U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio looks down during a press briefing in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., May 5, 2026. REUTERS/Kylie Cooper
Bulwark podcaster Tim Miller joined Tangled News creator Isaac Saul in hashing through the unfathomable mound of nonsense that comprises the Trump administration’s account of his Iran war.
“We have this total fog of bulls—— that's happening out there right now about the war. And it makes your job really almost impossible to try to tell it from truth,” said Miller. “Axios has predicted 13 of the last zero agreements and they have a report coming out every morning at eight o'clock saying ‘we got a source telling us that that a deal’s right around the corner,’ and then, you know, somebody from Iran … posts on X ‘this is not true. The American Satan is going to lose.’”
“You can’t trust anybody that’s talking. There’s no reliable narrator,” said Miller, referencing contradicting press conferences featuring Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegsth
“Operation Epic Fury is concluded. We achieved the objectives of that operation,” Rubio told reporters in his clip. “We're not cheering for an additional situation to occur. We would prefer the path of peace.”
But in another clip, a reporter pointed out to Hegseth that “in the last 24 hours or so, Iran's fired at us, we fired at Iran,” and then asked him “is the ceasefire over?”
“No, the ceasefire is not over,” Hegseth answered, but tried to separate the war and individual attacks as two different things. “Ultimately, this is a separate and distinct project. And we expected there would be some churn.”
“Some churn?" ranted Miller. "I mean, Hegseth is answering a direct question about the fact that that we are currently exchanging fire with Iranian forces and just says, ‘the ceasefire's on. This is a separate project.’
“I mean, we have to be discerning enough here to just say, come on, this is bulls——,” said Saul. “... They can't just declare that a conflict is done while we're actively engaged in the conflict.”
But Saul said Trump and his officials have no place to hide as voters face the reality of Trump’s unrelenting war every time they gas up their car: “We're all experiencing [the war] here in the States, through this oil shock … and there's simply no way Trump is walking away from the table without that.”
