Bulwark Takes - BREAKING: Trump Blames Hegseth for Iran War, Insults Widower

Episode Date: March 23, 2026

JVL and Andrew Egger are going live to cover the bizarre statements that Trump made at an event this morning in Memphis.For a limited time, get 60% off your first box with Tempo Meals! Go to https://...TempoMeals.com/BULWARKTAKES.

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 The Bell Air Direct app includes crash assist, which detects an accident the moment it happens, and even offers you emergency assistance at the tap of a button. Okay, but what if I don't have an accident? Well, just keep on, keeping on. Bell Air Direct, insurance, simplified. Conditions apply. All right, I think we're live. Here we go.
Starting point is 00:00:16 Wow. Hi, everybody. I'm Andrew Eger with the Bullwark. This is our fearless leader, JVL. We are coming to you live because we just sat through a very remarkable event that, Donald Trump was doing today in Memphis. The event itself, not so interesting on the merits, just an opportunity for him to sit in front of a bunch of supposedly seized weapons and drugs and things like that and talk about what a good job fighting crime he's doing. More interesting
Starting point is 00:00:44 because of when it's happening, right? We're just getting through a insane, insane, insane weekend when it comes to the war in Iran. It is coming home to everybody just how bad of an economic disaster and ongoing closure of the Strait of Hormuz is going to be, already is, but especially is going to be. And Donald Trump spent the weekend, basically making incredibly grandiose threats against Iran any time the markets weren't currently in operation, meaning all weekend long. And then as the markets prepared this morning to reopen again, suddenly backing off of all of those and basically saying, well, we'll give Iran one more work week, one more week,
Starting point is 00:01:25 got five more days of market activity to get their act together before we follow through on my threats of bombing Iran's energy infrastructure if they will not reopen the straight. So Donald Trump was going live this afternoon, and it was going to be kind of interesting what he had to say about all of that. And I'm not sure, JVL, before we start to actually break it down a little, maybe just suffice to say it was not exactly reassuring. What were your kind of your broad strokes takes at the top? If you went into this concern that the president of the United States is waging a war with no fucking idea what he's doing, this event did not make you feel better. I mean, we just say that.
Starting point is 00:02:08 He's all over the map. He takes like four different positions in the course of 30 seconds. He's slurring his words and getting his dentures back in. and he's surrounded by his secretary Pete and secretary Pan who were just, you know, like little automaton's. On the one hand, it all looks so obvious that, of course, he should just pull the plug now, right? You should just get out right now. You strike some phony deal. You let Iran, you ease off oil sanctions for Iran.
Starting point is 00:02:52 You could even sell it as, since we've already stopped the sanctions, as like, oh, we're not changing anything. It's all status quo, right? He's already, he's already done that. He's already pulled that Band-Aid off. Come up with some face-saving piece of bullshit and just tell Netanyahu and the Israelis, settle the fuck down. If you want to go hard after Hezbollah in Lebanon, fine, but you're done in Iran. We're out of here. And you give some meaningless guarantee of security.
Starting point is 00:03:22 Iran, they give us some meaningless pledged not to go for nuclear weapons or long-range ballistic missiles. And then we just let the supply chain work itself out over the course of the next 12 to 24 months, right? That's obviously what we should be doing. And yet, you look at how badly these guys have gacked every single decision so far, all the way down to, like, where are the minesweepers? like physically where are where are our mind sweeping assets and I just wonder if they're even
Starting point is 00:03:58 capable of doing this or if they're going to escalate to deescalate as scott's best in put it this weekend which which is like the worst of all possible worlds that's what you don't want to do because all of a sudden your downside risk like goes up to infinity because if you escalate to deescalate. The best thing you can do is get a deal at the end of the day that's like 10% less crappy. But the worst you can get is we don't even know, right? I mean, the worst you can get is off the charts, wreckage and destruction of oil producing and shipping infrastructure throughout the region which causes something like Cormac McCarthy's The Road. I mean, that's, And so you should be trying to minimize your downside risk.
Starting point is 00:04:52 And that doesn't seem, it doesn't feel like where we're going, even though it should be. Yeah, yeah. So we'll get to the clips here in a second. The thing before we start playing actual clips of this event, again, he's in Memphis. He's talking about, he's at an event to talk about, do this roundtable thing about kind of crime and enforcement. Really, when he gets up and speaks, as is usually the case, he's just doing his usual campaign rally stick, right? And I was, I mean, he started off with Iran stuff, right? And we're going to, again, we're going to talk about all this. But I just want to like preface this by saying most of the clips we're about to play are from about the first like six, eight, nine minutes of him talking. He did like 45. And, and the vast majority of it is just him yacking, just him hitting his normal, like old threadbare campaign laugh line marks in a very tired sort of like slurry voice like you were saying before. And I just, I mean, we're at such a critical moment. moment with Iran right now, where even if they walked away tomorrow, the damage would take so long
Starting point is 00:05:51 already just to kind of unsnarl. And it doesn't look like they're walking away tomorrow. And I was just kind of jaw on the floor for all the stuff we aren't even going to talk about now, where he's just like, this is what you're choosing to talk about right now. Right now is the moment where you're choosing to do your like 30 seconds of tired comedy about how you think Chuck Schumer is a Palestinian. I mean, like that. So we're not going to get to all that. But let's do, let's do the actual important. And Sleepy Joe and Kamala and nobody here, you know, 99% voted for us, not from common. I mean, it's crazy.
Starting point is 00:06:21 So we'll get to all that. We'll get to some of that in a minute. Let's do Iran. So again, just to preface, on Saturday night, he basically said, Iran has to clear the Strait of Hormuz in two days, 48 hours, or we're going to start bombing their power plants. That was the threat, 7 p.m. on Saturday night, I think, I think I said Friday. On Saturday night, he did that. This morning, you know, 12 hours before that deadline was set to hit, but only a couple
Starting point is 00:06:43 hours before markets were set to reopen, he backed way off. He said, we're giving him five more days. And then this was something he addressed. He talked about how they were going to postpone the strikes very early in this speech. So let's play that real quick here now. As I announced earlier, based on preliminary conversations between the United States and Iran over the past two days, I've directed the Department of Ward to temporarily postpone plan strikes against major energy and electricity targets in Iran. They have very, very big, new, actually, and very expensive, billions of dollars it cost to build them.
Starting point is 00:07:17 One missile, one of our powerful ones, and it comes down to the ground like it was made out of dust. But to determine whether a broader agreement can be reached, we've had very good discussions, very, very good discussions, and you have to understand, I know my whole life has been a negotiation, But with Iran, we've been negotiating for a long time. And this time, they mean business. I don't know who's supposed to be business in there.
Starting point is 00:07:45 It turns everything dusty, like an infinity war or something. What does that even mean? Yeah, we should say off the top, Iran has denied that any talks have taken place at all. Donald Trump seems to think that there have been, there's been some sort of breakthrough. And meanwhile, Iran is not even acknowledging that they're speaking to one another. So that's an interesting thing. But, yeah, I mean, I don't know. By the way, there's no reason to trust Iran any more than you trust Trump on this.
Starting point is 00:08:08 Yeah, no, 100%. But it's just like... Yeah, we shouldn't guess. But it's strange that there is a disconnect even on the level of are they picking up the phone and talking to one another? Not just like about what was said, but even is the conversation happening, right? I mean, I don't know. Do you think? Do you think it's the smart money is that they are talking and Iran is lying?
Starting point is 00:08:25 I mean, what do you make of any of this? I mean, what I'm... The number one thing I make of it is that just negotiation 101, the party which says, oh, yeah, we're really far along on talks. I'm going to put off this deadline that I imposed. That party's losing. When the other party is saying, no, we're not, we're not even talking to you. That's the party that's winning.
Starting point is 00:08:52 That's just basic, right? And I would, there are ways for them to both be correct. It is possible that the talks are going through intermediate. right? And so it might be technically correct. The Iranian government is not negotiating directly with the U.S. government. It could be, you know, through proxies. That sort of is less important than the reality that we're losing and the Iranians know it. And that's, that's a problem. And I mean, what nobody seems to have, what nobody in the highest portions of the U.S. government seems to have recognized was that geography is a strategic weapon.
Starting point is 00:09:43 And the geography of the Strait of Hormuz is every bit as important and powerful as, like, having nukes. In fact, it's even a little bit more powerful because you can use it. Like you can close the Strait of Hormuz without violating a whole bunch of, bunch of unforgivable taboos the way you would if you unleashed a nuke. And it's, again, no wonder we're losing. We're being led by these guys. Yeah, yeah. I mean, the asymmetry here is so bizarre, because if, if, you know, Pete Hegseth heard you, heard you talking like that, he would come in so high. He'd be like, JVL, what do you mean we're losing? Look at these explosions, dude. Every target we want to hit, we're hitting it. You know,
Starting point is 00:10:24 they have fewer and fewer missiles every single day. We have complete. you know, dominance of their airspace. We fly where we want. We bomb where we want. Everything is like going perfectly according to plan. And there's a sense in which all that's true at the military level, right? I mean, we have dropped an insane amount of ordinance on these guys. Anything that is like has a whiff of military activity and is like visible from the air has been basically bombed at this point. And yet, like you say, we are the ones. America is the ones. The Trump administration are the ones who are acting like, you know, they're the supplicant in these negotiations because the Strait of Hormuz is so important to us and to everybody. I mean, like, and not just that,
Starting point is 00:11:04 but Iran's own oil. I mean, like, the fact that we have, we have yanked sanctions off, that we are now, you know, like Iran actually has more economic sort of control over that area to let its own boats through, to extort bribes from other ships that might want to go through unmolested than they had before. And another way that we, we know that Trump, at least on some level, sort of realizes in sort of the lizard brain part of him, that they are losing is this other thing he said. This is very interesting today. He's starting to do a little bit of a little bit of blame apportionment in a way that we had not previously seen. So let's play that. This interesting thing he had to say about Pete Hegseth up there in Memphis today.
Starting point is 00:11:46 country known as Iran that for 47 years has been just a purveyor of terror and they're very close to having a nuclear weapon. We can keep going and get that 50,000 up to 55 and 60 years away. Or we can take a stop and make a little journey into the Middle East and eliminate a big problem. And Pete, I think you were the first one to speak up and you said, let's do it. How do you think Pete Hanks have felt about getting the little name check there? Yeah, that's just what he wanted. You know, a little detour. We're back down to 46,000.
Starting point is 00:12:27 So, you know, the Taoist shed 8%. But that's that, you know, what's that between friends, I guess? I do wonder how long he can stay with everybody. He did fire Christy. Now, Christy, I think, probably lost an internal struggle, an internal struggle. Look at me slurring my words. An internal struggle with Stephen Miller. And it's like, who would be trying to push Hegseth out?
Starting point is 00:12:59 And I don't think it would be either Rubio or Vance because they're focused on each other. And Hegseth is just the explosion dude. I mean, he really is like clavicular. You know, he just pull up roll. Where's a explosion? I got to go do some pull-up. And so I don't know that he has any natural enemies inside the administration. Although maybe I'm wrong.
Starting point is 00:13:25 I mean, I don't have any deep insights. What do you think? Do you think that he's- I think you're right. I don't think- In trouble here? I don't read this as like the seat getting hot under Hegg-Seth. I just read this as, you know, Donald Trump,
Starting point is 00:13:38 it's really only significant to me insofar as it's like a window into the way. I hit my microphone. It's a live thing. into the way Donald Trump sees the conflict, right? The way that, like, if Donald Trump actually thought that things were going super great, he would not be looking for people to share his... The whole thing was his idea then. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:13:55 And I don't think we have to do this. Yeah, 100%. And I think you're right. I don't think Hague Seth is, you know, I don't think he needs to worry about, you know, Trump swapping him out for Joe Kent or something like that. Or Megan Kelly, a secretary of defense, Megan Kelly. I don't think that the anti-war people are actually going to get a toehold in the administration here. But just as Trump is out there surveying the political landscape, I think he would like to have a few more people in the rowboat with him there.
Starting point is 00:14:23 I mean, the classic Trump formulation, if things were going well, would be that he would have said that Hague said didn't want to do it. Right. I mean, in these remarks, if things are all going to, he would have said, he would have said things were going great. The Dow was so strong. and a lot of people said we got to keep going with the Dow. But I said we need to do this little excursion and solve this problem. And Pete didn't want it. If he didn't want to, right Pete?
Starting point is 00:14:54 Right, Secretary Pete? You know, Pete would have, oh, that shucks. You know, sure, sir, whatever you say. Your instincts are immaculate, Mr. President. Right. I should have trusted you sooner. Instead, Trump is like, well, that guy over there, you know, likes to. Oh, man. Yeah, I want to talk a little bit more about just the other sort of psychological stuff you could really tell about Trump, just moving on a bit from Iran.
Starting point is 00:15:22 Before we do that, we should hard cut here real quick to shoving an ad read into this thing, which I will let you do, JVL, as the guy with the magic mouth. Yeah, that's what people often say about me. Phrasing. This take is brought to you by our sponsor Tempo. This time of year, I'm trying to say consistent with eating well, but between work and life cooking just isn't happening. Tempo gives me fresh, balanced meals ready in two minutes so I can eat the way I want without losing time. During the week, my schedule is nonstop, writing a triad, appearing in great life takes like this one. And healthy eating is usually the first thing to slip. Tempo keeps me grounded with real meals so I don't default to snakes.
Starting point is 00:16:05 to snakes. Again, this is live, guys. So I don't default to eating snakes or snacks or takeout. Each meal is perfectly portioned for lunch or dinner and ready in just two minutes. That means real food, real fast, without the sad desk lunch or drive-through regret. For a limited time, Tempo is offering my listeners 60% off your first box. Go to Tempomeals.com slash bulwark takes. That's Tempomeals.com slash bulwark.
Starting point is 00:16:35 takes for 60% off your first box. Once again, that's tempomeals.com slash bulwark takes. Rules and restrictions may apply. Okay. Yeah. So. Don't eat snakes, Andrew. Never, never, never.
Starting point is 00:16:50 Yeah, that's not, that's not my thing. The president, let's get back to him, that guy. I mean, we've been talking so much about the stakes, stakes, that are, that are, you know, coming into play right now. There's such a critical moment for this conflict. And yet, one of the biggest things that I was thinking of as I was just watching this guy go, I feel like Trump has always surrounded himself with yes men. He has always, you know, kept sort of unpleasant news pushed to the side and kind of just sort of luxuriated in a bath of praise from people around him physically and from people who are around him on the internet, especially now that he lives on his own truth, truth social platform that is literally just him on there with 10 million sycophants.
Starting point is 00:17:35 there are like no other important posters on the whole website. It's just him and his fan base. And you have really started to see that just sort of eat through his brain in the way that it would eat through anybody's brain, but especially his and his own specific pathologies. And I feel like today, more so than maybe ever before, I'm like, this is just a person who really does think everybody is with him, every decision is correct.
Starting point is 00:18:01 There are like six resistance people in the whole world, and they have a lot of money and they have a lot of, you know, power to sort of buy off protesters to go out and pretend there's a, there's an organic resistance to me. But actually everybody who counts is 100% on board with me. I think he actually does really believe this. Let's, let's just talk. I don't know. There were so many different clips of this that we kind of suggested this, but this is him talking about the young beautiful women who are always coming up to him in the streets of D.C. to just tell. I like this island with a lot of young beautiful women on it. And they're always coming up to, oh, sorry. wrong. That was a different time. Sorry, wrong throw. Okay, yeah, let's play that clip. Young women, they walk, I would say normally beautiful young women. Ever since I got elected, I don't like to say that.
Starting point is 00:18:48 Because usually when you say a beautiful woman, isn't she beautiful? That's the end of your political career. So I never say that. But young women coming up to me and they're saying, sir, thank you so much. I know immediately what they're talking about. I say, how big a difference? that they say, we walk to work. We were afraid to walk into an Uber.
Starting point is 00:19:10 Everything in the world was hell, and he came along and he sort of sprinkled the magic dust, and now everything is beautiful. I don't know. What do you, what? You ever meet any of these young women? What do you think? Do you see them when you walk down the streets? It's a new flavor of Dear Sir story.
Starting point is 00:19:28 So instead of being a big, burly, tough guy, now it's a beautiful young woman. And she doesn't have tears in her eyes, though. She has gratitude. And he knows what they're grateful for, Andrew. You know what I mean? They're grateful for the end of street crime. And I do think to myself, like, who is he talking about? Is he talking about Stephen Miller's wife?
Starting point is 00:19:57 Katie Miller, yeah, Carolyn Levitt. Is this just like Katie Miller and Carolyn Levitt are like the two women under the age of 40 who he might bump into on a daily basis and they said something about like, oh, nice outside now. I don't know. It's a weird thing, though, to go to the beautiful young women and then to talk about how you can't do that. You catch Hegseth and Bondi who know exactly what looks have to be on their faces. Like, it is, I almost feel for them to be up there as props, because, you know, It's kind of, you know, when Saturday Night Live does the cold opens with James Austin Johnson, and he comes in his Trump and everybody who is previously in the sketch has to freeze.
Starting point is 00:20:45 Yeah, they freeze frame, yeah. Right, like this. That's kind of what Bondi and Exit have to do in real life, except they also then have to perform on cue with reactions. It's pretty great. Yeah, yeah, I don't know. It's, I don't feel, I mean, usually, usually I try to like bring the, the human element. I don't have a shred of
Starting point is 00:21:07 sympathy for either of those two. That's their whole job, right? I mean, there are, maybe Marco Rubio, I don't know, yeah. Maybe one of these people who actually gets in there like, I'm going to try to do some policy things. But these guys, I mean, their whole role is to sort of be the moon that reflects his son in so many different ways and to try to burn down the country
Starting point is 00:21:24 in their respective orbits as well. We don't have a clip for this one. The other thing in this same sort of ballpark was Trump talking about these 99-1 issue, You know, one thing that Stephen Miller and a few of these other guys like to talk about is these 80-20 issues. And they might mean, you know, arresting illegal immigrant violent criminals or they might mean, you know, banning girls or banning biological males from girls' sports in schools or things like this. And they're like, you know, the whole country's with us. And there's just, you know, a couple of like dead ender libs who are standing in our way.
Starting point is 00:22:00 And the Democrats are captured by that faction. And, you know, 80-20 is not correct on most of these things, but it gets at something. It's like big majority for us, small minority for them. But Donald Trump specifically mentioned that. He's like, some people call these 80-20 issues. I don't think they're 80-20 issues. I think they're 99-1 issues, which is not correct. I mean, it's even obviously mathematically less correct, but it is suggestive of a completely
Starting point is 00:22:22 different thing. It's suggestive of, again, a world where, like, the whole United States of America in Donald Trump's mind is just standing behind him. every poll that shows otherwise is faked and cooked by the 1%. You know, every street protest that you see are fake actors who are paid off by the 1%. And I really do think, I don't think this is just sort of like, you know, chum for the idiots online. I really do think that Donald Trump, he really carries himself as though he actually
Starting point is 00:22:51 believes that's the way the country is. And that, and even voting is that way, right? I mean, when people vote and it's not that way, he's like, well, Democrats, the 1% they cooked to the vote again. And he's just kind of searing off, like, cauterizing every neuron that might suggest, well, Mr. President, sir, every whim that pops in your head might not be genius and totally politically popular and like a great savvy move. I don't know.
Starting point is 00:23:14 Am I crazy? Am I, am I, do I have Trump derangement syndrome with this? No, you're not. What I think this is an artifact of is his understanding of power, right? I mean, he does, he has understood from the beginning that the, the, the, the base. of power is controlling the Republican Party in that everything else, like even winning the presidency was secondary because you can get something from being president, but only a little bit more than you can get from owning the Republican Party. But owning it means you have to own it completely.
Starting point is 00:23:46 And so that's why he's never been willing to brook any sort of, you know, oh, that guy's with me 95% of the time. And he's only against me 5%. Like if you're against him 5% of the time, you're out. And so that's like, you know, like he goes straight from from zero to 100 on Joe Kent, you know, straight from like, yeah, this guy, uh, supported me, he loves me, he loves America, loves the Nazis, just like I do. And, uh, you know, he does, look, I think he's wrong about this and happy to see him go or something like that. He goes right to, well, you know, never liked that guy. He got married real fast after his wife got killed, didn't he? Yeah, let's, let's play that real quick. This is from, this is from earlier today, uh, when, when, when, when, Trump was getting on his plane to fly to Memphis. He did a quick gaggle with some reporters and talked about Joe Kent, so as his former director of the National Counterterrorism Center who resigned over the Iran War last week. Let's play Trump's remarks on Kent. What he said is 100% he agrees with me.
Starting point is 00:24:45 All of a sudden he leaves. I never knew he had a problem. Now, I hear they're looking at him for leaking. That's possible. But just to see you, and just to put it to rest, he lost twice badly. he also lost his wife. He's remarried since. He lost his wife.
Starting point is 00:25:02 I felt badly for him. So I told my people, reach out to him, give him a job at the White House. Yeah, there was a moment. It was a pity job. Yeah, I don't know. But I think that's what this is all really about, Andrew,
Starting point is 00:25:20 with the, you know, everything is not 80, 20, 991, because it's an artifact of how he thinks of his support, right? Everything has to be total. There can't ever be a remnant of people who are kind of with you mostly, but then aren't with you all the way, because that's not how he thinks of the consolidation of power. Yeah, yeah. I don't know. I mean, he's made it so far with managing to staff all these positions.
Starting point is 00:25:48 There are only so many, like, pure total suckups who can even, you know, keep the trains running in their various areas. I guess he has just about enough of them still to keep it going. even though, you know, one fewer now that Joe Ken is out. Let's, we should wrap this up here. Let's do one more clip from Trump. I'm going back in the document a little bit. Just to, again, kind of put a fine point on this. This is him talking about Iran's one last opportunity to end its threats.
Starting point is 00:26:13 He's just very old. He's very tired. He's barely with it. I guess we're giving Iran one more chance. And if they don't get with it now, they'll get another one and another one. But here's Donald Trump. Here's the president of the United States. Now, Iran is one more opportunity to end its threats
Starting point is 00:26:28 to America and our allies, and we hope they take it. There you go. One more opportunity slurs the president. What do you think, JVL? Any last thoughts before we take it home? Yeah, I want to read you two other clips from him. I don't think we have the clips teed up, but I'm just going to read him to you.
Starting point is 00:26:45 Sure. In recent months, there, he means Iran's here. Own negotiators brag to our representatives about having enough material to make nuclear weapons, and that was supposed to deter me, but it didn't deter. it made me more anxious. Okay.
Starting point is 00:27:02 Again, this is the guy who's been running around saying their program was completely and totally obliterated, which some of us said the time was a lie. And he then said, you know, anybody who didn't say that it was completely and totally obliterated was issuing a slur against
Starting point is 00:27:18 our great American patriot warriors. It's good. Good to know. But here's the good one. They've agreed they will not have a nuclear weapon, you know, et cetera. etc. But we'll see. You have to get it done. I think it could very well end up being a very good deal for everybody. As good as if we went all the way and just literally annihilated the place. What does that even mean? Andrew, and I'm serious about this. What does that mean? Like, on the one hand, there's a deal to be
Starting point is 00:27:51 done. On the other hand, this deal could be really, really good for both sides. On another hand, it could be almost as good as if we wiped Iran off the face of the earth. So who, like, I... The Jekyll and Hyde thing here has been really hard to watch. I mean, like, we know that somebody inside the U.S. government knows that on some level, we rely economically on Iran being able to sell its oil around the world. They're pulling it out of the, they're pulling it out of the ground, and they're selling it to China and a couple of other places, even though they're not supposed to be able to under our sanctions. We've gotten rid of those sanctions because we want the price of oil to go down, right? Like, Iran selling its oil is really good for Iran. We taught them for us. Yeah,
Starting point is 00:28:44 it's not so good for us like on a sort of strategic level, geostrategic level. But like, as far as right now where we're all freaking out over this gas shock, it's nice that they're able to do that. And yet, like, the fact that the president is saying, you know, that one good thing would be if we just sort of like, nuked the place and turned Iran into a field of glass. Like, that would be a pretty good outcome, but maybe almost as good of an outcome would be question mark, question mark, question mark.
Starting point is 00:29:10 And it could be anything in between there, right? It could be anything from us going home tomorrow. And I guess the, I don't know. I genuinely don't know how we're going to get Iran to reopen the straightforward moves. I don't know how it's going to happen. It does not seem like they're going to be content just to go back to the previous status quo. They keep saying they're not going to be content to go back to the previous status quo. But even if you could, like anything from there,
Starting point is 00:29:29 all the way up to that eventuality. Trump is saying, well, we're going to do one of those things. And it's going to be great. You're going to have this time. And this is the, just to loop it back up to the top. This is what I was saying in the beginning. We will go back to something like the status quo plus a sweetener. And the sweetener, I think, is probably going to be something like removing sanctions.
Starting point is 00:29:50 If I were Iran, I would be playing for more. And if I was sitting at their table with their cards, what I would look for is to break the petrodoll. And, you know, my ask would be, sure, we'll reopen the Strait of Hormuz, but oil transiting the Strait doesn't get sold in dollars anymore. We want it sold in one or euros, pick one. I think there would be a great deal of support for that from the international community, which is looking to de-dollar rise, and it would be a tremendously terrible blow to America.
Starting point is 00:30:26 And I think nobody in the administration would be capable. of explaining why that was bad? It's the kind of ask that, like, you know, God, you asked Donald Trump to defend the petrodollars to the American people and explain to people why he should keep prosecuting a really bad war that is deeply unpopular just to protect the petrodollars system. I think that is a very canny ask, but maybe we can get out of it and keep on the petrodollar system.
Starting point is 00:30:54 That would be good for America, good for our debt service, good for our ability to keep borrowing money and issuing T-bills and debt financing our future. Yay. But it'll end. And it'll end because the war is very harmful to Iran. And they do need to sell oil. They do not want all of their petroleum infrastructure to get erased. And we don't want them to erase all of the petroleum infrastructure for neighboring countries.
Starting point is 00:31:22 And also, like, four weeks from now, nobody will have any missiles left anyway. I mean, that's the other aspect of this. Like the armories are going to start running low. So that's why I feel reasonably confident that we're going to get to a negotiated solution. It's just going to be a negotiated solution, which leaves America in a worse position than it was before the war and leaves the Iranian regime with a great deal of damage, but in a stronger strategic position than it was before the war.
Starting point is 00:31:54 Thanks, President Trump. Honestly, I'm sure you're correct. I'm sure you are correct that that is the, that is the likeliest outcome. I just keep like doom scrolling, like possibilities in my head of like, what if the straight is closed for four months or five months or six months or something like that. And I want to live in that universe. I think you are, I think that you are correct that it is the likeliest universe. But we'll leave it there for now. Just to put a bow on it one more time, I'm Andrew Eager with the bulwark. This is JVL with the bulwark. We just kind of talked to you guys through an event that Donald Trump did in Memphis at a very, very critical moment in this conflict
Starting point is 00:32:28 with Iran. We are not 100% convinced. We weren't one over. I guess you could say we were not exactly one over by the portrait that the president put forward there in terms of his strategy and his general with itness and his object permanence and his ability to string English words together and understand such basic facts about the world as that the Iranian regime gets a vote in various policy things, that his domestic political opposition gets a vote in various domestic policy things. And that's what it was. So we'll keep following it. Thanks to you guys all for coming on and watching, following along with us. I hope you will subscribe to the bulwark feed. Head over to the bulwark.com and get our newsletters if that's the sort of thing that appeals to you as
Starting point is 00:33:14 well. And I guess we'll see y'all next time. Thanks.

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.