← Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Trump Downplays War Costs as Oil Explodes and Markets Crash
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Scott Galloway
Listen to Monday.com feel the sensation of an AI work platform so flexible and intuitive it feels like it was built just for you. Now open your eyes. Go to Monday.com, start for free, and finally, breathe. Welcome to Raging Moderates. I'm Scott Galloway.
- [02:02]
Jessica Tarleth
And I'm Jessica Tarleth.
- [02:04]
Scott Galloway
In today's episode of Raging Moderates, we're discussing Iran's new supreme leader and Trump's unclear endgame. If you aren't already, make sure to subscribe to our YouTube page to get up to date coverage on everything happening. All right, let's get into it. As the war with Iran enters week two, the situation is getting more complicated. Who would have thunk it, Jess? The US And Israel say they're weakening Iran's missile capabilities. But the political and economic stakes are rising. Iran has installed Mojabak Khamenei as the new supreme leader after Ali Khamenei was killed in early strikes, effectively turning the regime into a dynasty. Meanwhile, casualties are rising. Oil has surged past $100 a barrel. And there are growing questions about what Trump actually sees as the end game. Jess, let's start with the leadership change in Tehra, Iran. Installing Mojab Al Khamenei, the son of the former supreme leader, is pretty extraordinary, given that the 1979 revolution was supposed to end dynastic rule. What does his elevation signal for Iran and the war?
- [03:02]
Jessica Tarleth
That we're not getting what we want, even though the administration is out there grading it a 10 out of 15. He was literally the last choice. He wasn't even a choice. Right. He wasn't on the list of people that we killed either in the first set of strikes or then when they met again and we killed another 40 or 45 potential leaders. Donald Trump has acknowledged this, kind of making a joke out of it. But when you have dynastic rule here, and I mean, I guess I should say, like, who cares if the rule from 1979 was that you weren't going to have dynasties? I don't think anyone is playing by the rules in a theocracy like that. But the sun is by all accounts more of a hardliner than the father, which is a little difficult to imagine what that could possibly look like when you think about what's been going on in Iran. So mostly I ingest it as a reflection on how effective this campaign has been by the US And Israel. And it also suggests that it is not going to be easy to get him out. Like, this is no Delsey Rodriguez, where you know everything about her. And there was a lot of reporting over the weekend on how simple the US Thought it was going to be, I don't know why Lindsey Graham allows himself to speak to the press. But he should disappear. He should not. But the fact that he is just saying it out loud, that Donald Trump thought that it would be like Venezuela, when there are so few valid comparisons, that kind of makes your head spin. And there's no bigger embodiment, I think, of that, than the fact that you now have the son of the guy that it was Israel's number one goal to take out in charge.
- [04:51]
Scott Galloway
Yeah. And I've heard he's. He's actually one of the reasons he hardline. He's really angry because he wanted his father to buy him Warner Brothers. Oh, that's good. Little.
- [04:59]
Jessica Tarleth
It is good.
- [05:00]
Scott Galloway
Lil Ron. Light humor in the midst of a war. Let me ask you this. If I'm this kid and I know nothing about him. But I think we have a tendency to think we're smarter than everyone else, and that's just not true. It's generally a safe assumption to think if you've survived that regime in the inner circle, you're probably pretty. Not political and well connected, but you're probably pretty smart. If the people around him are smart, I would argue they'd be saying to him, this is what you do, kid. You give nationalist, angry, belligerent speeches that are defiant to look like a leader. And then you reach out to whatever CIA operative has established some line of communication between us and the US and you say, how the fuck do I end this? You guys want out? I want to look like a hero internally. What do we need to do here? It's not going well for you. It's obviously not going well for us. Isn't this an opportunity for the kid? Just when I kind of game theory it out, the war going on is going to be bad for us. It's going to be worse for him, I think. And something I think is a strategic mistake on our part. We've been bombing their oil fields. The last thing we want is the Balkanization of Iran and a civil war. We just don't.
- [06:16]
Jessica Tarleth
That seems like the only thing that we're willing to say that we're upset that Israel did is bombing the oil fields. Besides that, there's been no criticism. I think that you're right about the long term, that this isn't good for him. But I would imagine if I was a theocratic whippersnapper that was getting my. My first time behind the wheel, and I would see how much the US Is having to defend, like the bombing of that school, which Donald Trump can get out there and. And say all he wants, that it didn't happen the way that we know that it did. But the COVID of the biggest paper in Tehran has the faces of all the children that were massacred in that US Strike. And it was a double tap, right? This wasn't just one hit. And I don't doubt that they were trying to target the base that was nearby. But still, it's totally terrible. Our markets are completely roiled by this. They're now saying oil could get up to 150 to $200 a barrel. The Russians are sitting pretty right. We may rejuvenate the Russian economy. We're having to pressure India now to buy more Russian oil. All our alliances are getting scrambled. The Gulf states are unhappy with us threatening to cancel our contracts. There's a prominent Emirati businessman that I follow on Twitter, who posts a lot about the economic cooperation between us and the Gulf states. And he went after Lindsey Graham, which was totally well deserved, but pointed out that they know that Iran is a threat, but that they don't need us to tell them what to do. They have figured out a way to have a peaceful ish. Coexistence with Iran and that we have unilaterally, or I guess bilaterally with Israel, decided to plunge the entire region into a war on our schedule with no heads up to anyone. So if I'm the new Ayatollah or the interim ayatollah, Is that what we say? I might sit on this for a couple more days, mess with our markets, mess with our morale. We had another service member pass away, so it's up to seven, 18 wounded. I don't know if it looks that bad to them for a short amount of time. I think in long term, definitely, he'll have to get out.
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Scott Galloway
Yeah. My sense is, though, that they're pretty much naked. And that is the misnomer about the kind of the military infrastructure here, is that, well, we've taken out their missiles. You can hide missiles underground in bunkers. My understanding is the number of missiles they're firing per day has depleted by 80, 85%. But what we've destroyed, which is just as important, is the launchers. So they don't have a launch capability. But if we go after the oil infrastructure, he's not going to hold onto power for very long because, again, everything. The pictures of the girls is very, you know, it's very obviously very dramatic and emotional. Americans don't want to be in a forever war. The thing that makes it almost impossible for him to rule or be successful and the reason we probably leave sooner rather than later, this gets worse, is the same thing. And that's affordability. And that is if he doesn't have the money to give, people continue to pay people of which a huge percentage of the IRGC and the elites are essentially on a payroll linked to oil. He's gonna have a difficult time. People are just gonna not be fond of the sun when they stop getting paid. And Americans, if oil, say oil settles at about 100, you know, I think it's trading now at 103 or $105 a barrel. That translates to about a. I don't know, every $2 that goes up translates to about a cent of the gallon. It goes up about 50 to 70 cents per gallon. That translates to, depending on who you listen to, somewhere between an increase, just that of 0.6 to 0.8% increase in inflation. And the difference between 2.5% inflation is victory. The Trump administration could somewhat correctly claim victory, and 3.1%, which is inflation is still a problem. And the thing people don't realize about oil, they think, well, it makes it more expensive at the pump. You don't realize everything you touch, every physical thing goes up in price when oil goes up, because everything gets to you using a transportation infrastructure and a supply chain that uses oil. And to your point, the second order effects here, all of a sudden, Russia is going to have another 40 or 70 billion dollars this year to throw towards the war effort or recruit more, pay more people, pay more families from villages in rural Russia to join the front. So this is. I actually think the price of oil here is almost as important as the fatalities. And I don't want to be, you know, Dr. Death here, but to give a decent sort of proxy for how unpopular this war is, is that what we've lost? What have we lost? Eight service people, Jess.
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Jessica Tarleth
Seven.
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Scott Galloway
Seven. Excuse me. And this is obviously an enormous tragedy for those families. A lot of people feel like those are unnecessary deaths and that the Trump administration is being somewhat reckless with families. The data I have is that more service members this week will have committed suicide. So this isn't exactly. If you're going to have a 2 million person or strong military and have this sort of military adventurism attitude, which I guess a lot of people say that's the reason they were hoping to end it with Trump. And you're going to spend $1.1 trillion on the military. It's like, well, if you voted for this guy or you're comfortable with that kind of military budget, we're not spending that money. And I'm not arguing for it. I'm just saying, citing it a reality. We're not spending that money to defend against Canada. America. I don't call it our weakness. But in Vietnam, we lost 58,000 servicemen. I think 2 or 300,000 wounded really tore at the soul of America. The Viet Cong or the North Vietnamese at that point had lost a million people and they were absolutely willing to
- [12:30]
Jessica Tarleth
keep fighting like the Russians and, and
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Scott Galloway
World War II, I imagine. I wonder what the Russians are saying when Americans are calling for an end of the war because we've lost seven service people.
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Jessica Tarleth
Yeah.
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Scott Galloway
By some estimates, I've heard they're losing one to 3,000 men a day. I mean, a day. So it makes the front page. And maybe this is what makes our nation great is we just have a greater regard for our families. But in many ways, I think this is, to a certain extent, bearing what is. I don't want to call it a weakness, because maybe in some ways it's a strength. But if we're seen as a nation that, quite frankly, just has abso fucking lutely no tolerance for pain, it's not going to help our reputation overseas in terms of a threat of military action. It's like, well, if we can just find a way to kill a dozen of them, they're going to wig out.
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Jessica Tarleth
Don't you think that it's directly correlated to how much we believe in the cause, though?
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Scott Galloway
Fair point. They don't want to lose one life. Yeah.
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Jessica Tarleth
Right. And it's interesting, Caroline Levitt was on with Maria Bartiromo yesterday, and Maria said
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Maria Bartiromo
mothers out there are worried that we're going to have a draft that they're going to see their sons get and daughters get involved in this. What do you want to say about the president's plans for troops on the ground? As we know, it's been largely an air campaign up until now.
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Maria Bartiromo
It has been and it will continue to be. And President Trump wisely does not remove options off of the table. I know a lot of politicians like to do that quickly, but the president, as commander in chief, wants to continue to assess the success of this military operation. It's not part of the current plan right now, but the president, again, wisely keeps his options on the table.
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Jessica Tarleth
She said, you know, as with President Trump, all options are on the table. She has a batshit boss, so she can't rule anything out because he might, you know, wake up next Saturday at Mar a Lago and say, like, actually, a draft seems like a really good idea, even though I dodged, what, four times? But I think that the big problem here is that there has been absolutely no effort to sell this war to the American people.
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Scott Galloway
Agreed.
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Jessica Tarleth
On any level. And, you know, it's not. There are a lot of Russians that are very upset about what Putin has done, but in general, they understand what this is. Right. And there are a lot of people that want to reconstitute the USSR who think that, you know, Zelensky is running some weird. What do they say, like, some Nazi state there or whatever, whatever rumors they have made up about him. So I think that that is a big problem here. And even thinking Back to. Because 911 was my senior year of high school, and there were a lot of mothers that were scared then about a draft Right. Like we're supposed to go off to college and they're thinking like, are you going to war instead of going to Brown? Like, you know, this is something that's on the table for us. And I'm not saying that any of them, and I, I, you know, grew up in a pretty liberal environment. But people understood what the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan were about at the beginning. That's why you got so many people who volunteered for it. They saw 911 and the loss of over 3,000 innocent Americans. They knew what the war on terror meant. And you got people like the Seth Boltons of the world, the Reuben Gallegos of the world, Jason Crowe, who were like, sign me up for this. You don't see that right now. I mean, and it's interesting that even a conversation about a draft is in the ether because the Department of War, as they like to call themselves, has been bragging about smashing all their recruitment goals. So why is this our problem if you have so many people that are desperate to come and fight in your anti woke army? But I, I do think it has to do with what this conflict is versus that we, we wouldn't sacrifice for something that we really believed in or that was going to protect Americans in our way of life.
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Jessica Tarleth
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Jessica Tarleth
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- [19:48]
Scott Galloway
well, Abraham Lincoln said that you can't lose a war with public support and you can't win a war without it. And this is where I think the Trump administration has really screwed up. And most recently, two huge mistakes. One, the dignified transfer showing. I mean, it was not only it not only kind of positioned or cemented the notion that Fox isn't about news, that it's the chief propaganda wing of the Trump administration showing old footage because they realize how ridiculous and disrespectful it was for Trump to be wearing a USA hat. It's like he showed up with his favorite football team's jersey. And two, having Lindsey Graham and Trump talk about now let's do Cuban X. It's like, okay, I'm in Miami. You see this hat?
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Jessica Tarleth
Free Cuba.
- [20:31]
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- [20:32]
Jessica Tarleth
The liberation of Cuba is upon us. It's just a matter of time now.
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Scott Galloway
Just reckless with our our blood and our treasure. Oh, we're just going to have misadventures all over the world based on who we just kind of don't like. I mean, or who Secretary Rubio thinks will make him more popular in Florida. And again, no clear objectives, no rational reason, or haven't been able to really articulate a set of talking points that they stick to. Not briefing Congress, not in any way, it appears, attempting to incorporate our allies in the Middle east or Western European nations. And I actually think that many of them would have offered some sort of support if there had been backchannel diplomacy, which is Latin for threats. The general notion is, okay, 41% support the war. I think it would be closer to half if it was like, okay, I trust these guys somewhat to execute it in a thoughtful, measured way that shows some respect for human life on both sides and that there's some sort of geopolitical doctrine or strategy which no one has been able to articulate other than what he's not doing. And that is Trump would not enter these wars. I mean, remember a bunch of people, if Biden wins, It's World War 3, right? They can't just get out of their way. This is literally the gang that can't shoot straight. And all it's doing probably is emboldening. The most productive thing about this war so far, and I apologize for the word salad, was that it seemed to be creating an informal alliance between the U.S. israel and, and moderate Gulf states. And so it felt like everything was sort of closing in on Iran and these self inflicted wounds only I think create or embolden Gulf states to be a little bit more pro Iran, so to speak. And for the kid, if you will, to take more of a hard line. Your thoughts?
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Jessica Tarleth
Yeah, I think that the status quo was looking pretty good for them up until this point, right? They, everyone was making a ton of money and that's the primary motivation for Abraham Accords part one and part two. It's not like they woke up and said, actually, you know, I like those Jews. They were like, oh, okay, we could make a lot of money, right? If we are in proverbial bed with the Americans and with the Israelis, it's all fine and good. We don't have to agree on everything because the only color we care about is green. And they have gotten a lesson in what it means to be an ally of America in the Trump era. This is something the Europeans have had to learn, right, in support for Ukraine in and I'm not saying they shouldn't be paying their fair share at NATO, but the way that these things are done, right, that I'm going to come out, I'm going to threaten Greenland, that I'm going to stand up there and, you know, scream at you in a public forum about paying your 5% when I easily, I being, if I were President Trump, could have just called you up like a normal person. There's a way to do diplomacy that this man does not understand. And the Gulf states is getting a hard lesson in that. And something that really struck me, and I do not know why it didn't get more publicity. But Anthony Blinken did his first big interview since this war began on the Big Take podcast as a Bloomberg podcast, and he talked about how Israel had tried to pressure Obama to do this same.
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Anthony Blinken
Back during the Obama administration, the Israelis were pushing President Obama to take military action against Iran and were warning that they would do it themselves if he didn't. And he wouldn't, because he thought the better way to get at the nuclear program, which is what we were focused on, was through very muscular diplomacy, backed up by very, very strong sanctions that we rallied the world to put in place. And then we got the Iran nuclear
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Jessica Tarleth
agreement and then went and negotiated the jcpoa, which seemed like a pretty good solution. Was it completely perfect? Did we, in reality have any time anywhere, inspections? No. But in general, they were not enriching, and they certainly, certainly weren't enriching at this rate. And when you look at kind of the combination of what Lindsey Graham is saying about how he flew to Israel multiple times and was coaching Bibi on how to deal with Trump, you listen to Anthony Blinken talking about how this has been a pattern with the Israelis, that this has always been their goal, and they're trying to bring us along for the ride. The administration looks like even bigger fools that they fell for it. And that doesn't, you know, take away from how dangerous Iran is, how many Americans they've killed, how many Israelis they've killed, and that, you know, maybe the world is a safer place without the Ayatollah putting aside whatever his son is going to become. But it increasingly seems like this, it was not only a war of choice, it was a war of another country's choice, at least when it happened. And that is something, I think the American people, when you talk about getting even to that 50, 50 threshold, or God forbid, people be over 50% in support of. With reporting like that, I don't see how they're going to get there.
- [26:00]
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- [26:01]
Scott Galloway
As a species, our superpower is communication, which leads to cooperation. You drop one person in the forest, they get eaten by a bear, they starve within a few days. You drop 12 people in a forest and they become the apex Predator. And this is what the Trump administration one of the many flaws, perhaps the biggest flaws, is the notion that because we are a third of the world's economy, that we can bully the rest of the 70%, including our allies. Whereas our strength since World War II is that after turning Germany and Japan into allies and Western Europe showing loyalty to us, we controlled 60, 70% or there was an informal cooperation and the 40% that wasn't us was willing to be the operating system. And we've essentially had a hegemony since World War II. But obviously when you're seen as someone who's reckless, obviously we do have enemies. If we'd handle this better one, some obvious ones that we're focused on because we're focused on Americans having some sort of reasonable plan for how you extradite Americans or not extradite, liberate them from the Middle East. Right. We didn't have those plans in place. And this is really going to strain our alliances with some of the strongest growing economies in the world, and that is those in Asia. Because while all the headlines today, because we're just such narcissists, In Britain, about 2/3 of the news is international and one third on Britain. And in the US it's exactly flipped. Everyone's saying, oh no, the S and P is down or Pre market off 1.2 or 1.5%. The Cosby, which is the equivalent of the Dow in South Korea, Cosby was down 6.2%. That would be the equivalent of the S and P. The market opened down 3,100 points this morning. And we could have, I would have imagined if we'd just been a little bit smarter and more thoughtful about our alliances and maintaining strong alliances, worked with Canada, who we should have a stronger alliance with, and other oil producing nations to say, all right, Koreans, you know, folks in Japan, we are going to secure at least alternate supply lines of energy for you. Because when the Straits of Hormuz are under attack or that flow of oil is unstable or wobbly, it's the Asian markets that get hit because many of those nations get two thirds of the oil that they consume comes through the Strait of Hormuz. And many of those nations are totally reliant on imported oil, whereas the US Quite frankly, we're energy independent. And that's one of our big strategic advantages militarily, is if you game theory out this digressing into a world war. China goes out of business in six weeks without securing different supply chain, different energy. The US Is fine. The US can go for a long time. But this is yet another example of because we are alienating people and acting like such an asshole and not cooperating and believing that we can control the world with 30% of the GDP. We're, you know, cynically, the term is making friends wherever we go. We are, quote, unquote, making friends wherever we go. And that is when this is over and it will come to an end. Everyone from the Gulf states to South Korea are going to go, you know, we need to diversify away from the rich uncle we thought we could trust, who quite frankly may be rich, but is not as rich as the whole neighborhood and quite frankly is just drunk uncle. Wait, let me get this. Now they're talking about invading Cuba and absolutely to your point. And I'll finish where I started, the worst possible spokesperson right now for the American economy and the Trump administration is Senator Graham. He just comes across as reckless and drunk. They have totally diminished what is supposed to be the most important and somber of decisions. And I go back to William Cohen, who was our defense secretary, so measured, so thoughtful. Everything Hegseth isn't no bravado, no performative masculinity, very analytical, took this very, you know, took obviously any allocation, blood and treasure or putting it in harm's way very seriously. We're in uncharted waters here. And I feel as just we're just pissing off everyone and not preparing for
- [30:31]
Jessica Tarleth
the effects of pissing off everyone. Like, if you understand anything about human behavior, you would know that our Gulf partners are going to think maybe these aren't the best people to tie our economic futures to. And then at the same time that we've quote, unquote, well thought out this war, we don't fill up our strategic reserves, which I love. They're trying to blame Biden for it.
- [30:52]
Scott Galloway
I heard you talking about the Five. You're like, you like strategic reserve, Jess.
- [30:57]
Jessica Tarleth
That's me.
- [30:57]
Scott Galloway
We didn't fill it. Say more about it. What we again, we're not being very strategic about our reserves.
- [31:02]
Jessica Tarleth
Right. We have no plan to get our people out of the region. We haven't filled up are strategic reserves. And every day they seem to submit a new proposal for a varying length of conflict that they need to be funded for. And I mean, I'm sure we'll talk about this more tomorrow, but we're going to have a big funding fight because they're going to come and ask for another $50 billion, which to your point, earlier in the pod, we've already given them 1.1 trillion between the Pentagon budget and the reconciliation bill. It's interesting, I think, that there are more moderate Democrats who can get away with certain votes. Right. Like people were pissed about the Lake and Riley act or voting to stop the shutdown. I think it will be unforgivable to voters if senators, maybe, except John Fetterman, I think he's going to do it. But vote to give another $50 billion to the war effort without a clear plan as to what our goals are and what our exit strategy is and some explanation as to where the 1.1 trillion went. Because that, you know, the first promise that hegsafe made was we're going to do that full audit of the Pentagon never happened. And we have had one of the more expensive years in recent American military history. I like what you said, though, about finding the off ramp. Jim Himes, who we've had on, is so smart. The top Democratic congressman on intel thinks that Trump is going to find some way to tail between his legs. But a great, true social post, like, just find a way out of this and it's going to happen sooner rather than later. And I hope that that is the case.
- [32:44]
Scott Galloway
Yeah, it's so last night, and I'm kind of, I'm a little hurt you didn't bring it up. We did a event in Minneapolis.
- [32:50]
Jessica Tarleth
I'm trying to keep. I wanted to lead with it. I wanted banter back because I watched.
- [32:56]
Scott Galloway
I appreciate that. Anyway, so we did. Kara Swisher and I did a live event in Minneapolis called Resistant Unsubscribe. And my excuse for bringing it up is we did Q and A. And then one of the first questions was, Scott, with respect to resist and unsubscribe, what are your KPIs? And I thought, this kid's a consultant. And I thought, isn't there anyone with a consulting background in the Trump administration that asked someone for KPIs around the war? And if they had just said, to your point, if they'd had the strategic reserves filled for strategic reasons, a couple calls vis a vis our ambassadors to Korea and Japan, just to say, listen, we're willing to unlock a certain percentage of our strategic reserves, working with our great allies, Canada and other oil producers that are net exporters, to ensure that you have uninterrupted supplies of energy, and then they should have leaked that and oil wouldn't have spiked as much. So they just aren't thinking. These guys are thinking one step behind, not two steps ahead, and then wrapping it all in this kind of for lack of A better term, performative masculinity. Right. The biggest, strongest guy at the bar. But he seems willing to start fights all the time. And he, quite frankly drinks. He drinks too much.
- [34:10]
Jessica Tarleth
And they think it's what we find is attractive. Always saying it to me. My colleagues, like, I'm shocked. You are married to a liberal man. They're so unattractive. I'm like, you think that Pete Hegseth is looking that good right now?
- [34:21]
Scott Galloway
I've seen your husband. He's very attractive. Before we go, some big news. In addition to now being five days a week, Raging Moderates is now available on Substack. Subscribers will get ad free episodes, live streams, and a place to engage with Justin, me and other listeners. Find us at ragingmoderates.propgmedia.com Again, we're now available on Substack. Subscribers get ad free episodes, live streams, places to engage with us, live AMAs and guaranteed access to events. We're doing a Raging Moderates tour. By the way, Jess, fastest the Pentages theater has ever sold out. We sold a thousand seats.
- [34:58]
Jessica Tarleth
It was awesome.
- [34:59]
Scott Galloway
Governor Wells is very handsome. He's actually very good looking in person. He's clearly on a GLP1. We talked and I'm like, dude, you look. You're in fighting shape. He's like, oh, I've been running. And I'm like, come on. Come on, dude.
- [35:11]
Jessica Tarleth
He and J.B. pritzker, where they run together.
- [35:13]
Scott Galloway
Yeah. Yeah. All right, that's all for this episode. Thank you for listening.
- [35:17]
Jessica Tarleth
We'll be back tomorrow.
- [35:18]
Scott Galloway
All right, Jess, have a great rest of the day.
- [35:20]
Jessica Tarleth
You too. See you later.
- [35:41]
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