← Bulwark Takes
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- [00:01]
A
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- [00:45]
B
I okay, first of all let me just pause us to people who are tuning in. We had some technical difficulties. Not sure how to describe what you missed. If you're watching that at first honestly guys, I thought okay, there's something, there's a structure to this, there's a purpose to this. He's going to outline some path outward and then it just honestly and I know this is a cliche but it was an extended truth social rant. It really was. It was a stitched together truth social rant that basically boiled down to we are very close to meeting our core objectives and also we're about to bomb them into the stone age. That was it. Contradictory claims with no actual strategic vision. JVL Sort of not fully in agreement but why? What do you get wrong?
- [01:33]
C
It's not, it's not that mouthful. He says we're very close to our core objectives. I don't believe he outlined any core objectives. I mean just as a peace and performance. Was that a guy who sounded together to you guys? Because that sounded. I mean I don't want to make light of cognitive decline but holy. If you have kids in the military and that's the commander in chief, do you think to yourself yeah, this guy's got his fastball. Don't worry, he is dialed in. He knows just what's going on. No, I mean I, I just think it was sort of terrifying. Like if my, my oldest kid is going to turn 18 next week was enlisting I would like chain him to to a pipe or something and say you cannot go into the military with this guy running that. I mean it, it's insane.
- [02:32]
B
It was sleepy, it was ad libbed. I, I'm pretty sure it was ad libbed. I mean I, I'm almost positive as ad libbed at least portions of it were ad libbed it, it was incoherent at parts it went to weird sides like leave it to your imagination but they can't believe what they're seeing. What are you talking about? Again, it was contradictory. There was no actual I'm not sure what the purpose was. It just was a summarization of everything you said.
- [02:59]
C
That's what I wanted to ask Mark. What do you think? Because this, this wasn't a impromptu thing on the tarmac or something like this. Like, I mean, this was a plan. This was a set piece. What do you think the strategic or political or communications objective of this was?
- [03:22]
D
Well, I got to tell you, I was writing notes, scribbling notes like crazy. The only thing of any value I took off that was halfway coherent when he start talking about the strategic objectives. But then he named our objectives were to eliminate the Navy. They're now destroyed. To take out their air force and missiles. And those are all now gone. His term, not mine. The industrial base is gone. Those were the three I heard. Then he went into what I think we should probably appropriately call the rape pillage Trump doctrine because he invited all of Europe and anybody else that wanted oil just to go in and take it because he doesn't need it. I mean, we don't need it. We've got more than Saudi Arabia and Russia combined, which is an outright lie. So the one thing as I was scribbling, I finally, I just thought to myself, who's writing this speech for him? Who is putting this thing together? Who is his speechwriter? And what kind of communication process do they have to actually get some kind of coherence and precision and discipline into the things he's communicating to the entire American people? He asked for airtime for this tonight and it's just amazing that anybody gave it to him. And he's not going to probably get it anymore unless he beats.
- [04:56]
B
I disagree. I am so glad that they gave it to him. I'm happy people got to see that. I think it's important people see that because it was. If you, if you just read his truth, that's not the. That's not the vast majority of the population, but this is his rambling truths and to see it in the flesh was remarkable. Tim Miller's joining us. Tim, you were very hot on this.
- [05:16]
E
What's going. I wasn't supposed to be on tonight, but what in the fuck was that like? Honestly, what in the fuck was that? To General Hertling's point about who wrote it, Whoever's writing the truth social posts is who wrote it. So maybe the golf caddy, I guess. The golf. Yeah, I think the golf caddy probably wrote it because he writes his.
- [05:41]
B
He dictates them to an A.
- [05:43]
E
So yeah, I think it was probably him because it was just a rambling truth social post. Like the. As best as I could tell, like if you are coming into this clean, like if you had watched the Artemis launch and then went and cooked dinner and then like accidentally left CBS on and came back and like he was talking, you know, and you're trying to figure out what are we doing there? Like, why is this war happening? Still the best thing that I could tell that he said was we're there to help. It's like we're there to help and Israel and the entire Middle east would be wiped off the map if I hadn't won. And that's why we're doing this. And we can't let them have a nuclear weapon. There was never a pitch for why actually we care if they had a nuclear weapon. I understand in the abstract, etc. But I don't know, just as me sitting there on the couch watching this rambling old man talk about this war, I'm a little bit more worried about Donald Trump using the nuclear weapons, that all he needs to do is press a button. Then the mullahs in Tehran enriching uranium through a multi year process and attacking us with nuclear weapons. Not to say it's not a concern that Iran would have a nuclear weapon, but like there is no pitch that like this was an urgent thing that could matter to somebody who lives in Topeka. Like, like that, that there is a, you know, so, so because otherwise the
- [07:03]
C
Iranians might extort the rest of the Middle east the way they're currently doing.
- [07:09]
F
Right?
- [07:10]
E
I mean this like the pitch was literally we're there to save Israel. Like it was literally the pitch, like we're there to save the Middle east and our other friends, Israel and our other friends are good friends. They're giving us a free plane. Saudi Arabia, good friends, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. That is the fucking pitch. And like that is crazy. Like that it's a crazy, that's a crazy pitch. It's like we have to keep and then there's no announcement, there's no like. So in service of that, we are going to do this, that and the other thing, right? Yeah, in service of that, going to send in troops to Ishron and like we want to go get their uranium. Like that's the point. And Iran has, Iran has two weeks to make a deal or else we're going to send people in, we're going to go get the uranium and take it out so they can never do it again. That would be an insane, I don't know, Mark Hertling would probably know Better than me. That seems like that would be an insane mission, but like that would at least be a coherent strategy or something, like a notion that they're giving people. That's not what he offered. It was just a rambling mess where he's like, if he, if they get the nuclear, then maybe the Middle east would go away. And something, something, something, we, we can't have it. Other presidents could have had it. Oh, by the way, do you know how long the Korean War was?
- [08:22]
D
I want to address that.
- [08:24]
B
One second, one second. Let's play that video and Mark, address that after. Because this one just blew my mind when he was comparing this to World War II and World War I in the Korean War, as if, you know, it's just like it's a minor inconvenience that we're having here. So why don't we play that and Mark on the other side, go off.
- [08:42]
F
The nuclear sites that we obliterated with the B2 bombers have been hit so hard that it would take months to get near the nuclear dust. And we have it under intense satellite surveillance and control. If we see them make a move, even a move, for it will hit them with missiles very hard again. We have all the cards, they have none. It's very important that we keep this conflict in perspective. American involvement In World War I lasted one year, seven months and five days. World War II lasted for three years, eight months and 25 days. The Korean War lasted for three years, one month and two days. The Vietnam War lasted for 19 years, five months and 29 days. Iraq went on for eight years, eight months and 28 days. We are in this military operation, so powerful, so brilliant, against one of the most powerful countries for 32 days and the country has been eviscerated, is really no longer a threat.
- [09:57]
B
All right, Mark, he clearly wrote that with the help of ChatGPT. But what are your thoughts?
- [10:02]
D
Yeah, you know, that was the part where I said to myself, who the is in his speeches? I mean, seriously, you know, I've had the opportunity during combat operations to meet with or be with for short periods of time, a couple of senior leaders and the President of the United States. And I got to tell you, you walk away with conviction, you understand better because they communicate. You know, after listening to this, you know, if I were a four star journal today in his military, I think I'd walk out of the saying something along the lines of we're all gonna die because he doesn't know what he's doing. I mean, he has no friggin Clue the. Well, first of all, I mean, you know, you could, you could talk about each one of the calculations. In the war, yes, the United States was in World War I for a year and however many number of days, but that thing went on for 10 years and it was a slug fit. I mean, I don't even want to get into the military history. But again, who gave him that information? He didn't get it himself. I mean, he's not his own researcher on this stuff. So someone is feeding him this stuff. And the people who are feeding them this stuff are the same ones that are allowing the entire US Government to go haywire right now. And we have said it so many. I'm sorry, Go ahead, finish.
- [11:28]
E
Mark.
- [11:28]
D
No, I was, you know, Tim, I've heard you say it so many times on different media outlets of where are the people standing up and saying, enough. This. This man. I mean, I don't care what your ideological background is. This guy does not have common sense. He just doesn't have a sense of reality. And again, it's people around him that are, I mean, when the teleprompters were set up in the, wherever he was given the speech from and they allowed him to give this speech, it's like that's, it's criminal intent.
- [12:05]
E
Yeah, no, I was just going to say briefly this, sorry. That Jimmy, go. Just like, even if they aren't all getting, you know, that's. You're being a little cheeky. But like, who the hell knows? Yeah, sure. Maybe everybody's like, maybe they do. A ground occurs and they didn't announce anything, right? So short, even short of people are going to die. Like, let's say he does the opposite, right? Which is like, hey, in two weeks I give another speech just like this where I talk about how we won and we haven't done anything differently. And whatever we've won, that is not as bad of malpractice because people won't be dead. But that is also not like there is real damage happening all around the world, but to Americans, but to the people that live in countries that are allies. Every day this goes on, people are going to have shortages. There are going to be gas lines in the UK and in Japan not far from now. People in this country that are struggling to make ends meet are going to have their prices go up on everything. And he can't enunciate why at all. It's just like, well, we're just going to keep on keeping on for a couple weeks and who knows, maybe we'll Degrade their missiles more. It's like, who care why?
- [13:08]
C
Yeah, I mean, I, I feel silly even asking this, but. So when Trump and Biden had their first debate, we, we went to our first commercial break and the, during the commercial break, we had, like, us on to talk. And I remember saying to people, well, okay, well, he's going to have to drop off the ticket because this is the equivalent of a health event on national television. Didn't this kind of look like a health event on national television? No, I, I, I not. I mean, and it's one thing to, to ramble when it's just about, look at all the things we've done, or maybe we'll invade Greenland, but you're in a hot war. I mean, you, you do have American service members in harm's way. You've had people killed. You have, like, actual bombs going off. This seemed like a health event. And is it crazy to think that no Republican in Congress is gonna walk out and say, look, we all saw that.
- [14:14]
D
Right?
- [14:16]
C
You guys saw that too, right?
- [14:18]
B
I am kind of curious. Yeah. I want to see what the reaction is on the, online. Right. Because there have been people who, in the lead up to this, the sort of people who are waiting for an off ramp. We're getting excited about all these leaks. Right? There's a bunch of leaks being like, he's going to declare that this thing is over. He's going to say he's winding it down, the objectives have been achieved. And he did do that at the top. And then he didn't do that. He went from, we're here to help the world be over, quote, very shortly, to we will be hitting Iran very hard over the next two to three weeks. These are contradictory.
- [14:51]
E
It is.
- [14:51]
C
But I do think, Sam, I think that he implicitly closed the door to ground troops.
- [14:57]
E
He did elaborate.
- [14:59]
C
So I, the reason I say this is because if you give this speech and you tell the country in the first real way that you've addressed the entire war, period, hey, we're almost done. It'll just be another two to three weeks. We're really close. We've almost achieved all of our strategic objectives, and you don't prepare them for ground troops, you don't say, it's possible that we're going to put boots on the ground and then you do it. The political fallout from a normal prism.
- [15:34]
E
I think that's the prism of a normal politician, though. I think, I think, I don't know. I just think his whole, I don't know. I mean, I can do whatever I
- [15:40]
C
want to send in ground troops after this. Doing what he's doing is political damage.
- [15:47]
B
I mean, he also be clear, he also spent tonight saying he's going to commit a war crime. Right. He said he will not. He will bomb the power plants of Iran simultaneously, all of them, simultaneously. So we're acting like, well, you know, he's an irrational person here, saying irrational things. I don't think we could be like, well, he didn't say he'll sending ground trips, therefore there's no ground troops. Right. I just think he's not even, he's trying to get through the day, not
- [16:12]
C
even make the day. The, the to not even nod to it or say, and who knows, we may have to.
- [16:20]
E
I agree that it's crazy. I just don't know if there was any implicit message. I don't know.
- [16:26]
D
Here's the thing. I'll add to that. I mean, you know, I've had family members while I was deployed, while our sons were deployed, who took. They were assuaged by members of the government coming on TV and saying, here's what's happening, here's what's going to happen in the future. It's a tough fight. And I remember my wife saying one time that when, during Desert Storm, when people like Colin Powell or Dick Cheney, I mean even Dick Cheney getting on the air and speaking what was happening, okay, we know our soldiers are over there for a mission right now. If I were not so much a soldier, it would scare the hell out of me as a soldier watching this speech. But if I were a family member of one of those 60,000 people who are deployed to the Middle east right now in ships and mews and army brigades, I'd be scared to death. I really would.
- [17:24]
E
I want to talk about the oil stuff for a second because I talked to Josh Barrel on the podcast for a long time about this today and I think he was really sharp about how we're about to go through a period we're not there yet because a lot of the petroleum was on ships and stuff. He said, we're going to do this for two or three weeks. And we're about, during that time period, kind of towards the end of that time period, we're about to be a place where there's actual shortages. People are going to have to cut down on their behavior to offset the shortages we have. It'll be less of a problem here than it will be in the rest of the world. But it's a global market. We've had the largest Monthly increase in gas prices, I think ever this month. The chart went to Hockey Stick during that speech. And the speech was like, even at the end of three weeks, it wasn't like, oh, the straight is going to be open. Basically. Like if you're trying to read through his gobbledygook, you know, dentures, like talk. Like the takeaway is like, well, actually,
- [18:22]
B
no, it's not actually.
- [18:23]
E
It could be. Who knows how long after that before the straight opens. Actually, the rest of the world is gonna have to deal with it. Okay, I have one more clip. Let's play the clip. Then I have one other thing. Play the clip.
- [18:30]
B
Because it's very clear he has no plan for the straight itself.
- [18:34]
E
And he. I will just.
- [18:35]
B
Before we play it, I'll just say he also said this kind of went unnoticed. He said we could bomb their oil, but we're going to. Because we want them to rebuild, but we could bomb their oil. So obviously let's do take. Let's do take the oil clip and then. Kim, finish your thought on the end of that.
- [18:51]
F
The countries of the world that do receive oil through the hormone strait must take care of that passage. They must cherish it. They must grab it and cherish it. They can do it easily. We will be helpful.
- [19:04]
C
Sounds like a rapist.
- [19:05]
F
They should take the lead in. In protecting the oil that they so desperately depend on. So to those countries that can't get fuel, many of which refuse to get involved in the decapitation of Iran, we had to do it ourselves. I have a suggestion. Number one, buy oil from the United States of America. We have plenty. We have so much. And number two, build up some delayed courage. Should have done it before. Should have done it with us as we asked. Go to the strait and just take it, protect it, use it for yourselves. Iran has been essentially decimated.
- [19:42]
E
I'll defer to you guys on the geopolitics of this, of taking the strait by the pussy or whatever his plan was for the UK but like on the just economics part of it, Chris talking about the economics. We're going to be in a period of shortages. And he's like, okay, so the Straits going to. You guys are going to figure that out. It's going to take a while for that to figure out. I'm just doing basic Adam Smith here. We don't want the world buying our oil. Actually, we should probably put the export ban back on. If we get into this situation. Like, we should be hoarding our. Honestly, if you care about America even
- [20:11]
C
more, wouldn't It, Tim. I mean if the demand. Yes, if the demand. Because foreign countries want to buy our oil instead of having us sell it domestically. Supply, demand, Right. Supply constant. Demand goes up, price goes up.
- [20:28]
E
Yeah, sorry. His plan would drive it up even more.
- [20:31]
B
Yeah, yes.
- [20:31]
E
That's. You guys are in agreement? Sorry, we're saying the same thing. I thought you're saying what I was suggesting with wood. Yeah, no, I mean it's, it's a little, I mean it's, it's crazy.
- [20:39]
B
Guys, check, check out this, check out the oil futures graphic we want to put up. Tell me if you can see the time where Trump started speaking.
- [20:52]
D
Yeah, man.
- [20:54]
E
Direction chart.
- [20:57]
B
Cialis chart.
- [20:58]
D
Yeah.
- [20:59]
E
And then it's again and then it's like, okay, we're gonna sell the people the oil. No, wrong. He has no concept for how fucked the economic situation is. Like, he's like walking around. What this reminds me of is I went skiing like the weekend before Tom Hanks got Covid and we were on the mountain. We're going down the blues and it's like whatever we hear that there's this thing there, there'll be a little disruption and the next thing you know, like that it feels like he's skiing right now like during, like right before we're about to have a very serious economic crisis and it's like I've got no, can I. No plan.
- [21:41]
C
Can I raise something for the group?
- [21:43]
B
Sure.
- [21:45]
C
So one of the thing, you know, one of my little obsessions is about like the decline of the American led world order and all of the advantages that that once afforded us. And Trump's plan is that other nations, presumably led by China, form their own alliance and association to exert control over the Strait of Hormuz.
- [22:09]
E
Yeah, right, right.
- [22:11]
C
He's, he's willing into existence a global strategic competitor for America. Yeah, that's the craziest I've ever heard.
- [22:20]
E
Yeah.
- [22:21]
B
A super user. We have a super user question actually on this that I want to get. I'm going to pose this one to Mark actually. It's from Joe LT49. He says if the straight Hormuz was so easy to open defenders, Trump claimed it was, then why hasn't our own military already done it?
- [22:37]
D
Because it's not. Because it's not. I mean we've talked about this, I've written about it, several articles in the Bulwark. It's hard, you know, this whole combat thing, it ain't easy. And you know, especially when you're, you're miffin it as this current administration is with no planning. As you said earlier, jbl, it's, it's not just long term planning. It's short term planning. It's any planning at all. You have the cause and effect when you're trying to use military force as the principal element of national power before you've done anything else. And when you don't put the military force into action with a required end state, we don't know what we're doing other than bombing things. Something has gotten into his head thinking that we can get into and out of wars using air power alone with some special operators every once in a while to snatch and grab people or to create regime change. That's not how it works. And it gets back to just a simple understanding. If you're going to wear the title of, of Commander in Chief, you sort of need a little bit of information about what the military does and how they do it. And you don't put two Marine MEUs of 2,500 Marines apiece and an airborne brigade in an area the size three times of Iraq and expect to overcome the country and do great things and take over a strait. That's a major choke point in the world. It takes a lot of people to do that. And it's really, really hard when you've got an enemy that gets a vote.
- [24:17]
B
Can I, can I bring up a question about jail?
- [24:19]
E
Trump elect Martin Hurtling was a comment I saw across the screen there. And I don't, I don't hate that.
- [24:25]
D
I hate it a lot.
- [24:27]
B
I want to bring, I want to, I want to bring up something. I'm going to go to JVL on this one first. There was no, there was a newsworthy bit of omission in this speech. Okay. For the past, quite a few of us, actually 24, well, the most news, I think, last 24 hours. We've been told that Trump is going to use this speech to talk about NATO and how angry he is at NATO and how he wants to get the US out of NATO. Unless I missed it, he did not mention NATO. He did talk in the abstract about allies need to take the oil, but he didn't mention NATO. Now, earlier in the day, he was at some prayer event for Easter and he said this. So this is just the preface for you guys. This was leaked or posted by the White House accidentally, then ripped it off the website. But let's play that comment he made about NATO earlier in the day. And then I'm curious to JVL for jvl, why did he not mention it tonight. First the speech.
- [25:20]
F
And so I learned about NATO. NATO won't be there if we ever have the big one. You know what I mean by the big one? We ever have the big one. Hopefully we won't. Relationships very good with the big One. Better than with data. But. But they won't be there. And we spend billions. You know, we didn't have to go into Ukraine. Ukraine's thousands of miles away across the ocean. We helped.
- [25:42]
C
We didn't go into Ukraine.
- [25:45]
F
Stupid individual.
- [25:46]
E
The big one. China or Russia. Who's he talking about?
- [25:49]
B
Not totally sure what the big one is. Anyways, that's. That's the preface for the speech. We all expected him. You, me and Mark were talking about this. We thought he was going to go off on NATO and he didn't. Why?
- [26:02]
C
Forgot.
- [26:04]
E
I'm sorry. A commenter said Brian is the big one.
- [26:08]
D
So, you know, it was the thing I thought. I thought he was going to go after it for a couple of reasons and go after NATO. All the reasons he would have presented would have been wrong. And it just amazed me that all he said basically was they didn't help us out or. And he used the they versus NATO didn't help us out, which surprised me. But you know, truthfully, it doesn't matter because I'm not sure NATO wants us anymore if we continue. You know, it's interesting. I had a conversation with someone in Europe the other day and they said, you know, for the first term of his administration and for part of the first year, we were feeling sorry for you guys and you know, because you had this guy leading you, but now you're all with them, you know, nothing's changing. And he's still doing crazy stuff. So we don't blame him alone anymore. We're blaming all of you, which I found to be an interesting dynamic from someone in the Nordic region that has a lot of influence.
- [27:14]
E
My serious answer to your question, Sam, is that I think that the previous clip answered your question. Like, I think that he. They feel like they covered the fu. NATO bit with the good luck opening the straight. You know, I think that it was more about kind of that, you know, because he made that sly. He thinks it's sly, I guess. Comment about like you guys could show some courage. You haven't showed courage yet, but better late than never. And I think that was kind of the deal. Also, maybe he didn't realize that Marc Ruda was coming to town next week and Marc Ruda's been buttering him up a little bit. They're golfing buddies. I don't know, Margarita. Might have been an Arnold Palmer type situation with him. I'm not sure.
- [27:55]
C
Can I ask a, a real question? A little dangerous?
- [28:01]
E
Please.
- [28:01]
B
My question is not real.
- [28:04]
C
No, no. Dangerous question.
- [28:07]
B
Sure.
- [28:11]
C
What exactly does America get from being Israel's partner in this war?
- [28:17]
E
No, this is not a dangerous question.
- [28:20]
C
So here's, I mean, I just wanted to like it if, if everything is transactional. Like, if everything is transactional and we are allied with El Salvador because we give them money and they take our prisoners. Right. And we are allied with Dely Rodriguez because even though she's a socialist autocrat, she does what we tell her to do. I mean, Israel gives us nothing. Israel takes a great deal of aid. And Iran could open this.
- [28:55]
E
Our weapons. They buy our weapons. They buy our weapons with the aid. But sure, yeah, no, I'm with you.
- [29:00]
C
Like, I, like I don't. Again, from, from his transaction now, I could make the, like, well, Israel's a democracy. Like, you know, I could give you the old Republican neocon reasons why. But from his point of view, why is he extending himself for Israel?
- [29:20]
E
He says it is too. Like, this is the other thing. Like this in the speech. He says, like, we are here to help Israel and the Middle east would be off the map if we didn't do this. So like he's saying that we're doing this as part of the deal is. And I. You would lump in UAE and Qatar and Saudi with Israel, I think, as countries he's talking about and talking to the leaders of. But like those other countries are buying him off. Maybe Israel's also buying him off. I don't know. The Gaza, the bird of peace. He wants to control Gaza. He wants to be the king of the world. They're going to put. Jared's going to put some condos there. I don't know. I guess that's the answer. But he is explicitly. It is such a attack on America first, which is why you see the backlash within America first. The speech is essentially like we're doing this to help them. And I don't, I'm with you. I don't know. You know, again, you could say the democracy thing, you could say other things that people would say is that it's important to have an ally in the region. But yeah, right. Because of the radical Islam and maybe it'll come for us. Israel's the first line of defense. Like there's a lot of other things
- [30:26]
C
you could say for a guy who's purely transactional that's what I'm trying to get my head around. Like, I can tell you why America would be allied with Israel.
- [30:33]
E
Right.
- [30:33]
B
And this is not my. This is not my expertise here. But I. I do think, and I'm curious if some, if we had. If we could find someone smart to talk about this. If you look back at the first term, the thing that they really were most proud of on a foreign policy level was the Abraham Accord. And they talked a lot about reorienting the geopolitical landscape of the Middle east around a set of agreements between certain countries and Israel and creating a sort of nexus of stability. And Iran was obviously not part of that agreement. And they were very close to getting Saudi. The Saudi Arabia to be part of the agreement. I'm not sure where that stands right now, but, you know, putting that alongside with the weaponry that Israel buys, the intelligence sharing that we have with the Israelis, the historical alignment as a democracy in the Middle east, and obviously there's a close personal relationship that I believe Jared Kushner has with Bibi and all that stuff. You get a kind of larger idea that you can pivot the Middle east politics around a series of these agreements. Now, that being said, it's clear that the Israeli. And I talked to Sue Gordon about this.
- [31:39]
E
I'll buy that.
- [31:40]
C
That's a pretty compelling explanation.
- [31:42]
E
Can I add one element to that? Sure, because let me just finish on Sue Gordon quickly.
- [31:47]
B
And then. And then I'll say it. Sue Gordon, who was the principal deputy DNI for Trump's first term, and she left when Dan Coates was fired, but she was involved in all that stuff. I mean, she was pretty open about it. Israel's objectives here are very much different than hers, and they are forcing our hand in ways that she doesn't. And I don't think Trump quite appreciates. And, Mark, you talked a lot about who's advising him and who's giving him strategic advice and why aren't serious people in the room. And I guess the only sort of caveat to that is there might actually be quite serious people advising him, just not.
- [32:25]
E
Right.
- [32:26]
B
All right, go ahead.
- [32:26]
E
Yeah, just two thoughts of that. One, it's so obvious what Z Gord is saying. Like this is you don't. You can be a. The most low IQ person in the country who knows nothing about geopolitics, who's just watching this. And it's like, obviously this war is way more in Israel's interests. It just is. Israel would say it, America would say it. It's in their acute security Interest, right? And so then this is how conspiracies begin to blossom, because people are like, so then why are we doing it? You know what I mean? Like, why is somebody who said he was America first doing it and he can't enunciate it? And so to me, I think that just as an aside, like, if you're concerned about anti Semitism, you should be concerned about this. That, like, Donald Trump cannot enun. He's doing something where obviously the mission is so misaligned from Israel. The other, just to answer JBL's question really quickly, what is John Tom getting about this? Sam sparked a thought, I think, which is really the answer. He's getting puffed up. Like, Bibi was like, you're so great. Other, other folks that world. Like, you're so great. You're going to be the one. You're going to bring peace to the Middle East. This is your legacy. It's related to the Accords and safety forever. And they're going to build the Donald Trump statue in Tel Aviv. I, to me, like, that's something that I can like, wrap my head around from, like, thinking about it from the Trump perspective.
- [33:41]
B
I think that's right. Hey, along those lines, just quickly, John, another, another commenter. And I'm trying to get some of these viewer comments in here because I want to make sure they feel heard, but this does kind of get to what you were saying two seconds ago. I'm going to throw it to you, Tim. Jonathan says, if Trump had resisted doing an Oval Office address to this point or other similar trappings of war to avoid the optics, what changed now to get him to do a traditional speech that still had very little content, like, why do this now?
- [34:14]
E
I'm sorry, Jonathan, I have no idea. I mean, I came on and said, what the fuck was that? I truly have no idea. He offered, he announced nothing. Maybe he was thinking that there was like, the Artemis was happening today and this is gonna be a big, I'm trying to get you get inside Trump's brain. I don't know that, like, this is a big moment for America and the ROC rocket ship was gonna go up and I was gonna do rah rah. Maybe his team kept telling him he had to, and finally he said, okay, you know, a lot of times people think about this stuff as strategy, when really it's just human, whatever frailty and inertia and stuff where it's just like, finally he had to answer. I, I, I'm open to a better theory. Somebody has one, but he didn't say anything. Yeah, I wasn't supposed to be on tonight. People want to hear Mark hurt, like, anyway, so we're gonna let Mark.
- [34:58]
D
No, no, no. It's interesting because I think the conversation about Israel is important because, I mean, this is a blinding flash of the obvious. But Israel lives in a bad neighborhood. So does Iran. I think it's fascinating that we're hearing reports about how other Arab nations were pushing Trump to continue, especially nations that contributed a lot of money to his son in law. They want him to finish this because they don't. They don't. It means they don't have to. You know, Israel has the concept of mowing the grass whenever the terrorists in Gaza or southern Lebanon or the proxies or Iran starts getting a little froggy. Every other Arab nation in the region doesn't care all that much for the malign instincts of Iran as they put their foot against Saudi Arabia, against uae, against Iraq, against every other country in the region. So what you've got is competing bookends in this region and unfortunately, it seems like the President and his family is connected to both sides of those.
- [36:12]
B
Well, Mark, let me ask you a follow up question because you raised an interesting prospect. Let's say these Arab governments could snap their fingers and go back to the day before the war. Nothing had happened. They'd all take it, right?
- [36:28]
D
Oh, yeah, absolutely.
- [36:29]
B
With Israel.
- [36:30]
D
Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, you know, they see this initially as a good thing because Trump was acting. I don't think most of the Arab governments realized as well as some members of our administration what the fallout was going to be. It was predictable. This thing has been war gamed and red teamed for the last three decades within the Department of Defense. It's obvious what was going to happen. The straits were going to be closed, the proxies were going to be used. There's all kinds of hidden weaponry inside of Iran, just like there was inside of Iraq that. I mean, every time you felt you had fixed and finished all the Iraqi arms caches, there were 20 more on the horizon. They do their policy through weaponry, and that's a fact. So you're not going to destroy all the weapons, no matter what the chairman of the Joint Chiefs and Pete Hegseth tell the country, you're just not going to do it. And diplomacy, in my view, being a soldier is probably a first resort, not a last resort. We keep relying on the military to fix and bomb everything and we're going to continue to have these kind of quagmires. If you continue to do that.
- [37:50]
F
That.
- [37:52]
B
What do you think about that?
- [37:56]
C
I don't. I mean, I, I don't know if the other Arab states, Mark, would know this better than I do. I don't know that the Israelis would do a take back here, though. And I'm just. The reason I say it is only because I've, I've read some reporting in. I want to say it's Financial Times and hats, but it could have been someplace else where they're like, what do
- [38:20]
D
you mean by a takeback not due to war. I. I don't think that's the case at all.
- [38:29]
C
Oh, okay. I'm. Then I just misunderstood.
- [38:31]
D
I misunderstood the question and I'm sorry for that.
- [38:34]
B
Yeah. If they could bottle it back up, if they could say this never happened, we'll go back to early February, not, you know, the no bomb had ever been dropped, and we'll just go back to that status quo.
- [38:45]
D
Israel would definitely. I don't think Israel would do that at all. I mean, they've been pining for this for, for years. Would Saudi Arabia take it back? Possibly. I mean, they've seen what the Houthis do to them on their southern border. They don't want any part of this. So they want these people destroyed, but they don't want the kind of after effects that we're seeing right now.
- [39:08]
B
You know, we're sort of, we're kind of all beating around the larger question, I guess, and Trump is feeding into it because he didn't give us any specifics. But the real sort of big question is, what is the off ramp? Like, how do we get out of this? Right. And so Max Brooks, 8657. Not. Who knows if it's one of the more famous Max Brooks, but whatever.
- [39:29]
C
Not the Zombie War X Max, bro.
- [39:32]
B
I don't think so. All right, is there any action?
- [39:34]
E
This is for Mark.
- [39:35]
B
Is there any actual off ramp for Trump to take? How do we actually see this ending from a realistic perspective or a realistic perspective?
- [39:43]
D
Two weeks ago, I had this fear, Tim, that. I'm sorry, Sam. That there was not going to be a potential good off ramp. That the best. And in fact, I said it one time on some channel that the best we could gain out of this was a draw. That's the best. And the only off ramp I could see, and I thought the President was going to do it tonight, was to say, it's over. We've done what we wanted to do and now we're pulling out. And it would have been disastrous, but it would have been the best thing for the country. He didn't do that. He didn't do that. Now the courses of actions are still up in the air. We don't know what he's going to do next because he still has a lot of military forces in the region. There's been no conclusion to what's going on. Iran is still doing things that he's saying they're not doing. And I don't see an off ramp right now without a global, at least global dysfunction in terms of supply chain and the oil economy. And I hope I'm wrong. I'm not an economist. I'm a simple soldier. But that's the way I see it going down.
- [40:56]
C
I, I mean, I, I would just say this, and we should probably be wrapping up soon, but it does appear to me that Iran will exit this war in a stronger strategic position than it entered. They will have lost a bunch of material, they will have lost a bunch of infrastructure. But they navigated a succession crisis which was going to hit them anyway in a couple of years, which is always dangerous for an authoritarian regime. They proved the viability of a strategic weapon that they had long threatened but never used before, which was the ability to close the straight formos. They did it. Which means that that has to be taken into account forever.
- [41:39]
B
Right.
- [41:40]
C
It's no longer a theoretical. Well, maybe they could. It's now. Everybody knows that if there is a war, they can do this. They will likely be resupplied by the Chinese with material very quickly following the end of the war. And they now have the ability to project power in the region in ways they didn't before the bomb started from Operation Epic Fury. And I, I just. To all the people who are like ride or die with Trump purely because they hate the Iranian regime, which, by the way, I hate the Iranian regime, too. They're very bad. They're terrible, terrible people. They are. They will be more strategically sound and more able to project power as they exit this because of this war. And I just think that that's undeniable.
- [42:39]
D
Can I add something to that, jbl? Because I think something's important that I learned. One of the many things I learned spending a lot of time in the Middle east is we in the west are concerned with personalities. Who is our leader? What are they doing to organizations? How does the dynamic of that personality work to build something strong in the Middle east and to include Persia? We're talking more about a dependence on institutions as opposed to personalities. And all of the institutions in Iran, even though They've been damaged. They are still intact. The theocracy is intact. The IRGC is still intact. Although dramatically damaged, their weapons systems in many cases have been destroyed. The people are still looking for a leader. So there is still that essence of, of systems versus personalities working in that country. And I think that lends credence to what you were just saying in terms of them regaining their solid footing, rebuilding a little bit if they can get the economy running again and they're going to come out of this stronger than we went into it.
- [43:50]
B
We're going to close in about a couple minutes here and thank you guys for doing this and again, apologies to everyone for the earlier technical snappers. I want to play a clip again from Trump earlier in the day talking about how he, he was going to tell the world that he was doing a great job tonight. And then we're going to look at what actually transpired. So first the clip.
- [44:08]
F
Get a little speech at 9 o' clock and basically I'm going to, I'm going to tell everybody how great I am, what a great job I've done, what a phenomenal job, what a phenomenal job I've done.
- [44:23]
B
All right, well, as of 10:05, so about, you know, 43 minutes or so since he's finished speaking, a few things to just go through. Crude oil is up. Brent is up. Dow is down. Futures S P is down, NASDAQ is down. We have some graphs about this if we can pull them up. I mean, that is just brutal. Brutal. That's a 500. Apparently this is a $550 billion in market cap in 25 minutes. As he addressed the nation, he gave no, just to summarize, he gave no reason for being in Iran and he gave little explanation for how we are going to get out of Iran. And people are just sort of wondering where we go from here. And we've tried to game plan it out on this conversation. I think we've come to some conclusion that we are just stuck in a really bad spot and we'll see what happens over the next two or three weeks. Mark JVL thank you guys for doing this. For everyone else who watched, thank you for doing this as well. Oh, nice. Sue Gordon, text me to say she's watching. Sue, come on. Anytime. For everyone else, thank you for coming on. Subscribe to the Bulwark. We love you guys. We love our fans. Sorry we couldn't get some more of your questions in the conversation, but we'll try to do better. Fellas. Take care. Good luck. America thanks, guys.