You're inverting reality. You're making it sound like Lebanon invaded Israel. Israel is inside of Lebanon right now.
Do you condemn Israel for being in southern Lebanon? You condemn them for taking 70% of Imagine if Americans of US. We're not responsible for Israel.
Israel is not our daddy. Israel might be your daddy, but Israel is not our daddy. Iran has been at war with us since 19.
The things, as you said, that he campaigned expressly against. It was him who came out and said he was not going to engage in any of these um endless pointless foreign wars in the Middle East. It was him who said that he was going to focus on making sure that gas prices are low.
Well, gas prices are high as the result of this. You know what I absolutely cannot stand? When people suddenly discover principles only after it's politically convenient.
If you spent months cheering for a war and then panic the second it starts. So costing politically, don't expect people to forget where you stood. That's exactly why this debate is so fascinating.
Welcome back to US Power. Today we're looking at one of the most revealing clashes you'll see anywhere. Piers Morgan is joined by Shank Ugger, Brian Tyler Cohen, and others as the MAGA coalition starts cracking wide open over Donald Trump's handling of Iran, Israel, and America's role in the Middle East.
What begins as a debate about foreign policy quickly turns into something much bigger. Who is really driving Republican priorities? and why are some of Trump's loudest supporters suddenly turning on him?
We're going to break down the arguments, separate the facts from the political theater, and examine what this says about Trump's promises, America's interests, and the growing divisions inside the Republican party. If you enjoy fact-based political analysis that isn't afraid to challenge powerful people, hit that like button, subscribe to US Power, and let's get straight into it. Yuga.
Uh, I'm going to start with the extraordinary words I never thought I'd use, which is probably the biggest cheerleader for Trump's deal is Cheng Yuga. Yeah. So, listen, I I didn't want to go on the war in the first place.
I thought it was a bad idea. You all know that, right? But our job right now is not to uh say, "Oh, Obama's deal was better.
" And we could have that discussion, but the most important thing is let's get out of the war. Let's go towards peace. So if Trump is going towards peace and towards American sovereignty, uh I'm 100% in favor of it.
And so what do we want this theoretically this war for? Uh to end the any chance they have a nuclear weapon? Uh well, this deal ends that.
Uh and then after the war started, we need to open up the straight of Hormuz. It opens up the straight of Hormuz. So American interests are completely covered.
We're done. The only reason why we'd want to stay in Miriam's war is to appease the Israelis. And I think that every single person on air right now saying we have to stay longer is saying we have to stay longer for Israel so that Israel could fight Hezbollah and Hamas better.
So they could take southern Lebanon. So they could drag us into endless wars. So they could destroy their regional opponent.
So they could have no one to defend Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, and every other place that Israel wants to expand to. Why? Why do we care what Israel wants at all?
It's none of our business. Our business is covered. Trump made a deal.
It's perfectly fine. Let's get the hell out of there. We have no business in there in the first place.
Zero American interests. So, as you see people betraying us and telling us that we have to stay in a war for Israel. Make note of it.
And let's also make note of one more thing, Piers. Marjorie Taylor Green, Tom Massie were excommunicated. How dare they criticize uh Trump and want the Epstein files released?
Now I see all sorts of Republicans, politicians, pundits, all daring to disagree with Donald Trump, saying he's wrong, attacking Donald Trump. Where are the consequences? Are they going to be excommunicated?
Or as usual, does Israel first get a special rule? They're allowed to bash Trump. They're allowed to criticize Trump.
They're allowed to be for war. They always get special different rules. So, no, they won't get excommunicated.
And we're about to find out who runs the Republican party and who runs this country. So, if Trump says Israel doesn't run it anymore and we're going to leave and go to peace, God bless. I'm a totally in favor of that.
I'm Tyler Cohen. Welcome back to Uncensored. I want to start with you by playing a clip from Mike Pence because I think this is quite a significant uh comment from somebody who was, of course, Donald Trump's vice president.
It sounds like you think from what we know so far, this is a mistake by the Trump administration. Well, I it's it's much bigger than a mistake. I think it's ill advised.
We ought to keep the pressure on, keep the blockade on, and if need be, let our armed forces get back to work. I mean, worse than a mistake, you know, and I did say again, I don't want to play, you know, Monday morning clever dick, but I couldn't really understand why Donald Trump was doing this given all his pledges not to take America back into uh, you know, as he put them, pointless Middle Eastern wars. And with the obvious impact on cost of living, which he'd also campaigned on reducing the cost of inflation and so on, none of it really made much sense to me.
Um, and also I couldn't see what the endgame was going to be. And now we see the endgame is at best a mess and at worst as Mike Pence, Trump's former number two and and normally pretty loyal to him actually. Um, saying, you know, worse than a mistake.
And I did say this could end up being Trump's legacy, but it might also be something which could cost the Republicans, the House and the Senate potentially in the midterm elections and maybe even the next general election. You know, these things have enormous consequences. Well, they have enormous consequences because everything that he's engaging in right now is severely unpopular.
And Trump himself knows that it's unpopular because these are the things, as you said, that he campaigned expressly against. It was him who came out and said he was not going to engage in any of these um endless, pointless foreign wars in the Middle East. It was him who said that he was going to focus on making sure that gas prices are low.
Well, gas prices are high as the result of this war. It was him who said, you know, who who even today, you want to talk about cognitive dissonance today, Donald Trump said, and I'm going to I'm going to quote this, the JCPOA done by Obama, he handed them 1. 7 billion in cash.
They tried to bribe their way out of it. And you know what he the Iranians did? They laughed at Obama and they said he's a stupid son of a [ __ ] So that was Trump saying that today as he is in the midst of negotiating a deal where the Iranians would get not only $300 billion, but they would also have the ability to basically um use the straight of Hormuz as a toll route.
And so on issue after issue as it relates to to this whole, you know, what does he call this? Uh an excursion. Issue after issue, Donald Trump is undermining the very promises that he made.
And yet this is a small part of a larger hole. Everything that Trump said when he uh was campaigning has been undermined by his presidency. Whether he said that he was going to keep costs low and of course he launched a trade war that sent the cost of everything surging.
He was going to keep gas prices low. Gas prices are high. He said he was going to uh protect healthcare.
Healthcare has been gutted for 17 million Americans who rely on Medicaid, 24 million Americans who rely on the ACA. Food assistance has been gutted. That's not going to help with cost of living.
Inflation is up, not down since he took office. And so again, issue after issue after issue, Trump is undermining the very promises that he exploited people's votes for now that he's got power, now that he's got what he needs. Chang, I want to play you a clip from Ben Shapiro, who's furious about the prospect of this deal.
I'm noticing that Muhammad Khalibah, who will apparently on Friday be literally in a photo op with the vice president of the United States. I cannot express to you how stomach turning that is. I don't care who the vice president is.
I don't care who the president is. Leaders of the United States of America in a photo op with a mass murdering terrorist supporter like Muhammad Khalib shaking hands 6 months after he blew away 42,000 innocent people in the streets. I mean, there's something completely weird going on here, Chen, where Shapiro is ranting away against the Trump administration, having been the biggest supporter of the war in the first place.
And there's you opening this show by broadly supporting what the president is doing, albeit not from a deep abiding love of Donald Trump. But it seems that people like Ben Shapiro, Mark Levvin, and others, you know, they put all their chips in the casino on the red of Trump charging into Iran and getting rid of the regime and so on. But the moment that he looks like he's not going to do Benjamin Netanyahu's bidding, they've turned on him like rattlesnakes.
Uh what do you what do you make of this? Yeah. Uh there there is one small part that I agree with Ben on.
Uh so when our leaders shake hands with uh terrorist leaders who slaughtered tens of thousands of civilians like Benjamin Netanyahu, it is stomach churning when our Congress gives him standing ovations when he's a genocidal maniac and probably the largest terrorist leader in the world. It is stomach churning. But that's Netanyahu, not not anyone else.
They have a worse civilian kill ratio than Hamas or Hezbollah. And the IDF has murdered a hundred times the civilians of Hamas and Hezbollah. By any definition, they're a terrorist state.
But it's interesting because as you point out, Shapiro and Levin um oh my god, we love Trump. Oh, he's not doing Israel's bidding anymore. We hate Trump.
Did you know that Miriam Adlesen and that's why he called it Miriam's war because her family paid over $317 million to Trump's campaigns to make sure that they got a war like this and they got the war that they ordered. Now all of a sudden they say, "Oh, there's a problem with the war we ordered. " Well, that's kind of on you and not on us.
So, I'll get back to that in a second. But did you know that Miriam Mlesson and Larry Ellison used to donate to Bill Clinton before they donated to Donald Trump? Cuz they don't care about Democrats or Republicans, and neither does Shapiro or any of the Israel first pundits.
They only care about their beloved Israel. And it's obvious they don't change their position on taxes, on social security, on healthcare. They only change based on whether Trump is in favor of Israel's actions or against Israel's actions.
So what you're seeing playing out in American media and the government is team America versus team Israel. So if you're on team America, hey, they're not going to have a nuclear weapon. That was our only concern.
The straight of Hormuz is open. The economy is going to get hopefully get a little bit better now, right? Than at least in the middle of the war, right?
Uh if uh we continue in the war, the economy is definitely going to get worse. Gas prices are going to go up. Inflation is going to go up.
and it endangers the entire global economy. So as far as American interests are concerned, we should absolutely leave. And honestly, there's really no question about that.
So the argument that the team Israel makes now is yeah, but what about Iran's uh proxies Hamas and Hezbollah? To which I say, so what? Why are we facing our entire basing our entire foreign policy on the needs of a country whose population is the size of Papa New Guinea?
Why do we care what Israel wants in terms of, oh no, it has to wipe out everyone who might oppose their fascist empire in the Middle East? It has to destroy Iraq and Iran and all seven of their neighbors and take uh more of Gaza, more of the West Bank. Now they we owe them southern Lebanon.
Why do we owe them southern Lebanon? And that's not defense, that's offense. They're stealing Southern Lebanon.
And no, we don't have to finance that. We have no moral or strategic or military obligation to Israel at all, which is a force for darkness in this world. In fact, literally every nation on earth is opposed to this war except one, Israel.
And we're having a debate and it's 5050 on whether we should listen to Americans, we should listen to the entire world, or if everyone should bow to Israel and do their demands of wiping out all their neighbors so they could take more territory. No, this is a no-brainer for if you're on team America, you come home, you get the peace, you improve your economy. If you're on team Israel, you always want war.
You'll always want ethnic cleansing and land grabbing. We don't have to serve their imperial empire. This is fine.
But again, if you take the principle that if you come under attack, you should be allowed to have a nuclear weapon. Well, what about the Gulf States? They've all come under attack from Iran.
The Americans believe that Iran is literally weeks away from developing nuclear weapons. That threat doesn't seem to have been diminished at all by any of this wararmongering in the last 16 weeks from what I can see. So if you take that argument, if you extrapolate that out, if you're Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, whatever, given you've come under attack from your neighbor Iran, why should you not be allowed to have the same nuclear deterrent that Israel has?
So here's the challenge, right? Israel has had nuclear weapons for probably 40 plus years. The Middle East, minus Iran, has shockingly been without nuclear weapons.
So if the UAE, if Saudi Arabia, if Turkey were to suddenly want a nuclear weapon, now why is that? What's the proximate trigger? It certainly wasn't Israel having nuclear weapons.
No, it's the Islamic Republic of Iran having nuclear weapons that is the trigger. And it is long-standing US policy to be opposed to nuclear proliferation. It makes things progressively more difficult for more nations that are armed with nuclear weapons.
like so has has the United Well, hang on. Has the United States actively sought to stop uh Israel having more nuclear weapons in the last 20 30 years or has it just allowed it to? I'm aware of no policy one way or the other with regards to the US and Israel.
There may be some classified negotiations, but what shockingly prior to this conversation with Sank, you don't really hear a lot of concern about Israel's nuclear weapons program because they haven't used it, nor do they threaten their neighbors with it constantly. They used it to attack all their neighbors. They use the threat of it and they say, "Well, you can't attack us back because we have nuclear weapons.
" And the one country that has nuclear weapons in the Middle East has launched wars against almost all of its neighbors. They they've got that as backup. They've got Iron Dome back up and it has emboldened them to take land in Gaza, to take land in Lebanon, which you guys are denying.
Iran has taken no land. Israel has taken land over and over again. Do you know that in 1948 only 6% of the land was Jewish?
Now it's 78% is owned by Israel. How did the settler colony get from this time to begin to talk over southern Lebanon in 1986 with the IDF land that the IDF voluntarily left? Why were they there?
They went up to try to kick out the PLO. You know who rescued the PLO? President Reagan and the Americans rescued the Palestine Liberation Organ organization.
Israel left Lebanon. They left Gaza. So they were attempting to trade land for peace and they came back in unfortunately and they came back in.
Didn't they come back in three times and got into southern Lebanon? They keep wanting to take Lebanon and you just told us you're with the idea. The United Nations was supposed to present prevent Hezbollah from getting to be a murderous force and they utterly failed.
In fact, Hezbollah built You make it sound like Lebanon invaded Israel. Israel invaded Lebanon. You're you're inverting reality.
You're making it sound like Lebanon invaded Israel. Israel is inside of Lebanon right now. Do you condemn Israel for being inside?
You condemn them for taking 70% of Imagine if America was taking missiles daily from Tijana, Mexico. Tijana would be making if you're making the I can't believe you're making an Hezbollah argument because what Hezbollah is saying is can you imagine if America was invaded and they took half of Texas as they're doing right now? Israel invaded Lebanon and has taken southern Lebanon.
Well, of course we would fight back. You're saying, and I agree, and that's what Hezbollah is saying. Well, of course we're gonna fight back.
They're in our land. They're literally stealing our homes. What do you want us to do?
Go. I surrender to the mighty Israelis. By the way, you guys Hezbollah is an Iranian proxy that Iran has spent billions of dollars training and equipping.
What? You make it sound like our priorities are Israel's priorities. And the Iranians is defending Lebanon against Israel.
So what? Hundreds of us. We're not responsible for Israel.
Israel is not our daddy. Israel might be your daddy. Israel is not our daddy.
Iran has been at war with us since 1979. Sir. All right.
Before I get into this, let me say something that I think is important. This debate isn't really about Iran. It isn't even primarily about Israel.
It's about political accountability. It's about whether politicians and media figures are willing to stand by the promises they made when those promises become inconvenient. That's the bigger story here and it's why this conversation matters far beyond the latest headlines.
One of the most striking moments in this discussion is watching Sank Or someone who has consistently opposed military intervention, suddenly find himself agreeing with Donald Trump. Moving toward negotiations, politics has become so tribal that people assume agreement on one issue suddenly means you join the other side. It doesn't.
If someone opposes endless wars before Trump is president, they should oppose endless wars when Trump is president. Principles are supposed to survive election cycles. Unfortunately, for a lot of people in Washington, principles only last until the next donor meeting.
At the same time, Brian Tyler Cohen raises a legitimate political question that Republicans have spent years avoiding. Donald Trump campaigned as the president who would endless wars, lower inflation, reduce gas prices, and focus on problems here at home. Whether you agree with every criticism Brian makes or not, there is a real contradiction between campaigning on avoiding new Middle East conflicts and then becoming deeply involved in another regional military confrontation.
Voters have every right to ask whether campaign promises match governing decisions. That's not partisan. That's accountability.
What really exposes the fractures inside today's Republican party is how quickly some of Trump's biggest cheerleaders abandoned him the moment they believed he wasn't fully aligned with Benjamin Netanyahu's government. For years, these same commentators demanded absolute loyalty to Donald Trump. Anyone who criticized him was branded a Renault, a traitor, or worse.
But the second foreign policy disagreements emerged. Suddenly, those same people discovered that criticizing Trump was perfectly acceptable. Funny how that works.
That's why this debate feels less like a disagreement over strategy and more like a fight over who actually sets Republican foreign policy. Is it Donald Trump? Is it conservative media personalities?
Is it longestablished foreign policy hawks? Or is the party still struggling to reconcile competing visions of America's role overseas? Those tensions have been building for years, and now they're exploding into public view.
Now, Sank makes a number of sweeping claims throughout this exchange. And while some viewers will agree with his conclusions and others won't, it's important not to treat every rhetorical statement as established fact. Strong political arguments are most persuasive when they're grounded in evidence rather than broad assertions.
That's true whether you're criticizing Israel, Iran, or the United States. Precision matters because credibility matters. Piers Morgan also deserves criticism here, although perhaps not for the reasons some people think.
Throughout this discussion, he repeatedly inserts himself into the debate instead of consistently holding everyone to the same standard. A moderator's strongest weapon is consistency. When audiences begin feeling that one side is interrupted more often or challenged differently than another, the conversation becomes about the moderator instead of the issues.
That's exactly what happens during several stretches of this interview. What this debate ultimately reveals is that America's foreign policy conversation is becoming increasingly disconnected from ordinary Americans. While political elites argue over geopolitical strategy, millions of Americans are worried about groceries, housing costs, health care, and whether they can afford gas to get to work.
Those kitchen table concerns don't disappear simply because Washington shifts its attention overseas. If anything, foreign policy decisions become politically dangerous when voters believe they're paying the price at home. That's why every administration, Republican or Democratic, should expect scrutiny when military action carries economic consequences.
That's not anti-American, nor is it isolationist. It's democracy. Leaders ask for public trust and in return they owe the public clear explanations, consistent objectives and measurable outcomes.
Without those, skepticism is entirely justified. At the same time, we should resist turning every disagreement into accusations of treason or divided loyalty. That's one of the fastest ways to poison public debate.
Americans can disagree passionately about alliances, military strategy, diplomacy, and foreign aid without assuming everyone on the other side has sinister motives. Democracy functions best when arguments are answered with evidence rather than labels. The bigger lesson from this entire exchange is that campaign slogans are easy.
Governing is harder. Every president eventually runs into situations where campaign rhetoric collides with complicated reality. That's when voters discover whether the promises they heard were guiding principles or simply effective campaign messaging.
Those moments define presidencies far more than rallies ever will. As always, let me know what you think down below. Do you believe this debate exposed genuine cracks inside the Republican coalition, or do you think these divisions are being overstated?
Drp your thoughts in the comments because I genuinely like to hear your perspective. And if you enjoy in-depth political analysis that goes beyond the headlines, make sure you like this video, subscribe to US Power, and turn on notifications so you never miss our next breakdown. Thanks for watching, and I'll see you in the next one.
