A Closer Look Back: Trump's Iran War Is Not A War Except for When It's A War
Late Night with Seth Meyers Podcast
NBC
4.3 • 3.5K Ratings
🗓️ 30 March 2026
⏱️ 32 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
A Closer Look Supervising Writer/Producer Sal Gentile and Supervising Producer Emily Erotas discuss the chaotic first few weeks of Trump's reckless and illegal war with Iran that Republicans insist is not a war even though Trump says it's definitely a war.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | In a phone call after the attacks, Trump told the Washington Post that his main concern is, quote, freedom for the Iranian people. |
| 0:13.3 | Iran does pose an imminent indirect threat to the United States of America. |
| 0:17.5 | Iran has posed an imminent risk to the United States for 47 years. We went proactively |
| 0:22.5 | in a defensive way. We had to remove our murderous regime. Iran can't have a nuclear weapon. That |
| 0:28.6 | would be the ultimate military objective. Is regime change, as you see it, the objective here? |
| 0:34.5 | Absolutely. To me it is. This isn't about regime change. This is not a so-called |
| 0:38.7 | regime change war, but the regime sure did change. If we didn't hit within two weeks, they would |
| 0:45.6 | have had a nuclear weapon. It would be an absolutely incredible, you know, historic feat if we |
| 0:51.7 | can get the Iranian regime to collapse. There absolutely was an imminent threat, and the imminent threat was that we knew that if Iran |
| 0:57.6 | was attacked, and we believe they would be attacked, that they would immediately come after us. |
| 1:04.3 | Are you happy now, Emily? |
| 1:06.2 | You've been harping on these poor people to give you a reason for why we are currently at war with Iran, |
| 1:12.4 | and they just gave you like 12, okay? |
| 1:15.0 | All the reasons. |
| 1:15.7 | Yeah. |
| 1:16.1 | So you're just swimming in a wealth of reasons. |
| 1:18.5 | You can pick whichever ones you want, okay? |
| 1:20.8 | I hope you're happy now. |
| 1:22.4 | Leave these poor people alone. |
| 1:24.9 | Just let them go to war in peace. |
| 1:26.8 | God. |
| 1:27.2 | I know. Let them go to war in peace. God. I know. Let them go to war in peace. |
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