Tom Nichols

Hold on.

Let me just check signal, see if anything's coming in today.

You know, I share both of those concerns.

One of them is more proximate.

Here in the first few days of the war, what I'm really concerned about, our military is operationally the most capable in the world.

I mean, they're just the best.

But they can only do the missions that they're assigned to do.

They can't run the war.

That has to come from the White House and the Pentagon.

And the fact that, I mean, I suppose I take some comfort in the fact that Pete Hegseth has been relegated to giving cheerleader speeches at 8 o'clock in the morning when he knows nobody's listening to a Pentagon briefing room that's full of political allies.

I like you.

The first thing I thought, I mean, look, why are we going into Iran?

I think it is the president's vainglory.

He thinks he's on a roll that, you know, that this is easy to do, that you can knock off dictatorships like Venezuela and then have a parade.

Right.

that this solves a lot of his problems.

It gets people not talking about the Epstein files.

I really believe that a huge chunk of Donald Trump's foreign policy is rooted in trying to get people to stop talking about the Epstein files.

I think he is that narrow and crass.

I think that he will.