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- [00:00]
A
Foreign.
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B
Welcome to the Borg Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. It is Monday, so of course we are here with editor at large Bill Kristol. There's so much news to talk about. We're going to try to carve out some time for the NBA at the end, since Donald Trump is sullying the beauty of the NBA Finals. But, Bill, how you doing? Good weekend for you.
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A
Yeah, good, good. The Knicks maybe not aware of that. The Knicks. Knicks look strong, right? Yeah. We'll get to that at the end, though. Race through all the other topics to get to the Knicks.
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B
You're looking nice in that green polo. That's a good color for you. All right, let's talk about what's happening in Iran. I'm just going to run through the last 24 hours. We're very much deep into the Groundhog Day portion of the Iran war, but here we go. Yesterday, Israel is carrying out strikes against Hezbollah forces in Beirut. This prompted Iran to fire missiles at Israel. 20. Trump then urged Israel not to return fire and for both sides to shot. Stop shooting. Really strong. That's a strong man right there. Say after you've been bombed, do nothing. Israel nevertheless responded. They were not moved by Donald Trump's pleas. They launched airstrikes against Iran early Monday morning. Early this morning following that, Iran announced that they're halting military action in Israel. Israel continues to strike Lebanon. Axios's Barack Ravid post another siren alarm tweet about how Trump says, we are in a ceasefire and a deal is coming soon and the stock market is up. So I don't know what you make of all that. In some senses, a increase in hostilities in another way, it's just kind of a different version of the same story that we've seen for the last hundred days or so.
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A
Yeah, I do think it's Groundhog Day pretty much. I mean, a couple of little tidbits that are amusing. Not amusing, but depressing about our commander in chief. He seems to have called your friend Barack Ravid at Axios before calling Bibi to directly tell him not to retaliate. He was like, I didn't. I mean, isn't that right?
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B
I mean, talk to several reporters. There's a New York Post reporter he also spoke to. There's a third one I'm forgetting. Yeah, it's unusual management of the war, certainly, to have the ally that you're in war with, for better or worse, get attacked and then for you to immediately start telling media outlets that you want them not to retaliate.
- [02:33]
A
And that you're about to call their prime minister to tell them not to retaliate. I think what's, I think it might show, I think the gulf between Trump and Netanyahu and really between the US And Israel is probably greater than then they're letting on. And then we might think, given history and given both real history over decades, but also history of Trump and Bibi, which has been a lot of close coordination, obviously. And let's not forget that we got into this war. Bibi's urging, he's allowed to urge the US to do it. I don't think it proves anything inappropriate, but he urged the US to do it at this moment of opportunity to bump off the top leadership, and we took it. So I wonder really where, once this ends, and I kind of still think it will, this Trump really, really want it to continue, as we've seen, it will end, of course, with Iran having some ability to just shut the straight again. I mean, it's not going to be true. Free passage, God knows, the nuclear program, they can kick that down the road. I suppose they'll arrange to get some money to Iran through the Gulf states. All of our allies will have lost total faith in us. But I think one thing that will happen over the next several months, I wouldn't be surprised to see the administration turn against Israel. And then you really have an interesting moment. Right. For MAGA and for the Republican Party,
- [03:43]
B
I think I definitely agree that's possible. A couple of other ways to look at this. I don't think this is happening right now, but I think it bears mentioning that Trump and Bibi have done the good cop, bad cop thing in the past. It doesn't appear that that's what's happening now. You know, where Trump kind of pretended like he wanted peace and to give cover for Bibi to continue to prosecute wars. We saw this in Gaza and other places, so it's possible. I don't think that's what's happening now, but it's bears mentioning the other. I think the one element of what happened yesterday that makes it slightly different from what we've seen for the past three months is if there are continued hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah and Israel and Iran, and if Trump can't contain that or can't credibly say that he wants to contain that in a negotiation, I do think that further complicates, you know, his ideal to get a final deal. I mean, Iran's, it's, it's hard to even say what, what each side's terms are to end the war because, because the ball is moving on both sides a lot. You can't really trust anything coming out of, you know, either party. But if you take, you know, Iran's stated metrics for ending the war, you know, one of them is tell Israel to stop attacking Lebanon. Like that's what they keep, you know, when you look at the, you know, they want, they want reparations for the finances lost. You know, they want, you know, some element of control over the straight of Hormuz and they want Israel to stop attacking Lebanon. And if Trump can't promise that as part of the deal, then that complicates the deal somewhat. And I do think that that's kind of the one development from yesterday that's newish and relevant and it highlights the
- [05:33]
A
fact that Iran has made this demand and it's been treated seriously as a demand. So that Trump is in fact telling Bibi, hey, lay off on Hezbollah too much because it's going to screw up the, the deal with Iran. But that's really amazing when you think about it. All of Israeli strategy for the last several years has been, and it's been quite successful, incidentally, in totally degrading Hezbollah and limiting that threat. Obviously post October 7th, that was belated and not letting Iraq, well, and then attacking Iran for other reasons. One of the reasons being to weaken Iran's hold on its proxies. And that's been the. And then they seem to be doing a pretty good job of that until this war. I mean, one of the 19 different bad effects of this war is that it's restored Iran's ability to have to claim control and probably to exercise some control over its proxies and make an attack on Hezbollah, an attack on Iran that was never Iran's incidentally positioned or policy in the past. They might talk to good game, but they never actually got into fights because Israel went into Lebanon or anything like that. I mean, they might do a little terrorism on the side, but the actual launching of missiles against Israel. So it's pretty. Yeah, it's just, I mean, the number of the amount of damage, the extent of the damage Trump has done to US credibility, US Foreign policy, all of our allies interests, it's a pretty astonishing achievement for one stupid war.
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B
I guess the last thing I've said this several times, but I don't ever want this topic to go by anymore without mentioning just how humiliating and weak it is just because it is truly unimaginable that Barack Obama would do something like this, start a war, demand unconditional surrender and then start tweeting, please, Bibi, don't bomb. I mean, honestly, the people at Fox News could not contain themselves talking about, you know, how much he's a bicycle riding arugula, eating, you know, weak leftists like that's and that's what Trump. And Trump has demonstrated more weakness and less resolve than any president that we've had in modern times in this war. And I just think that continues to bear mentioning. Speaking of Trump being weak and erratic, he was on Meet the Press yesterday and could not handle the tough questions from Kristen Welker and had a temper tantrum, stormed off. I did a kind of full, you know, SportsCenter style breakdown of the tape over on the Bullock Takes feed if people want to check that out. But I was just wondering, Bill, what your kind of big picture thoughts were on the interview. And Trump goes real domestic in Wisconsin, ostensibly as part of some proactive messaging about how the administration is caring about farm country and despite the fact that farm country is getting eviscerated by their policies. And so they were there by some big tractors. The rain was hitting the barn roof and so the audio was very strange. And he ends up melting down and leaving. On the topic of the 2020 election, but there's a bunch of other stuff in there, too. I don't know what struck you.
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A
No, I thought your coverage was excellent and people should watch that and then they can skip the interview. Not that they were going to watch it anyway. I've got to think I certainly didn't. But you see clips of it in your coverage, so that's Good. Yeah. The 2020 election, again, people treat it a little bit too much like, well, he's obsessed with it. It's kind of weird. He's obsessed with it because he's going to try to do it again. But it's interesting. I do think that's why he's so both insistent on promoting the lie at every opportunity, but also very sort of sensitive about the discussion of the lie.
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B
Extremely sensitive.
- [09:03]
A
What do you make of that? You watched the whole show, so we didn't have to and commented on it. What is going on with him?
- [09:10]
B
I like to turn to George Conway for armchair psychological analysis of Trump, but since he's still in a campaign.