Is Zohran Mamdani the Future of the Left - Plus the Fate of the Middle East

Hey, everybody.

Welcome back to the Find Out podcast.

Some really, really crazy political news happening in my state and Chris's state of New York.

Zoran Mamdani has essentially cinched the Democratic nomination

to be mayor, the next mayor of New York City.

He is slightly below the threshold that is needed to actually confirm that.

But most political analysts who have looked at the remaining votes and how Brad Lander came in third place, it is very, very likely that Zoran has got the nomination and former governor Andrew Cuomo has resigned, who was, or excuse me, resigned, conceited.

He did resign.

He did resign, but he did both.

You're right.

Both.

He's done both.

So that actually was technically true.

Nobody expected this up until the last, I think, two weeks, and especially in the last week.

But before that,

his initial polling was at 1%

and he's currently at 4.3% in change,

which is by far the largest.

So everyone's calling this a political earthquake.

So, let's talk about why we think that's a political earthquake.

Absolutely.

I'm excited, dude.

So, I'll start with, I don't agree, like a lot of Mom Dani shit.

Like, I'm not a big fan of those attempted policy.

Like, I like the intent, but I don't think they'll work, but I don't give a shit.

This moment to me is not about like efficacy of policy.

This moment is like a wake-up call to Democratic leadership: like, stop investing in legacy horseshit.

Stop investing in the establishment.

Look at when you modernize campaigns, what the fuck you can do.

Wake the fuck up.

That to me is the moment.

Policy needs to be thrown out the window at this point.

All this focus on he's a Democratic socialist.

Who gives a shit?

At this moment, all that matters is the dude won.

Winning matters.

And I just want to look at a strategy that is a straight shot at victory in 26 and 28.

And this dude is showing us how to do that.

You know, the only thing that worries me is the next step of like, there's going to be a giant microscope on this dude, and he is going to have to do well.

If he does not do well, it's handing Republicans a huge talking point in 2018.

Look, they tried Democratic socialism, and it failed in New York City.

You know, that's like a nightmare waiting to happen.

But in the short term, at least we prove that the model for campaigns works.

Yeah, I mean, I think that's 100% correct.

This victory for Mimdani shows that candidate quality matters.

And when you merge candidate quality with popular issues, like we've all talked about, the democratic policy issues are very popular.

We can win.

Like, it's really like,

Donnie is new.

He is exciting.

And I think he is also proposing solutions to problems.

Like, you know, a lot of these candidates are like, well, I'm going to bring housing affordability.

You know, I'm going to lower the cost to live here.

How?

He's like, I'm going to freeze the rent.

I'm, you know, I'm talking about building government subsidized grocery stores.

Like, there's all of these things, which, you know, we'll see if that really works.

But like, but he has ideas and plans, and he is excellent on camera.

And, and I wrote about this on Substack today, a little plug, um, that he really dove into using, oh, I'm so sorry.

Yeah, yeah.

Um,

he, uh, he used influencers to get his message out.

Like, and he did it the way that you're supposed to do it, which is he went on their, like their podcast.

He went on these crazy podcasts.

Like, he jumped in the river in the winter at one point.

He's on that one that like, uh, that they are there in the subway.

And he's like, what's your take?

That's like one of the biggest ones there is, yeah, they hold the subway tickets, the express car.

Yeah, and

so, like, when you have a strong candidate who has a strong platform and you have people passionate about him who have massive channels, like these influencers have, that's how he galvanized support in New York.

And that's how he changed the conversation around whether he had a chance or not.

And then, once he had a chance, and everybody realized that he was the progressive one,

for the first time, and I've lived in New York for 10 years years now.

It's the first time where the other progressive candidates basically were like,

you know, rank him first and then rank us second, which is how you kind of play the ranked choice game.

And they didn't eat each other alive.

And then look what happened.

They now are most likely going to have a Democratic socialist as mayor of New York City.

I'm really hoping it goes well.

Like the sheer, like they're the

right is going full white mask off online about this shit.

Oh, yeah.

Charlie Kirk's post about it last night was like, oh, you're just a fucking Islamophobe.

Holy fuck.

Where he's like, he was like, yeah, 21 years ago,

New York City was attacked by radical Muslims and now they've got one in charge.

And I was like, holy fuck.

That's a rough one.

I just can't wait to see what Eric Adams is going to say.

Like that, that dude is

basically like a wannabe Trump and he just looks to say, and not because I think he just wants to say these things.

I don't think that Eric Adams is very intelligent.

I think he has a lot of the same attributes as

Donald Trump.

And I think that now he is in Donald Trump's pocket.

And that's why he created his own party, the stopped anti-Semitism, or the anti-anti-Semitism party or something like that.

Like if Eric Adams were to lose his, you know, Republican, is he a Republican now or an independent?

No, he's an independent.

And he's also got his own made-up party.

And it is along this lines of saying that Democratic Socialists of America is just an

anti-Semitic party.

And that is complete bullshit.

You know, why you shouldn't vote for this guy.

Which is.

Oh, it's going to be.

Eric Adams is a bad dude.

He's always been a bad dude.

Like, I've had interactions with him online when he was the Brooklyn Borough president that would blow your minds.

Maybe I've told you guys, but like, he is not a good person.

He did exactly what Trump did, only in the reverse, in that he was a Republican for most of his life.

And then he switched over when it was politically convenient for him.

He has done a horrendous job in New York City.

Horrendous.

The amount of

like just sketchy actions,

definitely illegal pay-to-play schemes.

I mean, his entire administration that he appointed, they all resigned.

They're like, they don't have anybody left.

They've gone through like three police commissioners.

They fired, or she, the, the woman that was the head of the, the fire department resigned.

Like all his aides had to resign.

Two of them literally sped up their wedding so that they could claim spousal privilege when they got interrogated by investigators.

Like Christ, it is madness.

Like that, I think all that,

no one's, he was polling at like five or 10%

in the Democratic primary.

He, and then there is a Republican, Curtis Silwa, who is part of the

Guardian Angels or whatever it is, and has like 15 cats in his 500-square-foot apartment.

He's the Democratic nominee.

I mean, great.

I'm glad he cares so much.

That's actually, I think, a good quality for him that he's actually taking the cats off the street.

But there's nothing, he has no chance.

But I am worried about anybody else jumping in as an independent.

I think that is a problem.

And I posted this on social last night, but I said, if any true Democrat, like they need to get behind Memdani right now, he won the primary.

yep this is where we're going like we have done the milquetoast mayor for a long time it's enough already it's enough like democrats have just done the milquetoast thing for a long time oh yeah

yeah yeah i think this is a and this is what i wrote about i think this is a roadmap for 2026 and 2028 like i'm not saying all the candidates need to be as left as him you need you need different flavors of democratic candidates depending on where you are but i'm not even talking about his issues i'm talking about how he ran the campaign.

Yeah, his education strategy is what won him fucking race.

And I think in the attention economy that we all live in, Donald Trump has shown us over the last 10 years, this is what it takes to win.

Now, what he showed is that you don't need to be a fucking buffoon.

Like you can present good, ambitious, progressive ideas and just don't back down when the establishment tells you no.

Like that, that is, that is how he won.

And that's why nationwide, people are excited about a mayoral race in New York City.

Yes.

I think like so much of it, unfortunately, is going to come down to the next step, which is execution.

Like, I completely agree.

He executed an incredible campaign.

Now he has to actually go in and with the same level of fervor that he defended his policies, he has to implement those policies.

And like, I really want to see him try some big swings.

I don't want to be like, well, this is tough.

And this is literally the demo.

Like, as much as it's crazy because it's on a literal city mayoral level, this is the democratic socialist moment to prove that their policies can actually work because you're implementing it in the biggest city in the country where there's a willing audience of people who are like, yes, let's try this stuff.

Can you cut through the horseshit?

pay for it and make it work for people.

And if you can show over, let's say, a two-year period that what he's doing is working and the city's not falling apart and the police force isn't losing funding and all the shit that they're trying to like fear monger over right now.

If you can prove that, then I actually believe, even though I'm not a democratic socialist myself, that that is the party platform.

If he like has so much writing on this, and I really think the microscope on this guy is unfair because it's, you know, he's 33.

It's going to be extremely hard to implement all this stuff.

But if he can even do half of it and not have a catastrophe, I think Democrats have to recognize that like, this is the moment to go.

This is how we benefit working people, regular people.

The game plan is clear.

Everybody's got to buy into the shit in one way or another.

Like Tim, you're right.

Like you can't all just be like, you know, carbon copies of him.

But to a certain degree, it's not just the fact that he ran a great campaign.

It's that he had specific ideas that people liked and they were for regular working people.

Like, that's the thing we can't do.

And they were presented in a way that

made people want them.

It wasn't like, oh, yeah, vote for me.

You're going to get a little tax break that's going to give you this amount of money back.

Right.

No.

Well, and the thing is that the good news is that he's going to be following on the most incompetent mayor that we've ever had.

So like

improving on that, which really the only thing I could point to that Mayor Adams did successfully was make us have trash cans to put our trash in when we put it out next to the street rather than just throwing the bags.

That seems like his big achievement in four years, which, you know, I'm glad we're doing it.

I'm glad he hates rats, but like that didn't really solve any real problem.

Standing

problems.

Incredible.

So if what Mimdani needs to do is, I think there's two tracks.

One, he just, he needs to hire strong operators to manage the city.

We need to make sure the trash is picked up.

When there's a storm, we need to make sure that there is clear communications about that, which Adams failed at as well, and

have response and be visible.

While he's doing that, working with the city council on these bigger proposals, right?

He's talked about freezing the front.

He's talked about these, like, these, the ways to make groceries more affordable.

And the city council is, I think there are three Republicans on it and like 130 Democrats.

So like, you know, and they had a pretty tough relationship with Adams because he's impossible.

But there's, there are a lot of opportunities here, but they have to be careful, right?

Because there's also like, you don't want to go too far and swing the pendulum back.

So it's, it's going to be an interesting

situation to see unfold.

But I just, I really, I really love how he ran that campaign and he really didn't take any bait.

And he got like hammered.

And, you know, they, the, there was a, there were independent expenditures of like $25 million that were directed right at him and he didn't flinch.

So that is also a pretty telling that this is a pretty exceptional person.

Well, it also shows how money doesn't always work the way we think it's going to work.

You know, I mean, if these super PACs think that we just pour cash on this problem, not anymore.

That shit doesn't work.

I mean, it didn't work in 24.

It didn't work here.

You know, when you have an activated base of people who just like the dude, they're not going to change their mind because he ran a fucking scare tactic ad.

They like him.

It's over.

You know, so I think that's a certain thing too, where like you saw like Bill Clinton jump in for Cuomo and like all these establishment, like big name democrats and everybody's just like yeah you i don't care what you have to say you're a relic goodbye and the second no it'll make me like somebody is because bill clinton endorsed him right

that is the old playbook and and cuomos didn't even have a field team which was a massive mistake they didn't have boots on the ground and the the memdani people were everywhere they came to our house many times like they were in the corners And it worked.

And it just shows that, you know, you can't spend your way to victory like you used to be able to because people can get, people are well more informed than they used to be because they get their information online and all of these things.

So, yeah, I mean, I think that it's true.

But like, this is why I keep, I'm going to keep hammering on this for the next few months about why

this is so good for Democrats, because it shows you a path that you don't need $1.7 billion in TV ads, which didn't even work, to win.

Like you need a compelling candidate with a compelling vision.

And then you just hammer it over and over again.

And you have to use these digital tools.

Part of the reason we started Find Out was exactly this, to make sure that we were getting information out to different groups of people.

In our case, mostly in particular, trying to move men leftward by having men talk about left-leaning content.

So

it's, it's, it's the roadmap.

But these, these, and I'm seeing campaigns, I think they're getting it, but we'll really see in the next few months how that will shake out.

But yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You can't just send fucking text ads over and over again.

It doesn't do anything.

Or email ads.

I know you feel strongly about that.

I think this race,

you can really see it.

And I'm looking at him now, the two different platforms between Cuomo and

Zoran.

If you just look at the framing of the issues, you see a difference.

You see Andrew Cuomo painting New York City the way that Fox News does.

It's unsafe.

It's a hellscape.

Like, we're not safe.

We need more cops.

And Zoran's like, we need cops to not be answering calls for mental health crises.

Right.

Because that's how people get hurt.

Both cops and victims who need medical assistance.

They don't need the law to come down on them.

Like, you look at his idea for a Department of Community Safety instead of saying, we need 10,000 more cops.

Like,

this framing of not making everything doom and gloom and everything is terrible, I think is part of the reason that, you know, and I'm not a young person anymore.

I'm going to be 40 in a few months, but like, I think that young people are looking for this kind of positivity instead of just reflexive, like, oh, we're not fucking safe.

Yeah, but the problem in the city is that the New York City police budget is the same size as the Ukrainian defense budget before they were invaded.

Like it is the, it is the, it is the same size as small countries.

It's like five, six billion dollars a year.

And I think that message of, well, we just need to do more of this doesn't work because you're like, well, you are spending, again,

like

the same that Ukraine was was you spending to defend themselves from a literal invasion.

Like we're not talking about southern border invasion bullshit language.

Again, literal invasion by a much larger entity.

And we're saying we need more cops because this city is so unsafe.

And also my experiences here, I've called 911 a couple of times when seeing things out in the open here.

And one was,

it was, it basically was a couple screaming and it was the man screaming at the woman to the point where I thought it was going to turn violent.

It took them 45 minutes to show up and then they didn't give a shit when they got there.

Like we stayed and made sure like that it was okay.

And the cop, you know, so this like we need more when they're like That's happening is just nonsense.

And I think a new approach is needed across the country.

I agree with you.

And I think that's the scary part for him:

this is the proving ground for that.

And you brought up the southern border, which is an interesting thing, too, because one of the things he's going to be judged on is how well he deals with Trump and ICE in New York City.

If he can come out and have an effective strategy that can mitigate a lot of the risk of his policies in other places not working.

If he can come out and be like, look, you could be a Democratic socialist, but also fucking punch Trump in the face with his ICE bullshit.

That is a combo for fucking winning.

But I don't know.

I don't know how he'll do.

I mean, that's, that's where, like, me as just an analyst looking at

how good of a mayor he could be, forget the campaign.

I worry then, with being 33 and having pretty limited experience, and he's going toe-to-toe with Donald Trump.

I mean, that's a really fucked up thing to ask this guy to do.

So, I'm rooting for him.

I'm just not sure that if I was like placing bets, I would bet on him to do great with it.

But who knows?

I mean, who knows?

He could do great.

I believe in.

I hope he does.

I'm trying to.

Yeah.

On the immigration front, I so you know, I am

have been working in stopping extremist organizations from responding

against immigration policies that like push and push mainstream further right.

And throughout New England and around the country,

as there has been an increase in migrants and there's not shelter,

they have been putting them on buses.

Now, Greg Abbott has gotten a lot of press over the last couple of years for like taking people out of Texas and flying them to New York or whatever.

But New York City under Adams was bussing people out to the suburbs and like the governor of Texas and the governor of Florida, was using this to basically harass local, um, local jurisdictions that didn't have the services that were capable of taking care of these people.

So I honestly don't know if this policy is still in effect or if it's completely gone belly up, but I'm interested to see what he does when New York City's

shelters are overloaded.

Like that, that just is a fact.

And you can't snap your fingers.

And like you need to work with the legislative body.

You need to work with the state and federal government.

So I'm interested to see.

you know, whether

state and federal government is just going to try to sabotage sabotage this guy.

Now, I'm hopeful.

I saw Governor Hochul like tweeted congratulations and saying looking forward to working with him.

So I'm hopeful at the state level.

But at the federal level, I really see Trump doing everything he can to use the powers that he has as the president to crack down on New York City and really try to make him the man Donnie the bad guy.

They've already talked about Donald Trump and team are

licking their lips at the thought of making him the poster child for National Democrats, which, of course, they're going to ramp up the racism and all this horrible, horrible stuff.

But I think it could potentially backfire if Mandani holds his ground and is basically like, no,

and are able to figure out some of these problems.

The homelessness one is a real problem and requires massive investment because part of the challenge is that the shelters are so dangerous, people don't want to go to them, which is why they end up back out on the street.

And many of these people are dealing with mental health crisis.

And that's where a lot of the 911 calls go.

And I think that's where you end up with people, cops going, like, oh, here's another one.

And it, you know, takes a while.

So did he have a plan for that, Montani?

I don't know his entire policy.

I don't have a specific homelessness.

Well, he mentioned the community,

I don't know what he called it, community engagement team or whatever, where they would, and this is something that I think has been done in, there's at least one city in New Jersey where on calls for mental health crisis, they go to a team that is actually equipped to handle somebody with mental illness, which police are not, right?

Like police, the amount of training that police officers get, I think is like six months in this country or something like that.

That's not enough.

And that's about, you know, dealing with criminals.

And people with mental health crisis are not, I mean, they do commit crimes, but like they're not criminals.

So all the police have is arresting somebody.

Yeah.

Instead of like, let's get you the help you need.

So I am 100% in favor of that because I think if you deal with the mental health crisis, you start to address the homelessness problem.

Yeah.

Because you get people help, you reduce the numbers, get them into

housing of some sort, maybe a job, like, and then all of a sudden the cost goes down too.

But it's going to be, there's a long way to go before you get to it.

And that's part of the problem.

I'm curious if there's any talk of investment in like additional shelters and making shelters safer.

Like I feel like that's got to be a part of it too, because a lot of the perception, especially in cities like New York, of how well the city's doing is when you you walk down the street, are you seeing a bunch of shit that makes you nervous, right?

Like, even if they're not criminals, like seeing somebody with a mental health problem on the street that's all disheveled, and that's scary for a regular person, you know, I think even if you look at the crime numbers and they look great, it doesn't feel like that to the person who's walking down the street and being like, oh shit, is this guy going to stab me?

Like, I think there's got to be something directly addressing that, but in a humane way that makes sense and that will thread the needle really well.

Otherwise, like you may not get the effect you want just by addressing little things like that.

You got to take the optics into account.

This is where Memdani, I think, has a real opportunity to show that he means what he says because anti-Semitism in this city has gotten out of control.

There is no doubt about that.

Also, attacks on Asian Americans, especially post-COVID, have increased and women are obviously always in a city, unfortunately, like targets.

If he steps up and finds a way to address the anti-Semitism, the anti-Asian hate, and making everybody feel safe, he will have an approval rating in 70%.

Like he will, like, if he can do that, but he has to show it.

Right.

And I, Adams, I don't think Adams makes a big deal about these events when they happen, but I haven't seen him actually do anything.

So if Mdani can find a way to do that, then

he is going to be the most popular mayor in the country.

100%.

And he'll be solving one of the key problems for Democrats, which is it's we say a bunch of shit and we do nothing.

Right.

Don't do anything.

Right.

Right.

Do some shit.

I mean, that's really

no Republicans in his way now.

None.

Everything that we're talking about right now, all of these issues, save for like the rent stuff, the homelessness, the mental health crises, the hate crimes, this all falls under his proposal for the Department of Community Safety.

So I encourage all of our listeners, go to his website, go to the platforms, and there's a link when you look at the Department of Community Safety

blurb, you can can see read full report, and it breaks down what the Department of Community Safety would do.

It would handle mental health, gun violence, hate violence, provide services to victims, and lead to other interagency interactions.

So talking about things like de-escalation and providing services instead of penalties for mental health crises.

I mean, as someone who has PTSD, someone who comes from a community full of people who've gotten in trouble because of their mental health crises?

Like, this is something that I really appreciate.

I mean, a lot of my friends have,

and I mean a lot.

Like, I'm not talking about a small handful.

Like, I've had a lot of friends get in a lot of serious trouble because of their mental health crises and because cops were the only response when they needed

something else.

A listening ear.

I mean, at the very least,

rather than being treated like a criminal.

I love it because, again, police don't, they solve immediate problems.

They do not solve long-term problems.

They do not solve a problem, the mental health crisis in this country and in this city in particular.

And they don't solve the drug and alcohol problem that we have in the city as well.

So that's why I love this idea.

If it's implemented correctly, you start.

reducing the people who are in crisis, who that sometimes leads to crime or violence like we see on the subways.

Like, there have been a bunch of instances where people have been pushed on the tracks.

Almost entirely, those have those have been from people with mental illness or one or two, like horribly racist, but also probably mentally ill at the same time.

Like,

you know, it's one of those things that you'll look back on and realize is successful.

You probably won't see it in the moment.

And I think that's what politicians want immediacy, right?

I'm going to put 10,000 cops on the street.

Okay, but like, how many, we have like 40,000, 50,000.

I don't know how many police we have right now, but like, what buckler?

What, like, if you live, especially in areas like in Manhattan, certain areas of Brooklyn, cops are everywhere, they're everywhere.

So, like, that's great.

Like, I, I, I have no, you know, whatever, but like, it doesn't solve the problem.

So, that's why I think, and I think that's what Democrats do.

They fall into this Republican trap of like, I have to be strong.

So, it's like more cops, and we're going to give them like

tanks.

The New York City police actually has like armored vehicles.

I'm like, what?

34,000 officers according to 34,000.

And that is apparently

lower than 29 of the last 30 years, according to Cuomo's website.

By what?

I mean,

34,000 is that's that's that's a fucking lot.

I love you, right?

The numbers of cops are going down, but the budgets are going up.

I don't understand the, right?

Like, I'm sure, I'm sure if you do the research too, like, it was thirty, it was 34,060, and now it's 34,000.

Like, oh, look, it went down.

Like, yeah, by 60 dudes, you know, like, I'm sure it's not like, oh, it was 60,000, now it's 34, we're plummeting.

It's like, no, dude, shut the fuck up.

I mean, this is what these sorts of Cuomo era politicians do.

They find a teeny little story and blow it way the fuck up and make you go, look how terrible this is.

And that shit doesn't work very well for Democrats.

It works super well for Republicans, but does not work well for Democrats because it's just like, it doesn't come off right.

You know, Cuomo is like a Republican, essentially, in New York, you know, so it kind of, you know, it didn't work.

But I just think it's going to be such a fucking weird situation.

Like, I'm really rooting for this dude.

And like, I never thought I'd be rooting for a Democratic socialism.

I didn't think you would be the most pro.

That would not have been on my list.

No, because

I didn't like Bernie Sanders at all.

I thought he'd be very dangerous for the country.

And I'm not a fan of the platform, not because I don't want people to get things, you know, not necessarily free, whatever.

Like, I want all the benefits to come along with democratic socialism.

My challenge with it being that I'm much more data oriented and, you know, trying to see the full picture of things is implementation.

I just, there's so many barriers to implementing these sorts of things.

So that's why I'm rooting for this dude because I'm like, look, I agree with the end game.

I want people to have an easier life and get more benefit from government.

Like that should be the way it goes.

I just look at it and go, man, how the fuck are you going to do 90% of this?

It's very difficult.

And I think like, that's why I see so much hope in him because he's in a city where the majority of people want it.

The majority of people he has to work with to get it done want to work with him.

He has a perfect roadmap to show efficacy is possible.

And that will take people like me who sit in the middle and go, oh, maybe this could work.

And it would shift perception of people who otherwise would get scared off by national democratic socialist candidates.

Yeah.

I also think that it's easier to implement some of these programs locally, right, than nationally.

So it could be good testing grounds for statewide programs, federal programs.

So

I'm really excited to see what happens.

So

I think what I like about Malm Dani so much, like, and I, I'll be totally honest to our listeners, I've, I've been sick and I have a newborn.

I haven't paid attention to shit until I'm about to hop onto an episode.

So

I'm just skimming through the website right now.

And like every example of an idea that he's got that he puts into one of his policy papers starts with the sentence like, in Massachusetts, like in New Jersey, like showing it works.

Yes.

You do it the same way that every he's not reinventing the wheel.

Like a tried and true approach is a thing that he's got on the raising taxes on the wealthy.

He names Massachusetts, DC, New York, three places where like I like living in these places.

They are they are nice.

They have good services.

Right.

Like, you know, this, this, this kind of,

you know, not making things up like we're just going to pull sunshine and rainbows from from nowhere.

I like it.

Like, as Zach says, it's data-driven.

Yep.

As long as you can prove it works, that's what you got to do.

I mean, that will convince so many people to vote for this platform.

There's no question about it.

You know, people want, like, you know, I mean, my favorite one of his is the grocery store idea because it really, like, what he's doing with a lot of this stuff is honing in on the most critical issues.

And that's what I think like a lot of these, like, you know, democratic socialists in general,

they have this really broad array of like, we want free healthcare, we want free education, we want free.

It's like the list becomes like, how much free shit are we doing here?

But he instead is like, no, no, no, no, we're going to deal with rent and groceries that were start there.

You know, I like that so much more because it feels digestible.

It feels like, ooh, this is directly impacting the people who need direct impact.

Really smart.

Same.

The grocery store one is like, as a former Manhattanite, I went to school in Manhattan and lived there for five or six years.

Like that, that is a problem.

Even for, you know and i was not always in good shape but like i had enough money to survive and food was was you know uh it was just not easy to go shopping at whole foods just to to like get a balanced meal you know i was eating a lot of what we call street meat like you know the oh yeah the halal food off off street carts because like

that's all i could you know that's all i could live on for a while

i should tell donny had a video about that he's not good to have all the time yeah what the hell is it he did He did a making halal affordable again video.

Mom Donnie did.

That was a good one.

It was really interesting.

Because I like, it was nice because he did, again, a great example of how he's a great communicator.

That whole video was about the regulations that force these vendors to spend.

tens of thousands of dollars to wait for licenses, not get licenses.

It makes them jack up their cost.

And if he were to come in and be like, look, I'll just remove this and you could just walk in and get a fucking license for almost no money and do your job.

Look, what would you charge?

And like, oh, I'd charge less.

Like, yeah, there you go.

Like, it just like being very clear of the cause and effect.

He did such a good job on that.

Well, I guess we will see over the next few months what happens.

Um, but I think we have wrapped the first half of our show, which I, of course, forgot at the beginning to mention that there is a second part of the show, which we are talking about a completely different topic with the former head of the AP in Europe, uh, Africa and the Middle East, which when it starts recording, you'll hear me bungle it horribly.

Uh, but that is the correct one.

Dan Perry knows a lot about Israel and Iran.

He lives in Tel Aviv.

So I think that's an important conversation that you guys can stick around for.

We have the exciting Zoran stuff at the beginning and then

a more serious conversation about Israel and Iran.

So anyways, thank you all for listening and enjoy part two.

Hell yeah.

Hey, everybody, and welcome back to the Find Out podcast.

We're going to dive right into it today.

We have an expert with us since the other day we talked amongst ourselves about the Israel-Iran conflict.

And we thought, well, since we were sort of talking about our half-cocked ideas, we should bring in somebody who really knows this region and particularly well because he actually lives in it too.

I want to welcome Dan Perry, who is the former head of the AP in Europe, Africa, and Asia.

Dan Perry, thank you very much.

I screwed it up.

I knew I screwed it up.

Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, not Asia.

I know, I know.

I'm just failing at my job.

Well, Dan, Dan, who's my buddy from, we did an I-24 TV hit gun violence in the United States a few years ago.

We've stayed in touch.

But Dan, I wanted to welcome you to the Find Out podcast.

Thanks, Tim.

Great to be here.

Much great.

Well, obviously, there has been, this is the only thing anyone's been talking about over the past few days, which is the Trump ordering strikes on three nuclear facilities in Iran and the sort of aftermath where we saw sort of a ceasefire come in and then Trump got mad that it looked like they were breaking it and then it seemed like they pulled it back.

And now we're getting conflicting reports on the actual damage that has happened to these facilities.

So, Dan, you have been covering this for a very long time.

Where do you feel like we are at this moment?

Are we in a good spot, a bad spot?

Too early to tell.

Try to walk us through what you're thinking about this right now.

Look, I think we're in a good spot if your expectations are realistic and you take a broad enough and long enough view of what spots we were in before.

It's never a good spot when the president of the U.S.

is a man as ignorant, impulsive, obviously corrupt, and anti-democratic as Trump.

So that's clear.

Fair.

However, however, the fact that he gives not a toss about norms and precedents

and

the way things have been done in the past,

that's good or bad, depending on whether the past has worked.

So when he says NATO is obsolete,

that's pretty dumbass.

All right.

When he says, you know, tariffs are a tax cut for the American people and we should, you know, end the global World Trade Organization type collaboration that has created the greatest burst of prosperity on the planet, not only for the U.S., but also for the developing world, that's very unfortunate.

But when Trump proposes to bash heads and ignore everything that went before in the Middle East that has been a house on fire for like 70 years now or more, not necessarily a bad idea.

And

the Middle East is full of characters that need U.S.

leverage to be brought down upon them, but hard.

And that includes most of the Arab world that's been allowed to get away with running despotisms despotisms and non-democracies that are also corrupt

and

oppress women here and there and don't give the youth any answers and run either last or next to last to

sub-Saharan Africa on almost every metric that speaks of progress and prosperity from female participation in the workforce to literacy to scientific publications per capita.

The Arabs need some changes.

The Iranians have been allowed to get away with madness for 46 years since the Islamic Republic, which is an Arab implant into Persian culture, hijacked the excellent Iranian people and is just ridiculous.

That head needed to be bashed together with some other head like long ago.

And that Obama, forgive me, but that Obama negotiated with them for years and years, like on an equal basis, like there's an equal footing between the US plus five or six other powers versus Iran was ridiculous.

And then there's Israel, of course.

I don't put them on the same level, but Benjamin Netanyahu needs tough love.

You know,

they have been of late, if nothing else, blocking the only plausible endgame to the situation in Gaza for the longest time, largely because Netanyahu's coalition partners

don't want an end to the war.

And the consequences of that is many lives lost, especially on the Palestinian side, but also Israeli hostages are dying and Israeli soldiers are being killed.

And for what?

Because there's a better way to do this than a forever war.

So

if the U.S.

is willing to

step into this morass

and

try to fix things, the moment is actually opportune.

Because Iran has been schooled, but

good.

in a way that should disabuse them of any further notions that they're on an equal footing with the U.S.

And the U.S.

has got to come to these negotiations with demands.

And the demands got to look like this: I think:

no more nuclear program, because that's just not in the cards for you.

You're a fanatical theocracy.

So if you're really lucky, we let you continue oppressing your own people and don't intervene, because there's no appetite for that in the U.S.

We might do that, but we cannot let you have nuclear weapons.

We cannot let you

build ballistic missiles.

And we absolutely need a disavowal of any continuation of this chaos project in the middle east where you fund arm create half the time uh guide and uh train uh shiite militias to destabilize everything from lebanon to the palestinian areas to yemen to to iraq and in syria this madness where they propped up uh bashar assad for like almost 15 years all these butchering his own people i mean all of that ends and it ends now uh no way this continues there's a carrot to give them.

They have the right to enrich Uranium at a civilian level, which is 3%, under the NPT nuclear, nuclear non-proliferation treaty, which they signed.

They have that right and there's no reason to deny it to them.

Now, Trump, being Trump, pretends he doesn't know that's their right.

Like he pretends he doesn't know tariffs are not a tax cut.

And he's been saying no enrichment.

Now, you sound like an idiot if you don't know this, but it's useful.

because it now gives us a carrot to hand the Iranians.

The U.S.

can agree in exchange for all this, this, you get civilian enrichment.

And that'll enable them to have a little bit of a victory narrative domestically.

That gives them the honorable way out.

So it was smart of Trump to pretend he doesn't know they have the right to negotiate, to enrich it 3%.

Once that happens, and

you're seeing subterranean

noises insurrection as well.

This is such a big win for Israel.

And Israel owes the U.S.

so much.

I mean, they always do.

But in this case, it's so visible.

There is no precedent, none, none, for the U.S.

joining Israel in an attack on another country.

In fact, the U.S.

rarely does such a thing.

When the U.S.

attacks, it's the U.S.

attack here.

The U.S.

joined Israel.

In the past, the U.S.

has helped Israel defend itself.

And as, you know, there was a massive arms supply during the 73 war.

They helped deflect the previous Iranian mallistic missile attacks, but to actually join Israel in an attack, unprecedented.

That's an IOU that Trump has right now.

He's got to tell Netanyahu,

forgive me, fuck your coalition.

That ship is sailed.

You're doing an endgame in Gaza.

You're letting the Palestinian Authority retake Gaza, which is the sovereign in Gaza.

They were kicked out by Hamas in 2007.

No more games.

But they won't be left to their own incompetence.

We're going to help them.

There's going to be Arab assistance, maybe even boots on the ground.

There's going to be massive money, massive oversight, total reform, and their somewhat bullshit educational system that still teaches kids to do war against Jews.

Yeah, you're going to get a lot, but it's going to be the PA backed by the West and the Arab world, and you get out of the way.

And we're going to make sure the Arabs pressure Hamas to, like, at the very least, hand over the keys, but probably also disarm and their leaders go into exile because the disaster Hamas brought on the Palestinian people is beyond compare in history.

And the result of all that can be an expansion of the Abraham Accords, normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia, and Hezbollah has been thrashed in this war in Lebanon, and Lebanon has a new government that wants to disarm them.

They're going to need our help as well.

So there's a Paksa Merikana that can happen here.

For real, with Lebanon and even Syria, whose new, once jihadist government,

because Abu Jihadi passed the new government of Ahmed Ashar, is desperate for legitimization.

You could see peace with Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Iran, defanged and inner corner, Hamas gone, and Trump wins the Nobel Prize.

Now,

you can, and it would be deserved, and it would be one of the Nobel organization's most ridiculous ever things.

Ridiculous in that it's deserved, and it's Trump.

That's the world we live in.

But those are all the things that could happen.

Does Trump or anyone around him want these things to happen?

Because I don't see that.

at all.

I don't see Trump pulling back, you know, saying to Netanyahu, you have to pull back on Gaza.

i see trump saying turn it into a parking lot so that i can turn it into private real estate i i haven't seen him back away from that position well his position articulated in february was we're going to buy gaza own gaza the entire population 2.2 million people are going to leave to go to beautiful places and we'll build the world's greatest revera now that was ridiculous and we're he hasn't disavowed it but he's never he hasn't since repeated it and it's the focus of a lot of mockery but here's the other thing about trump

That was preposterous,

but it was useful.

Because the Arabs, I mentioned earlier on, the Arabs have been allowed to get away with all this nonsense.

Part of that has been to keep the Palestinian problem going by refusing, for example, to give the Palestinian citizenship four or five generations after the refugeehood in other Arab countries that are like five miles away from the areas they fled in what became Israel in 1948.

Lebanon doesn't give the great grandchild of a refugee from 48 citizenship or health care and proper education.

They've kept this problem going in this absurd and inhuman way while disavowing any part of the solution.

So, Trump's outrageous ethnic cleansing plan

presented in February woke up the Arabs.

So, when I say that the Arabs are going to help the PA rule Gaza and are going to throw all their money and wherewithal at it, that's because of Trump.

scaring them half to death.

Because Trump's plan would have involved the Egyptians being relocated to Jordan, the Gazans, to Jordan and Egypt, and they don't want the Palestinians.

So now they're going to help fix the problem.

So I have a question on this stuff.

I see it.

The answer to your question, of course, is yes.

So all of this makes, like, I agree with everything you're saying, but my contention is this is not intentional from Trump.

Like, Trump does not sit back and war game this out.

Trump is a reactive person, instinctually.

Like, he does.

He spends at most 15 seconds on an issue before his brain is off into Trump ADHD land.

So while I kind of look at this as like a broken clock is right twice a day kind of thing, like I agree almost everything that's happened here, I kind of support it, but I don't sit back and go, oh, this is Trump's master plan.

I look at it and go, Trump fell into this.

And that's why when I look at like how this could all proliferate, what you've been describing, that requires.

very precise war gaming and attention to detail.

And I just don't think Trump is that guy.

I think he's the opposite of that guy.

So I'm curious if you think that, like, yes, those things could happen.

And if it were a reasonable man at the helm, those things would happen potentially.

But with Trump, I think the destabilizing factor is that he can't focus long enough on that stuff.

So if you listen to Trump speak,

it's clear why you'd think he's unfocused and has no attention span.

His rambling, you know, method or presentation, his jumping from topic to topic,

that bit is clear.

Defending Trump is obviously more difficult.

But you know,

when you look at results, it becomes easier to defend Trump.

I know he declared bankruptcy X times, but he's still wealthier than many of us on this call.

I know he sounds like a moron, but he got elected president twice and he believed thrice.

None of us geniuses on this call manage that.

He can speak extemporaneously in public and hold the attention of an audience that may not be like an Ivy League

professor audience, but it's an audience and it's large, and he holds their attention for like 90 minutes.

I can't do that.

But those are short-term methods.

This is a year, maybe, you know, of work to do.

Maybe there's a method to the madness.

I'm just saying, a lot of the stuff, a lot of the stuff looks like it benefits at the very least from the healthy instincts and sharp insights into a human nature that you find in a playground bully or a successful croon.

And

I wouldn't discount that.

I think he has tactics.

As for the gaming and stuff, I think the instinct is a bit of it.

I think people around him are a bit of it.

I would say luck, like the clock that's right twice a day, it's got to be right twice a day at the right time.

Like, yeah, like a clock, let's say a clock is on 3.15 and it's right twice a day, but the good stuff happens at 9.40.

Right.

Trump's clock is set at 9.40 because he got lucky.

But let me ask you this.

So, there's reports this morning.

I was looking, I was watching CNN before, that there are conflicting reports about the damage that was made to these three facilities.

You know, Trump, of course, came out and said complete and total victory, destruction, and all this stuff.

And then the DIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency report, I think, is sort of saying, well, definitely, definitely damaged.

And the Iranians, obviously, who can trust them, but like said, badly damaged.

Does it in for this path that you're talking talking about,

does it matter

the amount of damage, either 50% or 100% on the Iranian side?

Or is it just the fact that we acted that has basically like potentially woken them up and realized that they need to make a deal or they're in a world of trouble?

I wouldn't say that it doesn't matter the degree of damage.

It obviously matters, but

But there's no doubt that there was material damage.

Yeah.

So if you destroy totally and to rebuild it takes a year, you set it back a year.

If you didn't destroy totally, it only set them back six months.

Well, it's certainly better than not having set them back.

Iran was a nuclear threshold state.

And assuming we got any of the uranium and destroyed all the enrichment facilities,

then

I think it matters.

Now, Trump, of course, exaggerated because he's Trump.

I strongly believe what Israeli Intel is saying, not the Israeli government, Israeli Intel.

And American Intel is more difficult because

it's very diffuse.

There's 20 intelligence agencies and at the head sits this clueless Tulsi government.

So I don't know.

But

she seems a bit pushed to the edges right now, anyways.

Indeed.

It was severely set back.

But the main thing is they may be compelled to not try to rebuild it.

because they had Israel controlling their skies, a huge country.

Like if the Iranian foreign minister flew flew to meet Putin three days ago, that was at the pleasure of Israel.

Now that's humiliating.

And I think Iran, I think

it'll focus their mind.

They have to, because of honor issues, lash out a little bit.

Right.

But they may be, they may be compelled to play nicer next time.

And the U.S.

and Israel have shown that A, they can work together.

B, the U.S.

can fly in stealth.

across the planet.

C, Israel can from a thousand miles away, a much smaller country, control their airspace.

And they're completely infiltrated.

The fact that they were able to, in the first hour of the operation, decapitate the entire military and revolutionary guard,

I've never heard of such a thing.

It's astounding.

So I think Iran, I think a message was delivered.

Now, the question is, what do you do with that message?

You give them enough rope so that they aren't compelled to do something crazy.

I say yes.

Do you lay down a law?

I say yes.

Do you make it it both egalitarian and more positive by also explaining to Netanyahu what needs to happen now in no uncertain terms?

I say yes.

Will he do all this?

I don't know.

But he has advisors.

And luckily, he has this podcast to

give him, to lay out Atlanta's

roadmap.

One thing I want to bring up here, just because I do want to challenge this idea that Trump has the capability to really execute something more complex, because let's be realistic.

This guy rode the coattails of an Israeli plan and just dropped three bombs on three locations, or however many bombs on three locations.

He didn't really do much except kind of ride the coattails of what Israel is doing.

Let's look at the other situation he's dealing with, which is the war in Ukraine.

He completely misjudged that.

His negotiations strategy has been horrendous.

He came into it thinking that he and Russia could lean on Ukraine and force them into a deal that there's going to be, you know, a disadvantage to them.

That was a huge miscalculation and it set back the negotiations tremendously.

That to me is proof positive that Trump is not capable of understanding complex situations.

I think Trump wanted to just drop a bomb on this problem and walk away from it.

And I don't think he has the capability to fully grasp how much it's going to take to make significant progress.

I understand that it's...

possible and plausible.

Maybe there is a method to his madness, but I have not seen a real world example of that.

And I'm curious if you could think of a real world example of where Trump has for years kind of followed through on a complex plan and delivered results as opposed to just like falling into some kind of success.

Because I personally can't think of it.

And I see an example in term two of him failing to negotiate a complicated situation.

Tacking on to Zach, what I think is,

I think the most accurate analysis that I've seen of this situation was by Fareed Zakaria of CNN, where he said that Trump is running this so-called policy just on the fear of missing out.

He saw a war that was already won, and that is what gave him the confidence to say, oh, I need to get in here too.

And he just went in with a plan that was the Pentagon already had in the works for months, and it was just greenlit.

Like, I do not think that he had anything to do with the planning of the way that Israel executed the war in Iran.

And I don't see him doing any sort of,

you know, second and third order of effects planning beyond what he's already done.

So, look,

I feel a little ridiculous being put in the position of like explaining Trump

a brilliance and strategic acumen.

And I don't think that's what we're talking about.

But, you know, exhibit A and B of Trump implementing the plan was the 2016 and 2024 election tech.

As for doing the right thing with that

platform that was handed him in terms of policy, it's a bit tougher.

I got to grant you that.

I don't think this is a question of him latching on to someone else's victory, though to a degree it is.

But what you got to remember, I'll say two things about this, this and Ukraine, which you, I think correctly, suggested are interlocking or at least somehow mutually relevant.

Trump gave the green light.

The initial U.S.

position, well, you know, they went ahead and did this.

We told them not to, which lasted about 12 hours or even less.

That was implausible deniability.

Israel will not scuttle U.S.

plans to meet with the Iranians in Oman

because they won't listen.

That wasn't what it was.

Israel depends on the U.S.

completely.

I can explain why, but maybe we don't have all the time.

It just does.

The Air Force would run out of spare parts and they could no longer control anyone's guys.

So Trump greenlit this.

He was gambling.

He didn't immediately admit he did, and he certainly didn't promise to step in.

That was opportunistic when Israel proved so successful.

And, you know, I mean, success has

many fathers.

The Israeli government's taking credit.

Well, the Israeli government is a bunch of idiots and criminals.

They gambled correctly.

The Israeli military

had been planning for this for years and is one of the world's best, and they enjoyed great success.

And now everyone piled on.

But Trump has got to get credit for green lighting it.

As for Ukraine,

it depends what you think his end goal is.

I think his end goal is in strong army Ukraine to give up eastern Ukraine without looking like it and gambling.

That'll be enough for Putin and that he'll be able to prove or to disprove the narrative that says if you give a dictator a finger, he'll bite off your whole hand.

It'll only wet his appetite.

He'll go after Moldova next or the Baltics or whatever.

Trump is hoping that if he could just go and say, look, people, the internal boundaries of the Soviet Union between the different republics, they were largely designed to create chaos and to mix populations.

And maybe some movements are fine.

And Ukraine is big enough anyway.

Give them Donetsk and Luhansk and

Zaropozia and Crimea

and call it a day.

Now, it's absurd that the world's biggest country, Russia, needs more land, but fine.

I mean,

we all got to move on sometime.

and now now i've made peace now if that's his goal he's got to look like he's achieving that goal without

in in a way that doesn't destabilize and if he was too open about it maybe that would whet putin's appetite so he's struggling with how to do that in a way that look doesn't look like he's doing that i actually think that's what it is and that explains why in his first month in office he was talking a heap of rubbish analogous to we're going to buy known gaza by which i mean the dictator is Zelensky not Putin, Ukraine started the war, all this ridiculous shit.

That looks like he's trying to tell Ukraine, guys, I'm not going to arm you for much longer.

Is this the right thing or the wrong thing?

I don't know.

But I'm not sure I agree with their implication that he's not achieving his ends.

I think that that's an interesting point, but I think the challenge is the miscalculation in that is that Russia wants the war to stop.

I don't think they do.

And I don't think that's the end game that they have there.

I think that like it's great that they're going to get that territory.

I think that if they wanted that, they could have made that deal

That deal's kind of pretty much been the centerpiece of what the potential negotiations have been in the past couple of months.

Russia has no interest in that.

I think Russia has a greater scheme than just wanting a little bit of additional land.

They already have Crimea.

They already have, you know, they occupy half of Ukraine already, but it's not really that like they want the whole thing.

They don't, they don't want to end up worrying about Ukraine joining NATO in the, in the in the near future.

They don't, they want guarantees that Ukraine is not willing to give.

And without those guarantees, we're not going to have dealings.

That doesn't mean you don't have independence or sovereignty.

Like,

you know,

would the U.S.

necessarily be indifferent to

Canada becoming a province of China or joining what was previously the Warsaw Pact?

I'm not so sure.

No, I'm not defending Putin by any strategy.

No, no, I understand that.

We have to see both sides of the negotiation.

And by the way, predicting what one person will do, and we're kind of flirting with that,

is generally a fool's errand because one person,

they can wake up on the wrong side or they can be angry at their spouse or whatever.

I can more predict populations.

Russia does need the war to end.

Does Putin,

would he be willing to do a deal that Trump might be willing to offer him as part of his spheres of influence philosophy where Ukraine is Russia's sphere of influence?

My thinking is in the short term, yes.

And then it's a gamble, you know, with Putin's downstream intentions, which is a gamble I would take because the guy's Russian and he's in his mid-70s and the Russians, you know, I mean, lifespan being what it is, even an American one wouldn't take Putin much into the next decade.

So,

yeah, I think what we're looking at is

Trump strong-arming eventually the Ukrainians into giving up the areas they've lost, and it's about a fifth of their territory.

agreeing that Ukraine can't be part of NATO, even though it was promised such an accession in 2008 and a NATO summit in Bucharest.

And I have to think that the NATO summit happening right now in The Hague will touch on this.

It'll be Iran-Iran Iran, but I'm thinking Trump, or his team at least, will be trying to find ways to gently walk away from the 2008 Bucharest problems.

The interesting question to me is, will...

Will we let Russia get away with also trying to impede Ukraine accession to the European Union?

Right.

And that's and they need that more.

NATO is weirdly

kind of obsolete the way Trump says.

And the reason I say that is the following.

You don't need Article 5 doesn't mean anything.

Article 5 says an attack on all of us, on one is an attack on all.

And that's kind of all it says.

Does it obligate you to do anything?

Not particular.

Meanwhile, does it prevent you from from going to war against a non-NATO country that is your ally anyway that was attacked?

Also not.

Does it prevent NATO militaries from having joint

training and maneuvers with non-NATO countries?

It doesn't.

Israel does.

It's not a NATO member.

It doesn't mean as much as the EU, which is a one-way ticket to prosperity and democracy.

And the real problem there is the EU that may have to get over itself just a little tiny bit and agree to fast track

Ukrainian accession.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, let me ask this question.

I'm going to go back to Iran for a second

because there's not only obviously a lot of talk of Donald Trump's negotiating skills or pro or con, but it's also the people that he has surrounded himself with.

Like we already have mentioned Tulsi Gabbard, who I don't think anybody takes seriously at all

and, you know, is a...

baffling unique case in the United States of it's a very unique situation where she came from and how she flipped and did all that.

But also, Pete Hagseff, you know, they didn't even get the weekday anchors of Fox and Friends.

They went with the weekend anchor of Fox and Friends as the Secretary of Defense.

And, you know, he has surrounded himself with more

sycophants than people who are experts, right?

You know, they're no, that are advisors.

Do you know, are you, are there, I guess this is a long way of saying, are there competent people working below him that can iron out the details of such a deal and do the maneuvering that I think is not Trump's forte?

I think J.D.

Vince, while ridiculous in many ways, is not unintelligent.

Witkoff is inexperienced, and there was always a fear that the Iranians will run circles around him, but he's a real estate billionaire and he's...

he may have wherewithal.

Waiting in the wings is Jared Kushner, who's a pretty talented schemer.

I understand he's not there now, but all takes, you know, all takes is like a phone call and then he will be, I think.

Despite the narrative, I just think

he would be.

But you're right.

There are not a lot of visible,

highly capable people

in Trump's circle,

I have to admit.

Marco Rubio is currently a fictitious Secretary of State,

but he's there you know and and he's pretty smart actually uh never my personal cup of tea but he's a republican i would not disrespect and and there are others you know ted cruise i understand he's a joke in almost every liberal circle get i get all that yeah uh but but he has uh a certain weirdly weird mutation of neocon becomes mega then but always really stays ted cruise idea and he has foreign policy uh notions And I've heard him speak, and I've been on a panel with him on East Nation just last week.

And

he's not in the inner circle, but there are Republicans who are not

incompetent.

And

remember, he hasn't fired everyone in the State Department quite yet.

Not just for any of the

things that's for Hex Seth, he's a mystery.

I understand he was hired because he was on Fox and he has really good hair and he seems to hate wokeness.

I get that.

Yep.

But

when you see him speak, he presents pretty well in a way.

But I feel like that's all sort of like PR stuff, right?

I mean, like, like a lot of them, like, I mean, Hagseth was chosen, I think, in no small part because he's great in front of a camera and Trump loves that kind of stuff.

He values it tremendously.

But I still

really struggle with the idea that these folks are capable of a long-term game plan that works out.

Like, I think your examples of him winning elections, it makes sense, but the details are so different.

You're trying to convince people who don't know shit to vote for you.

It's a very different thing when you're trying to convince people who do know shit to go with you on huge geopolitical decisions.

I just haven't seen the evidence of it.

Now, you could be right.

I'm not saying that you're wrong.

I'm just saying I have yet to see sufficient evidence to believe that Trump is this mastermind.

One example:

show me another war that ended when the U.S.

president tweeted that it ended.

I mean,

exactly.

I mean, did it end when he tweeted that it ended?

It did.

It did.

Very interesting to be seen.

And more than this, I'm in Israel and I understand Hebrew.

And I was listening to the radio.

And the Iranians, you knew they're going to play games.

You knew it.

Of course.

You knew it.

So, like, first of all,

the ceasefire that both sides said they accepted and they didn't dispute too much Trump's narrative that they came begging to him to make peace.

And now peace will be everlasting.

They agreed.

But the last hour, the Iranians fired four volleys at my head, four times in the last 90 minutes.

I dragged myself blurry-eyed to the shelter.

But they didn't leave it at that.

One rocket got through like two and a half hours later.

And

the Israelis, their heads were exploding.

And I was listening to the radio and they're like, that's it.

We're going to fire.

And

this has got to be punished because we can't let them play these games.

And they started leaking.

And a defense minister started leaking that a big Israeli counterattack is coming.

Trump

goes to the cameras in front of his

on his way to the NATO thing, talks to a bunch of reporters, says he's very unhappy with Israel, says that missile is bullshit, says both sides don't know what the fuck they're doing.

The inaugural presidential F-bomb in front of cameras that I've ever seen.

I think you're right.

It's the first.

And you know what happened to all the reports in Israel?

I was listening to it all morning.

Trump spoke at like 1230 or 1245 or some such thing, Tel Aviv time.

Ended.

No, no more.

The leaks ended.

There was no response to that one rocket.

And that was the end of the story.

I'm not unimpressed by that.

It's fine, but it's not a long-term gameplay.

It's a short-term like, because I think what we're trying, I'll give Trump credit because I'm not afraid of doing that.

He has the strongman persona, and sometimes that works, right?

And in this set of circumstances, that is what happened.

Like Trump used it with the attacks on Iran, pretty much said, hey, go fuck yourself.

You could either have peace or tragedy.

This is what I'm doing.

I think that move was the correct move for the moment.

In this moment, I think you're right.

It's saying, hey, stop being assholes.

Just stop it.

And, you know, or else you're going to have consequences.

It's a smart decision.

That doesn't translate to long-term success to me, though.

It just translates to short-term containment.

And I think like he's a fine containment guy when he's just, you know, throwing his weight around.

But I can't, I don't see any evidence at all that this guy understands anything other than being reactive to the moment.

When you say, Hey, can you game plan this?

Can you even look at two weeks from now?

I think the answer is not really.

And that's where I start to struggle with something like this because the consequences are gigantic if you make huge missteps.

And it's such a complex scenario with such a long timeline of mistakes.

I just can't see Trump being the shepherd of great things in a situation like this.

And I, you know, I've written so much against Trump

in Newsweek and in The Hill and in CNN.

I mean, I publish everywhere and I have so consistently been a critic of him that my daughter, who goes to school at Georgetown, and who I visited like a month ago or a month and a half ago, was really concerned that I'll get stopped at the airport and messed with.

And I'm like, they don't, I mean, you got to be an immigrant.

You know, they don't do that to U.S.

citizens.

And she started sending me evidence that they do mess with U.S.

citizens and like detain you for hours and search your phone and stuff.

And if that's true, then she'd have what to fear because I'm on the record as disdaining him in an almost maximal way.

So I feel weird defending it.

But all I can say is the Middle East needs some very tough love.

It needs a president who knows how to throw his weight around or her.

Biden did not.

And Netanyahu ran circles around him.

Yep.

And

Israel is so dependent on the U.S.

that that should never have happened.

And And my sense is that in that particular kind of

landscape dynamic, Trump kind of knows what to do in the way that a lesser bully, remember,

might not.

I compared him to a schoolyard bully or a successful criminal.

All right.

Well, I think we're at time here.

I know, Dan, you're a very popular man right now.

So I know you've got other stuff you've got to go to.

But thank you for this.

It's really fascinating to hear your perspective on this and having been in the region for so long.

So, Dan Perry, thank you very much.

Uh, we'll have to have you on again in a few months and see uh see who ended up being uh being on the right side of this.

Well, we'll we'll have to wait and see.

I'm hoping it's you because I'm hoping you are right that this leads to peace.

Um, but we will certainly see.

So, thank you, Dan.

Can I just make one statement?

I uh

I gave a commencement talk a while back and I was telling

the students two scenarios for the future.

Never mind the details because we have no time, but one was quite optimistic and the other was catastrophist.

And I said equally, both are equally as likely, but it's better karma in your life if you be an optimist.

That's true.

That's true.

It's been a little hard in this country to do that for a while,

but

I certainly agree with you.

So,

it has to be equally as likely.

Right.

That's true.

That's true.

I guess that's fair.

So, all right.

Well, Dan Perry, thank you very much for joining us, and we look forward to having you back soon.