John Ganz

Well,

Trump screwed it all up because he, unlike every single other U.S.

president, didn't see through the fact that BB's rhetoric and ideas about this were unrealistic and crazy.

And he had his own political needs to take care of that had nothing to do with the United States and nothing to do with, you know, protecting our interests and just said, go fuck yourself.

I'm not going to do it.

Trump was the only person stupid enough or mercurial enough or whatever to try to roll the dice.

I think he rolled the dice because his administration was sinking on every other issue.

Don't forget, this comes not long after the tariffs thing.

I think you have to put every decision in the context of what is going on in the news for Trump back.

shortly before.

And if he feels like he's being weakened or he looks bad, he makes these improvisational decisions based on the meaning to appear strong.

The president happens to have a lot of power in foreign policy and war-making powers, unfortunately.

So that's an area he can make an immediate impact and try to make a big splash when the policy part of his administration is very much a flop.

So, you know, I think that that's what he was thinking with the war.

And he thought it would probably be something like Venezuela, a simple matter.

And anybody who is an adult who's read the newspaper can tell you not the same story at all.

But for some reason, every...

Fifteen years or so, the United States forgets how to think.

We think that the world is some simple place that we can manipulate at will and, oh, well, we're going to go in there and then we're going to knock over the regime.

And people who ought to have known better because they lived through Iraq –