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Hello, and welcome back to the David Frum Show. In an America that suddenly finds itself at war in the Middle east under the leadership of President Trump. My guest today is Tina Brown, the former editor of Tatler, Vanity Fair, and the New Yorker, author of the Fresh Hell Substack. I recorded this dialogue with Tina Brown before the outbreak of hostilities. We're going to continue with it because I think it says a lot of important things by Tina about the political culture of the United States today. But I am recording on the Monday morning after the strikes. I'm in a different location, obviously, as you will see from the location I was in when I recorded the dialogue with Tina. And of course, we're in a different world, a world in which the United States has struck Iran with air power. And that calls for some new thinking and some new approaches. For many Americans, nothing much has changed politically. They oppose Donald Trump before the war, and they oppose Donald Trump now that he's led the country into a war. For those of us on the center right, on the Never Trump side, things are a little bit more complicated. Among the reasons that me and people like me oppose Donald Trump was not just, along with our many, many coalition partners, spreading across the American spectrum, his disdain for democracy, his attempt to overthrow the 2020 election, his authoritarianism, his corruption. We also had very particular political concerns. The thing that led me and people like me to the political right in the first place was our belief in American global leadership. Leadership of willing partners and allies, leadership based on respect, leadership based on mutual benefit, leadership based on commerce and trade. Donald Trump rejected all of those ideas. His vision is one of an America, isolated and alone, an America that dominates, an America that may be feared but is not respected and certainly is not liked or trusted, because he's not liked or trusted. And through his first term and the opening months of the second, that logic prevailed. But by striking the Iranian nuclear program in support of Israel at war, in defense of itself, Donald Trump did something that is more or less in line with what a President McCain might have done or a President Romney might have done. The kind of action that, had it been done by President McCain or a President Romney, me and people like me would have supported. And so we are in a kind of quandary today. A president whom we fear and reject and whom we see as a threat to American democracy has this one time done something in line with. With established Republican values, established conservative principles, established principles of American leadership, rather than in defiance and rejection of them. So what do we do and how do we think about that do we forget that this president is unworthy and untrustworthy, or do we discard our past principles about what America's role in the world should be and object to this latest act, which we would have supported had it been done by another president? Reject it because it was done by a president we reject. So this is the dilemma. So let me just tell you not to give advice to anybody, but how I think about this. I've written a little bit about this for the Atlantic, but I'm going to talk more about it today. Donald Trump remains a dangerous and unacceptable leader of the United States, an enemy of democracy, an enemy of America's role in the world. And he's now leading the country into war. Now, we hope that this war will be brief and decisive. We hope that the strike on the Iranian facilities will be one and done. The facilities will be destroyed, the nuclear program will be terminated, as every president since Bill Clinton has wanted to terminate the Iranian nuclear program. It will be done in a decisive and relatively cost free way, and that things will now return to the usual programming. But we have to be ready for the possibility that these hopes do not come to pass. That in fact Donald Trump has opened his way into a new chapter in American history. That the Iranians will retaliate. That the situation will become more and more unsettled. That the Iranians will retaliate not only with conventional military means, or not only with missiles and barrages, but also by a campaign of global terrorism against American interests and other interests in the United States and around the world. And that we are at the beginning of something, not the end of something. I don't predict that, but the mind has to be prepared for it. That is a real possibility. Donald Trump may have converted himself into a wartime president for a long time to come. And if the powers that Donald Trump has asserted in peacetime were unprecedented and large, think of what he will do during war. In peacetime, he said that people illegally present in the United States or those who looked like they might be illegally present, they had no due process rights. But people around him have been itching to say that American citizens and American permanent residents don't have due process rights either. And in wartime, they can maybe make that stick. They have attempted to suppress the free speech rights of people they don't like and of institutions they don't like and of universities they don't like. Well, in wartime, they may have more ambition against the free speech rights of people they don't like. We've seen Donald Trump use bits and pieces of past presidential emergency powers to create a whole tariff system that raises billions of dollars of revenue without Congress, as not an emergency measure, but as a permanent measure of presidential one man revenue without reference to Congress. And in wartime, those powers get bigger still. And again, he'll have larger powers to raise revenue without Congress. So a presidency that was dangerous before becomes more dangerous still. But the war that he's begun was necessary. And the things he did were the things that a normal president would have done. So we have to find ways to keep true to both our principles about American leadership. And when I say we, I mean people who think like me and me. And this is advice also to myself, without abating one bit, our wariness of what the kind of President Donald Trump is. Donald Trump always wants personal thanks. He's always demanding that people say thank you to him. And for those of us who support the action against the Iranian nuclear facilities, he wants thanks from us. Thank you, President Trump. So I'll give him. Let me just give him what he wants for a second. Thank you, President Trump. For once in your misbegotten presidency, doing a right thing, even if you did it in a high handed and irresponsible way, I mean, the idea that you would brief the Republican leaders of House and Senate and not the Democratic leaders of House and Senate, as any president before you would have done, that's just oafish and churlish and rude and insulting and gratuitous. Because the suggestion here is we can't trust Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer to keep a secret that we trust Mike Johnson and John Thune to keep. Really? Really? That's what you want to say as you lead a united country into a conflict where you're going to be coming back, maybe for supplemental appropriations, and where the work is done by Americans of all points of view, all races, all backgrounds. Kind of a small point. But the fact that Secretary of Defense couldn't remember that there was a woman who was piloting one of the B2s and referred only to our boys, like, what's the need for that kind of gratuitous insult? But we don't want to lose sight of either of the truths that it is necessary to shut down the Iranian nuclear program and that American leadership is welcome, and the truth that the president exercising this leadership is a dangerous figure. You have to be able to be able to keep track of both. And that's complicated, but politics is sometimes complicated. And that's going to be a challenge for me because like all of us. I get into the flow of discussion. I can get heated. I can overstate things. I can say things one way too much or one way too little. The other way. We are in a situation of conflict. The conflict was necessary. The leadership is unreliable, untrustworthy and dangerous. And there is now an ever present and probably growing danger that the leadership of the United States will use this conflict to expand their powers to do illegitimate things and ill. Illegitimate ways. And as much as we mistrusted them before, we must mistrust them even more now. How do you support all of this out? I often cite a parable, a fairy story that was written by the American writer James Thurber. And because I don't want to trust my memory as to how exactly James Thurber said it, I printed it out this morning. It's quite short, so I'm going to read it. And I think it's a lesson that applies to a lot of us in our politics. It's the story of. Of a bear who could take it or leave it alone. And here's how it goes. It's just a couple of paragraphs. In the woods of the far west, there once lived a brown bear who could take it or leave it alone. He would go into a bar where they sold mead, a fermented drink made of honey. And he would have just two drinks. Then he would put some money on the bar and say, see what the bears in the back room will have. And he would go home. But finally he took to drinking by himself most of the day. He would reel home at night, kick over the umbrella stand, knock down the bridge lamps and ram his elbows through the windows. Then he would collapse on the floor and lie there until he went to sleep. His wife was greatly distressed, and his children were very frightened. At length the bear saw the error of his ways and began to reform. In the end, he became a famous teetotaler and a persistent temperance lecturer. He would tell everybody that came to his house about the awful effect of drink. And he would boast about how strong and well he had become since he gave up touching the stuff. To demonstrate this, he would stand on his head and on his hands and he would turn cartwheels in the house, kicking over the umbrella stand, knocking down the bridge lamps and ramming his elbows through the window. Then he would lie down on the floor, tired by his healthful exercise, and go to sleep. His wife was greatly distressed, and his children were very frightened. You might as well fall flat on your face as lean over too far backwards so that's the moral we all face. We don't want to fall flat on our face and we don't want to lean over too far backwards. We don't want to let our mistrust of Trump. If those of you who are on the never Trump and Conserv side, on the American leadership side, on the belief in free trade and American military power and the leadership of global alliances, you don't let your mistrust of Donald Trump lead you to reject this very necessary shutdown of the Iranian nuclear program, a program that was aimed at extinguishing the state of Israel and committing Act 2 of the attempted genocide of the Jews that Hitler tried in the 1940s. You don't want to be led there, but neither do you want to be led by your thank you, President Trump attitude to overlooking how dangerous the situation now is. The that how he will abuse wartime powers in a way that will amplify and extend the abuse of the powers that he's been doing and that he will try to create an atmosphere in this country of hostility to rights and due process and free speech even worse than that which has prevailed in the first half of this year at the beginning of his presidency. We face two dangers and we have to confront both. It's not going to be easy, but I'm now going to forget I don't want to jumble this quote, but as somebody wise once said, it's not an easy duty. Being an American just got a little bit harder after Donald Trump's actions in Iran. So I will now open our dialogue with Tina. I want to make I have two other bits of housekeeping to take up. As I said, I'm recording in the conference room of the Royal Hotel in Picton, Ontario. Thank you to the Royal Hotel for their hospitality. The interview was conducted in my usual recording studio at home in Washington, D.C. i also want to mention two things left over from last week's podcast with Karim Sajapur. When we talked about Iran and Iran's culture, I referenced Karim's book, but I gracelessly omitted to mention its title. For those of you who'd like to understand better what is going on inside Iran, Karim's book is Reading Comedy, named for the Supreme Leader of Iran, and it is the most insightful thing I've ever read about the political ideology, the religious beliefs of the Supreme Leader of Iran. And that may be a useful thing to take a look at. Now reading Comedy by Karim Sajapur. I also want to correct a mistake I made in last week's podcast where I referenced chess as a Persian invention. So I am corrected by those who know this history better than I do that chess originated in India and then spread westward via Persia to the Arab world and from there on onto Europe, all in the Middle Ages. So it's an Indian invention spread by the Persians, not a Persian invention. And I thank those who corrected me on that. We are in for some difficult times. I'm hoping you'll find this conversation with Tina Brown a kind of diversion and tonic in these difficult times. There will be more difficult things to talk about on future episodes of the David Frum Show. But now my dialogue with Tina Brown, recorded before the strikes on Iran by President Trump. But first, a quick break. An official message from Medicare. I'm saving money on my Medicare prescriptions. Maybe you can save too with Medicare's extra help program. My premium is 0 and my out of pocket costs are low. Who should apply? Single people making less than $24,000 a year or married couples who make less than $32,000. Even if you don't think you qualify, it pays to find out out, go to ssa.gov extra help paid for by the US Department of Health and Human Services.