Rick Wilson

0:00Tyler Reddick here from 2311 Racing, another checkered flag for the books, time to celebrate with Chamba. Jump in at chambacasino.com. Let's Chamba. No purchase necessary. BTW Group. Boy, we're prohibited by law. CCNC is 21 plus sponsored by Chamba Casino. We are screwed. We are probably screwed. We are. That's that's definitely true. Well, now that we're live and you guys are all hearing us say we're probably screwed, it's because we're now involved in and I don't know if you guys have heard this one before. A war in the Middle East. It really has never failed. Us, it's always been successful. They never go wrong. They're never any downsides or externalities. And here we are. Once again, on the strategy session about to talk about something that has, I think, shuffled the deck for the 2026 election, not in the favor of the Republicans, by the way, has shuffled the deck for the world and the American economy. We are delighted to have Joe Trippie as always with us. And of course, our special guest today is Max Pood, who understands the strategic implications

1:01of a lot of this better than Joe and I ever will, even if we studied harder in school. So what a build up, I got a punch out right now. Well, folks, as you are all aware, we are now at war in Iran. It is day four. We are seeing in the last 24 hours a wild number of developments. I want to stick to the domestic side of this for the moment, guys. And ask if you guys are as blown out as I am by the complete incoherence of the explanation for this war. Max, I'll start with you. It's definitely a moving target. I mean, it's pretty clear that Trump decided to go to war. I mean, we know he decided to go to war, but in trying to explain why the administration is, you know, is giving exercises and in pretzel logic yesterday, you had Marco Rubio

2:08making the very curious argument that we had to go to war because Israel was going to go to war in any case. And then Iran would attack US installations, so we had to strike first. I mean, they're really, really reaching for some kind of preemption argument to make Iran the aggressor here. And historically, Iran has been an aggressor. But in this present instance, they didn't attack us. And it's just wild to claim that Donald Trump could not prevent Bebe Netanyahu from attacking Israel, keeping in mind that the only time that Israel has ever directly attacked Iran was under Donald Trump. So I'm pretty sure that if Trump had said, don't attack, Israel will not have attacked. So this doesn't really pass the lab test. And there's just no credibility with the other administration claims about how, you know, last summer, Trump was saying their nuclear program was totally obliterated.

3:09Now he's trying to say, like, oh, they were on the verge of going nuclear. I mean, seconds from now, even though there's no evidence that they've been enriching anything since last June. And then finally, the argument that, oh, they're going to build, you know, ICBMs, the United States. Well, the DIA said a year ago, before the June strikes, that maybe like in 10 years, if Iran wanted to, they would be able to develop these weapons. But there's no indication they're actually working on developing them. So it's clear there is no eminent threat, and therefore there's no good reason why Trump bypass Congress to go ahead and bomb Iraq and is an executive authority. In fact, I mean, we can talk about the wisdom and the outcome of these strikes. And I think it's possible that something good could actually come out of all this. But I'm just amazed and dumb struck because no question there have been previous presidents who have used military force with international authorization, completely true. But I've just never seen a military action in this magnitude mounted with no attempt to persuade the public to move Congress to get a congressional vote, to get international

4:14support. I mean, remember, I wrote about Ronald Reagan in 1983, Reagan invaded Grenada, tiny little postage stamp country, and overthrew their government. But before he did, and it's true, he did not get congressional authorization for that claiming that they had to act quickly because there was supposedly a hostage crisis involving American medical students. But even in that situation, the Reagan administration felt compelled to get the support of something called the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States to kind of justify the intervention. Whereas Trump doesn't feel any need for any kind of external validation or justification. He doesn't need Congress. He doesn't need the UN Security Council. He doesn't need NATO. He doesn't need anybody except his own gut. And I think that's what you're seeing in action here. Yeah. Yeah. First, the whole thing about, if we have obliterated their nuclear capacity and then claiming we had to stop them from getting nukes because there was any minute now, then we've left

5:17out a regime change. That was like the first explanation actually out of the vote of the regime change. And regime changes, like you pointed out, Rick, has worked really well in Iraq and Afghanistan, all the places we've done in Syria, all of them. Libya? Libya worked out great. So then, so now we're, now we're to preemptive war. The last preemptive war that I can recall was Iraq. I believe that was the reason we were going in there was really to preempt the weapons of mass destruction, et cetera. That didn't go out. That it was both regime change and preemptive war, which now this one clearly has those fingerprints on it. Neither of those things have worked well, at least not in the Middle East for us.

6:18You know, Max and I used to be on the, I guess you could call us Neocons, Max back in the day. And you were in the next con. Yeah, right. We had to, and look, I think I think I can speak for both of us that we had to do an agonizing re appraisal of, oh, three, we, we went in there under, under intelligence that we wanted to see. There's the intelligence we wanted to, to be real. It wasn't real. We had a less complicated secular dictatorship on Dissentom. And Iran is wired, 95 million people, and yes, there are some incredibly brave young people out in the streets right now in Iran. But there's a real culture of this theocracy in that country and a real culture of a secret police force and of, and of the, you know, the IGRC and the Kudz force and the best siege and the Council of X. But all these organizations that have suppressed the Iranian people for 47 years. Tyler Reddick here from 2311 Racing, another checkered flag for the books, time to celebrate

7:23with Chamba. Jump in at chamba casino dot com. Let's chamba. No purchase necessary. BTW group. Boy, we're prohibited by law. CCNC 21 plus sponsored by Chamba Casino. And it's starting to sound like Donald Trump is okay, making a deal with them. Let's talk that through a little bit. Because I think if you're an Iranian 18 year old and you're in the street and you look at the Venezuela deal that Trump just called the perfect outcome, you got to be nervous. He's not going to sell you out in a hot minute for some relatively more cooperative mullis. Yeah. No, he's been Trump has been all over the place, not only in terms of the justification for this war, but also the outcome that he is seeking. And you know, sometimes he's saying that we want the Iranian people to rise up. We want the security forces to lay down their arms. So our goal is regime change. But at other times, he's saying he really wants to find the Iranian, Delce Rodriguez, i.e. some regime figure will be slightly more moderate than the late Ayatollah Manee and

8:28will cooperate with Trump. And obviously those two things are very much at odds because, you know, if he's searching for some figure in the current regime to work with, then why he's not in the street. Search. Yeah. It's going to be a long search. I mean, I feel like we've been looking for Iranian moderates since the 1980s in the Iran Controfair. And we still haven't found them because guess what? The regime is, is, is designed to exclude moderates. It's not a moderate regime. I mean, if you rise to a position of authority within the clerical regime, you're a deaf child. You're definitely a part of that theocratic. But that's the real difference here too. This is the theocracy and the religious component to the, the way they went in here with that, I think I couldn't possibly have been no understanding at any level that there's a religious

9:33component to this within the, within the Shia that is, it's just wrapped up. It's not Saddam Hussein's secular or taking out a secular leader that they're going to be religious extremists, fanatics of this, who are, who are enraged by this all over the world. I mean, in France, I mean, you know, they've been living there. This is just the consequences of, I think, of what, of, of all of this, or we are going to be, regardless of how well this goes early on, or even into, even if it ends up with somehow Iran evolving almost immediately to, to a, you know, new leadership. Yeah. The, I just don't see how this doesn't unravel. I mean, the impact isn't out there for decades. Yeah. That's a huge risk.

10:34I mean, I will, I will throw out there that while I think that, you know, Trump's goals, which are either eight to overthrow the regime or be to get the regime to sign basically the instruments of its own surrender. So giving up the nuclear program and, you know, ending support for proxies across the region ending its ballistic missile program. I don't think either of those is terribly likely to happen, okay? But I think what is likely to happen is that after about a month of this, with oil prices going up, you know, markets very, very topsy-turvy with US weapons, magazines running low, Trump will probably say, you know, we've decimated their nuclear program, we've decimated their navy, we've decimated their military forces. And the result will probably be to leave a much weakened Islamic regime in place, but one which, you know, will probably retain the capacity to oppress its own people.

11:41But its capacity to attack or threaten its neighbors will be greatly reduced. So that could be a somewhat positive outcome. But there's an awful lot of risks along the way, including the risk of the state, you know, disintegrating. And Iran becoming kind of Libya- Libya, yeah. I know. Well, and I think that a combination of the US and Iran having a lot of hand in Iraq after we left was something that kept Iraq a little more glued together. But if this thing does fall apart in Iran, you're going to have these very powerful factions I think who will look for ways but that religious framework to punish the infidel who caused this. And I worry that we have now, as we saw in the reporting from Carol Lenning, today we've dismantled a key element of our counterintelligence forces in the FBI that handled the

12:47Iraq or the, excuse me, the Iranian threat in part. What do you guys think about like the level of irresponsibility that that represents? I wish I could say I was surprised by it, but it certainly strikes me as a, as a, an own goal potentially. Yeah, I mean, just zooming back, I mean, I think we need to understand the Iranian strategy for heading back and they're obviously not giving in. And they're hitting back on multiple levels, the big one being not just the retaliation with the missiles, but especially with the shaheads, the drones, and we're finding that the Gulf States have much better defenses against missiles than against drones. And even for the US, it's a real problem because the Iranians are imposing a potentially brutal cost curve on us if we're using multi-million dollar patriots and missiles to shoot down 25,000 dollar shaheads. That's not a good exchange ratio. So, and you're seeing the Iranians basically targeting the Gulf States in order to cause

13:50economic chaos, and you're seeing it play out in higher oil prices and, you know, pressure on the stock market. So that's how they're trying to create pressure for Trump to end the war. But it's not the only way. And I think we need to be very cognizant of their longstanding involvement in terrorism. I mean, the analogy that I think back to is in 1986, Ronald Reagan, bomb Olivia, Operation El Dorado Canyon, it was built as a huge success. We were probably trying to kill Gaddafi, it didn't succeed. But everything seemed to go very smoothly, except whoops, two years later. La Bal Disco Tech, two years later. No, the Disco Tech was actually before the... Oh, that's right. That's right. How many two years later was that Libyan agents blew up Pan Am 103 over a lot to be Scotland killing like 300 people. So we need to be very cognizant of those that Iranian retaliation beyond what we're saying now could come down the road in various unexpected asymmetric ways. Yeah. Joe? Yeah, well, I was going to say it would December 12, 2003.

14:53We captured Saddam Hussein, 11 years later, eight years later. We withdrew with our final troops, declared it over, and then went back in to fight ISIS. So like, I'm not arguing that that'll be happening here. But I'm arguing that yes, I told his dad, that's a bad guy, no one says it here for him. But that doesn't... I mean, this is not going to end anytime soon, even if in the four weeks, like you say, Max, Trump sort of basically declares a win and says we've got a deal or whatever. I just don't see how that's going to play out, like it's done, and there are no consequences. We've learned the hard way several times now that that's just not likely to be... I hope it works out that way, but it's a plus likely...

15:56I mean, I think even in the best case scenario, you're probably going to wind up with a weekend, but also a pissed off Iranian regime looking for revenge. At point, the Moulas may well say that our big mistake was we were dithering around. We didn't go all out for any of the run, because Trump is not attacking North Korea. He's attacking Iran, and so this could create further incentives for Iran to try to go nuclear down the road. Also incentives for someone else. I mean, you now know, don't like pittal around, go. And it's also like the lesson of Ukraine. They gave up their nuclear weapons because we asked them to in 1991 guarantee their security. And now, if you were country X, you got to think to yourself, you know, these nuclear weapons seem to be the one thing that keeps people from actually going at you. I think we are in a moment where the imperatives or the incentives to do nuclear arsenals

17:02have gone up dramatically in a kind of frightening way. Yeah, no, in fact, just a couple of days ago, you had President Macron of France talking about expanding the French nuclear arsenal. And also for the first time, basing French nuclear armed aircraft in other European countries. So I think that's a reflection of our European allies losing faith in America, losing faith in our nuclear umbrella, protecting them, wanting to protect themselves. And it probably is not going to end with France. I think there's a good chance down the road. You could see countries like Germany, Poland, South Korea, Japan, and others acquiring their own nuclear weapons. So as the American security, as the credibility of American security guarantees fade, I think a lot of countries are realizing they have to take their defense into their own hands. And we may not necessarily like the results of that. And I mean, I would think one thing that Americans underestimate or underscore is, if you were a technologically sophisticated country like Germany or South Korea,

18:05the fuel chain is a little bit of a thing. But the actual construction of nuclear weapons is trivial for a technologically sophisticated country. This is not, this, this conspiral, I think, to many more countries making these decisions than we currently even imagine, which I find a little, you know, it's a little concerning. Say what you will about our nuclear system in the US. We have been pretty responsible with not using it loosely over the last 80 years. Right. Yeah, no, I mean, it's, I mean, I, I mean, I think that, you know, countries like Germany, South Korea, Poland, and others would also be responsible guardians of a, of a nuclear deterrent. But I think there is a real potential for nuclear arms races, which are going to be inherently destabilizing and not what we want to see in the world. But again, if we're entering the post-American agent, in some ways, it seems like we are, there's going to be a whole host of consequences that are very difficult to foresee or predict.

19:09The one thing that we know is that, you know, the Pox Americana has more or less kept the peace and, and provided a shield for this huge expansion of freedom and prosperity since 1945. And all of that is, you know, it is being called into question as never before now. It is, it is, it is a striking moment. And, and I think one that, that, you know, somebody said one time, I don't know what a post-American world looks like, but I know you won't like it. Yeah, I'm not going to like it because, you know, even if the Europeans are stepping forward and they are, I mean, right now, they're providing basically all the support to Ukraine. We're providing almost nothing. But even if the Europeans are stepping forward, I mean, the US has gotten used to thinking of Europe and other allies as kind of junior partners that we get to boss around. Right. And we're seeing that right now and Trump is, you know, applying the thumbscrews to get European countries to provide basing rights for us to go and bomb Iran. But in the future, it's not going to be so easy because you're going to probably have

20:10countries saying like, why do we want American bases here that just invite trouble in the Americans aren't really going to have the same interests that we have. They don't really want to defend us. So why are we helping out the Americans? So there could be a big reckoning in the future. And a message while we were talking about this just now and somebody was like, and I've had to answer this question for a couple of people already. It's like, aren't you afraid that you're going to get caught up and be accused of sympathizing with the Iranians or whatever. The folks, I want to say this, I can speak for all three of us, I'm pretty sure. This was a monstrous and is a monstrous regime. They are the source of great and profound evils in the world. How we take them, you know, out of that role, there probably should have been more planning than us getting our hand forced by Bibi Netanyahu. Look, can we play that marker, Rubio Clip? Do we have that in the can? I was just as a low point of American diplomacy.

21:12Does Congress have to weigh it? Does Congress have to weigh it? Is the president and just Congress have to weigh it? No. What, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, there absolutely was an imminent threat. And the imminent threat was that we knew that if Iran was attacked and we believe they would be attacked, that they would immediately come after us. And we were not going to sit, sit there and absorb a blow before we responded because the Department of War assessed that if we did that, if we waited for them to hit us first after they were attacked and by someone else, Israel attacked them, they hit us first and we waited for them to hit us. We would suffer more casualties and more deaths. We went proactively in a defensive way to prevent them from inflicting higher damage. Have we not done so? There would have been hearings on Capitol Hill about how we knew that this was going to happen and we didn't act preemptively to prevent more casualties and more loss of life. I don't know. It was, we were, it was a defense, it was, we weren't playing offense. It was so recursive and, and, and weak. I literally was like,

22:17I've never seen a collection of low moments of American diplomatic relations, but that seems to have been a pretty, that bar I've got felt pretty, pretty low after that, right Max? I mean, yeah, I mean, that's really, that's really throwing red meat to every, you know, anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist out there who thinks that whatever the US does, it's always being manipulated by Israel and the Jewish lobby. I mean, that's what Ruby was basically saying that. That's not basically what he said. That's not basically what he said. It's related to attacking Iran, which I don't really think is true because it's really Trump who's attacking Iran, but that seems to be the, the, the excuse that that Ruby was putting forward. Crazy. Crazy. Well, in Caspatel, you know, wiping out the Iranian section of the FBI, I mean, it's just the colossal mistakes that we're suffering under right now are just the, and going to have to live with, getting our allies, getting that trust back is going to take a long time, if ever,

23:21because it's going to be possible at this point. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I, I think it's going to require us to be very, I don't know. I don't know if it's possible. Well, the problem is having done it twice now with him. A lot of the, I don't think a lot of our, our, the leaders of our allies are sitting there saying, okay, so yep, you four years from now, you put somebody in, and it's, you know, it's business as usual with the United States. And then there's another trust that was down the line. What do we do? Yeah. How do you trust the American people again? I mean, in their heads, I'm talking about, there's a fundamental loss of faith. This is very different from when Trump was first elected in 2016. Now he's been reelected. And now, I think the Europeans really crossed the Rubicon when Trump was threatening to invade Greenland to take it away from Denmark. I mean, I think that was really, in many ways, a point of no return

24:21for the Europeans. And if you look at the polls in Europe, only about a quarter of Europeans, now say that the US is a reliable ally that they can gown on. That's, that's, that's a massive shift in, in attitudes. And I think people are losing faith that there is kind of a normal traditional America that's going to reassert itself after Trump has gone. It is going to be a great and, and terrible weight on this country and our security, I think, for a generation or more. Absolutely. So Joe, we've got a little Texas primary coming up this evening. What are your thoughts on the, on the race ahead? It's going to close out in the next couple of hours. Look, you know, I think, I think recent polling is shown, I think, that Telerico seems to have pulled a head in some polling significantly by eight points. We'll see if that pans out, but I think it looks likely that he's got the momentum right now. And then on the other side, there is absolutely no way Cornyn and Paxton don't end up in a runoff, which is just going to,

25:27I mean, the, the ads are, oh, the ads are already like, look at some of those ads going. That's a lot. How they, I think that's just going to be a train wreck. I don't see how Cornyn survives it. And so I think we're probably over time. We'll see tomorrow with tonight's results, but if Telerico pulls it out and, and this, this bloodbath on the Republican side, it's literally unbelievable what they're doing. I don't see there's any way to come back from that in terms of the split in the party, but. Yeah, I think, I think the, I think the best case for the Republicans would have been a, a moment where they could have gotten back and done a kumbaya after a tough, a tough, but, you know, but, but civil primary. And, but these guys literally,

26:28they hate one another. Yeah. And it is not going to go easy. There's no incentive now for, for anybody to play nice when this is done. And you don't have to, you don't need to, all you need to do is watch one of the ads and you know, oh, these two guys hate each other. Because it's, it's literally that they, they are amped, unbelievable, unreal in, just dividing it in the division. I, I just don't think in the end, they'll always be talked about this where there's 31% of the Republican party that, that, thinks ice hasn't been brutal enough. That group, they have to keep playing to, to keep them to turn out in the middle of elections. And anytime, like a cornon, if he were to survive,

27:28they're not coming out for him. And, and I don't think there's enough soft Republican support leaving now. And all independents have just turned their backs on. Independence have gone. And that's, I don't see how they put it together. Yeah, that's, I mean, and, and, and I think Texas is going to, is going to be a place where this could play really play out in November. And by the way, the other thing is, the, when they made those five seats in Texas, they did it with the, think, think building it on the model on, for 24% next work for, voted for Trump in 24, they're gone too. So with the independence, gone, the, the, the, the, the, the Hispanic community moving fast away. And now this brutal split in the party that's going to get now played out in a runoff. I really do think we'll see. But I'm pretty, I'm becoming pretty bullish. The

28:30Texas could finally fall. In a way, we, we hope for, you know, one thing, one thing I would got briefed on the other day was some polling out of the Rio Grande Valley, where Tallarico is, their show, his Tallarico is showing insane pickup strength in, in the Rio Grande Valley with Hispanics and Anglos. And if, if that's the case, I think this ballgame is going to be one we keep an eye on. Folks in honor of Texas primary tonight, I got what a burger today. So here we are. Well, listen, everybody. Thank you so much for joining us. It's always Max. Thank you for coming on today. You can catch Max. All our Max working folks find you on social media and we're, can they find your writing? Substack, Blue Sky, Threads, right. I write a weekly column for the last year in post. Good. Good. Joe has the two, the two Joe's with the great Joe Klein and that trippy show. Those are two podcasts. You should absolutely check out. You can find me on 4,718 separate podcasts every week. I am the Lincoln Project podcast, the elephant in the room podcast.

29:38On Mondays with Molly, John Fass on Fast Politics, you can also catch me this every Tuesday night here on the strategy session. Thursday nights on the breakdown. Friday mornings on behind the numbers with Andrew Wilson. We're going to have a blast this week folks. I can promise you that going through the nation's polling. You can also catch my sub-stack at against all enemies. We appreciate you tuning in tonight. Go watch Texas primary stuff. It's going to be an exciting night. Thanks, everybody. We'll see you next time. Thanks, Max. Thanks, Max. Thanks, Max. Tyler Reddick here from 2311 Racing. Victory Lane? Yeah. It's even better with Chamba by my side. Race to ChambaCasino.com. Let's Chamba. No purchase necessary, VTW Group, voidware prohibited by law, CTNCs, 21 plus, sponsored by Chamba Casino.