Ben Rhodes

It's not against him, but the concern that you have one vote that fails and then you want to pivot.

To your economic messaging, you know, well, your economic messaging is this.

It's like, let's not keep fighting dumb wars so we can spend money on the things that people actually care about.

I just would like to see Democrats like want to have this debate and not sometimes like unhappy that someone's asking the question about it.

And that's the high watermark.

Yeah, that's the high watermark.

Yeah.

And that's the thing is that the day that the supreme leader is killed is there's not another thing that Trump's going to do in this war that is going to drive up public opinion about this war.

You know, I cannot imagine.

And even if it ends, like how much to your point, like get the answers to how much this costs and what's the damage and what was the economic cost?

Because all this is already are things that have already happened and that are ongoing.

And another reason to be vociferous, and I have a piece out in the New York Times if you want to check this out today, but he's going to do this again.

So one reason to really oppose him here is I don't, do you trust that this is the last war Donald Trump's going to start?

Yeah, it's always reassuring to have a president launch an illegal and unnecessary war wearing a baseball cap in the middle of the night at Mar-a-Lago.

But putting that aside for the moment, I think the headline here is that this is the regime change war.

And we've walked up to this precipice with Trump like several times.

And each time he took a more limited action, whether it was assassinating Qasem Soleimani or whether it was the 12-day war when he bombed nuclear sites principally.

But this is clearly based on rhetoric and targets, like an effort to change the Iranian regime.

Now, the problem with that, though, is that even though that's clear,

Nothing is clear about what the end game is, right?