One President’s Whim. A World in Crisis.

Summary

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Podcast Summary

Podcast: The Opinions
Host: The New York Times Opinion
Episode: One President’s Whim. A World in Crisis.
Date: March 7, 2026

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Main Theme

This episode centers on the abrupt onset of a U.S. war with Iran, delving into the lack of public explanation, the constitutional implications, the dangers of presidential war-making without congressional approval, and the resulting confusion and risks on the global stage. The panel—Michelle Cottle (host, NYT Opinion), Jamelle Bouie, and David—explores the cascading impacts, public reaction, and political consequences, with a brief turn to the Texas primary as a microcosm of broader U.S. political dynamics.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. A War Sprung By Our Own Government

• The Suddenness: The U.S. commences “Operation Epic Fury” against Iran without public warning or a clear rationale.
• No Congressional Involvement: The attack is launched on presidential authority, not via a traditional declaration of war or even a prime-time address.
• Constitutional Concerns: “We’re living in a war that was sprung on us by our own government... This is not supposed to be the way this constitutional republic was designed.” — David [03:26]
• Unclear Objectives: No clear articulation of war aims, strategy, or endgame; risk to American civilians and troops is high.

2. Presidential Accountability and Process

• Secrecy and Style: The war is announced in the dead of night, not from the Oval Office, but at Mar-a-Lago—a symbol of opacity and avoidance.
• “Going to war is supposed to be an open and public and democratic decision... Rather than look the American public square in the eye... he goes under cover of darkness at Mar-a-Lago... and announces this conflict.” — Jamelle Bouie [06:46]
• Erosion of Democratic Process: Extended use of executive power has untethered war-making from democratic checks and balances, with public and congressional exclusion now taken to new, alarming levels.

3. Trump’s Leadership and Public Reaction

• Contradictory to His Image: Trump, once touted as reluctant on foreign wars, is now opting for major interventions, reversing campaign rhetoric.
• Polls: Overwhelming Republican support, majority Democratic and Independent opposition; “already majority disapproval from day one” — David [10:15]
• Perceived Recklessness: War seen as a “whim,” with no strategic clarity—a causative factor in setting up the mission for potential failure.

4. Confused or Nonexistent War Goals

• Is it regime change, nuclear containment, or something else?
• “Iran isn’t a personalist dictatorship... Regime change [would] require ground forces. The administration has not even begun to make the case for that.” — Jamelle Bouie [13:38]
• Civilian Harm: Early reports of civilian casualties, including bombed schools, provoke questions of proportionality and moral grounding.
• “How many girls schools do we have to destroy to attain whatever objective you’re trying to obtain?” — Unidentified [14:52]

5. Style Over Substance in Military Policy

• Rhetoric of “Maximum Lethality”: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s language and style echo a “macho” posture, prioritizing displays of strength over coherent strategy.
• “They kind of like macho language... a very kind of flattened, barely two-dimensional vision of how the world works... insanely dangerous.” — Jamelle Bouie [16:09]

6. Dangerous Global Implications & Historical Parallels

• Risk of Escalation: Likened to the early 20th-century Balkans (“August 1914”), where cascading events led to global disaster.
• Regional Chain Reactions: Chaos could expand, undermining Western credibility and inviting potential shifts in global alliances and rivalries.
• “This is a regime that does not care how many people it loses... The most likely case here is expanding chaos... We do not topple the regime, we do not end the war.” — David [22:02]

7. Political and Democratic Remedies

• Congressional Powerlessness: Democrats advised not to legitimize the conflict post-hoc; to unify in opposition and promise change if given a majority.
• “We are against this war, we are against this conflict... if you give us majorities... we will end this war.” — Jamelle Bouie [27:31]
• Electoral Accountability: The November election is posited as the only reliable check on executive overreach if Congress cannot or will not act.
• “If the Republicans in Congress can't be counted on to make any kind of demands on an out of control president, then it's time for a little electoral punishment.” — Michelle Cottle [29:56]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Announcement Secrecy:
  “Rather than look the American public square in the eye... he goes under cover of darkness at Mar-a-Lago... and announces this conflict.”
  — Jamelle Bouie [06:46]

• On the Danger of Presidential Whim:
  “Launching a war all on one man’s whim, with no articulated goals... this is intolerable. In the constitutional system, it’s intolerable.”
  — David [28:38]

• The War Game Analogy:
  “What's the one thing that everybody knows about the game of Risk? It lasts fricking forever. You can play that game for days and get nowhere.”
  — Michelle Cottle [17:14]

• The Escalation Parallel:
  “The August 1914 kind of comparison point... The Balkans of the early 20th century were the Middle East of the 21st century. Pressure cooker of rivalries and interest.”
  — Jamelle Bouie / Unidentified [24:50]

• On Unclear War Aims:
  “If you are spending people’s lives, you have an obligation to be absolutely clear and certain and have a plan and a strategy for what you’re doing. That’s what you owe those people.”
  — Jamelle Bouie [08:10]

• On Democratic Opposition:
  “There’s no political thing to gain here. And I think this maybe sense of responsibility is, like, misguided. What Democrats can do is... make clear to the American public that we are against this war.”
  — Jamelle Bouie [27:13]

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Important Timestamps

• 01:05 – 02:55: Initial reactions to the surprise outbreak of war, civilian impacts, and the sense of a government-initiated crisis.
• 04:49 – 07:30: Jamelle Bouie and panel discuss the implications of announcing war secretly and the abdication of democratic norms.
• 09:06 – 11:56: Polling, public opinion, and how lack of democratic buy-in weakens war efforts.
• 13:18 – 17:14: Scrutiny of the war’s unarticulated goals, hazards of macho military rhetoric, and dangers in the administration’s worldview.
• 19:33 – 21:08: Discussion of diplomatic alternatives, failures of past decisions (notably, ending the Iran nuclear deal), and the ideological momentum toward conflict.
• 21:40 – 26:10: Probable and potential war outcomes, historical analogies, broader international ramifications, Trump’s evolving approach to military force.
• 26:55 – 29:56: What Congress and citizens can practically do in response; the urgency of electoral checks.
• 29:56 – 34:27: Brief shift to Texas primary takeaways and broader lessons for the Democratic Party.
• 34:37 – 36:34: Panel recommendations (books, shows), winding down.

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Texas Primaries Discussion (Recap)

• Democrats: High turnout, energizing new candidates.
  “It's noteworthy that having a competitive primary between two young and exciting candidates really got Democratic voters, you know, ready to go out and vote and participate in that.” — Jamelle Bouie [32:10]

• Republicans: Runoff set between Cornyn and Paxton, with Trump’s endorsement pending. The outcome signals possible cracks in Trump-aligned dominance.

• In general, competitive races and new faces are driving higher engagement and hint at possible changes for November.

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Tone and Style

• Candid, skeptical, occasionally darkly humorous—the panelists do not mince words about the constitutional danger and strategic opacity.
• Historically-minded, drawing explicit parallels to World War I and prior U.S. military misadventures.
• Both alarmed and analytical, the hosts thread personal anecdotes, polling data, and rhetorical flourishes to emphasize what they see as a watershed moment in U.S. democracy and foreign policy.

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Concluding Thoughts

• The episode offers a sharp, critical perspective on the executive-led rush to war, with emphasis on the risks to American lives, democratic legitimacy, and global stability.
• The panel appeals for democratic vigilance: if representatives fail, citizens must use electoral power to enforce accountability.

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For further engagement:

• Jamelle Bouie recommends: “Detroit the Supreme Court and the Battle for Racial Justice in the North” by Michelle Adams. [34:37]
• David recommends: The latest season of Dark Winds (TV series). [35:11]
• Michelle Cottle recommends: “More Weight” by Ben Wiki, a graphic novel about the Salem witch trials. [35:45]

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Transcript

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[Show Announcer]

this is the Opinions, a show that brings you a mix of voices from New York Times Opinion. You've heard the news, here's what to make of it.

[Michelle Cottle]

I'm Michelle Cottle. I cover national politics for New York Times Opinion. And this week I am back with the usual suspects, columnists Jamelle Bouie and David. Guys, welcome, welcome.

[Jamelle Bouie]

Hello. Hello.

[David]

Michelle. Jamel, great to see y'.

[Jamelle Bouie]

All.

[Michelle Cottle]

So this week we are at the start of a conflict with Iran that is rapidly spreading across the Gulf region. This is a war with no clear rationale, apparently no long term plan, and a rising death toll. So we're gonna dive into the chaos and what anyone can do to make sense of it, and then we're gonna take a quick dip back into the pool of the Texas pr. The usual caveat. We are taping this on a Thursday morning, so it's pretty much a lock that the world is gonna look very different by the time you hear it. So why don't I just. Let's jump in and get started, guys. People were anticipating some kind of attack on Iran for weeks. As of this taping, we are six days into Operation Epic Fury, as the Defense Department has named it. Given all the buildup, is it playing out as you expected? David, you want take this one first?

[David]

I honestly didn't know what to expect. We had been told nothing. The President is in front of the State of the Union, all of America. He has an opportunity to explain. He has an opportunity then to declare that he's going to go to Congress. We then would have an opportunity to learn what would be the war aims, for example, why would we be doing this? What's the objective? Is it attainable? What's it based on? None of this happened. And so what's happening is you and I and Jamel, we're watching a buildup. And the people who pay very close attention to the news are watching this buildup in the Middle east. So we know something is coming. But buildups in the Middle east are not unusual, Michelle. I mean Controversy and turmoil in the Middle east is not unusual. So from the standpoint of, is this something that's going to lead to the kind of war that we're watching right now? No, I. I did not fully expect that in any way. And so what we have had here is one of the strangest sensations of my entire life, which is we're living in a war that was sprung on us by our own government. I mean, we've been in wars before that were sprung on us by opposing governments, but this is one that was sprung on us by our own government, and not as a very short, limited operation. But this is indefinite duration with not clearly defined objectives, with the potential not just of blowback against our troops in the region, but this is also something that risks civilians in a way that maybe many of our other conflicts haven't, because Iran is a state sponsor of terror, and there are a lot of questions about whether Iran could activate terror networks, for example. And so we are dealing with greater risk to American civilians. We already had what looks like a terror attack in Austin, Texas. We have huge risk to American service members. We have risks to the global economy. And this is just. It was just popped right on top of us. It's a remarkable. A remarkable turn of events. And this is not supposed to be the way this constitutional republic was designed.

[Michelle Cottle]

Yeah, I actually was, I think, sitting around, I can't remember if it was Sunday night or Monday morning, when my sister, who lives in Texas, just texted me. She's like, so we're in a war now. I was like, yep, yep. Welcome to the show. Like, they had no idea this was coming, really. And they, too, you know, they're in Texas. The Austin shooting made them very nervous. You said, where will this go? Jamel, what about you? What's your introduction to all of this been like? What has you scratching your head or wringing your hands?

[Jamelle Bouie]

Yeah. I feel compelled to say that most Americans learned of this Saturday when they woke up in the morning. Right. Like, I woke up, my kids woke me up at 7. I went to go look at what was going on, and it's like, oh, we've started a war in Iran.

[Unidentified Male Commentator]

And to me, I feel like it's

[Jamelle Bouie]

been brushed off, just like, oh, what a quirky thing the president's doing.

[Unidentified Male Commentator]

But I think it gets to the core of the absolute contempt for Democratic accountability and just explanation that the administration has that if you look in the past to when American presidents have announced conflicts and it's from the Oval Office, prime time. Right. It's talking directly to the American people, or in the case before television, it's FDR on the radio at a time when people are tuned in talking directly to the American people, saying, this is the conflict, this is why we're doing it. These are the war aims, an open public thing. Because going to war is supposed to be an open and public and democratic decision. The reason why the Constitution gives Congress the authority to declare war and not the President is precisely because putting that authority into a single person, it makes it opaque, makes it subject to their whims and impulses. And war is such a. It is one of the most consequential decisions the state makes. And so that in a self governing country, that's supposed to be something that the public and its representatives discuss among themselves. And there's a conversation to have about how the United States has over the last 50, 60 years, kind of moved away from formal declarations of war. And the executive branch has adopted a lot of prerogative about the use of military force. But even setting that aside, it is really striking that rather than look, figuratively, I suppose, rather than look the American public square in the eye and say, we're doing this because of X, Y and Z, he goes under cover of darkness at Mar? A Lago, not the White House, not the Oval Office, not some place that belongs to the American public, but to a little private resort in the dead of night and announces this conflict that has already claimed the lives of American soldiers. And that to me is such an abdication of the President's responsibility to the public and it's such a reflection of this President's, again, contempt for the idea that he's answerable to the public.

[Unidentified Speaker]

The lives of courageous American heroes may be lost and we may have casualties. That often happens in war, but we're doing this not for now, we're doing this for the future.

[Michelle Cottle]

And.

[Unidentified Speaker]

And it is a noble mission.

[Unidentified Male Commentator]

The other thing I'll say to wrap this up real quickly is that the fact that there is no. The administration cannot articulate any kind of coherent war aim or strategy. That every time you ask them, they say something different. That to me should be a sign that the actual process in the White House is convoluted and confused and has no particular order. They can't speak clearly because there is no clear process, because they have not planned, because there is no strategy. You're gambling with people's lives. And if you are spending people's lives, you have an obligation to be absolutely clear and certain and have a plan and a strategy for what you're doing. That's what you owe those people.

[Michelle Cottle]

Well, that strikes me as a very key point, especially with this administration, because a key piece of common wisdom about Trump was that until this past year, he was pretty wary of foreign entanglements. That is no longer true whether you're talking about the ouster of Venezuela's president or now this war. So I want your thoughts, aside from the execution so far, on what Trump has been projecting as a leader this past week, David, and how you see that landing with the American people as Jamel was talking about, who were basically kept in the dark until it was sprung on them.

[David]

Yeah. And one thing, just to amplify on Jamel's, I think, excellent explanation of why we have this system. I think we can easily overdo this argument that says, well, he's just standing in the line of recent presidents who've expanded war powers. We don't have a comparable situation where a president has taken us into this kind of conflict without Congress in a long time. I mean, Bush, he had a congressional authorization for Iraq and UN Security Council resolutions. He had a congressional authorization for Afghanistan. H.W. bush had congressional authorization and UN Security Council authorizations and Desert storms. So we're now seeing what it looks like when a divisive president in a divided time fights a war without trying to rally public support, and it falls on the American people just in an almost perfectly partisan way, with 80% or so of Republicans supporting this because they're going to support whatever Trump does. Overwhelming opposition for Democrats, it looks like independents are against this as well. This is already majority disapproval from day one by most polls. Majority disapproval. And, you know, some of the defenders of the administration might say, well, so what? He's got to get this done. This just has to be done. I'm like, hold on a second. Do you not understand how democracies fight wars? Let's just suppose, let's just grant the argument for the moment that this had to be done at this time. Still, you have diminished and minimized your chances of a successful operation by not doing this the right way. Democracies that go to war with public support are very strong. Democracies that go to war without public support, the war effort is very fragile. But again, to circle back to, you know, some of the earlier comments, we don't yet know what success looks like. We have heard 3, 4, 5 different articulations for the purpose. And this matters. I mean, if you're going to go for a regime change, war, that's one kind of strategy. If you're going to go to destroy a nuclear program, that's another kind. If you're going to diminish a ballistic missile capacity, that's something else. And so there is a no situation, I think, where we should say, well, the technicality of congressional approval wasn't followed, but now that doesn't matter. Now let's unite. That's just not the way this works. And look, when I say I'm very critical of Trump, I am not in any way saying that I want the mission of the United States military to fail. What I'm saying is he has set us up. He has created the conditions here for failure by what he is doing. And that is very alarming. It is very dangerous.

[Michelle Cottle]

Okay, I just. Before we go on to goals, which I want to get to, I just want to say that when you talk like that, it gives me bad flashbacks. I did not support the Iraq war. And the reason that it made me so nervous is I did not have confidence that the Bush administration was going to execute it. Well, and you'd get this whole, well, you'd support it if anybody else were doing it. And I'm like, one, I don't know that that's true, but two, it doesn't matter. It's this administration that's doing it. And if you have questions about the way they are, executing just is central to how you expect things to go. And I just, every time I hear people talking about confused motives and confused goals and not really laying out the case openly and all this backroom stuff, I just have these horrible flashb to, oh, my God, we're gonna land ourselves in another forever war. Which was central to Trump's appeal, was that he was gonna keep us out of these forever wars, at least for certain segments of his base. Now, on to goals. What do we know? Like, as you pointed out, they keep telling us different things. What have you heard that strikes you as the real story here? Or is it just impossible to tell?

[Jamelle Bouie]

I don't know if there's a real story here. As David noted, if this is a regime change war, the idea here is to change the leadership, change the nature of the Iranian regime, not just the leadership. Because I think the thing that's important to understand, and I'm not an Iran expert, I basically know enough to be able to follow a conversation. But from what I understand, Iran isn't a personalist dictatorship. This isn't a country where you can take out the leader and everything kind of falls apart because the country so tight, tightly to the leader as Was the case in Iraq. Right. This is a fairly sophisticated state, revolutionary state, where there are multiple power bases, where large segments of the population are actually kind of tied in to the regime itself in very material ways, which is like part of like state ideology. It's to prepare for an attack by the United States. But if the goal is regime change, then you can't really do this with missile strikes. Right. Like a regime change operation is going to require ground forces. And the administration has not even begun to make the case for that.

[Unidentified Male Commentator]

If it's just airstrikes, then it kind of raises the question, what's the point here? Is it to take out the nuclear program or. You tried that once, didn't work out. So why are we striking? And the way I'll put it is like one of the first accounts of civilian casualties was a girls school. So how many girls schools do we

[Jamelle Bouie]

have to destroy to attain whatever objective

[Unidentified Male Commentator]

you're trying to obtain with these airstrikes? And there's no attempt to explain anything in that regard. I want to. There's a thing, there's a point I

[Jamelle Bouie]

want to make really quick.

[Unidentified Male Commentator]

And that relates to how Hegseth, Pete

[Jamelle Bouie]

Hagseth, the defense secretary, has been talking about this in particular. So he has been discussing this conflict

[Unidentified Male Commentator]

in terms such as we're unleashing maximum lethality. You know how he talks. Maximum lethality.

[Jamelle Bouie]

You know, American fighting men are pursuing

[Unidentified Male Commentator]

their mission and they kind of like macho language. If you've ever seen that movie with Tom Cruise playing the kind of like, you know, men's rights style, motivational speaking.

[David]

Magnolia.

[Jamelle Bouie]

Magnolia.

[Unidentified Male Commentator]

That's Magnolia?

[Jamelle Bouie]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Unidentified Male Commentator]

That's hag says ho.

[Jamelle Bouie]

Vibe. God. And so that's its vibe. And that, to an extent, is the president's vibe a little bit, not as much. And then they cannot articulate a strategy.

[Unidentified Male Commentator]

And this just has me thinking, like, how much of this is actually less

[Jamelle Bouie]

about strategic objectives and more about kind

[Unidentified Male Commentator]

of, we have these toys, let's use them and let's demonstrate our strength and

[Jamelle Bouie]

masculinity on the world stage. How much of this is that and

[Unidentified Male Commentator]

how much of it reflects, but the way that the administration understands the world as not like a complex system where you move one thing and a hundred things happen in response, but as like equivalent to almost like a board game as to risk, where we have lots of guys and they have fewer guys, we big, they small, and if we roll the dice and move our guys there, we win. Right. A very kind of flattened, barely two dimensional vision of how the world works. In a sense that other people, other states, other leaders are. The term is non playable characters. They're NPCs. They simply react to us, the protagonists of reality. To me, just observing how they're talking and behaving, this fits this vision of the world, which is, you know, for lack of a better term, insanely dangerous.

[Michelle Cottle]

Well, what's the one thing that everybody knows about the game of Risk? It lasts fricking forever. You can play that game for days and get nowhere. So that's not soothing. Jamal, David, give us your reaction to that.

[David]

So, yeah, I think if you're going to really boil down what is the goal here? I think just to be perfectly blunt, they're trying to pound the Iranian regime to such a degree, hit it to such a degree, damage it to such a degree that it makes it vulnerable to falling, that it makes it very difficult to reconstitute nuclear weapons. And then if an uprising occurs and there's a democracy that breaks out, great. If not, well, then Iran is very, very, very damaged. And I think that one of the problems. Let's just take that even on their own terms, that starts to sound a lot like the strategy that Israel took with Hamas before October 7th. So if you go back and you look at Israel's military approach to Hamas before October 7, it was these periodic strikes that were designed to degrade Hamas, sort of constantly be degrading Hamas. And in the absence of any sort of permanent peace or any sort of permanent agreement or actual forced regime change, that's what you end up doing when you take this approach. You just end up hitting them and then they reconstitute and then you have to decide, do you hit them again? And for a long time, people thought in Israel that was a sustainable strategy with Hamas until October 7th. And so I think the best way to say it is the administration's just hitting them as hard as it can and seeing what happens. And I do want to say, look, none of my arguments against the administration are defenses of this Iranian regime, which is loathsome, evil. And look, if I were in the Senate and you came to me with an attainable goal about how you could destroy their nuclear program, or you came to me with an attainable goal about what you believed you could do to save their ballistic missile program, which is incredibly threatening. You know, there are circumstances where I would absolutely approve of, if I were a senator, the use of force against Iran. Not in this circumstance, not like this.

[Jamelle Bouie]

Can I say real quick as well, just in terms of even being in the situation to begin with, is that the origin point of this is Trump in his first term, tearing up the Iran agreement that the Obama administration negotiated around its nuclear program. A very stringent agreement that wasn't really given a chance to play out. And plenty of voices at the time when Trump withdrew from it said that there's two possible outcomes from ending this attempt to resolve this peacefully through negotiation, diplomacy. And they are Iran either actually successfully builds a nuclear weapon, or we go to war to prevent them from doing it. And I think that this is vindication of that, right? That, like when the administration tore up that agreement, and I would say like an ideologically driven decision to do it, there weren't really many choices left on the board. And neither the Trump administration, its first term nor its second term really seemed to be seriously all that interested in trying to find some diplomatic resolution to the question of the Iranian nuclear program.

[Unidentified Male Commentator]

All. All sort of diplomacy appeared to be

[Jamelle Bouie]

maybe really just like a cover for pursuing this military option, which to me

[Unidentified Male Commentator]

feels ultimately less about strategic necessity and

[Jamelle Bouie]

more just, they really wanted to attack Iran, like, in the same way that, you know, like, I'm really looking forward to going on vacation, right? Like, they. They really wanted to attack Iran.

[Michelle Cottle]

All right, so we're here. We've done this. However it happened. People are increasingly using the term metastasizing across the region, and let me just say, never is that word a good thing. There's no good context for metastasizing. So that's clearly telling you something about how it's being looked at. But going forward, how do we expect all of this to affect our credibility with our allies in the region? Thoughts? Feelings?

[David]

You know, first, I want to say war is a highly contingent exercise. It is something that is extremely unpredictable, and there are few better examples of that than the very month that Trump launches his war against Iran. We got the message that Ukraine reclaimed more territory than it lost for the first time since 2023. In this past month, you want to talk about a unexpected development. Oh, my goodness. You know, virtually every expert, every person who immersed themselves in the balance of power and military forces would have said this was not possible four years ago. Just not possible. So huge grain of salt, huge dose of humility. Let's look at some outcomes. One reasonable best case, the strategy works to some degree. Iran is hit so hard that it either cries uncle or there is some kind of uprising that creates a new government or provisional government. I think that is not the most likely circumstance. I think it is a possibility. It is not the most likely Possibility, I think the most likely possibility here is that regardless of the duration of this war, this particular phase of it, we should not think of it as ending anything with Iran. Iran is a nation that when Iraq invaded it right after the revolution, they righted the ship in that war in part by using mass wave, human, human wave attacks of young men running over minefields to clear minefields. This is a regime that does not care how many people it loses. This is not like a Venezuela where you have a lot of people in this thing for money, perhaps. This is a world in which a lot of people are in this for deep seated, radicalized, theological reasons, willing to expend lives at a level you can't imagine. And so I think the most likely case here is we have expanding chaos. We do an enormous amount of damage to Iran. We do not topple the regime, we do not end the war. And then we are now going to be at a much greater risk for Israel gets, I think for a time being, a much greater sense of security. We push a nuclear weapon way down the timeline, but with unforeseen second and third order effects. And then the worst case scenario is spreading chaos. That we're at the front end of something that looks like a August 1914. One thing leads to another, leads to another kind of cascade. And this is something I just wish people would have more cognizance of. We are in a time of heightened tensions around the world with a massive Chinese military buildup that Xi Jinping had talked about being ready for war by this year, next year, and in some reporting, and here we are touching off additional large scale conflict. Pulling multiple world powers in. This is inherently dangerous.

[Unidentified Male Commentator]

Yeah, I mean, I can't say it

[Jamelle Bouie]

better than David Thayer. This is tremendously dangerous. The August 1914 kind of comparison point, I think it sounds frightening and it should sound frightening. The Balkans of the early 20th century were the Middle east of the 21st century. It's the same kind of pressure cooker of rivalries and interest. Earlier in our conversation, Michelle, you mentioned twice that Trump had ran on being kind of a peace candidate. And I do want to say that I always thought that was that claim from the President was obviously made up, obviously fake that during his first term, although he did not commence a new war, he was very eager to use American military force for strikes and saber rattle. And his conduct in this administration is

[Unidentified Male Commentator]

of a piece with that previous administration, except now in the past where he may have been, he may have had voices in the White House who could say no or advise him to not do these things.

[Jamelle Bouie]

Now, the White House is geared towards

[Unidentified Male Commentator]

fulfilling his every whim and impulse, since there's no one really to say no. He seems to view the use of military force as almost an expression of his own will. And so he wants to do it to demonstrate his own toughness of some sort of.

[Jamelle Bouie]

And during the 2024 election, one of

[Unidentified Male Commentator]

the things you'd hear online a lot was, vote for Trump if you want

[Jamelle Bouie]

to avoid World War three.

[Unidentified Male Commentator]

And it's like, I don't know, if I were trying to start World War 3, this is the kind of thing I'd be doing.

[Michelle Cottle]

Okay, so what viable options do the American people have to have some say in this? I mean, Congress seems to have just thrown up its hands, or at least the Republicans in Congress. But what is to be done for those people who really thought this was going to be a president who wasn't a warmonger? And what kind of say can they have in what happens next or other possible conflicts moving forward?

[Jamelle Bouie]

If I can jump in real quickly. So last I saw, you had some Democrats who were like, you know, maybe we'd vote to authorize military action in Iran now that it's already started.

[Unidentified Male Commentator]

And if I were advising Democratic members

[Jamelle Bouie]

of the Senate in particular, I'd be

[Unidentified Male Commentator]

like, what are you talking about? This is already unpopular.

[Jamelle Bouie]

This is all.

[Unidentified Male Commentator]

It's this, like, we're not even a weekend, and this is about as unpopular as the Iraq war was in 2005. Already unpopular. So there's. There's no political thing to gain here. And I think this maybe sense of responsibility is, like, misguided. What Democrats can do is put forth a united opposition to this war to make clear to the American public that we are against this war, we are against this conflict. We are obviously for the safety of American soldiers, but we're against the war. And when it ends as quickly as possible, and if you put us into office, if you give us majorities in the House and the Senate, we will, if it hasn't already ended, we will end this war. That's the political strategy. It seems incredibly simple. But these are Democrats we're talking about, so.

[Michelle Cottle]

Oh, no, don't. Don't start that, David.

[David]

Yeah, I mean, look, one of the core problems we have here is that this, as we've been talking about, this launching of a war without articulating goals, without articulating really a plan, isn't, as I'm going to say it again, it's not just a technicality. This is fundamental. This is fundamental. And so I would say, even if you are somebody like me who is pretty hawkish in my approach to Iran, this is intolerable. This is utterly intolerable. Because once you initiate hostilities all on your own, you're the President, you do it without consulting Congress, all of a sudden you create a situation where it becomes incredibly difficult for Congress to unwind your mistake without creating additional risks for soldiers who are downrange. How do you sort of say stop when everything's unrolling? American men and women are in mortal danger, all of this. And so you begin to create a situation that has its own momentum. And so I think what you would have to do is you would have to go to the administration and say, we're unwinding this thing and here is how we're going to be unwinding this thing step by step. But again, I take a backseat to no one in my anger at this Iranian regime. Iranian backed militias killed men I served with in Iraq. Okay? But when we're talking about launching a war all on one man's whim, with no articulated goals, with often contradictory objectives, this is intolerable. In the constitutional system, it's intolerable. And Congress has to exert control over this situation.

[Michelle Cottle]

I am not terribly optimistic about this. My position on this is November is coming. We are in a big election year and everything that's going on should factor in to what people do at the polls come November. And you know, I understand that's a long way off, but this is the one kind of foolproof check on an out of control party at this point. So if the Republicans in Congress can't be counted on to make any kind of demands on an out of control president, then it's time for a little electoral punishment. I'm sorry. So before we wrap, speaking off, I just wanna take us back. The primary season has begun. Texas started us off with a bang. There were a couple of other states like North Carolina, Arkansas, but Texas primaries, especially the Senate, we talked a lot about, it was kind of a litmus test for each party or kind of a canary in the coal mine for where they're going. We have some answers at this point. James Talarico won the Democratic nomination outright, beating Jasmine Crockett. While the Republicans are headed to a runoff between John Cornyn and the state's Attorney General, Kid Paxton. Trump is expected to now jump in and do an endorsement. What are your top takeaways from this? I mean, I was there, I looked into it, I followed a little bit Paxton and Cornyn on the trail, I saw how their supporters were sorting themselves. You know, kind of like the old school Republican, last of a dying breed. Paxton strapping himself to Trump as hard as he could, but wildly scandalous. And then on the other side, you had a kind of equal split with Talarico being kind of a more unifying figure, lower key with his style, and Crockett just being the ultimate bomb thrower. So from how this all shook out, give me your top takeaways, but, you know, keep it tight.

[Jamelle Bouie]

My top takeaway is just the astounding Democratic turnout in the primary, considerably more than the previous Senate primaries, and a real sign that, like, Texas Democrats are at least, like, energized and excited. And you can't make predictions about, you know, general election turnout based on primary turnout, but it is noteworthy that having, like a competitive primary between two young and exciting candidates really got Democratic voters, you know, ready to go out and vote and participate in that. I think that's a lesson to Democratic parties across the country that people are looking for fresh faces and they want to be inspired and excited by their candidates. Not only can that produce, like, real energy, but you can, you can carry the energy over into November.

[Michelle Cottle]

Like you, anytime you get participation levels up. I feel like the country is, is doing what it's supposed to do. Yeah, David.

[David]

So a couple of things, I mean, what Jamel said about turnout, I mean, that, that really surprise me to see that. And because I've always been the one that says, ah, Democrats, this is Lucy with the football for you guys. You're always thinking, we're going to turn Texas blue. Do you dump an enormous amount of money into a race that was never going to be that competitive? I mean, the closest was Beto against Ted Cruz in a wave year could tallery go do it. I, it's quite possible. I mean, it's quite possible. Those turnout numbers were something that were surprising to me. But I will tell you, my main takeaway was on the Republican side that Paxton did not get that plurality.

[Michelle Cottle]

It's like a one point gap.

[Jamelle Bouie]

Right.

[David]

I know you grasp for any little ray of light here, Michelle, you grasp for. Because the, the conventional wisdom was he was going to come out of this maybe five or seven points ahead.

[Michelle Cottle]

Yeah.

[David]

And then the pressure would be on Trump to endorse Paxton and then Paxton would roll to the general. And then even though, you know, there was polling showing Paxton and Talarico with Talarico in the lead, Texas Republicans had a lot of reason to be confident that whoever they put forward is going to win. And we came one step, we stepped one step further away from a Ken Paxton as a U.S. senator. And no matter what else happens, if Ken Paxton be celebrating U.S. senator, that is, that's a win for America right there.

[Michelle Cottle]

Okay, on that happy note, David, David has given us reason for a little optimism here. Let's just roll right on in to recommendations this week. Jamel, what do you got for us?

[Jamelle Bouie]

I'm reading a really interesting book called the Detroit the Supreme Court and the Battle for Racial justice in the north by Michelle Adams. And it's a book about the battle to desegregate Detroit schools and how that produced a Supreme Court case that really shaped the nature of school desegregation efforts across the country. So really interesting book looking at mid century Detroit, looking at the kind of northern civil rights movement. And it's extremely well written and like really fascinating. So I would, I would recommend it. The Containment David.

[David]

Okay, the latest season of Dark Winds has come out. So good. This is a series about a Navajo tribal police chief named Jo Lee Porn and I think it's set in the 1970s and it's, you know, it's murder procedurals in the Navajo reservation. And it's so good. It is such a great show and the actor who plays Jo Leaport in the lead is just phenomenal. And so season four is out. Three episodes have dropped. It's really good. You will not regret this. I do not lead you astray, Michelle. I do not lead you astray.

[Michelle Cottle]

You do not. You're very good. All right, so I'm going with a book, although I'm going with a very weird book. It is called More Weight. It is by Ben Wiki and It is a 500ish page graphic novel about the Salem witch trials. I think it took about 10 years for the artist to get all of the artwork done and I'm only a few chapters into it, but so far it is a very strange but a very good read. So I'm just gonna go out there. Go get yourself a 500 page graphic novel about the Salem witchcraft. That's it. And with that, guys, we're going to land this plane. Thank you. It has been a crazy head spinning week. I rely on you to guide me through these things.

[David]

Thanks, Michelle.

[Jamelle Bouie]

Thank you, Michelle.

[Show Announcer]

If you like this show, follow it on YouTube, Spotify or Apple. The opinions is produced by Derek Arthur, Vishaka Darby and Gillian Weinberger. It's edited by Kari Pitkin and Alison Bruzick, mixing by Daniel Ramirez, original music by Isaac Jones, sonia Herrero Pat McCusker, Carol Sabaro, Efim Shapiro and Amin Sahota. The fact check team is Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Locker and Michelle Harris. The head of operations is Shannon Busta. Audience support by Christina Samulewski. The director of opinion shows is Annie Rose Strasser.