Transcript: Leavitt Goes Full Cult on Fox as War Leaks Humiliate Trump

The following is a lightly edited transcript of the April 22 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.It’s getting harder for Donald Trump’s propagandists to defend his handling of the war. Trump has been saying that a deal with Iran is near, yet Trump officials are leaking that his public outbursts have only made it harder to reach an agreement to end the conflict. Amid those realities, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt went full cult on Fox News. She viciously attacked the media for being insufficiently worshipful of Trump’s glory, and she unleashed an obsequious monologue that was plainly designed to lift Trump’s spirits. All this underscores that even if Trump gets a deal, it’ll be extremely hard to spin this adventure as a success. So how bad a catastrophe is this shaping up to be? We’re unraveling all this with former National Security Council and State Department veteran Emily Horne, one of our go-tos on these topics. Emily, nice to have you back on.Emily Horne: Thanks for having me, Greg.Sargent: So we’re getting close to the expiration of the two-week ceasefire. And as of this recording, JD Vance’s trip to negotiate a peace has been postponed after Iran failed to respond to the American position, though this could restart at any time. There’s a lot of confusion around the status of the Strait of Hormuz. Emily, can you explain where we are and bring us up to date on the current sticking points and everything else?Horne: Talks are off. There’s no plan for when or if they’ll restart. The Strait of Hormuz continues to be controlled by the IRGC—the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps—which is the real source of power in Iran. It continues to control the Strait of Hormuz. And it’s IRGC missiles and drones that killed 13 U.S. troops, attacked U.S. embassies and diplomatic facilities across the Middle East, attacked Gulf oil and data center installations across the region, and whose damage Trump political leaders at the Pentagon are really continuing to cover up even as they’re insisting that victory is at hand.So when you hear this administration talking about their conversations with the regime and how there may or may not be peace at hand, I think it’s really important to remember they often don’t know what the heck it is they’re talking about, because they confuse who really holds the power in Tehran these days. It’s really striking to me when I hear this administration talking about the regime change that U.S. strikes have brought about and the destruction that they have leaked on things like the Iranian Navy and the Iranian Air Force. Those were never power centers to begin with. So when they’re going out and bragging about them on Fox News, they don’t really know what they’re talking about. And it’s a real tell to negotiators in Iran that the people who are showing up at the table really have no idea what they’re doing—that this is total amateur hour. Sargent: Total Art of the Deal stuff. Well, CNN reports that the U.S. and Iran had appeared close to a deal, but then Trump started making all kinds of public statements to reporters and on Truth Social. He said Iran had agreed to a bunch of things that Iran hadn’t actually agreed to. Trump officials privately told CNN that this was detrimental to the talks. One official said this: “The Iranians didn’t appreciate POTUS negotiating through social media and making it appear as if they had signed off on issues they hadn’t yet agreed to and ones that aren’t popular with their people back home.” Emily, this seems really damning—not just on the substance, but also because officials are leaking this about Trump. What did you make of all of that?Horne: So the only thing that was surprising to me about this CNN story was that the headline suggested that the parties had at one point been close to a deal, which the story itself doesn’t even actually support. That was probably some editor who wanted to make it seem like there was higher drama and that Trump’s social media creative writing projects over the weekend and his random phone calls to random reporters had somehow interrupted something that was actually going well—when in fact it wasn’t. JD Vance doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing. Steve Witkoff, the president’s golf buddy—no diplomat. You know, the president’s son-in-law can’t negotiate anything except a deal with crypto leaders in the Middle East that’s going to enrich himself. These people don’t know what they’re doing and they barely even tried at the Islamabad talks. They were on the ground for less than 24 hours, where they washed their hands of the whole thing and said that it was a failure.So it’s not surprising that the whole thing fell apart.