Hammer & Nigel Weekend Show, 6/28/26

**SPEAKER_1** (0:01)
It's the Hammer and Nigel Weekend Show on 93WIBC.

**Nigel Jason Hammer** (0:08)
My name is Nigel Jason Hammer, right over there with a very special guest on the hotline.

**Hammer** (0:14)
No stranger to this audience, long time political insider from the great state of Indiana. And now you can check him out on Wake Up America. On Newsmax, Mark Lotter joins us. Mark, how are you?

**Mark Lotter** (0:30)
I'm doing great, Jason. How are you?

**Hammer** (0:32)
We're doing great. And Mark, I want to run something by you here. I'm wondering if these two things can be true at the same time, because my audience is kind of telling me two things. Number one, we support America. We want our men and women to go to Iran, kick ass, win this thing and be heroes. But at the same time, we're also getting fatigued and burned out by this. All this talk of, we've got a deal, a deal is imminent and then nothing happens. Can both of those things be true at the same time?

**Mark Lotter** (1:08)
Absolutely, 100 percent, yes. They can both be true at the same time. And that's really a messaging problem from the White House. And I hate to say it that way. I mean, I worked there. I was in the first administration. But I think all of this up and down, and let's think about this in historical terms. We've been doing this thing in Iran for, what, 100 and some days, 110 days maybe. And it's nothing compared to the years of war that we had, whether it was with the British all the way back in the day, whether it was with ourselves during the Civil War, the First World War, the Second World War, Korea, Vietnam, Gulf War I, Gulf War II, you know, the war against terror, all of those things. And of course, the one most recently lasted decades.
And yet, we're tired of war after 110 days.
And so, yes, I think we absolutely can be tired of it, but I also think we need to see the light at the end of the tunnel. And I think that's where the president continues to provide hope to the American people, which the Iranians, and I would say, sadly, the legacy media here in the United States, are in cahoots together, because they know that if you can drag people out, if they can do what Iran does so well, drag people along years and years and years, the American people will lose support for this politically, which puts the president in a problem.

**Nigel Jason Hammer** (2:31)
Hey, Mark, who is the Trump administration negotiating with? That seems to be a point of debate. I don't think it's the IRGC. Is it a civilian government? Do you have any sort of semblances to who Trump's people are talking to over there?

**Mark Lotter** (2:50)
The best I can tell is it's the foreign minister and it's also the speaker of their parliament. But the question is, do they have control?
And does the Ayatollah have control? Because really, the speaker of their parliament, the foreign minister and even the Ayatollah, the supreme leader himself, if he's even alive, they can all say one thing, like the IRGC, which has their fingers on the missile launchers, can say something completely else. So I'm not even sure if they know who is in control of their country, because all of them are sitting around going, as soon as the war is over, the people are going to rise up. And how long are we going to be around?

**Hammer** (3:32)
And Mark, it feels like the president has been more vocal of not only the Iranians, but also Bibi Netanyahu and the Israelis lately. What do we make of that? Do you think this whole thing is starting to wear on President Trump a little bit?

**Mark Lotter** (3:50)
Well, I think it is, but I also think that we have different goals because we are in different positions. I mean, we have to remember that we are experiencing this from what we choose to experience, whether it's we launch an attack, whether we put our Navy and our aircraft and our Marines in harm's way, where Israel is taking incoming fire. And if you are Iran, and this is one of the things that when I worked with the great general, Keith Kellogg, who you often see on another network that I can't mention, but you often see him there talking, and he often reminds me, we always think about these kinds of conflicts from our side. Look at it from their side. The Iranians know the best way to have some sort of semblance of a win, is to divide America and Israel.