← To The Contrary with Charlie Sykes
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- [00:00]
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Phillips O'Brien
Par le tu francais hablas espanol parl italiano.
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Charlie Sykes
I'm Charlie Sykes. Welcome back to the to the Contrary podcast. Hey, a quick reminder that if you want to listen to free versions of the podcast or watch the YouTube video, you can go to our website to the Contrary newsletter. If you are not yet a subscriber to the newsletter, please consider doing that. There is no paywall on the newsletter. It is free. But of course we rol rely upon the kindness of strangers. So we are very, very grateful to all of you who have decided to become paid subscribers as well. What we're trying to do on a daily basis is make sense of things that don't make sense to maintain Sanity amid all of the crazy. And this week is not unlike almost every other week feels like four years in which, if you're confused, you're not alone. Are we in talks with Iran? Are we not in talks with Iran? Has Iran given Donald Trump some amazing, huge new gift? Or is he just fantasizing that? Who knows? We're gonna dive in. To try to make sense of all of this. We are very fortunate to have one of my favorite writers, Phillips o', Brien, who is an historian and a professor of strategic studies at the University of St. Andrews, a contributor to Atlantic magazine. And really good to talk with you, Phillips, because I read your stuff, I've been reposting your stuff, and I figured, you know, at some point I gotta talk to the guy. So thanks for coming on. I appreciate it very, very much.
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Phillips O'Brien
I was so excited when they asked me to come on, Charles. Cause I love your stuff as well. So this is a big treat for me.
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Charlie Sykes
Well, one of the things that I really like about your work is I think you have a perspective that's sometimes different from the folks on this side of the PO who are, I think, insufficiently alarmed by what is happening. So I'm guessing that, you know, you have some thoughts on that. Are we alarmed enough about what is happening domestically and what is happening internationally? Because I think there's that default setting to how bad could it be? And this is the new normal. I sense that you're not willing to buy into that.
- [04:12]
Phillips O'Brien
Well, I mean, maybe I am an American, as you could tell from my accent think. But. But I do live now in Europe. I think the thing is, I. I've always, before this, had looked at America as sort of a very solid thing. So if you're an American living in Europe, you know, the US Was the rock of the North American alliance, and it was. It was a stable country and actually provided a lot of security. So it's particularly unnerving living here and just witnessing the United States evolve into this deeply unstable, capricious, and in many ways dangerous state. Now, you know, it is a real danger, the United States. And I think being over here, you can see it more than in America, whether there are a lot of people who do see it, but there's also a lot of people who don't want to admit it's happening. They just don't. They don't want to admit it's that bad.
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Charlie Sykes
Right.
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Phillips O'Brien
Because that means that the country made a really, really bad choice and took a really bad turn. So being away, I think, gives you that kind of perspective. But it also means you gotta fight the thing.
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Charlie Sykes
Well, you know, two things. I know it's ancient history now since, you know, we are talking in the middle of the week and this happened over the weekend, so this is almost like in the distant mists of time. But, you know, Donald Trump had two bleeds, one about celebrating the death of Robert Mueller. But another one that you commented on that I have cited frequently, where he said that now that Iran is dead, the greatest enemy of the United States is the left wing, demented, whatever the language was, Democrat party. And it's almost as if that sort of flowed over people's heads. You know, first of all, at his press briefings, I think he's been asked 86 questions. Not one reporter asked Trump about his Mueller, you know, insulting tweet. And the fact that he's basically said that, you know, since we've killed Iran, the next enemy on the list of Democrats has generated very little commentary as far as I can see. And as you point out, it has kind of ominous undertones, doesn't it?
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Phillips O'Brien
Well, I mean, first of all, that kind of comment is the kind of comment that would be dictators or authoritarians make when they want to take power. They don't just say, you know, our, our opponents are wrong and we dislike them and they will do the wrong policies. They actually say they are evil and against the country. And that becomes therefore the argument why we must save it. The thing with Trump is he gets away with it all the time. I think people have given up, to be honest, which they shouldn't. That's, that's one of the scary things. It's just, oh, this is another Trumpism. And tomorrow he'll say something more outrageous and people forget. But that's actually making an. It's sort of like acting like an anesthetic. And the people don't understand the power of what he is saying and what he is doing. And he is just destroying norms of behavior and Democratic norms. And the worry is, look, the Republicans know they are on a hiding in 2026. I think you can see real worry. They know the polling is bad. This Iran intervention has pulled really badly. So they're looking at this as a bad year. And Trump is going to get desperate because he knows if they lose the House and the Senate, he's in big trouble.
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Charlie Sykes
Well, that's what concerns me because of course, you know, a cornered and desperate despot can be even dangerous than what we have right now. So let's talk about where we're at in Iran, because this is extremely, you know, confusing. Let's just take the timeline of the last couple of days. Over the weekend, Donald Trump, you know, was issuing ultimatums that, you know, if Iran did not open up the Strait of Hormuz, he was going to bomb all of their energy plants. Backed off on that on Monday, said he was having all kinds of productive negotiations. You know, yesterday he's declaring that he won the war, that they have the peace plan. As you and I are speaking. The latest thing that I saw was that Iran's basically saying, no, we reject this completely. We are not backing up. So just give me a sense, you know, about are there negotiations, or is Donald Trump, you know, arguing with some voices in his head? What do you think?
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Phillips O'Brien
Well, I mean, there might be some contacts, I think, to call them negotiations seems quite a grand word. Look, Trump is stuck here because he can't control events. He started this war assuming it would be over quickly. A lot of similarities with Putin's invasion of Ukraine. We'll fight a few days and we'll destroy the Iranian leadership, and then we'll declare victory, and I will be the great successor. He never thought Iran would adapt and fight back or in any effective way. But now Iran has. Whether you hate this and I hate this Iranian regime, what they've done is strategically very smart, and they have shut down the trade in the Gulf, which Trump had not prepared for, and which, by the way, he can't permanently accept. He has to get that trade moving. If that trade doesn't go, the world economy really begins to fail, and that will have huge repercussions around the globe. So he's got to get that trade moving. The only problem is he can't just drop bombs and open that trade. So the way he normally fights, which is to use military force to blow things up or to do things like that, that's not going to work in opening the straits. So he needs to, in some ways, get the Iranian government to back down or agree to do it. And what we're seeing is him basically oscillating as he doesn't know what to do. So the threats are just. The Iranians have figured out the threats are bluster. When he makes these threats, and he's made tons of them and made the stupid, what I called the stupidest threat in US Military history a few times Saturday when he said he would blow up Iranian power supplies, which was just dumb on many levels. So he makes the threats, they don't work. Then he tries.
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Charlie Sykes
Why was that dumb? Why? Before we Go on that.
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Phillips O'Brien
Why?
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Charlie Sykes
Why was that dumb on so many levels?
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Phillips O'Brien
Well, first of what did he threaten? He threatened if Iran didn't do what he wanted, which was open, he would start destroying their power system. Started with the biggest one. Now, you could say it's not necessarily a war crime to attack a power plant if it is tied into war production specifically, but he was just making retribution. He was saying. So it is, by the way, a war crime. The President of the United States was calling for a war crime, something to damage Iranian civilians. So that's the first thing. But the second thing is he had no way to enforce it and he wasn't going to do it. So it was a bluff, and the Iranians called them on the bluff, and then he was left wondering how to react.
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Charlie Sykes
But this is the key point, though. This was a war. I think Ed Luce has called this. He's called this the war of whim. You know, the more technical term would be that this was a war of choice. But from Donald Trump's point of view, it's not. It's not really a war of choice anymore. Right. Because he doesn't get to choose when it ends. He doesn't have.
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Phillips O'Brien
That's a great point. And what has happened is the Iranians have a say, and he didn't think they would. He cannot just order them to open the Gulf. And they have understood how weak he is in reaction to that, and they're asking for concessions. They're going to try to make him, give him. Give them something to do that.
- [11:23]
Charlie Sykes
Well, you made the point in your newsletter today, basically that the only way for the United States to change the equation of the moment is to forcibly open trade into and out of the Gulf or put in place an Iranian government that is willing to do that. So you either back away or you escalate. Which leads us to all of this talk, which I don't know, how seriously do you take the talk about boots on the ground, an invasion of Carg Island? How seriously and literally should we take that? Because you're basically saying the options are you either pull out or you're going to have to escalate in a way that certainly Donald Trump did not initially anticipate.
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Phillips O'Brien
Charlie, what we need to do is look at the range of possibilities that Trump is faced with. I think actually he'd like to get out of this war. He actually does understand and declare victory. It's been a disaster, it's politically unpopular, it's causing economic problems. So he'd like to declare victory and go Home. That's why he keeps saying, we've won, we've already won. We've done regime change, We've done everything we want. Because he wants to get out. The problem he faces is if he leaves, Iran might just say, hey, we're going to still close the Gulf. You can't make us open the Gulf. So if he leaves, then Iran keeps the Gulf closed. It is shown to be a failure. So if he can't guarantee and get Iran to open the Gulf, then he's going to try and open it himself. And the only ways that he might open him itself are through the use of military force. And that's very dangerous for him. I think there's a lot of Republican worry. I know the Republican Party normally falls in line to everything Trump does, but there's a lot of political worry about this. And if he does start putting boots on the ground, that opens up a really dicey political situation. So he doesn't have a good choice here. There's no easy choice for Trump. All of the choices have real risk.
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Charlie Sykes
So we're talking about the possibility of boots on the ground, the invasion of Cargill. And, I mean, obviously, the U.S. marines could take Carg Island. They probably would seize it. Now, holding it becomes a whole different issue. This is an administration that's not shown itself particularly skillful at the what is the next step? What happens tomorrow and the next day? But what is your take on the fact that we are actively sending large numbers of troops into the Middle East? Because in the past, when those assets are in place, they become a tremendous temptation for Donald Trump to use them. When you put toys there, there are voices around him who are saying, Look, Mr. President, we have the world's greatest military. They are poised. They are right there. Does that raise the possibility and the temptation that Trump will use the assets that he's putting in place? I mean, we've seen this before in history, that the problem is that when regimes sometimes get these massive toys, they use them, they deploy the dreadnoughts. What do you think?
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Phillips O'Brien
My favorite phrase about that, Charlie, is if you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
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Charlie Sykes
Yeah.
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Phillips O'Brien
That. That sort of describes. If you are Donald Trump and you have this enormous hammer, the biggest hammer in the world, well, then you're going to look at everything else like a nail you can hit. He's sending troops. He's not sending, I would argue, enough troops to invade Iran. He can't take over the country. That. And he can't take over, like, the whole south coast. He's sending 2500 Marines and part of the 82nd Airborne. At least a thousand was the phrase used. That would easily be enough, we would think, to seize Carg. And that would, that would be a strong force to k Carg Island. So that looks like an achievable move to start. It's holding. Carg is the problem. And even though the reality they'll face is if they take card what that won't necessarily get Trump what he wants because ultimately he wants the Gulf open and he can't do that by just blowing things up and seizing them. He either has to send US Warships into the Gulf and open the whole thing and patrol the whole thing and cover every merchant ship that goes in and out, or he's going to have to reach a deal with the Iranian government.
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Charlie Sykes
You mentioned in your newsletter today looking at the how does this end? What is the solution? What does a negotiated settlement look like? You're saying right now it looks like something worse than Obama got and you described it as Trump minus minus. So after all of this, you're going to end up with a substantially worse deal than Barack Obama cut and a substantially worse deal than anything that Trump had asked for in the past. Talk to me about that a little bit. What do you think it looks like?
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Phillips O'Brien
Well, we do know because if we go back in history, President Obama signed what was called the J agreed what was called the jcpoa. And it's just this joint agreement with Iran, which was basically to keep Iran from developing nuclear weapons, but on the other hand gave Iran a relaxation of sanctions. Now, when Trump becomes president, he doesn't like it. He doesn't like it because Obama negotiated it. That's the real reason. So he gets rid of the JCPOA and he says, I'm going to be much tougher on Iran. So it's not just about keeping them from having nuclear weapons. It's about destroying all their links with Hamas and Hezbollah. I want to destroy their military capabilities to threaten their neighbors. And he has a much stronger list of demands. The issue we're faced now is that he take JCPOA. If we look at the 15 points that have were leaked, which by the way, the Iranians have said they didn't get or have rejected. So there's different ways to look at it. The 15 points that come as the US peace plan to Iran are basically Obama's plan and the Iranians are rejecting it. They want more. They're not going to go back to the jcpoa. So unless Trump really wants to invade Iran and take the whole thing over, or if he can overthrow the government and put in place a government he likes, if he's going to keep this present government there, he's going to have to give them a better deal than Obama gave them and a much better deal than he said he wanted to do in 2018. So it's all of this, all of this wasted money, all of these people killed in Iran, and Iran will be in a better strategic position.
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Charlie Sykes
So you cited some of Trump's bizarre quotes from the other day. Make this make sense, please. They. The Iranians did something yesterday that was amazingly. That was amazing, actually. They gave us a present, and the present arrived today, and it was a very big present worth a tremendous amount of money. Do you have any idea what the fuck he's talking about here? Did they give him a jumbo jet? Did the Ayatollah say, just give him a big jet like Qatar gave him? What. What is the big gift? What are we talking about? Do we have any idea?
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Phillips O'Brien
No, I think he's having a rich inner model. I mean, the way Trump gets by is he convinces himself that something he wants to be true is true, and then he says it out loud and his supporters believe it, and therefore it becomes a truth out of an untruth. As long as he tells the lie, people believe the lie, and then reality doesn't matter. And he's been successful at that.
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Charlie Sykes
And yet the truth is still the truth. And reality still matters, though. Right? Which is the. Which is the kind of the crux of the danger.
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Phillips O'Brien
Right?
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Charlie Sykes
Right.
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Phillips O'Brien
Well, I mean, what's interesting is Iranian. The Iranian government is a much more robust enemy of his than, say, a lot of the people in the American press or in American business or American institutions. The Iranians are not just going to roll over for him because he wants them to. Traffic may be locked, but savings isn't.
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Charlie Sykes
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Charlie Sykes
you cited something. Yeah, I'm sorry, you cited something on your, you know, I hesitated to go to the politics right away, but you cited the poll, the YouGov poll from the other day that shows, you know, pretty robust majorities of people who think that this will at the, this war will help Israel and it will help Donald Trump, but it will not help the American people, which is just an extraordinary turn of events that voters seem to be separating out the interests of Israel and Donald Trump from the interests of the American people and of the interests of the Iranian people.
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Phillips O'Brien
I have to say that was one of the most interesting polls I've ever seen.
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Charlie Sykes
I thought so, too.
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Phillips O'Brien
I don't think with any other president that question would have even been asked. I mean, they would have said, will this, you know, would will Joe Biden's or George Bush's policies help the country? Yes or no? They wouldn't have said. But would they also help Biden? That, that wouldn't have been the way the question would have been asked, I think. But Trump has so personalized the US Government, made it so corrupt and turned the US Government into a vehicle for enrichment that people have twigged. I think that is where he's in trouble politically now because people finally seem to understand what he is. And there is no national interest with Trump, nothing that he does. Can we say he's doing it because he thinks it's best for America. Everything that he's doing is because he thinks it's best for him. That's what drives him. He needs to have wins, he needs to make money. He needs to be a success. And the American people have cottoned onto that now, not the MAGA hardcore they haven't. But actually what was interesting is 60% of Americans thought the war was basically would be good for Trump but not good for America. And that's a stunning percentage.
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Charlie Sykes
It is a stunning number. And I want to talk about the other big winner at least looks like potential winner in Trump's war, which is Russia. But let's leave that aside because you brought up the corruption and of course this was on really vivid display earlier this week when we had that early trade. Somebody with inside information certainly looks like began trading with oil futures 15 minutes before Donald Trump moved the markets with that all caps and very misleading. True social bleed. But the issue of corruption seems to be absolutely entangled with our foreign policy right now in a way that I don't know that the system has ever seen before. So that, you know, the planets are aligning, the dots are connecting. There does appear to be this with the fact that Jared Kushner is negotiating with the Saudis at the same time that he's shaking them down for cash. I mean, can we just put this in perspective? Because I do hope the American people do understand that it's not just that Donald Trump is enriching himself with merch, that in fact the entire foreign policy of the United States and war and peace are entangled with this corrupt self dealing culture that surrounds him.
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Phillips O'Brien
Well, in many ways you can't put it in perspective because it's never happened before.
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Charlie Sykes
Well, that's what I mean.
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Phillips O'Brien
Yeah, I mean the idea that the President's son in law would be also the President's chief negotiator, but also has a hedge fund or investment fund that gets many billions from the countries with whom he is negotiating, or the President's sons invest in military equipment firms that then get big contracts with the Pentagon. That happens, happened last week as well. This kind of profiteering on this massive scale, billions scale has never happened before in broad daylight. Yeah, it should be illegal. But what's interesting is that there is no ability to, or no willingness in the system to stop it. And that's one of the reasons he, by the way, cannot lose in 2026. If he loses in 2026, this will come out. There will be congressional investigations that will bring out all of this corruption in detail. So. But it's poisoned the system. I mean, this is the problem. I, I think going forward, even if we have a very honorable person in the White House in two and a half years time, which would be ideal, the corruption, the, the system has now been shown to be corrupt. It can be corrupted. And we're going to have to put guardrails in to keep this from happening. Because right now the present guardrails are, do not work. And to me this is one of the most depressing things. I never thought people would just give up in the fight against presidential corruption. Then they just have, they don't care. There's, there's no one who's really, you know, there's not a single Republican I know that seems to be making a big difference about what is corruption on a historic scale. And the United States is plunging down. World corruption ranking. It's down now in like the 60s, probably should be lower, you know, but this is a country that would have been high up in the corruption, you
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Charlie Sykes
know, and it happened so fast.
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Phillips O'Brien
It's happened so fast.
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Charlie Sykes
No, it happened so fast. And I think this has been the disorienting thing about the second Trump term. I mean, I understand the speed, the aggressiveness with which he has moved. But on the other hand, to your point, who would have imagined that the guardrails were so weak because we thought we actually had them, only to discover that a lot of this was an honor system and that a dishonorable man like Donald Trump would simply blow right through them. But then again, all of the. Just the lack of outrage, the lack of. Do you remember Bob Dole's comment at one point? Where's the outrage? Remember what he was talking about? He was talking about donors being able to sleep in the Lincoln Bedroom of the White House, which seems like so petty Annie at the moment. Compared to all of this, it has been the acceptance of this. The other thing, as I keep coming back to, a lot of this is happening in broad daylight. This is the kind of thing that if you wrote up a movie, somebody would undercover, you know, uncover this, you know, tremendous, you know, internal, you know, dealing in corruption, everything. And right now, it's like, don't need the expose. It's right there. And he's getting away with it. At least it looks like it. And that's what's. That's the maddening part.
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Phillips O'Brien
We have a constitutional amendment against a constitutional clause. Not even amendment. I think it's in the original Constitution. Against emoluments. Yeah, the emoluments clause is in the Constitution. And now the President basically owns a crypto court, which is the perfect vehicle to pay off or to receive payoffs. So the emoluments clause is not being enforced. I just don't. There's certain things in the system that were never imagined. I think the Attorney General becoming just the tool of the White House. The Attorney General's role was not just to be that. It was supposed to be, you know, a law enforcement officer, and it has evolved into the president's lawyer, and that. That has been. So the Justice Department, therefore, cannot do what the Justice Department might have done otherwise. And now the FBI.
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Charlie Sykes
It's hard to know how you. Yeah.
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Phillips O'Brien
And how do you get.
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Charlie Sykes
It's hard to know how you put that back together again, too.
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Phillips O'Brien
I don't know.
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Charlie Sykes
Right.
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Phillips O'Brien
But I think you have to do it. That's actually the first. The first task.
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Charlie Sykes
Well, I mean, this was what Merrick Garland thought that his task was he thought that his role in history was to restore. Restore the independence of the, you know, the Justice Department to do what was it Ed Levy did during the 1970s to restore the integrity of it, when in fact, obviously that did not actually meet the moment, because can you have accountability and also basically try to go back to what it was before all of this? And I think this is going to be very, very difficult. It's going to be a very. It's going to be a thorny decision. Like, what does the, the, what does a non MAGA Justice Department do? Does it launch those investigations? Do we have the truth and reconciliation, or do we try to go back to, you know, playing by the, you know, marquee of Queensberry rules, which I don't think is going to work.
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Phillips O'Brien
We're not going back. No, I just don't think you can go back. It's not. It's not happening. So whatever happens is going to be new, and hopefully people will see what the reality of what we've experienced and are experiencing now and that there might be some political consensus going forward on establishing newer guardrails and effective guardrails. The old ones, we're not going to go back to. I mean, how do we even go back to having a political culture of civility?
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Charlie Sykes
I don't. I don't think I'm going to see it in my lifetime. No, I mean, it's. I think Peter Wehner in the Atlantic was talking about how there are people who believe that MAGA somehow is an organic development out of American conservatism. And I think Peter Wehner says, look, MAGA and Donald Trump and MAGA have rewired the entire ecosystem of our politics and of conservative politics. The things that conservatives used to disdain are now complete norms. Before we move on to other things, though, and I apologize in advance for bringing up the name Nancy Mace in a conversation with you, I generally will not cite Nancy Mace. But we're always looking at the question of, like, are there cracks in the MAGA base? Do they actually matter now? The polls are pretty definitive that the voting MAGA base is still solidly behind Donald Trump on Iran. The talking MAGA base is more divided. So Nancy Mace comes out of a briefing on Iran and she's thoroughly discussed it, says they want to put boots on the ground. Just give me your sense of that, that people like that are will. I mean, she's running for governor in South Carolina. She's on the ballot, but she's more and more willing, as are others, to
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Phillips O'Brien
be openly critical well, you are going to see, I don't think a lot of Republicans break ranks, but they are now getting closer to the election. We are closer to November 2026 than people realize. We're only six months away, seven months away. And so with the Republicans doing so badly, there's going to have to be some of them who are going to come to their political realization that actually embracing Trump is embracing defeat. So I think. And Mace was in, you know, she came out clearly to say she didn't criticize Trump. That's what. They never criticized Trump. Right.
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Charlie Sykes
It's always the people around.
- [30:42]
Phillips O'Brien
She said, oh, we can't have quid. I've come from a briefing and we can't have troops on the ground. And I think that's a, that's a, a shot across the political. Shot across the bow. And I'm sure a lot of other Republicans are worried about this, too. Now, Mace is a bit flaky, I leave it at that. And she has an interesting position in the party. But it will be interesting to see if more people come out in the next few days against troops on the ground, because that also pulls really badly with the American people.
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Charlie Sykes
Oh, it does. And I wonder whether there is. I'm seeing some reports, and I always, I don't know how seriously to take some of them, you know, some reports from within the administration that the Republicans and other Trumpists are getting more and more nervous about having Pete Hegseth as the public face of this particular war. And of course, I mean, he is, you know, just every single day he comes out, he seems like a Saturday Night Live parody of himself. You know, you saw him goes to the podium and says, you know, we negotiate. We negotiate with bombs. You know, at the time that we're talking about all of this. But, you know, I mean, talk to me a little bit about going to war with a Fox News weekend host who just appears to be. Appears to be auditioning for a podcast position.
- [32:02]
Phillips O'Brien
I mean, and I actually think the US Military is showing. I wrote an article in the Atlantic about this that got a lot of interesting comment showing some signs of what I'd call rot, because you rot. A fish rots from the head down, is the phrase. And what this leadership now in the Pentagon is, it doesn't think, it doesn't respect reflection. It doesn't respect sort of strategy or being wise. It stresses machism. Yeah, let's, let's be, let's be lethal warriors. Now, that might be great if you're a Spartan. You know, you're fighting in 450 BC. But actually if you're fighting now, you've got to be able to fight off cheap, small drones with smart soldiers and the best equipment. And you've got to be able to put them in the right place and plan. It's not just about being lethal. It's actually about being smart. And under Hegseth, the military is not going to be smart because that's not what he is. He actually stresses anti intellectualism. He's doing things like keeping the military out of some of America's best colleges. He will not let officers attend those colleges. And we are dumbing down the American military. And believe me, if you dumb down a military, it will become worse.
- [33:27]
Charlie Sykes
It will become worse. And particularly with this kind of leadership. But this culture, it is interesting how much energy the Secretary of Defense, not the Secretary of War, is spending on attacking the press. You would think that if this war was going as well as they claim, they would not be spending as much time and energy and angst on radio reporters and reports coming out of the region. But this again goes back to Pete Hegseth's agenda, which is to beat up on the media, which I suppose has its time and its place, but you would think that maybe take a break to actually run the freaking war.
- [34:11]
Phillips O'Brien
Well, someone said this to me and I didn't say it. I wish I had said it. But basically every time a Trump cabinet member speaks to the press, they're speaking to an audience have won. They're hoping they end up on Fox tv, Fox News and Trump watches them. That's what they're all doing. They're all trying to say the thing that will make it to Fox and that Trump will see it. So they're not speaking to the country. They don't. They care less about the country. These, these people don't care about the country. They care about appealing to Trump because Trump picks sycophants. That's what he likes. He, he likes people who praise him. He likes people who do what he wants. So whenever they're doing this, this is not just, you know, the, the press secretary in the White House, this is the Secretary of Defense. This is the Attorney General. Everything they're saying is to appeal to Trump, to get Trump to recognize them for doing the job that he wants. So Hegseth, he, he doesn't care. He just wants Trump's approval, which of course is disastrous as well, because it shows what a weak person he is, is. And he will absolutely devastate the US Military if he thinks it will appeal to Trump.
- [35:22]
Charlie Sykes
No, I think they have made that perfectly clear. But also there is somehow an invisible. There is somewhere that invisible red line that Kristi Noem crossed. You know, there was. There was a school of thought that thought that Donald Trump was never going to fire anybody because he did not want to give the libs a scalp. And yet she is gone. So there is some line that somebody that if. That if your name is not Trump and you cross, there might be negative
- [35:47]
Phillips O'Brien
consequences because she got bad press for him. That's the problem. See, what Kristi Noem did is she said, the White House told me to do this, and therefore she committed the cardinal sin, which basically implied that Trump had done something wrong, Trump had made a mistake. And Trump is spotless. He is blameless. He is pure to these people. So Kristi Noem's problem was that she probably told the truth, that the White House did tell her to release what was a lie, and she did it. And that's why she had to go.
- [36:26]
Charlie Sykes
Well, and there was also the. The pre. Cardinal sin, which was the. This was this multimillion dollar ad campaign. And her, you know, I think her fundamental, unforgivable sin was the ad campaign was about her, not about him. And my favorite story of the week, I have to say I'd like to wallow in a little bit this the report about how much that Mount Rushmore ad cost. You know, $200,000, $3,000 for hair and all the horse rental. We know where she's going around the cowboy hat, around Mount Rushmore. But again, in Trump world, the ad can't be about you particularly. So I think that was part of a problem. So back to the international situation. You posted a little while ago about the fact that Ukraine has apparently taken some action against Russian oil production, which would suggest that Ukraine taketh away what the Mideast has given to Vladimir Putin. So give me your sense of how this is all playing out. Russia, Ukraine, Iran.
- [37:27]
Phillips O'Brien
What Trump hath giveth Ukraine taken the way. Well, basically, it's actually been a really important attack and people aren't paying as much attention to it. They're not paying as much attention to Ukraine now as they should. That the Iran war. What Trump has done has been a huge boost to Putin's revenue because he's increased the price of oil hugely. And he's also made. He's rel. Relie, relaxed all sanctions. So people are just buying Russian oil and the oil price has gone up, up. Now, the one problem the Russians have is they actually have only a few ports that can export the oil. And one of the biggest ports is actually outside of St. Petersburg up in the north, which the Ukrainians have not been able to really reach effectively. And the Ukrainians two days ago launched a really large drone attack, which has caused a massive fire in this facility, this shipping facility of oil up in the north. And that means that Russian shipping supposedly is down 40%.
- [38:28]
Charlie Sykes
This is kind of a big story.
- [38:31]
Phillips O'Brien
It's a huge story because it means that Ukrainians are going to keep Putin from really. Putin has made a few billion dollars extra, sadly already. But it means that at least going forward for a while, he might not make the kind of windfall that Trump had handed to him. And it shows, by the way, that the Ukrainians can now reach almost anything in European Russia. This was a vital facility. This should have been protected. You know, the Russians would have, we would have thought, would have seen this as one of their jewels in the economic crown they had to keep protected and functioning. And the Ukrainians were able to devastate it. And the fires are still burning. When you look at the pictures, this has been a conflagration that's hit this facility. So the Ukrainians have done a lot of damage.
- [39:18]
Charlie Sykes
So before this, had this not happened, our conversation would have been somewhat different. That Donald Trump has given in terms of winners and losers, that Donald Trump gave Vladimir Putin just a huge windfall, opened up billions in oil revenue that he could use to finance his war machine against Ukraine. Ukraine, obviously, is not taking this down. And again, this is another indication of how war has changed, you know, how it doesn't take mass armies necessarily to inflict damage, particularly on infrastructure. And that's something I was going to ask you about before, about the mood, whether we know what the mood of the Gulf states has been. Because one of the stories that I heard, and which struck me as being quite plausible, although I am not the expert here, was that one of the threats facing some of the Gulf states was that Iran would go after their desalinization plants, which sounds very, very nerdy until you understand these are desert kingdoms. And in terms of infrastructure, if you lose the desalinization plants, then the entire society becomes at risk. You have these big cosmopolitan cities, but, you know, you're in the middle of a desert. So one of the things that's in play here is that not only do you need to open up the Strait of Hormuz, but you need to get assurances that Iran is not going to escalate by going after them. Apparently, UAE and Qatar freaked out about this. Can you tell me what we know?
- [40:48]
Phillips O'Brien
And, and Israel, too. Israel has desalinization plans. So, I mean, that's basically what you do, is you take seawater, get rid of the salt, and you have drinking water. That's what the. The plants do. But they're. They're very, you know, they're large, and they're large and expensive in the facilities, industrial facilities. That's one of the reasons the Trump threat against Iranian power supply was so stupid, because if the United States started doing that, the Iranians might just say, forget it. We're taking on everyone's desalinization. We're going to go against these plants, and that makes a desert kingdom uninhabitable. You don't have to.
- [41:24]
Charlie Sykes
That's really the nuclear option in the Mid east, isn't it? I mean, you don't need nukes to have a nuclear option. You basically can destroy those countries by taking out that infrastructure.
- [41:34]
Phillips O'Brien
You can never ship in enough water. It would be impossible to ship in enough water from outside to keep millions and millions of people drinking in the desert. So if you're gonna, you know, they don't have pipelines or anything to bring the water in either. So if they started going for. For the desalinization plants, that's a bit like going nuclear. You know, it has that kind of impact. And that's the kind of thing, again, Trump doesn't understand. And so when he makes this threat, he thinks, I'm the big man. I'm making a threat against Iran's power supply. But what he's doing is potentially making it so that Iran attacks desalinization plants in the Gulf and those places become unlimited.
- [42:14]
Charlie Sykes
So in the few minutes we have left, you know, Donald Trump has, at various points, you know, suggested that, of course, this war is, you know, all about, you know, his great mind and his great strategic genius. But at other times, he has seem to blame it on others. The Israelis, at one point. There's certainly the suggestion in the New York Times that mbs, the Saudis, while, you know, lavishing money on Jared Kushner, are also pushing him to finish the job. What is your sense about the role that Israel and Saudi Arabia are playing, pushing Donald Trump to continue to escalate this war or something else? What do you think? How do you describe their role in terms of who's wagging which dog?
- [43:05]
Phillips O'Brien
Well, certainly you could say the war is not in US Interest. I don't believe it is in US Interests, particularly if there's not going to be a regime change and a free Iran. That might be the only thing to make it in US interest. But otherwise I can't see it. You could say it's an Israeli interest in the sense that Israel sees Iran as a permanent threat, that Israel can never invade Iran. It's not big enough. So for Israel, what you get is the US military helping you kick the crud out of Iran for a few weeks and destroy Iranian military capabilities. They're not looking for a permanent destruction of Iranians capacity. They know they can't have that. But now the US is helping you do what you want to do to keep Iran down for a while. The Israeli strategy is often called mowing the, Mowing the grass. And this is, this is part of that. So you could say it's an Israeli interest. I think the Saudis must be, I think they maybe believe that the US would be able to end this soon. I don't, I mean I know they said that NBS is putting pressure on Trump to finish it. It partly, I think that's to provide justifications for Trump to finish it. I can't believe the Saudis are pleased with the way this.
- [44:20]
Charlie Sykes
No. Because they're vulnerable.
- [44:21]
Phillips O'Brien
But like everyone else, I think.
- [44:23]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah.
- [44:23]
Phillips O'Brien
What the Saudis probably don't know is what to do. The Israelis are happier because they can just pound the stuffing out of Iran for a while using American military equipment and they're probably not expecting to get anything else out of it. But the Saudis were probably hoping for a lot more than what they have had. But now they also probably are confused about what to do, as many of the Gulf states are. The Gulf states are not. They were much more gung ho at the beginning than they seem to be now.
- [44:55]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah. When they thought it was going to be quick and easy. And in terms of Israel, I certainly agree with you that there's obvious short term, medium range, you know, strategic advantages to all of this. Although as I've said on a couple of other podcasts, I think we're going to look back many years from now on this particular era and one of the most extraordinary things that happened was the collapse of bipartisan American support for Israel. I mean, our strongest ally. And you just see it feels like a generational sea change of pro Israeli sentiment. And given how isolated they are on the rest of the world, to link themselves so inextricably. Inextricably to one political party in the United States seems to be a, I think a bad bet.
- [45:42]
Phillips O'Brien
It's a terrible decision for Israel. I mean, again, Netanyahu is like Trump. He doesn't care really about his country so much, cares about himself. And he has identified. I mean, what he did in Europe is disaster. He just basically came out and endorsed Viktor Orbit for reelection in Hungary. So he has made common cause with these authoritarian thugs, people like Trump and Orban. And that might make him feel powerful now because he's got the US on his side, but he is really sowing the seeds for a very negative transformation for Israeli standing in US Politics. I've never imagined the Democratic Party would become an Israeli as really skeptical as it is now.
- [46:26]
Charlie Sykes
No, I never did either. And, you know, it's overturned so much. And by the way, speaking of Hungarian politics, the fact that Viktor Orban now has the support of Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu tells you something about the new world disorder or something out there.
- [46:45]
Phillips O'Brien
That's a great point. And actually, this is one of the things about the US Military. And I've been talking to some people, people you know, and these are military guys who now see the President of the United States basically defending the president of Russia who is helping Iranians try to kill Americans. This is where Trump doesn't, I think, understand quite what he is doing, that these are all the military had. Some very pro Trump people certainly still does. But also there's a lot of people who are saying, the president of the United States really doesn't care about my life. Yeah. That he, he's, he's palling around with Putin and Putin is trying to get me killed. And that, in fact, is something Trump is defending. And this is one of the areas where Trump doesn't seems to be losing his touch and going down a pretty dark and dangerous road, which will also hurt him politically.
- [47:40]
Charlie Sykes
Well, it ought to. The more people know about that because once again, speaking of, like, difficult to put that into context because nothing like this has ever really happened before. Phillips o', Brien, thank you so much for all your time. You can find Phillips work in the Atlantic, you can find Philip's newsletter on substack. I strongly urge you to subscribe to it. It is an absolute must read. It's an absolute must read for me. So thank you so much for all of your time. I know we're in very, very different time zones on different continents, so I appreciate it today.
- [48:09]
Phillips O'Brien
Thanks for having me. This was a real treat. So thanks for having me and thank
- [48:14]
Charlie Sykes
you all for listening to this episode of to the Contrary podcast. We do this and we're going to continue to do this because you know what our mission statement is. We need to remind ourselves that we are not the crazy ones. Thank you.
- [48:41]
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