JD Vance Takes On Iran Negotiations

There is the high-level committee, which is just JD Vance on our side, who before the talks even started was like, look, I don't really know anything about this stuff, but I'm just going to go in there and chat them up. Because we all know JD Vance's personality wins over everybody. Yes. I mean, that man, yeah, could talk a woman and white gloves into a ketchup popsicle, you know what I mean, just charm. Exactly. That's what we all say. I'm Jane Koston, and this is What Today, the show wishing a happy 11th anniversary to one of the best days of my life. Take it away, 2015 MSNBC. We have read from the bench. There is a right to marriage equality. I repeat, speaking to you from the steps of the Supreme Court, there is a right to marriage equality, read just from the bench now, waiting to get the opinions as they come running out of the court, Thomas. We do. So this is a big day. Again, Ari Melburgh is standing there telling us that the court has ruled in favor of marriage equality in the Ogre befell case. Yes, 11 years ago today, the Supreme Court ruled in a 5 to 4 decision at the 14th Amendment guarantees the right to marry to same-sex couples. Marriage, it turns out, is pretty cool. On today's show, we talked to Tommy Vitor about the negotiations to maybe, possibly, perhaps, and President Donald Trump's war in Iran. Before we get into all that, here's what we're following today, Friday, June 26th. There's a new Gallup in NBC poll. Came out, I think four days ago. Listen to this. Only 29% of Democrat voters now say they are proud to be American. Over half now say they want to live in another country. Go, go, go. We can't deport that minute. Hmm. Mike Johnson, why do you think people are ashamed of being American right now? Maybe it's the administration you coddle day in and day out while it runs roughshod over pretty much everybody. Unfortunately for us, House Speaker Mike Johnson was just an opening act for the Faith and Freedom Coalition Policy Conference today. President Trump headlined the conference and talked all about his love and tolerance for all of humanity. Well, kind of. Our founders invoked the creator four times in the Declaration of Independence, four times. I wasn't mentioned once. I'm very upset. Not once. Been reading all of those reports. Religion's really, it's going up. If that were stuck, we'd be very, very rich all of us. I think I'd be the greatest communist in history. Aside from blaming former President Joe Biden's administration for what he described as persecution of Christians by the government, Trump also bragged about establishing a White House faith office and took credit for restoring Christmas. Remember how you didn't celebrate Christmas under Biden? You're welcome. Moscow's defense ministry said Ukraine launched a major Thursday night attack on a dozen Russian regions, Russian-held Crimea, and the surrounding seas. It appeared to be one of Kiev's biggest drone assault since the Kremlin's full-scale invasion more than four years ago, with Russia's defense ministry saying its air defenses intercepted 660 Ukrainian drones. Ukrainian long-range drones have been battering Russian oil production and energy facilities. According to Western officials and analysts, Ukraine's campaign has choked Russian fuel supplies and military deliveries, stalled Moscow's efforts on the battlefield, and heaped pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Look, I don't really know anything about this stuff, but I'm just going to go in there and chat them up. Because we all know JD Vance's personality wins over everybody. Yes. I mean, that man, yeah. Could talk a woman in white gloves into a ketchup popsicle, you know what I mean, just charm. Exactly. That's what we all say. So it's just technical experts. Yeah, I think it's technical experts. You're going to try to hammer out some sort of deal. But, you know, ultimately. King Trump is going to have to decide or agree to whatever this is. So it's at his whim. And of course, Israel is not involved. No. Which is interesting. It is interesting because they are very much a party to the deal. They have been told that they will now have a ceasefire in Lebanon. They're not happy about that. No, they are not. No. Benjamin Netanyahu is an election coming up in October. He's very worried about this election because not only does it. He needs to stay in power, but staying in power keeps him out of jail, right? So that's the stakes for him. And he is getting crushed in Israel because of this deal because everyone thinks it's weak. He's getting attacked from the left from a hawkish perspective. He's getting attacked from the right. Everyone hates it. So he's going to be looking for ways to blow up the deal. We'll get back to my conversation with Tommy in a moment, because like Katie Perry, Trump is hot and then cold, yes and then no, in then and out, up and then down, on Iran. So there's a lot more to cover. But if you like the show, make sure to subscribe, leave a five-star review on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, watch us on YouTube, and share with your friends. More to come after some ads. What a Day is brought to you by Americans United for Separation of Church and State. This hasn't gotten a lot of airtime, but President Trump's Religious Liberty Commission has been meeting regularly, not to focus on religious liberty for all, but rather how to further a Christian nationalist agenda in the U.S. Religious freedom is meant to protect individuals' rights to hold and practice their beliefs without interference so long as they don't harm others, including children. Pretty sure we can all agree on that. Yet, that's exactly what has happened when taxpayer-funded adoption and foster care agencies deny kids a loving home that treats them with dignity. Religion is also being used as a tool to discriminate and only allow people who are of the right religion to serve as foster parents. That's exactly what's happened to multiple of Americans' United's clients. Liz and Gabe Rutan Ram, a Jewish couple in Tennessee, were ready to foster to adopt a child until a state-funded agency refused to work with them because they are Jewish. Amy Madonna, a Catholic mother of three, was rejected because she did not agree to an evangelical Protestant statement of faith. Fatma Merov and Bryn Esplan were turned away because they are a same-sex couple. If you believe religious freedom should protect everyone, not be weaponized to turn away qualified families looking to foster and adopt children, we need you to join the fight now. Visit AU.org slash crooked to learn more and become a member today. This fight is far from over and every one of us has a part to play.

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They seem nice. Everything's cool. We're going to give them soybeans and money. Oh, yeah. It's a real vibe shift. Everything is different. So on the soybeans thing, Trump is claiming that the unfrozen assets will be used to buy U.S. agricultural products. As far as I can tell, this is made up out of nothing. JD Vance said this was Jared Kushner's brilliant idea. But the MOU says the following. that the unfrozen funds quote shall be made fully usable for payment to any ultimate beneficiary designated by the central bank of the islamic republic of iran so if they want to buy soybeans they can but they don't have to under the terms of the deal so i just don't i truly don't know what the hell trump is talking about on the vibe shift thing yeah trump has talked gone from talking about iran as our mortal enemy as this you know uh theological, you know, sort of like religious-based extremist group to potentially our best friends in the region. I personally think that's a good thing. Like the United States, people lawmakers in the U.S. talk about Iran in a crazy way. We hype the threat. We don't talk about them like they are human beings with politics and a diversity of opinions. It's like this monolithic evil that must be countered. That's stupid. It's a country of 90 million people with leaders who are human beings who make political decisions just like anyone else. Like we should treat them more like a regular country. Also, it's pretty evident to me that we actually don't care about the evil that they do. They are executing protesters at a faster rate than they were before. Yeah. But JD Vance thinks, hey, let's take Revolutionary Guard members who the U.S. has designated them to be terrorists. And they're just going to go, like, be part of this and they'll talk to Centcom. It's not just that we don't treat them as human beings. It's that like all of the bad stuff that they do do. we just clearly don't actually care very much about and is evidenced by all of this. Well, yeah, look, Trump doesn't give a shit about human rights violations, whether it's in Iran or Saudi Arabia or Russia or China or any of his favorite autocratic regime, North Korea, for example, right? Trump just doesn't care about human rights. This whole idea that he was going to ride to the rescue of the protesters was always made up. And in fact, he certainly harmed them. Yes. JD Vance talks about the war. like the benefit was the friends we made along the way. Like literally. He was like, the cool thing is now we have someone to talk to. Yeah. And I want to say, JD. That old Ayatollah, ugh. Yeah. What a jerk. I just want to be like, hey, JD, like you could have just called them up, had some meetings, had some secret meetings. You know, you didn't need to bomb them to get an email address over there. But he seems to think that that's the upside. So. We also know that Trump is very hot and cold on Iran, really depending on the day. Apparently today he's a little cold. He's pissed. He posted on True Social today that Iran made, quote, a foolish violation of our ceasefire agreement by launching at least four drone attacks on ships in the Strait of Hormuz, which brings me to my next question. The Strait of Hormuz, which was open before all of this? I think it's important to mention that. What's going on there? What's happening? I think what's happening is the Iranians are saying that you can only pass through the Strait of Hamos if you follow a designated route.

And ships that go outside of that designated route are getting punished with drones, armed drones exploding on their decks. So the idea that the Strait of Hormuz is fully open and we're back to normal and oil and gas is transiting through there in record numbers. Like it's all just bullshit. Like Iran is demonstrating that they will be controlling the Strait of Hamos going forward. And they're setting up all this infrastructure to charge fees, i.e. tolls, which Trump says won't exist, but will in the future. We mentioned Israel a little bit earlier. In the midst of all of this, Israel has continued to strike Lebanon, despite President Trump's polite requests that they stopped doing that. Trump made the point that, like, you know, not every apartment building contains Hezbollah. Like, you got to stop doing this, which I was like, worst person you know makes a great point. So the U.S. started this war with Israel. Like, this goes back to last year. Can it make a successful peace deal without it? Because to your point. Benjamin Netanyahu's under a lot of internal political pressure to not stop doing any of this. Yeah. I mean, look, the Israelis are occupying like six miles of territory into southern Lebanon. They have said clearly that they have no plan to... withdraw troops or get out of Lebanon, as well as an organization that exists to resist Israeli occupation. So there's going to be clashes there. I think the question is, can, you know, Trump, I think, said a ceasefire in the Middle East sometimes is about shooting less, right? And he was like saying something that sounded ridiculous, but had some truth to it. I think the question is, will the Israelis start bombing Beirut again? And if that happens, that's the sort of scenario where I think you see. Iran fire back directly at Israel and things kind of pop off. To that point, Trump has said many, many, many times that the Iran war is over or almost over or basically over. Yeah. But given Israel, given everything we've just talked about, are we actually close to a deal? Because the White House just asked Congress for billions more dollars for, quote, urgent needs related to Operation Epic Fury. So like, at the end of the day, Is the war coming to an end? Where are we? I mean, I think we have a ceasefire. It seems clear to me that Trump politically does not want to resume fighting because he knows it will lead to closure the straight-to-homuz. Gas prices go up, bad politics for him, right? So he just wants this thing done and dusted. Now, the question is, do we have a nuclear deal? Absolutely not. Not even close. We'll see if they can negotiate one in the next 30 to 60 days. Consider me not all that hopeful. My guess is Trump just kind of. drags this thing out, extends the ceasefire, kind of punts the harder questions forward for as long as he can. But, you know, we'll see. Tommy, as always, thank you for joining me. Thank you for having me. That was my conversation with Tommy Vitor, co-host of Crooked Media's Pod Save the World. Before we go, guys, CrookedCon 2026 is happening. November 5th through 7th in Washington, D.C. It's going to be even bigger than last year, and last year was pretty big, not to brag. And I'll be there. We continue to believe that the answer to rising right-wing authoritarianism is a massive welcoming pro-democracy movement strong enough to defeat it. Friends of the Pod subscribers get an exclusive discount on the all-day event on November 7th, in addition to many other perks we can't wait to tell you about.

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