Mitch McConnell accused of Trump derangement syndrome over voter ID stance

Moving on, though, I want to talk about something we talked a bit about last week here, and this is this ongoing push for voter integrity and the Republicans pushing this SAVE Act, which, as we've spoken about before, is designed to ensure that only U.S. citizens with proper ID vote in federal elections. Now, this seems like a no-brainer. It's passed the House and gone to the Senate, but there's a surprising obstacle right now when Republican Mitch McConnell, who you see here on your screen making Joe Biden look like John Wayne and who is now joining Democrats to stand in the way of the act, which is odd to be given that McConnell has in the past been a key spokesman for voting integrity, like all the way back in 1987. A lot of the election fraud that occurs in my state, and I suspect in many others, involves the use of absentee ballots. Mick, what has made Mitch McConnell change his tune on voter integrity? Donald Trump. His Trump derangement syndrome now is real. Of course, Mitch McConnell is not running for re-election. I'm not sure the health — you showed the video there. That's not the only video you can find of Mitch McConnell, clearly limited in his abilities and so forth. But he hates Trump. He just doesn't. He doesn't want to give him a win. That's the only explanation I can come up with. Because as you point out, not only has he supported it in the past and for a long time, there's actually at least one Democrat, John Fetterman from Pennsylvania, who is supporting this bill. This is an 85 or 90 percent issue with the American public, and that includes Democrats. Should you have to show an ID to vote? That's really what this act is about at its base. So why Mitch McConnell is doing — if this is his parting shot to Donald Trump on the way out door of refusing to give him a victory, I don't understand it. The bill is not going to pass mostly because of Democrat obstruction. Keep in mind, even if McConnell supports it, they're still short and need Democrat votes. They're not going to get it. So you have a longer discussion another day about why the Democrats oppose it, but why Mitch McConnell opposes it. The only reason I come back to is that he just — he can't stand Donald Trump. Okay, but Mick, walk me through this with the Democrat logic here. There are some states that require ID, some states that don't. Now, for the last decade, we have heard the Democrats going on about election integrity. It seems to me that by not supporting this bill, they are giving Trump and Republicans, anybody who's a little bit suspicious, a great avenue to question the integrity of future American elections. Yeah, but they sort of want that, don't they? I mean, they're prodding Trump. They try to make Trump out to be this fascist dictator, and they sort of want him in some ways to try to federalize elections and so forth, to send out the National Guard and say, oh, look, see, we were right about him the whole time. It's really one of those circumstances of putting your own political interests and just being right ahead of what's right for the country. Look, some of them will make arguments about how elections are to be run by the states and not by the federal government. And I get that. I'm sympathetic to that argument. That doesn't mean there can't be some basic standards, including showing an ID. If you dig down deep into the Democrat Party, though, you'll find the wing of the party that wants to make sure that people who shouldn't be here still get to vote. They think that voting is a universal sort of right. It's not just for citizens. It's for anybody who's here. Yeah, and I think that's where we start to get down to the real nub of the matter. Let's move over to the Iran question, though, right now, because we keep getting action threaded here. And now Donald Trump has indicated that he will make a decision on whether to attack Iran in the next 10 days while these talks are underway to reach a deal on Iran's nuclear capabilities. Meanwhile, it is just broken that Keir Starmer's beleaguered Labor government is going to block the U.S. from using bases out of the U.K. in any strike on Iran, saying they think would violate international law. This is a bit of shades of, I think, when France tried to ban Ronald Reagan from flying over France to strike Libya back in the 1980s. But, Mick, what are you hearing about this, particularly around maybe that it's actually things like weather and the time of year and rough seas in that area that's actually what's delaying some sort of strike? Yeah, and keep in mind, France did do that to the United States, to Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, and we were still able to bomb Tripoli despite that. And we're going to figure out, if we decide we're going to do this in Iran, either the U.K. can go along or they're not going to, but we're not counting on the U.K. We're not reliant on the U.K. for that. It's disappointing to hear an ally doesn't want to help us if we decide to do that, but that's another story. Look, I had a laugh when you put up the headline about Trump suggests that he may have an answer in 10 days. In Trump world, that's not an answer. That's maybe I will, maybe I won't. I'll give you a little bit of a nugget that I know makes a headline, but that doesn't mean it's tomorrow and it doesn't mean it's six months from now. So I think they're still waiting on a couple of things. To your question about logistics, excellent question. The dark of night, the phases of the moon make a difference when you want to do these military types of operations. I understand, I think, if I've got this right, the new moon was last night. So for the next 15 days, it will be getting lighter and lighter, which sort of maybe puts you in a timeline of when something might be going on. They have had the opportunity, the American military now has had the opportunity to move more assets into the Gulf. They're comparing it to the buildup they did before Desert Storm back in 1991. So there's a significant American military presence in the area. Again, another reason we're not heavily reliant on the U.K. My guess is, and it's an educated guess, there will be something, James, eventually. As Lindsey Graham, and I don't agree with him very often, he said over the weekend, you don't move an aircraft carrier into the Mediterranean so the seamen can get some sunshine. They're there to work and they're going to use this military asset at some point. But I wouldn't read too much into the maybe I'll give you a decision in 10 days. That's not a hard and fast deadline by any stretch of the imagination. Yeah. And I mean, just on the domestic side of that, I mean, putting Lindsey Graham aside for a moment, you know, there is that sort of line that goes around Trump always chickens out. Trump has made commitments that, you know, if the Iranians keep doing what they're doing, help is on the way. He said that help is on the way for the Iranian people. Is there a risk to his credibility if he doesn't do that? Does that play into his calculus at all? You know that, man. What do you think? I think the calculus is this. They're trying to figure out if a decapitation, removing the senior leadership of the government, does that make things better or worse when it comes to American interests? In Venezuela, they were able to convince themselves, and I think rightly so, that taking Maduro out of the equation would help because there was a government there to stand up once he was removed. Contrast that to what you and I know happened in Iraq with Saddam Hussein and what they call the de-bathification of Iraq when they took out the entire governing wing of the population and there was no government left to run the country afterwards. So I think they're trying to figure out is Iran more like Iraq or is it more like Venezuela and what really happens on the day after we take out the ayatollah. I think that's what's really the issue right now is they're trying to figure out what comes next as they move down the chessboard. Yeah, look, I think that's always the thing that we like to hear that they're thinking about because so often it seems like our politicians and leaders don't think about what comes next. Mick Mulvaney, thank you so much for your time as always.