Courtney Brown

Him specifically negotiating with someone, is he on the phone with Ghalibaf?

No, I don't think he is.

Do I think that there are go-betweens and that there are conversations happening –

The headline was terrible.

It didn't give the reader an indication of what the goods were in it, which was that a lot of the bases, and it wasn't clear how many, had been seriously damaged in the war.

And in some cases, U.S.

personnel in the Gulf region were having to live off campus, off base, in hotels and the like.

And so I'm saying that by way of a preamble to kind of amend remarks I made last night on television, that militarily, from all the evidence we have, this New York Times story accepted.

I just urge people to understand that there's

two conversations that are happening.

There's a conversation you're having about the military success of it.

Fine, that that's happening.

Then there's the conversation about the political ramifications and that Donald Trump is losing for the reasons that we've just outlined.

And I think that's part of the disconnect in the way in which the White House is viewing this and in the way like we're more broadly having this conversation earlier today in the cabinet meeting, for instance, Besson

Treasury Secretary Scott Besant had made comments to the degree of how the enemy, how Iran had underestimated Americans' ability or desire to withstand short-term pain for long-term gain.

And it made me think that Besant might be overestimating Americans' desire for this.

Because a smarter person than I am, Aaron Blake at CNN, used to be at the Washington Post, wrote a really interesting piece a few months ago or a few weeks ago about how in two major cases involving the economy, tariffs and now the war, Donald Trump has asked Americans to have and endure the short-term pain for a long-term gain on something they weren't really looking for.

Like, yeah, sure, Americans don't want Iran to have nuclear weapons when you ask that question.

But we have enough polling evidence to indicate by now that Americans don't think this war is worth it.

Right.