Jon Stewart: Why are Trump aides ‘defensive and angry' if Iran strikes were successful?
Stewart said if the mission was successful, 'it shouldn't be that hard to not be so defensive and angry all the time,' on 'The Weekly Show' podcast's Thursday episode.
He criticized White House officials for repeatedly lashing out on the press who inquired about the report.
'Press secretary Karoline Leavitt comes out, and they ask her, 'was it obliterated?' And she says, 'Everybody knows what happens when you have a precision strike with these kinds of weapons,'' Stewart said.
'These weapons have never been used before in the history of the planet. But everybody knows what happened,' he added.
'It's just beyond the silliness. And if anybody pushes back, they demand 100 percent fealty and anything beyond that sets off anger and frustration because of the fragility.'
The Trump administration has ripped the news media over reports about the strikes.
'The sites that we hit in Iran were totally destroyed, and everyone knows it,' Trump posted on Truth Social on Monday after reporting the three struck sites were 'obliterated.'
Later in the week, he said 'sleazebag' journalists who reported on the preliminary intelligence report that said Iran's nuclear functions were set back by a month were 'scum' while Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the media was reporting 'fake news.'
Stewart's concerns about the administration's reports on the effectiveness of Sunday's strikes were also echoed by Democratic lawmakers.
'There's zero evidence that I've seen that the nuclear program was completely and totally obliterated as Donald Trump has claimed,' House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) told reporters Monday in the Capitol. 'No evidence that has been presented to Congress to suggest that that has occurred.'
However, the GOP largely backed Trump for engaging in the Middle Eastern conflict.
'The military operations in Iran should serve as a clear reminder to our adversaries and allies that President Trump means what he says,' Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) wrote in a statement on the social platform X.
'The President gave Iran's leader every opportunity to make a deal, but Iran refused to commit to a nuclear disarmament agreement. President Trump has been consistent and clear that a nuclear-armed Iran will not be tolerated. That posture has now been enforced with strength, precision, and clarity.'
'The President's decisive action prevents the world's largest state sponsor of terrorism, which chants 'Death to America,' from obtaining the most lethal weapon on the planet,' he added. 'This is America First policy in action. God bless our brave men and women in uniform – the most lethal fighting force on the planet – as we pray for their safe return home. May God bless America.'
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Los Angeles Times
13 minutes ago
- Los Angeles Times
Senate votes to confirm Trump's defense lawyer Emil Bove to a U.S. appeals court
WASHINGTON — The Senate on a party-line vote on Tuesday confirmed Emil J. Bove, President Trump's defense lawyer and loyal ally atop the Justice Department, to a lifetime seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals in Philadelphia. The vote was 49 to 50. Bove, 44, was a highly controversial judicial nominee, not because of his legal views, but because he led a purge of prosecutors and FBI agents who had worked on cases growing out of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. Before this year, the Justice Department held to a tradition of keeping politics out of law enforcement. But Bove and Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi saw their missions as carrying out the wishes of President Trump, including his plans for retribution against the prosecutors and investigators who brought charges against him or the 1,500 Trump allies who stormed the Capitol and fought with police. In the first weeks of Trump's second term, Bove served as the acting head of the Justice Department before Bondi was confirmed by the Senate. Bove also ordered federal prosecutors in New York to drop bribery and corruption charges against Mayor Eric Adams. The move prompted several of them to resign over what they saw as an unethical deal to win the mayor's cooperation in the administration's plan to round up immigrants who are in the country illegally. Bove also played a key role in the new administration's clash with a federal judge over deporting Venezuelans to a brutal prison in El Salvador. A former Justice Department attorney-turned-whistleblower said Bove told government lawyers they should ignore orders from the judge who sought to halt the deportations. When Bove appeared before a Senate committee as a judicial nominee, he said he had been misunderstood and unfairly criticized. 'I am not an enforcer' or 'anybody's henchman,' he said. Deputy Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche, who partnered with Bove in defending Trump last year, said he had been smeared by unfair criticism. 'Emil is the most capable and principled lawyer I have ever known,' he wrote in a Fox News opinion column. Democrats said Bove did not deserve a promotion to the federal courts. Sen. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) described Bove as a partisan loyalist who served Trump as 'the instrument of his vengeance.' 'When Trump wanted to purge the department of prosecutors who had proved to juries beyond a reasonable doubt that the violent offenders who attacked police officers that day did so to interfere with the peaceful transfer of power, Emil Bove was there to punish not the criminals, but the prosecutors,' Schiff said in opposing the nomination. On Tuesday, Bove was called a 'diligent, capable and fair jurist' by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), according to the Associated Press. Bove is not likely to have much influence on the 3rd Circuit Court. Its 14 judges hear appeals from Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware. Bove has no experience as a judge and has not written on legal or constitutional issues. However, if Justices Clarence Thomas or Samuel A. Alito were to retire in the next three years, Trump could nominate him to the Supreme Court. His nomination drew an unusually broad opposition from the legal community. In a July 15 letter to the Senate, 80 former and retired judges said confirming Bove to a life-term judgeship undercuts the rule of law and respect for the federal courts. They said his 'egregious record of mistreating law enforcement officers, abusing power and disregarding the law itself disqualifies him for this position.' More than 900 former Justice Department attorneys signed a letter to the Senate saying 'it is intolerable to us that anyone who disgraces the Justice Department would be promoted to one of the highest courts in the land.' Sen. Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, became the first Republican to declare her opposition to his nomination. 'We have to have judges who will adhere to the rule of law and the Constitution and do so regardless of what their personal views may be,' she said in a statement. 'Mr. Bove's political profile and some of the actions he has taken in his leadership roles at the Department of Justice cause me to conclude he would not serve as as impartial jurist. Collins and Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska were the only Republicans to vote against Bove.
San Francisco Chronicle
13 minutes ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders to headline signature South Carolina GOP event
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders is set to headline the latest iteration of an event previously billed as the largest annual gathering of Republicans in South Carolina, a state traditionally key to picking the GOP's presidential nominees, and one in which she already has deep relationships. Rep. Sheri Biggs of South Carolina's 3rd District told The Associated Press that Sanders would be the featured speaker at her Salute to Liberty, slated to take place Aug. 18 in Anderson. In an interview last week, Biggs said she felt the governor 'represents what the people in the 3rd District believe in, our morals, just down-to-earth hardworking people that love the Lord and want to live in peace with their families and uphold our conservative values.' Historically a catalyst for Republican White House hopefuls, the South Carolina venue provides Sanders a chance to introduce herself to a large number — typically around 2,000 — of party activists. It's also a crowd with which President Donald Trump — whom she served as press secretary during his first administration — remains popular. Sanders, whose name comes up among potential 2028 presidential contenders, has been making trips to South Carolina since her father, former Arkansas governor and current U.S. ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, sought the 2008 GOP nomination. She's recently been in other early-voting states herself, including a speech earlier this month at the Family Leadership Summit in Iowa, an annual event held by a conservative Christian group. For years, the South Carolina occasion was billed as Rep. Jeff Duncan's Faith & Freedom BBQ, a fundraiser benefiting his reelection campaign. In a conservative-rich area, it became a showcase for future White House contenders, including then-Vice President Mike Pence, Sens. Ted Cruz, Tim Scott and Marco Rubio, and former U.N. Ambassador and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley. The barbecue was upended just weeks after the 2023 event, when Duncan's wife filed for divorce, saying the congressman left her, was having a sexual relationship with a lobbyist and had been unfaithful before during their 35-year marriage. Last year, Duncan opted not to seek reelection to an eighth term, following the 2023 diminishment of his reputation for conservative family values. In her first political run, Biggs — a nurse practitioner and Air National Guard officer — defeated a Trump-backed primary opponent last year. Mark Burns, a Black pastor who has been by Trump's side for nearly a decade, had unsuccessfully run for Congress twice before. Biggs easily won the general election in the district, which has been in GOP hands since Republican Lindsey Graham, who is now seeking his fifth U.S. Senate term, won it in 1994. Six months into her first term, Biggs said that she knew she wanted a district-unifying event of her own, as well as one that could continue to act as a showcase for potential GOP presidential candidates seeking to get to know its voters. 'I do want people to know that I'm here to serve this district, and that means making myself available and being out front and accessible to our voters, and hearing their needs,' she said. 'I'm here to serve the district, and that doesn't just mean everybody who voted for me.' In some ways, Biggs' event will be familiar. It's being held in the same venue as Duncan's barbecue, a civics center in Anderson, and there will still be $1 tickets for law enforcement officers and first responders. As for the menu, Biggs said she'll be shifting away from the buffet line of barbecue, baked beans and rolls, with a catered, 'more of a sit-down type of dinner.' 'It's not so much that I don't think the barbecue was great, I just want my own identity,' Biggs said. 'I want people to realize that it's a new ballgame, and I want to move forward on my own accord.'
New York Times
14 minutes ago
- New York Times
Thailand and Cambodia Stepped Back From War, but Their Temple Fight Remains
It took days of cajoling and pressure from the United States, China and Malaysia — and a threat from President Trump — to get Thailand and Cambodia to come together to work out their two nations' deadliest border conflict in decades. That was the easy part. On Tuesday, the Thai and Cambodian militaries agreed to implement a cease-fire. Both sides said that they would not deploy more troops to their contested border, bringing a tenuous peace after rocket launches, airstrikes and shelling that killed dozens and forced more than 300,000 people to flee their homes. But questions remain about how long the lull can last. A key issue that brought the two neighbors to arms is their most intractable dispute: who can lay claim to the centuries-old Hindu temples along the border, dating back to the ancient Khmer Empire. Trust has seldom been in evidence between the two neighbors, and it has in no way been repaired after this latest violence. A personal feud between their de facto leaders has only added to the tensions. On Wednesday and late on Tuesday, the Thai Army continued to accuse the Cambodian forces of starting gunfights. Cambodia rejected the accusations as false, saying that they 'dangerously threaten the fragile trust and dialogue essential for lasting peace.' 'The problem in that area is that almost anything could provoke hostilities,' said Charles A. Ray, who was the U.S. ambassador to Cambodia from 2003 to 2005. 'No one has really gotten the two sides in a rooms, have them sit down and really discuss: 'What do both sides gain by fighting over a temple on a mountain?'' Officials will next meet on Monday, to work out how to maintain a cease-fire, including by having Malaysian observers monitor it. That step is seen as crucial: A plan to introduce Indonesian observers after the last major deadly border clash in 2011 never panned out. Reported sites of attacks and fighting since July 24 Sources: Cambodian and Thai officials, local news reports. Note: Locations where fighting was in dispute between the two nations are not shown. By Agnes Chang, Sun Narin, Kittiphum Sringammuang and Sui-Lee Wee The mood remained resigned and uncertain in evacuation centers in Thailand and Cambodia on Tuesday. In Thailand, the authorities have told more than 180,000 evacuees to stay put just in case. In Surin, Pa Srakaeo, 58, a rice farmer, said that she was not hopeful about returning home soon. 'It's probably 50-50.' For there to be an enduring peace, both countries need to resolve the dispute over how their 500-mile-long border should be demarcated. One major sticking point is Thailand's insistence that all discussions must to be done bilaterally. It has refused to recognize the 1962 ruling by the International Court of Justice that the Preah Vihear temple falls within the sovereignty of Cambodia. It argues that both countries should stick to a 2000 memorandum of understanding that states that both sides agreed to jointly survey and define the areas together. But they have been talking for years with little progress. Notably, they can't even agree on what maps they should use. Cambodia uses a 1:200,000-scale map, which is equivalent to giving someone a small and simple drawing of an area that gives a general layout but is not very precise. This map was drawn by French surveyors when Cambodia was a French colony and was used by the I.C.J. in its 1962 ruling. Thailand uses a 1:50,000-scale map — like the U.S. military — like a much bigger and highly detailed blueprint of a street in which every house and tree can be seen. Thailand says this map reflects the actual terrain. This issue is such an inflammatory one that the Thai government spokesman, Jirayu Houngsub, took pains to reject Thai media reports that Thailand would agree to use Cambodia's 1:200,000-scale map in the cease-fire talks. 'No government or individual would ever sell out their own country,' Mr. Houngsub said. Mr. Ray, the former U.S. ambassador, said he had once suggested to someone in Cambodia that both sides should come up with a joint commission that monitors the comings and goings in these areas, like the Demilitarized Zone, the strip of land that divides the Korean Peninsula. 'It didn't exactly go over big,' he said. 'You have a hard time getting through to them. It's almost an irrationally emotional issue.' Cambodia argues that temples like Preah Vihear, known as Phra Viharn in Thailand, and Prasat Ta Moan Thom, known as Prasat Ta Muen Thom in Thailand, are deeply significant to Cambodian identity as the descendants of the Khmer kings who built them. Thailand sees the Phra Viharn /Preah Vihear temple complex as theirs because it is more easily accessible from the Thai side of the border. More broadly, the temples have been seized on by the country's ultranationalists as 'lost territories,' ceded by Siam to French Indochina during the French colonial era. The border dispute has also been a convenient way for Thai political factions to target each other under the guise of nationalism. 'The problem is, once the conflict started, then nationalism became much more extreme,' said Ou Virak, president of Future Forum, a think tank in Phnom Penh dedicated to public policy issues. 'And then people made out that these zones were worth dying for.'
