Chicken & Waffles - September 21, 2026

Ana Kasparian (0:13)

There seems to be a theme with today's show, and I promise you, it was not intentional. It was kind of on accident, but a lot of the news stories today seem to have a similar theme, and that theme has to do with foreign countries and their way of influencing our policies here in the United States. And it's something that I think more and more Americans are awake and aware of, which is a good thing. Because for many decades, as this has gone on, no one has noticed, no one has cared. And certain decisions were being made that we couldn't really understand, but now we have an understanding of just how many cooks we have in the kitchen. Welcome to TYT. I'm your host, Ana Kasparian. I haven't slept much. I was in Chicago just yesterday giving a speech at the annual Chicago Care Gala. And for those of you who aren't familiar, Care is an organization, they have chapters throughout the country, that seeks to provide a legal defense to Muslim Americans who might have been discriminated against or victims of hate crimes, things like that. Actually, there was a really touching story shared during the event yesterday about a man who ended up getting convicted for a crime he did not commit. He served 30 years in prison. But while he was in prison, he learned about different faiths and I guess he became Muslim.

And it's really interesting how religion is interpreted differently by different people because the way that Muslims are kind of talked about in the United States, they're described as like these angry, evil, savage people. But this is a man who was wronged in the worst kind of way. He had 30 years of his life robbed from him. And he had this serene calmness about him, this peace about him that, I think I could find a little bit of that in my own life.

I'm not saying that I'm going to find it through religious doctrine, but it was really interesting to see that and his story was really touching. Anyway, so thank you for anybody who caught the live stream. For anyone who didn't catch the live stream, I'm sure it's out there somewhere.

But for today's show, we're going to talk a little bit about the escalation trap that President Donald Trump finds himself in. That trap is very real and unfortunately, escalation trap doesn't just mean that Trump is trapped, it means we're trapped. So we'll discuss some of the different facets of the Iran war updates. We're also going to talk about Trump not really knowing what he wants to do as it pertains to Ansarullah or the Houthis as they're commonly known.

He's getting pressured quite a bit by Saudi Arabia to get involved. Is he going to get involved? Well, there's a pretty big story in the New York Times today that's going to make you question whether Trump is into tacos or whether he's into waffles.

But that's going to be an interesting story. Can't wait to share that with you. And later, we're going to discuss the neocons freaking out over the fact that the polls aren't lying. Most Americans at this point are sick of the US alliance with Israel. So what type of proposal does Mark Dubowicz have? We're going to talk about that and more. As always, just want to encourage you to like and share the stream if you're watching us live. Take it easy on me today. All right, guys, I got in this morning. I've been up, I got two and a half hours of sleep. So if I make any mistakes, please understand that I'm making mistakes and I will correct them and apologize if I do. So just bear with me. But we do have an awesome show and many of these stories were produced by my incredible producers and some of them were produced by me when I wasn't sleepy yesterday. So let's get to our first story.

SPEAKER_2 (3:56)

I just spoke with President Trump about the situation with Iran. He tells Fox News he's in a deciding mode and that very big things are going to be happening in the not so distant future. The president described the current choices on the table as wiping Iran out, letting them rot economically or making a deal. He added, my question is if and when do I blow the entire nation up, they better behave.

Ana Kasparian (4:22)

Well, I mean, as you can see there, President Trump went to his usual course of action, which is embarrassing. But nonetheless, he's threatening Iran with complete destruction again. Despite the egg on his face, that's the reality. And he knows, on some level, the big baby knows, he knows he lost the war. And so what does he do every time he's backed into a corner? Really has no easy options, doesn't want to take his ball and go home, doesn't want to confess, doesn't want to concede to the fact that he lost this war. He lashes out like a child, like a toddler. Sometimes it's on social media, sometimes during late night or early morning phone conversations with Trey Yankst. But there you have it, he's threatening Iran yet again. Now what does that mean for us? So key diplomatic hurdles remain unresolved as the Iran war enters its eighth month. Remember when it was supposed to last two weeks? Remember when all those Israel lovers out there, people who have no idea what they're talking about, tried to make people like me and Dave Smith out to be lunatics because he said that a two week war was laughable, that this was going to turn into a quagmire, that this was going to turn into a forever war. You guys remember that? Do those people ever apologize? Never, right? Never. Anyway, let me continue.