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Chapter 1: What happened during Trump's recent peace deal announcement with Iran?
Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. It is Monday. It's one of those Mondays where, you know, it makes me wish, I don't know, I was a gardener or something. You know, Bill, having to wake up and read about the Hector Mountain Dew Camacho event at the White House last night and gather the stamina to come up with an opinion about it. You know, whatever.
I mean, there are a lot worse jobs out there in America, but it's a bit of a burden.
That's why you get the big bucks, Tim. I myself just watched another hour of Knicks celebrations in New York City. I'm kind of tuned out of my hometown.
Huge Knicks win. Happy for the Knicks. We'll talk about the goodness of America at the end. But unfortunately, Donald Trump is forcing some other stuff on us. Just because I can't begin with the White House nonsense, we have to start with the real news, which was, well... Maybe it's real news. I guess that's something to ponder over. The deal...
if you will, the deal about a deal, the memorandum about a deal that Donald Trump felt compelled to announce on his birthday yesterday, his 80th birthday. I don't know if you know that he's 80 years old, the president of the United States, extremely elderly. And he announced at his birthday party that they have a memorandum of understanding with Iran. We seem to get nothing out of that.
They are planning on having a formal signing in Switzerland on Friday. Yeah. We'll see if it holds till then. We got a lot to discuss about the contours of that. But Bill, what are your initial thoughts?
Yeah, I mean, we've acknowledged our defeat. I mean, Trump won't acknowledge it. But every normal person looking at this deal sees that, you know, at best, we've sort of walked away with a tiny bit of face saving from a misguided adventure, a misbegotten war that we've lost, that we failed, failed to achieve our objectives. We strengthened Iran and weakened ourselves.
I mean, I really do think that's pretty obvious and clear. So... There are details with the nuclear stuff and all, but in a way, all of that, as you say, is murky. Trump's putting his best spin on it, but at the end of the day, Iran has closed the strait, paid no price for it, and really retains the option, I would say, of doing so in the future. We'll see exactly what happens.
What the deal says, if it says anything exact about, you know, the strait being open. That part I think the media has been the most credulous about. Like Trump says the strait's reopened. Okay, I guess the state's back to where it was before. It's not back to where it was before. At best, it's temporarily opened again.
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Chapter 2: How does Trump's birthday event reflect on his leadership?
He's doing the rounds where he said this. Well, our expectation is that the straight is going to be opened in a toll free way for the long term. And that's the sort of thing that we're going to figure out in these technical negotiations. I thought we had a deal. We're still doing technical negotiations.
Wasn't that what you're supposed to do before you made an announcement that there was a deal where the straight is opened here with the as Donald Trump said yesterday?
Herewith. Herewith is a good word, a good Trumpy word. He likes that word. He just likes fake fancy words, you know, to make them sound. Yeah, he does love those, right? Fake legalistic kind of fancy words. I hadn't seen Van said that this morning. It's very revealing, as you say, the notion that that's something we're going to discuss, whether the straits really open,
That's supposed to be like a core red line of us and of all of our allies, right? That is the status quo ante. It hadn't been closed for 40 years. It was treated as an international waterway. No one thought of it as anything but. We are now going to sort of debate that with Iran, which will have all the leverage, incidentally, as we're busy getting out of there, right?
They're sitting right there. So that's a very good illustration. I wish that had I wish I had seen that this morning. I could have added that to the morning shots, but no. That's okay. I could barely keep up with Trump's tweets, let alone like Vance is going on TV. Why is Vance... You've done this stuff for a living at one time. I did a little bit too. Why is Vance going on TV?
I guess, does he want to go on TV and sell it or is Trump making him do it?
Well... I saw him on two. I don't have one of those TV situations in my bedroom where I have every channel on, so it's possible he did another network, but he at least did CNBC and CBS.
I assume he did CBS as a favor to their daddy, Larry Ellison, who we'll get to more about that relationship in a minute, but it's the new favored network, so you wanted to give them a little news bite, and then you're on CNBC to kind of... Make sure to keep a lid on the markets, who might be kind of jittery. Good news in the markets this morning.
Markets are, you know, stocks are up, oil prices are down. We'll see to the extent of how that holds. You know, having Vance out there is also interesting from... There was a critique coming from the neocon right on this deal. Mark Levin was extremely upset about it. Lindsey Graham. I know be surprised to know that these your former comrades who decided that they would go full bore.
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Chapter 3: What are the implications of the deal for Iran and the U.S.?
Under our law, any nuclear deal with Iran will be sent to Congress for review and a vote. Congress has a job now. That's interesting. I look forward to reviewing the final product, and I believe it's imperative that the architect of the deal, Vice President Vance... be part of the process in presenting the final deal to Congress. That caught my eye.
The architect of the deal, Vice President Vance. Is that true even? It seems telling, I think, that he is kind of laying the groundwork for this intra-party squabble and giving himself some cover if he wants to criticize the deal. I'm not criticizing Mr. Trump, of course, who is brilliant this whole way, but he might have put the wrong guy in charge of this deal.
Yeah, no, I was struck by that too. When Lindsey Graham says he's somewhat concerned about something Donald Trump has done, it means Lindsey Graham is here on fire, panicked, and thinks this thing is an utter and total disaster because somewhat concerned is the most critical he's allowed to be of Donald Trump. So yeah, it is revealing.
And yeah, and they want to throw Vance under the bus for this, I suppose, but... For what? What was the alternative? To use ground troops with no congressional authorization and not having prepared for it and suddenly seize Cargill Island? Would that have changed the outcome? I mean, Trump, in this respect, his instinct to just get out of there was probably right at this point.
He probably could have gotten a better deal, honestly, two months ago. What do you think the odds are that actually something gets signed in Switzerland Friday? I mean, the Iranians are going to be very tempted to say, well, Israel says they're not abiding by the deal in Lebanon.
And they somehow managed to instantly, the Iranians, to just shove that into the deal, which was totally out of nowhere, you know. We want a little more clarity about the Strait. And you can imagine them just continuing to torment Trump, you know.
Well, two thoughts on that. And I had my notes here. Are we sure this holds till Friday? I'm not. I don't. I mean, we'll see. I think there's a lot of incentives on both sides for it, too, because Donald Trump is sick of this Warren board and doesn't have any objectives and never had any objectives and thought this was going to be easy and got himself into just this total mess.
quagmire, and he's just looking for any way out of it. And then the Iranians keep adding more things and getting more things, you know, to your point. And there was a report yesterday that Trump wanted the deal so bad for his birthday party that when Israel bombed Lebanon yesterday morning, Trump called Bibi and started cussing at him.
And then the Iranians said, oh, I don't know, if we're going to sign the deal now, we need more stuff. And Trump made additional concessions yesterday. Just, you know, in order to make the Iranians happy because they're upset about Bibi and Lebanon. And one of those concessions is that Lebanon is part of the deal, which is like Israel's not a party to the deal.
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Chapter 4: What criticisms have emerged regarding Trump's handling of military relations?
You usually have a deal. There are things on both sides. And so the U.S. was stressed with two or three things it got. Iran was stressed with two or three things they got. And OK, fine. That's what deals look like, right? I mean, literally, what did we get? Nothing. I mean, we got an excuse for Trump to bring the troops home and say the war is over. But I mean, they don't even have a talk.
We got a return to how things were before the war, maybe, but worse.
But worse.
The stream was open before the war. We were negotiating over the nuclear before the war. And they're going to say it's the nuclear. But the whole point of the MOU is that there's now a 60-day period to negotiate over the nuclear issue.
Right, and we were doing before the war. So we spent $100 billion, lost 14 servicemen, men and women, antagonized allies, did a million other things that were bad. Killed children. Killed children, yeah, not trivial things, right?
And the very best account they can give, which is not in fact true, is that we're back to where we were on February 27th, and we're not even back in nearly as good shape. So I don't know, I was talking to a friend yesterday who was worried, will Trump succeed in spinning this, Fox News? You know, he's not crazy to be concerned about that given... the last 10 years in American politics.
But I kind of think this one is just hard to, I mean, what do they have? It was a war. I mean, they were literally negotiating with the Iranians about the nuclear thing. We hadn't sold out the Iranian people yet on February 27th. The Strait was open and unquestionably open. There was no talk about giving them money. There was not much talk about relieving sanctions, which is another thing.
Do we believe, I don't believe these sanctions are going to still be on or out in 30, 60 days. And Trump's going to, you know, that'll be one of the first things he throws up. So we will have given up what was, what everyone thinks of the Obama deal, where they did keep a lot of the sanctions. There was that snapback. There were endless disputes. I can't even remember them anymore about exactly.
which sanctions were strong enough and all this. But there were, like, there actually were sanctions, you know? I think it's, we're going to a deal that honestly, if any, if Biden or Obama, it's such a cliche to say this, but if Biden or Obama had done this, the entire Republican Party would be denouncing it as much worse than Neville Chamberlain in Munich, you know?
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Chapter 5: How do Trump's actions at the White House influence public perception?
Yeah.
That's what I think the money is going to go to.
And the degree to which surviving a war, a pretty all out assault by us after all, which as Pete Hicks said over and over, a greatest, huge, humongous, you know, devastating, debilitating assault on every Iranian asset, blah, blah, blah. They survived it. They did more than survive it. They held their own, ultimately, in a way. And now they're coming out of it better. I mean, what does that do?
It strengthens Iran a lot, but it weakens us really a lot. I mean, whatever one thinks of other aspects of our diplomacy over the years and the decades and our soft power and all, the one thing we were supposed to be pretty strong, right? And it turns out we weren't strong. Even militarily, we couldn't, you know, we get an Apache helicopter shot down. That's a week ago, right?
Yeah, Friday, I think, 10 days ago, 9, 10 days ago. by a drone. Two days after, Trump has said, oh man, if they mess around with our troops, if they put anyone in danger, that's really a red line. And the Iranians, just to show, you know, they could do it, shut down an Apache and we did one or two days of token bombing and then went back to begging for a deal.
So I think the degree to which we look weak is really, it can't be overstated, actually.
And just last week, also just on the way, it's worth mentioning, you said that Hegseth was bragging about all of the bombing that we did, that they not only survived, but came out the other side in a stronger negotiating position. It was just Trump. The president last week said the U.S. military dropped 250 million worth of bombs on Iran in one night. That's great. In one night. So I don't know.
Like, was he lying? And the president's just making shit up about what we're doing? that doesn't seem good. Or is he telling the truth? And we spent a quarter billion dollars of our money on bombs, you know, on bombing Iran last week to no end, to no purpose, like, or to the purpose of, you know, getting us to a deal that's worse than where we were before the bombing started.
And the whole thing is terrible. I'll let Tom Nichols sum it up for everybody. The best because he did a nice job in the Atlantic this morning. The reality is that the war will close with the regime in Tehran intact and in the grip of the IRGC. The Strait of Hormuz will remain under the threat of Iranian attacks. Iran will continue to possess significant drone and missile stocks.
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Chapter 6: What was the reaction to the UFC event held at the White House?
Everybody's paying more because of this. Our, our position is weaker in the world. Like these are all like the negative fallout from bad and incompetent leadership and clownish leadership like that. We're all experiencing from the Iran war. The, uh, Cage fight on the White House is like more just about what we feel America should be, right? It's more about these kind of esoteric questions.
No children died last night. There were a couple fat people that got into a fist fight last night in the White House lawn and were arrested because that's the country that we have right now. But, you know, besides that guy going to jail, nobody actually suffered any consequences last night. It was simply bad propaganda theater. But it was really bad.
I mean, it was propaganda theater that was really bad and harmful and outside of the spirit of what is good about the country. So we might as well talk about it. Before I play some of my favorite audio clips of the evening, do you have anything in particular that struck you?
I didn't watch it, as I said, but it's too depressing.
Well, none of us could watch it because it was on Paramount+.
Yeah, that's another thing, right? I mean, it's like the whole thing is so appalling on eight different levels. It's a commercial event. I guess... One point that struck Mark Hurtley had an excellent piece in the public this morning on this. The use and abuse of the military to provide the trappings of state occasion and a solemn state occasion for this ghastly event is particularly appalling.
Well, they did this gimmick. They did this gimmick where every fighter that walked into the ring was paired with What is it? A Medal of Honor recipient?
Medal of Honor recipient.
Yeah. And so then when they walked into the ring, the military that we forced to be there was saluting them in uniform because they could not tell, you know, whatever soldiers there were meant to salute wrestlers. But they do salute, you know, Medal of Honor recipients. So it was kind of a clever move.
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Chapter 7: How does the recent Knicks victory contrast with Trump's events?
But, you know, what's good, Tim, is that I mean, Lindsey Graham, you recall in 2015, 16, that was quoted on video actually praising Joe Biden as a very decent humanist. I think it was after Beau Biden died and Lindsay spent some time talking to Vice President. I was in an interview with my friend Scott Conroy, actually. Vice President, yeah, Vice President Biden.
But people like Lindsay who were there, they've denounced this. I mean, they've said this is inappropriate and they're kind of embarrassed that this, you know, was a blemish on our event because they respect President Obama and Mrs. Obama for their... from having been president and first lady. And they think this kind of thing is inappropriate.
I haven't a lot of the Republicans who were there, the cabinet members, your friend Besant hasn't, whatever his name is, hasn't he spoken up? And Lindsey Graham, John Thune was there, I believe. Mark Zuckerberg, the distinguished corporate titan head of Facebook, doesn't believe in that kind of thing, you know. With a single person, it would be funny to actually try to go ask the law.
Of course, they won't say anything, I suppose. Maybe Lindsey would be slightly concerned, you know.
At this point, I don't want them to.
I actually don't even want them to. They wanted this, right? They want this.
Let them. They had their chance in the moment to say, like, no, this is not appropriate. We're at the fucking White House. We're celebrating the country. Like, why are you making trans jokes about the former first lady? Like, it's fucking insane. All right, so here's this douche the night before.
They had a weigh-in at the Ellipse, and they also had a press conference at the Lincoln Memorial the day before the fight. It's worth just noting really quick that out in front of the Lincoln Memorial, there was just a ton of trash. And Trump's been talking about how he beautified the reflecting pool and how great it looks. Well, the reflecting pool was, like, green the next morning.
And I don't know. These guys were probably pissing in it or dumping their Bud Light in it or something. But anyway... I don't know if that vomit was real or whatever, but there's this guy spitting up on himself talking about how scary black men are the night before he goes into the White House and starts making trans jokes about Michelle Obama on what should be a celebration of the country.
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Chapter 8: What does the removal of Trump's name from the Kennedy Center signify?
I have some self-respect. I'm going to steal these people money on the backend. Okay. Like I don't, we're not going to put on the television screen. This is sponsored by Putin coin, you know, and like, like we're not going to have a little bit, a little, a logo on the mat. That's like by Putin, stable coin, Putin, RX, Putin.com. Like, it's like, this is, it's, it's embarrassing. Yeah.
It's embarrassing.
It is humiliating. And you're right. Putin would do, you know, save your Russia dot com, you know, the glory of Russia, you know, coin. Right. I mean, and that's the more traditional way. And then, of course, you take the cut, you know, on the back end, as you say, secretly. But that is striking about Trump. Right. The kind of it's so insecure, I suppose.
And so maybe he thinks it's better that works better this way. The grift or is it just insecurity that his name has to be on anything? I don't know.
Yeah, I think it's definitely insecurity. Fred didn't love him, I think, is pretty much what it is. It's just preposterous. In 2014, SNL had done a segment, 2015 at the beginning of this campaign, and was like, if Trump wins... this is what it would look like. And it was just a video of last night.
Like everybody, you know, like all the conservatives sort of like these liberals, like don't understand real America. These like, it's so unfair. It's so biased. It's like, like Trump's, you know, just total depraved, disgusting, grotesque, clownish behavior is like so far beyond what Hollywood could have even imagined in parodying Republicans. That's the parody is now impossible.
Like, how could you even parody from here?
But as Andrew pointed out, as Andrew Edgar pointed out in Warner Chess this morning, if you actually criticize what happened last night, you're out of touch with real America. You're elitist. You don't like this ultimate fighting championship. You want them to be playing croquet on the White House lawn. But, you know, real America likes this stuff.
Actually, to be fair to real America, there's not much evidence they like this stuff. There was some poll that showed, you know, like 16% of people like this. I don't know what the ratings are in that Paramount Plus thing. I don't know how you do that even with pay-for-view or whatever.
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