Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
So we’re talking to Emily Horne, a veteran of the National Security Council and State Department, to get a sense of why all this is so deeply abnormal and what we should be demanding instead. Emily, great to have you on.
Sargent: Emily, I think you have the distinction of being the only guest who’s come on twice in a row in such short succession. So congratulations.
Sargent: Well, you’re perfect for this topic. So let’s get into it. We just learned that Donald Trump made some sort of offer to the Iranians in hopes of getting a ceasefire—some sort of 15-point plan. But Iran has rejected Trump’s offer. There do appear to be some sort of back-channel talks going on, but it’s unclear who’s talking to whom. What does seem clear is that Trump really wants to get out of this, but that that’s turning out to be really hard. Emily, can you bring us up to date on where the war stands and explain why it’s hard for Trump to find a way out?
When President Trump says that the Iranians have agreed to talk and the Iranians say they haven’t, it’s really difficult to know who is telling the truth. And as an American, that really alarms me—that I have to acknowledge that while I will never trust what the Iranians are saying, I can’t trust what the commander in chief is saying here either.
I think a good question for reporters to be asking when they’re in those briefing rooms—and a press secretary or spokesperson says victory is nigh or success is at hand—is, okay, well, remind me: what is your definition of success? What does victory look like according to this administration, and how will you know when you have achieved those objectives? Don’t just give them the easy win of declaring mission accomplished.
Karoline Leavitt (voiceover): I think the president has shown that he is absolutely the leader of the free world, the head of the most powerful military in the world. And in various examples—the 12-day war between Iran and Israel, the ceasefire between Israel and Gaza—the president has shown a very unique skill at getting our allies to get on board with what’s in the best interest of the United States, but also the world.
Horne: You know, I’m not surprised. This has always been the administration’s MO—to just willfully assert their definition of reality and wait for others to react to it. These reporters in these briefing rooms have an opportunity to say directly to Karoline Leavitt’s face, directly to any spokesperson: what is your evidence for that? Why should we believe what you’re saying?
Sargent: Well, let’s just clarify what the truth is for people. Trump isn’t actually good at getting our allies together, is he?
Sargent: Yes. Well, that is certainly true. So let’s listen to a bit more of Leavitt. Here she is saying that whatever Trump says is true by definition.
Sargent: And here’s Leavitt talking about what will happen to Iran if, well, things don’t go the way Trump wants them to.
Sargent: So Emily, you’ve been part of this process a lot. This just doesn’t sound the way previous press secretaries have sounded. I mean, okay, press secretaries will spin—they will sometimes lie, they will do whatever they have to do to advocate for the boss. But this is another type of thing entirely.
Horne: Look, these are serious times that demand serious people. I wouldn’t say, as a communications professional, that it’s terribly serious to hear a press secretary or spokesperson who treats matters of war and life and death as if they are a video game to be won—where by owning your opponents, you somehow dominate.
Sargent: Yeah, there’s a sadistic, relishing-of-domination aspect to all of this that I find incredibly off-putting. I mean, the Bushies—the people around George Bush—sort of talked like this a little bit; there was a lot of swagger. But to hear things like “Trump will unleash hell,” it’s just really, really grating and I think morally abhorrent in a way, because these are human beings on the ground and there has to be an awareness of that.
You ideally, as a national security professional, try to avoid war—war is the last resort that you would go to. And so yes, it is very chilling to hear this White House talking about war as if it is a game to be won, when in fact it is not. You should not relish the idea of unleashing hell on the people that will experience it. That is upsetting to hear, certainly.
This is from current U.S. officials who seem to have leaked this to NBC. One official describes this as video of “stuff blowing up.” Now, Trump does get briefings from other sources, to be fair, but according to those officials, there’s concern among Trump’s own allies that he isn’t getting the full picture of what’s going on. Emily, you’ve been inside this process before. What do you make of that reporting?
You’ve got multiple sources, both current and former, who are all singing from the same sheet of music—which says to me, again, this is coordinated. This is a plan. So what does that tell us? That tells us that even though this is a story that on a casual read looks kind of embarrassing for the president—and is, I think, being treated as such on social media, like the president of the United States needs a greatest-hits compilation of CENTCOM strikes in order to understand how the war is going—I understand that reaction.
That is what they are trying to plant with this story, if—as I suspect—this is a planted story. They’re trying to create a paper trail and a narrative that says this is going badly not because Donald Trump made terrible decisions, but because his military leadership is not being honest with him about what is happening.
So the other day he went before reporters and he said something along the lines of, we’ve got them totally under our submission, our bombers are flying overhead and we could just bomb anything we wanted any time. And he spoke about it in this really kind of crude and stupid way. But when you realize that he’s getting fed video of things going boom, then you realize why he talks that way about what’s going on. I mean, it is extremely humiliating, don’t you think?
And if this president is not getting good information from his team, then that is a problem. And as Americans, we should all be concerned about that. Even if you don’t agree with the decisions that the president is making, you still want them to be informed and to have the information that they need to make better decisions. So if that’s not happening, then yes, that is a problem.
And so again, what I see here is just—as yesterday the president started to point the finger at Secretary Hegseth and say that Pete, you were the one who first started this—I see them starting to cast about for whose fault this really is, and laying the predicate for the buck stops anywhere but with the commander in chief.
Emily, I found that comical because anyone who’s watched those cabinet meetings he holds will notice that one top advisor after another slathers him with the most absurdly obsequious praise imaginable and lies endlessly about how triumphant his presidency has been. He’s incredibly prone to manipulation by falsehoods about his greatness and everyone knows it. But Emily, it would be good if he did expect full-throated honesty from his advisors. Isn’t that what we need right now?
Sargent: Well, how is this process supposed to work? How would a normal president be getting updated, and how would he or she be conducting these conversations about the latest information and the latest intelligence in the war? What would we like to see happening?
And you bring them that information so that they can make informed decisions. You keep them from making preventable mistakes. And presidents cannot do that if they are not getting real-time, honest, accurate information about—again—the good, the bad, and the ugly.
Look, what we are seeing with this administration—again, actions are speaking louder than words. No matter what Karoline Leavitt says, it is very clear that this is an administration that punishes people who do not toe the company line. And the company line for this administration is that Donald Trump is always right and can never be wrong. And unfortunately, we’re seeing the consequences of that right now.
Sargent: The way they talk about the war, the way they talk about Trump’s world-historical greatness, has kind of boxed them into a place where they can’t even compromise without it looking like failure. And of course the despot never fails, right?
But for the rest of us, I think we should keep pressing for that definition of success. We should keep holding them accountable for the impact that this is having on all of us, as we live through the impact of their terrible decision-making here and the lack of a plan as they’ve started this war.
Horne: Thanks, Greg.
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