Hey, pull up a chair. It's tax on tap with David Axelrod and Mike Murphy.

Happy New Year, brother. I know you're just back from your annual hill is skiing.

Holiday trip to Northern Canada and you look none the worse for a wearer. So welcome back.

It is good to be back this time. Hawaii, the state of high taxes and subsidies under democratic government.

We're talking about that later. We had a great time. Good, good, good. Well, a lot of stuff has gone down while we were away.

Just like we predicted. Yeah. And it was just a reminder that presidential politics is such a dynamic.

Process, you know, the world's a fragile place and the president of the United States have more power to change the storyline than anyone else.

So everyone was focused on impeachment when we left and Iowa and now Trump has changed the whole focus at least for now to Iran.

Salamadie has been perpetrating acts of terror to destabilize the Middle East for the last 20 years.

What the United States did yesterday should have been done long ago. A lot of lives would have been saved.

Just recently, Salamadie led the brutal repression of protesters in Iran where more than a thousand innocent civilians were tortured and killed by their own government.

We took action last night to stop a war. We did not take action to start a war.

I have deep respect for the Iranian people. They are a remarkable people with an incredible heritage and unlimited potential.

We did not seek regime change. However, the Iranian regime's aggression in the region, including the use of proxy fighters to destabilize its neighbors must end and must end now.

So the Salamadie hit. Give me your cut. I've been waiting to hear this. You being, you know, the crusty old neo-con that you are.

I want to hear how you process all of this.

Salamadie is the worst of the worst. He is an effective monster for them. He has been on the menu for a while.

The problem is, doing this, escalating this far. This was a classic escalation later. They killed a contractor. We killed some militiam members.

They swarmed the embassy. So President of the meeting, what to do next? They had a big menu. And at the bottom was the equivalent of order the atomic hot wings, which is fun for about an hour.

And then a heavy price may be paid. So push the option. He didn't do it. Obama had the option. He didn't do it. Now I, I, the Israelis, the Israelis had the option and they haven't done it.

Right. Because nobody to this date has seen killing Salamadie is a net net win. It's a tactical win. No more Salamadie. But it starts a chain of escalation that net net could be better for the Iranians.

I mean, the problem with these escalation battles is when you, when you make a move like this, you turn over control the situation to the other guy who makes a move on you.

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