Hidden Costs

0:07 May 6th, 2026.

0:10 It has not been a banner day for members of the Trump administration.

0:15 Evan Hill, Jared Ley, Alex Horton, Tara Copp,

0:19 and Dan Lamothe of the Washington Post

0:21 reported that Iranian strikes since February 28th,

0:26 when US and Israeli air strikes began,

0:28 have caused far more damage to US military sites in the Middle

0:32 East than Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and the US government have admitted.

0:39 While the damage from the Iranian strikes,

0:41 which have killed and wounded service members, is itself important,

0:45 so is the underlying story that the US government is hiding

0:50 the true cost of the war in Iran from the American people.

0:54 The journalists note that it is unusually difficult to get satellite imagery

0:59 from the Middle East right now because less than 2 weeks into the war,

1:03 the US government asked two of the largest

1:06 commercial providers of satellite imagery, Vantor and Planet,

1:11 to limit, delay, or indefinitely withhold the publication

1:15 of imagery of the region while the war is ongoing.

1:20 The companies complied, forcing the journalists to turn to high-resolution

1:25 satellite imagery published by Iran's state-affiliated media,

1:30 cross-checking it with lower-resolution imagery

1:33 from the satellite system the European Union uses.

1:38 Global Affairs journalist David Rothkopf wrote today in The Daily Beast,

1:42 "Not since Vietnam have we seen a more systematic

1:46 effort by an administration to lie about the nature, costs, consequences,

1:52 and results of a war than we have seen from the White House on Iran.

1:59 Early this morning, Barak Ravid of Axios,

2:02 who often reports information from White House insiders,

2:06 wrote that the White House believed it was

2:08 close to a memorandum of understanding with Iran that would end the war and lay

2:12 the groundwork for future negotiations over Iran's nuclear program,

2:17 although there was plenty of hedging in the article.

2:21 Once again, there were fortuitously timed trades before the story broke.

2:26 Adam Kobeissi's Kobeissi Letter, which comments on global capital markets,

2:31 noted that about 70 minutes before the Axios story,

2:35 someone took about 920 million dollars worth of crude

2:39 oil shorts and bet the market would drop,

2:43 meaning they promised to provide about 10,000

2:45 contracts for oil at the current price.

2:49 Within 2 hours, oil prices had fallen more than 12%,

2:53 making the entity a profit of about 125 million dollars.

2:59 On social media, Trump's account continued

3:01 to whipsaw between pressing for an end

3:04 to the war and threatening apocalyptic destruction

3:07 if Iran doesn't agree to US demands.

3:10 "Assuming Iran agrees to give what has been agreed

3:13 to, which is perhaps a big assumption," he wrote,

3:17 "the already legendary epic fury will be at an end and the highly

3:21 effective blockade will allow the Hormuz Strait

3:24 to be open to all, including Iran.

3:28 If they don't agree, the bombing starts and it will be,

3:32 sadly, at a much higher level and intensity than it was before.

3:37 Thank you for your attention to this matter, President Donald J.

3:41 Trump." The administration's shifting justifications and claims

3:47 about the Iran war are dizzying.

3:50 Ben Finley, Matthew Lee, and Farnoush Amiri of the Associated Press wrote today.

3:56 Yesterday, after calling the war concluded,

3:59 Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth spent

4:03 the day selling Trump's Project Freedom to open the Strait of Hormuz.

4:08 Only to have Trump call Project Freedom off with a post on social media.

4:13 Mosheh Gains, Courtney Kube, Andrea Mitchell, Natasha Lebedeva,

4:18 and Daniel Arkin of NBC News reported tonight

4:22 that Trump's abrupt about-face came after Saudi Arabia

4:26 told the US it would not permit the US

4:29 military to use Saudi airspace for the operation.

4:34 This afternoon, the US fired on an Iranian oil

4:37 tanker as it tried to pass through the US blockade,

4:40 and Israel launched strikes on a suburb of Lebanon's capital, Beirut.

4:45 China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi said today that China is

4:49 deeply distressed by the conflict and called for a ceasefire.

4:54 "We believe that a comprehensive ceasefire is urgently needed,

4:59 that a resumption of hostilities is not acceptable," he said.

5:04 Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Aragchi was in China today,

5:08 where he met with Wang.

5:09 Trump is due to visit China on May 14th.

5:13 Trump wants a solution to the Iran war before that meeting,

5:16 and the Iranians know it, giving them leverage over a deal.

5:21 This evening, the speaker of Iran's parliament,

5:24 Enbi Gallabov, posted, "Operation Trust Me, Bro, failed.

5:29 Now, back to routine with Operation Fozios." Hegseth is not

5:34 the only member of the administration in trouble in the news today.

5:38 After journalist Sara Fitzpatrick wrote an April 17th story in The Atlantic

5:43 detailing FBI Director Kash Patel's drinking and inability to perform his job.

5:48 Patel sued both The Atlantic and Fitzpatrick for defamation,

5:53 asking for $250 million in damages.

5:58 The Atlantic and Fitzpatrick stood by the story, which had two dozen sources.

6:03 Fitzpatrick noted that after she published the piece,

6:06 additional informants came forward to corroborate her findings.

6:10 Today, Ken Dilanian and Carol Lennig of MS Now reported that the FBI

6:16 has launched a criminal leak investigation into who talked to Fitzpatrick.

6:22 Sources told the reporters that such an investigation,

6:25 called an insider threat investigation,

6:29 usually involves government officials who may have

6:31 given away state secrets or classified documents.

6:35 Focusing on leaks to a reporter is highly unusual, they say.

6:42 Although it remains unclear what steps the investigation has taken,

6:46 Dilanian and Lennig note that it could allow FBI agents

6:50 to obtain Fitzpatrick's phone records and examine her social media contacts.

6:56 One of the sources told the reporters

6:58 that FBI agents feel deep concern about the probe.

7:03 "They know they're not supposed to do this," one source told the reporters,

7:07 "but if they don't go forward, they could lose their jobs.

7:10 You're damned if you do and damned if

7:12 you don't." FBI spokesperson Ben Williamson denied the story,

7:18 telling Dilanian and Lennig, "This is completely false.

7:21 No such investigation like this exists,

7:24 and the reporter you mentioned is not being investigated at all.

7:28 Every time there's a publication of false

7:30 claims by anonymous sources that gets called out,

7:33 the media plays the victim via investigations that do not exist." Under Patel,

7:41 the FBI has already investigated a New

7:43 York Times reporter who wrote a story about

7:46 an FBI security detail assigned to Patel's girlfriend

7:50 and searched the home of a Washington Post reporter.

7:54 Today, the FBI raided the offices and business of Virginia State Senator L.

7:59 Louise Lucas, 82, a black woman who led the movement

8:04 to redraw Virginia's districts after

8:06 Republicans redo districts in Republican-dominated states.

8:11 The Fox News channel was on the scene,

8:13 suggesting it had been tipped off by the FBI.

8:18 Meanwhile, Fitzpatrick published a new story today in The Atlantic,

8:22 reporting that Patel travels with a supply

8:26 of personalized branded bourbon with the label "Kash Patel,

8:31 FBI Director" and an FBI shield.

8:34 She explains, "Surrounding the shield is a band of text featuring

8:39 Patel's director title and his favorite spelling of his first name,

8:43 K A dollar sign H." An eagle holds

8:48 the shield in its talons along with the number nine,

8:51 presumably a reference to Patel's place in the history of FBI directors.

8:56 In some cases, the 750-ml bottles bear Patel's

9:01 signature with a number nine there as well.

9:06 In what sure reads like a journalist burying a subject with evidence,

9:10 Fitzpatrick lists the places and occasions on which

9:14 Patel has given out bottles of the whiskey and explains that he has transported

9:19 the whiskey on a Department of Justice plane,

9:22 including to the Olympics in Milan, Italy.

9:25 When a bottle went missing during a training

9:28 seminar with Ultimate Fighting Championship athletes in Quantico,

9:31 Virginia, Patel was angry enough that he threatened

9:35 to make his staff take polygraphs and face prosecution.

9:40 Fitzpatrick notes that several current and former FBI employees,

9:45 including multiple senior leaders, told me that the director regularly

9:50 handing out his own personally branded bourbon,

9:54 including to civilians outside the bureau, was unheard of.

9:59 They explain, "The FBI has traditionally

10:02 had a zero-tolerance approach to unauthorized

10:06 use of alcohol on the job and for its misuse while off duty.

10:12 Handing out bottles of liquor at the premier law enforcement agency,

10:16 it makes me frightened for the country." George Hill,

10:20 a former FBI supervisory intelligence analyst, told Fitzpatrick.

10:26 Ron Filipkowski of Midas News noted,

10:30 "The journalist who is being sued by Kash Patel,

10:34 and reportedly being investigated by the FBI, is out with a new story.

10:39 Is there a Pulitzer for being a fearless badass?

10:43 If so, she should win it." Josh Wingrove of Bloomberg reported today that acting

10:50 Attorney General Todd Blanche will ask the Supreme

10:53 Court to let the Department of Justice,

10:55 or DOJ, intervene in the case of columnist E.

10:59 Jean Carroll, who won an $83.3 million jury verdict against Trump

11:06 for defamation after he lied that he had not sexually assaulted her.

11:12 Although the Department of Justice is supposed to represent the American people,

11:16 Trump's appointees are using the department as Trump's personal law firm.

11:22 If the Supreme Court allows the DOJ to step

11:25 in, swapping the US government for Trump in the case,

11:30 the case would have to be dismissed because

11:32 plaintiffs can't sue the federal government for defamation.

11:37 Judges from the appeals court have already refused to permit such a swap,

11:41 but Blanche is giving it another shot.

11:45 Finally, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick was

11:48 in front of the House Oversight and Government

11:50 Reform Committee today for a closed-door interview

11:53 about his relationship with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

11:58 He was not under oath for his testimony,

12:00 a requirement Democrats want for those testifying before the committee,

12:05 and committee chair James Comer, a Republican of Kentucky, does not.

12:11 Lutnick said he had cut all ties with Epstein in 2005,

12:15 only to have information come out that, in fact,

12:18 the two maintained contact until at least 2018,

12:22 years after Epstein's 2008 conviction for soliciting prostitution from a minor.

12:29 Asked why he had taken his wife and their four

12:32 young children to Epstein's private island in the Caribbean in 2012,

12:38 Lutnick told the committee that he didn't remember and that it was inexplicable.

12:45 Indeed.

12:52 Letters from an American was written and read by Heather Cox Richardson.

12:57 [music] It was produced at Soundscape Productions, edited,

13:00 recorded with music composed by Michael Moss.