The following is a lightly edited transcript of the March 26 episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.NBC News is reporting that Donald Trump gets his updates on the Iran war in video form. Compilations of the most successful strikes on Iranian targets are shown to him in a montage. This has his own allies worried that he’s only getting a partial view of what’s happening on the ground. At the same time, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt praised Trump’s handling of the war in ways that were truly strange during a briefing—and sounded like she was speaking only for the benefit of Trump’s ears and no one else’s. Which got us thinking: This is just not at all how a president and a White House should be conducting themselves at such a moment. We’re at the point where we’ve forgotten what basic leadership should even look like.So we’re talking to Emily Horne, a veteran of the National Security Council and State Department, to get a sense of why all this is so deeply abnormal and what we should be demanding instead. Emily, great to have you on.Emily Horne: Thanks, Greg.Sargent: Emily, I think you have the distinction of being the only guest who’s come on twice in a row in such short succession. So, congratulations.Horne: Well, there’s a lot to talk about, unfortunately, in this case.Sargent: Well, you’re perfect for this topic. So let’s get into it. We just learned that Donald Trump made some sort of offer to the Iranians in hopes of getting a ceasefire—some sort of 15-point plan. But Iran has rejected Trump’s offer. There do appear to be some sort of back-channel talks going on, but it’s unclear who’s talking to whom. What does seem clear is that Trump really wants to get out of this, but that that’s turning out to be really hard. Emily, can you bring us up to date on where the war stands and explain why it’s hard for Trump to find a way out?Horne: So you said a word in that summary—“unclear”—that unfortunately is, I think, the perfect word to describe the current state of play. One of the things that makes this a very difficult situation for the American public to try to understand is that, frankly, we cannot trust the information that the White House and the Pentagon are putting out about this war. When President Trump says that the Iranians have agreed to talk and the Iranians say they haven’t, it’s really difficult to know who is telling the truth. And as an American, that really alarms me—that I have to acknowledge that while I will never trust what the Iranians are saying, I can’t trust what the commander in chief is saying here, either.That’s pretty alarming for all of us. We still don’t have a consistent definition of what success looks like. We still don’t have a consistent explanation for why—whatever the U.S. aims are—they appear to be very different from those of the Israeli government. We still don’t have a description of what a diplomatic off-ramp could even look like. So there’s just so much that we don’t know and that we have never really known about what this war is about or why we’re undertaking it at this particular moment.I think a good question for reporters to be asking when they’re in those briefing rooms—and the press secretary or spokesperson says victory is nigh or success is at hand—is, OK, well, remind me: what is your definition of success? What does victory look like according to this administration, and how will you know when you have achieved those objectives? Don’t just give them the easy win of declaring mission accomplished.Sargent: Let’s listen to White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt for a bit. Here she is after being asked whether Trump will be able to get our allies behind whatever he negotiates with Iran, or whatever the outcome is at the end of the day.Karoline Leavitt (voiceover): I think the president has shown that he is absolutely the leader of the free world, the head of the most powerful military in the world. And in various examples—the 12-day war between Iran and Israel, the ceasefire between Israel and Gaza—the president has shown a very unique skill at getting our allies to get on board with what’s in the best interest of the United States, but also the world.Sargent: Emily, this is extremely strange. Everyone in that room—except for maybe the hand-picked Trump propagandists—knows full well that Trump alienated our allies extremely badly in the run-up to the war, and that he’s been unable to get them on board to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Yet she just goes full cult right in their faces. What did you make of that?Horne: You know, I’m not surprised. This has always been the administration’s M.O.—to just willfully assert their definition of reality and wait for others to react to it.