Derek Thompson

No, I think at the end of the day, this is already – most military campaigns that the U.S.

embarks on begin at some relatively high level of polling.

One of the reasons why maybe you begin something like the Gulf War 1.0 under George H.W.

Bush –

or the Afghanistan war under W. Bush, or even the Iraq war under W. Bush, is that there's an initial approval tacit among the American people or explicated specifically by the Congress.

This is one good reason to have Congress vote for wars, not only because it's in the Constitution, but also you get a sense of whether or not the legislature elected by the people are for this particular move.

It's really unusual

to have the executive branch, especially one that's as sensitive to public opinion as the Trump executive branch has been, to engage in something that's so demonstrably unpopular within the MAGA coalition.

Yeah, this is put a little bit crudely.

But right, we're going to kill someone that most of you have never heard of in a country that most of you never think of.

And the cost to the American people is that they're going to pay a dollar more at the gas station for every gallon they put into their car.

I mean, that doesn't sound, I think, to a lot of people like a good deal.

Right.

I mean, just from a strategic standpoint, it doesn't sound like the kind of America first that I think Trump is on soundest foot articulating.

Like, I do believe that one distinguishing quality of his 2015 candidacy, and you're in a good place to tell me if I'm right or wrong here, is that he was willing to say things that were unpopular among elites, but popular among the public.

Right.

So I don't know what he's doing.

And the fact that I don't really understand what he's doing makes me wonder.

And this is really a question for you.

You study this more closely.