The Bulwark Podcast - Sarah Longwell: No One Should Trust this Government

Episode Date: March 9, 2026

Unless the administration is keeping some closely-guarded secret about why America went to war against Iran, the only thing officialdom is saying out loud is that Netanyahu wanted us to. And now Trump says he's waiting on Netanyahu to end it. But support for the state of Israel cannot make up for the fact that both the president and the prime minister are not to be trusted. Both Trump and Netanyahu are corrupt men who used their power to avoid being held accountable for their corruption. To be skeptical about the aims of the military operation is not antisemitic, but the fact that it is happening at all may contribute to the rising incidence of antisemitism. Plus, JD is in a tight spot, the administration keeps lying about our killing of Iranian schoolchildren, and Sarah's new book advises Democrats on how to win the comms war against Republicans.Sarah Longwell joins Tim Miller.show notes Pre-order Sarah's book, "How to Eat an Elephant: One Voter at a Time" Stream "Memphis Belle," the film Sarah recommended Tickets for our LIVE show in Austin on March 19: TheBulwark.com/Events. Same night out — way better morning with Cheers. For a limited time our listeners are getting 20% off their entire order by using code THEBULWARK at cheershealth.com/THEBULWARK #Cheers #ad

and welcome to the Bullwark podcast. I'm your host Tim Miller. Happy Daylight Savings Time. Finally, I'm in my element. Okay. We have light at night and I appreciate that. We've kicked out Bill Crystal this Monday. He was getting a little too excited singing Barbara Ann over the weekend. That's only a joke for people who are paying attention to politics in 2008. It's not true. We really... That's a John McCain joke. We have a guest for a different reason. She's the publisher of the Bullwark, you know, or she's the host of the Focus Group podcast, the illegal news with Sarah Longwell. She's now the best. selling author of a book that isn't going to even be out until September. But she's a front of a class person and wanted to do even better on the pre-sales. And so she's here on this podcast. You should pre-order it right now. Link is in the bio. How to Eat an Elephant, one voter at a time is the name of the book.

It's Sarah Longwell. What is up? Hey, do you want to apologize to me for saying I definitely shouldn't write this book? I don't. Opposite. And now I kind of feel like you want to get first on the New York Times list. got seconds behind Secretary of War, Pete Hegsuff, and you want to be first. And that was really the main reason behind the book. And I think it was probably about me. Yeah, I was just going to say,

I know you think everything in the world is about you and competition with you. But actually, actually, I wrote it for the Bullwark community, who, by the way, they ride so hard for us. All I had to tell them was, if I sold 20,000 copies, maybe I'd let JVL moderate a focus group. And boom, they were all over it. I can't, can't thank them enough. I just got to sit this weekend on my birthday weekend and see my book become a bestseller on the strength of pre-orders from the board community. So thanks to all of you for doing that. I do want to be number one. I am number one right now in all of the like political categories just in front of Senator Kennedy, who has a book apparently. If you watch the Amazon chart of Sarah going up to wanking,

so it was kind of like the gas prices chart. It was just like straight up. The book is how to eat an elephant. We'll talk about it at the end, about why. And you should get it just because it's Sarah. is great and you'll love it and doesn't matter what it's about, but we'll tell you more about why it matters, what's important about it at the end, but we have news to get to. We're in a war. We are. So I guess we're going to spend a lot of time talking about that here at the top.

A couple of dues items from the weekend. We had the seventh American killed in action as an army soldier in Saudi Arabia. It also announced another marine infantryman, 19-year-old Kevin Melendez died, but it doesn't seem like that was in the killed in action category, so we don't exactly know what

happened with that. Last night, me and J.B. of Yale jumped on a live stream. You can follow those on our substack or YouTube. When we get riled up about something, now we get on and talk about it live. And this was about the oil prices skyrocketing. It reached a peak of close to $120 a barrel. And it's down to about 100 right now. Sarah, I want to play for you a little audio to kind of contextualize that price per barrel.

And then we can talk about that and the other ramifications for the war. Are you a watcher of Landman? Do you watch Landman? I don't watch Landman, although I probably should. I think it's a show for me. I just haven't gotten to it yet. Okay, well, here is Billy Bob Thornton and his character Tommy Norris, who's an oil executive in Texas explaining to a young, do-eyed lawyer, what the target oil price is and what the implications are. Let's listen.

Well, you want oil to live above 60, but below 90. And don't get me wrong, we're still printing money at 90, but, again, again, you. gets up over 350 a gallon, it starts to pinch. It hits 100. Every product in America has to readjust its price. Every product in America has to adjust its price. That doesn't sound good. No, it's bad. The thing is, is that gas is just one of those things that every American notices. You know, the war feels far away to people, these Middle East wars. Even with the loss of American life, you know, until you really start losing people by the thousands and thousands, Americans have kind of a threshold for it. And what they don't have a threshold for, unfortunately,

and I say unfortunately, meaning one would hope that the loss of human life would outweigh how one feels about the personal pinch, but that's just not the way voters work. It is like a big blazing billboard. People look at gas prices when they drive by the gas station, they see the cost of it, and they are constantly doing the mental adjustment for what that means for them. You know, if they're not super wealthy, like it just matters to everybody. And so that is how they will interpret the war and whether or not they are for or against it is like the personal consequences to them and gas prices are such a specific personal consequence for people. Well, number one, they're already seeing it.

It looks like the most commonly encounter price for diesel jump from $369 a gallon to $4.99 a gallon this morning. So it's not like a 10 cent jump. It's like a massive jump over the course of a week. And it's never a good sign for the economy. when you're starting to follow commodities analysts online. But if, you know, which is what I'm doing, you're trying to follow commodities. I started doing this too.

Like, I'm following all different people all of a sudden to be like understanding it. But, you know, CNBC economics folks. Derek Thompson we had on last Thursday was on this. Nate Silver, not exactly a, you know, kind of Trump Drainian syndrome, you know, left wing apologists. Like, just neutral analysts looking at this and saying, it's going to get worse for it gets better. Like, even if he tucks tail, like, sure, it'll probably be better by summer. and so maybe it wouldn't have an impact on the midterms.

But, you know, like we saw this in the fallout for COVID. There is like long tail reaction to all this sort of thing. Like with the tariffs, it was like, ah, you could, you know, the stock market went down. And then he pulled, then he tacoed, the stock market went back up. Like, this is not that. This is not that. And, you know, you and I are not economics analysts. So people should take this with a grain of salt, but you don't have to be.

I got a C plus. Excuse me. I got a C plus in macro 101. Oh, did you? Okay. They literally invented a class called the history of math for me so that they could get me through high school mathematics. But even for people like us, we are able to see the downstream consequences of things like this. You bring up COVID, right?

I remember years after the peak of COVID, Americans were still frustrated by supply chain issues that were continuing the hiring issues where, you know, they couldn't find people to work in restaurants. These things, they go on and they still impact people. And this is the thing, only in a week's span of time, since this first happened, we can already see that this isn't going the way Trump wanted it to. We are already deeper in than I think he thought. We would be to the extent he thought about it at all. It's not the kind of thing you could just get in and out of. And it is the kind of thing that voters notice. And back building up, it's not just the gas, right?

It's like, okay, so if diesel is at five bucks a gallon, what does that affect? Truckers? You know, what are truckers carrying? Food, right? And plastics, like, it's cross the word. It's a lot of consumer products get affected by this. It's all the things that it impacts, but then also the other things that are already going on in the macro economy. Like, we were already seeing jobs number slow down.

We were already seeing inflation be high. Like, if we go into a stagflation period because of this, like, it's not in a vacuum. Well, the good news is the attorney general said we don't have to worry about any of the scandals or problems because the Dow Jones is at 50,000. But, oh, wait a minute, I'm sorry. We're down to 46,500 right now. I was wondering this morning, at what point does the stock market trigger the rest of the Epstein files, according to Pam Bondi, right? That's a good question. How low do we have to go to get the rest of the Epstein files out?

It's something to look at. Just again, about the kind of lack of strategic planning here and we're all folks on the economic side that we'll get into the military side of it. Last July, for example, Trump said that he was waiting for oil prices to get lower to fill up the strategic petroleum reserve. So that seems like a mistake. People might remember that Biden expended some of the strategic oil reserve, rather, the last time when Russia invaded Ukraine, which is a legitimate use for this. The Fox and Trump and the right winger's demagogued against him on it,

but it's like, okay, well, prices are going up. It's nothing that didn't have anything to do with us. It was this external shock of, you know, something happening with Putin. And that is not the case this time. We did it. So, you know, if you knew that we were planning, to go to war with Iran, one thing that you could have done, or it was possible, you know, a couple months ago when oil prices were lower, was refill that. But that didn't hit the checklist, I guess.

He's following whatever Netanyahu told him. I don't know how quickly this ultimately happened. Like, obviously they were having conversations, you know, for a few weeks leading up to this. But it's not clear that it was like imminent. Like, I think it's caught all of the American government off guard, which is why you just said, you open the podcast with, we're at war. Well, the administration's not saying we're at war. Trump is saying we're at war, but the rest of the administration isn't because to say we're at war has an actual legal meaning, actual things like, you know, Mike Wals has to actually go to the UN and say to the French, you know, his French counterpart, like,

yes, we are at war or here's why we're doing the bombing. whatever. They haven't reconciled any of that. Like when he's on television, it's sort of like when Democrats are asked, what is a woman? That's the new question for Republicans. Is like, are we at war? Because they just sit there and don't say anything because they don't really have an answer. Yeah. I was listening to the illegal news about this from this weekend about the legal implications from declaring war versus not.

One more thing. The Trump spin on the gas prices, I want to read you. You wrote this. Short-term oil prices, which will drop rapidly when the destruction of the Iran nuclear threat is over is a very small price to pay for USA and world safety and peace. Only fools would think differently, all caps. So call me a fool, I guess. A couple of notes there in that point.

I thought that the destruction of the Iran nuclear threat had already happened. They promised us that it had happened. I guess not. And then the second line, it's a very small price to pay for USA and world safety and peace. Like literally the opposite of what he campaigned done. You know, he campaigned the fools were the people that cared about world peace. Why are we the world's policemen? Who cares what's happening over there?

I care about you and your pocketbook. This, like this bleat on the gas prices is the exact opposite. It's like, oh, well, we're, you know, I'm sorry. You've got to pay an extra buck a gallon, but we're focusing on world peace over here. Look, we can make the hypocrisy arguments until we're blue in the face. but honestly, and we should, and we will. Trump doesn't care. I've been thinking about this a lot.

You know, you and I, actually, we jumped on right after this happened kind of a couple days in, and we were like, why hasn't Trump done an Oval Office address? Why isn't he talking to the American people? But actually, the question does sort of answer itself. It's that he does not care. Just think about Trump's experience right now. Think about what it's like to be him. All you do is have cabinet meetings where everybody goes around the table to tell you what

a beautiful, amazing, brilliant job you've been doing. All you're doing is taking calls from billionaires telling you how amazing you are and they're sending you a million bucks. And could you get their degenerate son-in-law, you know, pardoned? He's pardoning the January 6 people who are out there committing heinous crimes of sex crimes against children now. You know, like, he doesn't get any blowback for that. All he hears from the people surrounding him in every way is how incredible he is. And so Trump, he doesn't care about making a case to the American. people. He doesn't care what we think. He doesn't even care about his poll numbers. He doesn't, he already won. Like, I think that sometimes when we talk about, isn't this bad for him politically,

of course it's bad for him politically in a normal way. Like, in terms of his numbers go down. People think he's a hypocrite. Voters don't like it. People are actually dying. Gas prices are going up. There is inflation. He looks like a fool. He doesn't care. And the second you realize, don't let the nihilism infect you, but the second you realize what a nihilist he is, and that he, unlike any other American president, does not care about the impact on the American people in any real way, everything starts to make sense. Two thoughts on this. One, I've been saving this one, but waiting for the right opportunity to bring it up. A friend was in the White House because their boss was meeting with Trump. We've got to anonymize this. And they're like, you won't believe what happened.

Trump does this thing where he's taking us around. And they go into Marco's office. And Trump is like, Marco, how are things going with the world or the war or something? And Marco replies, Mr. President, everything is going great. You're the greatest, most visionary leader of all time. And the world has never respected us more. And he takes him to Scott Besson's office. And it's like, Scott, how are things going with the economy?

And Scott's like, it's a golden age. sir, it's a golden age, Mr. President. And it's like, I was listening to the story. It's like, okay, we've all come to accept that that is happening at the cabinet meetings. Like, we make fun of it, but it's like been the reality now for eight years. You know, it started during the first term. There was just something about the fact that this was happening in private, you know, that speaks to the point you just made.

That, like, not only is Trump not getting any real advice, but like the opposite. Like, even in private, they, are, you know, just treating him like he's a leader from the middle ages, you know, and the serfs have to all pay homage to him so that, you know, he doesn't send them to their deaths. I think that's right. And I think we've done a lot to understand that these aren't normal times. But there are certain things that we think of as hard political realities. They're unavoidable, even for somebody with a cult-like following like Trump. And that is true insofar as if gas prices go up significantly and stay there for a prolonged period of time, it will erode his

numbers further that are already eroding across all kinds of vectors, but nowhere more than on affordability and just the economy. Yeah. But if you then say to yourself, he doesn't care and he's not really getting that information anyway. Like it's so funny, one of the numbers that you saw circulating, and I guarantee you this is the number he is seeing, first they pulled and asked people, are you a regular Republican, are you a MAGA Republican? And for people who said they were MAGA Republicans, then they said, do you approve of

the war in Iran? Well, that has a 98% approval among people who say they're MAGA Republicans. That's the number he shows. That's the number he tweets out on his personal social media platform. Like, think about this. He's not even on a social media platform where he is reading criticism. Like he used to live in a world. He used to be on the general social media platform so he could see. Now he's on his own private one who only is followed by journalists and then everybody else is a big MAGA person. He's totally isolated from reality.

This leads me to my second observation. And I almost hate to bring this up, like honestly, because on the one hand, I try to keep my catastrophizing, you know, within the bounds of what I think is realistic. and also you never have to hand it to somebody like Nick Flentis. And so I say this with massive caveats of the front end. But I was watching a Nick Flintz clip over the weekend. And Nick is down on the war. And he said something that I was just like,

sometimes maybe the crazy people understand other crazy people's brains in a way that is a little concerning. He said something about Trump and about how Trump now doesn't actually care about us or politics or anything. Like he is totally in Megalomania world and he wants to do historic things. He sees himself as a grand historic figure. This is right. Right.

I was watching this. I'm going, I'm nodding, nodding. You know, this is why he went to Greenland. This is why Venezuela and, you know, the Arc de Triumph and all that explains all of that. And he goes, and that makes me also think that he wants to drop the bomb. It was like, it was like, you gave me a jump scare watching it. Yeah. Because all of a sudden I was like, okay.

And then Nick goes on it. He's like, I don't think it's definitely going to happen or saying. He's like, I'm just saying like, you have to think about it now because it's the kind of thing that only a historic figure would do. It's only happened once before and he gets to be the first in the modern times. So anyway, that's just something to keep people up at night. I don't know if I'm not predicting it saying that that was a rare time that I am consuming Maga Media and I heard a point that I was like, oh, that's a little too real. Yeah, I mean, look, suddenly I feel like I'm on a podcast with JVL and, you know, you're doing maximalist and I have to be the one to be like, I don't think he'll drop

a nuclear bomb and then everyone's going to yell at me for me too naive. Too naive to understand that Trump is actually- But did that not tickle a little thing in your brain? A little worry? A little motherly worry? Yeah, but I don't know. I do feel like my Trump derangement syndrome is full in total. So there's not a lot of room for me to sit there and be like, yes, I don't worry about the following things. I do try to maintain perspective. However, I also think that so many people underreact to what he's doing. And they continue, again, to do too much traditional political analysis. And they think, well, no president can just watch gas prices go up this high, watch his numbers sink this low, inflict this much pain on the American people,

literally do the opposite of what he campaign for. Like, you can't do that. That's against the political gravity. And I'm just saying there is no political gravity. He hasn't held an Oval Office address because he doesn't care what we think. To your point about you need to listen to other people that don't think the way you do, Yeah. Well, you should listen to all those pundits who tried to tell us the people rationalizing Trump.

I don't listen to what he says. I only listen to what he does. Okay. Well, let's just look at what he does. It's the exact opposite, which is why everybody can sort of decide to be for Trump. He's so all over the place. He can give anybody something to tag on to. But if I had told you a year ago, actually what Trump is going to do is say, basically like, I'm in this with Netanyahu.

He's going to be let around. And also, there's only constraint is his. own morality and his own mind. And so that's it. He doesn't care about us or any of these things. He only cares about those things. All right, guys, I don't know if it's because I'm living in New Orleans or, you know, something about my personal brand. It's because I get spotted at Tippettinas all the time. But we've got a new sponsor on the podcast that is also here to help you for the mornings after a night of fun. We're loving the products. We're also, I don't. I I like the branding.

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Please support our show and tell them we sent you. One other thing on this about our Trump-terangent syndrome and expectations, because it was another little light bulb I had over the weekend. I think officially this weekend, Trump 2.0 became worse than my expectations. And I'm curious what you think about that, because for a long time, people have been like, this is the, you know, Ben Rhodes. I was like, last week was like, this is the worst case scenario for Trump 2.0. And I was like, I need to let you into my mind, brother. Because for me, like Trump 2.9, it's like basically been, you know, maybe not in the particulars. Like, could I have predicted Greenland or, you know, kidnapping Maduro?

No. But, like, you know, generally it's been like kind of what I expected. Like, I expected there to be mass men in the street harassing people. Maybe a situation would arise that they'd end up killing people because that was what they wanted to do. Mass deportations. Like, I expected that. I expected that tariffs. You know what I mean?

Like, in some ways, it's been a little better in the sense that, like, I figure that the FBI and DOJ, which are kind of, of the scariest power ministries would have been more competent than they are. So, you know, when I think about the first year, it was kind of like, it was really bad, like maybe slightly better than what my Trump derangement syndrome baseline was. Like, this war is the first time that I'm like, I didn't think that he was going to be this stupid. Like, it's stupider than I expected. So anyway, I wonder what you, where you're at on that. Well, I think part of what's interesting about why he likes the war, because I think a lot of this, again, he doesn't care what we think. He just, he discovers things himself.

And one of the things he's discovered is that, to your point, Pam Bondi can't get him what he wants. Right. And Cash Patel can't get him what he wants. Like the problem of putting incompetent people who will do whatever you say in there is that they are fundamentally incompetent. And so there is some constraint that we're like they can't overcome some of the process that constrains them. What he's realized, though, is that the military is extraordinarily competent. The American military. our CIA, the Israeli intelligence apparatus.

These are wildly competent things that he now gets to play with. And so I think for him, yeah, that's what it is. It's like, oh, no, these guys are good at this. They are blowing things up. They are killing people. And I can just say, go for it. I'll soothe you with this one thing. The reason he doesn't drop the big bomb is that other people have the big bomb.

And Trump will do whatever it is to preserve his own life, just himself. So as long as he's alive, he won't do anything that gets us annihilated as a country. Okay. Yeah. That does soothe me a little bit. And it's really bad. Like, for example, we bombed a school in southern Iran, and he lied about it this weekend. We told us a little bit this on Friday.

I just wanted to mention it one more time. The guy's a Bellingcat, this military analysts. This is kind of like the commodities analysts. It's like things are going bad when Tim is like going deep on Bellingcat. and, you know, room-in accounts and also commodities analysts. That's where we're at. But they basically identified via video that it was a tomahawk missile that hit the school. Iran doesn't have that.

Israel doesn't have it. Only we have it. So it was a double tap. So parents going to try to find their kids in the rubble, then got killed. Just horrible. And Trump was asked about this. And it's like, it was Iran. They're not very accurate with their munitions.

I don't know who taught them the word munitions. It's a new word that he learned, I think, this week. week. And every war, every president, we've made mistakes with our targeting and killed civilians. But the scale of this is notable, just like the number of children dead. But then also, like, just the lies. And like I said, we talked about last week, like Abu Ghraib was horrible. There were whistleblowers from inside the administration. You know, like they had to acknowledge it. They didn't change policies. Like it took too long. And there were other bad things that happened. Right. But in this administration, it's just like, no, the Iranians did it. And it's Orwell.

Do you have any like movies or books or things that really shaped your view of the American military or about how Americans do things like morally? Because while you think about that, I'm going to tell you mine. So one of my favorite movies when I was younger and still is great is a movie called Memphis Bell. You should check it out. It's really good. It's about a plane, a crew that is flying. over a bomber plane and it's their last run. So they have done enough runs and survived it in World War II that they're getting to do their last one. And they are hoping it's going to be a nice

like milk run to France or something, but it turns out, no, they're going straight into Germany. And as they're flying over, there's a bunch of fire and like they're just really in the, in the thick of it. But they get a little too far. And the guy who looks down to see where the bombs will hit says we have to go around again. And they get in a fight in the plane. Some people are like, just drop them. Just drop the bombs so we can get out of here alive. This is our last one. And they're like, next to it's a school. Next to it is this. But like, this is the munitions factory or whatever it is. They were like, that was the thing they had to hit. So they go around again. And it's this incredibly harrowing moment. But the character of the people is that we will not drop these bombs on

innocent civilians. And instead, we will risk our lives to make sure we hit the proper target. Everybody should go watch this movie. It's really, really a good movie. But a lot of it defined for me, you know, the way these soldiers sort of thought about their obligations. Pride. Pride is attached to that.

Yeah, pride in the country. How we do things versus how we do things here. That's right. I've thought about that a lot as we like, in our opening salvo in this war accidentally hit this school. Now, number one, I watched all the right. wing influencers, Eric Erickson and these types. He was coming for Sam Stein when we suggested that it might have been America.

And he was like, no, it was a Iranian bomb. You know, like they were sort of. Yeah, John Fahor, it's called everybody anti-Semitic that was pushing that. That's right. Well, yeah, we can talk about how, okay. I don't think so. It was Iranians, yeah. No, it wasn't, it wasn't the Iranians.

It was us. And so here's the thing that comes with that is to your point, horrible things happen in a war. This is why you don't go into them cavalierly. Horrible things happen. But what you do as Americans when something like this happens is you accept responsibility. Like that's what we have to do now. And so to watch Trump, like these amazing situations where Trump is in front of the reporters and they're

asking him about it. And he's like, that didn't happen. And then Pete Higg says standing right behind him says, we're investigating because they know it was us. And like, they're just going to say we're investigating to buy time, I guess, in the hopes that people forget or whatever it is they do. But Trump is just lying about it. Just like Christy Nome lied about killing Alex Pretti and Renee Good and calling them domestic terrorists. Like, we have a government that's lying to us, which is why to people like Pot Horowitz or anybody else who wants to criticize us for not being full-throatedly, you know, all in on us going to war against Iran.

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For a limited time, Wildcreen is offering our listeners, 30 bucks off your first box plus free quassants for life. When you go to wildgrain.com slash the bulwark to start your subscription today, that's 30 bucks off your first box and free quassons for life. And you visit wildgreen.com slash the bulwark. Or you can use promo code the bulwark at checkout. I did like saving private Ryan and the band of brothers kind of that big aughts moment. But I've been more influenced by this, honestly,

but talking to people coming out of the Iraq-Afghanistan war and we had Will Selber and David French has written about this a lot. My buddy Thomas has talked to me about this and it's like because I didn't serve and you know there was frustration sometimes in Iraq and Afghanistan again not that we're perfect in some of these wars particularly the Iraq one and stupid but just how Americans conducted themselves or were tried to aspirational they tried to conduct themselves and a lot of times they put handcuffs on themselves but for this reason like they did not want to unnecessarily kill civilians. Like there were rules and ways of the road that they acted.

And that caused frustration at times, right? Because they're putting themselves at risk, like in the same way. And Pete Haguesteth, you know, demagogued against that. Like, Pete, this was a big thing about Pete Higgseth. It was like, we got to take off the chains and, you know, get rid of the jags and all this. So this is not just, you know, oh, we don't particularly like the character of the people in charge. They have made the case that America shouldn't act like you just said, that we should be less limited by the rules of war and that we should act like the baddies do. Pete Higgs has been on this beat since he was on Fox.

This is sort of frustrated me about the discourse around Iran with some of our old friends who are, you know, our old neo-co, let's call them that or whatever, conservative folks is like Hawks. is that I think that anybody with a brain, anybody with a conscience, like you update your priors based on new information that you have. And we're getting a bunch of new inputs that must be brought into consideration when we think about whether or not we should support a regime change war under this administration. And not, we already talked about the lying that this administration does, which is one of the reasons we should be skeptical. We can't evaluate the information that's going to come out. But also, we have been told that they are much less interested in America being the version of America that we all thought we had when we were more supportive and more hawkish on these things.

Like, if they're not going to follow international law, if they're not going to follow our own domestic law, then conservatives, even if they're supportive theoretically of regime change. which, by the way, now we've just got the sun. So we've got another Kamani. So there we go. So far. We'll see. We'll see where it goes. We'll see. We're going to kill a couple more people and see what the next person down the line is. That's right. But anyway, just you'd have to be brain dead to not be updating your analysis based on the new information we have. I agree with that. Let's noodle on that a little bit more, particularly in the context of Israel. You reference this. Trump said yesterday that the decision on when to end the war in Iran will be a mutual decision made with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. America first.

That's intriguing. Again, this is on the list of things that used to be anti-Semitic, it was slander to say to somebody that they had a dual interest or dual loyalty with Israel. And sometimes, by the way, that was actually an anti-Semitic slur that people were leveling at folks. Yeah. But now Trump is just saying, yeah. We have dual interests in this with Israel for some reason. Wyckoff and Kushner were scheduled to go visit. That got canceled.

We don't really know why. I was interested in this clip from Tony Blinken was on another podcast. And he was talking about something that Obama confronted during his term. Really, I want to listen to that. Look, you know, this has been a long story when it comes to Iran. And back during the Obama administration, The Israelis were pushing President Obama to take military action against Iran and were warning that they would do it themselves if he didn't. And he wouldn't.

That's interesting, just like that exact point, that they were warning they would do it themselves if he didn't. And he wouldn't. And that's basically what Marco Rubio says happened. Yeah. And we don't know exactly what happened, but all I can do is take the Secretary of State at his word. What he's saying is that the Israelis made the same push with Trump that they had with Obama, which is, hey, we're going to go in and do this. They might retaliate against you.

You can roll with us or not. Obama called the bluff and didn't go in. Trump went in. That's pretty noteworthy. Yeah. I mean, I think Rubio's thing, he got caught telling the truth. And I think the administration was a little frustrated with that because they know that that plays into fears that any of their base, their America First base holds, which is why they then tried to sort of walk it

back. But actually, this leads me to a question or a discussion that you and I should have. We haven't had this personally, but it's worth having, which is both you and I come from a place and a time and a political background where our support for Israel was sort of non-negotiable, right? You can tell me if you felt differently. But like, we were raised. And I still feel this. I get a pit in my stomach sort of at thinking about how one criticizes Israel or even talking about us doing this, right? Because it was so deeply ingrained that they were an oasis of democracy and kind of a sea of totalitarianism. And we had to support them because we were allies. But this goes to us.

And there's a historic right to be there. Both the biblical part, but just or more recently, I like coming out of the Holocaust and like just the horrors of what happened to Jews and like they deserved safety. They deserved a place. A homeland, a place that was safe that was theirs. Like I support all of that and still do. That will not change. And when the John Pod Horowitz is and those guys try to come at you and call you anti-Semitic, like the real talk is you're like, no, no, you don't want to do anything, anything that would feel like. you were in any way sort of saying that Israel shouldn't exist or any of that. I get mad at those

college kids. What are the people that live there bad or like that there's anything inherent? Right. Like obviously. Yeah. And so I feel that deeply. And yet I also have to grapple with again, it's like updating the way you feel about American foreign policy in the hands of Trump. One has to think about it in the hands of Netanyahu and like how this is all working. And so like do I trust Netanyahu? Do I trust BB Netanyahu? Not at all. These are both corrupt men. These are both people who held on to power in large part to avoid prosecution for their corruption.

And so, like, we shouldn't just be bullied into that old reflexive instinct. We have to update for the information we have now about the behavior that we're seeing in this moment. I want to add one element to that as well, is that after October 7, I also found myself reflexively defensive of Israel, of course, because the attack was so heinous. And it's hard to imagine being like Israel. And I tried to put myself in the shoes. I have friends live in Israel. And you think about that and like the safety feeling.

And it's like, okay, we don't have a situation like that. That's right. Even when we got bombed on 9-11, right? It's like not Mexico or Canada. Right? We don't have somebody living on our doorstep that's a threat. And so if you have somebody living on your doorstep that is that great of a threat, But, you know, the calculation about what you need to do to protect yourself and your people

is different. And so, like, there was a period of time, I think probably looking back on it myself, like, I'm reflecting on my own views. Like, I kind of feel like I almost gave it the benefit of the doubt a little too long because of that reason, because I was sensitive to that. And I was just like, you know, I can't, it's hard to put myself in their shoes, you know, because it's like this was such a traumatic event for the. country and for the people and and that's hostages and the hostages families and it's just it's unimaginably

horrible and so you have this and it's like okay well this is real war like in wars things you know things are messy and ugly right and i had that instinctive view that tied it back to all the things you discussed about being republican and the holocaust and historic the allyship and as silly as it sounds like the place where gays can go in the middle east like i could take my husband to tel aviv and be and be free, and I can't do that in very many other places in the Middle East, right? And so there is like a sense that we had this allyship. But to your point, like, among the reasons why it was easy for me to bail on the Republicans in the Trump era, it's like, I was always a technocratic Republican.

Like, I was, I'm practical. Like, I was, I'm not an ideologue, really. Like, there are a few things that I have strong ideological views on, but I'm not an ideologue, right? And just as a person who is an observer of this, like, what is happening, like, you just have to accept what is happening with your eyes. And like Israel's actions, particularly over the last year and a half, you know, have been so gratuitous and what is continuing happening right now, like in the West Bank, for example, with the settlements. And now getting us in this war with Iran,

which again, maybe Israel has to decide because of their how tenuous, their security situation is that it makes sense for them to go with Iran, or Iran. Okay. And maybe you could sell me on the idea that like we could provide some, you know, behind the scenes, intelligence or targeting or whatever because Israel did feel like they had an imminent threat. But like, we didn't. We didn't. We didn't. We didn't. There is no imminent threat. Seven Americans are dead now. And who knows how many more are going to be. The economy is in shambles. We get sucked into this war that we have nothing to do with. Obviously, B.B. was hugely influential on that. The actions in the West Bank and Gaza were way far, too far beyond the pale, ongoing.

American died in the West Bank recently, by the way. A settler killed him, killed them, American from Philadelphia. You can't watch all this. And I pulled this up. So this is me and Lee Feng, he's a lefty guy from Oakland. We don't agree on a whole lot. But he saw this and I was just like, okay, I'm going to read this. He goes, no matter how many people are killed by Israel, how many hospitals at bombs,

how many Palestinians live under apartheid, how many countries it evades, many U.S. pundits will claim it's an island of Western values simply because they have a gay pride parade. And I was like, maybe a little gratuitous, but there's something there. There's something there. And again, I guess I want to restate, like, I really do have, like, a reflexive. Like, it's deep inside me. Even me saying that, you're getting reflexively a little defensive. Yeah. It was just fine, by the way. There's something to it.

I feel like an affinity for Israel. I feel like a certain way that I feel, you know, and it's like, to your point. point. Think about the way you felt right after 9-11 happened, if you're old enough to remember that. Not the way you felt eight years later, but the way you felt right after 9-11 happened. And like, then think about what happened on October 7th was that plus the horrible, humiliating, denigrating, like the rape and the dragging through the streets. Like, if you had- Hostages, the hostages, which we didn't have. The hostages, which were- And at the scale, like, the percentage of the crime.

country, like the number of people who are affected, like, it was greater. Yeah. And so, like, I felt after October 7th, I'm like, I want to see every member of Hamas destroyed. By the way, still do. Still do. Still, yeah. There does have to be, though, I think part of our obligation, as big, powerful democracies, is our ability to show a certain amount of restraint and proportionality, right? Like, we, this is how we think about who we are. Like, there's who they are, and there's who we are. And as long as we are behaving with and our allies are behaving with the kind of democratic restraint and proportionality that provides maximum safety without things getting out of control. And like we have faith in that. That is different from what we're experiencing.

And we shouldn't be unable to say, no, what I'm seeing with my eyes is too far or too much or making us less safe. and I don't trust the people doing it. Like, we should say that because it's true. It's true. And I said this a year ago. Like when I was first trying to grapple with this after October 7th, I forget if it was what's from or somebody else who's a little more pro-Israel than me. And I was like, far be it from me to tell the government of Israel to do what they think

they need to do for their own safety. Okay. So take whatever. I'm not a military expert. I don't live there. But just as a political analyst and as somebody who kind of sees what's happening around the world. I was saying at the time, I was like, I think this is a mistake.

I think Israel is isolating itself. And I think that the support from the other Western countries militarily and economically that they've had, I think is very tenuous right now. And I think that, you know, they should obviously continue to do what they feel like they need to do to protect their people. But like, that should also be a consideration. And they don't seem to care. Like, Bibi doesn't seem to care about that. He seems to have made a bet that whatever, that maybe. you know, they can eviscerate all the foes in the Middle East during this one period where

Trump is in there and this is their moment and maybe they'll come to some PACs, Middle East Akana, you know, with the UAE and Saudi in 2029. And I don't, and who the hell? I don't, I don't have a crystal ball. Maybe that'll end up being right. But like my political analyst is, analysis is correct. Like Israel is now underwater an American popularity for the first time ever in history and going down, I think. And if this war becomes more and more of a shit show, like that number is going to continue to get lower and lower. And that was just a bet that they made. There's two points I want to make here.

One is what I don't understand about the people who are so reflexively fine with everything we're doing and they're so mad at us for not being 100% on board. I'm like, well, which explanation for why we're in there are you supporting? Because I'll tell you, if Donald Trump had come and made a case or Netanyahu jointly, whatever, people were making a case. The president Netanyahu and his VP Donald Trump had come to the American people and made a statement. And said, Iran is uniquely weak right now. Like, actually, their whole thing about imminent threat, et cetera, et cetera.

Actually, if they said they're uniquely weak, this is our moment, this is our opportunity. The people are asking for change. Like, you maybe could get me there with some people. Couldn't have got me, but I hear you. It would have been a better case than this one. It would have been a better case. I mean, and if it wasn't Trump, do it. But like, if we lived in a different world and somebody was saying, they're uniquely

They're uniquely weakly. I might have been like, okay, like, let's see. There are lots of good reasons why Iran, we should be worried about Iran's role in the world. But they didn't do that. They didn't give you a case for this. We are not getting any case. They're not coming to the American. So why just sacrifice your just say like, yeah, whatever they say is fine. That's number one. I think it's an unthinking, uncritical, not useful position to take. And all their only role is to lash out at people like us to try to keep us on side, which you're not going to do because we have eyes and can think for ourselves. The second thing, to your point about public opinion, it is all over the focus groups with people younger than us. So part of why I was talking about this reflexive thing is like they're counting on a certain amount of that in the American people, like a muscle that we have. And I acknowledge that muscle, right? We were raised a certain way.

People younger than us were not. And the thing that I hear in focus groups and that it's funny because there's to the people say who sort of say everything is anti-Semitic. I hear things when I do the MAGA focus groups that are anti-Semitic. And then I hear a whole bunch of things. Probably the left. There's like a bell curve. So like on the tails on either side, you hear things that you're like, I don't like that. That is not. That's coming from a bad place. But then up here in the big bell curve part, you hear a lot of people, younger people, just saying, I don't understand why I can't say that what I think Israel is doing is wrong. Like they're just like, people keep telling them they can't say it and they don't know why they can't say it.

Because they don't kind of have that same quite the thing that we have, maybe. And by the way, Israel keeps saying, doing talking points that would have been anti-Semitic a month ago. I mean, Bibi Nanyahu said that he wants to use TikTok as a weapon to manipulate people. Trump said that he's waiting on Bibi to decide whether to leave the war. Marco said that Bibi got us into this war. So it's not like anti-Semitic or irrational for young people. to look at this and be like, why? Why did a 19-year-old just die for Israel?

Because the government keeps telling me that they're dying for Israel. Maybe they're not. Maybe there's some other secret reason that's going. But this is what the president and the secretary of state have said. That's right. And they also, and Donald Trump told us he wouldn't do this. Right. Like, they weren't raised under George W. Bush.

And so, like, there's an entire generation now that is in a very different place. Like, your point about public opinion, this is actively changing. this moment the way young people across the political spectrum view Israel and view the United States. Like they were raised on Donald Trump's isolationism. Again, this is going back to like the Republican support for Trump and the war in Iran, okay, that Trump was able to go from 20% where nobody supported this before we did it. No one supported it. And then it went up to 41%. Why? Because it's Trump's war and people who just support Trump are like, okay, fine. And so sometimes people are like, well, They'll support everything. It's a cold. Blah, blah, blah, blah. Yes, true. But then there's all the

independents who voted for Trump literally for the opposite reason. They voted for Trump because he said, no new wars. And a lot of those were young people. It's not that young voters are swing voters exactly, and I sort of talk about this in the book, but they're swinging in the sense that they haven't picked aside completely. And they listened to what Donald Trump said and didn't know what he was going to do. And so they're the ones who, like, if 51% of the country voted for him, that's not the support he has now because a lot of people have left. They were the swingier voters who listened to what he said and voted for those things. And he's not doing those things. To close the book, I hope that the Persian George Washington

emerges and that Israel is safe forever. But that doesn't seem to be likely to me with the current strategy. You mentioned the voters. Let's just play. I've got a little bit of sound from your focus grips. I know we'll have more. I'm back on the focus groups for people who didn't know. I've I apologize to Sarah, but I needed a year off from hearing from the voters. I'm back on now. Locked in. You've been doing some war focus groups. I want to play this little teaser for people of these are Biden to Trump voters talking about the war.

We're already in bad economy and going into another war and going to battle for another country when we have enough problems on our hands over here. Well, if you bombed them the first time and set their nuclear program back decades, then why are we bombing them again? That's my first question. My second question is, if we're bombing them so we can have a regime change, what's our game plan for who's going to take over now? And how are we going to ensure that they're not going to be worse than the Ayatollah? Because my fear is that it's going to be a repeat of what happened with Saddam when we killed Saddam and then ISIS took over. And ISIS was worse than Saddam.

Under Biden, it was the Ukraine-Russian war. And now under Trump, we're in Iran. So it's like, it doesn't matter what it blue or red. It's still a war. It's still involved in other people's business before our own. It's still like the same stuff is just a different flavor. The last guy is a little bit less insightful than the lady. But you get a sense for where the Biden to Trump voters are on this.

Yeah. She's asking, she's asking good questions. I'll say in that last guy's defense, yes, you do get these things where it's like, do you see the difference where Russia invaded Ukraine? Okay. Just because Joe Biden was the American president literally had that. That had nothing to do with him, unlike this war, which we are in because Donald Trump took us and Congress didn't even approve of it. Key difference.

Key difference. But the sentiment is still there, right? They're like, they don't want this. And Donald Trump and J.D. Vance and the rest of them raised them to not want this. So, yeah, this is young voters. I hear anti-Semitism sometimes. Like, there's definitely some Nick Fuentes, Groyper stuff in there. But it is the vast majority of it is pretty like, why are we?

doing this and why is Israel have so much influence over us? And like, that's a fair question. Yeah, I guess I'd book in my thought on that with, I agree that there's anti-Semitism. There's a problem. I've talked about it a lot on this podcast. I think the war is making that problem worse, not better. You mentioned J.D. Vance. Me and J. Vial had a little disagreement about this last night on the live stream. So just wanted your take on it. I think this is like really bad for him politically. J.D. Vance has been very deft at navigating the MAGA estes. establishment divide up until now, very deft. And he was the one guy, there was the TPSA food fight at America Fest.

And it was like the people on the Tucker side, the people on the Ben Shapiro side, both were like, J.D., thumbs up. So eventually that is going to be a tough coalition to hold together. I think this war is making that more challenging for him. I noticed that there was a CBS town hall with Barry Weiss and J.D. Vance for next week that was canceled. I'm fascinated to hear whether that was canceled because Barry, Only once unapologetically pro-Iran war people on the network and the vice president wouldn't count or because the vice president couldn't defend the war and didn't want to deal with the hard questions about it. Either way, interesting cancellation, I would say.

What do you make of JD's prospects? So if Donald Trump doesn't care about what the American people think right now because he doesn't have to run for election again, J.D. Vance does care. like J.D. Vance and the people who want J.D. Vance care. Like part of the reason why I think you see Megan Kelly and Tucker and the more isolationist wing of the party speaking out against this isn't actually because they care so much about being consistent. It's that they have a view of politics that goes beyond Donald Trump. Right. So if your view of politics doesn't go beyond Donald Trump, and especially if you're Donald Trump, it doesn't.

then you don't care. You don't care what public opinion says. But if you're trying to get elected and you're trying to be a political pundit that has a future beyond Trump, you're a MAGA political pundit, the way Tucker and Megan Kelly and all these people who've thrived in the Trump era are, then you can't be for this war. You have to stay on the J.D. Vance side of things. And so you're actually starting to see, again, I have long talked about the split between MAGA and America a first. They are different. A lot of regular voters don't know how to fall into this category because they're not thinking that hard about it. But the pundit class is cracking up along those lines. And that is the J.D. Vance problem right now. Every quote that he gives in support of this war

will be hurled back against him because he's already a flip-flopper. He's already a guy where people are not sure they trust him because he doesn't say things consistently. That's like one of the big knocks against him in the focus groups. So I agree with you that it does hurt him. This is where, you know, I know what JVL is thinking, like JVL is sort of always thinking like he, these people are so nihilistic that it doesn't matter. They're blackpelled. Yeah, they'll go with him for whatever. Yeah. But I think that's not quite right. We're way over. So I just want to rapid fire through this DHS stuff. And so we can talk about your book, which I'm very happy about, very proud of you. It's really quite a feat. DHS stuff first. They're lying about us, as you mentioned earlier, about more things

in just the war. This is a pretty shocking Wall Street Journal story. The government has accused 279 people over the past year of attacking federal officers. Whether that be sandwich guy or just regular people across the country. They've accused 279 people.

181 of the 279 were American citizens. Of those 181, only half have been charged with the crime and zero have been convicted at trial. Zero. So far. So at minimum, like even if you're being as generous as possible in thinking the court process is moving slow or whatever, 90 Americans.

So basically one third of the people that the government is accused of attacking officials, they just lied about whole cloth. They didn't even bring charges against them. It's just fake fabricated. For the sake of time, I'm just going to say stipulated. Yeah, they're lying. It's bad and they lie about everything. DHS shutdown thing. I'm going to hit this really quick.

We're still shut down. The lines at TSA in New Orleans were all down to the parking lot. pretty concerning because we've got to go to Texas next week for live shows. I'm in Dallas and Austin. They end up driving. We still have tickets left for Austin. So come hang out with us in Austin March 19th. This is not tenable

for that line. In Houston Hobby Airport had four hour long waits at TSA. Bill Crystal, we will represent him since he should be here on Bill Crystal Monday. So I've been saying for a while that the Democrats should be putting forth a bill that just says, hey, we'll fund TSA and FEMA and that's it

and make the Republicans vote on that. That seems smart. to me. That does seem smart. And, and you know, to the extent, here's the thing, gas prices affect everyone and it's a real pain point. The thing about the people who fly and people who fly a lot, the higher percentage of them have outsized political power. You start creating huge long lines at airports for all the people who work in businesses, you know, corporate types, whatever, it's totally untenable. People will howl about that. And so Democrats, fighting to free that up and not, but not the ice stuff, smart. Back to the book.

Things seem very bad in the country because the MAGA Republicans have been elected twice now. And Donald Trump in particular. The book, How to Eat an Elephant, I think it's providing some guidance on, you know, how we can reverse that. Is that right? I haven't been allowed to read it. JVL's read it. I haven't been given a draft. So I don't know.

So you have to, I've listened to know your interviews about it, but you have to tell me. Was that the key element in here? Yeah, so there's two things. One, the how to eat an elephant one voter at a time is a nod to the fact that like MAGA and the forces that Donald Trump has unleashed on our politics are, it's a big intractable problem, right? That's what the idiom of how to eat an elephant is meant to be like, how do you tackle something that feels so big that you can't do it? And the answer has always been one bite at a time, meaning how do you sort of. of take it piece by piece and figure out how to tackle this big and tractable problem. Obviously, that also worked for the fact that, you know, elephants and donkeys, it's not,

that's pretty on the nose for that part. But the one voter at a time is an indication that I have spent now the last eight years because of Donald Trump listening to voters. Listening to voters has been for me like cheat code for understanding politics. And the fact is not a lot of people do it. And so the book is about both all of the stuff you and I went through. You are in the book a lot. Bill is in the book a lot. Because it's all about the beginning days of us trying to figure our way through.

And one of the ways I figured out how to do it was by talking less and listening more. Even though I talk all the time and I have all these podcasts and we're talkers, like, I didn't start talking until after I'd really done some listening. And listening to the voters made me both understand how Donald Trump happened, understand how disconnected both regular, like mainstream Republicans and also Democrats are from what a lot of voters are talking about. Also in our atomized, fractured media environment, I talk a lot about the way that the new media environment, the pressure that's putting on voters or the way that it's changing how they're thinking about politics. I talk a lot about the parissocial

relationships now that voters need to have with politicians, which is why politicians have to have different communication styles. I mean, there's so much about how, like, politicians who spent years learning how to be politicians now have to go back and figuring out how to be humans. because the artifice. You're trying to be a mid-tier influencer now, actually. Not. Well, actually, I mean, that's not quite what I say. But I do a few things.

One is I outline where a lot of the voters are in policy. Just straightforwardly, there's a lot of sweet spots for where the, and I outlawed who are swing voters, what is moving them, what is animating them? And there's two types of swing voters. There's the ones that take in a lot of information and they're swinging because they process what they're seeing. And then there's the ones who are not paying attention to anything at all. And they're living on vibes. And vibes have gotten really important in this new information environment.

And like, how do you create vibes? And so it is core, Tim, for you and I as Republican communicators, this is a book about how we learned about communications on the right. And then we both found ourselves trying to fight Trump and seeing how people on the left tried to do communications in this moment. And I can see the asymmetry so starkly having done both. And then having listened to the way in this new environment, voters are being impacted by Republicans' ability to do narrative dominance in a way that Democrats just haven't figured out yet. And so it is a series of things that I want people to both understand about how voters are processing information, how they're processing policy and the vibes.

And then also what Democrats can do about it to shift. their communications abilities and capabilities and the information ecostructure that they need to build. There's a lot about what needs to be built in order to compete in the attention economy. And those are the bites you've got to take of that elephant. Are you excited for it to come out? Are you nervous? I was nervous. I got to say, I feel much better today than I felt on Friday when the book was sort of launching because our people made it a bestseller before it's even come out, which is like I got to say thank you.

If I haven't said thank you already, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. This community rides so hard for us. We're so lucky. But I also talk a lot about community in the book and the stickiness of it and how you build it. You know, you taught that author on who wrote the New Yorker article, which I was quoted in about how Republicans have built

how much of their infrastructure is built around these communities that are sticky and that are coordinated, but also diffuse, not top-down coordination, right? And so I do think there's a lot to learn from that. But anyway, I am excited. Now I want the book, I want the book to be valuable. I said this to Bill, but like if abundance really kicked off a big conversation around policy among Democrats, I would like for this. It's not like abundance.

It's not, but I would like it to kick off a conversation about how Democrats communicate that people wrestle with. So you're not personally nervous. You don't have any feelings in your tummy? I mean, I just wanted to be, I wanted to meet people's expectations. Yeah, of course I do. No, I'm nervous. I'm nervous, but I'm also, I really wanted to do this. You were mad.

You didn't want me to do it. I'm happy for you, though. I had eight years of focus group stuff that I had to get off my chest. And so I'm glad to put it out in the world and then just run this company. Well, don't be nervous. Here's why. Number one, it's going to be good. We know it's going to be good.

Okay? You're talented. And, you know, people, come on. There's a lot of crap out there on the market. Trust me. When I was doing, I've got to read other political books. A lot of low, you're being graded on a low curve. all right. It's not the elite of the elite. Number two is there will be fewer people that read your book than are listening to this podcast. I don't want that to be true. Okay. I don't want it to be true. I want everyone listening right now to go buy it and to read it. But I learned this from my experience. I was like looking at the book scan numbers and then looking at the amount of people listening to the podcast. And I was like, why is it the same? Like shouldn't it be every single person? And the answer is no. There are a lot of people that are here listening that we love that are just,

listeners, or maybe they listen to us while they're falling asleep at night, or maybe their library goers. And so it wasn't purchased for whatever reason. It will be fewer. And so, you know, you can let yourself loose, all right? You know, your little pod circuit around it's going to be as important. All right? You can kind of let the, you know, let those muscles flare. And it'll be great. So go buy the book, is my takeaway. Go pre-order the book. It sounds like your takeaway is, yes, go buy the book, but also more people listen to this podcast than we'll buy the book. I'd like that not to be true. Go prove Tim wrong. Okay.

If you've ever gotten mad at him for interrupting me or I interrupted you a lot on this podcast today. I was noticing that. You know, go make Tim wrong. More people should buy the book than listen to this podcast. I agree. The other thing is if you don't like either of us, it also, Bullwark books selling is good for the other Bullwark people.

Yeah. We have a lot of great people here. And so hopefully they can get booked deals after. So we appreciate that. I want to close the pod with this. We have a breaking news item from Trump, the president was on, I guess, called into Fox maybe. And he's asked about what the plan is for the oil prices, the gas prices. The ship should go through the Strait of Hormuz and show some guts.

All right. That sounds great. We really thought this all through. Nothing to be worried about here. I can see why the jingoists and the flag wavers for this war are so confident. That's Sarah Longwell. Her book is How to Eat an Elephant. This war might help us out on that front.

We'll see how it goes. You can find her on illegal news with Sarah Longwell, the focus group with Sarah Longwell, the next level with me and her, that'll be out tomorrow. And I'll be back tomorrow for another edition of the show. So we're giving you lots of content. And the Secret Pod with JVL, which is only for subscribers. So go subscribe too. Subscribe too.

We'll see you guys tomorrow. Peace. The Bullwark podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brough.