objectives. If they're going to take out the nuke threat, then they've got to answer,

where's the enriched uranium? Where are the threats? And if they can't show us, we can't believe them.

And that's where we are now. So we're stuck in this place where he's trying to negotiate with China,

who is ultimately the big winner this week. The thoughts.

Truth is always the first casualty of war, and we're in a really difficult and unique and dangerous situation where we can't trust the Iranian regime and we can't trust the Trump regime. So we're trying to parse through the middle of that and find out what the facts are on the ground. We're also not hearing from the Iranians for the most part, at least the Iranian people. So I think we're in a really, really challenging situation where we need the president to prove it. And keep in mind, this is his second shot at this.

He had the shot before, and now he's taken a shot again, and it looks like he's missed or he's

failed to complete one of his many, well, at least four objectives. If they're going to take out

the nuke threat, then they've got to answer, where's the enriched uranium? Where are the threats?

And if they can't show us, we can't believe them. And that's where we are now. So we're stuck in this place where he's trying to negotiate with China, who is ultimately the big winner this week, right? They're just happy to sit there and watch us punch ourselves out, put 40% of our Navy in the Gulf, have 50,000 troops tied up. And now we're hearing that the army has to cut training because of their over commitment to Iran and to the border. This is how we get overextended. And there's no clear off ramp here. And unless we send boots on the ground, it doesn't look like we will be able to secure these missile sites, which is why no president has done this before. So now we're seeing the limitations of this strategy, the limitations of our isolation, and the dangerous overflow that can happen

for the rest of the world. Because ultimately, the barometer here is, is the straight open.

They don't need to have full capacity. They just to have enough to make going through the straight

dangerous, and that puts them in a control to have a chokehold over the world's gas station.

Well, on just a single objective that was articulated by micro Rubio, which was to, quote,

destroy their ballistic missile capability, Trump's own intelligence community seems to be saying

that that was not achieved. Yeah. I mean, this is where, you know, Trump is often in conflict with

his own intelligence community.

And now we're going to see the spin machine at full tilt.

They're going to call people traders. They're going to attack the press. They're going to attack the messengers instead of the actual facts on the ground. And I think this is a really important point, especially for Republicans to say, prove it. If you're in conflict with the intelligence, show us, you know, Zelensky does a brilliant job of this, I think.

They have like infographics almost every single day showing the degradation of the Russian military. They talk about specific targets and what they've taken out. They have a scoreboard that the world can see every single day. We don't have that right now. We just have to take Trump's word for it. And the whole world thinks that Trump is a liar. So it does put our troops in an incredibly precarious position, but now it's also putting pressure on NATO. What are they going to do about it? If America fails to solve this problem, can Israel act on their own? Can NATO come up with a solution? Because by the day, I think we are in a weaker position. Trump is more isolated, and the world is less safe. It's missile sites. So it may not be so decimated after all. Paul Reikoff is here for his

weekly visit, host of the Independent Americans podcast. Man, we can put up the Times story.

What do you make of this? We've been being lied to. Was that your read when you saw the Times

story? I think we can't trust iran regime and we can't trust trump

...