Loading...
Loading...

Tim Miller takes on Trump’s latest Truth Social rant about Iran—where the president calls Iran the “loser of the Middle East,” talks about the country potentially “collapsing,” and signals the war could escalate even further. He also reacts to Tucker Carlson’s claim that Trump believes the war is polling at 90% support, and what that might mean for where this conflict is headed.
Hey, everybody, Tim Moher from The Bulwark here, a couple of items as we're doing, you know,
Kremlinology, megaology around what this White House is thinking about their Iran war that they
have not made a coherent case for at all. And we have a couple additional data points on this over
the past 24 hours that I just want to make sure to share with you. The one, the first one as a
bleat from Trump, the very early on Saturday morning, and I'm going to read that to you and
guard your lines for this. Iran, which is being beat to hell, has apologized and surrendered to
its Middle East neighbors and promised that it will not shoot them any at them anymore.
I don't think that they've apologized and surrendered to their Middle East neighbors.
This promise was only made because of the oil unless U.S. and Israeli attack. They were looking
to take over and rule the Middle East. Okay. I don't think that's really true. I mean, maybe
aspirationally, but I don't know that there were imminent threat to the UAE in Qatar and Saudi.
I also kind of don't know why we care from an American first standpoint, but anyway,
supposedly they're looking to take over and rule the Middle East. And that hasn't happened
back to the Trump fleet. It is the first time that Iran has ever lost in thousands of years to
surrounding Middle East countries. I'm going to read a book about that. The Middle East countries
have said, thank you, President Trump. I have said you are welcome. Iran is no longer the bully
of the Middle East. Instead, they are the loser of the Middle East.
That's the President of the United States. Iran has all caps the loser of the Middle East,
talking like he is a nine-year-old. He continues. They're the loser of the Middle East and will
be from any decades until they surrender or more likely completely collapse. Let's put a pin in
that completely collapse. Today, Saturday, Iran will be hit very hard under serious consideration
for complete destruction and certain death because Iran's bad behavior are areas and groups of
people that were not considered for targeting up until this moment of time, hopefully not
schools. Thank you for your attention to this matter, President Donald J Trump.
I guess the point to this one now is that Donald Trump wanted to win for Qatar and the U.A.E.
in Saudi. That's what he says here. Iran was trying to, he doesn't say that Iran was trying to
rule America. He says Iran was trying to rule the other countries in the Middle East.
And so, okay, why are six Americans dying for Qatar? I don't even think that's true. I
even if it were true, didn't have to make the case to the American people that we wanted to
get involved in a war that's costing us a billion to two billion dollars a day and risking lives
in order to save Donald Trump's crypto partner at the U.A.E. or his investment partner in Saudi Arabia.
I don't, I understand why Donald Trump is family care about protecting the U.A. and Saudi Arabia.
They have been bought and paid for by them. You know, the Trump families on the take in a major
way from these Arab oil caliphates. But I don't know why I care. And I don't think that he's
tried to even convince anybody that they should care. So that's, this is the latest that Donald
Trump has decided that because Iran was going to try to take over the Middle East supposedly,
he needed to eliminate them. And he wants to call them a loser now and make fun of them.
But the next idea that he puts forth is that we're going to keep bombing them. New people that
we hadn't considered before, apparently, until they more likely completely collapse. He said,
he thinks the countries are completely collapsed. Like, how is Iran completely collapsing good for us?
Was any, were people awake during the 2000s? Like the collapse of Syria and the refugee crisis
out of Syria and other countries in the Levant caused massive issues all around the world,
because issues in Europe, because issues in America, there were terrorist attacks here. Why would
we want Iran to collapse? I don't like the caliphate. I don't like the Ayatollah. But why would
it, is complete collapse is what we want now? We pull up Iran on a map, okay, so there you go. I
don't, I don't know how many people in the Trump administration could, could find Iran on a map,
but here it is. If you look to the West, they border Turkey and they don't ally. Like, what if they
end up having a refugee crisis? Do we want people fleeing Iran into Turkey? In the east, they border
Pakistan, a nuclear power. How are we going to keep the straight of Hormuz open if they, you know,
to get oil prices back to a reasonable level? If Iran is in complete collapse and they're like
different warring factions inside the country, like you'd assume one of the factions would recognize
the power of controlling the straight. Like, this is insane. This is a massive country.
Tens of millions of people, they've been planning for this, and they've been planning for the
military part, but they've been planning for like protecting the regime and, and, you know,
ensuring that there were different nodes of power for decades since 1979.
So like, I mean, I could understand my complete collapse, I feel good for Israel,
or maybe some of the other Middle Eastern countries, I'm not sure.
If they're, let's say I want to deal with the refugee issue, but like, how is that, how is a massive
Iranian refugee crisis good for us? Why did we want that? That was better than the status quo?
I don't think so. Anyway, that's on Trump's plan this morning. Calling around losers,
telling them that they've lost for the first time to the Arab countries that we are so happy to
beat them because we're doing the bidding of Donald Trump's business partners, and also,
makes more likely the country will just completely collapse. Great. That's great.
To that point, a couple of the data points we have besides the bleep, and we see news,
this was yesterday, it was reporting that Trump has privately shown serious interest in U.S.
ground troops in Iran. Their private comments haven't focused on a large still ground invasion,
but they have a small contingent of U.S. troops that would be used for specific strategic purposes.
Don't we have to have a strategy to have strategic purposes? What is the strategy again?
He said this morning that we're going for maybe complete collapse.
And he said another day that we had people in mind that we're going to make the transition
more seamless, but we killed them. So, doesn't seem like we have a strategy.
So, but good. Great. Let's put more troops in harm's way, and in case we find one.
But that's what they're discussing internally. Part of that, I guess,
in the NBC story, the strategy they'll lay out is this, so let's just read it.
Trump's idea is that the ground troops would be part of a vision for his post-war Iran,
where Iran's uranium is secure, and the U.S. and a new Iranian regime
cooperate on oil production somewhere to help the U.S. and Venezuela are.
Okay. So, we're going to send in troops to guard Iran's uranium and oil fields. That's the plan.
I guess, I mean, we are we're drilling an historic amount of oil here.
You know, I saw some like 40 chess comments about how it's like, well, maybe Trump is doing this
because China gets a lot of their oil from Iran and if we control Iran's oil,
then we might have a greater leverage point over China. It's like, I think Trump's just emoting.
So, I don't think that's Trump's plan. Is there somebody around Trump that had that plan?
Maybe. But it's like, okay, so then we're going to start up a more hot economical with China.
Trump's not doing that. Trump's just trying to do deals with China. Trump's letting China have
our chips. So, it doesn't make any sense. So, anyway, there's the potential.
potential is maybe we have complete collapse or maybe we send in true small number.
We align ourselves with some random mullahs. We protect the uranium. We protect the oil fields.
We install somebody we like. They give their natural resources to us and everybody's happy.
Okay. Okay. What the fuck? Sure. Yeah. We'll see how that turns out.
Lastly, if you want to have any hope, the Trump was doing what I, I continue to look hand raised.
I've had a sense what Trump is going to do for most, most for a while. I can read this
motherfucker. I thought at least we have helped you with both look around corners and tell you what
Trump's mischievous plans are, you know, in the old David from line, a lot of secrets, no mysteries.
We can read them. At least I thought because on this one, I don't. I think the dude is having
a psychotic break. I think that he's just so high on the success of Venezuela that he is out of
his mind, even more than usual, because I don't. I had said this week that I thought that he was
going to just kind of do the Trump thing and declare victory and say good luck to Iran and pull
back and I kind of will see what happens. So I thought this is a disturbing sentence. I'm not
to say, but Tucker had the same assumption as me. So Tucker Carlson said that he was going to go
to try to meet Trump to push him that way. Or maybe Tucker did have the same assumption as me,
but he thought that Trump might be interested in that exit plan to accept that as an exit plan.
And so Tucker was planning on going to Washington to try to like tell Trump to clear victory,
mission accomplished, bring the boys home. That's better than the quaggbar you're getting us into.
And that sounds like that's not going to happen. Let's listen to Tucker.
This is not going to get better. So then I think I'll fly up again and ask him. I mean, I don't
know if anyone else is doing so I'm going to try to just declare victory and go home.
Like you killed an 80 structural cleric. Let's just call that a win and then pull back.
And so then meantime, he got convinced to denounce me. Okay. I don't care. I'm going to fly up
anyway and see him, right? Even though he's like denouncing me. So I call over there to see,
you know, call someone who knows him. Just I said, I'm just going to fly up anyway and
and tell him this because I think it's so important. And the person says don't bother because
he's being shown polling that this war is like a 9010 win for him. And I said, I don't know where
that polling is coming from. It's like, I, you know, I guess you could make any kind of poll. And it's
he's watching Fox News, which is telling him the same thing. And he's getting fake polling.
I guess they're only polling Sean Hannity's viewers or something. It's important to remember.
Tucker is a liar, like a liar. Like sometimes on this show sometimes I'm wrong.
Sometimes I miss something. You know, sometimes I get my facts wrong. I'm doing my best. You know,
that's like different. Like Tucker doesn't just get stuff wrong. Sometimes I accidentally like
Tucker intentionally lies like a lot, a lot, a lot. Tucker is just a
complete fabulous now. We could go through all the examples another day with Will Summer if you want.
Um, so I'm hesitant to like take him at his word in this case. But if you compare to the other
data points we have, Trump's bleeds, the report from NBC about what his plans are,
well, we're seeing with our own eyes about what they're doing in Iran.
Like Tucker's story is kind of in line with all that, which is that he said he wanted to go
convince Trump to get out. And I called somebody close to Trump to plan the meeting. And that person
said basically no father. Trump has seen polls that show at 90%. Again, maybe this is a miscommunication
tomorrow night. I assume what he's saying is that there's polls that show at 90% with Republicans.
And I've seen other people online pointing to that. I haven't done a deep dive with the cross tabs
on all the Iran polls. I'm sure there is a poll that has the subsection of Republicans in the
poll supporting them at that level. I'm sure you could find a poll that has that.
Of those I'd seen have Republican support more than like the high 70s.
But okay, so the top rationale you think you'd have for Trump leaving is if he was worried that
his core base would. We're starting to sour on him over it, you know.
That if Trump is being given fake polls,
or cherry pick polls, and believe is that all of his voters support him,
and full speed ahead. So let's say to play as we sit here right now. I'm taping this
early afternoon on Saturday. So things change with Trump. Sometimes he like is reactive
to the last person he saw. I told him. So we'll see. But based on the bleat, then we see report
and what Tucker had to say. It seems like we're looking to escalate rather than de-escalate
our actions in Iran. So we'll keep an eye on it for you. Subscribe to the feed, tell your friends.
Give us a little tummy up. Tummy up. Comment, criticize. Be nice. I don't know what you mean. Okay,
I can take it. I'm a big boy. Appreciate you all so much. We'll be talking to you soon.

Bulwark Takes

Bulwark Takes

Bulwark Takes