Mark McKinnon and Dan Shapiro: Mid-Wreckage
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Hello and welcome to the Bullard Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Happy Juneteenth. And for all the wokes out there, the DEIs, the women in the audience, I just want to say I'm well aware it's been a sausage fest around here lately. I've been trying my best to get a mix of viewpoints, but sometimes the scuds just don't work out. We had a cancellation late last night. I got out my binder full of women guests.

to find somebody good and it was it was late night and so i had to go to my i had to just call my comfort food and emergency backup the parade of dicks will continue we got a tuber today in the second segment we've got dan shapiro uh who was in the biden administration working on middle east issues so he's got a lot of expertise we'll talk to him about iran uh but first i found somebody who's in touch with his feminine side he was a media advisor

Thelma and Louise. We called each other Thelma and Louise. It's close enough. He was a media advisor for W. McKinnon and Ann Richards. He was the co-creator and co-host of The Circus. It's Mark McKinnon. Hey, MCAT. How you doing, man? Hello, my friend. Good to see you. Thank you for doing this. It's been too long. I want to talk about the news with you, but I kind of want to just pick your brain first. Biggest picture, we are June 20th, so it was just about whatever, five months ago that we had the inauguration. I

What have you made of it? How has it met what you had expected? Well, it's met my worst expectations on every level. And I mean, it just, I mean, the greatest fear was that, you know, Trump would truly be unleashed. You know, it was bad enough round one, V1. V2 is just, you know, Trump on steroids without any kind of oversight or anybody around him, any real adults in the room. My view is just that

I'm not sure how or when it's going to end catastrophically, but it's going to end catastrophically. And the only question is...

How bad is it? And can we recover from it? I don't know if that's going to be because we bomb Iran or if it's because of the tariff economic policy, but it's going to go south. I mean, you just can't have somebody this disconnected from reality and adult supervision in the American presidency in the year 2025 and expect that things are going to be OK. They're not. You don't think there's adult supervision at the Pentagon? You're not feeling comfortable with a weekend talk show co-host?

running the military at this moment? Well, you know, I just was reading about this guy named General Eric Carrillo, who's the U.S. Scent Commander, Central Command Scent.

Apparently, he's kind of like in charge now and the tech staff is kind of deferring to him and people actually think he knows what he's doing. They call him the gorilla. I was encouraging until I got to the nickname. Yeah, that's the problem. What are his instincts going to be? What's he going to tell Trump? Yeah, I mean, you said that it's going to end badly. I agree with that. I guess...

There's a range, though, right? And you're more of a level-headed than me. You're always a little calmer when we were riding around covering this stuff for the circus. So I'm hoping maybe you can calm me, or maybe not. Maybe it'll make me more worried. How is your level of alarm at this moment? I'm an eternal prisoner of hope, as you know. I think it's going to be really bad. I think we will recover. I think it may take years or decades. But...

I'm at peace with it in a macro sense because I think that for the long-term equanimity of most American voters in America, this had to happen. In order for at least half the country to come to terms with the wreckage, they had to see the wreckage. They had to experience the wreckage.

If Harris were president, no matter how things went, and we know things went, they weren't that bad under Biden, but they were certain that it was apocalyptic. Imagine what it'd be like under Harris. So no matter what she would have done, half the country would have hated her. Half the country would have said, you know, we're going to hell. The only way that that half of the country is ever going to reconcile Biden

The decisions that they made by voting for this guy is to realize the damage that he does to their own lives, which I which, again, I think is is is inevitable. So we're going to have to get through that. But I think ultimately that's going to bring most of the country back together to recognize that government's here for a purpose and that, you know, it's not the enemy. I thought you're going to go a different place with that when you said equanimity, because the one thing I think is true about.

the culture is it is it david french who says somebody has a good observation about how everybody feels like they're losing everybody feels like their own side is losing right and i understand why that is because across different vectors both sides have been you know losing like depending on how you look at it and but if you just look at it from like a cultural arc standpoint like conservatives right-wingers i feel i think correctly that

That they were getting their ass handed to them. And like they did, you know, they had the Supreme Court and Congress. And so I know that this feels like, what are you talking about? Like, you know, but culturally, institutionally, right? Like the universities, the movies, corporations all having pride floats. You know, just like there was a cultural shift that was more towards the whatever you want to call it. The left or more. It's more really like.

elite global you know kind of culture yeah and there have been like some big wins i know it doesn't maybe feel that way for some people but like between gay marriage and like uh health care like across a lot of areas there uh racial awareness right like there'd been a lot of wins and it wasn't like we got into perfect but there'd been there'd been a lot of change in a period of time

And to me, the equanimity might be that like they got one. Well, that's kind of the flip side of the argument that I'm saying that both the consequences and we won, we got it, you know, and we caught the car.

And, you know, we got the Supreme Court that we want a lot of other things. And so, yeah, that's a nice counterbalance view. They got the little middle finger, his tiny, stubby middle finger that they wanted. And now we'll see if that makes them happy. Let's talk about what's going on in Iran, which may be the catastrophe that you're talking about, may not be. You said the Green Room, you had a broad theory of the case of what was happening there. So let's just start with that.

Yeah, I think that we'll very soon see how wrong this could be. But I think he's made a decision. I think he's made a decision to go in and support Israel with air cover and the bunker busting bomb, whatever it is, for the following reasons. One, I think the notion of Donald Trump peacenik is just a complete mythology. It's not who he is. He did it politically because it served his interest to be the anti-war guy, the no more forever wars guy.

because of Biden and Bush and back down the line. He was just the everybody's stupid guy. And so, like, had the presidents before him been anti-war, he would have been like, you guys are so stupid, we should have been doing wars. Like, it was just like that. But think about what his instincts really are. Military parades, shooting protesters. He loves offense. He loves military. He loves Stroman. He loves Putin. I mean, he loves all the authoritarian military guys around the world. That's A. B, he wants to be a winner and

And he wants credit. And he looks at what's happening right now. And so far, it's been really successful in terms of what...

has accomplished over the last couple of weeks. And I think he's saying, geez, you know, this is working out pretty well and I want some credit. Now suddenly we, not they. So I think he's bought in and I think Netanyahu's driving him like a truck. That can't even be a controversial point at this point that Netanyahu's driving this, right? I mean, I hear what you're saying, like he wants you on the winning side, he's having

Imagine the conversations he's having with Trump. It's like they've got they've got the capacity. If we don't do this, it's going to be on you that we didn't do it. And if we do do it and we wipe it out, you're going to get credit for this. Yeah. Win win. We have a former ambassador to Israel and Biden's Middle East guy, Dan Shapiro, coming on in segment two to talk about this a little bit more, kind of giving a more what the Israeli perspective is on doing this and how they've been effective.

but i was interested in your i was watching you you're on with uh with scarborough before this and my buddy jmart jmart doesn't even give a fuck about tv by the way this is a total aside he's slouching he's making faces like he's he's just he's like the kid in the classroom doing spitballs now on tv it's hilarious watching anyway i was watching you because i wanted to hear what y'all were talking about and scarborough made a point that was um

Things in Iraq seem to be going pretty well the first couple weeks, too. I thought that was an insightful point. So, I don't know. You kind of lived through all that. I have a lot of muscle memory about that because I remember it very well. And...

You know, it's sort of the fog of history that people forget what it was like in the moment. But, you know, when we went in, it was not like a divided country or divided cabinet or anything. It was like 100% or 99. 99 senators voted to go in. Right. You know, it wasn't like this was a debate. We were all in. I mean, it was like everybody was there. And by the way, one of the interesting things about the Bush Library is

This really cool is he has something called the Decision Points Center in the presidential library. And they picked five issues. It was like Katrina, Iraq, the financial crisis, a couple more. And they put you in the chair and they say, here's the information the president had at the time. What decision would you make?

And I forget what the number is, but it's something like 88% of the people that go through there did exactly what President Bush did at that time with that information. So Ben Rhodes, you know, Obama's national security guy. Yeah, I had him on yesterday. Oh, great. Well, maybe I think I saw this from your podcast. Yeah.

So I stole it from you. This is where you want to be in the culture, McKinnon. You're on top of the news, man. Yeah, my interviews are just consuming you on your feeds. They're just seeping in. I steal stuff and it's just osmosis, man. Anyway, he said the problem is that it could be a catastrophic success. Yeah, he did say that. Right? So you have this incredible success of dropping this bomb that blows up a nuclear facility and you succeed. And then you have

Yeah, just for the consequences after that. Because you haven't, I mean, what does regime change in Iran mean? Just one more thing, going back to that Bush point. I just want to linger on that for a second, since you were there, or around it at least.

Like the shock and awe, it's like there is like a hubristic moment where people can get caught up in this stuff, right? Where it's like, we got this. For sure. And that is something to think about right now in the Israel scenario. Because there's kind of like a good reason kind of for Israel to be hubristic. It's pretty astonishing what they've done. Yeah. And I think that goes to your point that people get sort of caught up in that success. And we're the smartest military people in the world. And these guys are on their heels. And, you know, let's take them out while we can. You know, we're rolling. Let's go.

And you just kind of get caught up in the momentum of war. Speaking about the fissures, though, and then maybe the disagreements. Have you caught the Tucker and Ted interview? I've played it maybe a hundred times. I have it on a loop. I have it on a loop over here in the corner. Well, good. How about 101? Because I played one clip from it yesterday. It's better than Cats, man. It's better than Cats. I played one clip from it yesterday and I was like, yeah, I need one more. I'm not done with it yet. So let's listen. Let's listen to a different part of the exchange. It's so good.

It's interesting you're trying to derail my questions by calling me an anti-Semite, which you are. I did not. Of course you are. And rather than be honorable enough to say it right to my face, you are in a sleazy, feline way implying it or just asking questions about the Jews. I'm not asking questions about the Jews. I have...

There's nothing to do with Jews or Judaism. It has to do with a foreign government. Isn't Israel controlling our foreign policy? That's not about the Jews. You said I'm asking you. You're the one that just called me, I think, a sleazy feline. So let's be clear. It's easy to imply that I'm an anti-Semite, which you just did. No, I just said, why is that the only question you're asking? You answer it. Give me another reason. If you're not an anti-Semite, give me another reason why the obsession is Israel.

I am in no sense obsessed with Israel. We are on the brink of war with Iran. And so these are valid questions. But you're not asking...

Wow, I didn't even hear that clip. That's even better. It gets better and better. That one's been lost in the shuffle, man. That's incredible. Sleazy feline? Yeah, if the glove fits. I don't know. Sleazy feline, not too bad. How deep do you think, is this personal? How deep do you think the rift is? Is Tucker kind of on an island? What do you make of the...

Well, if he's on an island, it's a largely populated island of Magites. I mean, he and Bannon, I mean, I think that they, whatever you say about those guys, I think they have a pulse of,

The true pulse of the core MAGA base. And I think this is where they are, that they really are an isolationist group and that Tucker will just believe anything. It's not like he has an ideology, but I think maybe maybe say the same thing about Bannon. But I mean, that's some high level entertainment they're taking on Cruise.

I liked his little – he dipped into the William F. Buckley thing for like two words. What? Let's show you. It felt like he was on a firing line there for a second. I mean, it was such an ambush. He looked up the population right before the interview. It wasn't ambush, but there were some –

There's some legit points. I mean, Ted makes a little bit of a legit point about Tucker's...

tucker bannon it's so it's elizabeth warren right i mean it's it's a really interesting coalition that's coming together yeah tommy vitor over there on pod save america i was listening to them the other day and he has strange new respect for tucker it turns out so you know and sometimes when a person is right they're right and it's talking right for the right reason for the wrong reasons yeah

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like kind of bought the, maybe, I don't know what actually, I only asked this question. Was it BS? Was the compassionate conservatism stuff BS? Was that a, was that a, like a, just a marketing thing or, or did folks really believe it? Listen, I believed it. And I think George Bush believed it. And that's part of what drew me over the bridge. And then, I mean, I was there in Texas and saw him embracing immigrants, saw him on the border. I mean, that you can't fake that stuff. I mean, he was, you know, speaking Spanish to them and embracing them and,

And by the way, it was his sort of compassionate version of immigration and trying to fix the system that I fully supported. And, you know, he wanted to campaign on that. And a lot of people were saying, you know, that's a third rail. You can't do it, blah, blah, blah. And he said, you know, tough. This is what I believe. But the interesting thing about it, Tim, is that that was 25 years ago.

Yeah. So that's, you know, like a third of my life that we've been talking about this with zero action, you know, which is amazing. I don't think anybody disagrees that.

or very few that it's not a, it's not an issue that needs to be addressed. And the only question is how do you address it? What's the fix? I'm happy to say that it was one of my failed projects was I was going to go, I was probably going to lean on you to help me at this. I was pitching it as a podcast, like back before I started doing this podcast, I was going to go interview all the

OGW people and try to like answer this question. Like, was this real? Cause like, I thought it was real as a kid. I was drawn to it. Well, what did Jeb, what'd you think about Jeb's view on it? He was genuine about the immigration stuff though. I think that you could explore all that and be like, okay, well,

What are the limits to the compassion? Right. And I think that there are layers to explore, you know, there for sure. But I mean, he was definitely at least on criminal justice issues and on immigration issues, very legit. But then it's like these questions of you make these sacrifices and alliances and, you know, what are the priorities? Anyway, I thought that'd be an interesting thing to explore. But I bought into it and felt that it was.

And so I can, it's been a real betrayal. Like on the one thing when people have like, you've changed your views and everything. I was like, I don't know. I feel like I've been totally betrayed. Like, like they sold me from Reagan all the way through McCain on, you know, shining city on a hill and we're well, and this is a good part of America, et cetera. And like now we're China, like we have the nastiest immigration policy in the world. Like that is the thing that has hit me the hardest. Maybe the betrayal is part of it. The humanity element is also part of it. As you've watched kind of,

what they've been doing across all of the different elements with immigration. Like what has, what has grabbed you the most? Well,

At the core of it, the hypocrisy, and you can take it this sort of issue by issue about how Trump has discarded sort of, you know, the historical Republican approach on these issues. I mean, for example, like Bush appointed me to the broadcast board of governors, which oversees Voice of America. You know, that's all about pushing the freedom agenda around the world. And Trump's cut that. That's how much more Republican can you get than that idea and that you would shut that down. So on the immigration side, you know,

At the very core of this, and we're seeing it now in the, you know, with the ag sector particularly, is that these are people, I mean, they're here for the most American of reasons.

And these are like really religious people, hardworking people. They're not criminals. They may not have their papers, but by God, they are patriotic, America-loving people working their asses off. That's the thing that gets me in the end is that it's just – when you get to the core of this, it's very anti-American.

Anti-American. It is. It's un-American. I keep saying it. I was reading the local paper this morning. We're going to do a little local news segment on this with New Orleans because this struck me. This just really made me sad. And this stuff has happened all over the country. And there's this kind of ongoing debate about, you know, is Trump just targeting blue cities, you know, and this is part of some fight. And I think it is that. Like he's trying to escalate fights, obviously, with, you know, sanctuary cities, quote unquote, and with blue governors, right?

But the policies are way more far-reaching than that. And here we are in Louisiana, and we've got Kenner, which is a suburb of New Orleans. It's 30% Hispanic. They canceled their Hispanic Heritage Festival because they're worried about an ICE raid. Talk about un-American. And then another local story in the paper, check out NOLA.com, subscribe and support them, doing real journalism, is a flood control project job site was raided. It's like...

Really? I mean, how much more self-harm can you be doing than we're going to deport the people that are working on a construction project to help with flood control? Yeah. It feels like New Orleans could use some infrastructure related to flood control. And probably if we can get people who are willing to come work here and help us with that and do so and follow the law.

It seems like that's probably a win-win. Yeah, and the tension now that's happening in the administration is that the Ag Secretary went and weighed in heavily, and then, of course, Stephen Miller and Kristi Noem jumped in to reverse the reversal. But the problem is that Miller and company have come up with this number of 3,000 deportations per day to meet a mark of 1 million per year,

So the orders have been done. The interesting story is about the demoralization in Homeland Security and ICE. People who went in for the right reasons are having to go arrest really good people. And they're not criminals. And the notion that they sold was not that we're going to go round up hardworking people who just didn't have papers. We're going to go round up all these gang members and criminals. The problem is there aren't 3,000 a day of them to do that. Yeah. Yeah.

So the net pulls up all the, you know, these really good people. There's some economic impact on that too. But I want to play one more thing because it's been going around. It's been the first term. And I just, I feel like there's something here. I don't know. Maybe all these guys have been broken by 10 years of Trump, but a much younger looking Joe Rogan. I don't know if you've seen this. This clip has been going around. It's during the child separation stuff. And I want to show you how he was talking about this back.

broke the law shouldn't have come over here if you're kidding you didn't want to get your kids separated if if you were in the presence of a woman who came over here from guatemala and she's poor and she's starving and they're taking her baby away and she's wailing and screaming from a primal a primal place in her her dna that the one thing she loves more than anything is being taken away a baby

If that doesn't freak you the fuck out, you're not a part of the team, man. You're missing it. You're missing it. What are we here for? We're here for 100 years of whatever. That's what we're here for. If you want to spend 100 years saying, hey, you should have fucking broke the law, I don't want you on the team. You're an asshole.

I mean, that's really good. Yeah. Occasionally Rogan kind of. Yeah. And I just, I just, I keep banging this drum because I'm like, man, I think that Democrats and, and whoever commentators, comedians, podcast bros should be in these spaces making these arguments. People get it. I mean, I heard Rogan do something similarly recently.

He does sort of like, you know, on occasion, figure out the humanity and stuff. Humanity, you know, sort of eats through occasionally. And these stories like are still like we don't have a child separation policy right now, but like the stories are still happening. I don't know. I get this shit sent to me all the time because I'm so obsessed with it. And I tell people, I was like, don't send me.

national news stories and memes. I've seen all those already. But if you have a local news story about something that's happening in your community, send it to me because I miss that. And I think that stuff's breaking through, Tim. And I think that there's a repetition about it. And so I know that the political circle around Trump is like, you can do anything you want on immigration. You're bulletproof on it. Don't worry about it. But the reality is that those numbers are now south. Even as immigration numbers, which is obviously as strong as

the strongest issue. But the fact is that Americans, no matter how strongly they feel about deporting people who are bad people, I mean, they have a real sense of fairness, A, about deporting people that shouldn't be deported to a prison in a foreign country. They don't think that's right.

And also, you know, deporting people that don't have any criminal background. I mean, they do draw a line. Yeah, they do. And like the two stories I was referencing, people sent me like one was a guy, was the wife of a military guy. Yeah. And she got, and they kind of tricked her a little bit to get her to show up to an appointment. Yeah.

And then the other one was the wife of a pastor who had kids here. And she gets deported back to Mexico. Yeah, and then there was one just in the last day or two about the Afghani interpreter guy. Who's for this? A pastor's wife who's been here since 1998 is getting sent back to Mexico? Well, I think those are the kind of stories that get real sticky. Like you said, especially people read about local stories. They're like, wait a minute. What's going on here? I didn't sign up for this.

I want to go back to the econ side now. Chamber of Commerce, Tim and MCAT can come out because in addition to the humanity, there's the econ side. Matt Iglesias posted this. I think it was people are like, it's housing market issues right now. There's softness and costs are going up and people are like, why? And Iglesias just summed it up this way pretty simply. He goes, well, we're raising financing costs for things. Higher national debt is going to increase interest rates on everything.

We're raising building material costs directly with tariffs and indirectly with like these worksite worksite raids where like if you have fewer people, you know that you're going to increase labor costs.

And I think that, like, unlike the first term, Trump is, like, walking into a little bit of an economic pickle this time. Like, the stuff that he wanted to do, the guys around him didn't really let him do. Like, we focus on that in the context of the authoritarian stuff. But it's also been true in, like, the economic policy stuff. I don't know. Do you think that's overstated?

Well, I'm just a shallow media guy, and I am not an economist, and I flunked Econ 101, but even I... That's why you're representing the man of the people here, concerned about your prices. You know, the whole tariff obsession from the very beginning, it just struck me as insane. Trump somehow read something about something that happened in the late 1800s,

and just sort of transpose it to modern day without realizing there were different circumstances. And it became this sort of magic wand, much like the wall was in 16. You know, the wall is going to solve everything. We're going to build a wall and Mexico is going to pay for it. Tariffs is kind of the same thing. He just somehow latched onto this notion that, you know, that the countries are going to pay for it. There'd be no consumers here wouldn't have to pay for it, which is, you know, there's no economists in the world that say that that's true.

And so he just – he found a couple of nut balls, Peter Navarro and a couple of others that egged him on and just walked into this crazy tariff thing that – Scott Besant, I mean, I think history will go down as showing that he saved us from true economic catastrophe.

I mean, had those initial tariffs. Oh, I hate to hand it to Scott Bessent. I don't know. We've got gay on gay crime with Scott Bessent, you know? I can't do it, but that's fine. The gays did a good one there. Okay, that's fine. You just saved us. I'm not endorsing him across the board, but in that moment, in that moment...

you know, he, he pulled us back from, you know, could have been, he certainly is smarter than Howard Nutlick, but, um, but he certainly is. Okay. Media guy question. Then on econ, the punch poll, the DC, the little congressional news outlet that follows Congress. They,

They have a takeout this morning of just about how some Republicans on the Hill, and they're well-sourced there, are starting to panic a little bit about the polling numbers around the Big Beautiful Bill and how it's not popular and how they don't have a message on it yet. Now the Democratic message is clear. How about that for a change of pace? The Democrats have a clear message and the Republicans are flailing on their message a little bit. What do you make of all that? I think that this could be the catastrophe that implodes the whole Trump campaign.

second term. Of course, the irony that you can appreciate, given where you and I both come from, is this notion that the Republicans actually cared about the deficit. And they're the ones, you look historically, who's driven it up? Well, Clinton brought it down. I mean, you kind of go through the Democratic presidents, they got things sort of right-sided. And then you'd stack up Bush, and especially Trump. I mean, he's driven up the deficit three, five, six times.

And, you know, we're into territory now where, again, this is where the economists come in. The bond markets are freaking out. And so if this bill goes through, I think it's going to be huge long-term consequences that, to me, it just feels like they're driving it off the cliff. Okay. My old Republican has to come in for a second. Joe Biden did not do a good job on the debt and deficit. But, okay, sometimes the Democrat listeners are like, you've got to give us credit. And I was like, okay, I'll give you credit for the work in 1999. Yeah.

and Barack Obama's Barack Obama's failed effort with John Boehner and Simpson Bowles it was a good it was a good intentioned effort but it didn't land um but anyway yeah I hear you though no I mean Bush and Trump have been a nightmare everybody's been a nightmare on it Elon I wanted to get your pick your brain on Elon because uh

Elon sent a tweet maybe a week or two ago now that I felt like might have been an MCAT bat signal. He was like, maybe the 80% in the middle should create a party that gets rid of all these guys on the extremes. And I was like, did you get a phone call from Elon? Did he try to shake your tree a little bit?

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, this has been my obsession for many, many years. There's just no – this quaint notion that there should be an alternative to Coke or Pepsi. We should have 7-Up or Red Bull. Is Elon who you imagined as the standard bearer for that alternative? No, but I'll take whoever we can get. It's a steep hill and a big rock. Come on in. The water's really chilly. Yeah.

I mean, Elon's not what gets me excited about this notion. It's looking at what's happening with Gen Z. And, you know, they are just radically opposed to kind of the institutional parties and looking for an alternative in a different way. And, you know, that's on both sides of the aisle. So I could go on for hours about, you know, the experience of meeting the buzzsaw of trying to do an effort like this because it's

it's almost impossible. Well, why don't you do it? I get, I did a Reddit ask me anything yesterday. People can go and check that out on our politics. And I do like anytime I do one of these, you get this question. Why not a third party? Why doesn't it work? Why doesn't explain why it hasn't worked? I'll start off with, I think there's huge opportunity there. I think there's a huge desire for it. That's just that the system is really rigged against it. Just in the sense that you have to get on the ballot in 50 States. And in order to do that,

you have to raise, just the most recent example was about $50 million.

Well, Elon's got 50 million, so he could do it, but there's not a lot of Elons around. And then once you do that, you have to go around all these states and get on the ballot. And in every one of these states, there is a Democrat or Republican secretary of state who's going to do everything they can to question your signatures, throw up roadblocks, file lawsuits. So it's an incredibly difficult thing to just get on the ballot and do all of that. Um,

And there have been a couple of different efforts over the last couple of cycles or several cycles. All of them kind of flamed out for different reasons. People always say to me, you know, third party is never going to happen because it's never really successfully happened before. And it's like, you know, nothing happens in politics until it does. What do you make of my answer? My answer to this, folks, is this. There are two possible ways, and neither of them have really been tried. One is...

Because it's hard and it's a lot of work, which is just starting state legislators and local races and just like build from the ground up. And that's a lot more work than than like doing a than starting a group and going on TV. And I think that might not work, but it's worth a try. And the other one is a fuck you billionaire who has like insanely weird views, like not what you would think, not like.

oh, I'm socially moderate and fiscally conservative. This person would have totally wild views that are not out in the public that nobody is taking on right now. We should ban AI. Also, I really love guns. I don't know. You know what I mean? Totally... Yeah, it's a Ross Perot kind of thing. Yeah. Those are the only two paths. I agree. I'm really skeptical about the first one. I just think it's got to be kind of Moses leading out of the desert. It's got to be from the top. I mean, doing the...

I understand the local state, but just to do that is exponentially harder than the alternative route. Anyway, we went down a sidetrack, but I got intrigued by your answer to that question. People are really interested in it, so it's worth talking about. When I brought up Elon initially...

Do you have any hot takes on the feud? Because it's ongoing. Elon, people are like, oh, it's over now. But Elon tweeted yesterday calling Trump's head of personnel, Sergio Gore. This guy, I know, used to work for Rand Paul. Elon tweeted that he's a snake. Elon tweeted that he's a snake yesterday. So it doesn't, as I've always said, I was like, you can't really have a truce with a

with an unhinged poster. I know a lot of people that love to post on social media. They're not the type of people. Especially when you're posting to the platform that you own, yeah. Yeah, it's like, you know, you might think you have a truce, but something's going to happen and he's going to fire off. Yeah, I mean, it's the truce that's going to happen until he takes his next round of Adderall and he's going to crank it. Yeah, I just think that that's just going to be on again, off again. But yes, Sergio, I had some...

He's an interesting cat, isn't he? You had some run-ins with him? Not run-ins, but I mean, like when he worked for Rand and whoever. It's wild. The more you know these people, the scarier you are of the state of who's running the government, I would say. Well, you know, I tell the story about, and you'll appreciate this, Tim, because you were on the A-team. You know, 16, you think about, if you were a Republican operative like Tim Miller,

And, you know, you make your bones and your career and maybe a bunch of money by being working for a successful presidential candidate by helping elect a president. That's the world series of politics. So in that cycle, there were, I think, 18 candidates ultimately. And if you're a Republican operative,

If you interviewed with Trump, that was your 18th interview because you'd already been turned down by Rubio, Jeb. You know, you just go down the line. There were some A-listers in that race, and nobody thought Trump was going to win. So imagine the –

Yeah, I had multiple offers. This is not really a brag. It's just like there's so many people out there. The supply and demand was such that you're really at the bottom of the barrel. Yeah, it was truly broken toys. It was truly broken toys. And now it's self-selected for the most sociopathic people who have been like, after all this, they're like, now I want to come back in. Yes, I mean, so this time around, you could say, well, it's not just all broken toys, but it is people...

reward system in that ecosystem is not for following rules. It's for being rule breakers, right? It's for being shitstormers, glass breakers, you know, outrage performers. It's the loomers. It's the Laura Loomers. Those are the people that get attention and rewarded in that universe. It's not people who do good. It's people who break shit. All right. Do you miss the road? Are you happy? What are you doing? How are you spending your days? No circus. Are you bike riding? Yeah.

Well, I say that, you know, people ask me how I'm doing. I say, well, I'm pacing the cage as I look at the world, but I'm also experiencing radical gratitude for my little bubble. You know, you and I are both from Colorado. I'm back there, and I love it. I live in a town of 800 at 10,000 feet with a national forest behind me and a river running through it, and grandchildren and family surrounding me. So,

I have a lot of gratitude and feel very grateful for my life. And I, you know, I worry about the world, but I'm, you know, I love being where I am. Probably the best lineup of politicians in Colorado, too. Like the Colorado isn't broken. I mean, there are a couple of bad ones. There are a couple. And I'm so glad to be out of Texas. Yeah. Where George Bush couldn't get elected now. But it's such a purple state. Like Michael Bennett, you know, he's run for governor now. He'd be a great governor. That's

you just kind of look at the Bennett's and the Hickenlooper's and the Polis's. That's where I live politically. And so I'm very comfortable there. MCAT, thank you. Holler at me anytime. It's good to see you. Appreciate you stepping in today and hope to see you soon. Always willing to jump in the car, Thomas. All right, brother. Come on down to New Orleans soon. We can have a purple drink. Everybody stick around. I got former Ambassador Dan Shapiro up next.

All right, we are back. He was U.S. ambassador to Israel under President Barack Obama, and subsequently President Joe Biden appointed him as special liaison to Israel on the issue of Iran, and was also an advisor on Middle East issues to the Department of Defense. It's Dan Shapiro. How are you doing?

Thanks, Tim. Good to be with you. Happy Juneteenth. Happy Juneteenth to you as well. I got a DM from you this morning, and I was in the market for somebody to fit this bill. And so it was just fortuitous. And you wrote that you have a different take from your friend Ben Rhodes on the Iran nuclear negotiations and the pros and cons of military action. And as I said earlier this week, I'm like, I'm deeply torn about the whole thing. And so I was interested to hear your point of view. So why don't you just take it away?

Sure. Thanks. Well, I listened to you and Ben yesterday. And Ben's a friend, and we've worked together for a long time. And we've disagreed on things. And when we disagree, we argue as friends. But I'd want to just come and share a perspective. Yeah, we were both, of course, in the Obama administration when the JCPOA was signed, and I was ambassador to Israel. And you can imagine there was a lot of unhappiness and skepticism in Israel.

about that agreement. And I was the ambassador called upon to defend it. And I did. And I explained to my Israeli friends, you know, it wasn't a perfect deal. It didn't solve everything, but it did buy time. It did extend out Iran's ability to ever achieve a nuclear weapon, keep them at least a year distance from that and keep them there for over a decade.

And then when Trump withdrew from the agreement in 2018, I criticized that. I thought that was a mistake. It gave back some of that time. It sort of gave a chance for Iran to shorten the distance sooner, and it has. And that's kind of brought us to this moment. But I do feel like we're sometimes caught in that historical debate, the two tribes, you know, pro and con on JCPOA. And I'm just not sure it's as relevant to the situation we face now. And it's distracting us to some degree from focusing on the outcome that we need.

And that was the outcome that the president finally took a little time, but landed on in the negotiations he was conducting with Iran was that there should be no enrichment. There should be no ability for Iran independently to achieve the means to break out. President Obama. No, no. I mean, President Trump in the negotiations he was conducting in the last two, three months.

So that was what he landed on. No enrichment. And, you know, of course, the Iranians hadn't agreed to that. And I don't think they were likely to agree to that. And we're probably going to face some crisis point in those negotiations maybe a bit later in the year. And the only chance of them coming around to that position is if you have diplomacy backed by the credible threat of force. But that, I think, is the right position.

And I think, you know, three things have changed since those negotiations a decade ago on the JCPOA. And that's one is that just because and this is partly because of Trump's withdrawal from the agreement, the program has advanced. There's just no two ways about it. Everyone acknowledges and the International Atomic Energy Agency has confirmed they have about 10 bombs worth of TNTs.

60% enriched uranium, which they could in a very short time, days or weeks, turn into weapons-grade uranium. They've shortened the distance. There's some dispute about exactly in what means, but they've clearly done research on weaponization, the separate process of building the bomb. And so the program's advanced, and just the time that it would take them to do that is much less. The second thing is what happened last year. This is when I was serving in the Pentagon twice, twice.

Iran conducted these overt state-to-state attacks with barrages of missiles and rockets and drones against Israel. You know, in the past, that sort of campaign was conducted through proxies and it was sort of deniable, what they used to call the shadow war. But now we're talking about this open state-on-state act of war, reigning really unprecedented numbers of rockets and missiles and drones down on Israel. And you just imagine if any one of those had been tipped with a nuclear warhead, you know, how risky that is.

The third thing, I think, is just what changed in the psychology in Israel after October 7th. That is that the mindset has shifted. And this is really across the society. It's not really just about Bibi.

that you can't allow threats that could be, you know, to Israel's maybe very existence to mature and come up to the last possible minute before you address them. There were huge failures and errors that led, of course, to their vulnerability on October 7th. They weren't as prepared as they should have been. And so the

Position they now adopt is that we can't sort of, you know, we have no margin for error. We can't just wait till the last minute to address a threat, especially when we're talking about something with as existential as existential implications as an Iranian nuclear weapon. And, of course, they also see an opening because I think Ben discussed this yesterday, last October, after the second of those Iranian attacks, the Israelis arrived.

did go in and they did eliminate the best Iranian air defenses, the S-300s that the Russians had provided. So when they saw that vulnerability and they see the maturing of that threat and they see the risk that is associated with them carrying out a state-on-state act of war, as they've already done twice, just not going to have that margin of error. And so that brings us to this point when

And with the real negotiations, I wish they had given them a bit more time to try to see if they were going to work. I don't really think the Iranians were going to agree to the terms without a threat of force. But that's where we are now. And now Israelis have acted. Trump could have given them a red light, did not. But now we have some decisions facing us.

All right. I want to push on a couple of those different areas. First, on the intelligence about the nuclear program. I think you can probably understand folks who are not as versed in all this as you, having some boy-who-cries-wolf skepticism going towards what happened with the Iraq War. Intelligence really did that, of course. But also, Iran's been on the brink of a weapon for decades.

20 years now, the director of national intelligence, who I have no love for, was just three months ago saying that they weren't that close, not less than three months ago, really. And now just a little bit later, they're saying, oh, no, like we have to do this right now. How do you respond to that? I think legitimate skepticism that you'd hear from folks on that this is like an imminent, imminent threat.

Look, I mean, the Iranian strategy for years has been to inch forward with this program, not to rush to a breakout. And so partly their strategy has been to stay within range so that at the time of their choosing, they could break out. And so that means if you're ever warning that they're some distance away, but they're making the decision to proceed slowly, but still give themselves that opportunity, then, you know, a year passes, two years pass, five years pass, and that hasn't happened. People say, oh, well, see, you were crying wolf.

The other thing that's happened, of course, over a number of years has been a range of U.S. and Israeli actions that have put time on the clock. Everything from negotiations, and the JCPOA is part of that, and sanctions, and sabotage, and covert actions. So there are various ways that we've been able to extend the timeline that have kept them from the actual moment of truth.

I mean, right, some of what I say is drawn from information I have access to when I was in government. I, of course, left in January, so I don't know the most recent intelligence. But even then, it was pretty clear that there's research going on that without a formal decision to build a weapon is bringing them closer to be able to do that faster if and when they get that decision from the Supreme Leader.

That's on the weaponization side. And then on the enrichment side, there's no dispute. This is all public and documented by the International Atomic Energy Agency. They've accelerated their enrichment of 60% uranium. This was, again, partly a reaction to Trump's withdrawal from the agreement in 2018. But this is where we are. And they now have 10 bombs worth of 60%, which within days, they could produce at least one bomb's worth of 90%. That's weapons-grade.

And, you know, within a few weeks, multiple bombs were. So, again, to say that there's a decision, no, one can't say they've made that decision, but one can say they've significantly shortened the time that it would take them to do it if they make the decision. And that's where this do you have the margin of error question comes in.

So the other thing I think has people worried or concerned is the chatter around this offensive action from Israel, in part because of the success of it, which is, which I've mentioned several times. It's really kind of astonishing how successful Mossad and Israel IDF has been, both with Hezbollah and this action. But the result of that success has been there's a lot of chatter of like, ooh, what?

Like maybe we can get rid of the Mullahs altogether. Right. And there's been, I think it seems like an, a notion that this is not just like an effort to bomb the nuclear facilities, but maybe an effort towards regime change altogether. And that,

gets people leery, given our recent experience. What would you say to that? So far, at least, the Israelis have not declared regime change to be the goal of the operation. They've said it's to prevent the nuclear breakout possibility and also the ballistic missiles, which, of course, Iran is using to attack Israel every night. In fact, I think there was a very tough blow against the hospital in southern Israel today from one of those ballistic missiles. They've killed about 24 people, injured hundreds and the like.

So that's what Israel says their objective is. I don't think regime change should be the objective of this operation, whether it remains purely Israeli or whether the United States gets involved. And certainly, you know, I'm not talking to anything like what happened in Iraq and Afghanistan 20 years ago. We're not putting boots on the ground. We're not marching into Tehran.

That's not the case. We should keep the focus and keep on the outcome we need, which is to ensure they don't have that ability to create a nuclear weapon. Now, of course, I'll say, obviously, the regime is a terrible regime, mostly to its own people. It's brutal. It's corrupt. It's mismanaged the economy and the electricity and water. And in every other way, they have squandered the resources of the Iranian people, not on making their lives better and more prosperous, but on pursuing these ideological crusades around the region, mostly against Israel, against us.

There's a lot of Iranian, Israeli, Arab, European blood on the hands of this regime. And so no one will shed any tears or should when it leaves. But that's a decision for the Iranian people. And they'll have to make that decision. Now, there may be a tipping point when the regime looks weak. Certain institutions have been rendered less capable or wobbled because of some of this operation. And, you know, again, that might

trigger some internal processes, but nobody knows. Nobody knows when those regime fissures will appear, if there's some organized opposition. So that's not really the goal. It shouldn't be the goal. Yeah. I mean, I have no love for the regime either, but on the BB side of this, I think there's good reason to not maybe believe that the goal of this operation is just the nuclear regime. I mean, he was on Fox the other day saying that this operation could certainly result in a regime as the government around is very weak.

They shoot women because their hair is uncovered. They shoot students. They suck the oxygen out from these brave and gifted people, the Iranian people. The decision to act to rise up this time is the decision of the Iranian people. And I agree with every word of that. But coming from the person that is executing a bombing campaign, like to me, that means that seems to me that he is saying that he he wants to make that happen militarily.

or at least is open to that being the end game of this. And I don't know. I think it's an aspirational notion. I agree with it. But then we get into kind of a debate if it's really what the real mission is of the campaign.

Yeah, look, I've got no illusions about Bibi. I've worked with him and, you know, we've had our many differences over the years. You know, I think he is speaking aspirationally there. That is, again, something, an aspiration I share. Sounds like you do too. An awful lot of Iranian people feel that way as well. He's not necessarily the best spokesperson.

for that, not somebody who I think is going to be the one to draw Iranians out into the street. So if I were advising him, I'd say, you know, tone it down, chill it out. But I still don't see it as the military objective of the campaign. I still see that focused on the nuclear and the missile threats. The other thing that I talked about, I'm just interested in your take on is I just, in these discussions, I'm just filled with a deep uncertainty. And it makes me nervous that I feel like

There are a lot of people that in government and then who are advocates on both sides of this who have like utter certainty, like utter certainty that Iran must be taken out to protect Israel or utter certainty that Israel must not do anything, you know, because it will lead to catastrophe. I think that that is blinding, right? Like when you have that, I was talking about this with McKinnon in the first segment, there's like Iraq looked really great for six weeks. And that led to a hubris, I think, about like what was achievable, right?

And I worry about that here. I worry about the fact that I like it's the one issue where my inbox is most filled with people are 100 percent damn certain on one way or the other that we should do this. And like that worries me of Bibi and Trump and folks who could be a little reckless, right? That things can spiral out of control. I mean, because who the hell knows? Right. I don't know. Like actions like this might might yield freedom for the Iranian people.

it might yield a backlash that's hard to predict. What do you say to that? First of all, I'd say you're right that nobody who projects certainty about how any of this is going to unfold should be believed that they know. And that's part of this kind of frustration I have with the sort of tribal debate about the pros and cons of the JCPOA. I just think we should focus really carefully on what the objectives should be from here.

And you're right, the uncertainty goes both ways, right? If we don't act and they're left with that capability, as I said, they're much closer to the ability when they decide to build that nuclear weapon. And then one missile with that warhead, we're talking about a different world.

If we do act, yes, there's always risk when you take military action. And so this has to be done thoughtfully and carefully. And yes, Donald Trump is not the commander in chief I would have chosen for judiciousness and care and wisdom and how he approaches this. And I can't stand the kind of reckless tweets and, you know, sort of thinking out loud, you know, all of his impulses about, you know, evacuate Tehran. You don't think that the threats to assassinate the Ayatollah?

The threats to assassinate the Ayatollah via social media.

So I just think we should be thoughtful about it. And actually, there's still an opening for diplomacy here. And it should be coercive diplomacy, right? It's clear the president is considering this strike. He's putting in place the forces that would be necessary. He's moved a second carrier into the region and tankers and fighters and then the bombers that would come in at the end would actually execute it. But then you have the rest necessary for defense on any blowback.

And there's risk. And you have to message carefully to the Iranians that if they were to respond, especially against U.S. forces, they would pay a very dear price for that and try to use that as deterrence. There's risk of escalation. There's also the ability sometimes to use that risk of escalation to actually find a de-escalatory path.

But that's what's all on the table now. And that's an opening, actually, for the Iranians to come to the table. In fact, the foreign minister of Iran is meeting with the European foreign ministers, the British and French and German, tomorrow in Geneva. That may be an opening for him to give the concession they wouldn't give in the talks before, which is, all right, we're going to give up this enrichment program.

And that would spare everybody having to go through this. That would be the best outcome. But if they don't, then there's the question of who can actually deal with this militarily. The Israelis, by the way, may have solutions to Fordow, the underground facility that we don't fully know about. They've shown a lot of ingenuity and creativity with pagers against Hezbollah and commandos and smuggling drones in. We know what they are capable of. So they may have surprises up their sleeve.

But if it requires a U.S. action with our unique capabilities to get that underground site to make sure that they don't have that enrichment capability, it has to be on the table. And so the president's given himself that option. I just don't think he's made the decision yet. All right. Anything I didn't ask you you wanted to mention?

Listen, this is tough. And nobody, as you said, should feel that this is a good situation or confident about outcomes. But I do want to get the outcome right. The outcome is Iran with no ability to have a nuclear weapon. So that's the moment we're in. All right. Ambassador Dan Shapiro, man, thank you so much for reaching out and for listening to the show. And let's stay in touch as this stuff develops. All right. Thanks, Tim. Love to. Take care. All right. Everybody else, we'll see you back tomorrow. We've got a good one coming. So make sure to tune in. Peace.

I walk along the avenue I never thought I'd meet a guy like you Me, you With open hair and tawny eyes The kind that hypnotizes me, hypnotizes me And I run, and I'm so afraid I just run, I run all night and day I get away

A cloud appears above your head A beam of light comes shining down on the earth Down on the earth A cloud is moving near Aurora Borealis comes in the earth From the earth And I rise

The Borg Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brough.