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A
Hope for the best, expect the worst Some drink champagne Some die at first the way of knowing which way it's going. Hope for the best Expect the worst, hope for the best. Welcome to the Commentary magazine daily podcast. Today, finally is March 3rd, Tuesday, March 3rd, since I kept saying it was March 3rd when it wasn't March 3rd, 2026. I'm John Pothoric, the editor of Commentary magazine. With me, as always, a full house. Executive editor Abe Greenwald. Hi, Abe.
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B
Hi, John.
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A
Senior editor Seth Mandel. Hi, Seth.
- [00:47]
C
Hi, John.
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A
Washington Free Beacon editor Eliana Johnson. Hi, Eliana.
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D
Hi, John.
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A
And Social Commentary columnist Christine Rosen. I feel that it is necessary for me to note that this is the Jewish holiday of Purim. It will be of no surprise to Jews who observe Purim that this is an astonishingly timely moment to be celebrating this holiday, as it is a story of Persians in ancient times who were oppressing Jews and the secret wife of the Persian monarch who was giving sway to his vizier, Haman, who wanted to conduct a genocide. And through the administrations of the secret queen, secret Jewish queen, Turntail put the vizier to death. And then the Jews killed many, many, many Persians in order to make it the point that they were now not to be genocided. And I just wanted to cite one of the more hilarious tweets of all time for those who follow these things from an account called Hamish Humor. Hamish meaning sort of like, what would you call it? Like, friendly or kind of. Hamish is the Yiddish word that means sort of like friendly, familiar, wholesome. Maybe wholesome, friendly, familiar, wholesome. So Hamish Humer says, I'm not saying Trump is a hash ferosh, hash pherosh being the Persian monarch, but the megillah that is the book we read on. The book on the on on Purim does start with a Miss Universe pageant and ends with the king helping the Jews defeat all their enemies. So is Trump a Hashvar Rosh? It does in fact begin with a beauty pageant at which his, the king's first wife refuses to attend. And so he ditches her for the winner of the beauty pageant, Esther, whom he does not know is a Jew. And then at the end, the Jews defeat the Persians. So I thought this was worth noting to those who don't really follow these holidays and that this is of course, where we are with Iran being present day Persia or Persia being present day Iran, or whatever present day refers to here. I wanted to we're going to end up having to talk about this whole 24 hour cycle of how Trump was tricked into the war by Israel and we made him fight it and all of that by putting that to one side to mention two things that we found out yesterday factually that enhance the case for the war and help explain the fact that the war went when it went first. Steve Witkoff went on Sean Hannity's show after Netanyahu was on Sean Hannity's show last night to describe the negotiations that he had last week with the Iranians in Oman. And he said that the Iranians came into the room and said, haha, we have enough fish fissile material to make 11 nuclear bombs. They walked in and said we have enough material for 11 nuclear bombs. So, you know, and they spent two days and according to Wyckoff, he and Jared Kushner looked at each other agog because this is not exactly the way to start a negotiation and to, you know, with us with the whip hand. And they're in the sort of secondary position. And after two sessions realized they had nothing to talk about because the Iranian negotiators said we'll never give operate, we'll never give up our right to enroll, we'll never give up our right to have a nuclear bomb. And so they then went to the third negotiation. But they, that was all for a show. Okay, so that's, that's point number one. Point number two was that Marco Rubio in the briefing or press moment in which he said something that has led people to think that Israel made America go to war. So said that the, the detail that has been missing from this account is that the Iranian threat had turned, had taken a weird turn very recently in that the Iranian ballistic missile program had shifted in part from its pursuit of long range missiles to short range missiles. And that this was important because if they were left unmolested over the course of the next year, year and a half, they could make enough short range missiles to effectively make any effort to destroy their nuclear program impossible. Because a impregnable world of short range missiles meant that it would be too unsafe to go at them from the skies, whether it was America or Israel or anybody else. And that this was an active program that they were pursuing very aggressively. And so the time to take them out with the greatest degree of safety for our forces and for Israel's forces, but for our forces was now that they needed to be. This had to be nipped in the bud before they developed the capability to strike our aircraft from the ground to the air with greater precision. So those are the two actual facts that contribute to the idea that the war was necessary. And what seemed to happen yesterday with the administration is it got and with Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House is that they got tied up in knots with this whole question of imminent threat. And was the threat imminent? Why did we have to go now? Was there an imminent threat? What about the imminent threat? There's no imminent threat. And that imminent, imminent, imminent. So that's my presentation of the goings on on Monday night. Who wants to.
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B
Well, I want to jump in about this imminent threat question.
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D
I'll jump in after you, Abe.
- [07:54]
B
Part of the problem of what's going on here is that people in the administration and a certain sizable segment of the right in general now have anathematized a number of concepts and terms that they now need recourse to to explain why they're doing what they're doing. And so the idea that you can only take preemptive action when there is an imminent threat is wrong. For example, Israel has taken out other countries nuclear reactor programs, Syria, Saddam's. Before they were before, before they got to the point of an imminent threat, they were a massive long term threat. That's a good thing. Countries should act when they can to do things like that. So that's one of the problems here is that they are afraid of speaking clearly in terms that would describe and that you could use to justify what they are doing.
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A
My feeling is that they are worried. There isn't there is a very quick sentence answer to the imminent threat thing which is problem is that it relates to something that George W. Bush said and apparently George W. Bush is now a figure of great evil and controversy to people in the Republican base who should know better and are garbage. Which is to say what he said after 911 is if we wait until threats gather, we will have waited too long. And therefore what we are doing here in Iran is what would once have been understood to be preemption. What do you do when you don't preempt is you get Pearl Harbor. That would have been the understanding previously is that the Japanese are building up, they're building up their fleet, they're building up their their capabilities and you don't stop them and then they hit you first and then you will you waited too long and your response is therefore defensive and it's going to take you, you know, rather than do the thing that le that says I'm going to leave you alone and I'll continue my domination of the Far east and my takeover of China and my takeover of Malaysia and everywhere else I can Take over, but I'm leaving you alone because you're too scary. We, we didn't do that after 9 11. We decided that we needed to deal with preemptive. We needed to act preemptively against the possibility that terrorist groups and non state actors and others were going to develop nuclear capability and use a suitcase nuclear bomb, bring it to Times Square and set it off or whatever. That doctrine still holds. It's just that it's a. So if apparently the association is too poisonous and so Rubio's not going to say it and Trump's not going to say it and Johnson's not going to say it. And if they said it, it would give, you know, would give sucker to the people who want to use Bush's name as a kind of weapon against Trump. But the idea stands.
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D
Well, I totally agree, John, that the idea stands. Bush was right when he said we're not going to wait for threats to gather. And if that's what they're trying to avoid is the comparison to Bush, they're not avoiding it. The folks who oppose this already are comparing this, you know, to forever wars and saying, how is Trump going to avoid this, this becoming a forever war? And so I do think the, it would be wise for the administration to say this president in 2016 campaigned on ripping up the foolish Obama nuclear deal. He got into office and did what he said, what he was going to do. He ripped it up. He took out Soleimani. In the first term, you know, there's a through line and a story that he can tell. And in the second term, he did Operation Midnight Hammer. He told them not to go back and rebuild their nuclear program. They did that. They thumbed their nose at his negotiators. And he is the first president, unlike George W. Bush, is probably a mistake to aim at Iraq rather than Iran. And I think he could contrast himself to Bush in that manner. And somebody said to me yesterday, like, Trump is the first person to break the paradigm, said we're not going to live in the paradigm that we have lived in for the past 25 years that says they can sustain this low grade, you know, simmering war against us while developing on and off a nuclear program. And he is not accepting that and going to break us out of it. And I think in that sense, there's a way to make the case for it that contrasts him with Bush and presents a through line between his two administrations.
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B
You know, just, I just want to flesh this out. Rubio, among the things he said yesterday, one of them was that the US Would need to have this confrontation with Iran. At any rate, that's the part that got.
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A
Yeah, it was going to happen sooner or later.
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B
Yes, yes, that, that, that, that part was excised from the clips that are, you know, that you can use to say Israel brought us into war.
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A
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C
Yeah, and also the whole, the thing about the imminent threat is the point that I think the point administration officials have been making fairly clearly all along is that what matters is that, you know, the threat is real. And in the process of materializing, Iran has made clear they're not giving up nuclear enrichment in the pursuit of a nuclear bomb and they're not going to negotiate away all their ballistic missiles. So you can wait until they have their ballistic missile program up and running again and, and go to Congress and say, you see now it's an imminent threat. But the whole point is that it's about when you know the threat is materializing. You know, Iran is telling us they are a threat, so you'd be crazy to wait and attack them. It's one thing if you don't know, is what I'm saying. It's one thing if you're trying to suss out your adversary's intentions, if you're playing Kremlin ology or something like that, but we're not doing that here. The Iranians are very clear. We've been through this time and again. This is our third round of these silly negotiations, you know, in the past decade. We know what they do when they sign a deal. We know what they leave out. We know what they mean when they say, and they say when they mean. You know, we've had 10 years of knowing exactly what we're talking about here. And so we, we know, we know what's happening. And therefore we're not actually guessing and waiting to see when somebody's a threat. Maybe they won't really be a threat, but we just know. And they are not really denying that they are gathering steam to be a threat again. And that's different than guessing.
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A
The other detail that I should have mentioned is Pete Hegseth Monday morning praising the Israelis for acting on American intelligence that Khamenei and the leadership were gathering and doing the strike to take out to decapitate the malaccracy. This is important because what it meant was when Israel said, I think we should go, we don't know what the sequence was, but if the sequence was that the American intelligence developed said, they're all going to be in this building Saturday, you know, Saturday morning, Israel said, all right, we're going. You got the intelligence, we've got the capability. We're happy to fire first, we're happy to fly the plane, we're there. Let's lfg, you know, this is the moment that we, that, that fate and that fate has handed us. We're not going to necessarily get it again. And Trump and everybody said, fine. It appears there were debates inside the administration for weeks about whether or not this was a good idea, whether it was something that we should do. And from what we can tell, Vice President Vance was skeptical. And General Kane was trying to make clear the risks attendant in doing this and the level of, the level of military commitment we were going to have to sustain in order to get to a positive outcome. We don't know whether that means that. Kaine said, I don't think this is a good idea. But he was trying to impress upon the President the gravity of what was going on here and the fact that it was not going to be like the Maduro raid or it was not going to be like Midnight Hammer. We were talking here about weeks, not a day or not days and, or maybe longer. And I think that seems to have happened in Trump's own brain because when he talks, he says, we'll do this as long as it takes. He said, we have infinite capacity, infinite capacity. We have infinite capacity to sustain this campaign, which of course is not true, you know, as a matter of either physics or material. Like, at some point, if we did this the way we're doing it right now for six months, we would run out of, you know, we'd run out of things to fire at them if it was 24 hours a day for six months. But obviously that's not something that anybody sort of predicts to be the case. So Trump got it. Like Trump, Trump's line is, we're doing great, we're ahead of schedule. We haven't even. And Rubio said the same thing. We haven't even used our big guns yet. That's the other game, right? Rubio said it yesterday, Trump said it. We, we haven't even hit them. We got in our pocket, we got, we got blows they can't even imagine are coming. And we do know, for example, that nobody has yet hit the site that they believe is the secondary nuclear site, which has the very, you know, colorful name of Pickaxe Mountain that is sitting there, you know, sort of ready, I think, for obliteration, though that may take a level of that or a kind of bombing that America hasn't had to do yet. But they are saying this, they're saying Iran's developing short range missiles, enough short range missiles and no war against them. Is possible because it's too dangerous for our forces, which is another way of saying you don't want an imminent threat. Actually, an imminent threat poses greater risks to our forces than a non imminent threat. We want to hit them at the time of our choosing, when we are at the strong, when we are at our strongest and they are at their weakest. What else makes rational sense? Are we going to just stand by and let them get more and more and more threatening and have a greater and greater prospect of hitting our people, hitting our sights in the Middle east and, and, you know, creating a defensive phalanx that makes it, that makes them effectively impregnable behind which they can develop the nuclear weapon that we, you know, the material that maybe they have the weapon, the material for 11 bombs. I kind of doubt it. It doesn't really matter whether they have it or not. Even if they can't, you know, maybe they know that they have it somewhere buried in Fordow and that if they spend, you know, if they were, if they still existed and they were to spend three years digging it out, they could find it after the raids of Midnight Hammer. But, you know, that just doesn't make any rational sense. Unless your line is we should never go to war with Iran. We should let them develop a nuclear weapon, and they and Israel should be faced off in an existential duel to the death in which the possibility of the actual use of nuclear weapons becomes thinkable in a way that it has not been since 1945. Do we want that? Is that what Gavin Newsom wants? Is that what Hakeem Jeffries wants? It doesn't make sense.
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B
This reminds me, you know, in the roughly 20 years prior to all this, that people like us and many others speculated about Israel taking out Iran's nuclear program, it's like, are they going to do it? Can they do, or is it too late already? That was the constant question. And they were experts who always weighed in to say it was too late already. I think Bibi had a chance two years ago and such and such, but now at this point, I don't think he can do it. And then others would say he could. And then, you know, if not for the attack of October 7th, that might have continued indefinitely. October 7th happened and Israel had to make it not too late. October 7 set Israel on a course of taking out obstruction after obstruction after obstruction in order to get in there and do it.
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A
Right, but that doesn't speak to our involvement, right?
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B
No, no, no, but I'm just saying. But that's, but it was always the maddening. There were always enough people to say, it's too late. Some combination of it's too late now or it's and too early. Like, you know, the threat's not there or the threat's already established.
- [25:34]
A
Well, I think the idea that it's too late is effectively the overhang of the last 23 years. Right. I mean, next week or the week after next is the beginning will be the 23rd anniversary of the beginning of the war against Iraq. Right. I think March 15th or something like that, 2003. So the overhang is it's too late.
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C
Did we really start the war on the ides of March? Somebody should have said so.
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A
I can't remember. Maybe it was the 20th. I can't remember the specific date. But, but so it's, it's. That date is. That anniversary is imminent, shall we say. And the point is that it's too late because we already showed that we stink. We're bad at this, we don't win wars and we make stupid mistakes. And so, you know, we took, we had one shot to do these things well, and we didn't do them well in Afghanistan. We didn't do it well in Iraq. And so it's too late for us because our military capabilities in this regard, in terms of taking directly facing down the regime in another country and, you know, and ending it as a threat, we've lost our credibility as an actor.
- [26:54]
B
By the way, I remember when the surge, since we're talking about Iraq, when the surge began to turn the tide for US Forces in Iraq, Hillary Clinton said, yes, we're doing well now, but it's too late.
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A
Yeah. Yeah. And so that's what I mean. So on the one hand, it's too late because our meth, our ability to use Marshall means to affect these geopolitical changes that we think are necessary has already proved to be flawed, faulty, or fatally misguided. So we're done. We're done using this as a, as a, as a tool in our, in our box. And if we're not done, it's too early. Why are we going now? And that's where you start to get into the. Because the Israelis made us do it.
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B
I just want to add one more point of this. Why are we going now? And this fear of the imminent threat question, since we're talking about in the context of George W. Bush in Iraq, if you recall, the big charge against Bush was not just that he went to war after we were struck. It was, why didn't he do anything about the intelligence that said al Qaeda determined to attack us in, in next 10 months or whatever, Right? So which is to say the national security establishment should worry less about the fickle public at peace because honestly, because they're going to complain no matter what.
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A
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C
There's some people making an argument that, that America is losing credibility because along similar lines, we were negotiating in bad faith because now we've, you know, we've delegitimized American Americans as a negotiating partner because we'll, we'll bomb you during negotiations. And it's like everything that we've done in this particular round that strategically has given us an advantage, an undeniable advantage in the field and lowered the risk to American servicemen and women, et cetera. All of that stuff is what's getting sort of delegitimized and criticize when you can't have it both ways. You know, you, if you want to, if you want to make it safer for your troops to carry out something like this, you do use the element of surprise. You do do it before it's obvious that you have to do it. And you do do it when the other side doesn't think they're doing. They did it during the day. Was it wrong to do it during the day because they expected it to come at night? You know, we, we, we do want to, you do want to fool them. You want to use the element of surprise. And, and you know, we're, we are holding ourselves, some of this criticism holds ourselves to standards that literally no one else would ever hold themselves to.
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A
Christine Seth says we're holding ourselves to standards no one else would hold us to. And I think this is the crux of the problem, which is that Seth is using the verb our to describe the United States and our actions. It seems to me that what we have here is a world of people inside the United States who, seeing the United States engage in a major military conflict, is saying they, not us. You know, they, not we. Problem here is the people who are attacking Bush are not holding us to a higher. Excuse me, Trump. Are not holding us to a higher standard. They're holding them to a standard. They're not involved. This has nothing to do with them. You know, this is not their war. This is Trump's war. And they are standing there 72 hours into the war saying we're getting involved in a quagmire after we have literally pummeled the Iranians and they have fired very. You know, they've. They've set our embassy on fire in Riyadh, and there was some kind of an ambush in Kuwait, and some buildings have been struck in Israel, and otherwise quagmire. Like what Quagmire. We saw quagmire. We saw a quagmire four years ago in the battlefield in Ukraine when literally the tanks that the Russians were rolling toward Kyiv got mired in the mud on the road to Kyiv. That was the moment at which the conflict for the Russians became real. And their idea that they were going to be able to do this in a cakewalk suddenly became horrifyingly clear to them that they had miscalculated. We've actually seen this happen at the beginning of a war just four years ago. Here we are acting at will, at no risk to our aircraft whatsoever. And, I mean, I've heard. I heard 10 people yesterday use the word quagmire. So do they want us to lose? Are they worried that Trump's gonna win? Is this, like, a serious criticism? I. I can't tell.
- [35:36]
E
I think the uncertainty that's been created by the series of competing narratives out of this administration for why we are at war is. Has opened this opportunity for people who, as you say, John, have no interest in supporting America, prosecuting its interest overseas and striking Iran, which is why they get away with saying things like them rather than us as a nation.
- [36:00]
A
But.
- [36:00]
E
But there is a problem going forward. Trump himself has given multiple explanations for why we're engaged in this conflict, and he just added, I think, the destruction of the Iranian navy to the list. Most of his strategic goals are things that I share. I think. I'm glad to see the Ayatollah is gone. I'm hopeful for the future of the Iranian people. But as Eliana's earlier point, I think is really important. He could tell a very straightforward and consistent story. Because otherwise, you get into this. You get into these weird intellectual battles, not only with your own sort of isolationist MAGA faction types who want to make this about Israel, but also with people who are just generally skeptical of our involvement overseas. They can say, well, North Korea has a bomb, we could preemptively strike them. Why aren't we doing that? He needs to distinguish Iran's particularly unique danger to the world and to the United States, and that's easy to do. So State sponsor of terrorism tried to assassinate him several times as well as other American officials. There are plenty of reasons that you can give for why this was a crucial operation. And I think it was really instructive what happened to Rubio yesterday. I went back and watched the press conference after all this chatter about, oh, Israel made us do it. And he was very, it was very clear that he was asked a question about why did we do this? And then why now? Two distinct questions. And the why now? Answer prompted this, this tantrum about Israel. The reason that was allowed to take hold, though, setting aside our kind of crazy right wing media which pounced on it as well, is that there isn't a consistent narrative coming out of this administration. The President still hasn't addressed the American people. And I know there's some contempt for this traditional sitting behind the Resolute desk telling the American people what's going on, but they haven't filled that void. That void is going to be filled with all kinds of other nonsense and all kinds of grandstanding by people on the left who have no interest in the safety and security of this nation if it involves any sort of armed conflict. So I'm, I think all of your points are completely valid, but I would still say part of the job of commander in chief is telling the American people what the goals of the mission are, what we're doing and why. And I still am, and I'm just still not satisfied that we've gotten that answer yet.
- [38:12]
A
I get Yesterday, Trump appeared at the White House at a very moving Medal of Honor ceremony, which he prefaced with remarks about where we were with the war. And this absolutely makes your point because he started out on the teleprompter, giving some updates on the progress, talking about some of this. And then, and this is, you know, his, he doesn't think it's a weakness. He thinks it's the thing that everybody loves about him. And I think he's wrong. But he's himself and, you know, I didn't help get him, get him elected, so. But he like glances over to the curtains in the room and he starts talking about the curtains and how he changed the curtains. And you know, what happens if you move the curtains you'd see a giant construction site because they're building the ballroom. And the jackhammers.
- [39:11]
C
Comey
- [39:13]
A
and the jackhammers. And the first lady's very angry at him because the jackhammers are going from 6:30 in the morning to 11:30 at night. And about 18 months from now, come back and we'll open the curtains and then you'll see the most beautiful building that you've ever seen. And this is five minutes after he's talking about, we hit this target. We're doing this. We have the, you know, this is a, you know, he's talking about the most important thing that he has done as president. And it takes him five minutes to get distracted by the curtains and start in this peroration about his ballroom. That's him, right?
- [39:51]
B
He said, they think I'm going to get distracted, but I'm not.
- [39:55]
A
No, he said, I'm never bored. I'm not bored. Oh, they say I'm bored. He's going to get bored. I'm not bored. Then he said the reason that he fell off the rails or fell off the, whatever fell off the wagon is that he said, they keep saying, oh, Trump's not serious. He's gonna get bored. I'm not bored. I'm never bored. You think I'd be here if I were bored? Like, after what they did to me? It's like, after what they did to me, you think I'd be here now? Of course. So he suddenly gets back to 2020 and his narrative at 2020, and then he looks at the curtains and then we're off on the curtains. So the idea that he would be better served, that not only would this mission, the country, everything else be better served if he sat down in the Oval Office with a teleprompter speech and read the speech that explained the aims and goals and war aims and all of that, that was 20 minutes long. Maybe he has maps. I don't care. He could use video. He could do all sorts of up to date 21st century things to do that. Because he does himself. He was, he did himself no favor yesterday and left Rubio and Johnson to be providing this narrative. And look, Rubio, like, probably hasn't slept in 96 hours and Johnson, I, who knows what. Johnson, meanwhile, is dealing with his own mishigoim in the house and for some reason thought that it was a good idea to say, or basically read out of his own briefing that, you know, Israel made us do it. So he thought it was okay to say, well, look, we went because Israel made us. Israel said they were going, so we're going too. Right. Which again is almost certainly a misunderstanding of what happened on Friday.
- [41:45]
E
The Trump administration made Israel turn planes around midair. I mean, if we were at the bidding is really the other direction.
- [41:52]
A
Right? Yeah, that's last year when they said, we're done. Midnight Hammer is done. Go back to your bases.
- [41:59]
B
I mean, as someone on Twitter pointed out, even the Biden administration was able to stay Israel's hand.
- [42:07]
A
Right. I mean, this is not an issue, but it's now been made an issue because, of course, people are just using whatever is to hand. And you have this bizarre coalition of kind of liberal skeptics, never Trump lunatics. And then the podcast bros going meshuggah. Now, Tom Bevin of Real Clear Politics,
- [42:29]
E
there's some podcast gals, too.
- [42:30]
A
Losing podcast gal. Specific podcast gal. But, you know, as Tom Bevan just pointed out on Twitter from RealClearPolitics, the Republican level of support for this mission is 73% with 14% opposing. The polling problem all involves Democrats and independents, which I'm. And I'm not downgrading the importance of this. But what I mean is that the podcast crew that is going up against Trump and yelling at Trump and saying it's terrible, and Tucker saying that this was. This is a disgusting war and that Trump is being led around the nose by Netanyahu. And Megan Kelly, to whom the world owes Abe Greenwald an apology for having spotted Megan Kelly's descent into filth and depravity, moral and intellectual depravity, earlier than most. Megan complaining to Abe that she, he was being mean to her. Well, I'll be mean to you. Like, shame on you. You're a piece of garbage and I'm done with you. But Megan Kelly saying that this is Mark Levin's war. This is how. This is how bananas these people. Now it's like another podcaster is supporting the war. And I'm this. But I'm against the. It's Mark Levin's war. Mark Levin made Trump go into Iran to serve Bibi's interests.
- [43:56]
D
What can we go back to before we go down this fruitful path? Can we go back to Trump and the Medal of Honor ceremony in the public case? Because I was, I am genuinely torn about this and, and share your views in some way. But I'm going back and forth about it and I'm curious and what you guys think. On the one hand, I share your thoughts and have thought like Trump doesn't really do public persuasion and Then I was trying to think like, he's very persuasive and this amazing communicator and he knows how to use X. And he's changed our. He's turned politics into entertainment. And at the same time, like, he doesn't try to make the case for policies and direction and bring the public along. And that would be great. As you're talking about, I also had the thought that it's really Trump who needs to do it. It's not the same. I thought Hegseth was quite capable yesterday. General Kaine was really compelling when he talked, but it is the president who needs to do it. And then I'm going back and forth with myself again and thinking at the same time like, no other president would have done this. No other president did do this. And the president who did do this is the guy who's like, at one moment talking about the curtains and talking about like, oh, look at the construction.
- [45:32]
A
And.
- [45:33]
D
And so, like, do we just take him as he is and accept it? Because the guy who we would have preferred, you know, back in 2016, like I supply, was for Rubio and would give a really compelling speech about why to do this, like, wouldn't have gotten elected. Didn't get elected. And so I've been questioning my own priors and going back and forth about all of this, and I'm curious for your thoughts.
- [46:01]
E
It's not about whether I think you're right in your assessment of his temperament and also which is in his political skills, but he has an obligation as commander in chief if he's putting American troops in harm's way, to tell the American people why he's doing that and to give a. And it really doesn't even have to be 20 minutes, John. It could be 10 minutes, a statement, but it's a mark of respect for the concern of those of us who actually look, war is this very serious business. People die, innocent people die, but our soldiers are put in harm's way. We've already lost some. Some service members. So I just feel even though it's a ritual and he's very contemptuous of these sort of institutional rituals of the presidency, that has benefited him politically in some ways. I see this as not benefiting him politically long term.
- [46:47]
D
I agree with that.
- [46:48]
E
People are really upset. And he want his. His demeanor is basically like, trust me, I know what I'm doing. I don't think he has that same amount of Runway from the public. And independent voter poll numbers are, I think, what they should be looking closely at those are the people that brought him back and they are not happy with not knowing what's going on.
- [47:06]
D
Well, a couple of things on that. I do think he's been consistent relatively about why he's doing this. Like they cannot have a nuclear program.
- [47:15]
E
Yes.
- [47:16]
D
I said we're going to take out their capacity. We set them back a couple of years. Both he and the vice President have said that they, they went back to rebuild. They cannot have that, they cannot have a missile program and they cannot arm their proxies. Those were the conditions for the negotiations. His negotiators said they didn't do that. I think he's been pretty consistent. I'm talking more about the public persuasion, bringing the public along, that it's right to start a war to do that and that we should expend American lives. And I think there's a distinction between the two. So yeah, I would distinguish a little bit there.
- [47:51]
E
I mean, I would just say he muddled that message, the nuclear message by adding, you know, they're killing their own people. We're going to go after the Navy. So he's adding a lot. And that's his again, that's his way. He always builds the lily.
- [48:04]
A
So.
- [48:05]
B
Yeah, well, look, I think there's another aspect to this though that's worth talking about just briefly, which is that Americans are really reluctant to believe that far away threats can land on our doorstep. They didn't believe it before 9 11, after 911 they believed it up until the Iraq war went bad. Then they stopped believing it. And now these many years later, they believe it even less. Somehow it's like, boy, that wasn't worth it. Well, you know, our involvement. So because you hear this, when there have been efforts by Trump and others in the administration to explain that there is a legitimate threat to the United States, not just our allies from Iran, it's like, oh come on, what does that have to do with us? This has nothing to do with us. And that is an enduring attitude in the American psyche.
- [49:11]
D
Christine, the other thing I was going to say is with regard to the midterms and independence, it's my view that Republicans were really going to struggle in the midterms. Now I think people are going to point to whatever it is, their hobby horses and say, oh, that's why Republicans suffered in the midterms. But if Trump had not done this, like Republicans were going to lose the House.
- [49:37]
C
Yes.
- [49:38]
D
Have a real hard time. And so I think, you know, the president should make his, his case and try to bring the country along for Moral reasons. And that's the way our country is set up. And you should do that. But. But for political reasons. I mean, honestly, like. Yes, Yeah.
- [49:55]
C
I mean, look, I agree also, because you know this. Regardless, as somebody pointed out, I think early on, the first, first snap poll of the approval disapproval of the war matched Trump's overall approval disapproval. Exactly. So it's certain things that are baked against Trump. So I'm against what he does.
- [50:17]
A
You know, I think we're going to follow that course. By the way, my guess is that this is very much what this war is. Is. Is going to be like that. Trump is uniquely unpersuasive. He is both uniquely persuasive and has a control and sort of like, appeal to the people who follow him that is almost new in American politics. And he also has lost the capacity to speak in any way that can be heard by the people who don't like him. So whether or not he can use persuasion is, I think, besides the point. Christine is saying he has an obligation, which I believe he does, whether or not they can hear him or not. I think it's not just for the purposes of informing the American people, to be frank. It is, and this is going to sound like a weird thing to say, that he needs to take the burden off the people who have line authority for the war, for not only fighting the war and dealing with the diplomatic consequences of the war, but also for being the public communicators about the war. Hegseth, Kane, Rubio, they have other fish to like, literally Kane and Hegseth, with Admiral Cooper running the, you know, minute to minute actions. There is a war going on. And yes, Rumsfeld was pretty great in his time talking about what was going on, even though he actually wasn't that big a supporter of the war in Iraq. But Trump's place could be to, like, I know it's gonna sound weird to say he needs to spare Rubio the grief, but Rubio shouldn't be the one having to go to the microphones and explain why the war started. Now he goes to the microphones and they ask him a question. If he muffs the question or he's trying to say something complicated that is easily picked apart and kind of ruined. That's not Trump's fault, and it's not his fault, and he's not going to avoid the microphones. But establishing the precepts of the conflict would then allow everyone to say, well, you heard what President Trump said in his speech on March 8. He said, we shall storm them on the beaches, you know, we will never surrender.
- [52:59]
D
He's got to do it. The president has to do it. That's what I meant.
- [53:03]
A
But as I say, he has to do it not only to persuade the American people, but to make sure that the entire administration is singing from the same hymnal, because if he hasn't written the hymn, they can't all sing from the same hymnal.
- [53:19]
E
And that's why that's mic night right now in that administration, because you get a different story every time someone steps up to the microphone. It's confusing.
- [53:26]
A
But by the way, there is a different story. Like, is this a war of choice? Kind of. It's a war of choice, even though it's the right war of choice. Because it started. This whole thing started because of indigenous events inside Iran. I mean, we weren't. No, it was not on anybody's, like, dance card on Christmas Day that we would be here on March 3rd having this conversation. It was December 28th when the uprising started in Iran, and we had to respond to it. That started this, started us down this road. In that sense, the. The crisis is the crisis of the real. You know, the crisis is an opportunity was presented to the world because the Iranian people were making it clear that they were done with the regime and were willing to take pretty bold and drastic steps to see what they could do to change their life circumstances. And Trump responded to it. Trump said, we're with you. Help is on the way. Be strong, all of that. Then the horrible massacre happened, and it looked like he was pulling back, but I don't think he was pulling back. But in that sense, I mean, that's why falling into the trap of explaining why the threat is imminent is, in fact, a trap, because the threat is not imminent, which is good. You can say, you know what? We don't want imminent threats. You know, if something is a threat, we want to. We want to take it out before it's imminent. Like, you want to. You want to tile your roof. If you see that your roof, you know, you want to get. You want to make sure that you replace your roof before the storm, not in the middle of the storm, because then you get damage inside, and then you can maybe replace the roof. I know that's a pretty banal analogy to something, as, you know, elementary repairs this spring.
- [55:28]
E
It's. It's just painful analogy.
- [55:30]
A
I'm sorry. Well, I don't. You know what? I live in an apartment building, so we don't have a roof thing. We just have, like, three years of a building Project where we have a scaffold in front of the building. But I'm just saying speculate.
- [55:40]
E
Can I speculate as to why he has not his discomfort with that? I think it's a discomfort, and I think it's genuinely felt about being seen as making a moral case for America's role in power in the world. Because that actually is something that there's a lot of unease about in the MAGA coalition. And I think personally for Trump, I mean, he looks at the history of the 20th century and he doesn't see a lot of victories for American power in that way. And I think that tension is really underneath a lot of this hesitation to sort of make the bold statement. Because you know what, he made a very strong moral case for American power when he defended the Iranian people who are being slaughtered by their own regime. And I think that was actually a very good thing that he did. It is not, and I think he meant it, but I don't think that it's easy for him to make that same case in the way previous presidents in a. And sometimes in a very glib and I think not intentional way did that rhetoric about America's role in the world. He's actually conflicted about it, and so is a lot of his coalition. And that's got to also be one of the reasons why this messaging has been a little off kilter.
- [56:49]
C
Yeah, I, I think that's right. And I think that he, I think that he. That he is discovering that his opinion isn't exactly what he thought his opinion was on that too, which is a bit discomforting, you know, to hear J.D. vance, for example, similar things happening. J.D. vance, when they say, you know, when the press goes out and says, oh, they don't know what we're doing, we're gonna get into a quagmire or whatever, or the woke. Right. Says, you know, this is Iraq all over again. And Vance is like, what are you talking about?
- [57:19]
E
We're not.
- [57:20]
C
Not everything is Iraq. You know, it's like Vance was the guy we used to say that to, like, stop saying everything is Iraq. J.D. vance. It's not like it's a fine point to make, but there are differences in. And JD Vans is speaking of the gradations, and he's, you know, he's speaking in nuance. And I think that Trump is thinking in nuance. I know it sounds funny, but I think that he's. When he goes to answer a question, he, he has found himself in the situation of wanting to speak to his interlocutor the way that his, we used to speak to him, the way that he used to be on the other side to role reversal. And he's just starting to see that maybe I don't really think, you know, all these, you know, no, no gray area, black and white issues that I spoke about are so black and white. And it's happening literally as he's making policy.
- [58:24]
A
Interesting. Our friend Eli Lake, our contributing area Lake has a good piece this morning at the Free Press in which he sort of goes through the dark night of J.D. vance's soul. Not that he doesn't put it that way, but sort of like the box that Vance finds himself in. And the thing is that Vance has interests and needs and worries and discomforts and senses of loyalty that Trump does not share. So Vance does not want to break with Tucker Carlson. Tucker Carlson is going to put him in a position if things keep going the way they're going, where he's not going to be able to play this middle ground card of being friends with Tucker and friends with Trump. If Trump is a puppet, is a, you know, is a, is a marionette at the head Svengali, the Jews, you know, puppet strings are dancing Trump around. And this is a disgusting war that Trump is fighting. Trump has said a couple of interesting things relating to Tucker. And by the way, this is why the podcast bro thing is kind of important, because they may push buttons that, that start highlighting a fight that Trump will not be able to resist getting himself into if they, if Tucker keeps insulting him, he's not going to take it lying down. And Vance, and he said Tucker can say whatever he wants. I pay no attention to him. He also said something like, somebody's paying him. We heard he said. So he's, he's, someone's paying him. So he has now said that Carlson's on somebody's payroll and that he's not listening to him. So either Tucker is going to take that message and back off because he doesn't want to be in, you know, in a, in a total, you know, battle with Trump, or he's going to double down. And we don't know what the monetizing possibilities are of doubling down. He's, he can read that in his stats every day on, you know, on his, on YouTube and on his podcast and whatever. But Vance is standing there as Tucker's friend and Trump's friend, and it's like, you're not going to be able to be friends with both. And he's going to have to choose Trump because he is the vice president, after all. And then his own game plan for the next three years has got to start shifting. What is he going to do? If this war is like a huge triumph and success, which I deeply hope it is, and I don't want to jinx it by saying I expect it will be, he'll want a piece of it. He's already tried to claim a little bit of a piece of it by letting it be known to the New York Times and others that while he was skeptical of doing the war, if we were going to do it, we needed to do it big and fast and hard, right? So he's got the, ah, you know, as, as who said this? Which, which, which Biblical. Which Shakespearean character says, if twere done, twere better, twere done quickly, right? He's, that's where he is. So he's playing the game of maybe we didn't need to do it, but we're, if we're going to do it, boy, we're going to do it and then we're going to be done with it. And he's going to hope that that's where it comes out. With that, he, once the decision was made, he's like, let's, you know, go, you know, all out. And that's going to be an interesting position for him to be in. If the horish Megyn Kelly whoring after Tucker and Candace and everybody else's podcast audiences is sussing out. I don't mean sus, like suspicious. We used to use the word. Sus is sussing out that the money this week is in saying it's Mark Levin's war and the Jews did it. She's got some fingertip feel for something that's going on. And Vance is like, now in a, he's in a very, you know, it's like the chasm is opening up and he's got a foot on one side. It's like, you know, Warner Brothers cartoon as the, you know, as the, you know, as, as the earth opens up and his. And he's like, increasingly got two feet on either side of the chasm as it opens and opens and opens and opens.
- [62:55]
D
I don't, I don't think the chasm is opening up any wider right now than it has been for the past couple of years. I think Trump is obviously okay with the status quo where Carlson's in the White House, he sees Trump, he denounces the administration, but not Trump by name. He's a friend of the vice president's and like the President's fine with this. He obviously doesn't take Carlson's counsel, but, you know, speaks to him and has him around. The vice president's posture is I'm happy all these debates are happening and these conversations are happening. And I don't think that this war is going to be a tipping point or some unsustainable like it marks them unsustainable like change. I think that's going to happen during the 2028 primary where perhaps the media will press for more answers on this kind of thing. But I don't foresee any major change in, for, you know, for a couple of more years.
- [64:05]
E
I think that's right. Because, you know, if first of all, Trump's a lame duck, let's not forget they can buy, you know, where his power base is, is also largely around his particular personality. As we were discussing earlier, Vance could very well make the gamble that he's going to have to rebrand anyway and that to keep those people in the coalition, many of whom are perfectly happy listening to conspiracy theories about Israel and the Jews, maybe he just has to continue to keep that group, you know, satisfied without being directly and overtly on their side because he isn't, he does not have Trump's charisma. He has a different thing. And he's going to be, as Eliana says, there's going to be a primary. He's going to face multiple challengers, some of whom are probably going to come out of left field anyway that we can't even, I mean, imagine. So he just has to bide his time is what I think
- [65:01]
A
you're talking about. What vance's strategy for 28 is and what he needs. I am saying where I disagree with Eliana is it hasn't happened yet. But if Tucker goes on like this for two weeks and of course he's got to escalate his rhetoric because that's what he does. Trump is going to get mad. He is very thin skinned. He doesn't like getting attacked. Huh.
- [65:25]
E
He slashed out at Tucker before the
- [65:27]
D
president said, oh, kooky, Tucker Carlson. And Carlson's gone on about the Epstein files and he, he attacked the administration's ambassador to Israel for the court over the course of three hours. I just, and, and Trump's comments, the way I read them last night, quite mild. I know.
- [65:47]
A
I'm saying it's not there yet. I'm, I'm saying it's not there yet. But Tucker's like heroin. Like, you know, you got to keep upping the dose to get the Effect. So if he's gone, he went to disgusting war in the first 24 hours. What's he going to say two weeks from now?
- [66:04]
B
Also, by the way, there's another.
- [66:06]
D
But I don't think that really forces Vance his hand. I think Trump is fine with Vance saying like it's really great these debates
- [66:13]
B
are happening, but Vance is increasingly losing, losing the griper, griper adjacent slime that he was trying to court. It started a while ago. Obviously Nick Fuentes was, you know, on record, you know, saying horrible things about Vance long before this war. But if you look online, they are all now piling on Vance as a sort of crypto neocon inspired, inspiring Sohrab Amari to say. I actually think Zorab's right on the facts here. No, no, no, he's not. Trust me, you don't understand.
- [66:56]
A
Yeah, right. I don't know. Look, we're both predicting. So you're saying Trump will be fine with it and he'll feel contemptuous and let, and let Tucker have his head and say what he wants. And I'm saying my read on Trump is that there'll be a point at which he goes, okay, shut your little trap. Rich boy, drunk cokehead, gay bashing hater, you know, and you know, you and you and your drunk brother and your stupid podcast, you know, why don't you go take money from so and so or so like he, he's, he does not have a record of being forgiving of people who talk to him.
- [67:38]
C
The first time that Tucker went after him like this, his response was, well, that guy doesn't even have a show. Tell him to get a show before he has anything to say or something. That was right after he got fired from Fox. That's a preview that he's got that
- [67:50]
A
those types of standing by. Honestly, I could be very wrong. Eliana, you could be right. It's all going to go this way forever. But just the, you know, if a Democrat raises half an eyebrow, you know, half an eyebrow in Trump's direction, he likes lobs a nuclear missile in their direction. So he, you know, and he of course has a history of going at people on his own side who don't toe the line for him, destroyed Bob Corkery, destroyed Jeff Flake, you know, he, you know, made sure that all these people were primaried when they displeased him. So if Tucker displeases him, you know, he likes stop listening to Tucker. Don't buy, you know, don't buy black shoe coffee or whatever.
- [68:39]
E
But I think I Think what, Eliana, Eliana's point, I think, is that in private, Tucker continues to flatter the president and when he does his performance, he does his performance and then Trump can just be dismissive about it. But I think as long as Tucker actually maintains his behind the scenes flattery, and we know he goes off into the White House and has these meetings, then I think, I think Trump's fine with it because I think he will see what Tucker does on air as a performance.
- [69:03]
A
Okay, well, again, we have no idea.
- [69:05]
D
And then they'll become friends again in six months.
- [69:10]
A
Okay.
- [69:11]
C
I, I also think, like, there's, there's a side of this that like, kind of irks me about J.D. vance, which is like, you know, the triangulation at some points, like, he had to be, he had to be harangued into defending his wife from the groipers and it's like he, you know, all right, you're not going to defend your wife, you're not going to defend your president, you know, your partner, your boss. You're not going to like, all of this stuff is like, he should be. Part of me feels like, you know, if he's really invested in the administration, he should also be angrier at Tucker. Like, it shouldn't be, it shouldn't be just a Trump Tucker thing. When, you know, when, when Tucker is, you know, talking about how we're led by the stupidest people in America or whatever. And some of the things that he says, like JD Van should get his backup in defense of the administration in which he's the number two man.
- [70:07]
A
I mean, he should or he shouldn't. I just think it's going to start there anyway. This is all speculative, so it doesn't matter. Obviously what matters here. And the only thing that matters here, where we get sidetracked, the same way everybody gets sidetracked by the sideshows, is, does the war go well or badly? Does the war, you know, do we achieve our aims or do we not? Is this, does this become a circumstance in which the Iranian regime is ended and a future is assured and Israel. And we can stand down our ships, go back to where they were before, and we say we did something that was righteous and serious and the entire map of the Middle east has been shifted. We have alliance, we have essentially a functioning military alliance between Israel, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, the three most powerful forces in the area. Who could ever have imagined such a thing could ever happen? And let's move forward. And if that happens, then all of this is a sideshow. And it may or may not help Trump in the midterms, and it may or may not help J.D. vance if he's going to try to get the nomination in 20, and it may or may not help Rubio if he decides to contest in 2028. But it is the only thing that really matters here. And, you know, we get, because we're part engaged in an ideological war for the future of the right, we cannot not participate in these ongoing conversations and this weird way in which the right has now aligned itself with the pacifist, isolationist, anti American left and the dangers that that poses, because there will there, therefore, there will be no pro American, pro liberty voice in our national discussions come 2029. If this is where things line up and that's, you know, looking to the future, what is most important after this war is over, important for the future of the world, important for the future of the United States and its continued flourishing. And, you know, that's a fight we have to watch. But again, what really matters now is what happens, you know, what, what sites we destroy today and what, what things the Israelis can find on the ground and what parts of the, how many launchers can be destroyed so that we don't have to use interceptors to shoot down Iranian missiles, but we can make sure that Iranians can't even fire the missiles off and therefore we can preserve our interceptors. So, you know, I think that's a, ultimately, I just don't want to think that, you know, we, we do what everybody else does, which is that we sort of turn to our own internal obsessions and fail to focus on the most, on the fact that the United States is engaged in a major military conflict and, and if this were Biden, if it were Obama, if it were, if it were a president that I loathed, who was like Clinton, whom I loathed, but when he did what I thought was right in Bosnia, I was very supportive of it. And like, I think that's something that people should be able, should be able to do. Increasingly, we are unable to do it in the United States. But that's this moment. Things can change. Our politics alter all the, you know, over time. So that's just I wanted to make it clear that, you know, I don't want to be talking about Tucker every day, and I certainly don't want to be talking about Megyn Kelly every day. May her, you know, may her, may we, you know, may we get so drunk today that we are unable to distinguish between the names of Megyn Kelly and Megyn Kelly.
- [74:01]
C
What you're saying is don't get distracted by the curtains.
- [74:07]
A
We will be back tomorrow. So for Christine, Eliana, Seth and Abe, I'm John. Pod horiz. Keep the camelbird.