looking at the Iran war, haven't you already won? isn't it, I mean, war-. We've already won, but I want to win by a bigger margin. But we have, we have already. We have destroyed their Navy, destroyed their Air Force, destroyed all of their, if you look at their anti-aircraft [00:00:19] equipment, their radar equipment, their leadership, their leadership is destroyed. We've destroyed everything. If we leave right now, would take them 20 years to rebuild if they ever could rebuild. But it's actually not good enough. I've already won, I've won everything. I just [00:00:40] want to destroy a little bit more. Really, come on, which boomer still believes this guy? mean, well, you have to be really out of your damn mind to believe anything he said. So no, we haven't destroyed all their. uh That's why they keep planting mines in the straight [00:00:57] of war moves and that's why it's not open. Two thirds of their air force is still intact, which is shocking and all that leaked by his own vice president. But the main question is, why is Donald Trump at this point, and this is a very important point, pretending that [00:01:13] the war is over when it is nowhere near over? In fact, he just rejected a peace plan by Iran. So John, tell us all about I'm sure that'll be followed up by another one soon after all the Iranians are so desperate to end this thing. But yeah, there's multiple reasons really [00:01:30] why Donald Trump is lying in the way that he is. There's the copium that he's been doing for quite some time, but we've also about to hit a special date. So according to CNN, the war in Iran, which Donald Trump of course started without getting approval from Congress, without even apparently letting Congress know that he was about to start an incredibly consequential [00:01:47] and expensive and stupid war. He's about to hit its 60th day or did. I guess we're on the 60th day today. So why is that important? Well, first of all, it's important because they told you on day one that it would take two to three weeks. So never forget that they've been lying to you about the timeline from the very beginning. But it's also important because [00:02:03] of the law. Under the War Powers Act of 1973, the president has 60 days to conduct military action in response to an imminent threat or an attack on the United States if Congress has not voted to authorize a war. Without explicit congressional authorization, the law says that once that deadline is reached, the president quote shall terminate. any use of the United [00:02:21] States armed forces. And to be clear, this six-day timeframe is based on when Trump notified Congress of the hostility. So a couple little interesting notes about that. First, though, the text of the law. The President must notify Congress within 48 hours of introducing the armed forces into hostilities and explain the scope, justification, and likely duration of the effort. In his notification [00:02:42] to Congress about Iran, Trump, like other presidents, said he committed troops under a president's inherent authority in the Constitution to conduct a United States foreign relations. um A purposeful misreading of the Constitution, which clearly makes the legislature in control of military action. They've just taken that power for themselves. So uh when should the clock have started? [00:03:00] Well, some are saying it should have started on February 28th when the hostilities actually started. You could say it's two days after that, but either way, we're at the 60 day mark right now. Now, uh sort of interestingly, um it says that he was supposed to initially explain [00:03:16] the scope, justification, and likely duration. He has not really done that to this point. It's been two months. He keeps changing what the scope and the purpose of all of this is. And also bear in mind, the reason for him to be able to briefly use the military without going to Congress is because of an imminent threat or attack in the United States, which [00:03:35] of course never existed in the first place. So I think a case could easily be made that he's been in violation of the War Powers Act from the very beginning, both the intent and the letter of the law. But he also appears to be violating the incredibly lenient 60 day timeline that he's been given. So what's going to be done about it? Well, lawmakers [00:03:54] are debating. uh Some lawmakers say, okay, so if Friday, May 1st was the 60th day, then maybe we should do something. Some Senate Republicans argue that that should mark a quote inflection point when Congress must step in. Boy, I'm sure they're ready to use all that great power [00:04:10] they have in the Senate. They've been so deferential. Remember, they rejected an opportunity. require Trump to come before them before hostilities against Cuba. So they have a terminal case of not wanting to do just about anything these days. But anyway, let's talk now about the [00:04:26] ceasefire that supposedly is going on right now. So they're claiming that that pauses the timeline or resets the timeline or something like that. And there are a few issues with that. So the first is Bruce Fine, a US constitutional and international law expert and former associate deputy attorney general said the resolution the War Powers Act anywhere. The 60 day deadline [00:04:46] to receive congressional approval for military action stops if there's a ceasefire. He warned that such an interpretation turns the resolution into simply a paper tiger. Ironically, I think it would be just the latest reason that's just a paper tiger, like we've literally never used it to stop a conflict. But he is right that uh nowhere in the law says that you can just [00:05:04] stop it with a ceasefire. What he could also make the case that we barely have a ceasefire. We're still blockading them. which is an act of war. They're still blockading the Strait of Hormuz, which is an act of war. We've seized ships, they've seized ships. What part of this seems like peace has been achieved in our time? But this seems to be a compelling argument [00:05:24] to some of the dumbest people in America, like Donald Trump, but also Pete Hegseth. Take a look. We're right at the 60 day deadline. Is the president intending to either seek congressional authorization for the war in Iran? or send us the legally required certification that [00:05:42] he needs an additional 30 days to remove US forces from the war. Ultimately, I would defer to the White House and White House counsel on that. However, we are in a ceasefire right now, which our understanding means the 60 day clock pauses or stops in a ceasefire. you're [00:05:58] nodding. It's our understanding, just so you know. Okay, well, I do not believe the statute would support that. I think the 60 days runs maybe tomorrow. Yeah, to be clear that is not Pete Hegseth's understanding that is Pete Hegseth's intentional performative misunderstanding of what the law says. But that is the position of the administration. Look, one of the biggest [00:06:16] problems with political media right now isn't just bias. It's how quickly the same story gets spun into two completely different realities depending on who's telling it. That's why I recommend Ground News. It's a website and app that pulls together reporting from across the political spectrum so you can compare how the same story is being covered, who's covering [00:06:34] it, and what kind of narrative they're pushing. Take this story about Pete Hegseth refusing to rule out US troops on the ground in Iran. On ground news, you can immediately see how differently outlets frame that same development. The Daily Signal downplays the danger by stressing [00:06:49] that this isn't Iraq and that the war won't be endless. NBC meanwhile, focuses on the key fact that Hegseth would not rule out American boots on the ground in Iran. Same story, two completely different realities. And ground news makes that obvious right away. You can compare [00:07:07] headlines side by side, see the bias distribution of the coverage, check the factuality ratings of the sources, and even see who owns the outlets behind the reporting. That matters because once you understand how stories are being framed, you start to see how public consent gets manufactured. [00:07:24] Ground news also has a blind spot feed that highlights stories that one side of the political spectrum is barely covering. So you're not just trapped inside the version of the world your algorithm wants to feed you. If you're tired of being fed somebody else's narrative, I genuinely [00:07:41] recommend ground news. Go to ground.news slash tyt or scan the QR code. Using our link gets you 40 % off ground news vantage plan and you can also gift a subscription directly through ground news. Trump apparently sent a letter to Mike Johnson explaining that this was their [00:07:59] stance. But to be clear, Mike Johnson already was interviewed earlier today and he said the same thing, the war is over. They're saying hostilities have terminated, even though they haven't. Cenk, what do you think? Yeah, okay, so let's just skip all the lies. Is he in violation [00:08:15] of the War Powers Act, of course? Is the war illegal, of course? Is it unconstitutional for the president to go to war without a declaration of war, of course? Is he passed the 60 days now, of course? we stopped counting when Roseanne got taken off the air because we thought [00:08:33] that was unfair. Okay, none of that makes any sense. Okay, so that's kind of obvious. To me, the real questions are twofold, So number one is, I'm back to, I don't know what's [00:08:48] going to happen. um We have to leave the war, and this is how you do it. You just come home, okay? like the simplest deal with the Iranians, saving face, who cares, right? So I mean, Trump's going to pretend he cares, but it's an easy way to get past that. Here, I'll give Trump [00:09:07] rare, helpful advice for him. Just make a crappy deal and then lie about it. And just tell all the Fox News viewers, the war over fans you have left, right? Yeah, we have won greatly in Iran. We made them open up the straight of hormones. They won't know that it wasn't closed [00:09:26] before. Sean Hannity never told him, right? So come home, come home, that's also super clear and he's gotta do it. But is he going to and I don't know. I mean, this is to me now this has become one of the big, big mysteries. I was convinced last week, uh Anna got me [00:09:47] uh to believe for good logical empirical reasons and the data we had at that point. Now we're going back in, right? Now I'm like Trump really seems kind of desperate to avoid it because it will be an economic disaster and it will totally obliterate his administration if it [00:10:05] isn't already obliterated. So if you're looking at it strictly from a Trump perspective, let alone an American perspective, you would have to be beyond crazy, beyond emotionally and psychologically disturbed to go back into this war. guys, one last thing that's important [00:10:22] about this so you understand the context. He's kept the market together with duct tape by like every day coming out and going, it's almost over. No, no, no, prices go down, go down. They shut down, don't worry, don't worry, the oil's totally fine. The war's fine, everything's [00:10:37] pieces blooming everywhere. I'm a hippie now, I'm hanging out with Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield and we're in Woodstock. And the markets are like, okay, bro, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, we believe you, we believe you. But if it turns out we go back to bombing, then they're to go. Okay, and the market's going to crash and all those things are going to happen and way [00:10:56] worse than he even anticipates. So then the question remains that that's left. If that's not a question, what is? Is he fully and utterly controlled by Israel? Do they have blackmail on him? Because that's the only reason to go back in, period, period, right? So if we don't [00:11:14] go back in, hey, maybe they didn't have the blackmail. And maybe he was just an idiot and got talked into it by the Israelis plus the bribes and all that stuff. But thank God they don't have the blackmail. Let's get the hell out of there, right? If he does go back in, they definitely have the blackmail and then economic calamity will ensue. So the second [00:11:34] part, John, is of course how it's affecting his own voters. So Democrats are never in question. He never had any of them, never going to get any of them. Independence, bye bye, right? Gone, 70 % of them are against the war, 61 % of the whole country. not just against the [00:11:52] war, say the war was a mistake, okay? And it's at Iraq, at the height of the violence in mid 2006, when the Republicans got shellacked in the midterms, and everybody's furious with Iraq war, 59 % of Americans thought the Iraq war was a mistake. Two months in, we're already [00:12:11] at 61%, a higher number in Iran. But now let's dive into his own voters because I hear all over the internet and TV, he hasn't lost a single MAGA voter. So not one Trump voter, they're all in a cult. Okay, let's go to graphic time. Among younger supporters, just 57 % of Trump [00:12:29] voters under 35 now approve of his job performance, marking a major drop from the near universal support he enjoyed among his coalition at the beginning of his term. Okay. Okay, the drop is a whopping 35 points from 92 % approval rating he enjoyed among his youngest voters at the [00:12:50] start of 2025. On the other hand, he's still hanging on to the over 50 voters, but even there's some erosion there. 87 % of Trump voters ages 50 and older still approve of his performance. But on the war, only 79 % of the over 50 approve the performance. On the war, he's even lost [00:13:10] 20 % of the zombies. They're like, Sean Hannity says it's a great idea, but I'm paying so much more for everything. I don't know, we said no war, but Gutfeld says we should do war, I don't know. So 20 % of those guys are against the war, which for Trump and his older base is [00:13:29] still a remarkable number. But as Harry Anthony would say, you lost 35 points of on your younger words, it going down. down. Yeah, that's falling off a cliff. So has he lost some of his own [00:13:45] voters? Yeah, bet you. Yeah, yeah, the question is, how much does he care? Does he ever care? I mean, he does wildly unpopular things that even a dullard would know would lose him support. He doesn't seem to be bothered by it. And he and the Republicans seem to have made the decision [00:14:00] a long time ago that to the extent that they care about the electoral ramifications of any of this. The only thing that they are willing to try to do to offset the damage they're doing is to manipulate the system, rig things, gerrymander, get the SCOTUS to rule on their behalf. They don't really seem to be even trying to sell anything to the people. So I'm very concerned [00:14:19] about that. I don't rule out the potential motivations that you sketched out for why he might go back into Iran. But I also don't think that they're the only potential explanations. I mean, you see all these insider accounts coming from inside the administration. senior administration officials that he is talking about himself like he's Homelander saying [00:14:38] I'm the most powerful person who has ever lived. I will craft the future with just my will I can do and accomplish anything. He's out of his mind, Cenk. It was very stupid to start this war to begin with. It was stupider to continue it. And to go back in would be madness, economic [00:14:57] madness. But remember, it was stupid to start the tariffs when he did. They've done massive damage. Then the Supreme Court swept in and said, you know what, actually, let us save you here, the tariffs are gone. And rather than take that, he put them back in another [00:15:13] form. His uh approval rating on inflation was so bad that I don't know if you saw it was one of the cable news networks had to create a new graph for it because his approval rating didn't fit on the prior one. So he is willing to double down on wildly unpopular moves for [00:15:29] seemingly no reason. But let's talk about this one because hypothetically the Senate could get involved. One would say they have an obligation, a responsibility to get involved. That is their constitutional role. They were reminded of that with the War Powers Act. But the best that we can get at this point from Republicans is like Tom Tillis saying, I felt like the [00:15:49] War Powers Resolution says in 60 days you have to take some action. We need to start talking with the administration and in cooperation with them to get an authorization for the use of military force. the American people understand that Congress is behind what the President is trying to do. He's one of the critical ones and all he's saying is, we'll come to them [00:16:08] hat in hand and just help the people to know that we support this stupid unpopular war as much as Donald Trump does. When from my point of view, Cenk, if there was every reason for the war powers, I mean, there's been a lot of stupid conflicts we've gotten involved with. This one was needless, okay? There was no reason to go, there was no imminent war or [00:16:28] anything. He could have gotten authorization from the Republicans in the Senate and the House. He's just choosing not to. It's wildly expensive. We've already lost Americans. We've killed tons of civilians. He cannot articulate a good reason for us to be in the war. It's wildly expensive. It was unpopular on day one, less popular every day since then. As you have [00:16:48] pointed out, know. It is now less popular than Vietnam or Iraq, which is mind boggling. If there is ever a call for the Senate to actually step in, wiggle a little bit, exert some sort of energy, some sort of power. But they're not, they're allowing him to pursue a stupid, [00:17:08] costly, unpopular war. And the best they can do is say, well, maybe we can co-sign a letter with him. should, again, there's a lot that they should do that clearly they're not going to do. And it's very frustrating to see that as always, other than one or two Republican, [00:17:25] Marjorie Greene, guess, Every other Republican in elected office is an utter sub to Donald Trump, despite how catastrophically unpopular he is. The spell has broken, he should not have a stranglehold on the party or on the movement. Some would say he doesn't and yet [00:17:41] they're still acting as if he doesn't, it's incredibly frustrating. Yeah, so I think, is he crazy? Well, of course he's always been crazy. And is he extra level of crazy now? Sure, but like, I still see that as relative constant. But the reason why I think that he [00:18:00] blackmailed us a very significant possibility is because he clearly doesn't want to continue the war because at every time that he had an opportunity is, he does these fake deadlines. I will destroy everyone in Iran and Paraguay at the same time tomorrow at noon, right? And [00:18:17] then tomorrow comes and it's 1155, he's like, I changed my mind. They've conceded. the Paraguayans and the penguins have conceded. So I will now extend the deadline and he's done that like three times now, right? Okay, fine, the ceasefire is permanent, but not permanent. I will destroy [00:18:35] them plus I need more time, okay? So he doesn't want to reengage because the minute you start bombing the oil facilities again, calamity ensues. And apparently someone's talked him into that, so he's worried, right? So is it that he's crazy or is it that he's controlled? Well, [00:18:54] a little bit of both, right? And like on the crazy front, the tariffs, he did it again. like, the Europeans, I'm mad at them. Plus Israelis told me that I have to get out of Naverdo so they can attack Turkey. tariffs are back up to 25%. But that's why we told you not to elect [00:19:13] them. Electing a madman is no matter how frustrated you are, not a great idea. the largest military the world has ever seen in the entire country, etc. But bottom line is for Congress in [00:19:29] what you're talking about, John, look, they're pathetic. I need you guys to get this out of your head. There's almost no one in Congress who's like, what's the right thing to do? Okay, what they look at is the polling, the donors, and then they make a calculation. They are [00:19:47] cold. calculating cowards. And they have no morals, they have no principles, they have no guiding philosophy at all. And I swear to you that I'm not exaggerating. So there's about 5 % of Congress that does, Bernie Sanders, Thomas Massey, etc. But 95 % are like, where's the [00:20:05] check? Where's my power? Where is it? Where's my ego? Right? So the only way to move them, and I literally talked to a senator in Washington recently and he confirmed this. The only thing they care about is fear, fear of losing their own power. So if you don't throw the bums out, [00:20:24] they're never going to do the War Powers Act. They're never going to stop the war. They're never going to do anything but kiss Trump's ass and Israel's ass. So you have to throw out all the incumbents. If you don't do that, then don't complain about Congress. If you haven't gone to your primary and voted against an incumbent, then you had it coming. Because [00:20:42] this government is 95 % corrupt. and will never represent you. So why on God's green earth would you ever vote for any of these guys? No, if you're not voting in the primaries to get them out, then the war will continue and Israel will continue to rule us. Yeah, no, you're [00:21:01] right. The War Powers Act is supposed to get them to do their job, but it can't get them to want to do their job. So only we can do that. And uh so when you have people that utterly give up their power to the least qualified man in history, when you have an a Senate that's filled with geriatrics. The answer at the end of the day very often is why have we allowed [00:21:21] this? Now, of course, there's money in politics, there's the corrupt media, there's structural protections against challenges and stuff, there's all of that. But at the end of the day, we still have to want to change to get a change. So I agree with you there. uh