The Bulwark Podcast - David French and Suhas Subramanyam: The Superpower Folded in Front of the Whole World

Episode Date: April 8, 2026

Trump showed that he is completely unequipped to be a war leader. He threatened crimes against humanity, and not only let a foe prove it could take our punches, but also inflict economic pain on the global economy as well. Indeed, with the closing of the Strait of Hormuz, Iran looks to have emerged from the war with a stronger hand. We also don't know how much Trump's financial ties to Gulf countries are influencing his wild and erratic handling of the war. And if this military operation was just about Israel's national security, then that should have been explained to the American people from the start. Plus, the threat an Orbán loss would pose to MAGA, the key redistricting election in Virginia, and how Dems would prioritize oversight if they win back the House.David French and Rep. Suhas Subramanyam join Tim Miller. show notes TNL live last night after Trump folded Wednesday's "Morning Shots"  Tim's debate over the war with Rep. Josh Gottheimer Tix on sale soon for The Bulwark LIVE in San Diego on May 20 and in Los Angeles on May 21 

And welcome to the Bullard podcast. I'm your host Tim Miller. We get a double-headed today. In segment two, we have a discussion with a Democrat on the Oversight Committee about what to expect next year. He's also going to give us an update on the critical redistricting ballot initiative fight in Virginia. Polls are showing that's a lot closer than I would have expected. So, you know, if you're just so blown away by guest one that you don't make it to segment two. If you live in Virginia, have friends there, make sure to vote early or turn out on April 21st.

Up first. We needed somebody to match the gravity of the moment this morning. So we've called in an opinion columnist for the New York Times, co-host of the legal podcast advisory opinions and a former JAG officer, among many other things. It's David French. How you doing, sir? Tim, you know, I'm doing better than the alternatives today, but wow. Wow. Yeah, wow. Let's start in the meta before we get into the details. And obviously, by the time folks are seeing this, they have seen. that we did not do civilizational destruction as our president threatened last night. My friend showed me this clip because I'm not a local news watcher here in Louisiana, but he's like, did you watch the local news today? And I was like, no, I didn't. Who watches the 5 o'clock news?

My crazy friend, I guess. And he sent me on it, it was like, do, do, do. It's like Channel 4 News. The president is threatening civilizational destruction. And potholes on Clairbonne Avenue are being filled. So, you know, it's a strange world to ring. You posted this, and it resonated with me. Because last night, I was obviously, you know, I was obviously relieved that things didn't

escalate. But at the same time, I was pissed and frustrated. And you post, you know, about that same feeling, about how you were furious that he put so many people through this senseless, anxious, and dangerous day. Let's talk about that on the metal level before we get into the deal. Yeah. I want to really emphasize that what happened was unacceptable on every front. You know, I've seen some of the bag of people saying things like, oh, come on.

We've watched this for 10 years. He says something extreme, kind of just stir the pod. And then he reaches a deal. And, you know, yes, we have seen these kinds of things. We've seen extreme over-the-top tariffs get somewhat rolled back. We've seen other extreme things happen that, you know, he changes and he twists and he distorts. And then we've also seen him carry. all the way through, like January 6th, right? We've seen that the man, yeah, sometimes he

negotiates and sometimes he breaks through every single line that exists. And so there is just no justification for threatening, not just a war crime, Tim, not just a war crime. Because I think that that's a word that we use it a lot, unfortunately, because we've had to use it a lot. There's a big category. It's a big. It's a big category. It can encapsulate everything from an individual soldier killing a civilian completely on his own to a president in the United States ordering a strike that violates the law. But this is beyond that. What he was threatening would be categorized as a crime against humanity. In other words, a genocide level or close to genocide level crime is what a crime against humanity is. And why would I say that? I would say that

because already the UN has classified what Russia is doing to Ukraine as a crime against humanity. And one of the foundational elements of their claim that Russia is committing a crime against humanity is Russia's relentless campaign against Ukraine's infrastructure, that Russia has tried and tried and tried to totally annihilate Ukraine's infrastructure, which would plunge the country into unimaginable suffering. It hasn't been able to do it successfully because of Ukrainian defenses and for a while a lot of American support, now a lot of European support. Ukraine has been remarkably resilient. But he was trying to do something that we have condemned Vladimir Putin for attempting to do. He was threatening to do something that we have condemned

Vladimir Putin for attempting to do. And by the way, and if he then ordered it, he doesn't just put it on truth social. Let's suppose he had given the order. If he had given an order to destroy, because this wasn't the first time he'd threatened a crime. If he'd given an order to destroy all power plants, all bridges, all desalination plants, which supply people with drinking water, if he had actually delivered that order, it would have been an illegal order, clearly illegal. Now, the Department of Defense Law of War Manual says there is an obligation to defy an order when it is clearly illegal.

We were staring at the precipice of really an unprecedented crisis. because if the military complies, you break the moral backbone of the military. That's been the foundation of 50 years of reform since Vietnam. You just break the moral backbone. If it defies a president, not a junior commander, not a major, not a captain, not a colonel, but the commander in chief, then you create a massive constitutional crisis, just massive. Because normally when somebody He says, I'm not going to comply with an unlawful order. They have avenues to pursue. They can go up the chain of command, for example.

They can pursue review by a JAG officer. They can ask their commander clarifying order. There's all different kinds of ways you can try to avoid complying with an unlawful order. But when it's the commander-in-chief, who do you go to? Well, you go to Congress, that collection of invertebrates. Where do you go? They're on vacation. So, you know, it's the irresistible force would then meet the immovable object.

and we would be in an absolute crisis. And this order was also given, or potentially given, it was also given in the aftermath of a purge of many of the leading generals, a purge offered without explanation, where the clear, crystal clear message being sent to the military is, any hint that you are not absolutely with us, this administration, and we're going to eliminate you. And so what that starts to do is it starts to create a culture in the military

over time, doesn't happen right away. The military has a lot of cultural and moral strength to it. But you create precedence where you're telling the military that your path to success is loyalty to the administration, not excellence in the profession of arms. It's loyalty to the administration. And you're putting all of these together into one toxic stew in the middle of a war, fought and declared on Trump's initiative only and without the American Constitution. constitutional process. We were, we were literally staring at the break. I think that that gives some heft to like just my feeling less than. I was expressing we did a live next level at the, you know, war climbs o'clock at eight o'clock last night. People could

go listen to if they wanted to. You know, by the time that we went live, he had already struck this deal, which we're about to get to the extent that it's a deal. Just my feeling was like, the stakes were too high for this level of uns seriousness. You know, like the uns seriousness of Trump is frustrating all the time and it's a little bit of a dog bites man thing. It's like, why even complain about it anymore? You know, we're just, we're in an unsurious world. But for some reason, in this case for me, and I think, well, the reason is what you just laid out. You know, it just really hit me that these stupid games.

Like, we have to play these silly games where the president's like, hey, you know, we are going to have a cliffhanger episode of the finale of the apprentice. and you'll get to see if I do war crimes next week and Tuesday. And it's like, even if he doesn't do it, there is a degrading effect to the entire culture. And there are real consequences as a result of it, negative consequences for people, you know, even if they aren't at the scale of what he had threatened. Just think about this, Tim.

We've gone through a period where he launches a war without going through Congress. The reporting from my colleagues, incredible reporting from my colleagues in the news, room indicates that basically everyone in the room was telling him, Netanyahu is feeding you false hope that our strikes will not affect result in immediate regime change in Iran. They will not immediately topple the regime, that Iran will lash out at its enemies. Iran will lash out in the Gulf. It will do something to the Strait of Hormuz. It will not be easy to reopen if Iran does it. And he just yolos it anyway in this incredible sense of confidence that he's just

going to get it right, obviously riding very high on his own supply after the remarkable success of the Madeiro raid, which was a legitimately tactically brilliant military raid. But also, there was a lot of luck. I mean, there was a heroic pilot who prevented the whole thing from going absolutely terribly sideways in the middle of the operation. But he obviously looks at it is much more than luck. He's cracked the code. He's figured this all out. And he launches into this thing. And you also begin to see why he didn't go to Congress. It appears like he thought this was going to be a two, three day deal. Like he'll do the decapitation strike, a few other strikes, the Iranian regime falls, the people rise up, which is just breathtakingly naive.

Then when it doesn't work out the way he thought it would, because of course it wasn't, then he lashes out at all of our allies. Threatening NATO again. Now, and this is a lot of, is completely misunderstands the NATO alliance. It is a defensive alliance. It is not an alliance where we attack somebody and when things are going poorly, we just, you know, break glass in case of emergency, France, Germany, Britain, activate. No, especially after Tim, we threatened to invade Denmark just months before we just had reporting that literally Danish troops were thinking the unthinkable, how are we going to shoot down American planes coming into Greenland? I mean, we're in Carnival Funland here. And then we have this spectacle, the absurd spectacle

of people who absolutely know better, saying, well, where are our European allies? What? The ones that you've been crapping on for weeks who you threaten to go to war against? Because if we'd attack Greenland, that's an Article 5 event. Who have gas lines right now because you didn't warn them that we were doing this? What on earth? It's like citizens are furious because you've negatively impacted their economic well-being with no prep, no consultation. Yeah. And then you still have these MAGA people acting like people like you and me who look at the plain facts of the matter and are alarmed by it are like libs to trigger.

Right. Like, you know, oh, look at how we're triggering. You know, he's look at him triggering all the libs. No, he's the commander-in-chief. He's not the meamer and troller-in-chief, and he's launched a reckless war of choice that's going sideways because he didn't think through the most obvious play possible for an overmatched Iranian regime. They were never going to be able to knock all of our planes out of the sky. They were never going to be able to stop the bombing campaign.

But the one thing they could do, they did. and we didn't have an answer for it. And so he then escalates to threaten a crime against humanity. It's just a remarkable turn of vents, Tim. When you look at it from even, not a 30,000-foot view, a 3,000-foot view. It's like, what just happened here? Yeah, to that point, I mean, this thing started, sometimes it's easy to forget because, you know, of the avalanche of crap that he throws our way. But the war started with him demanding unconditional surrender.

Yeah. You know, we did the whole shock and off thing and then said Iran has unconditional surrender. Well, you know, Bill Crystal writes this morning in the newsletter that what Trump did yesterday is not a taco, really. It's a functional surrender. And his case for that is this, that the deal came to pass basically because Trump couldn't take the pain anymore, the economic pain on the Strait of Hormuz. And if you look now at the 10-point list, the kind of Iranian proposed. contours of the deal, which is evolving, you know, every minute, obviously. Like, among the things on there is that Iran has control over the Strait of Hormuz

and that they get to recover all of the sanctions against them, that we're going to get rid of all the sanctions that have been put in place since the Bush administration. And also not on that list is getting rid of the nuclear material, which was at one time the stated goal. of the effort. Yeah, okay. So here we are.

In that tweet you were talking about, I said, we don't actually know what the deal is. We really don't. All we know is we have somewhat of a shaky ceasefire. We have 10 points from the Iranians.

We have 15 points from the Trump administration. The difference between those two blueprints is, I would say, as far as the difference between Mars and Venus, no, no.

It's between the Milky Way and the Adromeda galaxy. Like we're talking thousands of light years of difference. And but one thing we absolutely know, this was not unconditional surrender. This was not America dictating terms to Iran by any means. Iran did not have an answer for us militarily without question. U.S. military was performing its mission tactically, brilliantly. It was destroying missile launchers. It was destroying Iranian nuclear facilities. It was destroying the Iranian defense industrial base. But guess what, Tim? All of that can be fixed. All of it can be fixed with money, with money. And what was Iran making a

lot of during this war? Money. It was controlling the strait. It had received special dispensation because the one check and balance on Donald Trump that you can count on is the Dow. He wants that Dow $50,000. You know, he wants all of that. And so he He was constantly trying to do whatever he could to keep the Dow from cratering, even if that meant easing up our sanctions on Iran, the very country we were fighting to allow them to sell oil on the international market to keep the price of oil from exploding. What are we doing here? You know, I use this analogy, Tim, I feel like I'm unusually animated for the bulwark podcast. This is why I called you for today. I wanted to get unusually animated David Franklin.

But as I said at Morning Joe, because this also very grieves me for the military. Like what he's doing to the military right now is grievous. And I said there's an analogy. It's an ancient analogy, but it really became famous after World War I. After there's so much valor, indescribable courage for four years on the most brutal battlefield the world had ever seen. And this was the analogy, lions led by donkeys. In other words, you would have. fighting men of incredible courage, incredible tactical skill, led by political leaders who totally

lacked strategic imagination, who totally could not get their nations out of the bloody mess they'd put them in. And that's how I feel about the current military. It's lions led by donkeys. We've had 50 years of a project of reforming and professionalizing the military after the disasters at the end of the Vietnam War, we've turned it into the most easily the most respected public institution in the United States, capable of remarkable things,

like the Maduro raid, like the rescue of the two pilots who were shot down. That was, every American should swell with pride at the ability to do that. And a military that has an ethos, it says, you know, you cannot leave a fallen comrade

that leave no one behind ethos, which is so core to the morality, the integrity of the military, to take that force and put it in the hands of this man and then have him deploy it so haphazardly on his own impulse in an unconstitutional manner. And then after they have risked their lives, taken large-scale damage to American military facilities, Americans do not realize how damaged our facilities are across the Middle East. Billions of dollars lost billions. to have Americans die, to have hundreds injured, many of them very severely, and then to just sort of say, okay, two, it's over.

You know, I'm going to, A, I'm going to threaten to use you to commit a crime against humanity. And then the last minute, it's over. Well, we didn't accomplish some of the war aims that I suggested. And, yeah, Iran in many ways might be immensely strengthened strategically because it's demonstrated that can cause a superpower to back off. that it can take our best punch and then in response cause us to suffer pain, that that's the textbook, lions led by donkeys. In other words, valor wasted in so many ways by people who lack strategic imagination,

who are grotesquely incompetent and immoral. It's kind of unfair to the donkeys, really. Two ways to look at this ceasefire deal, so-called deal. to me at the top level, like what this seems like is two sides that are just happy to stop this and figure out the details later. Like Trump because of the economic pain that was being caused and Iran because of the potential economic opportunity. Yeah. As you said, this does come back to money. And, you know, this is evidenced by, as you mentioned, how far the sides are apart.

I thought this was funny from Greg Karlstrom at the economist here. I'd say, so if you're keeping score at home, the ceasefire includes Lebanon but also doesn't include Lebanon. Israel's attacking Lebanon this morning. America has agreed to all of Iran's demands, and Iran has agreed to all of America's demands. America will recognize Iran's right to enrichment and also insist on zero enrichment. Hormuz is completely open,

but also Hormuz is subject to unclear limitations. So, you know, it's totally contradictory. The nature of the ceasefires that just both sides are happy to be in a ceasefire for now, for economic reasons, Trump, this morning, in the latest update on the deal, called John Carl of ABC News, and said that, hey, the Strait of the Hormuz thing,

this could be a joint venture. This could be really great for us. It could be Chamini and Trump. And so, you know, they'll kind of split the proceeds from that. That's the proposal this morning. It's, words fail. I mean, they were killing our trips yesterday, and now we're business partners.

I want to emphasize this again, because I just don't want anybody to mistake this. I take a backseat to no one in my loathing of this Iranian regime. It has been an enemy of the United States. It's been an enemy of human rights forever. But this war was foolish from the outset. It was foolish from the outset. The original sin of this war, not going to Congress,

not getting the American people behind it, in many ways doomed it from the beginning because that meant that the American people had no tolerance for anything that would go south on this. They had not been prepared to sacrifice. They had not been prepared for casualties. They had not been prepared for the Iranian reaction. This was sprung on us. And then when Iran did the most obvious thing imaginable in response, because it did not have the military capacity to match us strength for strength. It went to its strengths, which were including

using its geographic advantage of the Strait of Hormuz, using its long coastline to threaten shipping. We didn't have an answer. We didn't have an answer. And so, no, Iran didn't have an answer for our airstrikes, but we ultimately didn't have an answer for its closure of the strait. Or if we had an answer, we weren't willing to, if we had a solution, we weren't willing to employ it because everyone knows that this war was extraordinarily unpopular and the means necessary, boots on the ground, and extended war, serious casualties, the American people were not going to put up with that. And so Trump destroyed his own chances for success and the way that he launched this war. But also, at the same time, he was in this situation where he thought he could achieve greatness

quickly. That was never realistic. If we'd had to debate about the war going into it, that would have been exposed is completely unrealistic. And look, I have always been an Iran hawk. I served in Iraq. There are men I know who are friends of mine, who are killed by Iranian weapons. I loathe this regime. I loathe it.

But my hatred of Iran does not relieve me from the requirement to engage in critical thinking. Does not relieve me of the requirement to think about the best interest of the United States of America, the constitutional processes that the Constitution requires, the interests of the global economy, the role of our allies, what we could realistically hope to achieve while maintaining deterrence against China and Russia in an increasingly unstable world. All of those are things that should have been so carefully thought through before we engaged Iran in a conflict. And obviously none of that happened. Did you know that fast-growing trees is America's largest and most trusted online nursery with thousands of trees and plants and over 2 million happy customers, including me?

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The Secretary of Wars is Nutpicking. Press Secretary is nut picking. But before we do that, some of our, you know, of people who are fellow Iran Warhawks to you, I'm not sure if I would qualify myself as an Iran Warhawk. I definitely dislike the regime. I will take a back seat to you probably in my hatred of the regime so you can still have the front seat. But so their fellow Iran Warhawks online, their case is that Iran is weaker today than it was a month ago in important ways, the ways that their Navy has been obliterated. They've lost half of their missiles.

The next regime will now be more fearful for their lives. They'll see that the Americans and the Israelis can decapitate them. and so it was worth it because this regime was weakened by the war. What would your reaction be to that case? So first, I do not want to in any way minimize what our military actually accomplished tactically over the month or so of the war that they did do a remarkable job, sinking a very antiquated Navy, but a Navy that was still capable of menacing traffic through the Gulf. They destroyed a very antiquated Air Force, but again, an Air Force that was still

capable of menacing its neighbors. More significantly, they did seriously degrade, but did not destroy the ballistic missile capacity for Iran. And they did destroy a lot of Iran's capacity to build weapons. They did accomplish that. From a standpoint of a warfighting capability, Iran has less warfighting capability right now than it did a month ago. Absolutely. It did. But all of that is very temporary. It is not hard for a country that is receiving billions of dollars in new revenue, potentially because of its use of its own strategic levers with the straight-a-form-mose. They can reconstitute all of that.

And Iran has established a degree of deterrence because Iran has demonstrated that even in that weakened state, it can close the straight and keep it closed against the world's greatest superpower. Now, we absolutely have the ability to open it, to force it open. But Iran showed the world that that's not what we want to do, that that is not a price we are willing to pay. And so in a strange way, I would say it's very difficult to say that at the end of the day that Iran emerged strategically weaker. it's definitely tactically weaker. And that matters. It does matter.

We should not say it doesn't matter. And it doesn't really matter. I argued with Josh Gottheimer about this yesterday. People can go listen to that on the board takes feet if they want. It does matter like looking just purely from the American perspective. Right. Because we weren't really threatened. Again, like Iran in the biggest picture, sure, was like threatening our interests in the past.

Obviously, Iran and their proxies have attacked U.S. installations overseas and troops, of course, going back to the Iraq War, the damage that you were discussing and the war on terror broadly. But like right now today in 2026, like the missiles that we degraded and the ships that we bombed, they weren't like coming for Orlando anytime soon. This wasn't the Russian Navy. This wasn't a Chinese Navy. This was, you know, so no, Iran is a regional power. It is not a global power. But it is a regional power that successfully showed that it could take a global powers direct hit and at the same time impose global consequences, global economic consequences on everyone without us having the will to stop it. Now, to sit and look back at that situation and say, well, we clearly won, what? I'm probably going to go maybe a little further than you and saying that we accomplish some concrete goals that will degrade Iran's ability to, say, project power against Israel. I can absolutely see that. Absolutely. No, I agree with that.

100%. I agree with that. Against Israel, of course. Yeah. And I understand why that was a priority of Israel. Yeah. But that wasn't a threat to America. Right. It's not the same. Yeah. It's not. It's just not the same. It's not the same. Can we just put a pin in X? I want to come back to the Israel thing, but I do want to just mention what happened at the press conference this morning, and then we'll circle back to the Israel side of this,

because I think that we have a two-sided ceasefire, and there's kind of a third party in the war that will be interesting to see how they see it. But we'll come back to that in a second. Here is Tegseth this morning, his case. He was next to General Kane, lengthy presser. He says, said this, together with our Israeli partners, America's military achieved every single, objective, on plan, on schedule, exactly as laid out from day one.

And then when he was challenged on that and asked by a reporter, for example, here's one piece of audio I want to play for you. Is the straight actually open right now? Let's listen to what the Secretary of War had to say about that. Go ahead, please. No, you've had your chance. Go ahead, sir. Thank you very much.

I believe so based on the diplomatic negotiation. I believe so. I believe so. Sorry. Yeah. So we've achieved every single objective. And then also, if we're asked if the Strait of Formuze is open right now, the response to the Secretary of War is, shut up, shut up. You've had your chance. And, you know, we have news out this morning that, like, Iran wants to get paid in crypto. So it's kind of a, we'll see how that turns out for me, more than every objective achieved. Obviously, every objective was not achieved. Because Donald Trump, one of the objectives, right from the beginning of the war, is Donald Trump said unconditional surrender. No. Now, I will. tell you this, Rubio was largely pretty consistent by laying out, well, we wanted to degrade the missiles, we wanted to grade the nuclear program, we want to sink the Navy. So he had this list that were achievable tactical objectives. And meanwhile, his boss

is running around going unconditional surrender. He's running around talking about regime change. And all these MAGA people are like, yeah, we've been totally consistent. Listen to Marco Rubio. I'm thinking he's not the boss, guys. Yeah, Rubio is much more disciplined. Rubio is much more capable of articulating an achievable goal, but he's not running the war. So we didn't even achieve those, we should just say. We made progress, but we didn't achieve all of those.

We made progress, yeah. He's not the boss. And so this idea that you can say, oh, the administration's been totally consistent because one of Trump's subordinates has been consistent. It's just absurd. You just realize you're dealing with people, Tim. At the end of this, you know, here we are 10 years in.

And if there's one thing that we have learned, truth doesn't matter, spin matters, bluster matters, memes matter, liberal tears matter. Truth doesn't matter. And so you just cannot, you just cannot go to these MAGA figures, the ones who are still flying the Trump flag, proudly and hear anything coherent, hear anything sensible. Because had he launched civilization destroying war last night, you know what they'd be doing talking about, how that was totally justified, completely correct, not a war crime at all. It's proof that, you know, that Trump is a guy who can actually do things. It's no longer negotiating tactic. It's a brilliant military stroke. You know, so whatever he does, no matter how berserk or unhinged, they're going to find a way,

to make this okay. And in Hexeth, you know, it's interesting to me that he's survived and Pam Bondi hasn't because he's every bit as cartoonish in many ways as she was. You know, remember when she was shouting about Dow 50,000 in an Epstein hearing, as if one thing had anything to do with the other, he's almost identical in that way. He's just, he's a talk show host as a secretary of defense. Co-host. Yeah, sorry, weekend co-host, talk show co-host as a Secretary of Defense and obviously outmatched and overmatched by the position.

I will say this, based on all the reporting, General Kane, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, seems to be fighting the good fight inside those rooms. And seems to be, and when you have a press conference and Hegseth talks and then General Kane talks. Yeah, come on. The contrast is massive. It's just massive. That's what I'm talking about. It's that lions led by donkeys phenomenon just right in front of the American people. It's just about as obvious as you can see, just right in front of our faces.

It just occurs to me as an accidental stray kind of on my colleague, Catherine Rampel, to go after a weekend talk show co-hosts. And I'm going to say, it is a case-by-case basis. If a Democrat wanted or if anybody wanted to make Catherine Impel's Secretary of the Treasury, I think she could do a good job at that. No shade. It's an honorable profession. No shade. It's just not necessarily...

And I'm a podcast host. It's not necessarily the stepping stone to Secretary of Defense, right? Defense, right, exactly. Okay, you all know how much I like those soul out-of-office beverages. I got the gummies, too, but I like the beverages. A little CBD-THC, you know. If you're sitting around on the weekend, watching some March madness, it's a Sunday. Don't want to have hangover for Bill Crystal Mondays.

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You mentioned the New York Times story. A lot of alarming elements to it. I mean, just like the idea that BB is in the situation room pitching this February 11th, about two weeks for the war starts that Jared Kushner is also in the situation room. The son-in-law does not have a security clearance. He's in business with multiple parties in the war. And he's also in the kind of decision desk that's concerning. So, you know, the degree to which.

which Israel was involved in encouraging this. And we could quibble over the exact language about this. But obviously Israel was a big proponent for this and was actively pitching Trump to do it. And then they became, then we were partners together in the war. Okay. So now we've forced forward to today. Trump pulls the plug.

And people are unhappy on the Israel side of it for now. I mean, the Israel war in Lebanon continues this morning, for example. And then the opposition leader, now this could be political. it's domestic, but opposition leader Lepid, you know, posted this. There's never been such a political disaster in all our history. Israel wasn't even at the table when decisions were made concerning on the core of our national security. The military carried out everything that was asked of it. The public demonstrated resilience. Netanyahu failed strategically and didn't meet a single

one of the goals that he himself set. Not a big Lepid fan, but show me the lie there. Yeah. I mean, there was an interesting pair of polls when the war started. and one showed that the Israeli public was about 80% in favor of the war, and the American public was about 35%. Which makes sense. This makes total sense. These are the two interests of the countries right there. Israel has endured a horrific massacre at the hands of an Iranian-backed Hamas.

Parts of the northern Israel were depopulated under a missile threat from Iranian-backed Hezbollah. They have received missile fire from the Iranian-backed Houthis. They've been directly attacked by ballistic missiles from Iran itself. They have every interest in the world in degrading Iran's military capabilities and its ability to threaten it through proxies. So the Israeli situation is fundamentally different from our situation. Now, if we were going to join with Israel to pursue Israeli defense priorities out of an active collective self-defense with an ally,

that is a case you make to the American people. That's a case you take to the American people. That is not something that a president just does unilaterally, and it shows in the polling difference. The American people know that this is not as directly in our interests as it was directly in Israel's. But then if you're going to do it, Tim, and a lot of people I respect a lot,

have very much appreciated the way that Trump has backed Israel. But from the conception, I'm sitting there watching and they would say, well, he's done this and this. And back in my mind, I'm thinking, just you wait. Israel isn't special. Donald Trump's most important priority is Donald Trump. It is not Israel. It is not anybody else. And while he might have some shared hatred of Iran with Israel, or whereas he might have seen that it's been to his political advantage to help Israel,

he doesn't have any particular love for that country, certainly not as compared to his love for himself. And then you have this ally who is fighting its pilots who are just as much risk as American pilots. Israeli civilians are under Iranian missile fire. And he goes, okay, guys, stop. Just stop. No consultation. Just stop. And Israel has to stop.

They're the junior partner here. They can't continue being a regional superpower. a regional superpower without American assistance. And so we're ultimately in the driver's seat. And can you imagine the feeling in Israel right now? I mean, what? What? Yeah.

And this is where I just, again, I feel like the pro-Israel crowd that has been mad at me over my commentary the past month, I'm like, I don't think that what Israel has been doing with the degree of this partnership with Donald Trump is in their medium-term interest. Like, again, I understand it. I don't live there. They're short-term security interests. The terrorist attack was just a trauma on the country.

So I get it logically. But it's like, okay, so here's the deal that you made. You signed up with Trump in the hopes that, you know, this cockamamie plan to have regime change in Iran would work, that nobody who was an expert actually seemed to think it was going to work. But you signed up with Trump in the hopes that this could happen. And the result is your most important ally in America, the Democratic Party feels absolutely burned and outraged by, you know, the way in which you've meddled in American politics to help

one side over the other and dragged us into, you know, several conflagrations we didn't really want to be part of and did so in ways that a lot of Democrats are rightly upset about from the way that the wars were carried out. And then on the Republican side, you've got to deal with Trump is the least reliable person in the world, you know, who could easily be bought off from the other side. And you have another wing of the Republican Party, the America First wing, that now is going to use you as a boogeyman. I just like from just again, it's one of those things like tactically I get strategically. I just think it was a disaster. And I think that all parties are right to be upset about it. After October 7th, just this purely evil, horrific massacre. Just if something like

that happened to our country, God help whoever did that to us, right? That would be, I mean, a trauma upon a trauma upon a trauma. But then, what Netanyahu seems to have fixed in his mind is that he could then launch the war to end all wars. In other words, that he could launch the conflict, exert the full power of the Israeli military, the full power of the American alliance, and just take care of it all.

He could take care of Hezbollah. He could take care of Hamas. He could take care of Iran. And that was just a massive miscalculation that he didn't have the capacity to launch a war to end all wars, because Israel doesn't have that power all by itself. And America was never going to buy into that

to become a partner in Israel and sort of a ward. Why would they want to? And how possible was it to begin with? You know, because this is another thing that's floating around out there, Tim, that really I think is under-discussed is the guy they're throwing in their lot with is also a guy who had extremely lucrative personal financial relationships in the gulf.

And what part of the world is getting hurt the hardest? It's that area of the Gulf where he has extremely lucrative financial relationships. How much does that play into his calculus? I don't know. But we know Trump long enough to know that he's always looking out for number one. And so it's like the perfect storm of everything. It's the constitutional violations of launching a war without Congress. It's the corruption problem of Trump getting in the Trump family and enterprises,

enriched by Gulf countries, Qatar, the UAE, etc. It's his mercurial nature. It's his hatred and contempt for his allies. All of these things came together in this perfect storm in this moment in which he was utterly unequipped to be a war leader. And the sad thing is, Tim, the war might not be over. This might be just a pause, right? Well, that's where, and this is where we are now.

It's like, again, Trump doesn't want to be in the war. he couldn't take the pain anymore. The Iranian's an opportunity to have money. Get out of this. But, like, Israel is still attacking Lebanon this morning. Iran's still attacking the UAE this morning. Trump's new business partner in the Strait of Hormuz is attacking his old business partner in the cryptocurrency business.

And, like, you know, Kuwait. Well, when you put it that way, it sounds kind of bad, too. Yeah, so I don't know. We'll see. Doesn't seem like the most stable situation to me, but we'll see how it turns out. I want to do two other stories really quick with you. And then I'll let you go. J.D. Vance in Hungary.

I can't let this go by. We're going to talk a lot about the Hungarian elections on tomorrow's show. But I just had to play for you one part of his speech. Judy Vance is doing a campaign speech for Victor Orban. Victor Orban is running against Peter Magyar, who is just a center-right, typical European pro-democracy, center-right, pro-market candidate. I mean, like the type of person that a David Cameron type of person, the type of person. that American Republican politicians would have been aligned with in any moment before this. Like not some far left socialist, not some what, like that's who Victor Orban that Putin cut out is running against.

And our vice president decided that given that choice, he needed to go over there and actively campaigned for the authoritarian. Here's what he did. Will you stand against the bureaucrats in Brussels? Will you stand for sovereignty and democracy? will you stand for Western civilization? Will you stand for freedom, for truth, and for the God of our fathers? My friends, go to the polls and the weekend, stand with Victor Orban because he stands for you and he stands for all these things. God bless Hungary and...

Fuck this guy. That is just unbelievable. Every part of that is a lie. If you stand for freedom, you should be with Victor Orban. if you stand for Western civilization, you should be on the side of the Putin candidate that's currently engaging in a war attacking as Democratic neighbors. And the whole thing is monstrous. Why is he bringing God into this with Viktor Orban?

Are you kidding me? Like what on earth? This is a guy who has helped Russian interests in its godless invasion of Ukraine for years. I mean, recently holding up EU loan guarantees that were, We're going to help Ukraine stay in the fight. That this is a guy who has suppressed dissent in his country. This is not a guy's leading some sort of religious revival. Sorry, that part of it just really got me.

There's so much about this. But let's explain why this is happening. Why is the sitting vice president going to one of the smallest and least powerful countries in Europe? Like, look at the Hungarian military. This is not a powerful country. Look at the Hungarian economy. This is not, by European standards, a rich country. This is one of NATO's weakest members.

But why is J.D. Vance going there? Because Victor Orban has achieved almost spiritual status within the illiberal part of MAGA, that he is the model. He is seen as a model for the rescue of Western civilization, as weird as that sounds. Tim, you know, you might remember growing up that it was very frustrating, growing up as a Republican, to constantly hear, like, socialist, more socialist-leaning Democrats talk about Norway or Denmark as the model of social democracy.

And you're like, guys, I love Norway. I love Denmark. But these are tiny Nordic countries that are very hard to translate into the United States of America. Hungary is even hard. harder to translate into the United States of America. And yet for years now, I mean, I could go back to years of writing. Victor Orban has been the model. He has been the vision for the new European and American future. But if he loses, if he's out, then he's no longer the model. He's no longer the first of a wave. He's a blip. He's an aberration. And what's interesting is you're seeing even a lot of

the hard right European parties that had previously wrapped their arms around Trump, they're now turning their backs on him. Yeah. The level at which he's alienating people is unbelievable. And so- Yeah, Malani and it's Italy. It's amazing. Yeah.

And so you look at it and you say, Orban had this almost spiritual hold on parts of illiberal MAGA and the illiberal or post-liberal right. Americans had moved to Hungary. The Hungary was paying American right-wing intellectuals, you know, through various institutions, et cetera. It was really seeding. Orban had had, you know, had been fetid in the United States, really sort of seeing him as kind of an intellectual and moral godfather of the whole movement. And if he loses, much less decisively, then he, it really is a signal that maybe, maybe, who knows, I mean, things are very contingent, Tim,

and a lot of things can happen, that maybe this entire MAGA thing, this entire post-liberal movement was a aberrational historical blip and not an emerging historical trend. Your lips to God's ears. Yeah, we'll see. We'll see. Last thing. I just, I had to get your take on this because I find it just so repulsive. of, we had news yesterday, the Department of Justice is using the Civil Rights Division to look into Cassidy Hutchison for testifying, speaking out against Donald Trump's behavior on January 6th.

It is just truly a despicable abuse of power, in my view, from the Justice Department. But I just wonder if you had anything to say about that. Repugnant. I mean, look, the way in which the DOJ has been weaponized from day one, and, you know, It's just almost hilarious to look back at all of the Republican claims of weaponization of the DOJ and when Donald Trump tried to overthrow an election, that that was weaponizing the DOJ to investigate and prosecute the people who tried to overthrow an American election. They called that weaponization.

And then here we've been watching play out in front of our eyes, weaponization so blatant that even grand juries won't indict. Like, you know, the old saying, you know, a prosecutor can get a, grand jury need to indict a ham sandwich. Well, under Trump, the ham sandwiches are pretty resilient these days. You're talking of bringing cases so frivolous that even grand juries won't indict. You're talking about bringing cases so frivolous that they have obvious legal flaws that caused them to be tossed out almost immediately.

And then you have Pam Bondi fired, not because she was doing this that is corrupt and incompetent. She wasn't corrupt and competent. And so he's now looking for, maybe he's found. in Todd Blanche, the man who can be corrupt and competent at the same time, more dangerous than Pam Bondi, because no one should think for a moment that Trump is like, well, golly, gee, I need to restore the integrity of the DOJ from Pam Bondi. No, he's thinking, I need the DOJ to be more effectively my weapon. But he's going to be frustrated, Tim, because guess what, the attorney general does not control the outcome of cases. Juries and judges do. And so he doesn't

control the juries. He doesn't control the judges, as has been made abundantly obvious throughout the second term, much to his unbelievable frustration, even his own appointed judges. He doesn't control those guys. And he can't fire them, Tim, like he fires Bondi. He can't fire Justice Gorman. Orsich. He can't fire Justice Barrett. He can't fire the district judges and appellate court judges who've done the right thing. And so this infuriates him. And so he lashes out. He's brought in Todd Blanche. Todd Blanche has his audition period to see how corrupt he can be and get away with it. And again, you know, I just feel like I've been in kind of a nonstop ranting mode, which is not my normal mode. I love it. I love it. And it's a short audition period because, you know, if the Democrats,

potentially could take control of the Senate. They're going to have to decide this year and try to get a new AG confirmed or else it's going to be really tough next year. But we can discuss that next year. That is a ranting, fired up David French, which is what we were hoping for this morning. So I appreciate you very much, sir. And I wish we had some playoff basketball to talk that the Grizzlies are. And then I have to move the team.

Things are going so bad. So anyway, sorry for bringing that up. Why? I appreciate you. Why, Tim. All right. Up next. Suha, Subramanium.

And we're back. He's a Democrat representing Virginia's 10th congressional district. We're going to get it right. It's Suha Subma... It's Suha, Subramanium. I was practicing all morning. It's Suha Subramanium. What is up, man?

What's going on? Thanks for having me. Is that right? I got it in the end. Seventh trial was a charm. You did great. We got a bunch to talk about. First, want to focus on something really important happening in Virginia.

make sure our audience knows about it. And that's this referendum on redistricting. That's coming up here, April 21st. So for folks who have not been following that that closely, just give us a little readers digest on what the votes about. Yeah, you know, Trump looked at the map last year and said, we're going to have to do mid-decade redistricting in all the red states. And he didn't think blue states would respond, right?

So he started with Texas. Even the state legislators there were a little reluctant, but they fell in line. But then through Gavin Newsom and the California legislature, California did it back. Now we got Florida. Now we got Missouri. We got other red states trying to do this as well. Indiana tried to do this as well.

And so Virginia, we let the voters decide. And we set up a system where it's going to be temporary one time, but this is a response to the other red states. And basically, we have a referendum coming up on April 21st. And if the voters decide 50 plus one that we're going to read the other of these districts, it's going to go from 6-5 in our delegation to potentially 10-1. And that's going to be the response. So people ask me every day, what do you do?

How are we going to fight the Republicans? What are you doing to fight Trump? Well, the battlefield for the midterms is a critical part of that. And so we have to win this referendum. We have to make sure people come out and vote for it. And what I'm seeing right now is some people aren't quite sure what this is, why we're doing this. The Democratic Party has told people for a long time now that, you know, redistricting and

gerrymandering is bad. right, and we don't like doing this. But until we have legislation out there that says every state is not going to do redistricting and gerrymandering, then we have to be a part of this arms race. And we have to make sure that we're in a position to win the midterms and not what Republicans be the only ones doing this. And so it's temporary just for the 26th cycle or is it through 2030? Basically through the next redistricting.

In our Constitution, we already have a bipartisan. redistricting commission. If that fails, then it goes to Supreme Court, which appoints special masters to draw districts. That's what happened last time in 2021. And so the next time it happened probably 2031, but would they do that the same way as they did in 2021? This is to bring us through 20131, basically. And so it's for basically the next four or five years, and it's temporary. And if Texas decides that, you know, they're going to retract, then, you know, maybe we can do the same thing, in the future. But it doesn't seem like that's happening. It seems like we have to make this response. No, I could not be more supportive of this effort. I agree. You have to fight fire with fire.

The redistricting, there are gerrymander states everywhere. Some are red, some are blue, but the Republicans did something unprecedented by trying to do this in the middle of a redistricting cycle. And they tried to do it to cheat to keep Mike Johnson and Donald Trump in power. And I think that I'm impressed that Abigail Spanberger there in Virginia and that the Virginia legislature decided to do this and not do what Democrats sometimes too, which is, you know, have a meeting, you know, convene a council, like discuss how we can protect norms.

They didn't do this. They said they're going to fight back. I do want to shout out Louise Lucas, who's kind of spearheading this in the state legislature. Give us just like one minute on her lore because I think that story is really great. Oh, man, she's a rock star. She is a force of nature. And basically, she said, you know, we got to go big. We got to go big and we got to do it so that Republicans will get the message. And that's what she did. And so with her leadership and leadership of so many others, Scott Sarvel, Don Scott, many others in the General Assembly where I used to serve, as well as our delegation, Akim Jeffries, we were able to pull this together. But now what Republicans are doing is they're trying to confuse voters. They're sending out mailers with Abigail Spanbergerers. face on it and Barack Obama's face on it saying

vote no because they oppose gerrymandering, right? So this is the tactic they're trying to use. They're confusing people. And we're getting the message out there now that if you want to fight Trump, if you want to get things back on track, we need to win the midterms and we need to make sure that the battlefield for the midterms is set.

And that means passing this referendum voting yes. All right. That's on April 21st. I'll talk to you about some other stuff. You're in the oversight committee and so I've got a lot of thoughts on what you might consider next year. But obviously we have this news out of Iran with this temporary ceasefire we have, I guess. We have a two-week ceasefire as of right now.

As part of that deal, Iran is going to control the Strait of Hormuz. As we are talking right now, you know, there are still Iranian missiles going after Arab countries. Israel is still going after Hezbollah and Lebanon. So, you know, it's a bit of a tenuous ceasefire to say the least. But I'm wondering about what you thought about the war to begin with and how Democrats should be thinking about it. Yeah, the war shouldn't happen to begin with. I think Trump thought that this was going to be easy and he was wrong. And he's backed into a corner and he was desperate.

And his last couple of tweets, you know, I didn't see the genocide section of Art of the Deal. But clearly what he was doing is trying to get himself out of this. And so even the ceasefire, the 10-point plans that we've seen, even Iran's own 10-point plan doesn't actually sync up. The Farsi version is different from the English version. So we don't quite know exactly what we got out of it. But what I do know is that we're in a position now where we're worse off than we were when this war began. And that is why we were also against this war and why we need to continue to be against this war

and continue to push for another war powers resolution vote. because I think if we had a war powers resolution vote in the House next week, it would pass this time. There's enough Republicans who are fed up. They're saying publicly now that they would support a war powers resolution. And I think we should put it to a vote, even if it's symbolic, even if President Trump vetoes it, I want to see him veto it. We did the same thing with the Epstein bill, the Transparency Act. And Trump ended up signing it because he was backed into a corner. So let's continue backing this president into a corner because right now that's how he's feeling.

Just literally, as we're talking right now, Iran's forest news agency is saying that oil tankers passing through Hormuz are being stopped because of Israel's ceasefire breach and Lebanon. So we'll see how this stuff continues to shake out. And I think that it's important that you point out that just because Trump is saying that he's stopping this doesn't mean that there should be a break in the effort to have a resolution about this war on the floor. And I agree with you that I think that there are potential. Republicans that are getable for that. Maybe a couple Democrats on the other side. I interviewed Josh Gotheimer yesterday. He was a maybe on that. But I think continuing to like drive this issue and put pressure on the administration is important because the war is unpopular for for good reason. Oh, absolutely. And Republicans, right, are coming out against this. I saw a Republican,

I don't know King's Rally who was there because of the war. Like that we have to see, you know, take the reins on this. We have to take advantage of this moment as Democrats. And and start to build a coalition again. And we can't be a country club where we only accept certain people. We have to accept everyone who is fed up with Republicans and be a good alternative. We're on the same page on that one. Let's talk about oversight next year. Obviously, Robert Garcia took over and we saw, I think, some real changes last year

when he took over the minority leadership position on the committee. And Epstein Files is the prime example of this. as you guys look ahead to next year, what I think your biggest challenge is gluttony. You have too many targets, right? And so the question is, how do you focus that? Just a couple of things I wrote down this morning. You could go after Trump family business stuff. Jared is mixing war and family business right now in the situation room,

even though he doesn't have a security clearance. His sons have a crypto business with countries that are involved in our war. His sons are involved in a defense production company. Obviously, there's Epstein going, you know, know, getting the additional documents, insider trading that might be happening in the administration, DHS corruption with regards to the deportations, DOJ corruption with regards to, you know, investigations, politicized investigations. I run all that down in 10 seconds. And there are a bunch of other stuff you guys could look into, right? So how do you think about that? How do you prioritize

oversight and investigations, assuming you guys take the gavel next year? Well, the things you just mentioned are too important to let any of it go. And so from, you know, a communications perspective, you know, maybe we'll, you know, focus on a top three publicly, but we have to investigate all of it because all of those things are illegal and they're bad and they're, the American people knew about the Trump family business and how much they are actually benefiting from the Trump presidency. Are they being sets? Taxpayer dollars and our diplomacy is for sale, right? That is what has happened. So we have to investigate everything, but part of that is having the subpoena power. It's been tough. I mean, I'll tell you the Oversight Committee right now. I'm the ranking member

for military and foreign affairs, that's subcommittee on oversight. We have not met since last July. We have not had a hearing since last July. And the other subcommittees now are being told by the administration to only meet if you're going to bring him a Democratic governor or mayor or local prosecutor. Other than that, have roundtables instead. Don't have public. hearings anymore. And so that's where we are right now when it comes to this oversight committee. They do not want to provide oversight over the Trump administration. And so we have a lot to cover because they're not doing their job. And that means having to deal with all of it. So I'm not letting any of it go. And I think the corruption is where we need to start.

What I've seen in particular? Like, what do you think is still getable? You know, are there additional, you know, documents that you guys have particular interest in? Is the focus maybe more run the cover-up and how, you know, the administration tried to block the release of the files. Like, where do you think the focus should be on that? Jeffrey Epstein was not truly investigated by the FBI and DOJ. There was an investigation, but they stopped short on so many levels. They didn't investigate his financial crimes more deeply. We had Endyke and Khan, his accountant and his lawyers, basically his fixers, come in before a committee.

They said that they had never been interviewed by. law enforcement. The only time they'd ever sat for a deposition was in civil cases and where they usually settled, right? So we were the first to actually talk to them in this kind of setting. We shouldn't be doing the job on the oversight committee that at the FBI and DOJ should be doing, but that's what's happening right now. And so until that changes, it's not going to change under Todd Bletch, right? He's not going to go after people. What's interesting is in the UK, because of our work, we had a former prince, Andrew Mountbatten Windsor, arrested, and we had a diplomat, right, Peter Mendelsohn, arrested.

So there's actually a real change happening around the world. But in the United States, because of this DOJ, we are not seeing that same level of interest and going after the people who are involved in these crimes. So in some way, the cover-ups ongoing, right? I'm just the fact, like a lack of investigation is, you know, an element of a cover-up. And Cash Patel could be looking into some of the additional information that has been uncovered and they're refusing to do so to protect the president. And that's what it seems like to me. Well, a lack of investigation and they're not sharing two and a half million documents with us.

Many of those documents were ones we were looking for for a long time, like witness statements where they name names, right? Even the survivors themselves wanted to see those. And what was nice is that we knew these documents were missing because the survivors have been telling us what to look out for, right? And so that's what we're waiting for now. And I don't think we're going to get it under Todd Blanche. I think Todd Blanche is going to be worse than Pam Bondi because he was the president's personal attorney. He's going to act like the president's personal attorney. And remember, he sat down with Clay Maxwell for six hours. And then she got sent to a minimum security prison right after that, right? So I think this is going to get worse at the DOJ. And the only way to

solve us and fix this is to have real oversight. So, I mean, I guess. guess then the answer is that getting those documents is at the top of the list next year are attempting to get the outstanding documents. I'm not optimistic, though, that Todd Blanche will give us those documents, even if we're in the majority and we see pinah him. And the question that I wonder sometimes is how we are going to hold certain people in the administration accountable for not following our subpoenas, because we can levy criminal sanctions against them, right, hold them in criminal contempt. But that gets referred. to the DOJ.

And so I'm not quite sure exactly how we're going to enforce some of our subpoenas next year, but we're going to have to figure out a way. That'll be a showdown to look forward to. I guess another potential way is impeachment. I noticed that you had talked about impeachment for Bondi before she got pushed out. Is impeachment just a vehicle for doing investigations?

So you might as well do it or how do you think about that question strategically about whether to impeach or whether to use some other tactics? Yeah, there's other people to Ludnik, Hegsseth. A lot of people have done impeachable things, including the president himself. To me, impeachment is a political question just as much as it is a legal question, right? So we need the votes to be able to do impeachment. It's not to say we shouldn't try at times, but especially when someone's deserved it. But we need the votes. And it's better when you're in the majority to do that because you have the votes and you have the subpoena power and you're able to do a full. investigation. I guess that's what I meant. So when you're in the majority, I mean, do you think that's something that is, and I think that's a big question right now where it's kind of like, you know, he's, we've been impeached twice already and he's the president again, right? So the question is, is that the most useful vehicle or something else for, you know, trying to get accountability?

Yeah, you know, we're not going to impeach her way to success and impeach our way back into the White House. I don't know exactly how we're going to do that. And when, the Senate needs a certain number of votes to to convict, right? So we've impeached them twice at the presidential level. But I do think that it's a great way to investigate, and especially when someone's done impeachable things. And I think that's happened all over this administration. So I certainly think we have to have it on the table,

especially on the Oversight Committee, we have to make sure that we hold people accountable for their crimes and not be afraid of impeachment just because we may not like the politics at times. If the Democrats are going to have the capability to do any of these investigations and do any oversight of the administration's corruption, they have to win the midterms. And so if you're in Virginia or you have friends in Virginia, the vote is April 21st, but early vote has already started on the redistricting ballot measure. I appreciate you coming on and talking to us about it. We'll be staying in touch, all right? Thank you.

Appreciate it. All right. Thanks to Congressman Suhah's Subramanium. Nailed it. And spicy David French. How about that guy? We got another one of your faves coming tomorrow. So we'll see you all then. Peace. The Borg podcast is brought to you thanks to the work of lead producer Katie Cooper, Associate producer Ansley Skipper, and with video editing by Katie Lutz, and audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.