Why is Trump encouraging Iran to bomb San Diego? | The News Agents

The more Donald Trump speaks, the more Donald Trump travels to the swing states, the worse it gets. What is Trump doing in Alabama? Is Alabama really up for grabs? Doug Jones had the kind of, the sort of self-awareness to say, oh, I don't think he's here for the race. I think he's found another piece of infrastructure he'd like to rename after himself. In this case, it's the Mobile River Bridge in Alabama. What the hell is President Trump doing in Nebraska so close to the midterm elections? He's there because some of the safest states in the country for the Republican Party are now looking vulnerable as a result of the last, you know, year and a half of Trump's rule. We will not know what has actually happened. The News Agents USA podcast is brought to you by HSBC Private Bank. Opening up a world of opportunity. This is a global production. And again, remember, with the word just artificial, it's a little bit high. It's a small price to pay for keeping the world safe, keeping our country safe. They can take out a city. Let him take let it let him take out Los Angeles. Let him take out San Diego. That's this is a very small price to pay. And it's going to be over very soon. It's essentially almost over with. And they might keep going a little long. You know, they always say they have a big threshold for pain. They need it. There are some pretty extraordinary things that over the course of the past decade, we've had to explain from Donald Trump. But Donald Trump has just said it would be a small price to pay if the Iranians took out the cities of Los Angeles and San Diego. Yeah, it's not the first time that Trump has sounded like he's losing it. But this time, he's actually becoming a drag anchor on his own party, his own Republican candidates in a fearsomely fought midterm election. Has he actually tanked it for his own side? Welcome to the News Agents USA. The News Agents USA with Emily Maitlis and Jon Sopel. It's Jon. It's Maitlis. And, you know, when you start to think about the midterms, you always know that the incumbent party faces an uphill task because you're defending your record. People are fed up, pissed off. They kind of see that things haven't gone maybe as well as the president promised they would go. And you kind of want to just punish them a bit for having let you down. What is happening in America right now is that times 100. Because what we're seeing is Donald Trump kind of obsessing about his ballroom and obsessing about whether there is a kind of a triumphal arch, the Arc de Trump, and whether his name is on the Kennedy Center. Whilst the price of fuel is going up and up as a result of the war in Iran and the consequences of that are feeding through. And you just kind of get the feeling that the more Donald Trump speaks, the more Donald Trump travels to the swing states, the worse it gets for the candidates themselves. I mean, he's speaking at a rally there and obviously he riffs. That's his thing. He makes people laugh. He says outrageous things. And I'm sure this was actually just always meant to be a funny joke. Ha ha. Let's let the Iranians take out Los Angeles. Let's let them take out San Diego, he says. As if to say, oh, let's win the Libs. Let's destroy the Libs. Literally with a big Iranian bomb. The trouble is if you flip it on its head and you imagine any Democrat in any situation trying to say the same thing, let us get the enemy that we are currently at war with, because he still hasn't managed to win the war with Iran, to take out a massive metropolis of American citizens. How heavily would the Republican Party come down on that person? And this time round, Gavin Newsom has basically embodied not the kind of snappy, chatty, sort of fast talking tweeter. He's basically become the grown up in the room. And he's called Trump out for what this is essentially, which is treasonous. And I want you to hear his response in full, because it's not just to Trump, it's to all those who enable him. So if you didn't think the November election mattered, just consider what just happened. The President of the United States, the same one who sent in the National Guard into Los Angeles, 700 active duty Marines to the second largest city in the United States of America, just invited Iran to take out Los Angeles and San Diego, where by the way, over 130,000 active duty personnel are stationed, our best and the brightest. This is not only madness, this is dangerous and it's deranged. And the question is self-evident. Where the hell is Congress? Where the hell are you, Speaker Johnson? Marco Rubio, the great JD Vance, where is your outrage? Find a backbone, do your damn job. In the absence of that, it's time for all of us to do our job. And we'll do that. We're going to stand up this November and we're going to put an end to the presidency of Donald Trump as we know it. We will take this country back. So that is Gavin Newsom forcefully firing back after Trump's speech. Now, Trump's speech took place in Nebraska. Trump was campaigning in Nebraska. Nebraska is not a swing state. In the 2024 presidential election, Trump won virtually every single county across the state and by significant margins. What the hell is President Trump doing in Nebraska so close to the midterm elections? He's there because some of the safest states in the country for the Republican Party are now looking vulnerable as a result of the last year and a half of Trump's rule. Yeah, I mean, I think we should say that Nebraska is not one of those that he's going to lose. Nebraska is still totally in the safe Republican pile. But I think it talks to his sort of mindset at the moment, which is he only really wants to be in these deep red states. And the other place he's visited twice in the last couple of weeks is Alabama. Doug Jones, who was previously a senator when a Republican paedophile got kicked off the ballot, is now back on the Senate campaign race and he's hoping to win there. And when he was asked about this on CNN, what is Trump doing in Alabama? Is Alabama really up for grabs? Doug Jones had the kind of the sort of self-awareness to say, oh, I don't think he's here for the race. I think he's found another piece of infrastructure he'd like to rename after himself. In this case, it's the Mobile River Bridge in Alabama. In other words, Trump isn't even going to these places to gee up the Republicans necessarily. He's going to them because they are kind of safe territory for him and he can still see bits of legacy that he can tinker with or toy with. In Alabama, it's frankly to rename a bridge after him. In Nebraska, it's one of the few places, one of the few proper red areas that is still going to be fine. And actually, what you notice is when he goes somewhere like Texas, where there really is a tangible, legitimate question over this felon, frankly, Ken Paxton, whether he can win the race in Texas for the Republicans versus James Tallarico, what you notice is the candidate, the Republican candidate himself does not want Trump anywhere near. And we will play you a little later some of Ken Paxton's own thoughts on why Trump is so damaging. But this is something that we are hearing repeatedly now that Republican candidates are saying, please stay away. We don't want you. You are making life harder. And when Newsom says we must end the presidency of Donald Trump, they're being really smart about this. The Democrats are saying, well, let's actually pretend it isn't the midterms. Get people to the polls because they think that voting in November in these midterm elections can be a proxy for ending the entire presidency because we take away his power in Congress. But there are certain states, you know, that where clearly the Republicans are feeling frightened. And one of them is South Carolina. And you think, oh, my God, South Carolina should be a rock solid, you know, Republican state. And there's no chance that anyone's going to win there other than a Republican. And you've got Darlene Graham, the sister of Lindsey Graham, who died and she's taken over the seat. She's fighting reelection this November. And Trump has posted this long truth social post about the Democrat candidate, who he calls, kindly, Annie Tranny Andrews, in a post, is running against our wonderful Darlene Graham for the Senate in South Carolina. For years, my dear friend Lindsey would say that Darlene is the finest, most reliable, la la la la. And so it goes on. And say, accusing this woman, Annie Andrews, who's a pediatrician and kind of very respected member of the community, and that she's in favour of transgender for everyone, open borders, defunding the police, high taxes, a weak military. And so it goes on. And you think, hang on, are you really worried that South Carolina... I mean, she hasn't said any of that stuff. She hasn't said. She literally hasn't said any of that. She's a pediatrician. And whenever she's asked about it, she's stayed completely clear this round. She just said, I will work to do anything for the people of South Carolina. And it's clear of insulting Trump, you know, and fighting back and saying, what the **** are you talking about? But, you know, again, you just think, oh, mate, maybe the Republicans now think that South Carolina is vulnerable. And the other swing state we've spoken about before is Michigan, where you've got this candidate, Abdul Al-Said, who, you know, controversial figure. He's seen to be part of the, you know, Democratic Socialists of America movement, who, you know, has faced some headwinds. And the Democratic Party establishment wanted to see him off. You know, there is a battle going on there. And Trump is trying to wade in. And you sense that the Republican candidate is saying, Mike Rogers saying, don't come anywhere near. Listen to Abdul Al-Said saying, Donald, please come. You're welcome. Why do I think that's going to help me? People hate Donald Trump, frankly. And also he is, he just, he wants everybody to know that he's on the ballot. I want everybody to know that he's on the ballot too. Mike Rogers is a vote for Donald Trump. I want him to come and say it for himself. And I think he's too afraid. And I know that all of Rogers' people are being like, please don't come, sir. Please don't come. And he, you know, he is the best speaker on behalf of the Republican Party. How dare they tell him not to come? How dare they? So I think he's between a rock and a hard place. Do you do what's good for Donald Trump? Or do you do what's good for his party? Donald Trump can't help himself. So Donald, if you're watching, don't, don't wuss out, man. Don't be, you know, don't be told what to do by Mike Rogers, right? You should come. You should tell everybody, come to Port Huron, go to Oakland County. You should go to Detroit. You should go to Grand Rapids. You should go up north. You should go as many places as your little heart desires. And you should tell everybody why you're on the ballot. Your tariffs are on the ballot and your war is on the ballot and your drapes are on the ballot. You're welcome here for the next couple of months. And then afterwards, don't come. If there was a hand gesture to accompany that clip, it would be Abdul Saeed doing this. Come on if you think you're hard enough. He's basically goading him to come to that state because right now the Democrats see Trump in their state as a plus for them. And that is not really where you want to be as a Republican president. But he's figuring that Trump is so vain, he probably will take up that challenge and probably will come to Michigan. So let's put this in the context of the actual election race and why it is so important to the Democrats to win some of these places. Because they want this midterm election to result in Democratic control of the Senate. They need four new Senate seats for that to happen. And the kind of places that look as if they might be up for grabs are not the kind of places that we would ever have imagined two years ago. We're talking about Alaska. We're talking about North Carolina, Texas, Iowa, Ohio. These are places where the Democrats are not only in play, but in some of the polling, they are ahead. Mary Paltola for the Democrats could win in Alaska. It is entirely possible that James Tallarico now could win in Texas. It is entirely possible that Andy Beshear, long-term governor, could win in North Carolina. I think Iowa and Ohio are still quite close. It doesn't mean that the Democrats will win all of these. And it could, of course, mean that the polls are completely wrong. And once again, the Republican voters have been less audible in who they're going to vote for. But right now, as things stand, it is within the Democrats grasp in places that are deep, deep red and have been for decades. Yeah, I mean, in the States, there is the Cook Political Report, which is as near as you get to a Bible of political forecasting, where everything is weighed very carefully. And it leans this or it's toss up or it's decidedly that. And they have just done their race ratings. And they've shifted three races towards the Democrats, including Kansas. And the Cook Report projects that the Democrats will pick up six Senate seats, which is pretty damn seismic. If we are talking about the Democrats picking up six seats in the Senate, you aren't even talking about the House of Representatives. The assumption there is that the House of Representatives is going to go so solidly Democrat that it's not even up for grabs. So, you know, the speaker will be gone and it will be a Democrat speaker who will take over in November. And on this basis, it's also going to be that the Senate will be controlled by the Democrats as well. So they'll have taken both houses. And so from a very, very strong position, Donald Trump will very quickly look like a lame duck president because, you know, what is he going to do with the House and the Senate under Democrat control? And technically be more vulnerable to any investigation that the Democrats want to bring over corruption charges, over ballroom. Where do you start? Now, look, I think I feel like we have been in this place so many times before where we say, oh, Kamala is going to do it. You know, she's ahead in all these states and then she doesn't. Or we say, oh, there's no way that Donald Trump can ever pull this off. And then he does. So I do keep going back to the fact that polling these days is so much more complicated because there tends to be a bias towards people who answer polls because nobody has a landline anymore. So you tend to get younger, more politically engaged, often more Democrat voting people responding to the polls. So it looks as if, you know, they are way ahead until the date of the election, first week of November. We will not know what has actually happened. But Donald Trump is clearly scared enough that he is actually entertaining places on his weirdo tour of America that he should never have had to worry about. So he is trusting the polling, even if it turns out, you know, eventually he doesn't have anything to worry about. Let's just kind of indulge our hypothesis that we're right, that it's now looking like the Dems are going to take the Senate and the House. And then you kind of put to the question, who is the captain of the Democrat team now? Who is the leading Democrat in the country? I mean, Gavin Newsom, arguably, who's been a very articulate and forthright spokesman for the Democratic Party for a long time. Technically, Hakeem Jeffries becomes the most seen one. Because he'll become the speaker. Mamdani, I think you could say, is probably the spokesman for the Democrats on the left. I mean, that feels to me the place that many people in the party now sort of trying to copy or emulate, right? But the person who's closing the argument for the Democratic Party in so many races and has recorded a whole pile of ads and is kind of ubiquitous in the States right now is Barack Obama. I mean, the power that Barack Obama still has as this inspirational figure for the Democratic Party is still unchallenged and unrivaled. They call him the coach player. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. The guy who's going to kind of be there, teach them how to do it, what the messaging needs to be, and is wanting to be on the ads of these candidates. You know, I'm Joe Bloggs and I support this message while Barack Obama is delivering a few words in support of them. And I think that, you know, so when we start, if we get ahead of our skis and start looking to 28 and who is going to be the emergent figure, I mean, it's unclear at the moment still. I think it's still very unclear who emerges from this. And you'd have to say that, you know, people say, oh, well, look at what happened with Barack Obama. I mean, Barack Obama was already a significant figure by the time... What would you mean, look at what happened with Barack Obama? Well, Barack Obama... You mean the 2012? Yeah. The 2010 midterms. Yes, exactly. Because he'd already been, you know, he'd already done the speech at the previous Democrat convention for the 2008 election. And so he'd already made his name and was already seen as the rising star. I'm still not clear in my mind who that person is because I think the debate stage for, you know, once the midterms are over and the Democrats start going to pick who their candidate is going to be, there are going to be, I think, two or three dozen people who will think, yeah, I'm in this. And I would say that one of their challenges is deciding whether they want Kamala Harris to be a part of that because she is all over this campaign at the moment. She actually polls, I think, highest in terms of the candidates, probably because of name recognition. But there will have to be serious conversations about whether they want her on the ballot. So I spoke to someone last night who's a long-standing Democratic Party operative who was with Kamala Harris just before, just as she was announcing that she was going to be a presidential candidate last night. Because I was saying, you know, well, Gavin Newsom has said that he, you know, he won't run if Kamala Harris is running. And this person said to me, yeah, he said that because he knows that Kamala Harris, when it comes to it, won't run. And that the numbers just aren't there for her. And although she's got money, she hasn't got the support. And he probably won't run. And therefore, Gavin Newsom looks like he's being gracious, but he's just biding his time until he enters the race. Biding your time is an undervalued talent, I think, in this kind of race. And this person said to me about Marco Rubio, Rubio doesn't want to run in 28. Why would Rubio want to? He's still relatively young. He can wait out this session. It looks like, you know, it's not a chance that the Republicans are going to win re-election after the chaos of, you know, this second Trump term and the corruption allegations and all the rest of it. Rubio does well to sit this one out. And if it's J.D. Vance, so be it. But don't put yourself in the race. So it's a marathon. It's not a sprint. So Miles is joining us now. Miles, just talk us through what you are writing about right now, which is an extraordinary development of the almost forgotten about Doge years. Just just tell us what's been going on there. Well, Emily, in a in a previously unreported incident, the people at Doge had apparently early in the second Trump administration focused on a particular office in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security that's going to be getting a lot of attention in the coming days. And that's what was called the Office of Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction. Now, I have some familiarity with it because I spent about 10 years helping to create that office within DHS. I want you to think of this as the belly button inside the U.S. government for countering biological, nuclear and chemical threats. This is basically the focal point for protecting Americans against those threats and also a central hub of experts that we often lent out to the rest of the world when it came to those types of situations. Well, apparently early in the second Trump administration, Doge set its sights on deleting this office. Earlier this year, the Trump administration got its way and basically formally disbanded that office. And as of today, the hundreds of WMD experts in the Department of Homeland Security that used to be there have now either been fired, bought out or scattered across the department and reassigned to other jobs. And many of those current and former officials are now very, very concerned that the office they used to work in that was supposed to respond to the incident like the one we are seeing in Russia are now not able to do that whatsoever. There's no one left to call. Oh, my God. OK, so just talk us through, because we haven't really got into what is happening in Russia. But talk us through what we know about that right now, Miles, and how U.S. scientists could have been helpful in trying to get to the bottom of what it is. Well, the situation's fluid. But what we know is that sometime around 10 days ago, an incident happened in this lab in Siberia, in Russia, what's called a BSL level three lab. That's a biological security level. That's one of the highest security level labs you get. It only goes up to BSL level four and allegedly a test tube or something broke in that lab. And what had been initially reported is that a strain of the pneumonic plague was released. And one lab worker, a 28 year old, was exposed. And later, several days later, died of that exposure. Now, the Russians have been very quickly trying to censor any references to pneumonic plague from local health officials and regional health officials. And of course, the Russian federal government itself has been very silent on the matter. But they could not stop those initial references from getting out. And that's what set off a lot of panic. Indeed, Russia's neighbors are taking the types of precautions you would imagine they would take if they did indeed believe that something that serious had escaped from a Siberian lab. But Emily, we also have Russia's own response to the incident as evidence that something very serious happened. The FSB, the successor to the KGB, was sent in to basically go lock down the area. As of right now, it's believed that you've got dozens or hundreds of these lab workers still basically under lockdown and travel restricted in some of these areas. And that's given a lot of folks, especially in the West, grave concern about what's happening. No matter what the Russians say it was or wasn't, we have a history in Russia of lab leaks that the government has lied about. I mean, the world won't soon forget during the height of the Cold War in the Soviet Union that there was a leak of anthrax from a Russian military lab that the Russians spent 13 years saying was just a contaminated meat incident. They said it was contaminated meat until it came out that no, it had been anthrax that had killed more than a dozen people. This is not a country that we tend to trust. And not a lot has changed in the years since, Emily. Vladimir Putin and his regime, of course, have carried out chemical weapons attacks against their adversaries in the West, targeting dissidents for assassination. And I helped respond to a number of those incidents, including the one in Salisbury, where the Russians attempted to use a chemical weapon to poison a defector from the regime. And of course, the United States and that office I mentioned earlier was central in helping the UK to respond. Yeah, and people died ultimately as a result of that Novichok in Salisbury. So just back to the US response there, Miles. I mean, it is not so long ago that a war was being waged against Saddam Hussein precisely to counter weapons of mass destruction. So what is the rationale being given from the Trump administration for basically shutting down the office, disbanding expertise? Well, we actually don't have one yet. And I'm expecting we're going to get comments somewhere in the next day or two from the Trump administration as this becomes more of a big deal here in the States as people find out that they have deleted the office for countering weapons of mass destruction. But I suspect, Emily, it falls in the same category as these other cuts that Doge engaged in early in the Trump administration, which is that they were arbitrary, in some cases, capricious, done without forethought and planning, and certainly done without consulting the experts themselves. Remember, Doge, of course, deleted the US Agency for International Development. At the time, experts within USAID had warned that potentially millions could die. I just spoke to the former head of global programs at USAID the other day, and he said, you can now confidently say at least hundreds of thousands of people have lost their lives because that department was unilaterally deleted without consultation with Congress. And of course, here in the United States, we grappled all summer with the fact that the US government could not keep up with terrible outbreaks of things like what was called diarrhea lettuce here in the United States, these sort of bacterial infections in vegetables and fruits across the United States. And one of the reasons was because the Trump administration had undertaken sweeping cuts to CDC and other food health agencies in the United States so there literally were not enough food safety inspectors and officials to figure out where these threats were coming from fast enough. This situation, I would say, is an order of magnitude worse. Not to say anything, not to minimize the experience of people who got sick with diarrhea lettuce this summer, but we are talking about the people inside the US government responsible with detecting and protecting Americans against things like the Black Death and the pneumonic plague. Those people are now off the job. I guess when we last left Doge, it seemed like a row between Trump and Elon Musk. You know, it was the kind of brainchild of Chainsaw Musk and Trump seemed to be kind of stepping in and saying no more. We were kind of left with the feeling that that wasn't happening anymore. The cuts weren't happening precisely because they were realizing the consequences of the actions they were taking. So, I mean, is that wrong? Has Doge actually carried on all this time, just sort of in a slightly quieter vein, just shutting things down? I think, Emily, it's less with a chainsaw and now more with a scalpel. You have seen basically the pros take over, OK? Elon Musk had never worked in the US government for all intents and purposes and was pushed out and partly by a man named Russell Vogt, a man that I used to work with in the first Trump administration. He is now the director of the Office of Management and Budget, OMB, in Washington, D.C., which is basically the president's major budget chief to oversee $4 trillion in federal spending. In fact, just this week at a rally, Trump called out his budget chief, a person you almost never hear mentioned by a president of the United States. He called him out and he said, Russ Vogt may end up being one of the most important people in American history. That was Trump's reference. And he said that because this man is continuing Elon Musk's work, but he's doing it in secret and systematically undertaking efforts to shut down federal spending, cancel programs the president doesn't like. And just for scope and scale, for folks to understand, it was reported this past month that the administration has paused or deleted more than $177 billion in U.S. spending that Congress had told them to spend on different agencies and programs. That's about one-tenth of the entire discretionary federal budget that Congress passes every year. That has basically happened in secret. It's happened without the legislature giving its approval. And evidently, one of those programs is the program meant to protect Americans against things like the plague. And Miles, before we let you go, we spent the first half of today's episode talking about the rampaging rallies around the U.S. that Trump is now doing, often in very red states like Nebraska and Alabama for reasons that we hope have now become a little clearer. But if we look at what's happened in Texas, the race between Ken Paxton and James Tallarico, Axios has in the last hour or so released a bit of audio that he probably wishes hadn't got out. And it is Ken Paxton asked about the biggest drag on his campaign saying, it's the war, it's gas prices. I wonder if we can just play that to you. I'm just trying to figure out ways that I can help people. That's the only way I can propose legislation. You can't stop the war. Right. I have no control over gas prices. So many of the factors in this federal race are uncontrollable. I don't make the decisions. And I don't know what's behind some of the decisions. He basically says he can't stop the Iran war and said, I don't know what's behind some of the decisions. We are seeing their own little war now, essentially between Paxton and Trump. And Trump really isn't helping Paxton win here. No, he's not. And this is the same Trump who basically stood in front of the world and said, wow, Ken Paxton, he's not a looker, is he? And mocked his looks at a convention that was meant to help Ken Paxton. I think if you're in the Tallarico campaign today, you're seeing this and you're realizing once again, you don't even have to show up. And now Tallarico is, but Ken Paxton is his own opponent. He almost doesn't need an opponent in James Tallarico. And this leak comes on the heels of two other audio leaks from the Paxton orbit, which include Ken Paxton talking about how he doesn't believe he's in control of his campaign. He's not in control of the messaging. And a previously leaked tape where he talked about how this GOP convention, what was called Trumpapalooza was very unhelpful. In fact, he conceded to a donor in that tape that their numbers had gone down after that convention and that it had not been helpful to his campaign. This is a man, in fact, Emily, I've never seen a campaign that is flailing this badly in a major Senate race, period, full stop. Never seen one flailing this badly, especially in a place where it would be expected that a Republican candidate would have a deep built-in advantage. And again and again, we are seeing that advantage erode because of the candidate himself, but also because of the foibles of the president of the United States who's supposed to be backing that candidate. Let's imagine you have a Nebraska steak on your plate. What would be your preferred cut? Well, I think Porterhouse is excellent. Honestly, I like them all. Unlike Telefrico in Texas, where he's a vegan and all of a sudden he eats steak and he's not happy. He goes and throws up after he eats it. He's not. This is a vegan. This is a guy that likes lettuce, not steak. But with me, I think there's no doubt about it. I'm all for steak. You could either like lettuce or you can like steak. God forbid if you like lettuce and steak. I mean, James Telefrico, A, is not a vegan. B, I don't think threw up when he ate steak. But Trump doesn't really care anymore. Doesn't care if he is tethered in any way to reality or truth. He did manage to turn the corner from the Nebraskan steak to the Texan steak, because that's where it really matters. Yes, because James Telefrico is a vegan, whatever a vegan is. But anyway. But he isn't. But I also love the answer. Oh, I like any kind of cut. You know, that is the same answer that Donald Trump gave when he was at an Iowa Bible study group. Which book do you prefer? The Old Testament or the New Testament? And Donald Trump hasn't got a frigging clue about either. He's just, I think they're both great. I couldn't say one from the other. I love them both. You know, both my favorite books. I think he does probably know his cuts of steak somehow. It is such a perfect American, like, quick fire, isn't it? Can you imagine Kemi Badenoch in Britain saying... Actually, she has said that. She likes a steak for lunch. So steak has become... Isn't it interesting? That is the point. Steak basically means you're a real man or you're a real woman. And lettuce means you are a wimp, Liz Truss. That's what we know. I'm going off for a salad now. Bye-bye. Bye for now.