We Sat Through a Painful Trump Cabinet Meeting So You Don’t Have To

Summary

Podcast Summary: Bulwark Takes – "We Sat Through a Painful Trump Cabinet Meeting So You Don’t Have To"

Date: March 26, 2026
Hosts: Sam Stein (Managing Editor at The Bulwark), Andrew Egger (Author of Morning Shots)

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Sam Stein and Andrew Egger bravely recap an hour-and-a-half Trump cabinet meeting that devolved into a series of bizarre, free-associative presidential monologues and sycophantic moments from cabinet members. The episode’s goal: break down the top five wildest and most absurd moments from the cabinet meeting, shifting from the relatively silly to deeply unsettling in tone and content. Sam and Andrew dissect not just the expected chaos, but the dangerous implications for U.S. foreign policy, political norms, and global security.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Method of Recap and Gamification (01:55)

• Format: Andrew presents his “Top Five Wildest Moments” from the cabinet session (least wild to most wild).
• Sam’s Note: Sam broadly agrees with Andrew’s rankings but throws in a couple of highlights Andrew missed.

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2. #5: The Presidential Pen Monologue (03:00 - 07:40)

• Context: Trump launches into a 15-minute, rambling story about government pens, penny-pinching, and Sharpies—ostensibly to illustrate his fiscal prudence.
• Quote (Donald Trump):
  • “This pen is very inexpensive, but it writes well. I like it, but I can't have the pen the way it was… I called the guy, I said, I'd like to use your pen, but I can't have a gray thing with a big S on it saying Sharpie as I'm signing a trillion dollar airplane contract… I can even paint the White House on it, sir, if you like, in gold, almost real gold.” (04:04)
• Commentary:
  • Sam: “If you just ran across someone talking about Sharpies like that in your normal course of life, you would wonder if they ate the Sharpies…” (07:21)
  • Andrew: Highlights how this mundane, meandering anecdote is par for Trump’s public events, crowding out real policy discussion.

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3. #4: Cognitive Tests & Ableism (08:44 - 13:03)

• Context: Trump rants about mental fitness, targeting Gavin Newsom and boasting of his own cognitive prowess.
• Quote (Donald Trump):
  • “I'm the only president that ever took a cognitive test. I took it three times… by the time you get to the end, very few people can answer those questions. I aced it all three times in front of numerous doctors…” (09:10)
• Commentary:
  • Sam: “Let’s not gloss over the fact… Gavin Newsom… he's not saying he's dumb, he's saying he has dyslexia. Like, it’s a particularly horrific thing for Trump to basically say, you know, he's disqualified because of that.” (11:47)
  • Andrew: Notes Trump’s projection and insecurity, and how nastiness creeps into personal attacks.

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4. #3: NATO Disdain and “Never Forget” Threats (14:09 - 17:44)

• Context: Trump expresses disappointment in NATO’s (and especially the UK’s) response to the Iran conflict, recycling a grudge about delayed British military support and making veiled threats toward treaty partners.
• Quote (Trump):
  • “If you don't do that, we're going to remember, just remember… never forget.” (15:51)
• Commentary:
  • Tyler: “To repurpose the ‘never forget’ thing for this… for the UK taking a couple days to send a ship, that’s just on its own merits, insane. But it’s also very grim… for the war in Ukraine.” (16:23)
  • Sam: Highlights hypocrisy, given that U.S. support for Ukraine has “dried up” under Trump.

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5. #2: Iran “Weeks from a Nuclear Weapon” & JD Vance's Backpack Nuke Nightmare (18:19 - 23:07)

• Context: Trump repeats the demonstrably false claim that Iran was only “two to four weeks” from building a nuclear weapon, justifying the current war with Iran. JD Vance, pressed by Trump, escalates the rhetoric by invoking the specter of a “backpack nuke” terror attack.
• Quote (Trump):
  • “If we didn't attack with the B2 bombers, they would have had a nuclear weapon within two weeks of that, maybe four weeks.” (18:50)
• Quote (JD Vance via Sam):
  • “What happens when what's on the vest is… not something that can kill a couple people but can kill tens of thousands…? That is the most important national security objective…” (21:36, paraphrased)
• Commentary:
  • Tyler: “Nobody in Donald Trump's cabinet at any point has said anything like this… Everyone knows this is not the case…”
  • Sam: “This is like a stage well beyond [Iraq war rhetoric] where he's invoking the idea that someone's just going to walk with the backpack nuke into a crowded supermarket and blow you up and take out your entire city.”

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6. #1: Minimizing the Strait of Hormuz Crisis (23:15 - 25:41)

• Context: Trump publicly dismisses the importance of the economic crisis resulting from the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.
• Quote (Trump):
  • “We don’t need the Hormuz Strait… Our country is not affected by this.” (24:19)
• Commentary:
  • Tyler: Impresses upon listeners how stunning it is that the President would claim a global economic emergency isn’t America’s concern, even as gas prices spike and recession looms.
  • Sam: Points out Trump’s inconsistency—at one point, he’s “grateful” to Iran for letting a few oil shipments through.

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7. Honorable Mentions and Weirdest Asides (25:41 - 29:07)

• Doug Burgum and a Statue for Trump:
  • Earlier in the meeting, Doug Burgum suggested Venezuela might erect a “statue to Trump,” illustrating the level of sycophancy.
• Decorating the Kennedy Center:
  • Sam: Recounts Trump’s fixation on the Kennedy Center’s leaky roof and repainted columns—“beautiful cream white”—as classic Trumpian stream-of-consciousness.
• “Old man who loves his Sharpies”:
  • A repeated motif in Trump’s monologue, to which Sam quips, “it’s a little bit weird in its own right.” (07:21)

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Memorable Quotes (with Timestamps & Attribution)

• Andrew (on the Cabinet meeting’s tone):

  • “Almost everything that was said in this entire Cabinet meeting was kind of insane.” (02:56)

• Sam Stein (on Trump’s pen story):

  • “If you just ran across someone talking about Sharpies like that… you would wonder if they ate the Sharpies…” (07:21)

• Trump (on his cognitive abilities):

  • “I took it three times. I aced it all three times in front of numerous doctors that I have no idea who they… who they are.” (09:10)

• Tyler (on Trump’s NATO remarks):

  • “To repurpose the ‘never forget’ thing for this… that’s just… insane.” (16:23)

• Trump (on the Strait of Hormuz):

  • “We don’t need the hormone strait. We don’t need it… Our country is not affected by this.” (24:19)

• JD Vance, via Sam (nuclear terror scenario):

  • “What happens when what's on the vest… can kill many, many tens of thousands?” (21:36)

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Tone & Notable Moments

• Absurdity blurs into danger: The hosts’ exasperated tone mixes exasperation with gallows humor. “This man’s mind is gelatin at this point,” says Sam, and Tyler repeatedly expresses disbelief at Trump’s ramblings.
• Wild transitions: Trump veers wildly from global crises to the “Kennedy Center columns” and pen choices.
• No serious policy debate: The actual war in Iran, consequences for Ukraine, and global oil disruptions are glossed over in favor of personal grievances, ego trips, and self-aggrandizement.
• Cabinet sycophancy:
  • “If a boss ever did that to me, it’d be so humiliating. But I guess that’s the price of admission…” (13:08)
  • Example: Pete Hegseth being publicly embarrassed by Trump.

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Important Timestamps

• 03:00 – 07:40: Trump’s pen monologue and the “Sharpie saga”
• 09:10 – 12:35: Rant on cognitive ability; attacks on Newsom, Biden, Obama
• 15:51 – 17:44: Trump’s grievances with NATO/UK and implied threats
• 18:50 – 21:47: Iran nuclear claims and JD Vance’s “backpack nuke” fear-mongering
• 24:19 – 25:41: Trump’s dismissal of the Strait of Hormuz oil crisis

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Conclusion

Sam and Andrew survived the Trump cabinet meeting so listeners wouldn’t have to—presenting a hierarchy of the most absurd and alarming moments, from the president’s pen obsessions to his cavalier disregard for global crises and dangerous nuclear fear-mongering. Their analysis moves seamlessly from gallows humor to grave seriousness, capturing the tone and substance (or lack thereof) of both the meeting and the dire state of U.S. policymaking.

Final note from Sam (29:07):
“We listened to it, so you guys didn’t have to.”

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For further discussion:
If you disagree with Andrew’s “Top Five,” drop your suggestions in the comments!

Transcript

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[Sam Stein]

Stein, managing editor at the Bulwark. I'm here with Andrew Egger, partner in crime, author of Morning Shots, Must read newsletter. We just watched an hour and a half Trump cabinet meeting. We made it. I didn't at various points I didn't know if we were going to make it, but we did. And it wasn't as tongue bathy as as some of the other ones were, but it was pretty tongue bathy. At one point I think Doug Burgram talked about a statue being erected of Trump in Venezuela.

[Andrew Egger]

I literally think they're going to put up a statue to President Trump and I'm not being it's not a political statement. It's that would be a great no

[Sam Stein]

because it's like they view President Trump like Simon Mullery and he thought it was like I'm not trying to be political. And Trump was like, oh, I would love that. But that's not even like the top of the craziness here. Andrew, thankfully has organized his thoughts better than I have. We're going to gamify this a little bit. We're going to do top five, wildest, craziest moments, most mindboggling utterances from the cabin meeting. Andrew's going to do his five. I'm just going to set it up. I have a few that I'm going to talk about, but they're that I kind of agree with most of your five, Andrew, but there's one or two that I think you missed. But let's go with your number five. This is from, we're going in order from least wild of the five to most wild. So number five, what do we got?

[Tyler Redick]

Least wild to most wild? Within reason, almost everything that was said in this entire Cabinet meeting was kind of insane. So we're already working with the creme of the creme de la creme here. One of the reasons why, like you said, it was not as tongue bathy as it could have been, or as these sometimes are, is that there actually was not all that much talking from the Cabinet secretaries in this meeting. Donald Trump was in his bag. He was just going, he was pre associating, he was doing the weave. And number five was a moment that came at the end of a very, very long rant, about a 15 minute, just free associative spiel about how everybody wants to sue him for trying to make D.C. beautiful again. And the ballrooms, they ought to be suing Jerome Powell instead for the problems with the Fed renovation building and how, you know, it's good that Janine Pirro and Pam Bondi are going after him and going after the Fed. But, but nobody's, but, but everybody's mad about the Kennedy Center. Everybody's mad about the ballrooms. He goes about, he goes on about this for about 15 minutes, and then he gets to this moment where he has somehow worked his way into talking about the pens he uses to sign things. So let's, let's, let's hit that.

[Andrew Egger]

See this pen right here? This pen is an interesting example. It's the same thing. So this pen is very inexpensive, but it writes well. I like it, but I can't have the pen the way it was. You know what it is? I don't want to give too much publicity, but they do treat me well. Sharpie. So I came here, they have thousand dollar pens. And you Know, you hand pens out, you're signing and you hand them out, you're handing them to all these people. Sometimes you have 30, 40 people and they were $1,000 apiece. Beautiful pen. Ballpoint. Thousand. It was gold, silver, gorgeous. But I'm handing it out to kids that don't even know what they are. What is this, Mommy, it's kids. They're getting a pen for a thousand dollars. They have no idea what it is. And I feel guilty because I'm like, you know, I'm. By nature, I don't. You know, it's the government. I love the government like I love myself economically. I want to save money. So I'm saying, this is crazy. And it had another problem. They didn't write well. So I take it out and I sign and there's no ink. And I got all you people looking and you're saying, there must be something wrong with Trump. And I'm signing and there's no ink in the pen. And it costs $1,000, this one. I called the guy, I said, I'd like to use your pen, but I can't have a gray thing with a big S on it saying Sharpie as I'm signing a trillion dollar airplane contract to buy brand new fighter jets, brand new B2 bombers, of which we just ordered plenty. I can't do that with the press. Use your pen. But I like the pen the best. But I'll sign it. I could do like Biden did, give it to somebody else to sign or an auto pen, or maybe sign it separately in another room. But I can't use your pen. He said, well, I can make it nicer. I said, what can you do? He said, I'll paint it black. I said, that's nice. And I can even paint the White House on it, sir, if you like, in gold, almost real gold. Not bad. And I can even do your signature, sir. And by the way, this was not staged. I just saw the pen sit there and I thought of this as an example.

[Tyler Redick]

It wasn't staged. He actually. No script writer had the thought to offer that genius example of saving government money like the President did with his totally invented nonsense about thousand dollar pens before and the Sharpies we have now. That's a long clip. I wonder if Matt's going to cut that down a little bit and we're

[Sam Stein]

gonna watch the entire audio for this. No, no.

[Tyler Redick]

We sat through the whole thing and then we lost everybody with 90 seconds of the President blathering about pens. That came. I already said this. That came at the end of a 15 minute uninterrupted spiel, totally free associating from the President. I mean, there's nothing going on in the world, so it's not like there's anything important that we have to talk about. But I mean, it's just this is what these cabinet meetings are and I guess he thinks they're going to go great for him.

[Sam Stein]

Okay, I'm glad we played all two minutes of that or whatever it was, because at first I was like, okay, it's not that crazy. But then he just kept going and kept going, kept going. And I'm wondering if he actually did talk to Mr. Sharpie or whoever the executive was at Sharpie and if they did have a conversation about the color of the pen. And also if you just sort of step back and you think about it's like an old man who loves his Sharpies is a little bit weird in its own right. And then I did like the line where he was like, I love the government, like I love myself economically.

[Tyler Redick]

Yeah, it's good stuff. It's good stuff.

[Sam Stein]

That's pretty good. It's hard. It's amazing that that's five because that if you just ran across someone talking about Sharpies like that in your normal course of life, you would wonder if they ate the Sharpies and that was like something. They had a weird relationship with the pen. But yeah, that's number five.

[Andrew Egger]

All right.

[Sam Stein]

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[Tyler Redick]

Number four. We got. Number four came at the end of another long spiel. It wasn't 15 minutes, but it was a lengthy, lengthy spiel about how bad and evil and racist and, you know, hating for the country our Democrats are. And. And this is what he had to say. He had gotten done with a bunch of, you know, hits on Joe Biden and hits on Kamala Harris, and then he pivoted, talking about the cognitive abilities of Gavin Newsom and his own. So let's. Let's listen to that a little bit.

[Andrew Egger]

I don't want a person with mental disability to be my president. I mean, you don't want to have a person with mental disability being your president. And Gavin Newsom said that he can't read a speech, he can't do almost anything. And then he said he's as dumb as all the people in the room. And he got accused of being a racist, which was an amazing situation. I thought it was the worst interview I've ever seen anybody give. He's actually a very stupid person. So I believe he's out of the running. I think that that statement, that interview, he admitted that he's a stupid person. I don't want a stupid person being president. You know, I'll say it right now. I say it because no press ever reports it. I'm the only president that ever took a cognitive test. I took it three times. It's actually a very hard test for a lot of people. It wasn't hard for me. It starts off with an easy question, and by the time you get to the middle, it gets tougher. By the time you get to the end, very few people can answer those questions. They get very tough mathematical equations and things. I took it three times. I aced it all three times in front of numerous doctors that I have no idea who they. Who they are. And I was told. When I went in, I said. They said, Dr. Ronnie told me this. My current doctors, who are fantastic doctors, they said, well, if you take it, you know, it's Walter Reed. It's essentially a public hospital, and if you do badly, it's probably going to get out. But I aced it. I got them all right. And one doctor said, I've never seen anybody get them all right? I've been doing the test for 20 years. I want people. I would love to see anybody that's a president or a vice president, president or anybody that has any chance of being a president, I would like to see them take a cognitive test.

[Sam Stein]

I.

[Tyler Redick]

This is like a Classic Trump line, right? He always talks about the cognitive tests at the rallies, but there was, like, some extra good detail this time where he's talking about. And, you know, those questions, they get really hard at the end, you know, like, like, these are, these are dementia tests to make sure that. To make sure that your mind is. Is fully functioning. He's like, I had a doctor tell me I was the only person he'd ever seen in 20 years who aced it. He's talking about how his, his aides, including his White House doctor, as he's going in to take it, are kind of discouraging him from taking the cognitive test. Like, you know, if you don't do so well on this, it's going to leak out. But he showed them. You know, he went in and he proved once and for all that his mind is, is functioning at normal baseline, as opposed to Gavin Newsom, who, who. Who was so foolish as to admit that he has had, you know, learning disabilities growing up and things like that. So.

[Sam Stein]

Well, it was interesting that you picked that as number four, because it was both. It was a little wild. And I actually do believe that the doctor probably told him that, but that didn't mean anything because the doctor knows. He wants to hear it. But it also, that one turned, like, particularly nasty. First of all, let's just not, like, gloss over the fact that Gavin Newsom, you know, he's not saying he's dumb, he's saying he has dyslexia. Like, it's not, you know, it's particularly horrific thing for Trump to, like, basically say that, you know, he's disqualified himself because of that. But then Trump pivoted from there to not only talk Newsom's intelligence, then go after Joe Biden, which is he par for the course. He always does that. And then he went after Obama and he was like, Obama was not a smart guy either. Like, the guy edited the Harvard Law Review. I mean, come on. Objectively. Objectively, Obama is not dumb.

[Tyler Redick]

I don't know, man. I don't know. Those questions, they get pretty hard there at the end of the cognitive. I don't know. It's crazy. I mean, it's crazy. It's crazy. It's crazy that he does this. It's crazy this happens in the first place. And then it's just so megalomaniacal that he's like, I'm going to go out there and I'm going to show him like, like, like it's projection. He believes that, you know, he's like, Barack Obama could never.

[Sam Stein]

Yeah, no, it's projection, obviously. It's insecurity. He feels like he's the dummy. All right, number three. What do we got?

[Tyler Redick]

Three. Okay, now that was just the stupid stuff. All of the rest is extremely grim.

[Sam Stein]

So let me. If we're going to go to the grim stuff, I'm going to just throw out a one stupid thing that's not on your list. I actually saw the list before. That's a good idea, because we're going to get more serious here. There is a moment in here where Trump is sitting. Sitting next. I'm sorry, I'm laughing. He's sitting next to Pete Hegseth, his Defense secretary, who is kind of embattled over all this stuff. And Trump's been quietly, or not so quietly, throwing him under the bus for what's happening in the war. And he says something like, I was talking to someone the other day who really was, you know, critical of me for appointing you Defense Secretary. I'm not going to tell you who it was. And. And Pete X is just forced to sit there listening to this, and he's like, now, can you speak, Pete? And then Pete does this whole shtick. But it just struck me as, like, the most. You know, if a boss ever did that to me, it'd be so humiliating. But I guess that's the price of admission when you're in the Cabinet. All right, away from the silly stuff to the serious stuff. What's your number three?

[Tyler Redick]

Yeah. So this is bad. This is one of Trump's gripes with the war. And not surprisingly, all the rest of this stuff is about the war, because, as you might remember, Sam, there is actually a very serious conflict going on in Iran right now, and Trump has a lot of gripes about a lot of it. We're gonna get to the actual stuff that matters a lot, which he's weirdly glib and dismissive about. But he has retained a grudge since the very opening days of the war, where basically right when we first went to. In Iran without consulting anybody except Israel, we took all of our European and NATO allies by surprise by going in there. And they took a couple of days to really figure out to what extent they were gonna get involved. A lot of these allies aren't getting involved at all. Germany, for instance, and the EU have sort of said, this isn't our war. But Great Britain belatedly, the UK Belatedly said, we'll send some ships just a few days into this conflict. And very famously, at that point, Trump said, we don't need them. So even, even in, in this, in this Cabinet meeting, it seems like he had kind of half forgotten who, like when, when they had offered that and what he himself had said, because he turned down the ships, because he basically said the war is already over. That was like three or four days into the conflict. We're now four weeks in, but he's still talking about how, you know, they didn't want to send ships till after the war was over. So, like, that, that's all crazy. But, but this actual moment that I want to talk about here has to do with NATO and just his perspective on NATO in general. And, and I mean, it's, it's one of the kind of baldest statements we've seen from Trump yet that he is really considering just sort of dropping any remaining obligations that America has to this treaty alliance.

[Andrew Egger]

Let's play nobody's a match for the United States, but they're not a match for the United States. It's small potatoes. That's why I'm so disappointed in NATO, because this was a test for NATO. This was a test. You can help us. You don't have to, but if you don't have, you know, if you don't do that, we're going to remember, just remember, remember this in a number of months from now. Remember, my statements have an expression, a great expression, never forget, never forget.

[Tyler Redick]

I mean, first of all, that's so gross. I mean, to repurpose the never forget thing for this specifically for the UK Taking a couple of days to send a ship, I mean, like, that's just on its own merits. That's insane. But it's also very grim for even just in the immediate term thinking about the war in Ukraine. Right? I mean, the war in Iran has been sort of bad news for Ukraine in a lot of respects. I mean, we have pulled certain military installations of our own out of that theater to bring them to Iran. As was also discussed in the Cabinet meeting today, Russia has been able to reap a real economic, you know, benefit from, from the war because not only has the price of oil gone up and so, you know, they've been able to sell at higher prices, but the US has taken a certain number of sanctions off of Russian oil, so it's easier for them to sell more at higher prices and, you know, just, just have that, those extra infusions of cash in cash into Russia's war economy. So, like, all that is bad enough on its own. And then to hear Donald Trump talk this way about NATO with, with A real implicit threat there toward just sort of taking the ball and going home when it comes to different kind of NATO priorities, which are also our priorities, by the way, in everybody's mind, except for Donald Trump's. So that was a, that was, you know, again, like I say, we're getting into the pretty, just actually grim and grisly stuff here.

[Sam Stein]

Yeah. And I would just only add, first of all, thank you for making note of the never again thing. Galling stuff. But, you know, obviously it's, if there, if this is a one way street, it's, you know, not in NATO's way. I mean, Trump threatened to take over Greenland for months. Okay. And then on top of that, all of our aid basically is dried up towards Ukraine, which is a huge NATO priority. So if you're talking about never forget, I mean, they, they won't forget either. All right, number two, okay.

[Tyler Redick]

So, yeah, number two, this has to do with why we went into Iran in the first place, which, which, you know, there have been a million different explanations given, but this is the one that Donald Trump seems to have settled on in complete defiance of all factual reality and of his own administration's insistence a year ago that they had destroyed Iran's nuclear program. Here is the President saying that if we had not gone into Iran, you know, last month, they would have had a nuclear weapon in a matter of weeks.

[Andrew Egger]

And if we didn't attack with the B2 bombers, they would have had a nuclear weapon within two weeks of that, maybe four weeks. But between two and four weeks, they were planning to have a nuclear weapon if we didn't hit them at that time with the nuke, with the B2 bombers and one of the great air raids in history, maybe the greatest.

[Tyler Redick]

Just to put a fine point on this, nobody in Donald Trump's cabinet at any point has said anything like this. And they know, they didn't say it today. They haven't said it all along. They've given lots of shambolic and silly explanations for the war, some of which are kind of mutually contradictory. But, but, but nobody is saying this because it is obviously insane. Everyone knows this is not the case. Everyone, There, there, there are some concerns, as Michael Marco Rubio has laid out at the time, that Iran was building up its ballistic missile defenses to, to the point where, you know, it was going to be able to, you know, operate in the region with more impunity. That's, that's a, that's a, at least more plausible sounding thing that they have allegedly for why they had to go in Right now. But it's the President of the United States that is repeatedly. Apparently he thinks this because he has said this in a couple of times in recent days as well. He actually thinks it's the case that even though they somehow destroyed, you know, obliterated Iran's nuclear program last year, surprise. They're actually two weeks from a bomb. And.

[Sam Stein]

Right.

[Tyler Redick]

Nobody. I don't know what can you even say about this? It's insane. That's not how any of this stuff works. But the President thinks that, thinks it's how it works. And nobody in that room, even though they won't say it, obviously no one will correct him. Apparently they're not even even correcting him in private because he keeps repeating it.

[Sam Stein]

Well, see, I thought you were going to mention something else with respect to nukes, because there was a. No, another moment in there that kind of went under the radar. And it was JD Vance who has been very quiet about this stuff, as we reported today, morning shots. And he was talking about it because Trump pressed him to speak, and he was talking about essentially a backpack nuke. And we don't need to play the clip, but I'll just read it. He said, when I say options, I think it's important the American people know options for what, and it's options to ensure that Iran never has a nuclear weapon. And this is where it gets a little wild. You talk about people who walk into a crowded supermarket and have a vest on and they blow up the vest and a couple of people get killed, and that's a terrible tragedy. What happens when what's on the vest is not something that can kill a couple people, but can kill many, many tens of thousands of people. That is the most important American national security objective that exists for any administration at any time, is you don't want the worst people in the world to have a nuclear weapon. I mean, that is like, you know, I remember the Iraq war days where it was like, you can't have Saddam possess a nuclear weapon and they have them. This is like, you can't. This is like a stage well beyond that where he's invoking the idea that someone's just going to walk with the backpack, nuke into a crowded supermarket and blow you up and take out your entire city. I mean, that is just like wild stuff. So, you know, they. They really ratchet it up.

[Tyler Redick]

If the world worked anything like these people say it works, I don't know if they actually believe it. I don't know if J.D. thinks that that's a real problem or anything. Like if it were actually the case that, that you could go into a country, completely obliterate their nuclear program. You know, you take out everything you can take out. It's an absolute military victory, you know, unparalleled success. And then one year later, they are weeks away, not only from creating a nuclear weapon, not only, I mean, like, that's, that's crazy enough on its own, but, but creating a nuclear weapon that is of such a kind that it can be, you know, smuggled into a country, strapped on a person's backpack and used to carry out a terror attack. You just stick a fork in everything. There's no point in doing any sort of foreign policy. There's no point in diplomacy. Go home and sort of enjoy your last days with your, with your family. Right? I mean like, none of this for good, thank God. None of this is how the world works, unfortunately. It is apparently the way that some of the most powerful people in the entire world, the most powerful people in our country certainly view it or at least see fit for God knows what reason to talk about it. So, yeah, I don't know. JD Is having a hard time. He's seeing his own presidential ambitions go up in smoke as this conflict goes along. He's seeing his poly market odds hit the floor. So he's going through it whatever he can. He's got his mind on other things. Maybe that's the, maybe that's the most generous.

[Sam Stein]

It was a bit of a while, it was a bit of a wild specter that he raised there. All right, all that considered, what could possibly be your number one?

[Tyler Redick]

What is the number one? Well, this is, I don't know. Now, now that you mentioned it, maybe that was actually the craziest. Now we actually read a little bit. It is so crazy that the President apparently cannot be disabused by hook or by crook of this notion that Iran was two weeks from, from a nuke. But, but, but this is the last thing. And this is, this is, I have this as the last thing just because it is such amazing from the President of the United States as the Strait of Hormuz. Everybody, you know, we've been talking about it like crazy. Everybody's been talking about it because it is giant economic problem that, that 20% of the world's oil is snarled up in there and Iran is, you know, only letting ships through that it wants to let through and it's charging a toll on them and, and you know, it's. Gas is up a buck 50 around America and you know, it's only going to get worse. It's a big problem unless there's some actual solution here. And Donald Trump has a few things that he's been willing to say about the Strait of Hormuz, but one thing that he cannot stop himself from saying, apparently, is, I just don't know what the big deal is. It's gonna be fine. America doesn't. It doesn't matter for us at all. You guys should stop caring so much about the Strait of Hormuz. So here's him saying that the amazing

[Andrew Egger]

thing is we don't need the hormone strait. We don't need it. We don't need it at all. We have so much oil. Our country is not affected by this.

[Tyler Redick]

Our country is not affected by this. It is true in an extremely narrow sense. We have enough oil to drill ourselves. It is unlikely that the closure of the Strait of Hormuz will actually result in you going to a gas station and being unable to pull any gasoline out of the tanks. That's not really the problem here. The problem here is it's a giant, unprecedented in size and scale global oil shock that is going to, at the very worst, really hurt the economy. And at the, you know, it is not at all implausible. There could be a significant crash here. Obviously, Donald Trump is looking very hard at trying to find some off ramp for this conflict because unlike the nukes thing, where I genuinely don't know if he actually believes that because he keeps repeating it and it seems so crazy that, that he wouldn't keep saying it if he didn't actually believe it, this I don't think he believes. I mean, he is, he is actually looking pretty hard for a, for an off ramp to this conflict because he knows how bad these price shocks are going to hurt him politically. But the fact that he is still making this case in public, like, guys, come on, it's not even our oil. It's fine. It's good for our companies. Actually, I still cannot wrap my mind around the fact that he thinks that this is an argument that plays for him in any way.

[Sam Stein]

Well, that. And then at another point during this, he talked about how grateful he was that the Iranians let in or let through eight chips full of oil through the straits. So straits don't matter. What difference does it make if they're laid? Letting those eight chips through, it's not the biggest gift in the world. I think that's a fine top. I think I probably would swap your 1 and 2. I think nukes probably is more important in the grand scheme of things. But I think that's a good top. I will say you left out two little bitties which wouldn't even make my top five, but I think are worthwhile for the viewers to, to hear. One was he had this aside about Tony Blinken, Biden's old Secretary of State, where he, he basically said, yeah, Tony Blinken was quoted as saying he, first of all, he was watching Tony Blinken. He's saying this is Trump saying. He was saying that they should have done it. The implication being that Tony Blinken had admitted in this speech that Biden should have done the war in Iran that Trump was now doing. We went back and looked. Tony Blinken was saying they should have re entered the jcpoa, the nuclear agreement with Iran, not invade Iran. So slightly different. And then this one is, it's almost even hard to kind of, I don't know how he got to this one, but it just, you know, classic weave where they're talking about something and then they're talking about like, the National Guard and how clean D.C. is. And then they're talking about, like, you know, buildings in D.C. and then they're talking about the Kennedy center and they're talking about fixing up the Kennedy Center. They're talking about how the roof on the Kennedy center is leaking. They're talking about the, the columns on the Cany center and how they were actually fake gold. And then he was talking about how he's fixing them up and that they were painting them a beautiful white color, beautiful cream white. And everyone is saying how much, how much more beautiful it is. And, and you can't imitate gold. And it just went on and on and on about the columns at the Kennedy Center. And I, I was just sitting there being like, I, this man's mind is, is, is gelatin at this point.

[Tyler Redick]

Yeah, all of that.

[Sam Stein]

But this is the stuff he loves to talk about.

[Tyler Redick]

Yeah, no, it's amazing. I mean, like, and he got some questions about the strait at the end, which is when he started saying some of this stuff. But, but when you compare just the stuff that he said in his own opening remarks and in the Cabinet proceedings about the war in Iran and the Strait of Hormuz. It was a couple minutes. And then he went on for, like I was saying, this was all part of that answer that culminated in those in that pin clip we just talked about. Right. But he's going on about the columns. He's going on about the decorations in the Oval Office. He's like, he's going on about how you can't do fake gold. Fake gold is always really noticeable. And then he's like. But not like in here. These, these decorations. 24 Karat, which is just like. It's just amazing. I guess it's possible. I don't think those are 24 karat gold. All that, all that chintzy stuff he has up around the White House. Come on. But. But that's what he carries. Even at this moment. Even at this, like, insanely, insanely fraught and bad moment for. For his presidency, for the country, for the world, for the global economy. He'll talk about that stuff. Yeah, sure. If you make him like, whatever. I guess he's got some thoughts. He's going to mostly defer. He's mostly going to just tell you. He's not going to tell you what he's going to do. But you get him going on any of that shit that he does with his actual day, any of the redecorating, any of the renovations, any of the D.C. stuff, and he will talk your ear off for hours on end, it seems like.

[Sam Stein]

Yeah, well, we listened to it, so you guys didn't have to. Andrew, thank you for doing the list, buddy. Really appreciate it. If you disagree with Andrew's rankings, just drop your own rankings in the comments section. We'll take a look at them and see whether we could have done better. For those who didn't watch the capital meeting, but did watch our encapsulation of it, our summary of it. Thank you. We appreciate it. We do this for you in return. Just subscribe to the Bulwark. That's all we ask. Andrew, take care, buddy. I'll talk to you later.

[Tyler Redick]

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