DC insiders expose 'mind-boggling' reason Trump’s war is dumber than it seems

President Donald Trump returns to the White House, after Israel and the U.S. launched strikes on Iran, in Washington, D.C., March 1, 2026. REUTERS/Nathan Howard

President Donald Trump's war with Iran and the pending deal for a temporary ceasefire are dumber than most realize, and the D.C. insiders at Pod Save America shared the "mind-boggling" reason why.

Reports have repeatedly claimed this week that the U.S. and Iran are nearing a deal for a 60-day ceasefire, one which would reopen the Strait of Hormuz and, theoretically, allow shipments of oil and other crucial materials to resume. Trump himself said on Friday that he is weighing the "final determination" for the plan, though critics have noted how often the president appears to claim that a deal is approaching as the stock market nears the end of the week, only to resume a more combative rhetoric when the markets are closed.

Some of those critics include the hosts of Pod Save America, who, in their latest episode on Friday, broke down the news surrounding the temporary deal and why it is, in their view, "so stupid." The hosts noted that the specifics of the deal fail considerably to live up to the hype around, as it is essentially "a deal to keep talking," meaning that an actual, definitive end to the conflict still has not been reached and might not be for some time.

"Now, the problem here is there are still mines in unknown places all across the Strait of Hormuz," Dan Pfeiffer, the former White House Communications Director under Barack Obama, explained, meaning that claiming to reopen it as part of this 60-day deal might ultimately mean nothing.

While noting that it is positive progress that the two nations will not be actively conducting strikes and that a small number of ships might cross the Strait of Hormuz, Pfeiffer said that the deal was "very minor" and far from "the Treaty of f—— Versailles," as some of the hype has made it seem.

Co-host Jon Favreau, the former director of speechwriting under Obama, rattled off the myriad ways in which Trump's war has failed to achieve meaningful goals, noting that it has not done any more to inhibit their nuclear program than the airstrikes from last summer did, it has replaced the previous leader of Iran with a younger and "more radical" one and, all the while, the Iranian people overall are no closer to freedom, and might actually be "more repressed" going forward. For all that, he concluded, the U.S. has paid at least $50 billion and lost 14 servicemembers, to say nothing of skyrocketing gas prices at home.

Pfeiffer added that what made the whole situation "so stupid" was the fact that Iran was not on the cusp of creating a nuclear weapon prior to the conflict, as Trump and his allies have claimed, to which Favreau added that the nation only had the enriched uranium because they started making it again after Trump blew up Obama's nuclear deal when he started his first term.

"It's mind-boggling that we've been talking about this for so long, because it's so stupid," Pfeiffer said.

"There wouldn't even be more enriched uranium to be talking about if Trump hadn't gotten us out of the [Obama-era] Iran deal," Favreau added.

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