Ben Rhodes

has imposed a blockade on all sorts of fuel to the island nation of Cuba for a couple of months now.

But this weekend, for some reason, who knows why, Trump decided to let a Russian oil tanker go right through the blockade, sail on through unmolested to bring oil to Cuba anyway.

I mean, Trump's war on Iran has been one question mark after another about the most serious stuff in the world.

Tonight, not only is the Strait of Hormuz still unsafe for shipping, but Iran appears to have hit a fully loaded Kuwaiti oil tanker in the port of Dubai.

The crew were reportedly unharmed, but they hit the tanker.

Meanwhile, this weekend, thousands of troops from the U.S.

Army's elite 82nd Airborne Division, the paratroopers, arrived in the Middle East, which means there are more than 50,000 American troops in the region.

Trump reportedly wants to send 10,000 more.

The latest deployments include large numbers of special operators, including Navy SEALs.

What are they there for?

What is Trump going to tell them to do?

What is the point of this war at this time?

Joining us now is Ben Rhodes, former Deputy National Security Advisor for President Obama.

Ben, it's nice to see you.

Thanks very much for being with us tonight.

So, a lot is happening all at once.

I feel like there's a few different things I want to ask you about.

One is, what is going on with the weird favorable treatment to Russia when the intelligence and the open source reporting seems to be getting stronger and stronger about Russia really playing a pivotal role in Iran's ability to hurt American assets and American personnel?

But also what's happening, and I'll ask you this first, just with the strategic rationale for what we're doing, the president's incoherence in terms of being able to explain what he's trying to do and how that matches up with what he's actually doing, which is sending lots more troops.

Ben, The Wall Street Journal's reporting tonight that President Trump has told, again, this is a thing that Trump has reportedly said.