Dave Smith

That being said, what exactly?

Like, OK, Rob, when Donald Trump comes out and says Israel do not respond and then Israel responds.

OK, well, if what is the theater here?

Is he trying to make himself look like like there's there's essentially two options here.

Either Donald Trump is really telling Israel not to do it and they are doing it anyway.

Or Donald Trump is pretending to tell Israel not to do it while really green lighting it and then in some sense agreeing to give the perception that he's being he's having his balls chopped off.

Well, that is quite possible.

That is possible.

We will see.

We will see.

My read is that he wants out of this, that he doesn't want to go back to escalation, but we'll see.

yeah well you know perhaps you're right about that i mean that that one i'm certainly i'm more inclined to agree with you that it's quite possible that like i i have a tough time believing that trump is ever actually standing up to the israelis and again you know

With all of these things, and of course, Axios, and specifically this reporter whose name I'm blanking on right now, but he's essentially Trump's mouthpiece.

And they've run stories like this before.

The reason why, and I think this will be an area where we agree, the reason why it's just so hard, or one of the reasons why it's so hard to believe any of these stories, it's not just Axios' track record of getting everything wrong and always being Trump's mouthpiece throughout this war.

It's that, look, dude, if Donald Trump wanted to put pressure on Netanyahu, if there really was a split between Donald Trump and Netanyahu, and Donald Trump had the autonomy that he's purported to have, and if Donald Trump... Like, you wouldn't need it to be this cursing out phone call.

You wouldn't need it to be a tweet where you... It'd be one phone call with Netanyahu before you get him to do everything you want him to do.

Like...

I don't know.

The country's survival depends on us.