Trump Blurts Out Damning War Admission as GOP Panics: “What the Hell?”

THE DAILY BLAST with Greg Sargent

The New Republic

News, Politics

4.4 • 800 Ratings

🗓️ 3 April 2026

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

During Donald Trump’s speech on Iran this week, he revealed too much. In a line that sounded partly ad-libbed, he declared that the Strait of Hormuz “will open up naturally. It will just open up naturally.” This should be read as a straight-up admission that Trump has no idea how to fix the colossal mess he’s made, and that he’s just washing his hands of it entirely. That’s utterly damning. Meanwhile, Politico reports that Republicans privately fear the speech did nothing to help them politically; as one put it: “What the hell did he just say?” Those things are related: The worse this war gets, the more it will hurt Republicans in the midterms. We talked to foreign policy writer and podcaster David Rothkopf, author of a good piece about the speech. We discuss Trump’s implicit admission of failure, the deeper reasons this is developing into such a fiasco, why it’s a trap for Republicans, and what the post-Trump Democratic Party should look like. Looking for More from the DSR Network? Click Here: https://linktr.ee/deepstateradio Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the Daily Blast from the New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network.
0:16.4	I'm your host, Greg Sargent.
0:35.3	If Donald Trump's speech about Iran this week was supposed to calm Republicans who fear an increasingly brutal midterm cycle, well, it failed.
0:39.7	Republicans reportedly reacted to the speech with dismay and panic,
0:44.1	privately declaring that it hadn't helped at all and might have made things worse.
0:50.1	And indeed, Trump's speech didn't say much of anything at all. In fact, it was really a concession of failure. Trump claimed the Strait of Hormuz will naturally open itself,
0:55.7	essentially admitting right out in the open that he didn't anticipate the closure
0:59.6	and that he has no idea how to fix it himself. Foreign policy writer and podcaster David
1:06.1	Rothkoff has a good new piece arguing that Trump's war has basically put us on a path to all bad options.
1:12.9	So we're talking to him about all this today. David, nice to finally have you on, man.
1:18.1	It's great. And I so admire what you have built here, Greg. So congratulations on all that.
1:24.0	Well, you guys have contributed a little to it. so thank you for that. So in his speech,
1:29.4	Trump claimed that Iran's defenses have been decimated, but that the war will go on for a few more
1:34.8	weeks and that we're going to bomb Iran back to the Stone Age, including electricity plants,
1:40.2	which means commit more war crimes. And Trump seemed to admit we're not really going after Iran's nuclear material.
1:48.2	David, what was your overall takeaway from all that?
1:52.1	Well, you know, it was hard to take anything away from it because he'd said all of it many times before.
1:59.9	In fact, you know, somebody clearly said to him, you've got to give a speech
2:04.3	to the American people on this. Things aren't going well. And he gave a speech that revealed to us
2:10.5	why he hasn't given one. They still don't have clear objectives.
2:23.9	The way things are going don't support any of the multiple objectives they've floated.
2:28.6	He doesn't seem to be that interested in outcomes.
	...

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