The Bulwark Podcast - David Frum: A Very Bad Time for Bozos to Be in Charge

Episode Date: March 20, 2026

The U.S. is at war with the leading state sponsor of terror, and Donald Trump appointed Markwayne Mullin—a man with no counter-terrorism experience—to help defend the homeland. At the same time, Hegseth is a meathead, and the shoe designer at the top of the FBI is preoccupied with visiting all the places on his bucket list. This is the moment for Democrats to argue that Trump has made the country very vulnerable. Plus, the administration apparently did not consider worst case scenarios vis-à-vis Iran, the Iraq War planners look like pros in comparison, Denmark was seriously preparing for an American invasion of Greenland, and is Israel's conduct contributing to the growing antisemitism problem?David Frum joins Tim Miller for the weekend pod.show notes David's podcast David encouraging Dems to get to the right of Trump on the war Tim's playlist

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I'm your host Tim Miller. Delighted, welcome back to the show. One of our faves is a staff writer at the Atlantic and host of the David From podcast. That's our friend David From. What's up, man? Thank you, Tim. Good to be on home field today. Well, you hosted me on your show where we hashed out whether, you know, I've gone too

native with my friends on the left and whether I'm too much of a code pink piece, Nick now. So I want to continue that conversation towards the end of this podcast. But first we've got to get to the news. And I'm here in Texas. And we have learned that Walker, Texas Ranger himself, Chuck Norris, has moved on from this mortal coil. We send our sympathies to him and his family. I'm wondering if you have any life experiences with Chuck Norris or his fellow Magas. The first time I became aware of you, and I don't mean this in a disrespectful way to Chuck Norris, was you were battling on television, an extremely small Trump supporter.

I'd heard of you by reputation, but I'd know. I've never seen this. He was in a booster chair. Because you have such an affable manner. I'd never seen like the still, the knife underneath the sleeve. And he called you at one point a fake conservative. And you said, if I'm the fake, why are you sitting on a booster seat? And it was just the walls came in.

Chuck Norris, obviously a great American, a great star. But it is worth remembering how many of the Trump supporters like him, like Cash Patel, are extremely small people. And you were the first to point out this trend. Well, I appreciate that. I appreciate the recognition on that. I don't, I'd never met Chuck Norris in person. and how we was he?

Like a lot of movie stars. And the camera likes small people. I don't know quite why that is. Maybe they have better skin. But there's something the camera does love its actors to be on the small side. Yeah, it is frustrating for those. That's why you're not a movie star. That's why you're not.

Trust me. I always look at the photos of myself on Instagram. And I'm like, I'm handsomer than this. Am I not? Let's get on to some more important news. I want to, as mentioned, kind of back into Iran. And hash out my new piece-knock turn. But first, I want to go through the Trump crazies of the week because there's so much to discuss.

I guess we'll start with the coins. There's news yesterday that the Treasury Department is hurtling forward with minting what will now be three different coins with Trump's picture on them, a $1 that will circulate. And two commemorative 24K gold coins where he's standing behind the table looking mad. Yes. You know, if we ever get to write this chapter of history, and if this chapter of history comes to a less grim ending, then sometimes it looks like we'll have a happier ending, I think one of the verdicts of future history may be that what saved America was that Donald Trump could never tell the difference between the substance of power and the image of power. If you're doing a serious program of consolidation of power in an authoritarian way, you don't do something as gaudy and shameless and un-American as putting a living president's image. on the coins. That just gets everybody upset. It creates opposition to the whole project in a way that might not be there if you just focused on realities. And maybe it seems to be true that as Trump's hold on the realities of power falters or weakens a little bit, that he gets more consumed

by the ballroom, the Kennedy Center, and his image on these coins. I mean, it's obviously un-American. It's arguably illegal, although the New York Times had an interesting story about some of the loopholes are using because the coins are commemorative maybe that they don't come under the rules governing currency. But it just seems a provocation that a wiser authoritarian would avoid. Yeah, I felt a little bit better about that notion that maybe Trump would focus on his true passions like the marble armrests at the Kennedy Center two weeks ago. But it does seem like, unfortunately, he's able to juggle, you know, some catastrophic choices home and abroad while also minting himself coins.

Well, one more point about this that is sort of a sign of daylight breaking through, which is it doesn't look like he's going to be able to protect Cory Lewandowski and Christy Kno. Now, understood that their operation was distinct from the Trump operation, and that's one of the reasons they're in trouble. It's like the Sopranos, they forgot to put the cash in the envelope for Tony and ran their own grift without telling Tony about it. And as everyone who remembers, you get whacked. But it will raise the question if law is allowed to take its course, if Pam Bondi doesn't protect Lewandeski and Nome, if taking bribes at DHS in the millions and tens of millions is wrong. Why is taking bribes at the White House and the hundreds of millions and billions okay?

It is a good question. And I guess a subtext to that, given the coin news, is would taking the bribes be okay if the bribes were all on the new Trump minted $1 coin? Or Trump crypto. We're in Trump crypto. The DHS thing is interesting. I like your positive news there. I'm hoping for accountability for Corey Lewandowski. We have a new thing at the end of the Bullwark Live shows where we let people do a rant and they can choose whether it's something they're hopeful for or something that they hate. Yeah.

Something that got really big applause last night was hope that maybe there will be criminal accountability for someone and maybe that man will be stank-breath, Corey Lewandowski. And so I'm with you on that. The concern of the other side. of that coin to brutalize the metaphor is what is replacing them at DHS. That's another big news this week. You got Mark Wayne Mullen coming in there. He seems just kind of like a masculine Christy gnome. I'm not sure exactly the differences between the two of them. Well, can we pause there? I don't have to get too far to the Iran news. The United States is now engaged in a global war spanning from the Caspian to the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean against the world's leading

state sponsor of terrorism, so designated year after year by the U.S. State Department. The leading state sponsor terrorism uses a lot of terrorism, and Iran has a long history of activating terror networks all over the world, including in the United States. So you would think it would be, for the administration leading the war, a matter of vital concern to have a non-bozo as head of the Department of Homeland Security and maybe also a non-bozo at the FBI. But while telling everyone that one of the reasons that the United States needs to fight Iran is the threat of terrorism. How unsurious about terrorism are you if you put this team of bozos in charge of defending the homeland against terror attack? Literally, you were there at the point of the creation

of the Department of Homeland Security was in the wake of the terror attack. They don't even pretend as if Mark Queen Mullen has any expertise or background or ability in that way. I mean, they've now refashioned the department entirely around their immigration plans and their deportation agenda. And, you know, as you mentioned with Cash, I'm going to pull this up here during a testimony, I guess it was two days ago now, because this was Wednesday. Congressman Cullen from Tennessee was asking about the experts they had fired on Iran. And he says, the people you fired, they worked in counterintelligence on Iran, did they not? And Patel Cash replies, I'm taking it your word on that. He's like,

you're the director. Like, you should know who the people you fired were. And that is the story. Like they fired these guys because they were. were caught up in the Trump classified documents case because among the documents that were in his bathroom at Marilago was Iran war plans. And so since these guys, experts on Iran counterintelligence got pulled into that, they've been fired. So just as you mentioned, like across the board, whether BFBI or DHS, they seem totally unserious about that domestic element of the potential fallout for the war. So let me just remind people why the Department of Homeland Security was created, and maybe it wasn't a good idea, but here was the logic back in the Bush days. When the 9-11

investigations were conducted. One of the things that was found was that the CIA had possessed a lot of the information, maybe sufficient information, necessary to prevent the 9-11 attack. But the CIA had no operating ability to do anything about it. The FBI did have the operating ability to do something about it, but it didn't have the information. And the reason that they didn't have the information, it was not just a bureaucratic screw-up. It's the CIA operates by one set of rules. It's an espionage agency. It doesn't have to respect civil liberties. It doesn't have to charge people and send them to prison. It just needs to know things. The FBI needs to charge people and send them to prison. And properly, in a constitutional democracy, you limit the knowledge that a police department has because they can't just go ferreting around everything. But what do you do with international terrorism where the CIA is gathering information by one set of rules? And the FBI needs to operationalize that by another set of rules. You didn't want to bring the CIA into DHS. It's not there. But you needed to create some kind of structure for coordinating all the information that was available to the United States government to protect the United States against terror attacks and other catastrophic threats.

So that's the theory. And the people who were in charge of DHS were supposed to be serious homeland security protectors. And whatever you think about illegal immigration, and I probably more hawkish about it than you, it's a threat to the labor market. It's not a threat to anybody's safety. And DHS needs to have the mandate of American safety first. and that means competent, efficient, experienced, counterterrorism, counter espionage professionals,

not, as I say, the team of bozos. I kind of hate to do this. I feel like sometimes we're in this world where we're talking to the podcast, it's like the Democrats are the only people with agency, and yet they're also the only people with no power. There is a question right now in this moment about how the Democrats handle this DHS funding fight, especially in the context of the war, a less important priority, but real, something that's affecting people as TSA, most importantly, the people that work for TSA that aren't getting paid,

but also, you know, that's getting worse and worse if you're trying to travel. That has, you know, various impacts on the economy in the country. The Democrats offered, you know, just funding TSA. You know, now this is all wrapped up in the Mark Wayne Mullen confirmation process as well. How would you recommend they handle this, given the context of the threats? Well, this, again, is going to anticipate something you wanted to say for later. Let's just do it. We'll just do it.

We don't need to go onto my agenda, David. But we can just kind of hang out and we'll come back. We'll save the MMA for the end. Okay. I wanted to do the MMA fight at the lawn first to give people a little appetizer, but instead it can be a dessert. So the Democrats are conducting the DHS fight as if the Iran war is not suddenly agenda one item in Washington. Obviously, the president has done something fantastically irresponsible with Homeland Security,

as he's already done something fantastically irresponsible with the FBI. And as he did something fantastically irresponsible by naming Joe Kee, Kent to be counterterrorism person. This person gallant war record, personal tragedy, history, but whatever the reason, he is clearly mentally unstable with crazy views and should not be anywhere near the government of the United States, much less a national security portfolio. So those were all crazy, irresponsible things. How do you press the president on that point? You have to say, you know, the Iran war is on. The Iran war is a fact. I think you have to get to his right on national security. He said, Mr. President, you started a war of your own voluble.

against the world's leading state sponsor terrorism, and you are leaving the homeland naked to Iranian terror attack and Iranian terror cells because you want to send a lot of guys who do roofing to prison or deport them. That's your priority is deporting roofers. You are leaving the country naked to terrorism. And I think sometimes Democrats need to ask themselves, if the tables returned, if you had some complete, I don't know who the Democratic Trump would be, but somebody as irresponsible as that, playing games with national security for some completely unrelated agenda in the middle of a war against Iran, what would the Republicans do? Think about, you know, that strategy. The next terror attack will be the fault of Cash Patel because he's an idiot and an

expert at chugging beer in locker rooms, no doubt. But that maybe chugging beer in locker rooms is not the skill set you need when you're conducting. He's designed his own shoe. He has a personally is a new shoe that he has designed for himself. I don't know if he caught that. In a very small size. But meanwhile, the homeland is naked. But that means you have to take on board the reality that there is really a war against this leading state sponsor of terror and not in any way either undersell the danger from Iran and not in any way, put your fingers in your ears and say, la, la, la, we can't hear that there's a war on because whether you like the war or not, approve the decision to start it, it's on. So let's think about that in the context of the funding fight then.

How do you get to the right of them? Because there's, you know, you could imagine various different strategies that could be put forth. You know, I don't know. You can imagine a hawkish Democratic Party going to them and saying, we're going to give you more money for counterterrorism here. But there is, you know, one catch. You have to, I don't know, take off the masks of ICE agents or something. You know, we're just spitballing.

There are a million things that they could do. The other way to look at this is continuing the fight, which is to say no. Like, we're not going to fund this agency as long as you haven't made these concessions. How do you think about it? The hazard of approach to, saying we're not going to fund the agency is it is not impossible that there is an outbreak of lucidity on the Republican side. Because the strategy I just recommend that Democrats use against Republicans is available for Republicans to use against Democrats.

And John Cornyn basically did this. There was this exchange. It was here. I'm in Austin. It was Greg Kizar, is a progressive house guy. crashed one of John Cornyn's press conferences outside the airport. And Greg was saying, basically, it's your fault that we're not funding these guys. Like, we offered to pay them.

And Cornyn's shot out of him when he goes, you want more terrorist attacks. We had this terrorist attack on 6th Street in Austin. Like that exchange happened. Right. Well, that's the obvious play, right? I'm just imagine Carl Rover running the Republican Party right now. And you had a Republican Party that was about winning elections, not about stealing as much money as it can before the roof falls in in November. That's what he would do.

and it would work. And by the way, it has the merit, as Henry Kissinger used to say about when he would offer a line of argument, he said, he would go, this argument, it has this advantage, this advantage, and it is the further additional merit of being true. So this has a further additional method of being true. The country is very vulnerable right now. And Iran has a long history of conducting terror attacks more in Europe than in the Western Hemisphere, but in Buenos Aires. In Washington, D.C. a couple of years ago, they nearly assassinated of the Saudi and on his way to dinner at a popular restaurant here, the British apprehended Iranian agents casing out the oldest synagogue in London. You have to be prepared for this to be an Iranian

tactic. And the DHS is unfunded. Somebody needs and somebody will make an issue out of that. And the strategy is not to preserve the non-funding. The strategy is to get the department funded, but with rules, with the right priorities, and with the terrorism first approach. And by the way, the FBI is part of this. And Cash Patel needs to be in the sites as someone who not just is a crook and a time-waster, but as someone who is leaving the country naked to its enemies. And the counter to that is just that, yes, the war in Iran is a fact. The other thing that is a fact is that Donald Trump got elected and put in a bunch of clowns

to run all of these, you know, agencies. And they've run it in a way that is lawless with regards to DHS, but also incompetent across the board. And why do you want to be complicit in giving? giving these clowns and incompetence additional resources. Because there's a government. There's a government. Could you have to?

There are just so many points where Democrats could make this case. For example, in 2022, when Russia escalated its war against Ukraine, Russia's one of the world's largest energy producers in the world, Russian Ukraine are the largest food producers in the world. They created a huge shock to energy and food markets. I wrote about this a lot at the time of the Atlantic. And through an amazing success of coordinated response between the United States, Europe, Japan, and other friends, that challenge was blunted. And what the Russians hoped would be an economic disaster did not turn into one.

But one of the means used was that President Biden authorized the largest release of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in American history. And that was a good call. That was the right thing to do in 2022. But in 2024 and 2025, with these amazing low fuel prices that President Trump, Trump kept bragging about, that was the time to go refill. And he didn't do it. He didn't do it. And so we need to do more releases. But had it been topped up in 2025, the United States would be in a much better position. So there is a national security argument always against this administration, which is, and by the way, one of the things that you would want to top up is some aid for Ukraine,

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I want to talk about the relationship with the allies with regards to the war, then we'll kind of get into the war itself, just because there's been a bunch of news on that this week. We had in Denmark a pretty astonishing new story about the links to which they were planning on protecting Greenland in the case of an American invasion with the Japanese prime minister in the Oval Office yesterday,

ostensibly a more conservative figure. I don't want to pretend to be an expert on internal Japanese politics, but somebody that was essentially more Trump-friendly, potentially, a new prime minister there in the Oval Office, Trump. attacked her in Japan for the surprise Pearl Harbor attack. I think that was something that he brought up.

You had on your podcast this week, Alster, from the rest is politics, talking about the tensions between Kier-Starmer and the UK. So a lot there, but I kind of want to let you cook on the various ways that our relationships with our traditional allies are being strained. Well, the Denmark story is the most shocking and startling. And this is a rumor that those of us who are interested in the Arctic

Canada. I had been hearing since January, but last week it was confirmed by Danish news agencies with good sourcing to the Danish government in quotes on the record. It had not been on the record before. Greenland is, of course, Danish territory part of the kingdom of Denmark in a substantial autonomy. And the Danes and Donald Trump in January really ramped up a threat to annex it by force. And so the Danish plan was obviously Denmark cannot defend Greenland against the United States. Their plan was to send their best soldiers to Greenland to die, to be killed. And their hope was that if the United States shed Danish blood, it would so shame the United

States, they hoped. They had that they had that sufficient confidence in the United States to believe that Americans are still capable of shame for murdering allies or killing allies, that it would stop the war. But that was their plan. Blow up the airfields because of the frozen conditions there. You can't land off the airfields. You'd have to use the airfields, blow up the airfields. It's not like there's a big pasture where you can.

land the plane. Right. Exactly. And then had the soldiers there, and their mission was, take casualties and shame the Americans. And they were going to be French troops as well, and there were, I think, some British observers. So in January, the Allies were preparing for a NATO war against an American invasion of NATO territory. And for the United States now to say, oh, our allies are so ungrateful. They were preparing for you to kill them. So there's a reason they're a little testing from the old Brad Todd line. You know, Trump, opponents take him literally, but you have to take him seriously, but not literally. Unfortunately, if you're discussing an invasion of a NATO ally, the allies have to take the American

presidents at his word and at least prepare for that rather than try to decide when he's, you know, speaking out of his ass. And by the way, it's not clear, this is the one part of the story we don't know, is whether, in fact, the deterrence worked. We don't know how advanced American plans were in January. It's very possible that had the Danes not done that, there would have been a seizure of Greenland territory and that the threat of not having runways and having to kill Danes did deter the United States. We're waiting to find out that piece of the story. I don't want to assert it is true or

not true. I don't know. But that's the question you have is how close was the United States and did Denmark successfully deter the United States? So that's the Danes. And then, you know, I mentioned with the Japanese Prime Minister in this week. And in addition to just the disrespect to the allies, you know, not giving them a heads up about what we were doing, not engaging them, all these countries are going to suffer economic consequences as well in a very real way. And to me, we'll see I don't have a crystal ball, but you'd have to imagine that will exacerbate these relationships even further. I mean, they've been insulted, they've been threatened to be invaded, and now Trump has done a military action without their buy-in that is going to have real ramifications for them domestically. Everyone's aware of the price of oil and the price of gasoline because there's one global oil price.

But it's worth remembering that the actual flow of oil, 80% of the oil from the Persian Gulf goes to Asia. The United States is now, again, the largest producer of oil in the world. The North America, U.S. plus Canada, produce about 25% of all the world's oil and even more of the world's natural gas. And the United States imports a little from Canada. It imports a little from some other places because there are particular kinds of oil that don't come from the United States. and in turn, America exports all, but America's a net exporter. So you're going to have higher prices, but there's no risk of a supply shortage in the United States. But in Asia, South Korea, Japan, China, too, there are a real risk of outright shortage because the tankers that are expected and that are not

making their way are on their way to Asian markets in 80% of cases. So the United States is putting a special burden on its Asian allies. And that's a moment that calls for language of sympathy to stir solidarity. Because what you're ultimately afraid of is that maybe not Japan, maybe not South Korea, but people like you less, like Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, countries that are important to American strategic planning but are not really friends of the United States. You guys are just too unreliable, too flaky. And you never think about our interests. So why should we think about yours?

That's the first rung. I mean, I think you have to start having some hard conversations in the countries that are actually allies. I mean, you saw this from Mark Carney in Canada, starting to have these conversations. about whether, you know, rebalancing the relationship and how much America has relied on versus China is something that is being considered, right? Do you think that's empty threat? No, it is not at all an empty threat. But it's necessary to understand what the threat is. It's not that Canada is going to become a Chinese ally. Geography is geography. I spent a lot of time on this question. The Canadian mood has always has historically been. The United States is this

intimate partner. And the Americans sometimes drag Canada into ventures where Canada would rather not be, like a trade war with China over electric cars. But when they say go, you have to go because they do so much for you. And there's a kind of integration at the highest levels of government. I think one of the things that Carney was saying is it's not we're breaking off from the United States to realize with China. He's saying the way I think about the 21st century is there are going to be three superpowers, the United States, China, and India. And the United States is a little more benign than China in India, but not dramatically more benign. And so our goal is we'll always be closer to the United States than China and India, but we have to have options in a way that Canadians never thought about optionality before. The Indians carried out an assassination on Canadian soil. Admittedly, it's somebody who deserved it, okay, a problem allegedly deserved it.

Can I just get two sentences on that because I'm not aware of the Indian assassination of Canada? I know the Saudis sent a team to Canada to try to kill one of MBSs. political foes, but they got shut down by the Mounties at the border, yeah. So Canada has a bad history of turning its eye to diaspora terror fundraise. There's a deal. If you're a Tamil, if you're a Sikh, if you're Hezbollah, and you fundraising, if you don't conduct any operations in Canada, but you raise money in Canada for operations elsewhere, Canada will sort of look away. And this has been a special problem with Sikh terrorism. In the 1980s, there were some Sikh terrorism inside Canada.

But since then, there's been a lot of fundraising, but no. And the Indians have complained and complained and complained. And finally, they've murdered one of the alleged largest Sikh terror fundraisers in Canada. You know, he was allegedly a big terror fundraiser. And there was allegedly blood on his hands. But still, it's bad form. And the Chinese do even worse things, interfering Canadian elections. they harass, intimidated, and kidnap.

Sometimes Canadians of Chinese origin who speak out in ways that the Chinese state doesn't like. So what Carney is saying is, look, China and India obviously bigger problems in the United States, but the Americans are also a threat. And so Canada needs, it's like a problem in geometry where you need to stay away from all three points of the triangle, the triangle of danger. But it used to be, you wanted to be as close to that safety point and it's no longer safety. That's what Carney's message was. Not that Canada's going to become China's ally.

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Let's just start the conversation about the actual military engagement in Iran and the expanding war in the Middle East, just a little baseline of how you think it's going. How do you think it's going so far? I think there are two tracks, a military track and the political track. And I think the military track is going, and again, I'm not an expert on this, but in my impression, the military track is going much, much better than you would gather from following most conventional American opinion, whether legacy media or new media, the United States and Israel are successfully, they have neutralized Iranian air defense, they are eliminating Iran's

ability to do offensive attacks. Those attacks are becoming more ragged, more poorly aimed. And the Iranians are being pressed to do stupid things like shoot at everybody, including the Turks, whom they shouldn't be shooting at. People, they ought to be looking to make some kind of ally out of they've made an enemy out of the Turks. They're making an enemy of the Gulf states. And the Israelis in particular are destroyed. the security apparatus of the regime, but with these highly targeted attacks on checkpoints, on officials who have done monstrous crimes. So that part, I think, is succeeding. And although it's hard to see the resolution, if you'd look at one of those military matrices and you say, where do you

want to be on X day, I think they would say that everyone is completely satisfied with where they are in whatever day of the war this is today, I guess it's day 22, something like that. It's the political track, and there are two political tracks. One is, where are we going? What's the goal? Trump's idea seems to be that you hit the Iranians enough and they negotiate. That puts all the initiative in the Iranian hands. All they have to do is not negotiate and sooner or later Trump gives up, not the Israelis, but Trump. And the second problem is, this is the bigger one, he has no permission structure. He has no authorization from Congress. He has no certainty that Congress will fund his war. He has no permission from the public. There is real economic pain and it will get worse.

and he has not told Americans it's coming. He has no permission from it, and his numbers will crater. And as first fuel and then food prices rise for a war that Americans do not understand, we're never consulted about, we're never informed of in advance, his political position, weak already is going to crumble more. So I would say military progress, political trouble now and worse trouble ahead. Yeah, I guess I want to add a third vector, because I think that when the military success is being discussed, I take your point that in a lot of media, there is more skepticism and hostility to this for good reason.

And so, you know, there's not a lot of focus on, like, if you're grading this as if it was a war game, and it's, you know, a number of leaders of the other side taken out, you know, number of missiles taken out, right? Like that the Israeli and the U.S. operation has been successful. But the other vector is kind of this quasi-military geopolitical one, and, you know, which is a little bit different from just the pure politics. It's kind of this middle ground. And thinking about, okay, well, when you started this operation, you knew that the Iranians were going to do something. Maybe they've been less effective at protecting their missile stockpile than you've thought. And so that part has gone well.

But blowing up oil infrastructure all across the Middle East is causing very real problems geopolitically. For sure. And that, I think, has been more, you know, the ability for the ability for the Middle East. the straight of Kormuz to totally be shut down, you know, rather than having, you know, little kerfuffles there is something that obviously they did not expect or want. And, you know, the, I guess if you have the stated goal of the nuclear program, again, I'm not an expert on this, but looking at, you know, various military experts that you've read, it doesn't feel like additional progress beyond what was made in last year has been made at preventing them, you know,

from attaining a nuclear weapon, a Danny Citrin, Citruits, you know, know, as a formerly IDF Intel guy that had a pretty negative assessment, essentially, of what's been happening there. You know, again, if you're doing scoreboard counting, the military part has been well, but like the impact more geopolitically to me feels much more negative. As an observer of the run-up to the Iraq War, what were the most important mistakes made in 2003? And among them were never serious enough thought to what if we don't get the best case or even the mid-case scenario, what if we get the worst case scenario? What does that look like and what happens then? And the second was, how do we plan for after the shooting stops or after formal military operation

stop, what happens then? How do we get to a political resolution in Iraq? And both of those were very poorly planned. And there was a real failure, a refusal to think about worst case scenarios. And there was a joke that circulated at the time. How many Bush officials does it take to change a light bulb? And the answer is, what are you talking about? That light bulb is perfectly fine. What would anybody need to change it? And you're giving aid and comfort to terrorism if you even contemplate changing the lightball. So Trump people looked at that record and said, you know what? They screwed up on those two counts, but like amateurs. We're going to show some professional refusal to think about worst case in our.

We're going to show them, you know, when you put Cash Patel on the job of not thinking about things, how much not thinking can Cash Patel do? And it turns out, you know, he could way more than Paul Wolfowitz. Yeah, we're going to take that same mistake in the ab, it's a megalomania to the top of that. A cult of personality. When you read these stories saying they didn't plan for the Strait of Hormuz, I'm sure that the United States Navy, there's a whole floor of the building that has spent the past 50 years thinking about what happens if the Strait of Hormuz is closed.

There's not a plan. There's probably eight plans. All kinds of options with cool names. Actually, pre-Trump, so they're uncool names. But you have to prepare it. You know, the Iranians might really do this. And Mr. President, have you considered which of those opt plans you will choose? have you consulted with the American people

about how you will brace them for the shocked oil prices it's going to. And he just said, I'm not thinking of it. I'm just going to assume they don't do it. Not because the Navy didn't think about it, but because he refused to consider the worst case or even the mid-case scenario. And this is the most probable thing

the Iranians would do, and they don't seem to have taken it seriously at all. Yeah, I think there are two elements that. Just really quick on the priming the country for all this stuff. And there is another just massive difference from the Iraq war. Right. And so the planning was not there for the worst or mid-bad case scenario. And over time, obviously resentment built, anger belt, there's, you know, we could do a whole podcast series

on all the ramifications of that. But like in the initial months, people were understood what the mission was or thought they did or bought in on the state admission. That isn't happening here. And so when you have these negative ramifications that are affecting people's lives tangibly, and you can see them immediately. And then they ask themselves, well, wait a minute, why we're even doing this in the first place? Like, I don't even understand what we're doing. Like, what the point is of this, that, I think, puts them in even the worst position to try to navigate it. And to add to that, they said, last summer, President Trump struck out of the clear blue yonder, the Iranian nuclear program.

I don't think any American or very few Americans would be sorry about that, although they might be troubled by the legalities of it. And then he said, mission accomplished, we do. did it. We obliterated the Iranian nuclear program. If you're worried about that, you don't have to think anymore. I did it. I solved it. Yay me. Why don't people, more people say thank you to me? No one ever says thank you to me. But I did it. You're welcome. And I didn't consult Congress and I spent a lot of money, but I did it. Nine months later, the country's back. Why? Well, that thing I told you I did. I actually, I didn't. Sorry. So I told you not to think about it anymore, but now we're at a big war and the price of fuel is going off because I need to fight a ground war, which I think we're on the way to fighting,

because even if it's just Kargai Island, that's still ground to fighting a ground war for something I told, I promised you I had fixed already. And I never went to Congress. I didn't go to the UN. You know, again, there's not a lot of Iraq war nostalgia out there. But I just want to remind people, President Bush in 2003 got authorization from Congress. And he had a whole series of UN Security Council resolutions against Iraq. And he was went back to the UN to try to get another one. He failed, but there were abundant resolutions before then authorizing the United States and allies to enforce no nuclear weapons in Iraq. He put together some kind of political consensus, and he had public approval on his side for a while. Then the war

went wrong, and the WMD, everyone knows the story. And again, I don't cite this as, you know, here's a great success story, but just here is some show of institutional respect to the way war is fought in the United States. And so then to the military, you mentioned this. So, you know, there's reporting in Axis this morning that very serious contemplation of sending in either an amphibious unit or helicopter they have different plans or options, try to take this Karg Island, which is in the strait Formatives where there's a lot of Iranian energy assets, very risky type operation. And again, when you think about the potential negative outcomes for this, in every day that the Strait of Hormuz is closed.

There are all manner of unintended consequences down the pike. You know, some of the stuff we talked about with geopolitical, with our allies earlier, also then the economic. You know, we saw what a supply chain crisis does to the economy in 2022. And Joe Biden suffered the consequences. You know, it's not just oil and gas. It's fertilizer, helium, a bunch of stuff. So, and then the potential for escalation, what happens if the operation doesn't go well and,

you know, God forbid, additional troops die, et cetera, et cetera. So, I mean, like, that's where we're at right now, which seems very precarious. And let's say the operation does go well, because I'm sure like the Navy with the Strait of Hormuz, the Marines have been thinking about Carg Island nonstop, again, for 50 years. Sure. And they've probably been training for it, and they're the Marines. So let's say it goes well. Now what?

Because the real ground troop question is going to be, suppose you, as the Israelis seem intent on doing, do collapse this hateful regime, which is doing additional hateful acts by the day, murdering teenage girls or hanging high school athletes. And it's hateful. And the Israelis are like the hand of God striking down the judges who handed down those sentences. So let's say the regime does collapse. Now what?

Iran is a semi-developed society. It's got roads. It's got hospitals. It's got a huge problem with keeping the water on. It's got electricity. Who's in charge of preventing roving gangs of criminals from taking over the streets of Iranian cities? The Iranian military is going to be broken.

and if the idea is somebody takes power, who? Trump even said we killed them. I don't know. We had a couple guys in mind. They're dead now. Yeah. And if the idea is that the Polovi dynasty returns, they are going to need some kind of international structure.

And by the way, they're going to need international aid. Because by the time this ends, if it ends in anything like the way the United States and Israel hope and that I hope with a transition to some new kind of regime, it's going to be broke. They're going to need international assistance. and they're going to help reconstructing their oil facilities. Who's thinking about that?

Well, nobody. Our president wants to steal stuff from them if they get a new regime, wants to take there. It wants to do the Venezuela deal, where if we're going to take Carg Island and then we're going to get a 20% Vig, you know, 5% for the country, 15% for Don Jr. This is the other really important mistake about Iraq. And this is one I personally was most guilty of, so I'm very conscious of it. So you looked at a picture of Baghdad in 2003.

You saw these buildings. It looks sort of like buildings you knew. And you thought, there must be people going to work in those buildings. There must be something like a state. So when you remove the 200 worst actors at the top, you'll inherit a state structure. That's what happened in Japan in 1945 is, you know, the people at the ministry of tramways continue to go to work and to operate the tramways. And it turned out, no, actually, there was no state. The United States had broken and the Iraqis had broken that state long before.

There was nobody in those buildings. They weren't doing anything. So you remove the 200 worst actors, the whole thing disintegrated into chaos. and it needed many more people, many more armed people to keep order in that society the United States had ever budgeted for or ever would budget for. The original plans for Iraq said, you'll need 300,000 men. And that was, by the way, was the correct number, it turns out. If people had accepted that, the Iraq war would never have happened. No one was sending 300,000 to Iraq. So the United States government of the time, President Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney,

persuaded themselves they could do it with 100,000 troops for a short time. And that was not true. and chaos broke out, as I said, two few people for too short a time for the excellent reason that they wouldn't have sent the proper number, it wouldn't have been worth it. So that's the question we're facing with Iran. What is it going to take to keep order in Iran

if you collapse the regime? It's a country of 90 million. It's bigger than Ukraine. It's mountainous. The population may be well disposed to you, at least at the beginning. But they'll get grouchy too if there isn't electricity,

if there isn't water. Booster juice is going crazy for hazelnuts. No, not crazy. Nuts. Booster Juice is going bananas for hazelnuts. I mean, there are bananas and smoothies, but that's not the point. Banana juice is booster for hazelnuts. What? Just stop.

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and even offers you emergency assistance at the tap of a button. Okay, but what if I don't have an accident? Well, just keep on keeping on. Bell Air Direct, insurance, simplified, conditions apply. This takes us to what I tease at the top, which is why I'm, like, when I just assess what is happening in this conflict, I feel like Barbara Lee or Code Pink. I just, I'm like, I think this is just a catastrophe of epic proportions.

I think it's possibly, it's most likely going to be the biggest catastrophe of either Trump term. I guess up to now, who the hell knows what the future could hold. I just think economically, geopolitically, I don't see any possible good solution for Iran. I think that the worst case scenario is just a total breakdown of the state and a refugee crisis and something that looks like Syria. The best case scenario is huge economic shock and a different Ayatollah in charge. The whole thing seems horrific. And, you know, I had Bill Crystal on earlier this week, and we got some teasing on social media.

because the headline of the podcast was end the war. Because I just like, that's how I see it. There are others, they're Democrats, and you talked about this a little bit on your podcast, about, you know, thinking that that's the wrong approach. There is, like, we are where we are. The Iranians are bad guys that needs to be managed. So, like, how do you, like, where do you see my Barbara Lee approach

as incorrect at this point? I think what you're doing is you're pushing together into one question, what are two separate questions? So question one is, would you have pressed the go button at the beginning? Of course. Or would you have approved the pressing of the go button at the beginning? So President W Bush, President Obama, President Biden, they all had the opportunity. President Trump won to press the go button, and they all said no.

So that's a pretty wide range of presidents and said, you know what? No, no go. And if you'd ask me the day before the strike, would you approve a Trump-led war on Iranis? Absolutely not. Even if it has the military's ready, the political leadership, they're not to be trusted, they're not ready, the homeland's naked, they're crooks. They will take emoluments from the Saudis and the Kuwaitis and the Gulfies. No, I am not in favor.

I would not, if I were in charge, I would not press go. And if I'm as an observer, as a poll answerer, I do not approve the decision to go if it done by President Trump. No, no, no. But now it's March 20th. The go button is pressed. What happens now? And this is, I think, is where our disagreement is.

I don't think it's a meaningful answer to say, stop the war. It is everything I'm worried about. We're already on that path. So my response is the people who care about the country in which I do not include President Trump need to find some way to assert authority over this war that has begun and it is on its way to being a very big war. The plane is in the air. So the question is, how do you bring the plan? Turn it around.

Try to land it on the ice in Greenland. I don't know. Yeah, but what stop the war really means is turn off the ignition and see what happens. Because you can't go backwards in time. You can't turn the plane around. You can't undo what has been done. I just don't see how it could get better. Like, what is a path to it getting better than it is today?

And I don't see it. I think stopping the bombing and getting Israel to stop as well and letting Iran figure it out feels like it's not a good situation. That's a really bad situation. No, because they don't stop. Iran doesn't stop the war. Why? Because they have to exact a price.

If, supposing we did that, the Iranian regime now has to reassert its authority within its territory, which means killing a lot of people. And they have to exact a price from the Emirates. They don't stop firing Israel. They have to exact a price. Right now, they're humiliated. What is what is it? This is where I start to, this is where I start to feel like, again, a peace knicker, an America first person. What does that have to do with us? Who cares? I just think back to when we were in, we were in like our in the Bush era and Obama and you were writing for speeches. I was working for Republicans. One thing that we kept talking about was we needed energy independence at home because we did not.

not want to be, you know, caught up in dealing with the fights of these mullahs and be at their mercy overseas. Like that was the point of becoming energy independent. And so now it's like, why, who cares if the United Arab Emirates and Iran keep shooting at each other? Well, that doesn't have anything to do with us, does it? There's no such thing as energy independence. There's one global price of energy.

And wherever it comes from, that's the price. So you may get all of your energy from the United States, from North America. There may be no absolute shortage. but the price will be the global price. You can't get oil from the Persian Gulf to Japan. Well, the Japanese that entered the auction market for North American oil. But if we stopped, wouldn't Iran then just sell their oil? Again, these are all bad scenarios.

I'm not for this, but we're here now. I look at the same thing that you're looking at now, and you're saying we're here now so we should figure out how to manage the war. I'm saying we're here now, and everything we do from here gets worse, if I guess the new Iranian regime, whatever asshole Ayatollah takes over, then start selling their oil to, Asia, that's not great, but we shouldn't have done, we shouldn't have started this conflict in the first place. Why are we going to fight on Karg Island so that Asia can get oil? It doesn't make any

sense to me. So two answers to the question. The first one is, why do I care? And the second is what do I hope would happen? Admitting that what I hope for is kind of unlikely. Why I cares? Because the reason I came, became an anti-Trump Republican in the first place, and I remained an anti-Trump Republican. I've disaffiliated from the party in moral disgust, but I believe in American global leadership. I don't want to see the Chinese fleet policing the Persian Gulf. Even though the oil is flowing not to the United States, but to American allies, the United States gets enormous benefits from being in charge of world safety. Because if the United States is not, either there won't be world safety or China and India will do it. And I don't want to live in that planet.

And I don't want that planet for my children. But we've elected Trump twice since then, though. Look at the job he's doing managing. He's not doing a good job. It's being managed quite poorly. And maybe we should just stop and let him be America first and build his arch here and stop doing this stuff. And then we can deal with all of that, reasserting our global power in 2029. And maybe twice election of Trump means, I mean, I comment this again from a Canadian point of view where I sometimes we look at the United States as outsiders, but we also maybe have more admiration and trust in the United States and a more idealized version.

But the America I believe in, and maybe I'm just a fossil. And, you know, when I shuffle off the stage, this view goes with me. I still believe in the mission of the United States. I still believe in the capacity of the United States. And yes, the two elections of Trump challenge my view of the ultimate value of the American experiment. Sure. But I'm not giving that up. And so I still want to live in that unipolar American-led world order rallies like-minded countries to meet the challenge from China that tries to recruit India into that order, difficult as that brought.

is, and this is part of it. And so what I hope will happen, and again, this is maybe more fanciful than your idea of stopping the war, is that there are enough Republican senators who, behind the scenes, will work with enough Democratic senators behind the scenes. And Democratic members of the House to say to President Trump, you have to put a responsible person at DHS. You have to replace that of the FBI. If Heng Seth wants to keep his job, let him keep his job. But let's make sure there's someone who's doing the job who isn't Hegseth because he's on Meathead. And let's have some real people. and let's have achievable aims and let us apologize to all of our friends in Europe. And let's try to build the coalition and let's give the American people the message you should have

given it. And maybe that message can't come from you. You know, the reason we call it the Marshall Plan, the thing the United States did after World War II, was because President Truman at that point had lost the trust of Republicans in Congress. And he said, if it's named for me, it won't happen. He found George Marshall, who was the most admired man in the country, and said, this is your idea now. So we need to find people who are admired who are in the vicinity of the Trump administration. who can become the face of getting us out of this jam that President Trump has driven the country into. As I said, I would not oppress the go button.

I was not in favor pressing the go button. But the go button is pressed. It can't be unpressed. What would you tell to a Marine right now about or their family about why they're going to do an amphibious attack on Carg Island? Like, what is the point? Why would we do that? A hard thing to say to somebody in that line of danger. I hope what I'm about to say is true.

You've drilled this operation, you and your predecessors, every day. for the past 50 years. You are going to succeed. And you're going to succeed at acceptable cost because you're in the United States Marine Corps and you've been thinking about this under presidents

going back to Jimmy Carter. I'm sure that planning started under Carter. And it will work. And you are doing this because the United States is at war with the world's leading state spawns of terror that is the blood of many, many Americans on its hands

and that has killed 40,000 of its own people in a matter of weeks. And you're bringing a better future to that country. And you're doing what American soldiers do at their best, which is fight for justice and freedom,

not only safety at home and justice and freedom for other people. And I'd hope to God that that would be true and that there would be people back home who would feel a little bit that sense of what America used to be and should be again, but isn't now. The Bell Air Direct app includes crash assist, which detects an accident the moment it happens, and even offers you emergency assistance at the tap of a button. Okay, but what if I don't have an accident?

Well, just keep on, keeping on. Bell Air Direct, insurance, simplified. Conditions apply. I want to ask you out the Israel element of this as well, obviously, is something that is important to you and more so than me. And so maybe this is my version of you being a Canadian looking in. Like maybe my distance here is not giving me the full point of view on something. And so I just want to posit this and get your reaction.

One thing we agree on is I just think that there's a scourge of anti-Semitism here and globally that is expanding and growing. And I think that that's a problem. I think simultaneous to that, obviously, Israel has very serious security issues, which they have the right to deal with. And yet, the way in which Bibi has worked with Trump on this war, to me, has done a lot to exacerbate the global anti-Semitism problems. And I think if you look at just to give one example of this, Joe Kent, who we can both agree is an anti-Semite and a bad person, he resigns his job, and he writes this sentence. Iran pose no imminent threat to our nation, and it's clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel. here is what caroline levitt the spokesperson for the president said in response to that

that this is a lie president trump has clearly and explicitly stated he had strong and compelling evidence that iran was going to attack the united states first if you were to stay person in the world and you are listening to those two statements and joe kent the anti-semite says no there was no human threat we did this due to pressure from israel and the other side says oh no that's not true iran was going to attack us any day now i don't think it's crazy for sensible people to look of that and say, it seems like Joe Kent is the one that is saying the truth here. And I think that that has created a problem for Israel and for Trump that they, that they've put themselves in this situation. How do you react to that? I write, well, neither is true. But the problem is that the

truth is one that it's a little difficult for leaders to articulate. So Iran in March, I guess the war started in February, in February of 2026 was not an imminent threat to the United States. That's not why the United States struck. The United States struck because Israeli action had made Iran so vulnerable that for the first time since 1979, the long simmering U.S. Iran War, which has been going on nonstop in one form or another since 1979, the United States could strike with devastating effect and at very low cost. Thanks to the Israeli success last summer against the Iranian air defenses, this was the moment when you could achieve something that every American president has thought about very seriously. The United States worked with Israel under

the Obama administration to use clandestine means to stop the Iranian nuclear bond program. And the Israelis were doing things like messing up the Iranian centrifuges, killing Iranian nuclear scientists. The United States did not veto those actions and probably helped. So there has been this war in the shadows for a long time. It goes back to kidnapping of American diplomats at the embassy in 1979, the murder of American Marines in 1982 in Beirut, the torture of the CIA Station Chief, the Iranian supplying IEDs in Iraq. This is a long-running battle. The United States struck now because this was the moment of safety. And so the claim of imminent threat, I think, is untrue.

Iran was struck because this was the moment to prevent it from becoming the next North Korea. And that, I think, is why the military was willing to do it. And President Trump acted, maybe he was under the impression his poll numbers would go up. Who knows how he thinks? I'm not going to pretend to understand that. But for Israel, this war truly is existential. I mean, the Iranians have made it very clear. The reason they want a nuclear weapon was to do.

They have a big clock, they used to, a big clock in the center of Tehran with a countdown to the annihilation of Israel by the year 2040. And the Iranians were the funders of the people attacked Israel on October 7th. So from an Israeli point of view, that war doesn't end until you've gone to Berlin in a way and turned off the source of the existential threat. And Israel is in a much safer place. Israel has a much narrower margin of security than the United States does. But there was no imminent threat, but it's also not true. This is some kind of Israeli scheme. it's America saying this, I don't think Kamala Harris would have done this.

But if a younger and healthier Joe Biden were president in 2026, would he have thought very, very hard about striking Iran then? I believe he would. And I think even if President Obama might have thought very, very hard. This is the moment. Let's do it. Just my one follow up on this. And then we'll close with the MMA fight, give people a dessert that they've been waiting for,

is given the nature of the existential threat, Israel cannot make decisions on war and peace based on like what's going to be said on the Theo Vaughn podcast in America. You know, like I recognize that. And yet, I just, given the increasing isolation and concerns about anti-Semitism in the West and Europe and the U.S., I just, I even listened to that answer that you just gave. And it's like, well, the U.S. didn't really go because of Israel, but Iran was an existential threat to Israel. Like, this was a real threat that they had faced.

And now we are part of it because it's kind of for these like, long, complicated, more bankshot reasons. And I just worry if you're Israel and you're trying to weigh all the various threats, you're thinking about this. And like, you're giving a lot of ammo. You're giving a lot of rhetorical ammo and aid in comfort to people that don't like you, don't want to be supportive of you. And I think maybe, you know, you could be putting yourself in a situation where in

2028, you have two different presidential candidates who are both opposed to you because of the way that this was prosecuted. And that's, and that is also a long-term risk to Israel. And I just, I think that it would be fair for people to critique or to be concerned about the relationship based on that. Is that wrong from your perspective? No, I don't think that's wrong. There's an Israeli piece and an American piece. And it is a very difficult balance from an Israeli point of view.

I speak as a Jew and a supporter of Israel. It's a very difficult balance for friends of Israel and for Israelis to think, how much of our security should we rest on the opinions of others? and how much should we rest on our own limited strength. This goes into history that never mind the Holocaust, but one of the things that I think every Israeli remembers is when Israel kidnapped Adolf Eichmann from Argentina in 1960 and brought Israel for trial, that action was condemned by a resolution of the United Nations.

And the Antibiaid in 1970, in 1976, when Israel flew to Uganda and rescued a plane full of hostages who were going to be murdered, the United Nations didn't quite vote to condemn it, but it nearly did. And so deep in the memory of every Israeli and friend of Israelis, you know, if we relying on popularity to protect the Jewish people, Finreed, but never that popular. And people will be sorry for us afterwards, but they won't help us before. So now, Israel has to be shrewd about this and wise, because Israel's strength is limited.

It can't just, it can't behave in any way it wishes. And it depends on permission of others and needs support from the United States and its partners in Europe. So it can't do whatever it wants. But the idea of chasing likes and clicks, that's not a viable strategy, not for a country that is on the verge of extinction. That said, the United States has a right of veto over Israeli actions. It's often exercised it. But I think if you knew the full history of what has gone on under Obama as under Trump, you would be impressed by how much more cooperation there has historically been between the United States and Israel on Iran and how much less vetoing.

the MMA fight that was supposed to honor America's birthday has been changed David Trump. It was going to be on the 4th of July. Yes. And that was troubling to me because the 4th of July

is already starting to have a tinge of melancholy. My former favorite holiday is already starting to have a tinge of melancholy and I was like, what am I going to, how am I going to just disassociate myself from the world

on this of Independence Day? Luckily, Donald Trump has done us a favor. He's moved to the MMA fight to his birthday in June instead. It will be celebrating the president. And it will be aired on the new network of choice of the White House. CBS. CBS decided to air the MMA fight. And there'll be some sort of Rocky versus Drago MMA fight on the White House. And this time the president of the United States will be on Drago side. So the United States marked the 100th anniversary of independence with a great exposition of science and technology in the city of Philadelphia, the 1876 exposition. And the contents are still on display at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington at the Museum of Industry. That's basically preserves the highlights of that 1876 show. It celebrated the 200th anniversary in 1976 with many events, but the highlight was a giant regatta of sailing ships in New York Harbor that was jointly

American and British. As if to say, 200 years ago, the most violent battles of the revolution were fought between the United States and Britain in New York Harbor. And today, these two intimate friends are together honoring the 200th anniversary in New York Harbor with ships that look like the ships of the 18th century. What a beautiful image. And the 250th MMA fighting. It just sounds like the decline and fall of the American Empire symbolized right there. And a special, badly executed, commemorative coin, fined gas stations everywhere of President Trump in his rocky short pants and his fake six-pack abdominal muscles. Well, there we are. That's David Frum. Go check out his podcast. The David Prumption's very,

it's excellent. Thank you, too. And hopefully we'll be having you back again soon. All right, brother? Thank you always for your hospitality. All right. Everyone else, we'll be back on Monday with Bill Crystal. See you all then. Peace. Because the eyes of the ranger are upon you. Any wrong you do, he's going to see. Dexas left behind you. Because that's where the Rangers going to be. The Borg podcast is brought to you thanks to the work of lead producer Katie Cooper,

Associate Producer Anselaer, and with video editing by Katie Lutz, and audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown. The Bell Air Direct app includes crash assist, which detects an accident the moment it happens, and even offers you emergency assistance at the tap of a button. Okay, but what if I don't have an accident? Well, just keep on, keeping on. Bell Air Direct, insurance, simplified. Conditions apply.