transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:01] This podcast is brought to you by WISE, the app for international people using money around the globe. With the WISE account, you can send, spend and receive in over 40 currencies with no markups and no hidden fees. Whether you're sending pesos across the pond, spending reals in Rio, or getting paid in dollars for your side gig, you'll get the mid-market exchange rate on every transaction. Plus, most transfers arrive in less than 20 seconds. Join 15 million customers internationally. Be smart. Get wise. Download the WISE app today. T's and C's apply.

Speaker 2:
[00:35] Spring nights can't decide if they're hot or cold, and neither can YouTube. The Pot by 8 Sleep is a smart match's cover with dual temperature zones. So one side of the bed stays cool while the other stays warm. Autopilot adjusts automatically as you sleep, and it's clinically proven to boost deep sleep by 27%. Better sleep for both of you. No compromise even. Try the Pod by 8 Sleep at 8sleep.com.

Speaker 3:
[01:11] Aloha, namaste, welcome to Impolitic with John Heilemann, a puck and an Odyssey joint. And as the war with Iran hits the eight-week mark, with peace talks stalled, the Strait of Hormuz still closed, and Pete Hegseth taking the extraordinary step this week of firing the Secretary of the Navy at a time when the United States is engaged in active hostilities abroad, it seemed like the perfect time to have Tom Nichols back on the show. Tom, of course, is a long time friend of the pod and a staff writer at the Atlantic. More to the point, he's a Professor Emeritus of National Security Affairs at the US. Naval War College, where he taught for 25 years, an instructor at Harvard, former Senate staffer, author of books including The Death of Expertise and Our Own Worst Enemy, The Assault from Within on Modern Democracy, one of the best, smartest and most relentlessly sensible experts out there on matters of foreign policy, defense and international security, and a five-time undefeated Jeopardy champion. Something that he is generally quick to remind anyone who is willing to listen, but that somehow didn't come up in our conversation today for the show. Maybe it was because Tom is too busy providing an insightful and encompassing take on where things stand in the Iran War at this point. Whether there's any end in sight, whether Donald Trump looks more right now like a madman or chicken little, or weighing in on Pete Hegseth's wartime performance as a self-styled secretary of war, as well as the moment that will be the lead of Hegseth's obituary, at least if I'm the person writing it, when he recently turned himself into a global laughing stock by quoting the fake Bible verse uttered by Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction as if it were actually factually a piece of Old Testament scripture. Or Tom giving his finely honed assessment of Tucker Carlson's much-discussed apology this week for having helped foist Donald Trump upon the country for a second time. But I'll tell you the truth, if you ask me, the reason that we never got around to Tom's status as a Jeopardy prodigy was because we got distracted by another and far more shocking area of his expertise. I will not give it away right now. No spoilers. But here's hoping that a teeny tiny two-word teaser, Bob Dylan, does the job of getting you all psyched up for the all-new episode of Impolitic with John Heilemann that's coming at you in 3, 2, 1.

Speaker 4:
[03:36] I have the best plan of all, but I'm not going to tell you what my plan is.

Speaker 5:
[03:39] I've got so many people like you about that.

Speaker 6:
[03:41] I mean, who would answer a question like that? Why would I tell you that? Step 6, art of the deal. Don't tell anyone your plan. That would be the dumbest thing you could do, which brings us to step 7, call up a news person and tell them your plan.

Speaker 4:
[03:55] I just spoke with the president this morning. The president said if they do not sign the deal, the US will blow up every power plant and more in Iran.

Speaker 6:
[04:08] But telling one person your plan, that's still just 4D chess. Step 8 is 5D chess. Tell everyone your plan.

Speaker 7:
[04:16] I spoke to him on the phone this morning and told me several things.

Speaker 8:
[04:20] President Trump today told me if Iran does not sign this deal, the whole country is going to get blown up.

Speaker 6:
[04:26] So now, everybody is on the same page. It seems like you're moving towards a resolution in a crisp and linear fashion. Everybody knows the plan. All that's left to do is send over a high-level negotiating team to work out the fine print and arrive at an enduring peace. You've got them right where you want them, where you hit them with step 9. Who's talking to what now?

Speaker 8:
[04:54] The president's saying he intends to send Vice President JD.

Speaker 9:
[04:57] Vance to Pakistan for a second shot at Peace Talks today.

Speaker 10:
[05:01] And an important clarification, I just got off the phone with President Trump yet again. He told me that Vice President Vance will not be leading the US delegation.

Speaker 6:
[05:16] Vance on, Vance off, Vance on, Vance off.

Speaker 3:
[05:24] So that, of course, was John Stewart the other night on The Daily Show, offering up a brilliant, extended riff on how, if nothing else, the Iran War has given us all a chance to see the art of the deal in action on the global stage. And Tom Nichols, hey, good to see you, how you doing?

Speaker 11:
[05:39] Good, John, good to see you, man.

Speaker 3:
[05:41] So there's a whole lot to unpack when it comes to Donald Trump's tactics and strategy in this war, if you can call him that. And we'll get into all of that in a minute. But let's just start at 30,000 feet with the state of play in the war itself. We are now exactly eight weeks into this conflict, Tom. So where do things stand? How's it going? And am I right to say that, as far as I can tell, there is no end in sight?

Speaker 11:
[06:12] Well, Iran is has had a huge dent put in its military capabilities, but has come out of this strategically in a more commanding situation. You know, things that were once notional, could they close the Strait of Hormuz? And, you know, what would really happen if the Iranians controlled the Strait of? Well, we're finding all that out in real time, because everything we talk about in this war, all flows from the same problem. That Donald Trump didn't listen to anybody, walked into this thinking, regime is going to fall and 72... He did a Putin, right? I'm just going to hit them so hard, and the regime, the whole thing collapses, and we'll be greeted as liberators, and I'll be a hero. And when that didn't happen, you know, he didn't... He had nothing to fall back on. So now it's all improvisation, and frankly, it seems like the Iranians and the Russians and the Chinese and a lot of other people thought this out better than we did. And by we, I do not mean everybody in the government. The military's been wargaming this stuff for 40 years. The state department, the intelligence community. But the people around Donald Trump, you know, the president said, it's gonna go great. You know how he is. He tries to manifest. He tries to wish things into existence. It's gonna be great. We're gonna win. Done deal. We won in the first hour. It's gonna be over. Unconditional surrender. And when none of that happens, you know, it kind of all goes to shit. He doesn't know where to go next. So that's where we are. That's why we're here, sitting here six weeks later, saying, you know, we're doing what now? And what exactly are our demands? And who's going and who isn't going? Because they don't know.

Speaker 3:
[08:06] I'm not wrong to say there's no end in sight, right? There's no end in sight. I don't see an end in sight.

Speaker 11:
[08:11] What constitutes an end? I mean, major military, major combat operations seem to be over, right? So if you're thinking of the war as, you know, daily briefings from Dan Cain about how many sorties and how much stuff was blown up and how many things were destroyed, that part seems to be over. Now, this, you know, there is no going back to the day before Donald Trump started this war. That's, I think, in that sense, you're right, there's no going, it's going to go on forever because there's a fundamentally new strategic situation emerging in the Persian Gulf.

Speaker 3:
[08:51] World and regional order, I would say, right?

Speaker 12:
[08:54] You know, yeah.

Speaker 3:
[08:56] I mean, well, look, there's still hostilities in the region, and we're still seeing ships being fired on and detained, and the Strait of Hormuz is still closed, and the economic implications of that are still vast and potentially long-lasting. And if Trump had defined the war's aims in kind of a limited way right from the beginning, it might be true that the US could have dropped a bunch of bombs, launched a bunch of missiles, and dramatically degraded Iran's military capacity, and then said, mission accomplished, we're done. But look, at the outset of the war, there was a lot of talk about how there were all these different statements by Trump and his team about the objectives and the rationale for the war. And that was true in a way, but also, you know, kind of misleading, because as you've said over and over again, the president started the war and said, it's very clear what this is about. We're doing this for regime change, and we want the people to rise up, and we want to get rid of the people who have threatened the United States and have been state-sponsored terrorism for the past 40 years. He said it very clearly the first day. He's now said 100 other things, but that was the initial goal. We have not achieved that. I think it's fair to say, even though Trump is on true social, saying, it's not clear who's in charge in Iran, it's all a mess, and so we don't really know who to negotiate with making excuses for why he's not negotiating, I think it's pretty clear who's in charge in Iran. The IRGC is in charge in Iran, and more in charge than they've ever been.

Speaker 8:
[10:27] Yeah.

Speaker 11:
[10:29] I mean, Trump has tried to make the argument that people change means regime change. No, it's the same regime, it's different people. And again, you know, when I say that the military and the intelligence community and the diplomatic community have all game this out, that includes theirs too.

Speaker 3:
[10:46] Right.

Speaker 11:
[10:48] For a long time. A long time, exactly. So this wasn't exactly a surprise to them. So, you know, I think in that sense, Trump, you know, is going to... He can end this war, when we're talking about the end, he can end this war anytime he says, oh, let's see. Hmm. Like, he's trying to do it. You already see him say, well, we've already changed regimes. So, like, he's trying to check that box just by asserting it. But he could say, fine, their nuclear program is dust. You know, they're not going to, you know, we've destroyed X number of their missiles and so on. Good enough. If he had gone into this, by the way, saying, listen, Iran is a problem and we are just going to, we and the Israelis are just going to mow the lawn every now and then. Right. You know, and gone to American people and said, listen, this isn't about regime change. That's going to come down the line, but this regime is too dangerous. And every now and then you have to go in and you have to just pull some of their fangs out. And I think a lot of people would have said, okay, you know, his base probably would have said, you promised you weren't going to do that. But if it's going to be a one and done, kind of a midnight hammer thing, and then, you know, every year we kind of go back and, you know, just degrade their capabilities. But as you point out, John, and as I was shouting, you know, from the first night, when you go on there and say, rise up and seize your government, that's a regime change argument. So he can say we don't know who's in charge, but I can tell you that we know who's not in charge, and that is the Iranian opposition. Right.

Speaker 3:
[12:25] And again, I'm no area specialist here, but from everything that I read from people who are in the sources I talked to, we have the Ayatollah is dead, having now been replaced by one of his children, and more radical, more theocratic. The IRGC, which always had an iron grip over the regime in general, and in particular the military operations of the regime, is in, has demonstrated its tenacity, its strategic savvy, and is firmly in power as it always was. The whatever the nuclear situation is, the however deeply some of this stuff is buried or hidden, no one's claiming that whatever nuclear materials, whatever enriched uranium they had before, we've now extracted. That's still there. The Strait of Hormuz, which we're really focused on trying to open up with good reason, was open before the war. So all of the main objectives that were laid out that were beyond just degrading their ballistic missile capacity and their Navy, none of them have been achieved. And you have elevated Iran to the point where it is now, having demonstrated its ability to choke off the Strait of Hormuz, into a regional superpower. That has changed. We don't even know what that's going to mean going forward. But Iran not only does not seem to be weaker, in terms of the world, its power in the region, its relationship with China, its relationship with Russia, its control over the Petro economy, which matters more than probably anything else, but they seem stronger today rather than weaker. And I just can't think how you could explain, if you lay all that out, how you can't look at this and go, man, we have thus far, not just not won, but gotten our asses kicked in this war.

Speaker 11:
[14:11] Well, I won't go as far as saying they're a regional superpower, but they've definitely climbed the rankings. You know, they've definitely advanced out of their weight class.

Speaker 3:
[14:21] Right, okay, fair, fair.

Speaker 11:
[14:22] No, because they have proven, first of all, they've proven that they can take an onslaught from the United States and Israel.

Speaker 3:
[14:30] And survive.

Speaker 11:
[14:31] And survive. You know, and this is another thing I was warning about early on, you know, another parallel with Ukraine, right? I mean, Putin, every day that the Ukrainian government survives is a day Putin's losing. And, you know, they, the Ukrainians have wisely realized they don't need to, you know, march into Moscow. They simply need to survive and outlast, you know, Putin and the Russians. The same thing here. The Iranians are like, well, we're not going to take the, you know, we're not going to go duel on the high seas and dogfight. And this isn't going to be World War II and midway. All we have to do is still be here after the dust clears. And I think that's why Netanyahu was trying to convince Trump of this, that no, the regime really has to go, because that is how you finally end the nuclear program. That is how you finally end the terrorist proxy support. That is how you finally remove this, you know, malignancy. And let's, I think you and I don't even need to say this, but let's just say it out loud. Neither of us cry any tears if the regime had actually fallen. I mean, if Trump had attacked, and a week later, the Iranian regime had fallen, I would have said, well, you know, I guess they got to name a school after the guy.

Speaker 3:
[15:49] Right, seriously.

Speaker 11:
[15:51] But that wasn't, in the words of John Radcliffe, Donald Trump's own CIA director, when Netanyahu was making this claim, he called it farcical, which I think, you know, was the, you and I are not Iran area analysts, but the CIA has plenty of them, and I think they were right. This was farcical. And so you're right, in that sense, not militarily, but diplomatically, and in terms of their position in the world, they are much stronger. And I think that the Russians, the Chinese, the Iranians, others, including our own allies, friends, everybody is just kind of now trying to set the situation aright without the United States, because the United States is just not a reliable partner. Nobody knows what, you know, policy in the United States is whatever electrical discharge fires between Trump's ears at any given moment. And, you know, and they've just, they're just kind of moving on without us.

Speaker 3:
[16:51] Okay, so now I want to come back to the Stuart thing, because when Trump's defenders are trying to like rationalize his strategic incoherence and tactical flailing, you know, we always hear about how Iran is playing checkers and Trump is playing chess, or how Trump is pursuing the madman strategy when he makes these maximalist threats, you know, like when he wrote a whole civilization, we'll die tonight on truth social, or, you know, we're going to bomb you back to the stone ages, or we're going to destroy all the bridges, or we're going to take out all the electrical infrastructure. And, you know, Tom, it seems at this point like he makes one of these kind of maximalist, kind of bonkers threats like every other day at this point, you know. It's like, all we ever hear from Trump is like, if you crazy bastards don't accept our deal, or give up your nuclear program forever, or open the Strait of Hormuz immediately, or meet with us in Islamabad on Tuesday, that's the last straw, you know. I think he posted the other day, no more Mr. Nice Guy, you're going to be living in hell. But, you know, we've gotten to the point now where, like, Trump doesn't sound like a madman, although he may be. He sounds like the boy who cried wolf. I mean, he does a speech last weekend where he's like, the war is over, the deal has been done, they've given us everything we've won on every single thing. And immediately, Iran says, well, we're not giving up our nuclear material, the Strait of Hormuz is closed, and we're not really sure we're going to Pakistan. And Trump says, I'm going to blow everything up now, and here we are. It's a week later, nothing's really happened, nothing's really changed. And it's just, it makes me think like if you were an adversary of the United States, watching Donald Trump, these threats are not just ineffective, they're counterproductive. They just make everybody think, this guy is the ultimate paper, not a paper tiger, because obviously, we have an incredibly powerful military. But Trump's maximalism is kind of a joke at this point.

Speaker 11:
[18:39] It is. And when he first made that thing about destroying their civilization, I wrote a piece where I said, look, I don't think that's going to happen, but that's implicitly a nuclear threat, for one thing. And I said, and we can't fall into the habit of saying that the President of the United States doesn't mean what he says, that when the President of the United States speaks, it doesn't mean anything. So you have to take it seriously. But of course, after enough of this, you just kind of write it off. You know, the Trump administration has never figured out the menacing, excuse me, the menacing nature of silence. Right after 9-11, I went to, like within weeks after 9-11, I went to London and Moscow, and both. And, you know, if you remember that time, John, the Bush administration was basically saying nothing.

Speaker 3:
[19:37] Nothing, nothing.

Speaker 11:
[19:39] What are you guys going to do? And they kind of held up a finger and said, we'll get back to you.

Speaker 7:
[19:43] Yeah.

Speaker 11:
[19:44] You know, we're up to, we're doing stuff. And when we know, when we're ready, you'll know.

Speaker 7:
[19:49] You'll know.

Speaker 11:
[19:49] And everywhere I went, and I was, cause I was doing a lot of, I was writing a book at the time, I was doing interviews, I was at the Russian foreign ministry, I was doing all kinds of stuff. And people were saying, what are you guys going to do? What are you guys going to do? And like the world was scared. Like a London cabbie. You know, I feel like I'm telling a Tom Friedman story, I was literally in a cab with my wife, you know. And like, you know, the guy's like, so it's night to night then, you know. And I'm like, dude, you know, beats me. And people were more afraid of us at that moment than at any time, I would argue, since maybe the Cuban Missile Crisis. And Trump has worn out that part of people's ears, where when he makes a threat, people say, whoa, the president of the United States has made a really dangerous threat. Now I think what's happening is that these countries, Iran, Russia, China, you know, the Axis of Evil, Mark 2.0 or whatever they are now, they look to other people in the administration to see if, you know, for seriousness, not to the president. And that is a real problem.

Speaker 3:
[20:55] It's like the opposite of walk softly and carry a big stick. It's like, he's like, talk constantly.

Speaker 11:
[21:01] Shoot your mouth off and carry a pop gun.

Speaker 3:
[21:03] Talk constantly and carry no stick at all. I mean, again, I mean, I don't want to, I don't want to totally dismiss the damage that, I mean, our airstrikes have done real damage to the Iran on some level, but again, not achieved in these strategic games. And I guess, I mean, here's my last question about this before we move on to Pete Hegseth, which I want to do, more kind of case in point of some of this. If you think about this week, the way that the whole second round of Peace Talks in Islamabad thing went, it looked to me like we started out with, the first round of Peace Talks actually went better and got farther than it seemed at the time. So we're off to Pakistan for round two to kind of wrap this thing up. And then we had Iran saying, well, we're not sure we're going unless we're sure that JD. Vance is coming. And then we heard, no, JD. Vance is not going. And then we heard, oh, actually, JD. Vance is definitely going. In fact, he's on his way to Andrews right now. At one point, Trump said, told some reporter on the phone, JD. Vance was on a plane.

Speaker 11:
[22:09] On his way.

Speaker 3:
[22:10] Yes. On his way. Right. And in the end, in the end, Iran basically kind of fucked us around for a few days and then said, and then basically said, no, you know, we really don't want to do this and Trump's now trying to say, well, we didn't, we called off the peace talks because, because it doesn't really, not really clear who's in charge over there. It looked to me like the exact opposite, like Iran is at the point where they're kind of playing with us now.

Speaker 11:
[22:35] And because they don't know who's in charge over here.

Speaker 3:
[22:38] Here, right? It's like the exact opposite of the situation. I mean, it's just, it's embarrassing to watch this.

Speaker 11:
[22:44] I have to tell you that I know that in the past, in Trump 1 and since, I know that there have been Russians who have, you know, because of course, I come out of that Russia watcher community and I still have friends there. You know, that there are Russians who have been formally asked that question. Hey, you know, we're in a bad spot here. We're, you know, this is a bad situation between us. Who are we supposed to be talking to? Right. And, you know, nobody can really answer that question. And I think for the Iranians to jerk around JD. Vance, you know, what's the penalty? That's why you were saying, you know, walk softly and carry no stick. Right. Neither of us wants to underplay the amount of damage that the US military did. But after the ceasefire, General Cain came out and he gave a kind of final tally that to me sounded like the Butcher's Bill and it was done. Right. So the Iranians, the idea that Trump is going to go into like major combat operations again, if you don't do this, we're going to do, you know, like Nixon during the talks, right? We're going to do, you know, the Christmas bombing or something. It's just not I don't think they believe that. I don't think the world believes. I don't think Trump wants to do it. I think, you know, when you're a 33 percent approval and your base is up in arms and the, you know, the Iranians are making funny Lego memes about you, you know, actually, I mean, I hate it. I don't laugh at them because I kind of hate it that they're funny, you know, but, but they are funny, but they're, you know, they're, I mean, that's a, that's a different situation now. And I think that's why they can afford to leave JD. Vance sitting there, because who speaks for the president? Someone, someone asked me a while back about why, why should Jared Kushner be doing any of this? Of course he shouldn't. It's shameful. It's embarrassing. But I suppose the only good thing that comes out of it is, look, I'm the president's son-in-law. I swear to God, I can go to his bedroom at 11 o'clock when he's in his slippers and say, dad, this is how it is. But that's really twisted because the guy that should be able to do that should be Marco Rubio or Suzy Wiles or somebody in authority and not the guy that happens to be married to your daughter. All right.

Speaker 3:
[24:59] We're going to take a quick break and then we're going to come back and talk about Tom Nichols' favorite ever defense secretary, the man known among some of the Pentagon apparently now as Dumb McNamara, which I love. We'll take that break. We'll come back and we'll hear Pete Hegseth right after this. Hey, everyone. At this time of year, every year, I think about my dad, dearly departed. Love that guy. He used to say when the spring was arriving, he'd say, spring is sprung, the grass is riz. I wonder where the flowers is. He was not a poet, a good guy, but not a poet, but I still love that little poem. And that's where we're at right now. It's springtime, baby, it's coming on. And when springtime comes on, it's not just time for spring cleaning, it's time for spring culling. You wanna get all the stuff out of your closet you don't ever wear, you wanna just have, at least for me, I'm like done with the mess, I'm done with having these jammed closets. I want fewer things, but better ones that I'll actually reach for every day. And that's why, if you looked at my closet, you'd see this rising ratio of quince to everything else. Quince's fabrics feel elevated, the fits are thoughtful, and the pricing doesn't just make sense. It makes you feel good about buying stuff from quince and you're like, this is fair, more than fair. This is a bargain. Quince's linen pants and shirts are lightweight, they're breathable and comfortable, perfect for spring. Somehow they look polished without feeling stiff. And their flow knit active wear, it is so soft, it's moisture wicking and it's anti-odor. And I like to think of myself as not a particularly stinky guy, but everybody can use a little help now and then. It's the kind of active wear that you'll wanna wear all day, every day. And what really sets quince apart is the thing I mentioned before, value. By working directly with ethical factories and cutting out the middleman, they give you premium quality pieces at prices 50 to 60% lower than similar brands. Everything is designed to last and to make getting dressed easier because everywhere you look, the things are there that you wanna wear. So refresh your wardrobe with quince. Go to quince.com/impolitic for free shipping and 365 day returns. It's now available in Canada too. So go to quince.com/impolitic for free shipping and 365 day returns. quince.com/impolitic.

Speaker 13:
[27:27] When beloved family patriarch Gary Ferris went missing, his family looked everywhere on their property until they came across something horrifying. It's a homicide.

Speaker 9:
[27:37] Absolutely.

Speaker 13:
[27:37] The blame game in this family went round and round. This is blood is thicker, the Ferris wheel.

Speaker 9:
[27:44] I don't see how anyone can look at this story and think they were happy.

Speaker 13:
[27:48] Follow and listen to Blood is Thicker, the Ferris wheel on the free Audacy app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 14:
[27:57] Blessed is he who in the name of camaraderie and duty, shepherd the lost through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children.

Speaker 12:
[28:08] Blessed is he who in the name of charity and goodwill, shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children.

Speaker 14:
[28:22] I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to capture and destroy my brother.

Speaker 12:
[28:29] I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers.

Speaker 14:
[28:40] And you will know my call sign is Sandy One when I lay my vengeance upon thee.

Speaker 5:
[28:46] And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee.

Speaker 3:
[28:54] So Tom, I'm out in LA right now. And I just went last night to the premiere of my friend Rizza's new movie, One Spoon of Chocolate, which is officially billed as being presented by Quentin Tarantino. So the premiere was at one of Tarantino's two theaters here, The Vista. And I will just say that I have it on good authority, arguably the best authority, if you know what I mean, that Tarantino has found this whole pulp fiction Pete Hegseth story even more hilarious than you and I have. And that, of course, is really saying something. Because you and I didn't even need to talk about this beforehand for me to know that, despite some of your terrible lapses in musical taste, you're culturally literate enough to have known from the first moment that these words came out of Hegseth's mouth, that the supposed supposed Bible verse that he was quoting, you know, Ezekiel 2517, it's not actually a Bible verse at all. It's Tarantino's creation. And look, I know this is old news by now, but I had to play that clip and I had to talk it through with you, partly because, you know, I just can't help myself, but also because I think it speaks to some larger things. I just can't imagine how you could be so culturally ignorant and have a staff that was so culturally ignorant and incompetent that you would allow that to happen. It just, I just, I can't imagine how that could be the case. And I can't imagine what it says about you and your staff that it is the case.

Speaker 11:
[30:29] Well, supposedly, this is a, that there are guys in the aviation community in the, in the, I think it was supposed to be Army Aviation, but there were people who adapted the Quentin Tarantino thing as kind of an inside.

Speaker 3:
[30:50] A joke, an homage.

Speaker 11:
[30:52] A joke, but also as an inside kind of macho sort of, we will come and get you, you know.

Speaker 3:
[30:57] Sure, sure.

Speaker 11:
[30:58] But it is, it is incredibly, it shows you how much Pete Hegseth wants to cosplay the tough, I'm one of the war fighting guys, you know, I know all the inside lingo, you know, watch, watch me do this thing and not realize that millions of Americans say, you know, I don't know much about the, about the, you know, a ground attack or fighter community in American aviation, but I do know that you're trying to sound like Samuel L. Jackson, and you sound like an idiot. And, and it's just, it's the kind of thing where, you know, you're right, there should have been a staff guy to say, hey, Secretary, I know what you're trying to do here, I know what you're trying to get to, but it's going to, it's not going to land, it's going to look weird, you know, let this one go. But he is committed, nobody says that to him at anything, and every Pete Hegseth, every time Pete Hegseth goes to the podium, I think the analogy I used the other days, he always sounds like the smarmy high school kid who's reading the Flag Day Proclamation in the auditorium, you know, he's not, he's not actually, or, you know, I think somebody else wants to, he always sounds like he's auditioning for a play. But this is the problem with this entire cabinet, which is that they do not talk to the American people, they are not exercising their functions as members of the cabinet, they are performing, they are like performing seals, trying to balance that beach ball on their nose, so that the audience of one will clap and keep them in their jobs. And Hegseth, by all, I mean, as we're recording this, we just found out, you know, yesterday, the secretary in the Navy just got, I guess you could say, walked the plank since he was the Navy secretary, but you know, got sent off. He is insecure, he is paranoid about losing his job, and that's probably good because he shouldn't be in that job.

Speaker 3:
[33:00] Right, well, I want to get to John and feel it in a second, but just one last thing about this. I mean, you know, the obvious thing here is, I mean, who doesn't want to look like Samuel L. Jackson, you know, in Pulp Fiction? Any red-blooded American male is like, you know, yeah, it's kind of like my bow ideal for what I'd like to be in this world, but you know, if you're a white Christian nationalist holy roller, you know, you might kind of think, you know, that's probably not, that's really not a thing I should be publicly aspiring to. And I would say also that it's just sort of like, to the point about staff, every administration I've ever covered, every cabinet department I've ever covered we've had someone who looked at this speech and said, hey man, listen, if you just throw a little thing at the top that says, you know, that's it, this is, hey, you know, first of all, sir, you know this is from Pulp Fiction. Second of all, if you don't insert a couple words at the top that says, you know, I'm gonna read this thing, which is an adaptation of a famous riff from Pulp Fiction, you are gonna become a global laughing stock. And I don't think it's overstated to say that is the case. This thing got coverage all over the world, Tom. Of course. In every newspaper, on every television broadcast throughout Europe and Asia, places that are less familiar with Pulp Fiction than us are mocking, cackling at the Secretary of Defense.

Speaker 11:
[34:22] It is news that the American Secretary of Defense is a bonkers adolescent who is in so far over his head in this job that he can't see daylight. Of course it is. And you know, this is the other problem going back to the general issue of Iran. Well, who do we deal with? Well, the president is clearly mentally unstable. Secretary of Defense is clearly unstable. Marco Rubio has 16 jobs and they won't send him. So we don't talk to him. You know, who exactly are we going to negotiate here? And this problem, you know, when you're talking about the aid, as you know, I used to work for a senator. I was one of those guys. Hey, let's put in a marker in here, boss, so that, you know.

Speaker 3:
[35:08] So no one will accuse you of plagiarism. So no one will just like, just to be safe. I know what you don't say. It's really an elegant. It's only an elegant, but just to be safe.

Speaker 11:
[35:15] Had I been writing that speech, I would have said, hey, I know that the Iranians probably aren't big fans of pulp fiction, but here's something they ought to hear. And you could play it almost, you know.

Speaker 3:
[35:25] Perfect.

Speaker 11:
[35:26] Right. I mean, I used to write these speeches, but it shows you that they are not just an audience of one, but that all of these folks, they think that the only America they answer to is the 30 percent of red state America that cares about Donald Trump. They don't see their jobs as the stewardship of the Department of Defense or the Department of Health and Human Services. They see it as client servicing, the very small extremist group that already likes them, and hoping that they're going to create viral moments and memes and clicks and things like that. It's like watching the government being run by a bunch of out-of-control children. I did a piece a while back called a Confederacy of Toddlers, and that's what it's like watching.

Speaker 3:
[36:16] It should have been like DUNS Toddlers, Toddler DUNSes. Could have put it together. You mentioned the John Phelan thing, which I flew out to California yesterday, and I got off the plane, and now the Secretary of the Navy has been fired by Pete Hegseth. I want to just start with, to clarify for anybody who's wondering, because you might be wondering if you're a normal person. You're like, he's the Secretary of the Navy. Can the Secretary of Defense really fire the Secretary of the Navy? Are they both cabinet secretaries? It's not the case. The Secretary of the Navy is not a cabinet level position. So it's not. He does have the right to fire the Navy secretary. I'm just saying he can't fire the Secretary of Commerce. He can't fire the Secretary of the Treasury.

Speaker 11:
[36:58] He can't really fire the Secretary of the Navy either. He has to get the president. I mean, that's why Phelan went to see the president directly.

Speaker 3:
[37:06] Right.

Speaker 11:
[37:07] And that's when the, because Phelan basically said, I don't recognize, you know.

Speaker 3:
[37:10] Pete's authority.

Speaker 11:
[37:12] Your authority to, you know, I don't believe that you're actually firing me. And he went to Trump and Trump met him in the White House and said, yes, you're fired. Remember, all these people serve at the pleasure of the president. They are appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. So when we say Hegseth, like Hegseth can't really fire a general either.

Speaker 3:
[37:32] He can recommend it.

Speaker 11:
[37:34] He can recommend it. Exactly. And so he has that. That's what that's what we mean when we say cabinet secretaries fire somebody. If their Senate appointed, you know, the person that can say no to that is the president of the United States. I appointed him. You can't fire him. But and that's that's, by the way, why Dan Driscoll, the army secretary, who is the guy that really wants to get rid of. Right. Can't get rid of him because nobody in the White House is saying is is kind of like, you know, John, we both love the same kind of movies, right? It's kind of like, you got to have a sit down. You got to get straightened out first, you know. With Phelan, with Phelan, it really was like, so do we get straightened out? Now we had a problem.

Speaker 3:
[38:20] Totally. So like, but do you understand why this, I mean, look, you have written about this. You did a piece a few weeks ago, a couple of weeks ago, I can't remember when it was called Hegseth's War on America's Military. And you went through his dismissal of Randy George, the Army General and Chief of Staff of the Army, right? Big deal. Four-star Army General David Hodney, Major General William Green Jr., the top Army Chaplain. You know, he had, these are just, this is just the most recent stuff. He started out by, you know, firing the guy who was the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, CQ Brown, back towards the beginning of the administration. He's fired a lot of people. He's intervened in a lot of promotions. He's held people back. There's this broader context of what Hegseth is doing to the ranks, the senior ranks of the military. But in the specific case of Phelan, I thought the whole point of Phelan was that he was, you know, like a Trump buddy, right? From, you live in Florida, you know, he would call Trump up in the middle of the night and talk to him about ships and chip building and stuff. And you know, that he was all tight with Trump. Like, what is it that made him a target for Hegseth? And how did Hegseth convince Trump to do it if they were such good phone buddies?

Speaker 2:
[39:36] You just said it.

Speaker 11:
[39:37] You just said it. What put him in Hegseth's crosshairs? He is part of the senior military, civil military leadership who's very close to Donald Trump. And Hegseth is really worried that he's going to get dumped and he doesn't want, he is trying to put loyalists in all around him who are going to go to Trump and say, You can't fire Hegseth, he's my guy. You know, I'm the new secretary of the Navy, and if you fire Hegseth, you got to fire me. He's trying to firewall himself against getting fired. Now, how did he do it? I saw one report that suggested that Hegseth, and I can't vouch for this, but it would make sense, that Hegseth said things like, you know, he's not on board with your shipbuilding. He doesn't, he's not going to do all that fast enough. You're not going to get your battleships in time. He's dragging his feet, you know, whatever it is. But, you know, this is all palace politics. This is all Game of Thrones stuff, because remember always, Donald Trump doesn't care about policy. Donald Trump cares about getting shiny new battleships with his name on them. So, you know, and Hegseth has been firing, to understand the way Pete Hegseth approaches the Pentagon, think about one of the, I mean, he's a Passover major who says that the army spit him out, because, you know, that he didn't like his tattoos and, you know, he had a problem, whatever. So he feels wronged. So imagine taking, like, the most resentful and pissed-off kid in your high school and ten years later making him the principal, right? So what's he going to do? He's going to start firing all the teachers he was mad at. He's going to close the teachers' lounge. You know, he's going to bring in all of his buddies and make, you know, instead of AP physics, you're going to have six periods of gym all day, you know, because that's what he wants. And that is, you know, this is an angry juvenile. I mean, that's the thing that always comes across to me about Pete Hegseth is that it's like he's 45 years old and he comes across like he's kind of 17 and angry all the time. And that's what he's doing. He's just saying, you women and you black officers, you DEI people that were passed up the chain while I got turfed, you're fired, fired, fired, fired.

Speaker 3:
[42:03] OK, you sound like Trump and the apprentice there. We got to sneak in one more quick break, Tom. So let's do that. And then we'll finish up with Pete Hegseth. And then we'll move on to a figure that I know you have even greater admiration for and who did something this week that I think it's fair to say we will never see from Pete Hegseth. The person that I'm talking about is Tucker Carlson. And the thing he did was apologize. Get to all of that right after this.

Speaker 9:
[42:36] You're a pro at running your life, at committing to your workout, at showing up every day. At Bombus, we're pros too. Pros at making socks. Our sport assortment has specialized socks for whatever sport you're committed to. Running, hiking, golf, pilates, and so much more. Made with sweat-wicking yarns, blister-fighting details, and targeted art support. Bombus Sport is pro-level socks from the pros of socks. For another pro, you go to bombus.com/audio and use code audio for 20% off your first purchase. That's bombus.com and use code audio.

Speaker 15:
[43:06] Pepsi prebiotic cola in original and cherry vanilla. That Pepsi tastes you low with no artificial sweeteners and 3 grams of prebiotic fiber. Pepsi prebiotic cola. Unbelievably Pepsi.

Speaker 14:
[43:21] You see, the Pharisees, the so-called and self-appointed elites of their time, they were there to witness, to write everything down, to report. But their hearts were hardened. Even though they witnessed a literal miracle, it didn't matter. They were only there to explain away the goodness in pursuit of their agenda. As the passage ends, the Pharisees went out and immediately held counsel against him. How to destroy him. I sat there in church and I thought, our press are just like these Pharisees. Not all of you, not all of you, but the legacy Trump-hating press. Your politically motivated animus for President Trump nearly completely blinds you from the brilliance of our American warriors.

Speaker 3:
[44:17] So more Bible talk there from Pete Hegseth banging on a familiar drum of his about the evils of the Trump-hating press corps. And I just got to say, on that final point, it's just about as pure a sack of bullshit as anyone in the administration has ever peddled. You know, as you know, Tom, you can say what you want about the press and Trump and bias or whatever, but I have never heard a word from anyone in my profession that's been anything but admiring of and even sometimes kind of awestruck by the performance of America's soldiers in Iran and elsewhere. I just think you got to keep saying this because Hegseth does this all the time, and it's just totally untrue that anybody in the press is shitting on the American military. Anyway, so I want to wrap up our Hegseth discussion with two larger questions. The first of which is itself, I guess, a kind of a two-parter. So I think you and I would agree that the ultimate real-time test of a secretary of defense is how they perform during wartime, especially when you've declared yourself to be secretary of war. I've talked to a secretary of war before, war, during wartime, right? How do you think his performance has been, judging just on the merits, as a wartime secretary of war? And how much do you think that has been absorbed by Donald Trump? I don't sense that he is hanging by a thread, Hegseth, but maybe I'm wrong. So there's the question of the performance and the perception of the performance by the Decider-in-Chief.

Speaker 11:
[45:43] Yeah, he seems to think he is, which to me says, even paranoids have real enemies, right? So maybe he is hanging by a thread or... I mean, this war against Dan Driscoll that he's been carrying on really is basically... And Driscoll has not shrunk from it, by the way. Driscoll came out and talked about what a great guy Randy George is, which was...

Speaker 3:
[46:10] Driscoll is the secretary of the army, right?

Speaker 11:
[46:12] Yes. And that was distinctly a shot over Hegseth's bow. Remember when the Pentagon sent a delegation to negotiate with the Russians about the Ukraine War, they sent Driscoll. They didn't send Hegseth. I mean, because you can't. I mean, Pete Hegseth just in over his head on this stuff. You can't put him among the adults like that. So that's part of it. In terms of his performance, I would say, you know, he's been largely irrelevant to the conduct of the war. Because the Pentagon, the military has a bunch of plans on a shelf. This is how we attack these targets. These are the target sets for ballistic missiles. These are the nuclear sites and so on. And so when the president says execute, Dan Cain, who is not in the chain of command says, here's my advice, Mr. President, here's what you should say. And that goes down and it goes through the Secretariat of Defense, it goes to the combatant commands. But I don't see Hegseth sitting around moving planes and boats with his little stick in a map room. I think by and large, his thing is to come out and do Samuel L. Jackson impressions.

Speaker 3:
[47:27] I know hip hop isn't your realm, Tom, but there's a thing in hip hop called the hype man, who's a guy who comes out before the actual performer and tries to get the crowd all riled up and get them all energized. I think of Hegseth as kind of Dan Cain's hype man. They appear at these briefings together and Hegseth does his various shtick basically, and then the actual Chairman of the Joint Chiefs gets up and talks about what's really going on in Iran.

Speaker 11:
[47:55] Conducting plans that were written and gamed out long before Pete Hegseth ever darkened the door of the Pentagon. So this is not Rumsfeld with the hand, and I didn't like Donald Rumsfeld. I thought he was a terrible sectiff, but this is not Rumsfeld hands on in the way. I don't get that sense at all from this.

Speaker 3:
[48:19] Here's my last question about Hegseth, which is, dumb McNamara, that we've got a brilliant coinage by apparently some Pentagon staffers, it's been reported, is funny. But one of the things you and I have talked about in the past is, when would the senior military ranks, which by all accounts of the murmuring just below the surface, clearly don't think much of Pete Hegseth, when does the ice crack and the stuff that's murmuring below the surface start to make its way up into the public? Because so far, senior military ranks have been incredibly disciplined, and I think this is a point you've made, about not letting their feelings about what Pete Hegseth is doing to the senior military ranks and his performance in general, about not letting that become public. Do you think that will hold or at some point, do you think the ice has to break or we're going to start to, even if it's just on background, we're going to start to hear more from the inside the military about what they think of the secretary of defense, war, whatever?

Speaker 11:
[49:26] I'm so torn by that question, John, because on the one hand, having taught military officers for 25 years, I am so impressed by their professionalism and their refusal to wade into the morass of politics that way. On the other hand, when you've reached three and four stars, you are a political creature. That is just that you are confirmed by the Senate. A lot of officers' ranks are confirmed by the Senate, but at three and four stars, you are part of the civil military leadership of the United States. And I think it's really important for some of those guys to come out now and to speak their mind. They are citizens. They are citizens and they have a right to speak. I admire how much they've held back for the sake of the civil military tradition. But you have a president who is just on the war path and a secretary of defense who are determined to destroy all those norms. And so while I don't want to see the generals all showing up with their, you know, looking like the Soviet general staff deposing Khrushchev or something, you know, I think it's really important to hear from, you know, Jim Mattis or, you know, some of the other people that have worked directly with Donald Trump to say what they think about, you know, firing Randy George. I mean, these are, there have been so many opportunities here. When Trump held that political rally at Fort Bragg, that was such a transgression of civil military relations that somebody, the army secretary, Randy George, somebody should have gone to Trump, and even privately, even if just privately to say that this, you can't do this, this is a bad thing. And so, you know, on the one hand, I don't want to see it. On the other hand, I think if there was ever a time for these folks to speak up, you know, this is the time. But I think you have to admire how much they don't want to do it, if that makes any sense.

Speaker 3:
[51:32] Sure. Okay, I have one last piece of sound to play you.

Speaker 11:
[51:37] Let me have one thing about the generals.

Speaker 3:
[51:38] Sure.

Speaker 11:
[51:38] You know, Mattis, when he was, and I think this shows you how deeply ingrained this gets because I was really upset. Back when he was sec def, Mattis was being in a hearing with Tim Kaine. And Kaine said, well, what do you think about this? And he said, well, Mr. Secretary, he was Secretary of Defense. He said, well, Senator, I'm not a political guy. I'm a military guy. I'm not a political guy. No, when you're Secretary of Defense, you're a political guy. Right. You are no law. You can't just say, well, I'm just a general. And I think now, you know, once you've been Secretary of Defense, once you've been the chairman, once you've been in these national leadership positions, I think you don't have the same obligation as, you know, a colonel or a one-star or two-star in that way.

Speaker 3:
[52:24] So you probably not only do you not have the same constraints, you have certain kinds of different obligations to the country.

Speaker 11:
[52:30] I mean, Mattis, somebody like Mattis can speak up in seven. I'm speaking as a general. I'm speaking as the former secretary of defense.

Speaker 3:
[52:36] Yes, right. And should. Jim Mattis, are you out there? Give us a call. We'll let you come on and say whatever you want here on Impolitic. I said I have one more piece of sound to play. And the only reason I'm playing it, look, I mean, it's not a foreign policy thing. It's not a defense thing. It's not anything related to the War College, your War College pedigree, Tom, or any of your expertise. Except as a, I know, as someone who has lived through what we've all lived through the last 10 years, you are firmly in the camp of the kind of person who has longed to hear this kind of thing, not necessarily a specific thing, but this kind of thing for a long time. And here it is, and a lot of people are struggling with what to make of it and how to absorb it and how to react to it. It's Tucker Carlson's apologia this week for having foisted or helped foist Donald Trump upon us. It's Saat number three, play that.

Speaker 16:
[53:29] You and I and everyone else who supported him, you wrote speeches for him, I campaigned for him. We're implicated in this for sure. Yes. It's not enough to say, well, I've changed my mind, or like, oh, this is bad, I'm out. It's like in very small ways, but in real ways, you and me and millions of people like us are the reason this is happening right now. Yes. So, I do think it's like a moment to wrestle with our own consciences. We'll be tormented by it for a long time. I will be. I want to say I'm sorry for misleading people and it was not intentional. That's all I'll say.

Speaker 3:
[54:09] I don't know if he will be tormented for a long time, but he should be fucking tormented for a long time.

Speaker 11:
[54:12] It was intentional.

Speaker 3:
[54:14] But separately from that, here's the real question, very simply. At one end of the spectrum, there are people whose attitude towards this is like, I don't like Tucker Carlson, but thank you for finally saying that. At the other end of the spectrum, there are people who are like, I don't like Tucker Carlson very much and fuck you, you charlatan. This is all part of some other grift. Then there's a lot of yardage in between.

Speaker 7:
[54:37] Where are you?

Speaker 11:
[54:38] I'm way over toward the charlatan end. It wasn't intentional. Yes, of course it was intentional. You talked about how much you hated him, and then you went and did this anyway. You knew exactly what you were doing, and now you're making sure to prepare a big soft landing now that all of this is coming apart. I'm glad that you're saying it to your own audience, but I think that I just don't trust the sincerity of anything Tucker Carlson says because he has proven himself to be one of the most mendacious people in American public life. With that said, am I glad that he said it rather than not saying it? Yeah, sure, but can I do one more Samuel L. Jackson quote?

Speaker 3:
[55:25] Oh, yes, you certainly can.

Speaker 11:
[55:27] I remember asking you a goddamn thing. I mean, it's like, okay, fine, Tucker Carlson's having a dark night of the soul. Big deal. You know, I mean, it's almost, there's almost that self-pitying quality of, I feel the need to atone. I misled people. It's so poor me. No, you know what? And what, well, one more movie quote, in the words of Sean Connery in The Untouchables, great, now what are you prepared to do? You know, how much are you going to take this forward besides just saying, well, I'm sorry, I screwed up. Are you going to campaign against him now? Are you going to argue that the house should be taken over by Democrats so that they can impeach him? How far are you willing to go with this beyond this kind of mealy mouthed sort of, oh, you know, I mean, even in the apology, John, there's a lie.

Speaker 3:
[56:20] Yes, of course. I mean, I think there's a, for me, this is really easy. In utilitarian terms, to the extent that people like this, breaking with Trump and breaking explicitly with Trump, helps to deepen, create deepened fissures that crack open the MAGA movement and lead to its ultimate demise. I'm 100% for it. And do I believe that it's in any way sincere as opposed to another way to generate clicks, build an audience for your YouTube show, and ultimately probably try to start to establish your own political base so you can run for president. So therefore, it's all insincere and all bullshit and all about self-aggrandizement and self-empowerment. I think that 100%. So I'm basically like, I'm both thank you and fuck you. Basically, I mean that, I mean that, and I mean that, but thank you for helping. If this is going to unravel the whole movement, thank you. And to the extent that I have to judge it on any other level, fuck you. Those are Mike. That's like, I've, you know, I'm an in both guy, Tom, not a, not a false binary guy.

Speaker 11:
[57:20] I think, I think that's fair. And, you know, I mean, if it weren't, if we weren't in such a dire situation, you know, who could care less about what Tucker Carlson has to say about anything. But as you say, if at the very least, John, if it puts people out there saying, you know, I used to believe everything Tucker Carlson said. And I don't like what he's saying now about Trump. But now I don't know if I should believe Tucker Carlson. Good, that if you're starting to have doubts about whether you should believe Tucker Carlson, that then you are taking the first step to recovery.

Speaker 3:
[57:52] Tom Nichols, a man who took the first step to recovery a long time ago. Always a pleasure to see you. And man, I will say right here for the record, you and I have had our share of squabbles publicly and privately about music over the years. And you will forever be so tragically wrong in thinking that Boston, I mean Boston is a better band than the Velvet Underground. This is sad. But you were on MSNOW the other day and I was watching it live and all of a sudden you dropped a lyric from the song Talking New York by Bob Dylan from his first album, which is called Bob Dylan. You just dropped it right there into your spiel. And I gotta say, I was impressed.

Speaker 11:
[58:32] You didn't think I had it in me.

Speaker 3:
[58:34] You're right. You're right. I did not. And in fact, I didn't even recognize that lyric at first. I had to go look it up, but you had it right.

Speaker 11:
[58:41] I contain multitudes, John.

Speaker 3:
[58:43] Dude, you too, you contain multitudes. Next thing you know, you're going to be posting a picture of yourself as Jesus on social media. Please, please don't do that. Tom Nichols, great to see you, man.

Speaker 11:
[58:52] Thanks, John.

Speaker 3:
[59:00] Impolitic with John Heilemann is a PUC podcast in partnership with Audacy. Thanks again to Tom Nichols for coming back on the show and giving the best Jules Winfield imitation possible from a middle-aged Caucasian. If you enjoyed this episode, please follow Impolitic with John Heilemann and share us, rate us, and review us on the free Audacy app or wherever you have in the basket, the splendor of the podcast universe. I am John Heilemann, chief political columnist for PUC to read my stuff. Along with the reporting of all my PUC colleagues, go to puck.news slash J-Heile, J-H-E-I-L, and subscribe. Speaking of my PUC partners, John Kelly and Ben Landy are executive producers of this podcast, Laurie Blackford is our guest-rangling guru, Ally Clancy is our gal Monday through Friday, JD Crowley and Jenna Weiss-Berman are our guardian angels at Audacy, and Bob Tabador is our very own sultan of swing, flawlessly producing, editing, mixing and mastering this show, and yes, just like guitar George, Bob knows all the chords. From all of us, all of you, as my sainted mother liked to say, don't get arrested, don't get dead, and as always, namaste.