Mark McKinnon and Dan Shapiro: Mid-Wreckage

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Speaker 3 Hello, and welcome to the Bullword Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller.
Happy Juneteenth.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 I've been trying my best to get a mix of viewpoints, but sometimes the schedule just don't work out. We had a cancellation late last night.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 The parade of dicks will continue. We got a tuber today.
In the second segment, we've got Dan Shapiro,

Speaker 3 who was in the Biden administration working on the 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 his feminine side.

Speaker 3 He was a media advisor.

Speaker 4 Thelma Louise.

Speaker 3 We called each other Thelma Luise. It's close enough.
He was a media advisor for W. McCain and Ann Richards.
He was the co-creator and co-host of the circus. It's Mark McKinnon.
Hey, MCAT.

Speaker 3 How you doing, man?

Speaker 4 Hello, my friend. Good to see you.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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? How has it met your, what you expected?

Speaker 4 Well, it's met my worst expectations

Speaker 4 on every level. And I mean, it just, I mean, the greatest fear was that, you know, Trump would truly be unleashed.

Speaker 4 You know, it was bad enough round one, V1. V2 is just.

Speaker 4 you know, Trump on steroids without any kind of oversight or anybody around him,

Speaker 4 any real adults in the room. And my view is just that

Speaker 4 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?

Speaker 4 I don't know if that's going to be because we bomb Iran or if it's

Speaker 4 because of the tariff economic policy, but it's going to go south.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 3 You don't think there's adult supervision at the Pentagon? You're not feeling comfortable with a weekend talk show co-host

Speaker 3 running the military at this moment?

Speaker 4 Well, you know, I just was reading about this guy named General Eric Corrilla, who's the U.S. Sent Commander,

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 3 I was encouraging until I got to the nickname.

Speaker 4 Yeah, what are his instincts going to be?

Speaker 4 What's he going to tell Trump?

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 But like, what is like, how is your level of alarm at this moment?

Speaker 4 I'm an eternal prisoner of hope, as you know. Yeah.
I think it's going to be really bad. I think we will will recover.
I think it may take

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 If Harris were president, no matter how things went, and we know things went, they weren't that bad under Biden, but

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 Half the country would have said, you know, we're going to hell.

Speaker 4 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, is, is inevitable.

Speaker 4 So we're going to have to get through that.

Speaker 4 But I think ultimately that's going to bring most most of the country back together to recognize that government's here for a purpose and that, you know, it's not the enemy.

Speaker 3 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?

Speaker 3 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,

Speaker 3 both sides have been, you know, losing, depending on how you look at it. And, but if you just look at it from like a cultural

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 And so I know that this feels like, what are you talking about? Like, you know, but culturally. institutionally, right?

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 And there have been like some big wins.

Speaker 3 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, there are racial awareness, right?

Speaker 3 Like there'd 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.

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 we got the Supreme Court that we won, a lot of other things. And so, yeah, that's a nice counterbalance feud.

Speaker 3 They got the little middle finger, his tiny, stubby middle finger that they wanted. And now we'll see if that makes them happy.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 So let's just start with that.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I think that we'll very soon see how wrong this could be, but I think he's made a decision.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 One, I think the notion of Donald Trump peacnick is just a complete mythology. It's not who he is.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 3 He was just the everybody's stupid guy. And so had the presidents before him been anti-war, he would have been like, you guys are so stupid, we should have been doing wars.
It was just like,

Speaker 4 but think about what his instincts really are. Military parades, shooting protesters.
He loves offense. He loves military.
He loves strongmen. He loves Putin.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 And I want some credit. Now, suddenly, we, not they.

Speaker 4 So I think he's bought in. And I think Netanyahu's driving him like a truck.

Speaker 3 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 to be on the winning side.

Speaker 3 He's happy to be there.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 And if we do do it and we wipe it out, you're going to get credit for this. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Win-win.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 But I was interested in your, I was watching you, you were on with Scarborough before this and my buddy J Mart. JMart doesn't even give a fuck about TV.
By the way, this is a a total aside.

Speaker 3 He's slouching. He's making faces.
Like he's

Speaker 3 just, he's like the kid in the classroom doing spitballs now on TV. It's hilarious watching it.
Anyway, I was watching you going to hear what y'all were talking about.

Speaker 3 And Scarborough made a point that was,

Speaker 3 things in Iraq seem to be going pretty well the first couple of weeks, too.

Speaker 3 I thought that was an insightful point. So I don't know.

Speaker 3 You kind of lived through all that.

Speaker 4 I have a lot of muscle memory about that because I remember it very well. And,

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 And it was like 100%

Speaker 4 or 99, 99 senators voted to go in.

Speaker 3 Right.

Speaker 4 You know, it wasn't like this was a debate.

Speaker 4 We were all in and every, I mean,

Speaker 4 it was like everybody was there.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 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?

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 So Ben Rhodes, you know, Obama's national security guy had it.

Speaker 3 I had him on yesterday.

Speaker 4 Oh, great. Well, well, maybe I think I saw this from your podcast.
So I stole it from you.

Speaker 3 This is where you want to be in the culture, McKinnon.

Speaker 4 It's on the top of the news, man.

Speaker 3 Yeah, my interviews are just consuming you

Speaker 3 on your feed.

Speaker 4 They're just steeping in. I'm stealing stuff, and it's just osmosis, man.
Anyway, he said

Speaker 4 the problem is

Speaker 4 that it could be a catastrophic success.

Speaker 3 Yeah, he did say that. Right.

Speaker 4 So you have this incredible success of dropping this bomb that blows up the nuclear facility and then you succeed. And then you have catastrophic consequences after that.

Speaker 4 Because you haven't, I mean, what does regime change in Iran mean?

Speaker 3 Just one more thing on 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 And that is something to think about right now in the Israel center.

Speaker 4 because there's kind of like a good reason kind of for israel to rehabristic it's pretty astonishing what they've done yeah and i think that's it goes to your point that that people get sort of caught up in that success and these we're the smartest military people in the world and these guys are on their heels and you know let's let's take them out while we can you know you know we're rolling let's go and you just kind of get caught up in the in the momentum of war Speaking about the fissures, though, and maybe the disagreements, have you caught the Tucker and Ted interview?

Speaker 4 I've played it maybe 100 times.

Speaker 3 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 quit from it yesterday.

Speaker 3 I played one quip 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.

Speaker 4 It's so good.

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 5 And rather than be honorable enough to say it right to my face, I'm sitting in a squeezy, feline way implying it or just asking questions about the Jews. I'm not asking questions about the Jews.

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 5 By the way, you're the one that just called me, I think, as sleazy feline.

Speaker 3 So let's make it clear.

Speaker 5 It's sleazy to imply that I'm an anti-Semite, which you just did. No, I just said

Speaker 5 that's the only question 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.

Speaker 5 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 not just.

Speaker 3 Wow, I didn't even hear that, Clip.

Speaker 4 That's even better. It gets better and better.
That one's been lost in

Speaker 4 the shuffle, man. That's incredible.
What's sleazy feline?

Speaker 3 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?

Speaker 3 Like, what do you make of the fight?

Speaker 4 Well, if he's on an island, it's a largely populated island of Magites.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 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, I don't know, maybe you say the same thing about Bannon.

Speaker 4 But I mean, that's some high-level entertainment there taking on Cruise.

Speaker 3 I liked liked his little,

Speaker 3 he dipped into the William F. Buckley there in the middle for like two hours.

Speaker 3 What?

Speaker 3 Let's show you.

Speaker 3 It felt like he was on a firing line there for a second.

Speaker 4 I mean, it was such an ambush. You know, he looked up the population right before the interview.

Speaker 3 It was an ambush, but there were some.

Speaker 3 There's some legit points.

Speaker 3 Ted makes a little bit of a legit point about Tucker's.

Speaker 4 No,

Speaker 4 this is an interesting

Speaker 4 historical demarcation because, I mean, look who's in this coalition. It's not just Marjorie Taylor Greene and Tucker Bannon.

Speaker 4 It's Elizabeth Warren. Right.

Speaker 4 I mean, it's a really interesting coalition that's coming together.

Speaker 3 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.
So, you know.

Speaker 3 And sometimes when a person is right, they're right. And is Tucker right for the right reasons?

Speaker 3 You know what I mean? Tucker moves right for the wrong reasons. Yeah.

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Speaker 3 I want to talk about immigration with you a little bit because I think, like me,

Speaker 3 you,

Speaker 3 you know, when you were a Republican in good standing, like, kind of bought the, maybe

Speaker 3 I don't know. What actually, I want to ask this question.
Was it BS? Was the compassionate conservatism stuff BS? Was that a

Speaker 3 just a marketing thing, or did folks really believe it?

Speaker 4 Listen, I believed it, and I think George Bush believed it, and that's part of what drew me over the bridge.

Speaker 4 And then, I mean, I was there in Texas and saw him embracing immigrants, saw him on the border. I mean, that he can't fake that stuff.

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 that I

Speaker 4 fully supported. And, you know, he wanted to campaign on that.
And a lot of people are saying, you know, that's the third rail. You can't do it, blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 that was 25 years ago. Yeah.
So that's, you know, like

Speaker 4 one third of my life that we've been talking about this with zero action, you know, which is amazing.

Speaker 4 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?

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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 answer this question. Like, was this real?

Speaker 3 Because I thought it was real as a kid. I was drawn to it.
Well, what did Jeb?

Speaker 4 What did you think about Jeb's view on it?

Speaker 3 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?

Speaker 3 And I think that there are layers to explore, you know, there for sure. But I mean, he was definitely, at least on criminal justice issues and on immigration issues, very legit.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 But I bought into it and felt that it was genuine. And so I could, it's been a real betrayal.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 Like they sold me from Reagan 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, et cetera. And like now we're China.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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?

Speaker 3 Well,

Speaker 4 at the core of it, the hypocrisy, and

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 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,

Speaker 4 at the very core of this, and we're seeing it now 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.

Speaker 4 You know, and these are like, you know, really religious people, hardworking people. You You know, they're not criminals.

Speaker 4 They may not have their papers, but by God, they are, you know, patriotic, America-loving people working their asses off.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 3 Anti-American. It is.
It's un-American. I keep saying it.
There are two. I was.
Reading the local paper this morning.

Speaker 3 We're going to do a little local news segment on this with New Orleans because this struck me.

Speaker 3 This just really made me sad. And this stuff has happened all over the country.
And there's this kind of ongoing debate about,

Speaker 3 you know, is Trump just targeting blue cities, you know, and this is part of some fight. And I think it is that.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 3 That's talking about un-American. Yeah.
And then another local story

Speaker 3 in the paper, check out NOLA.com, subscribe and support them doing real journalism is

Speaker 3 a flood control project job site was raided. You know, it's like, really?

Speaker 3 I mean,

Speaker 3 how much more self-harm can you be doing than

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 4 Yeah. And, you know, the

Speaker 4 tension now that's happening in the administration is that, you know, the ag secretary went and weighed in heavily.

Speaker 4 And then, of course, Stephen Miller and Christy Noam jumped in to reverse the reversal.

Speaker 4 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 million per year.

Speaker 4 So the orders have been done. The interesting stories about the demoralization in Homeland Security and ICE.

Speaker 4 People who went into for the right reasons are having to go arrest

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 We're going to go round up all these gang members and criminals.

Speaker 4 The problem is there aren't 3,000 a day of them to do that.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 4 So the net pulls up all the, you know, these really good people.

Speaker 3 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,

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 Shouldn't have fucking come over here if you can. You didn't want to get your kids separated.

Speaker 3 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, a primal place in her DNA that the one thing she loves more than anything is being taken away.

Speaker 3 A baby.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 That's what we're here for. If you want to spend 100 years saying, hey, she shouldn't have fucking broke the law.

Speaker 3 I don't want you on the team. You're an asshole.

Speaker 3 I mean, that's really good. Yeah.

Speaker 4 Occasionally, Rogan kind of.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 People get it.

Speaker 4 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 eeks through occasionally.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 But if you have a local news story about something that's happening in your community, send it to me because I miss that.

Speaker 4 And I think that stuff's breaking through, Tim. And I think that there's a repetition about it.
And so I know know that the political

Speaker 4 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,

Speaker 4 even as immigration numbers, which is obviously as strong as the strongest issue. But the fact is that Americans, no matter how strongly they feel about deporting people, who are bad people,

Speaker 4 I mean, they have a real sense of fairness, A, about deporting people people that shouldn't be deported to a prison in a foreign country. They don't think that's right.

Speaker 4 And also, you know, deporting people that don't have any criminal background. I mean, they do draw a line.

Speaker 3 Yeah, they do. And like the two, the true stories I was referencing to people who sent me, like, one was a guy, was the wife of a military guy.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 And she got, and they kind of tricked her a little bit to get to get her to show up to an appointment. And then the other one was the wife of a pastor who had kids here.

Speaker 3 And like, she gets deported back to Mexico.

Speaker 4 Yeah. And then there was the one just in the last day or two about the Afghani interpreter guy, you know,

Speaker 3 a pastor's wife who's been here since 1998 is getting sent back to Mexico?

Speaker 4 Well, I think those are the kind of stories that get, you know, get real sticky.

Speaker 4 Like you said, especially if people read about local stories and they're like, wait a minute,

Speaker 4 what's going on here? I didn't sign up for this.

Speaker 6 This week, on a very special episode of Health Discovered, we take a closer look at MS.

Speaker 8 I'm 30 years old.

Speaker 9 I'm a toddler mom expecting twins, and I was diagnosed with MS in 2020.

Speaker 13 Every week in the U.S., approximately 200 people are diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, or MS.

Speaker 16 Four times as many women have MS as men, and more and more women are developing it.

Speaker 18 Well, first, I will say the doctor that diagnosed me told me on a voicemail.

Speaker 19 And then when I saw her, she still kind of dismissed all the symptoms that I had.

Speaker 22 We'll also address the deeper challenges patients face, like health disparities that delay diagnosis in underserved communities, the stigmas that may prevent women from seeking care, and the very real barriers that many patients deal with.

Speaker 24 Listen to Health Discovered on America's number one podcast network, iHeart.

Speaker 6 Open your free iHeart app, search Health Discovered, and start listening.

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Speaker 3 I want 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.

Speaker 3 I think it was, people are like, it's housing market issues right now. Like, there's softness and costs are going up.
And people are like, why? And Iglesias just summed it up this way, pretty simply.

Speaker 3 He goes, well, we're raising financing costs for things. Higher national debt's going to increase interest rates on everything.

Speaker 3 We're raising building material costs directly with tariffs and indirectly with like these

Speaker 3 work site raids, where like if you have fewer people, you know, that you're going to increase the labor costs.

Speaker 3 And I think that, like, unlike the first term, Trump is, is like walking into a little bit of an economic pickle this time.

Speaker 3 Like, like the stuff that he wanted to do, the guys around him didn't really let him do.

Speaker 3 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?

Speaker 4 Well, I'm just a shallow media guy, and I am not an economist, and I flunked Econ 101.

Speaker 3 But even I.

Speaker 3 That's why you're representing the man of the people here, concerned about your prices.

Speaker 4 You know,

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 and just sort of transpose 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.

Speaker 4 You know, the wall is going to solve everything. We're going to build a wall and Mexico is going to pay for it.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 And so he just, he found a couple of nutballs, Peter Navarro and Lutnick 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 besant i mean i think history will go down as showing that he saved us from true economic catastrophe i mean had those initial tariffs

Speaker 3 i hate to hand it to scott besant you know

Speaker 3 we've got gay on gay crime with scott besant you know i don't i can't i can't do it that's fine the gays did a good one there you

Speaker 4 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 what could have been.

Speaker 3 He certainly is smarter than Howard Nutlick, but low bar, but he certainly is. Okay, media guide question then on Econ.

Speaker 3 The punch poll, the DC, the little congressional news outlet that follows Congress.

Speaker 3 They have a take out 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

Speaker 3 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?

Speaker 3 The Democrats have a clear message and the Republicans are flailing on their message a little bit. What do you make of all that?

Speaker 4 I think that this could be the catastrophe that implodes the whole Trump second term.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 And that they're the ones, you look historically, who's driven it up? Well, Clinton brought it down.

Speaker 4 You you know 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 the bond markets are freaking out and and so if this bill goes through

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 3 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 the Democrat listeners were like, You got to give us credit.

Speaker 3 And I was like, Okay, I'll give you credit for the work in 1999

Speaker 3 and Barack Obama's Barack Obama's failed effort with John Boehner and Simpson Bowles. It was a good, it was a good intentioned effort, but it didn't land.
Um, but anyways, yeah, I hear you though.

Speaker 3 No, I mean, Bush and Trump have been a nightmare. Everybody's been a nightmare on it.

Speaker 6 This week, on a very special episode of Health Discovered, we take a closer look at MS.

Speaker 8 I'm 30 years old.

Speaker 9 I'm a toddler mom expecting twins, and I was diagnosed with MS in 2020.

Speaker 13 Every week in the U.S., approximately 200 people are diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, or MS.

Speaker 16 Four times as many women have MS as men, and more and more women are developing it.

Speaker 18 Well, first, I will say the doctor that diagnosed me told me on a voicemail.

Speaker 19 And then when I saw her, she still kind of dismissed all the symptoms that I had.

Speaker 22 We'll also address the deeper challenges patients face, like health disparities that delay diagnosis in underserved communities, the stigmas that may prevent women from seeking care, and the very real barriers that many patients deal with.

Speaker 24 Listen to Health Discovered on America's number one podcast network, iHeart.

Speaker 25 Open your free iHeart app, search Health Discovered, and start listening.

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Speaker 3 Elon, I wanted to get your pick your brand on Elon because

Speaker 3 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

Speaker 3 that gets rid of all these guys on the extremes. And I was like, did you get a phone call from Elon?

Speaker 3 Did he try to shake your tree a little bit?

Speaker 4 Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Well,

Speaker 4 this has been my obsession for many, many years. This just

Speaker 4 quaint notion that there should be an alternative to

Speaker 4 Coke or Pepsi. We should have seven upper Red Bull.

Speaker 3 Is Elon, who you imagined, is the standard bearer for that notion of the bread.

Speaker 4 Take whoever we can get. It's a steep hill and a big rock.
Come on in. The water's really chilly.
So,

Speaker 4 I mean, Elon's not what. gets me excited about this notion.
It's looking at what's happening with Gen Z.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 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 almost impossible.

Speaker 3 Well, why don't you do it? I did a Reddit Ask Me Anything yesterday. If you can go and check that out on our politics.

Speaker 3 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?

Speaker 4 A, I'll start off with, I think there's huge opportunity there. I think there's a huge desire for it.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 And in order to do that, you have to raise, just the most recent example was about $50 million.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 So it's an incredibly difficult thing to just get on the ballot and do all of that.

Speaker 4 And there have been a couple of different efforts over the last

Speaker 4 couple of cycles or several cycles. All of them kind of flamed out for different reasons.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 3 What What do you make of my answer? My answer to this folks is this. There are two possible ways.
And neither of them have really been tried. One is

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 You know what I mean?

Speaker 4 Like, totally. Yeah, it's a Ross Perot kind of thing.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 Like, those are the only two paths. Like, that's enough.

Speaker 4 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,

Speaker 4 I understand the local state, but just to do that is exponentially harder than the alternative, right?

Speaker 3 Anyway, we went down to sidetrack, but I was, I got intrigued by your answer.

Speaker 4 People are really interested in it, so it's worth talking about.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 But Elon tweeted yesterday, calling Trump's like 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 4 They're not the type of, especially when you're posting to the platform that you own. Yeah.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I mean, it's the truce that's going to happen until he takes his next round of Adderall. And

Speaker 4 is he going to crank it? Yeah, I just think that that's just going to be on again, off again. And, but yes, Sergio, I had some, some guy, he's an interesting cat, isn't he?

Speaker 3 You had some run-ins with him?

Speaker 4 Not run-ins, but I mean, like when he worked for, for Rand and whoever, you know, it's wild.

Speaker 3 The more you know these people, the scareder you are of the state of the government, of who's running the government. Yeah, that was exactly.

Speaker 4 Well, you know, I tell the story about, and 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

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 That's the world series of politics. So in that cycle, there were, I think, 18 candidates ultimately.

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 3 Rubio, Jeb.

Speaker 4 You know, you just go down the line. There were some, there were some A-listers in that race.
And nobody thought Trump was going to win.

Speaker 3 So imagine the level of you had multiple offers.

Speaker 3 And this is not really a brag. It's just like, there's so many people out there.

Speaker 3 It was

Speaker 3 the supply and demand was such that

Speaker 3 you're really at the bottom of the barrel.

Speaker 4 Yeah, it was truly broken toys. It was truly broken toys.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 4 I mean, so this time around, you could say, well, it's not just all broken toys, but it is people.

Speaker 4 The reward system in that ecosystem is not for following rules, but it's for being rule breakers, right? It's for being shit stormers, glass breakers, you know, outrage performers.

Speaker 4 It's the loomers, those Laura Loomers. Those are the people that get attention and rewarded in that universe.
It's not people who do good. It's people who break shit.

Speaker 3 All right. Do you miss the road? Are you happy? What are you doing? How are you spending your day? Is that just no circus? Are you bike riding or what are you up to?

Speaker 4 Well, I say that,

Speaker 4 you know, people ask me how I'm doing, I'm saying, well, I'm pacing the cage as I look at the world, but I'm also experiencing radical gratitude for my little bubble.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 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, worry about the world, but I'm, you know, I love being where I am.

Speaker 4 probably the best lineup of politicians in Colorado too like the Colorado isn't broken I mean there are a couple bad ones there are a couple you know I'm so glad to be out of Texas yeah where George Bush couldn't get elected now but but it's such a purple state like Michael Bennett you know he's he's run for governor now he'd be great governor that's you just kind of look at the Bennetts 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 6 This week on a very special episode of Health Discovered, we take a closer look at MS.

Speaker 8 I'm 30 years old.

Speaker 9 I'm a toddler mom expecting twins.

Speaker 11 And I was diagnosed with MS in 2020.

Speaker 13 Every week in the US, approximately 200 people are diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, or MS.

Speaker 16 Four times as many women have MS as men, and more and more women are developing it.

Speaker 8 Well, first, I will say the doctor that diagnosed me told me on a voicemail, and then when I saw her, she still kind of dismissed.

Speaker 10 all the symptoms that I had.

Speaker 22 We'll also address the deeper challenges patients face, like health disparities that delay diagnosis in underserved communities, the stigmas that may prevent women from seeking care, and the very real barriers that many patients deal with.

Speaker 24 Listen to Health Discovered on America's number one podcast network, iHeart.

Speaker 25 Open your free iHeart app, search Health Discovered, and start listening.

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Speaker 3 All right, we are back. He was U.S.
Ambassador to Israel under President Barack Obama, and subsequently, President Joe Biden appointed him as special liaison to Israel on the issue of Iran.

Speaker 3 He was also an advisor on Middle East issues to the Department of Defense. It's Dan Shapiro.
How are you doing?

Speaker 26 Thanks, Tim. Good to be with you.
Happy Juneteenth.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 And as I said earlier this week, I'm like, I'm deeply torn 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?

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 And you can imagine there was a lot of unhappiness and skepticism in Israel about that agreement. And I was the ambassador called upon upon to defend it, and I did.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 It did extend out Iran's ability to ever achieve a nuclear weapon, to keep them at least a year distance from that and keep them there for over a decade.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 But I do feel like we're sometimes caught in that historical debate uh 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.

Speaker 26 There should be no ability for Iran independently to achieve the means to break out of.

Speaker 3 President Obama, you mean?

Speaker 26 No, no, I mean President Trump in the negotiations he was conducting, in the last two, three months.

Speaker 26 So that was what he landed on, no enrichment. And

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 And I think, you know, three things have changed since those negotiations a decade ago on the JCPOA.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 Twice, Iran conducted these overt state-to-state attacks with barrages of missiles and rockets and drones against Israel.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 And you just imagine if any one of those had been tipped with a nuclear warhead, you know, how risky that is.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 It's not really just about BB,

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 And so the position they now adopt is that we can't sort of, you know, we have no margin for error.

Speaker 26 We can't just wait till the last minute to address a threat, especially when we're talking about something with as

Speaker 26 existential implications as an Iranian nuclear weapon.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 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 evacuated.
Trump could have given them a red light, did not.

Speaker 26 But now we have some decisions facing us.

Speaker 3 All right. I want to push on a couple of those different areas.
First, on the intelligence about the nuclear program.

Speaker 3 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, intelligence related to that, of course, but also, you know, Iran's been on the brink of a weapon for 20 years now.

Speaker 3 The director of national intelligence, who I've no love for, was just three months ago saying that they weren't that close, not less than three months ago, really.

Speaker 3 And now just a little bit later, they're saying, oh, no, like we have to do this right now.

Speaker 3 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?

Speaker 26 Look, I mean, the Iranian strategy for years has been to inch forward with this program, not to rush to a breakout.

Speaker 26 And so partly their strategy has been to stay within range so that at a time of their choosing, they could break out.

Speaker 26 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 a year passes, two years pass, five years pass, and that hasn't happened.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 Everything from negotiations and the JCPA is part of that and sanctions and sabotage and covert actions.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 I mean, right, 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.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 They've accelerated their enrichment of 60% uranium. This was, again, partly a reaction to Trump's withdrawal from the agreement in 2018, but this is where we are.

Speaker 26 And they now have 10 bombs worth of 60%, which within days they could produce at least one bomb's worth of 90%. That's weapons grade.

Speaker 3 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 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 the israel IDF has been, both with Hezbollah and this action.

Speaker 3 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?

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 gets people leery given our recent experience. What would you say to that?

Speaker 26 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 the ballistic missiles which of course iran is using to attack israel every night in fact i think there was a very tough uh blow against the 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.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 Certain institutions have been rendered less capable or wobbled because of some of this operation. And, you know, again, that might trigger some internal processes, but nobody knows.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 or at least is open to that being the end game of this. And

Speaker 3 I don't know.

Speaker 26 I think it's an aspirational notion i agree with it but but then we get into a kind of a debate if it's the if it's really what the real mission is of the of the campaign yeah look i've got no illusions about bibi i've worked with him and you know we've had our uh many differences over the years you know i think he is speaking aspirationally there that is again something i an aspiration i share sounds like you do too i think an awful lot of iranian uh 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 draw Iranians out into the street.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 I still see that focused on the nuclear and the missile threats.

Speaker 3 See the other thing that I talked about, I'm just interested in your take on, is I just,

Speaker 3 in these discussions, I'm just filled with a deep uncertainty. And it makes me nervous that I feel like

Speaker 3 There are a lot of people that in government and that who are advocates on both sides of this who have like utter certainty, right?

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 I think that that is blinding, right? Like when you have that, we are talking about this with McKinnon in the first segment. There's like Iraq looked really great.

Speaker 3 for six weeks and that led to a hubris, I think, about like what was achievable. And I worry about that here.

Speaker 3 I worry about the fact that I like, it's the one issue where my inbox is most filled with people who who are 100% damn certain on one way or the other that we should do this.

Speaker 3 And that worries me when you have Bibi 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.

Speaker 3 Like actions like this might

Speaker 3 yield freedom for the Iranian people.

Speaker 3 It might yield a backlash that's hard to predict. What do you say to that?

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 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?

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 3 You don't think that the threats to assassinate the Ayatollah, the threats to assassinate the Ayatollah?

Speaker 26 You know, you know, all of those, unconditional surrender in all caps, right, this is not helpful. So, you know, I'm hoping, of course, that judicial decisions are ultimately made.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 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?

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 And there's risk, and you have to message carefully to the Iranians that if they were to respond, especially against U.S.

Speaker 26 forces, they would pay a very dear price for that and try to use that as deterrence. There's risk of escalation.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 And that's an opening, actually, for the Iranians to come to the table.

Speaker 26 In fact, the Foreign Minister of Iran is meeting with the European foreign ministers, the British and French and German, tomorrow in Geneva.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 The Israelis, by the way, may have solutions to Fordo, the underground facility, that we don't fully know about.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 So they may have surprises up their sleeve. But if it requires a U.S.

Speaker 26 action with our unique capabilities to get that underground site to make sure that they don't have that enrichment capability, it has to be on the table.

Speaker 26 And so the president's given himself that option. I just don't think he's made the decision yet.

Speaker 3 All right. Anything I didn't ask you you wanted to mention?

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 The outcome is Iran with no ability to have a nuclear weapon. So that's the moment we're in.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 26 Thanks, Tim. Love to.
Take care.

Speaker 3 All right. Everybody else, we'll see you back tomorrow.
We've got a good one coming. So make sure to tune in.
Peace.

Speaker 3 with love and hair and tony eyes.

Speaker 3 The kind of eyes that hip, no ties with the road,

Speaker 3 you hit the ties with the road.

Speaker 3 And I ran,

Speaker 3 I ran so far away.

Speaker 3 I just ran,

Speaker 3 I ran all my energy.

Speaker 3 I couldn't get away.

Speaker 3 A cloud appears above your head.

Speaker 3 A beam of light comes shining down on you,

Speaker 3 shining down on you.

Speaker 3 A cloud is moving near a stone.

Speaker 3 Aurora Borealis comes in the earth.

Speaker 3 Aurora comes in the earth.

Speaker 3 And I ran,

Speaker 3 I ran so far away.

Speaker 3 I just ran, I ran on night and day.

Speaker 3 I couldn't get away.

Speaker 3 The Board Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.

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