Breaking News from Pod Save America - Trump is Making Up Random SH*T About Iran and MAGA's Not Buying It

Episode Date: March 19, 2026

On this episode of SPEECHCENTER Lovett is joined by The Bulwark's Tim Miller to discuss Mike Johnson on the Save Act, Kevin Hassett on the Iran War's impact on the U.S. economy, Trump's rant on Joe Kent's resignation and his whining about allies not helping with the Strait of Hormuz, and Megyn Kelly on Mark Levin's micro penis. CHAPTERS 0:00 - Intro 0:57 - Mike Johnson on Save America Act 5:28 - Kevin Hassett on Iran War impact 9:47 - Trump on Joe Kent 15:43 - Trump on France 22:44 - Megyn Kelly on a micro penis Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

He always thought Tim that Joe Kent, who he put in charge of counterterrorism, was weak on security. Where would you put a nice guy who's weak on security? Would you put him at the head of the Counterterrorism Center? Hey, everybody, welcome back to Speech Center. We're recording this episode on St. Patrick's Day. So, Tim, I got to ask you, are you feeling lucky? Feeling luckier than Rick Grinnell and the artists that he pounded. Yeah, a lot of pounding from Rick Rennel and a lot of pounding at Iran from Trump yesterday in his

press conference. I had a St. Patrick's Day where I was in New York City. I over-served myself. And the last thing I do remember before blocking out is throwing dolls over the balcony at F.A.O. Schwartz. Okay. This goes against your nature. You're aware St. Patrick's Day is straight pride, right? Yeah, I had no business being there. I think that's why I was so drunk. On today's show, we're going to cover a lot of what we've seen on the war in Iran. But first, here's Mike Johnson being asked about the Save America Act and previous examples of election. election fraud. The President has said that the Save America Act is his number one priority. When making the argument to Democrats to vote yes for this, because it will require

Democrat votes to pass, can you give for me one example of fraud conducted in a previous election that the Save America Act? Look, we're not going to litigate all that. I can tell you what, I'll tell Democrats, you should listen to the American people. Ostensibly, we're supposed to come here and represent the interest of the American people. This is a 90-10 issue in public opinion polling. And Democrats agree that you should be a citizen and have a photo ID to vote at a tune of about 70%. So there's no argument that you shouldn't do this.

If they want free and fair elections, if they don't think fraud should be a problem, then they should vote to enforce federal law. It's already the law, as you know, it's already the law that you have to be a citizen to vote in American elections. And we should enforce that. The Save America Act isn't just about voter ID. there was a new more extreme version that Trump watched that will also restrict mail-in voting. It also has some features that I don't really see how they contribute to protecting elections, given that they have to do with access to care for trans people. So a little bit of a mishmosh there.

I'm not sure how that tied into the electoral fraud. They need to match the ID to their name, right? So the dead naming, it creates some issues. So obviously they don't have any examples of fraud. So we redounds to, well, actually, most people when you ask them think it's common sense that you should have voter ID. How do you respond? What would you have a Democrat say in response to that? You know, I have to agree with Mike Johnson.

I don't think the Save America Act goes far enough, you know? I feel like passport-only voting is the only way we can know for sure. I had a fake ID in college. I was from New York. I was a couple years older than I was. that worked a lot? What if that could work at the voting places? I think we need a passport, preferably a stamp on the passport, to show you've traveled the world. Yeah, that's a good idea. I think that only if you have been to Europe should you be able to vote.

You have to have a passport thing to think about. I don't know. Fuck, John, Mike Johnson. Who cares? I don't know. Like, sure. I don't know. Do they need to reply to this? Like, they can't pass this. Do they want to end the filibuster to pass the, to pass the, The SAVE Act, which might not even help them in elections, by the way, because if you looked at data for 2024, more non-voters were leaning Trump than leading Harris. This isn't 2008 anymore. Things have changed. I think this is very desperate for these guys.

I think that they're trying to cheat, but I don't even know if they're that good at cheating. And they might try other things to cheat. They'll be more effective than this. But I think this is delusional. I don't think they're thinking that many steps ahead other than Trump wants this and their pro-voter ID. Because there is a lot of debate about who would be helped by this. And quietly, Republican members of the House in tough districts are saying a lot of our old people use mail-in ballots. You're going to make it harder for them to vote.

But on the other side, I do worry about what happens when for people whose passport is more accessible than their birth certificate, suddenly the ID you need to vote, its validity is determined by the Trump administration. I do worry about that. I do worry about it. No, there's a lot to worry about it. This bill just feels like kind of like an amulet that they, you know, want, like the MAGA Republicans want to use because they're not doing anything. And they don't really have anything to talk to their own base voters about when it comes to Epstein or the war or the economy. They're not even trying to supposed to talk about mass deportations anymore. The Trump administration told them not to do that.

I don't want to pretend like this is not a pernicious bill. It is. But it's just like, I don't, how do they pass it? They're going to end the filibuster to pass that. this bill that like really may or may not help them. I'm genuinely wondering if it wouldn't be like a move for a Gavin Newsom to say, I'm for national voter ID, but every citizen gets an ID from the government. If we're going to do federal IDs this way, every person, uh, has the right to vote.

And every person has the right to an ID provided by the federal government and free for every citizen. And thereafter, if you want to have voter ID, go for it. But we're going to get every person a citizen and you're not going to be able to monkey with elections by telling people they don't have the right ID. That'd be my twist, potentially. That's pretty good. All right, let's see what we got next. I'm going to call Roecona.

Yeah, I'm going to call Roecona. Up next, here we have Kevin Hassett. He's the White House National Economic. I love this guy. He's been on an absolute fucking tear, National Economic Council Director. He is truly, from our point of view, one of the great spokespeople for this administration. He was on CNBC discussing the Iran War, how long it will be and its impact on the economy. Let's roll the clip.

Get this guy a podcast. When you math out the possibilities within your own group about the economy and this impact here, and you say it's going to end sometime soon, what does that look like? Well, again, what we work off of is, first of all, what the president has said, which is that it's a four to six week program, and we're ahead of schedule, and we're in the third week. And so then you could say call that a base case. But of course, you know, I get paid to worry. It's my job here in the White House.

And then you think about, well, what if it's a little slower? We don't have much simulating to do if it's faster than that. But the fact is that the U.S. economy is fundamentally sound, and that if it were to be extended, it wouldn't really disrupt the U.S. economy very much at all. It would hurt consumers, and we'd have to think about if that continued what we would have to do about that. But that's really the last of our concerns right now, because we're very confident that this thing is going ahead of schedule. That's great.

An incredible quote. If we lived in a world where words had consequences, we'd be seeing that for months to come. Maybe we do live in that world. We'll find out. It won't hurt the economy. It will hurt consumers. But that's the furthest thing from the mind of me, Kevin Hassett, head of the economy program here. They used to, what was the word?

A Kinsey Gaff. Remember Kinsey Gaff? Kinsley. A Kinsey? A Kinsey is the scale. gay are i'd say he's a i'd say it was a kinsley i think there was a kinsley five and he's a a kinsie three basically temperamentally but so uh kensley sex kinsie too for me but whatever okay sure let's not split hairs could you pick a better person to be a representative for

the trump economy i mean that man he has the softest hands in america and he has never done a single hour of yard work he has never had to take a shower at the end of the day after work. And he is just a highly educated nerd who is on the rich person channel talking about how pores we're going to have to pay more for gas and groceries. The only person who I find to be a more unctuous and less appealing economic spokesperson is Scott Besant. Yes.

You got it. You nailed it. Scott Besant, his tone is worse. He's worse. But he's that. I don't think we've heard. heard something as transparently revealing from Besson, though he's gotten close. And we could find examples.

They all sound like the general in Dr. Strangelove when he's like, well, I'm not saying we won't get our hair must a little bit. They're constantly playing down what's happening. And when Trump is confronted by it on the plane, just hard questions about the deaths of Americans, about the cost of the war, he gets angry because he doesn't like being confronted with just the actual reality. of how big a blunder this is. They are not as good at it as Trump,

but they've been able to kind of ride in his wake previously. Trump has been able to kind of live in this disreality and have these unctuous spokespeople. They're kind of reiterating that King is wonderful and, you know, stop. We thank you, dear Stalin, for the wheat harvest this year. And unfortunately, like, that starts to break down when everybody's like, wait a minute,

gas cost $2 more than it did last week. Like, how is that possible? In the face of this war, we've seen a bit of a right-wing crack up between the old-line, neo-conservative pro-Israel faction of the Republican Party and the kind of soup of sincere isolationists, conspiratorial thinkers, anti-Semites, America first crowd. But that has all come to ahead with the resignation of National Counterterrorism Center Director Joe Kent, here's Trump's reaction to it from this morning. Your director of national counterterrorism, Joe Kent, he just resigned today.

He said he can't support your conflict with Iran. What's your reaction to that? And did you- Well, I read his statement. I always thought he was a nice guy, but I always thought he was weak on security, very weak on security. He said that Iran was not a threat. Iran was a threat.

Every country realized what a threat Iran was. The question is whether or not they wanted to do this. do something about it. And many people, many of the greatest military scholars are saying for years that president should have taken out Iran because they wanted a nuclear weapon. They were, if we didn't do the attack, or if I'll go a step further, if I didn't terminate Obama's horrible deal that he made, the Iran nuclear deal, you would have had a nuclear war four years ago. You would have had, you would have had nuclear holocaust. By the grace of God, Trump, pulling us out of the nuclear deal years ago is why a few years ago we didn't all die in a nuclear

holocaust he always thought he always thought tim that joe kent who he put in charge of counterterrorism was weak on security he always thought he was a nice guy who was weak on security where would you put a nice guy who's weak on security would you put him at the head of the counterterrorism center been following joe kent for a long time One of my favorite things I ever wrote was about joking out when he was running for Congress. He, like, went on to his Zoom with a bunch of groipers. It was like a spin-off group of Groopers. It was, like, not even the Nick Fuentes tier.

It was, like, the B-tier of the Nazi youth. And he was apologizing to them for some negative comments he had said about the groopers. And, like, begging their forgiveness. And he's, like, being grilled by an 18-year-old Nazi youth in his dorm room. room, like somebody's making a hot pocket, like, across the, across the hall. And it was just a very humiliating scene, you know, for Joe Kent to have to grovel and suck up to these young racists. And so I've not been keen on him for a long time.

He has some crazy views. Among the views he's always held was that the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, which he served in were stupid. He has some, I think, some mistaken sense of, like, the Jews role in those wars. I think that like my people, the neocon Christian establishment was like mostly responsible for Iraq. And I think that kind of the radical Muslims were to blame for a lot of the Syria war. But, you know, we can we can split hairs on that. Or just we could or just say he's one of those people that kind of has,

believes in some anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. He believes in some anti-Semitic conspiracies. And I think that he's mistaken on the mark of who's to blame for the Iraq Syria wars, but he's been against those wars. Donald Trump goes to war with Iran. And like, in this case, according to the Secretary of State, like, they went to war with Iran because Israel pushed them into war. Like, that's what Mara Rubeo said, like is playing his day. And Trump, when he talks about the war, talks about, you know, Israel's interest in it all the time. And then when Trump offers other explanations for the war, like in that clip, what he offers is so absurd and preposterous,

like, it can't be believed. And it's like, oh, we're in this war. because Iran might have nuked us four years ago, like we're in this war because there was some imminent fear of attack by Iran on America. Like, nobody believes that. You have somebody like Joe Kent, who's working for Trump, who's a conspiracy theorist. And like his conspiracy theories are being, like,

kind of affirmed by his boss. And so he quits. And, you know, I think that you can be clear-eyed about who he is. I'm sure he's gonna be on Tucker Carlson any minute. but while also recognizing like a good thing and notable for somebody from inside the tent to say like, no, I'm against this war because that creates permission for other people out there who were America first isolationists to like say the obvious thing, which is that Donald Trump doesn't care about them. This war is stupid and maybe they can leave the ship and I doubt that they're going to be Democratic voters. But, you know, I don't know. Who knows? Maybe they'll waste their vote on third party Groyper candidates.

You see a range of responses from people that were ostensibly opposed to foreign interventions. You have Tulsi Gabbard. I believe she went through some kind of a portal and now lives in another universe that's not reachable from our universe. It's sort of a... She's kind of living in the side to spirit of Aloha. Right. Yeah, that's right. That's right.

Which, hello and goodbye. You have J.D. Vance leaking to the press that he wasn't for this. You have Margoturubio fully embracing it, I think, going back to his neocon roots. but it was Marco Rubio who said that Israel dragged us into this. The whole thing is giving a lot of life to anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. And I feel the same way about the rationale as you even see it with the SAVE Act, which is they buy the story. And even though they don't believe the story, their actions are as if the story were true, but it's not. If Donald Trump and Israel's allies in America and others want to offer a counter rationale for why we're doing this,

then they should like have a rationale or else like in the vacuum like what do you think is going to fill the vacuum? Yeah. What do you think it's going to fill the vacuum here? What the pro-war side is offering is that nuclear annihilation was near if we didn't do this and what the anti-war side is offering was Israel made us do it. I think most people are going to go along with that the latter. We've started a war. The motivation is unclear. It's feeding into the worst instincts of the right. And now Trump is trying to get our allies.

involved. Here's Trump responding to France, potentially helping to open the Strait of Hormuz. Are you confident that France will help with the reopening of Strait of Hormuz? I don't do a hard sell on them because my attitude is we don't need anybody. We're the strongest nation in the world. We have the strongest military by far in the world. We don't need them. I'm almost doing it in some cases, not because we need them, but because I want to find out how they react. Because I've been saying, years that if we ever did need them, they won't be there. Not all of them, but they won't be there. I was very surprised with the United Kingdom. Because the United Kingdom, two weeks ago,

I said, why don't you send some ships over? And he really didn't want to do it. I said, you don't want to do it. We've been with you. You're our oldest ally. And we spend a lot of money on NATO and all of these things to protect you. I mean, we're protecting them. We're working with them on Ukraine. Ukraine's thousands of money. miles away separated by a vast ocean. Where do you keep Iran for Trump? Where's it? Where's the wrong about?

I like the idea that Trump is going to NATO to help secure the strait of Hormuz, not because we need help. We don't. But honestly, he's just doing it as a little test. It's a little relationship test. He wants to see how they'll handle it. Yeah. You know, I just, I'm watching that, and I go back to, did we do this in the last speech center? I want him to get the Bob Hope job. Like, had we just told them that he could be like the toastmaster of the world after Biden had beat him. We'd really be in better shape right now. That would have been, I think, a lot less damaging than starting the war in Iran.

And I think that maybe the allies would have taken it in better spirit than when they're asking them to like send people into harm's way for a war that still has no rationale. From a president who has been bullying them, mocking them, tariffing them, insulting them, breaking our alliances, threatening NATO allies. Like the whole thing is a fucking joke.

It's so incoherent. The absurdity of watching what Donald Trump is saying and then the way it is covered on Fox or the fact that there's actually going to be a debate in Congress as to whether to add funding to this, we are so far gone that the idea that this person and this fucking rabble of fucking dummies has caused all this hardship all over the world, he's like begging countries for minesweepers in the strait of Hormuz two weeks into the conflict. There's no end in sight. Sometimes the truth is so obvious, you kind of get sick of saying it.

That's where I'm at. Yeah, I'm with you. JV.L. This wrote for us today, our low IQ president did an oopsie. You don't even understand actually how bad the minesweeper situation is. Like, we canceled a bunch of ships that could do this six months ago. It's just, it is incompetence after incompetence. And I look, right before we got on, you know, he's doing some riff about how, like, the Iranians are the worst people since the Nazis. And it's just like, which people are the worst people?

The IRGC, the Ayatollah, all of them, like the people of Iran. I do even understand the different factions internally. They don't have a reason to be there. And so instead, you know, he just is doing what he tried to do on the election fraud and just, like, throw random shit out there. And it's like, it's the nukes. It's, they're Nazis. And yeah, no, everyone's suffering because of it. We shouldn't have elected him. Yeah, it's that you should not have elected him.

I don't think. Well, this is, it's also, you know, what, of course, obviously, obviously, Obviously, we're so far gone, right, that it's almost like feels cringe to say what should be happening. The president put out a fundraising pitch using the coffin of a dead soldier. That should be a scandal. The bipartisan impeachment should have been wrapped up some time ago. You can do it on the corruption. You could do it on the abuse of office.

You can do it on usurping congressional prerogatives. But he should have already been removed from office as long as this person is in power. He's dangerous. Anything we do to limit him is a necessary good, even if there's a cost. You think we're going to make it out of the Trump era without paying a terrible price without national humiliation? We are in the midst of a great national humiliation. It's playing out in Iran. It will continue to play out as long as he's in power.

Anything Democrats can do to limit it is what they should do, including restricting his ability to fund this war. Even if that hurts, even if that goes against your instinct, as someone who consider, as Democrats who consider themselves to be someone who can separate in their minds, Donald Trump as the commander in chief and the need to support the military. Like, how much worse does this have to fucking get? It's always great to be with you, love it. Because it's just like, yeah, yeah, what you said. I'm sorry, I just like, even here, we can't really face the clear, simple reality over and over again. It's not possible because it is so fucking obvious and stupid. This is why I want to go back to the Joe Can't think.

Hit me. Because this is a hard thing. I want to say something that is probably not popular and that somebody's going to cut and dunk on me on Twitter. But successful political coalitions always include cranks and idiots and conspiracy theorists and racist. Because guess what? There are a lot of those fucking people in the country. And if they're all on one side, then you're never going to win anything.

Donald Trump coalesced all of the cranks and the bigots under his tent. And right now, some of them are looking at what he's doing in Iran and saying, wait a minute, maybe you're the baddie. And I'm not saying that we should welcome, we should have a ticker tape parade for all the anti-Semites and bigots inside the administration or inside the Maga Tent that look at this and say this is fucking crazy I'm out peace but if you're going to make this thing as big as possible it's probably going to include some folks that don't want to sign up for stupid wars but and their motivations there are maybe not humanitarian concern for the poor maybe their

concerns are they don't want to get bullied by Israel and other countries and they care about sovereignty. That's not me, but should maybe the tent include them? I agree with you. It is such a entitlement of the broad left that there was this big opening for someone like RFK Jr. to own healthy, chemical-free food while also doing all this anti-vaccine nonsense. There was an opening for a kind of different kind of politics there that we just sort of let go by. So I I'm with you. I'm with you. I can't believe I'm getting lectured on food health by Mr. Chilis and Taco Bell. Listen, I want to tell you something right now, all right?

I know I play a-I-I-play-Chilob on television, all right? I am 43 years old. I am in Pilates, all right? I mean, I, you know what I ate for breakfast? Fucking spinach. I'm the best of my fucking life. I ate spinach for breakfast. It was with some leftover rice that I turned into fried rice with eggs, but with a fair amount of butter.

But still, I added the spinach, Tim. I added the spinach. But you know what? We've had enough spinach today. Let's end with some absolutely absurd right wing dessert. I tweeted at Mark Levin this weekend, something to the fact of I'm very sorry about his micro penis, which I really enjoyed. Performative laugh.

I mean, I thankfully have never had to look at it firsthand, but you can just tell. No one's that angry and misogynistic because there's been lots of misogyny in his tweets about me. Who doesn't have that problem? And really, we should be feeling sorry for Mark Liven. We should be comforting him because that's got to be really tough. Got to go out on the air and like try to act like you're a big swinging. And as you know, the only people who act like they have the big swinging are the ones that don't. So he's really revealed it to me against my wishes and consent, to be honest.

But there it was for me to see, obviously. And also I called them out on it. And guess what? He didn't like his new nickname. So this is Megan Kelly about her feud with Mark Lovine. who is in the midst of this sort of, this is part of that isolationist pro-war fight. Now Megan Kelly has accused Mark Levin of having a micropenus.

I will say to suggest that anybody who is as angry and pretends to be tough and is misogynistic, anyone who does that has a micropenus, I don't know if she can live with that in terms of its broader implications for the people she does still like. Yeah, this feud and that is, feud and that little monologue there is like faker than her face. And so it's tough for me. It's tough

for me because if you can't land a micro penis joke and make me laugh, like you've got some issues. You know, I mean, like there's not even a little bit of a tongue at cheek. It's just a fake, plastic, bullshit fight because she's the grandma groiper and she's on like the wrong side of the Intra Mega feud. And it's... That's sad. They're in a little ways in the mirror of what we're dealing with, which is there's only so many ways you can pretend that Donald Trump and what he's doing is not the biggest and most important story in the world.

And so I think they're all kind of casting about for other things to talk about ways to be angry, ways to be blustery, ways to have a fight, ways to do what Megan Kelly likes to do, which is to sit in a studio and kind of lamb-based her antagonist while claiming she wishes she could be above it all. You know what it would be more fun? What? Is if like she went back to doing the dances. with Hoda. Like that, Megan. That was also fake, and everybody knew it was fake.

But some of the most uncomfortable dancing you've ever seen. But there's like a little bit of joy there because it was like, you know this isn't her. You know she's not the lady that dances at weddings. She's like the angry antagonist, but she wanted to do it. And maybe that she could have, what's the Gavin Newsom line that he stole from Kurt Vonnegut or whatever? Be careful. It's like, you are what you pretend to be. It's you are what you pretend to be. So one must be very careful what you pretend to be. That's the Vonnegle line. What's the Gavin one he's been using with the mask?

If you put a mask on your face becomes the mask? Yeah, your face grows into it. You put a mask on your face grows into it. Maybe if Megan had just done the mimosa's with Hoda and the dancing for longer, her face would have grown into that mask and she could have found happiness. Tim Miller, thank you for joining us. Everybody subscribe to the bulwark and everything Tim is doing. Subscribe to this channel here at Crooked Media.

We are building a pro-demand. democracy media ecosystem to take on the Megan Kelly's and Mark Levins and all the other assorted goons on the rights. We need your help to do it. Subscribing and supporting these channels is one of the best ways you can do it. So thank you for watching and Tim. I'll see you next time Later man. You lit-mogged me. Did I? On Mother Night like I got lit-mogged right there. I love that. That's good. I don't mind me. I don't mind being mugged. I like that book.