'Really scary': Trump reportedly 'paying the price' for hiring 'knuckleheads'

With the very real possibility that the U.S. will partner with Israel and take an active role in the growing war with Iran, longtime New York Times columnist Tom Friedman expressed dismay that Donald Trump's key advisers are in no way up to the task ahead of them if a major war does break out.

Appearing on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," the foreign affairs analyst admitted he desperately wants to see regime change in Iran, and has for years, but not with the current administration taking part in the dismantling.

As part of his lengthy 17-minute appearance on MSNBC on Wednesday morning, Friedman told host Joe Scarborough, "Joe, this is a hellish problem, it's a hellish choice it always has been. That's why I favor a kind of step-by-step methodical approach to it."

"I want the whole world to see that what Iran has," he continued. "Every effort we made to avoid war because if there is a war, Joe, it's going to be a long war and you want maximum legitimacy, you want the world behind us."

"That also creates leverage and so how you get into this war, I think, really matters," he noted before adding, "I would say another thing, Joe, you know, Donald Trump is now paying for the fact that he appointed a cabinet of knuckleheads. You know, he's got a defense minister [Pete Hegseth] who is a former Sunday weekend host on Fox, his DNI [Tulsi Gabbard] he's repudiated because she's another knucklehead."

"You know, you hire clowns, you get a circus and who is in the room? They're giving him advice right now and that is really scary," he remarked. "And this is why, you know, when you hire people just for their slavish loyalty to you, not for their expertise and willingness to say no to you and to question you that is really scary to me. And he's paying the price for that right now."

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