Michelle Cottle

Jamel, you go first.

But fits, right, with the topic.

I'm sorry.

It's like he was sedated.

Well, the one thing that struck me, I think most of all, as I watched this, besides the fact, as Jamel pointed out, he looked like he was about to doze off, was this was just a series of distractions so that he could get people to look at the things that he wanted them to think were fantastic while skipping some of the bigger points.

So...

he came back again and again to the destruction, the degrading of Iran's military capabilities.

He started off by going through the Venezuela escapade, as though that has any bearing on this situation and what we're looking at now.

It's clear that his strategy with the speech was, I'm just going to throw all these...

Facts at you that I want you to think mean we've achieved our goal.

Mission accomplished, everybody.

I think we all enjoy a good mission accomplished speech.

Without addressing things like, what is victory?

You know, Iran still has its nuclear stockpiles.

It was not reassuring at all for me.

And so I wanted you, Jamal, to talk about how can he claim victory in,

If he is indeed planning to wind this down while the regime is still intact and unlikely to stop being a threat, what is Trump going to claim as a real victory that is going to look remotely like what's actually happening in the real world?

All right, I want to come back to this issue of agency.

Well, Jamel, you actually wrote a column last week that was focused on Trump's complete inability to recognize that other people have agency and, if you're applying force, are sometimes likely to push back against moves that they oppose.

And, you know, not just with the war, but, you know, with Doge slashing at the federal government, the administration's treatment of Kilmar Abrego-Garcia,