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Here's the latest this morning.
Then Rut's reporting around Supreme Leader pushing for its uranium to stay in the country to run, reportedly preparing a response to the latest peace proposal from the US, and Ray joined to snaw from Washington for more hammriy.
Hey, Jonathan, Well, that directive from Iran that's being reported from the Supreme Leader on Reuters is really going to be a red line potential in these negotiations, because Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had made it very clear for Israel for the war to end, that highly enriched uranium needs to be taken out of Iran's Potentially this could put
the President in a very difficult position. And for a little bit more insight on how potentially we could see this White House react, we are now joined by Trump's in the first term director of Legislative Affairs, and of course he was the former chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence, and that is Mark Short. Thank you so much for joining us, Thanks for having so we have this new reporting out of Reuters. As the President said yesterday, right now they're right on the borderline between
getting a deal and resuming a war. What do you think he does with this basically escalation from Ron?
Well, look, I don't think there's any president who's been a better partner, more loyal to Israel than Donald Trump throughout his first term and his second term. But we are reaching an important point here because Iran is an existential threat for this real clearly, and they're not going
to want to see a deal at this point. Whereas the President is facing a lot of domestic pressure with energy prices continuing to spike, his numbers continuing to deteriorate, with midterm elections coming soon, and so there's this is obviously going to be a significant pressure point for him.
Yeah, his polling is going down, as you see, gasoline price is going up. We're north of four dollars and fifty cents today. I just spoke last hour to read a cent of Energy Aspects, and she's on the road and she says, inventories are halfway drawn down now and people are looking at June.
If we see.
North of five dollars a gallon, does the president blink?
I think it's not just worth of five dollars a gallon, it's jet fuel prices, jetfield a lot of airlines continue to cancel flights as diesel fuel continue to go up. I think there's some things the President's done, like leaving the waving the Jones Act, that have kept some of this a bay. But I think that the question is
going to be does he want a deal? The President loves to have a deal, but I think if he gets a deal, and Marie, there's gonna be a lot of questions like is this not just Obama two point zero? And when a lot of Republicans criticize sending pallets of cash to Iran, if we're basically saying, well, you know, as some have said that we've got twenty years now, is that really going to be that significally different? And Iran has done this, this is what they've done for
forty seven years. Continue to walk along a lot of presidents to say, hey, we'll you know, negotiate this later. And they've continued to be the same menace for forty seven years.
Yeah, they continue to drag their feet, and they have done with multiple presidents.
But you have been in the room with President Trump. You know his instincts.
If the domestic pressures get too much for him, does he then gave a lot of concessions away.
I worry that he does.
I think that right now the president, again it's hard to say there hasn't been somebody who has stood with Israel.
More than this president, and he has so far. But Amria, I do think he's tough.
On Iran first term, maximum pressure, second term. Obviously their strike.
Taking out solid money.
But for a lot of things the president has done. But I do think that he likes to be the one who ends up making a deal, and.
So there's a lot of pressure.
On for him to obviously get out of this into lower energy prices. But again for our partner Israel, again this has been an existential trend.
They view this is our opportunity.
Iran is weakened, now is our opportunity to do this, and they know that it basically if we back out, then China and Russia and continue to rebuild the military supplies in Iran and it will become once again a threat to Israel and to the West.
You mentioned the midterm elections. We just had a bunch of primaries, but also recently the President said he's not thinking about American's financial conditions when he's talking about Iran. Now, I know some people would say that was taken out of context, but how difficult is that going to be for Republicans when they try to deliver a message before November.
The midterms are always going to be difficult in the determament of the president, particularly when there's one party in power. So the Republicans have obviously the House, the Senate, and the White House, and American voters have always wanted to have divided government, and so you would anticipate already a significant year for Democrats. I think you add on to that what you've seen with the economy and affordability crisis, energy prices spiking, but also now the president has shown
his muscle in winning primaries. But if you're basically showing that you want people who are more loyal to you, how does that play to general election voters? I think that that may be playing out to their strength in the primary season memory, but creating an even bigger hurdle for Republicans come November.
What does this mean for also the current Republicans in Congress. A lot of Republicans were very disappointed of the President yesterday going for Ken Paxton in Texas.
Well, that's obviously on the heels of taking out Republicans in Indiana and taking out Thomas Massey and Kentucky, taking out Bill Cassidy and Louisiana. And I think that you're going to continue to see I think, less and less done in Washington.
It's already hard to get something.
Done in midterm election cycle memory, but I think even more so now because you're going to see those Republicans begin to break further and further from the President. So I would think there's been very little done legislatively. It seems that this housing bill that seems to be Republicans, there's only a handful of Republicans actually still believe in free markets, because it seems like the vast majority of them are partnering with the populace left and deciding who can buy houses.
But if they're willing to break with this president, what does that look like.
It looks like things stalling.
It looks like basically nothing else happening between now and Novembers. It means that that things like the president's desire for a ballroom funding doesn't happen. It potentially means that more funding from the military doesn't happen.
I was going to say, we had an individual yesterday saying we're going to be running out of.
The military budget for the war in Iran.
The president's asking for one point five trullion.
Now does he get that before November?
I think everything gets harder Now, everything does, and so I would be basically wagering against anything else happening of consequence between now and November.
Does that mean that we see a president that's going to be more assertive on Congress and try to do things through executive order?
Well, I think that's already been the case, right right. I mean, this administration clearly believes they don't need Congress for much, and they think that they can do it just from an executive branch. That's going to become a bigger and bigger challenge after the midterms, because there'll be a bigger and bigger clash with the legislative branch at that point.
Mark Short, thank you so much for your time.
Evering morning.
Thanks for coming in. That was Mark Short.