Curt Mills: Trump Can Save America or Wage Another War, but He Can’t Do Both. Here’s Why.

So it's amazing to me that over 20 years after the Iraq War, its architects and supporters are still not fully in control of America's foreign policy, but certainly influential in it.

And it's shocking to me that two months after Trump's landslide victory, a race in which he ran against the neocons, the neocons are still brazen enough to try and influence and sabotage his nominations. Welcome to the Tucker Carlson Show.
We bring you stories that have not been showcased anywhere else. And they're not censored, of course, because we're not gatekeepers.
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Here's the episode. We are days, but less than a week before Tulsi Gabbard's hearings.
Where are we in the below-the-radar war between permanent Washington's national security

establishment, the neocons, and the incoming

Trump administration? I think it's

unclear. So, as of this

recording, 10 minutes ago, Mr.

Hegseth, the defense secretary, was just

confirmed on a 50-50 vote.

Hegseth's an interesting character, I believe a former

colleague of yours. He appears

to have done a bit of a

conversion on his foreign

policy

beliefs, and the best evidence of that. Yes.
He appears to have done a bit of a conversion on his foreign policy beliefs. And the best evidence of that is the people that he's picked so far.
So his cadres, the people that will serve. I ask you to pause with there.
So what you're, this is relevant to people who know Pete Hegseth from clips on acts of him from eight years ago, saying things that would lead you to believe he's a pretty stout neocon.

Yeah. But, okay, so that's what you're referring to.
Yeah, I mean, I think the available evidence is that he is, like, circa 10 years ago was a pretty conventional Republican. Yes.
And he has changed his life in more ways than one. Yes.
And so he is a question mark. but the early evidence is the people that he has chosen to surround himself are stark departures from the man from 10 years ago.
And so that's a big deal. And especially- It is a big deal.
Especially in a place like the Pentagon. Yes.
Which is hard to control. Yes.
And wants no change under any circumstances except an annually increase in the number of four-star generals. It's the largest bureaucracy on earth.
It is. And it exists to serve itself.
It's got a pretty abysmal record of winning wars, a pretty great record of spending money. It desperately needs reform.
And you're saying that based on the personnel choices you think he's making, he's now the defense secretary, by the way, as we're right now. That he is like sincerely on board with Trump's foreign policy.
Yeah. I mean, he did not need to make these picks.
I don't think he needed to make these picks to get confirmed. I don't think he needed these picks to win any senators.
He is courting, I think, minor controversy now, which is why we're having this meeting. He did not need to do this.
It was a move of conviction and belief and principle in his early days in office. Before he even...
So give us an example. Just give us what you're talking about.
Sure. There's going to be this Michael D'Amino figure who will have the Middle East portfolio.
He has been advised throughout the process by another figure named Daniel Caldwell. These are both people in their 40s or 30s, basically millennials, who are veterans of the global war on terror.
They're very much in the— So they fought in that. Yeah, Dan did, and Michael was a CIA agent.
So yeah, these are the guys that were hunting down IRGC, Iranian Revolutionary Guard, core people, and the forever wars that Trump and Vance ran on reforming and ending, et cetera, et cetera. And so, you know, they're very much in the Vance mold of we went there, not really sure what the point was, and we want to roll back from that somewhat.
I think you might have heard this message from Mr. Trump at least once or twice in the last 10 years.
So these, I don't know, Damien, I know Caldwell, who I think of as a man of genuine integrity, high intelligence, and principle committed to his country.

I think he's proven that.

Yeah.

I honestly think he's like a wonderful person.

But he's being attacked by people who never served

with a long, unbroken track record of destroying America

as somehow anti-American?

Yeah.

How does this work?

Yeah, I mean, I think that the tactics are pretty clear.

So, no one reads anything.

Fair.

Everybody is cynical, confused.

Says the magazine editor.

Nobody reads anything.

Are you right?

Get a headline out there.

Call someone a naughty word.

Say they're anti a country, or they are radical. You know, if anyone sues this publication, it will take years and years and years, and hope that some club member at Mar-a-Lago hands this to President Trump.
Exactly. And tries to trick him, and thinks that Mr.
Trump is a stupid man. And this is the approach.
And this is what they are trying to do. That's exactly.
And it is a cyclone. I mean, the word has been abused by the Democrats.
They've done this to me. Yes.
But this is actual disinformation. Yes.
I hate to use the word. But like.
What are the publications? Who are the people involved in this campaign of lies? Okay. I mean, I'm not familiar and i don't know any of the people over there personally but the big story that's going around on both domino and i believe caldwell is from jewish insider and again uh no one really wants uh to be uh you know attacked by something called jewish insider um it doesn't sound very fun uh and And so they are running headlines against people and they are attacking them.
And what they do is they don't say anything that is per se inaccurate, but they totally strip the context for everything. So what, let's go one by one.
Do you know what you mean? Just by correspondence. Okay.
And what's yours? Is this a radical figure, anti-American figure? No, this is somebody who wants to pull back, I would say moderately from the Middle East, which I think at this point is basically bipartisan outside of the radicals within Washington, D.C. and the Beltway.
Okay, I think this is a fair assessment. So the people who want to continue what we're doing at unsustainable cost, being a bankrupt country, by the way, sending aid to countries that are not bankrupt, those are the radicals, I think it's fair to say.
So what are they saying about D'Amino in this hit piece? They are trying to make the reader jump to the conclusion that he is anti-Israeli, that he is pro-Iranian. He's pro-Iranian? Pro-Iranian.
Okay. He is somehow pro-radical Islam.
You know, he's pro all the scary people in the Middle East. Radical Islam.
Sure. Whatever.
It doesn't really matter. I don't know the guy.
It sounds kind of Catholic to me. They think...
You lot of Shiites called Diminu, or is that a common name for Persians? Not to my information. Okay.
And again, I think it bears repeating that this person was responsible for the tracking of Revolutionary Guard Corps members in Iran, potentially sent some of them to their death. So the whole thing has an opera buffet flavor to it that he's being attacked as sort of-

So what you're saying is these are people

who will say anything.

It doesn't matter.

They're kind of from the very white school of journalism.

Just like you have an objective,

something you want to achieve

and whatever it takes to get there is fine.

You will say it.

It doesn't matter.

You'll call anybody anything

if it serves your purpose.

They are very, very willing to destroy this person with absolutely no compunction. Is there any evidence that he's, quote, anti-Israel? None.
Right. None.
And in fact, there's no evidence of the contrary, which he praises the country. Yeah.
So, okay. He is critical of aspects of the war.
It's okay to be critical of other people's wars. Yeah.
Or your own wars. It's, it's okay to offer analysis of war.
Or to even state that it's not, in fact, our war, as the president of the United States just did on his inauguration day, emphasizing from behind the resolute desk. Right.
That it's their war, not our war. So I read, um, something from a guy called David Wormser, who was one of the architects of Iraq.
We're not from this country, not really concerned with this country at all. And also, I think it's fair to say, you know, someone who should hang his head in shame, given a lifetime of destruction that he's helped bring to our country.
But describe these policies as anti-American. so I have to say, it takes a lot of balls for someone who has no interest in the United States to accuse someone whose whole orientation is helping the United States of being anti-American.
But I've noticed this a lot. If you raise the question, like, what are we getting out of this? You know, the endless war cycle, we're getting bankruptcy, obviously, but like, is this good for us? They'll accuse you, you know, the Constantine Kizan, also not an American, will accuse, that wing, will accuse you of being somehow woke, and you're like, left wing for asking these questions, have you noticed this? Yeah, I mean, it's interesting that you raise some of these figures, we go into this all night.
I'd like to. Yeah, they're hoping...

There's no more repulsive group in American life

than the people who continue to push death

and bankruptcy on the United States.

I think that's fair.

Can't recover from death.

No, you can't.

So, I mean, I think that they're hoping

that Americans don't do the reading.

They're hoping that Americansicans don't do the reading hoping they're hoping that they're hoping that americans read x posts yeah they're hoping that americans watch um random cable news hosts that uh they're zoned out and they hear they have you know let's say they have a positive view of uh you know certain aspects of of america's role in the middle east and they start tar and feathering people on the internet, and that there's no pushback on it. At the same time— But it's just—I guess the only reason I have noticed this is because it's so over the top.
Rather than—look, I think a lot of these positions are legitimate. I disagree with them.
You know, a ton of these people are smart people. I know almost all of them.
And they could make like a straightforward case for their position. Like, here's why we should affect regime change in Iran or here's why we should kill Putin.
I mean, maybe there's a case to be made for that. But they never make the case.
They attack anyone who stands in their way in the most brutal and dishonest ways. They have no limits at all in their behavior at all.
And I just find that repugnant and like corrosive. Even if I agreed with them, I'd be against that.
Like, what is that? It's guerrilla warfare. The win at any costs.
Win at any costs. I know I'm jumping around, but I just, I'm exercised.
I just watched what's happening to a man called Steve Whitcoff. Do you know Steve Whitcoff? Do you know who that is? Okay.
So he's a friend of Trump's. He's a real estate guy from New York.
I happen to know him just for other reasons. How well did he know him? Pretty well.
You know, just personally, I don't know a ton about his views. I don't sense that we probably don't agree on foreign policy in some ways.
But he was tasked by Trump, as you know, to go over and affect some kind of ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.

And he did.

And I doubt he's anti-Israel.

In fact, I know he's not, whatever that means.

And he is being attacked as somehow an agent of the Islamic Republic of Qatar and like anti-Israel Steve Wyckoff.

Yeah.

And I happen to really like Steve Wyckoff. I think he's just, I just like him.

He's just a great guy, actually.

And he's really tough and he's just a good guy.

If you're not going's just a good guy if you had dinner with him you'd like him trust me but i'm just blown away by the dishonesty rather than say hey steve whitkoff like i disagree with you or whatever it's he's working for qatar no what he's from like long island what are you talking about this is the This is the higher profile. I mean, they're hoping again that Trump has learned nothing.
They insult the president's intelligence. But these people are disgusting.
They're liars. And like, if there's one thing the country said too much of, it's lying.
Let's just stop lying. Let's just be honest.
I agree. Yes.
I agree. We've been corroded by lies.
Completely. The country's about to collapse because of of lies and the people pushing endless war are one of the main vectors for that lying like because there's just no reference point in reality at all if steve wickhoff is an agent of islamic republic then i just give up do you know what i mean yeah no okay sorry lecture over no no no no i mean i mean the wickhoff thing in some ways is what set the whole thing up right right the most reasonable moderate person in the world no he's not anti-israel he's just tough i think the wickoff thing surprised both sides though i would note so um i think so obviously you knew him uh before yeah within recent years okay so um i think in general the open source intelligence to use a lame term but like that i would say is that the hawks um people who want to say go all the way on iran uh did not expect witkoff to be uh so pragmatic and then additionally the realist and restraint camp also did not expect it did not

all the all the reporting from say israeli media say haretz or times of israel that whitkoff went

in there and sort of um with both the incoming trump administration and you know the remnants

of the of the biden administration forced prime minister netanyahu into some sort of deal a deal

that he had turned down six months ago in may of 2024 basically identical deal that through

Thank you. forced Prime Minister Netanyahu into some sort of deal, a deal that he had turned down six months ago in May of 2024, basically identical deal.
That threw most everybody in the loop for a loop. And that has set off, as far as I can infer, a climate of hysteria within Israel itself, at least among the, I'm not sure,, Netanyahu himself, but at least within the factions of his cabinet that are hard line as hell.
Okay, so they disagree. You know, they've had to give a little.
Everyone does in an association. Not a disagreement.
I mean, like, this will not stop unless there's pushback. All I'm saying is, when you reach an agreement, everyone gets pinched.
Okay. That's just the nature of it.
Right. And no one likes it, you know, but like tough, that's what it is.
And my read on Witkoff is that he's just not super ideological. I think he's pro-Israel.
You know, I wouldn't even question that, but I don't think he's an ideologue. He's a self-made real estate guy who started with a single apartment building in Washington Heights.
He's a tough human being. And I think you need someone who's practical and tough to affect a negotiation.
You don't want someone who's captived all kinds of theories. Trump says, hey, Wyckoff, get a peace deal.
Or get a ceasefire, an intermediate peace deal, a first step toward one. And Wyckoff's like, okay.
And he just shows up and he's like, hey, you, you. You're like, that's, isn't that what you want? I think a lot of Israel is surprised by this.
I mean, this was lost in the absolute cacophony of 2024. Really? yes like if you if you read uh i i read the israeli's press uh daily and um you know there were members of netanyahu's uh coalition so these are members of the prime minister netanyahu people who are not in his party who are more hard-line than him and they were saying trump's really talking about this endless war stuff this might be a problem and this was back in october and september and august and no one was paying attention because it was brat summer and uh you know other things were going on um but this was coming and the fact that they got it done not even before not not even during the transition itself also surprised people and so uh I'm sensing inflated expectations here.
This is a foreign country, obviously an ally, a close ally, the closest ally, I think it's fair to say, but a separate country. And so, you know, I think realistic expectations would be we get some of what we want, we don't get everything we want because we're not in charge of the United States.
Okay, but there's a tension here. I mean, so first, the relationship between the president of the United States and the prime minister of Israel is extremely unclear.
Yes. Yes.
I don't think maybe only the two of them now. They have disagreed since at least 2020 over the election, but they probably disagreed beforehand over strikes in Iran.
The last time you and I spoke publicly was over the Soleimani strike in January of 2020. And since then, reporting in the last five years has come out that the two of them disagreed over that uh trump felt that the israelis didn't do their part etc etc etc so for years for at least half a decade the well has been poisoned between trump and netanyahu doesn't mean the relationship is done um but there's been an atmosphere of mistrust and well he's had that um you know i've watched closely and you know you know, interviewed him more than once.
And, you know, for, you know, well, moving on 30 years. Because he's been in and out of office and he's had complicated relations with every president, you know.
Yeah. I mean, I think the key thing to understand for your listeners, anyone who's not turning this off because we're getting into the depths of Israeli politics here.i politics here but netanyahu's situation is unstable yes uh a super majority of israelis want him out um they they want him to resign he does not want to resign because if he resigns he may go to prison right and also he's been a power uh achiever for 30 years and i've noticed that people who do that often don't like to quit.
I think that's fair. Yeah, okay.
So he doesn't want to quit for both reasons of his freedom and the way of his life. Yeah.
Yes, okay. Pretty recognizable syndrome, I would say.
Yes, yes. Not confined to BB.
It's international. Yes, it is international.
Okay, so how does he not quit um it's pretty clear uh that spectacular circumstances justify his presence it's very similar actually i mean there's been comparisons between him and churchill it's actually fair um only in wartime can someone like netanyahu at this point get a position i get it the war has to go on so what war so they have basically a deal with hezbollah i think it's not like i think that is by far the least likely that they're going to go back in there there are basically two options one once all the hostages are exchanged then they go back into gaza okay or i guess one b is to do the west bank which is already going on right now or to what do is to do the West Bank, which is already going on right now, or to... What do you mean, do the West Bank? Invade it, annex it.
What about the people who live there? What happens to them? Not Israel's problem. What do you do while you're in the West Bank? What are you doing there? What is the point of the operation? To annex the territory and build developments.
I mean, this is, this is, I mean, and you know, the unstated thing is that they'll either export these people or eliminate them. And so it's pretty terrifying stuff.
It's not light stuff, but this is not a light interview. And so the problem is the U.S.
is the military underwriter of this. The Israelis probably can't do this without us selling them weapons.

And so while Americans are tuned out and not thinking about this kind of thing,

our reputation overseas is one of arms dealer.

And over time, that affects your children,

being able to travel abroad,

that affects America's reputation overseas.

It's dicey stuff. Well, it caused 9-11 among other things right so yeah it has effects for sure yeah right option two yeah is Iran yeah which is which is as I'll just quote them I'll quote the the hardline perspective itself it's the head of the snake in the conception of the Israeli hardline and also the neoconservative right in the United States.

For sure.

And so Israel also can't do Iran in my view and also in general assessments without the

help of the United States.

It's usually joint U.S.-Israeli airstrikes or even a solo invasion of Iran by the United

States is the ultimate sort of fantasy. I'm going to need more coffee to proceed because you're blowing my mind, Kurt Mills.
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That's 1-800-780-8888. just one quick digression about steve wickhoff sure um i think it's really significant that he's not a professional foreign policy figure he hasn't spent a career at the State Department or doing bilaterals for his career.
He's just a smart, tough, competent person who was charged with a task by the president and he got it done. And maybe we need more of that.
I mean, there are certain parts of statecraft that probably is helpful to have experience in statecraft, but some of it's just pretty straightforward. They get a ceasefire, okay.
Yeah, no, no, I know. I mean, I think there has- Could anyone from the State Department have done what Steve Wyckoff did, do you think? No, especially without the president's informatter.
Of course not. But even if Trump had called someone in and been like, okay, Mr.
Career Diplomat, can you affect a ceasefire? He'd be like, well, it's very complicated. Wicca's just like, hey, ceasefire, stop.
No, it's the same. I mean, like the international relations has been made into, they have to make it into like a pseudoscience.
Exactly. Smart.
Exactly. Just like everything else.
Yeah, just like everything else. Just like journalism or even education.
Like you can't teach third grade without a master's degree. Are you kidding? Yeah.
So it's just needlessly complex. When the first requirement is, do you like third graders? It has nothing to do with your master's degree.
The whole thing is absurd. Yeah.
And then, you know, it's the same thing with all of academia, which is like people's theses are increasingly more Baroque and like nobody actually knows large things like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or at least know it in a way that is applicable in power in real life. And I mean, maybe things are changing now, but like also a lot of the foreign policy establishment, it's different now in the second term, but wouldn't work with the first Trump term, wouldn't work with their team.
And I think that was a discredit of the country. I think that just did not serve the country.
Well, of course it didn't serve the country. Well, we know the country hasn't been served because look at the country.
And so I think, you know, we can say of all players, they didn't serve the country. That would include the media.
And there have been times when I didn't serve the country, like when I advocated for the Iraq war. I mean, we're all culpable to some extent, but it's just remarkable to me that people are continuing it.
So now, instead of telling us that Saddam has weapons of mass destruction or that Osama bin Laden attacked us for our freedoms or whatever the lie of the day was, the new idea is that Iran is, quote, the head of the snake. How many Americans have been killed by Iranian proxies in the United States over the last 20 years, do you think? How many Americans in the United States? Yeah, have been killed by Iran-sponsored terrorism.
Zero. Right around zero.
How many have died of fentanyl ODs, drugs whose precursors come from China? Millions. Well, more than a million.
More than a million. Yeah, yeah.
Okay. I think, I mean, look, to play to play...
What are you talking about, Mary White? The Iranians back proxies that killed U.S. troops in the Iraq war.
Yeah, of course. But we shouldn't have done the Iraq war.
Well, Iran took over Iraq because we took out Saddam Hussein in a majority Shiite country. I happened to be there for that.
And even I as a 33 year old moron was like, wait a second. It is a basic interest in demographics.
Like, isn't this going to go to Iran now? Yep. Anyway.
Yes. Right.
Right. But I just find it amazing that there's been no public conversation about whether or not the United States should go to war with Iran.
There's been no case laid out. At least in 2002, they had the decency to lie to us in a pretty complicated, sophisticated way about weapons of mass destruction.
Now it's just like, shut up. You're anti-American if you ask questions.
And it feels like we're moving toward a conflict with iran is that a fair i think we have been moving towards one and um you know uh i think the the basically the biggest risk of a democratic administration is a war with russia and the biggest risk of a republican administration is a war with iran yes so my rule is always that's why it's more ethical to be a Republican because at least the Iranians don't have nukes yet. So that's, that's actually like pretty close to my first principle, like, like just outright.
We have simplified it. Yes.
Yes. But the Iran war would be still like the worst and like not something that we should pursue.
And look, I look, foreign policy experts will chime in on this conversation being like oh well that's just so unrealistic that's not actually what we want this is actually just ridiculous externality but i think it is worth noting that uh we have done wars toppling governments throughout the region over the last 25 years so number one it's happened very recently two, it is kind of the explicit goal of the hardliners. And the hardliners keep moving the overage window in their direction.
And so while this is perhaps not 100% certain, but hardly, there is a hard drive towards doing this and picking off Pentagon deputies and allowing leaders like Trump and Vance to be surrounded by hawks and no dissenting voices whatsoever is absolutely essential towards any road to war. And I have to say the amount of calculated deception on the right, so all of a sudden Barry Weiss who's a leftist becomes a conservative because she's against trannyism or something you know every normal person is against that yeah but it you it's pretty obvious that the whole purpose of her organization the free press and her career in journalism um is to kind of soften up the right for war with Iran and to attack anybody.
And she had this whole constellation of people, Neil Ferguson and all these kind of people who had weight to the project, but who really are all kind of paid to flack for war with Iran and attack anyone who's not with the program. I felt the sting of this, so didn't really understand how this worked but then you know someone with like thoroughly moderate foreign policy views I don't really want war with anybody I'm not against anybody and all of a sudden you're like wow you know people are calling you anti-American Well there's precedent for this so what you're just I don't know I don't know any of the people you described personally But I'm just saying like there was you said the problem with voting Republican is you're more likely to wind up with a war with Iran.
And I agree with you. I'd much rather have a war with Iran than a war with Russia, but kind of don't want either one.
And it's just interesting how the groundwork, I just know because I've been in conservative media my whole life, all of a sudden all these new people and you're like, oh, Barry Weiss, are you really conservative? Well, not at all. Then what are you doing here? Oh, you're trying to convince me that I'm not allowed to oppose a war with Iran, or I'm going to be written out of the conservative movement or something.
Okay, so a lot of people are comparing Trump to Reagan these days. And I think it is an inaccurate comparison, but there obviously are comparisons that are very different human beings, is basically my my position so if you accept that trump is the biggest cheese since reagan yeah on

the republican side uh what happened in the reagan years so the neoconservatives uh that is

people who came from the left and moved to the right uh were very very savvy effective and

reasonable at domestic policy they were very very good on the the crime issues of the day. And their periodicals gained currency because, hey, actually, we should clean up the streets of New York, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
And some of them were, I knew a lot of them, and some of them were really smart, decent people, too. And by the way, some of their foreign policy viewers were not crazy at all they were they recognized the soviet union was evil like the first generation of neocons midge dechter i mean i kind of love midge dechter i don't know you know what i mean i don't think that they were all nuts at all yeah but by the 90s and 2000s oh you know if you believed in uh you know some crime enforcement in New York, you also had to believe towards the march towards regime change in Iraq.
And so, again, don't want to sound... I'm skipping that part of the buffet line.
Yeah. I will take the safe city and the thriving economy.
I'm going to leave out the forever war. Is that okay? But I think it is the essential pitch of this new generation of neoconservatism, which, of course, does not call itself that.
But it is moderation on the social issues. Let's turn down the volume.
Yeah. And at the same time, over here in column space over here, a little news item about what's going on in the Red Sea and why the U.S.
needs to care. And it's a drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip.
And it can

go on for months and years and years and years. And all of a sudden, we super care about the Houthis in Yemen.
We super care about Iran. And we have to underwrite a war in Israel until every single member Hamas is dead.
And it's just not clear that the U.S. international, the U.S.
national interest is there, to put it lightly. Yeah.
And I guess what I object to is, I mean, I'm never offended by people with different ideas. I'm never offended by someone who makes a sincere case, affirmative case or something that I disagree with.
Okay. And by the way, maybe he's right and I'm wrong.
I've certainly been wrong a lot. The part where I get enraged is the bad faith.
Yeah. And so you ask questions like, well, is this in our interest? Well, you hate so-and-so.
I don't hate anybody. And I certainly don't hate that.
I certainly don't hate that country. I like it a lot, actually.
But there's no room for it. They're preventing discussion.
And a lot of these people have the gall to describe themselves as warriors for free speech. When, of course, free speech is the last thing they want.
And they've gone out of their way to prevent any kind of open conversation about the most important topics in our collective life so i'm just i'm just bothered by the lying there's too much lying don't you think absolutely i would say and by the way i'll even go far farther and say having worked for bill crystal for five and a half years and crystal the editor of the weekly standard that was was the absolute uh launching point magazine of the iraq war for sure and i was there. I mean, I started the very first day of the Weekly Standard, August 1st, 1995, 30 years ago.
And I thought Bill Kristol, I still would say, was a great boss, you know, interesting, fun to talk to, funny as hell. Obviously, I think he's taken a really dark turn and his life has been kind of a disaster and I feel bad for him.
But one thing I'll say about Bill Kristol circa 2000 is that he would make an actual case for his views. He would say, we have to go in and take out Saddam for the following eight reasons, and he would write.
You would say this is in 95, 96, 97. I mean, I was there for all of that, and I wasn't paying super close attention because I was dumb, and I was focused on other things.
And I was like, oh yeah, it's a foreign policy hobby horse. He's into that stuff.
I'm not that into it. I didn't understand the stakes.
I didn't really understand anything, actually. I mean, I was like a kid.
But I always admired and still admire his willingness and that generation's willingness to make their case, to write some paper. Here's what we're for.
That is gone. And now it's just like, can we censor the people? Can we call them names to the point where they get kicked off social media? So there's no counter argument.
Well, even Crystal himself had stopped writing. Well, he could never write.
Not a genius, I will say. But, you know, an affable, amusing person in meetings, you know, I can tell you.
I mean, probably the most successful political organizer of the last 30 years. Yeah, and tireless, you know, and there are good things to be said about Bill Kristol.
Obviously, he's called me a Nazi like a hundred times, but that's kind of the point. I'm not a Nazi.
I'm not for the Nazis. I just don't, I've got different views.
And that's the turn that I'm really bothered by. Yeah.
Is just the pure ad hominem attempts at, that's an attempt at censorship. Yeah.
And Barry Weiss engages in that like relentlessly behind the scenes using all kinds of proxies, some of whom I know. And I just want to say it out loud.
I just want to say it out loud. This is deception say oh this is the this is deception here okay so i hope people know that i think it makes it impossible for the new president to do what he's promised to do if he doesn't solve this conundrum well tell me what you mean so i mean if the president wants to send troops to the u.s border and the trump and the president wants to uh rebuild the american economy and the president wants to focus on china yes and the president wants to rebuild the American economy.
And the president wants to focus on China. Yes.
And the president wants the moral credibility to end the Russia-Ukraine war at some point. Yes.
Expanding the war in the Middle East, even with prolonged arms sales, corrodes his political capital. Who's going to pay for that? The United States.
No, but I mean, we literally are operating in the red to the tune of trillions of dollars. In what world can we afford that? Well, it's a very complex topic.
We don't have any functioning community hospitals left. We have the reserve currency, and we can keep writing debt until it causes an inflation crisis, which a lot of people thought would happen earlier and did not.
And even our inflation crisis in the 2020s was mild by global standards. So accordingly, we've got plenty of room for the big enchilada, which is an Iran war.
Yeah. So this, it just feels like a big deal.
It's a big deal. To me, and it feels like it's worth, I mean, certainly if you comment on this, you do ask yourself, is it really worth it? You know, do I want to get into this? By the way, a lot of people I really like and I'm friends with violently disagree.
So you run the risk, which I really don't want, of rupturing friendships over it. That's the last thing I want ever.
And you think, maybe I should be quiet. But it does seem like that's a huge step.
And at the very least, the public ought to understand that there are highly motivated people pushing us toward that. Do you think that we will participate in a military action against Iran? Well, the big question is right now, so there's a new Iranian president.
So the previous Iranian president died along with his foreign minister in a helicopter accident over the summer. A little mysterious.
Are you going to use air quotes around accident? I mean, a lot of things happened last year. It's very possible i mean i don't think everyone got killed so many accidents the iranians the iranians equipment helicopter equipment is to my understanding is old yeah and uh it is a rough part of the world and it's possible that it it's likely that it just went down.
And again, I would say...

I would not fly in a helicopter with Iranian officials.

I'm just telling you that.

Yeah, yeah.

And again, if you think it was Israel, the Israelis pretty much took credit

or didn't deny all the other assassinations that occurred last year.

I don't, yeah.

The meeting of Hamas leadership, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Just for the record, I try to suspend judgment because I know a lot about what countries do. And I do think, this is one thing I'll say in support of Israel, I do think that it is, you know, it isn't fair to just single out Israel and say they're doing naughty stuff.
Like, lots of people are doing naughty stuff. That's just a fact.
My only,

you know,

the only point where I would feel like I want to say something is if the United States gets sucked into it.

It's like that now,

now we're talking about our interests,

my country,

where my family's from.

And I think it's fair to speak up then.

Yeah.

So the,

so I guess maybe the 2025 zoom out,

I,

you would say,

um,

there was an election in Iran right afterwards. Yes.
Uh yes uh okay a lot of people disagree with our perspective uh will disagree with this term but the more moderate candidate people think there are no moderates within the regime um but the the less hardcore candidate won yes it's the first time this has happened since trump left the iran deal uh and this person uh it is not clear how much power he has within the system the supreme leader is old it's not clear how old um and there will be a succession crisis to succeed the supreme leader should he die yeah so it is this weird situation where every time iran is in a crisis and they're crisis right, they're in an electricity crisis by all reporting. Again, don't know if we can trust all the reporting, but they can't keep the lights on in Tehran fully.
And what will they do? And so every time Iran is at a decision point, there is a fracas between what I will call the moderates and the hardliners within their government. The hardliners want to go for the bomb.
They think, we can't trust anybody. Right.
We need to get the bomb. They also recently signed a defense pact, just short of mutual defense pact, but a security arrangement with the Russians.
So they seem to have a bunker mentality right now. If US intelligence or Israeli intelligence or Western intelligence assesses that they are going for the bomb in a real way, so they can either be true or false, but if they assess it, then there will be severe pressure on the new administration to do airstrikes

on Iranian nuclear.

I get it.

Look, I don't want Iran to get the bomb.

I don't want anyone to get the bomb.

I'm against the bomb.

Okay.

But I was around when Pakistan got the bomb.

Yep.

And Pakistan is a country with a lot of wonderful people in it, kind of a great country in a

lot of ways.

Spent a fair amount of time there.

However, the government of Pakistan is arguably scarier than ours.

You think?

Harvard, Osama bin Laden, etc.

ISI has been, you know, really a source of disorder in South Asia for a long time.

And they've exported nuclear technology, including to North Korea.

So no one's ever said anything about that.

Like, it's not a crisis that the Islamic Republic of Pakistan has the bomb. I don't really get it.
I mean, why was that not a crisis? Why do we do nothing to stop that? I guess it occurred basically when the U.S. was still quasi pro-Pakistan over India.
And it was... That was a bad bet by the way it was a nixonian bet actually

he really he really didn't like indira gandhi it was basically okay well he basically was i think we can say longitudinally that was a bad bet he just didn't like one person and it didn't matter that was like betting on wang computers over apple like it just kind of didn't turn out yeah so i i'm I'm not holding a wing in my, so.

But the point is.

Might want to cut that this is a bit of a so we're keeping the wang in okay yeah um look i think all i'm saying my father sold wang computers oh did he i'm so sorry i didn't mean to make it personal no no well no no it's just it's at one point the top sales in the country of wang computers yeah your father sold some wangs yes. Is this actually going in? Of course it's actually going in.
Are you kidding? Yes. Yeah.
R.I.P. Wang.
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Create a hierarchy of priorities. We don't want other countries to get nuclear weapons.
I'm with the neocons 100% on that. But in a complicated world that we don't actually control, what can we do? What are the limits of our power given a lot of other factors like our domestics, our economy needs of our people? Like, you can't do everything.
That's all I'm saying. Yeah.
No, I mean, so I think Trump should complete the work of his first term, which is he revoked the JCPOA, the Obama-Iran deal. And he should do a Trump-Iran deal.
Well, he's sending Wyckoff over to do that, apparently. Yeah, so Wyckoff, the aforementioned, not only did what he did with the Israelis, he was promoted for it, per reporting.
It has not been confirmed to my understanding by the transition or the White House. But per the FT and I believe another outlet, Wyckoff is getting, quote, the Iran file.
Within the Trump universe, that's as much power as the president wants to give it but as of filming he his role is expanding and uh if trump wants a lasting legacy of peace and prosperity uh there needs to be uh an accommodation with the de facto government of iran so if of course there does this is just in this is totally insane it our interests, I guess, is what I would say. Yes.
If you were Trump and you say to Steve Whitcoff, hey, Steve Whitcoff, go get a ceasefire in place. And he comes back like 20 minutes later with a ceasefire.
Wouldn't you say, okay. We like that pace.
I like that pace. Wouldn't you send him to Iran? I would.
Yes. Yes.
Yeah. yes yeah i mean i think i yeah i mean i mean and this is actually something both uh trump and obama uh who apparently get along now at least perfunctorily yeah uh agreed on well they both just like michelle i think so uh they remember obama on the debate stage in 08 um said and he was he was just howled down for this whatever you

think of barack obama uh said we should meet with the iranian leaders face to face and trump did uh similar uh maneuvers yeah why wouldn't why wouldn't yeah with kim jong-un etc etc and again we're sucking up to dictators oh shut up i mean i mean was was north korea policy more stable from 2017 to 2021

or 2021 to 2025?

I don't think after 25 years of this nonsense, killing dictators and watching their countries become more chaotic and more dangerous to the United States and the world, that we have any obligation to listen to people who chirp like that. No.
Sucking up dictators. Shut up.
To link it all. We don't know anything, actually.
So we started this conversation with sort of the campaign against the cadres that are now serving Secretary Hexeth. The people that are leading it, as far as I can infer, are oftentimes many of the people that were behind the original Iraq War.
Well, yeah. Yeah.
So this may seem obvious. Well, I'm 55, so this is driving me completely insane.
I thought after we discovered that the pretext of the war was a lie, that those people would, I don't know, don ashes in sackcloth and go like sit on a pillar for 10 years. I think a lot of Americans assumed that they did.
So we do this for a living. Oh, no, they didn't.
They went around the World Bank and they still run the State Department. And Torian Nuland, who was an architect of the Iraq War, was an architect of the Ukraine War.

Like, this just doesn't end.

But most Americans have real jobs and don't know this.

And so these people are disguised or shrouded from public view.

And they are still quite effective at driving home an agenda.

In fact, I would assume they will win absent pushback.

Oh, they'll definitely win absent pushback.

Oh, 100%.

Thank you. Yeah, they're still hegemonic.
And even if they're a minority government, so to speak. Yeah.
And I'm, because I've spent my life in the media, I'm very kind of fixated on their enablers, their agents in the American news media. And one of them who's working, has been working for years on their behalf, on behalf of permanent Washington, the foreign policy establishment, every bad idea, is Jennifer Griffin at Fox, the Pentagon reporter.
Who is now, you know, basically texting Domino? Is that the? Michael Domino. Yeah, is, you know, running around on behalf of, you know, her sources at the Pentagon, doing their bidding, trying to torpedo these guys because the permanent staff doesn't want to be challenged on anything.
And okay, there's a role for that kind of behavior. It's called lobbying, but it's a little crazy that a supposed news reporter would be acting like that.
I'm not guessing. This is a fact.
She's doing that right now and has been doing that kind of thing for as long as I've been paying attention a couple decades. How does that continue? Yeah, I don't know her personally, but what I will say is the role of most Pentagon reporters has always struck me since I've done this as extremely hierarchical.
I mean, it- What do you mean by hierarchical? It almost felt like the reporters worked for the Pentagon. Well, of course they- Yeah.
So, I mean, in any place that I've worked that had a Pentagon correspondent, and that was the only way you stayed in the room. Isn't this a democracy where we have civilian command of the armed forces and the entire federal government works for the population of the country, its voters, its citizens, its constituents, shareholders? No.
There's no sense of that whatsoever that whatsoever in Washington at all. It's like, what are you doing here? I think it's fast moving.
I mean, you didn't see criticisms or skepticism of the military from the right until the very last few years, including from the new president, including from organs of conservative media. I think it started with Mark Milley, but also the sort of- Well, some of us were at it before that.
Troy, I know, but in public opinion- It was considered a fringe position. It's not fringe.
Yeah. You know, I just refer you back to the pivot point in American politics in my lifetime, which was the 2016 debate in Greenville, South Carolina, where Donald Trump, home of the highest percentage of military veterans of any state, famously, and Donald Trump came out against the Iraq war and all the dumbos at the channel I work for and in Washington are like, oh, he's lost it now.
He'll never get the nomination. He's offended all the veterans.
And of course, all the guys whose lives were destroyed fighting these wars, not on behalf of the United States, not to the benefit of the United States.

They were filled with many emotions,

frustration, shame, rage, sadness, and they immediately knew what he was talking about.

And no one in DC knew what he was talking about.

I think he overperformed his polling.

So like he was polling a certain,

he was ahead and the Bush family came in.

That's when it was the last stand for Mr. Jeb in February of 2016.
And George W. Bush campaigned finally for Jeb.
And it was like, we got to keep him in the race. We're going to make our stand.
And he did the big fat mistake, that is a rock debate. And I think Trump is up 10 or 15.
I think he won by over 20 in that debate don't quote me out of that but it was it was it was something like that he was right before the primary it was over the polling so like not only did he not go down and still won he went up and then clearly triumphed that was the moment when i was just you know whatever his flaws i was for trump because here was a guy telling a real truth a hard truth that no one wanted him to tell and was rewarded for it and i just felt like that was that's consistent with my principles and beliefs which is you ought to tell the truth and a healthy country rewards people who tell the truth not people who lie there's a cynical bet though i would say that uh and it's a cynical bet on trump and it's a cynical bet on americans and

it's a cynical bet on republicans and independents which is i'll just i'll just let's use the actual uh language of uh center left or left-wing media it's a cult and uh once the cult leader leaves we can just go back to 2005 and uh implant the same old free trade open borders maybe endless neoconservatism and actually the people that are driving uh the opposition to these selections in the pentagon agree with president trump's critics in spirit and in practice? You know, that's an interesting analysis. I mean, it's like MSNBC level dumb person analysis, but it's also like a real analysis.
And there is a sense in which devotion to Trump has a religious quality to it. I mean, that's undeniable.
I was just in D.C. for the inauguration.
I can confirm that. And there are a lot of reasons for that.
I think a lot of voters feel like Trump is the only person who cares about them. He's their only option.
And so they're on board regardless because where else are they going? And I think that's true, A. And B, I think that's a reflection of how badly the leadership of the country has failed.
People will take anything other than that. But I also think saying true things out loud changes history.
I think that's the lesson of history. The only people who actually change history are not the ones who marshal the biggest armies, but the ones who speak the truth out loud.
I think it's a holy act. I think it's a transformative act.
And all of history is the story of that act, actually.

And sometimes it takes centuries for the consequences to unfold, but they do.

It's inevitable.

It changes everything.

That's why there's such an almost crazed attempt to shut down people from speaking.

Why speaking?

They don't care about violence.

They care about talking because they understand correctly that that's what matters over time. So once Trump has said all this stuff, there's kind of no going back.
No. Do you think? I mean, that's my view.
I don't know. No, I don't agree with the cynical bet.
I think it's a bad bet. Yes.
Which is why the tactics are increasingly hysterical and marginal. But we're robbed of like a real debate.
I mean, I don't know know you know if it's if you think it's so important to kill the leaders of iran and get into a full-scale war with a real country which iran is which is part of a real coalition they won't say full-scale they'll say they'll say that the ayatollah has to go it's very important to use as scary words as possible uh ayatollah the mullahs the islamic republic um emphasize uh you know and again like uh basically the bin laden who's dead runs a country even though these different ethnicity and a different religion and so it doesn't really matter you're stupid and uh we need to do this again and like i they won't say an invasion but uh again some of the people pushing uh this stuff didn't say an invasion in 1996 uh they soft they they laid they softened the ground for it debate on it i guess that's the point there wasn't a debate i mean it's a little harder here too because on the question of russia it's been surprisingly effective for them to just dismiss all criticism as sponsored by Putin. Like, you don't think it's a good idea to prop up the Zelensky government.
You're a Putin puppet or whatever. You want someone to do something? Can you really call like a white American Christian guy a puppet of the mullahs? Probably not.
I don't think that works, right? Does it? I guess they're trying it with Steve Wyckoff. You're a tool of cutter.
Oh, so you're referring to- The Shiites. I just don't think as a rhetorical matter, it's quite as easy- Should we address the actual allegation? Yes.
So Wyckoff, I believe, his real estate firm took some sort of investment from qatar and uh so first of all i would say uh throughout the trump entourage a lot of them have worked with gulf states um and as far as i can tell the real estate business is uh rife uh with investments from gulf states and then additionally as far as i'm aware this is hardly that man's well domestic, I mean, you can't buy an apartment in New York because there's so much Chinese money in the residential real estate market. So like, okay, so the argument is what? You're only allowed to invest in your own country's real estate? Okay, let's start here.
Let's ban foreign investment in our real estate markets. Oh no, that's anti-capitalist.
Just the whole thing doesn't make sense. What are they saying? What? Well, with the Qatar argument specifically, I mean, I think it's an unusual place.
It was supposed to be the Eighth Emirate. So it is separate from the UAE.
It is the most conservative of those emirates, I would say, at least in terms of the government. They have a perspective uh they spend money on media they spend money on press junkets uh they have an influence operation no question um but the idea that this small jetting uh you know uh lng dependent uh you know uh peninsula uh uh, controls us foreign policy hook,

line and sinker top to bottom.

Um,

if you think that,

I don't think you're extremely curious.

it's worth having an honest,

I've never seen one.

There's never has been one, but an honest conversation about foreign influence on American policy.

I think that's a totally legitimate topic.

And, you know, we've kind of done a lot of lying and pretending, for sure. just having lived in D.C., this whole conversation is like so infuriatingly false and just silly.
I mean, are they running intel operations against us? There's a lot of Qatar surveillance in Washington. A lot of Qatar agents running around the Willard Hotel.
I don't think so. Maybe.
Very well disguised. Like, what are you talking about? I mean, our country's doing that.
Are they hacking the Pentagon's mainframes? I don't think... Oh, China's doing that.
Yeah. Right, okay, so...
Yeah. But making the allegation, though, is a kind of armor, though.
It makes you seem informed. It makes you seem like sort of a spy master.
You know, like, I know something you don't. I'm more serious, quote unquote, than you.
Everyone traffics in that nonsense. Yeah, yeah.
Like, let's not have a conversation. And it's very anti-democratic, small d.
Of course. It is not agreeing to disagree.
It is not saying we have different values and, you know, shaking each other's hand and walking out of the room. It is shutting down the spirit of the system.
Well that's exactly the complaint that I have. And that's the problem that I have with Barry Weiss.
It's the problem I have with Jen Griffin. It's the problem I have with the Washington Post.
And just so much of the media coverage of foreign policy is based on insinuation. And like the cruelest sort of character destroying insinuations that you're not loyal to your own country and I'm sure they reach for the biggest oh man they go right for the face and I just think that that's beneath a great nation like ours I think it's beneath any decent person to behave like if you have evidence that someone's selling out his country tell me what it is but to start with that to accuse steve whitkoff of being a tool of cutter it's like so over the top i just feel like it's important to call out to people doing it and say you're disgusting we're not listening to you anymore you have no influence except that that you project through aggression and threats and like we're not we're not playing along.
I think a lot of it is effective in Republican politics. Yes.
Because, you know, so you were there for the inauguration, I observed a week ago. And, you know, I've always observed that is usually when I meet someone from a red state, like a deep red state, Oklahoma or Alabama, it's often their first time in Washington, D.C.
Yes. It's very like Roman province visiting Rome for the first time.
Totally. I'm here from Gaul.
Yeah. Show me around.
Yeah. Versus, I would say, blue state America actually has a lot, the coasts have a lot more familiarity with D.C.
Yes. Back and forth, airport access, et, etc., etc.
So when they hear the argument going on in the Capitol, there's actually a de facto trust there that might be not as much there on the Democratic side. There's actually a more jaundiced cynicism on the Democratic side.
So it's less effective. They assume that the, despite it all, despite all of all the failures that you've announced that you've reported on fairly tirelessly they assume that the people in dc know what they're doing um and i'm not sure that's the greatest default assumption well i i mean i think the track record is pretty speaks conclusively um i mean look i respectfully to the president, I mean, Donald Trump, again,

is the only u.s president who has was not a general or a former statewide official or federal official right to get the presidency and with all due respect to the new president healthy country doesn't elect something like. It had that level of outsider.
That level of outsider could only exist within a polity that was deeply sick. And I think he knows that.
I think he recognizes that. And the fact that the Capitol doesn't imbibe that lesson, I think they're imbibing it a little bit more, i mean it's still bizarre 10 years on i mean trump june 2015 so we june this year 10 years of trump you know longer than obama at this point the trump era uh in spirit um in length uh it's like well maybe there's something wrong with this country but it's like a five percent recognition it's not a it's not a recognition.
I think national, I mean, first of all, I agree completely. And I wrote a piece at the very beginning of this whole saga almost 10 years ago.
Donald Trump is shocking, vulgar, and right. Yeah, he's winning because you failed.
It's simple, you know, obvious. It was five years ago this month that people started to drop dead in the central Chinese city of Wuhan.
Five years since the beginning of COVID. And yet for some reason,

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Anyway, I don't think D.C. gets it.

But I also think at this point, Trump is the most powerful president, certainly since Roosevelt. Interesting.
And the potential for achieving his promises is really high. America has greater problems in its head since the Great Depression, maybe even bigger than it had then.
And we have a chance to address them. Probably not solve all of them, but make some headway on things that could help Americans.
Sealing the border, stopping the chaos, just taking a breather so we can figure out how to fix the country. And the only thing that could derail that is another foreign war.
We can't do it with this stuff. It is an actual choice.
It's an actual choice. We cannot do the border if we do the Middle East.
So you had, what, 200 200 000 people a year dying of drug ods and no one said anything about it and endless lectures about ukraine and it's no disrespect to the ukrainians who i really feel sorry for but like that's so unbelievable that that happened it's like a bad dream and now we've woken up from the dream and we have this chance and i'm sorry i just you know with respect to and Jen Griffin, you can't do that to us again. I'm not going to go without a fight this time.
We have to reorient toward our own interests. That's no disrespect to any other country, to our allies, who we wish well and will help to the extent we can, but the idea that we're responsible for all these other countries when we're dying here, no mas.
Is that a radical position? That's my actual position in my heart. That's my actual position.
I agree. But it's very upsetting not only to leaders of some foreign countries.
And this is not just the Middle East. We didn't even talk about Russia, Ukraine.
But like, I mean, that perspective is obviously very, very relevant for extricating the United States out of the Russia-Ukraine war, and almost every European capital is unhappy with that. And you can have a conversation with a nice Danish person, and you might agree on immigration or trade or wine, but you mentioned like, hey, I'm not really sure the United States should be underwriting a quagmire in Ukraine.
And like the conversation shuts down. It is stunning.
Well, they're hell bent on suicide. The Western Europeans, and not the Eastern Europeans or Central Europeans, but the Western Europeans have decided to kill themselves.
And it's almost like if someone's standing on a bridge or in a window of a skyscraper and you're trying to talk them back in, it's hard. And who knows why that happens? I think there's a supernatural element at work.
It's my personal view, but whatever you think the cause is, that's what it is. You destroy, you blow up Nord Stream, destroy the German economy, and you're not allowed to say anything about it in Germany.
I don't know that we can help you at that point. You know what I mean? Like if you're that intent on self-harm, that anxious to destroy your own civilization, make it impossible for your children to live there, then you're killing yourself.
You can't help someone who doesn't want to help himself. Like, go ahead and jump then.
Kind of. That's how I feel.
But just from an American perspective, like, all of this has been bad for us. There's no way to pretend otherwise except to launch into some airy moral lecture about dictatorships and Winston Churchill and Neville Chamberlain or something.
Just shut up, okay? The Churchill thing is really essential. It's just played out.
It's played out. I mean, it's played out in...
But there's a gamble that some of this stuff isn't played out, though. I, there's a, there's a gamble that, um, that this, I mean, I think people have, have, this country has a generational problem, right? Generations don't get along.
Um, I think that's fair. For good reason.
Yeah. And I, I think there's just a bet, uh, that a lot of the voters, uh, that, um, made the decisions in the nineties and two thousands, 2000s are dumb and don't care about their kids' future.

And we'll vote for the exact same thing.

Clearly they don't.

Yeah.

Sorry.

And we'll exert pressure on the new administration to do the same thing.

And I think there's a bet that the president is a desperate, cynical man who will do whatever it takes when he's pressured. And I think the early evidence is that it's untrue.
I mean, I don't, I mean, the... The evidence is that Trump is less cynical than even his supporters thought he was.
I think that's the truth. I mean, there's...
Do you want to discuss the Pompeo-Brian Hook stuff? I would. I was just reading the Barry Weiss editorial about how pulling Pompeo's...
What did she say? I didn't read it. It's outrageous.
It's a betrayal of Trump's promises. Mike Pompeo.
Is that what the free press argued? Yeah, that you can't, you're not allowed, you are required to pay for Mike Pompeo's security detail.

And I will just say, point blank, as someone who has faced greater physical threats than Mike Pompeo, I can promise you that. If I have security, I pay for it myself.
Like, wow, why does Mike Pompeo as a private citizen get to stick me with the bill for his security detail? Like, how does that work, Barry Weiss? And the point is that Mike Pompeo is a faithful servant of the kind of ideas that she is here to push on the rest of us, and therefore he will be defended at all costs. But let's just be honest about what's going on.
Anyway, sorry. Yeah, I mean, details roll off.
The government doesn't usually advertise it. Everyone's got a detail.
Fauci has a detail. Yeah.
Because he's in my dog park in in Washington. I hear about it.
I think the interesting thing. So it's very easy to just glaze over Trump fighting with officials, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
You know, and sort of the, the, the example of this is Trump versus Bolton. And we can talk about that and it's fun, but it's, it's kind of over, right? Bolton's not in the mix and release of Trump and like, but he's still got bits of egg in his mustache and I don't have his cell anymore

so I can't tell him,

but he needs to fix that.

Yeah.

So Pompeo and Hook.

I mean, look.

Tell us who they are.

Mike Pompeo.

Yeah, so Mike Pompeo was the former Secretary of State,

former CIA director,

former Kansas congressman,

former West Point valedictorian.

Harvard graduate. Harvard law graduate.
Osanic user. Sorry, I'm just doing the whole CV here.
Okay, right. And he was...
I'm so bitchy. I'm so sorry that I said that.
It's beneath me. I shouldn't have said that.
The Bolton-Trump feud is old. The disagreement with Pompeo is potentially quite new.
And so, by all available information, Pompeo was in the mix for Secretary of Defense, most likely, in the days after the election. election, so much so that his son, Donald Trump Jr.
intervened in a sort of online campaign,

and, you know, other allies within that milieu stopped both Pompeo and the former UN ambassador and South Carolinian governor, Nikki Haley, from getting administration posts. I had heard about that.
Yeah. Yeah.
Pompeo. Patriotic Americans rallied, as they did in Boston in the 18th century, to act on behalf of their nation at some personal risk, but they did it anyway.
Unsung heroes. One of Pompeo's former deputies, Brian Hook, who ran something called the Iran Study Group and had various other portfolios and titles at the State Department.
He's actually someone Pompeo inherited from rex tillerson his predecessor he kept him on um brian hook at uh various points throughout the transition in the last 100 days um was reported to be running the state department's transition at some point then was rumored again rumors i don't if it's rumored i don't i don't post about it i don't out. I don't write about it, but it was rumored to have been fired.
Very unclear. Trump in the days leading up to him taking the Oval Office oath issued essentially an enormous denunciation, a fatwa against Mr.
Hook. Extraordinary to say, not only like is this guy not in the mix, I hate him.
And he said that. So that occurred.
And then additionally, both Hook and Pompeo's security detail was removed in the last few days. I don't know that Brian Hook has served in government in four years.
He definitely has not served Mr. Biden.
Why would he have a security detail paid for by taxpayers? Not an expert on who gets Secret Service details. But can I just want to say...
I can actually directly answer that. Yeah.
So the key thing here is that there is an allegation, a belief, many in the intelligence community believes this uh that there were serious credible plans by the iranians to assassinate members of the trump high command as it were yeah so trump hook john bolton etc etc in revenge principally for the solomani Because they've been committing a lot of terror attacks in the United States, you've noticed. Oh, no.
No, that was in Tifa. And so that is the essential, that is the causes.
I'm just going to have to scoff at all of this. I've heard a lot of this.
I hear this all the time. I think the key thing here is the critique on Trump always was he fired Bolton, but he didn't really understand why.
So he just, he soured on the guy, but he didn't change any like policy. You know, he didn't learn.
This is the sort of pedantic way of looking at the president. But with the Hook and Pompeo removal from his inner circle, there is, I think, very credible evidence that Trump's personal grudges are now blending quite heavily with policy.
He doesn't trust

the Iran hawk old guard. A lot of the Iran hawk old guard think tanks struck out in getting

transition officials and officials in this government. And again, circled around this

Thank you. think tanks struck out in getting transition officials and officials in this government and again circled around this very unlikely pentagon helmed by a guy who has changed his life it appears in pretty severe ways over the last five years both ideologically and morally is this very new pentagon that is now uh being being targeted by all the usual suspects.
And it is the biggest story in American politics that people aren't talking about. So if I could sum up what I think you're saying, it is that Donald Trump may have actually broken the grip of the neocons on Washington.
I mean, you control the Pentagon. You control the military.
I mean, it's... It just seems like this is...
Because there was always this question about Trump. Like, you get up and you give these speeches where you say, we don't want more pointless wars, I believe, in peace through strength.
Not a wuss. It's not Jimmy Carter.
But like, you know, you assert American power, but you don't embroil a country in wars that you can't win for no reason. It's a very moderate, sensible, common sense, I would say, view.
So you say those things, but then you hire John Bolton. And the question is why? And Trump would say, I've heard him say, well, I hired Bolton, I beg your pardon, I hired Bolton because he's a lunatic.
And he's a warmonger freak. He's obviously watching war porn late at night.
And people can smell that on him. And so when he goes into a negotiation, he scares the crap out of everybody.
And then I show up. He's the heavy.
Bad cop. He's the bad cop.
I mean, I've heard Trump say that. And I didn't know if i believe that or not but i'm starting to think that i should have just believed him because it sounds like trump's actual instincts are what he says they are yeah i mean the bolton firing itself is again ancient history but it's it's it's circled around an issue of policy so i remember yeah so i mean trump had invited the the taliban which was then the outlaw uh not government of afghanistan as it is today um to camp david on 9-11 i just love the sound of it i mean so trump invited the taliban to camp he did he literally did that i mean i don't i mean i'm just reporting the facts here so so it's a great sentence so so donald trump invited the taliban so tonight who's coming for dinner tonight at Camp David? Oh, the Taliban will be here.
Bolton, Bolton was wiped out before this meeting never happened, but it was the instigating incident for the final breakdown of their relationship. I do think it's important, Kurt, to just recognize the inherent hilarity of, of a lot of, you know, it's just, it is in addition to being grave and, you know, historically significant, it's very funny.
It is sort of funny. A lot of this stuff is very funny.
It's sort of funny. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, it's pretty great. Yeah.
So, you're very restrained and business-like and precise as a reporter should be, as an editor should be, but the story that you're telling, I think, I don't want to put words in your mouth, is a story of like real change.

Yeah.

Finally,

we actually appear to be getting to like a foreign policy

that puts America

close to the center of the action.

Yeah.

Is that what you're seeing?

No, I mean,

if he sees this through,

this is the biggest presidency.

Certainly since Reagan, you alluded to FDR. I mean, it is moving the ship of state.
And people are going to try to stop him from doing it. Yes.
But they're not going to say that he's bad, though. They're going to go after anyone.
No one will ever sit right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, I just want to countersign him by saying, I think what you're saying is true. think it's real and I've never admired Trump more I don't think I'm an ass kisser on the Trump question but America really needs this it's super important and it's not radical at all it's not attacking anyone or canceling our allyship with any country at all it's just it's you know the adjusting expectations for what we can achieve the reason that i started covering war and foreign policy principally um is that uh the reality is that u.s domestic policy is a morass it's impossible to get anything done exactly uh obama tried to do a health care plan they did six years in they couldn't even You know, the country's hard to govern.
Yeah. But externally, the president is imperial.
He's God. Quite literally the most powerful person on earth.
And if you want to burnish a legacy real quick, you do big things in foreign policy. You do shocking things in foreign policy.
That's what all the Republican senators have figured out. You do surprising things in foreign policy.
You're John McCain. Like you're, you know, whatever.
You've got a lot of problems in your personal and public life, but you can bomb around Eastern Europe and get treated like an emperor. Right.
And feel like you're doing something. You're, you know, Jim Risch or Mike Rounds or some like U.S.
senator nobody's ever heard of, even in his home state. But when you travel to Romania to tour a NATO base, people are like, oh, you know, Senator Risch is here.
You know, it's like... The Foreign Relations chair, yeah.
Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So that's a big motivator for our lawmakers, isn't it? Sure. For sure.
I mean, yeah. You go to Idaho Falls and no one's like, oh, I can't believe you're here.

But, you know.

Chairman Risch.

Chairman Risch.

It's like such an absurd.

Anyway, excuse me.

Interesting.

So, and I interrupted you because I can't control myself.

Zero self-control.

Get on the topic of pizza or neocons and I'm just out of control. Tell me your analysis of Trump canceling the security details for Brian Hook and Mike Pompeo.
Well, he seems to have the authentic view that these people can afford it, especially with Fauci and especially with Bolton.

He specifically flagged them.

Yeah.

And Pompeo,

who's now running around

being like,

I'm actually a businessman.

He's on a board

of a Ukrainian company as well.

Well, he's on,

I think, more than one board,

but he's certainly running around,

including with people I know,

saying,

I'm really kind of a business guy.

Look, I mean,

so the Pompeo thing is like, I mean, it's supremely interesting because I, you know, I think it's somebody who probably would have positioned himself to run in a major way had Trump lost. I think it's somebody who's not going to quit being president.
This is not an unintelligent man. Pompeo is smart.
This is, yeah, this is a real fighter. He's not dumb.
No, I agree. This is real fighter um and uh i don't want to say he's part of the cynical bet crowd but he's making a bet that the trump thing will pass and i will be able to steamroll people like vance and even rubio in the future because i'm more vicious and um in the meantime uh you know maybe make some money uh influence, et cetera.
And he's very impressive if you don't know. I mean, if you don't come in with huge foreign policy convictions as I think you and I do, he can be very persuasive.
Just for the record, I had no foreign policy convictions. I don't think I'm ideological on the question at all.
I just think in general, our foreign policy should

serve the nation. I am.
I mean,

so I think this was very

interesting about some of these Pentagon picks,

not to keep linking it back, but also

the vice president. A lot

of these people, my generation, the millennials,

fought in these wars. Oh, yeah.

And although the baby boomers, forget

it, we're now old, you know,

and we grew up, and we're quite mad about it um and it's a it's a it's a bipartisan thing it's not just like a democrat you know anti iraq war indie music thing it's like young republican people hate it too oh and they might hate it more actually which is actually the interesting thing uh the and the Party, frankly, under Trump, might be a vessel of anti-war sentiment far more effectively than the Democrats. I mean, I didn't see a lot of protests for the Ukraine war.
The Israel stuff was pretty interesting. That probably was number one threat to Biden circa April.
Remember that? For sure. But if you know, if you look at the conversation online, if you look at the sentiments of younger conservatives, younger Republicans, the anti-war stuff is big and it is not going anywhere.
And I think that also drives a sense of a timetable, which is, you know, we've got these older people in their 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s. They have a certain belief set.
They're the people that voted for the stuff in the 90s and 2000s and we get this get this stuff done now before the united states turns um you know on both parties on this stuff and this was always this was so we can't afford it anymore and our allies pivot to china and sell even more defense technology to china um yeah i do think they're okay so the backbone of support for these wars has been evangelicals. Let's just be blunt about it.
It's everyone, you know, beats up on the neocons or whatever, these fervid intellectuals in Washington. But really the foot soldiers of this have been Fox News viewers who are not ideological.
They're not intellectuals. They're not, they're just normal American patriotic, heavily evangelical people.
And the truth is, I think a lot of them are beginning to recognize that their religion does not support this at all. It's really clear.
Genesis 6, why do we have the flood? Why does God kill everything on earth? All the people except Noah and his family, all the animals except the ones in the ark. Why does he do that? He spells it right out because they're committing violence.
That's why. So it's like the idea that, I mean, the Iraq war breaks out and all these preachers are like, no, no, no, really? We have to fight Islam and kill all these people.
And that's what God wants. That's not what it says at all.
And there's no mention of any specific secular government in the New Testament. Sorry, guys.
And I think a lot of Christians are beginning to realize this. It doesn't, because you're a Christian doesn't mean you have a specific political agenda at all, I don't think.
But if your political agenda is like violence, that's prohibited. Sorry.
And I just, it could not be clear. It's on every freaking page.
So I don't know the deception involved in this was just like mind boggling that these preachers could get up on Fox news and tell you that like, yeah, killing people is what Jesus wants. No, that's not true.
And I just feel among people I know a growing recognition of that. And I think it's a huge problem for the war lobby, which has used these people as its supporters.
And you see it in the Congress. You know, I'm an evangelical and I'm for another war with somebody.
No, you can't do that anymore. I'm hoping people are zoned out.
You do think that? Yeah, I think they're hoping the country's old, tired, zoned out, can't oppose it. And they're hoping that these initiatives can be achieved piecemeal.
You know, start by bombing Iran here, et cetera, et cetera. Maybe the government will collapse, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
To be replaced by what? The same people who replaced Assad and Gaddafi and Saddam and the Taliban. I mean, I think, okay.
I mean, to take the other side, I mean, the Assad thing is pretty close

to the best case scenario of how that could have gone.

I think in Iran, it would go way, way, way worse.

It's a much bigger country.

It's hard to know.

You're rolling the dice.

You start killing people and things go sideways.

It's pretty close to Iraq and Afghanistan combined, right?

It feels that way to me.

You have the capacity for major urban violence,

a la Iraq.

You have huge cities.

Thank you. It's pretty close to Iraq and Afghanistan combined, right? It feels that way to me.
You have the capacity for major urban violence a la Iraq. You have huge cities.
Not that Kabul is small, but you have that. And then additionally, you have the mountain element.
So any outlaw contingent can just flee there. I mean, and we learned this with our southern neighbor.
Why is Mexico ungovernable? The mountains. You just fleet.
I mean, the entire coastline is... Why is Kentucky ungovernable? Same reason.
Okay. Yeah.
Sorry. Just kidding.
No, no. I mean, it's hard to...
It would be very, very, very difficult. And ask Saddam Hussein, who tried to invade Iran and didn't work out for Mr.
Hussein. A lot of things didn't.
No, I agree completely.

Well, you have actually given me,

I asked you to come for this conversation.

It's late at night.

I was very exercised about it. You were nice enough to come.

And we're in a hotel room in some city,

but I thought I was going to be more depressed by the end,

but actually I feel really heartened by what you said.

Thank you for having me.

Well, thank you for making me feel a lot better.

Kurt Mills.

Appreciate it.

Thank you.

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