Elie Mystal, the author of "Bad Law," told Joy Reid on her podcast this week that the U.S. needs to be "rebuked" by the world community for bombing Iran.

"Our country needs to be sanctioned. We are the bad guys on the world stage," he said. "We are a menace to not only free people everywhere, but we are a menace to peaceful people everywhere at this point."

"Like, when does the international community decide that enough is enough?"

"We have to be stopped through the same kind of means that our country and others have used to rebuke... a rogue state. We are the rogue state. And other countries need to start treating us like that," he said.

JOY REID: Last night on CNN, I was on with my friend Abby Phillip, and someone said 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 like the '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?

ELIE MYSTAL: No. They're making it up as they go along, because they understand that Trump's poll numbers were tanking, he can't get his bill passed, 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.

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.

Here's more from the conversation:

Hat tip:

Elie Mystal: "Our country is THE bad guy on the world stage. The world needs to stand against America. Sanction us." pic.twitter.com/3OjPx52Ryn

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) July 2, 2025

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