On Saturday afternoon, as reports of U.S. airstrikes rippled out of Tehran and other Iranian cities, MS NOW anchor Rachel Maddow opened continuing special coverage on the network with a lengthy monologue in which she indicted President Donald Trump’s motives. Keep up with the latest in LGBTQ + news and politics. Sign up for The Advocate's email newsletter. “The United States [has] apparently started a war with Iran for some reason,” she said at 1 p.m. Eastern. “Your guess, your personal guess sitting at home watching me right now, your personal guess is as good as any as to why the President of the United States has just started this war.” Related : Retired Space Force colonel warns Trump’s Iran strikes are ‘reckless adventurism and distraction The United States government said that its airstrikes killed Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. In a Truth Social post at 4:37 p.m., he declared Khamenei dead. “Khamenei, one of the most evil people in History, is dead,” Trump wrote, calling the killing “the single greatest chance for the Iranian people to take back their Country.” He said U.S. forces, “working closely with Israel,” would continue “heavy and pinpoint bombing … uninterrupted throughout the week or, as long as necessary to achieve our objective” of Middle East peace. He added that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and security forces were “looking for Immunity from us,” warning, “Now they can have Immunity, later they only get Death!” “Does Iran have ICBMs? No.” In the broadcast, Maddow dismantled the administration’s stated rationale point by point. The White House has gestured toward an imminent nuclear or missile threat. “Does Iran have intercontinental ballistic missiles? “No, it does not,” she said. “Follow the money.” She also challenged claims that Iran is on the brink of weapons-grade uranium enrichment, noting there has been no public evidence to support that assertion. Trump has previously insisted he “totally obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program in earlier strikes last summer. Related : Kamala Harris calls Donald Trump’s Iran strikes ‘recklessness dressed as resolve’, dragging U.S. into war Related : Rachel Maddow on standing up to government lies and her Walter Cronkite Award “It’s hard to say that anything totally obliterated, gone, pulverized, erased from the earth might now suddenly be back again,” she said. In a recorded White House video released overnight, Trump urged Iranian security forces to “lay down their weapons” and called on the Iranian people to reclaim their country. “If this is a regime change war, as Trump says it is,” Maddow said, the United States has taken no serious steps to enable a civilian uprising or safe transition. Iran is home to roughly 92 million people, with a Revolutionary Guard Corps embedded in its military, economy, and domestic security structure. Removing a supreme leader does not dissolve that system, she said. “There is no other person of that stature to just pop in place and say, ‘OK, it’s done. We’ve made that change,’” Maddow said. In a statement, former Vice President Kamala Harris condemned the escalation . “Donald Trump is dragging the United States into a war the American people do not want,” Harris said. “Let me be clear: I am opposed to a regime-change war in Iran, and our troops are being put in harm’s way for the sake of Trump’s war of choice. This is a dangerous and unnecessary gamble with American lives that also jeopardizes stability in the region and our standing in the world.” Harris added that Trump’s aggression “dramatically escalates the stakes” and urged congressional leaders to use “all available power to prevent him from further committing us to this conflict.” “Who benefits?” “Cui bono,” Maddow said in Latin. “Who benefits? It’s always useful to start with that question in any country. Who benefits?” she asked. She pointed to Iran’s regional rivals. “The Gulf Arab states, countries like Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and Qatar,” she said, pointing to the detailed financial relationships between those governments and Trump’s inner circle. Related : Trump administration is potentially sending two gay men to their death by preparing to deport them to Iran She mentioned Qatar, “the country that just gave Donald Trump a really, really nice $400 million plane,” which she described as “a gilded flying palace for his own use” during and potentially after his presidency. She cited the United Arab Emirates, which she said structured “a totally pointless crypto financial transaction so that $2 billion of it would be stuffed into the Trump family’s otherwise worthless brand new crypto financial firm.” “And of course, you remember the Saudis who stuffed another $2 billion into the pockets of Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, just as Trump’s first term in office came to a close,” Maddow said. She noted that when Kushner received the Saudi investment, Trump allies argued that it posed no conflict because Kushner would never work for the U.S. government again. “Who has been leading the negotiations on behalf of the United States government with Iran before we just started this war with them today?” she asked. “It wasn’t,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio. “No, it was Jared Kushner.” She added that Kushner was working alongside “Trump’s tiny real estate friend, Steve Witkoff,” Trump's special envoy for negotiations on Russia's war with Ukraine, who had recently sought funding from Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund. Maddow likened the situation to a neighborhood dispute in which police destroy one homeowner’s property and then hand it over to a rival, only for it to emerge that the rival had been paying off the authorities. She also pointed to the possibility that Trump is using war as a distraction. “We know what Donald Trump thought would be the salutary domestic political effect of a U.S. president starting a war with Iran,” she said, when he accused President Barack Obama of attempting to start a war to win reelection in 2012. “And now today, as he is facing domestic political disaster in this year’s elections, our wildly unpopular U.S. president has started that war himself.” Trump, in his statement, promised that bombing would continue “throughout the week or, as long as necessary.” “Why do you think he did it?” Maddow asked. Watch Rachel Maddow discuss Donald Trump’s motivation for war with Iran below. - YouTube www.youtube.com