Transcript: Trump Blurts Out Damning Iran Admission as GOP Panic Grows

As the president reveals too much about his handling of Iran, a writer tracking Trump’s bungling explains how his megalomania won’t allow for any good way out of this fiasco.

The following is a lightly edited transcript of the May 4 episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.

After we recorded, The New York Times posted a piece disclosing more about GOP angst over the war, reporting that Republicans are beset by “increasing nervousness.”

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

As of this recording, Donald Trump has declared the war with Iran “terminated.” But it’s unclear what’s supposed to happen next. He’s left the military in place there, yet he says he’s unsatisfied with Iran’s latest offer. Now what? We don’t know. During a Newsmax interview, Trump made an accidentally revealing admission, one that seemed to indicate that he has no idea what’s going on between his own negotiators and Iran. This comes as new polling shows the public really souring on the war and specifically on Trump’s lack of clarity around it. MS NOW’s Steve Benen has a good piece arguing that Trump’s inadvertent Newsmax moment captures a good deal about this situation. So we’re talking to him about all this today. Steve, good to have you back on.

Steve Benen: Thank you, Greg. It’s great to be here.

Sargent: All right. So Trump sent a letter to the Hill declaring the war terminated. He did this to circumvent the law that requires a congressional vote on hostilities after 60 days have passed. Yet Trump is now saying he’s dissatisfied with Iran’s latest offer but won’t say exactly why, though it appears to be partly that Iran won’t renounce its nuclear program entirely. Steve, can you try to sum up where we are right now?

Benen: I could try. I mean, I think what you just said was an accurate and concise summary. We’re in a situation in which Congress is supposed to step up, now in the third month of the war getting underway. Donald Trump and his team have decided that they have, quote-unquote, “terminated” the conflict. We heard similar comments from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth during his congressional testimony this week before the House and Senate committees.

It’s a situation in which they basically are saying that the 60-day window is effectively closed because they say so, because of a ceasefire that we’re waiting to see whether or not it advances. And it’s against that backdrop that Iran and the White House are presumably having some kind of diplomatic negotiations. We don’t yet have a sense of the details. And we know that the president isn’t satisfied with their offer, but we don’t know what the offer is and we don’t know what the president finds unsatisfying about it. So other than that, everything is crystal clear.

Sargent: Right. Other than that. So Trump had this astonishing exchange with an interviewer on Newsmax. Here he’s asked about something that his negotiator Steve Witkoff apparently offered to Iran. Listen.

Greta Van Susteren (voiceover): Steve Witkoff told me on this show that the United States offered Iran to give them enriched uranium for medical and powerful purposes free if they would give up their nuclear program. Wouldn’t cost them a dime. And they declined that—to me that suggested that they really didn’t want to deal.

Donald Trump (voiceover): Well, and maybe it wasn’t a very serious offer because I wouldn’t have approved that. I wouldn’t have. I’m not giving them anything. I wouldn’t have approved that. They’re going to either have a nuclear weapon or they’re not.

Sargent: Steve, let’s break this up into pieces. First, note that his interviewer brings up Witkoff’s offer to Iran—which was of enriched uranium for medical purposes, I guess—in order to paint Iran as unreasonable, as in Iran turned down this very generous offer from Trump. That was like a setup for Trump to wallop it out of the park, but it flew right over Trump’s head. All he’s able to say here is I would never give Iran anything like that because I’m tough and strong and totally in control. Your thoughts on that?

Benen: All right. I mean, I think that context is highly relevant because Greta Van Susteren was clearly trying to set up the president for a good point, for an important observation about the nature of the negotiations and about Iran being unreasonable in the context of these diplomatic talks. But Trump didn’t pick up on the cue. He sort of just—frankly, he was........

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