Republicans losing their grip as Trump loses his

**David Pakman** (0:06)
Donald Trump is about to surrender to Iran. I know that if you believe that Donald Trump is just the most alpha strong guy ever and he would never do that, that might be tough to accept. But there is now reporting that Trump is getting set for an unconditional surrender to Iran. Now, remember that Donald Trump at the beginning of all this said that the only way that this war would end was with Iran's unconditional surrender. But according to the Wall Street Journal, what Trump is considering doing is just declaring victory, saying to Iran, open the Strait of Hormuz and getting the hell out even without having accomplished a single objective. This is effectively a total surrender. The groundwork that Trump is laying is coming from the reality that he probably can't win this war by any real definition. He's going to walk away seemingly with no nuclear deal. So in plain English, the message is, listen, reopen the Strait, let the oil start moving again. I will just say we won and we're going to get the hell out of there. And, of course, if we think about society and humanity, avoiding more war is good. I have opposed the blockade. I have opposed the threats of escalation. I've been against this war. The possibility of a ground war has been terrifying. It's great, right? Like don't less war. That's awesome. But ending a war responsibly and pretending you won, but actually just surrendering are completely different things. Trump went into this thing never defining victory. It was, well, we're going to stop their nuclear weapons program. I thought you did well, but we did. What about the uranium? I don't know. They can keep it. We're going to destroy their ballistic missiles capabilities. Yeah, well, that didn't happen. We're going to do regime change. Well, it did and it didn't happen, right? I mean, like literally the leader is different because you killed the previous one. But it's the same family. It's the same regime. We're going to bring Iran back and get a deal done. Well, what kind of a deal? Obama had a deal. You got out of the deal because you said it was no good. So whenever a goal became unattainable, the goals were just shift. And Trump's administration now says the strikes have destroyed the three main nuclear sites. Is that true? We don't really know.
And they are saying Tehran is not going to be able to restart their program without us knowing.
And that's good enough. But what happened to the agreement? What about Iran will never get a nuclear weapon and they're at the table and there's 60 days to negotiate and he's going to walk away, is what the Wall Street Journal reports says. A real diplomatic victory would have some terms, a timeline, the ability to verify consequences if anything is violated from the deal. Trump is reportedly getting set to just tuck his tail between his legs, go home and go, yeah, but I won, didn't I? And everybody's going to go, won what? What are you talking about? Iran would reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
That's by the way, the central piece of leverage that it gained during the war. Iran didn't even have that leverage before this war started and Trump would go, mission accomplished. Oil traffic is happening again. It's flowing. I'm just going to go home. Even if that outcome remains uncertain, Iran is also reportedly demanding sanctions relief. The return of frozen assets, American military withdrawal and then to the naval blockade, compensation for war damage. And Iran says there's no negotiations happening right now. Think about that. Trump started with their they're going to cry uncle unconditional surrender. That's how it will end.
There were going to be negotiations. The negotiations failed.
Trump insists they are negotiating while Iran goes, we're not negotiating. What is what is he talking about? And Iran has been able to avoid surrendering and they are negotiating. And I don't mean it's not a literal negotiation, but they're negotiating in the sort of public domain in a way where everyone knows they can wreak havoc on Trump's presidency with what they can do in the Strait of Hormuz. So this is going to be an embarrassment. And I want to hear from every single one of these magas who goes, Trump is so strong. If Trump just turns around and goes, I won, imagine if you're in a chess game and you're losing and the other player has a better position and you go, I won and you shake hands. You've surrendered the game. You you've lost. You can sit when you stop playing and say, I've actually won. Other people can evaluate that and see if that is true. Now then we get to the bigger issue. And this is now the 30,000 foot level. Trump told us he was the guy who would end the forever wars. He would never start forever wars. He's not so stupid as George W. Bush and Hillary and Biden and Kamala Harris, all of whom did or were going to start stupid wars. And now Trump started a war and he can't get out of it seemingly without losing. And the proposed escape route is forget about the nuclear issue, give Iran concessions for reopening the waterway that was open to begin with before he started this thing, declare victory and just hope everybody moves on if that ends the killing.