I just think it's just ungrateful to say that the service personnel are not keeping you safe when they are. No, I feel less safe due to the actions of our leaders. I am incredibly grateful for our servicemen.
You're doing your feelings don't make your feelings the way you feel. Adam Mockler made another appearance on Abby Phillips show after his clash with Scott Jennings went viral and had people all over social media talking. This time he stepped into a heated debate against two more outspoken MAGA figures, Noah Rothman and Hal Lambert with Terara Setm also joining the conversation.
The discussion quickly turned intense as Adam challenged their arguments directly and refused to back down while the debate kept getting more heated. We're going to look at some of the biggest moments from this CNN segment and break down how Adam Mockler handled the pressure while going head-to-head with Noah Rothman and Hal Lambert on Abby Phillips show. And I'll also share my thoughts on how the entire exchange played out.
Here's a sign that we are in America's Iran war. The president who started it can't remember how long it's been going on. We have a war right now and went to like what 6 weeks.
They said, "What's taking so long? " Not quite. We are in the 10th week of the war and the third month with no end in sight.
Frankly, Donald Trump may not be keeping track, but Americans certainly are via their gas prices. It's hit another high today. And one expert says that you can expect to see $5 at a pump if the straight of Hormuse doesn't open soon.
Now, the president is also dismissing how unpopular the war is. They give me fake polls. They tell me about polls and this, you know, it's it's interesting.
did a poll on the war with Iran and they said only 32% of the people like it. Well, I don't like it and I don't like war at all. They said 32% of the people are against President Trump.
Well, when you explain it, like is it okay for Iran to have a nuclear weapon? It wouldn't be 32%. But even if you said that, they'd be at 32% because the polls are fake.
I mean, they're totally fake. for the reality. At the start of the war, Americans were pretty evenly divided in their support for the conflict.
But now, 61% say that the campaign in Iran was a mistake. And there is a clear generational gap, too. While older Americans are split, 61% under the age of 35 opposed the war.
And 80% of those under 30 say there were no sufficient reasons to attack Iran in the first place, while 51% over the age of 65 say that there were. Uh, so this generational divide, I think, when it comes to war has always been a thing in America, but it seems particularly acute right now, Adam. Yeah.
For my entire life, the United States has been at war with some country in the Middle East, and young people have constantly been told that this will make us safer and make us better off. When we look around at the world today, we are less safe and we are worse off. Millennials grew up watching all these headlines saying that Iraq had been, you know, defeated, that we had taken out Saddam Hussein and we had killed all the bad guys.
Well, that turned into a grinding counterinsurgency that cost us trillion, a trillion dollars, and it was a catastrophe. The same thing happened with Afghanistan, and now Jenzers are going through the same thing with Iran. We are watching the same people who defended these first two failed wars go on television and defend another failed war.
This war is failing. We have not gotten any political concessions. And I'm sorry, I'm not buying this trust the process line.
I don't trust the same people who got us into the prior wars, amassed trillions of dollars in debt, and are not putting America first on the global stage. So putting aside um perhap for just for a moment uh even the politics of this current moment I mean is it fair for young people to have that level of distrust of the people to Adam's point who maybe defended the last war and were wrong and are defending this war too. Yeah I don't think so.
I think honestly Adam that's immensely ungrateful to American service personnel and the people who keep us safe every day. After 9/11 it was by no means guaranteed that there would be no mass casualty terrorist attack on American soil in the immediate aftermath of that attack especially since we had events in Madrid, in London, etc. Uh and after the attack on Iraq and the elimination of Saddam Hussein's regime, we took a terrorist supporting enterprise off the map.
We don't talk about Iraq anymore as a threat to a national security because it isn't. And those who would pretend as though Iran is not a national security threat as as and are just frankly dismissive of the extent to which American service personnel get up every day to stop these people from executing the attacks on American and their allies that they plan every single day. This is a thorn in our side.
It absorbs a lot of American taxpayer dollars to say nothing of the energy of our service personnel. And I just think it's just ungrateful. say that the service personnel are not keeping you safe when they are.
No, I feel less safe due to the actions of our leaders. I am incredibly grateful for our servicemen. You're doing your feelings don't make your feelings the way you feel.
What really stands out in this moment is the complete contradiction coming from Noah Rothman and Hal Lambert during the debate with Adam Mockler. On one side, Noah is lecturing Adam and insisting that he should feel grateful to American servicemen and women, while Adam is calmly explaining that he simply does not believe these actions are making the country any safer. Then how Lambert suddenly cuts in with the classic facts don't care about your feelings line, which becomes incredibly ironic because the entire argument they are making is based on how they think Adam should feel emotionally about the military.
It is the same tactic conservatives have used for years where the second someone questions a war or criticizes military intervention, they instantly accuse that person of disrespecting the troops. That narrative has existed for decades, especially after 9/11 and likely goes all the way back to conflicts like the Vietnam War, where speaking against government decisions was treated as being anti-American. But in reality, one of the most patriotic things a person can do is refuse to blindly support leaders who push the country into unnecessary wars built on false promises and political motives.
Supporting the troops should mean protecting them from being thrown into dangerous conflicts that serve no real purpose, not demanding endless loyalty to every military decision made by politicians. Real respect for servicemen and women means valuing their lives enough to say they should never be sent into harm's way for a war that does not truly protect the country or its people. Let me finish.
He was talking to me. He was talking to me. Hold on a second.
I'll let you respond. Let him finish. You are doing the exact same thing that I just laid out in the opening.
You are telling young people they shouldn't be asking questions. They shouldn't be questioning the people in power because it's ungrateful questions about the nature of what was ungrateful about what I said. I said that the leaders are making us less safe and I can prove that.
Right now, Iran has control over the straight of Hormuz. And that is a weapon they didn't have control of two months ago. Of course they did.
They shut down the straight of Hormuz in the ' 80s and they opened it up in the 80s. By the way, [laughter] we nuclear weapon. You think you think gas prices are high right now?
Iran with a nuclear weapon, we'd have unlimitedly high gas prices. They would take control of the straightup news and they would blackmail the world. Where are they going nuclear weapon?
Where is the uranium right now? They're non-existent. Where's the uranium?
We're going to get the unrest. Where is it? I want you.
It's buried right now. But you where is it buried? You're asking me.
I'm not in the class briefings and neither are you. So just quiet for a minute. Let me finish.
Let me finish. Okay. We are we are more safe than we were before we took out Iran Iran's nuclear capabilities.
Absolutely more safe. The straight over muse is going to be open and Iran's not going to control it. It is that is absolutely going to happen.
It doesn't it doesn't matter if it's two weeks or two months. It does actually matter because economists are saying if it's closed for a few more months then we're going to go into a recession. So it does matter.
No one's predicting that because the markets that are all time the markets that are an alltime high. The markets aren't predicting it. The inflation rates uh the inflation rate has stayed where it is.
And by the way, both inflation, by the way, unemployment has stayed low. So when you're talking about the everyone's predicting the average just to be clear, um, just to be clear, inflation has ticked up. It has not stayed the same.
But Bobby, you were around for the politics and the conflict of the last two Middle East wars. Um, I mean, what do you make of this generational debate about whether it's wise to be going into another conflict in this region? Well, I can't fault the logic that when you've seen this happen through your lifetime and you're still living with the consequences of it in one fashion or the other, you're bound to be reluctant to get into the war.
Nobody's disputing for the fact that for a moment that the Iranians are bad, the Iranian regime are bad guys. But when you when you hear the president and our leadership constantly changing the explanation they're giving for why we're at war, constantly changing the timetable of how long this is going to last, and then forgetting how long it has been going on, then you're right to to push back and say, "Kindly give us a clearer explanation for why we're there, how long we're going to be there for. " It's not enough to say sit at this table and say, "It'll be over and then the the Straits of Hormuz will be open.
" We've got no indication of that being the case. When the straits were closed, we were told this is a matter of days. Now it's been a matter of weeks and we're no closer to it being open than we were two weeks ago, 3 weeks ago.
And well, let me and on top of what you're saying there, I mean, I think one of the big problems with where we are in this conflict is that very clearly the administration has determined because they've basically ended the the kinetic conflict of it all, they've determined that the only way to actually get the things that we want, which is Iran abandoning its nuclear ambitions, um moving away from from funding terrorism, is to get to the negotiating table, which is the same truth that existed a year ago after they did the first set of strikes. So, I mean, I think that's part of the problem is that war has not necessarily gotten us the outcome that they say that we are trying to get here. No, that and and that's because the rationale for the war has shifted multiple times.
No one here has ever said we want a nuclear armed Iran. That is a red herring at this point. This is the only talking point that the proTrump folks have because they've gotten themselves into a situation.
Personally, I do not believe any country should possess nuclear weapons at all. But at the same time, it feels incredibly hypocritical when the United States, one of the nations with the largest nuclear arsenal in the world, lectures other countries about why they should not be allowed to have them. The message becomes even harder for people around the world to accept when powerful countries continue holding thousands of nuclear weapons while demanding that others stay completely unarmed.
That contradiction is exactly why so many critics argue that global leaders apply one standard to themselves and a completely different standard to everyone else. Some people even believe that if Iran already had a nuclear weapon, Donald Trump may have never pushed toward this conflict in the first place because nuclear deterrence changes the way countries calculate risk and respond to military pressure. Tara Setmire was completely right for pointing this out because these people keep falling back on the exact same recycled talking points throughout every debate.
Instead of actually addressing the real concerns being raised, they repeat 47 years again and again like it is supposed to instantly end the conversation. And then they jump straight to calling Iran the number one state sponsor of terrorism. As if repeating the phrase enough times somehow replaces an actual argument.
It feels more like political messaging designed to trigger emotions than a serious discussion about the situation itself. Rather than breaking down the complexities of the issue or responding directly to the criticism being made, they rely on these dramatic oneliners because they know constant repetition keeps their audience locked in and makes the narrative sound stronger even when the debate is far more complicated than the slogans they continue pushing that they were unprepared for. And what's incredibly ungrateful?
You know who's incredibly ungrateful? Donald Trump and Pete Hegsth. For the men and women who are serving in this war, who are on deployments that are extra long, who are not getting their their ships resupplied, who are the who don't understand what they're doing over there, who are being taken for granted.
Our military is the greatest in the world, and the men and women who serve are the greatest in the world. And they are being taken for granted as props in a political effort by Donald Trump to make himself feel better so he can distract from everything else that's going on domestically. And now he's gotten himself into a situation where he can't even explain cogently why we're there, what's going on, and why the American people should have to pay the price for it.
So that's what's going on here. I mean, I I when I was a Republican for many years, we were we absolutely looked at Iran as the threat that it is, and absolutely were trying to do things to make sure that they did not continue to be the world's sponsor of terror. But this isn't it.
This is not it. You know what? You talked about Adam because Adam being ungrateful.
Um, I just want you to look at these charge. Look at what happened to public opinion when it came to the war in Afghanistan. Was it a mistake for the US to send military forces to Afghanistan?
The war started out as incredibly popular and then it became much less popular. So about half of Americans said that it was a mistake. Um and about half said that it was not.
The same is true of Iraq. Incredibly popular, right decision, 72% back at the beginning of it. And by the by the end of the conflict in 2014, it was down to 38%.
I mean, are all of these Americans ungrateful? I mean, I I imagine many of them um have they they ended up tasting the consequences of the war, including the impacts on their their lives, people that they knew, people who may not have even lost their lives in in theater, but came back forever scarred by it. I mean, it to what I had said previously is that it is in my view ungrateful to American service personnel to say that they have not kept us safe when we do not measure.
It's not a nonow [laughter] but but he didn't say that. So you have to No, he's saying that we can't we can measure non-events which is to suggest that the attacks that have not happened which none of us are aware of were not were not avoidable because because of the nature of these conflicts and the conflicts themselves are what inspires the attacks. It's almost the problem is that he didn't that's not really the argument that he's making.
the argument that he's making is that um is that the the the people who made the arguments to go into these conflicts in the first place misled which is a fact and and secondly that the conflicts ended up lasting a very long time costing a lot of American treasure and and that those are also facts he didn't he didn't say it's because it's because they're you know they didn't keep us safe that's not actually what he said well it is kind of what he said but let's labor the point I have all the time in the world for criticisms of the president's rhetoric all the time in the world in fact I think a lot of the reasons why the public soured on this is because the president never approached Americans and said solicited their support, told them the burdens they were expected to bear and told them why they were going into this. But as important as it is to criticize the president's rhetoric, it's also important to talk about what's happening on the ground. And we are closer today to opening up the straight by virtue of what we heard from Admiral Brad Cooper today and the operation that was engag the strait was completely open before all of this.
But now everything has changed because Trump and his MAGA allies pushed the situation straight into chaos. Their reckless decisions dragged the country deeper into conflict. And now the strait is closed when it never had to reach this point in the first place.
If Donald Trump had not charged headirst into this war with the same aggressive attitude he always brings to international issues, this situation likely would not have spiraled so badly. Instead of creating stability, his actions only added more tension, more uncertainty, and more problems that the entire world is now being forced to deal with. 24 hours.
Very important. Let me let me respond and then I want Bobby to have the last word. Well, I I covered the war in Iraq.
Uh I was there for all the arguments uh going into that war in Iraq. I remember people saying this was the major sponsor of terror and you point you pointed to 911. Iraq had nothing whatsoever to do with 9/11 and going into Iraq and toppling that regime as much as I hated the regime as any right-thinking people spawned from there direct consequence of that the Islamic State also a terrorist group that came directly out of our actions in Iraq.
You know, if we want to look at his historical precedents, we should not cherrypick little bits out of a larger picture and pretend that the larger picture over the Syrian. To expand on my framework, I gave a very good faith criticism of this war and of the history of these types of wars. And I had one person say that I was ungrateful and then another invoke the weapons of mass destruction that Iran could potentially be developing.
What I was trying to say is that getting military successes, if you want to call them that, doesn't always translate to helpful uh outcomes for the American people. We've seen this. We killed Saddam Hussein.
We took out the bad guys. It's arguable. It's arguable that this is the most worse since World War II because Iran has killed thousands of Americans.
Saddam Hussein hadn't killed thousands of Americans. Afghanistan hadn't either. But he ran on no new words.
I'm saying no new worify to the Congress and the American people if it was so justified. Ultimately, he may do that. But ultimately [laughter] 128 powers.
I'm using your own logic where you said it was so justified. The most just war since I'm saying arguably. go ahead and present it to the American people that way.
Iran has killed thousands of Americans. Okay, Iran is a threat to the world. Okay, if they get nuclear weapons, they would control the straight of use anytime they wanted to.
People wouldn't be able to do anything about it. They have high oil prices now have skyrock weapons to to control the straits of Hermuz. The states of Hermuz are right there.
You can't change geography. They need small speedboats. They just need to issue a threat.
What happened in the la in in the last few weeks, they didn't do anything. All they had to say was we're going to shut the states and the markets did the rest. The insurance companies refused to insure ships.
Shipping companies refused to go. They do not need nuclear weapons to shut that is resolvable in the horn of Africa and the state of Mala. It's resolvable in Hormland.
All right, Bobby. Thank you very much for being here. Appreciate you.
The non-stop fear tactics coming from Hal Lambert and many of these MAGA commentators have become completely over the top. And the reality is that a large portion of Americans are no longer buying into the same narratives they have been hearing for years. People have watched politicians and media figures push one war after another while promising safety, freedom, and stability.
Yet, ordinary Americans continue struggling while the costs keep rising and the country keeps getting dragged deeper into conflict. That is why Adam Mockler made such a strong point when he said, "None of this truly helps the American people. " Because when you actually look at the results of these wars, regular citizens are left paying the price while politicians and television personalities continue repeating the same recycled talking points.
Before 9/11, during the late '9s and early 2000s, gas prices were unbelievably low compared to what people deal with now, with prices sometimes sitting below a dollar per gallon, something younger generations can barely imagine today. Then, America entered years of military conflict overseas. And instead of life becoming easier or more affordable, Americans watched prices continue climbing while trillions of taxpayer dollars disappeared into endless wars that never seemed to solve anything.
Even people who supported those wars at the beginning were eventually forced to ask what the country actually gained from all of it. Because everyday Americans did not see lower costs, more stability, or a better quality of life. Instead, thousands of American troops lost their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Tens of thousands returned home wounded. And many veterans were left carrying mental and physical scars that will stay with them forever. Yet commentators like Hal Lambert, Noah Rothman, Scott Jennings, Ben Ferguson, and many others rarely spend serious time discussing those sacrifices or the long-term damage these wars caused.
They constantly focus on enemies overseas and dramatic political messaging while avoiding difficult conversations about the human cost paid by American families and service members. Now the country is once again facing rising tensions involving Iran. And many Americans feel frustrated because they no longer trust the government or media narratives the way they once did.
Outside of the hardcore MAGA base, a huge number of people can clearly see that another conflict is unlikely to improve their lives or make the country safer. And instead, it could waste even more taxpayer money while creating economic instability across the world. That is why Adam Mockler pushing back during this panel mattered to so many viewers because he challenged the emotional manipulation and political spin directly instead of allowing those arguments to go unanswered.
CNN bringing him back onto Abby Phillips show after his previous viral appearance ended up creating another heated debate where he once again stood firm against the MAGA commentators and refused to let their talking points dominate the conversation. Let me know what you think about this intense exchange on Abby Phillips panel and whether you agree more with Adam Mockler and Terara Setmire or with the MAGA voices defending these arguments because this debate definitely sparked strong opinions from both sides and I'll catch you in the next Bye.
