The Nation justice correspondent and frequent MSNBC talking head Elie Mystal appears to be in a competition with himself to see just how outrageous he can be. On June 28, he joined The Joy Reid Show podcast to claim “our country needs to be sanctioned” because “we are the bad guys on the world stage” after President Trump ordered strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Reid began by torching a straw man, “I was on with my friend Abby Phillip, and someone said that that Donald—that our bombing of Iran, one of the gentlemen that was on the set with me, said that this was about the Iran Hostage Crisis and the various acts of terror by Hezbollah, an Iran proxy in the, like, 80s, I've never heard of delayed action warfare. So, essentially, they take our hostages in the 70s, and we bomb them in 2025? Does that even make sense? Is there a War Powers Act for that? The delayed response retaliation?”
A keyword search of the transcript reveals only one use of the word “hostage” by someone other than Reid. It was spoken by Atlantic Council senior fellow, self-described liberal Democrat, and Clinton National Security Council official Jamie Metzl. Metzl claimed, “Americans recognize that for 46 years, Iran has been at war with us, starting with the hostage crisis. They've killed thousands of Americans. They supported the war against us in Afghanistan. They've built proxies and they've destroyed multiple countries. Iran has declared war on the United States. Death to America was their mantra… the American people understand that the United States plays an important role in the world. I am thrilled that the United States is trying to police the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Imagine what the world would look like if it was otherwise.”
Metzl was talking about Tehran’s broader history of anti-Americanism and destabilizing the volatile Middle East going back decades to make a threat assessment for 2025. He wasn’t saying, “This is payback for 1979.”
And again, Metzl is a liberal who has worked for Democratic presidents and who had to inform Reid that, contrary to her assumptions, he always opposed the Iraq War. Nevertheless, Mystal spewed, “No, they're making it up as they go along. They're making it up again because they understand Trump's poll numbers were tanking, he can't pass his bill, his actions are unpopular, he's deploying troops on the streets of Los Angeles, so let's have a war, let's have some bombing that always tends to get people to rally around the flag.”
Mystal was just getting started with his anti-American, anti-factual garbage, “Joy, I've argued, and I don't say this lightly, but our country needs to be sanctioned. We are the bad guys on the world stage. We are a menace to not only free people everywhere, but we are a menace to peaceful people everywhere at this point, and I'm not even going to say that we've only been a menace for the past three or four months, right? Like when does the international community decide that enough is enough.”
While Mystal wants the countries that won’t even sanction Russia for its real crimes against peace to sanction the United States for bombing a Nazi-like regime’s nuclear program, he did acknowledge that this is unlikely, “I know we're rich, I know we've got a lot of money, I know that people want to buy things from our country because we're rich or want to sell things to our country because we're rich, but at some point the international community has to stand up to us because we are a bad guy on the world stage, right?”
He concluded, “And so we should be sanctioned. We should be sanctioned and rebuked for these illegal, unnecessary bombings in Iran in a conflict that does not involve us, right? Like, we have to be stopped through the same kind of means that we have that our country and others have used to rebuke a North Korea or a China or name a rogue state. We are the rogue state, and other countries need to start treating us like that.”
Foreign policy, especially foreign policy in the Middle East, can be messy and complicated, but some things are easy: the United States is the good guy, and Iran is the bad guy.
Here is a transcript for the June 28 show:
The Joy Reid Show
6/28/2025
51 Minutes, 6 Seconds
JOY REID: I was on with my friend Abby Phillip, and someone said that that Donald—that our bombing of Iran, one of the gentlemen that was on the set with me, said that this was about the Iran Hostage Crisis and the various acts of terror by Hezbollah, an Iran proxy in the, like, 80s, I've never heard of delayed action warfare. So, essentially, they take our hostages in the 70s, and we bomb them in 2025? Does that even make sense?
ELIE MYSTAL: No.
REID: Is there a War Powers Act for that? The delayed response retaliation?
MYSTAL: No, they're making it up as they go along. They're making it up again because they understand Trump's poll numbers were tanking, he can't pass his bill, his actions are unpopular, he's deploying troops on the streets of Los Angeles, so let's have a war, let's have some bombing that always tends to get people to rally around the flag.
Joy, I've argued, and I don't say this lightly, but our country needs to be sanctioned. We are the bad guys on the world stage. We are a menace to not only free people everywhere, but we are a menace to peaceful people everywhere at this point, and I'm not even going to say that we've only been a menace for the past three or four months, right? Like when does the international community decide that enough is enough.
I know we're rich, I know we've got a lot of money, I know that people want to buy things from our country because we're rich or want to sell things to our country because we're rich, but at some point the international community has to stand up to us because we are a bad guy on the world stage, right?
And so we should be sanctioned. We should be sanctioned and rebuked for these illegal, unnecessary bombings in Iran in a conflict that does not involve us right? Like, we have to be stopped through the same kind of means that we have that our country and others have used to rebuke a North Korea or a China or name a rogue state. We are the rogue state, and other countries need to start treating us like that.
