Fareed Zakaria

The second Trump administration, you said, it's not going to be as bad as people think.

This is a country with a lot of checks and balances.

You have institutions, you have bureaucracies, you have laws, you have rules.

These all can't just be willy-nilly dispensed with.

Yeah, I'd say I was basically wrong.

A few months ago, Trump made one of his most unpredictable moves yet and possibly one of the most consequential to a joint military strike on Iran with Israel.

Fareed Zakaria did not think this was a good idea.

As he wrote at the time, bomb and hope is not a strategy.

So what is the strategy?

Today on Freakonomics Radio, we ask Zakaria to look at some of his past predictions, and we force him to make some new ones about how the war with Iran will end, about whether the U.S.

political system is due for an overhaul, and whether globalization is really dying.

I think that the reports of the death of globalization are vastly exaggerated.

We also ask Zakaria to tell us something important that he has changed his mind about, because in a world that defies expectations, it's good to have an open mind.

This conversation with Fareed Zakaria was recorded on May 20th.

At the time, negotiations between the U.S.

and Iran were very much in flux.

And depending on when you're hearing this, they may still be.

There's also a lot of flux in D.C.

as well.

I started the conversation by asking Zakaria how the second Trump presidency has compared to his earlier expectations.