Mark McKinnon and Dan Shapiro: Mid-Wreckage

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Kevin and Rachel and Peanut MMs and an eight-hour road trip.

And Rachel's new favorite audiobook, The Cerulean Empress, Scoundrel's Inferno.

And Florian, the reckless yet charming scoundrel from said audiobook.

And his packs glistened in the moonlight.

And Kevin, feeling weird because of all the talk about pecs.

And Rachel handing him peanut MMs to keep him quiet.

Uh, Kevin, I can't hear.

Yellow, we're keeping it PG-13.

MMs, it's more fun together.

together.

Hello, and welcome to the Bullard Podcast.

I'm your host, Tim Miller.

Happy Juneteenth.

And for all the wokes out there, the DEIs, the women in the audience, I just want to say I'm well aware it's been a sausage fest around here lately.

I've been trying my best to get a mix of viewpoints, but sometimes the skeds just don't work out.

We had a cancellation late last night.

I got out my binder full of women guests to find somebody good, and it was, it was late night.

And so I had to go to my, I had to just call my comfort food and emergency backup.

The parade of dicks will continue.

We got a tuber today.

In the second segment, we've got Dan Shapiro,

who was in the Biden administration working on Middle East issues.

So he's got a lot of expertise.

We'll talk to him about Iran.

But first, I found somebody who's in touch with this feminine side.

He was a media advisor.

Thelman Louise.

We called each other Thelman Louise.

It's close enough.

He was a media advisor for W.

McCann and Richards.

He was the co-creator and co-host of the circus.

It's Mark McKinnon.

Hey, MCAT, how you doing, man?

Hello, my friend.

Good to see you.

Thank you for doing this.

It's been too long.

I want to talk about the news with you, but I've just, I kind of want to just pick your brain first, like biggest picture.

We are, you know, June 20th.

So it was, you know, just about whatever, five months ago that we had the inauguration.

Like, what have you made of it?

it how has it met your what you had expected well it's met my worst expectations uh on on every level and i mean it just i mean the the greatest fear was that you know trump would truly be unleashed uh you know it was bad enough round one v1 v2 is just you know, Trump on steroids without any kind of oversight or anybody around him,

any real adults in the room.

My view is just that

I'm not sure how or when it's going to end catastrophically, but it's going to end catastrophically.

And the only question is, how bad is it?

And can we recover from it?

I don't know if that's going to be because we bomb Iran or if it's

because of the tariff economic policy, but it's going to go south.

I mean, you just can't have somebody this disconnected from reality and adult supervision in the American presidency in the year 2025 and expect that things are going to be okay.

They're not.

You don't think there's adult supervision at the Pentagon?

You're not feeling comfortable with a weekend talk show co-host

running the military at this moment?

Well, you know, I just was reading about this guy named General Eric Carrilla, who's the U.S.

Scent commander,

central command.

Apparently, he's kind of like in charge now, and the HegSAS kind of deferring to him, and people actually think he knows what he's doing.

They call him the gorilla.

So

I was encouraging until I got to the nickname.

Yeah, that's the problem.

Yeah.

what are his instincts going to be?

Yeah.

What's he going to tell Trump?

Yeah, I mean, you said that it's going to end badly.

I agree with that.

I guess, you know, there's a range, though, right?

And you're more of a level-headed than me.

You're always a little calmer when we were riding around covering this stuff for the circus.

And so I'm just, I'm hoping maybe you can calm me or maybe not.

Maybe make me more worried.

But like, what is like, how's your level of alarm at this moment?

I'm an eternal prisoner of hope, as you know.

Yeah.

I think it's going to be really bad.

I think we will recover.

I think it may take

years or decades, but I'm at peace with it in a macro sense because I think that for the long-term equanimity of most American voters and America, this had to happen.

In order for at least half the country to come to terms with the wreckage, they had to see the wreckage.

They had to experience the wreckage.

If Harris were president, no matter how things went, and we know things went, they weren't that bad under Biden, but

they were certain that it was apocalyptic.

Imagine what it'd be like under Harris.

So no matter what she would have done, half the country would have hated her.

Half the country would have said, you know, we're going to hell.

The only way that that half of the country is ever going to reconcile the decisions that they made by voting for this guy is to realize the damage that he does to their own lives, which I, which, again, I think is

inevitable.

So we're going to have to get through that.

But I think ultimately that's going to bring most of of the country back together to recognize that government's here for a purpose and that it's not the enemy.

I thought you were going to go a different place with that when you said equanimity, because the one thing I think is true about the culture is it David French who says this somebody has a good observation about how everybody feels like they're losing.

Everybody feels like their own side is losing, right?

And I understand why that is because across different vectors,

both sides have been, you know, losing, like depending on how you look at it.

And, but if you just look at it from like a cultural

arc standpoint, like conservatives, right-wingers, I feel, I think correctly, that they're getting their ass handed to them.

And like they, they did, you know, they had the Supreme Court and Congress.

And so I know that this feels like, what are you talking about?

Like, you know, but culturally.

institutionally, right?

Like that the universities, the movies, corporations all having pride floats, you know, just like there was a cultural shift that was more towards the, whatever you want to call it, the left or more, it's more really like elite global, you know, kind of culture.

And there have been like some big wins.

I know it doesn't maybe feel that way for some people, but like between gay marriage and like healthcare, like across a lot of areas,

racial awareness, right?

Like there had been a lot of wins.

And it wasn't like we gotten to perfect, but there'd been a lot of change in a period of time.

And to me, the equanimity might be that like they got one.

Well, that's kind of the flip side of the argument that I'm saying that both the consequences and we won, we got it, you know, and we caught the car and

we got the Supreme Court that we won, a lot of other things.

And so, yeah, that's a nice counterbalance view.

They got the little middle finger, his tiny, stubby middle finger that they wanted.

And now we'll see if that makes them happy.

Let's talk about what's going on in Iran, which may be the catastrophe that you're talking about, may not be.

You said the Green Room, you had a broad theory of the case of what was happening there.

So let's just start with that.

Yeah, I think that we'll very soon see how wrong this could be, but I think he's made a decision.

I think he's made a decision to go in and support Israel with air cover and the bunker busting bomb, whatever it is, for the following reasons.

One, I think the notion of Donald Trump peacenick is just a complete mythology.

It's not who he is.

He did it politically because it served his interest to be the anti-war guy, the no more forever wars, because of Biden and Bush and back down the line.

He was just the everybody's stupid guy.

And so, like, had the presidents before him been anti-war, he would have been like, you guys are so stupid, we should have been doing wars.

Like, it was just like,

but, but think about what his instincts really are: military parades, shooting protesters.

He loves offense.

He loves military.

He loves Strongman.

He loves Putin.

I mean, he loves all the authoritarian military guys around the world.

That's A.

B, he wants to be a winner and he wants credit.

And he looks at what's happening right now.

And so far, it's been really successful in terms of what Israel has accomplished over the last couple of weeks.

And I think he's saying, geez, you know, this is working out pretty well.

And I want some credit.

Now suddenly we, not they.

So I think he's bought in.

I think Netanyahu's driving him like a truck.

That can't even be a controversial point at this point that Netanyahu is driving this, right?

I mean, like, you can, I hear what you're saying, like, he wants you on the winning side.

He's happy to be there.

Imagine the conversations he's having with Trump.

It's like, they've got the capacity.

If we don't do this, it's going to be on you that we didn't do it.

And if we do do it and we wipe it out, you're going to get credit for this.

Yeah.

Win-win.

We have the former ambassador to Israel and Biden's Middle East guy, Dan Shapiro, coming on in segment two to talk about this a little bit more, kind of giving him more what the Israeli perspective is on doing this and how they've been effective.

But I was interested in your, I was watching you, you were on with Scarborough before this and my buddy JMA.

JMART doesn't even give a fuck about TV, by the way.

This is a total total aside.

He's slouching.

He's making faces.

Like, he's

just, he's like the kid in the classroom doing spitballs now on TV.

It's hilarious watching him.

Anyway, I was watching you because I wanted to hear what you all were talking about.

And Scarborough made a point that was, um,

things in Iraq seem to be going pretty well the first couple of weeks, too.

Yeah.

I thought that was an insightful point.

So I don't know what you kind of lived through all that.

I have a lot of muscle memory about that because I remember it very well.

And,

you know, it's sort of the fog of history that people forget what it was like in the moment.

But, you know, when we went in, it was not like a divided country or divided cabinet or anything.

And it was like 100% or 99, 99 senators voted to go in.

Right.

You know, it wasn't like this was a debate.

We were all in.

And every, I mean, it was like everybody was there.

And by the way, one of the interesting things about the Bush Library that's really cool is he has something called the Decision Points Center in the presidential library.

And they picked five issues.

It was like Katrina, Iraq, the financial crisis, a couple more.

And they put you in the chair and they say, here's the information the president had at the time.

What decision would you make?

And I forget what the number is, but it's something like 88% of the people that go through there.

did exactly what President Bush did at that time with that information.

So Ben Rhodes, you know, Obama's national security guy had him on yesterday.

Oh, great.

Well, well, maybe I think I saw this from your podcast.

So I stole it from you.

This is where you want to be in the culture, McKinnon.

It's on top of the news, man.

Yeah, my interviews are just consuming you

on your feed.

They're just steeping in.

They're stealing stuff and it's just osmosis, man.

Anyway, he said

the problem is

that it could be a catastrophic success.

Yeah, he did say that.

Right.

So you have this incredible success of dropping this bomb that blows up the nuclear facility and then saying you succeed.

And then you have catastrophic consequences after that.

Because you haven't, I mean, what does regime change in Iran mean?

Just one more thing going back to that Bush point.

I just want to linger on that for a second since you were there, like, or around it at least.

Like the shock and awe, it's like there is like a hubristic moment where people can get caught up in this stuff, right?

Where it's like, it's like, we got this.

For sure.

And that is something to think about right now in the Israel because there's kind of like a good reason kind of for Israel to be heuristic.

It's pretty astonishing what they've done.

Yeah.

And I think that goes to your point that people get sort of caught up in that success.

And we're the smartest military people in the world.

And these guys are on their heels.

And, you know, let's take them out while we can.

You know, we're rolling.

Let's go.

And you just kind of get caught up in the momentum of war.

Speaking about the Fissures, though, and maybe the disagreements,

have you caught the Tucker and Ted interview?

I've played it maybe 100 times.

I have it on a loop i have it on a loop over here in the corner well good how about 101 because i played one clip from it yesterday

i played one clip from it yesterday and i was like yeah i need one more i'm not done with it yet so let's listen let's listen to a different part of this

it's so good it's interesting you're trying to derail my questions by calling me an anti-semite which you are i did not of course you are and and rather than be honorable enough to say it right to my face you are sitting in a squeezy feline way implying it or just asking questions about the jews i'm not asking questions about the jews I have,

this has nothing to do with Jews or Judaism.

It has to do with the foreign government.

Isn't Israel controlling our foreign policy?

That's not about the Jews.

You said, I'm asking.

And by the way, you're the one that just called me, I think, as sleazy feline.

So let's be clear.

It's sleazy to imply that I'm an anti-Semite, which you just did.

No, I just said

that

you're asking.

You answer it.

Give me another reason.

If you're not an anti-Semite, give me another reason why the obsession is Israel.

I am in no sense obsessed with Israel.

We are on the brink of war with Iran.

And so these are valid questions.

But you're

Wow, I didn't even hear that clip.

That's even better.

It gets better and better.

That one's been lost in

the shuffle, man.

That's incredible.

What, sleazy feline?

Yeah, if the glove fits, I don't know.

Sleazy feline, not too bad.

How deep do you think?

Is this personal?

Like, how deep do you think the rift is?

Is Tucker kind of on an island?

Like, what do you make of the

fight?

Well, if he's on an island, it's a largely populated island of Magites.

I mean, he and Bannon, I mean, I think that they, whatever you say about those guys, I think they have a pulse, the true pulse of the core MAGA base.

And I think this is where they are.

They really are an isolationist group and that Tucker will just believe anything.

It's not like he has an ideology, but I think maybe

he says the same thing about Bannon.

But, I mean, that's some high-level entertainment there taking on Cruise.

I liked his little,

he dipped into the William F.

Buckley there in the middle for like two hours.

Yes.

What?

Let's show you.

Felt like he was on a firing line there for a second.

I mean, it was such an ambush.

You know, he looked up the population right before the interview.

It was an ambush, but there were some.

There's some legit points.

Ted makes a little bit of a legit point about Tucker's.

No,

this is an interesting

historical demarcation because, I mean, look who's in this coalition.

It's not just Marjorie Taylor Greene and Tucker Bannon.

It's Elizabeth Warren.

I mean, it's a really interesting coalition that's coming together.

Yeah, Tommy Vitor over there on Pod, Save America.

I was listening to them the other day, and he has strange new respect for Tucker, it turns out.

And sometimes when a person is right, they're right.

And is Tucker right for the right reasons?

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

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I want to talk about immigration with you a little bit because I think like me, you,

you know, when you were a Republican in good standing, like kind of bought the, maybe,

I don't know.

Actually, I want to ask this question.

Was it BS?

Was the compassionate conservatism stuff BS?

Was that a, was that a

like just a marketing thing?

Or did folks really believe it?

Listen, I believed it, and I think George Bush believed it, and that's part of what drew me over the bridge.

And then, I mean, I was there in Texas and saw him embracing immigrants, saw him on the border.

I mean, you can't fake that stuff.

I mean, he was, you know, speaking Spanish to them and embracing them.

And, and by the way, it was his sort of compassionate version of immigration and trying to fix the system

that I

fully supported.

And, you know, he wanted to campaign on that.

And a lot of people are saying, you know, that's a third rail.

You can't do it.

Blah, blah, blah.

And he said, you know, Top, this is what I believe.

And you're going to.

So, but the interesting thing about it, Tim, is that

that was 25 years ago.

Yeah.

So that's, you know, like a third of my life that we've been talking about this with zero action, you know, which is amazing.

I mean, I don't think anybody disagrees that, or very few, that it's not a, it's not an issue that needs to be addressed.

And the only question is, how do you address it?

What's the fix?

I'm happy to hear you say that.

It was one of my failed projects was I was going to go, I was probably going to lean on you to help me with this.

I was pitching it as a podcast, like back before I started doing this podcast, where I was going to go interview all the OGW people and try to like answer this question.

Like, was this real?

Because I thought it was real as a kid.

I was drawn to it.

Well, what did Jeb?

What did you think about Jeb's view on it?

Oh, no, he was genuine about the immigration stuff, though.

I think that you could explore all that and be like, okay, well, what are the limits to the compassion, right?

And I think that there are layers to explore, you know, there for sure.

But I mean, he was definitely, at least on, on criminal justice issues and on immigration issues, very legit.

But then it's like these questions of you make these sacrifices and alliances and, you know, what are the priorities.

Anyway, I thought that'd be an interesting thing to explore.

But I bought into it and felt that it was genuine and so i could it's been a real betrayal like the one thing when people are like you've changed your views and everything i was like i don't know i feel like i've been totally betrayed like like they sold me from reagen all the way through mccain on you know shining city on a hill and we're well and this is a good part of america etc and like now we're china like we have the nastiest immigration policy in the world like that is the thing that has hit me the hardest maybe the betrayal is part of it the humanity element is also part of it as you've watched kind of what they've been doing across all of the different elements with immigration, like what has, what has grabbed you the most?

Well,

at the core of it,

the hypocrisy, and

you can take it this sort of issue by issue about how Trump has discarded sort of, you know, the historical Republican approach on these issues.

I mean, for example, like Bush appointed me to the broadcast board of governors, which oversees Voice of America.

You know, that's all about pushing the freedom agenda around the world and trump's cut that that's how much more republican can you get than that idea and that you would shut that down so on the immigration side

at the very core of this and we're seeing it now in the in the you know with the ag sector particularly is that these are people i mean they're here for the most american of reasons you know and these are like you know really religious people hardworking people you know they're not criminals they may not have their papers, but by God, they are, you know, patriotic, America-loving people working their asses off.

And that's the thing that gets me in the end is that it's just, when you get to the core of this, it's very anti, it's very anti-American.

Anti-American.

It is.

It's un-American.

I keep saying it.

There are two.

I was reading the local paper this morning.

We're going to do a little local news segment on this with New Orleans because this struck me.

This just really made me sad.

And this stuff has happened all over the country.

And there's this kind of ongoing debate about,

you know, is Trump just targeting blue cities, you know, and this is part of some fight.

And I think it is that.

Like he's trying to escalate fights, obviously, with, you know, sanctuary cities, quote unquote, and with blue governors.

But the policies are way more far-reaching than that.

And here we are in Louisiana, and we've got Kenner, which is a suburb of New Orleans, is 30% Hispanic.

They canceled their Hispanic Heritage Festival because they're worried about an ICE raid.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

That's talking about un-American.

Yeah.

And then another local local story

in the paper, check out NOLA.com, subscribe and support them.

Doing real journalism is

a flood control project job site was raided.

It's like, really?

I mean,

how much more self-harm can you be doing than

we're going to deport the people that are working on a construction project to help with flood control?

Yeah.

Like it feels like New Orleans could use some infrastructure related to flood control.

And probably if we can get people who are willing to come work here and help us with that and do so and follow the rules, it seems like that's probably a win-win.

Yeah.

And, you know,

the tension now that's happening in the administration is that, you know, the ag secretary went and weighed in heavily.

And then, of course, Stephen Miller and Christy Noam jumped in to reverse the reversal.

But the problem is that Miller and company have come up with this number of 3,000 deportations per day to meet a mark of 1 million per year.

So the orders have have been going down.

The interesting story is about the demoralization in Homeland Security and ICE.

People who went into for the right reasons are having to go arrest

really good people, and they're not criminals.

And the notion that they sold was not that we're going to go round up hardworking people who just didn't have papers.

We're going to go round up all these gang members and criminals.

The problem is

there aren't 3,000 a day of them to do that.

Yeah.

So the net pulls up all the, you know, these really good people.

There's some economic impact on that too, but I want to play one more thing because it's been going around.

It's from the first term.

And I just,

I feel like there's something here.

I don't know, maybe all these guys have been broken by 10 years of Trump, but a much younger looking Joe Rogan.

I don't know if you've seen this.

This clip has been going around.

It's during the child separation stuff.

And I want to show you how he was talking about this back then.

Broke the law.

Shouldn't have fucking come over here if you kid.

You didn't want to get your kids separated.

If you were in the presence of a woman who came over here from Guatemala and she's poor and she's starving and they're taking her baby away and she's wailing and screaming from

a primal place in her DNA that the one thing she loves more than anything is being taken away, a baby.

If that doesn't freak you the fuck out, you're not a part of the team, man.

You're missing it.

You're missing it.

What are we here for?

We're here for 100 years of whatever.

That's what we're here for.

If you want to spend 100 years saying, shouldn't have fucking broke the law, I don't want you on the team.

You're an asshole.

I mean, that's really good.

Yeah.

Occasionally, Rogan kind of.

Yeah, and I just, I just, I keep banging this drum because I'm like, man, I think that Democrats and whoever, commentators, comedians, podcast bros, should be in these spaces making these arguments.

People get it.

I mean, I heard Rogan do something similarly recently.

He does sort of like, you know, on occasion, figure out the humanity stuff.

Humanity, you know, sort of eks through occasionally.

And these stories like are still like, we don't have a child separation policy right now, but like the stories are still happening.

I don't know.

I get this shit sent to me all the time because I'm so obsessed with it.

And I tell people, I was like, don't send me national news stories and memes.

I've seen all those already.

But if you have a local news story about something that's happening in your community, send it to me because I miss that.

And I think that stuff's breaking through, Tim.

And I think that there's a repetition about it.

And so I know that the political

circle around Trump is like, you can do anything you want on immigration.

You're bulletproof on it.

Don't worry about it.

But the reality is that those numbers are now south.

Even as immigration numbers, which is obviously

the strongest issue.

But the fact is that Americans, no matter how strongly they feel about deporting people who are bad people,

I mean, they have a real sense of fairness, A, about deporting people that shouldn't be deported to a prison in a foreign country.

They don't think that's right.

And also, you know, deporting people that don't have any criminal background.

I mean, they do draw a line.

Yeah, they do.

And like the two, the two stories I was remembering, the people sent me, like, one was a guy, was the wife of a military guy.

Yeah.

And she got, and they kind of tricked her a little bit to get her to show up to an appointment.

And then the other one was the wife of a pastor who had kids here.

And like, she gets deported back to the city.

Yeah, and then there was the one just said in the last day or two about the Afghani interpreter guy, you know, who's like,

a pastor's wife who's been here since 1998 is getting sent back to Mexico?

Well, I think those are the kind of stories that get, you know, get real sticky.

Like you said, especially if people read about local stories, they're like, wait a minute,

what's going on here?

I didn't sign up for this.

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Share your story at mountjaro.com slash duets.

Mountjaro terzepatide is an injectable prescription medicine that is used along with diet and exercise to improve blood sugar, glucose, in adults with type 2 diabetes mellitus.

Mount Jaro is not for use in children.

Don't take Mount Jaro if you're allergic to it or if you or someone in your family had medullary thyroid cancer or multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2.

Stop and call your doctor right away if you have an allergic reaction, a lump or swelling in your neck, severe stomach pain, or vision changes.

Serious side effects may include inflamed pancreas and gallbladder problems.

Taking Manjaro with a sulfinal norrrea or insulin may cause low blood sugar.

Tell your doctor if you're nursing pregnant plan to be or taking birth control pills and before scheduled procedures with anesthesia.

Side effects include nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting, which can cause dehydration and may cause kidney problems.

Once-weekly Manjaro is available by prescription only in 2.55, 7.5, 10, 12.5, and 15 milligram per 0.5 milliliter injection.

Call 1-800-LILLIERX-800-545-5979 or visit mountjaro.lilly.com for the Mount Jaro indication and safety summary with warnings.

Talk to your doctor for more information about Mount Jaro.

Mount Jaro and its delivery device base are registered trademarks owned or licensed by Eli Lilly and Company, its subsidiaries or affiliates.

This Labor Day at Lowe's, kick off fall with savings.

Get up to 40% off.

Select major appliances.

Plus, get an additional 20% off when you buy four or more.

Valid through 9-10.

Selection varies by location.

While supplies last.

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See Lowe's.com slash rebates for details.

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I'm going to go back to the Econ side.

Now, Chamber of Commerce, Tim and MCAT, can come out.

Because in addition to the humanity, there's the Econ side.

Matt iglesias posted this i think it was people are like it's housing market issues right now like there's softness and but like costs are going up and people are like why and iglesias just summed it up this way pretty simply he goes well we're raising financing costs for things higher national debts can increase interest rates on everything we're raising building material costs directly with tariffs and indirectly with like these work side work site raids where like if you have fewer people you know that you're going to increase increase the labor costs.

And I think that, like, unlike the first term, Trump is like walking into a little bit of an economic pickle this time.

Like,

the stuff that he wanted to do, the guys around him didn't really let him do.

Like, we focus on that in the context of the authoritarian stuff, but it's also been true in like the economic policy stuff.

I don't know.

Do you think that's overstated?

Well, I'm just a shallow media guy, and I am not an economist, and I flunked Econ 101, but even I.

That's why you're representing the man of the people here, concerned about

prices.

You know,

the whole tariff obsession from the very beginning, it just struck me as insane.

Trump somehow read something about something that happened in the late 1800s and just sort of transposed it to modern day without realizing there were different circumstances.

And it became this sort of magic wand, much like the wall was in 16.

You know, the wall is going to solve everything.

We're going to build a a wall and Mexico is going to pay for it.

Tariffs is kind of the same thing.

He just somehow latched onto this notion that, you know, that the countries are going to pay for it.

There'd be no, the consumers here wouldn't have to pay for it, which is, you know, there's no economist in the world that say that that's true.

And so he just, he found a couple of nutballs, Peter Navarro and whatnot and a couple of others that, you know, that like, that egged him on.

and just walked into this crazy tariff thing that, you know, Scott Bessant, I mean, I think history will go down as showing that he saved us from true economic catastrophe.

I mean, had those initial tariffs.

I don't know.

We've got gay on gay crime with Scott Besant, you know.

I don't, I can't, I can't do it, but that's fine.

The gays did a good one there.

He just saved us.

I'm not, I'm not endorsing him across the board, but in that moment, in that moment, you know, he pulled us back from, you know, could have been

certainly smarter than Howard Nutlick with low bar, but he certainly is.

Okay, media guide question then on Econ.

The punch poll, the D.C., a little congressional news outlet that follows Congress.

They have a take up this morning of just about how some Republicans on the Hill, and they're well sourced there, are starting to panic a little bit about the

polling numbers around the Big Beautiful Bill and how it's not popular and how they don't have a message on it yet.

Now, the Democratic message is clear.

How about that for a change of pace?

The Democrats have a clear message, and the Republicans are flailing on their message a little bit.

What do you make of all that?

I think that this could be the catastrophe that implodes the whole Trump second term.

Of course, the irony that you can appreciate, given where you and I both come from, is this notion that the Republicans actually cared about the deficit and that they're the ones, you look historically, who's driven it up?

Well, Clinton brought it down.

I mean, you kind of go to the Democratic presidents.

They got things sort of right-sided.

And then you'd stack up Bush and especially Trump.

I mean, he's driven up the deficit three, five, six times.

And, you know, we're into territory now where, again, this is where the economists come in.

The bond markets are freaking out.

And so if this bill goes through,

I think it's going to be huge long-term consequences that to me, it just feels like they're driving it off the cliff.

Okay.

My old Republican has to come in for a second.

Joe Biden did not do a good job on the debt and deficit.

But okay, sometimes sometimes the Democrat listeners were like, you you got to give us credit.

And I was like, okay, I'll give you credit for the work in 1999 and

Barack Obama's failed effort with John Boehner and Simpson Bowles.

It was a good intentioned effort, but it didn't land.

But anyway,

I hear you, though.

No, I mean, Bush and Trump have been a nightmare.

Everybody's been a nightmare on it.

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Elon, I wanted to get your pick your brand on Elon because...

Elon sent a tweet maybe a week or two ago now that I felt like might have been an MCAT bat signal.

He was like, maybe the 80% in the middle should create a party

that gets rid of all these guys on the extremes.

And I was like, did you get a phone call from Elon?

Did he try to shake your tree a little bit?

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

Well,

this has been my obsession for many, many years.

This just

quaint notion that there should be

an alternative to

Coke or Pepsi.

We should have seven upper Red Bull.

is Elon, who you imagined, is the standard bearer for that.

Take whoever we can get.

It's a steep hill and a big rock.

You know, come on in.

The water's really chilly.

So,

I mean, Elon's not what gets me excited about this notion.

It's looking at what's happening with Gen Z.

And, you know, they are just radically opposed to kind of the institutional parties and looking for an alternative in a different way.

And, you know, that's on both sides of the aisle.

So I could go on for hours about, you know, the experience of meeting the buzzsaw of trying to do an effort like this because it's, it's almost impossible.

Well, why don't you do it?

I get, I did a Reddit Ask Me Anything yesterday.

If you can go and check that out on our politics.

Yeah.

And I do like anytime I do one of these, you get this question, why not a third party?

Why doesn't it work?

Why doesn't explain why it hasn't worked?

A, I'll start off with, I think there's huge opportunity there.

I think there's a huge desire for it.

That's just that the system is really rigged against it, just in the sense that you have to get on the ballot in 50 states.

And in order to do that, you have to raise, just the most recent example was about $50 million.

Well, Elon's got 50 million, so he could do it, but there's not a lot of Elons around.

And then once you do that, you have to go around all these states and get on the ballot.

And in every one of these states, there is a Democrat or Republican Secretary of State who's going to do everything they can to question your signatures, throw up roadblocks, file lawsuits.

So it's an incredibly difficult thing to just get on the ballot and do all of that.

And there have been a couple of different efforts over the last couple of cycles or several cycles, all of them kind of flamed out for different reasons.

People always say to me, you know, third party is never going to happen because it's never really successfully happened before.

And it's like, you know, nothing happens in politics until it does.

What do you make of my answer?

My answer is, folks, is this.

There are two possible ways, and neither of them have really been tried.

One is because because it's hard and it's a lot of work, which is just starting state legislators and local races and just like build from the ground up.

And that's a lot more work than like doing a than starting a group and going on TV.

And I think that might not work, but it's worth a try.

And the other one is a fuck you billionaire who has like insanely weird views, like not what you would think.

Not like, oh, I'm socially moderate and fiscally conservative.

Like they, like this person would have totally wild views that are not out in the public, that nobody is taking on right now.

Like we should ban AI and also I really love guns and I don't know.

You know what I mean?

Like totally.

Yeah, it's Ross Perot kind of thing.

Yeah.

Like those are the only two paths.

Like that's enough.

I agree.

And I just, I'm really skeptical about the first one.

I just think it's got to be kind of Moses leading out of the desert and it's got to be from the top.

I mean, doing the,

I understand the local state, but just to do that is exponentially harder than the alternative, right?

Anyway, we went down to sidetrack, but I was, I got intrigued by your answer.

No, People are really interested in it, so it's worth talking about.

When I brought up Elon initially, the feud, do you have any hot takes on the feud?

Because it's ongoing.

Elon, people are like, oh, it's over now.

But Elon tweeted yesterday, calling Trump's head of personnel, Sergio Gore.

This guy, I know, used to work for Rand Paul.

Elon tweeted that he's a snake.

Elon tweeted that he's a snake yesterday.

So it doesn't, as I've always said, I was like, you can't really have a truce with an unhinged poster.

I know a lot of people that love to post on social media.

They're not the type of people.

Especially when you're posting to the platform that you own.

Yeah, it's like, you know, you might think you have a truce, but something's going to happen and he's going to fire.

Yeah, I mean, it's the truce that's going to happen until he takes his next round of Adderall.

And

is he going to crank it?

Yeah, I just think that that's just going to be on again, off again.

But yes, Sergio, I had some

guy.

He's an interesting cat, isn't he?

You had some run-ins with him?

Not run-ins, but I mean, like when he worked for Brand and whoever, you know, it's wild.

The more you know these people, the scareder you are of the state of the who's running the government.

Exactly.

Well, you know, I tell the story about, you'll appreciate this, Tim, because you were on the A-team.

You know, 16, you think about if you were a Republican operative like Tim Miller.

And, you know, you make your bones and your career and maybe a bunch of money by being working for a successful presidential candidate by helping elect a president.

That's the world series of politics.

So in that cycle, there were, I think, 18 candidates ultimately.

And if you're a Republican operative, if you interviewed with Trump, that was your 18th interview because you'd already been turned down by

Rubio, Jeb.

You know, you just go down the line.

There were some A-listers in that race and nobody thought Trump was going to win.

So imagine the...

the level of

multiple offers.

And this is not really a brag.

It's just like, there's so many people out there.

It was

the supply and demand was such that

you're really at the bottom of the barrel.

Yeah, it was truly broken toys.

It was truly broken toys.

And now it's self-selected for the most sociopathic people who have been like, after all this, they're like, now I want to come back in.

Yes, I mean, so this time around, you could say, well, it's not just all broken toys, but it is people.

The reward system in that ecosystem is not for following rules, it's for being rule breakers, right?

It's for being shitstormers, glass breakers you know outrage performers it's the loomers those lore loomers it's those are the people that get attention and rewarded in that in that universe it's not people who do good it's people who break shit all right do you miss the road are you happy what are you doing how are you spending your days now just no sarcasm are you bike riding or what are you up to

well i i say that uh you know people ask me how i'm doing saying well i'm pacing the cage as i look at the world but i'm also uh experiencing radical gratitude for my little bubble You know, you and I are both from Colorado.

I'm back there and I love it.

I live in a town of 800 at 10,000 feet with a national forest behind me and a river running through it.

So, and grandchildren and family surrounding me.

So I have a lot of gratitude and feel very grateful for my life.

And I, you know, I worry about the world, but I'm, you know, I love being where I am.

Probably the best lineup of politicians in Colorado, too.

Like the Colorado isn't broken.

I mean, there are a couple of bad ones.

There are a couple of

of Texas where George Bush couldn't get elected now.

But it's such a purple state.

Like Michael Bennett, you know, he's running for governor now.

It'd be great governor.

That's you just kind of look at the Bennett's and the Hick and Loopers and the Paulises.

That's where I live politically.

And so I'm very comfortable there.

MCAT, thank you.

Holler at many times.

Good to see you.

Appreciate you stepping in today.

And hope to see you soon.

Always willing to jump in the car, Thomas.

All right, brother.

Come on down to New Orleans soon.

We can have a purple drink.

Everybody, stick around.

I got former Ambassador Dan Shapiro.

Okay.

Our partner, Eli Lilly and Company, just announced duets for type 2 diabetes, a campaign celebrating real patient stories of support because managing type 2 diabetes doesn't have to be a solo act.

Share your story at mountjaro.com/slash duets.

Mountjaro terzepatide is an injectable prescription medicine that is used along with diet and exercise to improve blood sugar, glucose, in adults with type 2 diabetes mellitus.

Maljaro is not for use in children.

Don't take Maljaro if you're allergic to it or if you or someone in your family had medullary thyroid cancer or multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2.

Stop and call your doctor right away if you have an allergic reaction, a lump or swelling in your neck, severe stomach pain, or vision changes.

Serious side effects may include inflamed pancreas and gallbladder problems.

Taking Maljaro with a sulfinyl norrhea or insulin may cause low blood sugar.

Tell your doctor if you're nursing pregnant plan to be or taking birth control pills and before scheduled procedures with anesthesia.

Side effects include nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting, which can cause dehydration and may cause kidney problems.

Once weekly Mount Jaro is available by prescription only in 2.55 7.5 10 12.5 and 15 milligram per 0.5 milliliter injection.

Call 1-800-LILLIRX 800-545-5979 or visit mountjaro.lilly.com for the Mountjaro indication and safety summary with warnings.

Talk to your doctor for more information about Mount Jaro.

Mountjaro and its delivery device base are registered trademarks owned or licensed by Eli Lilly and Company, its subsidiaries or affiliates.

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Get up to 40% off.

Select major appliances.

Plus, get an additional 20% off when you buy four or more.

Valid through 9-10.

Selection varies by location.

While supplies last, more terms and restrictions apply.

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all right we are back he was u.s ambassador to israel under president barack obama and uh subsequently president joe biden appointed him as special liaison to israel on the issue of iran and was also an advisor on middle east issues department of defense it's dan shapiro how you doing thanks sim good to be with you happy juneteenth Happy Juneteenth to you as well.

I got a DM from you this morning, and I was in the market for somebody to fit this bill, and so it was just fortuitous.

And you wrote that you have a different take from your friend Ben Rhodes on the Iran nuclear negotiations and the pros and cons of military action.

And as I said earlier this week, I'm like,

I'm deeply torn about the whole thing.

And so I was interested to hear your point of view.

So why don't you just take it away?

Sure.

Thanks.

Well, I listened to you and Ben yesterday, and Ben's a friend, and we've worked together for a long time, and we've disagreed on things, and when we disagree, we argue as friends.

But I want to just come and share a perspective.

Yeah, we were both, of course, in the Obama administration when the JCPOA was signed, and I was ambassador to Israel, and you can imagine there was a lot of unhappiness and skepticism in Israel about that agreement.

And I was the ambassador called upon to defend it, and I did.

And I explained to my Israeli friends, you know, it wasn't a perfect deal.

It didn't solve everything, but it did buy time.

It did extend out Iran's ability to ever achieve a nuclear weapon, keep them at least a year distance from that and keep them there for over a decade.

And then when Trump withdrew from the agreement in 2018, I criticized that.

I thought that was a mistake.

It gave back some of that time.

It sort of gave a chance for Iran to shorten the distance sooner, and it has.

And that's kind of brought us to this moment.

But I do feel like we're sometimes caught in that historical debate, the two tribes, you know, pro and con on JCPOA.

And I'm just not sure it's as relevant to the situation we face now.

And it's distracting us to some degree from focusing on the outcome that we need.

And that was the outcome that the president finally, it took a little time, but landed on in the negotiations he was conducting with Iran, was that there should be no enrichment.

There should be no ability for Iran independently to achieve the means to break out of the United States.

President Obama, you mean?

No, no, I mean President Trump in the negotiations he was conducting in the last two, three months.

Oh, God.

So that was what he landed on.

No enrichment.

And, you know, of course, the Iranians hadn't agreed to that.

And I don't think they were likely to agree to that.

We're probably going to face some crisis point in those negotiations maybe a bit later in the year.

And the only chance of them coming around to that position is if you have diplomacy backed by the credible threat of force.

But that, I think, is the right position.

And I think three things have changed since those negotiations a decade ago on the JCPOA.

And that's One is that just because, and this is partly because of Trump's withdrawal from the agreement, the program has advanced.

There's just no two ways about it.

Everyone acknowledges.

And the International Atomic Energy Agency has confirmed they have about 10 bombs worth of 60% enriched uranium, which they could in a very short time, days or weeks, turn into weapons-grade uranium.

They've shortened the distance.

There's some dispute about exactly in what means, but they've clearly done research on weaponization, the separate process of building the bomb.

And so the program has advanced, and just the time that it would take them to do that is much less.

The second thing is what happened last year.

This is when I was serving in the Pentagon.

Twice, Iran conducted these overt state-to-state attacks with barrages of missiles and rockets and drones against Israel.

You know, in the past, that sort of campaign was conducted through proxies and it was sort of deniable, what they used to call the shadow war.

But now we're talking about this open state-on-state act of war of raining really unprecedented numbers of rockets and missiles and drones down on Israel.

And you just imagine if any one of those had been tipped with a nuclear warhead, you know, how risky that is.

The third thing I think is just what's changed in the psychology in Israel after October 7th.

That is that the mindset has shifted, and this is really across the society.

It's not really just about BB,

that you can't allow threats that could be, you know, to Israel's maybe very existence to mature and come up to the last possible minute before you address them.

There were huge failures and errors that led, of course, to their vulnerability on October 7th.

They weren't as prepared as they should have been.

And so the position they now adopt is that we can't sort of, you know, we have no margin for error.

We can't just wait till the last minute to address a threat, especially when we're talking about something with as

existential implications as an Iranian nuclear weapon.

And of course, they also see an opening because, and I think Ben discussed this yesterday, last October after the second of those Iranian attacks, the Israelis did go in and they did eliminate the best Iranian air defenses, the S-300s that the Russians had provided.

So when they saw that vulnerability and they see the maturing of that threat and they see the risk that is associated with them carrying out a state-on-state act of war, as they've already done twice, just not going to have that margin of error.

And so, you know, that brings us to this point.

When there were negotiations, I wish they had given them more time to try to see if they were going to work.

I don't really think the Iranians were going to agree to the terms without a threat of force, but that's where we are now.

And now, Israelis have acted.

Trump could have given them a red light, did not.

But now we have some decisions facing us.

All right.

I want to push on a couple of those different areas.

First, on the intelligence intelligence about the nuclear program.

I think you can probably understand folks who are not as versed in all this as you having some boy who cries wolf skepticism going towards what happened with the Iraq war and intelligence related to that, of course, but also, you know, Iran's been on the brink of a weapon for 20 years now.

The director of national intelligence, who I have no love for, was just three months ago saying that they weren't that close, not less than three months ago, really.

And now just a little bit later, they're saying, oh, no, like we have to do this right now.

How do you respond to that, I think, legitimate skepticism that you'd hear from folks on that this is like an imminent, imminent threat?

Look, I mean, the Iranian strategy for years has been to inch forward with this program, not to rush to a breakout.

And so partly their strategy has been to stay within range so that at a time of their choosing, they could break out.

And so that means if you're ever warning that they're some distance away, but they're making the decision to proceed slowly, but still give themselves that opportunity, Then, you know, a year passes, two years pass, five years pass, and that hasn't happened.

People say, oh, well, see, you were crying, wolf.

The other thing that's happened, of course, over a number of years has been a range of U.S.

and Israeli actions that have put time on the clock.

Everything from negotiations, and the JCPA is part of that, and sanctions, and sabotage, and covert actions.

So there have been various ways that we've been able to extend the timeline that have kept them from the actual moment of truth.

I mean, right, some some of what I say is drawn from information I have access to when I was in government.

I, of course, left in January, so I don't know the most recent intelligence.

But even then, it was pretty clear that there's research going on that without a formal decision to build a weapon is bringing them closer to be able to do that faster if and when they get that decision from the supreme leader.

That's on the weaponization side.

And then on the enrichment side, there's no dispute.

This is all public and documented by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

agency they've accelerated their enrichment of 60 percent uranium this was again partly a reaction to trump's withdrawal from the agreement in 2018 but this is where we are and they now have 10 bombs worth of 60 percent which within days they could produce at least one bombs worth of 90 percent that's weapons grade and you know within a few weeks multiple bombs worth so again to say that there's a decision, no, one can't say they've made that decision, but one can say they've significantly shortened the time that it would take them to do it if they they make the decision.

And that's where this, do you have the margin of error question comes in?

And so the other thing I think has people worried or concerned is the chatter around this offensive action from Israel, in part because of the success of it, which is, which I've mentioned several times, and it's really kind of astonishing how successful Mossad and Israel IDF has been, both with Hezbollah and this action.

But the result of that success has been there's a lot of chatter of like, ooh, like maybe we can get rid of the mullahs altogether, right?

And there's been, I think it seems like an a notion that this is not just like an effort to bomb the nuclear facilities, but maybe an effort towards regime change altogether.

And that gets people leery, given our recent experience.

What would you say to that?

So far, at least, the Israelis have not declared regime change to be the goal of the operation.

They've said it's to prevent the nuclear breakout possibility and also the ballistic missiles, which, of course, Iran is using to attack Israel every night.

In fact, I think there was a very tough blow against a hospital in southern Israel today from one of those ballistic missiles.

They've killed about 24 people, you know, injured hundreds and the like.

So that's what Israel says their objective is.

I don't think regime change should be the objective of this operation, whether it remains purely Israeli or whether the United States gets involved.

And certainly, you know, I'm not talking anything like what happened in Iraq and Afghanistan 20 years ago.

We're not putting boots on the ground.

We're not marching into Tehran.

That's not the case.

We should keep the focus and keep on the outcome we need, which is to ensure they don't have that ability to create a nuclear weapon.

Now, of course, I'll say, obviously, the regime is a terrible regime, mostly to its own people.

It's brutal, it's corrupt, it's mismanaged the economy and the electricity and water, and in every other way.

They have squandered the resources of the Iranian people, not on making their lives better and more prosperous, but on pursuing these ideological crusades around the region, mostly against Israel, against us.

There's a lot of Isranian, Israeli, Arab, European blood on the hands of this regime.

And so no one will shed any tears or should when it leaves.

But that's a decision for the Iranian people.

And they'll have to make that decision.

Now, there may be a tipping point when the regime looks weak.

Certain institutions have been rendered less capable or wobbled because of some of this operation.

And again, that might trigger some internal processes, but nobody knows.

Nobody knows when that regime, those regime fissures will appear, if there's some organized opposition.

So that's not really the goal.

It shouldn't be the goal.

Yeah, I mean, I have no love for the regime either, but I just, like, on the BB side of this, I think there's good reason to not maybe believe that the goal of this operation is just the nuclear regime.

I mean, he was on Fox the other day saying that this operation could certainly result in a regime as the government of Iran is very weak.

They shoot women because their hair is uncovered.

They shoot students.

They suck the oxygen out from these brave and gifted people, the Iranian people.

The decision to act to rise up this time is the decision of the Iranian people.

And I agree with every word of that, but coming from the person that is executing a bombing campaign, like to me, that means that it seems to me that he's saying that he wants to make that happen militarily, or at least is open to that being the end game of this.

And

I don't know.

I think it's an aspirational notion, I agree with it, but then we get into a kind of a debate

if it's really what the real mission is of the campaign.

Yeah, look, I've got no illusions about Bibi.

I've worked with him and we've had our many differences over the years.

I think he is speaking aspirationally there.

That is, again, something an aspiration I share.

Sounds like you do too.

I think an awful lot of

Iranian people feel that way as well.

He's not necessarily the best spokesperson for that.

Not somebody who I think is going to be the one to draw Iranians out into the street.

So if I were advising him, I'd say, you know, tone it down, chill it out.

But I still don't see it as the military objective of the campaign.

I still see that focused on the the nuclear and the missile threats the other thing that i talked about i'm just interested in your take on is i just

in these discussions like i'm just filled with a deep uncertainty and it makes me nervous that i feel like

there are a lot of people that in in government and that who are advocates on both sides of this who have like utter certainty right like utter certainty that iran must be taken out to protect israel or utter certainty that israel must not do anything you know because it will lead to catastrophe.

I think that that is blinding, right?

Like when you have that, we were talking about this with McKinnon in the first segment.

Iraq looked really great for six weeks, and that led to a hubris, I think, about like what was achievable.

And I worry about that here.

I worry about the fact that

it's the one issue where my inbox is most filled with people who are 100% damn certain on one way or the other that we should do this.

And that worries me when you have BB and Trump and folks who could be a little reckless, right?

That things can spiral out of control.

I mean, because who the hell knows, right?

I don't know.

Like actions like this might yield freedom for the Iranian people.

It might yield a backlash that's hard to predict.

What do you say to that?

So first of all, I'd say you're right that nobody who projects certainty about how any of this is going to unfold should be believed that they know.

And that's part of this kind of frustration I have with the sort of tribal debate about the pros and cons of the JCPOA.

I just think we should focus really carefully on what the objectives should be from here.

And you're right, the uncertainty goes both ways, right?

If we don't act and they're left with that capability, as I said, you know, they're much closer to the ability when they decide to build that nuclear weapon and then, you know, one missile with that warhead.

We're talking about a different world.

If we do act, yes, there's always risk when you take military action.

And so this has to be done thoughtfully and carefully.

And yes, Donald Trump is not the commander-in-chief I would have chosen for judiciousness and care and wisdom in how he approaches this.

And I can't stand the kind of reckless tweets and, you know, sort of thinking out loud, you know, all of his impulses about, you know, oh, evacuate Tehran.

Do y'all think that the threats to assassinate the Ayatollah, the threats to assassinate the Ayollo media?

Assassinate the Ayatollah,

you know, you know, all of those, unconditional surrender, you know, all caps, right, this is not helpful.

So, you know, I'm hoping, of course, that judicious decisions are ultimately made.

I know the military who are advising him, the CENTCOM commander, General Eric Carrilla, and the team, and they're very, very smart and careful and thoughtful, and they mitigate risk.

So I just think we should be thoughtful about it.

And actually, there's still an opening for diplomacy here, and it should be coercive diplomacy, right?

It's clear the president is considering this strike.

He's putting in place the forces that would be necessary.

He's moved a second carrier into the region and tankers and fighters, and then the bombers that would come in at the end would actually execute it.

But then you have the rest necessary for defense on any blowback.

And there's risk, and you've got to message carefully to the Iranians that if they were to respond, especially against U.S.

forces, they would pay a very dear price for that and try to use that as deterrence.

There's risk of escalation.

There's also the ability sometimes to use that risk of escalation to actually find a de-escalatory path.

But that's what's all on the table now.

And that's an opening, actually, for the Iranians to come to the table.

In fact, the foreign minister of Iran is meeting with the European foreign ministers, the British and French and German, tomorrow in Geneva.

That may be an opening for him to give the concession they wouldn't give in the talks before, which is, all right, we're going to give up this enrichment program.

And that would spare everybody having to go through this.

That would be the best outcome.

But if they don't, you know, then there's the question of who can actually deal with this militarily.

The Israelis, by the way, may have solutions to Fordo, the underground facility, that we don't fully know about.

They've shown a lot of ingenuity and creativity with pagers against Hezbollah and commandos and smuggling drones in, right?

We know what they are capable of, so they may have surprises up their sleeve.

But if it requires a U.S.

action with our unique capabilities to get that underground underground site to make sure that they don't have that enrichment capability, it has to be on the table.

And so the president's given himself that option.

I just don't think he's made the decision yet.

All right.

Anything I didn't ask you you wanted to mention?

Listen, this is tough.

And nobody, as you said, should feel that this is a good situation or confident about outcomes.

But I do want to get the outcome right.

The outcome is Iran with no ability to have a nuclear weapon.

So that's the moment we're in.

All right.

Ambassador Dan Shapiro, man, thank you so much for reaching out and for listening to the show.

And let's stay in touch as this stuff develops.

All right.

Thanks, Tim.

Love to.

Take care.

All right.

Everybody else, we'll see you back tomorrow.

We've got a good one coming.

So make sure to tune in.

Peace.

You hit the ties with the road.

And I ran,

I'd rather so far away.

I just ran,

I got all my

days.

I couldn't get away.

A cloud appears above your head.

A beam of light comes shining down on the earth,

shining down on the earth.

A cloud is moving near a snow.

Aurora borealis comes in the earth.

Aurora comes in the earth.

And I ran,

I ran so far away.

I just ran,

I ran on high and day.

I couldn't get away.

The board podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.

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