Transcript: Trump Explodes in Fury as Media Reveals Fresh Iran Fiasco

Sargent: Yeah. And by the way, a woman of color, too, really tends to trigger him more than I think even white women do.

Marcotte: Low IQ is one of his favorite go-to racist insults for sure.

Sargent: Yes, he constantly applies that to women of color. By the way, to your point about AOC being calm and measured, that’s exactly how she responded. She tweeted in response to Trump, saying, “Mr. President, don’t take your anger out on me – I’m just a silly girl. Take it out on whoever convinced you to betray the American people and our Constitution by illegally bombing Iran and dragging us into war. It only took you 5 months to break almost every promise you made.” Now, Amanda, there will be some out there who claim that Trump is cleverly attacking AOC because his base will love it and blah, blah, blah, but I don’t think that’s what’s going on. I think he’s genuinely set off by hearing her in particular say these things. He’s still sensitive about the two impeachments from the first term. What do you make of this?

Marcotte: I think Ocasio-Cortez has often talked about her time being a bartender and how useful it was in teaching her to be politician. And this is a really classic example, because if you’re a woman in the service industry, men taking out all their issues on you is a common experience—and she handled it with aplomb. I think that that’s obviously what’s happening. I think he’s feeling especially insecure right now because it’s clear that this Iran thing … he wants it to be this one-and-done victory, but that’s just never going to be what it is.

I think that a lot of the people that pressured him into this bombing are not going to be satiated by that. I don’t think Benjamin Netanyahu is going to be satiated. I don’t think the evangelical right that really wants an Armageddon war with Iran or Ted Cruz or Lindsey Graham who want regime change in Iran—I think that they’re not going to be satiated. And he’s probably starting to feel the heat because there is no way to please those people while also not eroding his base of power even more.

Sargent: I want to home in on what you said there about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s past as a bartender because that was on Trump’s mind. In his tweet going after her, he mentioned the fact that her district is partly in Queens and he said, “Alexandria should go back home to Queens, where I was also brought up, and straighten out her filthy, disgusting, crime ridden streets.” Now, I actually know a little something about the part of Queens where Trump grew up himself. It’s called Jamaica Estates, right? And while Trump constantly portrays himself as this scrappy outer borough guy who took on the elites in Manhattan and so forth, Jamaica Estates was the home to elites in Queens. Lawyers, judges, lobbyists, real big shots—that’s where he grew up. I think he is sensitive to the fact that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a New Yorker just like him, only genuinely with a hardscrabble background.