasn't regime change. No, no, no. They just, I think, and correct me if I'm wrong, they bombed Bengali, but Gaddafi stayed until his own people massacred him, basically. You know what I mean? And it's a total chaos. And you don't want that regime change because to this day, Libya is chaotic. And my fear about Iran is that already, even before the war, experts in Washington, people like Kareem Sajjapur. I said to Kareim, What are they saying to you in the State Department, the Iran experts? First, he said to me- There aren't any. I haven't found any.

Right, there aren't any.

And second, he said to me that they seem to be talking about doing a deal with a pragmatic Revolutionary Guard or somebody. Was So that's not what the opposition wants. The US-based opposition of Reza Palavi has basically said anybody who does anything with anybody in the current power structure is appeasing or collaborating, and we won't have it. So there's no clarity on the day after, who, what, where, when. And in the middle of this, there is no clarity for the Iranian people. And I'm very fearful because it's already being said by the Trumpies, We're just providing the environment for you, Iranian people, to go see She's the moment.

John, I think you're totally on to something here that this is just about might makes right. We're tired of this. We're just going to use our military. The President, when we heard Hegset the other day do his very macho announcement of why we were doing this. He said, We're not going to have any stupid rules of engagement. It was a very telling statement about how to go about these things. We will do what we want to do when we want to do it because we're the United States of America. We know that that arrogance has gotten us into big trouble in the past. We all loved the shock in all the first few days of the Iraq War, the The fact that we were going to help Vietnam, the South Vietnamese, create a democracy, and then it turns into a quagmire. Whether this is a forever war or not, I don't know, but it's certainly a war of choice and a war of chaos and a war of confusion. There's no doubt about it. It has second and third and fourth term effects with our allies in Europe in terms of Ukraine. The President is going to China at the end of March.

I think he wants this to be over before he goes to China unless he's succeeding and then scares the devil out of Xi Jinping, which I don't think is going to happen. I think what it says to Xi Jinping is he can take Taiwan because might makes right, and the US will let him do what he wants to do because the President wants to be his partner, not his competitor. We are in a really different world.

And what about Zelensky, Wendy? Absolutely.

Certainly, Putin has said, I mean, Putin has said explicitly, Gloves are off now. Now we get to do whatever we want. There is no moral order. But, Wendy, I want to ask you because I think you're more familiar in these negotiations. I'm struck by the Trump team's air of grievance and victimization. The United States created this rules-based order. It was our design after World War II. We're the ones that rebuilt Japan and Germany and the rules that they were going to be militarily neutered. And we created the trade rules, and we created this world order. And now we're saying, Everybody is taking advantage of us in this world order that we created in the United States and have been benefited from more than any other country. We have had the most successful 80-year run of a country in the modern times, but we've been getting ripped off, and so we're going to burn the whole thing down and go with the old world, more monarchal, colonialist version of, I need something, I'm going to go take it. Is that the frustration you're seeing from negotiators that treaties are for losers? Is that where we're at?

Well, Donald Trump famously said that John McCain, a patriot and a war hero, was a loser because he had been captured. So a lot of this is out of Donald Trump's mentality. He has always been a fan of McKinley, the President who believed in spheres of influence, who believed in tariffs, who got us into a lot of trouble. Yes, may have acquired a couple of territories, but we shouldn't be a colonial power. We should not be an oppressor ourselves. This is like nuts. I think we're beginning to see politically in the US, MAGA beginning to have some concerns about all of this because it was supposed to be America first and no wars abroad. The President instead is projecting power.

But do they really believe that the world order has existed, the democratic world order, I'm talking about Europe, Canada, that they've existed to exploit the United States and that we have been victimized by the world we designed?

I think the President has always worked on the concept of grievance and globalization, which was part of that world order after World War II. It helped people get better food, better pharmaceuticals, have possibilities. But it also meant that some people no longer had their manufacturing jobs in the United States. It was collateral damage. Collateral damage. And we never had an employment assistance program worth anything. And so those folks feel like they were left out and left behind, that that world order didn't help them. They saw huge cultural change in this country where gay people could be married, women would go to work, a woman might even become President of the United States. Their wife had to go to work, even though that wasn't their deal. People moving into their community spoke a different language or went to the mosque, not to their church. And people felt heathered and filled with grievance. And Trump has worked really hard to milk that grievance and say, Everybody's against us. Yes, we are the most powerful. We're going to show it with use of our military. I'm going to get you what you to serve through tariffs. Instead, what he's gotten is a tax hike for every single American and a war that may not have an end anytime soon.

Christian, I'm struck by what Wendy is saying in that the seeds of that grievance can found in the seeds of the religious movements in the Middle East. The a response to modernity. If you were to look at the University of Cairo graduating class in 1966, you'd probably see women in mini-skirts and you'd see a whole thing. Back when there was Nasserism and we were going to have rapproachment with the West, and everything got liberalized. Beirut was the Paris of the Middle East. The seeds that Wendy is talking about It feels like those were the cataclysms that occurred in the Middle East that turned it into this much more conservative area. Do you see the echoes of that, Christie?

Yeah, I do. I actually think it's really interesting that you bring it up. Of course, those grievance-based politics are very dominant in Europe, but also, as you say, in the Islamic world, particularly since the Islamic Revolution of Iran. Some of it is based on the grievance of the Iranians when the Americans and the The Brits had that coup in 1953, brought the Shah back when their democratic Prime Minister had been kicked out in a coup, et cetera. But if you read the history of Shiaism, the Shiais, of which Iran is the most powerful country in the most populous Shiaid nation, it's 99% Shiaid. And the history of Shiaism is the same grievance, victimhood, and martyrdom that you're seeing in a much more different religious way, that you're seeing now, all these centuries later by post-industrial Western nations who have used all their politics and fear of the other to gin this stuff up. But that's why Both these countries are talking past each other. There's actually no understanding. And if you go back and read a little bit of the which I've been doing in this last week to refresh my memory. I mean, I was in Iran during the revolution, but to refresh my memory of everything.

The Americans are still haunted by the hostage crisis, 1979. The Iranians are still haunted by the coup of 1953, and it goes on and on and on. And so there's a wall of mistrust.

But, Christian, I want to ask you, in 1979, though, it seems like that revolution against the Shah wasn't necessarily a religious one. I don't think Khomene- Yes, it was. No, but I'm saying, don't you think Khomene appeared to be a more more moderate figure before he got there. You don't think that when he was living in exile?

No, I don't think he was more moderate. He was a true believer. But what he did do, because you did get quite a lot of the, I don't even know what to call them, the upper middle class, deciding to go into the streets against the Shah and vote for him. He managed to lie and dissemble, but he managed to tell everybody that he was going to bring democracy, he was going to bring this, he was going to bring that. And, oh, no, a muller will never be in charge. So all of this stuff was a lie. Actually, very gullible Western politicians believed him. At the time, the British government, maybe some in the US government, thought, Wow, we're going to get democracy in Iran. Let's throw the Shah over our decades-long ally, who, yes, was authoritarian. But I think the difference there was that in 1979, after a full year of revolution, and I just have to tell you, in New Year's '77, going into '78, Jimmy Carter and Rosalind came to Tehran, and they had a state visit, which culminated in a state dinner. And President Carter told the Shah that, You are our greatest friend and an island of stability in the Middle East.

That meant they knew nothing about the rumblings. Their ambassador there knew nothing about. Eight days later, the revolution started. It took a year, and one year later, Khomene came back. Eight days after Carter's famous, You are my best friend, and you are the stability of the Middle East, which means that nobody knew anything. Or if they did, the message wasn't going up the chain. I mean, that's a simplistic version, But that's basically what has been happening. To this day, I'm going to just say, I think 47 years of Western policy to Iran has been rubbish, literally rubbish, literally rubbish.

In the sense of the sanctions and the way that they've isolated them?

Everything. You know why? Because they focused only on the hard power. Nuke, missiles, foreign merceries, never on the rights of the Iranian people. And the Iranian people are some of the most sophisticated people in that whole region. The best educated, the most female empowerment, the most technologically savvy, the best scientists, doctors, artists for thousands of years. And we just lump them all as quasi-terrorists. All the people of Iran never put their human rights or their democratic rights not just at the top of an agenda, but anywhere on the agenda.

That's what I meant, Christian. Even with Khomenei, it felt like a bait and switch, not to the world, but to the Iranian people.

And to the world.

He said, We're going to give you democracy and to the world.

And to the world who backed him.

And then he gets there and they start massacring everybody and imposing these religious customs. Because I agree, and Wendy, maybe you're experienced as well. If there is a country over there that seems most inclined to be breathering with the United States, it's Iran. Their culture, their people, seem much more aligned with Western sensibilities, no?

Well, without a doubt, as Christiane pointed out, highly literate country, very sophisticated people, technologically, culturally, intellectually. Just look at Christiane. I think that- That's right. I think there's no doubt that there could have been another story written here. But I think that the searing of the hostage crisis in 1979 lives with us forever. And certainly for my generation, it lives forever in the same way that Vietnam lives with me forever. Madeleine Albright, with whom I worked both at the State Department and in business, really was a daughter of Munich, not of Vietnam, and had a very different view of the world and the United States because of that experience. We all are a creature of our history. This generation, as we're seeing, where Israel is concerned. I know my own daughter, young people around the world, yes, they think Israel has a right to exist, and therefore the Israeli people, but they do not consider themselves Zionists in the same way that my generation perhaps did. We see a huge split in any of the polling that is done for the first time. The American public has greater support for the Palestinians than for Israel.

That's really astonishing, and it has to do with our own experience and Bibi Netanyahu's decades now of deciding how the world would go. I'm very, very much certainly feel horrified by what happened to Israel on October seventh, no doubt about it, but I'm also horrified about everything that is happening now and the right of the Iranian people, not the mullas, but the people.

Yeah, I'm always talking about the people. I mean the people, not the structure.

The people are going to get left behind, I'm afraid, in all of this sound and fury.

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Okay, one question.

Yeah, please, Christian.

Could it be a Berlin Wall thing? Because I'm very nervous. We've explained all the possible downsides and the possible cynical deals that might be made around the back of the Iranian people to end this. But could it be, Wendy, John? I didn't cover the fall of the Berlin Wall. I wasn't a foreign correspondent yet, but it was like, no, no, no, no, sign off, and the soldiers didn't shoot. And that was crucial, which will be crucial in Iran. But I wonder if you think there might be the space, Wendy, created by this war to allow that there.

Christian, you should be a journalist because... Let me tell you something. That is an incisive question and one that we had not considered previously. You know what? Send me your resume.

Can I work for your show?

Oh, please. Absolutely. Anytime. I hope you like basic cable money because that's where it's going. Wendy, what about that question? I think there's always that possibility. Anybody who lived through the Berlin Wall falling in the fall, the USSR, and all those things, what is your feeling on that? These guys could collapse, and there could be a different renaissance.

Look, I think we would all find that a wonderful outcome. I think that we don't have an organized opposition in Iran. There were organized groups in Europe and ready to take the seeds of the fall of the Berlin Wall. We had West Germany, of course, who could help usher in that change. Perhaps Perhaps that can happen here. We didn't have a Shia-Suni split in the same way that we do here. Nonetheless, that was a hard integration between East and West Germany. We'll see how that plays out in Merz's visit with the President today, the Chancellor of Germany. But look, nothing would make me happier, not in terms of our politics in the United States, I am not a fan of President Trump's. But for the Iranian people, I'd be delighted if there were such a situation.

Christian, you covered Arab Spring, and it does bring up, I remember being in Egypt right before. It wasn't before Mubaric fell, but before Morsy fell. The Arab Spring had that feeling of young people and a democratic movement. But what we saw was Exactly what Wendy is saying, without having the infrastructure or organization, the only groups, because civil society has not been fostered necessarily in those countries in the same way, the only groups organized enough were either the ultra-religious groups like Muslim Brotherhood or the military. And so what you don't get, and maybe this is the legacy of Arab Spring, you don't get that fostering of that democratic society that is from bottom up, you get top-down autocracy, either through religious actors or military actors. Is that the problem with the general structure there?

Yeah, I think it was absolutely the problem there. And what happened is that because the Muslim Brotherhood had civil society in its pocket, having been the humanitarian lifeline for so many Egyptians through the mosques and through their foundations and this and that, they were the only clear, organized group first. And when there were elections, they won. And then the military said, No, no, no, no, no, and they had the weapons. So what? It's the weapons versus... And nobody wanted to see what they thought may be radical Islamic groups taking over any of these countries. It was different than Iran in that there was no outside intervention. Here you've got Israel and the United States bombing. And I fear very much for the backlash in generations to come, because I think it's very controversial to be liberated in a Muslim country by Israel and the United States. But I know A lot of people are saying, whoever it takes, whatever it takes. But I worry about that for the future.

Christian, are there tent posts within Iranian society that would make them better ground for that type of democratic infrastructure to rise up?

I think that you have a very young population. It's very, very young across the board, but most especially, it's essentially called a Gen Z uprising right now. These are people who are incredibly plugged in. But I worry a little bit that they're also incredibly plugged into TikTok. So there's potentially a little bit of an unrealistic notion of how you have to do the grassroots and the groundwork, and most particularly unifying. What you don't don't want is to have an opposition wherever it comes from who's going to just replace one hegemony with another, for want of a better word, one superiority to another. So I think, just like in Syria, where the new President Al-Shara, who's been in now just over a year, his biggest challenge, and he's known that it's his biggest challenge, but he must get over it, is to unify a very fragmented country. So any leader has to do that. And do not forget that There is a genuine 10, 15 % fundamentalist population in Iran who are very religious, who could be brought along in a new Iran, but they're not nothing. They're not nobody. And they need to be brought in and unified.

I think Israel has to decide what it's going to do. There's another whole front open now, again, in Beirut. There may be a land invasion of Lebanon, again, by the Israelis, but they are under cover of our inattention regularly bombing a new free Syria who the US happens to be friends with.

That's the leader Trump likes. That almost seems like his model, which is, I like a strong man, but I want a strong man that- Who's my friend. Seems reasonable to me and he's my friend because he has no compunction with strong men throughout the... He loves Putin. He loves MBS.

But my fear, Wendy, and you can take this away, obviously, because you know much more than me on the diplo, but that Israel does not want a strong Iran, no matter who under who. I think that they want to fragment it and have a chaotic Iran, and that would be a disaster, in my humble opinion.

I certainly don't think that Bibi Netanyahu wants an Iran that has any strength whatsoever ever.

Really? Yes. So even if they're not a theocracy, he would object to a powerful Iran.

If they are still financing proxies in the region, if they still have missiles that can reach Israel, If they still have an enrichment program, none of that is anything that Bibi Netanyahu wants. Let me just say on this political point, it's really important. I actually, with Anne Patterson, who was then the ambassador in Egypt, went to meet with Al-Sisi. He was not the President of Egypt yet. We also met with all the different political factions and political groups. They were just beginning. They were babes in the organizational development of what you needed.

Is this in between Mubbarak and Morsy in that space a year, I guess? Yes, in that space. Right.

We met with all these political groups They were terrific and wonderful, but had so far to go to have the power and the capability to rule a country like Egypt. We met with Assisi, and Anne and I came out of that meeting, turned to each other said, he's going to take over. He's going to throw Morsy in jail, and he's going to take over.

And was very popular when he did it.

And was very popular when he did it.

That year of chaos had created such as Christian said, I think the people just wanted to feel safe.

Yes.

And as though they were in. Wendy, when they talk about, Trump says now I bomb, but hey, look, I'll negotiate, what does that even look like and who would he even talk to at this point? And what could they seed other than just utter supplication, which, as Christian said earlier, no country will allow itself to be in that position?

If I were Iran, and in June, I was negotiating, and three days into that negotiation, got bombed, and then I was negotiating again in February and got bombed the hell, as we've seen in these last few days. The chances I would sit down and negotiate with the United States, boy, I'd have to know a lot was going to be on the table that I would get as a result of doing that. And I don't think from Iranian culture and a culture of resistance, again, Christian knows better than I do, I would give in and say, Well, if you just stop bombing me, I'll give you everything you want. That's not going to happen.

I don't know, Wendy, whether you know any more from talking to maybe insiders and particularly close to the administration, but I was told that Trump is trying to negotiate, and with Iran's new leaders. God only knows who those are. But we've heard that Lari has said there will be no negotiations under bombs. But I do find it interesting, the couple of polls that I read, right as the war started, a poll was taken that basically had 41 % of Americans for and 41 against. So that's pretty equal. The latest one from yesterday from Washington Post found 52 against and 39 in favor. And you've seen all the officials, the major cabinet officials, including the President of the United States, struggling with their messaging, and Mager, very upset. And certainly, can you imagine? Can you imagine it's Tucker Carlson, who's the only one who's actually tried to tell Trump the negative fallout of a possible war with Iran.

The rest of them just off they went into it. It's what's launched him into front runner status for 2028.

Yeah, but I wonder what's going to play out internally in the politics of the US. I don't know.

And also in the context of Americans, look, we love us a good new war. And a lot of times, if you remember H. W. Bush, when he started bombing the Middle East, his stuff would go up to 90%. Like, generally, Americans rally around the President and the flag during these times. So to start out with even 50/50 about going into a place like that is shocking for these types of operations. But as we wrap up, and I'm cognizant that you guys have a lot to do, the one area we haven't really discussed is the other Gulf States. What a game is Saudi Arabia playing here? Because let's be honest, the Suny-Shia rift in that part of the world and that power structure is real. As Iran had tried to create that corridor through Lebanon and Syria, to extend their power. The Saudis were very concerned about, and that's why Iraq was so important to them. What are they doing with regards to Palestine and with regards to Iran? Because they talk a game of resistance, but it seems like behind the scenes, they facilitate and agree with a lot of these actions. What is your feeling about their role in all this?

I think Saudi Arabia, more than anything, wants stability and wants to have the economic future that Mohamed bin Salman, really the person who's running Saudi Arabia, hopes out of his 2030 plan for the economic future of Saudi Arabia, which also has a very young population and an understanding that oil will not exist forever and that, in fact, the royal family will be at risk if they cannot create a future for the young people in that country. He has tried to create a relationship with Iran, even starting diplomatic relations. That was really to protect his back. But now Saudi Arabia has been attacked. Of course, Saudi Arabia didn't want to be attacked by Iran again after they after the Saudi Aramco plant some time ago. So this was like his, I'm going to make sure that I've got a back channel and a way to make sure we don't get targeted again so that I hold on to the future I want for Saudi Arabia.

How does his public relationship with the United States and Netanyahu differ from what you believe is going on? Because that portrays him in a much more conciliatory role with Iran than I would have imagined.

I don't think he's conciliatory. I think he's trying to have it always, all of the time, and stay in control. As we've seen, he's a very controlling person. We all know about the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, which many of us will never, ever be able to forget. It was so horrifying and so outrageous. I think a lot of these countries are very pragmatic, very transactional. Saudi Arabia has bought enormous number of weapons from the United States, truly important to us as part of our economy. They don't know how to use these weapons sometimes very well. We saw that in Yemen, which hasn't gone very well for Saudi Arabia. Now that Saudi Arabia has been attacked, but some of those targets have been US targets, not just Saudi targets. We will see where Saudi Arabia goes and whether they will now be all in. One other point I'd make about all these Gulf States and reports this morning, which is they all have munitions often bought from us, and they are running out of those munitions. One of the big debates to come in the United States now is whether we're going to spend more money to help all of these Gulf countries increase their munitions as well as get more for ourselves.

Our military-industrial complex is very slow going. Getting those munitions in storage and in stock is not something that happens in five days.

We don't have the manufacturing base for it anymore.

Exactly. We do not have the manufacturing base for it, and you can't start up those manufacturing on a dime. We are about to see how this is all going to play out. Uae, ostensibly United Arab Emirates, only has maybe a week at most left of its munitions.

To keep those missiles from... They're talking about all those shields that they've created. Christian, what's your thought on where the Gulf States play in this, and Saudi's in particular?

Well, I would just add that I think it'll potentially cause Saudi Arabia and UAE and Qatar and their people to potentially maybe question the wisdom of having American bases their soil, particularly when they're not being defended by the United States, their allies. And I don't even know whether they were alerted that this was happening on Saturday morning. I don't know. But I also think that for the UAE and Qatar, especially, and now Saudi more and more, they have branded themselves as this place that is modern, that is stable, that is a financial hub, a business hub, a negotiating peace hub, World Cup here, this and that there. They have completely branded themselves on being a safe bolt hole for very rich people and those who want to have some tourism and sports and all the rest of it. Really good point. Whoa, now they are in the line of fire. So they're going to have to make some decisions, and it's going to be very weird and interesting to see how this all plays out for everybody. It really is so huge, the ramifications of what's just happened. And I will go back to the whole business of Israel, because I was pretty shocked two days, two weeks before October seventh, to learn that the then National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan, had said publicly, Things in the Middle East are quieter and more organized, and I'm paraphrasing, than in a long, long time.

So all I'm saying is there still seems to be a knowledge gap. There just seems to be a gap between what's going on And what is actually happening and what your best friends think halfway around the world. And that affects everything. Even Netanyahu has been written recently that he asked the Qataris to increase the funding for Hamas, practically on the Eve of October seventh. So guys, something's got to change. This same policy that's been had for the last half a century is not producing the optimum results.

Well, certainly not a learning curve. I mean, I would say, you had talked earlier about the lessons of Vietnam and the lessons of Iran. But it doesn't seem that we've tried every version of this game, whether it's bombing for a little bit, whether it's bombing and then invading and then occupying and holding it until... We've seen in Afghanistan and we've seen in Iraq and we've seen in Vietnam and we've seen in Libya, that the collateral damage and the downstream effects We just don't know where it going to be. But the one thing we never seem to stop doing is meddling and trying to control the hubris of a nation, even as strong as we are, thinking that it's not just about influencing It's about control. When you put it into control, our Constitution very clearly states people want to breathe free. They want self-determination. When we have policies that use these other countries as puppets, how can that not be disastrous?

I still think the Americans have one big superpower, and they have to use it, either this president or the next one, to force peace and a just solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I genuinely believe that that is the source.

You think that's a nuclear reactor?

It is huge this. Everything else is a tentacle that hangs off that. Everything else, I believe, is a tentacle. I'm convinced that a proper lasting peace will do so much to quieten most of the tension in that region. I really do. I think focusing on the human rights and democratic rights of a people like in Iran is very important, too, along with the national security.

Not just the transactions.

Yeah. Along with that, you have to have something for the people.

Yes, I agree with you, Christian. I think that's absolutely critical. I don't think it's about building a resort on the beautiful waterfront of Gaza. No, it's not. But I do think that giving people the dignity they deserve to live a decent life and the dignity of their own identity.

Maybe understanding it's not for us to give. We cannot be patronizing when it comes to the dignity of other people. It's their unalienable rights. We don't grant them the ability to get those. But I really appreciate the conversation and the insights here today. I think you've both got bright futures.

I just hope the people of Iran have bright futures and the people of Israel and the people of Palestine and the people in the world because they are treated as, unfortunately, second fiddle to everything or fourth or fifth fiddle.

When you talk about it, it all seems so much simpler than what it is, which is to people live in dignity.

Women rule. We should go and do it.

Right, exactly. Christian Ammampour, CNN Chief International Anchor, Ambassador Wendy Sherman, former Deputy Secretary of State and lead negotiator of the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran. Both of you, thank you so much for your insights.

Thank you, John.

Which Trump pulled out of, don't forget.

Yes, because it was a disaster of Barack Hussein Obama's doing. He's the only one who prevented nuclear war.

A man of great dignity.

Always. It's great. Thank you, guys.

Thank you.

Thank you.

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I mean, it really can't. There's no goals, like real concrete goals, no strategy. I mean, how can it end well?

It's just shocking in that they're describing the dynamics of it, and then they say, Now, there is a way for this to go right, but it's not going to.

Not going to happen. No.

Even when they said, Could this be a Berlin Wall moment? Then they took a moment to think like, Yeah, no, probably not.

It's also crazy. There's a Board of Peace in the I wonder what their take is. Has anybody thought about calling them? Yeah.

The problem is they're still in the hiring phase. They're still taking resumes, so they're not fully... Now, you can call there, and obviously, you can still get through. Of course. There's still not a lot of follow-through.

They're fully funded, though, just ramping up the hiring.

Well, because it costs a billion... Was it a billion dollar? He runs everything like a fucking country club. It's It's a board of Peace. You pay a billion dollars, and there's a dining budget that you have to fulfill.

But the food is not that good.

There's a three-year waiting period.

How quickly after the war started did the Board of Peace puns, the Board of Peace is Board of Peace. The internet is undefeated.

Well, I think when he fell asleep at the meeting, Board of Peace just became very easy to make jokes on.

That did become the meme. But don't you think his ADD, I really do wonder They're like, he just doesn't have the long… He likes Demo Day. He's a big Demo Day guy, but he doesn't like to be in there the day where they're like, Yeah, we're just framing out the siding. We're painting the trim. That's not the shit that interests him.

I mean, he's falling asleep in meetings. I imagine that once these big, beautiful attacks or whatever aren't as big- Or as beautiful. He's probably going to move on.

I saw this great thing that was like, Trump is not a day two President. He's just day one. And anything that happens day two is like, I have no time for that.

No, he moves on. The thing he's most interested in- But the ballroom does continue to captivate him. I was just, Gillian, that I was like, Oh, I was going to go. But the one thing that he brings up in any situation is the ball room.

He loves gold. I think it's because it's right outside the window. You can't forget about it when it's right outside your window. We need to start putting some wildlife right outside. Have him divert to zebras.

That'd be so great if they did one of those Disney hotels where you say the girafes just walk up to the window. That's what you could open up on.

We got to get those fly-by planes like the Jersey Shore. Yes. Yeah, you could really.

With lawyers that you can call to sue people. No, I like what's going on here. Distract him with benign things that can't get the world in trouble, just like baubles and trinkets and such. But somebody said me the other day, which I hadn't even really considered, and they go, And by the way, I'm not a construction guy, but how can a ballroom cost $400 million? And I was just like, That's a great I don't know what sound system you're putting in there, but $400 million does seem like a lot for a one story.

Yeah, especially DC real estate. This is in New York City we're talking about.

$400 million Dollars?

I can't wait to go to my first party there. Yeah.

Maybe the speakers are like, I don't know, camouflaged as other things. You can't see the sound. It's all built into the curtains. I don't know. I'm trying to imagine.

I don't think he's getting his money back is what I'm saying. I think even when he sells this, he's going to take a hit. No write off the depreciation, because, by the way, he's never moving out of there. He's living there. Brittany, what do they got for us on this fine week?

Okay, John, you said you thought your guy, David Ellison, should have it all. Looks like he's about to.

That's right, baby.

I called it. You're still good with that?

I am the king of Polymarket. Now, don't look into the transactions too much. But there may have been a whale that came in towards the end of the betting and threw down a quick half billion on whether or not Netflix would bow out. I didn't have the inside information. No, they are accumulating toys. Santa's bag is full. Were you guys surprised that Netflix, that it ended with such a weird wimper?

No. Yes, completely. I was.

Lauren says no. What were you thinking? I don't know.

I just remember- Lauren had the inside scoop. Oh, yeah, I wish. I would have cal sheet all over it now.

Yeah, baby.

I just think I've seen these types of issues in the past, like during the first Trump administration, administration, and how much things have ramped up. I mean, the meetings we're seeing these executives taking with the President, the subservience in the public to him. I just had a feeling it might be inevitable that what Trump wants will happen?

Right. Well, how astonishing is it for the President of the United States in a business merger to go, I haven't decided yet who I'm going to give it to? Where it really is like, we are all just things on his desk that he can hand out, party favors to be distributed to the loyalists.

John, were you surprised?

No, I was not surprised at all. I never thought Netflix had a chance, to be honest.

Oh, really? No.

Because of how clearly the President wanted a loyalist, look, that's how they ended up with TikTok. That's how they... Cnn is too big a prize for them to risk handing it over to news people or people that are going to let it just operate. I always thought that they were going to use the lever of FCC approval as a manner by which to tilt the scale. I thought the one thing Zad love did smartly was use Netflix to drive Paramount insane and make them pay Of course. $10 billion for something that clearly... And if you look at once Paramount got awarded the deal, their stock looks like a fucking looge course.

Just curious what you thought was going to happen to CNN. Does it just becomes CBS, too?

I think so. I'd be astonished if they don't walk in there and go like, Hey, nice show you got here. It'd be a shame if something happened to it. I I think the kinds of changes that you're seeing at CBS are in the offing. He's got a much more personal grudge against CNN than he does against CBS. That's such a good point. I have a feeling he's going to go in there. Their studio, I would be surprised to see that looking more like the oval. You're like, Are those gold cherubs behind Wolf Blitzer? I think he's going to be more involved in that. I wouldn't be surprised if one of these media properties was handed over to Trump Inc. That Donald Jr. Had his hands. Look, those guys run a drone company. There's nothing he can't do. As far as I know, they're not either one of them, real aeronautics guys. But I would not be surprised to see at one point Trump going like, Why are the Ellison is getting all that? Why isn't my family getting a taste of this empire?

What about Jared Kushner?

Kushner will go in there and develop a mall around it. The Saudi. I mean, look at the financing. There's a lot of money from, I think, the Middle East that's also going through there. It's so explicitly corrupt that it's almost breathtaking. To think that they consider it on the par with Hunter being on the board of Burisma, you're like, You have no fucking idea. It's so quaint.

I mean, yeah.

Remember that?

No. This is real fucking monarch shit for sure.

You know what I thought was interesting was that over the weekend, I guess there was all this drama blowing up with the prediction markets, and Kalchi went up shutting down the communy one and saying that it's not appropriate for people to benefit from death or to make money off of death.

It's like, what's their whole business model? That's where they draw the line. These are moral operators. Meanwhile, they're offering prop bets on how long his would be when he got out of the rubble. We've gamified our entire existence. The sub-economy, the speculative economy, I think is probably so much larger than the actual economy that That's the thing that's going to blow us up. It's like the derivatives market. We have a derivatives market now on our lives. Everything is gamified. Everything's a prop bet. I think you'll get divorced in the third quarter of fucked up. I can't tell if it exposes that we all have a taste for gambling or if it exposes that our real economy is also just a speculative game. I'm not sure what ends up looking worse throughout all of it. Is our amorality or the fact that maybe our entire fucking economy is a bit of a shell game with all that? What else you got, Brittany?

Last question. John, God forbid, what your last meal, taco Bell or Arby's?

Oh, that's not even... Really? Yes. Did you just say, so last moment on Earth, a hug or a punch in the face? That's not even a question. That's the worst would you rather that I've ever... Would you rather fall asleep eating ice cream or be burned alive? Like, Arby's and taco Bell?

All right. There's a follow-up question.

Really? To the Arbies and taco Bell question? Yes. All right.

What's your taco Bell order?

Crunchwrap Supreme, no meat with refried beans to give it a nice... I like the refried over the black bean because the black bean, I don't like to see my beans as individuals. I feel like then I get- A melting pot. I get attached to them. It's not right. You see them as individual nuggets of bean. The refried bean then feels more like a substrate, something in which the other ingredients, we all exist together in this, but the black bean always felt like, who are you? You arrogant, you not even mixing with my other ingredients. So I like the refried. And then if I'm feeling particularly celebratory, then I apologize for having thought about this too much, is I'll go the nachos Bel Grande, no meat. What I like about that is you have the individual. Each chip is its own experience. You can get the couple of chips that are in the corner that nobody has decided to touch, so they're empty and devoid, and you can create whatever bite you want. A little bit of refried, a little bit cheese, a little bit of sour, a little bit of tomato. Boom.

Cheese is your own adventure.

But then there are others that are in a come as you are, you will eat me as is. I am loaded for bear. And so you have all these different... What would you guys do?

I cannot stress how hungry I am right now. It's lunchtime.

Are you guys... Are you taco Bell people? Well, Now I am. Gillian, were you not a taco Bell person? Do they even have them in Brooklyn? Oh, they must.

Yes.

There are a few. Yeah. I honestly didn't think it was very vegetarian friendly, and you're just blowing my mind. This is thrilling.

It's the best one. How many times have I had to roll through McDonald's and be like, I'll have a Big Mac without the meat? They're like, Sir, I'm going to have to ask you to leave. That's a crime. They'll make it, but you I walk up there and be like, I'm charging you extra, right? Even though you're not getting the thing. But taco Bell is made for that.

I have to say your taco Bell spiel sounded a lot like a fake ad just for nachos.

That is the beauty of nachos, by the way, is it's one of the few foods that you're served where you decide the proportionality. Somebody makes you a sandwich, you don't get to go in there and go like, Oh, on this bite, I'd like all turkey with just a little bit of that. People do that. But the nacho, it really is... I'm sorry, I didn't want to get choked up. This is beautiful. It is America. I understand that it doesn't seem to be native to us, but it is an emblem of freedom where each chip allows you to express your individuality.

Every chip a possibility. I think FDR said that. What?

Wait, what? Lauren just dropped a bar. You just dropped a bar. Hit that again.

Oh, God, I don't know if I should. No, just a new possibility with each chip.

Every chip a possibility. There you go. We're opening up our own taco bell.

I would love that.

I hope we get sponsored at some point.

The weekly show is going in. Oh, they want nothing to do with it. It's gotten to the point in my talk about because I go there regularly and generally, it's always right before band practice because if I'm going to go act like a 14-year-old at band practice- You sound like a teenager. I should eat like one. Now I come up and whenever I roll up, they come on the thing and they go, Are you using the app? I'm like, I don't know what that is. What do you want? Crunchwrap Supreme, no meat, refried beans. And they're like, You again. All right, sir. So it's all good. Guys, thank you so much. Brittany, how did I get in touch with us?

Twitter, we are a weekly Show Pod, Instagram threads, TikTok Blue Sky. We are Weekly Show podcast, and you can like, subscribe, and comment on our YouTube channel, The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart.

Breach. As always, fantastic. Great job. Very interesting conversation. Lead producer, Lauren Walker, producer, Brittany Mamedevik, producer, Gillian Speer, video editor and engineer, Robert Tolo, audio editor and engineer, Nicole Bois, and our executive producers, Chris McShane and Katie gray. All right, see you guys next week. The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart is a Comedy Central podcast. It's produced by Paramount Audio and Bustboy Productions. Stop paying for too much wireless just because, I don't know, that's just what I do. It's how it's always been. That's just my company. Mint exists purely to fix that. Same coverage, same speed, just without the inflated price tag. You can change your coverage, people. Mint is the premium wireless you expect. You're unlimited talk, you're unlimited text, your data. But at a fraction of what others charge. For a limited time, you can get 50% off three months, six months, 12 month plans of unlimited premium wireless. The only thing keeping you from doing it is inertia, laziness. Don't be the bean bag chair. I'm trying to think something energetic. Pogo stick? Be the Pogo stick? That's probably not right. Bring your own phone number. Activate with e-SIM in minutes. Start saving immediately.

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