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Isaac Saul (2:11)

From executive producer Isaac Saul.

Darina (2:14)

This is Tangle.

Isaac Saul (2:25)

Good morning, good afternoon and good evening and welcome to the Tangle Podcast, a place we get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, and a little bit of my take. I'm your host, Isaac Saul and this is a special Friday edition. Today I'm going to be talking about five things I got wrong about Donald Trump so far this term. So let me set the table this way. My favorite journalists, my favorite writers, my favorite thinkers, they all have a few key qualities they admit when they're wrong. They are open to having their minds changed, and they learn from mistakes. I also try to embody these qualities, and one way to maintain that kind of mental flexibility is to analyze my past writing ideas or predictions and then reflect on how accurate they actually were. Well, that exercise by itself has inherent value. If I don't actually own and explain some of the things I got wrong, then it has no value for you, the listener. To that end, I've made a habit of periodically looking back at my writing and owning up to the things that I've got wrong. I do this in yearly roundups, I do it in occasional Friday editions. And in today's world, where media trust is at an all time low, polarization is high, and no one seems willing to change their minds, this exercise is all the more valuable. So today I'd like to tackle five things I think I've gotten wrong about President Donald Trump's administration through the first six months of his second term. Of course, the book isn't closed on all these stories, and I remain open to having my mind changed again in the future. All right, number one, I thought the repercussions of the Iran strikes would be a lot worse. When I saw the news that the US had struck Iran's nuclear facilities, my alarm bells went off. In my take on the strikes, I laid out the possible ways that the attacks could go well, but my instinct was that the decision was incredibly risky, potentially disastrous, and would create a fresh Middle east engagement for the United States. I did not reach Tucker Carlson levels of hysteria, but I saw a near future where oil supply was disrupted, proxies across the Middle east were killing US soldiers, Iran carried out crippling cyber attacks on US infrastructure, and retaliation from Iran and Israel led to a never ending cycle of violence. I worried aloud about whether Trump could exercise restraint if or when Iran retaliated. I surmised that the nuclear negotiations with Iran were officially dead, and I thought we were entering a new protracted war in the Middle East. And perhaps most to the point, I was very skeptical the strikes would do lasting damage to Iran's nuclear facilities, and I wondered how Israel or the US could achieve its goals without a ground invasion. Pretty much all of that was totally wrong. Instead, the strikes devastated Iran's nuclear facilities. While CNN published a report calling into question the severity of that damage. An authoritative International Atomic Energy Agency report indicated that the mission crippled Iran's nuclear program and that its facilities would need months to become operational again, while the Pentagon assessed it would take years. Basically, the US succeeded in setting back Iran's nuclear program, which one could even say they destroyed it, even if Iran could one day rebuild it. Iran did respond, but meekly, with a warning that inflicted very little structural damage and did not harm a single American soldier. Once those strikes were complete, Trump not only exercised restraint, he embraced peace. He immediately negotiated a ceasefire between Iran and Israel, then became incensed when the terms of that ceasefire were violated, drawing both nations to heel and creating a relative calm that has continued since. Oil experts from Gulf states have not been choked off. There were no devastating cyber attacks. No U.S. soldiers died. There was no major escalation of any kind. None of Iran's friends joined the fray. Even Hezbollah sat things out. Iran may even come back to the nuclear negotiating table, a sign it recognizes the weakness of the position it is in. In sum, Trump appears to have crushed Iran's capacity to pursue a nuclear weapon without sparking a war, dragging any US Soldiers in or suffering any real conseque of any kind. It is actually a version of the best case scenario I floated. The only thing missing is some kind of peaceful end to the current regime in Iran, which was always a bit fanciful. Number two, I thought the deportation effort would be smaller and honestly, less horrific. Throughout Trump's campaign and early presidency, I warn that his mass deportation effort was set to become one of the most destabilizing parts of his presidency. My theory was simple. If ICE agents start snatching up random immigrants in the country illegally, citizens who object to Trump's immigration policies will start to fight back and violence will break out regularly. That has happened intermittently and seems to be getting worse. However, I also suspect that a lot of Trump's mass deportation effort would amount to a lot of hot air. I expected, as in his first term, he'd close down the border while making a big fuss about arresting gang members or a few violent criminals, and then tout the success of his administration's deposits deportation program, I thought, at least up to this point, he would be focusing primarily on people with criminal records. Trump did briefly offer exceptions for farm workers in certain service industries, but apart from that, I couldn't have been more wrong. Trump's deportation effort has been far more authoritarian than I expected. He's been deporting people, even those without criminal records, to random countries or directly into foreign prisons where some could spend the rest of their lives. Masked federal agents are harassing citizens and noncitizens alike from Boston to Los Angeles, raiding workplaces, devastating communities, and tearing families apart, all behind a cloak of impunity. And while Protesters have expressed outrage, most visibly in Los Angeles. The response has been much less confrontational than I thought it would. Indeed, a majority of Americans support deporting all immigrants here illegally, which seems to be informing a generally blase attitude about what is acceptable from federal immigration agents. Immigration policy aside, I find all of this terrifying. As a society, we should never accept heavily armed law enforcement agents disguising themselves in masks and unmarked cars with the legal authority to arrest, detain and deport people while the government refuses to publicly charge its detainees. Watching federal officers in military fatigues and masks regularly arrest the wrong people, traipse through public parks and tanks, disappear U.S. citizens into federal court system, raid Home Depot parking lots with automatic weapons, detain elected officials officials deport Afghan military translators, trespass at public schools, and demand the public completely acquiesce to all of their demands is not just scary, it's shocking. Just imagine for a moment that you saw a group of plainclothes officers wearing masks grabbing one of your neighbors and throwing them into the back of a van with tinted windows. What would you do? Supporters of Trump's immigration policies have largely waved away concerns about these tactics, lacking the ability to imagine a future when law enforcement turns on them or their communities. Or alternatively, they've justified allowing masked agents to conduct these arrests and raids because of threats to ICE agents or doxxing. I find this position wholly unconvincing. Federal law enforcement agents are public servants, and identifying them publicly, even when they are trying to conceal their identity, is not what I would qualify as doxxing, a practice usually reserved for exposing details about someone who can reasonably expect privacy. Further, the threat to ICE agents is vastly overstated. Until this week, I could find a grand total of zero cases where an off duty ICE agent had been targeted with violence. Examples were solely reserved for instances where an ICE agent was confronted while on duty, often in scenarios where they were instigating the violence themselves or conducting crowd control. Unfortunately, the hardliners in the Trump administration are winning the day, and there's good reason to believe this is all going to get worse. The big beautiful bill just approved an astounding $170 billion in federal funding, making ICE the largest single federal law enforcement agency ever. Bigger than many countries entire militaries. At a time when illegal immigration is at an all time low and spending and debt are astronomical. It's all pretty ludicrous and worse than I thought.