Bill Kristol: Trump Is in Way over His Head
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Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. It is Monday. So we are here with editor-at-large Bill Kristol. Bill, I want to start with you with what I have titled Stupid War Update. Is that okay? That's fine. There's a lot to update, right? Yeah, I think we should just dispense with the pleasantries this week and go to the stupid war update. So since we were last together, me and the podcast audience, Friday, Trump lifted the oil sanctions on Iranian oil that's currently at sea, giving them a multibillion dollar windfall while we bomb them. And then Iran fired a couple of missiles unsuccessfully at the island of Diego Garcia. Great name for an island, which is far beyond the range that we'd previously known they're capable of sending missiles.
So that missiles, they didn't succeed. They're intercepted. It was kind of interesting, a data point. Then Trump threatened to hit and obliterate their power plants within 48 hours from this exact point of time. If they don't open the strait, that was yesterday. Iran replied, threatening to hit energy assets across the Middle East. You know, the worst case scenario here could have been just a global energy crisis like we haven't seen had both sides gone through with that. Then this morning, Trump blinked and called off the threat. He bleated this.
What recent actions has Trump taken regarding Iran?
I'm pleased to report the United States of America and the country of Iran have had over the last few days very good and productive conversations regarding a complete and total resolution of our hostilities in the Middle East. etc etc and then he goes on to say that uh they're going to postpone all military strikes against iranian power plants and energy infrastructure for five days which you might notice would be like right after the markets close again on friday iran denies that these talks occurred at all Israel news outlets are reporting that this is basically just market manipulation, that nothing has happened, that they're pressing forward. The Israeli Air Force has begun a new wave of strikes targeting Iranian infrastructure sites this morning while Trump bleated that out.
And then Trump was on the tarmac after the bleat this morning and said that if negotiations go well, we'll end up settling this. Otherwise, we'll just keep bombing our little hearts out. So that's the state of affairs on the Iran war. response.
Well, I guess I've always been slightly of the view that Trump would taco himself out of this, that he was sufficiently worried about boots on the ground in the Middle East and certainly worried about gas prices, that he would find a way to have a negotiation or a fake negotiation or just order his fire, kind of stop the war and assume that Iran would have to open the strait pretty soon afterwards anyway because of pressure from other nations. And I think that's where he ended up. I mean, it is convenient, as Andrew Egger pointed out this morning in Morning Shots, that he launched the really big bluff, I guess it turned out to be, at least for now. And these are all just at least for now, because who knows where this could go.
But at least for now, the big bluff was launched late Saturday afternoon and called off early Monday morning. So it was while the markets were closed, Trump was bluffing. Now, hey, relief, presumably the market, God knows how much market manipulation there's been by various people in and close to the Trump campaign. Trump administration. You know, the threats were pretty jaw-dropping. On Sunday, to Israeli radio, he pledged the total decimation of Iran. If they didn't pledge to reopen the strait right away, and they haven't done so, they've simply said, well, they haven't said anything. Trump has said, we're talking to them, and they've said, actually, we haven't talked to the U.S. at all. But, I mean, they could have talked to Oman or to Qatar or to Japan or UK or a million possible interlocutors or have indirect contacts with some people there and not others.
Anyway, this morning, I was busy writing morning shots, and they're at 7 a.m., and I had just finished basically saying that I did think Trump would still talk, even though, despite all the bluffing that I took his Friday afternoon post about how we're winding down, the whole bunch of objectives he laid out, all of which were a huge retreat from his early objectives, and all of which were either doable, had been done, like,
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