AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
It's been just over a week since Israel and the U.S. began bombing Iran, and as the conflict expands to include over half of the countries in the Middle East, the reasons and objectives for that war remain murky. Even as Iranian officials are poised to announce a new supreme leader, President Trump says he's considering choosing the new leader. But in speaking in the oval office last week, he said that it might not work out.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I guess the worst case would be we do this, and then somebody takes over who's as bad as the previous person, right? That could happen. We don't want that to happen. It would probably be the worst. You go through this, and then in five years, you realize you put somebody in who was no better.
RASCOE: We're joined now by senior national political correspondent Mara Liasson. Good morning, Mara.
MARA LIASSON, BYLINE: Good morning.
RASCOE: So, you know, as we just heard, regime change in Iran might not work out. Do we have a better understanding of why the U.S. is bombing Iran alongside Israel and what the objectives of this war are?
LIASSON: I think the military objectives are pretty clear. The administration says it wants to destroy Iran's navy. It wants to set back their ballistic missile program. But the political objectives are more confusing, and they've been shifting. The president has said he wants unconditional surrender. He says he wants to have a say in picking the next leader. He said that the Venezuelan model is perfect. In other words, where you leave the regime in place, but you just change the leader. Kind of the band is still playing, but the lead singer gets replaced. But Israel might want the collapse of the entire regime. And this all raises the big question that if it is regime change that the U.S. wants, how do you do that with air power alone? There's never been a case where regime change has happened just through bombing from the air.
RASCOE: So President Trump has also been talking about taking over Cuba. What's the strategy there?
LIASSON: Well, I think the short answer is that Cuba is weak. Trump is emboldened. He has said that Secretary of State Marco Rubio is in talks with Cuban leadership and that a deal could be made, quote, "very fast." He's also said that Cuba is in its, quote, "last months of life." Cuba, like Venezuela is a small, weak country in the United States' backyard. It's the subject of an oil blockade right now, and its economy is close to collapsing.
But that's not nearly as risky as what the president is doing in Iran. You know, he's taking a big risk. He went to war without the support of the American people. Forty percent of Americans tell pollsters they are supportive of this war, and that's very low. He didn't get the kind of rally-around-the-flag effect that presidents usually get when they start a war. He has said, quote, "I don't care about polling, I just have to do the right thing."
And the president is also facing a lot of other headwinds right now. February jobs numbers showed that the U.S. economy lost 92,000 jobs in February. Gas prices are going up, and if the Iran War continues, they'll probably stay there. Stock market is dropping. And in all of these special elections that we've had, the Democrats - despite having historic lows in popularity for their party, Democratic candidates keep on winning.
RASCOE: The president's immigration policy was in the spotlight again this week after he fired Department of Homeland Security head Kristi Noem. Will that turn things around on that issue for him?
LIASSON: Well, I don't think so if the ICE policies remain the same. Now, Kristi Noem presided over those botched ICE raids in Minnesota that left two American citizens dead. But you could argue that her biggest political misstep was when she claimed that the president himself had approved her $200 million ad campaign, which featured her prominently, sometimes on horseback or in a cowboy hat or next to Mount Rushmore or in front of incarcerated inmates - immigrants. President Trump said he didn't approve that campaign, and Noem was fired. So she is the first big casualty of the loss of support for Trump's immigration policies, which used to be his most popular policies. And she's been replaced now by Oklahoma Senator Markwayne Mullin.
RASCOE: On Wednesday, lawmakers approved a subpoena for Attorney General Pam Bondi. They want to ask her about redactions in files related to sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, as well as why some documents were excluded. What are you watching for there?
LIASSON: Well, I would be watching for new information about Trump's relationship with Epstein, but I think it's very unlikely that Pam Bondi or the Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who's also volunteered to testify, will share any new information about that. But still, Epstein remains a very high concern for Republican-base voters. MAGA really cares about this, and I don't think it's going away.
RASCOE: Meanwhile, there's a two-way Texas GOP primary coming up in May, and that'll determine who state representative James Talarico, who just beat U.S. Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett, will face. Has President Trump endorsed anyone yet?
LIASSON: No. He says he will endorse in that primary runoff, and conventional wisdom is that he's going to endorse the incumbent senator John Cornyn. He's an establishment Republican who has been a Trump critic in the past, but many Republicans feel he would be the most electable. Trump has said that he wants the person he doesn't endorse to drop out of the race after he does that. And it remains to be seen if Ken Paxton, who's the attorney general and Cornyn's opponent, will do that.
RASCOE: That's NPR's Mara Liasson. Thank you so much, Mara.
LIASSON: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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