Dan Pfeiffer

They cannot do it in any sort of normal way.

It's why they're not even trying to do it.

They're so desperate for a rationale for a war that the neocons, of which Trump is now one of them apparently, have wanted for decades and decades and decades.

They're so desperate to create a pretext for this war that they are – one of the ideas on the whiteboard is let's get some Americans killed so that Americans will be mad and want to go to war with Iran.

Seems bad.

I don't think it would work.

I really don't.

I think that the Trump people think the American people are stupid, and they're not.

If Israel attacks Iran and then Iran attacks an American base, I do not think the American people are then going to sign up for a protracted war in the Middle East.

We talked about this in an actual private conversation that wasn't recorded.

But American people have gotten a lot more skeptical of foreign interventions.

And that question in the CBS poll, I think in people's minds,

is a military strike like Midnight Hammer, or whatever we called the other thing.

Not an actual protracted conflict that could cost American lives, could lead to attacks on the homeland or on Americans abroad, could likely lead to a giant spike in

oil prices, and just general chaos in the world.

And just remember, this is a president at 38% approval who is underwater on every single issue, including national security and foreign policy, who may launch the United States into a war he has not explained to a single person why it's happening.

And so I just think people do not want to go to war, and they really don't want Donald Trump to take them to war.

I mean, by the time you're listening to this, it is quite possible that the strike happened because the gating issue was they were going to get through these talks on Thursday.

We're recording this on Thursday.

The talks are over.