Peter, I want to move to um a stickier subject even than Maine.

Uh Iran.

The Iranians don't seem to be particularly interested in seeding control of the Straight of Hormuz.

Donald Trump is not particularly interested in the historic landmark memorandum of understanding that was signed and almost immediately forgotten.

Uh it looks a lot like we're just in perpetual war with Iran.

Yeah.

Is that fair to say?

Yeah.

No, I think it's exactly right.

It turns out to be a memorandum of misunderstanding.

they didn't didn't actually agree on what they actually agreed on.

Uh and this wasn't even the hard part, right?

This was just the preliminary thing in which we say we stop shooting each other so then we can talk about the things that are really hard.

We couldn't even get through that.

So it does suggest that we're not going to see a decisive uh agreement of any sort in the near term if we can't even get the the the short-term thing going.

And clearly President Trump doesn't seem eager to relaunch the full-scale war that he had at the very beginning.

That's not going to help his Republican candidates in Maine or anywhere else.

So, we're in this kind of middle ground, right?

This kind of stasis where a little bit of war and a little bit of peace, a little bit of diplomacy and and and no actual resolution.

And I'm not sure politically how that plays um in the midterms, but that's on the factor at play both in terms of how the White House looks at it and how the Iranians look at it because they know our clock just like we do, right?

But I wonder if if in terms of the midterms, I wonder if this is now just kind of perpetual background noise in a kind of way.

It's just like there's always going to be this Iran problem.

Gas prices are going to be elevated.

Beef is going to cost a lot.

Am I am I wrong in saying that?

Is this a is this a a real threat if it continues this way to the Republicans in in November?

Yeah, I mean, Jeeoff, I was also very struck this week that um we've become so ignored.

It seemed to me that it was really not treated as such a big deal.

Uh remember that, you know, for the previous 15 years, you know, just the mere thought of the United States striking Iran even in a single uh bout of air strikes was considered to be, you know, one of the major uh debates that engaged foreign policy over and over again.

And yet Donald Trump just sort of casually now goes back to war and uh the world just sort of shrugs its shoulders to a certain extent.

And I I was really struck by that that Trump does this thing where he gets people accustomed to the previously unthinkable with remarkable speed.

So he may be baking that into our politics, understanding that uh an achievable deal is not within sight and so getting people used to the idea that this is going to continue.

I think it represents a continued misreading on the part of the administration.

They don't seem to have had a very good uh understanding of the dynamics with their Iranian interlocators.

They they seem to have gotten it wrong over and over again about what they were even talking about.

What could Trump or the Iranians do to advertently or inadvertently escalate this out of control?

I I mean I think there's any number of scenarios which is exactly why previous American administrations, Democrats and Republicans didn't go down this route of opening up an open-ended conflict with Iran because there are so many possibilities and and that was even before the age of drone warfare.

You've seen America's partners in the Gulf extremely and increasingly unhappy both because of the economic damage to their uh oil and energy businesses, also civilian populations.

There's the possibility of terrorism.

Uh, you know, President Trump flew over to uh Europe on his new Air Force One gifted to him by Gutar had to change planes in the middle of the trip to go back to the old Air Force One.

Why?

It appears from very credible reporting that was because it didn't the new Air Force One didn't have enough security precautions for a president, air defenses, anti-missile.

Exactly.

And the Iranians have targeted Donald Trump as well as other senior current and former American officials.

uh for credible assassination plots.

So, it's a very volatile environment in which we can all imagine any number of things going wrong and leading to a much more serious and genuine uh full-scale war as opposed to the Trumpian kind of on again off-again war.

By the way, you're you're exactly right about something.

We've already baked into the conversation the fact that Air Force One is a gift of the royal family of Cutter, right?

Who?

Imagine if if that if if President Obama, President Biden, President Bush had taken a gift from an oil em a non-democratic oil emirate essentially.

It would have been the scandal to end all scandals.

But here we are just talking about it like it's it's normal.

Something else that's not particularly normal is is that at the NATO summit um the Turkish president gave all of the assembled uh leaders uh a gift of a revolver.

And we don't know if President Trump has taken the revolver back to Mara Lago, do we?

No.

But he loves President Erdogan.

He loves Erdogan, one of his very very favorite strong men.

I I want to have that discussion.

It's a very interesting discussion.

I want to have that discussion in another show about the the these new Middle Eastern dynamics.

I do want to ask you one question very quickly, Peter, about NATO.

It seemed like it went better than it usually goes when when President Trump interacts with NATO.

Fair.

This is yeah, this is the you're beating your head against the brick wall and then you stop.

It doesn't feel so bad.

NATO summit, right?

It didn't explode.

It wasn't a disaster.

So, hey, it's a success, right?

At the end of the day, of course, there's still the president of United States talking about going after Greenland, in other words, the territory of a NATO ally and so forth.

But yes, it could have been worse and so they'll take that.

Right.

Leanne, question about Mitch McConnell.

Um, we don't really know how bad shape he's in.

His office isn't saying.

We've seen this again and again on Capitol Hill where people don't public officials don't tell the public what's going on.

Can you can you shed any light on this?

Yeah, and there's really no accountability for it.

Um there's nothing they can do.

Mitch McConnell is not running for reelection.

Uh but the reality is is we don't know the state of his condition.

Um there's been online conspiracy theories that he's dead or that he's brain dead.

Um he had some phone calls this week with the two leaders uh John Thun and John Braso and a former aid of his.

You know before all of this started coming out.

Um it was about 3 weeks ago.

I do know that John Brasso talked to him on the phone before there was all the conspiracy theories.

So I don't think he's brain dead.

But um his office it doesn't seem to be changing their policy of giving no information.

Right.

Adam, this is a last word to you.

This doesn't seem like a great way to build trust in transparent democratic processes.

No.

And people flatly.

No.

Right.

People have long sort of distrusted that the information they're getting from Congress is um is is true that their representatives are telling them the truth.

And if you're not willing to just sort of be upfront, I think if there is a unifying theme of this whole thing, it's be upfront and and have some character about it.

Um and but we've seen recently Tom Keen um was gone with the depression for for a long time.

um Senator Mitch McConnell.