Extended Interview: Ben Rhodes
The Takeout with Major Garrett
CBS News
4.6 • 586 Ratings
🗓️ 28 May 2026
⏱️ 39 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
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Summary
In a compelling interview with Major, Ben Rhodes reflects on his upcoming book, “All We Say”, which tells the history of 15 speeches that define America 250 years after its founding. Rhodes, who served as Deputy National Security Advisor to President Barack Obama, shared his thoughts on the Iran war, why he thinks the Obama White House “did get right” the 2015 nuclear deal, and the state of the Democratic Party as it faces backlash over the handling of the 2024 election autopsy release. From Martin Luther King’s "I have a dream" speech to right- and left-wing populism in America, Rhodes gives his first-hand account to Major and how the nation prepares to celebrate 250 years of independence under the presidency of Trump.
Transcript
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| 0:30.1 | Ben Rhodes, I promise you we will get to all we say the book. |
| 0:34.0 | But I've got to talk to you about Iran. |
| 0:35.7 | I've got to talk to you about President Trump's orientation to the state of the war, the objectives, |
| 0:42.3 | all the things that he continues to say harshly critical of the nuclear deal. |
| 0:49.3 | President Obama negotiated with the Iranian regime. Your thoughts? |
| 0:53.8 | Well, I mean, Major, you were there at the time. |
| 0:56.7 | I was. And look, there are a lot of things that we did not get right in the Obama years. |
| 1:04.1 | But I always felt like one thing we did get right was that nuclear deal with Iran. And our basic case at the time was, there are only two ways to |
| 1:11.6 | solve this problem of the Iranian nuclear program, a diplomatic agreement that is roughly like |
| 1:16.4 | what we got. And you could argue whether certain provisions you might want to tighten or make |
| 1:20.8 | longer, but the outlines of that kind of deal, or you'd have to use military force. |
| 1:25.5 | And the agreement that you put together was not just the United States and Iran. |
| 1:28.3 | It was a multi-nation agreement with enforcement mechanism. |
| 1:32.3 | And I think that's the most important thing because, again, you had the permanent five members of the United Nations Security Council. |
| 1:40.3 | So you had not just the United States, Great Britain and France, you had Russia and China in on the deal, Germany and the EU and on the deal. |
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