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On Friday, I was happy to return from a short hiatus for my first cable news appearance since my son was born, and I couldn’t have come back to a better show.
I made my debut on Stephanie Ruhle’s new morning show, Money, Power, Politics on MS NOW. As many of you know, I was a regular on her show The 11th Hour, so it was cool to check out her new setup. Her team has updated the format to span two hours of programming in a new time of day. It’s a truly great show. And as usual, she booked a panel with brilliant people.
I was in studio with MS NOW Business Analyst (and at this point, buddy of mine) Ron Insana and Puck News Journalist Abby Livingston. Semafor Politics Reporter Dave Weigel and Former Ambassador Michael McFaul joined remotely. It was a fast-paced, high-energy panel. I could not have been more grateful to be included. It never gets old.
We covered a lot of ground, so I cut together a clip above with some of the key moments where I contributed.
I talked about what this war is actually costing American households. I called out the grift defining the Trump presidency, and how he is the personification of the K-shaped economy. I broke down why Iran hasn’t been forced to yield despite months of bombing, and why the Strait of Hormuz and the Houthis’ new Red Sea front are proof this war made things worse, not better. And I closed on a moment from a Senate hearing that tied the whole thing together: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who has been lying to the American people since day one of this war, and Senator Jon Ossoff, who wouldn’t let him get away with it. Ossoff was my MVP of the week, and for good reason.
You can watch key moments from the appearance above, read key takeaways below, and check out the first two full segments of the appearance linked at the bottom of this piece from YouTube.
I also just wanted to thank you all for your support! It feels great to be fully back in action. It’s because all of you who like, share, and subscribe to this work that helps get me these opportunities to speak truth on bigger stages. Just wanted to share a note of gratitude.
Ok, now let’s dive in.
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The Throughline Is Simple. Americans Are Paying For This War In Multiple Ways.
Americans don’t need a briefing to understand what’s happening to their wallets. They’re connecting the dots themselves, and the numbers back up what they’re feeling.
The money being wasted on Trump’s Iran War. I laid out that there’s a direct line between the $37.5 billion, and by some upper estimates $100 billion, this war has cost U.S. taxpayers, and the fact that Republicans somehow never found the money to renew the Affordable Care Act’s enhanced subsidies. Americans can see the money being wasted in Iran and not being spent to improve their affordability crises.
You don’t need to read the headlines to see it. You just need to look at the gas pump. I made the point that Americans don’t even have to check the news to know when there’s been a move in the Iran War. Gas prices climbing above four dollars tell the story. Every spike is a signal of a development in the war.
The household math is brutal. Moody’s Analytics puts the cost at $1,100 more spent per household since this war began. I paired that with the Fed’s finding that 37 percent of Americans don’t have $400 in emergency savings. That’s the gap between what this war costs and what people actually have the financial bandwidth to absorb.
Trump is the personification of the K-shaped economy he’s worsening. When the conversation turned to Republican ad spending ahead of the midterms, I made the case that no amount of money buys back a message that doesn’t match how people are living. Trump is grifting billions personally while raising prices on everyone else, and now he’s stacking new tariffs on top of war costs. I said if you asked ChatGPT or Claude to design a policy meant to raise prices, it wouldn’t look much different than what he’s actually doing. Republicans can spend whatever they want, but they can’t gaslight Americans out of their own lived experience. Right now organic Democratic messaging is reaching people more than any paid ad could.
This War Is Like The Movie Groundhog Day, Except The Plot Is War Crimes
Stephanie Ruhle asked me directly what Americans should be bracing for, and my answer was straightforward.
We’re living in the volatility of Trump’s mind. I told her Americans should brace for a continued volatile president, someone whose mind changes direction constantly and drags the country’s foreign policy along with it. This isn’t background noise for the people affected by it. Every reversal, every strike, every cover-up becomes something the country has to absorb in real time, with no indication of when, or whether, the cycle actually breaks.
My Groundhog Day analogy: We’re stuck in the same deadly cycle. Failed ceasefires, strikes, casualty cover-ups, Strait of Hormuz closures, war profiteering, repeat. I told the panel that this is like the movie Groundhog Day, except the plot is war crimes. We’ve been living the same news cycles over and over again.
The cycle doesn’t reset. It compounds. Each ceasefire that fails leaves the region worse positioned than the one before it. Each closure of the Strait tightens the same chokepoint that’s already driving prices at the pump. Nothing about this loop is neutral. It gets more dangerous every time it repeats.
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The Hydra: Why It’s So Hard To Get Iran To Yield
This is where I got into the strategic military miscalculation underneath everything else we discussed, because the economic costs don’t exist in a vacuum. They’re downstream of a war that was ill-advised, ill-conceived, and downright foolish.
Iran’s leadership isn’t built like a target you can decapitate. I explained that a more extreme Iran is the result of this war. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) operates with a decentralized, mosaic leadership structure. Different generals hold different realms of responsibility. There’s no single head to remove and no guarantee that removing one changes the structure underneath it. It only further entrenches an extremist regime.
Trump thought this would look like Venezuela. It didn’t. He believed he could take out Khamenei and get a clean regime-change outcome. Instead, he cut off one head of a Hydra. What’s left is a more extreme Iran, not a defeated one.
The chokepoints multiplied instead of disappearing. Iran now holds the Strait of Hormuz as leverage, and the Houthis have opened a second front in the Red Sea. Neither of those was utilized as pressure points in this way before the war started.
The American people are the ones absorbing the fallout. This is where the throughline closes the loop. A war meant to project strength instead handed adversaries more leverage, and the cost of that miscalculation lands back on the same households already paying more at the pump after losing their ACA subsidies.
My MVP: Ossoff Made Hegseth’s Lie Impossible To Defend
My MVP of the week was Senator Jon Ossoff, and not just for how he handled Secretary Pete Hegseth in a Senate hearing. But also because he got the worst nickname Trump has ever given.
Fourteen days into the war, Hegseth made a claim that hasn’t aged well. He said Iran’s military capability had been so thoroughly destroyed and degraded that it was rendered combat ineffective for years and decades to come. Ossoff went after that claim directly, and it fell apart under questioning.
Stephanie added context. She noted this wasn’t an isolated lie. The administration said Iran’s nuclear capabilities were essentially wiped out over a year ago, and separately claimed Iran was two weeks from a usable nuclear weapon before this year’s strikes even began. They can’t keep their lies straight.
I said it plainly: nearly every word out of their mouths has been a lie. Not just on the nuclear front. On military capability, on missile stockpiles, the administration has consistently claimed more damage than the facts support.
David Rohde’s reporting backs up exactly what I said. His reporting showed Iran retained 70 percent of its missile launchers before the ceasefire and held access to 30 of the 33 missile sites along the Strait of Hormuz.
And then there’s the nickname. Ossoff earned the worst nickname Trump has ever produced, and Trump didn’t even land it. He called him “Pinky Herman.” We all laughed about it on the panel. He meant Pee-wee, but let’s be real. Nobody looking at Ossoff thinks Pee-wee. This will never land.
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Bottom Line
This war has cost the country a lot. It cost us economically, in taxpayer dollars, in affordability programs that aren’t being funded, and in household budgets that are $1,100 thinner than they were before the first strike. And it cost us strategically, because the administration sold a clean outcome and delivered a more dangerous one, an Iranian Hydra with more chokepoints than before, defended by a Pentagon that has been lying about the results since day one.
Senator Jon Ossoff helped expose the gap between the Trump Administration’s claims and reality of this war. That gap is the story right now, and Republicans can't spend their way out of it. The midterms are coming, and voters are going to make themselves heard loud and clear.
A short highlight reel of all my major contributions to the conversation is at the top of this post. If you want to dive deeper, here are the first two full segment blocks. MS NOW posted them on YouTube, including one with a title that used my Groundhog Day analogy. Check them out:
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