← Bulwark Takes
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- [00:01]
Cole Swindell
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JBL
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Andrew Egger
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- [01:30]
Andrew Egger
All right, I think we're live. Here we go. Wow.
- [01:32]
Donald Trump
Hi.
- [01:33]
Andrew Egger
Hi everybody. I'm Andrew Egger with the Bulwark. This is our fearless leader, jbl. We are coming to you live because we just sat through a very remarkable event that Donald Trump was doing today in Memphis. The event itself not so interesting on the merits. Just an opportunity for him to sit in front of a bunch of supposedly seized weapons and drugs and things like that and talk about what a good job fighting crime he's doing. More interesting because of when it's happening. Through a insane, insane, insane weekend when it comes to the war in Iran, it is coming home to everybody just how bad of an economic disaster an ongoing closure of the Strait of Hormuz is going to be already is, but especially is going to be. And Donald Trump spent the weekend basically making incredibly grandiose threats against Iran anytime the markets weren't currently in operation, meaning all weekend long. And then as the markets prepared this morning to reopen again, suddenly backing off of all of those and basically saying, well, we'll give Iran one more work week, one more week, five more days of market activity to get their act together before we follow through on my threats of bombing Iran's energy infrastructure if they will not reopen the strait. So Donald Trump was going live this afternoon and it was going to be kind of interesting what he had to say about all of that. And I'm not sure jvl, before we start to actually break it down a maybe just suffice to say it was not exactly reassuring. What were your kind of your broad strokes takes at the top if you
- [03:11]
JBL
went into this concern that the President United States is waging a war with no fucking idea what he's doing. This event did not make you feel better. I mean, we just say that he, he's all over the map. He takes like four different positions in the course of 30 seconds. He's slurring his, slurring his words and, you know, getting his dentures back in. And he's surrounded by his Secretary Pete and Secretary Pam, who are just, you know, like little automatons.
- [03:47]
Donald Trump
I,
- [03:50]
JBL
on the one hand, it all looks so obvious that of course he should just pull the plug now, right? You, you should just get out right now, strike some phony deal. You let Iran, you ease off oil sanctions for Iran. You could even sell it as, since we already stopped the sanctions, as like, oh, we're not changing anything. It's all status quo, right? He's already, he's already done that. He's already pulled that band aid off, come up with some face saving piece of, and just tell Netanyahu and the Israelis settle the fuck down. If you want to go hard after Hezbollah in Lebanon, fine, but you're done in Iran, we're out of here. And you give some meaningless guarantee of security to Iran. They give us some meaningless pledge not to go for nuclear weapons or long range ballistic missiles, and then we just let the supply chain work itself out over the course of the next 12 to 24 months, right? That's obviously what we should be doing. And yet you look at how badly these guys have gacked every single decision so far all the way down to like where the minesweepers, like physically, where are, where are our minesweeping assets? And I just wonder if they're even capable of doing this or if they're gonna escalate to de, escalate, as Scott Besson put it this weekend, which is like the worst of all possible worlds, that's what you don't want to do. Because all of a sudden, your downside risk goes up to infinity. Because if you escalate to de escalate, the best thing you can do is get a deal at the end of the day that's like 10% less crappy. But the worst you can get is. Is we don't even know, right? I mean, the worst you can get is off the charts wreckage and destruction of oil producing and shipping infrastructure throughout the region, which causes something like Cormac McCarthy's the Road. And so you should be trying to minimize your downside risk. And that doesn't feel like where we're going, even though it should be.
- [06:12]
Andrew Egger
Yeah, yeah. So we'll get to the clips here in a second. The thing before we start playing actual clips of this event again, he's in Memphis. He's at an event to talk about, do this roundtable thing about kind of crime and enforcement, really. When he gets up and speaks, as is usually the case, he's just doing his usual campaign rally shtick, right?
- [06:31]
JBL
Oh, yeah.
- [06:32]
Andrew Egger
I mean, he started off with Iran stuff, right? And we're gonna. Again, we're gonna talk about all this, but I just want to preface this by saying most of the clips we're about to play are from about the first, like, six, eight, nine minutes of him talking. He did, like, 45. And the vast majority of it is just him yakking, just him hitting his normal old threadbare campaign laugh line marks in a very tired sort of, like, slurry voice, like you were saying before. And I just. I mean, we're at such a critical moment with Iran right now where even if they walked away tomorrow, the damage would take so long already just to kind of unsnarl. And it doesn't look like, like, they're walking away tomorrow. And I was just kind of jaw on the floor for all the stuff we aren't even gonna talk about now where he's just like, this is what you're choosing to talk about right now. Right now is the moment where you're choosing to do your, like, 30 seconds of tired comedy about how you think Chuck Schumer is a Palestinian. I mean, like that. So we're not gonna get to all that, but let's do.
- [07:27]
JBL
Let's do the actual Sleepy Joe and Kamala. And nobody here, you know, 99% voted for us. Not from Kamala. I mean. Yeah, it's crazy.
- [07:37]
Andrew Egger
So we'll get to all that. We'll get to Some of that in a minute. Let's do Iran. So, again, just to preface, on Saturday night, he basically said Iran has to clear the Strait of Hormuz in two days, 48 hours, or we're going to start bombing their power plants. That was the threat. 7pm on Saturday night, I think. I think I said Friday on Saturday night. He did that this morning, 12 hours before that deadline was set to hit, but only a couple hours before markets were set to reopen. He backed way off. He said we're giving him five more days. And then this was something he addressed. He talked about how they were going to postpone the strikes very early in this speech. So let's play that real quick here.
- [08:10]
Donald Trump
Now, as I announced earlier, based on preliminary conversations between the United States and Iran over the past two days, I've directed the Department of War to temporarily postpone planned strikes against major energy and electricity targets in Iran. They have very, very big, new, actually, and very expensive billions of dollars it costs to build them one missile, one of our powerful ones. And it comes down to the ground like it was made out of dust. But to determine whether a broader agreement can be reached, we've had very good discussions, Very, very good discussions. And you have to understand, I know my whole life has been a negotiation. But with Iran, we've been negotiating for a long time, long time. And this time, they mean business.
- [08:58]
Andrew Egger
I don't know who's supposed to like a Thanos missile.
- [09:01]
JBL
It turns everything dusty, like an infinity war or something. What does that even mean?
- [09:06]
Andrew Egger
Yeah, we should, we should say off the top, Iran has denied that any talks have taken place at all. Donald Trump seems to think that there have been, there's been some sort of breakthrough. And meanwhile, Iran is not even acknowledging that they're speaking to one another. So that's an interesting thing. But, yeah, I mean, I don't know. By the way, there's no reason to
- [09:21]
JBL
trust Iran any more than you trust Trump on this.
- [09:24]
Andrew Egger
Yeah, no, 100%.
- [09:25]
JBL
But it's like, yeah, we shouldn't guess.
- [09:28]
Andrew Egger
But it's strange that there is a disconnect even on the level of. Are they picking up the phone and talking to one another? Not just like about what was said, but even is the conversation happening? Right. I mean, I don't know. Do you think, do you think it's the smart money is that they are talking and Iran is lying? I mean, what do you make of any of this?
- [09:43]
JBL
I mean, the number one thing I make of it is that just negotiation 101, the party which Says, oh, yeah, we're really far along on talks. I'm going to put off this deadline that I imposed that party's losing when. When the other party is saying, no, we're not. We're not even talking to you, that's the party that's winning. That's just that. That's just basic. Right. And I would. There are ways for them both to both be correct. It is possible that the talks are going through intermediaries. Right. And so it might be technically correct. The Iranian government is negotiate. Is not negotiating directly with the US Government. It could be, you know, proxies that that sort of is less important than the reality that we're losing and the Iranians know it. And that's. That's a problem. And I mean, you. What nobody seems to have. What nobody in the highest portions of the US Government seems to have recognized was that geography is a strategic. Is a strategic weapon. And the geography of the Strait of Hormuz is every bit as important and powerful as, like, having nukes, in fact, is even a little bit more powerful because you can use it. Like, you can close the Strait of Hormuz without violating a whole bunch of unforgivable taboos the way you would if you unleashed a nuke. And it's again, no wonder we're losing. We're being led by these guys.
- [11:26]
Andrew Egger
Yeah, yeah. I mean, the asymmetry here is so bizarre because if, you know, Pete Hegseth heard you talking like that, he would come in so high to be like, jvl. What do you mean we're losing? Look at these explosions, dude. Every target we want to hit, we're hitting it. You know, they have fewer and fewer missiles every single day. We have complete, you know, dominance of their airspace. We fly where we want, we bomb where we want. Everything is going perfectly according to plan. And there's a sense in which all that's true at the military level. Right? I mean, we have dropped an insane amount of ordinance on these guys. Anything that has a whiff of military activity and is visible from the air has been basically bombed at this point. And yet, like you say, we are the ones. America is the ones. The Trump administration are the ones who are acting like they're the supplicant in these negotiations because the Strait of Hormuz is so important to us and to everybody. I mean, like, and not just that, but Iran's own oil. I mean, like, the fact that we have yanked sanctions off that we are now, you know, like, Iran actually has more economic sort of control over that area, to let its own boats through, to extort bribes from other ships that might want to go through unmolested than they had before. And another way that we know that Trump, at least on some level, sort of realizes in sort of the lizard brain part of him that they are losing is this other, this other thing he said. This is very interesting today he's starting to do a little bit of, a little bit of blame apportionment in a way that we had not previously seen. So let's play, let's play that. This interesting thing he had to say about Pete Hegseth up there in Memphis today.
- [13:02]
Donald Trump
Country known as Iran that for 47 years has been just a purveyor of terrorists and they're very close to having a nuclear weapon. We can keep going and get that 50,000 up to 55 and 60.
- [13:17]
Andrew Egger
Talking about the Dow here, by the
- [13:18]
Donald Trump
way, or we can take a stop and make a little journey into the Middle east and eliminate a big problem. And Pete, I think you were the first one to speak up and you said, let's do it.
- [13:32]
Andrew Egger
How do you think Pete Hegset felt about getting the little name check there?
- [13:36]
JBL
Yeah, that's, that's just what he wanted. You know, little, little detour. We're back down to 46,000. So you know, the Dow is shed 8%, but that's that, you know, what's, what's that between friends? I guess I do, I do wonder how long he can stay with everybody. He did fire Christie. Now Christie I think probably lost an internal, an internal strong. Look at me slurring my words. An internal struggle with Stephen Miller. And it's like who would be trying to push Hegseth out? And I don't think it would be either Rubio or Vance because they're focused on each other. And Hegseth is just the explosion dude. I mean he really is like clavicular now. He's just pulling. We're explosion. I gotta get. We're gonna go do some pull ups. And so I don't, I don't know that he has any natural enemies inside the administration. Although maybe, maybe I'm wrong. I mean, I don't have any deep insights. What do you think?
- [14:43]
Andrew Egger
Do you think? No, he's. I think you're right in trouble here. I don't read this as like the seat getting hot under Hegseth. I just read this as, you know, Donald Trump. It's really only significant to me insofar as it's like a window into the Way I hit my microphone, it's a live thing into the way Donald Trump sees the conflict. Right. The way that, like, if Donald Trump actually thought that things were going super great, he would not be looking for
- [15:07]
JBL
people to share his whole thing was his idea then.
- [15:10]
Andrew Egger
Yeah. And I don't.
- [15:11]
JBL
And I said we have to do this.
- [15:14]
Andrew Egger
Yeah, 100%. And I think you're right. I don't think Hegseth is, you know, I don't think he needs to worry about, you know, Trump swapping him out for Joe Kent or something like that or Megyn Kelly as Secretary of Defense. Megyn Kelly. I don't think that the, like anti war people are actually going to like get a toehold in the administration here. But just as Trump is out there surveying the political landscape, I think he would like to have a few more people on the rowboat with him there.
- [15:39]
JBL
I mean, the, the classic Trump formulation, if things were going well, would be that he would have said that Hegseth didn't want to do it. Right. I mean, in these remarks, if things are all going. He said he would have said things were going great. The Dow was so strong and a lot of people said we gotta keep going with the Dow. But I said we need to do this little excursion and solve this problem. And Pete didn't want it. He didn't want to write Pete. Right. Secretary Pete, you know, people have shucks, you know, sure, sir, whatever you say.
- [16:15]
Andrew Egger
Your instincts are immaculate, Mr. President. You know. Right. I should have, should have trusted you sooner.
- [16:20]
JBL
Instead, Trump is like, well, that guy over there, you know, likes to.
- [16:28]
Andrew Egger
Oh, man. Yeah. I want to talk a little bit more about just, just the other sort of psychological stuff you could really tell about Trump. Just moving on a bit from Iran. Before we do that, we should, we should hard cut here real quick to, to, to, to shoving an ad read into this thing which, which I will let you do. Jbl as the, as the guy with the magic mouth.
- [16:48]
JBL
Yeah, that's, that's what people often say about me. Phrasing this. This take is brought to you by our sponsor, Tempo. This time of year, trying to stay consistent with eating well. But between work and life, cooking just isn't happening. Tempo gives me fresh, balanced meals ready in two minutes so I can eat the way I want without losing time. During the week, my schedule is non stop writing the triad, appearing in great live takes like this one. And healthy eating is usually the first thing to slip. Tempo keeps me grounded with real meals so I don't default to snakes. To snakes. Again, this is live, guys, so I don't default to eating snakes or snacks or takeout. Each meal is perfectly portioned for lunch or dinner and ready in just two minutes. That means real food, real fast, without the sad desk lunch or drive through regret. For a limited time, Tempo is offering my listeners 60% off your first box. Go to tempomeals.com bulwark takes. That's tempomeals.com bulwarktakes for 60% off your first box. Once again, that's tempo meals.com bulwark takes. Rules and restrictions may apply. Okay, yeah, so don't eat snakes, Andrew.
- [18:04]
Andrew Egger
Never, never, never. Yeah, that's not, that's, that's not my thing. The president. Let's get back to him. That guy, I mean, we've been talking so much about the stakes, the stakes that are. That are, you know, coming into play right now. This is such a critical moment for this conflict. And yet one of the biggest things that I was thinking of as I was just watching this guy go, I feel like Trump has always surrounded himself with yes men. He has always kept sort of unpleasant news pushed to the side and kind of just sort of luxuriated in a bath of praise from people around him physically and from people who are around him on the Internet, especially now that he lives on his own truth social platform. That is literally just him there with 10 million sycophants. There are like, no, no other important posters on the whole website. It's just him, him and his fan, fan base. And. And you have really started to see that just sort of eat through his brain in the way that it would eat through anybody's brain, but especially his and his own specific pathologies. And I feel like today, more so than maybe ever before, I'm like, this is just a person who really does think everybody is with him. Every decision is correct. There are like six, six resistance people in the whole world, and they have a lot of money and they have a lot of power to sort of buy off protesters, to go out and pretend there's an organic resistance to me, but actually, everybody who counts is 100% on board with me. And I think he actually does really believe this. Let's just talk. I don't know. There were so many different clips of this that kind of suggested this, but this is him talking about the young, beautiful women who are always coming up to him in the streets of D.C. sea to, to just tell, I like
- [19:45]
JBL
this island with a lot of young, beautiful women on it, and they're always coming up oh, sorry, wrong.
- [19:50]
Andrew Egger
That was a different.
- [19:51]
JBL
Sorry, wrong throw.
- [19:53]
Andrew Egger
Okay, yeah, let's play. Let's play that clip.
- [19:56]
Donald Trump
Women, they walk, I would say, normally. Beautiful young women, ever since I got elected. I don't like to say that because usually when you say a beautiful woman, isn't she beautiful? That's the end of your political. Political career. So I never say that. But young women coming up to me, and they're saying, sir, thank you so much. I know immediately what they're talking about. I say, how big a difference is it? They say, we walk to work. We were afraid to walk into an Uber.
- [20:26]
Andrew Egger
Everything in the world was hell. And he came along and he sort of sprinkled the magic dust, and now everything is beautiful. I don't know. What do you think? You ever meet any of these young women? What do you think? Do you see them when you walk down the streets?
- [20:40]
JBL
It's a. It's a new flavor of Dear sir story. So instead of being a big, burly tough guy, now it's a beautiful young woman. And she doesn't have tears in her eyes, though. She has gratitude. And he knows what they're grateful for, Andrew, if you know what I mean. They're grateful for the end of street crime. And I. I do think to myself, like, who is he talking about? Is he. Is he talking about Stephen Miller's wife, Katie Miller?
- [21:13]
Andrew Egger
Carolyn Levitt?
- [21:14]
JBL
Is this just like Katie Miller and Carolyn Levitt are like the. The two women under the age of 40 who he might bump into on a daily basis. And they said something about like, oh, nice outside now. I don't know. It's a weird thing, though, to go to the beautiful young women and then to talk about how you can't do that. Did you catch Hegseth and Bondi, who know exactly what looks have to be on their faces like it is. I almost feel for them to be up there as props because it's kind of like, you know, when Saturday Night Live does the cold opens with James Austin Johnson, he comes in as Trump, and everybody who was previously in the
- [21:59]
Andrew Egger
sketch has to freeze frame. Yeah, right.
- [22:02]
JBL
Like this. That's kind of what Bondi and have to do in real life, except they also then have to perform on cue with reactions. It's pretty great.
- [22:15]
Andrew Egger
Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. It's. It's. I don't feel. I mean, usually. Usually I try to, like, bring the. Bring the human element. I don't. I don't have a shred of. Of. Of sympathy for either of those two. That's but that's their whole job, right? I mean, there are maybe Marco Rubio, I don't know. Yeah, maybe one of these people who actually gets in there, like I'm going to try to do. But these guys, I mean, their whole role is to sort of be the moon that reflects his sun in so many different ways and to try to burn down the country in their respective orbits as well. We don't have a clip for this one. The other thing in this same sort of ballpark was Trump talking about these 991 issues. One thing that Stephen Miller and a few of these other guys like to talk about is these 8020 issues. And they might mean arresting illegal immigrant violent criminals, or they might mean, you know, banning girls or banning biological males from girls sports in schools or things like this. And they're like, you know, the whole country's with us and there's just a couple like dead ender libs who are standing in our way, and the Democrats are captured by that faction. And, you know, 8020 is not correct on most of these things, but it gets at something. It's like big majority for us, small minority for them. But Donald Trump specifically mentioned that he's like, some people call these 8020 issues. I don't think they're 8020 issues. I think they're 991 issues, which is not correct. I mean, it's even obviously, mathematically less correct, but it is suggestive of a completely different thing. It's suggestive of, again, a world where the whole United States of America in Donald Trump's mind, is just standing behind him. Every poll that shows otherwise is faked and cooked by the 1%. Every street protest that you see are fake actors who are paid off by the 1%. And I really do think these, I don't think this is just sort of like, you know, chum for the idiots online. I really do think that Donald Trump, at least he really carries himself as though he actually believes that's the way the country is and that, and even, even voting is that way. Right? I mean, when people vote and it's not that way, he's like, well, The Democrats, the 1%, they cooked the vote again. And he's just kind of searing off like cauterizing every neuron that might suggest, well, Mr. President, sir, every whim that pops in your head might not be genius and totally politically popular and like a great savvy move. I don't know, am I, am I crazy? Am I, am I, do I have Trump derangement syndrome with this.
- [24:33]
JBL
No, you're not. What I think this is an artifact of is his understanding of power. Right. I mean, he does. He has understood from the beginning that the, the base of power is, Is controlling the Republican Party in that everything else, like even winning the presidency was secondary because you can get something from being president, but only a little bit more than you can get from owning the Republican Party. But owning it means you have to own it completely. And so that's why he's never been willing to brook any sort of, you know, oh, that guy's with me 95% of the time, and he's only against me 5%. Like, if you're against him 5% of the time, you're out. And so that's like, you know, like he goes straight from. From 0 to 100 on Joe Kent, you know, straight from, like, yeah, this guy supported me. He loves me. He loves America, loves the Nazis, just like I do. And, you know, he. Look, I think he's wrong about this and happy to see him go or something like that. He goes right to. Well, you know, never liked that guy. He got married real fast after his wife got killed, didn't he?
- [25:39]
Andrew Egger
Yeah, let's. Let's play that real quick. This is from. This is from earlier today when, when Trump was getting on his plane to fly to Memphis, he did a quick gaggle with. With some reporters and talked about Joe Kent, his former director of the National Counterterrorism center, who resigned over the Iran war last week. Let's play Trump's remarks on Kent.
- [25:57]
Donald Trump
What he said is 100%. He agrees with me. All of a sudden, he leaves. I never knew he had a problem. Now I hear they're looking at him for leaking. That's possible. But just so you understand, just to put it to rest, he lost twice, badly. He also lost his wife. He's remarried since he lost his wife. I felt badly for him, so I told my people, reach out to him, give him a job at the White House.
- [26:26]
Andrew Egger
Yeah, there was. There was a pity job. Yeah. I don't know,
- [26:32]
JBL
but I think that's what this is all really about. Andrew, with the, you know, everything is not 80 20, it's 99 1. Because it's, it's an artifact of how he thinks of his support. Right. Everything has to be total. There can't ever be a remnant of people who are kind of with you mostly, but then aren't with you all the way, because that's not how he thinks of the consolidation of power.
- [26:54]
Andrew Egger
Yeah, Yeah. I don't know, I mean he's made it so far with, with, with managing to staff all these positions. There are only so many like pure total suck ups who can even keep the trains running in their various areas. I guess he has just about enough of them still to keep it going even though one fewer now that Joe Ken is out. We should wrap this up here. Let's do one more clip from Trump. I'm going back in the document a little bit just to again kind of put a fine point on this. This is him talking about Iran's one last opportunity to end its threats. He's just very old, he's very tired, he's barely with it. I guess we're giving Iran one more chance and if they, if they don't get with it now, they'll get another one and another one. But here's Donald Trump, here's the President of the United States now.
- [27:41]
Donald Trump
Iran is one more opportunity to end its threats to America and her allies and we hope they take it.
- [27:49]
Andrew Egger
There you go, one more opportunity slurs the President. What do you think, jbl? Any last thoughts before we take it home?
- [27:55]
JBL
Yeah, I want to read you two other clips from him. I don't think we have the clips teed up, but I'm just going to read them to you.
- [28:01]
Andrew Egger
Sure.
- [28:03]
JBL
In recent months there he means Iran's here own negotiators bragged to our representatives about having enough material to make nuclear weapons. And that was supposed to deter me, but it didn't deter. It made me more anxious. Okay, again, this is the guy who's been running around saying their program was completely and totally obliterated, which some of us said at the time was a lie. And he then said, you know, anybody who, who didn't say that it was completely and totally obliterated was, was issuing a slur against our great American patriot warriors. It's good, good to know. But here's the, here's the good one. They've agreed they will not have a nuclear weapon, you know, etc. Etc. But we'll see. You have to get it done. I think it could very well end up being a very good deal for everybody. As good as if we went all the way and just literally annihilated the place. What does that even mean, Andrew? And I'm serious about this. What does that mean? Like on the one hand would there's a deal to be done. On the other hand, this deal could be really, really good for both sides. On another hand, it could be almost as good as if we wiped Iran off the face of the earth. So who, like I.
- [29:29]
Andrew Egger
The Jekyll and Hyde thing here has been really hard to watch. I mean, like, we know that somebody inside the US Government knows that on some level, we rely economically on Iran being able to sell its oil around the world. They're pulling it out of the, they're pulling it out of the ground and they're selling it to China and a couple of other places, even though they're not supposed to be able to under our sanctions. We've gotten rid of those sanctions because we want the price of oil to go down. Right. Like, that's Iran selling its oil is really good for Iran. We taught them. Yeah, it's not so good for us, like, on a sort of strategic level, geostrategic level. But like, as far as right now where we're all freaking out over this gas shock, it's nice that they're able to do that. And yet, like, the fact that the President is saying, you know, that one, one good thing would be if we just sort of like, nuked the place and turned Iran into, into a field of glass. Like, that would be a pretty good outcome, but maybe almost as good of an outcome would be question mark, question mark, question mark. And it could be anything in between there. Right? It could be anything from us going home tomorrow and I guess the U.S. i don't know. I genuinely don't know how we're going to get Iran to reopen the Strait of Four moves. I don't know how it's going to happen. It does not seem like they're going to be content just to go back to the previous status quo. They keep saying they're not going to be content to go back to the previous status quo. But even if you could anything from there all the way up to that eventuality, Trump is saying, well, we're going to do one of those things and it's going to be great. You're going to have, I mean, and
- [30:51]
JBL
this is, this is the. Just to loop it back up to the top is what I was saying in the beginning. We will go back to something like the status quo plus a sweetener. And the sweetener I think, is probably going to be something like removing sanctions. If I were Iran, I would be playing for more. And if I was sitting at their, their table with their cards, what I would look for is to break the petrodollar. And my ask would be, sure, we'll reopen the Strait of Hormuz. But oil transiting the strait doesn't get sold in dollars anymore. We want it sold in one or euros. Pick one. I think there would be a great deal of support for that from the international community which is looking to de$ize and it would be a tremendously terrible blow to America. And I think nobody in the administration would be capable of explaining why that was bad. It's the kind of ask that, like, you know, God, you, you asked Donald Trump to defend the petrodollar to the American people and explain to people why he should keep prosecuting a really bad war that is deeply unpopular just to protect the petrodollar system. I think that is a very canny ask, but maybe we can get out of it and keep, keep on the petrodollar system. That would be good for America, good for our debt service, good for our ability to keep borrowing money and issuing T bills and debt financing our future. Yay. But it'll end and it'll end because the war is very harmful to Iran and they do need to sell oil. They do not want all of their petroleum infrastructure to get erased. And we don't want them to erase all the petroleum infrastructure for neighboring countries. And also like four weeks from now, nobody will have any missiles left anyway. That's the other aspect of this. Like the armories are going to, are going to start running low. So that's why I feel reasonably confident that we're going to get to a negotiated solution. It's just going to be a negotiated solution which leaves America in a worse position than it was before the war and leaves the Iranian regime with a great deal of damage, but in a stronger strategic position than it was before the war. Thanks, President Trump.
- [33:11]
Andrew Egger
Honestly, I'm sure you're correct. I'm sure you are correct. That is the likeliest outcome. I just keep doom scrolling possibilities in my head of what if the strait is closed for four months or five months or six months or something like that. And I want to live in that universe. I think you are correct that it is the likeliest universe. We'll leave it there for now. Just to put a bow on it one more time. I'm Andrew Egger with the Bulwark. This is JBL with the Bulwark. We just kind of talked you guys through an event that Donald Trump did in Memphis at a very, very critical moment in this conflict with Iran. We are not 100% convinced. We weren't won over. I guess you could say we were not exactly won over by the, by the portrait that the President put forward there in terms of his strategy and his general with it ness and his object permanence and his ability to string English words together and understand such basic facts about the world as that the Iranian regime gets a vote in various policy things, that his domestic political opposition gets a vote in various domestic policy things. And that's what it was. So we'll keep following it. Thanks to you guys all for coming on and watching following along with us. Hope you will subscribe to the Bulwark feed, head over to thebullwork.com and get our newsletters if that's the sort of thing that appeals to you as well. And I guess we'll see y' all next time. Thanks.
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