Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov - Trump’s Foreign Policy Could Define the Midterms — And He’s Losing

Episode Date: August 31, 2026

Jessica Tarlov is joined by Ryan Grim, reporter at Drop Site News and co-host of Breaking Points, for a wide-ranging conversation nine weeks before the midterms. They open with the state of the races. Democrats have flipped roughly 30 state legislative seats in special elections since Trump returned to office, while Republicans have flipped none. With a wave of progressives and anti-establishment candidates winning primaries, can Democrats make the big tent work in the general? And how would Ryan rate the Republican strategy heading into the fall? They check in on the race in Michigan with progressive Abdul Al-Sayed. And one primary still to watch: Massachusetts, where 80-year-old Senator Ed Markey is running for another six-year term against Rep. Seth Moulton. In a cycle where incumbents have been falling to younger, more progressive challengers, Markey has uniquely positioned himself as the more progressive candidate — touting his record as coauthor of the Green New Deal. Polling has him far ahead of the younger Moulton. What does Markey's campaign tell us about where the Democratic Party is heading? Then, according to reporting in The Washington Post, a classified Pentagon planning document revealed that senior U.S. military leaders have warned Secretary Pete Hegseth that sustaining current operations against Iran isn't feasible. Ryan breaks down how dire the situation actually is — and what it means that these officials are putting this on record, knowing how Hegseth treats military leaders who push back. A New York Times investigation has found that a growing number of political influencers are being paid by campaigns and outside groups to endorse candidates on social media without disclosing those payments to viewers, a practice that is largely unregulated at the federal level. And, more distressingly, the Pentagon appears to also have certain content creators on their payroll. What does this mean for the future of political media?  On the Canada trade war: Google Maps has renamed Lake Ontario "Lake America" for U.S. users, following the Gulf of Mexico precedent. Meanwhile, Republican lawmakers are speaking out against Trump's tariff escalation and his decision to allow 300,000 tons of foreign beef into the country duty-free. Is this another Trump news cycle that ends in a backdown — or something more serious? For ad-free episodes, exclusive livestreams, and to connect with Scott, Jessica, and the Raging Moderates community, join us at ProfG+ on Substack: https://ragingmoderates.profgmedia.com/ Get The Monday Rage newsletter: https://profgmedia.com/s/monday-rage/ Follow Raging Moderates on IG, Tiktok, and Facebook: https://www.instagram.com/ragingmoderatespod/ https://www.tiktok.com/@ragingmoderates https://www.facebook.com/ragingmoderates Follow Jessica Tarlov on Instagram, Substack, and Bluesky: https://instagram.com/jessicatarlov https://substack.com/@jessietarlov https://bsky.app/profile/jessicatarlov.bsky.social Follow Scott on Instagram, Substack, and Bluesky: https://instagram.com/profgalloway https://substack.com/@profgalloway https://bsky.app/profile/profgalloway.com Subscribe to our YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@RagingModerates Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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his own politics. Like Maine and Michigan, major Senate states. Let's launch a trade war with Canada. In the last two months of the midterms, he might even lose Nebraska. I think it's so absurd. It puts a spotlight on his unwillingness to deal with anything because he thinks we're all idiots. You're driving down the street and you're seeing the gas is $4.10 a gallon or whatever. God help you if you need diesel. And then we're doing another trade war. And I feel so horrible for people whose lives are being upended and businesses are going under for absolutely no reason.

Welcome to Raging Moderates. I'm Jessica Tarlov. And I am very excited. This is our final guest of Scott Free August. And he's a big one. Actually, I don't know how tall you are. So I don't know how big you are technically. your big deal.

About six one. Oh, okay. All right. Very good size. I'll take it. So, yeah, big guest. Ryan Graham, reporter at DropSight News, co-host of the Breaking Points podcast.

It's great to have you. Yeah, it's great to be here. Thanks for having me. One day maybe we'll meet in person when I'm out of this pantry that I'm trapped in in Long Island. But we have tons of news to get to. I want to hop around a lot,

but begin with elections. The midterms are, was it like 66 days away, which feels very soon. Despite all the positive polling and all the problems of Republicans, a lot of questions still remain as to whether the Democrats can pull out a win in the House or the Senate. So this far in Trump 2.0, Democrats have flipped 30 state legislative seats in special elections, and Republicans have flipped none. As we eye the general election, a little bit of historical context. In 2018, Democrats' special election overperformance started out at around 18 points, but it dropped to two points by November,

and they still netted 41 house seats that year. How are you thinking about the midterms at this point? And then I want to dig into the Civil War question of the mods versus the progressives. But what do you think is going on? Yes, you know, this is the cycle in which I've spent the most time covering kind of U.S. foreign policy. and it also is the cycle where I think it's going to have the biggest influence, at least since 2006, when that year, Rahm Emanuel was running the D-2C, if you remember, and recruited a whole bunch of veterans and wanted to make Democrats look tough on the Iraq war.

But an anti-war wave kind of swept Democrats in, and people were just so frustrated with the Iraq war. this time people are frustrated with the Iran war in a different way because while we've I think lost I think 13 service members at this point the it's just killing everybody here at home and for no reason whatsoever like there was no effort put in by the Trump administration to even lie about why we were doing it and then you get this thing where he keeps saying that it's over and we've won so people like okay there was no reason for us to be the there that was given to us other than that, yeah, I wanted to do this.

You keep telling us it's over and you've won. Yet I keep seeing news about you bombing them and them bombing us back. And gas is over $4 a gallon. Diesel's over $6 a gallon. The inputs to the entire economy, but particularly food and agriculture, are just killing us. And we've got a trade war now with Canada.

I mean, it's kind of shocking. the level of like lack of concern that he has for his own politics. Like Maine and Michigan, major Senate states. And Ohio. At Ohio. Let's launch a trade war with Canada. Like in the last two months of the midterms, he might even lose Nebraska. So he's like, oh, well, we're going to let in a whole bunch of beef from Argentina and

Brazil and give them a discount because beef prices are killing people. Oh, turns out the ranchers all hate that. I might possibly lose Nebraska. Kansas is at play. There was a poll that had, there was this liberal megachurch pastor, one point behind Roger Marshall. Yeah, he's very cool.

Yeah, it's like when you're talking about Kansas, we're almost in September, and you're talking about Kansas as potentially on the board, and he just keeps doing things to try to make it more difficult for Republicans to win. Like last night, bombing Iran again. like nobody made him do that why did he do that the hardliners inside iran were waiting for some

excuse to kind of break out of the stasis that was that is choking them and so they launched a whole bunch of strikes yesterday uh so it makes me really worried about what what he's got cooking when it comes to the actual election because there's no sense that he seems to care about the electorate checking him in november it's it's totally bizarre Yeah, like if your plan is to cheat, then what does it really matter, right? The size of the cheat that you have to pull off. Too big to rig. That's what Democrats have been saying.

And I think that it is very smart messaging. And I like the comparison to 2006. And it has made the divisions within the Democratic Party or between different ideologies of Democrats a lot easier, frankly, because you can go to a rally for the progressive candidate to the most conservative Democratic candidate. And they're talking about Donald Trump's war of choice. And they're talking about Donald Trump's culture of corruption and really calling out their own side on some of this, right? Just saying it, you know, it's the elites versus the little guy. I was in Texas on Saturday for a James Talarico event with Mark Cuban. And it's the same chat, right? I mean, it's a special story because obviously there's a little bit more

God talk when you have James Talleyko. But in general, we're largely on the same page, which gives me hope. And then by extension, it feels like we're also having so many useless fights. And I see this, a lot of it playing out online and Twitter is not real life. And you see this over and over again where you ask an actual person, like, who is Hassan Piker? And they have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. But for those of us that do, scroll for a living. It's reaching a fever pitch. How do you think about the big tent? And do you think that we're actually living in it? Well, we are because it's not up to anybody. Like, that's what people don't seem to understand is that there are no people at the door kind of checking IDs and, you know,

letting some people in and kicking some people out onto the side. walk. That's they the center left, the establishment wing of the party is rerunning the kind of same playbook they ran against Jeremy Corbyn when he was head of the labor party in the UK. And the difference is that the UK Labor Party literally has lists of party members. Like you and you can be kicked out of you can get kicked off the Labor Party list, even just a random voter in the middle of nowhere England. If they say, oh, you know, you posted on Facebook, this thing that we think is anti-Semitic, you are out of the labor party. That's a thing that can be done. And so therefore, the analogy of a tent actually is somewhat useful because a tent is a structure and there's an

in and out. Whereas in the United States, that's not what a party is. Like, there is no tent. Like, it's just the entire park. And everybody is allowed into the park. Nobody can keep you out of the park. So then it becomes who can get more people into that park compared to their other faction. And in Maine, it was the populist wing of the party. And it continued to be the popular swing of the party after they pushed, you know, Platner, after Platner left, Troy Jackson ends up, you know, with the nomination even after Platter. Then in Michigan, Abdul al-Sayed wins. So like, the question is not who's allowed in and out of the tent. It's, it's who has more people that are coming into it because Abdul al-Syad cannot kick third way out of the tent.

Like, Third Way has $15 million that they want to spend attacking the DSA and DSA-A adjacent candidates. Nobody can stop them from doing that. In a parliamentary system or like something in the UK, you can sort of stop them from doing it. Like, a party leader can be like, no, you know what, third way folks? Like, you guys are ruining what we're trying to do here. So you're out.

Like, we are literally excommunicating you from the party. Can't do that here in the U.S. But what third way keeps finding out is that they don't have the juice anymore. Like, it was effectively their elevation of Hassan Piker in the primary that polarized that campaign around the question of APAC and support for Israel in a way that it had not been before. And when Mallory McMorro came out so hard against him, it made her. appear like she was closer to Haley Stevens. We had run a poll right around that time that showed that effectively El Saya did not have a path to victory unless all three stayed in the race.

That changed when McMorro kind of lost that kind of middle ground vibe that she had been cultivating so effectively for so long. In our head-to-head polling that we did, he lost to both McMorro and Stevens' head-to-head. But that was right as Third Way was jumping into the race. So now they're doing it again. They're trying to polarize the entire race around this question of Hassan Piker. I think it makes them look out of touch. I think it makes them look a little bit crazy.

Like we're on week three of this or whatever. It makes the media look crazy. It makes Mike Rogers look crazy. It makes this Democratic establishment look nuts. And as long as he's, and it'll be fascinating to see him curious. if you take on this, if they do this, they throw the entire kitchen sink, everything in the kitchen sink at Hassan Piker and Abdul's side and his relationship with Asan Piker, and he pushes through and maintains his lead and wins anyway, that is a pretty crushing blow to them. Because then they'd have to

come up with something. They would have to come up with their own ideas and agenda that they want to run on, because they would have tried every possible way to run a negative campaign against the left to say, like, they're bad people, they're toxic, and their political, you know, their political kryptonite. If they try all that and the populist wing still wins, then the establishment has to say,

oh, here's, okay, we have an idea that we would like to pitch to the voters and just vaguely saying affordability doesn't cut it. But because they are so thoroughly funded, by corporate interests. Like third way is not getting grassroots dollars to come, go attack VSA. Anything that people might like

is going to run up against the donors who are willing to fund that. And so I think their kind of house of cards collapses at that point. Well, there was a lot there. And, you know, and I worked in British politics when I was living abroad and doing my PhD.

over there and, you know, worked on a campaign against Ken Livingston, who was very closely associated with Jeremy Corbyn, and I think there are very real accusations of anti-Semitism and anti-Semitic rhetoric. I think that is true also in the American political space, but I think what serves us best at this moment in time when we have an election to win is to understand that respective of whatever third way is doing, that there are a bunch of voters in Michigan who, who are apprehensive about Abdul al-Sand, and who he has to make the case to. And he obviously understands this, right?

He's apologized now to the Jewish community for his comments after the synagogue attack, right? The synagogue attack saying, you know, hurt people will hurt people and that it was, you know, certainly poorly timed and kind of undid his condemnation of the event in the first place. And he has very smart people working for him. And now he has a lot of that, quote unquote, establishment money.

That's flowing through a Chuck Schumer, which is authorized a $4.5 million ad buy that will help him a lot. And I'm relieved to see that because we can't make any change unless people are in office. And I wish that we would focus on that. And Abdul Al-Sayad has a lot more in common with people who are even more of the third-way brand than not. I guess you were polling in that race, which I think is really interesting. And I know that the McMorough people have been defensive of their choice to stay in because she had just received a million dollars in funding and they thought that she had

a pathway there. What do you think the odds are at this point? Because I know the map is opening, right? Like you were saying, we're looking at Kansas. We're looking at Mississippi. I was in Texas. I love Josh Turrick, Mary Potola, all of it. But it would be a huge waste, right, to lose this seat that we've held for decades at this point with Michigan. So how do you see the race right now? And do you think that Abdul will stick to his, I'm not campaigning with Hassan Piker line because that's where they are. And I'm sure that Hassan is comfortable with that because he wants to win too. It's a really interesting question. And I think there are a couple different layers to it. One is, how big is the margin going to be? Like, what is the, you know, Alyssa Slokin won by 20,000

votes in 2024, but that was a pretty Republican year. Very. So let's say Alyssa Slokin is redoing the race with Mike Rogers and she's looking at a 200, 300,000, in this environment, something like that. In that case, how many votes can his rivalry with the kind of party establishment cost him? Is it tens of thousands? Is it 200,000? That's an open question. And it much depends, I think, on kind of how active the contest is in September and October. Like, are the near attendance of the world going to continue, and not just nearer, but like that entire ecosystem, are they going to continue to gin up as much kind of hostility towards Al-Sai'at as possible? and if so, can he surmount that? Or do they look at this and say, you know, we have, this is too much. Like, he hasn't done the full, complete,

and total capitulation that we've wanted, but he has abjectly apologized in this speech. He has said he's not going to campaign with him. He denounced these particular comments. He criticized his own comments. Like, we've gotten a lot. Let's now actually try to win this. And I think that it is my understanding,

and I realize that I'm doing what I criticize other people for that we're talking about this too much and there are so many other things to get to. But Nira is supportive of Abdul Al-Said's campaign. Like, everyone has gotten in line. Nira's support of her, of El-Said, doesn't extend so far beyond saying that she is supportive of him.

Every objective action that she takes helps Mike Rogers. Like, so far. Like, if she was supportive of him, she would never say his name again. between now and November. So she does say it. It's becoming increasingly transparent that this effort is undermining him.

So let's, but now we have to see, like, do they continue to push that? The other huge question is Detroit. Like, you know, Mike Rogers has asked APEC not to spend in the race, which is utterly fascinating in its own right. Totally. And very undercover. word. Also, right, because all we've been talking about is the non-iker. But yes, exactly. After spending

whatever they spent in the primary, 60 million or whatever, they said we're going to spend tens of millions to support Mike Rogers in the general. Mike Rogers said, no, don't do that. Instead, you should funnel all your money to me. Well, I'll hire your strategists. Right after he said that, he went out and did three at three fundraisers in California organized by APAC. Some real questions about the legality of some of this, as long as they're not going over the limits. But a lot of APEC's recent power comes from people who are giving

$100,000, $500,000 million to United Depocracy Project their Super PAC. And you can't give that directly to the campaign. You could give it to the NRC. You could give it to the party and they coordinate that way because the Supreme Court's loosening those rules.

If they spend endless amounts of money in Detroit, trying to drive a wedge between him and black voters in Detroit, that could be another 50 to 100,000 votes that he has to then overcome. If there are people in the Upper Peninsula who are kind of skeptical of him, you know, that could be another, you know, he could lose out there. So then it depends on how much he's able to juice his own turnout, which I think will be substantial, especially because of Trump's insistence on

talking so openly about like rigging the election, pushing the mail-in restrictions at the Supreme Court, nothing galvanizes people to vote more. This is all the political science data backs us up, then telling them that they can't vote. Like that's the thing. That's the main thing that get people out. And it has swamped so many of the voter suppression efforts that Republicans have engaged in in the past because they become public. And then, yes, they do end up suppressing some percentage of people by putting up all these hoops, but people who otherwise wouldn't have voted come out and vote just to say, like, how dare you? So whether or not he could, you know, the surge in turnout and the climate can overcome, you know, those kind of three obstacles,

I think is going to answer the question of whether or not he can win. Now, people are saying, well, you're taking a risk with him. I think you would have been taking a huge risk with Haley-Stevens, too, because then you're looking at, um, Dearborn and young people across the state of Michigan showed in 2024 that their frustration with the positions of the Democratic Party, particularly as it relates to Israel, can have an influence on the overall turnout. So that would have been its own risk. So I don't know.

What do you think? I still think the smart money is on El-Sai, but it's going to be a tough race. Yeah. Yes. I'm feeling better about it. I mean, it was the first couple of polls that came out after the primary that had him losing. And since then, it's been better, though someone who has worked in polling and research, looking at the disasters polling-wise that we saw in the Michigan race and in Wisconsin,

I'm a little bit like play like you're a hundred down and, you know, don't count any chickens before they've hatched or roosted, whatever you're supposed to. I guess chickens don't roost. Anyway, before they patched. I am feeling more optimistic about it. And that is, in large part, also due to the flexibility that we have seen from the candidate in that it seems like he is just on board for whatever it takes to win. And I don't mean that in a disingenuous way that he doesn't believe in the things that he says. He seems like somebody who wouldn't actually say things that he didn't believe in. So I'm glad that he's listening to communities that are concerned.

I worry about Jewish voters and I worry about black voters. I love how Haley Stevens is managing her loss. She is the most graceful loser, I think, that we've seen in politics. She is, you know, full throttle, let's get this done, you know, come to the unity breakfast, going to do whatever she needs to do. And I think that that will have a big impact in Detroit. So I'm optimistic about it. I guess as someone who talks about these issues a lot and also works in conservative media,

I'm just exhausted of the same conversation. And I do think, frankly, that reducing Hassan Piker or this discourse writ large to, like, we're just talking about a Twitch streamer is not effective when people have real concerns and that it's just going to take that much more work, right? For Abdul to represent his beliefs as distinct from the narrative that has been created around him. Or at least that's what I sat up Friday on the 5 or Thursday. And it went over pretty well. It's like, yes, he's a Twitch streamer, but also this is a prevalent way of thinking on the progressive left. And you got to deal with it. You're trying to win a swing state.

So cautiously optimistic about the situation. And I think that his race also has a lot of impact on races around the country that are going to be close. And you see other candidates, especially more moderate ones that are trying to win in red states, not just in purple states, having to figure out how they're going to talk about those issues. So, like, in Iowa, they're hunkering down. Like, I love Rob Sand out there saying, no thanks Joe Biden, no thanks Kamala Harris, really living this turn the page thing. Like I said, I was with Talariko. John Ossoff, you know, someone who I think would fit into that mold that you would traditionally call a third way mold, he's found his way to do that. And the fact that so many moderates have swung against the idea of sending money for offensive weapons to Israel, I think, shows where even the base of the party is, no matter, you know, what kind of.

of state you're representing. So I'm in a good mood about it, I would say generally. Support for the show comes from ground news. I'm going to read you two headlines pertaining to the recent story about Amazon drone deliveries. From UPI, Amazon to expand drone delivery to nearly 500 cities, towns this year. And from digital trends, Amazon really, really wants to make drone deliveries normal as it expands to 500 cities. Same story, different takes. You can find these using Ground News' app and website, the go-to solution for getting down to the facts of important stories, rather than getting lost in the hype of the headlines. Ground News is basically the Spotify of News, telling you who owns each outlet, where it leans politically, and whether you're reading

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Obviously, Markey is to the left of Seth Moulton, but polling shows Markey far ahead and Calci currently has the odds of Markey winning at 99%. I've been surprised that Congressman Moulton is down 30 points to Markey. Do you think that that actually bears out on election day or there'll be a bit of a surprise in this primary? No, I think that, I mean, maybe I'll be embarrassed on election night, but I do think the lead is serious. And I think that we're kind of, Markey is an interesting window into the shallowness of the kind of generational analysis. Because, you know, six years ago, he was an old man.

He's been old for a long time. Old for a very long time. Yeah. Now he's older, but he spoke to young Kennedy. six years ago. And Seth Moulton, I think he's such a perfect 2000s candidate.

Veteran, sensible centrist, well-spoken, good-looking. He says. Yeah, everything Rahm Emanuel would have wanted in a 2006 or 2008, you know, house recruit, willing to challenge his own party.

You know, tried to go up against Nancy Pelosi back when she was speaker. But when you peel it a little bit, you're like, well, what does he stand for? With Ed Markey, you know, he was fighting for the Green New Deal. He's fighting. He's kind of a bold, progressive.

Like, you kind of know where he is. With Seth Molling, you're like, what is he really, what's his thing? And if you're in Massachusetts, just triangulating to beat a Republican isn't on voters' minds. in the same way. So I think there are so many young people in Massachusetts that, like, respect Ed Markey.

And that's going to be enough. And then the older people who are, and also the kind of like lower information voters, they just, you know, he's been, Ed Markey's been their guy since 1972 or something. But that was supposed to be the problem. Right. And all of these leaders were supposed to be cognizant of the fact that passing the torch is something important. I mean, think how much rightful criticism. Biden got for marketing himself as a bridge candidate that could beat Donald Trump and then

pass it to the next generation, whether that's Kamala Harris or a Buttig, you know, whoever would have emerged from an open primary in 2024. Although if he could have kept string and sentences together, I think. It would have been better. Yeah. Coherence is a big deal. And Ed Markey is coherent. But, and I understand for Massachusetts voters, it might be in the back of their mind that they

don't have a real Republican opposition to make this complicated. But the actuarial tables are undefeated. If Scott were here, he would be talking about this, right? And Ed Markey will be 86 years old. That seems too old. And if he were running for president, I think that that would be a bigger deal. I think, you know, the Democrats in Pennsylvania voted for Federman after he had his stroke, unsure if he could even speak, basically. But they knew that he was going to vote the way that they wanted compared to Mehmet Oz. They don't seem that happy with that choice.

They thought, they thought, yes. And his voting record has been. His voting record is fine. It's always funny to me when people freak out. I used to say this about Joe Manchin. Like, please just calm down about him a little bit because his voting record is just fine. It's better than Dr. Oz would be if he were in there. Yeah.

And so I think if I think if I. Yana Presley had decided to run against him, I think she cooks him this cycle. Okay. Like, she should have done that. Like, I don't, I know she wants to be senator. She's eyeing that seat. She's doing the Massachusetts thing of waiting until, you know, there's an opening and it's your turn. But I think if she had run the combination of young people supporting her and also wanting some generational change would have been enough to power her past him.

But I think generational change is not enough if the voters think they're going to get something weaker, politically speaking. So especially if it's just the Senate where people are like, yeah, what's the job, like physically show up and just vote? I think people have pretty low expectations at this point of what they can ask for out of their senators and reps. Well, that's a bummer in its own right. But I do think you're right. I also imagine if Ianna Presley had signal that she would be willing to jump the line that Markey might have retired. Like my feeling in New York, I'm a New Yorker, is that if AOC tells Schumer she wants to do this, that he will retire versus having some ugly generational and ideological fight. Yeah.

You know, with the next generation. So. Yeah, I think you're probably right. I don't know. I was just surprised by the size of the lead, I guess. I expected Markey to win, but I'm thinking maybe like 10, 15 points, not seeing a 30-point chasm. And maybe that will- Maybe that will be exaggerated.

Yeah. Yeah. So you mentioned when we first started talking about, you know, this is your first cycle covering foreign policy so closely and the connections to what's going on here. We have some new pretty crazy stories out of the Washington Post. The first that they're reporting that senior U.S. military leaders and the armed. Navy and Air Force chiefs, plus combatant commanders over Europe, Asia, and Latin America have warned Pete Hegg-Seth that sustaining current operations against Iran isn't feasible long-term. And this is per a classified August 14th Pentagon planning document. We know that the stockpiles are dwindling, and I'm being generous and just using dwindling as the term. Where do you think things stand and how, from your reporting, just, you know, your perspective on this, how is, how is. is hegesse ignoring all of this.

Because it feels like at a certain point, I'm not saying you'd really have like a mutiny or coup or whatever, but that like there are enough solid guys and gals in these positions who would be like, we have to go to the top or make this public in some way because it's going to be disastrous and we're going to have more American lives lost and all the bad things. What's so fascinating about this is this is one of the moments

where kind of the American political conversations and kind of just general thinking about how the world operates is colliding so thoroughly with like real material reality. The U.S., because of its global power, we can print money. We've got the Federal Reserve operates in a way that no other Central Bank in world history has ever really been able to operate.

our raw soft power is enough such that when our presidents speak, like it moves entire nations. And so we have lost touch with the idea that underneath that, there is a material reality. And that's being exposed now. And in particular, you know, they don't need to launch a coup or launch a mutiny because the stockpiles are what they are. And that's the fascinating moment.

Like, you know, Hegeseth can reject the advice of these admirals and generals and say, you know what, we're pushing forward anyway. But at some point, you just physically run out of the ability to do the thing. So it's like, you can believe these guys are not. But like, if you are expending two to four patriot missiles for every ballistic missile that Iran is, is firing at Jordan or Israel or Qatar or Bahrain. And you started with a particular amount, which is a public amount of ballistic missile interceptors, and we can count them down.

And we know you've drawn them in from Korea. We know you've reduced the amount going to Ukraine. We know that, and over Drops, they reported that Israel's own ballistic missile defense stockpile is down into the double digits. they're relying almost exclusively on the U.S. Navy to intercept. They're not getting targeted right now, but as they were at the end of this last war, and if Iran starts striking them again, they're going to be relying almost exclusively

on the U.S. to try to intercept these missiles. So these are just facts. Like, these things cost millions of dollars apiece. They take years to produce, and we're running out of them. the other fact is that the 15 plus bases that we, you know, had been operating for decades are in ruins. And particularly NSA Bahrain, which, you know, how's the fifth fleet, can no longer serve as the logistics and supply hub for the Lincoln Aircraft Carrier Strike Group that is there. It's leaving. It's being replaced by the George Washington. But bringing in the George

Washington aircraft carrier strike group does not change the underline. fact that you can no longer supply from Bahrain, that you now have to go to Diego Garcia, 2,200 kilometers away, it takes 10 days or something to make a round trip. And so everything just falls apart. So that is the reality that we're living in. We did so much to ignore that when we launched the war. You know, even it, and I'm sure you saw this, because I've noticed that, like, on the five, you're the only one that seems to have any idea what's going on in reality. Again, I remember at one point you were like, well, people are saying. Yeah, you can read Dropside or not, but like if you don't, you're just going to be lied to.

But like reading it going into the war, you would not have been surprised because Iran was saying very publicly, if you attack us, we are going to turn this into a regional war. We're going to attack all of your bases in all of these Gulf countries and we're going to attack Israel. this is not going to be the tit-for-tat thing that we did during the 12-day war. They even wrote a letter to like the UN where they laid all this stuff out. They told it to us, to Jeremy Scahill in interviews. They said it publicly. It was not a surprise to anybody who was listening. And that was another example of our kind of idealized view of the world clashing

and like smashing headlong into reality. It's like, oh, we're going to kill the Ayatollah, and we're going to do all this, and then, and then their Kurds are going to come in and yada, yada, yada, we're going to democracy in Iran or whatever is going to happen. Instead, all of our bases are lying in ruins, and we're almost out of ballistic missile interceptors, and two of our aircraft carrier groups have been chased away. Well, it's also a story about hard-headed leadership, and I'm not even talking about the really powerful people, talking about, like, the top one to three people, because there has been also. extensive reporting on how many people whose opinions should matter, like Secretary Rubio, CIA director Ratcliffe, were saying, this is bad shit insane, right? I think that that was the quote from Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan on it. And I, because you brought it up. I, and I did want to ask you about this. So I read Drop Sight. And on this particular issue, I think you guys have been,

leagues ahead of a lot of press rooms that are much better. funded and certainly enormous on a comparative basis. You know, the scoop over the MOU I think was particularly impressive. And I mentioned that and obviously credited you guys with that when I talked about it on the five. How are you managing to do this, first of all? And what do you think about the balance between being independent media and also a newsroom in this way? Because usually it's bifurcated. And, you know, the rise of independent media, which I think is really important. And like, listen, I love having a podcast. I think this is, you know, such a great way for me to be long form and to talk to different people than my, you know, I'm on a show that's cast with

the same five people every day. And you think of independent media a lot more in that sense, right? People who are able to go out on a podcast. But DropSight is doing something different. Right. Yeah. The immediate answer to that is Jeremy Skatehills reporting on the Gaza genocide then had produced enough sources so that when they expanded the war over to Iran, you know, he was better positioned than pretty much any Western reporter to be able to report accurately on what, on what their thinking was and how they were planning to respond to these attacks. But to your broader point, yes, we were very, Jeremy and I and Oskia, renner, our editor-in-chief, were very kind of deliberate about how we did not want to be, you know, just kind of sub-stackers because we felt like institutions and kind of newsrooms were not the problem. Like the idea of collectively gathering news and reporting it accurately, there's nothing wrong

with that idea. What was wrong is the way that's, what's wrong is the way that's, so many newsrooms are doing it and deliberately cutting off huge parts of the world where they just refuse to listen to what other people are saying. And so we really believe that even if it was going to be a very small one to start, that we needed to create an institution, not just, not just us as individuals kind of popping off or even doing our own kind of one-off investigative pieces. We also have a pretty big team now that is able to read and listen to news from all over the world and from the region. And so you can get leads from telegram channels that the rest of the kind of Western press is not covering.

So it's a very simple concept, the idea that you should be talking to everybody who's involved in the situation. Like, it's every, I think everyone in journalism, any journalism professor that you would talk to would say, yeah, that's, we teach that in the first day of class. Yet, when you actually do it, people start to freak out. Like, well, those are terrorists. How can you talk to them? And so because of their reticence around that, they just left the entire field open for a news organization. to come in and be like, no, we're going to, we don't care one way or the other. We're just going to talk to the people who are involved in this situation, whether they're in Oman, Pakistan, Iran,

the United States, Qatar, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, or wherever. Like, if they're involved and they have access to information, we're going to try to get that information and share it with the public. And then the public can do with it what they want. Yeah, I mean, I definitely, I think I fall in the public and do with it what they want because there are, you know, some perspectives that drops I believes in or brings forward that I don't necessarily share, especially on the Israel-Palestine conflict and, you know, genocide. That's not a term that I used to discuss it, but there are, you know, sources that you have and perspectives that I think are valuable in shaping this complete picture of what's going on.

And it has been very useful to me and to a lot of people. So I'm glad that you guys are out there doing that. Support for the show comes from Hymns. If you have weight loss goals, you know it takes time to actually reach them. And weight loss by Hymns is designed to support you every step of the way. Wagovi is the first ever GLP 1 pill for weight loss, so there are no needles involved. With Wagovi at Hymns, they say you can lose up to 20% of your body weight when combined with diet and exercise. It helps you regulate your appetite, eat less, and keep the weight off.

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You know the Washington Post piece about the conservative influencers that are actually being paid according to their reporting. And I know the administration is pushing back, but they push back on everything. And then they only bring lawsuits about, you know, Jimmy Kimmel. So the idea is that there are former, there are veterans that have big platforms that are getting, you know, some semblance of marching orders from the Pentagon. Folks like Kirch Lictor is one of the ones that they name in it,

who writes for Town Hall. you know, and this is a larger question going on in media right now. The New York Times had a huge piece about liberal influencers that are being paid by politicians or causes for their perspectives. How do you see this? I imagine that you're not surprised by the Washington Post reporting, but, you know, how do you look at that landscape and how do you think about that in reference to doing good journalism yourself when you're doing a piece? I actually, maybe I'm not cynical enough, but I was even. even a little surprised by that. Like, I mean, first of all, it doesn't seem necessary.

By the military ones or the Democratic influencers. Okay. Yeah, well, I mean, the Democratic influencers, that one didn't surprise me. Because Democrats have been doing that. They've got their thing chorus. It's a very old idea that where Democrats and Republicans, too, if they're running a campaign, they're like, how do we reach the young people? Let's get some TikTokers and Instagram people and hire them.

Like that. Yeah, in 2024 was a wash with this on both sides. Yeah. Right. The actual Pentagon putting, you know, so-called journalists on its payroll, that was like, that one struck me as wow. Also, like, I don't understand why they need to even do that. Like, typically, both parties, when they're in control of the White House will do this. They'll, they'll have sympathetic journalists that they'll send out talking points to. Why is that not sufficient? You also have to pay them to do this for you. That part struck me as quite odd and deeply disturbing when it comes to how this current

Pentagon understands its relationship to the press, because it also follows that very famous revolution that they did where they threw out basically the Pentagon Press Corps. All the real reporters. And replace them with these total clowns that we all kind of had fun, kind of making fun of and who had no idea what they were doing. Like, if you remember in the very beginning, you'd have several of them were saying, hey, so we just got out of an off-the-record briefing. It's off the record, so I can't tell you what was discussed, but here's what was discussed.

And they, like, didn't even understand. They weren't breaking norms that they thought were unfair and undemocratic and in principle. they just had no idea what they were doing. They thought maybe it just meant they couldn't say the name of the person who had given them the brief. So all this off the record stuff is spilling out. And then most recently this data Republican woman who turns out to be on the payroll of the Pentagon was given a leak and didn't understand how leaks worked and thought she was being set up to go to prison. It just demonstrated a real skills gap in just journalism and just understanding. how the world works, and then to find out that not only are these the best you've got,

you're even paying them, was kind of shocking to me. Well, I think, you know, putting it side by side with the realities of how the war is going, I think it's the part that makes it worse for me. Because I do, you know, everybody's got to earn a living, I guess, and being in journalism is that the highest paying job you could have. So I get it, right? If, you know, something shows up. But you're totally.

But when you think about this being a cadre of veterans, right, who are talking about something as important as war when other veterans or service members could lose their lives as a consequence of this, because the longer that we're there, right, the higher the likelihood. That's what really jolted me about it, right? This isn't like, you know, doing a Tom Stey or damn. or whatever, and saying, like, you know, he's the one good billionaire or whatever. You know, this, it felt heavier to me. And it'll be interesting to see where it goes. I'm fearful of where they go with this stuff, like, you know, attributed to the Washington Post. This is their reporting.

Everyone has been pretty buttoned up because they know how litigious the Trump administration is. So I want to be buttoned up, too. The Washington Post said it. I didn't say it. But it did shock me too. I guess these influencers better hurry up and get the bag because pretty soon they'll just be able to make AI influencers that look like real people.

And those fake people can go out and say he's the only good billionaire. So I guess, yeah, they better cash those checks while they still can. It's just such an ugly landscape in general. Before we go, I want to talk a little Canada. I can't believe, does Google Maps have to do this, that they already have renamed it, the Lake of America. It feels like there should be some sort of standard, right, where you just say,

until I get a court order that this has to happen. I do know they have to get along with the administration and the big tech companies. That was a piece. I guess it didn't surprise me, but I was paying attention to when all of them are now courting the Democrats too because they know odds are that we're going to be in power

the next time. Republican lawmakers are speaking out against Trump's escalation. you mentioned this when we first started, especially in those swing states, as well as this decision to allow 300,000 tons of the beef to get in, even though some has been recalled. I saw someone post this, and I don't remember who it was, so I'm sorry that I'm not crediting you, though I don't think it was like a reporter. I think it was just a hot take. But that Lake of America is working perfectly for Trump because he doesn't want to talk about anything real at this point because the real stuff is so abysmal. for him. So even if it elevates someone like Mark Carney and he's the guy who looks like the leader of the free world by comparison, that he's fine with that if he doesn't have to talk about the war and he

doesn't have to talk about, you know, health care or any of the things that will actually be important to people when they vote. And it's deeply unpopular. Even Republicans aren't into this Lake of America thing. It's minus four with them, minus 42 overall. The idea that we should be renaming a 400-year-old name that predated Canada even. Yes. Right. At least Gulf of Mexico, like, you understood, okay, the name Mexico is in there. So that's why we're controlling Mexico and why we're angry and while we're training it.

It's like Ontario, like that's, there's nothing to your point. Yeah, it's a Native American name. We have cities called Ontario in the United States. Canada is in North America also. So the new name is not even an own of them. Well, we don't care about the rest of the continent. And what about the other lakes?

Like so Canada now gets the name four of them. We only get one or whatever. I think that while the decision itself is underwater and it does let him talk about something other than all the things that he's screwing up, I think it's so absurd that it highlights, It puts a spotlight on his unwillingness to deal with anything. Because when people hear it, they're like, oh, that's the idiotic stuff that he's focusing on because he thinks we're all idiots. I don't think it works as the distraction that he might think it does.

You're driving down the street and you're seeing the gas is $4.10 a gallon or whatever. And God help you if you need diesel. You're seeing or you're hearing about the unemployment numbers, job losses. And then you're hearing that the war is, we're back in the war again, thought this was over. Like, what, what's going on here? And the, and the, and the tariffs seemed over because of all the payouts. Right, but they're still going. And then we're doing another trade war.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And Canada's targeting, you know, Trump voting areas. So, you know, they can't really buckle the entire American economy, but they can cause immense amount of damage in, in very specific places. by going after particular products. And I feel so horrible for people whose lives are being upended

and businesses are going under for absolutely no reason. And it sounds like Howard Lutnik played a significant role in blowing this up because he can't stop running his mouth and offending people. And lobbying for God only knows what interest that he and or his friends

or sons are involved in. So you've got the Jameson Greer, the U.S. Trade Representative negotiating with the Canadians. And then the last minute, you have Howard Lutnik coming in and blowing things up. And I think it's like, why, why is this, why? Like, why is Howard Lutnik involved in this at all? Like, who is, like, what kind of administration is this?

It just is just such an insult to everybody involved, including the American people. And meanwhile, you're engaged in a hot war with Iran, a trade war with Canada, laying this beef in. Everything's getting recalled. Like, there's this cyclospora thing going everywhere because your HHS secretary believes in voodoo. The entire country is getting put at risk by this incompetence. And then, like, every day, it's like, oh, now avocado is,

you know, guacamole has been recalled. You name it, like, every single day. The biggest lesson for me of the recalls has been, how much more I'm paying to go to Whole Foods for the same products that you could get at Walmart or Target. That killed me. Like, you know, when they said, oh, it's the Guacamole at Whole Foods. And I was like, this is another Taylor Farms. I am eating the same shit.

I'm just paying six times more. I want to just full circle on this. Mike Rogers has decided inexplicably to support Trump wholesale on the tariffs. And that is also working an update. I'll say it's favor. It seems like a lot of these Republicans are just doing everything that they can to make it easier for challengers. Even in red states, Ken Paxton this weekend was so embarrassing at his little gaggle that had 10 people at it. Just waiting for dad to send a Venmo, essentially.

That's how I think of MAGA Inc. at this point that Trump's just sitting there. It's like, okay, go ahead. Give him $10 million. Perfect example of that is Pete Ricketts, the Nebraska-Rubarak. Republican, whose dad, like, started Ameritrade and basically, you know, owns the Cubs and basically bought his boy Pete, a Senate seat. And now he's up against this independent. I love Dan Osborne. Yeah. He's great.

I also, I don't talk about Annie Andrews enough in South Carolina. That's my last question. Do you think there is any chance or the Graham name, even though it's Nordone? It's too much. I think it's possible. I mean, Darlene barely squeaked past Ralph Norman. She only won with a huge lift from Trump. So could there be a reject, like it has to be a multi-layered rejection,

like rejecting the idea of this entitlement to the seat, being mad at Trump, Norman and Freedom Caucus and MAGA voters who were upset that Norman lost, combined with Annie being a very inoffensive Democrat who, like, I'm sure you noticed in her, like, launch ad. She definitely did not mention she was a Democrat and said, like, her only policy that she was, she said, I'm going to work with Republicans to cut taxes. I was like, and I'm a doctor. And I'm a doctor.

Because no one asks your politics when you take your kid in to see the pediatrician. Right. Well, I guess now in a weird vaccine phase. Now they do. Now it's a polarizing. Another fucked up aspect of Trump. 2.0. Ryan Grimm, it was so great to have you.

Thank you for your time. Yeah, thank you for having me. Support for the show comes from Atio. Everyone's talking about how AI is changing how we work. But one thing isn't changing. The win. The moment the hard work pays off. That's the moment Atio is built for.

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