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Critics say President Donald Trump is a walking example of projection. If so, the president’s description of Iran’s leaders over the course of his war with that nation may be telling, considering a steady rollout of claims recorded and presented for MS NOW’s The Weekend on Saturday.

“I think Iran looks like they want to make a deal very badly,” Trump said February 6, in the weeks leading up to the February 28 joint U.S./Israeli attacks.

“They want to make a deal,” he said March 16, weeks after the attacks. And then: “They want to make a deal very badly,” on March 23 in Palm Beach, Florida.

“They want to make a deal so badly. You have no idea how badly they want to make a deal,” he repeated on March 24 at the White House.

“They want to make a deal so badly, but they're afraid to say it because they figure they'll be killed by their own people,” Trump claimed on March 25.

“They are begging to make a deal — not me. They're begging to make a deal very badly,” he insisted yet again March 26.

“They want to make a deal,” he proclaimed on March 27, followed by: “They’re begging to make a deal. They’re begging to make a deal” that same day at a new location.

“They want to make a deal. They want to make a deal more than I want to make a deal,” he claimed in the Oval Office on March 31.

“They’d like to make a deal very badly,” he repeated yet again April 13 at the White House.

Former CIA Director John Brennan told Weekend anchors that he doubted Trump had any credibility left to squander at this point.

“I don't think he's ever had credibility on this issue because he has consistently misrepresented and lied about the situation. And the Iranians know that,” said Brennan. “And that's why when we're talking about the Strait [of Hormuz] right now, it's absurd to think that the Iranians would allow the strait to remain open if the U.S. blockade of Iranian ports continues.”

“So, he's making all these claims about they've agreed to suspend uranium enrichment and, open up. And the Iranians know that he is lying. And why should they believe anything that he might be saying that has an element of truth in it?” Brennan added.

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President Donald Trump may act like he is answerable to no one, but an ex-Republican consultant warns that he and the rest of the “Epstein class” are nearing the end of their heyday.

“Everyone knows how much the Trump family cares about the little people,” wrote Steve Schmidt, who previously advised President George W. Bush, in a Substack post on Tuesday. He then showed a picture of First Lady Melania Trump going to an immigrant detention facility wearing a jacket saying, “I don’t really care. Do u?”

“She’s a beautiful soul," Schmidt wrote sarcastically, and then proceeded to tell the story of Amanda Ungaro, who was reportedly held in an ICE detention facility for more than three months by her ex-partner Paolo Zampolli after Trump intervened to help Zampolli in a custody dispute.

“Melania claims it was Zampolli who introduced her to her soulmate at the Kit Kat Klub in Manhattan in 1998,” Schmidt wrote. “That’s the story at least. Ungaro came to the United States via airplane at age 16 or 17 from Brazil. She arrived via private jet.”

Schmidt then quoted Ungaro declaring on social media about Melania Trump that “I will tear down your corrupt system, even if it's the last thing I do in my life. I will go all the way—l am not afraid.” She added, "Maybe you should be afraid of what I know... of who you are, and who your husband.”

Schmidt even connected Trump’s failure to distance himself and his wife from the convicted late child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein to his recent seemingly staged photo op with an elderly female DoorDash driver.

“Donald Trump’s out-of-touch stooges thought it was a good idea to cast a grandmother in the role of a happy serf kissing the feet of her Lord with gratitude for his dispensations of a half pence to the low and unseen,” Schmidt wrote. “What it showed was the corruption of our age and the rot of American life. It showed the chasm between the Epstein class and normal Americans.”

Schmidt went on describe Trump's Mar-a-lago home in Florida as a "place of corruption, decadence and depravity," and he noted the president's inability to climb out from beneath Epstein's shadow.

The First Lady, for example, has repeatedly denied the accusations about her and Epstein being linked, including in a surprise press conference last week. But critics say Trump has failed to bury the Epstein scandal, despite his repeated efforts to do so.

“The American people don’t need any help being suspicious about the government’s handling of Jeffrey Epstein,” reported CNN’s Aaron Blake in February. “But the Trump administration keeps giving them more reason to be anyway.”

Blake aid "the plausibility" of victim's claims "isn’t the main point; the point is that an increasingly politicized Justice Department — one where a massive banner of Trump was hung last week — did not release documents containing allegations about the president.”

He added, “In a vacuum, that would be problematic. But next to everything else, it’s really bad.” Three out of four Americans said Trump is “hiding information” about Epstein, according to a recent Reuters and Ipsos poll, while a recent CNN poll put the number at two out of three. Indeed, the Trump administration only released the Epstein files that were disclosed when forced to, and has subsequently “failed to redact lots of victim information while apparently redacting more than the law called for in other areas, including the names of potential and suspected Epstein co-conspirators. The administration claimed it didn’t ‘redact the names of any men,’ but it clearly did.”

Despite others facing legal consequences in nations like the United Kingdom, no one in the United States has yet faced judicial accountability for their involvement with Epstein. But Schmidt predicted big changes in 203 days.

"I will see multitudes in the streets joyously celebrating as the MAGA Congress is obliterated," Schmidt said. "I see Lindsey Graham defeated.I see the beginning of the reckoning at hand. The disgrace of this era is far from over and the worst lies ahead, but I can see something very clearly. The world does not exist like Donald Trump sees it. His fantasy is crumbling."

After President Donald Trump threatened to wipe out a "whole civilization" in a post on his Truth Social platform, many Democrats in Congress called for him to be removed from office via the U.S. Constitution's 25th Amendment. That's unlikely to happen at this point, as Republicans still have majorities in both branches of Congress. But conservative attorney George Conway, during an appearance on The New Republic's podcast, "The Daily Blast," posted on April 17, argued that the push to use the 25th Amendment against Trump won't be going away.

Sargent, who spent much of his life as a Republican but is now running for Congress as a Democrat, told host Greg Sargent, "He is somebody who has always been marked by personal obsessions — whatever's bugging him, whatever he sees on television, whoever he thinks has slighted him. And in a sense, this is nothing new. But he's reached a different stage here. Because even though there were weekends where we scratched our head and said, 'What's wrong with this guy? 25th Amendment and so on,' the difference now is that he's less inhibited. People like him who are narcissistic sociopaths, they get worse over time."

The Never Trump conservative continued, "And in addition to that, his age — and I'm not saying he has dementia — but his brain is not functioning as well. I don't think it ever functioned that well, (but) he's becoming more disinhibited. And he's going fewer people around him who can tell him, 'Don't say that, don't do that. Please put the phone down." Not that they ever really could do it. But basically, if you tell him no, you're gone…. Now, he's just not listening to anybody."

Conway emphasized that as "sociopaths" like Trump become more "detached from reality," they become "more dangerous not only to themselves, but also, to the people they supposedly serve."

Sargent noted that Republicans are becoming increasingly worried about the midterms, and Trump is doing nothing to calm their anxiety.

"I think they're trying to communicate something to Trump, but he's not listening," Conway told Sargent. " He no longer cares. He is off in his own reality now. And the Republicans are expressing concern because they know he's driving them off a cliff. And you see also it in a lot of the Republican influences — the Megyn Kellys, the Joe Rogans, the Tucker Carlsons. They're basically talking about the 25th Amendment now. And I think this is happening all up and down the MAGA food chain. The electeds, who realize they're no longer getting usefulness from Trump. The influencers, who realize there's in there for them in there anymore…. The cognitive dissonance, in other words, is breaking down. And the problem for them is, there's only one way out of it — and that's to get rid of Donald Trump."

Conway continued, "He is not going to listen to them. He is not going to tone it down. If anything, he's going to get worse because he is completely detached from reality…. They have a huge problem…. The Republican senators are cowards. They have been afraid of Trump, but at some point, they're going to have to be afraid of something else."

House Republicans will vote this week on a bill expressing support for their "One Big Beautiful Bill" Act passed last summer. The measure will not only cheer the law, but it will attempt to rebrand the unpopular budget measure to the "Working Families Tax Cut."

There's a reason for both of those things, a CNN data analyst explained on Wednesday. Data shows Americans don't like the "One Big Beautiful Bill," and they don't believe it did anything to help their affordability crisis.

The GOP's flagship budget bill, which Trump called the "big, beautiful bill," delivered many tax perks to the wealthy and corporations, but it has been a bust for many others. Even after it passed, there wasn't much fanfare. Mere months after it passed, Trump announced he was rebranding it to the "Working Families Tax Cut."

"So the bill that — I’m not going to use the term 'great, big, beautiful' — that was good for getting it approved, but it’s not good for explaining to people what it’s all about," Trump said in Aug. 2025.

CNN data analyst Harry Enten told host John Berman that the president's bill "ain't workin' too good."

"Trump is paying the piper when it comes to taxes and the American public," Enten explained. "Look at this trend. I mean, again, what massive trends we're seeing from term one to term two."

He compared Trump's polls to where he was at this same time in 2018. Currently, the president is 28 points underwater on taxes, according to a Fox News poll. That same poll in 2018 showed Trump was up 2 points on taxes after he and the GOP passed a tax bill.

"Look at this!" exclaimed Enten. "If there are benefits that the American people are liking when it comes to the 'One Big, Beautiful Bill' act, they are not, in fact, giving the two thumbs up to Donald Trump when it comes to that."

Berman saw in the fine print on the graphic that the number of displeasure among independent voters is considerable.

"He is 58 points underwater with independence when it comes to taxes. My goodness gracious," Enten said.

"I'm going to circle that. That is stunning. Again, he says he cut your taxes, and people are 58 points opposed to it. Independents," said Berman.

The other number that has changed is that more Americans agree that taxes aren't fair. In 2018, only about 38 percent of Americans said that they felt their taxes were not fair, vs. 61 percent who rated them fair. In 2026, that number flipped to 49 percent of Americans saying they are unfair.

"And John is over there shaking because these numbers are unbelievable," said Enten.

Looking specifically at the "One Big Beautiful Bill" Act, its approval is down 20 points. When it comes to Independents, that is 41 percent down since Fall 2025.

"No wonder Donald Trump is struggling so much when it comes to the american public and taxes," Enten added.

"The signature, legislative achievement, as it is now mid-April heading into the midterm elections. This is where it stands," Berman closed.

It might be the reason the GOP wants to change the name so much. The law was passed with Trump's name for it. So, the new bill from the GOP declares in its first provision that it is "commonly known as the ‘Working Families Tax Cuts.'"

The bill will "1. expresses its support for tax policies that support working families and let them keep more of their hard-earned money; and 2. recognizes the significant tax relief provided by the Working Families Tax Cuts for hardworking Americans," it says.

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Sen. Mitch McConnell on Monday wrote a new op-ed for Fox News, blasting President Donald Trump and others in the GOP for their admiration of outgoing Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, with one journalist calling the piece his "victory lap."

Orbán has served as the prime minister of Hungary since 2010, ushering in a staunchly far-right and anti-democratic government that many on the international stage decried as a dictatorship. Over the weekend, however, his reign was toppled when his party took a decisive loss from the opposition, ushering in new leadership in the form of Péter Magyar.

This loss was seen as especially damaging for the global far-right movement and MAGA in particular, as Orbán's tactics for consolidating the government and clinging to power were widely seen as a template for far-right political movements. The Trump administration was so invested in maintaining Orbán's power that Vice President JD Vance was dispatched to Hungary to campaign for him, though his arrival appeared to have the opposite of the intended effect.

In the wake of the landslide loss, McConnell, the former GOP Senate majority leader and increasingly vocal Trump critic, published a piece for Fox News celebrating the development, citing Orbán's overt deference to Russia and Vladimir Putin, as well as his close ties to the likes of China and Iran. He also took the opportunity to excoriate those in his party who showed deep admiration for the Hungarian leader.

"[For] the better part of a decade, Hungarian politics has persisted as an object of intense fascination in certain corners of the American right," McConnell wrote. "This phenomenon is endlessly puzzling. America’s self-proclaimed national conservatives spoke of Orban’s Hungary as an oasis of traditionalism amid the wasteland of an ailing, liberal and decadent postmodern Europe. And some American politicians appear to have bought into the myth."

He continued: "To be clear, it is a myth. Orban’s champions on this side of the Atlantic may well consider his illiberal court-packing, crony capitalism or restriction of free speech an acceptable price for their desired social utopia. Yet for all the talk of reviving faith and family through statist intervention, Hungary’s religious participation and birth rates under his rule have declined right alongside the rest of the West."

McConnell further ripped the outgoing prime minister for his "fawning servitude to authoritarians," which he said ran "counter to American values." He also ripped members of the American right for their degree of fixation on Hungary as a political partner, arguing that the Eastern European nation offered "little in the way of strategic alignment" or "moral cooperation," and that the biggest shared value now between the U.S. and Hungary is the "the right to choose our own leaders, freely and fairly, without foreign or domestic interference," praising Hungarian's for their "distaste for the crony capitalism and corruption that have weakened Hungary’s economy and the image of its ruling party." He further noted that Magyar, himself a former member of Orbán's party and considered center-right politically, is unlikely to shift Hungary into a bastion of liberal politics.

"Watching this from Kentucky, it is hard to understand how some on the American right thought that staking U.S. influence on the outcome of a parliamentary election in a small, central European country was putting America’s interests first," McConnell concluded. "To the extent that what happens in Hungary matters to America, it is a question of whether its actions on the world stage — not its social policies — align with America’s strategic interests."

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte was in Washington D.C. on Wednesday, where he faced off against President Donald Trump's claims against NATO.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization has been in place since after World War II, with the specific purpose of working to face threats to Europe and the U.S. They were huge players after the Sept. 11 attacks, in which the U.S. invoked the Article 5 agreement for an attack on Afghanistan.

Former U.S. Representative to NATO, Ivo Daaler, told CNN on Thursday that it does appear the only way people can speak rationally with Trump is through charm and flattery.

Daaler hoped this was the tactic Rutte was deploying to steer Trump in the right direction. NATO's biggest foe over the years has been the former Soviet Union and, now, Russia. The country has long endeavored to undermine the group. Trump told the press last week that Russian President Vladimir Putin had convinced him to withdraw from the group, a move that can only be accomplished with congressional approval.

The fear, Daaler has, is that things are different."The breach is bigger. And, I think it's no longer flattery that is going to do things. And I think he was trying to explain what NATO was about, and I'm not sure if the president was listening."

The White House is angry about NATO refusing to back its war with Iran. Daaler had suggestions for how to fix that.

"I think the White House should be looking at its own behavior to explain it," Daaler explained. "If you decide to go to war, that is generally regarded as illegal under international law and unnecessary because there were many other routes to try to achieve the goals that you were trying to achieve."

In the recent example, Trump went to war with Iran and didn't even inform NATO or allies in the region, which likely would have withdrawn diplomats and soldiers from the region.

"Don't be surprised that they may wake up the next day and say, well, wait a minute, we're not part of this. We weren't involved. We weren't asked to be involved. We weren't informed about what it is you were going to do, and now you just want to go out and make sure that you use our airspace and the bases on our territory to do that. We have some questions," said the former ambassador.

Trump has used NATO's lack of engagement in IRan to justify his claims that NATO is a burden and not a benefit to the United States.

Now, Trump is looking for ways to "make Europe Pay for his own mistakes," said Daaler.

"And as a result, the alliance is so much weaker than it has been for so long because the president of the United States is basically saying, you sort out your own security, we sort out ours," Daaler continued. "The problem is that for the United States to sort out its own security, it actually needs NATO. It needs Europe. It can't conduct the war that it has just conducted for five and a half weeks without access to European bases and European airspace. And so he should spend some time figuring out exactly what it is that Europe does, even when they don't support the United States in the."

President Donald Trump spoke to the press on Monday, where he was asked about the AI image his account posted depicting him as Jesus Christ.

While the image has since been removed, Trump told the press he didn't know what it showed him as Jesus.

"I did post it and I thought it was me as a doctor and had to do Red Cross. Only the fake news could come up with that one," said Trump.

It isn't merely legacy media, however, even some of Trump's most ardent supporters came out against the post.

In it, he was depicted wearing a long white robe with the red garment draped over him. The art comes from the Revelations 19:13 excerpt in the Bible that says when Jesus returns, "He is dressed in a robe dipped in blood, and his name is the Word of God."

CNN host Dana Bash didn't buy it. She returned to the screen and showed the image Trump posted.

"He said he thought it was really just a picture of him as a doctor," said Bash. "I'm not Christian, and I see that's Jesus."

The comments follow Trump's multi-day public feud with the Pope.

The press availability came after Trump ordered McDonald's from DoorDash.

President Donald Trump has split his MAGA base so fiercely, one conservative commentator is predicting long-term negative consequences for Trump’s Republican Party.

“There are parts of the Trump coalition they presumed, after 2024, would always be there,” Rick Wilson, a former Republican strategist and head of the anti-Trump group The Lincoln Project, said in a post on the social media platform X on Wednesday. “But if you were going to build a set of programmatic actions that would break them off the Trump coalition — start a war with Iran, raise tariffs, and destroy a huge part of the farming and rural economy in this country — all of those things have started to add up into a political chemistry that is not going to disappear tomorrow.”

Referring to Trump’s ceasefire with Iran as a “brief TACO,” referring to the acronym “Trump Also Chickens Out,” Wilson added that Trump’s voters realize “it's not going to be Barron Trump who goes to war. In fact, the Lincoln Project put out an ad about this today. It's not going to be Barron Trump who goes to war — it's going to be their kids who go to war. It's going to be their kids who fight on some desert battlefield in Iran, if Donald Trump doesn't stop doing what he's doing.”

He added, “So I think there's a great dysfunction inside the MAGA world right now, where their reflexive support of Trump — which has really been inculcated in them over a decade — has finally been challenged with something they can't explain away. They can't spin it, even to themselves, because you can't go to the gas pump and say, 'Oh, the gas doesn't really cost five dollars — right now it's $1.89.' You can't say that to yourself, no matter how much of a supporter of the president you are.”

Despite Trump hoping to heal the cracks in his base, Wilson predicted that “it's going to drag out much longer. And it has already dragged out to a point where the electoral damage is scaring the hell out of a lot of Republican elected officials.”

In contrast with Wilson, The Bulwark’s conservative commentator Tim Miller argued that Trump will need to inflict “real pain” on his own base for them to turn on him.

“The best case scenario economically is where we're at now, which is real pain for people to experience,” Miller said. “I don't think that 90% of the MAGA folks are going to stay with them. I really don't. It's hard to tell in the polls right now because there's a lag.”

A little later Miller observed, “Yes, self-described MAGA folks, 90% of them are supportive of Iran, but that's just people who are self-described MAGA folks. I mean, how many people in those polls don't self-define as MAGA folks anymore because of what's happening? As we are sitting here, literally as we are sitting here, the Marquette University law poll, which is like the gold standard in Wisconsin, they put out a poll today. Trump's net approval rating is minus 14%. which is, ‘the lowest net approval figure for him in both of his terms as president.’ I mean, these numbers are, who knows? They're catastrophic.”

By contrast conservative columnist Jim Geraghty told The Washington Post that he does not believe anything in the realm of possibility will convince Trump voters to leave their president.

“I would argue it’s more of a pugnacious attitude with a handful of immovable north stars (immigration enforcement, tariffs, disregard for multilateralism) and every other policy decision negotiable — up to and including the federal government taking an ownership stake and some degree of control over private companies,” Geraghty wrote for The Washington Post last month. As proof, he pointed to an NBC News survey in which 100 percent of self-described “MAGA Republicans” say they still support Trump; a CBS News poll put the number at 92 percent.

“Back in January, Trump boasted, ‘MAGA is me. MAGA loves everything I do, and I love everything I do, too,’” Geraghty said. “Other than a few exceptions such as the release of the Justice Department’s Jeffrey Epstein files, that has been the case.”

President Donald Trump ordered the Justice Department’s civil rights division to investigate a star witness against him from his Jan. 6th, 2021 insurrection — an explicitly political move that experts say is “highly unusual.”

“The move was a highly unusual one by Justice Department leadership, directing a criminal case that appears to involve accusations of lying to Congress to a specialized unit that normally focuses on systemic civil rights abuses like police misconduct and racial discrimination,” the Times reported on Tuesday. Trump ordered the Justice Department to investigate Cassidy Hutchinson, a former White House aide who testified before Congress that Trump allegedly engaged in criminal activity on Jan. 6, 2021. “And yet the decision was in keeping with the administration’s bid to find new ways to use the powers of the federal government to target Mr. Trump’s political opponents," according to the Times.

Trump has tried other political prosecutions that have spectacularly failed. These include his attempts against New York attorney general Letitia James, former FBI director James Comey, Democratic lawmakers who criticized him including Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona and various protesters who have opposed Trump’s immigration and other policies. Yet instead of taking these cases to trial as Trump demanded, grand juries have refused to prosecute.

“This is how grand juries were meant to work,” UC Berkeley Criminal Justice Center Director Chesa Boudin and UC Davis Law Professor Eric S. Fish wrote in The New York Times in February. Quoting Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren that grand juries are “a primary security to the innocent against hasty, malicious and oppressive persecution,” Boudin and Fish pointed out that they are fulfilling this purpose under Trump.

Speaking to Salon Magazine in February, former federal judge John E. Jones III emphasized that the grand jury rejections of Trump’s cases is highly historic.

"It’s unprecedented, although we now see a wave of grand juries pushing back against the government," Jones said. "I don’t recall a single instance, during the almost 20 years I served as a U.S. District judge, when a grand jury refused to return a true bill, an indictment. It just is completely aberrational."

He added: "The grand jury would have to totally reject the whole premise of the case that’s being presented to them by the United States attorney because, remember, there are typically no witnesses appearing before the grand jury to dispute the facts. The grand jury is clearly saying, 'Even accepting the facts you’re putting before us as true, we don’t think under these circumstances this case is worthy of a federal indictment.'"

“The investigation into Ms. Hutchinson began some weeks ago after the Justice Department received a referral from a Trump ally in Congress who accused Ms. Hutchinson of lying to the special House committee that investigated the events of Jan. 6,” the Times wrote on Tuesday. “During explosive televised testimony in June 2022, Ms. Hutchinson, now 29, said that Mr. Trump had encouraged the crowd that gathered to hear him speak near the White House on Jan. 6 to march to the Capitol even though he knew it was armed and could turn violent.”

The Times added, “She also claimed that she had heard that Mr. Trump lunged at one of his Secret Service agents in a presidential limo when he was told he could not join his supporters on Capitol Hill. Other testimony later contradicted that assertion.”

What President Donald Trump has done in the Middle East has not only failed, but has made things worse, said one former defense intelligence expert.

Retired Maj. Harrison Mann, a former Defense Intelligence Agency official, and Steven A. Cook, a senior fellow for Middle East Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, both agreed that Trump has bungled his Iran war.

Mann specifically pointed to the recent decision to strike Kharg Island as part of Trump's ongoing threat of a ground invasion of Iran.

"That's why you'd need to take care of the fortifications on the island to as preparatory strikes to land troops. This is something the administration has been threatening threatening for weeks now," Mann explained. "I've said before, it would be a suicide mission."

He cited the huge effort that the U.S. had to deploy to simply get one soldier back who had ejected from a downed plane over Iran.

"Think about getting an 800-man battalion out of there after you've landed them," said the major. "So why this might be a threat, I think, compared to the infrastructure strikes that the administration is playing with, this is something the Iranian regime might welcome."

Mann explained that he left the military out of fear he would be "implicated in war crimes." That said, he believes the U.S. has already crossed that line.

"From hitting schools, some by accident, but there's also been dozens of universities bombed [and] medical facilities. The bridge that Trump bombed last week with the express intent not of achieving a military purpose, which theoretically could have made it legal, but to pressure the Iranian government," Mann continued.

On Tuesday morning, Trump threatened to wipe out "a whole civilization" if Iran doesn't meet Trump's demands.

"If that happened here, we would call that terrorism," Mann said. "We would know it was a war crime. And so something that has worried me from even before this war started, is how the Trump administration is putting more and more senior officers and troops at every rank in the position where they have to either disobey an order, which is an extremely difficult thing to do, even if it's a patently unlawful order, or prosecute war crimes or otherwise break the law."

He sent a message to the other officers, asking them to think really hard" about how they want to look back on these years of their career and if they are willing to do the right thing now "or live with the stain that a lot of my colleagues do and potentially face Leavenworth in 2029."

Leavenworth is where the military prison is. He noted that Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) has already threatened "accountability" for anyone in the military who breaks the law.

Both men agreed that hitting non-military targets would be a war crime, even if there is evidence that the military also uses a bridge. Trump has already made it clear that this is different.

"The kind of mass force that the president is threatening doesn't seem to qualify for every bridge, every railway station — don't seem to qualify as legitimate military targets," Cook said.

Iran called on its people to form human chains around those civilian targets, which Cook said makes a kind of "human shield" to ensure that there is no ambiguity that the military members carrying out Trump's orders must kill civilians.

"It strikes me that the president does not care, and he will give the order anyway, and that people are going to suffer as a result," Cook added.

The other problem it causes, he said, is that Iran wants desperately to be liberated from the regime. If Trump begins to kill civilians, however, it might change where they stand.

While Iran has agreed to nix the nuclear program, Mann said he doesn't ever see them willing to disarm themselves entirely.

"Unfortunately, I think some kind of unilateral U.S. disengagement is probably the best option because what we've done with this war is teach Iran that they had this power that they were afraid to use in the past, which was controlling basically the global economy and dominating this waterway, which which I got to reiterate, was something they were afraid to experiment with before we put them in this position," Mann explained.

Iran is already ensuring it has formal control and will begin charging a toll, "which they're already doing," Mann said. "Maybe we can talk them down from that position. But I think it's not realistic to expect things, going back to the status quo ante. Unfortunately."

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Marine veteran Mark Glesne explained to CNN that the war in Iran is justifiable in Christianity and that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, a Christian Nationalist, is right to promote it as such as a U.S. official.

Speaking to CNN on Tuesday after President Donald Trump threatened to kill "a whole civilization," Glesne cited Romans 13. According to Glesne, it says, while Christians are called not to personal revenge, the state and governing authorities have been ordained by god and set up, as it says in Romans 13:3, to be a 'terror to bad conduct.'"

Traveling Minister Elijah Murrell challenged the often quoted clip, noting that those who use it to justify war are taking it out of context. He explained that Saint Paul wrote the passage to say that while God's ultimate authority reigns supreme, "Leaders can fail. Power can be abused. Laws can be unjust. But government exists (at its best) to restrain evil and protect the innocent. So yes—honor authority. But honoring authority doesn’t mean pretending leadership can’t be questioned."

The larger problem that Glesne has is that the U.S. government is run not by scripture, but by laws. It's what Retired Maj. Gen. Randy Manner pointed to when he talked about his ministry work as a chaplain for the military.

"I believe that we need to be able to talk to all the people of the United States, which, by the way, is not just Christian. It's also, of course, people who perhaps have no beliefs or they are Catholic or Muslim, or they are Jewish or whatever. Whatever religion they might follow," the chaplain said.

"Like chaplains in the military, the role of military chaplains are very different from those of a civilian religious leader," he explained to Glesne, who has only worked in civilian ministry.

"One: provide, obviously, unbiased support of our military members, both in wartime and peacetime. Ensure also — the second reason — provide specific religious support if a member requests it. For example, a Catholic priest or an Imam or a particular religious denomination. And thirdly, provide advice and counsel to the commander on the morale of the military members and their families. So I think we need to be able to separate this and ensure that our chaplains are not divisive, but are inclusive and providing hope and resilience to all our military members and their families," the former U.S. Army major general said.

Hegseth removed top Army chaplain, Maj. Gen. William Green Jr. last week. It is unclear why.

CNN host Pamela Brown asked Glesne about Trump's TruthSocial post threatening the civilians in Iran. Glesne explained that something like this is perfectly acceptable because the Earth is already a "fallen world." He then claimed that war is evoked all throughout the Bible.

"We see this nuanced understanding of violence in a fallen world in order to restrain evil. And again, that is what the state has been ordained by God to do, which is to be a terror to bad conduct," he said, implying that either Trump or the United States is somehow "ordained by God." It's a language typically reserved for a monarchy.

A piece for Christianity.com by theological scholar and missionary Vivian Bricker argued against the idea that kings throughout history were ordained by God. Citing 1 Samuel 8:1-22, the column said, "God never intended for there to be human kings; however, since the people rejected God as their king, God gave the people Saul to be their king."

"God did not ordain kings throughout history," Bricker said.

While Glesne claimed that "reasonable minds can disagree," Maj. Gen. Manner explained that the military chaplains have their own personal beliefs that may conflict with the leadership of the military. "They have to keep those to themselves."

The critical thing he wanted to voice is that the United States is a country of laws.

"The idea of eliminating a civilization, the idea of attacking civilian power plants, these are actually the words of potential war criminals. And we need to be able to understand that under both U.S. military law, U.S. law and international law," the major general explained. "But attacking civilians, attacking civilian bridges, attacking civilian power plants, those are potential war crimes."

Glesne disagreed, saying that the military can use civilian targets too, like the military can use bridges and trains for war purposes.

Military law experts have argued that these could be considered civilian targets, regardless of what Trump thinks, a PBS News report said.

"Even if specific civilian infrastructure were to qualify as a military objective," said Stephane Dujarric, spokesman for U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. Such an attack would still be prohibited if it risks "excessive incidental civilian harm."

"What Trump is saying is, 'We don't care about precision, we don't care about impact on civilians, we're just going to take out all of Iran's power-generating capacity,'" explained Rachel VanLandingham, a Southwestern Law School professor who previously served as a judge advocate general in the U.S. Air Force.

President Donald Trump is leading the Democrats to victory in North Carolina, CNN data analyst Harry Enten reported on Tuesday.

While it's election day in states like Georgia and Wisconsin, North Carolina is growing increasingly likely to flip a U.S. Senate seat due to Trump's unpopular war with Iran.

Analysts expect the House of Representatives to flip to Democratic Control, but there are now growing reports that Republicans might lose the Senate as well.

"So you want to talk about a state that Donald Trump has won three times? Three times. But it looks to me that Roy Cooper, the former governor of the great state of North Carolina, has a real shot here," Enten said of the Democratic candidate running for U.S. Senate.

Outgoing Sen. Thom Tillis, a Republican, announced last year that he would retire at the end of his term, leaving the seat open for the popular governor to swoop in.

Citing prediction markets, Enten said that in October, Cooper was looking good with a 63 percent likelihood he would win. The probability that Cooper will win has now increased to 86 percent. Trump won the seat in 2024 by three points.

"So Donald Trump has won North Carolina three times," Enten recalled.

"In the spring of 2025, Donald Trump was three points underwater overall among independents. He was 18 points underwater. Look at how low he has fallen now among independents; he's 42 points underwater," Enten continued. "And overall, he's 15 points underwater right now. North Carolina is not a pink state. It is much more of a purple, dare I say, light blue state, with how unpopular Donald Trump is dragging down Republicans. And he may, in fact, push Roy Cooper into the Senate."

Net approval for the war in North Carolina is -19, but among Independents it's -41 points.

"This war, if it continues on, will continue to drag Republican candidates down across the political map," Enten warned.pre

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Although Fox News and Fox Business are decidedly right-wing on the whole, Fox News has one liberal panelist who often butts heads with her colleagues: Jessica Tarlov. And President Donald Trump angrily railed against her during a Monday night, April 6 rant on his Truth Social platform.

Trump posted, "For Fox executives only, take Jessica Tarlov off the air. She is, from her voice, to her lies, and everything else about her, one of the worst 'personalities' on television, a real loser! People cannot stand watching her. Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DJT."

But Trump went after one of Fox News' conservative hosts, Shannon Bream, as well.

"Tell Shannon Bream of FoxNews that it's not the Save Act, it’s the Save America Act, a big difference!," Trump posted. "Also, when she insists on having lightweight Democrat Congressmen, such as Jake Auchincloss, on her not very hard hitting show, she should correct them when they spew out Democrat propaganda and lies. She never does! I always close deals, unlike the Dems, and did great with China in every way, also, unlike the Dems!"

The Daily Beast's Cameron Adams notes that it is "unclear what triggered Trump" about Tarlov and inspired him to "offer unsolicited advice to the bosses at his favorite network about his least-favorite presenter."

"Tarlov is the latest in a growing line of female journalists to be targeted by Trump," Adams observes. "On April 1, he lost his cool with NewsNation's Libbey Dean, who had asked him whether Iran would have to make a deal for him to end the U.S. military intervention. 'You're a fresh person, you know?' Trump snapped. 'We've had a lot of problems with you, haven’t we?' In March, on board Air Force One, Trump opened fire on a female reporter from ABC. 'I think it's maybe the most corrupt news organization on the planet,' he said. 'I don’t want any more from ABC.'

The Daily Beast reporter adds, "In February, the president laid into CNN's Kaitlan Collins, 33, when she asked him what he would like to say to the survivors of convicted child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein."