President Donald Trump said he had given an order to cut off "all trade with Spain" after its leaders refused to allow bases in the country for attacks on Iran.
During an event at the White House on Tuesday, the U.S. president was asked which European countries had not been helpful with Operation Epic Fury.
"But some of the European countries, like Spain, have been terrible," Trump said. "In fact, I told Scott to cut off all dealings with Spain."
"And now Spain actually said that we can't use their bases," he continued. "And that's not all right. We could use their base if we want. We could just fly in and use it. Nobody's going to tell us not to use it. But we don't have to."
According to Trump, Spain was "unfriendly" to his efforts to strike Iran.
"So we're going to cut off all trade with Spain," he revealed. "We don't want anything to do with Spain."
President Donald Trump said Tuesday that Israel did not pressure the United States to launch strikes against Iran.
Trump was meeting with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and speaking about the conflict with Iran at the White House when he took questions from reporters inside the Oval Office. He claimed that Iran's navy, air force and radar technology had been "knocked out."
"I might have forced their hand," Trump said. "You see, we were having negotiations with these lunatics and it was opinion that they were going to attack first. They were going to attack if we didn't do it. They were going to attack first, I felt strongly about that, and we have great negotiators, great people, people that do this very successfully and have done it all their lives very successfully. And based on the way the negotiation was going, I think they were going to attack first and I didn't want that to happen."
Trump's comments somewhat differed from Secretary of State Marco Rubio's remarks on Monday about how Israel claimed Iran was planning to attack. Trump appeared to say he had pushed for the strikes instead.
"So if anything I might have forced Israel's hand but Israel was ready, and we were ready, and we've had a very, very powerful impact because virtually everything they have has been knocked out now," Trump said.
Trump commented that Iran has targeted Arab countries that were neutral, targeting civilians and hotels, but now those countries have planned to fight back.
"They hit countries that have nothing to do with what's going on... which shows you the level of evil that we're dealing with," Trump said.
Q: Did Israel force your land to launch these strikes against Iran?
TRUMP: No. I might've forced their hand. It was my opinion that these lunatics were gonna attack first. pic.twitter.com/KcDmIbI6Vr — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 3, 2026
An analyst Tuesday suggested that the Texas primaries could signal a major shift nationally among key voting blocs in the Democratic Party.
Jim Messina, former White House deputy chief of staff for operations, described in his new Substack piece what Democrats should keep in mind heading into the midterms and the next presidential election. Messina argued on MS NOW Tuesday morning that Democrats need to build a stronger relationship with young men in an effort to stop losing their votes in elections, advocating that progressive strategists should look at TikTok, streaming, cryptocurrency, sports, betting and prediction markets as paths to reaching this group.
"If you look at the issues, you know, Dems bled young voters in historic numbers in the last presidential [election]," Messina said. "And I think there's a view in my party that we just need to get on a couple Joe Rogan podcasts or we need to hang out with tech bros and it will all be fine. It's really just about, you know, figuring out social media. And I think it's deeper than that. Right now we're the party saying 'No' to a bunch of things that young male voters like and do every day, like video games, like sports betting, like prediction markets, like crypto, and they look at this and say, 'You're saying no, to all these things, maybe you're saying no to me, too.'"
Messina argued that it's not just about culture — it's about Democrats taking a look at their overall strategy.
"And I think best when we go back to the Clinton days or the Obama days of being pro-innovation, pro-new things, pro-things getting better and right now we're starting to be in this kind of, you know, being perceived by these voters as a nanny state," Messina said. "And someone who's saying, 'No, you can't do these things.' And I think that's a really dangerous place to be. And so, we need to stop talking, and listen to these young voters, and meet them where they are, not where we want them to be."
Democrats could have an opportunity, with the Texas primary as the first test, to see how Democrats and Republicans perform among young men, along with another key voting bloc: Latinos. Both groups broke support for Vice President Kamala Harris, voting instead for Trump. What comes next in Texas could reveal more about what could happen in November — and how Democrats reach these voters.
"Yeah, this is the mostexciting primary we've hadso far," Messina said. "What I'm going to belooking at, two things: are the young men comingback? Are they voting at all?Because that's a reallyimportant number, but moreimportantly in Texas, where arethe Latinos going? When youlook at some of these specialelections Dems are gettingback the young voters andback the Latino votersthat Donald Trump rented in2024.This will be a reallyinteresting night because youhave both like really hotlycontested, Republican primary and a Democratic primary, and so when you and I look at the numbers tomorrow, we're goingto look and see where the Latinos are going. And ifthe Latinos are starting tocome back to the Democratic Party in Texas of all places,that is a very goodsign for the Democratsin the midterm elections."
An analyst revealed the difficult challenge ahead for President Donald Trump as the war in Iran now enters its fourth day.
In an interview on MS NOW's Morning Joe with David Ignatius, columnist and associate editor of The Washington Post, and Shashank Joshi, defense editor at The Economist, Joshi discussed the Trump administration's mixed messaging about objectives for the military strikes in Iran, including regime change, then "imminent threats" from Iran against Israel and the push to stop Iran from developing ballistic missiles.
"What we heard yesterday from Dan Caine, from Secretary Rubio, from Secretary Hegseth,others, was a very,very different set ofaims narrowly focusedaround Iran's missileprogram," Joshi said.
The war aims, such as regime change, could take weeks, Joshi explained.
"Now that, I think, can be donein a short period of time,they can degrade missilestockpiles, and we've alreadyheard the Iranians the Israelis say they havedestroyed about half of the Iranian missile launchesthat Iran's able to bring tobear and I think you couldhave really longlasting and severe damagedone to Iran's missileprogram by the end ofthis week," Joshi said. "There's no doubt about it.But the problem is, youwould still have an Iranled by individuals who aremore hardline in somerespects than theleaders who have been killedby the strike so far.You have, you know, a newleader of these Islamic Revolutionary Guard, calledVahidi, who is this man? Well,you know, David is, you know,he is a former head of theexpeditionary,IRGC. He was associated with the bombingof a Jewish cultural centerin Argentina in the1990s. This is not a regimethat will be more moderate,more pragmatic, moredeterred than that, of Ayatollah Khamenei."
Despite the killing of Khamenei and the dismantling of Iran's weapons, the problem over Iran's leadership will still remain.
"Andso, I still think at the endof this week, eventhough enormous damage mayhave been done to Iran'smissile program, includingthe supply chain, theexplosives, the guidancesystems, you will still havethe political problemsitting in Iran over regime, thatcast this incredibleU.S. missile shadow over the Persian Gulf, and I think the Trump administration willfind it very hard toarticulate that and framethat as some kind ofdecisive win," Joshi added.
The strikes have wiped out the regime, but it could take time for Iranians to reform their government.
"But I think the focus of these first three days of operations have been on Iran's missile forces, Iran's navy and nuclear and missile sites as well as political leadership," Joshi said. "I think if you are going to give the Iranian people the confidence to say, 'if we go back onto the streets in a week's time and we want confidence, we are not going to be gunned down in the same way.' I think what you need to see is an Israeli and American set of strikes over the next four or five days that systematically break down Iran's domestic security apparatus."
But history could repeat.
"I think that is a very hard thing to do, and I think that President Trump will face the dilemma between doing that and upholding his commitment to the Iranian people that he has made and sucking himself into a longer campaign, but it'll, he should remember the case of George H.W. Bush in 1991, who, as you will recall at David and others, called upon the Iraqi people to rise up in 1991 after the first Gulf War and the Shias in the south and the Kurds in the north did so, and they were massacred by Saddam Hussein," Joshi said. "That should be, I think a very, very cautionary tale for American strategy today."
Protests erupted during a House Judiciary Committee hearing after Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem refused to retract claims that two protesters killed by her agents were domestic terrorists.
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) was the first Democrat to confront Noem about the killings at Tuesday's hearing.
"Secretary Noem, the nation has watched horrified as immigration agents killed Renee Good, Alex Pretti," Durbin said. "In Chicago, one of your Border Patrol agents shot Marimar Martinez five times after ramming her car."
"You and your agency rush to brand these victims as, quote, domestic terrorists," he continued. "We have ample video evidence and eyewitness testimony proving you are wrong. Your statements cause immeasurable pain to these families. Let me give you an opportunity to do the right thing. Do you retract these statements identifying these individuals as domestic terrorists?"
For her part, Noem declined to retract the claims of domestic terrorism.
"You know, Senator Durbin, when we have these situations happen, we always offer our condolences to those families," the secretary explained. "And I offer mine as well. These are tragic situations. And I can't imagine what these families go through in losing a loved one."
"I was getting reports from the ground from agents at the scene," she added. "And I would say that it was a chaotic scene, as you've seen in Minneapolis and St. Paul, as immigration enforcement has gone forward. And we've worked at targeting the worst of the worst that many times our agents have been faced with violent protesters."
"You believe calling the victims of that violence domestic terrorists as a way to calm the scene?" Durbin wondered.
"These violent terrorists have put them in a situation where they've been, it's unprecedented what these agents have faced it," Noem insisted.
At that point, the secretary stopped speaking as a protester erupted in the room.
"You haven't given their family any justice," the demonstrator screamed. "They have names!"
Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) pushed back on conservative CNBC host Joe Kernen for calling the Constitution's war powers provisions a "moot point" because President Donald Trump had already ordered attacks on Iran without the permission of Congress.
"You must have seen that some of the things that are circulated, how many times President Obama took military action without a declaration," Kernen said in defense of Trump on Tuesday. "But it's almost a moot point. [Trump has] at least has probably 60 days under certain provisions to carry things out."
"And if we did go your route, Senator, what's happened over the past three days is impossible. It could never happen. Even informing Congress at times about certain raids that or actions that have to be done. That's not in the real world, it's not possible," he added.
Kaine replied: "Let me just underline the fact that I made an argument about the Constitution, and you said it was a moot point. I don't believe that. I don't believe the Constitution is a minor matter or a moot point."
Kernen insisted that he didn't believe the Constitution was a moot point.
"I'm asking every senator to do what you should ask them to do," Kaine insisted. "Go on the record and declare, are you for this or against this? Anybody who's elected to a job like this should not hide under their desks and say, oh, you know, even though the Constitution says it's for Congress, let's let the President do it and try to evade accountability. We've got to be accountable."
The top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee sounded the alarm that President Donald Trump launched a war without having enough weapons.
The 79-year-old president fired off a Truth Social post Monday night stating that the U.S. military had a "virtually unlimited supply" of munitions that would allow the war to continue "forever," but he also blamed former President Joe Biden for giving away too many weapons to Ukraine.
"Sleepy Joe Biden spent all of his time, and our Country’s money, GIVING everything to P.T. Barnum (Zelenskyy!) of Ukraine – Hundreds of Billions of Dollars worth – And, while he gave so much of the super high end away (FREE!), he didn’t bother to replace it," Trump posted. "Fortunately, I rebuilt the military in my first term, and continue to do so. The United States is stocked, and ready to WIN, BIG!!!"
Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI) cast doubt on the president's assurances on the third day of Operation Epic Fury.
"Well, I think at firstsuggests to me that we do nothave an unlimited arms," Reed told "CNN News Central." "Thepresident is trying to put agood face on a situation which,not immediately, but certainlywithin a weeks or months, we'regoing to run into a crisis ofhaving sufficient arms. That iswhy over the last year, the Department of Defense has beeninvesting significantly onincreased arms productionbecause, even without thisconflict, they anticipated thatwe would not have adequatenumber of arms for a majorconflict."
"I think thepresident is simply trying todispense with the real problem,which is that at some point wehave to start rationing ourarms, and again, the questionis, when is it – this week?" Reed added. "Is itfive weeks? Is it five months? The whole question of unlimitedtermless war is something that weface. I don't know of any warin the Middle East that has beenshort and sweet, other than the1991 attack against Iraq. Butthat was limited by President George Herbert Walker Bushhimself. They were theyunderstood they didn't want togo all the way to Baghdad, amistake that was made by his son George W. Bush."
Jimmy Kimmel has blasted Donald Trump's war in Iran as a distraction tactic from the release of Jeffrey Epstein's files.
The talk show host played a clip of Trump denouncing the decision of then-President Barack Obama to go to war with Iran, and contrasted this quote with the current actions of the 47th President of the United States. Trump said in 2011, "Our president will start a war with Iran because he has absolutely no ability to negotiate, he's weak, and he's ineffective."
Kimmel dubbed this "another prediction he [Trump] got right." The talk show host went on to suggest that Trump is using the Iran war as a distraction from his name appearing in the Epstein files.
He said, "When your best friend was a pedophile, and you're losing bigly in the swing states with an election coming up, what do you do? I tell you what you do. You fire the weapons of mass distraction."
Another clip from Trump, this time from 2012, heard the business magnate claim a war in Iran would be "good for Obama politically."
Kimmel responded to this clip, adding, "And since Obama didn't do it, Trump said, 'Well, why not? I'll do it.'" A screenshot of a Trump post from 2012 accused Obama of launching strikes as he was "desperate" to hold onto political power.
Kimmel added, "At least we know why he [Trump] did it. Only one in four Americans, by the way, believes the US made enough of an effort at diplomacy with Iran before using military force. That includes many from his MAGA base who feel Trump violated his promise to keep us out of foreign entanglements and regime change."
The talk show host also took a jab at Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, saying, "In times like these, I for one am grateful that the lives of the men and women in our military are in the experienced, capable, totally not at all shaky hands, of the former weekend co-host of Fox and Friends."
President Donald Trump appears to have just blown up one of the reasons he gave for coordinating strikes against Iran with Israel over the weekend, according to one expert.
The Trump administration has offered shifting reasons for the strikes, ranging from protecting protesters from the brutal regime to overthrowing the regime itself. If regime change was a true aim, then the administration has a lot of explaining to do, argued David Rothkopf, former editor of Foreign Policy Magazine, on Monday's episode of "The Daily Beast Podcast" with Joanna Coles.
Rothkopf read a tweet from ABC News journalist Jonathan Karl that he described as "stunning." In it, Karl said Trump told him that the administration's candidates to take over the country after Ayatollah Ali Khamenei died were also killed in the strikes. "The strikes were so successful they took out some of the candidates," he read.
"How incompetent is this?" Rothkopf asked.
U.S. and Israeli forces coordinated strikes against several targets in Iran on early Sunday morning that took out the nation's political and military leadership, and further damaged its ballistic and nuclear missile infrastructure.
Rothkopf described the strikes in Iran as the most "reckless" war he has ever seen.
"This president is so ignorant and so ill of good advice that he lurches into these things," Rothkopf said. "For the two weeks before this, he was shopping for a reason to do this."
On Saturday, U.S. and Israeli troops coordinated strikes across Iran, which killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and multiple top political and military leaders. Since then, the White House has waffled on its justification for the strikes. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Monday that the administration believed Iran would attack the U.S. if it were attacked by another country like Israel.
Rep. Warren Davidson (R-OH) described Rubio's answer as "disappointing" during an interview with CNN's Kaitlan Collins on "the Source.
"I thinkhe's been a phenomenal Secretaryof State, and I have a greatdeal of confidence in him," Davidson said. "And Ithink it was just a poor answer. I hope there's better intel onthat."
The Trump administration has also offered shifting answers for its justification, such as Iran's enrichment of uranium and continued development of long-range missiles. That's despite Trump claiming last year that the administration had "completely obliterated" Iran's nuclear capabilities.
Iran will almost certainly be out for blood now that U.S. and Israeli forces took out Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, MS NOW's Rachel Maddow said on Monday — but the very group of U.S. counterintelligence officials tasked with keeping Americans safe from their retribution is out of a job because of a longstanding Donald Trump grudge.
"They're really good at this," Maddow said of Iran. "They can reach all around the globe to kill people when they want to, and they have done it ... They've killed or tried to kill their own dissidents and whistleblowers and political opponents, not over not only just over, you know, all over the Middle East, but throughout Europe. They have killed people. They've even tried to kill people here in the United States before."
"Their security services have reached all around the world to kill people, and they have done it sometimes by finding turncoats ... They've done it sometimes by just sending out their own agents into the world," said Maddow. "They have done it even by partnering with just straight-up criminals, by partnering with mobsters and drug gangs in order to carry out targeted killings for the Iranian regime. And they have done it for decades. I mean, you think Russia is good at flinging people out of windows and dosing people with exotic poisons all over the world? The Russians are pikers at this sort of thing compared to the Iranians, who have not only been doing it for decades, they have been very good at it for decades."
After the Trump administration took out Revolutionary Guard leader Qassem Suleimani, for instance, Iran made serious plots to assassinate National Security Adviser John Bolton, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and diplomatic adviser Brian Hook — all of whom needed constant security detail to keep them safe.
"Iran is a big country, more than 90 million people, and they are a powerful country with a sophisticated, intensively resourced, world-class, ruthless set of intelligence and security services, which, of course, target their own people at home to disastrous, murderous effect, particularly recently," said Maddow. "But those security services and intelligence services also have tentacles all around the world, and they have used them to target the regime's perceived enemies all over the world, including in the United States of America."
Thankfully, Maddow continued, the U.S. has for years had a top-notch team of counterintelligence officials at the FBI, known as CI-12, tasked with thwarting Iranian assassination plots. There's just one problem: Trump's FBI Director, Kash Patel, just gutted that unit, firing numerous agents because of their involvement in the investigation of Trump's classified document stash at Mar-a-Lago.
"But, you know, if you're Trump, who cares?" added Maddow. "I mean, the Iranians targeted Trump, too, but he has Secret Service protection. What does he care if they knock off anybody else? He'll be fine."
Vice President JD Vance caught heat on Monday night after defending the Trump administration's "objectives" in Iran following the strikes over the weekend.
Vance joined "Jesse Watters Primetime" on Fox News to discuss the administration's decision to strike Iran on Saturday morning. Watters asked how Americans can be sure that the operation won't turn into another War on Terror, which dragged on for decades without a clear end in sight.
Vance's comments raised eyebrows among some political analysts and observers.
"What's so different about this is that the president has clearly defined what he wants to see in Iran," Vance said. "There is just no way Donald Trump is going to allow this country to get into a multi-year conflict with no end in sight and no clear objective."
Analysts and observers reacted on social media.
"We’ve already gone to war and Trump hasn’t defined a damn thing," political writer Polly Sigh posted on X.
"Even Mollie Hemingway isn’t buying this," writer Shannon Last posted on X, referring to a far-right writer for The Federalist.
"Oh JD, we are all going to remember this when you run for President," political commentator DJ Omega posted on X.
VP Vance says Iran is different than Afghanistan and Iraq because: the president has clearly defined what he wants to accomplish… He's not gonna let his country go to war unless there's a clearly defined objective pic.twitter.com/ZeurMt3n5d — Acyn (@Acyn) March 3, 2026
President Donald Trump's Justice Department backed down on Monday on a huge monthslong legal battle, no longer defending a series of executive orders that attacked prominent law firms that represented anti-Trump clients in the past.
It's a huge victory for the rule of law, voting rights attorney Marc Elias told MS NOW's Nicolle Wallace — but also a huge black eye for the law firms that made deals with Trump to avoid similar regulatory action against them.
"Donald Trump will do whatever he can get away with doing, and a lot of it isn't legal," said Wallace. "An alarming amount of it is unconstitutional, and he will move on and bully someone else if people stand up to him. Well, why isn't that lesson sort of internalized writ large on the pro-democracy side?"
"I think today is going to be remembered as one of the most important days for the opposition movement against Donald Trump," said Elias, who runs both the Elias Law Group and the media outlet Democracy Docket. "Today was the day that the law firms that stood up tall and said to Donald Trump, we will not bow down to you. We will not obey. We will not bend the knee. Today is the day that the Department of Justice ... [stopped fighting] the victory that the law firms had against the Department of Justice. And what that means for everyone listening is that the four law firms that stood their ground, they can proceed on and have government contracts and enter buildings and do all of the things that Donald Trump tried to deny them."
At the same time, he said, "For the 9 or 10 law firms that capitulated and collaborated, they still have to provide free legal services to Donald Trump."
"They still have to look at themselves in the mirror and explain why they settled a case that wound up getting dismissed, and that the Department of Justice then dropped," said Elias. "They have to explain to their clients why anyone would hire them when they were so cowardly, when they lacked even the basic spine expected of any lawyer, no less one who charges thousands of dollars an hour, and they settled a claim and groveled in the Oval Office rather than standing up to fight."
"And most importantly, they're going to have to explain to their children and their grandchildren and future generations that will remember them by name, when democracy was under attack, when large institutions were asked to do the bare minimum to stand up, not to show the courage that the people of Minneapolis showed. Not to show the activism of millions of people, that No Kings rallies, but to show the basic minimum amount of decency and backbone they'll have to explain to their children, grandchildren and future generations why they couldn't muster that. History will remember them as the great villains and great cowards of this era."
"And so I hope we celebrate today as a victory for everyone who stands up and tall and does not bow down to Donald Trump," Elias concluded. "But I also hope we we redouble our efforts to remember who the villains were, who the cowards were, who had every advantage in life and yet refused to bear any burden to do the rightthing."
