David Frum

There's no democracy building.

I thought, what kind of guy looks at the Iraq war, says, you know what we did wrong in Iraq?

We spent too much time planning for the end state.

Everyone thought the problem was we did too little planning for the end state, but the Hegseth and company say, nope, too much.

The answer is launch a war, then see what happens with no particular idea about what's to come next.

Right.

And now we're not now we're not doing the Trump people think they're doing the opposite.

But they're doing, as you say, Rumsfeld on steroids.

Rumsfeld without the good manners.

Not Rumsfeld's manners were so good.

All right, let's talk here about the team at home.

I think you and I are worried about slightly different things.

You're worried about the competence of the team.

I'm worried that war empowers presidents inevitably.

And President Trump and his team have proven, his domestic team have proven they can't be trusted with those powers.

And now they're going to have greater powers to, for example, crack down on media reporting.

I mean, it's a war.

You can't put troops at risk, obviously.

So if Pete Hegseth texts you the war plans by mistake, as he did to our colleague Jeff Goldberg, now there's a real case for punishing the people who receive Pete Hegseth's mistaken texts.

Right.