Thank you for watching! In the face of unrelenting disinformation and authoritarian actions, clear truth-telling and independent media are a necessity. If you value pro-democracy journalism, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber to my newsletter. Paid subscribers empower this work and gain access to exclusive benefits. Your support makes a difference.
In our latest Substack Live, Don Lemon opened with a simple question: Is this a ceasefire or not?
The honest answer is, we don’t know. What we have right now is a fragile, contested, actively violated pseudo-ceasefire that the Trump administration is trying to sell as a win, while bombs were still falling in Lebanon and ships are still parked outside the Strait of Hormuz waiting for clearance that isn’t coming. Don and I spent the conversation pulling apart the gap between what this administration is claiming and what is actually happening on the ground, and it’s a wide gap.
The big picture verdict is not complicated. Trump put us in a worse position than we were in on February 27th, the day before the war began. A more extreme Iranian government is now in place. Iran has more leverage over the Strait of Hormuz than it did before the war, not less. They’re moving to monetize that leverage through crypto toll payments on shipments. Enriched uranium is still there. Lebanon is destabilized. Hezbollah is likely to try to expand its terrorist activities. And the President of the United States sent out a genocide threat on his phone that the media moved past far too quickly.
There was also the inside story this week from Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan at The New York Times about how Trump actually made the decision to go to war, and it is a story about a president who was warned of the risks, who was told by his own people that Netanyahu was overselling, and who did it anyway. That piece is essential reading, and it confirmed what we have been saying since this war began.
On top of all of that, there is a political subplot underneath the ceasefire negotiations that deserves attention. J.D. Vance is heading to Pakistan this weekend alongside Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, and the question of why Vance is at the center of this now, and what it means for his future, is something Don and I dug into directly.
And then there’s the MAGA fracture. Alex Jones. Marjorie Taylor Greene. Candace Owens. Megyn Kelly is begging Trump to be a normal human being. People who in 2024 were the loudest voices in his coalition are now calling for the invocation of the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office. Don’s read is that MAGA is cooked, and I agree. The electoral data and the betrayal on tariffs, the war, the Epstein files, and affordability all point in the same direction.
You can watch the full conversation above and read our key takeaways below.
A Fragile Ceasefire
The state of play is chaotic, and the Trump administration’s own messaging makes it worse. What’s being sold publicly as a breakthrough is, on close inspection, a very fragile ceasefire built on a miscommunication between two governments that weren’t actually talking directly.
The Trump administration is claiming it did not agree to all of Iran’s 10-point plan, even though Trump previously called it a good starting point. Iran interpreted that signal as acceptance and sold it as a propaganda win. Neither side had a clear shared understanding of what was actually agreed to, including whether Lebanon was part of the ceasefire at all.
J.D. Vance stated publicly that Lebanon was never part of the negotiations. Iran’s position is the opposite. Netanyahu then announced a desire to start direct talks with Lebanon over Hezbollah disarmament, which added another layer of confusion to an already broken communication channel.
Don pointed out what the numbers actually show: the Strait of Hormuz handles roughly 150 ships per day under normal conditions. A handful of ships passing through does not constitute an open strait. Ships are parked off the coast of Oman waiting. The administration’s claim that the strait is open is false.
Saturday’s planned trip to Pakistan with Vance, Witkoff, and Kushner would, in my read, represent the actual beginning of direct talks since the war started, because up to this point, both sides have largely been selling propaganda wins to their respective bases rather than negotiating in good faith.
The World Is Worse Than Before the War
There is no honest accounting of this war that produces a positive outcome. I asked Don directly if he could name a single thing that is better today than it was the day before the strikes. I couldn’t. Neither could he.
Iran is now led by the son of the previous Supreme Leader, who is significantly more extreme and does not carry the same commitment to avoiding nuclear weapons. The previous leader had a fatwa against nuclear weapons and agreed to the JCPOA. That baseline is gone.
Iran now has more leverage over the Strait of Hormuz than it did before the war, not less. According to Wall Street Journal reporting I raised during the live, Iran is moving to toll the strait and accept crypto payments for passage. They are actively monetizing the leverage this war handed them.
Don laid out the basic before-and-after: gas prices were low, ships were moving, a deal was on the table. Now, gas prices are high, the Strait is functionally closed, Iran is making more money, and there is no regime change.
I made the point that the media needs to stop moving past Trump’s genocide threat against Iran. That notification landed on people’s phones. That moment cannot be normalized. It is evidence of how volatile this president is, and the exhaustion Americans feel living inside that volatility is real, and it is accumulating.
Lebanon is now destabilized as a direct outcome of this war, and Hezbollah is going to use that instability to try to expand its global reach. We achieved nothing that was promised and created multiple new crises in the process.
Netanyahu Oversold It, Trump Bought It
The New York Times piece from Haberman and Swan this week is the inside story of how a foreign leader walked into the White House, gave a presentation that Trump’s team didn’t fully believe, and still got the war he wanted.
Don flagged the seating arrangement in the Situation Room as significant, and I agreed: Trump did not sit at the head of the table. He sat on one side with Netanyahu directly across from him. Don’s read was that it signaled equal footing, that Netanyahu was not a guest being briefed but a co-principal driving the meeting.
Netanyahu’s presentation to Trump laid out a four-step plan: a decapitation strike, military capability erosion, popular uprising, and then regime change. Trump was focused on steps one and two. He did not seriously engage with three and four.
General Caine warned after Netanyahu’s presentation that Israel was overselling. That is a pattern, he noted, something Israel does. The promise that Iran’s military would be wiped out so completely that it couldn’t even exert control over the Strait of Hormuz was not credible.
Ratcliffe called the regime change portion of the plan farcical. Rubio called it “bullshit,” and other administration officials also pushed back on Netanyahu’s promises about the Iranian people rising up and Kurdish forces quickly filling the vacuum. Trump heard all of this and proceeded anyway.
I framed this as the story of this administration at its core: a president who runs on gut instinct, rejects facts, and doesn’t attach consequences to his decisions. He was told. He knew. He did it anyway. And now the primary objective of these negotiations is to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, which was open before the war started.
MAGA Is Cooked
Don said it plainly: MAGA is cooked. I agree. And the fracture is not coming from the left; it is coming from inside the house.
Alex Jones, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Candace Owens are now calling for the invocation of the 25th Amendment. I pointed out that if you had told anyone in 2024 that those three names would be calling for Trump’s removal using the same language as 2017 resistance members, no one would have believed you. That is how far this has moved.
Megyn Kelly went on air begging Trump to just be a normal human being. Don called it immediately: the day before, she said she would vote Republican even if they dropped a nuke on Iran. Don’s verdict was that she’ll do anything for a click. His read is that she’s a fraud. I took it further and said that these are not moral awakenings. These are people who see a market opening up and are moving to monetize anti-Trump sentiment. There is no principle driving it.
Don made the point that the bro podcast ecosystem, the Manosphere, the independent streaming voices that helped put Trump in office, these are not controllable by corporate media. Fox can manage its audience. Fox cannot manage what Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, or the podcasters say. And if those voices are speaking out against Trump heading into the midterms, that carries.
The electoral signals are already showing it. I brought up the Georgia special election and the broader trend of massive swings in Republican-held districts. Not every race is flippable, but the tide is moving in one direction. Republicans are going to get shellacked in the 2026 midterms if this trajectory holds.
Every betrayal compounds the last: the Epstein files, the war, the tariffs, the affordability promises. Each one chips away at the coalition a little more. Don and I were calling these fractures early, back when the Epstein file debate was playing out last summer. What was a crack then is a split now.
The Vance Setup
Vance is now front and center in the Iran negotiations, heading to Pakistan this weekend. Whether that is an opportunity or a trap is an open question, and it is one worth watching closely.
I raised the observation that throughout the Haberman-Swan NYT piece, there are moments where Vance’s opposition to the war surfaces in ways that feel sourced from Vance’s team. The framing keeps pivoting back to Vance saying he was against this. That is the kind of narrative shaping that happens when someone close to a principal is talking to reporters and trying to build a specific record.
My speculation here, and I want to be clear this is speculative, is that Vance is quietly trying to separate himself from the war’s outcome while Trump may be doing the opposite: putting Vance at the center of negotiations precisely so that whatever happens next gets tied to him.
Don flagged the real danger in Vance’s potential leak strategy: if Trump figures out who is talking and alerts the MAGA base, it is political suicide for Vance. The same coalition that made Trump would turn on Vance instantly. The leaking, if that is what it is, is a high-wire act.
What is not speculative is the consequence: whoever owns these negotiations owns the outcome. If talks collapse, that failure will be attached to whoever was in the room. Vance, Witkoff, and Kushner are all heading to Pakistan. Rubio has also already tied himself to defending the war. None of these names are clean heading into 2028.
Don’s framing was right. This administration sent a fast-talking salesman to close a deal that requires actual foreign policy expertise. And the people around Trump who do have some experience have already burned their credibility by going along with a war that his own team privately called farcical before the first bomb dropped.
Bottom Line
The ceasefire is not a stable ceasefire. The Strait of Hormuz is not open. There was no regime change. Iran is more extreme, exerting more leverage, and more dangerous than it was the day before this war started. Trump was warned by his own people, told directly that Netanyahu was overselling, and proceeded anyway. The world is paying for it. The American people are paying for it at the pump, in the instability, and in the memory of a genocide threat that the media moved past too quickly.
Don and I have been tracking the MAGA fracture since the Epstein file debate last summer. What we are seeing now is not just a fracture. It is a collapse in slow motion. The question heading into the midterms and 2028 is not whether the damage from this Iran War is real. It is whether the people who enabled this will be held accountable for it at the ballot box.
If this conversation mattered to you, I hope you consider becoming a paid subscriber to my newsletter and supporting Don Lemon. Independent pro-democracy journalism only works if people back it. You can subscribe and/or upgrade below:
