Astead Herndon

I guess the obvious question here is, you know, who should we believe here?

Is the Trump administration making up dialogue that doesn't exist?

I know some people have speculated that this could be some form of market manipulation by Trump.

I mean, is the biggest factor about whether this war continues or ends the stock market?

I've heard you say in other places that Trump is not a strategic thinker, a transactional thinker.

That seems obvious from the public perspective.

But from your perspective of someone who was in the White House, who was making kind of national security pitches or trying to strategize with the president, what was the impact of that lack of strategic thinking?

I'm hearing you that we should somewhat see the lack of planning that has manifested in this war as a result of the change in process or the collapse in process from the first Trump administration to the second.

Yeah, fair.

In 2024, in a new forward for your book, you called Donald Trump unfit to be president.

You warned that his second term would be worse than the first, that it threatened NATO, Ukraine funding, and would embolden China and Russia.

It seemed to go beyond ideology.

I wondered, when was your personal break with Trump that went from you thinking that, you know, maybe this isn't a strategic thinker to, hey, the actual second term risk greater, the risks are greater than the first?

I did want to ask, though, considering how clear-eyed you've been about Trump's unfitness, you still also refuse to endorse Kamala Harris going into the 2024 presidential election.

Considering the chaos that has ensued, considering the reality of some of the foreign policy decisions that have come from the second term of Trump, do you look back and wonder if that was a mistake?

Do you look back and there could have been some benefit of maintaining the floor of even the process of national security?

Some of the things you're talking about Trump broke down feel unique to him.

Has any of the last three weeks shaken any of your convictions?

I mean, you have been someone who has obviously advocated for regime change in Iran, but we have not seen the uprising from Iranian people that maybe some folks wanted or expected.

What if regime change simply is impossible or is not kind of the desire of Iranians?