Secretary of Defense Pete Hegath said this week that the US could maintain a blockade of Iran indefinitely.

This suggests that President Trump is trapped in another so-called forever war.

And as if Trump needed reminding that Iran now shadows his presidency, [music] we learned this week that he had to be secretly moved by catering Trump, no less, off of Air Force One, which was allegedly being targeted by Iranian agents.

While Trump was smuggled back into America, Air Force One, packed with staffers, military personnel, [music] and reporters, was allowed to fly as a decoy.

Strange times next.

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Good evening and welcome to Washington Week.

It's a strange story certainly this Air Force One business.

Though the Trump administration does manufacture plenty of strange storylines, it's also a deadly serious story.

One that raises questions not only about the dubious decision-making that led to this Air Force One caper, but about Iran's continued ability to wreak havoc on the US and its friends months after the president promised that the threat of the Islamic Republic would be neutralized.

Iran is a shadow over the White House and over the Republican party.

Something that could help the Republicans out of their predicament, the Democratic Socialists of America.

I'll discuss this tonight with my guests.

Elizabeth Biller, writer at large at the New York Times.

Adam Harris is a staff writer at The Atlantic and a co-host of the Radio Atlantic podcast.

Dan Lamoth is a national security reporter for the Washington Post.

And Liz Landers is the White House correspondent for PBS NewsHour.

Thank you, Liz, for doing double duty tonight.

[clears throat] We appreciate it.

Dan, let's start with you.

You broke the story.

Explain what happened on Air Force One and why it happened.

Uh yeah, thank you for having me.

Um just an extraordinary tip that uh I I received and you know just writing it down.

I mean the idea that President Trump leaving a NATO summit with the you know the the the world's eyes on him um moves tells the world that he's sending his new plane back to Britain.

Tells the world he's taking the old Air Force One instead.

The new plane being the one given to him by cutter.

Yes.

Yes.

only to learn that he took neither of those planes and in fact moved by catering truck secretly to a third smaller plane the C32 without telling anyone and then not telling anyone for the next calendar month uh until we reported that story out.

Yeah.

And why do they say they did it and who knew and who didn't know?

Yeah.

So I mean obviously there is legitimate concerns about the president's life.

The Iran has made efforts in the past.

They received a tip from Israel uh saying that they thought the president's life was in danger uh that there could have been a threat on him or the aircraft.

Uh so that threat was assessed later to be not high confidence, but in the moment without a lot of time to act, uh they chose to put this all in motion.

Right.

Um, Liz, not unusual to protect the president.

Obviously, a a a a worthy cause, not telling the people who got on Air Force One, right, that the that they believe they had intelligence or the suspicion that that Air Force One was going to be targeted.

That's the truly unusual aspect of this story, right?

There were White House staffers aboard the plane that was apparently what was going to be targeted, also Secret Service.

There are also military officers on board that plane too and press as well.

And I think as a reporter when you travel with the president, you have an expectation that he is a target at any given time.

But for the the actual circumstances to be so real that the president is then moved off the plane, I don't think that that's something that uh most White House press are thinking about when they're traveling with him.

And in fact, the White House Correspondents Association, this was reported by a number of media outlets, has apparently sat down with the White House press shop to have a conversation about the future of keeping the press corps that travels with the president safe and informed of where he is.

What would be the normal way of doing this?

Decoys are not uncommon, but but typically it's a short duration thing where from the outside world you wouldn't necessarily be sure which plane he was on, right?

You know, a common example when you watch the Marine Corps helicopters roll in with the president.

They usually come in group of groups of three.

From the ground, you can't really tell which one and then at some point it becomes apparent, right?

uh when they've done this overseas in the past, you know, one example that came up a lot this week was President Clinton in 2000 landing in Pakistan.

That was immediately apparent once he stepped out of the other aircraft and there was at least some uh amount of White House members and and certainly uh a member of the White House press corps who had been briefed in advance, hey, we need to do this here.

Why?

In this case, no one knew outside of a very select amount uh of senior White House staff, Secret Service, and it was just kept quiet really from then on.

Right.

Elizabeth, you've supervised coverage of many White Houses.

You've covered many White Houses.

What strikes you about this as as what's the larger meaning of this very strange episode?

just the way the um the pe the the civilians on the plane were were sacrificial were potential sacrificial lambs and that they were so unaware of it.

Our colleague Peter Baker wrote a great story this week about it.

He quoted Andrew Marlo who was the screenwriter for Air Force One, the 1997 thriller starring Harrison Ford and it at the president's plane is hijacked.

And Marlo told Peter that you know I don't think I could have written that as a you know movies are not real life but I don't think I could have written that into a movie because you want the the president to be heroic and that kind of action would not be perceived he felt by by an audience as a heroic action.

So that was that was interesting and I I would have I would not have liked to have been on that plane not not been aware of the risk that I was taking.

If you were member of the press corps you would have gone on the plane had you known or would have said wait a second what's going on here.

I don't know.

I don't know.

I don't think I would have I would have thought long and hard about it.

Right.

Right.

What about you Adam?

Just say yes.

Be heroic.

I'll have to say yes.

I'll sacrifice.

I'll sacrifice.

[laughter] But it is there's the having the knowledge of it as opposed to sort of being left in the dark about it.

Um you're able to make an informed decision.

Right.

Right.

And they were sort of told to close their window shades as opposed to actually even having the ability to know.

Dan, the the real story here is transparency.

If you did not find this out, we would not be talking about this.

It's it's very odd to to to to see this story just emerge a month later.

Um, you've been dealing with the administration for for some time.

Is this what you have come to expect in terms of transparency and accountability?

Short answer, yes.

I mean, who knows how many things we don't know.

Um, I would say when this tip was brought to me, initially it sounded pretty surreal even for kind of current events.

Uh, so it took a lot to kind of grow the confidence that hey, we really had this right.

And the fact that we initially got a straight no comment and then the statement that kind of half explained it was like we got this.

Let's go.

Right.

Right.

[snorts] The the the large context of this is Iran and its shadow over American foreign policy over this administration even over the midterms which we'll get to in a second.

I want you to listen, Elizabeth, to something that the uh president just said earlier today to get a sense of how he's ostensibly seeing this war.

Why don't we just listen?

Pretty soon, I'll be declaring the Hormone Strait, a territory of the United States.

Essentially, that's what it we have the blockade.

[cheering] No ships get through unless we want them to.

So, this comes after the president said that his new approach to Iran, this week's new approach would be to low-key it.

Not not entirely clear what that means.

It's been a while, 6 months.

6 months.

Um, the straight from Moose was open before the war.

Um, now he's talking about owning it.

Give us your sense right now of where this where this war is.

seems as if the White House is desperate to tell the American people and the American voter, we won, you don't have to think about Iran anymore, and we're not going to think about Iran anymore.

Is that fair?

Uh, no.

Because I think that Iran um uh it, you know, I I again, this is a little premature, but it reminds me of Jimmy Carter.

I think Iran wants this to keep going um certainly through the midterms and potentially into uh 2028.

I mean right now I think what we we've been seeing the last six months I think we'll see more of that Trump makes some statement there seems to be some movement towards um negotiations uh the stock market goes up you know and then and then the Iranians say we're not negotiating there's there's exchange of fire and we're back at it that's what has been going on for six months I don't see how this changes and I don't I think Trump must have been trolling people when he said that he was going to uh annex the straight of hormuz that's yeah I couldn't tell if he was joking or or coming to a coming to a spontaneous policy realization.

Yeah.

I mean, you you never really necessarily know with him, but what what you've seen from the administration in the last week, you have um Scott Bessent saying that, you know, they're going to have economic sanctions unlike anything that we've seen before.

You have Pete Hexith saying that the they're they can keep the blockade going sort of indefinitely.

Um, so they're trying to project this confidence, but at the same time, you have Republicans on Capitol Hill saying that, well, the enemy gets a vote too in when this war is over and when they say they're they're done with the fighting.

And I think that that is really starting to weigh on the administration, which has continuously tried to project confidence over the last 6 months, even as it's been quite clear that their control and um or lack thereof uh is uh the sort of central factor in this.

Dan, you're an expert on these sorts of things.

What are the chances that the blockade achieves Trump's goals?

I mean, the Navy is a powerful navy possible.

I mean, the block the blockade is causing pain.

I mean, that there there's a fair amount of reporting out there to that extent.

But I think the blockade also comes with an opportunity cost.

The longer you do this, the more strain you put on the US Navy, the sailors, the ships, uh, you know, the fact that you have nowhere to take a quick port stop, which which is is a problem for both the delivery of food, any kind of repairs.

There's nothing easy about doing this blockade long term.

Right, Liz?

Let's go to that because uh you've been reporting on the situation with the aircraft car Abraham Lincoln.

Um you know it's been become a very big story again part of the possible miscalculation or series of miscalculations made by the US.

Trump wanted a quick war this is not a quick war.

Tell us what you're hearing about the situation on the Lincoln and how it relates to what Dan is talking about right now in terms of long-term stress.

Well, we spoke earlier today with the former chief of naval operations, Admiral Gary Ruffett, who was explaining basically what Dan was saying, which is that part of the reason that the USS Abraham Lincoln has been there for so long and these sailors are uh so desperate, some of them, not all of them, there are 5,000 people on that boat of course, but some of them are trying to go overboard there.

and he said that it's become a logistical problem because typically what happens is that these uh aircraft carriers can go to port and some of these ports that they would typically go to he pointed to uh Bahrain in the past had been a place that the US could go dock that's not accessible anymore because Iran has a strangle hold on these passageways so he was saying that part of the blockade has created this own problem now that the US military is dealing with in a very acute way and I think that this news in particular this week about the USS Lincoln really has broken through and we've seen um Secretary Hegsth was a bit I would say dismissive um when he was asked about this on an official visit in Panama.

The president was too today.

Uh it seems like Hegath is kind of walking back those comments.

Yeah, just listen to what the president um said uh just earlier today actually.

this appointment.

No, no, no.

Not nearly long enough.

[sighs] You cover the man.

That just seems like one of his sort of oppositional answers.

Yeah, it's kind of a throwaway comment for him, but it's already enraging according to several news outlets that have spoken just in the last few hours with these family members of these uh men and women who are deployed on the ship that they're already upset about these comments and it's it's insensitive.

Right, Elizabeth, you have a situation that they're describing in which the blockade is being enforced by Navy ships that can't go to the ports in the Gulf that are set up for American Navy ships to be repaired, resupplied, obviously RNR for for sailors.

Um, again, it's it it it comes back to this idea that when they're sitting there in the Pentagon and choosing or sitting in the White House and choosing to launch this latest round of attacks on Iran starting 6 months ago, that the second order, third order, fourth order consequences, correct, were not contemplated.

Well, as we know, the president thought this was going to be Venezuela, that he was going to ma do a massive bombing campaign and that Iran would would uh would say give up and come to the negotiating table.

And it was total miscalculation as we have seen.

And it is the reason that previous presidents did not do what Donald Trump did which because of the un because of the inevitable consequences of of basically um igniting a a regional war in the Middle East and um closing the straight of Hormuz which was always any kind of battletop exercises always predicted that was be the first thing the Iranians did.

Right.

Right.

Dan, one more question for you on this and and you cover the Pentagon.

Obviously, it's much harder to cover the Pentagon these days because they've sealed it off from members of the press, but nevertheless, you seem to get a lot of good stories.

Uh, are people inside the Pentagon talking about all of these miscalculations made by the White House?

What What are you picking up on that?

Yeah, I mean, I think especially on the military side, the officer corps and and so forth, there are folks who are thrilled with the amount of money they're looking to put into the military.

they see some benefit to the Trump administration and changes they've made, but when it comes to thing like how do you get into this war?

How do you get out of this war?

Yeah, there's growing frustration and concern I think on what this means long term, how long does it take?

How do you get out of this?

And how do you prepare for the next thing?

Right.

Right.

Um let me turn to domestic politics, although this also shadows domestic politics.

Um, the Republicans don't have necessarily a lot going for them leading up to the midterms, but as is often the case, they can sort of wait and and hope that the Democrats mess up.

One possible way the Democrats are messing up uh is by nominating people who come from the far-left spectrum of the Democratic party.

We saw this in Wisconsin.

The apparent limits of DSA kind of politics when uh a seemingly popular candidate was defeated, a more mainstream Democrat came in.

Obviously, the Republicans in Wisconsin wanted the DSA, wanted to run against a hard-left DSA candidate.

We see this now in in Michigan, uh with the Democratic nominee, uh being the preferred choice of the Republicans of Michigan.

That's that's a much closer race than what Wisconsin looked like.

Um, Adam, is there a ceiling?

Are we discovering this week the ceiling that the DSA has created for the Democrats?

Well, I I think it's it's hard to know for sure just based on this week, right?

Uh because because Franchesca Hung lost by about 4,000 votes um and this race in which she did not run a single television ad DSA insurgent candidate.

And um meanwhile, right, you have several um folks who've dropped out in recent weeks.

And so the the polling that actually sort of reflected her like a ceiling of around 39 40% was effectively what she landed on.

Um there were about 34 35% of undecided voters in that race and they did they they went towards the more established candidate once he received the endorsement from from Governor Ivers.

But I think that the thing that um we are seeing out of this um in part because it's it if somebody had argued in 2015 that uh the Republicans were making a a mistake by nominating Donald Trump as the far the further right candidate, right?

So, so I think that there's a sort of um we want to better understand what the middle wants, but but those polls are actually pulling uh American politics in a really strong direction.

And it's it's politics is not a science.

it can be studied as one.

Um, but the sort of electability argument is is floundering in all.

Did you just invent political science?

You know, I tried.

I tried the uh No, but you make a certain you make a very obvious point for any reporter, which is this Trump asterisk on everything that will ever happen in American politics, which is on the one hand that doesn't make sense.

On the other hand, Donald Trump has won the presidency twice.

So all all the rules are one question I I have for you.

You cover this very closely.

uh the DSA is having trouble convincing bluecollar and not blue collar black voters uh to come on board.

That's I mean historically you you have a lot of black voters who are if not sort of um conservative in the in the most general sense but but more traditional Democratic candidates, right?

There's this belief that um a candidate needs to be proven.

Um there's if you think about Barack Obama, he he benefited from winning Iowa.

Um and and then you move towards South Carolina, it's like well he has shown that he can that white people will vote for him.

Um right and and so there there has to be a belief that other people will will vote for you and and this has been kind of across campaigns, the ones that I've covered where you have voters starting to to talk like talking heads.

You interview them and they're like, "Well, I just don't know if this person is electable.

I don't know if [laughter] they will vote for We've all had that weird experience.

Exactly.

And and so when you when you hear it and when you see it, um they're going into the the polling booth sort of thinking about what everyone else is thinking as opposed to what they're thinking.

Right.

Right.

One one other problem, to put a finer point on it, the party has developed something of a a Hassan [ __ ] problem.

This is a popular hard-left uh Twitch streamer um who has said that Americans deserve 911, that Jews are inbred.

He's praised Mao.

Um he's praised Houthy terrorists and so on.

Um Democrats are extremely worried about the presence of people like this who are no longer at the margin who are creating let's say loads of new ads if nothing else for Republicans.

Yeah.

No, it's a it's it's a problem for Democrats.

There's no no question.

And it's a was a it's been a problem for El in Michigan who was associated with him, right?

Uh it's a big problem.

I do think though that in Wisconsin uh it show it does at least in that state it shows the limits of of the Democratic socialists because Francesca Hong as we all know in the last weeks of the race you know the tweet earlier's um you know post media uh social media post came out that she was you know opposed to Thanksgiving.

It was a it was all about colonialism.

This did not help in Wisconsin.

I think there it was a bridge too far even in Wisconsin for for um ultra liberal candidate.

It is a truism that really just don't attack Thanksgiving.

Yeah.

Or Valentine's Day.

She was not big on that either.

So I could see that one that that [laughter] that that I'm a little divided on.

Go ahead.

Last word to you too about what Adam was mentioning about um just the appeal of the the DSA in general and why people are looking at this.

I spoke with Jeff Weaver who was the campaign manager for Bernie Sanders, America's best known Democratic socialist, and was asking Jeff what he thought of this race.

And he said, "Look, Franchesca Hong wasn't that well known in Wisconsin."

So, that obviously played a factor, too.

But he also made the point to me that he said the Democrats are not fighting back against Trump uh enough according to a lot of the party and the base and Republicans are not doing anything at all.

So he said that's why he thinks this moment is appealing and DSA candidates are appealing to people who feel like they are politically unmed.

Right.

Well, we are going to track this issue among other issues uh very closely, but we are going to have to leave it there for now.

I want to thank our guests for joining me and thank you at home for watching us.

For a look at the Republican party's evolution, please listen to Adam's interview with former Republican Senator Jeff Flank at Radio Atlantic.

I'm Jeffrey Goldberg.

Good night from Washington.

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