Four Truths About Trump and Iran, Netanyahu’s Gamble, and Bombshell Reports About “Leaderless” Dems

Next Up with Mark Halperin

MK Media

News, Daily News, Politics

4.8 • 846 Ratings

🗓️ 19 June 2025

⏱️ 70 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Mark kicks off the show with a deep dive into the four truths about Trump and Iran, and the fundamentals about his biggest foreign policy decision yet. He breaks down the underreported dynamics inside the White House, how U.S.-Israel relations are shaping global responses, why the real divide goes far beyond MAGA, and what Trump has—and hasn’t—decided. Plus, a historical parallel to JFK’s handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis, and why Trump’s critics may be misunderstanding both his instincts and strategy. Then, Dan Senor, host of the “Call Me Back” podcast, joins the show to break down the U.S.–Israel relationship in the context of the Iran crisis. He and Mark explore Netanyahu’s strained history with American presidents, whether it’s already too late to reach a diplomatic resolution with Iran, and why comparisons between Bibi and figures like Churchill or Kissinger may be more complicated than they seem—especially when it comes to Trump. Later, Democratic strategist Patti Solis Doyle weighs in on the Democratic Party’s post-2024 meltdown and why the party has yet to rebound from the election “massacre.” The former Hillary Clinton campaign manager reacts to scathing new reports about dysfunction at the DNC, offers a blunt assessment of the Democrats’ attempt to cover up Joe Biden’s cognitive decline, and explains why the party remains rudderless heading into 2026 and 2028. Plus, Mark and Patti discuss the future of the party: is anyone on the Democratic team capable of leading the party out of what she calls a “messageless” and “leaderless” spiral?

Transcript

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0:00.0	Greetings, everybody. Thank you for joining me again to find out what's next up. I'm Mark
0:06.3	Calpher, an editor-in-chief of the live video platform Two-Way and your host to everything next up.
0:12.0	Grateful to you for being part of the conversation here. Two great guests today. First,
0:15.6	we're going to talk to Dan Signor, one of the smartest people I know about the Middle East.
0:19.7	He's the host of his own podcast called Call Me Back.
0:23.1	And someone I've known for a long time and always look to to try to decode what's going on,
0:27.7	particularly the relationship between Donald Trump and BB Net Yahoo.
0:31.8	Dan knows them both, I think understands the dynamic between them as well as almost anybody.
0:36.1	So eager to talk to Dan.
0:38.1	And then Patty Solis-Doyle, she ran Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign in 2016,
0:43.0	longtime stalwart of the Democratic Party sees things in a pretty clear-eyed way.
0:46.8	We're going to talk about what's going on with the Democrats, some brutal stories in the last
0:51.6	couple of days about the Democratic National Committee.
0:54.2	And it's chairman.
0:55.4	We'll talk about if that matters and where the Democrats stand as they try to figure out
0:59.0	how to regroup after losing to Donald Trump in 2024.
1:04.4	Biggest story in the world is what President Trump's going to do about Iran.
1:09.5	As I sit here recording this now, whether you're watching
1:12.7	it on YouTube or listening as a podcast, and please like, subscribe, et cetera, et cetera, we don't know
1:18.4	what he's going to do. And by the time you hear my voice or watch me, maybe the story will be
1:22.6	quite different. So we can't game that out completely. But what we can do is I can tell you some things I've learned in the last few days talking to my sources inside and outside the Trump administration, folks on Capitol Hill, people who know Donald Trump well about what some of the fundamentals are here.
1:38.8	What are some of the things that I think other folks may be getting wrong or not talking about very much or maybe underappreciating
	...

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