Chapter 1: Why does Saagar Enjeti regret his vote for Trump?
Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Reminder, I'm live streaming tonight. You know, I'm coming for Hasan and Destiny. We'll see how it goes. 8.30 in the East. Come hang. One thing I've been wanting to do on the podcast, I told you guys this after the election, is I've been trying to get a wider breadth of views on the show.
But I have some policies, which is like no bullshitters. Sometimes people can slip through the cracks on this. And it's a little challenging on the MAGA side.
getting no bullshitters because like trump by his nature forces advocates to bullshit because he's like all over the place in the issues and he himself is a bullshitter and he rug pulls people like all the time on things by changing his views in two seconds and so i've been begging today's guests to come on the show for like months literally begging like the our dms are embarrassing it's like the the lover that you have sent nine straight dms to for this reason for
He's an unapologetic right wing populist. And there's a bunch of stuff we don't agree on, but he's not full of shit. And that's been evident recently as he's allowed consistent criticism of Trump as he has betrayed the popular base on Epstein and Iran in particular. So with that glazing intro, it's the coast of breaking points. Sagar and Jetty, how you doing, brother?
Hey, thank you for having me, Tim. I'm not sure how I feel about it, but I'll take it. I'll take it.
Well, obviously you feel a little nervous because it's been months. I wouldn't say I was nervous.
I won't be honest. I mean, I was conflicted about coming on your show. Why? Well, you know, I think bulwark. style politics has been kind of the antithesis of like everything I believe. This is not really a shot at you personally, but Weekly Standard and Bill Kristol, Jonathan Last, a lot of the people who you work with, Sarah Longwell.
I mean, a lot of these people I would consider like my ideological enemies. And also at a policy level, these are the very people who architected some of the types of politics, which I have basically dedicated my career to try to smash down. So I was like, well, you know, what's the... appropriate level. But at the end of the day, I think some discussion across these lines is probably important.
And I finally decided to do it because I thought I want to expose, hopefully, your audience to, let's say, a Trump criticism, which they may not have heard previously, and to potentially get them to change some of their ideas or at the very least engage with some ideas which they may think that they disagree with. So that's why I decided to do it.
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Chapter 2: What distinguishes MAGA from the America First movement?
Even though he had some praise and he had a lot of backup from the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a lot of people warned about some of the bigger problems that could erupt in Latin America. And Venezuela, you know, in the interim, by the way, I hate when people say it's been a success. I've even seen some liberal pundits say this.
Guys, I mean, does anybody remember how long it took Benghazi and Libya to completely fall apart or Syria? I mean, the whole idea is you don't get involved because on a long enough timeline, pretty much every single U.S. intervention turns out to be
disaster so in the interim it turned out to be a quote-unquote success because we didn't have state collapse and we had some sort of deal with the oil and he really believed i think that bb and lindsey graham you've seen this in some of the wall street journal reporting convinced him that it would be that easy all we have to do is take out the ayatollah they'll cry uncle but you know they didn't listen and the military told them not to do this uh the chairman of the joint chiefs the vice admiral fred cocker he was literally fired by the joint chief staff i think because he probably leaked a lot of that meeting
where he gave a great warning, I think, to the American people. And he's like, guys, this is not the same thing. We're going to have to deal with Hormuz. We're going to have to deal with interceptors, munitions. Every warning that they said ended up coming true. But I'll give an analogy I'm sure your viewers will love.
For anybody who has ever read a history of the Second World War, Hitler's dynamic with his generals was very similar. He was told that that the phony war, that the invasion of France and Belgium, it was going to be a disaster. It could be very difficult, sir. We could do this, but not on this timeline. And of course, what ended up happening?
It was a smashing success in the surrender of France in a couple of weeks and the takeover. And so what happens is you have Norway, you have all of these great wins and wins. I mean, it looked unstoppable in 1940. And so when Barbarossa comes around, they're like, no, man, you really shouldn't do this. He doesn't listen. And so that's the same mindset.
I mean, I'm giving that one because I know your viewers will love it.
This is great. I need a cigarette right now. Sager's complaining to Hitler. It's the vice president and Sager.
I knew you would all love it.
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Chapter 3: How does Saagar view the current U.S. military strategy in Iran?
So there is a four year project after Trump is gone after the 2020 election.
It's kind of funny, like a lot of us were telling people like me and Nicole Wallace right there telling people that Trump 2.0 will be worse. Yeah, it's going to have all these other people. Well, worse from your perspective. From our perspective, that's what I'm saying. For the true believers, the magnet types will all be in there. Like that was our framework of it as well.
It's just like you thought it was a good thing. We thought it was a bad thing.
Well, it depends because here's how it ended up manifesting.
So our belief over that four-year period, and again, my belief at least, was that this professional elite project, so-called America First professional elite project, which is very indifferent, organizations, personnel, people we've all met, conferences over the years, that those people would be able to transpose their ideas into the policy of the United States.
Some of them became the vice president of the United States. the Pentagon, you know, number three, like you're talking about, and then a myriad different other people who are all across the administration. And the belief was that those ideas would be professionalized into policy. But what I've ended up seeing actually is an inversion.
And this is something that I dramatically underestimated is that what it actually has translated into is that the so-called lesson of Trump one was that people were not loyal enough to him
And that means that whatever he thinks is the policy, the idea, or whatever, that will then be set through in terms of policy, and that there will actually be very little pushback whatsoever if he disagrees or undermining, etc., because they don't want to be seen as disloyal to the president. even though there were a lot of people who were disloyal, let's say, to the president in the first term.
But on a policy level, this time it's inverted. A lot of it is personal, and that's why I gave the Versailles analogy. And so, look, I have no idea what's going on with J.D. I have no idea what's going on with any of these people, but I can only speculate that for a lot of them, they have to maintain their access to the president. You can look at what happened with Tulsi Gabbard.
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Chapter 4: What are the implications of the U.S. munitions shortage?
Again, look, call me an idiot. You're right to do so. I actually believed it. And it's not because I believed in Hegseth. I believed in the people who were around Hegseth. I knew a lot of people knew him. They said, no, dude, he really believes it. I trust a lot of these people. And the joke is on me. The joke is absolutely on me.
I'm trying to reclaim both the words liberal and neocon. These guys are hawks. This is a war hawk war. They're not even claiming that they're trying to get democracy. You might have been able to sell me on Venezuela if we were putting Machado in there.
Not with Trump as president, but if Marco was president and he came to me and said, hey, we'll do this Venezuela gambit and we'll put Machado in there and maybe democracy will flourish in our hemisphere. Some of my old muscles would have started flaring with that. That's not what they're doing. That's not what he's doing. Well, that's how he's doing. It's corruption.
It's just like a straight like it's a like it's a shakedown. Yeah, I mean, that's what it's turned into. And things go boom. Well, don't forget.
It's actually that let's not discount the role that Machado and her entire cohort played in this entire operation.
She is.
We're upset at her now. You should be. She's a joke. And she wanted to bomb her own people. So congratulations, Maria. You didn't even get what you wanted. But let's put that to the side. Now, you're not wrong, but let's parse some of the language. Remember, the original impetus for this whole thing goes back to the protests.
It had nothing to do with the nuclear program that became the Casus Belli. Right. Originally, this was which you're again, you're I don't know, Bob's co-founder Bill Kristol supported. He's like, oh, we must go. What did he say? This is January 2026. He's like, oh, we have to go in free and liberate, you know, the great Iranian people, which, again, I think is a disastrous idea.
And as we have all seen, isn't even going to work. What are they going to thank you as you rain down acid rain on their children? Yeah, that's definitely a very natural impulse. So that element of it was genuinely neoconservative. Now let's get to what you're talking about. And this is fair. You know, terms matter. There is a robust hawkish nationalist. I would call it John Bolton.
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