Monday on the RealClearPolitics radio show — weeknights at 6:00 p.m. on SiriusXM’s POTUS Channel 124 and then on Apple, Spotify, and here on our website — Andrew Walworth, Tom Bevan, and Carl Cannon break down the complex three-way relationship between the U.S., Israel, and Iran, President Trump appearing to make a big reversal on immigration policy, and Susan Crabtree’s reporting about how the Secret Service followed their protocol handling Sen. Alex Padilla’s disruption of a press conference last week. *** First, making sense of where President Trump stands on Israel’s attack on Iran. Can Trump keep the U.S. from getting directly involved, or will the situation escalate out of anyone’s control? “Trump has said he is against war, and he’s proving it yet again. He wants to talk and settle things peacefully,” Tom Bevan said. “It seems to me like Bibi and Trump are playing the ultimate good cop/bad cop routine,” Carl Cannon said. “Or maybe Israel just decided to go it alone.” “I don’t think this is some sort of good cop/bad cop routine he and Bibi cooked up behind closed doors,” Bevan said. “Now, will Trump get maneuvered into the war? That’s clearly what Netanyahu wants… I don’t think Trump is going to be baited into doing what Netanyahu wants. On the other hand, he is trying to thread this needle and tell Iran they have to come to the table or there’s nothing he can do for them.” *** After that, at timestamp 7:30, Trump is attending a meeting of the G7 in Alberta this week. Is anything productive likely to come out of these meetings? “The first thing he did when he got there was criticize President Obama and Trudeau for excluding Russia from the G7 back in 2014,” Walworth said. *** In the next segment, at timestamp 10:30, a review of the great “splitscreen weekend” with President Trump’s military parade and widespread “No Kings” protests against the administration. “There were a variety of derogatory adjectives used by the media about Trump’s parade,” Bevan said. “But there were others who actually thought it was tastefully done, displaying the history of the Army. Hillary Clinton called it the ‘Dear Leader’ parade, but it really didn’t seem to have that vibe — it was the Army’s 250th anniversary.” “It turns out the anti-Trump parade hysteria was overblown and misplaced,” Cannon agreed. “He did not get the idea from Russia or North Korea; he got it from a parade he saw in Paris, sitting next to Macron. He thought, as many Americans probably would: They get a parade? How come there’s no parade for us?” *** In the next segment, at minute 22, President Trump appeared to make a big reversal on immigration policy this week, now saying he supports allowing people like farm workers to stay legally. “For every person who comes here because they’re in a gang that wants to take over an apartment complex, there are a thousand people who came here because their country is terrible and they want to work in the most affluent, freest, best country ever,” Cannon said. “Now, Trump is just learning this? I don’t know how he learned it, but it took a long time.” “There are still tons of criminals out there they could be getting and deporting,” Bevan said. “Focus on those folks, not on folks who are otherwise law-abiding citizens… But a decent amount of people, and Trump ran on this, who want to see everyone who is here illegally sent back and get on line to do it legally, as millions of Americans have.” *** After that, around minute 30, a quick aside about Beach Boys frontman Brian Wilson, who died recently at 82. Carl Cannon wrote a great tribute to the legendary musician. *** Finally, at minute 33, RCP reporter Susan Crabtree breaks down her latest reporting about how the Secret Service followed their own protocol handling Sen. Alex Padilla’s disruption of a press conference last week. “I found out this is textbook Secret Service use of force, in fact, for all law enforcement,” Crabtree said. “It’s relevant because the agents did not know who Sen. Padilla was, he was not wearing his Senate pin, and they said they would do the exact same thing if it had been an event with Secretary Mayorkas, who served under Joe Biden, or any other protectee, regardless of partisanship.” “These agents got caught up in what some of them believe was a stunt by Padilla to try to go into that press conference and force a question in while Secretary Noem was making a statement,” she said. “If it was just a heckling story, this would be completely different, if he hadn’t been making forward motion towards the secretary… Padilla was moving rapidly in a very aggressive manner and did not identify himself.” *** Don’t miss a single episode of the RealClearPolitics weeknight radio show – subscribe at Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
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