Bulwark Takes - Trump’s Iran Post Is Unhinged and Alarming

Episode Date: March 7, 2026

Tim Miller takes on Trump’s latest Truth Social rant about Iran—where the president calls Iran the “loser of the Middle East,” talks about the country potentially “collapsing,” and signals the war could escalate even further. He also reacts to Tucker Carlson’s claim that Trump believes the war is polling at 90% support, and what that might mean for where this conflict is headed.

Hey, everybody. Tim Moore from the bulwark here. A couple of items as we're doing, you know, Kremlinology, megaology around what this White House is thinking about their Iran war that they have not made a coherent case for at all. And we have a couple additional data points on this over the past 24 hours that I just want to make sure to share with you. The one, the first one as a bleat from Trump very early on Saturday morning. morning. And I'm going to read that to you and gird your lines for this. Iran, which is being beat to hell, has apologized and surrendered to its Middle East neighbors and promised that it will not shoot at them anymore.

I don't think that they've apologized and surrendered to their Middle East neighbors. This promise was only made because of the relentless US and Israeli attack. they were looking to take over and rule the Middle East. Okay. I don't think that's really true. I mean, maybe aspirationally, but I don't know that there were imminent threat to the UAE and Qatar and Saudi. I also kind of don't know why we care from an America first standpoint. But anyway, supposedly they're looking to take over and rule the Middle East.

And that hasn't happened. Back to the Trump fleet. It is the first time that Iran has ever lost in thousands of years to surrounding Middle East countries. I might read a book about that. The Middle East countries have said, thank you, President Trump. I have said, you're welcome. Iran is no longer the bully of the Middle East. Instead, they are the loser of the Middle East.

That's the president of the United States. Iran is all caps, the loser of the Middle East, talking like he is a nine-year-old. He continues, they're the loser of the Middle East and will be for many decades until they surrender or, more likely completely collapsed. Let's put a pin in that completely collapse. Today, Saturday, Iran will be hit very hard under serious consideration for complete destruction and certain death because of Iran's bad behavior are areas and groups of people that were not considered for targeting up until this moment of time, hopefully not schools. Thank you for your attention to this matter, President Donald J. Trump.

So I guess the point of this war now is that Donald Trump wanted to win. for Qatar and the UAE and Saudi. I mean, like, that's what he says here, right? That, like, Iran was trying to... He doesn't say that Iran was trying to rule America. He says Iran was trying to rule the other countries in the Middle East. And so, okay, why are six Americans dying for Qatar? Like, I don't even think that's true.

But, like, even if it were true, didn't have to make the case to the American people that we wanted to get involved in a war that's costing, as a billion to two billion dollars a day and risking lives in order to save Donald Trump's crypto partner at the UAE or his investment partner in Saudi Arabia. I understand why Donald Trump and his family care about protecting the UAE in Saudi Arabia. They have been bought and paid for by them. The Trump family is on the take in a major way from these Arab oil caliphates. but I don't know why I care

and I don't think that he's tried to even convince anybody if they should care. So that's, this is the latest that Donald Trump has decided that because Iran was going to try to take over the Middle East supposedly he needed to eliminate them

and he wants to call them a loser now and make fun of them. Okay. But the next idea that he puts forth is that we're going to keep bombing them new people that we hadn't considered before, apparently,

until they more likely completely collapse. He said it. He thinks the country's going to completely collapse. Like, how is Iran completely collapsing good for us? Like, did, was any... Were people awake during the 2000s? Like the collapse of Syria and the refugee crisis out of Syria and other countries in the Levant,

like caused massive issues all around the world because issues in Europe, because it's just America. There were terrorist attacks here. Like, why would we want Iran to collapse? Like, I don't like the caliphate. I don't like the Ayatollah. But why would, it's complete. collapse is what we want now? Can we pull up around on a map? Okay, so there you go. I don't,

I don't know how many people in the Trump administration could find Iran on a map, but here it is. If you look to the west, they border Turkey, a NATO ally. Like, what if they end up having a refugee crisis? Do we want people fleeing Iran into Turkey? In the east, they border Pakistan, a nuclear power. How are we going to keep the straight of Hormuz open? If they, you know, to get oil prices back to a reasonable level. If Iran is in complete collapse and they're like different warring factions inside the country, like you'd assume one of the factions would recognize the power of controlling the straight. Like this is insane.

This is a massive country. Tens of millions of people. they've been planning for this. I haven't been planning for the military part, but they've been planning for like protecting the regime and, you know, ensuring that there were different nodes of power for decades since this 1979. So like, I mean, I could understand what complete collapse

might feel good for Israel or maybe some of the other Middle Eastern countries. I'm not sure. If they're going to deal with the refugee issue. But like, how is that, how is a massive Iranian refugee crisis? Good for us? Why did we want that? That was better than the status quo? I don't think so.

Anyway, that's Donald Trump's plan this morning. Calling Iran losers, telling them that they've lost for the first time to the Arab countries, that we are so happy to beat them because we're doing the bidding of Donald Trump's business partners. and also makes more likely the country will just completely collapse. Great. That's great. To that point, a couple of other data points we have besides the bleat. NBC News, this was yesterday, it was reporting that Trump has privately shown serious interest in U.S. ground troops in Iran. Their private comments, they haven't focused on a large steel ground invasion,

but they have a small contingent of U.S. troops that would be used for specific strategic. purposes. Okay. Don't we have to have a strategy to have strategic purposes? What is the strategy again? He said this morning that we're going for maybe complete collapse. And he said another day that we had people in mind that we're going to make the transition more seamless, but we killed them.

So it doesn't seem like we have a strategy. So, but good, great. Let's put more troops in harm's way and, you know, in case we find one. But that's what they're discussing internally. Part of that, and I guess in the NBC story, the strategy they lay out is this. So let's just read it. Trump's idea is that the ground troops would be part of a vision for his post-war Iran,

where Iran's uranium is secure and the U.S. and a new Iranian regime cooperate on oil production, similar to how the U.S. and Venezuela are. So we're going to send in troops to guard Iran's uranium and oil fields. That's the plan. I guess, I mean, we are drilling an historic amount of oil here. You know, and I saw some like 40 chess comments about how it's like, well, maybe Trump is doing this because China gets a lot of their oil from Iran. And if we control Iran's oil, then we might have a greater leverage point over China.

it's like I think Trump's just emoting so I don't think that's Trump's plan Is there somebody around Trump that had that plan? Maybe But it's like, okay, so then we're going to start out A more hot economical world with China Trump's not doing that.

Trump's trying to do deals with China. Trump's letting China have our chips. That doesn't make any sense. So anyway, there's the potential. Potential is maybe we have complete collapse or maybe we send in troops small number we align ourselves with some random mullahs.

We protect the uranium. We protect the oil fields. We install somebody we like. They give their natural resources to us. And everybody's happy. Okay. Okay. What the fuck?

Sure. We'll see how that turns out. Lastly, if you wanted to have any hope that Trump was doing what I, I continue to, look, hand raised. I've had a sense for what Trump is going to do for most, most for a while. Like I, I can read this motherfucker. I thought at least. Like I had a, we have helped you at the board, look around corners and tell you what

Trump's mischievous plans are, you know? And the old David from line, a lot of secrets, no mysteries. We can read them. At least I thought. Because on this one, I don't. I think, I think the dude is on, is having a psychotic break. I think that he's just so high on the success of Venezuela that he is out of his mind, even more than usual. Because I don't, like, I has said this week that I thought that he was going to just kind of do the Trump thing and declare victory and say good luck to Iran and pull back.

And I kind of, we'll see what happens. That's what I thought. This is a disturbing sentence to what to say, but Tucker had the same assumption as me. So Tucker Carlson said that he was going to try to meet Trump to put. him that way. Or maybe Tucker didn't have the same assumption as me, but he thought that Trump might be interested in that exit plan to the extent that is an exit plan. And so Tucker was planning on going to Washington to try to like tell Trump, declare victory mission accomplished, bring the boys home. That's better than the quag buyer you're getting us into. And sounds like that's not going to happen.

Let's listen to Tucker. This is not going to get better. So then I think I'll fly up again and ask him. I mean, I don't know if anyone else is doing it, so I'm going to try to just declare victory and go home. Like you killed an 86-year-old cleric, let's just call that a win and then pull back. And so then meantime, he got convinced to denounce me. Okay. I don't care.

I'm going to fly up anyway and see him, right? Even though he's like denouncing me. So I call over there to see, you know, call someone who knows him to see. I've said, I'm just going to fly up anyway and tell him this because I think it's so important. And the person says, don't bother because he's being shown polling that this war is like a 90-10 win for him. And I said, I don't know where that polling is coming from. It's like, I, you know, I guess you can make any kind of poll. And it's, he's watching Fox News, which is telling him the same thing. And he's getting fake polling. I guess they're only polling Sean Hannity's viewers or something. It's important to remember, Tucker is a liar. Like a liar. Sometimes on this show, sometimes I'm wrong, sometimes I miss something.

You know, sometimes I get my facts wrong. I'm doing my best. You know, I, that's like different. Like, Tucker doesn't just get stuff wrong sometimes by accident. Like Tucker intentionally lies like a lot, a lot, a lot. Tucker is just a complete fabulous now. We could go through all the examples another day with Will Summer, if you want. So I'm hesitant to like take him at his word in this case.

But if you compare it to the other data points we have, Trump's bleats, the report from NBC about what his plans are, what we're seeing with our own eyes, about what they're doing in Iran. Like Tucker's story is kind of in line with all that, which is that he said he wanted to go convince Trump to get out. And I called somebody close to Trump to plan the meeting. And that person said basically,

don't bother. Trump's been seeing polls that show them at 90%. Again, maybe this is a miscommunication some of the long lines. I assume when he's saying is that there's polls that show up at 90% with Republicans. And I've seen other people online pointing to that. I haven't done a deep dive with the cross tabs on all the Iran polls. I'm sure there is a poll that has the

subsection of Republicans in the poll supporting them at that level. I'm sure you could find a poll that has that of the polls I'd seen have Republican support more in like the high 70s. But, okay. So the top rationale you think you'd have for Trump leaving is if he was worried that his core base would, was starting to sour on him over it, you know. But if Trump has been given fake polls or cherry pick polls and believes that all of his voters support him, then full speed ahead. So that's, let's say to play as we sit here right now, I'm taping this early afternoon on Saturday.

things change with Trump. Sometimes he, like, is reactive to what the last person he saw told him. So we'll see. But based on the bleat, the NBC report and what Tucker had to say, it seems like we're looking to escalate rather than de-escalate our actions in Iran. So we'll keep an eye on it for you. Subscribe to the feed. Tell your friends, give us a little thumby up, thumby upy, comment, criticize.

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