PREVIEW: SPECIAL EDITION - Isaac interviews David French about the volcanic blowback to his James Talarico piece, the war in Iran and more.

Summary

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Tangle Podcast – Special Edition: Isaac Saul Interviews David French

Episode Date: March 15, 2026
Host: Isaac Saul
Guest: David French

Episode Overview

In this special edition, Isaac Saul sits down with New York Times columnist, lawyer, and author David French to unpack several burning issues: the intense backlash to French’s recent James Talarico piece, the ongoing war between the United States and Iran, and the legal, political, and social reverberations of these events. The conversation delves into the constitutional questions around the Iran conflict, the shifting norms of war powers, and the experience of moderates—particularly moderate Christians—within the contemporary Republican Party.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Legal Status of the U.S.-Iran War

(Starting at 02:05)

• Is it a War?
  • Both Isaac and David agree: the conflict with Iran is a war, rejecting ongoing semantic debates.
  • David French [02:37]:
    “It’s a war. I mean, there’s no credible argument it’s not a war. I mean, come on.”
• Who Decides on War?
  • French insists that the current U.S. offensive against Iran fits precisely the scenario the U.S. Constitution envisioned requiring Congressional authorization.
  • He draws clear distinctions between edge cases (short-term, defensive actions) and prolonged campaigns, emphasizing that, “…none of that applies here. This is a direct attack on another nation state, a decapitation strike against its leaders.” (French, 03:56)
• Presidential Precedent
  • French disputes the idea that presidents routinely bypass Congress for significant operations, citing George W. Bush (Iraq, Afghanistan), George H.W. Bush (Gulf War), and even Obama (UN-backed Libya intervention) as examples where Congressional or UN authorization was sought.
  • French [06:48]:
    “…the most recent major operations against nation states had either congressional or UN backing and often both. So [Trump] is really well out of bounds.”

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Public Misconceptions on War Powers

(10:02–12:34)

• Origins of Cynicism
  • Saul observes widespread resignation and cynicism among the public about presidents circumventing Congress.
  • French argues this stems from misunderstanding, particularly around Obama’s use of prior authorizations (AUMF) for Al Qaeda and Iraq. For Obama, “90% plus of his military activity was actually under congressional authorization.” (French, 11:02)
• Edge Cases vs. Full-Scale War
  • French reiterates that short-term or defensive actions (e.g., responding to Houthi missile strikes) don’t always require advance legislative approval—but the current Iran campaign goes far beyond that threshold.

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The Executive’s Justifications for Bypassing Congress

(12:34–16:23)

• Trump Administration’s Defense
  • Saul "steel mans" Trump’s position: There was alleged urgent intelligence sharing with Israel, supposedly leaving no time for Congressional debate because of operational security.
• French’s Response
  • He dismisses that reasoning, noting the build-up was “the least secret thing in the world... happening for weeks.”
  • Notable Quote [13:38]:
    “…there was a big flashing warning already, this giant military buildup. So it was the least secret thing in the world that we had a big military buildup. That was plenty of time for him to go to Congress.”
• Lost Strategic Opportunity
  • French contends that, “had he secured an authorization for the use of military force, he might have had a much stronger hand in the negotiations going forward.” (French, 15:22)

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International Law versus U.S. Constitutional Law

(17:39–22:42)

• International Legitimacy
  • French observes a paradox: under international law (UN Charter/just war doctrine), the U.S. arguably has a better case for war with Iran than under its own Constitution.
  • He outlines the international criteria: right to self-defense, defense of others, and prevention of crimes against humanity.
    • Iran fits some of these, due to attacks on U.S. forces, support for violence in the region, and participation in atrocities.
• Constitutional Requirements Remain
  • However, French circles back to the need for Congressional approval:
    • “…even if you have reason under international law, that doesn’t give us carte blanche under our Constitution.”
      (French, 21:58)
  • The Constitution, he stresses, obligates taking these arguments to Congress for approval, regardless of broader justifications.

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The Role (and Abdication) of Congress

(22:42–23:37)

• Congressional Inaction
  • Saul voices disbelief at Congress’s unwillingness to reclaim its war-making authority, noting the failed War Powers Resolution.
  • French's Analysis: Congressional passivity is “rational from their frame of reference”—implying a complex interplay of political incentives and public expectations.
  • (Elaboration cut off as the preview ends.)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• David French on Precedents [06:48]:
  “Trump’s defenders have sort of…obscured the view of the situation by essentially trying to wrongly insert him into a modern trend that is not nearly as clear cut towards executive authority as they’re saying.”

• David French on Congressional Authorization [07:27]:
  “It’s a war that should have been declared by Congress. He has departed from past practice and it creates massive problems politically, legally, militarily, that he did not do this.”

• David French on Obama-era Authority [11:02]:
  “A lot of people saw the military operations from the Obama administration and…forget 90% plus of his military activity was actually under congressional authorization.”

• David French on Element of Surprise [14:00]:
  “…Iran knew the hammer was about to fall, or at least it had to know that it was very likely that the hammer was about to fall.”

• David French on International vs. Domestic Legality [21:58]:
  “Even if you have reason under international law, that doesn’t give us carte blanche under our Constitution.”

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Timestamps for Major Segments

• [01:33] – Episode introduction, guest welcome
• [02:05] – Is the Iran conflict a war? Legal framing
• [03:56] – The Constitution, Congress, and war powers
• [10:02] – Why do Americans accept presidents bypassing Congress?
• [12:34] – Trump administration’s operational security defense
• [13:38] – Refuting the “no time for Congress” argument
• [17:39] – International law perspective
• [22:42] – Congressional abdication, War Powers Resolution

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Summary & Takeaways

• David French provides a detailed legal and historical case that the current U.S. war in Iran is exactly the kind of conflict meant to require Congressional approval—a precedent Trump is violating.
• While international law may provide multiple justifications for U.S. involvement in Iran, none of that obviates the need for following American constitutional procedures.
• Public misconceptions—especially around previous administrations’ conduct—have created a fatalism, enabling Congress’s ongoing passivity about war powers.
• French warns that bypassing Congress not only violates the Constitution, but also weakens the political resolve and legitimacy needed for sustained conflicts.

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For further discussions, subscribe to the Tangle podcast and newsletter at readtangle.com.

Transcript

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[Isaac Saul]

Coming up, David French joins us to talk about the Iran war, the huge volcanic blowback to his James Talarico piece, some thoughts about what it's like being a moderate Christian in today's Republican Party, and the big stories that he's keeping his eye on going into the future. It's a very good episode. David French, welcome to the Tangle Podcast. Thanks so much for being here.

[David French]

Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.

[Isaac Saul]

So there's a ton going on and I'm super excited for this conversation. I have a million questions for you about some of the James Talarico writing you've been doing recently, your views on the current state of the Republican party and Trump 2.0, what's been happening with this administration. But we're recording this now, Thursday afternoon. Obviously, we are a couple weeks now into war with Iran. I mean, there's been some debate about the language. We've talked about it on the show. I don't know what else to call it, aside from a war.

[David French]

It's a war. I mean, there's no credible argument. It's not a war. I mean, come on.

[Isaac Saul]

Great. We don't have to argue about that.

[David French]

Yeah, we don't have to do that.

[Isaac Saul]

So, you know, there's obviously A lot of threads here. There's, you know, storylines about the Iranian regime and the relationship between the United States and Israel and destabilizing the Middle east and Trump's campaign promises not to start wars. But you're David French, and I have you on the show, which to me is an opening to talk about some of the legal questions around this war. And this is the stuff that I know is really in your lane, in your strike zone. And I think I would maybe start by just asking you something I've been getting asked a ton by my audience, which is how is it okay for Donald Trump to do this? A lot of people seem to be under the impression that to have an extended operation like this where we are deploying US Troops, where we're deploying tons of money and resources to the region, he should be having to go to Congress. Obviously, we've seen presidents not do that in the past. We had this War Powers Resolution, which I'm not really. I don't totally understand how much it would have changed if it actually passed the House or the Senate. Can you just give us the lay of the land about the legal questions on something like this and where we are really as a country?

[David French]

Yeah. So a couple of things. First, this should not be happening. I mean, I don't think there's really much of a credible argument that I've heard that this is not a war, that this is not exactly the kind of situation that the founders and the framers of the Constitution were thinking of when they were thinking of putting the declare war power in the hands of Congress. There are edge cases, such as very short operations, immediate defensive operations. Obviously, if we're attacked, we don't have to wait for act of Congress to respond to an attack. For example, there are very short term deployments that in scope and duration you might not call a war. But none of that applies here. None of that applies here. So this is a direct attack on another nation state, a decapitation strike against its leaders. You've sunk most of their navy, They've sunk more of the Iranian navy than the Japanese sunk of the US Navy on Pearl Harbor. And nobody would say that wasn't a war. And so when you look at it from any objective measure, this is absolutely a war, absolutely what Congress was supposed to declare. And then so that's number one to me, that's very clear. Here's number two. That should be more clear in the public. But it is not. And that is, it is not actually the case. It is not the case that modern Presidents disregard Congress. If you go back and you look at Operation Iraqi Freedom, Bush had a legal opinion from the Office of Legal Counsel and the DOJ saying he didn't have to go to Congress, but he knew what the constitutional structure was. And he also knew you can't rally the people to support potentially a long war without rallying the people, without taking the case to the people. So he not only got a congressional authorization for Iraq, he also got a UN resolution, he got congressional authorization for Afghanistan, even though we'd just been attacked. He went to Congress. His dad, George H.W. bush, he went to Congress for Operation Desert Storm. He went to the UN for Security Council resolutions authorizing Operation Desert Storm. I had objection to Obama not going to Congress before the Libyan operation, but he had a UN Security Council resolution and a UN and by the way, we have treaty ratified. Our relationship with the UN we had by 89 to 2. This was an overwhelming democratic process that put us in the UN structure. So you go back again and again and again and you can look at congressional authorizations and or UN resolutions authorizing US military action. And so I feel like Trump's defenders have sort of, sort of, they've obscured the view of the situation by essentially trying to wrongly insert him into a modern trend that is not nearly, not nearly as clear cut towards executive authority as they're saying. And in fact, the most recent major operations against nation states had either congressional or UN backing and often both. So he is really well out of bounds. He has departed in a substantial way from the very recent past practice. So it's a war that should have been declared by Congress. He has departed from past practice and it creates massive problems politically, legally, militarily, that he did not do this. This is something that is setting increases the chance of military failure, ironically enough, by doing this all on his own.

[Isaac Saul]

We'll be right back after this quick break.

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[David French]

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[David French]

Steven here has not read Mistborn before.

[Isaac Saul]

That's right.

[David French]

Hey. Hey. So each week you'll get my unfiltered raw reactions to every single chapter. Along the way, we'll do character deep dives, magic explainers, and Steven will even try to guess what's next. Spoiler alert. He'll be wrong. News flash, I'm never wrong. Episodes come out every Wednesday and you can find Fantasy Fan fellows wherever you get your podcasts.

[Isaac Saul]

Where does that misconception come from? Because I, I have to concede I'm pretty cynical. I mean, I've said this in my writing as the rumors about the Iran attacks were coming, that I just didn't expect Trump to go to Congress. Not just because it was Trump, but because I'd seen Obama and I'd seen even Biden in some instances do these admittedly more narrow operations, but without congressional approval. I'm wondering why the public has become so cynical about this or why we're just ignoring it. Cuz I don't see any real debate at this point. It's like everybody's just kind of throwing their hands up like we expect this now.

[David French]

Well, and a part of it is that a lot of folks didn't actually understand the Obama military operations. So they conflate Libya, which is a discrete operation that was un authorized, with all of the drone warfare, and they think of the, and I encounter so many people like this, they think of the Obama drone campaign as not congressionally authorized when it absolutely was. He was inheriting the Bush authorization for use of military force against Al Qaeda. He inherited the Bush authorization for military force against Iraq. And so that gave him a lot of flexibility to deal with Al Qaeda and to deal with Iraq. All of those legal authorities were already there. And so I think a lot of people saw the military operations from the Obama administration and because they don't remember specific congressional moves during the Obama administration, they forget 90% plus of his military activity was actually under congressional authorization. And so I do, I do know that there's, there have been a lot of shorter term, smaller operations that seem to be just on the President's prerogative. But this is not that. This is not an edge case. This is not a case like the Houthis are firing missiles at allied shipping. We have to respond right away. That's a situation where you don't have to go to Congress right away, but if you are going to engage in a sustained campaign, you should. But this is very different from that. This is not an immediate self defense situation. This is a deliberate planned attack on another nation. It's war by every measure. He should have gone to Congress. The fact that he didn't means the American people aren't prepared for this. The American people aren't prepared for this. They have a lot less staying power in a conflict.

[Isaac Saul]

I will concede that the Trump administration's explanation for what led up to this war has not been entirely consistent. And I have a hard time sometimes parsing exactly how they're framing their defense. But I think if I could steel man their position and the conglomeration of their position as best I could, it's that they believed an ally in the Middle East, Israel, was going to conduct these strikes. They had some sort of shared intelligence being passed back and forth that they knew the Iranian regime and Khamenei and all these leaders were going to be in the same place at the same time. And they felt like they had this really small window of opportunity to go in and do this. And from an operational security perspective, which is something I've heard them and their defenders throw out a lot of, they didn't have time to go to Congress. They had to do it. They had to be discreet about it. They couldn't send a big flashing warning across the Atlantic that this was coming. What do you make of that defense? Does that move you at all? How do you think about that garbage?

[David French]

I mean, look, the reality is there was a big flashing warning already, this giant military buildup. So it was the least secret thing in the world that we had a big military buildup, and this buildup was happening for weeks. Weeks. For weeks. That was plenty of time for him to go to Congress. That was plenty of time for him to make that case to the American people. Absolutely. And then once you get the authorization, once you have that secured, then the timing of when you strike, or if you strike, is up to you. You've got all of the authorization that you need. So think about again, let's go back to George W. Bush in 2003. He spent a year, almost a full year, making the case to the American people, making the case to the U.N. we had hearings, we had U.N. security Council presentation. We had it all. And then he secured the authorization for the use of force. And people, you know, younger listeners might not remember that. Then there was an immediate attempt at a decapitation strike. We had received intelligence that regime elements were in a particular location in Baghdad. And we tried. We tried in the opening hours for the exact kind of decapitation strike that we had at the opening hours of the Iran war. But our intelligence was not good. It was. It missed. Saddam was not harmed in that strike. But the fact that you secure an authorization for the use of force does not mean that you then lose for forever any tactical element of surprise, because this buildup was all over everywhere. Iran knew the hammer was about to fall, or at least it had to know that it was very likely that the hammer was about to fall. Now, the timing of it, the direct timing of that first strike, yeah, that's a classic sort of target of opportunity. But Trump should have gone to Congress weeks before that, weeks before that, and then, by the way, had he secured an authorization for the use of military force, he might have had a much stronger hand in the negotiations going forward. Perhaps with that kind of authorization in his back pocket, he could have ex. You know, he could have forced more concessions out of the Iranian regime. And so it's quite possible that the lack of an authorization actually created to the existence of this conflict, perversely enough. And so this idea that they had to do it at that moment with no congressional authorization because of the element of surprise just holds no water at all.

[Isaac Saul]

We'll be right back after this quick break.

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[David French]

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[Isaac Saul]

Well, many thanks, good sir.

[David French]

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[Isaac Saul]

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[David French]

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[Isaac Saul]

Yeah.

[David French]

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[Isaac Saul]

You know, we've been talking a little bit so far, focusing mostly on the domestic legal questions here. And you've referenced a few times, you know, past United nations charters agreements. I'm interested in the international law question question here, too. I think another thing I'm becoming increasingly cynical about is it feels like emotionally, it feels like globally, the international order is breaking down a bit and there is just kind of this might makes right posture that the great world powers are taking. It seems pretty obvious to me that if China were to assassinate leaders in the United States, we would not take particularly kindly to that and everybody would condemn it as being extremely out of the question in terms of a violation of international order and international law. Can you talk to me a little bit about how this particular strike and this war fits into international law, what's supposed to happen and what's actually happening and maybe the space between them and the implications for it? I mean, it does seem like it's opening up a door that I'm not sure we necessarily want to open.

[David French]

Well, here's, here's. This is going to be a little bit counterintuitive for you. There is a greater basis for this war under the, under international law than there is under American constitutional law. So under international law, you have a right to respond. So the UN Charter. Let's back up a bit and give a little bit of history here. So after World War I, there was a desire for World War I to be the war that ends all wars, that we can never do this again. And so the United States at that point, under Woodrow Wilson, who was one of our worst presidents, but had some good ideas, but genuinely just a terrible human being. But after World War I, which is a very controversial war for Americans, this was not like World War II. World War I was one that America was very deeply divided. And after World War I, a lot of Americans just wanted to come back and sort of retreat back to the borders of our nation. And so we did not join the League of Nations. We did not join these international organizations that were trying to prevent another world war. So the most powerful economy in the World One of the most powerful militaries in the world just steps back. So after World War II happens and we have 60 million by many estimates who are, who are killed around the world, we give it another go and we say we are going to try to reimagine the world. And so essentially what happened is that with the UN Charter, the world codified just war doctrine, which is one way to think about it. So if you think about sort of what is just war doctrine? Well, just war is a war undertaken by a nation state for a just reason, for a just purpose. And what is a just reason to go to war? Well, it's really very narrow. It is defense of yourself, defense of others, or for example, prevention of crimes against humanity like genocide. And so that is the structure of the UN Charter. You have defensive self defense of allies and then with UN Security Council permission, you can try to prevent crimes against humanity, defense of, you know, innocent civilians. So let's think about Iran. Iran has attacked us relentlessly, constantly, for decades. In the last year they've attacked us. Their Iranian backed militias have attacked us in Iraq. We've been attacked again and again. They've attacked our ally Israel. So you have defensive self, you have defense of others. Iran has executed by or slaughtered by some estimates up to 30,000 civilians in just a few days span. So you have some justifications if you took this to the UN Security Council to try to prevent crimes against humanity. But, so all of those things. I can make a case, I could make a case right now for Congress to approve certain kinds of strikes. Now I would not approve of a aerial regime change operation, but an operation designed to destroy the nuclear program, limit Iran's capacity to harm its neighbor with ballistic missiles. Take the case to us, you've got a pretty good case. You've got the case to make. Make it. And they just didn't do it. So it's one of these really weird situations, Isaac, where you've got, I think in my view, under international law you've got reasons to go to war. But under American law that's not supposed to happen. Even if you have reason under international law, that doesn't give us carte blanche under our Constitution. The Constitution says in essence, take those reasons for war to Congress and if Congress believes that it's international interest to pursue war, that we have a reason to pursue it, will vote for it.

[Isaac Saul]

I'm curious, just quickly, last thing on this I guess is just your reflection on how Congress has actually handled this moment because for me, I am astounded. I mean the War Powers Resolution that failed in both the House and the Senate was sort of framed in the press, I think, wrongly, as there was this opportunity for them to stop Trump, which it wasn't even that. It was that they could have taken the power back to have the possibility to stop Trump if they wanted to in the future. But they even refused to do that, which is just. It's kind of astounding to me. And I don't know, I'm just interested in how you're thinking about that and why it seems the Senate. It's like the only scenario I can think of where politicians are intentionally abdicating power that they could have. I just don't understand it at all.

[David French]

Well, they are rational from their frame of reference, and this is what I mean.

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[David French]

All. Peace.

[Isaac Saul]

Our Executive Editor and founder is me, Isaac Saul, and our Executive Producer is John Lowell. Today's episode was edited and engineered by Dewey Thomas. Our editorial staff is led by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman, with Senior Editor Will K. Back and Associate Editors Audrey Moorhead, Lindsey Knuth and Bailey Saul. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet75. To learn more about Tangle and to sign up for a membership, please visit. Visit our [e-mail].

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