Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
what's up everybody what's up welcome to a brand new episode of part of the problem i am dave smith uh okay i'll be rolling solo for this episode i should let me get some business out of the way real quick uh april 11th this saturday one night only me and robbie the fire bernstein will be in stamford connecticut Those tickets are moving fast. Those shows are going to sell out.
If you want to come out, go grab tickets now, ComicDaveSmith.com. And then the following weekend after that, we'll be out in Chicago doing the Zanies in Rosemont and downtown Chicago, which always one of my favorite weekends of the year.
Chapter 2: What announcement did Trump make regarding the U.S. and Iran?
So really looking forward to all that. ComicDaveSmith.com for all those ticket links. Okay. So, wow. What... a 15 hours we've just been through. So as all of you guys know, I'm sure, Donald Trump posted before the deadline, about an hour and a half before his self-imposed deadline, he took to Truth Social. And this is a spoiler alert for any of you guys. If you fell asleep at...
5 30 and just woke up now uh i i spoiler there was no bridge in power plant day uh all civilizations that existed yesterday uh still continue to exist today um so donald trump here let me i guess i'll i'll read the tweet uh or the truth social that donald trump put out he said um okay
Last night, Donald Trump posted based on conversations with Prime Minister Shabazz Sharif of Pakistan and wherein they requested that I hold off the destructive force being sent tonight to Iran and subject to the Islamic Republic of Iran agreeing to a complete, immediate and safe opening of the Strait of Hormuz. Thanks. This will be a double-sided ceasefire.
The reason for doing so is that we have already met and exceeded all military objectives and are very far along with the definitive agreement concerning long-term peace with Iran and peace in the Middle East. We received a 10-point proposal from Iran and believed it is a workable basis on which to negotiate.
Chapter 3: What were the reactions from the political right to Trump's announcement?
There's so much to break down here that there's probably more than I can possibly fit into one episode because I really I want to cover, you know, what happened here, what Donald Trump just did last night, my thoughts on it. Then I also want to get into some of the reaction to this because there's just so much that's fascinating about it. And that just needs to be, I don't know, discussed.
So, first of all, thank God. Thank God that this is what it turned out to be. You know, as you guys who listen to the show know for, you know, days now, at least the last three episodes, me and Rob have both been talking about this. And we've been saying, you know, there's this dynamic with Trump where, as we've said every episode multiple times, he could just stop.
he maybe will just walk away from this but the more serious these um the these threats became where he was really like repeatedly talking about the stone age and ending civilization and bridge and power plant day there you had to at least treat it like perhaps there's a chance he means this and even if there's like a 10 chance that he actually means what he's saying
Like, oh my God, what is this guy about to do? Like what a horrific and destructive and pure evil thing to do. But of course, it turns out that that's not what this was at all. And or at least that certainly seems like the case. Now, to be clear, there's a lot here that we don't exactly know how this all came down, but how it all went down.
But it was very interesting if you listen specifically to the language of what Donald Trump posted. Ryan Grimm, who's a really phenomenal, phenomenal journalist over at Dropsite. And of course, he's on the Breaking Points show as well. He
had this video it's pretty incredible he must have posted this like i think a couple hours or he recorded it like a couple hours before donald trump posted this and and backed off and he he was talking about um the uh it was during the cuban missile crisis And there was essentially, as the story goes, Khrushchev had sent a couple of cables to Jack Kennedy.
And so like one of the cables was like a kind of reasonable proposal.
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Chapter 4: What does Trump's ceasefire proposal entail?
and then the next cable he was more pissed off or he was more you know drunk on russian vodka or whatever and the next one was like furious and offered like a much worse deal and what uh jack kennedy uh and bobby kennedy came up with was they said we're just gonna go public and accept the previous offer.
We're going to pretend we never got that second cable and we're going to just accept the first offer and say, we've come to that agreement. And so they come, they go public. They say, we've come to that agreement. And then it puts Khrushchev in the position of going, well, I mean, that was my idea. That was my agreement. So I guess I'll go along with that.
This seems to be what happened here with Donald Trump. Now, Ryan Grimm called, he basically called that Trump would have this option. And there's a very specific reason why. And one of the things that Ryan pointed out, now, Ryan over at Dropsite, him and Jeremy Scahill have done like the best reporting in the world, as far as I can tell, certainly in the country.
on what the iranian government is actually saying through all of this which is like a very interesting component to that you know i know the the level of intellectual discourse amongst the war hawks is like you must i don't know hate your grandma and love jihad if you're interested in hearing from the iranians at all on this but for any thinking person you'd be like no that's a pretty important part of this dynamic
I'd like to hear what the U.S. leadership is saying, hear what the Israeli leadership is saying. I'd also like to hear what the Iranian leadership is saying. OK, so as Ryan was pointing out, and this is such an interesting dynamic here, this plan is something Iran's been offering all along.
Now, we've actually talked about this on the show several times, and I've given those guys credit, the drop site guys and the whole team there, not just Ryan and Jeremy. But.
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Chapter 5: How does Trump's approach compare to historical events like the Cuban Missile Crisis?
We've been saying the whole time that Iran has had this kind of deal on the table. Now, essentially, since the first week of the war, they've been saying the same thing. And this is ultimately what turned into the 10-point plan. Dropsite had ran an article with it a few weeks ago. This is at least for a couple weeks now been what they call their 10-point plan.
And from all the reporting, what it seems like happened yesterday is that Donald Trump just came out and acted like a new deal had been reached. But the point Ryan was making was that because the entire American media essentially operates like they're Mark Levin, None of them have ever reported on the fact that Iran's been offering this plan.
And so Donald Trump is able to credibly say to most of the American people, like pretty much everyone who doesn't read Dropsite or Antiwar.com or listen to Breaking Points or this show or a few others, all the rest of them haven't even heard this. So it's like, oh, OK. So I think essentially what happened here.
Now, this is not confirmed, but it seems like what happened is that the Iranians said, no, we're not talking. Donald Trump says you have to talk or I'm going to go scorched earth and send you back to the Stone Age. They didn't budge. And he blinked and he just went, well, I say the 10 point plan is, you know, is a workable start. And then when you say that, the Iranians go.
Okay, yeah, if you're agreeing to the deal that we already proposed, then okay, sure. If you're saying that's where we could start, okay, let's start there. Now, part of the reason why this really seems to be the case is that, look, it's pretty interesting language that Donald Trump did not announce that he has a deal with Iran initially.
He said, if I go back to this, he said he made a deal with the prime minister of Pakistan
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Chapter 6: What are the implications of Trump's negotiation strategy with Iran?
where they requested that I hold off the destructive force being sent tonight to Iran and subject, subject to the Islamic Republic of Iran agreeing. So he said this as if, if they agree to this, then we have this ceasefire. And then the Iranians came out and agreed to it. But there's a reason why they agreed to it. We'll get into that now in a second. Look, Donald Trump...
It seems pretty clear what happened to you in hindsight now. And this is part of the reason why. I mean, I got to say, I have felt a darkness about covering this war that I have not felt about almost any other issue. Even like the COVID stuff, when it really felt dark, like our whole country was being locked down and stuff. There was something about this war that just...
know to me it was genuinely like just a disturbing thing to be talking about for the last uh several weeks and there's a lot of reasons for that we'd get into it another time but there's um man it's just such a relief this morning to find this out um because it is just so much better that it wasn't the the answer wasn't that donald trump was just had gone that crazy and was going to do this the answer now seems to more be that donald trump is the kind of buffoonish bully that we always kind of knew he was
He was never really going to do all this. He got convinced, at least according to a lot of reporting at this point, New York Times just had a big piece on this. Maybe we'll have time to talk a little bit more about that.
But he got convinced by Netanyahu that he could do this strike and topple the regime, just like Venezuela, and that it would lead to a regime change and he would go down in history. And then he got in there. None of it worked at all because, of course, the Israelis are just trying to break you into this war to begin with.
um the in the most predictable way and according at least to the new york times damn near every member of his cabinet warned him that this would not work now i don't know if i buy that or not you know people as this thing starts to get worse and worse people try to jump off board and i'm not sure and honestly i don't really care you're all part of it um but
Anyway, he's been desperate to get out of it ever since because it's a disaster.
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Chapter 7: What is the significance of the 10-point plan proposed by Iran?
It's an absolute disaster. It's destroying his presidency. He, you know, it's destroying, it's threatening the global economy. It's destroying the Republicans' chance in the midterm elections this year. It's just, you know, and it's costing tons of money. Americans are dying, not to mention the Iranians and the Israelis that are dying. And... So now he wants to get out of it.
And so his last play was to threaten to destroy the whole civilization. Maybe that'll make them capitulate. And they didn't. So he swerved. He played a game of chicken. They called his bluff. And he just gave in. Now... There's still a lot of huge questions here.
I mean, look, it's we're still in a terrible situation in a much, much worse situation than we were before Donald Trump launched this stupid war. It is not. You know, I remember one time is like when I was first getting into all this stuff.
Chapter 8: How do commentators react to Trump's shift in strategy?
You know, I was a young man. It was like 20 years ago or something like that. And I. Barack Obama was given a speech about climate change. I think this was before he actually became president, but it was maybe during his campaign, maybe shortly after he became president.
And he said something like, he goes, now, if there's something we know about climate change, we know that it's a man-made problem. And therefore, we know that man can solve this problem if he created it. And I remember just at the time thinking that, I mean, he said it in a real eloquent, intelligent Obama way, but I was like, that is not true.
That is just, and in fact, that might be like the most unwise statement. There may be no statement more devout of wisdom than saying, if man can destroy something, then it can definitely put it back together. I forget the fact that we didn't destroy the climate and all that nonsense anyway. But, you know, man can, we can explode the whole world.
We got enough, just America, we got enough of a nuclear arsenal, I think, to blow up the world like 20 times over. We cannot put it back together. Just because we can break something does not mean you can put it back together. And this is like on some very basic level, like the dichotomy of man. It is to build and to destroy. And one is way easier than the other.
Building takes work and planning and intelligence and resources and investment. Destruction is, you know, my four-year-old can walk into his playroom and destroy the place. Putting it back together is more challenging. Anyway, so Donald Trump, I mean, starting this war is a, you know, that colossal mistake is not that easy to put back together.
And this is so much of this still hangs in the balance. But look, the 10 point plan, just to be clear here, like the 10 point plan that Donald Trump is. seeming here to say no, he hasn't agreed to it. But he said that this is a reasonable starting point or whatever. Let's go through the the 10 point plan.
This is, as I said, it was published, a version of this was published in Dropsite a couple weeks ago, the Wall Street Journal listed it as as the following. Okay. Number one, the US must fundamentally, excuse me, the US must fundamentally commit to guaranteeing non aggression. So we have to commit to no aggression against Iran. No more attacking Iran like a commitment.
Number two, a commitment of Iran's control over the Strait of Hormuz. That's number two. Iran controls the Strait of Hormuz. Number three, acceptance that Iran can enrich uranium for its nuclear program. They get to enrich uranium. That's number three.
four removal of all primary sanctions on iran they also get full sanction relief and if you don't think i mean full check out number five removal of all secondary sanctions against foreign entities that do business with iranian institutions so no secondary like full sanction relief okay Six, end of all United Security Council resolutions targeting Iran. So all UN Security Council resolutions.
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