Raging Moderates: Trump’s Iran War Plan Falls Apart as Allies Walk Away

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you're into that. Now here's today's show. The administration is completely off

base and out of sync with the 330 million Americans who are invested in not

only where American lives may end up not only you have the 50,000 troops in

the region but potentially perishing what their costs are as a result and

what this says about American power writ large and our allies. Welcome to

Raging Moderates. I'm Scott Yahweh. And I'm Jessica Tarlov. Just got one to the

Oscar party at Vanity Fair of the Vanity Fair Oscar party. I don't know if you

knew that. I did know it but I want to know more. I want to know everything. You

sent me one great text. I did. And then nothing. So tell me everything. And that

was before all the winners started showing up. Yeah. It was I'm not exaggerating.

I at one point I started googling actors with last time Galloway because I

think they screwed up. I don't know. I literally have no idea how I got someone

that said oh podcast are important and some 19 year old intern one. What about

that crazy professor? It was it was incredible. I thought I mean they just did an

amazing job and then standing in between, you know, Jacob Allody and John Ham

ordering drinks. It's just it felt did you talk to them? I did. I talked to a

bunch of people. Everyone was very friendly. These people know who you are. They

at least love what you're doing for young men. I'm sure a lot of them are

pivot listeners. You've seen that. I mean, you guys have become, you know, you're

still up. Anyway, so I didn't want to go that. I really wasn't finishing your

compliments. It was amazing. No, that wasn't even when I'm trying to make you feel

better. I genuinely think that's the case. I don't know about Jacob Allody. But it

was amazing. I had an amazing time. Thank you for asking. What did you do this

weekend? I was at South by Southwest with you. Oh, I knew that and we had a great

time. I was literally sitting next to you. Oh, and it was wonderful. James

Salarico was the Jacob Allody of South by Southwest. That was actually I'll go

as far as to say that was a close second in terms of my weekend was I

interview with with Representative Tallarico. He's so good. Anyways, all right,

enough of that. Today we're going to be discussing Trump's demands to allies to

step up on Iran and his immigration policy colliding with reality. If you

aren't already, please make sure to subscribe to our YouTube page to stay in the

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to our sub-stack where you'll get exclusive content and these podcasts

add free amongst other things. All right, let's get into it. Trump is facing

mounting pressure on multiple fronts abroad and home overseas tensions are

escalating fast. Israel set a killed a top Iranian leader, Ali Larajani in a

striker to Iran, the latest blow to Iran's leadership that comes as Trump

tries to rally allies to help reopen the straits of her moves. But so far,

no one's committing warships and he's openly frustrated back at home.

There's a reality check on immigration. After promising mass deportations

would create a hundred percent American workforce, the administration is now

expanding visas for migrant farm workers because farm workers can't find

enough labor. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court is weighing whether Trump can end

protections for hundreds of thousands of Haitian and Syrian immigrants. Inside

the government, there's also turmoil at DHS, where border control hardline

or Greg Bavino is stepping down after a strange controversy is clashes and a

federal judge accusing him of misleading the court. And Republicans are

pushing the say back, voting bill required proof of citizenship and ID,

which critics say could tilt elections toward the GOP. So the bigger question

is, are the administration's biggest promises on immigration and global

leadership colliding with reality? Still, that hasn't stopped officials

from saying the quiet part out loud. Let's watch Kevin Hass at this morning on

CNBC talking about the economic impact of the Iran conflict. The fact is that

the U.S. economy is fundamentally sound and that if it were to be extended,

this it wouldn't really disrupt the U.S. economy very much at all. It would hurt

consumers and we'd have to think about, you know, if that continued, what we

would have to do about that. But that's like really the last of our concerns

right now because we're very confident that this thing is going ahead a

haven't you heard that U.S. consumers being hurt is not part of the general

health. And it's two thirds of consumer. It's so weird. Like I know I've said this

a million times. Why do you not learn lessons from our defeat? This is like

exactly the same thing that Democrats went out there and said actually a

little less callous than we don't really care what happens to the average

person. But we went out there with our GDP growth and our job growth and

said, you know, you can basically deal with the prices because we have the

fastest recovery in the G7 and everyone was like, guess what? You lose. We're

picking the other guys. And then they show up do everything wrong. And then

use the same talking point. Yeah, his the tenor of his voice reminds me

this might if one of my favorite moments with my young guest when he was

five, he drew on the wall with a marker. And he started denying it in the

middle of his denial. He realized that he had written his name. And that's

what his voice sounds like. He sounds like, okay, there's no way anyone's

going to believe I'm not lying here. What I'm saying is true. You know, all

of these guys, JD Vance, Scott Bassett are like, no, I'll pass on that meet

the press interview. I think I'm I think I'm just going to take a little

vacation here and not have to defend any of those nonsense. Do you

think that what do you think do you think things are getting cheaper

here? What's what's our data, Jess?

Oh, no, the data does not indicate that's the case. Certainly gas is not

getting any cheaper. And we're going to be talking. Yeah, right. And

diesel went over $5 a gallon for the first time since 2022. Without

diesel, you've got no trucking business, agriculture, housing, all of it,

relies on diesel. People still report that the grocery store is tougher for

them over 70% say that Trump is not paying attention to what matters most

to them, which is cost of living, energy prices in general continue to

spike. They seem to just not be taking it seriously. This affordability is a

hoax thing. They think it's just a buzz word. And I get it. It's, you know,

funny. When you hear everyone from mom Donnie to Abigail Spanberger

using the same lines, right? Because it's affordability, affordability,

affordability. But that's what wins you elections to show people that you

actually care about their experience on the ground. And I think that,

you know, it's still a long way until the midterms and people might not be

paying attention to the everyday flow of this. You know, what do Kevin

has it say on CNBC today? But their feelings are not changing because

there has been no indication that the administration is taking the realities

on the ground seriously. And if you want to run a midterm election around,

I'm the peace president and I stopped eight wars or whatever ridiculous

claim he's going to make. And you don't feel like you can take a vacation

to Disney and go out to dinner once a week and maybe catch a movie. If that's

something that appeals to you and your family, then why would you

entrust the keys to the car to the Republican certainly for the Senate, the

House and the White House? I mean, I think there are going to be a lot of

people out there hankering for at least divided government.

Yeah, according to CalChi, there's a 53% chance gas prices exceed $4 this

week. You and reference farmers who are getting especially hard hit, I think

a combination of the surge in diesel prices, what will be a huge increase in

the price of fertilizer. And also their inability to find workers has led

to bankruptcy rose 46% in 2025, according to the American Farm Bureau

Federation, and you're probably going to see even greater increase in 2026.

And fertilizer prices up are 77%, which is it? It's funny. It's the

stuff you're not expecting. I wouldn't have thought like fertilizer would

be 30% of the world's fertilizer comes through this trade of hormones.

Yeah, Qatar, right? It's I think so. Anyways, it's that's the word we're

going to hear more about. A January Pew survey found that 92% of

Americans were concerned about the cost of food and consumer goods. And

the level of consumer prices has increased 24% since March of 2021.

So in about five years, it's up 24%. I'm interested to know what inflation

inflation is probably up 12 or 14% since then. Anyways, this is a big deal.

If I think about, well, if you think about his three big pillars of the three

legs of the Trump stool that were so effective in 2024, it was immigration,

affordability and quite frankly, no forever wars. And let's use this to

segue into the straight of hormones. It appears that with their approach to

the war in Iran, he's immediately got a tofer and not in a good way.

He's gone back on affordability and on what potentially could be or what

people are worried about could be a forever war. And US allies don't want to

commit to ships. What do you think are ships to help to help us score

tankers through the Gulf of or the straights of hormones? What do you think

it means for the war and the US just?

Well, if you're going by the original war plan, there's about three weeks

left with the amount of strikes that they want to carry out where they'll

quote unquote feel like they've finished the job. The question is, can

we hold on through those three weeks? He seems pretty dug in about it.

There are obviously reports of various off ramps that they've been

trying conflicting reports about Whitcoff trying to talk to the

negotiators like get back in good terms with the homonies and the Iranians

to get back to the table. Then there are counter reports that the Iranians

want to talk to us. I'm not sure what's true there. What I do know is that

attitudeally, the administration is completely off base and out of sync

with the 330 million Americans who are invested in not only where American

lives may end up, not only you have the 50,000 troops in the region,

but potentially perishing what their costs are as a result and what this says

about American power writ large and our allies. And Donald Trump just posted

us through social before we got on here, basically saying, we never wanted

your help when he openly wanted the help of the NATO countries. And they've

all basically said, like, I can't pick up your call at this moment. This is not

our war. We weren't consulted. No one was giving a given a heads up. And

when you consider the fact that there is for lack of a better term, another

war going on in Lebanon right now that the Israelis are waging. I mean,

there are 800,000 people that have been evacuated out of Lebanon because of

what Israel is doing there, which was clearly part of the plan. But not

something that we were necessarily signing up to be a de facto part of.

So I think that the administration is doing themselves no favors. I was

really stuck on. And I know, you know, I live in a bubble to some degree and

these clips, and once the algorithm knows that I like these clips of Donald

Trump saying stupid stuff, I just get more and more and more. But I'm sure you saw

this exchange with Peter Ducey.

Thank you. You were talking about Iran a couple of times today. And what they

did after Epic theory began. He said they had cut us out of the radio. You

were wearing weight. Nobody expected that. We were shocked. Are you surprised

that nobody briefed you ahead of time that that might be their retaliation?

Nobody. Nobody. No, no, no, no. The greatest actress. Nobody thought they were

going to hit. They were, I wouldn't say friendly countries. They were like

neutral. They lived with them for years. Iran publicly warned nine days

before the US Israeli sneak attack that this is what they were going to do.

They said all bases, facilities and assets of the hostile force in the

region would constitute legitimate targets. They sent that letter to the

UN on February 19th. There's also this guy in Iranian specialist,

Nate Swanson, who was on the National Security Council under Biden,

and then was actually on Trump's negotiating team for this new nuclear

deal that they were trying to get through. And he wrote a piece in foreign

affairs called why Iran will escalate. And that came out four days before

the attack. So Donald Trump is trying to sell us this idea

that no one could have seen this coming that they would shut down the

state of Hormuz when it seems like not only did Iran tell us that that's

what was going to come. But people who worked on his own negotiating team

set it out loud. Yeah, I just feel obligated to insert the

Israel moving into Lebanon is after the Hezbollah fired hundreds of

projectiles into Israel. So it wasn't. Yeah, I wasn't

trying to make it like nothing had happened. I wanted to say as well that

more rockets are getting through the iron dome than we've seen in a really

long time and it is a very dangerous situation on the ground in Israel.

I just meant that this is not just about what's going on in Iran anymore.

Fourteen countries are involved. Yeah, look, the

the statement that is one of the most, I don't know, one of the statements I carry

in my back pocket of one of my board members, Larry Bond from General

Catalyst said something that always struck me where it stuck with me. And that

is greatness is in the agency of others. And I think

it would be hard. It's a pretty stiff competition for Trump's biggest

flaw. But right up there is an arrogance and belief that with 30% of the

world's GDP, we can we can muscle around the world, not

recognizing that that control came from cooperation

amongst 60 or 70% of the world's GDP. They're generally speaking

the world sauce as obnoxious, but the good guys are at least the western world

and would follow us into conflicts even when they were a bit unsure to maintain

this alliance, recognizing they benefited from a kind of an American

led operating system and just some history here around

Gulf Wars and the coalitions in 1991 under

Herbert Walker Bush 35 nations. It was UN authorized and allies paid the bill.

In 2003, W 40 nations claimed or were claimed as part of the coalition.

It was mostly symbolic. There was no UN authorization

in the US paid the bill. This for two nations, US and Israel,

no one UN authorization in the US is paying 100% of the bill and absorbs

all of the blowback. And so Bush senior built a 35 nation coalition for Desert

Storm got the UN on board and made allies pay 54 billion of the 61

billion dollar tab. You know, that's real leadership. Bush junior claimed

that 40 countries were for Iraq, but it was really the US UK and a few

thousand Australians. Trump started a war with Iran with basically,

you know, check notes, Israel. That's it. No coalition, no UN,

no allies paying. Just two countries bombing a nation of, you know,

93 million people while the rest of the world, including the Arab states whose

military bases were operating from, are getting hit with retaliatory strikes

that they never agreed to. You could argue, this isn't a coalition,

right? It's an attempt to distract from domestic political disasters.

I mean, they just so badly blew it here. If they'd gone to Congress for an

authorization for the US military force, if they'd limited the scope in terms of

objectives, if they got, they probably got a couple, a couple of at least

cooperation from a couple of Gulf Gulf Gulf states, a couple of European nations.

It would have been just such a different complexion of the war. And on a very

basic human level, it's like, I didn't consult with you. I've created problems for

you. Now I expect you to help me. And people are like, go fuck yourself, boss. You

broke it. You own it. And we're sort of out there alone right now.

So this again, I think the lesson to take away here is that no, no matter how powerful you are,

no one nation is able to dominate without a coalition, without cooperation, which is our species

superpower. And I believe this is Trump's Achilles heel is he believes he can muscle around Congress,

muscle around the courts and muscle quite frankly muscle around the West. And I think

that this is their moment where they're happy to say, sorry boss, this one's on you.

Okay, let's take a quick break. Let's do it with us.

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to be great. When you think about wealth inequality in America, there's probably one man whose name

comes to mind. And yes, he did compare America's billionaire era to the gilded age.

We're living in a moment where the top 1% owns more wealth in the bottom 93%,

where one man Elon Musk owns more wealth than the bottom 53% of American households,

where while 60% of our people are living paycheck to paycheck,

the billionaire class has seen its wealth increase by a trillion and a half dollars since Trump

was elected. How's that? They're doing pretty well. I talked to Senator Bernie Sanders about his

latest bill for a wealth tax and his call for a moratorium on AI data centers. Plus, how much

he uses AI himself. Today explained every weekday and now on Saturdays too.

Welcome back. Like I'm sure you've seen this AI slop that they're posting from the official

White House account. Actually, we have a clip of John Oswald responding to the video games.

Let's play that. Last night, the White House put a video on social media

that depicted this war as a video game. Did you all see that?

When American service members killed in action,

our returning to the United States in flag draped coffins,

and even more Americans have lost limbs or suffered terrible brain injuries,

or are fighting for their lives, this White House treats war like a game.

Have a moment also, but he's completely right. And I've seen online a lot of veterans,

gold star families responding to these posts from the White House saying, how dare you do this?

And then Trump is also fundraising off of using a picture of him wearing the White USA cap

at the dignified transfer. Remember, they didn't want anyone to know that he wore a baseball cap to

it, but now they're making money off of it. You just can't take these people seriously.

And not only that, you can't think that they're good human beings. It's so depraved.

Yeah, the word in there is serious. I think everyone Logan Roy says to his children who act like

the entitled jerks that they are. He says, you're not serious people. The US government should

never be putting out memes. Anything that comes up from the president is essentially an

official communication in the US government. The US government should never be. I'm not even sure

the US government should ever be tweeting around social media. They need to ensure that what they

say is taken seriously. And it just erodes our reputation as a serious people when we start

putting out memes and we don't know when they actually mean something and when they don't.

It's just again a further erosion in our brand equity. And the result is all of these

things mocking people not being taking this seriously. We're now more isolated than we were in a rack.

And that war cost us two trillion dollars and 4,500 American lives and created ISIS. And the scary

part here is that, you know, and I need to, I need to have a asterisk here is that I've gotten

this information from a lot of geopolitical creators. I follow on TikTok who follow troop movements.

There are amphibious vessels and combat troops circling the island or getting in a position to

go after cargo. And one of the other observations that was really interesting to me is they said,

look, going after Iran's oil infrastructure means that the administration is giving up on the

notion of regime change because if you had regime change, you'd want the new regime to have the

benefit of economic support of an intact oil infrastructure. And so attacking the oil infrastructure

kind of acknowledges we're not going to we're not going to have regime change. But this is the

chickens are coming home to roost. He went out at alone, made no effort to even nod any sort of

a coalition. And the coal, you know, who should be logical allies have said, I'm sorry, you didn't

check with us. And now you want our help? Yeah, pound sand. Just on the the big takeout of their

intel head, essentially, the guy who they took Ali at Lara Johnny, he was Iran's Supreme National

Security Council had it's a big deal. It shows, you know, great infiltration of the Iranian

leadership coalition. We knew that they had infiltrated obviously to that level. But

how this war is being executed makes it very hard. And I think you've put it in these terms before

to look for the good in it, right, to see what's going right. And, you know, we are being sold

this idea that, you know, their missile capabilities are weighed down, which is objectively true,

right, they're sending up 10 to 14 a day compared to what was it like 900 on day one. But we also had

complete obliteration of four, and it was the end of the nuclear program. And then within a few

months, it was up and running. And so if we are not taking out their capabilities on a permanent

basis, I worry that we're going to it's going to come back again in five years to say we have to

go do this again. And it's going to become like a ritual, right, that we do this. And I'm not sure

that the American people are going to be up for something like that. Yeah. And just just to put

a fine point on the notion that they're it's always important to ask what could go right here.

And to your point, that's how you said it. What could go right? I've found that the best

description of the war so far is operational excellence and strategic incompetence. And to the

point of operational excellence, the US has damaged more than 30 Iranian mind-laying vessels.

So there is in terms of military objectives, the US is performing and Israel are performing

really well. Thoughts on the say back. Yeah. So the Republicans are going forward with this

even though John Thune didn't want to. He's not open to nuking the filibuster to get this past.

It is being marketed as a voter ID bill. And it is not a voter ID bill. And they come out with the

stat. I think it's 87% of Americans or something. Believe it, you should have to show voter ID.

When you go to the polls, Jim Clyburn agrees with that. Not that you should have to show proof of

citizenship in order to be able to register to vote. That is only a passport or a birth certificate.

50% of Americans don't have a passport. Majority of whom are Republicans, by the way. As for the

birth certificate, who has access ready to access to that first of all? Like think of the kid who

just went off to college. Do you think you took his birth certificate with him? Or got married.

Or got married. Your name got adopted. Change your name because you wanted to. I went to get a

real ID on maternity leave. And it took me three trips to the DMV to be able to show them the

proper documentation in order to get my real ID because I have two middle names. And I have some

IDs that have both of my middle names. Some have one of them and some have none of them. And I didn't

even change my last name when I got married. This will hurt the young and the old. It will hurt

married women, people who have been in the foster care system or been adopted. There are some

people who own that like Senator Ron Johnson has said, you know, I'm conscious of the fact that

this could hurt us. I think it's worth it to stop illegals from voting when there's evidence that

like 30 people illegally voted in the 2024 election. I mean, sure, go ahead with it then. But

Democrats have to get smart about this. Sorry, it's a bit of a diatribe. I would love to see us go

on offense with this and say, okay, let's talk about a good voter ID bill. Voter ID can encompass

this range of IDs. You should be able to show a student ID to do it. We should have automatic

registration. We should have a national holiday to go and vote also Native Americans. They require

a date for the ID that would be valid at the polls and tribal IDs don't have that on them. So we

should make it possible for everybody who needs one. And this would take several years to do

obviously you can't say it's for 2026 or 2028 to have valid ID to go to vote to push back on them.

Like if you can get something, you know, a gun with something you should certainly be able to vote

with it. We should own this issue more. There is an opportunity to do that because what they're

talking about will disenfranchise people, probably majority of whom would vote for their Republicans.

But I think what you just outlined is the key strategy and the key flopper Democrats. And that

is we need to move from indignants to ideas. And rather than just complaining and correctly

pointing out that Jim Crow 2.0, I don't want to hear that again. Or saying correctly pointing out

that a passport costs $160 that all right, what if you have global entry, right? There should be

or student ID. I love that or a biometrics. They should facilitate come up. I love a response.

I think that's a great idea to an alternative voter ID law that puts them on their heels as opposed

to us just giving indignant speeches. And no access to the voter roles because we know what you're

trying to do with that, who you're trying to purge from those roles. We saw Tulsi Gabbard lurking

around Fulton County and no doing away with mail-in voting. Conservative states use it. It is very

effective. There is not fraud with it. Go talk to Governor Cox in Utah about mail-in voting.

All right. Any thoughts on the last of Greg Bovina?

Yeah. I don't miss you. I mean, let's see how immigration enforcement really plays out. But

now that they're giving visas to migrant workers because they realize like holy shit, we don't have

anyone to do these jobs. It seems like we're being proved in left, right, and center, which is a

good thing. But how we capitalize on it, I don't know. And hopefully things stay calmer. And we don't

see like a Minnesota, what happened in Minneapolis again. All right. Let's leave it there. Before we go,

a reminder that not only is Raging Moderates not five days a week, we're now available on

Substacks. Subscribers will get ad free episodes, live streams, and a place to engage

with Jess and me and other listeners. Find us at ragingmoderates.proftymedia.com. Again,

that's ragingmoderates.proftymedia.com. That's all for this episode. Thanks so much for joining us

today. Have a good one, Jess. You too. I'll see you later.

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