Breaking News from Pod Save America - Jon Lovett & Sarah Longwell PUSH BACK Against Pete Hegseth's ABSURD War Budget Demands

Episode Date: July 23, 2026

Jon Lovett is joined by The Bulwark's Sarah Longwell to discuss Zohran Mamdani's permitting reform, Steve Scalise's midterm scare, Trump's comments on the Iran War, and Pete Hegseth's war on the woke military. CHAPTERS 0:00 - Intro 2:30 - Zohran Mamdani 13:59 - Steve Scalise 20:59 - Donald Trump 27:57 - Pete Hegseth Catch Lovett or Leave It in a city near you! Tickets for the Lovett or Leave It: Live on Tour are now on sale. For more info head to www.crooked.com/events Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Recently, our company's softball team lost the big game by one run. Then Dale tried to console us with the quote, winning isn't everything. Well, Dale and I are very different. I get early payout from Bed 365. If my team goes up big, I get paid out instantly, even if they blow the lead later. Sound familiar, Dale?

Thanks, Beth 365. Must be 19 or older Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or the gambling of someone close to you, please go to connectsuntario.c.com. What is the expense for woke? Right. Like, what is the line items that woke costs?

I don't know. Like pink hair die. I guess it's all the transgender surgeries they have to give, I guess. If we're spending $87 billion on top surgery, I'd like to see either far more or far fewer boobs in the military, I think. Hey, everybody, welcome back to Speech Center. Today we have a very special guest filling in for Tim Miller. She's also from the bulwark.

It's Sarah Longwell. What's up, John? love it? It's so good to see you. We never, we never do this. We never hang out. But wait, I have a question. Am I sitting in for Tim Miller? Is he like the regular person on this show? So, you know what's interesting? He was never supposed to be. He was just our first guest. And we as a matter of inertia and also liking Tim to a certain degree. I think it's a mix of just laziness and enjoyment have continued to have it be Tim. And so out of respect for Tim, we're saying that you're standing in for Tim. But I actually feel like that's sort of underselling what you could do in this

role and how I don't care if I never see Tim again. Yeah. And let me actually tell you just a quick story about Tim. The last time we were talking about you, he mentioned to me that I was on the like the B team to get invited to your wedding. He was like, he was like, just so you know, Sarah, Lovett was like, is as long as doing anything? Because, you know, if we, if enough people don't come, we'll invite Long. That is, let me tell you something. I want to tell you something. I'll tell you the truth about that conversation, which is Tim was coming to the wedding. And then I saw you were doing a show in California around the time of the wedding.

And I said to Tim, should I invite Sarah? And I felt it was a little strange because we're not friends in that way. Like, we have not spent a lot of time together socially, but I really enjoy you. And you were on the coast. And I didn't want to put you in a weird position of feeling like you were invited last minute. and you probably had already had plans, so I didn't. But it was nothing other than would have been delighted to have you at the event. And it was never a matter of B-Team or space.

In fact, were the roles reversed? And you and I had been friends for a while. And Tim were in town wouldn't invite him in a fucking second. Well, that's okay. I appreciate that you just invited me on your third most popular podcast. That's right. That's right. That's right.

Okay. On today's show. We've got moments with Trump, Pete Hagseth, Steve Scalise, but first, I wanted to start with New York's mayor, Zoran Mamdani. Sarah Longwell, I would say, has a on again, off again relationship with the Democratic Socialist mayor of New York because he put forward a set of proposals that even the former Republican could not help but love. let's see Zoran proposing a set of reforms for small businesses. For too long, restaurant owners and street vendors have been forced to apply for not one, but two permits if they want to serve warm food and cold dairy desserts at the same location. Today, my friends, we are lifting the freeze that too many New Yorkers must contend with

as we launch open for small businesses. In a win for every ice cream lover across New York City, we will work with the state to do away with the frozen dessert, permit that requires restaurants to seek out a superfluous second permit for what they're already doing, serving food. No more treat exploitation, as we say. Our reforms touch virtually every sector, from bodegas that have to apply for a license to sell identical goods, to the child care providers who have to navigate three different agencies, overlapping processes before they can actually get up and running. When there is something that we see that we want to celebrate,

we say that it's a miracle, that these are miracle workers. We don't want to. We don't want to to have to ask people to be miracle workers. We want them to just be able to do what they should have always been able to do, which is work with the city government that's responsive. Come on. Come on. You know what? They told us we were going to get free grocery stores, but instead we got permitting and licensing reform. Take that DSA. Take it. So I want to think a moment just to appreciate Mumdani as a politician because he chose the ice cream piece of it to break out. Because it's simple. You can make it make sense. It's summer. It is hot, making it easier to sell ice cream. It is a stupid rule, right? But actually, it's a really big set of reforms that this sits on top of it. I don't know if you went into any of the details of it, but it's about, first of all, just making regulation simpler for people starting businesses.

It also has a lot in there around just making the government nicer to work with. So like about just inspectors being nice and having good customer service, giving businesses a person, like a liaison they can talk to while they're navigating the system. This was, I thought, a really good, a simple thing that just speaks to just the power of good government. Having all of the services in one place, so people don't have to go traips around to different offices to try to figure out what kind of permits they need and just getting rid of a bunch of superfluous rules. Sarah, have you signed up for the DSA because of this or are you still on the fence? Well, this was a real, Momdani, I'm listening, a moment for me. And in my younger days, as a young sort of libertarian-ish

Republican, I was big on licensing reform. And it's one of those things where you can point to all these really ridiculous ways that the government kind of lairs on stupid stuff for small businesses that make it harder for them. And I loved that he was focused on small businesses in New York. I mean, and I don't know if you saw this, but the Chamber of Commerce came out and gave him a bunch of attaboys. And for me, in this moment, it's not that I'm writing. to sign up for the DSA, obviously. I am, however, sort of thrilled to see

the darling of the DSA approaching his job in this way, especially at a time when Donald Trump is literally in the middle of like a red scare and like seizing the means of production in all kinds of places. And so, you know, they told me we were going to get socialism in New York,

but instead we're getting permitting reform. And the real socialism is Donald Trump, like, taking over a bunch of companies in America. So this is good. I'm glad. Eric Adams was a, you know, buffoon. But before that, you had de Blasio, you had Bloomberg. Bloomberg was big on some of these government reforms. You've actually seen a bunch of cities implement versions of 311 to try to make government more effective. Like, it's been part of a move towards trying to make government services better. But like, Mamdani clearly understands that if he wants people to sign up for more government,

he better damn well prove that it works and like that's really hardening. And now what to me, what I want to understand, like, okay, Mamdani has the space to do these kinds of things. If a center-left person or a centrist person put a lot of these things forward, there be, I think people on the left that would be instinctively suspicious, right? Like this is a giveaway to the corporation. This is a violation of protections for safety or environment. mental rules or what have you. And now in some cases, they might be right to be suspicious of those politicians. But it speaks to him on Doni as a figure that he kind of has this space to operate. He has so much trust, I think, amongst his really engaged fans that he can put him, you know, somebody

from McKinsey on the Economic Development Board. He can keep the police commissioner, right? Like, he's making these moves that are just political. And I think also smart. but they are political. Yeah, I mean, it would be interesting to see if we could enter a new era where people run hard to the left as candidates and then they govern as centrists as opposed to the other way around, like a Biden, for example. Right, right, right. Well, the other part of this is like Mom Dani at the same time puts out this very direct

statement around Benjamin and Yahoo being a war criminal that I'm sure is free. out a lot of people that text me on the Upper West and Upper East sides of Manhattan. But he does have this understanding that there are places where he needs to prove that he is as left as he claims, right? And there's other places where he can operate a little bit more freely, which I thought was an interesting part of it. What did you think about him doing that? Because there was on one hand, I thought it, I think it's always a little strange when sort of the mayor of a city sits down and doesn't address on something about which he doesn't have much control. I did think it was clear that he had made, you know, I will arrest Netanyahu.

That was part of his campaign. It's something he clearly can't do. And so he needed to acknowledge that that was something he couldn't do. But why did you think he felt the need to do this specifically? Is it to maintain, like you said, like the credibility with the space that he still really cares about these things? Or is it just like this sits on him and he wanted to talk about it? He wanted to use a little capital on it. Like, what was it about?

So there's something about Mom Donnie that he understands that the bully pulpit is available. And so he's going to take it. Right? Like no one's going to offer you the podium. It's sort of like a rehearsal. dinner at a Southern wedding where anyone can go up and if it's an open open you can grab it and it's been open for some time. And so if he feels there's something going on where he either has to address something he said, he wants to pivot, he wants to explain, like he makes moments out of it.

That's including when the Knicks win, right? Like he just knows how to make a moment when he goes and talks to Trump. What my reaction to it was is he wants to address whether or not he can arrest Benjamin Netanyahu. He came to the conclusion that legally, he can't. I think there is value to a leader saying there's something my diehard supporters want me to do that I thought I might be able to do. I actually legally can't. And so we're just not. He is also modeling, which I think is very important to a lot of people on the left, if we really believe Benjamin Netanyahu has committed war crimes. And I agree with, I believe Benjamin Netanyahu has committed war crimes. What would our reaction be, right? It wouldn't be just a statement.

you'd want your behavior to reflect such a important and serious claim. Like, what do your values require? And his values require exploring whether or not he can be arrested and short of that, making clear that this person is not welcome in New York, nor is any other person who is wanted for war crimes. And he is, I think, displaying what he believes is moral leadership. on this question. Like, what does it mean to follow your words to their logical conclusion?

That's how I took it. I guess there's part of me that thinks it's a little performative in the sense that the UN sits in New York City. Lots of heads of states from places that do terrible things come to New York City. And nobody tries to arrest them at the UN. So there was a little part of me that was just like, okay, this is just politics. He's just doing sort of politics. And the fact is, like, nobody, when I see something like this, I'm not standing for Netanyahu.

Like, Netanyahu's a bad guy. He's the Trump of Israel. And so I think that I thought it was something he wanted to spend political capital on to say at a time when you couldn't have done. I think it would have been really hard for any mayor of New York City to do that five or six years ago in a way that he can today. and some people will be upset, but like not enough people for it to really matter to him. My overall, because you ask me, you know, does Mom Dani make me, like, how do I feel about Mum Dani? As a pure communications matter, I sort of want to take what he's doing, bottle it and force feed it to the rest of Democrats. And that is sort of separate from how I might

feel about many of his proposed policies. But I got to say, I do, when somebody like Mom Dani runs and you hear their ideas. A lot of them, to me, are like, I'm not interested in that. Watching him govern has been interesting because I don't agree with all of it, but his both his communication style of being there with New Yorkers, of being like, I'm with you in this, and I'm going to talk to you all the time. It's the one piece of the Trump communication style that I sort of desperately want Democrats to understand, which is voters want to have sort of a parissocial relationship with their,

leaders now because they're used to having parasocial relationships to everybody and they want to know like where do you stand on these things and they want to celebrate with you and they want to like he's very good at bringing joy into things and not in a cheesy way but like I'm want to be happy with you I don't want to it to always be about us fighting fights and so there's so much that he does that I respond sort of well to and then there's certain things he pitches that I don't but I'm I'm watching him and I'm neither falling in love nor like oh he's the end of civilization I think he is a good politician who is doing some very interesting things. I would love to see more politicians behave this way, specifically on the license or reform, even just talking like, I'm here with small businesses. And you thought I wouldn't care about businesses, but I do, because they're important to this city. Like, that's a good thing for him to do as mayor. Up next. Here's Steve Scalise warning us, what's at stake going into the midterms, including why he believes it is so important that we pass Trump's.

vote suppressing Save America Act. Democrats will be voting today to have four hour lines at every airport when you're going and taking your summer vacation this month for a hard work and family. Democrats will be voting today to take away paychecks from our men and women in uniform. That's what they'll be voting on today. These are basic functions of government, basic responsibilities of reforming government. bring in the Save America Act. Again, what is the Save America Act?

Show and picture ID to vote. Not a complicated subject. Again, anybody that gets on an airplane has to show a picture ID to vote. Nowadays, if you want to go to Olive Garden and get unlimited pasta, you got to show a picture ID. This isn't complicated stuff. Yet every Democrat is against these basic things. So I am against having to show an ID to get pasta. I don't know about that.

Am I missing something? Did you know that you need an ID to get pasta now? So I can't say that I'm an Olive Garden gal myself. And I do wonder, it's like he goes to Olive Garden a lot. Is like, does he, is he like Michael from the office where he's like, I need some authentic Italian food? I'm going to go to Times Square and go to the Olive Garden. Right. So I looked it up.

And you don't need an ID to like get into Olive Garden, but there's one specific thing. or if it's like a $100 never-ending pasta pass. There's $100 never-ending pasta pass. Of course. And if you get that and you have to sign up for it in advance, when you come in, you say like, I'm the person, because they don't want you like sharing it or giving it away. You can't share it because it is unlimited.

It's like AMC. It's like the movie pass. Right. It's exactly right. The one thing I wonder if he's thought about is that pasta, unlike voting, is not like an enumerated. constitutional right. He might not have considered that. And look, obviously, if voter ID was the only thing in the SAVE Act, it would probably pass. There's a reason that despite having a majority

or people like Lisa Murkowski, there's a bunch of people who were not going to vote for this, Republicans who aren't going to vote for this, because it doesn't just include voter ID. It's like you have to have your passport and women who have changed their names from their maiden names. Suddenly, they have a huge problem. Right. There's all kinds of reasons. why this is a badly thought out, badly formed bill that is really just the tools in Donald Trump's toolbox to try to, you called it a voter suppression tool. I do think actually if it passed, like the funny thing is, is that if it actually passed and they were just like, only people with passports who can show their passport at voting are allowed to vote, you're like,

I might take that. I'm not sure. I'm not sure that Republicans come out ahead in that particular form of identification. But this is just Trump trying to figure out any way he can mock with the upcoming election. So voter ID is popular. If you ask people, should you have to show an ID to vote? Actually, most people think it's common sense. It's very popular. Yeah. Would you take a deal in which there is a voter ID law, but it is tied to. But I don't get pasta. It is to, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but. Yeah, I'd take that deal. The The government would be required to provide every citizen with a valid voter ID. If you want to do national voter ID, then you have to make sure every single citizen, you basically would make it as part of a guaranteed right to vote, which and every person gets an ID from the government.

Would you take that deal? I would take that deal. Tell me why I shouldn't take that deal. Well, I mean, the conservative argument is that we shouldn't have a national ID whatsoever. Yeah. Let them make that argument. argument right now. That's fun. That's fun for them to try that. Well, and the other argument against it is, especially with someone like Donald Trump in power, you do not want the entity that can

determine whether you get an ID to also have an interest because that ID will determine whether or not you can vote. Yeah, it's difficult because there's a lot of things that I would say in normal times I might support that I wouldn't support with Donald Trump in charge. Let's just take hyperbole. hypothetically, if we thought that Iran was really endeavoring to finish up a nuclear weapon that they could use against us, I would certainly want an American president to be vigilant on that front and do something about it. Donald Trump is lying to us about Iran. We don't trust Donald Trump as far as we can throw him on any of this stuff. So I absolutely don't support foreign adventurism with Donald Trump at the helm in any way. So I'm trying to think right now,

real time how it would go wrong. So if they were mailing everybody a voter ID card, and we all just had those in America, I could see the way that they would do it as maybe they would try to get the voter rolls in a, you know, more ways than they have. And they would maybe try to take it away from people who, I don't know, I'm trying to think about like temporary permanent residence, but they don't, I don't think you're allowed, you're not allowed to vote unless you're an American citizen. Of course. So it's like not that hard actually to send every American citizen. It actually feels kind of easy and common sensical if you think about it. Well, if you actually break it down, this idea of voter registration is antiquated. Like, I'm sorry, you need to make, like, every American

citizen has the right to vote. If they live in a place, they should have the right to vote there. The act of registering is about creating a list of people who can vote in certain places from an era in which that information had to be physically moved around. As opposed to- Can't AI solve this now? Feels like we're in a new moment where we could just, uh, it's not that hard. Like, you turn 18 right now. This doesn't happen to women, but it happens to young men. You turn 18 and they send you something that's like you could be drafted. They know. The government knows when it matters to them. They know with taxes. And so it feels like how hard can it be to send everybody a card when they turn 18? Congratulations. You're eligible to vote. A national voter ID,

automatic voter registration, and the onus is not on the individual, but the government to make sure, to make sure you have that ID and if you that and you could like vote provisionally if that idea is not there because the government failed if you don't have that ID and I'm a no on involving AI because I don't want some computer to be like I don't know there's only three that was a joke oh I know there's only three tits I know that your official ID says you have four boobs and this picture only has three boobs and only seven fingers on your hand so you're out I didn't know the number of boobs was relevant to voting but maybe As you pointed out, Donald Trump is the person who is in charge of our government.

If our government is going to be trying to prevent Iran from having a nuclear weapon, Donald Trump has been addressing the escalation of the conflict and the disintegration of the memorandum of Versailles that was supposed to bring this conflict to an end. Let's see what Trump said. Some of you are going with us to honor our heroes, and they are indeed. Great heroes, actually. They said, and all of them said very strongly, we can't let Iran have a nuclear weapon.

They won't have a nuclear weapon. So we're going to honor them? Well, Americans aren't against the war. A poll just came out. Americans don't want to have gasoline prices, but they're not against the war. That just came out loud and clear in a poll. Nobody wants Iran to have a nuclear weapon.

a nuclear weapon. Do you want Iran to have a nuclear weapon? Do you think it's good? What will you say that today? All I'm going to say is we love you. We love your child and that's what they are to them. They're their children. There's no games, no nothing. That's their child. There's been reporting and Congressman Adams Smith has been talking about this that the administration is downplaying and being not forthcoming with data around injuries and casualties and equipment losses. Trump posted the death tolls of previous conflicts as if to say, see, this one's not so bad. Actually, by comparison, we're doing pretty good, actually.

Can you believe how glib we have an American president being about the death of American service members and the lack of a reaction from your former Republican colleagues? I'm not surprised because Donald Trump is a terrible person who does not care about the lives of Americans. What a low-tie way to fight a war. Like the idea of like we're going to, we're going to talk tough and then we're going to turn tail and run. Donald Trump is a weak man's version of a strong man and he's in way over his head. He doesn't know what to do now. The thing about the war, and this is, you're right, where he loves to talk about, he does this too about the length of time. He loves to just sit there and be like, Vietnam was this long and World War II is this

long. Now he's like, and here's the casualty totals. Those were when those things ended. We have no idea where this is going. We don't know if we're at the beginning, middle, or towards the end of this conflict, but we may very well be in the beginning as things continue to spiral out of control. We've had 11 consecutive days of us bombing them. They are now bombing, you know, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia is in the mix, and Jordan and Israel, like, it's quickly becoming a morass of a sort of regional destabilization and conflict in ways that we can't predict how this is going to go. And so I know politicians have always shaded things. I can think about the way George W. Bush, like the weapons of mass

destruction, the way they got that wrong. But the idea that you would just lie to the American people constantly, like, if we talk about Pete Hegsef, they're lying about the amount of money the war is costing right now. They're lying about service members. And so it's disrespectful beyond imagination, but more importantly, it is you can't run a country this way. Like, America's not supposed to be this way. Yeah, the other part of it that I haven't seen people talking about is what we're seeing the Iranians can see. And if Donald Trump signals that the reason this war is ultimately good is because the costs are low and the death count is low. If he is signaling that the politics have turned against him,

and, to put it crassly, he thinks deaths of Americans make him look bad. That weakness invites escalation, right? Like, Donald Trump is training Iran through this conflict to understand that he cannot tolerate further losses. It's obviously like democratically unacceptable to have a leader lying about a war he's taken us. into, but the lack of a strategic imperative from the administration and the kind of clear way in which he has made himself seem vulnerable to events, I think also is just dangerous in terms of

what it could mean for the conflict going forward. I think you're right. I mean, one of the things the Iranians are learning is that the American people aren't, we have a very low tolerance threshold for higher gas prices. And so they know every time they close the straight of. her moves, they put Trump in political peril and Republicans, and that is now something they can wield against us. It's why, what was the, they used to have that, this, they would say this in, in Afghanistan, they would say they have the watches, but we have the time. Iran isn't on our

political timeline, and they can, they now have a lever to use against us, and we, they didn't have it before. Donald Trump has given it to them. The straight of Hormuz was open. before we started this bombing campaign. They didn't think this through. And that's why there's no obvious way to get out of this for Trump where he gets what he wants. We either end up paying off the Iranians and making a deal that is just so much worse than what anything they could have said Obama did with the JCPOA or what were in this war indefinitely. Even, you know, the 60-day memo was a way of avoiding this reality.

which is the only deal that Iran would accept is better for them than the Obama deal. The only deal Trump can accept is a deal that's better for him than the Obama deal. There is no overlap between those circles. So a fragile ceasefire that goes on indefinitely is at least tolerable to him. But then Iran, understanding its power, starts firing at ships in the strait of Hormuz that are not going where they want those ships to go for their ultimate aim of having a toll or some way controlling traffic and we're back into a war. And like, you know, the Iranian regime does not care about the interest of its people. The Iranian regime is acting in ways that are foolish for

anyone other than themselves. They are a despicable group of people. But that was the case before we decided to have this war and everybody knew it then too. Let's move on to Hegsef, who you raised, testifying before the Senate and trying to defend the department's request for additional funding for a war, the Congress never approved. This whole supplemental funding request is $87.6 billion, yet we are told the Department of Defense still has $75 billion in obligated funding from last year's reconciliation package. Is that true? Well, that 75 is, there's plans and designs on that, part of the rebuild of our military, which

had to be undertaken. And so, does it have to do with the war in Iran? No, this is rebuilding our military from what was not funded in the past under the Biden administration. So that's, these are, this is from 2026, one big, beautiful bill,

which helped move the president's priorities like Golden Dome for America, move away from all the woke priorities of what the Biden administration was pursuing. I mean, the Biden administration ignored hypersonics. They just decided to pretend like that technology didn't exist and we shouldn't invest in it. There are a thing.

I don't know what Lloyd Austin did for four years. I really don't. The amount of neglect, the amount of stale thinking and bureaucracy, it was staggering when we took over. So one big beautiful bill gave us a chance to get caught back up. So the money that they need for the supplemental is actually not to replace what was spent in the war in Iran. It is because of all the money that went down the woke drain. Did you know that the Pentagon paid for this new Odyssey? It was just, I was trying to want. Like, what is the expense for woke? Right. Like, which is the, what is, what is the line item that woke or the line items that woke costs?

I don't know. Like pink hair die. I guess it's all the transgender surgeries they have to give, I guess. I got to tell you, if we're spending $87 billion on top surgery, I'd like to see either far more or far fewer boobs in the military, I think. Some, something. You know, it's transgender for everyone. Yeah.

John. As the reporting has made clear, they need this money because they have spent down a huge amount of their stockpiles and materials, the cost of this war is extraordinary. And they are going to these Republicans and to Democrats who consider themselves, they are sensible, national security, American patriotic Democrats who don't want to make every decision

because Trump is president and who can't fight this feeling, which is they would never have voted to authorize the war with Iran. But the fact that the, The Pentagon has used so much of its resources on the war does mean we are now vulnerable in ways to do other conflicts and in other parts of the world. What would you advise a Senate Democrat facing that kind of a question? I don't think that the Democrat should be giving Republicans money for anything, not for

ICE. It's the one lever that they have. And if nothing else, utilizing the leverage they have now when he comes to them for money to say, you didn't come to us for approval of this war. And he's lying, too. He's lying when he says it's not for the war. It's just to rebuild our military. Everybody knows that he's lying again.

So even as somebody who is maybe more hawkish than the average person, I think we should fund the military generally. But I don't think that they should just approve this money without forcing Republicans to make changes to what they are doing. They should demand that if they want this money, then this war has to be authorized by Congress. Because part of the function of Trump doing like the snip, snap, snip, war off, war on is that it resets the clock by which Trump is able to wage this war unilaterally without the consent of Congress. And so, you know, there's like a now another, you know, a couple of months before Congress actually has to step in. Even that is sort of accepted as like what he's doing to skirt the rules. The president is not allowed to wage war without the approval of Congress unless, it is an emergency to defend the republic. Right. Like that is what this, that is what is ultimately

undergirding these rules. There is absolutely no justification for the president responding to a, not even an American vessel, just a ship in a straight somewhere on the other side of the world is being fired on due to the geopolitical crisis we're in. And so we're going to bomb some kind of infrastructure in Tehran. Like, that has no basis in the president stepping up despite Congress not approving it to defend the nation. There's just no, they're not even pretending anymore. No, and look, if you go back to the beginning of this war, I think we've all forgotten

this. They didn't have an initial justification. Like, it actually took them a while to really circle the wagons around Iran can't have a nuclear weapon. Because for a while, it was like, I mean, Marco Rubio was like, well, because Beebe asked us to. You know, like, they didn't have a reason for doing this. And it's also moved, right? First it was, well, he can't have a nuclear weapon.

And then it was, well, we just need them to open the street, which, again, was open before we started. And this is why when I say we don't know where we are in this war, the ability, if we are going to keep firing on their infrastructure, okay, this is water treatment plants and energy and things like that. It's not like, okay, the Iranian people are in the streets and we're going to go help them out. Now we are both bombing the Iranian people and the things that are critical infrastructure to how they live. We're destabilizing the Middle East. We're accelerating regional conflicts. And there's no obvious way for us to get out of it without just at some point handing them a pile of money and walking away. But even there, it's like, I don't even know if that option's available anymore.

Because so first of all, just also that happened this week is Iran's proxies in Yemen are also threatening the ships on the Red Sea side where they also have a small choke point where they can, if not control the water and control the ability to pass. scare the shit out of shipping companies into taking the long way, right? Or needing more insurance or what have you. And so they're just exerting more and more power. And if, you know, Trump says, we're declaring victory. And so we're going to give you a bill, you know, several hundred billion dollars to rebuild your infrastructure. They're saying they're going to start tolling the straight regardless. The option of total, like the surrender option isn't even as good as it was like even a couple of weeks ago. Yeah. Well, also. If we're going to ultimately at the end of this pay to rebuild their infrastructure, we keep blowing up the things that we're going to have to pay to put back together later.

That's my water treatment plan. I'm a taxpayer. You're going to, I'm going to have to pay, I'm going to pay, I'm going to pay for that water treatment plant. Pete Hegseth is the worst. Yeah. You know, did you see the Atlantic kind of did a whole piece mocking him for how he does his pushups? And my thought, because I'm not here to, I, I'm on a fitness journey, but I, but, you know, push-ups are hard. But I thought, man, if even the nerds at the Atlantic are like giving you crap about your push-up abilities, it really is like a stand-in for the fact that these guys look super weak. Vance, Heg-Seth, Trump, they, and I do, I'm going to rely on the focus groups for just a second, going back to Trump's assertion that the war is popular, you know, I talk to Trump voters

all the time. This war is not popular with Trump voters. And Trump voters are actually kind of split between voters who want Trump to bomb harder and voters who are like, what are we doing? Why are we doing this? My gas prices are going up and it doesn't seem like they have a plan. And so like half the Republican Party, and Trump is sort of caught between that. Now there's two parts of the Republican Party where half of them want him to get out. And the other half are like, no, escalate, escalate, finish the job without having any real understanding of what that means ultimately. And so he doesn't have any popular, like real popular support. There's like a small, a small. small group of MAGA Republicans who are excited about bombing. Here's my analogy for the exercising.

And actually, I think Hegseth is a little bit better than a lot of these Republicans, to his credit. He does some calisthenics and things like that. But you see a lot of these sort of manosphere people, and they're doing huge bench presses. And it's like their style of strength is all big, all heavy weights, no cardio, no stretching. And it looks good on camera. and you look big, got big, beefy muscles. But then you're not flexible. You're going to fall in the shower.

You're going to get injured. Ultimately, you look strong, but you're quite weak. That's what the Iran war is, right? It's a look strong but actually weak. The Obama nuclear deal, the Democratic kind of diplomatic style, is like Pilates. No big muscles, all right? No, you don't seem masculine and super tough. But, God damn it, the core strength, the planks you can hold, the long-term health.

You're not shuffling when you're old. You're still with it, right? That's actual long-term strength and security. You have really thought about this. I have. I thought about it a lot. Are you doing a lot of Pilates, Sarah? A lot of Pilates, Sarah.

A lot of Pilates, too. It is wild on the core. Really gets you. If you're in a workout class and it's a bunch of big, beefy dudes, you're in the wrong place. You want to be in a room with some of the pointiest women you've ever seen in your life. That's where the strength is. that's where the power is.

It's true. But I'll tell you where I see the strength and power. It's sitting across from me here at Sarah Longwell from the Bullwork. This has been great. It's great to see you. Sorry, I missed the wedding, but Mazel. Thank you. Very happy for you.

You know, there was even a lesbian table. Get out of here. One lesbian table? Well, we had more... Was it back in the corner? No, no, no. It was quite central. We had a gays table.

The gays had to spill over. We had more gay guys than we had lesbians. All right. Sarah Longwell, everybody go. subscribe to the bulwark. And once again, if you have seen Tim Miller, please, you know, let someone know. Let's find him. Let's bring him home. I think he's just on vacation. Oh, right. He's just on vacation. He's fine. He's fine. We know where he is. We know where he is. And that's Speech Center and we'll see you all next time. Thanks for watching.