The "Crude" Economic Reality of War in Iran

Summary

Podcast Summary: To The Contrary with Charlie Sykes
Episode: The "Crude" Economic Reality of War in Iran
Date: March 10, 2026
Host: Charlie Sykes
Guest: Nicholas Grossman (University of Illinois, editor of ARC Digital)

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Episode Overview

This episode tackles the rapidly escalating war between the United States and Iran under the Trump administration, focusing on its political, military, and especially economic consequences. Host Charlie Sykes and guest Nicholas Grossman explore the confusing leadership, global economic fallout, strategic errors, the Russian alliance with Iran, and the impact on both international relations and U.S. domestic politics. The conversation is marked by concern over the administration's lack of strategy, the dangerous gamification of war, and how political calculations may be influencing, or even driving, catastrophic policy choices.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The "Gamification" and Detachment of War (01:30–06:28)

• White House Tone-Deaf Messaging:
  The Trump administration released “hype videos” for the war, featuring superhero and action movie clips, video game soundtracks, and a tone that trivializes real violence ([02:11]).
  • Quote: "The mashup of real war and video games and action movies really did strike me... blurring the line between real and not real. And so much of the, the White House, the maga movement, a lot of the online Right. Blur those a lot."
    — Nicholas Grossman (03:54)
• Dangerous Detachment:
  Both hosts emphasize that making light of war, blurring fact and fantasy, is reckless and echoes tactics seen in extremist propaganda, such as ISIS ([05:10]).

2. The War in Iran: No Clear Goal or Strategy (06:28–12:18)

• Strategic Confusion and Hubris:
  Grossman notes the administration seems to have “no clue why we’re there or what we’re doing,” citing the difference between Iran’s ideological government and the regime change logic that may have operated in Venezuela ([06:28]).
  • Quote: "Iran is not like Venezuela... it's a religious theocracy... you can't just remove the leader and expect things to change."
    — Nicholas Grossman (06:28)
• Unrealistic Demands:
  Sykes questions Trump’s insistence on “unconditional surrender,” which Grossman calls "badass-sounding but not well thought through" ([11:19]), arguing it only rallies Iran’s hardliners and prolongs conflict.

3. Consequences of the War: Economic and Diplomatic Chaos (12:18–17:20)

• Oil Prices & Economic Fallout:
  Oil spikes past $100/barrel, triggering global market turmoil and intensifying domestic affordability crises ([01:30], [23:08]).
• No Diplomatic Offramp:
  By demanding unconditional surrender and burning diplomatic bridges, the U.S. strengthens the resolve of Iranian hawks and discourages negotiation ([13:07]).
  • Quote: "The US has given them no off ramp, no possibility to make some sort of face saving concession... The Iranians are probably thinking about how to raise the cost of this war for everyone, so it becomes a cautionary tale."
    — Nicholas Grossman (13:07)

4. Russia’s Alliance with Iran, U.S. Response, and Political Implications (15:49–21:08)

• Russian Aid to Iran:
  The U.S. administration is revealed to be shrugging off the intelligence that Russia is helping Iran target U.S. and Israeli forces. Rather than imposing new sanctions, Trump lifts oil sanctions on Russia ([15:49]).
• Criticism from Both Hosts and Others:
  • Quote: "What the hell must Russia have on Trump, that he would look the other way while Russia is providing real time intelligence that targets American servicemen... None dare call it treason."
    — Charlie Sykes (16:41)
  • Quote: "It's even more than a pass... they are encouraging Russia to do it."
    — Nicholas Grossman (19:03)
• Irony and Incoherence:
  U.S. seeks drone aid from Ukraine, but aids Russia (which is helping Iran kill Americans), revealing a strategy “lack” and chaotic priorities ([21:08]).

5. The Political Impact: An Unpopular War and Domestic Risk (21:08–28:00)

• No Rally-around-the-flag Effect:
  Trump’s approval remains low; the public is skeptical, and there is little support for the war or belief in its necessity ([21:08]).
• Economic Hardship & Political Blowback:
  The war worsens inflation and living costs, likely hurting Trump’s and the GOP’s midterm chances ([23:08]).
  • Quote: "We've never seen somebody try to go into an election by making the economy worse."
    — Nicholas Grossman (23:08)

6. Decision-Making Process: Ignoring Warnings ([24:57]–[27:16])

• Warnings Ignored:
  Reports leak that both intelligence and some GOP politicians (e.g. Marco Rubio, J.D. Vance) warned Trump against war with Iran, but he dismissed them ([24:57]).
  • Quote: "So did Donald Trump not hear the warnings? Did he hear the warnings and reject them? What does this tell you about the decision making process right now at the highest levels of the US Government?"
    — Charlie Sykes (25:22)
• Rejection of Expertise:
  Grossman details Trump's pattern of "rejection of expertise," ignoring “eggheads” and relying on bluster ([26:06]).

7. The Dangers of a Wartime President and Emergency Powers ([29:23]–[32:57])

• Potential Use of Crisis Tactics:
  Sykes raises fears Trump might welcome chaos to exploit emergency powers and interfere with elections ([29:23]).
• Grossman’s Counter:
  While vigilance is warranted, Grossman is "skeptical" that Trump’s hand is actually strengthened; authoritarianism gains power if people cede it in their minds, not just through legal channels ([30:19]).

8. SAVE Act and Election Interference ([32:57]–[38:51])

• National Voter ID Push:
  Trump pushes a stringent “SAVE Act” requiring in-person, documentary proof of citizenship for registration and updates, which would disrupt registration and suppress votes on a mass scale ([32:57]).
  • Quote: "It would create chaos again. It creates chaos and concern. And the goal is very clearly voter suppression on a mass level."
    — Charlie Sykes (36:08)
• Legislative Prospects:
  Grossman and Sykes doubt it will pass, as Senate Republicans are unlikely to abolish the filibuster for it, and public opposition is strong ([38:51]).

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• "[The war] really feels like a stranger choice as we go along, especially as the global markets are melting down... and you have to ask: why this war now?"
  — Charlie Sykes (05:26)
• "When it comes to things like domestic messaging or wars of words, that doesn't really have much consequences. But when it comes to a real war, we're seeing all the problems that come up without a strategy."
  — Nicholas Grossman (12:18)
• "We could have had smarter fascists... we've never seen somebody try to go into an election by making the economy worse."
  — Nicholas Grossman (23:08)
• "Did Donald Trump not hear the warnings? Did he hear the warnings and reject them? What does this tell you about the decision making process right now?"
  — Charlie Sykes (25:22)
• "Authoritarianism to a decent extent takes place in our heads... if we think the government has more power than it actually does... we grant it that power..."
  — Nicholas Grossman (32:57)

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Important Timestamps

• 01:30 – Show proper begins; Sykes sets up the week’s turmoil and introduces Nicholas Grossman
• 02:11 – Criticism of White House’s “gamified” war videos
• 05:26 – Sykes notes reality-detached war logic, growing confusion about strategy
• 06:28 – Analysis of the Trump administration’s assumptions about Iran
• 13:07 – Effects of the “no off-ramp” strategy for Iran, implications for hardliners
• 15:49 – Bush admin’s Iraq War vs Trump’s Iran war: Preparation and consequences
• 16:41 – Russia helping Iran; Trump’s indifference sparks “none dare call it treason” comment
• 23:08 – War’s domestic political disaster for Trump as oil/market crisis bites
• 24:57 – Warnings to Trump, decision to ignore expertise
• 29:23 – Sykes’ “darker scenario”: War as pretext for election manipulation
• 30:19 – Grossman on not overestimating or underestimating authoritarian overreach
• 32:57 – SAVE Act, national voter ID bill as a vehicle for mass voter suppression
• 36:08 – Doubts about the SAVE Act’s passage; filibuster unlikely to be removed

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Overall Tone and Takeaways

• Tone: Uneasy, urgent, and critical. Both Sykes and Grossman use candid language and historical analogies, underlining the gravity of the moment without succumbing to hysteria.
• Message:
  • The Trump administration’s handling of the Iran war is marked by strategic incoherence, dangerous political theatrics, and reckless disregard for both expert counsel and democratic norms.
  • These missteps create catastrophic global and domestic consequences, with few signs of corrective leadership.
  • The political manipulation of war, emergency powers, and the voting process pose deep risks for democracy, but the guest counsels measured vigilance over panic.
  • Fundamental economic realities—especially oil shocks—cannot be spun away, and may prove decisive both for the war and the administration’s future.

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For listeners seeking context, strategic analysis, and a cogent breakdown of how foreign and domestic crises are intertwined in 2026, this episode offers a sobering but insightful discussion.

Transcript

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[Charlie Sykes]

Welcome back to the to the Contrary podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. Oil prices are spiking at $100 a barrel. The war continues to spread. Donald Trump has apparently decided he's going to lie about the bombing of the school children in Iran, meanwhile, demanding unconditional surrender while declaring mission accomplished. Where we and what kind of a week is this going to be? And joining us to start off the week, our good friend Nicholas Grossman from the University of Illinois, the editor of ARC Digital. Nicholas, how are you?

[Nicholas Grossman]

I'm doing pretty well, all things considered.

[Charlie Sykes]

How are you, all things considered? Well, I'm going to spare everybody my rant about daylight savings time. It's an annual event around here, but we have too many other things to start with. Could we start with something that I think that some people are going to think is relatively trivial? And I wrote about this in my newsletter yesterday. There are things that are trivial and yet the triviality of mind of the people who are running this war is not trivial. We had a couple of incidents. Donald Trump shows up at Dover Air Force Base on Sunday wearing that Trump branded USA cap. Again, in the great scheme of things, not great, but as an act of justice, overwhelming disrespect. But I wanna remind people of something that happened last week. And I know you saw this, Nicholas. The White House official account put out these videos, these, these hype videos. Justice The American way. Caption read of a video posted on Thursday night along with an American flag and fire emoji. Video includes clips from superhero movies, Top Gun, Braveheart, you know, electronic music underneath the clips. It ends with a voiceover saying FL victory. And on which is audio from the victory from the game Mortal Kombat. Then because they thought this was so funny, on Friday they put out another video from, you know, Grand Theft Auto with the caption, ah, bleep, here we go again. You know, as Tammy Duckworth, you know, Iraq veterans senator from Illinois said, you know, war is not a fucking video game. And just the juvenile mentality behind the fact that the White House would post that. The official White House account.

[Nicholas Grossman]

I was pretty weirded out by that too. I mean, things like you mentioned the baseball cap at what's supposed to be a dignified ceremony and he's hawking merch and that's, you know, highly undignified and disrespectful. But it's also something I guess we've kind of come to accept from this president or maybe shouldn't be okay with, but at least, you know, we're not surprised by. But the mashup of real war and video games and action movies really did strike me because it is something where it's blurring the line between real and not real. And so much of the, the White House, the maga movement, a lot of the online. Right. Blur those a lot. And it has gotten them into, and gotten the country and the world into highly consequential trouble, which is that things like, you know, people don't respawn, they don't come back. The, the death is real. Real world violence usually doesn't look cool and it has tons of other reverberations that then have to be managed. That in games are not part of that. And they did this with ICE videos also of hyping up different members of ICE and trying to make it look cool. And the thing that it reminded me the most of where I saw that type of video game action movie mashup with real war was in ISIS recruitment videos.

[Charlie Sykes]

Oh, that's great. That's wonderful.

[Nicholas Grossman]

They did similar kind of first person shooter videos and blurred the two to try to make it seem cooler. And it is getting more detached from reality in a way that both on its own is weirding me out, but has broader consequences because it's how they're not taking very serious stuff seriously.

[Charlie Sykes]

No, I agree. And they're calling it gamifying the war. Gamifying the war. The one thing that at a time of war, you do not want is for the leaders to blur that line between reality and fantasy, to become detached from reality. And yet there's a lot of indications that this war feels detached from reality. Donald Trump, I think, thought this was going to be one and done, you know, clean, you know, clean, quote, unquote, clean, like in Venezuela, you know. And you know, the cliche is this is a war of choice. But Nicholas, this really feels like a stranger choice as we go along, especially as the global markets are melting down. I mean, the oil prices are spiking, the markets are crashing, the world is saying, what? What the hel. And you have to ask why this war now? And we are in the second, third week of this war and we still don't have a clear clue why we're there or what we're doing.

[Nicholas Grossman]

I'm pretty sure they don't know either. Meaning the Trump administration, the people in charge of the war, that the things that they've already done wrong are ones that we, the everybody who studies this stuff, who's been following Iran or various military tactics, different US Strategy with Iran for decades, has been warning about that Iran is not like Venezuela in that the Iranian government are ideologues, they are religious. It's a religious theocracy. They are a movement. They're people who believe in what they're doing, at least a bunch of them. And so they don't have something where you can just remove the leader. And it's not a personalist regime like say, you know, Saddam Hussein or Kim Jong Un, but then you can remove them and replace somebody else. And it looks like in Venezuela, all the US did was remove Maduro. Everybody moved up a spot, the regime is intact. And in fact, Trump was even in trying to parry some reporters question, bragging about how the regime in Venezuela is intact. And that as if then what was the point of that war? But it seems like the timing with Iran, a lot of it is that the Venezuela operation went pretty smoothly and as far as military operations go, and that they thought this would be relatively easy. And the 12 day war with Israel and with the US bombing Iranian nuclear sites last year also made them think that it would be easy, that it would perhaps be like that, or that the Iranians would fold. Trump really seemed to talk himself into this. And they do this with a lot of foreign policy stuff. The idea of bullying is going to work. You just sort of bully people and they back down. And they often seem surprised when this isn't the Case, we saw this with Greenland and with NATO.

[Charlie Sykes]

Right, right.

[Nicholas Grossman]

Didn't do it. And we've seen it with both Mexico and Canada at various times where they seem surprised that those countries aren't eager to bow down to us. And then with Iran, they express surprise. Steve Witkoff, the main negotiator for Trump, expressed surprise that the Iranians hadn't made a deal. And it was not at all surprising to people who'd been following this issue for a while because Trump, in his first term, ripped up the deal that Iran had signed with the United States, which was a bunch of, it led to a bunch of domestic arguments in Iran whether they should do it or not. And the people who said that you can't trust America, they'll, they'll renege on this, they'll take whatever we give them, and then they'll come back demanding more. Those people won the argument, won the argument internally thanks to Trump. And so no, they didn't just make some sort of deal or capitulate. They have big domestic and international incentives, not

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[Charlie Sykes]

Well, let's talk about the latest developments. Number one, Donald Trump refusing to rule out boots on the ground. I'm still skeptical about that because that just reeks of quagmire and endless wars. What do you make of his declaration? He made two contradictory declarations. One, mission accomplished said we didn't need any help from the Brits because it's already won. So mission accomplished. On the other hand, demanding unconditional surrender. And I think the people ought to step back and recognize that unconditional surrender was, believe it or not, was a controversial decision in World War II because most wars until then had ended with some sort of a negotiation. And unconditional surrender seems like the formula for extending this war much further. What do you think of that particular demand now? Trump can always back off from it. He can always, you know, fudge it. But still, you know, that was, that was the big declaration over the weekend.

[Nicholas Grossman]

I think it shows more that they don't have a strategy and don't really know what they're doing and are thinking about this the way that they think about various domestic political issues.

[Charlie Sykes]

It sounds good, right? It sounds for sort forceful.

[Nicholas Grossman]

It sounds cool. That unconditional surrender, you can associate that with demands on Japan and Germany in World War II. And even then there were some conditions that the US agreed to or that's what the union demand demanded of the Confederacy at Appomattox. And so I don't know, it sounds cool, it sounds kind of badass. And it doesn't sound like he thought it through where the, you know, the war was. It's been about Iran's nuclear program or Iran's missile program, or Iran's support for terrorism, or it's about regime change, or it's about democracy, or it' about attacks on protesters, or it's about unconditional surrender, or it's about Israel security or it's about allied security or they really do not seem to know. And when it comes to things like domestic messaging or wars of words, that that doesn't really have much consequences. They can get away with it. But when it comes to a real war, we're seeing all the problems that come up without being able to have a strategy because you need to link military operations to a broader political goal or it makes no sense.

[Charlie Sykes]

Well, also you were talking before about the internal debate among the Iranians after Trump tore up the deal. So when he announces unconditional surrender, basically saying there's nothing that we can negotiate and if in fact the dead enders in this regime have decided that we're just simply gonna hunker down, we're gonna take these blows, we're going to survive. This certainly strengthens their hands because he's essentially saying, I'm not negotiating anything with you, you can't make any comp. So it's either you resist or die. Which would seem to, I would say, you know, send a message to the Iranians that they might as well continue to fight and shoot off these drones. It would encourage the hawks in Iran, right?

[Nicholas Grossman]

Absolutely. That the US has given them no off ramp, no possibility to make some sort of face saving concession, something that the US can call a victory and then there can be a debate, diplomatic resolution. The new Ayatollah Khomeini son. So the second Khomeini Ayatollah is reportedly more hardline than his father. He fought in the Iran Iraq war. He's close to hardline factions in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and a. So both the US has signaled to them that if you, there's no possible off ramp for you, that it's either, you know, surrender and die or fight. Do the best you can. But also those Iranian hardliners especially, but Iran in general will be thinking about what next. So already they must be thinking about how do they make it that the cost of this war is so high for so many different people, especially in the region, that no matter how it turns out, it becomes a cautionary tale, becomes something where anytime anybody's talking about war on Iran again, you have people like the Saudis and the UAE and also factions inside the United States or the Europeans and Qatar and you know, Kuwait and others who are then saying, no, no, no, bad idea. You remember what happened last time. And so the Iranians are probably thinking about that now also. And they don't need to win in the sense of, you know, conquer Washington. They just need to survive to show that they took the hit, they did some damage and they're still around. And not trying to remove them is going to be extremely difficult if that is even is the plan. That's where you mentioned boots on the ground. But that's what you need to do to try to actually do regime change.

[Charlie Sykes]

That it's a big country. Yeah.

[Nicholas Grossman]

You contrast this with Iraq war, which had of course a lot of problems with it. And I think there were a lot of, you know, poor decisions made in it. And I thought it was a mistake to do in the first place. But even so, the Bush administration put in the effort. They both followed the Constitution and then conducted themselves more or less like professionals in that they presented a case of public for the war to the public. They got a vote in Congress, it was bipartisan super majority vote to authorize it. They had a lot of public support. They lined up some allies, they set up, positioned 150 some odd thousand US troops, additionally 30,000 British troops, some from Australia, from Poland. And then within two months after removing Saddam, they had a UN resolution that was authorizing the occupation. And then a bunch of others sent resources and sent troops. And that was because they did all this work and there were still so many problems with it. I don't want to try to downplay the problems of the way the Bush administration handled the Iraq war, but that highlights how, how much worse the Trump administration has been conducting the Iran where they have.

[Charlie Sykes]

Well, that's right. And that is a, that's a cautionary tale, you know, for, for any of this, and I want to get to the politics of this a little bit later. Maybe I probably should have actually started with this because one of the, the, one of the developments, actually two developments over the weekend that are kind of mind bending. You know, the fact that we realize we might need the help of Ukraine in dealing with the, with the drones. But also, what do you make of this very strange series of events where we find out that the Russians have been providing intelligence to the Iranians to help them target American and Israeli forces. So the Russians are helping our enemies in this war. And when Donald Trump and the White House are asked about it, they basically shrugged it off. They have no problem, no criticism, no sanctions whatsoever. In fact, in the wake of learning that the Russians are actually helping target American servicemen, Donald Trump lifts oil sanctions on Russia. And so the whole question of, like this relationship between Trump and Putin has been this constant theme for the past 10 years. But Adam Kinziger was saying, what the hell must Russia have on Trump, that he would look the other way while Russia is providing real time intelligence that targets American servicemen. I mean, this, you know, I don't want this to get lost in the, in the rush of events because this is an extraordinary moment. None dare call it treason. What do you think?

[Nicholas Grossman]

So first, the Russia helping Iran is the least surprising thing in the world. Another good example of stuff that we knew well in advance and that were part of arguments for years. So one, we know about Russian Iranian cooperation, things like Iran helping Russia with drones for the Ukraine war, that's recent. But also the US intelligence in the 1980s when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan was chomping at the bit to be able to do to the Russians what Russian intelligence did to the US In Vietnam. And so the idea that the United States was helping Ukraine resist Russia for a few years, Iran was helping Russia attack Ukraine in that period of time, and then Russia wouldn't help. Iran tried to attack the United States. This is something that's very beneficial for them because even at just a pure military level, any resources and focus that go into the Iran war are not then available to go to help Ukraine. And we'll also strengthen arguments about how the US can't help Ukraine because it needs its weapons for other things, might even get some of the Europeans now to move some of their air defense assets elsewhere.

[Charlie Sykes]

Okay, I understand why Russia wants to help Iran. Why? But this moment where Trump is asked about it, I mean, Phillips o' Brien wrote, Trump is today telling every member of the US Military that it is okay with him If Russia helps Iran, kill them, everyone. Once again, Americans. Once again, Americans. Trump looks at the US Military personnel as suckers and losers that he can sacrifice for his own glory and profit. This is who leads you. The fact that, you know, we keep asking, is there some red line for Donald Trump? This would normally be a red line for an American president. It is an extraordinary moment that Donald Trump is basically giving a pass once again to his bff, Vladimir Putin.

[Nicholas Grossman]

It's even more than a pass in that they are encouraging Russia to do it. So with the negative effect on oil prices, one of the ways that the US has tried to scramble and respond to that is by then allowing more oil sales to let more Russian oil sales let more oil get on the market. And that can potentially try to reduce the price shock. But it also means that the communications of Russia is effectively, if you help Iran beat America or at least do better against America in this war, then the United States will give you economic benefits, will help you out economically. And so, I mean, I don't know about, say with have something on him that that implies that Trump has been coerced into doing this, he's acting against his will in some fashion. And I'm pretty skeptical of that, that it seems there's a whole lot of useful idiot explanation for it in which he clearly has a big affinity for Putin and Russia, where there's an element of jealousy of Putin in that. Remember in 2022 when Russia first invaded, Trump was very positive about the war. He called it savvy and genius and said, oh, that's wonderful. And probably, I think because he expected the same sort of just bullying. Here, let me show you a bunch of toughness and force and you'll fold. And then it didn't work. So, yeah, it's a lot of gift to Russia in many different ways. But I think there's a good stupidity, selfishness, just messaging, just trying to get through the day's news cycle, not having any long term plan, just putting out any fire that happens to come up of trying to bullshit his way through it, where no matter what the real consequences are, that maybe if people don't pay attention, he can lie enough about it that it'll be okay for him. And all of that fits also. And so whether to some extent we have a compromise president or just one that really looks up to Putin and wants to be like him and is constantly screwing up in ways that greatly hinder US national interest, but maybe in some way advance his personal interest, which has always been his priority.

[Charlie Sykes]

Okay, so we're at this point of this great irony, and again, this is Phillips o', Brien, is that over the weekend, while the US Was apparently begging for aid from Ukraine dealing with these drones, it was providing protection and a windfall of support for the power trying to destroy Ukraine, Russia. So we have a situation that the Ukrainians are helping the US and the US Is helping protecting Russia. This must be the lead story of the week. But it goes to this larger theme that you've been describing of sort of the lack of a plan and the, the chaos, the various things. So let's just talk about the politics of all of this because, you know, number one, you know, Trump's numbers are very low. We're not seeing the kind of rally around the flag phenomenon you would normally see. Usually when a nation goes to war, there is at least majority support, sometimes, you know, large majority support. That is not the case here. They didn't make the case. So this starts off as an unpopular war, but now, as you and I are speaking, it feels as if there's this here it comes crude reality shock as people realize all of the consequences of this. So here you have Donald Trump going into the midterm elections. He's underwater. They're facing a potential shellacking. One of the issues that's killing him is affordability. And what does he do besides, you know, reimpose the tariffs? He now starts a war which is causing a global economic meltdown and will probably result in higher prices across the board. I mean, in terms of political choices, this really becomes, should we say, problematic for Donald Trump. And we keep asking, why did he do it? Why did he do it now? It seems as if it's a war of choice. He could have done it earlier, he could have waited later, but he's done it now. And it feels as if it's a perfect storm of political disaster domestically for Donald Trump.

[Nicholas Grossman]

It does. One of the sort of saving graces, I guess, could put it, of dealing with America's democratic backsliding is that we could have had smarter fascists. We could have had ones who tried to really boost the economy, throw money at their supporters. There were a bunch of, even the ones that we used as models. Orban in Hungary spent years consolidating power institutionally and trying to the economy before acting more openly corrupt and before having more negative economic effects. So not only. Yeah, it's. We've never seen somebody try to go into an election by making the economy worse. And I think probably the answer is they either didn't think through that at all, or thought it wouldn't have an effect, that it would be over soon. And now they're also again left scrambling to try to do it. But this is not something that the economic damage they're going to be able to fix. It reminds me of COVID in that sense that global energy markets are something that is too big for Trump to be able to lie his way through. It has too many act on too many second third order effects of things like the one people aren't even talking about yet, but is the other petroleum products. So not just things like oil and energy, but other things that are components in various metallurgy processes and in agriculture. And the more there is this bottleneck which is going to be very difficult to open up because the main thing is not can the US Navy get there, it's will insurance companies agree to underwrite the tankers and will the shipping companies be willing to take the risk of it? And that needs very little to be able to disrupt, which is again some reason why a lot of us warn against full on war with Iran. But so these economic effects are going to not go away within a few weeks.

[Charlie Sykes]

Okay, so to this point about the warnings, I mean, we were getting more and more reports of intelligence warnings that, hey, you know, this is not gonna be easy. This is not, this regime is not going to easily fall. There are leaks coming out of people saying, well, I was cautioning him, I was telling him to be cautioned. There's a story that even Marco Rubio and J.D. vance were cautioning or warning Donald Trump against it. And he basically said, fuck it, I'm gonna do it anyway. So in terms of the decision making process, we've had this ongoing conversation about, you know, the adults in the room and Trump 1.0 and there are not adults around. But apparently there were alarm bells going off in the intelligence community in the Pentagon about the cost of this war. And it either. So again, we don't know. So did Donald Trump not hear the warnings? Did he hear the warnings and reject them? What does this tell you about the decision making process right now at the highest levels of the US Government? Because we were warned and all of this was in many ways predictable. And yet the President of the United States decided to go ahead with guns blazing anyway.

[Nicholas Grossman]

I mean, I am not totally confident that the things that say Rubio presents in the press, or maybe his staff leaks to the press about all the smart things that he said behind the scenes is actually what he said when he was in a room privately with Donald Trump, as opposed to, sure, sure, yes, sir, you're so smart, whatever you say, or some variation like that. But even so. So a lot of them are already. General Kaine is. Another one is getting on the record of, no, I didn't say that. And Trump claimed that Kaine said it would be easy and then Kaine leaked it that no, he hadn't. But that means either, I suppose it could be that, you know, Trump is delusional or he's just shutting out other voices. But a lot of it speaks to all the rejection of expertise, rejection of the deep state and any people who had said along the way that various things wouldn't work, that it's, I don't know, it's eggheads like me who said that ending the Iran nuclear deal was putting us on a path either to war or nuclear Iran and, or who said, you know, various other things about how, I don't know, Trump committed a lot of crimes and attempted a coup and should go to jail. And look, he went and got power again.

[Charlie Sykes]

So all those things.

[Nicholas Grossman]

So they discount tons of that. But I think a lot of it speaks to that, just thinking that they can bluster their way through. And actually speaking of bluster, I had a thought, just more about the midterms, which is that it's possible that they already thought that they were in such trouble or maybe were in such a bubble that they're discounting it regardless, but that the economy's bad, the polls are bad, they're likely to lose. And so they've been trying a lot of manipulation and malfeasance already. And so it's possible that they didn't really think much about the political implications of the Iran war, or they maybe thought this will be a, you know, a glorious triumph and then we'll get to look strong and run on that.

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[Charlie Sykes]

Can I give you a darker scenario? Because I think in many ways paranoia is mental health these days. There's a school of thought and I am at least curious or adjacent to that school of thought things that that Donald Trump wants a crisis that will allow him to declare an emergency, which will open up various powers to mess with the midterm elections. I know that David Frum has made this suggestion. One of the scariest things about Donald Trump as a wartime president is that wartime presidents in American history have done some, you know, constitutionally questionable things. Donald Trump as a wartime president wielding what he thinks are the emergency powers is a look that's a real prospect. So at one level, the more chaos, the more emergencies, the stronger Trump's hand is. Your thoughts?

[Nicholas Grossman]

I'm skeptical on that last part of stronger his hand is because they already violate tons of laws, violate norms, lie as an excuse to try to do a lot of these things. We're already conducting all sorts of manipulation of the midterms. Not only things like gerrymandering, but voter intimidation or trying to do voter disenfranchisement or potentially posing a threat to polling places, like, you know, sending ICE goons out to polling places in minority areas, for example. And they were already moving a lot in that direction. So while it I it is true about all the dangers of Donald Trump as a wartime president, a lot of that because of the war itself or things that he might try and excuse at home. But the situation at home doesn't change much, which is that they are trying it they've already dismantled a lot of the checks and balances of liberal democracy. They've already broken rule of law and they are limited by their capacity, not by their willingness to do it. It's how many people can they get to go along? How many and this is a similar thing, like with Trump in the Insurrection act that so many times talks about or this with Minneapolis. It's I'm going to invoke the Insurrection Act? Or what if we do it? And he's always doing it like a TV producer teasing a thing that's coming, never actually does it. Seems to like having he's still going to do it. A reaction of people going, oh, no, don't invoke the Insurrection Act. But what would that actually do? It authorizes the president to have military forces in support in domestic operations. And the Trump had already been trying to do that and already has a army of secret police that they then sic on various cities, especially ones where they don't agree with the politics. And so the Insurrection act would not really get him a much greater ability to do that. It would be something that would be tied up in the courts. There would be questions about orders. There were the courts already that reversed National Guard deployments and that the administration has followed that order. So this is where I get, I do think paranoia is a healthy expression in these days, but where I get wary of it is that authoritarianism to a decent extent takes place in our heads and that the if we think the government has more power than it actually does, and we start acting as if it has that power because we're afraid of it, then we grant it that power, or at least some of it. And so while I do think vigilance is warranted and it's good to think through the negative scenarios, it's also important not to go too far and grant them greater capabilities than they have demonstrated or that they physically have.

[Charlie Sykes]

Yeah, I think that's a balanced approach. The authoritarian wants to live in your head and tell you that resistance is futile because they are so all powerful. On the other hand, I think that we have suffered from a lack of imagination of what Donald Trump is capable of doing, what he is willing to do. And I don't want to make that mistake again. I don't want to fall into that belief that, oh, he's going to make a lot of noise after the 2020 election, but nothing really serious is going to happen. And I think I was pretty adjacent to that particular point of view until very close to the end. So, again, caution against hysteria or numbness on the one hand, but also the lack of imagination on this. Speaking of the election interference again over the weekend, it's kind of amazing all the things that happen. Donald Trump is apparently going all out for something called the Save Act. I have not talked about this a lot. This is their act. They're pushing it as a national voter ID. Now. Voter IDs are actually quite popular, but the Save act is much, much more extensive than that. It would basically require every American citizen to produce documentary proof of citizenship, a passport or birth certificate to register to vote, not just new voters. Anytime you update your registration, you move to a new apartment, you change your name after a marriage or divorce, you switch your party affiliation under this law, you have to show up in person at your election office with your documents. Every single time election officials face criminal charges. It kills mail in voter registration entirely for practical purposes. So Donald Trump is now saying that he will not sign any legislation until this is passed. You have Ken Paxton down in Texas saying he will only drop out of the Senate race if the Senate Republicans abolish the filibuster to pass the SAVE Act. So there's a lot of political capital being put on this one piece of legislation. How big a deal would this be in the midterms?

[Nicholas Grossman]

I think it's hard to say in that it could be potentially damaging. Big deal. But it's not clear entirely who, who that would help in partisan terms, that part of it is driven by Trump MAGA conspiracy theories about both voting by mail and voter fraud, of where it's hard to know how much do they believe their own bullshit about the tons of voters that, you know, fake voters in all different sorts of places or illegal immigrants voting, which is incredibly low numbers and for very obvious reasons that the punishment of getting caught doing that is very large. The benefits of one vote almost never swing an election. And so the benefit is virtually non existent. Nobody knows that you did it. So it's not like they can pay you or thank you or something afterwards for it. But so those numbers are very low. But they do seem to, the administration seems to believe it, at least to some extent. So where if they end up passing it, where it would disrupt things like vote by mail. Well, a lot of older people vote by mail and a number of older people vote well.

[Charlie Sykes]

It would create chaos again. It creates chaos and concern. And the goal is very clearly voter suppression on a mass level. And I'm guessing the question is whether or not Republicans will be able be willing, so willing to do Trump's bidding that they would, I mean, for us to get to the point of the impact they would have to abolish the filibuster to ram this through on a strict partisan line. And that strikes me as at least a three or four alarm fire for democracy, that the Republican Party is that committed to supporting Donald Trump's election interference campaign.

[Nicholas Grossman]

So yeah, I find that very concerning. I really don't want to Sound like I'm downplaying it. And I think the chaos point is a good one because even if no matter how it plays out, what it would do was throw a lot of things into question, allow greater opportunities to challenged results by claiming that areas didn't follow this new law, that which they might not even have enough time to logistically prepare for if it gets passed. But there looks to be quite a bit of opposition to it. One, because Trump is much like with the war with Iran changing the goals on the fly. There was a another thing added in for where he demanded something having to do with trans people added in to this act. I don't know if the House would have to pass it again. The Democrats at least in the Senate and I saw Senate leader Chuck Schumer has been adamant on, you know, where we are blocking this and if that means that there's no additional legislation, so what? There's no supplemental funding for the Iran war, there's no more funding for DHS and the network of concentration camp like warehouses that they're building. For Democrats perspective, for the pro democracy opposition perspective, those terms are acceptable, but we'll see if he can actually get it through. I think on balance, if I had to guess, I'd say that probably not that it's going to run into roadblocks in the Senate, both that the Democrats will put up enough of a roadblock and Republicans, especially as they're starting to look to the future and think that they're going to lose their majority, are not going to be eager to get rid of the filibuster now, just as they weren't in earlier during the government shutdown, for example, and where the Democrats held for a while, Republicans could have easily passed that themselves, just gotten rid of the filibuster and they kept it. So I would be surprised, especially as Trump's political capital is draining from there's economic damage and there's the war and the Republicans, even if they do have a cult like devotion to him, that doesn't mean that they're going to do something if they think it's going to jeopardize their personal job prospects too much.

[Charlie Sykes]

Yeah, well they've had plenty of chances to abolish the filibuster in the past. Every political party falls in love with a filibuster at certain times. If Republicans did have the votes to pull the filibuster, this would have happened before now. And you know, this is one of the very few issues on which Senate leadership has been willing to basically tell Donald Trump no, I know what you want, but I'm not going to give it to you. I think this is going to be another big test and right now I don't think that Donald Trump has the political capital to be able to ram that through. Nicholas Grossman, thank you so much. It is always great talking with you. Thank you for joining us me on today's podcast.

[Nicholas Grossman]

Sure, it's my pleasure.

[Charlie Sykes]

Great to be with you and thank you all for listening to this episode of to the Contrary podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. We continue to do this for the duration because it is so important to remind ourselves that we are not the crazy ones. Thank you.

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[Charlie Sykes]

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[Charlie Sykes]

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