The Bulwark Podcast - Susan Glasser: The President Is Crazy and Delusional

Episode Date: April 2, 2026

Trump fired Pam Bondi, maybe the most destructive AG in the history of the United States, because she wasn't able to magically and lawlessly jail his political enemies. On Wednesday night, he told Americans that gas prices would naturally go down when he was finished with his war—much like the way he told the country in March 2020 that COVID would just go away. In reality, China may end up in control of the Strait of Hormuz and with freight passage paid with the Chinese Yuan. America and the world are paying for the incompetent (and petrified) advisers Trump has surrounded himself with. Plus, POTUS threatened war crimes on national television, the Iranian diaspora bet on the wrong horse, and who will be the next Barbie to get the ax? Susan Glasser joins Tim Miller.show notes: Susan's column on Trump's Wednesday address Susan on Trump breaking up with NATO

Hello and welcome to the Bullwark podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. I will be stream again tonight. Eight o'clock in the east on sub-second YouTube. Come hang out. Just me, ranting, taking your questions, etc. I did hop on to the post-speech live stream last night because I was screaming on my TV and that felt like a waste of my breath. And so I appreciate Sam and JVL and most importantly General Hurtling for accommodating my spleen venting last night. And we've got more of that to come today. I'd welcome back to the show. Staff writer at the New Yorker and co-host of its political scene podcast for most recent book is The Divider, co-authored with her husband, Peter Baker, at Susan Glasser. Thank God you're here this morning, Susan, because I don't know.

I'm at my wits end, honestly. Tim, if you're relying on me for the upbeat, cheery assessment of things, you know, maybe we both need that vacation. I'm not relying on me for upbeat and cheery, but just for coherence. Maybe you at least had to put your thoughts into words for your piece for The New Yorker this morning, titled Trump's case for war fails to mention how to win it. Among other things, it failed to mention. Like, you know, what exactly it is we're doing there, what the plans are for after. And it was, there's so many WTF moments of this second presidency. You know, it's kind of hard to rank them.

But this last night was towards the top for me. Yeah, for me too, exactly. I mean, there are so many almost existential questions that Trump at this point raises. For example, you know, can everything be going according to the plan if there is no plan? Although I will, I will say, I will say that Donald Trump, he lied about literally almost everything in that speech. But a few hours before the speech, he did tell the truth when he said, I'm going to give a little speech at 9 o'clock tonight. and I'm basically just going to tell everybody how great I am. And really, I feel like that was the, shall we call it, the intellectual center of gravity of the piece.

You know, his case for war was, as so many things are with him, all of my predecessors failed, especially Barack Hussein Obama. And therefore, I am the greatest president of all time. And, you know, I mean, and I'm not even actually being facetious because I think that, And if you once you sort of understand the Trump Madlib's approach to just about anything, you know, it's always going to include that section, whether it's the economy, whether it is inflation, whether it is a global pandemic, or whether it is launching a war of choice in the Middle East, you know, the fill in the blank section is all of my predecessors did everything wrong and I am right. Yeah, one hole in that case. I mean, there are many, but the most glaring.

I think in this context is that he is one of his own predecessors. You know, like you're hearing that speech. I was listening to the speech and it's like, well, you know, and he's doing the thing that the Iran Warhawks have been doing about this war, which is that they've been attacking us for 47 years. All other presidents could have dealt with this and they didn't. You know, Trump said a couple weeks ago that one such president had called him and told him he wished he had done it.

And, you know, that is, I guess, the case for the case for the last. the war. I mean, there's all this hyperbole about how Israel and the Middle East would be off the map. If he had not gotten reelected and he had not done it, this is kind of do these delusions of grandeur. But like the problem with all that is that nothing has changed with Iran since he was already president once. If anything, the regime had been degraded more because of our attacks from last year and Israel's attacks on their proxies after October 7th. The Aitolo was, five years older and he's in his death throws anyway, you know, before we killed him. So it's a nonsensible argument no matter what, I think, that we had to do this now because this has been going

on for 47 years. We've always been at war with East Asia. But it's like particularly nonsensical since he was already president once and didn't do this. Yeah, no, that's right. I think that's a really important point. And of course, the reason he didn't do it in the first term is because he had a different set of advisors around him, a different risk framework around him, and people who were still willing to say, like, sir, if you attack Iran and you don't have a plan, they're going to close the Strait of Hormuz and choke off 20% of the world's energy and lead to an enormous economic catastrophe, which is exactly what we're seeing now. But I think it also, Tim, your point is really important because it gets to the Trump,

alternate reality bubble, which, again, you know, there's nothing new with Donald Trump, like he is who he is. But I think for Americans and for the rest of the world, seeing him operate in this kind of delusional force field in the middle of unleashing consequences that are affecting things all over the world, right? How is it that Americans have allowed one man to have such global power? They're literally closing universities in Bangladesh one day a week. because Donald Trump woke up one morning in Mar-a-Lago and decided to do something. But, you know, the delusional force field aspect of this, I think, is really cast into sharp relief by a performance like last night. You know, the man just speaks in, you know, sort of empty exclamation point slogans as if, you know, we're just a sort of stupefied population that's, you know, going to take whatever propaganda that the leader dishes out.

But the guy believes his own BS. He's seriously making the claim, Tim, and he did this in writing yesterday morning. He's seriously making the claim that there has been major regime change in Iran because they now have a new president who is much more moderate and reasonable than the old president. Except that the new president and the old president are exactly the same. And he literally did this in writing. And nobody calls him on it. I mean, I didn't even see this reflected in most of the news stories yesterday. I'm sorry, but this is a good example of how he has stupefied all of us in some way.

There's so much bullshit. It's very, very hard for people to call it out. But yes, folks, the president of the United States is crazy and delusional. He put in writing that there's a great new president of Iran who he's dealing with who's the same freaking guy. Yeah. One of the existential questions that is begett by that speech is like, is, is he in touch with reality? Like is the president of the United States

in touch with reality? Because it's unclear if he is. I like to think about this and the kind of, we all follow this very closely. You know, if you're listening to this podcast, you follow up very closely. This was a stintz way of prime time address. The war has been raging for a month now. American troops have died.

Everybody's gas prices have increased, right? And so I'm thinking about this last night. Like, what is the person who, you know, is just tuning in for Nashville 911 or Elsbeth or whatever? is on network TV nowadays, you know, on primetime on a Wednesday night. And like, they start watching the speech. And like my gas prices have gone up. I understand there's something going on in Iran. I don't, you know, I haven't really followed closely exactly what. Like, what did was their takeaway from that speech? Right. It was like, Trump was like, you know, at one point he said,

you know, we're here to help people of the Middle East, I guess, and the people of Israel. he goes on a lengthy diatribe about how all the other wars have been longer World War I, World War II, the Korean War he mentions some objectives like they can't get nuclear weapons but doesn't like really talk about how we're going

how that's going to come to pass I don't know how just a regular person could possibly have gotten anything out of that you know I mean people have to be totally confused And I think this is reflected in his numbers on this war right now. Yeah, I mean, I assume that the reason they gave the address now, as opposed to when they launched the war,

when a speech like this would have been more appropriate a month ago. But I assume that the reason they gave the speech now was exactly because his numbers really have been bottoming out even for Donald Trump yesterday, right before the address, CNN had its new poll, which had him at 64% disapproval, which is actually basically the record for disapproval of a president since modern polling began. Even I think, you know, the only person who ever came close was George W. Bush in his second term before the surge in Iraq who hit 63% at one moment in time. But Donald Trump is bottoming out in the polls.

The war is unpopular. People are furious in particular about his handling of the economy. And that's why I was really struck that in this 19. minute speech, I noted down. It was more than 11 minutes, I think it was actually 13 minutes into the speech, Tim, when Donald Trump mentioned gas prices and the economy, which presumably is the thing that would speak to your casual non-news focused viewer on network television who might have stumbled into the speech. I find it hard to believe that they would have stuck with the speech for, you know, more than 10 minutes in order for Donald. Trump. And by the way, what did he say when he got to the gas prices section of the speech?

I thought that was also vintage Trump, which goes to my theory about the Trump Madlibs, whether it's war in the Middle East or a global pandemic or an election that he doesn't like the results. He always has the same kind of formula and the same recipe that he just fills in. When he got to the gas prices section of the speech, he basically said, don't worry Americans, it will just naturally go back to a lower price. And that to me was like, you know, March 2020 flashback. The coronavirus will just magically go away. It will just magically disappear. And, you know, he is the president of magical thinking, basically.

There has been a magical change in oil prices this morning, but it's the other direction that he said. As we sit here right now, oil prices surge up to about $112 a barrel. I poked into my Charles Schwab account this morning just to check that out. I would not recommend that for anybody. All things read. The market is crashing, except I do have one oil fund. It's doing quite well this morning.

So if you're living in the Permian Basin, things are okay this morning. Everybody else, I don't think I would check your accounts. And I do have to correct the record here. I guess it's Chicago Fire that is on at 9 o'clock on Wednesday night. It's not Nashville 911 over on NBC. Prime time is strange these days. I'm not out of touch with what's happening. I want to go back to like the what is exactly it is that we're doing here, part of this.

There are two kind of things that I saw last night that I think are pretty relevant. One is the list of objectives, the State Department put out a list and the White House put out of list. Problem is they're not the same. Here's the State Department's list. The destruction of the Air Force, Objective 1, Objective 2, destruction of Navy, Objective 3, diminish their missile capabilities. Objective 4, destruction of factories. Okay, now then the White House, after the speech, put out a four-point plan of their own.

Destroy their missile arsenal, so it's kind of close. Destruction of Navy, that's kind of close. But then it's destroyed terrorist proxies and no nuclear weapon, which are much more ambitious plans than just like destroying shit, you know. And it seems to me that, you know, we've talked about this bunch of this way, like that Israel's, I think, objectives are that our partner in this war, I think, are going to be different than that. So that doesn't auger for success, I don't think, when the State Department and the White House and our partner in this war all have different objectives.

What's amazing, Tim, is that that's also after a month of being beaten up pretty relentlessly every single day off of their inability to get one list that they agree upon. So what's incredible to me is that that's not a miscommunication on day one, but that is 30 days into it when they're getting beat up over exactly this thing of like, you idiots can't even tell us what your objectives are and agree on the same list and then they keep doing it multiple times in the same day. So I think it's pretty notable about the sort of internal dysfunction and incompetence of the team, which by the way, I know we tend to think of that as like a sort of inside the beltway thing.

Nobody cares about that. But don't underestimate incompetence as a serious factor in the running of this war by the Trump administration. You know, basically they have dismantled a working national security process that has been developed over decades by presidents of both parties. And I can assure you a functional interagency process. And again, I know that's like, you know, dread like beltway term. But a functional, whatever you want to call it, group of people who actually knew their shit would have definitely explained to the president in terms that he could understand. And they would have continued to explain it if he disagreed with them that no, sir, I'm sorry, you're wrong. The Iranians have a very real possibility of closing the Strait of Hormuz.

And when they do that, you have given them incredible leverage and the war that you started, you know, they will now be able to dictate. terms on. So that's the overriding essential fact of the war is that, and this is where there are real echoes, I think, of what happened to Vladimir Putin when he launched a war against Ukraine, an invasion that he thought was going to lead to a shock and awe displacement in three days of the leadership in Kyiv. He told his military there was no need, you know, to do anything other than pack their dress uniforms for the parade in Kiev that would. inevitably result soon within the week. Instead, they were bogged down in the mud with insufficient fuel and food even to keep going down the road to Kiev. And, you know, there are many enormous

differences, obviously. They've lost territory since that initial shock and off. No, that's correct. That's absolutely correct. But I think it goes to this notion of the kind of incompetence that isolated authoritarian leaders who create a system around them that prices. loyalty over competence. That's one of the things that we are seeing here in this campaign that I think it's really important to underscore for people. And, you know, I take your point, not only was there no plan, but for all the factors that you just outlined, is it about the nuclear program, is it about ballistic missiles? Is it about terrorist proxies like Hasbalah still very much entrenched in Lebanon? That seems to be one of Israel's goals in the conflict.

is possibly to go after Hezbollah on the ground. All of that argues for conflict that may continue to go on for quite some time because Donald Trump doesn't necessarily have the ability just to walk away and say, I'm done. And even if our engagement in the conflict doesn't go on for quite some time, who knows what that could entail? And last night, his message on the Strait of Hormuz was, we're going to be here for two or three more weeks, basically.

And then after that, everyone who needs oil from the straight and should, what was the word he used? He should grab it and caress it or something like that? Like you should go to the straight. No, excuse me, grab it and cherish it. Sorry, I had access Hollywood in my head. The European country should show courage and grab and cherish the straight afterwards. Like, who knows how long that could take or what that entails or may end up. China and the energy that goes through the straight now has traded in one. I mean,

there are just so many potential options and there was no vision at all for winding it down. I mean, in the case of the straight, literally there was no vision. He said, I don't know, we might just leave. We don't need the oil. You guys could figure it out. Yeah, he was pretty clear about that. And I think the reason for all the escalating rhetoric toward NATO and toward European allies, which he didn't really amplify in the speech, despite having threatened in various quickie phone interviews with European journalists before the speech. He essentially said, I'm going to pull out of NATO in the speech. Then it's a classic Donald Trump move. Then everybody is like, oh, thank God. I'm so relieved. He didn't pull out of NATO, which, of course,

he doesn't have the ability to do so. But imagine China being in control of the Strait of Hormuz. And to your point about, you know, passage through the Strait being, now potentially required that you pay up in Juan, there are already reports that that's what's happening because actually Iran has not 100% close the street. What it is done is it's enabled its own ships to pass through. It is enabled friendly countries who have cargoes on the way, such as China, to pass through. There are reports already that that's how you might be able to get your way through is to pay your way through in Juan. And that raises an even more ominous prospect. This is something that American strategists have been worried about a lot in recent years,

which is that the destabilizing moves of the United States as such an unreliable guarantee that the U.S., what it's risking, basically, is all the built-in privileges of an international system that has been constructed with our own benefit in mind. For example, most of the, major global trading occurring in dollars. That's a huge benefit for the U.S. economy. Imagine Donald Trump accelerating the move away from the dollar as the de facto global currency, right? Imagine that there's a much. Don't think we have to imagine. Yeah, we don't have to. Right. Imagine a much closer partnership, both strategic and economic, between our main adversaries in the world, China, Russia, Iran, North Korea. That's already been happening with great speed.

And that's the reason that you have some strategists talking about, you know, if World War III has already started and, you know, we just didn't recognize it quickly enough. And, you know, of course, what side is Donald Trump on in that conflict is also not entirely clear, but that's a different conversation, I guess. I mean, there's a way to look at it now that we are currently in a multi-theater war and the wars have been spawned by Putin, Trump, BB, and MBS. But that's not exactly like that. yet as far as access powers, but that's not a crazy way to assess the multi-theaters that we're in military conflict in right now. All right, y'all, it is officially hot season down here in New Orleans. None of that scarf nonsense. I was seeing at the No Kings rallies in Boston and New Jersey where all my other Bullwark colleagues were, D.C., uh-uh, shorts and T's now here. Or I'm into the kind of short-sleeved button down look right now. I'm doing the short-sleeve and download, not literally in this moment, but it's kind of what I'm wearing around town these days.

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bulwark. I want to come back to NATO in a second, but just a couple more things on the speech. I was so flabbergasted by it. Just like the fact that he had nothing to say. I mean, it was literally a 19-minute truth social post. There was no announcement. There was no plan. There's no objective stated. It wasn't really even clear why we're doing it. Like I said, I mean, he gave some lip service to like being there to help, but like why now, why we had to do it now? He didn't really explain. And so I went searching far and wide for people who liked the speech to maybe get some insight. Mark Levin thought it was perfect, but I didn't get any context on why. But Mark Levin didn't like to speech. Rich Lowry at the National Review writes this. I don't know how anyone can listen to that.

speech and conclude anything other than that Trump is a sincere and passionate Iran hawk. So I don't know. You wrote a book on him. You went and interviewed with him. Maybe that's what I've been missing. Is he a sincere and passionate Iran hawk? Do you think that explains what's happening right now? Well, I mean, hearing sincerity from Rich Lowry, the guy who ran an entire edition of National

Review magazine about the great danger. the mortal danger that Donald Trump would pose to our democracy? Who, you know, come on. No, you know what, though? I will say this. I will say this. Donald Trump doesn't have a foreign policy ideology. I think people often miss this notion that there's some kind of a Trump doctrine.

But he does have sort of like visceral feelings that have been with him for decades. And one of his visceral feelings in his, you know, formative, you know, life's greatest moments stage, which are basically the early 1980s, late 1970. all those nights at Studio 54 or whatever. You know, this was, I think, when the kind of urbrain of Donald Trump was formed around the idea that, you know, Iran and this theocracy had sort of screwed the global superpower, the United States of America, and that we ought to basically get rid of it and that presidents had been far too weak going back to Jimmy Carter in dealing with this.

And so I do think if you listen to him over the last month, the one thing he says with some conviction is that, you know, for 47 years, these people basically have been screwing us wreaking mayhem havoc. And, you know, that, by the way, is the awful kind of tragedy of the moment, which is this is something that the vast majority of Americans can agree upon that, you know, the Ayatollahs in Tehran have been a rogue. regime oppressing their own people, attacking their neighbors, not just Israel, but their Arab neighbors as well, you know, waging wars of terrorism, fomenting civil wars and unrest throughout the world. By the way, holding hostage the world's oil supply through the straight of Hormuz, absolutely the kind of global bad actor that if we had a meaningful United Nations Security Council, the whole world should be rising up and saying, this is unacceptable. And, you know, Donald Trump takes what should be a just and noble cause and fails to pursue it with legitimate means. And that comes back to the one thing we haven't mentioned, which is, you know, the major kind of ultimatum

in the speech, which was, you know, very news-free, was Donald Trump saying, if you do not agree to my terms, Iran, then I will bomb you back to the Stone Ages and destroy. very specifically every single one of the electric generating plants in this country of 93 million people. So you have the president of the United States taking a cause that many Americans might agree with and threatening war crimes. And that is what bombing Iran's electric stations would be. It would be an international war crime. You can't just do that to a country of 93 million people, never mind if you were the elected leader of a democracy. And so, you know, does anybody care that we have the president threatening war crimes? I don't even know anymore.

A lot there. A couple thoughts on that. Number one, those are two good caveats that like Trump is kind of stuck in 70s and 80s brain and like he is a little bit like unfrozen caveman from this era where like the hostage crisis was happening and all that. And so there is that instinct is there that is true. I guess I'll say though, like to be a sincere and passionate warhawk on Iran, you would have to like know a little bit more about about like why or what the purpose is, what the goal is. It's hard for me to even believe Trump knows whether Iran is Shia or Sunni. I mean, I don't know. It's been one of the videos that he's been watching,

but, like, I think that is, like, the ridiculous part of this. It's like the fact that there is, he has some coherent, like vision about Iran. And to that point, like, as you said, he's already saying that the new regime is better, but it's the same. I told his kid and the same president as before.

One of the news items is, when I wanted to mention in the spirit of talking about how awful this regime is, Nick Christoph is reporting that he just heard the Iranian authorities today, this morning arrested a human rights lawyer, Nazrin Sotuta. She has been mentioned as a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize for her courage and leadership advocating for women in Iran. So it is horrible what is happening.

The thing is, though, we're not offering a vision for helping that human rights lawyer. This is the thing. I mean, I think that we've learned from the mistakes of the early 2000s that, you know, well-intentioned efforts to support. freedom in various countries don't always work out. But at least that was this coherent objective, right, the idea that, you know, there were these terrible leaders or these autocrats, they were a danger to the world, they're a danger to their own people. We want to give their own people an opportunity to throw off the chains and have freedom. Maybe there was naivete there, bad execution or whatever.

But like, that was a coherent thing. That's not what Trump is offering here. There was, like, barely even any lip service to that. Like, there's some complaints about how they crack down on protesters, and they mentioned the number of protesters have been killed. But, like, that isn't on the objective list, freedom for the Iranian people. Well, it was on the objective list. And actually, it's very interesting because that probably was ironically and sort of tragically now the original impetus for why this war now. It goes back to early January when the regime was cracking down on, you know, a really

enormous set of demonstrations that broke out at the end of the year because of the very severe and worsening economic conditions in Iran, you had thousands and thousands of Iranians, many of them young Iranians on the streets, university students, and basically a really fierce crackdown ensued whether the number is, I think, 7,000 is the number that so far been able to be verified by human rights groups. Donald Trump used in his state of the union speech, one figure which was 30,000 dead last night. In this speech, he upped it to 45,000 dead. You know, whatever the true number is,

a horrific massacre of Iranians by the government had occurred in early January. And it led to this Donald Trump social media posting, I believe it was on January 6th, something like that, in which he said, basically help is on the way. And according to what I've heard from sources in the region, you know, the Israelis saw this.

and persuaded Trump from this point on, hey, listen, we are already planning and, you know, think there is a need for a follow-on military campaign to the one that we launched together the previous summer against Iran's nuclear program. You know, perhaps we should accelerate the timetable of that. Donald Trump, as you know, already had a huge amount of American military assets here in the Western Hemisphere positioned around Venezuela. And so it took some time he wasn't able to send military.

assistance immediately after making that social media posting. But, you know, he had this idea that he was just going to threaten Iran with such overwhelming force that he was unleashing along with Israel, that he was going to decapitate the regime and that Iranians were going to go back into the streets so soon after this horrible massacre and somehow topple the government. And so it's even worse than not offering any hope to Iranians about. how to change their government. I think that he exploited this tragedy. And then when the goal showed no signs of being able to be plausible, he just backed away for it. And so the people who suffer are the very people in whose name he originally claimed to be launching the campaign.

I agree with that so much. And this is something that has frustrated me because this is more of like a point of personal privilege, I guess, on all of this. But as somebody who just has been singularly obsessed with Trump for 10 years and how he is like the locus of so many of our problems. I had a bunch of friends over the last month who like have friends who are either part of the Iranian diaspora or have friends who are part of the Iranian diaspora who were talking about how happy they were about this

for good reason because the Ayatollah has been just so brutal and cracking down on the Iranian people. And I sympathize with that. But it was, I was always frustrated to say to them, it's like, you're, you don't have a good partner in this project. I'm sorry. Like, I understand that you want to be hopeful and I don't want to take that away from you, but like, you don't have a good partner in this project. And now, here we are a month later. And the person that was ostensibly going to be helping them find some sort of freedom or some sort of distance from the repressive Ayatollah regime is now saying, I'm going to bomb the country back to the Stone Age.

Right. I struggle to, I want to shake the excited Iranian diets for people and say, see, look, this is what he thinks of you. This is what him and Pete Hanks said, think of the country. They don't actually care about you. Like, they will gladly bomb you back to the Stone Age to make themselves feel strong and tough. And it's really tragic about the situation. I don't know if you have anything on that, but I have a breaking news item for you.

Do you want to move on to that? Sure. I want to come back to NATO because you wrote about that for the New York. and I think there's some other geopolitical elements to this. But first, over at 7-4 News, Shelby Telcott is reporting right now that the president has informed of Pam Bondi that her time as AG is nearing an end, according to multiple sources.

There had also been a CNN report to this effect that he's looking at replacing Pam Bondi with Lee Zeldon. The complaints that the president is citing with Bondi is, one, mishandling of the Epstein files, and two, he's fumed that she hasn't investigated enough of his political opponents. So a lawless DOJ is potentially going to have a leadership change because the president does not feel like they've been effective enough at lawlessly investigating his foes and covering up his potential associations with Epstein. Yeah, I mean, that's got to send a chill through you, right?

When you imagine what is the job interview between Donald Trump and Lee Zeldin, which is basically, do you promise to put in jail my enemies in a way that Pam Bondi has failed to do. do so. So if this does happen, we should be under no illusions that that is a condition of employment for any future Trump Attorney General. We'll see if that big brave, Republican Senate has anything to say about it. But, you know, they've confirmed Zeldin for his current role as EPA administrator. So it's hard to see that they won't confirm him for this as well. Pam Bondi's name, whether her tenure ends tomorrow or two years from now, her name will certainly go down in history as perhaps the single most destructive attorney general ever in the history of the United States. And I am including John Mitchell on that list who actually went to jail

for his role in the Watergate cover up. Because we're so understandably distracted by things like war in the Middle East and the immigration crackdown that has wreaked havoc around the United States, I think we tend to obscure one of the most damaging aspects of Trump's presidency, and it's exactly what Pam Bondi has been doing at the Justice Department, which is eliminating the idea, the very concept that there is such a thing as independent, impartial justice in this country. And, you know, I'm, I just, I don't know, it sends a chill through me the idea that she's not, you know, vicious and partisan and personal enough for Donald Trump. She hasn't been enough of a hack for Donald Trump. And she's tried.

Maybe his complaint is she's been incompetent in her efforts to go after his political foes. You make a pretty important point there on the confirmation process because the political environment for Republicans. is getting worse and worse every second. You know, every inch that that oil price chart goes up, it's worse for the Republicans midterm prospects. And confirmations in the last two years of his presidency might be very challenging. And you can have interim and we've seen all this, you know, and Trump finds ways around this sort of stuff.

But even still, if you want to have the vicious attack dog ahead of the Justice Department who's going to use every lever they can to go after political foes and go after people that threatened the administration, this would be the time to put them in place. And so I do think this confirmation process would be very important because you have a little bit of leeway here. You could potentially find four people to oppose a MacGates type of appointee. But if it's not at that level, you know, I think that this is Trump's window to get somebody in that could do his dirty work at the DOJ. Yeah, I agree with the timing on that one. I absolutely do. You don't have to pour one out for old Pambondi, though.

You know, head on back to Florida. I guess she'll be on the speaking circuit at the Villages. I'm not sure exactly what else is in her future. She and Christy know I'm going to do joint appearances. You know, the two fired ladies of the Trump cabinet. I mean, you know, there. The Bimbo vacation tour. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. I had to do it. Well, I mean, look, you should point out, honestly, like the caricature. of femininity that has passed for the only acceptable women to play important roles in Trump's world. Aside from Susie Wiles, and that's a very interesting temperate conversation we can have. But, you know, look at the physical transformation demanded of the women who are required to perform in public for Donald Trump, the, you know, Caroline Levitt, Christy Noem, Pam Bondese of the world.

You know, it's fascinating to me what the MAGA optics, you know, tell you about how Donald Trump thinks about women, which is that, you know, you can, you know, basically dress them up like Barbies. And, you know, as long as they do whatever you tell them to do, he's okay with it. But there have been some pretty incompetent men also in the cabinet. I guess it's worth noting. Nutlick is still there. Higgs says not exactly knocking it out of the park, you know, could go down the list. But that's the two women, cabinet members that are out. Susie Wiles wasn't on my topic list today, but you piqued my interest.

What did you have in mind about Susie Wiles? What do you think is happening there? Oh, no, more just that she has not been as much of a public figure. She hasn't been required to undergo what appears to be so many physical transformations in order to serve at Trump's side. So that was all. Pretty ominous stuff happening at the DOJ, but don't let the door hit you on the way out, Pam Bondi.

I want to go back to just the geopolitical implications of the war and talk both about some stories out of Europe and Asia. You wrote, I guess, last week Donald Trump is breaking up with Europe. That was, as you mentioned, advanced in the ensuing week where Trump was like basically threatening to leave NATO. Doesn't do that in the speech last night, but does insult them and say basically, you know, if you got to show, it's time for you to show courage, you got to step up, you got to do the straight. And then there's this line from a staffer to Politico last night after the speech. This is a Trump administration staffer. It's like these motherfuckers always talk about Article 5, Article 5, Article 5, Article 5, Article 5, Article 5. Okay, well, Iran has been blowing up our soldiers and ripping their wings off for, you know, half a century.

And we finally responded. And now they're going after all our major non-NATO allies and the United States. And you guys are not only saying we're not going to help, but you're closing your air. space to us, really, former Republican Congressman Peter Meyer tweeted that with this. It would be who our NATO allies to appreciate this sentiment is very widely shared, included among erstwhile boosters of the transatlantic relations. Man, a lot to unpack there, but wondering what your thoughts are. Well, I suppose it would be sort of trillishly rules-oriented of me to point out that the Trump

administration, if it's actually claiming that this is a defensive war under the the terms of the NATO alliance, which is purely a defensive alliance, what they should have done is gone to the North Atlantic Council and asked our allies to help the United States and to invoke the provisions in the treaty. The quote suggests that we believe that this is an American attack on Iran that is justified because we have in fact been under attack by Iran for decades. And if that's the case, the U.S. should have and did not formally ask for help from the needo allies. So, you know, as always, there's a strong element of gaslighting here. Really remarkable that the guy who has spent the last decade in public life trashing both our allies and this

specific alliance in very, very explicit terms is now absolutely furious that the person he's been kicking the shit out of isn't rushing to, you know, leap to his support when he goes after another target to start beating up, you know. And so it is. the bully boy mentality that I think has spilled over. It's not just Donald Trump's mentality, but it does represent, you know, a big part of how many Republicans now appear to view the world. So that's one thing. It's a misunderstanding of the role of NATO. It's a defensive alliance. And specifically, by the way, that defensive alliance exists only in a defined geographic area. And the reason that was put in the founding act of NATO was at the insistence of the United States itself

because it didn't want to be on the hook for going to war alongside European colonial powers outside of Europe and the North Atlantic. That was literally a provision insisted upon by the United States so that it wouldn't have to go to war, for example, in the Middle East. And look, just a few years after NATO was founded, you know, not to get too historical in our historical world. But let's talk about the 1956 Suez Crisis. Great example of European military action in the Middle East that the United States refused to have anything to do with for exactly this reason. So, you know, again, I just, I think that in many ways, right, like the U.S. just, of course, Donald Trump, you know, give him a pop quiz on the Suez Crisis. And I'm sure he couldn't even name it. And the whole thing is crazy. It's almost like I, my blood pressure. were spiked when I saw Majer's week because I was like,

how do I even, how do you even argue with this? It's so crazy. It's like we menaced Denmark and like threatened to invade their territory a couple months ago. And now you're telling me that Denmark needs to send their 20 year olds to Iran to risk their lives because Iran was behind the USS coal bombing 26 years ago. It's insane. Like before these kids were even born. Like it's just crazy. It's great. You can't, possibly imagine a counter situation where Germany decides to decapitate the Ayatollah and then gas prices spike and Donald Trump's like, we're going to come help you.

The whole thing is ridiculous. It was a choice, war of choice. We didn't ask them on the front end. And we're dealing with the results of that. Here's how Donald Tusk put it, leader of Poland. The threat of NATO's breakup, easing sanctions on Russia, a massive energy crisis in Europe, halting aid for Ukraine and blocking the loan for Kiev by Orban. Hungary is blocking it EU loan to. Ukraine. It all looks like Putin's dream plan. How widespread of a view do you sense that is among our friends in Europe? Yeah, I mean, I think that's a consensus view among our friends in Europe right now, especially with, you know, Putin's other leading apologist in Europe, Victor Orban, you know, in the middle of an election campaign in which the United States is openly campaigning on his behalf. You have both Marco Rubio and J.D. Vance literally going there to campaign essentially for Victor Orban. You know, Putin has also been the economic beneficiary of this conflict and is going to

receive literally a something like a $50-plus billion windfall, even if the war were to end in the next few weeks, because we've temporarily lifted sanctions on some of the Russian oil in order to relieve pressure on the, the, the, the, the, the, market, which, by the way, it didn't work. But the result is that Trump's war is now funding Putin's war. At the same time, you know, he continues to belittle Ukraine and to say very explicitly Ukraine is not our war. I noticed with alarm that although you could see that was something Trump believed, he's been wary of actually explicitly seeing that until now, until this conflict with Iran. And in the last week, both the president and Marco Rubio have come out and said Ukraine is not our war in ways that are a big shift in American foreign policy and probably an underappreciated spillover effect from the war in Iran. Mark Ruta, Secretary General of Data is coming next week.

Any sense for what is happening there? And he's been pretty – he's worked Trump, maybe. He would be the way to put it. He's buttered him up. He called him Daddy at one point. Do you have any thoughts, I want to expect? Yeah. Putting aside the cringe factor there, Tim, you know, Ruta has been, along with Alexander Stubb, the president of Finland, the sort of designated Trump whisperer among the Europeans, you know, the good cop.

And Ruta, I'm sure is here to, you know, grovel, basically, to do whatever he can to stop Trump from publicly damaging the election. alliance even more, I'm sure that he and others are insisting to Trump that they're working very hard to assemble a kind of international coalition that would ultimately take charge of the security problems in the Strait of Hormuz, although the Europeans so far have been very clear that that could occur only after the cessation of hostilities. I do think it's notable. I saw a level of panic yesterday in advance of the speech that I haven't seen before from serious NATO actors, even Republicans here in the U.S. who support the war and around, but also support NATO. They seem to be signaling that they were very alarmed by Trump's rhetoric before the

speech, threatening to pull out of NATO. But a lot of Europeans understand that Trump has already sort of functionally destroyed the Article 5 guarantee that is at the core of NATO. And by the way, that's been my view that from the moment of Trump's reelection in 2024, that Vladimir Putin understood very clearly that Article 5 was a dead letter because it's something that's written into law in a treaty that's been passed by the United States. But in reality, Article 5 depends upon the psychological condition of everybody believing that you will actually go to war to defend your allies. And if they don't believe that, it's not a deterrent. And let's be real. If tomorrow, Putin, you know, ordered Russian troops across the tiny river that separates Russia from Estonia.

Do you believe that the United States would actually go to war on Estonia's behalf or do much of anything at all before Russia swallowed up this tiny Baltic country? I mean, I think we understand the answer is no. And so in many ways, Donald Trump has already effectively pulled out of NATO. Just really quick on Asia. I was going to mention how bad Christ. among our Asian allies. South Korean president today urge citizens to save every drop of fuel because of their coming energy crisis. The Japanese Ministry of Finance intervening in fuel markets

to offset the evaluation of the end, the Indian rupee plunged 10%. They have their worst annual decline in 14 years. And there's a real global economic crisis coming. And it's going to hit a lot of our friends who we're already threatening with tariffs and already hitting with tariffs. And I go back to that political quote about our non-NATO allies. It kind of seems to me like the allies that we're going to have left at the end of this are Israel, the UAE, Saudi, and El Salvador. And maybe Hungary. We'll see how that election goes. Yeah. Friends don't let friends ruin their economy. I mean, it's, again, I think for so many people around the world, the shock here is realizing that America has become so dysfunctional that, you know, one cranky senior citizen, you know, in Marquis.

Aralago can determine the fate of their economy, you know, thousands of miles away on the other side of the world. Rapid fire through a couple of other things. Domestically, pretty important quote from Trump yesterday. It's, I think, going to be shown up in a lot of Democratic ads. I just want to read to you. This was before the speech was during a press conference. We can't take care of daycare. We're a big country.

We have all these other people who are fighting wars. We can't take care of daycare. You've got to let the states take care of daycare, and they should pay for it, too. they should pay. They have to raise their taxes, but they should pay for it. We can't pay for Medicare, Medicaid, daycare. We have to take care of one thing, military protection. So I very explicitly yesterday saying that in part because of the war in Iran, I mean, a ton of costs. We have had very expensive planes get bombed. We've, you know, it's a very costly war to the government in addition to the American people.

And because of that, we can't pay for health care and daycare services. I don't think that's going to really go over that well politically. No, I don't imagine it will. Although I actually have a theory of the case here, and I recognize it's unprovable. Please. But if you listen to the quote and where he ends up with Medicare, my theory is that he didn't mean to say daycare and that he actually confused daycare and Medicare all along through that quote because he says like the states, you know,

we're not allowed to do it to this day. It's like, again, it doesn't really change the political point perhaps that you're making, but it makes it somewhat worse if the press in the United States actually. We looked them all together in that last quote. Not possible for us to take care of daycare, Medicaid, Medicare. We have to take care of one thing, military protection. I think I think I'll be seeing that in the swing states. A lot of complaints about the Democratic pushback on this regime. And so when they do things effectively, I think it's worth highlighting. this DHS shutdown, we have a deal now that it's about to end. Mike Johnson has folded, possibly the weakest speaker in American history.

There's a lot of superlatives to be handed out in this moment, you know, the most corrupt attorney general, the weakest speaker of the House. But one thing I think that has gotten missed a little bit as far as as part of the win here, quote unquote, for Democrats, is during this shutdown period, the administration has had to spend a lot of the money that was allocated for DHS during the bill last year. And just for example, here, this is from Politico this morning, if DHS continues to siphon that cash at the current rate funding could run out as soon as June, this was part of the package for border support that was, you know, going to Christyneum's planes and also the mass

agents in the streets of Minnesota, et cetera. But the Republicans now are enough to go back to get more funding for the deportation. program, you know, they're going to have to go back and jam through a reconciliation bill that funds the war, the ICE agents. And I don't know, maybe they'll try to throw in some rules about election voting in there. But, man, the politics of that were going to be very hard two months ago. The politics of that are unimaginably hard now to think that like when people are feeling an acute crisis in their pocketbooks, it's like the one thing that we're going to try to do this year in reconciliation is fund the ICE agents and the war. Absolutely correct. But the only point I would make is that what worries me right now is that Donald Trump already historically unpopular, thinking about that 64% disapproval rating in that CNN poll, he seems to be increasingly detaching from any interest in the normal pressures that politics would impose upon him and the constraints that that kind of unpopularity would impose on any other kind of president.

So I worry that he's detaching in a way from our political system. And once again, if these Republican elected officials don't break with him, you know, what is the consequence of that unpopularity? And any other moment in our lifetime, any president, Democrat Republican, with this levels of public dissatisfaction, both broadly with the country and specifically with his leadership, you would see Republicans in the Senate and the House just absolutely refusing to do anything that that president wanted. And we haven't seen that case. And frankly, it's exhausting every time you listen. I'm sure you have them on the show or you're on MS,

you know, with these people and they're, you know, their congressional reporters, God bless them. They do great work. But they always, how many times a week do they come on and they say, well, you know, I'm picking up a lot of discontent with those Republican members on the fence. And I think, you know, it's not happening yet, Tim. But I feel like next week, we really could see them start to break Am is about to break. It's like, come on, right? I mean, this is, we've been living with this too long to be prepared to say that in June, you know, they're absolutely going to wake up and look at this political reality

and tell Donald Trump to screw off. I agree with that. Okay. I knew we were going to be very dour today and negative. So I have at the end of the show, I have a We Can Do Cool Things Question Mark section. Your colleague, David Kirkpatrick, who I've had on the show, wrote a very cool. feature piece about this CIA operative, former CIA operative that

actually did the work that Donald Trump said that past administrations weren't doing which is stopping Iran from getting the bomb and it's a very cool caper story. We'll link to it. I recommend people read it. Just about how you recruited a scientist in Iran to disrupt the program. And on the science front on the home front

Artemis 2 up to the stars, beyond the stars, as Donald Trump said. Not quite. But it is, you know, and around the dark side of the moon. That's pretty cool. It was cool for my daughter to get to watch that yesterday. So there you go. Do you have anything on either of those items on the American, America can do cool things still? Question mark topic. Absolutely. I watched every minute of the launch, the Artemis launch, with my husband, Peter Baker, who is a huge space junkie. He has... Could have predicted that.

He has read literally the memoirs of like every American astronaut who's ever gone into space. And, you know, both of us were really struck by, you know, again and again, the sort of commentary was, you know, at a time when Americans are bruised, when there's so much that divides us, does this hearken back to some kind of different moment in time? You know, Peter was pointing out to me, you know, you can go back to, you know, launch in December of 1968, probably the worst, you know, year in recent American history, you know, assassinations and. you know, divisions over the Vietnam War and Richard Nixon and the campaign and the like. And yet that was still something that brought America together. You know, I don't know that this does anything at all about our political divisions. But, you know, it's a reminder about big ambition. And, you know, one of the things it feels so painful to me that it feels like the U.S. has lost on some level is being the country of the future.

and that that in some ways, more than anything, any specific thing was what powered the U.S. through its incredible run, you know, in the post-World War II era as this country of the future, as a country that not just had democratic ideals, but that, you know, was harnessing the power of individual innovation and freedom to do things that other countries around the world couldn't and wouldn't do. And I feel like that's what's been lost. you know, ask our children, you know, look at these poor, you know, Jen's ears. They, they see a world that's been defined since they can remember with, you know, with constraint, with division, with economic insecurity. You know, these are kids, brilliant kids, wonderful kids coming out of universities, and they can't get jobs. And, you know, that's not the America that, you know, of JFK that first went to the moon. So, you know, it's inspiring. It's a nerve-wracking. by the way. You just really sit there and watch the whole thing. You know, the first news event I remember was of the space program was the challenger when I was in high school. So I was a little bit anxious watching it. But it's a great thing and a big accomplishment. I love that melancholy tinge with the inspiration there. No, no, that's right. That is appropriate. That is Bullwark and Susan Glasser and Tim Miller podcast appropriate. And so we'll leave it with that. She's over at the New Yorker. Check out her latest. latest and we'll be seeing you again soon. Who knows what imaginable horrors will wait us the next time we're together, Susan. You're the one who said horrors. Appreciate you very much. We've got another negative Nancy coming tomorrow. So we'll see you all then. Peace.

The Borg podcast is brought to you thanks to the work of lead producer Katie Cooper, Associate producer Anzley-Skipper, and with video editing by Katie Lutz, and audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown. Thank you.