The Dispatch Podcast - Trump the Neocon? | Roundtable

Episode Date: June 20, 2025

Is it time to take out Iran’s Fordow nuclear site? As pundits gaze through their crystal balls attempting to determine what President Trump will do next, Trump administration officials are��fighting over the United States’ direct involvement in the Iran-Israel conflict. Sarah Isgur, Steve Hayes, Jonah Goldberg, and John McCormack analyze the many factions of MAGA and the future of Iran. The Agenda:—Israel and Iran: what’s next?—Tulsi Gabbard trying to be relevant—The cult of Trumpism—We’re against political violence Show Notes:—Jonathan Ruhe’s piece for The Dispatch—Jonah’s Remnant with Ken Pollack The Dispatch Podcast is a production of ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Dispatch⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a non-partisan, conservative perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including members-only newsletters, bonus podcast episodes, and regular livestreams—⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠click here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the dispatch podcast. I'm Steve Hayes. On this week's roundtable, we will go deep on the war between Iran and Israel, the implications for the world, for the region, and here in the United States. I'm joined today by Sarah Isker, Jonah Goldberg, and John McCormick. Let's get into it. John, can you just give us a big picture, 30,000 foot overview of the news of the past week as it relates to Israel and Iran? Well, yeah, big picture. I think most people have been stunned by the success of Israel, establishing dominance over the skies of Iran, taking out top echelons of the military nuclear scientists. And the big question in the United States now is a question of, will we become directly involved? And the immediate question there is whether President Trump will order a strike on this hardened nuclear facility underneath a mountain in Fordow. And that is the main question that's sort of gripping Washington, I would say, right at the moment.

Yeah, Jonah, the changes have been very fast. And if you think back to conversations that Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu were having earlier this spring, the reporting that we were reading, you know, just a month ago, the view was that Donald Trump was opposed to these strikes, any Israeli kinetic action, and that the United States was determined to continue with diplomacy. There was a big New York Times article this week that walked through sort of point by point, how Trump came to accept that Netanyahu was going to do this. do you have any thoughts on what led to the to trumping at least okay with net and yahoo doing this and any sense when net and yahoo had decided that he was going to go ahead regardless of the

united states support yeah so i mean i think there's going to be more and more criminology about this over the weeks months years decades but it seems pretty obvious to me that i mean we see it now with trump saying i don't know what i'm going to do i want to keep my options open right i think that has been his approach to almost everything, not just Iran stuff, and it seems pretty clear to me that the Israelis very smartly banked Trump's statement that he was giving Iran 60 days and had an argument ready for why on the 61st day they were going to open a can of whoop ass or two. And I think the thing that brought Trump further and further on side with the Israelis is the success. I mean, you can you can see it in his true.

social posts where he says, he uses the word we a lot, right? And he wants to take claim ownership of these successes and sort of talks about Israel as it's as if it is his proxy, right? It is, the Israelis are his button man, as it were. And on a strict policy level, that to me is preferable than a lot of the other possible ways this could have played out. It's not the ideal scenario, but it is preferable to some of the others. And I think that this is the thing, which we should note John did a great TikTok on the wars inside the MAGA coalition about this. I think that is the thing at the end of the day that is driving a big chunk of his biggest fans, allegedly biggest fans crazy, is that Trump was never an isolationist. He was,

I brought up this term a couple times on here, and I know everyone rolls their eyes at it. this, the term sovereignist, but the difference between an isolationist and a sovereignist is both isolationists and sovereignists don't like alliances, but isolationists don't want to, like, leave our shores. They want to just be a fortress America and let the world have its problems. Sovereignists just don't want anything to constrain what they want to do. And if they want to go go and slap around some country 6,000 miles away, they should be free to do it without anybody saying you can't do that. And that's much more of what Trump. is in this stuff. And he likes winner, he likes to back winners. He likes displays a strength and he likes

to take credit for stuff. And I think that's the biggest thing that's driving this right now. And it could lead into some bad things. I think it's sort of crazy for Trump to be talking about unconditional surrender. That's just, that's a very loaded term that backs the mullos into a corner. But again, it's better than a lot of the alternative scenarios. Yeah. Sarah, there's been reporting this week from a variety of sources that, in effect, this was all cooked up a while ago, that Trump's public posture opposing Israeli strikes, opposing Israel doing what Israel has done over the past week, was really just that oppose, and that he didn't really mean it, that he and Benjamin Netanyahu had sort of come up with this plan where the United States was going to push for diplomacy

and continue to push for diplomacy. Israel was going to do what Israel needed to do. The United States would oppose it, Trump would make public statements, suggesting that he wanted diplomacy to continue, all with sort of a wink and a nod. That feels more speculative to me than grounded in a lot of detailed fact-based reporting. But you've read those stories. Where do you come out? The problem is they're sort of unfalsifiable. Right. Because it is in the Trump administration's interests and the Israeli government's interest to now hue to that story, whether it's true or not. And so I have no idea because it's such like ex post rationalization. It could be totally true. But I would need to see something from before the strike, the initial Israeli strike,

to back that up for me to actually believe it. Because both versions make perfect sense, the version where Trump was seriously against it, then Netanyahu goes, it goes really well. And so Trump hops on board and says he was always on board, or the version where Trump has actually been very successful in the Middle East in a lot of respects, in both his first term and this term, far beyond what other people thought his administration would be capable of. And my God, the Israelis have had every strategic thought, work out well for them. So the idea that maybe Netanyahu would have come up with this plan and asked the Trump

administration to go along with it and play their role also, to me, makes a lot of sense. But again, I wouldn't believe anyone's rationalization now I would want to see paperwork from the before times. Yeah, that's what I was trying to get at just for the record about how there's going to be a lot of criminology going forward about all this. Because like, I don't, I don't believe 100% of any version. have any of these things. Yeah. Well, Jonah, let me ask you about part of your conversation with Ken Pollock on the remnant yesterday. You had on Ken Pollock, certainly an expert in these areas.

And one of the things you asked him about, and I'd say pressed him about, were these claims by the Israeli government of sort of a new imminence to the Iranian nuclear program, finishing the construction of a bomb and again we've seen the we've seen in remarks from Netanyahu claims that there's new intelligence that this now seemed like a much shorter time frame than than people had been suggesting and that this action was required right now because the path to Obama had shortened there's been I'd say a fair degree of skepticism in certainly in the U.S. press, but even among American lawmakers and lawmakers who support Israel about these new claims. What did Ken Pollock tell you and where do you net out on that part of

the argument? I don't buy. I mean, so Ken thinks that BB's playing fast and loose and talking much like, well, look, I mean, there are these videos out there. They've compiled them. I think CNN has a as a clip reel on this of BB saying the Iranians are minutes away from having a bomb for like 20 years. Bibi Naniathu has been obsessed with the Iranian nuclear program for a very long time. There are a lot of people, you know, you hear stories about how if you want to talk to him about tax reform or Hamas, if you keep talking for too long, he's going to turn it to the conversation to the Iranian nuclear program.

He kind of thinks that's his mission is to prevent that. And so personally, and I think I agree with Ken about this, there's no evidence yet. There's no persuasive evidence that they were 10 seconds to midnight of getting this bomb ready to go, right, or any of that kind of stuff. And I think it's kind of a mistake for the way Bibi has talked about it, for him to try to do that because it induces a certain amount of Iraq war PTSD flashbacks. And moreover, partly for reasons that we're gotten into on advisory opinions, but I just, there's just no evidence that you need to have the eminence thing. Iran has been at war with us for a very long time. Iran says all the time that they want to destroy us, that we're the great Satan. They've killed, I don't know what the full number is, several thousand Americans at various points, including American troops during the Iraq war.

they have proxy I mean certainly they're in a regular state of of war with Israel I mean that's just by any conventional understanding of what war is they've been at war with Israel for a very long time using proxies and doing other things and while I think the AUMF the authorization of use of military force from the Iraq war or from the after 9-11 really should be updated because it's kind of become this enabling act to just blow up people, if you just read the actual text of it, there's more than enough predicate there for Iran being involved in 9-11, right? So you can just go, you can unwind this a million different ways. And so I think you don't need to make the imminence argument, in part because no reasonable person anymore, like this is another thing that Pollock and I were talking about. There's no one who claims, they even tries to claim that Iran wants this nuclear

program for peaceful domestic energy purposes. Like, you don't need to refine the uranium to 60% for domestic energy. They've built no nuclear power plants. Like, 5% to 10% of rich uranium will do the trick, but they're going to 60% because to get from

60% you're just on the precipice of fissile material. And I'm not saying it's not true that they're very close to a bomb or they made the decision to make a bomb. But the whole point was you wanted to get to a position, you didn't want Iran to get to a position where they could make that decision. And that means you have to, it's prevention, not preemption.

And I got Jimmy Crackhorn and I don't care. I think America is perfectly fine in doing this. I'd rather Congress authorize it. I think you can make the case Congress has authorized it. I certainly think Israel is entirely within its rights to be doing this. under the laws of war and common sense. But if we want to dot eyes and cross-tees, by all means, go ahead and do that.

So the biggest voice, or maybe the most important voice, taking, I would say a different position from the one that you articulated with respect to Iran's program is the U.S. intelligence community. When Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, testified in Congress earlier this spring, she said, quote, the intelligence community continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003.

So while I think logic, it's hard for, it's hard to explain what Iran is doing unless you believe that Iran is working towards nuclear weapons. But the official position of the U.S. intelligence community is that Iran is not working towards. nuclear weapons. John, Tulsi Gabbard said that in this earlier this spring. Donald Trump, when he was asked about this on Air Force one earlier this week, told reporters that he doesn't care what Tulsi Gabbard says and said Iran is close to the bomb. He seems to be siding with the Benjamin Netanyahu assessment. Were you surprised to hear Trump totally disregard what Tulsi Gabbard has said and what the intelligence community that she speaks for was assessing?

I wasn't surprised. And I think Trump didn't do this, but I think you actually can sort of reconcile Gabbard's points and the Netanyahu point. I think there is some parsing about they're not building the bomb exactly. They're not actually assembling the bomb, but they are getting enough, they are enriching enough material to be very close to being able to have that breakout period. So I think you can sort of reconcile that. Steve, you would know better than I on that on that question. Well, let me just push back on that or get you to, go further. Yes, but I think you can. I think you can say they are pursuing a bomb, but they have not yet gotten to the point where they are, where they have breakout capacity. But the statement

that she read said they don't have a nuclear weapons program. I think that is hard to reconcile with what Donald Trump is saying. I mean, if they have been working for years, some would argue decades on the component parts of a nuclear bomb, doesn't that sort of in and of itself mean that they have a program? For sure. And I think that it's obvious that he no longer trusts her, has lost confidence in her. I would say an even bigger data point than his dismissal of her aboard Air Force One was a decision to leave her out of a key meeting at Camp David on June 8th, I believe it was, where CIA director Ratcliffe and Trump and other top national security people were present at Camp David to discuss a possible Israeli attack on Iran.

Gabbard was left out of that, supposedly because she had National Guard duty. It kind of seems like the thing that she would have been able to cancel, a kind of high-level meeting, if she were trusted in Trump world. And then she came out- She was washing her hair that night. Right, yeah. And then she came out two days later with that weird video direct-to-camera talking about the threat of nuclear war. I mean, yeah, Trump effectively put a Glenn Greenwald Democrat, as his time.

Director of National Intelligence, and that is not who Trump is. I think Jonah called him a sovereignist. I think some people would say Jacksonian. But it's obvious that he, you know, no longer has, if he ever had a lot of confidence in her, he doesn't trust her on this issue, I would say. Yeah, so Steve, just really quickly on this, I'm sorry to hijack. I'm just assuming you're trying out some of the patented Sarah Isger steelmanning devil's advocacy stuff here, because there's just no friggin' way.

You believe that Iran isn't developing a nuclear weapons program. Like, seriously, I will demand a blood test if you tell me, well, it's an open question because Tulsi Gabbard says so. No. And the ODNI says so. Yeah, no, that's correct. You know me well. But I do think, I mean, it is instruction.

This was a controversial assessment when it was revealed, it may have. happened earlier as well. But I remember there was a huge public fight about this. I believe in 2007 when General Michael Hayden was still CIA director. And they provided this public assessment that Iran was not pursuing a nuclear weapon. And that ran against the views of many senior Bush administration officials, some of whom were open to taking it out, some of whom wanted Israel to take it out then. John Bolton wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal that basically ended his relationship with W. Bush saying we got to do this, or maybe that was about North Korea, but it was around that same time. Right. Go on. Right.

Yeah. So I think it's, I think it's, I think the, the intelligence community assessment relies on very careful parsing of language. But there are, it's hard to explain why Iran has been doing what Iran has been doing unless you believe that they're pursuing a nuclear weapon. And I think Occam's Razors suggests that they are. Sarah, if you look at some of the things that the White House did on the comms front this week, very interesting. Middle of the week, I think it was Monday or Tuesday, they put out a series of tweets from the White House rapid response Twitter handle or X handle with video of all of the times in the past two, three years, maybe even going back further. that Donald Trump had said, this is very simple. Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. Donald Trump, I don't think is consistent about much. He's been consistent about that. He has said that repeatedly.

I guess two questions. One, should we believe that this is sort of a core view of Donald Trump, since he's articulated it this way so many times, number one. And number two, if you're working in the com shop at the White House, and you're putting this out, are you doing this because you want to win a rhetorical war, or you want to set the record straight with sort of MAGA within the Republican Party? Or are you doing this because you're trying to justify action that could be coming? Set aside this White House for a moment. The traditional role of the White House communication shop is to maximize options for their boss. You know, you have the policy folks in the Oval Office making the decision depending on how senior and how trusted the White House

Press Secretary or the White House Communications Director is. They may or may not be in that room. They're unlikely to be in the situation room, for instance, when those type of decisions are being made. So assume for a second that they're not in the room for the decision. Their job on the outside, though, they know what meeting is going on. on and they know what's being discussed, again, generally speaking. And their job on the outside is to maximize the president's decision-making ability with the public. Now, you asked about this White House, because as I think you already knew, this White House does operate a little differently. They seem to have different factions that want to pin in the president. Now, look, there's nothing

particularly new about that either. There's always factions in the White House. They always want to influence the president's decisions. But all that being said, I actually think this looks like pretty old school White House comm strategy, maximize the president's opportunities to make any decision he wants in that room, because I think it's pretty clear that President Trump has not decided about U.S. involvement and the scope of U.S. involvement, I think that's for good reason. I think that, you know, if he ruled out any involvement today, And then Iran had a truck full of drones launch from DuPont Circle. That would have to change the calculus.

So I do think he hasn't made a decision. I think it's the White House comps office's job to make sure everyone knows that. And that, you know, if he makes this decision, that will be very consistent with what he said. If he decides we're not getting involved, it's because he does not believe that Iran will get a nuclear weapon. So right now, at least, that looks like a pretty smart comms. strategy from where I'm sitting. We're going to take a quick break, but we'll be back soon with more from the dispatch podcast. The new BMO ViPorter MasterCard is your ticket to more. More perks, more points, more flights, more of all the things you want in a travel rewards card, and then some. Get your

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of a website or domain. We're back. You're listening to the Dispatch podcast. Let's return to the conversation. So, John, let's get into your piece. You have a piece that we posted Thursday morning looking at all of this big, debate in MAGA world in the Republican Party in the country at large about Trump's views on Iran, about whether they're consistent with MAGA or American First, the splits

in the MAGA movement. Can you just take us through the reporting that you did this week and tell us where Trump ends up, why he holds the views he holds, and what's the likelihood that he'll maintain support from this bag of movement? the loudest voice, the most prominent voice, an opposition to U.S. support, simply support, not involvement in the war in Iran, has been Tucker Carlson, who has been a key ally of Trump's for several years. He came out of the gate last Friday, hours after the Israeli campaign against Iran began saying that Trump was complicit in the attack and that the U.S. should drop Israel. And Tucker was very explicit, saying that meant no funding, no U.S. weapons, not merely no U.S. troops

in the ground. He's been joined by people like Steve Bannon, former White House Chief Strategist and a current host of a podcast, Marjorie Taylor Green. But I went down to Congress just to sort of take the temperature of folks down there. And obviously, Trump is the leader of the Republican Party. And the Republican Party has been strongly opposed to Iran, strongly supportive of Israel, strongly supportive of Trump. So there's really not much dissent, at least in the Senate. talked to Ted Cruz. He made the point that Trump, and most everybody except for Rand Paul, thinks that Trump has the inherent authority or the AUMF that Jonah mentioned against al-Qaeda. He has the authority to do this. And so I think that that basically is where most people are

comfortable with Trump making this decision himself. There's really not any blowback. It doesn't seem like anyone is really rushing to Tucker's defense. Trump himself said yesterday in the Oval Office that Tucker called him to apologize and for his comments and that they have, they may still have an impasse if Tucker thinks that Iran can have a nuclear weapon. Trump just says whether you have to fight or not, they can't have a nuclear weapon. So he seems in intent on taking action if he thinks that's necessary and will be successful to disable or destroy this nuclear facility. He seems ready. That's what the reporting out there already suggests that he's ready to authorize, but he hasn't given a final order. So that's sort of worth.

things stand right now. So getting into a little of the internal MAGA Kremlinology, it was interesting that in the reporting about, we talked about Tulsi Gabbard on this podcast last week and the fact that she was not included in the Camp David conversation that took place now roughly two weeks ago that was about U.S. strategy toward Israel and Iran and that she put out this weird three-minute video potentially as an effort to have a voice in that conversation without having been present in that conversation. There's been subsequent reporting. Politico reported this week that that was in fact what had happened and that Trump was frustrated that Gabbard put out this video in which she talked about political elite warmongers

and warned about the horrors of nuclear war. It's been interesting to see who has risen to her defense, as the president publicly said, he doesn't care what she thinks. She's taken criticism from people in the Republican Party who, you know, have effectively called her what you said earlier, basically a Glenn Greenwald Democrat, political reported that J.D. Vance, the vice president, offered a statement in her defense that I believe came in unprompted to the political reporters working on this piece. What do you make of the fact that Vance was the first one to maybe unbidden defend Tulsi Gabbard in public in this way? Vance himself is ideologically much closer to being an isolationist than anyone else at the top of the administration. You know, Tucker Carlson's son works for him.

Tucker Carlson was a key voice in getting J.D. Vance elevated. So I don't have any original behind the scenes reporting, but I think you can just tell from his behavior that he is, likely in the camp that's been trying to dissuade Trump, but he put out a tweet the other day saying, basically saying, I'm on Trump's side, whatever he decides, I can see what's going on in the background, mega world, you need to trust the president here if he thinks additional steps are needed to take out the nuclear program. That's what he'll do. I think one other aspect too, it's so interesting is that, you know, as Trump is on the brink of potentially the most serious and consequential foreign policy decision of either term, the debate among both sides are

sort of, again, appealing to his ego and which side is truly mega. So the vice president of the United States was squabbling, you know, with, I believe, a self-described Twitter pugilist, Dave Reboi on Twitter the other day. Reboi accused Vance of someone on his team leaking to Politico that there were negotiations underway, a peace talks. Trump immediately disputed this, and Reboi accused Vance of this. Vance, the vice president at Sites felt necessary to respond, and what does he respond with it, but saying, this loser supported DeSantis in the primary. to which Reeboy replies, well, this guy's an Evan McMullen voter. And, you know, sort of on and on it goes, Tucker, Carlson, and Steve Bannon were doing the same thing on their podcasts. You know, Mark Levin has come under fire for saying back in 2016, he wouldn't vote for Trump. So again, it's, it's equally predictable as it is perverse that as we are on the brink of this hugely consequential foreign policy decision, the varying factions are trying to appeal to Trump's ego just based on who's been a loyalist and who has supported him. And the truth is that in the Church of Trump, that if you are without sin, at some point either privately or publicly, they have gotten on his bad side or not been fully supportive of him.

Yeah, Jonah, one of the things that's been notable since that, J.D. Vance, defense of Tulsi Gabbard, and he put out this long statement on X in which he, as John, I think, summarized, said, I'm on Trump's side, whatever he decides. The number of pro-Trump commentators, analysts, lawmakers who have effectively just echoed J.D. Vance's sentiment, I think, it's a very long list. And one of them is our former colleague at Fox News, Molly Hemingway. On June 12th, Molly issued a warning on social media, in effect, saying, hey, this would be a disaster if Trump does this. It will end, sort of end. It will destroy him. and the movement he leads if he were to participate, initiate massive escalation, or even greenlighting. She said, this is it. It would be seen as an unforgivable betrayal by millions of American voters. And some two or three days later, Molly was on Fox News, touting Trump's statesmanship on this issue, in effect, echoing J.D. Vance's points. or whatever, whatever Trump decides is good with her. And he's earned a lot of trust in these issues. So we should, in effect, defer to him.

What's going on here? How should people understand that? Oh, first of all, it would take a heart of stone not to laugh at the spectacle. But I, so first of all, I'm just going to do my own horn here for a second. I've been making this argument for 10 years now that any attempt to impose a coherent and consistent, philosophical, ideological, ideological program on Trumpism, always founders. Always. And I first started writing about this when they were going to come out with a, with like, that crime guy was coming up with a, you know, Journal of American Affairs or whatever it was,

some sort of Julius Crine, yeah, Julius Crine, yeah, some egg-hedy sort of journal to be the intellectual home to Trumpism. And I was just like, this is not a possible project. I wrote about it at the time saying you're either going to have to break with Trump about something at some point or you're going to have to just keep bending whatever you're for to fit his program. That dynamic has proven true time and time and time and time and time and time again because there is no inherent, immutable, consistent ideological content to Trumpism. Trump said it the other day. He said, I mean, he was wrong when he said, I invented the term America first. So I get to decide what it means. America First has a long history.

He was ignorant of it. But his political point is entirely accurate, is that he, he gets to decide what Trumpism is. And he brags about the fact that he changes his mind all of the time. And he thinks that's a feature of his brilliance, is that he just wants to listen to his instincts. And so the only safe harbor, again, something I've been saying for 10 years now, the only safe harbor for pro-Trump. people is to come down and finally just say, look, I just trust his instincts. I defer to his judgment. That is the genesis of where this 4D chess thing originally came from was that nobody could explain on rational terms with earth logic and basic facts what he was doing or why he was doing

it. And so they invented this heuristic, which just basically says, look, he's just thinking so many steps ahead, we just got to trust him. And whenever you get into one of these situations, that's where 99% of these people fall back on. And I'll just, one last point, because it's a toot your own horn Thursday here. On June 6th, I wrote a G-vile about the Musk-Trump wars, which now seem like such ancient history. And the title of it was the inevitable splintering to come. And I just made a basic point, which I think this is evidence of, is that all majority coalitions have warring factions. I mean, as I often point out, FDR's coalition, had communist Jews and blacks and the clan in it, right? That is what you get when you get a majority coalition is you get

different factions who disagree with each other. Minority coalitions have the luxury of ideological consistency. The Trump coalition is not a very large majority coalition, but it is a majority coalition. And it's got very competing interests, ideological, economic, inside of it. And as I pointed out, you know, three weeks ago, this fight we're seeing now about Iran and Israel is one of these fault lines within the MAGA coalition that is irreconcilable other than with appeals to cult of personality arguments about Trump. And it is one of the reasons why I think the post-Trump GOP is going to be a free-for-all with these different factions openly going to war with each other because he's the only thing holding it all together. And so the Vance defense of Tulsi Gabbard thing

is he wants to be the head of that faction. He needs some faction on his side. And he has this dream of unifying the entire MAGA coalition, which means that whenever one part of the coalition is about to be thrown overboard, he wants to do what he can to keep it in the boat. and I just don't think he's got the political talent or charisma to pull that off over the long term, but I think that's what he's thinking about. Sarah, can I take the same question or similar question to you? Jonah said he gets to decide what Trumpism is, he being Donald Trump. And Donald Trump said something very similar this week pushing back on Tucker Carlson, right?

Or these claims that what he's doing with respect to Iran are not America first. He said, yeah, I'm the one who decides what's America's first. Is that right? I mean, is this as far as it goes? Yes, and I think that efforts by his supporters to claim him and build an ideology around him have always failed. I think it's a hundred percent failure rate, like saying that Donald Trump is an isolationist. That was never true. It's not that it used to be true and now it's not.

It was never true to call him an isolationist. Donald Trump doesn't isn't an ideologue and you know you think back to when he gets elected in 2016 and the space between his election and his inauguration there was real concern within the conservative movement that Donald Trump would govern from the center that he would make deals with Democrats and that potentially he would in fact be so swayed if they were super nice to him the conservatives tried to hold the line, that he could actually sort of be a quite liberal president, like democratic liberal president. That was the real thought among conservatives in November and December about Donald Trump. They seem to have totally forgotten that

and now try to like hungry, hungry hippo pieces of Donald Trump into their own ideological camps, whether it's common good constitutionalism or isolationism or you name the issue area and there's an ideologue out there who claims to carry Trump's banner up the hill. 100% failure rate. Now, I do think that it makes sense for them. And I think building out a sort of think tanky world around Donald Trump make some sense, it certainly is profitable for those who do it, you know, gets them jobs, and they get to say that, you know, they've got a white paper on this issue of whatever Donald

Trump wants to do. But again, 100% failure rate. Yeah, I mean, John, it was not long ago after Donald Trump gave this major foreign policy speech in Riyadh on his trip to the region that, you know, gave birth to dozens, maybe he hundreds, maybe thousands of chin stroking think pieces declaring, this is the Trump doctrine. And in that speech, he raised the potential threats from Iran. But he also staked out a foreign policy view that was markedly different from his Republican predecessors, certainly contrasted himself with Joe Biden. And you had everybody saying, hey, this is the Trump doctrine. Is there such a thing as the Trump doctrine? No. I mean, what Sarah said, I go back to, you know, his first

campaign for president. He, he was for the Iraq war before he was against it. He, during the campaign, he both said, why don't we just let Syria and ISIS fight it out? Why are we going to get involved? He also said we needed 30,000 ground troops on the ground during the campaign that he, you know, won decisively. Now Steve Bannon is trying to retcon this and saying that really the key moment for Trump, The key moment in all this was when in the South Carolina debate, he said that Jeb Bush was connected to W and W had lied us into war. That's actually not true. As someone who, you know, remembers all this, lived through it. Trump was actually up by like 30 points in South Carolina and then he lost, he won by 20 points after that.

So the idea is, as Sarah said, sort of just like construct this ideology around Trump has always failed. And, you know, yeah, he's he's miracurial. He's an egomaniac. he likes strength. And when he sees the strength that Israel has, you know, approach Iran with and been decisive and victorious, I think he thinks, well, this isn't very costly if we get involved and take this out. So it's been, it's been very interesting. And I would say one more point on the mega world people, you know, trying to do this. I think part of it isn't just playing to their audience. They're also trying to maintain their ability to influence Trump. I think that's true

of what you just mentioned with Molly Hemingway. It's true of Tucker calling Trump and saying whatever Trump described as an apology. And it's remarkable right now, they're all trying sort of Tucker and everyone else to sort of, rather than actually have the specific debate on whether a U.S. strike on nuclear facility in Iran, Ford O, makes sense. They're sort of trying to have a debate about regime change wars. And well, you usually want a regime change war. You don't want, that's interesting to me that they, that they, these are people who are very close to Trump. they know how to push his buttons and sort of turn him and manipulate him. So that's where they are right now.

Can I just though, I feel like John's version of this, and maybe it sounded this way when I was talking about it too, is the negatives of Trump not being an ideologue and not having a sort of singular worldview. But just to be clear, I think it can be a very good thing to have a president who's not an ideologue and doesn't come in with a I know everything about the world and I see every problem. through the exact same lens of my, you know, preconceived ideological priors, you know, I think back to that December 2016 time. And that president that they were describing could have been a very effective president. Now, I think there's lots of reasons that, like, it would be really interesting to go back through and say why it happened the way that it did. Why wasn't? Was Trump never going to govern that way? Or did Democrats lose their opportunity to have Trump govern that way? There's plenty of evidence for both of those. But regardless, having a non-ideological president could have been pretty good.

I mean, Bill Clinton was arguably a non-ideological president. I don't know, Jonah. Like, who else would you say is sort of our most non-ideolog captured presidents? Eisenhower. I mean, I'm going to generally say that the non-ideologs have been better than the. the ideologues, again, on like sort of a very general, whatever, whatever. Donald Trump has other problems. Being non-ideological is not the cause of those problems, though, to me. Yeah. So I generally, I take your point. I think it's a good point. I think the problem is that he's not simply non-ideological. He's unprincipled. And there's a difference between the two things. His view of, well, you know, when talking about Putin being a killer, well, we all

kill people, right? And I thought, Jonah, this goes to your, I mean, it's one of my favorite things that you say, behind every double standard is a single more important standard. Yeah. Like, I don't think he's unprincipled. It's just that the principal, um, is it, you know, maybe an honorable one, but there is a principle there. Well, yeah, whatever's good for him, which I don't, I, I think we can get into a whole semantic thing. So he's deeply principled. Yeah. Yeah. Is it, is it a principle or is it operating standard? He's the most principal president we've ever had. Yes. Right. But he has no principled objection to rolling over the Constitution. He has no principled objection to using American troops military on American streets. He has no principled objection with rewarding dictators and throwing allies under the bus. Right. He has no principled guardrails. And my view about like, particularly about foreign policies, has always been I'm entirely in favor of pragmatism and realism about means. But you have to have some idealism about ends.

And I don't think there's a lot of idealism about ends with Donald Trump beyond the media cycle. And that's the problem. But like imagine a world, like, imagine that Donald Trump's number one principle is to be on the winning side of whatever it is, right? The winning side of every debate in Congress, the winning side of every primary campaign in every state, and the winning side of every foreign conflict.

when it comes to foreign policy again i'm not saying it's any of your preferred things i think y'all have different principles but is it that bad for america to be on the winning side if that were his like overarching principle yes and we can we we can do a game theory thing we can have uh chat ch pt and claude game this out if we want but um the idea that in the long term it's good for america let's say Russia declares war on Sweden. Poland, yeah, I don't know. And we think Russia is going to win, so therefore we side with Russia on that. Short term, he gets that claim victory in a media cycle or two.

Long term, no one ever will want to be our ally. And there's also the sort of bird of prey problem that Evan Burke talked about about what it actually does to the American people that we now have. Oh, it would totally alter that. Yeah, as a totally cynical view of, of just using power for our own glory. But this is why Donald Trump again and again, like, reminds me of Henry VIII.

I really think there's no better historical example for Donald Trump than Henry VIII. He's got to get to work to catch up on the wife count. Well, he doesn't get to, I know, but, you know, beheadings just aren't as in vogue as they once were, and that's going to slow you down. Let's be real. He needs a better matrimonial lawyer than get that beheading clause in there.

I mean, Henry the 8th didn't love his divorce lawyers either. Cardinal Wolsey found that out the hard way. Fair, fair, fair. We're going to take a quick break, but we'll be back shortly. This episode is brought to by Tron Aries. For the first time, the captivating world of Tron breaks out of the grid. Aries, a highly advanced program, journeys into our world on a dangerous mission, marking humankind's first encounter with AI beings.

Featuring an electrifying original soundtrack by 9-inch nails, Tron Aries is a must-see movie event, filmed for IMAX and made for the big screen. Experience it only in theaters, October 10. Get tickets now. We're back with the Dispatch podcast. Before we get back to our conversation, I want to let you know what's going on elsewhere at the dispatch. This week on advisory opinions, Sarah Isker and David French discussed the Supreme Court's recent ruling upholding Tennessee's ban on gender transition treatment for transgender minors. They also get into the TikTok ban, Judge Maid.

doctrines and presidential war powers. Search for advisory opinions in your podcast app and make sure you hit the follow button. Now let's jump back into our conversation. What's been striking to me about this debate over the past week most intensely, but really on a longer term basis, is we discuss these decisions, these decisions of war and peace and these decisions of where Trump is and the question of whether the United States should support Iran to achieve a military objective that I do think has profound implications for our own national security, Iran's potential becoming a nuclear state. And there's almost no discussion about Trump's leadership and character as it relates to this. Everybody sort of ends up in the place that you would expect them to be on a strict

policy level and almost sets aside this problem for me. that it's Donald Trump who's leading the policy, who's executing this. So to take myself, I think it's important that Iran not have a nuclear weapon. I think if the United States made a decision that we couldn't permit this under any circumstances and had to work with Israel to eliminate the nuclear facilities at Fordo and the rest of nuclear program in Iran, I would be for that in the abstract. But doesn't it matter that it is Donald Trump who is making these decisions, that he is saying these things publicly about, you know, hey, I might take out the Supreme Leader. Ah, maybe I won't. Actually, I'm not going to

for now. And sort of, you know, treating this as if it's almost a game show, I would probably be in favor of this kind of kinetic military action with U.S. involvement, which we think needs, we think a successful attack on Fordo probably does need U.S. involvement. If it were another president, I'm not so sure I favor it if it's Donald Trump. Am I wrong to think about it that way? I think you're a victim of something that afflicts all of us, which is that people just don't want to argue about Donald Trump very much anymore, or at least it's fruitless to argue. argue about, it feels fruitless often to argue about Donald Trump because Donald Trump is going to be Donald Trump. He's, it's kind of become Aesopian, right? Is the scorpion's just

going to do the scorpion thing? Trump's going to do the Trump thing. And so that's one of the reasons why you get these really warped extremely online, factional fights because the White House cares way too much about social media. And nobody can criticize Trump. So everybody he criticized, goes after each other instead. Look, I do think it matters. I think it matters. I think Trump's leadership style, which I use the term very advisedly, matters a great deal. I think he makes America fundamentally less reliable for our allies, but also less predictable for our enemies, which is not necessarily, like there's a lot to be said for having unpredictable, having enemies worried about what we're going to do. But there's also a downside to it.

because it creates more and more opportunities for miscalculation. And I increasingly during all of this feel like Fred Thompson, hunt for Red October, where I look up at the cable, I watch it for five minutes, and I'm like, this is going to get out of hand and somebody's going to die, right? I mean, like, that's the vibe here. Well, can I ask a question, Jonah, which is if I'm Iran, assume for a moment, that they believe that they cannot, over the long term, match Israel's bombardments.

And so, therefore, over the long term, they will lose. And it's an existential threat to the Ayatollah and their current regime. Right. And they're on a losing trajectory. So, literally anything they can do to change that trajectory is better, because it may also put them on a losing trajectory. But if you're guaranteed to currently be on a losing trajectory, any change at least gives you a,

probability of success, even if it's five or ten percent. Why in that case would you not attack the United States and bring us into the war? Because that at least gives you then, I think, a higher probability of potentially drawing in Russia or China and making this a world war in the true sense. And like, yeah, maybe you end up on the losing side of that, but maybe you don't. And if you're going to lose right now, 100 percent, change those odds. In which case, I don't know that Donald Trump matters a lot. Yeah. I mean, I'm very skeptical. I mean, there were a lot of people who said that we're going to have World War III because Moran has these allies in China and Russia and China are like, yeah, you're going to have to go work

at this on your own pretty quickly. And yeah, they're not going to come in now. I get that. But like Pearl Harbor this, you know, Japan, we all look back and say made a huge strategic mistake with Pearl Harbor. Maybe they did. But as long as they changed their odds, Yeah. Then it was still the correct strategy, even if they ended up losing in the end. This is like my whole thing about campaigns. The winning campaign didn't do everything right and the losing campaign didn't do everything wrong. You know, we get second guess for good reason on the Carly campaign. And my point is we were going to lose anyway. We did something that also put us, you know, to lose. It doesn't mean it was the wrong tactic. It just means we were probably going to lose no matter what. Right. Losing was overdetermined. Yeah. I get it. I think part of the answer and I talked about this a little. bit with Ken Pollock is it's very interesting. For all of the damage Israel is doing to Iran, they're not taking out the political leadership. And I don't just mean the Ayatollah. I mean, they're not taking out the head of parliament. They're not taking out the president. They're not

taking out, you know, elected leaders. They're taking out military dudes, you know, at a spinal tap drummer pace, which is kind of awesome. And they're taking out nuclear scientists. and some IRGC kind of stuff, but not a lot of IRGC stuff. And Ken's argument is Israel doesn't necessarily think they're going to get regime change out of this. And so they need to have something in reserve to threaten what the next time will look like. Like you saw what we did that time.

You know, we saw what we did in June of 2025. Next time, we're not going to start with the military leaders. We're going to start with the political leaders. and we are going to completely remove the regime. And someone was saying, I can't remember who, that the Iranians are homicidal, but they're not suicidal. And they don't want to be killed. Israel has demonstrated a remarkable capacity

for killing the people that they want to kill in recent years, right? It really is something. It's really impressive. You got to hand it to them. First in class kind of stuff. And there has to be what 11 looks like, since we're talking spinal tap, right? And that's why they're holding the regime change card in check. So I think if Iran attacked America, first of all, it would make Donald Trump very, very angry.

And it would also give Trump permission to give BB permission to say, do whatever you want to do now. And we're going to give you all the support you need. But even in that scenario, you know, all these people talking about how we're They don't want American troops, you know, fighting on, you know, to fight Israel's wars. I don't think there's going to be anywhere in any likely scenario or even remotely likely scenario, American troops on the ground fighting a war. There might be pilots, right, and they support stuff, and Iran could do stuff to our Navy, which would invite a really vicious retaliation.

But all these people who are doing the, this is a replay of the Iraq war, missed the point that no one is talking about actually invading, occupying with an army, Iran. And I just don't think that's going to happen. Yeah, and I think that's one of the areas where the Iraq war comparisons don't hold up. There were plenty of other short-term kinetic actions, times that we took out specific, you know, we took out the Iraq intelligence headquarters, stopping well before a full-scale invasion and the war in 2003. Well, we're going to have to leave it there, but I think it was worth going deep on on this question because it's a big question. We decided that not worth your time this week was in fact not worth our time. So we're skipping that too. Thanks to John,

Sarah and Jonah. And thanks to you all for joining us. You know,