Transcript: Trump Iran Rants Get So Crazy that Adviser Visibly Rattled

The following is a lightly edited transcript of the June 11 episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.

Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.

Donald Trump’s latest claims about the Iran war are lurching wildly in different directions. He just claimed that he loves the inflation it’s creating for reasons that remain impenetrable. He also insisted that he’s about to attack Iran again as retaliation for them shooting down a U.S. helicopter while simultaneously claiming Iran has been totally defeated. It’s all gotten so absurd that his own advisors are struggling to defend his stances, as one extraordinary exchange in Congress with Energy Secretary Chris Wright reveals.

The situation’s moving rapidly and Trump is dramatically confusing matters with his unchecked derangement. So we’re trying to pin down what’s really happening with Ariane Tabatabai, a former Defense Department official under Joe Biden, who’s now at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. Ari, nice to have you on.

Ariane Tabatabai: Thanks for having me, Greg.

Sargent: So let’s quickly summarize. Earlier this week, Trump was saying a deal with Iran was imminent, within a day or two. Then a U.S. helicopter was shot down. Trump said Iran did it. He launched limited strikes to retaliate. He’s now also said Iran is taking too long and that it will pay the price.

And then on Wednesday, he vowed to escalate hostilities again, saying, “We’re going to hit them hard again today.” By the time you all listen to this, he may well have attacked again—or not. Ari, can you recap where we are here?

Tabatabai: I mean, that’s the perfect summary of where we are. We’ve had two parallel tracks that have been ongoing. One is on the diplomatic front, where the United States and Iran have been negotiating on how to sustainably end this conflict and then kind of pave the way for further negotiations on other issues of interest, including Iran’s nuclear program, which is one of the main reasons why we’re in this conflict to begin with. We can come back to this.

Then there’s a second track, the military track, where we’ve had ebbs and flows in this conflict over the past even just the past week, as you described. The most recent thing that happened that seems to have led to this latest round of escalation is that the Iranians evidently shot down an Apache helicopter. And after that happened, the president had this Truth Social post and said that he was going to be targeting Iran again. He did.

There’s been reporting over the past 24 hours that we even may have struck some Iranian water supplies, which I should also pause here and let folks know—this is a country that has deeply struggled with water shortages and droughts, and they’re about to enter very, very hot months over there. So if that is actually the case—and it seems like U.S. Central Command has neither said yes or no—that would be pretty troubling, in addition to some of the other things we’ve seen over the past few months in this conflict.

But nonetheless, we’re in this new round of escalation that is not only leading to a tit for tat between the U.S. and Iran, but is also again spilling over into other places in the region, including Jordan, Kuwait, and Bahrain, all of which house U.S. forces on their soil.

Sargent: Just to clarify for people, once again, Trump is very clearly saying that he’s going to escalate now. And by the time people listen to this, that may have happened or it may not have happened.

So it’s in this context that Trump told reporters that he loves inflation. The new inflation numbers just came out. They’re devastating for Trump. It’s over 4 percent now. He was asked about this, and he segued to saying that the U.S. has secretly been removing millions of barrels of oil from Iran. We’ll get to what that means in a second. But first, let’s listen to Trump.

Donald Trump (voiceover): You know what I really love? I love the inflation. You know why? Because as soon as this war is over—you know, I can say it now. Something you didn’t know. Do you know we’ve been taking out millions of barrels of oil? Nobody knows it. You know who doesn’t know about it? Iran—until right now.

Sargent: Now, why Trump said the part about loving inflation is a little hard to understand, but with the secret removal of millions of barrels of oil, he seems to mean the U.S. is escorting ships carrying oil out of the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran is keeping closed. Ari, can you shed any light on this?

Tabatabai: Yeah, I mean, it’s really hard, as you know, to try to make sense of what the president might be trying to say here. He does have a tendency to kind of use verbs for other verbs. And so it’s really hard for me to say exactly what he meant. I think there’s a few different ways to read the statement.

Yours seems like the right one to me, which is that what is in essence happening is that the U.S. Navy is conducting freedom-of-navigation operations, allowing for tankers to cross the Strait of Hormuz. Obviously Iran has been holding the Strait of Hormuz at risk for weeks now and preventing the oil flow from happening. So I think this is the plausible explanation.

There are a few questions to me here, though. One of the key questions is, we’re talking about this diplomatic track that seems to be slowly but surely maybe progressing. It’s clearly not going as fast as Trump would like. These things tend to take time. And again, we’re just a few months away from the midterms. But the surest way to reopen the strait would really be to get a deal, right?

Otherwise we’re going to be spending a lot of money sending assets to the region that are just going to make sure that these tankers are able to move and to get the oil back on the market. And that seems like a really interesting use of these very expensive assets. And that is not even counting the human lives that are at stake here. Thousands of people have died throughout the region since this war started.

We’ve had U.S. service members who’ve been killed or injured in this. And of course, our bases and other infrastructure are being targeted throughout the region. So this is putting a Band-Aid on one of the many issues that is cascading out of this conflict. And it is not a sustainable Band-Aid. It is one that we can maybe continue for a bit, but ultimately there needs to be a more sustainable solution here.

Sargent: Well, Trump on Truth Social just announced, in quotes, this secret operation to escort tankers and ships through the strait. He said this: “Today I am pleased to announce that this effort has resulted in more than a hundred million barrels of oil making its way through the strait and into the open market. This wildly successful effort is because the United States of America controls the Strait of Hormuz, not Iran.”

Ari, so obviously Trump is absolutely desperate to make it look as if he’s in total control of the Strait of Hormuz and the situation more broadly. But what I’m having trouble understanding is what he means.

He is saying—with total, well, clarity’s obviously the wrong word—he is saying what he thinks he means, to be that this is actually happening, that a hundred million barrels of oil has been transported out of Iran through the strait because the U.S. is escorting them and that oil has gone onto the open market. Does the U.S. control the Strait of Hormuz? How real is any of this?

Tabatabai: It doesn’t.

Sargent: I mean—is the oil being transferred? Is it happening? Do we know?

Tabatabai: I don’t know. And if it is happening, is it happening on the scale that he says it is? I don’t know. Again, this is somebody who talks about drug prices going down 600 percent. So if you’ve bought any Advil recently, you should really be getting some money back.

I think some of this is hyperbole. He’s not known for being precise, to say the least. And so there might be that there is some oil that is making its way into the market. We’ll see that in the days to come, we’ll be able to fact-check that. I don’t have that information. The piece where he talks about the control of the Strait of Hormuz is clearly not real. Because if it were real, then we would not be in this situation to begin with.

And I think it’s kind of part of this narrative that he has about this conflict where he keeps talking about Iran’s military being completely destroyed. Last year, after the summer operations against Iran’s nuclear program, he said that basically their entire nuclear program had been obliterated. And that was not the case, because we are here again.

And by the way, Iran still has several hundred kilograms of highly enriched uranium on its soil. That is very troubling. Iran still has military capabilities. It’s not 100 percent of what it had at the beginning of this conflict. But it’s not nothing, which is why they’re able to shoot down an Apache just a couple of days ago.

And the piece that I think is really something folks should understand is that we, the United States, are spending billions and billions of dollars sending very expensive, sophisticated weapon systems, munitions, missiles, platforms to fight what was, even before this war, not a particularly sophisticated military. Iran’s military is not China’s military, it’s not Russia’s military even. They weren’t known for having large, expensive platforms.

So this was an unequal war. And even without those sophisticated capabilities, Iran has been able to really just create this dilemma for the United States. And we’re here several months later when the president had said that this would be a war that would be over pretty quickly. So all of this to say, this is just another one of these statements in this conflict that I think are probably not going to stand the test of time.

Sargent: Probably not. We should note, by the way, that the headlines on the inflation spike are really tough for Trump. The Washington Post says this: “Inflation heats up to highest point in three years, fueled by Iran war.” The New York Times: “Inflation jumps as Iran war intensifies price squeeze.” Politico: “Inflation surges to three-year high as Iran fighting drags on.”

Ari, the reason I’m highlighting these is that they directly tie the worsening inflation to Trump’s war. Everybody understands that this is what’s happening. It’s a real rarity that presidential responsibility for the state of the economy is so clear. Your thoughts on all that?

Tabatabai: Yeah, I mean, look, I’m not an economist, but I also have to go get gas every day—well, I don’t get it every day, but I have to get gas. And so I see the prices keep going up. And again, we are in a midterm, we’re really in the depths of the midterm season at this point. We’ve had primaries throughout the country.

And so folks are really feeling the hurt of this conflict in a way that I think other foreign policy decisions don’t necessarily make the results known as much for everyday people. We’re really—people, when they go to get gas or purchase groceries, they can directly feel the impact of this war. And that is not generally the case with foreign policy issues.

So it’ll be really interesting to see, if this conflict continues, how it shapes people’s attitudes as we go into November. My organization, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, has been doing some polling on the attitudes of Americans about this conflict. It is not a popular conflict, as you can imagine.

Republicans, of course, are more supportive than Democrats and independents, but it is by and large a pretty unpopular conflict. And I think this is partially probably adding to Trump just wanting to get a deal done really quickly.

But again, and this is something that many of us in the analytical community had said for years—once you start a conflict, you don’t always end it on your terms. In fact, you rarely end it exclusively on your terms, because the adversary gets a vote as well. And he’s discovering that in real time now.

Sargent: You’d think he’s discovering it. He’s certainly acting as if he’s entirely won and then he lurches towards saying that retaliation’s necessary. It’s all very opaque.

I want to get into how hard all this is to defend. Let’s listen to an exchange in Congress where Representative Amelia Sykes questions Energy Secretary Chris Wright.

Emilia Sykes (voiceover): Do you feel like your positions and policy statements are in line with President Trump?

Chris Wright (voiceover): Yes, I hope so.

Sykes (voiceover): Do you love inflation?

Wright (voiceover): I love ending Iran’s ability to have a nuclear weapon. I think that’s existential for us.

Sykes (voiceover): That was not my question. Do you love inflation, yes or no?

Wright (voiceover): I love ending Iran’s—

Sykes (voiceover): That is not my question. Do you love inflation, yes or no?

Wright (voiceover): No, I would prefer lower inflation.

Sykes (voiceover): You would prefer lower inflation. Do you know that your boss, essentially President Trump, just stated that he loved inflation?

Wright (voiceover): He’s an entertaining, hyperbolic guy who’s done tremendous leadership.

Sargent: So note how absolutely terrified Wright is of appearing to differ with Trump in any way at all. Now listen to this exchange about all that oil that Trump says the U.S. is transferring out. Sykes plays audio of Trump making that claim, and then this happens.

Sykes (voiceover): So why would the United States be taking out millions of barrels of oil from Iran?

Wright (voiceover): Well, it’s essential that we prevent oil sales from generating revenue for Iran to spend to develop nuclear weapons—

Sykes (voiceover): Mr. Secretary, I understand this might be an uncomfortable line of questioning and you don’t want to do it, but you are not answering my question. So I’m going to ask you again and I’m going to hope that you will answer it honestly. Did you know that the United States was taking millions of barrels of oil from Iran?

Wright (voiceover): I’m unaware.

Sykes (voiceover): So do you think that the president is lying based on the audio that you just heard? And I will send it to you in case you say you didn’t hear it.

Wright (voiceover): No, I do not think the president is lying. I think the president’s talking casually about our efforts to stop the flow of Iranian oil.

Sargent: All right, that is some mysterious stuff. As far as I can tell, parsing it—it’s really convoluted and crazy—but I think Energy Secretary Chris Wright admitted that Trump basically made the stuff up about the oil being transferred out and said he thinks what Trump really meant was that the blockade, the U.S. blockade, was keeping the oil from getting to the market. Can you make any sense of it?

Tabatabai: I don’t know if I can. I do think it does point to a much larger issue, which is again how we ended up where we are now, which is that this administration is really lacking in people who are both knowledgeable of issues and willing to stand up to the president or give him advice that he may not necessarily like. And that is such a fundamental part of what these Cabinet positions are supposed to be.

They’re not supposed to be yes-men who just stand there and say, yes, sir, you’re correct about everything you’re doing. They’re supposed to bring their best expertise of their agency or department they represent, and they’re supposed to help the president make a better set of decisions. And that has not happened, which is how—

You know, we’ve talked about the Strait of Hormuz. I can tell you that for years and years, folks who’ve worked on this Iran portfolio in different agencies and departments have known that this would be a possibility—in fact, that it was a very likely outcome of a conflict.

And it seems like that viewpoint was not represented, which is how we’ve now had multiple administration officials, including the president himself, say, no one knew that this would happen. No. Everyone who’s worked on this issue knew that this would happen.

And so it is really troubling that he’s not hearing folks tell him things that he wouldn’t necessarily want to hear.

Sargent: Just to pick up on the point you made there, here Chris Wright very visibly does not think of his job as telling the truth to the president or to the American people. He clearly understands his job as being sycophant to the president. It’s very clear.

Tabatabai: Yeah, and look, I think it’s really telling that if—and I keep thinking about this having served in a Democratic administration—if this was the way that some of my former bosses had responded to folks on the Hill, Republicans on the Hill, the other party, I don’t think we would have heard the end of it. There would have been impeachment processes.

And yet this is kind of how the administration treats Congress—an atrophied Congress that has frankly not stood up to this administration, even as it’s made bad decision after bad decision on a host of issues. And for things that we’re going to be really, frankly, paying the price for for years to come.

We’ve talked about the implications for people’s paychecks every day and their gas and groceries and so on. But there’s the longer-term cost of these conflicts that we’re not seeing quite yet. There’s the support from allies and partners and our international standing, which sounds like this kind of interesting concept that only academics care about, but it is not.

Our ability to have a good story to tell internationally is how we get a lot of things done that directly impact people every day. We’re going to be paying the price of these facilities that are being targeted, of these defense systems that we’ve spent billions and billions of dollars buying that are now being damaged and destroyed. We’re going to potentially see huge implications for recruitment and retention in the military.

There’s so many things that are going to be happening in years to come that are directly stemming from the actions that the administration is taking. And the Congress should care more. It should be playing more of a role. And it is just not doing that right now.

Sargent: Just to finish this out, what’s going to happen now? Granted, we don’t know whether by the time people are listening to this, Trump will have bombed Iran again. Maybe he will have completely obliterated it by tomorrow as he’s been threatening to do by the time people listen to this. Maybe not, I don’t know. But understanding that things are in, let’s say, flux—what is the most likely set of scenarios to unfold from here?

Tabatabai: So I think what we’re going to see is escalation, kind of a steady-state situation, and then we’ll keep moving forward that way. It’s clear to me that President Trump is kind of ready to move on from this conflict. He has Cuba on his radar. He keeps saying the midterms don’t matter, but they clearly do.

And I think he’s just kind of stuck here, because on the one hand, Iran again gets a vote. On the other hand, any deal with Iran will be problematic for him, will be extremely divisive within his own base. He obviously doesn’t care what Democrats or independents think, but he cares what Republicans think. And many Republicans will be very opposed to any deal with Iran.

And then you have the additional challenge of—again, we’re degrading Iranian military capabilities, but this is not a country that needs a ton of sophisticated capabilities. They can keep doing this for a while. This is not a democracy that is going to have to respond to its people because gas is expensive. This is an authoritarian regime that is going to be able to continue this for as long as it needs to. And frankly, it probably benefits from it because it has cover to crack down on dissent, for example, and to continue to have an external enemy to point to.

So for Iran, winning is not about winning militarily. It’s about standing up and not losing to the United States. And I think that is a really bad recipe here for a situation that continues in a way that is problematic for all of the people of that region who have to live with the missile attacks and drone attacks and unpredictability, frankly.

Sargent: It’s going to get a whole lot worse for Americans and even worse for people over there, unfortunately. Ariane Tabatabai, it was really good to talk to you. Thanks so much for coming on.

Tabatabai: Thanks so much for having me.