Foreign. Washington the war against Iran now hitting the one week mark as the administration faces mounting questions about its true military objectives, its claims about civilian casualties and its response to soaring energy prices. This morning, President Trump appeared to move the goalpost when it comes to the US Mission in a post on social media calling for Iran's, quote, unconditional surrender. Today, White House press Secretary Caroline Lovett was asked what the president meant by unconditional surrender.
Here's what she said. What the president means is that when he, as commander in chief of the US Armed forces determines that Iran no longer poses a threat to the United States of America and the goals of Operation Apothecary has been fully realized, then Iran will essentially be in a place of unconditional surrender. Whether they say it themselves or not, it comes as gas and oil prices are skyrocketing at the pump. The average price per gallon is up 34 cents since the war started last week.
And U.S. crude oil settled today at more than $90 per barrel, rising 35% just this week. That is the biggest weekly gain ever recorded going all the way back to the inception of the crude oil contract back in March of 1983. Today, White House press secretary also addressing concerns of runaway energy prices.
Let me just walk you through the president's thinking on this. We have to focus on the short term and the temporary goals of Operation Epic Fury to obliterate the Iranian regime will be a very good thing for the energy and oil markets and for oil prices across the globe in the long term when you no longer have a terrorist regime that is restricting the free flow of energy through the Strait of Hormuz into the rest of the world. And we're also learning new details about the strike on an elementary school in southern Iran on the first day of this war. Iranian officials say more than 160 people were killed in that strike.
The Pentagon says it is investigating whether it was a U.S. strike that hit that school. But two U.S. officials tell NBC News during closed door briefings, administration officials told lawmakers the U.S.
was operating in a section of Iran where the school was struck. Joining me now is NBC News senior business correspondent Christine Romans, NBC News White House correspondent Monica Alba and NBC News correspondent Danielle Hammamjan is in Beirut. Christine, I have to start with you and some of these stunning figures that we've been following. Let's talk about gas and oil prices first.
Is there a ceiling when it comes to oil prices? Well, look, we had a record high back in 2008. I think of $140 a barrel. And you saw after the war began in Ukraine, when Russia invaded Ukraine, you saw a spike in oil prices then, I guess depend on how long, quite frankly, this, this conflict lasts in Iran and how wide it spreads, to be honest.
Well, Christine, I guess the question a lot of people have, because they seem to spike pretty quickly, does it take longer for them to come down or they come down just as quickly? President Trump continues to insist, look, yes, they've blown up, but they're gonna come back down. Yeah. And really what you're hearing from White House officials is patience, that the aim of this particular mission in Iran is really important.
That longer term, that would mean on lower oil prices. Look, we've seen this many, many times. It's just the nature of the beast. Prices tend to go up much more quickly than they come down.
That has happened. It's been studied. You know, it's one of those economic studies when you go to business school, you learn about. And we've seen just this week has been such a dramatic, just such a dramatic rise.
And you talk to people who are trying to fill up their gas tanks. It's noticeable right away, especially if you run a small business or you drive your car for your job. So that is front of mine. And I'll also say this has been something the White House for months has been pointing to as a reason why you should trust Trump economic policies.
Because inflation was defeated. That's the way the White House put it. And gas was a really good example of that. And now it is reversed.
Well, and I keep going back to that fact, or seeing President Trump continue to talk about gas prices, it would almost be one of the first data points he would mention when you talk to him about the economy. Put this into broader context, if you will. We know that affordability is the number one issue for voters. We're in a midterm election season.
How important are gas prices to a presidency? I know that President Biden's chief of staff check them every single morning. Look, because this is a real economic factor for people. You fill up maybe every week.
And so it's something you've noticed, even if it maybe doesn't affect your family budget, it does affect the psychology of the household. But I will say bank of America had some fascinating studies or research today where they said that, you know, it had been sticky inflation on food, sticky, meaning it was just not getting any better on food that people were really unhappy about. The falling gas prices allowed them to continue spending as a household. Right.
They were able to make up the grocery bill by the falling gas prices and that benefit has just disappeared in a matter of days. And so that will be very closely watched for what it means for consumers. So they start to pull back on spending and does it hurt the rest of the economy more broadly? The other real field data point the jobs market.
We got that anemic jobs report today and the previous jobs numbers were revised downward. What are the implications of those figures, Christine? Look, it's a dramatic downshift. I mean, you had only 116,000 jobs created last year because now we've had these new revisions for December.
And then you have this week, week, February, that number right there, that 126. I think that was actually even revised down a little bit too. No, that was 1.6. Yeah, exactly, 126.
So you've got all these sort of revisions and downshifts and frankly it tells that there's a no hire, no fire job market, maybe slightly more firing in February. And that is a real change from the prior year. We had almost a million and a half jobs created. A few things here, tariffs, mass deportations, and now a new headwind which is higher energy costs.
Will there be some sort of an energy shock from a war in Iran? Tbd. All right. Well, I know you're going to watch it very closely.
Christine Romans, thank you for starting us off on this Friday. Really appreciate it. Let's head over to Monica Alba at the White House. Take us inside your conversations.
Monica, how concerned is the administration about these rising gas prices and are they scrambling to try to come up with a plan to address them? They are tracking it very, very closely, Kristen, and they did have a couple of meetings on that exact issue this week. We know, according to Secretary Rubio, this is one of those things that they said going into making the decision. They knew this was going to be a big factor.
And that's why the energy secretary, the treasury secretary and others have been trying to work on some possible plans to mitigate the oil prices. But as you just been discussing, there really isn't anything they can do to flip the switch or help in the immediate. And it's the president who is making that crystal clear, saying, yeah, you're probably gonna see these go up. You're see the gas pump prices go up a little bit and then hopefully they'll come down.
He's talking about that in a very matter of fact way that you and I both know could become a huge issue and liability for this White House because it is something that they are constantly touting. So I do think this week as they turn a little bit more from the obvious overseas implications and the operational updates, there's a way more concentrated focus now on the domestic impact of all of this. And I do think you have the White House actively discussing, discussing additional plans, additional ways in which they could address this, other plans that they could come out and try to tell the American people about that they are still considering but haven't decided to fully act on yet. Yeah.
And Monica, we know that all this comes as the president has some key meetings coming up with defense executives as well as his secretary of defense. Walk us through your understanding of the agenda in those meetings, Mom. Yeah, and the president just actually put out a pretty lengthy readout about the meeting saying that it was a successful meeting, that these defense contractors and the largest defense contractors in the world have agreed to quadruple their production of the exquisite class weaponry that he is saying and has argued for days the United States has enough of to potentially carry on conflicts like the one in Iran forever. But at the same time, they say, and the White House is trying to argue this meeting was scheduled weeks ago.
They say they need to ramp up that production for potential future other conflicts or because the stockpile eventually could be depleted enough, there would need to be additional munitions. So the president is announcing that these defense contractors are going to meet again in two months. They will return to the White House to provide an update to the president. And according to the White House, they say that there are going to be additional plants that need to be built.
And so now you have different cities. He says they're bidding on the potential contracts for that. So it does seem like this is a moment where the White House is trying to say, well, don't worry, don't panic. We have enough munitions, we have enough weapons.
But at the same time, on the other hand, we want more. We always want to be building that up. And so that is a big focus of the administration today and going into the next couple of weeks as this conflict stretches on. Monica, I wonder how much of a focus the messaging of this is.
You have different administration officials and Republicans saying different things. Is this a war? Is this not a war? Is it a conflict?
Is there a strategy to explain what is actually happening to the American people in the coming days? Yeah, and it's a great question because we've kind of seen the president in fix and starts on this. He had those pre recorded videos that he did for Mar A Lago. Then he offered some remarks.
It does seem like every event Even if it's not focused specifically on the conflict in Iran, the president opens it by giving some kind of an update. Yesterday he was honoring the Inter Miami soccer team for their MLS championship and he did decide to talk about Iran for the first six minutes or so. So today he has another sports roundtable. It's possible he will do the same.
But almost every single time that the president talks about it, more questions are raised about the end game, about what could the administration actually mean when they say that this isn't about regime change, but they definitely want to see the regime change and they have ideas about which leaders they would like to see potentially lead Iran. But they haven't necessarily detailed some of those specifics. And so I do think this is a week where just a couple of days ago you had totally contradictory messaging from the secretary of State to the president going back and forth in a matter of hours. I think the White House is aware of that and they're trying to do a little bit more to make the message a bit clearer.
But again, every time that the president does take questions on this or talks about this, he's sometimes introducing competing narratives and ideas that then the White House still needs to explain. And I don't see that change anytime soon. All right, Monica Alba at the White House. Thank you so much, Monica, for a great reporting.
As always, we appreciate it. Danielle, let me turn to you. You're in Beirut where Israel has launched a wave of attacks. Walk us through the past 24 hours, how things develop there.
Yeah, well, you know, the it all really is focused on one suburb of Beirut called Dahia. Christ. And that suburb is behind me over the bay over there. And that is where Hezbollah has has a stronghold.
Hezbollah stronghold. And there have been strikes all week. But yesterday came an evacuation order that in the past, you know, was directed at one building or two buildings or block. But this was for entire neighborhoods affecting hundreds of thousands of people.
You could really feel the absolute panic in the air because in the past when these evacuation orders have been posted, you know, the strikes have either come within 15 minutes or three hours. So people ended up grabbing whatever they could, the clothes on their back, and fled as quickly as they could. There was gridlock, traffic. And here we are today, 24 hours.
There was intense strikes over the night throughout the day. It's been relatively quiet here for the past few hours. But I can tell you, throughout the city now, there are people in makeshift camps along the promenade, on the beach, in parking lots. And you've got the UN now raising the alarm saying that when it comes to international humanitarian law, where the issue of forced transfer is concerned, there are some fears that those laws could have been violated.
Well, how we'll be watching what Israel's been doing very closely. Israel's been intensifying as you just laid out its assault on Lebanon. What are the actual goals? Do you have a sense of that?
I mean, ultimately for Israel, this is about disarming Hezbollah. And then we get into the weeds of domestic politics here. Earlier this week, the Lebanese government banned Hezbollah military activities. It is still a political group, but it banned its military activities.
How that's going to be enforced is the big question I've asked people. Sort of it's met with a smile because they think it's absolutely unrealistic. How are you going to enforce that? But meanwhile this week, Israel says it has struck 500 targets.
It's now amassed tanks along the border with Lebanon in the south. Hezbollah has told people in Israel along the border that they have to evacuate. And they say they're engaged in direct combat with Israeli troops. There is no sign whatsoever, Kristen, that this is de escalating.
And what officials have said today is that they now have 500 million, 500,000 people, half a million people displaced in a tiny country of 6 million people. That is a big chunk of the population. They're now preparing for stadiums to take in thousands and thousands of refugees. This is a country that is painfully familiar with war and they fear they just got dragged into a new one that could last long after, no matter what actually happens in the rest of the Middle east, specifically in Iran.
While your reporting just underscores all of the concerns about a widening war in the region? Danielle, please stay safe, Danielle Hamjin, and be root for us. Thank you so much. We appreciate it.
And coming up, what is next for the war in Iran? In every wave of strikes across the region. And new details indicating the US Was potentially responsible for a deadly strike on an elementary school in Iran. Plus extremely disturbing accusations.
The Justice Department publishes documents that were missing from the Epstein files, which include allegations from a woman who says she was sexually assaulted by Donald Trump in the 1980s when she was just a teenager. He denies those charges. You watching the press now? Welcome back to War with Iran continues to escalate as more countries in the region get caught in the middle of the military conflict.
The Pentagon saying Iran has attacked 12 different countries throughout the Middle east and the Iranian regime is deliberately targeting civilians. It comes as we're also learning that the midst of this war, Russia is now providing Iran with intelligence about the location of US Forces in the Middle east that could help Tehran locate American warships, radar or other communication systems. Joining me now is senior national security correspondent Courtney Kubi and the former commander of U.S. central Command retired force, our General Joseph Hotel.
He's now a distinguished military fellow at the Middle East Institute. Thanks to both of you for being here. Courtney, let me start with you. So one of the big developments today is President Trump's post on social media.
He called for a, quote, unconditional surrender from Iran. Can you walk us through what that would look like from an operational stand? But militarily, what does that mean? So where they are militarily right now is they have taken out most if not all of their defenses, which means they open up the space for manned aircraft to move.
And we've already seen that. We've seen over the last several, three days or now. So now B1, B2 bombers going in, dropping enormous bombs. They're taking out these big underground bunkers with missile systems, vertical silos, all that they are.
If you look at the map of Iran, the US Is sort of taking the west and the south and they're starting to move inward slowly. If in fact there were some kind of unconditional surrender, the question is, would that mean that the US Would stop those efforts to continue to take out the Navy, the ballistic missile system, and then we could talk about this. But they have not yet touched the nuclear program as part of these strikes. So would they that mean that the US Would actually take a military action against the nuclear program as part of this current conflict?
Interesting. And Courtney, one of the other big headlines today was this idea that Russia is giving Iran intelligence information. Caroline, a little bit of a G reaction on the other side. Whether or not this happened, frankly, it does not really matter because President Trump and the United States military are absolutely decimating the rogue Iranian terrorist regime.
It doesn't matter what a statement. I mean, this is. President Trump's trying to get Russia to end the war in Ukraine and now this. Yeah, I mean that's a lot of bravado especially.
Look, Iranians capabilities have been decreased, right? We have not. They've taken out a lot of the Yosefs and a lot of their launchers. They've cut their ability to fire ballistic missiles, but they have not taken them out.
We just saw a pretty significant attack against Bahrain where they used drones to attack civilian infrastructure in Bahrain. So they're not down and out right now. So using that kind of language and sort of bravado doesn't really make sense right now. The reality of what officials are telling us is that Russia has provided Iran with some information, most likely its satellite information.
Some of it could even be available in an open source capacity. It's not clear that Iran is using it for actual targeting of US Ships and things. But it's more of the symbolism, the fact that Russia is supporting Iran in this endeavor. That's why the matters here.
We have no indication that it's actually an attackable impact on the battlefield yet. But the fact they're supporting that is important. The implications are hugely significant. The White House is also telling the fact they say Iran's retaliatory ballistic missile strikes are down 90%.
What's the reality check there and the implications of that? Court Iran has, they've lost all their capabilities but they are still not down and out and they are still attacking areas other countries in the region. Okay Courtney qb I know you have been going on stop. Thank you so much for being with us.
Really appreciate it. Great to see you. General Hotel thank you for being here. I want to get your take on president posting today that the goal is Iran's unconditional surrender.
From a military perspective, do you think that that's a realistic goal? Thanks. It's good to be with you. I mean I think certainly it's the president and the administration will probably at some point define exactly what that means.
But I think when you look at what the military is doing, what our military is doing in conjunction with the Israelis right now, they're doing just about everything that can, that can contribute to that from a military standpoint. As Admiral Cooper has highlighted, our real focus is on dismantling all of the military capabilities that Iran has so they can't project them beyond their, beyond their own borders. And as Courtney pointed out, that we've had a spectacular success against that from a military standpoint. I think, you know, when we talk about war termination conditions here, the military can do a lot to create the conditions for that.
But you know, the other elements of power have to, of national power have to come in and contribute to this as that includes our diplomatic element of power, informational element of power, economic element of power. And that's I think what ultimately will, you know, hopefully compel Iran to communicate a change in their policy behavior that can certainly be interpreted as wanting to end the conflict. General Votel, what do you make of the fact that the president is not taking the possibility of boots on the ground off the table? In other words, he says look, nothing's imminent but at the same time, he hasn't said that it's an absolute red line for him.
I think what he's trying to do is he's trying to create the maximum amount of pressure on the remnants of the Iranian regime here. They are certainly taking a significant pounding right now from the air, from our maritime resources. And I think the president and the secretary are just signaling that nothing's off the table here. We are going to do what we need to do until you communicate a change in your policy and direction.
You know, it's interesting because there has been criticism from the left, from some on the right who say, look, President Trump vowed to get out of this war or endless wars. Defense Secretary Pete Hex has said this is not Iraq, this is not an endless war. What do you make of that debate? Is it possible to say that, given that it's not clear how this war is going to end yet?
Well, I think what, I think what the secretary, and certainly with the chairman in his discussions the other day, are really trying to keep us focused on very specific military objectives that we're trying to achieve. And that's a big part of it. Of course, when you enter into a conflict like this, in the war like this, the enemy always has a vote. And so, you know, what we have to contend with is how Iran is responding to this.
I think what we've seen is they've been really doing two big things. One, they're trying to expand this geographically, as you pointed out, 12 different countries. But I think they're also focused on trying to expand this in time that has dragged this out over as long a period of time. They have an appreciation for what time means for us and protracted conflicts or something we don't want to be engaged in.
And so what I think is imperative right now for the US Military conjunction with Israelis is to continue to really push hard on this and to take away the ability for Iran to respond, to use some of their, some of their capabilities for retaliation. I think that's, I think that's a lot of what we're seeing right now. And by doing that, I think we can, we can, the military can contribute to trying to keep this up. Conflict that, you know, can be, that can be ended in a reasonable amount of time to accomplish our objectives.
General vote, what do you make of the velocity of the US Military strikes in Iran? They come amid concerns that that could diminish the U.S. stockpile that ensures military readiness elsewhere. Yeah, I mean, I think this has always been sort of in every military operation I've been involved in.
There's some of them, lengthy discussions about our, you know, required supply rates and supply rates, other things, how we're going to. How we're going to expand and resupply ourselves. So, yeah, I think this is, this is a reasonable concern. I'm sure that our military professionals are paying very, very close attention to this, make sure we have the means in theater for Admiral Cooper and forces to do what they need.
And as you point out, I mean, the implications may not necessarily be seen in the Middle east right now, but they will be seen in how these, the expenditure of this munitions affects our ability to respond or to maintain our readiness of. Prepared for other contingencies down the line. So it's important. I mean, this has always been a challenge for us, you know, making sure we have deep magazines.
And so I suspect it will, going forward. I don't necessarily think it will have an impact, at least in the very short term, the next days and maybe weeks of the campaign, but certainly for prolonged conflict, it could be a problem. I do want to get your reactions finally to this strike on a school in Iran. Iranian officials say it killed more than 160 people.
The defense Department says it is investigating the incident, apparently behind closed doors. Administration officials did tell lawmakers the U.S. was operating in that area. Walk us through how the Pentagon identifies potential targets and the implications of this.
Well, certainly, I mean, these are the really unfortunate aspects of contracts like this. But, you know, when selecting targets, you know, the military will use the very best intelligence that it has, and we'll go through a weapon area in the targeting process to try to identify. We use cooperating forms of intelligence to help raise our confidence that the things that we are going after are the targets that we need to. That we need to strike.
The unfortunate aspect is that sometimes we do get alongside. Sometimes we do make mistakes. Sometimes, you know, we. We make.
We make some, you know, misassessments on the course of doing these kinds of things. So it does happen. What I would emphasize to you is that mitigation of civilian harm on the battlefield is always a concern for military commanders. It has been in the past, and we'll be going forward.
We try to do everything we can to mitigate it right now. You know, we'll do everything we can to investigate this. It's difficult to investigate this. We certainly rely on our targeting information.
We don't have people on the ground. We can't talk to people. We can't gather information right there. So I think that's going to delay our process in terms of trying to reach some kind of conclusion about this particular unfortunate incident.
All right, General Hotel, thank you so much for joining us for your expertise today. We really appreciate it. Good to be with you. Thank you.
Good to have you here. Coming up next, Democrats and Chris firing from DHS is not enough to end the partial government shutdown as a battle of Republican Congressman Tony Gonzalez officially drops his bid for re election. Keep it right here on MEET the PRESS now. Welcome back.
Turning now to a major development in the Epstein files. The Justice Department has now published previously unreleased documents that contain disturbing allegations from a woman who says she was sexually assaulted by President Trump in the early 1980s when she was between the ages of 13 and 15. I do want to warn viewers that what we're about to talk about might be difficult Content for some people, the documents include summaries of four FBI interviews from 2019 with a woman who at the time told the FBI Jeffrey Epstein, quote, drove her and or flew her to either New York or New Jersey to a, quote, very tall building with huge rooms where she she said Mr. Trump asked her, a teenager at the time, to perform a sex act, and when she fought back, he hit her.
The woman says she met Jeffrey Epstein in Hilton Head, South Carolina, when she was about 13 years old, after her mother had posted ads offering up babysitting services. She alleges she was sexually abused by Jeffrey Epstein on a number of occasions as a young teenager. Now, it is important to note that these documents, known as FBI 302s, are unverified summaries of her allegations and contain no assessment of the credibility of the allegations. But it is notable that the FBI did speak to her four times.
The FBI documents say the woman initially contacted federal law enforcement shortly after Epstein was arrested and charged with sex trafficking of minors on July 6th of 2019, with the women's interviews taking place between July and October of that year. Epstein died in a Manhattan jail in August. President Trump has not been accused by authorities of any crimes, and he has denied all wrongdoing tied to Epstein. In the last published summary In October of 2019, the woman is described as having hesitations about having further conversations with the FBI, and it's unclear if the FBI had any more contact with her.
Now, in the interviews, the woman says she and her mother endured years of blackmail, threats and legal entanglements. She did not name individuals, but said they stemmed from her association with Jeffrey Epstein. The White House has responded to the statement saying in part, quote, these are completely baseless accusations backed by zero credible evidence from a sadly disturbed woman who has an extensive criminal history. Because the woman's name is redacted in the files, we are unable to verify her identity.
And there's no evidence included in the FBI interviews to suggest the White House's characterization of the woman. NBC News senior justice reporter Ryan Reilly joins me now. So Ryan, first of all, thank you for being here. I want to take a step back a little bit, talk about why these documents were released now not as a part of the original release.
Yeah, they were originally labeled as duplicative documents but it turns out that they were never released. So that was a label that shouldn't have been affixed to them. But I think, you know, generally what we should note about these is there was a lot of allegations that flooded into the FBI through their tip line and a lot of them you could sort of read off the bat as just not credible or not really. You could just sort of dismiss them out of hence based on the content of those tips alone.
Some people didn't even want to give their name or that sort of thing. You know, these allegations. I think one important thing that in all that great context you to state is that there also is not really an allegation of Epstein ever being connected to Hilton Head, South Carolina. That's not someone who's known to stayed in the 1980s.
And you know, the White House points to that information about that criminal record is also relevant to this discussion. So it's a really delicate and tricky issue to get into. But that's sort of the White House response to Governor it certainly is. Look, this comes as the Republican led House over committee has actually voted to subpoena US Attorney General Pam Bondi for testimony about her role in the release of the Epstein files.
Talk about where you see this going. Yeah, they really want to know about what this process was like, why this was missed. They want to get into some of those details about the handling of those documents themselves and really get in on that on that matter. I think on the Justice Department side what you're going to hear is push back about just the extensive.
You're talking about millions of documents, so many documents they had to deal with here. They had hundreds of lawyers dedicated to this effort and so they really did say, you know, this took a lot longer than they were expecting or that they in their view could have reasonably been expected to complete this matter in. But you know, I think that's the pushback that you're going to see from the Justice Department on a lot of this and just looking forward in terms of this latest release, Ryan, could there be more unexpected releases? There could be these documents that were released.
We were able to identify and knew they were missing because we looked at some of those reference points. Right. And so you could tell that, oh, there's these missing numbers here, there's missing pages here. And so that's sort of how this ended up getting pushed out and finding that.
But there's a lot of instances where they've had to go back and redact information that was improperly released. And I think that's sort of the threat of this very unusual circumstance where they're releasing raw investigative files is normally information that would have been deemed uncredible to begin with or would have been out there. And it just creates a lot of possibility for speculation. So it's really important to go to trusted and verified news organizations that are really vetting through this information rather than, you know, social media speculation on any of this.
All right, Ryan Reilly, thank you so much. We really appreciate your bringing us your reporting on all of that. Appreciate it. We do want to turn to Capitol Hill now after the outsource of Christy Noem is the head of Department of Homeland Security.
Democrats say they will continue to demand reforms to the department and they're preparing to launch investigations into some of the secretary's actions. I think taking her out is first step, but you know, we need to keep reorganizing and overhauling the whole thing. At this point, she should be held account for the corruption that she has shown with contracting in the way that this issue should be held to account for violation of court orders, should be held accountable, frankly, constitutional rights of America. Joining me now is senior national political reporter Sahil Kapoor.
Sahil, thanks so much for being here. So Democrats, it seems like initially are saying Kristi Noem's ouster is not enough for them to drop their demands that there be changes to ICE and the president's deportation policies. Yeah, absolutely. And they believe that Christine Owens transgressions here rise to level something more than just her being fired.
And impressive suggested things like investigating her for perjury on allegations of lying to Congress. One Democratic congresswoman says she'd still be impeached if only to be barred from running for office in the future. There are others, one investigating for allegations of corruption regarding DHS contract on her watch and for default court orders. My word of caution on all this is Democrats are saying this now while anger at her is at an all time high.
You know, within their ranks, the soonest they could actually do a serious investigation. Would be 10 months from now. If they win, are they still going to feel this way? 10 months if they allow the administration targets to investigate, or is Christina going to be a distant memory?
I think time will probably answer to that, not to the other point. This doesn't change anything. A couple of Democrats on the DHS funding matter, Chuck Schumer, the top Democrats who've been informing the filibuster on this, says it's entirely different. It's apples and oranges.
Schumer said the problem here is policy, not personnel, that firing one official isn't gonna be enough. And as far as Schumer is concerned, they want to, quote, end the violence and rain and ice. That means paper is gonna be continue to continually traded back and forth between the White House and Democrats until they can find a legislative solution to the DHS demands that Democrats have. All right, let me ask you about another big headline on Capitol Hill.
Congressman Tony Gonzalez announcing he's not going to run for reelection. After acknowledging that yes he did in have an affair with a staffer who tragically went on to die by suicide. He said that the affair was a mistake. He has agreed now to drop out of his bid for re election, but he's going to stay in the House.
So this speaks to a, not everyone is immune from political scandal in this environment and B, the fact that the margins in the House are incredibly narrow. Absolutely, Kristen. So this is the crucial point you just mentioned. He's dropping his reelection bid.
He was forced into a runoff with another congressman, Brandon Herrera, who's now going to be the de facto Republican nominees. Since when? His House is dropping out. But he's going to remain a congressman, he says for the next 10 months.
And House Republican leadership that pressure him to drop his re election day. They did not pressure him to resign. They want that vote. The House majority is way for thin 2018 to 214.
Right now they believe he's not fit to run for reelection, but they are not taking an issue with him being a voting member of Congress for another 10 months. And of course, the Ethics Committee is investigating him as well. He's got a lot on him plate. All right.
Well, we'll watch it all unfold. Sahil, thank you so much. Really appreciate it. Still to come, former presidents, business executives, religious leaders and many more all descended on Chicago for the funeral of Jesse Jackson.
I'll look at today's tributes remembering the civil rights icon. That's coming up after the break. You're watching me the press now. Welcome back.
In Chicago today, family, friends, former presidents and thousands more gather for the people's celebration to say goodbye to the late Reverend Jesse Jackson. The civil rights leader died earlier this month at the age of 84. Among those paying tribute, three former presidents, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and Joe Biden, along with former Vice President Kamala Harris, civil rights leader Al Sharpton, and NBA legend Isaiah Thomas. And many war former President Barack Obama, just one of many who delivered rousing speeches.
Listen, Jesse didn't just speak to black folks. He spoke to white folks and Latinos and Asian Americans and the first Americans. He spoke to family farmers and environmentalists. He spoke to gay rights activists when nobody was talking to gay rights activists and blue collar workers.
And he gave them the same message, that they mattered, that their voices and their votes counted. Because of Jesse, the Democratic Party changed its rules, ending the winner take all distribution of delegates during presidential primaries, which meant underdogs and outsiders like Bill Clinton or Bernie Sanders could stay competitive and build momentum instead of getting knocked the out of early. And it was because of that path that he had laid, because of his courage, his audacity, that two decades later, a young black senator from Chicago south side will even be taken seriously as a candidate for the presidential nomination. Today's funeral caps two weeks of memorials for Reverend Jesse Jackson.
Welcome back. As we noted earlier, US crude oil prices just settled at more than $90 a barrel, a 35% increase for the week. That's the single largest week game ever recorded, a spike that threatens to undermine the White House's messaging on energy and affordability. Joining me now is today's big panel, Nicholas Wu, congressional reporter for Semaphore Elise Labett, author of Cosmopolitics on Substack Megan Hayes, Democratic strategist and former special assistant to President Biden and Stephen Hayes, editor and CEO of the Dispatch and an NBC News contributor.
No relation here. Thank you all for being here. Elise, let me start with you. Lay out the stakes of this moment.
Here we are more than a week into this war with Iran and oil prices are spiking. The president says, okay, they're up, they're going to come back down. What are the stakes of this moment? Well, I mean, the stakes are enormous, not just for the US but really for the region and for the global economy.
I mean, when we see these oil prices, originally when the war started, you know, they were kind of lukewarm about the oil markets. But now you see, and people are saying that this could drag on for several weeks. The strait of Hormuz is effectively closed. And, you know, this is, you know, this whole issue of affordability is really not going to be good for the president in terms of the oil prices.
I mean, oil is right now, I think at $85 a barrel, they're talking that it could go to over $100 a barrel. And when you look at what Iran's retaliation is across the entire region, these are oil producing states, they haven't gone after the oil refineries yet. But the longer this drags on, unless you really destroy Iran's missile capability and the missile launchers, it could really do a lot of damage. And oil prices could be, you know, I saw one analyst say, like, crazy bad.
Well, I'm glad you brought the issue affordability, because that quite frankly, is the number. We're in a midterm election season. Nicholas, let me play you what Carolina had to say and get your reaction on the other side. Take a look.
We have to focus on the short term. And the temporary goals of Operation Epic Fury to obliterate the Iranian regime will be a very good thing for the energy and oil markets and for oil prices across the globe in the long term, when you no longer have a terrorist regime that is restricting the free flow of energy through the Strait of Hormuz and to the rest of the world. We should know. We did play that a little bit earlier on the show, Nicholas.
But talk about the messaging that is coming out of the White House on this. The White House is trying to say that this is, you know, limited operation. They'll wrap it up soon. We found kind of a conflicting timetable from president and even what the goals of the overall military operation are.
And professional Republicans I've talked to have expressed some concerns that the longer this goes on, the more this could overtake their domestic messaging. More memory. Republican leaders already talking about trying to do another mega bill. But, you know, this is something that could very much distract from that.
Stephen, what about that argument that this could potentially distract from the messaging of affordability, distract from the economic message that the White House and quite frankly, Republicans want the White House to be focused on? Yeah. One of the strongest as least point out one of the strongest arguments the President had on the affordability question. One of the places he could point was gas prices.
Gas prices have, I mean, first of all, we see it every time we fill up and they have a disproportionate sort of downstream effect on other parts of the economy. So the president was in position for why, where he was able to say, look, Gas prices are lower. Gas beef might be up there might be gross rates might be a little bit higher or the same. I have not brought down prices the way I thought, but gas is low.
He always pointed to gas, always pointed out the economy every time he did that. And then I think if you look at every war game that's ever been done in Iran, expect a short term price spike. So we shouldn't be surprised at what we're seeing now. I think the real question is what can the president, what can the White House do to leverage reducing prices from suppliers?
We've seen them take a step, I think a controversial one given the news that Russia is helping Iran targeting, which you talked about with Courtney earlier, to lift sanctions on India so that they can buy more oil from Russia. That's a boon to Russia. I mean, that is helpful to Russia in a way that I think is problematic for the United States. Megan, how do you see Democrats messaging on this again in this midterm election year?
Do you have the supreme Leader that was taken out the argument that without the supreme leader in charge, yes, there is a leadership vacuum right now. But does that make the world safer? Should Democrats be focused on this war or should they stay laser focused on the affordability issue? People in America do not care what's going on abroad.
They can't afford groceries, they can't afford gas. You're hiding this spring break, you're hiding in summer where people want to take road trips with their families. They're not going to be able to do that. So the cost of gas is, once you spike, as we just noticed, it's going up 35%.
I think they interest that. They'll feel that immediately when the gas starts to come down. They won't feel that immediately. It doesn't work that way.
And like you said, other things are going to be impacted. So goods coming across now are going to be on top of tariffs, are going to cost more because fuels are going to cost more, jet fuels and cost more. So this can show immediate impact. Democrats would be smart to stay lazer focused on the economy and affordability.
All three midterms. Elise, this comes as the president posted today about an unconditional surrender. Those are the only terms under which he would accept a deal with Iran. Is that even realistic?
What does it suggest about what the length of this conflict could be? Well, it just shows a fundamental lack of understanding about Iran. The whole raison d' etre of this revolutionary system is defiance against the United States. They will shoot themselves and they will kill their own regime before they will surrender to the United States.
Now you might find that there's some face saving agreement at the end of this that allows Iran to still stand, but they would never consider a total surrender. And so for the president to say I want a total surrender, I'm going to pick the next supreme leader, it just shows not only a fundamental lack of understanding but also kind of self defeating to what he wants to accomplish, I think. Let's talk about Kristi Noem. That was the other big news this week.
Nicholas, what do you make of her ouster? And the Democrats are saying that they're not dropping their funding battle over her ouster. They still want to see changes to ice. This partial government shutdown is going to drag out.
Political pressure had already been building on the Hill for some time against nomen. We saw this in that kind of contentious hearing the other day where Eagles Republican senators were asking some very hard questions of her about contracts that DHS was building out. And so, you know, I think there are a lot of Republicans available who breathe the sigh of relief when true social posts came out. And Mark will probably have a pretty easy path to confirmation among his Senate colleagues.
But among Democrats I've talked to, you know, they say, they say even like an ex secretary gnome and the conduct of DHS and her watch is going to be fair game for them. Yeah, just super quickly. I mean first of all, I talked to a lawmaker last night that said it's hard to be a downgrade with Mark Wave Mullen, but at the same time, you know, Meghan talks about keeping it on domestic issues. A possible war, terrorism, Iran, possible cyber attacks.
I mean, I really think right now Democrats want to be careful about not funding DHS because securing the homeland is really one of the most important things right now. Megan, that's where this debate is going to go. Republicans are saying, okay, we've given you Kristi Noem now fund DHS for the exact reasons Elise is laying out. What do you make of that?
Could that backfire against Democrats if they don't? Yeah, I think Democratic need to be right here for anything I do. I don't actually think that's a big policy change. We all honestly even know the policy.
So I don't actually think that the policy changes more of show, a side show. But I do think they'll probably get one or two other things, probably face master warrants or body cameras that don't get they'll open back up. We cannot be in a position, Democrats cannot be in a position. If something dysfunctional happen here on the homeland, to be the one that did not find dhs, I think that's a Democrat to play that very hard.
Stephen, how do you see all of this playing out and the confirmation process of Mark Wain Mullen? What do you think he may bring to DHS that Kristi Noem did not? Well, you know, one hopes that he's not a walking scandal the way that she was. I mean, I think she was ineffective from the beginning.
As Nicholas pointed out, Republicans were frustrated with her. Not just over the past couple weeks, but really almost since the beginning. They don't like to answer for. They want to answer those questions.
They know Mark Wayne Mullen. I think they'll be reasonably happy with him. He's not, I would say, the best public face, necessarily. He doesn't.
He's not glib. He doesn't often do a good job explaining policy positions that he himself takes, much less explaining positions that the president takes. But I think it'll be sort of relief that Republicans don't have to apologize for. Christina, you see him getting confirmed.
I do. Without much of a fight. You know, zooming out, at least what's notable about this, compare this moment to the first Trump administration. This is the first ouster of a Cabinet official during the first Trump administration.
Talk a little bit about that. And particularly as you have a president who's now a wartime president, what are the implications, do you think? I think, you know, as Steve said, I think it'll just be a relief for everybody to kind of get on with the job at dhs. I think, you know, this president, it's really not about competence, it's about fealty.
And, you know, you could probably get anything you want for this president if you just kind of give him what he wants, which is that fealty. I mean, look, this is a war time. I don't think Pete Hegseth is the most, you know, he doesn't have. I would say Marco Rubio is a serious person.
You know, Pete Hegseth not so much in this moment. When you see what's happening with these videos and the way he's talking about the war and the kind of lack of serious. I mean, you know, what we've said is there's nothing more serious than sending your troops and a country at war. And I think a little bit more leveling with the US People, a little bit more seriousness of this moment, I think is called for, not just on the economics, but on the risks and the consequences and how long it could go on.
Nicholas, we only have about 10 or 20 seconds left. Does the president need to be communicating even more with the American people right now, both on the war in the economy? One thing I'll be watching for is his march for the weekend. He'll be there for taking my transfer.
And then on Monday, he'll be addressing House Republicans. And this will be an opportunity for him to address his names, both to marry people and to his congressional eyes. All right, thanks, guys. Great conversation.
Elise, Nicholas, Meghan and Stephen, thank you all. We'll be back Monday with War MEET THE PRESS Now. And if it's Sunday, it's Meet THE Press and her local NBC News stations. I'll have interviews with House Minority Leader King Jeffries and UN Ambassador Mike Walls.
Plus, Steve Quernity is at Big Board breaking down a brand new NBC News poll after the first major primaries, the 2026 winters, which we're ahead on BC News Now. It's here. The Ford is a big. Not yet.
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