MTracey podcast - So, uh, are we headed for perpetual war in Iran?

Episode Date: April 13, 2026

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.mtracey.netAlso: Hungarian election antics, Eric Swalwell’s defenestration, Tucker-ology update, and more.

Live with Richard Hanania as we set out on our mission to blockade the Strait of Formuz. The FECD. Pedophile. U.S. Petapile. Yeah, on the Lillita Express. On our private mission to blockade the straight. This is great stuff.

We have a lot of stuff to talk about. Okay. Now repeat what I'm sure was your fantastically funny joke. So I'm sure you just came from a Hungarian election watch party? Oh, yes. All the based new right attendees were incredibly devastated. They have been assured by J.D. Vance that victory was within our grasp. But unfortunately, it actually, it turned out to be a landslide.

Did you see the polling? Did you see the polling divergence? there was like government-affiliated polls that had like Orban plus 10 and then independent post-posters who all had the opposition plus 10. So bad money. Was it plus 10? Do we have a, what's the current count? I haven't seen it, but yeah. Because they have sort of a strange electoral system where you can't just go strictly by the percentages because you have sort of like proportional representation for each district, but then there's another metric by which certain members of the parliament are elected?

Yes, supposedly. Do you have to estimate based? on like the number of party members elizzi. Or about Hungary election results. People were saying they were like last time I checked, they were one seat away from super majority.

Yeah, it was something like that. And, but it's sort of interesting because I don't know how much you've looked into it, but the political decision was made amongst virtually every opposition faction. With the exception of

one quote unquote populist right party that thought Orban didn't go far enough. Yeah. To, to, what's that? Was it Jobic? Yeah, yeah.

Is that her name of the party? Yeah, it's spelled J-O-B-B-I-K. They're famous as the far-right party. Oh, yeah, I think so. I think so, yeah. But Peter Saigar sort of launched a new party. Cygar, is that how you say his name? Isn't that how it's spelled?

Cygar. It's spelled with an M. Peter My-Gar, like, like, my-Gar. I'm sorry, my girl. Sorry, I'm going senile just like our previous two presidents. But it was sort of interesting because they sort of solved the collective action problem that had been de-deviling them for the length of Orban's tenure, meaning that they finally consolidated opposition.

And there were even left-wing parties, like socialist parties and so forth, that would not have otherwise supported this. Party, Mygar, Mygar's party, because he was a former conservative parliamentarian pretty much, but like a liberal conservative or a Euro. I don't know if he could call him pro-European, but he's not hostile to the European Union. But even these left-wing parties who are notoriously difficult to rein in seemingly got together for the sole and singular purpose of finally defeating Orban, and it worked. which is hard to imagine being able to ever replicate in American context. Obviously, when you have a parliamentary system, maybe that's easier to organize or it's more straightforward as to how that would work.

But I don't know, I just think there are some interesting lessons to we learn perhaps from the Hungary election, but one of them is that the opponents of Orban agreed that they should set aside what other differences they have in United Gives them. Yeah. And do you buy this take that this was a democracy was on the ballot? No, I mean, they said that in 2022. I remember being in Europe in 2022 when Orban was elected pretty resoundingly. And I guess democracy didn't die a terrible death because four years later there was another election and Orban conceded like within minutes of the polls closing.

Yeah, I mean, I don't know tons about Hungary, but from what I read it, from what the accusations they make against Orban, I feel like the accusations that he's a dictator are pretty exaggerated. He would do like things that were, you know, the equivalent of gerrymandering, not exactly, but it would be, you know, favoring, like rural seats, not bringing the election, not stuffing the ballots, not blocking people up like his friends would buy like a media conglomerate, not like he puts people in jail like they do in the UK and in Germany. It didn't ban political parties. You know, don't love Orban. But, yeah, this stuff was, I mean, it was kind of over the top. He sort of centralized control some of the media, but there's still opposition media that's been allowed to flourish. within Hungary. So there are some unique features of Orban's governance that you could rationally assess.

But everything had to play into this overarching democratic backsliding narrative that is the favorite of these like NGO liberalism that I think obscured more than revealed in terms of the nature of how Orban and his coalition actually ran the country. But yeah, I mean, there was definitely some cronyism and there was favoritism and patronage, which you would expect if one party or one leader is basically in power for 16 years, and he had been prime minister once before. But apparently people got sick of it, including in the rural areas that had once been his base of support. So quote-unquote democracy seemed to prevail without having to buy into the, this whole histrionic nonsense incubated by all these, you know, phony NGOs where we're supposed to be really terrified of Orban because he maybe wanted to use some diplomatic mechanism to

end the Ukraine war and he liked Trump and therefore democracy is always teetering on the verge of destruction. I mean, give me a break with this. Yeah, somebody corrects us. It's Magyar, not Maigar, which is what I keep saying. Magyar. So it shows our expertise in Hungarian politics. But yeah, he's, yeah, I think this is the end of Hungary being, like, important, like a country we have to hear about. What do we hear about them for? Because, like, you know, right-wing types like them. And then because they're standing in the way of Ukraine-Aid often. Well, because he kind of subsidized some of these new rights writers and people to go take these sojourns or go take sabbaticals.

He created a think tank. There was a good article by Phil Magnus. a series of articles on this. They created like a think tank called MCC, and they just hired these guys, and they gave them like 10% stake in like a state oil company or something, so they just had this, like, huge perch

on which to like preach their, you know, their, they're like Catholic integralism or their post-liberal stuff or whatever you want to call it. And so, yeah, there was like junkets to Hungary, and then there were also just like direct subsidization. And this is why these people came to America. they met with J.D. Vance loves these guys. He's at home, like Hungary,

kind of these post-liberals. This is like his intellectual home. Not just junkets, though, not like the thing that, you know, A-PAC organizes for members of poverty to go to Israel. Yeah, they live there. I mean, Rod Dreher moved there, didn't he? Yeah. There's a guy named Gladdenop Pepin who travels with them as like a foreign policy, like part of their team, like comes to America as part of the Hungarian team and meets with J.D. Vance, right? He's an American political theorist. Yeah. I think it was by way. of his connection to whatever

Hungarian entity is doling out this largesse to him that Rod Dreher had a meeting with J.D. Vance, with, you know, maybe it was six months ago, four months ago, where, and that resulted in this, you know, viral substack that he did that was then reposted

at the free press and other places where he's trying, you know, he's sounding the alarm to J.D. Vance. All the young conservative, all the young right winger are anti-Semitic. You have to finally, you know, look, look, reality in its face. All these, you know, they all listen you know, Fuentes and whatever. And if I'm not mistaken, that, you know, meeting that Joe, that, uh, Rod Dreyer had with

Vance was somehow facilitated by the connection to Hungary where I think, you know, maybe there was a Hungarian official president. I could be wrong, but I seem to remember that being the context, which is probably, probably explains why J.D. Vance, bizarrely, decided to go to Hungary and not just do one of these indirect endorsements of Orban, where, like, maybe they take part in some official event, which kind of implicitly signals support

for the candidate. No, J.D. Vance took part in an outright campaign rally. Yeah. For Orban, which is not like a customary thing for a vice president to do. And then within a matter of days, he gets a giant glop of egg spirit on the space. Yeah, bad week for J.D.

Yeah, it's, it is kind of, It is kind of, if you understand the intellectual currents of the right, like these people are, they do see Orban, because he was the one talking about immigration. He was talking about gender identity early. He gets out, he uses their words. He responds them. I mean, this is important to bats. Not abortion, though. Abortion is actually, you know, very much of abortion. They don't know. I know. I know. I'm just, I'm just noting that, you know, it's funny. I've always thought that there's such a fetishization of Hungary. But, They have, you know, very lax. No, no. Abortion laws, as my recollection and also prostitution. Well, really. Well, 2022 Vance, after the 22 midterms, Vance had a tweet where he's like, you know,

basically saying in a fact that we need to listen to people on abortion and like we need to moderate. And he's like very aggressively pro-IVF. So he's like this Catholic convert who's like based, but like not very pro-life. Like not into that issue at least. And yeah, that's true for, that's true for our bond. a two. Maybe I should correct. I don't think it's, I don't think it's that the laws might have actually gotten a little bit more onerous around abortion in Hungary lately, but if you look at the actual rates of abortion, I think I would have heard about that because when Poland

restricted, Poland was already strict and then became more restrictive. It worked like you couldn't have any exceptions at all. And that was, yeah, yeah, yeah. So why wasn't Poland the base country? I mean, I guess you saw some talk of that, but they couldn't become officially based in terms of like the American right wing sort of youthful context because they're they're hardcore anti-Russia. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's part of it. You have to be pro-Russia.

There was also the there was like two twin PIS. There wasn't one identifiable leader who was just in power for a really long time. There was these two twins, right? One of them died. And so it was a little bit more. It was a party. Well, I mean, do you mean the under the right-wing government? Yeah, yeah, the P-I-S.

I mean, Duda was a pretty outsized figure, wasn't there? How long was Duda? Duda was it? I think it wasn't like eight years. Duda is, um, uh, 2015 to 2025. Yeah. So.

Oh, really? But the president is the president even, I don't know about the Polish system. I thought there's a, isn't there the prime minister? There's a prime. Yeah, there's a prime. Yeah, there's a prime. Yeah. Like the, the, the, the more like Euro file liberals are now, uh, they have a parliamentary majority.

So there's a prime minister, Donald Tusk, who's more of like a classic. Eurocrat. But the presidency, I think, the presidency is somebody from Duda's party. Like, remember, Trump actually endorsed him as well. Last year, I don't know if you recall that.

I think just Orban. And they have had like CPAC stuff in Poland actually. But there's like the beating intellectual heart of like the new right or whatever is much more spiritually aligned with Hungary. You've got to want to. You've got to be like if Poland just funded

these people and talked like them like them, and, you know, tried to build connections. Maybe they could have been the based country. But what about that? I mean, the, but the Vance thing is amazing, right? Because, yeah, he did have a, quote, bad week. But you got to almost think, I mean, it's difficult to say that Trump can, like, think two steps ahead anymore or, and it's always been a little bit tedious when people would make all these, you know, multidimensional chess explanations for his conduct. But if he was looking to just kind of sandbag Vance this past week, he would sign off on him going to do this totally self-defeating and pretty humiliating campaign appearance.

in Hungary, which didn't just culminate in Orban's defeat, but like a landslide blowout defeat that seemingly backfired. But then followed by the Pakistan negotiations, which were a total bust. Well, I doubt he sent, I think Vans, Hungary. I'm sure that was more his initiative, but like Trump said, yeah, I mean, go dig your own race. Yeah. I mean, yeah. And Trump did, and Vance did call, did you watch the speech?

Trump, Vance called Trump on his speakerphone on his iPhone, on his iPhone. during the speech and had Trump, you know, give a comment. I saw the one word, went straight to voicemail. Yeah, and then later, I guess he answered. Well, he picked up eventually. So, so, yeah, let's talk about. He'll take anybody's phone call, I guess. I guess, yeah, this is probably the end of, you know, like, maybe the last time we'll

ever talk about hungry or anyone will ever talk about hungry. It's probably, you know, most likely scenario. I wonder what's going to happen, though, because, you know, they're not going to let it go. They've been thinking about hungry for 10 years. It's been on their mind. Yeah. I mean, all the, all the, all the European Union, Brussels,

beat writers are now going to have to find something else to fixate on because when I went and covered some of these like European Council meetings and so forth around, it was around Ukraine stuff. But like all anybody could ever talk about was, is Hungary going to screw things up? Or is Hungary going to budge on its obstinacy in terms of opposing the latest sort of escalation and sanctions or the imposition of some kind of defense spending mechanism to fund Ukraine? like that was always the narrative so we'll have to conjure up some other narrative that will fascinate them just as much

which I doubt they'll be able to do yeah but anyways there negotiations are more important than Hungary what do you like what do you think Trump is doing like because I think that he's always kind of incoherent but I think you tell me if you agree with me

he was he's been more incoherent on the straight of Hermuz than on any other topic that I can remember it's like we don't care about Hermuz oh we're going to destroy their civilization unless they open it. Oh, we're going to have a partnership. Oh, it's actually open. A beautiful venture, he said.

And then he denies that it's closed. A beautiful joint venture. A reporter asked him, and he's like, oh, what do you know? You don't know anything. And it's like, yeah, we know. We can see, like, you know, we can talk to the shipping companies that's been reported that it's not open. He's just, he's, I think he's flummoxed.

I think he doesn't know what to do. Do you have a similar impression or is this just normal Trump stuff? I don't think it is just normal. I don't think it can just be chalked up to normal Trump stuff. I think that's almost a cop-out. I think people will say, oh, read the R of the deal. No, you know, no problem. Everybody calm down.

But the problem is whatever we could chalk up to just being ordinary Trump bluster or, quote, negotiating, has never before taken place in a context of a giant military conflagration that he personally instigated. Right. And also, this is taking place in the context. of a military strategy or a larger kind of strategic calculus that can only be understood by listening for better or worse to whatever Trump blurt's out of his mouth on any given day or posts on

truth social. I think there's a larger policymaking process that we could consult for insight in terms of like what the policy trajectory is. So I've been almost, I've been comparing it to Iraq, the 2003 and, invasion in this sense. There was a very protracted lead-up to the Iraq invasion, right? There were lengthy hearings in Congress. There was a whole effort to try to get the UN Security Council to authorize the war, which

they didn't ultimately, but the Bush administration still tried to claim that it was authorized under earlier UN Security Council resolutions around weapons inspections in Iraq. And, you know, obviously, you know, the infamous Colin Powell speech to the U.N. Security Council, there was lots of public debating going on. Now that, so there's like a big policymaking apparatus, like the State Department, the Pentagon, lots of agencies would weigh in on this sort of interagency, this policymaking process that obviously was ultimately presided over by Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld, et cetera. but still kind of like encompassed. It was like still a whole of government effort. Now everything has gotten so shrunken or truncated such that it's really only Donald Trump, who on any given day knows what the policy is and he likes it that way.

He thinks that's good for his negotiating leverage, right? And it'll keep everybody guessing. And so all we're left to do is just like wait along with like 99% of the administration for the next rant on. on truth, social. So I don't think you can just, you know, explain away the volatility of his public statements by saying, this is just classic Trump. You know, it's the same as when he was negotiating with the New York City municipal government

to refurbish the woman rink in 1987, right? It's something that correlates directly or corresponds sort of intellectually to the day-to-day maintenance of the war and the, you know, the management of the war strategy. And so I think, yeah, he does seem to be getting, so, I mean, there's never, like, can you think, you can't, can you think of an analog, really, in the past, whether it was Trump's first term, even the first year of the second term, or, like, the interregnum period when he was out of office where he would say crazy stuff,

but, like, it didn't have as much real world, like, life or death impact as saying, we're going to wipe out your entire civilization if you don't do X, Y, or Z, within a certain number of hours. So the import has gotten much greater. But I also think that, you know, there is some indication that he's also personally becoming a bit more incoherent, like, which you would expect because he's turning 80 years old in June. Like, that's, that was kind of like the, the drop-off period for Biden in terms of his

cognitive aptitude. And I, you know, I think if you look at the, if you look at the, what do they call, like, the projections in terms of when somebody's, you know, I think. cognitive abilities really seem to fall off a cliff. If it's going to happen expeditiously or if there's going to be a dramatic decline, my understanding is it does tend to happen around exactly this age. I don't know about this. I don't know about the age.

I mean, obviously there's decline, but I don't know exactly when. He's become, you know, the art of the deal thing, it's like the definition of art of the deal seems to have changed. It used to be like you take an extreme position and then, something happens. This is like, it's weird. It's like you can't even think of a strategic rationale. It's all over the place. It's like, sometimes he says he's going to surrender. Sometimes he's like, we don't care about straight of her moves, right? Or we're going to have a venture with them. And then it's like, okay, yeah, sometimes he has like, we're going to kill them all. I don't know how, like, it keeps them off balance. It's not madman theory. It's like either I'm a madman or I'm going to completely surrender.

And you just have to kind of guess, which I'm going to do because I do both. The madman theory, quote, unquote, did not, quote, unquote, work. I mean, that originated with Richard Nixon, right? Or it didn't work where it was most sort of, like, vividly applied, which was supposed to be Vietnam. It was supposed to pressure or frighten the Soviet Union to stop supporting Vietnam or exert their own leverage on Vietnam so that at the Paris peace talks, the North Vietnamese would be more amenable to some sort of diplomatic accord to end the law. war that would be on the U.S. terms. That never happened. Did you see it? And whatever madman technique that Richard Dixon employed wasn't as wild

and crazy as this by any stretch of the imagination. Did you see, there was a David Ignatius piece in the Washington Post today on the talks. Did you see it? You know, just before we logged on, I saw a little excerpt of it. Yeah. Oh, maybe you saw the excerpt that I posted. Basically, he just says that the whole point of the article is he just says that the people he talks to. to close to the administration, say that Trump doesn't have any stomach for more fight, and the blockade thing is a, you know, a strategy to try to pressure Iran economically,

but probably he doesn't look. I don't buy that. I mean, did you happen to listen to him on Maria Bartaromo today? No, I've seen, I saw some clips of that. Okay, I mean, I just listened to the whole thing. And at one point, Maria Bartaromo was like, do you think, Mr. President, that the price of oil will come back down in time for the midterm elections. And he's like, oh, no, probably not.

Don't really care. Yeah. So do you think I think this whole idea that he's going to like maneuver and sort of try to comport things that they're most amenable to a Republican electoral fortunes of the midterm elections. It's just stupid. Why don't care if there isn't really care that much if the Republicans win? I don't think he cares about the Republicans. He cares about not being investigated for corruption and other things and not,

being impeached and then I think he's smart enough to know that even if there was no Iran war, like the historical pattern would be that the Republicans would lose regardless. Well, they might not have the Senate. The Senate is like 50-50. The Senate the markets are 50-50. So it's like it could make the difference whether

they keep the Senate or not. Okay, but what doesn't, what doesn't Trump have the stomach for? Like he's, he's too hurt and and, you know, bereaved about the images of destruction in Iran. He seems to really love exerting aggressive military power at this point. I'm saying I think he is only self-interested politically.

He wants a Republican victory, not because he loves conservative principles or something like that, but because he's about protecting Donald Trump and having Trump's power. And then eventually being having a Republican successor, so he doesn't get prosecuted after 2028. Yeah, he's got an interest in winning the election. And this thing is going to screw with him. If he fights a war from now until November, they're going to get massacred. I think he's politically shrewd enough to realize at this point that when he's not personally on the ballot, Republicans drastically underperform in the Trump era, whether or not there's a war employee.

There's really not much he could do to blunt that. Why not pursue these hairbrained military adventurism schemes that he's had bouncing around in his adult brain? But nobody can believe that, okay, he can expect the midterm to be tough regardless, but it doesn't mean like, nothing he does is going to have any impact. Like if gas, you know, oil is 200 a barrel versus if it's 80, that's obviously going to be electorally different. He's not going to say, screw it, whatever, right? But even if it's a slim Democratic majority.

In the House, he's kind of, it could be a different thing. He's going to investigate a majority and a huge Democratic majority. And that actually does make a difference. Not really because it's like he was going, he would be looking to get any major legislation passed in a Democratic Party. No, but he was a senior power, investigations. That's what he cares about. Right, but I'm saying Democrats could do that even with a slim majority.

Well, they might not get a – okay, they could or they could lose a few people, right? There could be some people who don't go along. And then it's not a guarantee that Democrats are going to – Nobody thinks it's a guarantee. I mean, to me, the thing that would only really affect him in terms of him trying to preserve self-interest in terms of the margins and the midterms is whether he could be convicted by the Senate after an impeachment trial. And I don't think there's any plausible scenario where Democrats would get enough seats where they could get – it's 67. votes, right? I think his entire, like, the way he's been profiting off the presidency.

I think 60 votes, actually. The way he's profiting off the presidency, like, he wants to keep being able to do that and not get in trouble for doing it in the past. And, like, having a slight Democratic majority versus a slight Republican majority or a large Democratic majority versus a slight Democratic majority, that matters. How does that not matter? I don't feel maybe it matters, but I don't think it matters so much that would override his determination to see through this grand military victory that he's been declaring that's going to be much more

impactful. I hate that term. That's going to be much more decisive in terms of his quote legacy than whether Republicans lose a couple more seats in Virginia or something. No, I don't think he like legacy. Would he be, you know, selling crypto like how the historian is going to remember him for like, you know, pardoning every criminal

who gives him money. I mean, I think the legacy thing does matter, actually, because that explains why he's so almost monomaniically focused nowadays on foreign policy. Because that is what is within his most unilateral control, right? And that's, you know, like there was a, I wrote about this a couple months ago when like the Venezuela thing was heating up. Why is Trump so focused on foreign policy? Why is he sending the largest naval armada in South American history?

He brags off the coast of Venezuela and bombing random boats and whatever. And there's a quote from Gore Vidal, where he's reflecting on his personal relationship with John F. Kennedy. And he relays that John F. Kennedy told him that he always thought, meaning J.F.K. always thought that for a president to be looked back on as like a truly great president in American history, they have to have a war. So they have to be thought of in the pantheon with Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt, et cetera. So the idea was that if presidents want to go down in history as this triumphant, glorious figure, they have to have a war that they successfully commanded or that leave their mark on the world. And I do think that is a big factor with Trump as how for sort of like scatterbrained and self-serving and almost petty his conception of the legacy is. I think that is a factor.

I mean, that's got to be a bigger factor than, again, making sure that John Foon is, you know, by any means possible, the Senate majority.