165. Why Trump Fired Noem and the Forever War Presidency

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Hello and welcome to the rest of the politics US with me, Katty Kaye.

I am jumping on to give you a quick update on political news here in Washington,

and then we will bring you the full episode that Anthony and I recorded earlier,

which touches on Iran and the economy and all the latest on that.

But I thought it was worth coming on because Donald Trump has fired his first White House official.

Kristi Nome is out as head of the Department of Homeland Security.

She's been given some kind of title about some invented job about shield of the Americas,

which is a bit like being told you're going to go and do the gardening.

I think it is clearly a firing.

There has been a storm of controversy swirling around Kristi Nome,

also the person that Anthony likes to call jailhouse Barbie.

Ever since the Minneapolis shootings and the deaths of the two American citizens,

it's an open secret in Washington that there was quite a lot of dissatisfaction with her.

The president was hearing from people inside the White House.

I'm told quite a lot over the last few weeks, Suzy Wiles included,

who didn't appreciate what Kristi Nome was doing, saying that it was time she went.

Just in the last day, there was reporting that the president had been calling members of Congress

up Republicans up in the House and in the Senate, trying to canvas whether he should let her go or not.

And at around two o'clock Eastern time today, he made the announcement, as is his way,

on Truth Social, that she was out and he was bringing in the Senator from Oklahoma,

Mark Wayne Mullin, who's a staunch Trump loyalist, to do her job.

So what is it that went wrong for Kristi Nome?

Well, first of all, she contradicted the president.

That is not great.

She was in a hearing in which she said that the president had signed off on a $220 million

advertising campaign for her role on the border with pictures of her on the border.

The president today said, actually, he had no idea about that.

Never great when your boss is saying publicly that you have said one thing in Congress

and he has no idea about it.

She'd also been doing this ad campaign, which showed her riding in horseback by Mount Rushmore,

which is in her home state of North Dakota.

I guess that didn't go down terribly well either.

Of course, she is the woman who has appeared in multiple bizarre and slightly creepy, I think,

and what one Republican has described to me as outright offensive photographs,

most famously the one where she's standing in kind of full makeup with a

baseball hat on in front of prisoners in Seacott, that awful prison,

really draconian prison for people down in El Salvador.

That caused a Ferrari, also,

Christy Nome caught up in various financial scandals, like how much money she was spending

on a private jet, which had a bedroom, to deport apparently detainees, people who had been picked

up who were in the country illegally to deport them out of the country, not quite clear why they

needed a luxury jet when they were going to be deported out of the country.

She has been open secret dating a senior advisor of hers, Corrie Linundowski,

who was actually Donald Trump's first campaign manager in his 2016 campaign.

Side note, if you happen to be listening to our series on Donald Trump, you'll get to meet

Corrie Linundowski, that's our series for founding members.

So that also apparently didn't go down very well in the White House.

One person did tell me today that he thought that one of the reasons that

Christy Nome might not be fired was because Corrie Linundowski, the first campaign manager for

2016, has known Donald Trump for so long that maybe he has so much dirt on Donald Trump that

that might protect Christy Nome. In the end, it didn't. Too many financial scandals, too much

about jets, too much about her and advertising campaigns, openly contradicting her boss. He

didn't like the scenes from Minneapolis of the ICE agents going in and shooting American citizens

in particular. He didn't like the way she came out straight away and called those people

domestic terrorists. She was grilled about that on the hill over yesterday and today. So I think

that all of that finally got to the point where he had no choice. He decided that he had to let

it go. And I say he got had no choice because Donald Trump hasn't wanted to fire anybody

in this administration. He's been very resistant to the idea that he would be seen to be succumbing

to media pressure to fire somebody. And it's worth pointing out that at this stage in his first

administration, 37 senior members of his team had either been fired, including Anthony. We like

to remind him or had actually stepped down. There was an enormous amount of turnover in that first

administration. That's 34% of the original postings had already turned over by this stage in the

first term. And this is the first one. There's been tons of speculation. Would it be cash

hotel at the FBI? Would it be Hegseth at the Department of Defense? Would it be Kristi Nome?

And he resisted. He has resisted right up until now because he didn't want to make it look like

he had made any mistakes or that he was succumbing to media pressure or that he was listening to

criticism of these people because he had chosen the best team there was and he wanted that to be

the narrative. But now of course she's out. And we will see. I don't think this marks much of a

change in DHS policy. We've already seen something of a pullback of ICE agents from cities around

the country not totally. But there's been something we're not seeing a repeater those scenes in

Minneapolis. And I imagine that Mark Wayne Mullin will continue whatever the policy is that Donald

Trump wanted it to be. Anyway, back to the original episode. Thanks guys. What are we going to talk about

this week, Anthony? Well, I think we have to talk about Iran and we have to talk about the

president's decision to go into Iran, the reaction of the American people, the ramifications for

the economy and oil. But you go first, Katty. How do you think it's going for the president and

anything that's going for the administration? And could you talk a little bit about Pete Hegseth

because as an American, I've had very embarrassing things happen to me, but I could not have been

more shamed or embarrassed by this person's speech conversation monologue yesterday. But go ahead.

I was texting you yesterday, right, about Pete Hegseth. On him's Pete Hegseth. Excruciating

it was to listen to him, particularly when he was asked about American service members who have

been killed during this conflict. The six Americans who have been killed so far, he was being asked

about that by the press. And what does he do? He attacks the press, which Caroline Levitt then did

as well in the White House press briefing room. Hegseth has decided just that this is an

opportunity for him to talk to Donald Trump and I guess show Donald Trump that he's in his corner

every moment. And he's turning it into a nonstop attack of the press. Arara, we've, you know,

bro, we've sunk everything. We've attacked everything. We're going to go on forever. We have total

dominance. You know, this is not a fair fight. It was not meant to be a fair fight. I get it. He's

the secretary of defense. He likes to call himself a secretary of war. And the role of the secretary

of the defense in a press briefing is to tout the success of the military operation. But if you compare

Pete Hegseth's performance yesterday to that of General Dan Cain, the joint chiefs of staff,

who was sober talking about the military aspect of this immediately. The first thing he did when

he took the podium was to pay tribute and name the six fallen soldiers, reservists who have been

killed in the region. It was night and day compared to Pete Hegseth. And Pete Hegseth sounded like

it was a sort of clown show. Really? I don't know how else to describe it of ego and bombast and

an American prowess and Rara. And there was General Cain very calmly talking about the situation

as it is. And therefore, having far more credibility, I felt when it came to actually telling

Americans how this war is going. I mean, listen, I was horrified. It was literally like a rhetorical

orgy of Fox News host. As if they all got together and said, what kind of bombass can we put into

a speech for a guy playing the secretary of defense? Yeah, it was a show. I think it took away from

some of the things that he said, by the way, because there were some things that he said, Cady,

that seemed to be true. And when you're doing your reporting, I'm doing my reporting,

they have put a hurt on the Iranian missile capability, launch capability. They put a hurt on

the air defenses of Iran. Obviously, they sunk a naval vessel and maybe 10 other naval vessels have

been taken out of commission by the American Navy and the American military. And you know from

the reporting in Tel Aviv that the alarms are going off less and there are less missile strikes

there in other parts of the Gulf. So it seems to be working. What the plan was does seem to be

working. What the military plan was. And I think the execution of the military plan seems to be

working. But I guess my question to you about that is, what do we, what does the West, what does

the United States, what does Israel get out of this plan? So I think those are all the right

questions, Anthony. And I agree with you. My reporting is that militarily, this seems to be going

very well. It's worth everybody, by the way, reading Karl Rove in the Wall Street Journal this

morning, because he is making the point that this is going very well militarily. But there is such a

deficit when it comes to American opinion polls on this because the president has not done a good

job of explaining a coherent narrative. And the narrative is still slightly all over the place.

We had the president yesterday saying, well, they were two weeks away from making a nuclear bomb.

I've tried to see if I could get anyone in the intelligence community to stand that up. But nobody's

going to say that that was the case, particularly after the events of last June. So I think where we

are, this snapshot when we're recording on Thursday morning, both of us seem to agree. And we

mentioned this last week that this could work militarily. This seems to be going in America and

Israel's favor militarily. They have not, because of the strikes from Iran against the Gulf states,

they have not lost their Gulf allies. In fact, they've probably pulled their Gulf allies closer to

them. There are some big questions out there. I think there are still questions about that girl

school that you and I mentioned. Pete Hegseth was asked about that yesterday. Again, he kind of

refused to answer, just said it's an investigation. We're getting lots of other military details,

but curiously, they can't give us details about that girl school. But I think that they have not

done a good job of selling this to the American public. And I think we are beginning to see fractures

in the mega coalition that have been exacerbated over the last couple of days. And we're seeing these

war votes play out on Congress. I don't know how particularly important those are. But there's a

lot of skepticism around the country. You've got the latest opinion polls are suggesting what

60% disapproval, 40% approval for the operation in Iraq. Now, I know polls can depend on how you

ask the question. Some other polls, CBS polls, is a little closer than that. But that's not a great

position for a president to be in when he's only got 40% approval in the days when the military

operation is going successfully. My memory of military operations over the last 20, 30 years in America

in the days at the beginning, you get a rally around the flag effect, you get a rally around the

commander in chief effect. And particularly when it's going well, you get a spike in support for the

military operation that then reflect on the president. I don't think we're seeing that for this

president at the moment. There are still a lot of Americans who are asking themselves why are we

doing that? And they're asking why are we doing that? Because the case hasn't been made coherent.

In the cases all over the place, right? Anthony? Yeah. I mean, I just want to add a couple of stats,

which I think people will be interested in 68% of the independence are against it. I love this.

You've dug into the crosstabs. We love a crosstab almost as well. Well, we have to do that because

the independence are really going to decide the midterms and decide the of 2028 elections. So

almost 70% of them are like, this is absurd. This is ridiculous. You know, the other thing

you should know, Caddy. And you probably do know this, but I want to share this with people.

12% of the Americans favor sending troops to Iran. 12%. Can you imagine that? Imagine how crazy that

is. And he's talking about it. Now, I'm not saying he's going to do it. But I mean, there's no room

for him in this meaning he doesn't have unshakeable support from even his base on what he's doing here.

So if this is so good for America, why are so many Americans against it?

I think it's because the case hasn't been made. The president has put out various ideas. We're doing

this because we were about to be attacked and attack was imminent. Marco Rubio says we're doing

this because Israel was about to attack. And so then we would have been counter-attack. And we

have to do it. We're doing that because they were two weeks away from a nuclear weapon. That's

the latest explanation. Meanwhile, Americans are thinking this has nothing to do with my cost of

living. In fact, cost of living has got worse because of this operation. So why are we out there

thousands of miles away trying to take down the Iranian regime when it doesn't feel to Americans

like there was an imminent threat? I think one thing that is worth saying is that there is

the traditional, the old Republican position that you would have remembered Anthony

would have been hawkish on Iran. There's not a lot of love lost for the fact that the

Ayatollah has been taken out or that Iran is getting punched on the nose. So you've got this kind

of discrepancy between Donald Trump who is saying I came in to stop the forever wars but now has

become the commander-in-chief who goes for Venezuela, who threatens Greenland, who actually goes for

Iran not once but twice in the course of the last year and puts himself seemingly at odds with

his mega-America first base, which voted for him because they said they didn't want the forever

wars. And yet, scratching to Congress, I think, where you're seeing this support for Donald Trump

and there is still in the Republican party a desire for America to lead and a desire for America

to hit America's enemies, particularly Iran, which has been an enemy for so long. So I think it's

a more complicated picture than perhaps the polling is suggesting. And I think there is this

rump of traditional republicanism on foreign policy, on this foreign policy issue that is helping

Donald Trump at the moment. So there are mega voices. You're right. There are the Tucker Carlson's,

the Marjorie Taylor Greens. There are a bunch of mega voices that have come out against

this operation, but they tend to be mega-influences on the sort of one extreme of the

mega base. I don't know that he's going to lose mega over this. No, I don't think he loses

mega over this, but I don't think he's got all of mega. I think he's fractured mega, and I think

he's leaked a little bit of mega. But I did a say on it last night in preparation for this,

and I do. How the ghost's doing? I know. Could you do believe all this? Yeah, I know.

Well, yeah, I channeled the spirit of Dick Cheney. So it took a while because I'm here in Dublin,

and I had the sorcerer thing, and Dick came down, and he is still a little Dick Cheney. Let's

just tell you how happy Dick Cheney is, because Dick Cheney is like, this is at Neocon's wet dream.

Vindication. He cannot believe this. He's like, whoa, we got the reality television star

in the White House, Liz didn't want him. I didn't want him. You know, before he moved dogs,

you know, Cheney's in purgatory, where he's not quite in heaven because of all the bad deeds.

And he's like, you know, I'm here waiting to see if I need to say that about the dead. You can't say

that, Anthony, about the dead. This is the period of Len, we're heading into Easter. You're a good Catholic.

Well, I'm just like, you know, what's going on? And so he's sitting there waiting for the same

Peter to let him in the pearly gaze, but he's very happy right now because he's like, this is

like even better than I thought. And so let me give the unitary executive power pitch, Dick Cheney

on steroids. That would be Donald Trump. And remember, just a reminder, everybody, this is the

peace president, Donald Trump. This is the president that was campaigning for the end of forever

wars. He has taken the Dick Cheney playbook to the max. And so as I said last week, what is the

Dick Cheney playbook? We're going to behead Iran. We're going to install somebody that we can

corrupt. And that's secular. And we're going to see if we can do to Iran, what we did to Venice

Wella. Now, Katie, I am sure of this. And this is not based on reporting. This is based on my

gut. And so I'm going to tell you my gut. And then I want you to respond to it. I am sure that

Trump is pissed off at the Israelis. And let me explain why the Israelis have a diverging

objective to Donald Trump. The Israelis want to kill everybody. The Israelis have been terrorized by

the Iranians. They funded Hamas. They created this fiasco in Gaza. And they've heard tons and tons

of Israelis over the 47 years. And so now that the Israelis have opened fire like this, they're killing

everybody. I mean, they went through the top 40 in like five minutes of the senior leadership.

And Trump is very pissed off about this. Including by the way, the senior leadership that he was

hoping to put back in there after they'd taken out the very top. That's my point because I'm watching

the interviews of Trump. He's sitting there in front of the gilded fireplace now. There's like

so much gold coming off the fireplace from Home Depot. It's like that's another revolting thing.

But Trump is saying he's saying, who am I going to bribe? Trump is basically looking at the media

and saying, BB killed so many people. I can't figure out which secularist I'm going to bribe.

Okay, so that is an opinion by me. And I'd like you to react to that. Go ahead. That was everything

from Dick Cheney, by the way. And then I let his spirit go back into the, yes, he went back

up, yes, or down, wherever he may have gone. Actually, I'm not sure. Go ahead. What is your

opinion of that? Next time we need to know what's happening. We're going to call up, you know,

your sound situation. Look, I think that one of the most honest things that was said this week

was when Marco Rubio came down and in this very kind of mangled way said the quiet part out loud

and said, the Israelis were going to go for it. And so we had to jump in there in case we got hit

and we didn't want to get hit inadvertently. So we thought, well, we better join the Israelis

and make sure that we were protecting ourselves. I think this BB has been, I understand,

in the White House nonstop pushing Donald Trump to do this, obviously. But Donald Trump could have

said no. Now I had reporting this morning of somebody who had lunch with Donald Trump a month ago

in Mar-a-Lago, who said he was gagging to strike Iran. You know, BB was clearly pushing. They could

have said no to BB. They chose not to say no to BB, but maybe Rubio wanted to use that as the

excuse. Israel was pushing maybe Rubio has his own reasons for saying that. But and they could have

definitely said no to BB and not let him do it. But I think Donald Trump came out of Venezuela

feeling as many presidents do when they see the awesome power of the American military

high on the power of American power. He loves power anyway. He loves to prove his predecessors were

weak and stupid and wrong. That's a constant theme with his presidency. They didn't do this

because they were too weak to do this. You and I have been doing this series on Donald Trump.

He loves to show that he is the only person that can fix things. Only Donald Trump had the balls

to go after Iran and punch them where it hurt and actually kind of obliterate their military

machine. Only I have done this thing that's impossible. And you know what? However, this turns out

at this point, he declares a win. Short of massive American casualties, which looking at the what

you and I hearing from the region, looking at the military situation at the moment, they seem to

have avoided that so far fingers crossed. But short of massive American casualties, Donald Trump can

go to the American public and say, anything is better than what was there. I don't really care

about what regime comes next, what their ideology is. So long as this is a regime, but look,

American public, they don't have access now to their nuclear weaponry. They don't have access to

their ballistic missiles that were pointed at our US bases in the region. And he doesn't care about

whether the Iranian population rises up and takes over, which is probably going to lead to a

bloodbath for the Iranian population. But the problem is it doesn't get America out of a cold war

that it's been with in Iran since 1979. It's still going to be in a cold war. It just won't have

the weapons. And maybe that's enough. Maybe that's enough for him to be able to sell this reasonably

plausibly as a win to the American public. Okay. So before we go to another topic, I just want to

throw a few more things at you because I'm looking for Delsey Rodriguez. Yeah. You've probably

killed it, by the way. Yeah. So that's what Trump said. Okay. And this is the beauty of Trump.

He literally said, well, the attack was so successful. It knocked out most of the candidates.

It's not going to be anybody that we were thinking of because they're all dead. Second and third

place is dead. Those are literally Trump's words. But I'm going to throw out two people to you.

Okay. One is Hassan Khomeini. This is the grandson of the ruler, obviously, that was taken out

earlier in the week. And he seems to be more secularized. And he seems to be more pragmatic.

Now, I'm not saying that's the direction he's going to go in or not. And then the other one,

I would say, is Ali Larajani, and my saying is name right. He's probably the most powerful

transitional figure that's left alive. He's probably been running the country for the last year.

Yeah. And he's probably running the country. And maybe he's not dead because the Israelis

don't want to kill him. If you're just being brutally honest with everybody. And he's more or

less, I think, run the country, national security, supreme national security council. He's the one

that's worked with the Europeans and the Chinese. And he has some technocratic credibility.

So my question to you is, is this somebody that could work with Donald Trump? And now as I'm

saying that to you, remember, the Israelis, they don't mind failed states. They like the failed

state of Lebanon. They don't mind the failed state of Syria. And they ideally would like this

to be a partitioned failed state. Trump does not want that. We both know that. So the question

is what direction is it going in? And do either of those two people sound like to you, as potentially

people that Donald Trump and the Americans could deal with? I think it's potentially, you know,

one of those two, assuming they stay alive for a while, because these bombardants are continuing

and the Israelis are going after the security forces. And the Americans, Hegseth has said,

we're going to step up the bombardment. So the next day or two, what Trump seems to be looking for

is kind of, you know, Iran's Deng Xiaoping, right? The post-Mao leader who America can deal with.

I have a question about the Iranian society, though, because I've reached out to a couple of

Iranian friends over the last few days and people who are Iranian, but live abroad. And they say,

Iranian society is so fed up with the model that they've had that will they accept anything that

is adjacent to that model? Will they be satisfied with the Laranjani? Will they be satisfied with

how many is offspring? They are seriously unhappy with the status quo, and will that be something

that they can tolerate? How many was very opposed, my understanding is, to reform of any kind,

because you saw the Soviet model. He thought, once you open the door to any kind of reform

Gorbachev style, then the, you know, all hell breaks loose and you lose the regime. So there aren't

very many people around him who were real reformers. I don't think Delci Rodriguez was a real

reformer, but Venezuela is a very different case. Venezuela has been democratic and pro-American,

much more recently than Iran has. They've kind of gutted a lot of the leadership anyway,

is now still staunchly radicalized. So I think all of those are good questions. And I think

we don't know. I mean, there's also these reports that are coming out that the CIA is trying to

help the Kurds in the North. Well, the poor Kurds have been through this before. So I hope if the

Americans really are saying they're going to support the Kurds, they're going to do a better job

of this than they did in the first Gulf War when they kind of abandoned them. So there are a lot

of moving parts in this. Is Trump really trying to ferment civil war in the country? Will the

Iranian public accept somebody who wears a turban? I mean, let's put it bluntly, who comes from

the clerical side. Will they accept somebody who has anything to do with the regime? Like

Laranjani does. I mean, it's going to be up to, I guess, having decimated Iran's defenses,

it will be up to Israel and America because they're not going to tolerate somebody who

they feel they can't do business with. I think all of this is why Karl Rove is writing this

article today in the Wall Street Journal, which is saying, look, we just need a more coherent

theory of the case rather than the prospect of Donald Trump. One day clicking his fingers and

saying, okay, let's call it quits. We've had a victory. We're done because if you leave so many

of these questions unanswered, your victory could evaporate. Yeah, I know. I think it's a really

insightful analysis. And I'll just add a few things to it. So you have everything you just said

and now you have the big supreme question, Caddy. And that is Will, whatever's left standing in

that government, play ball with the Americans. And I think it's hard to know because

they've got a couple of different factions in there, right? Faction one, out of the pragmatists,

they're debits of yearly damage. These are the ones that were very close in Geneva. They were

reporting to reporters that they thought or they were almost there with a deal. And there will be

a backstory about that. Jared and Steve Whitkopf, because you guys are very close to the deal,

but you know, BB didn't want that deal. BB wanted a bomb, everybody. So the pragmatists are there

and they are damaged. The second group are the IRGC. These are the hardliners. These guys are also

militarily weakened, but they're the ideological maximalists. And the question is, what are we doing

with them? And how many of them are left at power? These are the ones that are shooting the rockets

at the Gulf States. You know, the foreign minister, you probably heard this, called the foreign

minister of Qatar to offer some level of apology. That's not an IRGC thing. That's the pragmatist

faction, right? And the Qatari foreign minister says, hey, you're not just shooting at American

bases here. You're blowing up apartment buildings and hotels, cut it out. So you've got a couple

of different factions. And this is the one that I want to ask you about. And that is the people

Qatari. Because I think Trump is misreading the people and hear me out for a second, okay?

Do Iranian people? He is. I think he's misreading them. He's like, you know, go overthrow the government,

go overthrow the government, but then he's also telling the press, where's Delsey Rodriguez too?

Where's Delsey Rodriguez too? And I think Trump's going to put himself in a weird position because

I don't think the general population wants to deal with the regime. Yeah, I think you're right.

That's what I say. Yeah. I think they want fundamental change, which is frankly fundamentally

different from Venezuela. So you could be in a situation where let's say Trump finds Delsey Rodriguez

too, but you have lots of tall malt in the place of the people, where they're like, no, that's not

what we want. We want a full, renewed Iranian revolution. And I think Trump is misreading that. That's

just me personally, because he likes and he enjoys this. He does it to everybody. He talks out of

both sides of his mouth. I'm not for forever worse. Let's bomb the living daylights out of these

guys like Dick Cheney. I want you guys to overthrow the government. Hey, is there someone in the

government I can bribe that I can do business with? And so he gets the guy or the person that he can

bribe to do business with. I think the people are going to generally be unhappy. Am I wrong in that?

No, I think you're exactly right. It's what I was saying that they won't tolerate somebody who is

regime adjacent. Now, that doesn't mean that we're about to see a huge uprising from the Iranian

people. They've been traumatized and brutalized for years. And they're not at the moment my

understanding is they are absolutely terrified and will not be going out onto the streets because

there are regime remnants and security services. And I, RGDC, who are walking around with guns,

who are going to shoot anyone who so much as puts their head above the parapet. And I think you're

not likely to see within the next six to months to a year, a huge big rising up of a of the

Iranian population, short of massive American support. I don't think Donald Trump is going to do.

He's just kind of vaguely hoping that they'll do this by themselves because

they've they've been hurt really hard. I mean, I think they're much more likely the Iranian

people right now to hunker down and try to repair themselves. They're under bombardment right now

as we speak. But that doesn't mean that they are happy about the idea of this bombing campaign

starting and then being abandoned and this not leading to wholesale regime change. Speaking to

people who know the country much better than I do, where we know there's something like only 15%

support for the regime. But people are very, very wary there at the moment and they don't like the

idea of America not finishing this job and giving them thought that will that would be massively

disappointing to the Iranian people if we end up with an infee bold, but still Islamic Republic

type of regime in the country. That is exactly the last thing that they want. Okay, talking of

factions. Where is Mr. JD Vance these days? Mr. No more forever wars. I voted for Donald Trump

because he is the only one who understands how awful it was that America started all of these

wars and we must never start anymore wars. Have you seen him recently? Is he there with you in

Ireland? Because he's not here in Washington. He's not here with me. We had a say-ons for him. Maybe

in the say-ons with Dick Janie. But the thing with JD Vance, and again, I'm not patting myself on the

back, but I sort of am patting myself on the back because I told you JD Vance, like in the movie Fargo,

is going to go through the woodchipper. And so, consistently, conspicuously, not in the room

during the Venezuelan thing, conspicuously, not in Marlago during the Iranian invasion,

and he said, oh my god, we got to set up some mock-up situation where he's sitting there looking

like a bozo in some kind of photo op in another situation room that has nothing to do with the real

situation room. Power center. Yeah, exactly. This sort of nonsense. And he's doing things. He

had line at that fundraiser. He went out to go with 50 people. People probably saw that in the

paper with Donald Trump Jr. They had 50 people get $100,000 each. It was a very lucrative

fundraiser for them all. But I think Vance is in big trouble with Donald Trump. I think he

has been completely and totally sidelined on this issue, on this issue, but generally Trump wants

nothing to do with him. Now, on the other thing, okay, the eagle that is soaring right now is little

Marco. Okay, little Marco is almost like a clay pigeon caddy, you know, like it's up in the air

right now. And he's soaring and Trump's telling you he's the greatest secretary state in the world.

And in six months, click, click, kaboom. Okay, the clay pigeon is going to burst in the sky.

And Donald Trump is going to eviscerate little Marco. Okay, so that's going to happen as well,

because Trump honestly cannot, and I repeat, he honestly cannot help himself. And somebody said

to me here in Dublin last night, is that an event? Who does Trump want to be his successor?

Nobody. Okay, thank you, Caddy Kay. So I answered with Gavin Newsom, and then one,

oh, oh, oh, oh, she might say, well, hear me out. You guys were nobody before I got here.

Now you're somebody, but only because of me. And oh, by the way, when I leave, you're going to

be nobody. Okay, and that's what's going on here. So JD Vance, bye bye. Okay, now what JD Vance

did, which I found very interesting, Caddy, and I want you to react to it. He had his staffers

leaked to the press that he wasn't for the strike. Yeah, didn't help him with Trump, but he's

trying to get a pole position in place for the 2028. So react to that, please. So in, he didn't even

just leak it to the press. He wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal back in 2024, in which he

said his primary reason for sporting Trump had been that he started no wars. In October of 2024,

he said, our interest, I think, very much is not going to war with Iran. He doesn't even need to

leak it to the press. And he's been quite blunt about this. And to the extent that he represents the

anti-interventionist wing of the Republican Party, which he clearly does and is the champion of,

that wing is losing at the moment. The Steve Bannon wing, the JD Vance wing, they're the ones

that are not being able to restrain the president. They couldn't stop him from Venezuela. They couldn't

stop him from doing Iran. And now JD is in the position where he's having to go out and talk to

some of these anti-interventionists. And he has had to come out in public, which he's done,

and sell the administration's line. But as he does that, he's losing some of his political capital

with that group. So he is having to spend his own political capital. He's in a, you're damned

if you do and you're damned if you don't, because he's got to spend his political capital with that

group to defend the administration's actions in Iran, knowing that if he's going to run in 2028,

he's going to need their support. And they are now a little bit disappointed with him. A reminder

to JD Vance, you can't win here. You can't be half pregnant. You can't be half mega. You have

to be kind of full, Maggie. It's a bit like John Cornen. We spoke about him in Texas. You've got

to be a hundred percent on board. So in 1960, on the eve of the election at a press conference,

one of Eisenhower's last press conferences, the press raised their hand and said, Mr. Dickson

is running for president in the last eight years. Could you please tell me an achievement

of his in your two administrations? And Eisenhower looked at the guy and said, if you give me a

week, I'll think about it. Okay. And it was like literally like a scud missile going into Nixon's

campaign headquarters. Trump did a number. He did a number on JD Vance said differently. He

hit him with a karate chap into the Adams apple, caddy. He said, and I quote, it didn't take much

persuading of JD Vance because the press went to him and said, the vice president has expressed

reservations of going to this war and Trump just went right at him and demeaned him and takes

away the invitation to come down to Mar-a-Lago as the war is starting. Exactly. And so by the way,

JD, that was assigned to disloyalty. I agree with that. And here's the thing. Okay, because JD

actually had some chops on this. He's a former Marine. He was in the wars. He had some chops on

this and he had some gravitas on this. And a long history, you know, there's video for everything,

right? There's video and op-eds for everything. So interesting Vance and we're going to move on to

the economy and what it's doing to the American economy. Because I think that's also interesting

that. But Vance did do an interview with Fox News. Here's what he said. The president has clearly

defined what he wants to accomplish. There's just no way Donald Trump is going to allow this country

to get into a multi-air conflict with no clear end insight and no clear objective. That is JD

Vance trying to talk out of both sides of his mouth. In the first part of that, he's trying to say

Donald Trump, you're right, you know, he's done exactly the right thing. Not that we think

Donald Trump has clearly defined his what he wants to accomplish because he clearly hasn't.

And then in the second part of that, he's saying to his non-interventionist base,

don't worry, this is not a forever war. And please forgive me for the position that I'm in.

How's that going to work out for him, Caddy? That's going to work out really well.

Can you hear the wood shipper in the background? Can you hear the wood shipper? It's right outside

my window by the say-on studio. Can you hear it? You know why it doesn't work out because we live

in an era where there is no forgiveness for people not being authentic. There is no room for

100 percent. People in this communications world, in this age of populism, particularly,

you have to be somebody that the people believe you are. That's why Donald Trump gets away with it.

100 percent. Donald Trump can say 50 different things at once and have 50 different positions

on something, but he is who he is. Yeah, he's consistently mad. He's consistently inconsistent.

JD Vance is trying to make a coherent position, but revealing himself as trying to satisfy

everybody. And in this world, you can't try and please everybody.

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request a prescription today at colaguard.com slash screen. Let's talk about the economy.

Okay. I had an interesting conversation this morning with Congressman Jim Himes and asked him

whether we're going to start seeing Democrats make more of a case linking the economy and the

potential costs of the economy and this war because just in the last day or two, you've heard

Democrats saying hold on a second gas prices are going up. The war cost a billion dollars in

the first 24 hours at the same time the Republicans and the White House are trying to cut your healthcare

subsidies. So is this somewhere where Democrats think they're going to go that they're going to

hammer this knot on the grounds because I think it's complicated for them, not on the grounds of this

was a bad idea because they realize Americans don't like Iran and a lot of Democrats don't like

Iran either but they're going to start linking this to the key issue that they know is the issue in

the midterms which is affordability. Do you think that's do you think that's where they're going to

go and would they be smart to go there? I do and I think it's smart to go there if they frame it

properly. Like if they got to the camera look straight into the camera and said this is the war

tax that nobody voted for because gas prices went from the low two dollars to three dollars and 20

cents in five days. Now you have a liquid natural gas crisis going on around the world where those

prices are up substantially. You also have a forecast coming out by E and Y Parthenon that's

saying that the growth in the US, the GDP is likely going to be down 50 to 100 basis points as a

result of this. So that slowdown is going to hurt everybody and then the weird thing, Katty,

I'd like you to talk about this, he's trapping the Fed. So the worst enemy of Donald Trump

is Donald Trump because he wants the rates to go down but you're setting up a situation now for

stagnation. You see what's going on? Like Muhammad al-Aryan and one of my buds used to run the

Howard and down. He was at alliance. He's one of the top capital allocators top macro thinkers in

the world is saying these types of situations could really hamstring, hamstring the Fed,

it'd be locked in a accordion now because they can't move and Trump wants lower rates but you

got the prices going up. Kevin Walsh is not going to want to come in and raise interest rates

after all of the campaign he made to get that job. That is not the thing he's going to want to do

but if oil and gas prices keep going up, it's going to be certainly very difficult for him

to cut rates. Apparently you've got Susie Walsh is calling oil industry executives frantically

on the phone saying, what can we do? Find me something. Find me some good news. I need you to do

something to try and bring down oil and gas prices, particularly prices at the pump. I don't know

why the administration didn't think going into this that gas prices would go up. But why didn't

they open up the strategic petroleum reserve? The last war we opened up the SPR? Or suspend as

they're talking about now. You suspend the gas tax or something. They're throwing out all of

these ideas. Let's suspend the gas tax for a year. The White House is acting in a panic over gas

prices right now. All of the political sides realize what an incredible cost this can be. This is

what helped get Joe Biden booted out of the presidency. No question. It was damaging to his campaign.

It was the single thing right. They care about gas prices more than they care about the price of

eggs voters. See, the White House thought that they were going to have a triple intensity 12-day war.

But the Iranians were going to respond to it like they did the 12-day war. They did not expect

the Iranians to start bombing apartment buildings in hotels and Dubai. No way because that's evidence

by the lack of planning with the embassy and getting people out of the country. They were thinking

about it in a way that shows extreme arrogance, meaning never underestimate your adversary or your

potential opponent. And the Iranians are saying, hey, I got the number here. I'm going to choke off

the global economy. And so I see the straight-of-war moves as a mini-covid. And just hear me out for a

second. Because yeah, even if they slow down, they could mine the straight. They could slow down

the tanker activity in the straight. Then what happens, Caddy? You get factory shutdowns in South

Korea, factory shutdowns in China. You get a whole host of things that happen in Europe as a

read adjustment, a reallocation, a capital due to energy prices, as well as the United States.

And it's like a mini-covid recession. And the administration, what are you doing? They weren't

thinking about this. And so I just find it really weird that they thought that they were going to

get a 12-day war response where the Iranians were like, hello, we're going to bomb this site. And

you get your people out of there so that we don't escalate this too far. But the Iranians are not

doing that. Now, look, the missile strikes are down. This is the stuff that General Kane said.

Obviously, the US will have air superiority. But the Iranians have done something, which is they've

choked off elements of the global economy, which is going to hurt the approach the Fed is going to

take over the next six months. And it's going to generally hurt global GDP. And by the way, if

tankers, like we heard off the coast of Kuwait, do start getting hit. An oil starts leaking into

the Gulf. How many oil companies and tanker companies are going to want to send their ships there?

I mean, that's going to depress even the fear of Iranians blowing up your tankers full of oil.

It's going to make people worry about trying to be in that region. So I think that's going to hurt

price. I mean, the longer this goes on, the more destabilizing it is to the economy, the more

destabilizing it is to the White House, because they have to deal with the fallout of this and the

more the American people risk turning against this. If this is all done and dusted in the case of

the next week, then we may not be having this discussion in a week's time. And I think we have

to have the humility to recognize that that's a possibility. I still think you heard the economy.

We'll have a different discussion. But, Katty, we've been doing this Trump series as we both know

for our founding members. And I listened back to the second episode. I really want to encourage

people to listen to it because the whole foundation of Trump's decision making and the whole

lack of caution and general recklessness combined with the luck, okay, has gotten us to where we are

right now, which is why the president is incredibly overconfident in doubling and tripling down

on the things that he's doing. And thus far, because he's won the presidency twice, Katty,

much to the degree of many people, including myself, he's won it twice. I think we do a very good

job in this episode. We should play a clip. Do a very good job in this episode of explaining

the sediment and the foundation of the Trump decision make.

Is it everybody like Marikotch? Because Marikotch was bringing back the police officers.

Marikotch was trying to bring back the businesses. And Marikotch needed Trump. And Trump needed

Koch. And you know what they both disliked about that? What I just said. Because neither one of them

liked needing each other. You see what I mean? And so bam, bam, bam, they were constantly going

at it with each other. Of course, Koch being a politician always used to cut out. And you'd always

throw different commissioners in front of Trump. And you try to block Trump. And Trump was a

steamroller. But the most famous thing that happens in the 80s that Trump writes about in the art

of the deal is the Walman rink. But you have to think about this. And these numbers aren't

staggering to us today. But these numbers were staggering to the 1980s. Okay. So the rink

closes in 1980. 13 million dollars is spent by the city to try to get the rink reopened.

1980 to 1986. 13 million dollars, caddy bureaucratic infighting contractors fired multiple design

changes. This is an ice skating rink, guys. I mean, he has a point. It's an ice skating rink.

So Trump goes on the air. Okay. He goes on the radio. He goes on TV, like local news. This is

before real, the real advent of cable. And he says, I'm a private citizen. I'll take this over.

I'll get private contractors. I'll fix this thing in six months. And so now you can hear the

drum beat from the city. Let him fix it. Let him fix it. Signs go up. Let him fix it. And so caddy,

he completes the rink in about four months. What's he going to call it? Trump ice ink.

Of course he wants to do that. A coach blocks that, right? So that's like the first blocking of

the Trump Kennedy Center. Trump can't do that. But it doesn't matter. They have this big ribbon

cutting ceremony. And there he is. And there's a great picture of him standing on the rink.

It's a 1987. And the rink is open. He's in that famous top coat of his. And this is great branding

and great messaging for a private citizen, private entrepreneur coming into government-like services.

And I'll show you, right? Because that's ultimately his message in 2016. But it goes back to

the woman rink. And I think people have to understand how important this rink is to him.

While he's doing this, he's flying high. He's in the process of building his casinos if we'll talk

about. But he does something that shit crazy. Yeah, you're really here in that clip Anthony,

how he believed this Mr. Fixit persona. It was born out of his years of business in New York

where he was working there on the ice rink. I mean, we've gone from an ice rink to a war in the

Persian Gulf. And the thinking behind it from Donald Trump's own point of view of himself,

how he sees himself is basically the same. I am the only person that can fix this. The problem

with that is that now he is in the Oval Office. The stakes are so much higher. This is potentially

a much bigger regional war. And if he thinks he can do it alone, it means he's not listening

to the smartest people in the room. He's the smartest person in the room. There's nobody smarter.

He's not listening to people that will say no to him. And in foreign policy, you need a good

president has people around them who will say to them, no, you're wrong. Try this approach. Have

you thought of this? This is the nuance of the Iranian population. They may not be what you

think. And he doesn't have those people around him because he surrounded himself in this presidency

with yes people. And I think you can see this is why I love doing this series and why it's so

timely right now. If you want to understand Donald Trump's world that we are all living in,

listen to this series and you'll understand where it came from. So if you'd like to sign up and

get this series, you can become a founding member by going to the rest is politics us.com

and clicking on the link. Well said. Thank you so much for listening. Clearly a lot going on

will be back next week with more. Thanks guys. We'll see you next week.