Good morning, and welcome to Raw America. I’m Thom Hartmann. We have a lot to cover today. Trump told Time magazine that Americans should expect to die from Iranian retaliation at home, and he seems fine with it. U.S. military investigators now believe American forces struck an Iranian girls’ school, killing at least 150 students and staff. New Epstein files finally surfaced after being incorrectly tagged as duplicates. And the conservative media civil war over Iran has turned into an all-out brawl. It’s all ahead.
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Trump Says Some People Will Die. He’s Fine with That.
In a new interview with Time magazine, Trump was asked whether Americans at home need to prepare for Iranian retaliation. His answer: “Yeah, you know, we expect some things. Like I said, some people will die. When you go to war, some people will die.”
This is the man who campaigned as the “Peace President” and sought a Nobel Peace Prize. When Norway declined to give him the award, Trump told the Norwegian Prime Minister the snub changed his thinking. “I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace,” he wrote.
The Time interview also revealed Trump launched the strikes earlier than planned, saying “We went way early. We were going to do it in another week,” claiming he believed Iran was preparing to attack because they postponed negotiations. This directly contradicts the administration’s public posture at the time. By Thursday, Trump and Hegseth were openly bragging about the war’s open-ended nature. “Iran is hoping that we cannot sustain this, which is a really bad miscalculation,” Hegseth said. Trump has posted that wars can be fought “forever.” The stated duration of this conflict has shifted from two to three days, to four weeks, to two months, to indefinite.
When a president casually accepts the deaths of his own citizens as the price of war it signals a dangerous erosion of democratic leadership and a terrifying normalization of endless conflict that could reshape America’s role in the world for generations.
U.S. Military Likely Responsible for Striking Iranian Girls’ School
This story should be leading every newscast in the country. A preliminary assessment by U.S. military investigators, confirmed to Reuters by two officials, concludes that American forces were likely responsible for the strike on a girls’ school in Minab, southern Iran, that killed at least 150 students and staff. The New York Times separately found the school was struck by a precision weapon at the same moment as an adjacent Revolutionary Guard naval base the U.S. has confirmed it was targeting.
Hegseth has avoided confirming American responsibility, saying the Pentagon is “investigating.” Days earlier, before the details emerged, he told reporters: “We fight to win” and “We don’t waste time or lives.”
Under international humanitarian law, deliberately striking a school is likely a war crime. Reuters reported that if U.S. responsibility is confirmed, this would rank among the worst civilian casualty incidents in decades of American military action in the Middle East. And the justification for the war itself continues to unravel. Administration officials told congressional staffers in closed-door briefings that there was no intelligence pointing to an imminent Iranian attack — directly contradicting Trump’s public rationale for launching the strikes.
If America is responsible for killing 150 children in a school and our government refuses accountability then we risk losing not only moral authority abroad but the very democratic principle that no leader and no nation is above the law.
New Epstein Files Detail Trump’s Alleged Behavior
New FBI interview memos from a woman who contacted investigators in 2019 with allegations against both Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump were finally made public this week, after being excluded from earlier file releases. The DOJ said they had been incorrectly tagged as duplicates.
The woman told FBI investigators that in the 1980s, when she was between 13 and 15, Epstein introduced her to Trump, who she alleged sexually assaulted her. She described the language she heard the two men use to refer to young women: “fresh meat,” “untainted,” and “not jaded.” She told agents she had to look up the word “jaded” because she didn’t know what it meant at the time.
Trump has denied all wrongdoing and says the files have “totally exonerated” him. What the White House leaves out is that the DOJ’s earlier releases included only the first of four FBI interviews with this woman — omitting the three that described allegations against Trump. That selective release is the subject of a continuing NPR investigation. In total, only about 3.5 million of more than 6 million Epstein-related files have ever been released to the public.
When powerful men and institutions can hide evidence and shape what the public is allowed to see it undermines the rule of law and reminds us how fragile accountability becomes when wealth and power overwhelm democracy.
The Conservative Media Civil War Over Iran
The split inside conservative media over the Iran war has moved well past policy disagreement. Tucker Carlson called the strikes “absolutely disgusting and evil.” Megyn Kelly spent multiple broadcasts questioning the war’s justifications. In response, Fox News host Mark Levin called Kelly a “Crazy Grandma Groyper” — a term with white nationalist associations. Ben Shapiro called both Carlson and Kelly “unbelievable cowards.” Right-wing influencer Laura Loomer called Kelly a “stupid bitch.” Sean Hannity said he disagrees with Carlson but is staying out of it. “If they all want to kill each other, have at it,” he said.
The fault line is the question of whether the U.S. is too deferential to Israeli interests. Carlson has said the war was “waged purely because Israel wanted it.” Levin and Shapiro have pushed back hard.
Jonah Goldberg of The Dispatch told the Guardian this is part of a broader “unravelling of the Trump/MAGA coalition.” He also noted the fight has a commercial logic — conflict drives clicks. But what none of these feuds are producing is accountability. Nobody is asking who authorized these strikes while diplomacy was reportedly making progress, or who answers for 150 dead children in a school in southern Iran.
When a media ecosystem built on outrage begins tearing itself apart the real danger is that truth and accountability disappear entirely leaving democracy trapped in a circus of propaganda while life and death decisions go unquestioned.
Raw America had reporters on the ground in both of Kristi Noem’s congressional hearings and on Capitol Hill for yesterday’s war powers resolution vote. We have brought you exclusive interviews with people like retired General Paul Eaton, voices you won’t hear on a network run by a Trump-aligned billionaire. None of that happens without our paid subscribers.
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I’m Thom Hartmann. We’ll see you tomorrow.
STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:
37 Pages Remain Missing from Epstein Files. Despite the Department of Justice publishing new documents this week pertaining to a sexual assault allegation one woman made about President Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein, 37 pages remain unaccounted for. The documents are known as 302s, which is FBI parlance for an agent’s notes after a witness interview. The DOJ argued that some of the 302s were either duplicative or contained privileged information relating to an ongoing federal investigation. Trump himself has not been charged with a crime and maintains he was “exonerated” by the Epstein files.
Progressive Groups Urge Democratic AGs to Stop Paramount Deal. A coalition of liberal organizations — including the Center for American Progress, Public Citizen and the American Federation of Teachers, among others — recently sent a letter to Democratic state attorneys general asking them to stop Paramount-Skydance’s pending acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery. The groups are urging AGs to take antitrust action, arguing that David Ellison’s purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery would lead to higher costs for consumers as well as thousands of layoffs and further right-wing consolidation of media.
U.S. Economy Lost 92,000 Jobs in February as Unemployment Rate Climbs. The unemployment rate has climbed to 4.4 percent following the February 2026 jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which found that the economy shed 92,000 jobs. This is a stark departure from economists’ projections of the economy adding 60,000 new jobs to payrolls in February. The economic uncertainty from the war in Iran is reportedly causing companies to hesitate in hiring new workers.
Democrats Say Noem’s Firing Was Not Enough. Leading Democrats are calling for outgoing Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to be “held accountable” and that removing her as the head of DHS alone is insufficient. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), who is the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, argued there should be a “reckoning” for DHS’ actions under Noem’s tenure, which he described as “murders” and rampant violations of Americans’ civil liberties: “There’s been intense corruption, and there’s been rampant lying in the courts and disobeying of court orders.”
Federal Judges Accuse Trump Administration Immigration Courts of Staging Show Trials. Multiple federal judges are expressing concern that immigration judges who work for the Trump administration are pre-cooking immigration bond hearings to have a fixed outcome of immigrants being deemed a “flight risk” or a “danger to the community.” U.S. District Judge Douglas Harpool — an appointee of former President Barack Obama — noted that one immigrant deemed a flight risk had not missed a court hearing in nine years, owned a home, operated a business in the U.S., and had a husband and three children.
