In short
Whether the Trump administration has “corrupted” the U.S. military—especially in how wars are planned and how senior commanders are managed—plus related claims about operational performance in an Iran conflict and alleged unlawful U.S. actions in the Caribbean.
Guests
Rep. Jason Crow (D-CO, 6th District; Aurora area). Background: Iraq and Afghanistan veteran; 82nd Airborne and 75th Ranger Regiment; three tours; captain; Bronze Star; served on House Intelligence and Armed Services committees; co-chair candidate recruitment for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
Key claims
Crow says rank-and-file operations are strong, but senior commanders have been “less than candid,” and strategy/tactics are confused. He argues impulsive civilian decisions disregarded commanders’ timelines (e.g., mine-sweepers/air defense), harming service members. He criticizes drone-era mismatch and says the defense budget is “absurd” without reform. He alleges politically motivated firings, blurred civilian-military lines (campaigning by DoD leadership), and warns the military must refuse illegal orders.
Notable examples
cross-examining Central Command; alleged unprotected base strikes; “SouthCom” Caribbean dismissals tied to legally suspect boat strikes; “Don’t Give Up the Ship” video; My Lai/Platoon training analogy.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOIntroduction to David Frum and Episode Theme
0:32 to 1:31
David Frum introduces Jason Crow and the discussion topic on the Iran war.
“As podcast hosts, we talked about the pressures and temptations of the medium.”
Analysis of Trump's Approach to the Iran War
1:31 to 11:19
Frum discusses Trump's leadership style and its consequences for the Iran conflict.
“Hello, and welcome to The David Frum Show.”
Transition to Guest Interview
11:19 to 11:40
Frum sets up the dialogue with Congressman Jason Crow.
Interview with Jason Crow on Military Operations
11:40 to 14:00
Congressman Crow shares insights on the military's role in the Iran war.
“A few months ago, I invited Atlantic staff writer Charlie Warzel onto The David Frum Show.”
Assessment of Military Operations
14:00 to 14:44
An exploration of the current state of military operations in Iran and the effectiveness of leadership.
“So we've all seen your televised tangles with the defense establishment and the wry humor you bring to those encounters.”
Military Tactics vs. Strategy
14:44 to 17:00
Discussion on the confusion between military tactics and strategy, highlighting historical contexts.
“Yeah, I look at it in two different ways.”
Vulnerabilities in Modern Warfare
17:00 to 19:05
Analysis of current warfare vulnerabilities, focusing on drone technology and military readiness.
“So the attacks on some of the bases, some of the logistics hubs, their communications and radar facilities that killed six service members in one instance, I think that is a good example of not being prepared.”
Impact of Political Influence on Military Command
19:05 to 21:04
Examining the implications of political appointments in military leadership under Trump administration.
“But even at that, our adversaries are at an advantage if they can just send swarm after swarm after swarm swarm of cheap, attritable drones or missiles at us.”
Controversial Dismissals in the Military
21:04 to 24:18
A look at the suspicious dismissals of military leaders and their potential motivations.
“and it appears as though many of those decisions are being made for those improper reasons, right?”
Military's Political Neutrality at Risk
24:18 to 26:22
Discussion on the erosion of military's nonpartisan nature and its societal implications.
“Do you have any suspicion, or I should say we all have suspicions, do you have any basis for suspicion that Donald Trump is trying to build a more politically pliable military?”
Show all 17 chapters
Concerns Over Military Deployment in Political Contexts
26:22 to 28:00
Concerns regarding the potential use of military to influence political events and elections.
“of our nation and will no longer be the venerable institution that it has been for generations.”
Preparing Military for Ethical Decisions
28:00 to 31:25
Learn about the importance of ethical training in military leadership and decision-making.
“You learn about it throughout your career.”
The Dangers of Vigilantism
31:25 to 36:20
Explore the implications of vigilantism in law enforcement and drug trafficking.
“Because you're not, I'm not going to be standing there right next to those folks when they're asked to make that decision.”
Leadership and Candidate Recruitment in Politics
36:20 to 42:07
Discuss the challenges of political leadership and the importance of candidate recruitment.
“We don't know whether they are drug runners or not.”
Leadership and Community Engagement
42:07 to 43:59
Learn how broad life experiences shape effective leadership.
“One of the things I read you say about this was you were interested in people with broad life experience that took them outside their comfort zone.”
Introduction to How to Touch Grass
44:05 to 45:27
Discover insights into the relationship between technology and our lives.
“Why are people trying to get off their screens?”
Literary Reflections and the Importance of Literacy
45:27 to 50:00
Explore the impact of literacy on critical thinking and cultural understanding.
“As mentioned at the top of the show, my book this week is James Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson, a classic of biography and of English literature.”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00Logging off. Rebuilding our attention spans. Trading in smartphones for dumb phones. Why are people trying to get off their screens? And what are they really after? I'm Natalie Brennan, a producer at The Atlantic. And I'm Julie Beck, a staff writer at The Atlantic. This season, we're exploring the often fraught, always changing relationship people have with technology. And examining the ways our devices affect our connection with one another. New episodes of How to Touch Grass come out every Monday. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. A few months ago, I invited Atlantic staff writer Charlie Worzel onto the David Frum Show.
0:37As podcast hosts, we talked about the pressures and temptations of the medium. Outrage often gets rewarded. Nuance does not. Charlie doesn't take that bait. On his show Galaxy Brain, he covers the ways technology is changing how we think and how we live. not just the obvious stuff but the subtle ways it shapes what we believe how we talk to each other how we see ourselves and our neighbors if you've ever wondered how smart people end up believing implausible things online Galaxy Brain is worth your time it's thoughtful, surprising and a little unsettling in the very best way find it wherever you listen or watch
1:31Hello, and welcome to The David Frum Show. I'm David Frum, a staff writer at The Atlantic. My guest this week will be Jason Crow, who represents the 6th District of Colorado in the United States House of Representatives. The book for discussion this week will be James Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson, a classic of English biography and English literature. But before either the dialogue with Congressman Crowe or the book discussion, some opening thoughts on news that is arriving this weekend, that the United States and the Trump administration may have reached some kind of resolution in the war with Iran that began on February 28th of this year.
2:08Now, this news is very much in flux. That accounts for the unfamiliar look of this podcast, if you are watching. I am not recording from my usual recording place in Washington, D.C. I am in Ontario for the Memorial Day weekend, and I'm improvising a recording studio here. If the news is accurate, what we hear, what has been reported so far, is the United States is reaching a settlement based on the idea that the Strait of Hormuz will be reopened, that oil will continue to resume flowing out of the Persian Gulf, in return for which the the United States will offer some kind of compensation to Iran.
2:40Maybe there'll be some kind of release of frozen Iranian assets, but the United States will get access to oil. The United States and the world will get access to oil. Iran will get money and there'll be some kind of ceasefire and some kind of down the road later return to the problem of the Iranian nuclear program. If these reports are accurate, this is a pretty humbling defeat of America's goals in the war with Iran that started on February 28th. When the war started, President Trump never declared formal war aims. But based on things the administration said, something like this seemed to be in their mind.
3:12They wanted a formal termination of the Iranian nuclear program that the United States had badly damaged through airstrikes last summer. The United States wanted an end to the Iranian ballistic missile program, something that was not covered by the Iranian treaty that the Obama administration negotiated a decade ago. The Obama deal overlooked the ballistic missile program. The Trump administration wanted some kind of termination of the ballistic missile program. The president of the United States had promised help is on the way to the tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of Iranian people who rose up against their terrorist, repressive, theocratic regime.
3:46And you might have thought that some kind of help for the Iranian people would be part of the outcome that the United States sought. And maybe some kind of end to Iran's practice of being the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism, a status it's held since the Iranian revolution of 1979, with blood on its hands of people all over the world, including many Americans, from its terrorism and aggression, some kind of change in the nature of the regime to make it less dangerous to its neighbors and its own people. None of that happened, or none of that looks to have happened. All that looks to have happened is a reversion to the status quo as it was before the war started.
4:19If any of this is right, it is a pretty humbling climb down. How on earth did we get here? The disparity in power between the United States and its ally Israel on the one hand, and an Iranian regime weakened, rocked by the challenge and the rebellion of its own people would seem so overwhelming that it's hard to imagine how the United States could not have won this war. And yet it seems to have not won in strategic terms, really it lost. How did that happen? Part of the answer, only part, but part of that answer takes us to a disconcerting fact about the government of the United States right now, about the Trump administration and President Trump.
4:54And I think the best way to sort of sum up what the matter is, is by citing a statement President Trump made earlier in the month of May. He was talking to reporters and they challenged him on his declining poll numbers and especially his declining poll numbers among Republicans. And President Trump said, citing a story he had seen on CNN and misunderstood, he said, I have 100 percent support among Republicans. Although I do, I am, according to CNN, 100 percent approval within the Republican Party. I'm at 100 percent approval. Now, President Trump mangled exactly what the poll said. None of that matters.
5:31The point was the thing that had stuck in his mind and that he wanted people to know was he believed wrongly, but he believed he had 100 percent support among Republicans. Now, if true, that would be a pretty impressive number in one way. Who gets 100 percent of anything? But the urge decided to show something very peculiar about President Trump, which is he's never thought of himself as a national leader. He's a factional leader. He's the leader of the MAGA movement that has seized power in the United States and that attempted actually to hold power in 2021 by violence, that returned to power in 2024 by legal means, and that is now looking for ways to hold on to power after the elections of 2026 through gerrymandering and other forms of rule bending.
6:12He has always seen himself as a movement leader who happened to arrive in the government of the United States, not as a national leader, not as the president of all the people. Now, if what you want to do is sort of plunder the treasury and deliver a few benefits to your supporters at the expense of the rest of the country, this is a kind of, perhaps, for the short-term, workable political strategy. But if you want to lead the country to war, it is doomed to failure. Wars are big, costly, dangerous events, full of shocks, full of bad news. And when a president makes the heavy decision to lead the country to a major war, and this war with Iran has been a major war involving massive expenditure, massive use of U.S.
6:54munitions, American loss of life, heavy loss of life on the Iranian side. When the president makes that decision, he needs to mobilize something more than his pre-existing fragment of popular support. He needs to speak to the country as a whole, or at least try to. Now, no president, maybe since Pearl Harbor, has been able to rally virtually every American to a single national cause. It's a democracy, there are a lot of different opinions. That's as it should be. But presidents have tried. The presidents of the Cold War era tried. They tried to be something bigger than just the leader of a party.
7:27And that meant discipline upon them, even when the country was not at war, that the president had to behave in certain ways that were recognized as presidential, even by his opponents, in order to retain the ability to speak to and for the whole nation when a real emergency appeared. And this is the one thing that I think most people would agree unites the chain of presidents from Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, through Truman, through Eisenhower into the later day, Reagan, Obama. And even Biden tried to sound that music with his fainter voice. But Trump has never thought that way, never tried to do it that way.
8:02And so long as things seem to go reasonably well, as they did for the first three or so years of Trump's first term, it didn't harm him much or didn't hamper his plans. He was not regarded by half the country and more than half the country as some kind of interloper, somebody who got into the office by a kind of trick and who represented the interests only of a minority of the country and who, in everything from disaster relief to his tax program, made no pretense of caring about the people who hadn't voted for him. But in this second term, where things have been bumpier, where the news has been worse, where he's made more mistakes, where first there was the economic hardship caused by his crazy tariff program and then outright war, his inability to speak to and for the country, his inability to act the role of an American president has become a major strategic liability for the United States because the United States was never able to accept any costs at all from the Iran war.
8:58A different president operating for different reasons would have said, I want to lead the country into a war with Iran. I understand, I hope you all understand that this will be an expensive and difficult undertaking. Obviously, the price of fuel and perhaps the price of food will rise. I believe, might say to the president, this will be a short-term shock, but a shock it will be. I have various measures in mind to cushion the shock for those most in need. But this is important for all of our interests. Here's why. This is important for the peace of the world. Here's why. and I ask you to follow me and trust my leadership.
9:29That's what a normal president would try to do. Because Trump had never tried to be that kind of president, he couldn't acknowledge any kind of suffering. He couldn't make the case for the war at all. He spoke to the nation at the State of the Union just a few days before leading the nation to war. He made almost no reference to Iran. He certainly gave no indication that war was coming and he asked, he warned of nothing and he asked for nothing. He asked for no support from Congress. He just went to war without any kind of consultation. no kind of authorization of the use of force, which his predecessors had done for large-scale military conflicts.
10:02Asking Congress for the use of force would mean that you would be subject to questioning by Congress. How much will this cost? How long will this last? What are the goals? Are they achievable? President Trump didn't want to face any of that kind of questioning, so he didn't ask for authority. But that meant his war had no co-authors. It was entirely his own doing, a one-man show. So long as everything went smoothly, that might not be so much trouble. But of course, things have not gone smoothly. And now they've ended very disappointingly, if not in outright defeat. And it's still the one man show.
10:32The presidency has always been too big a job for Donald Trump. He's never understood it. He's never tried to do it. He has never imagined, even imagined the lineaments of the job. What would it look like? What kind of person that he would have to have been in order to be a president of all the people, a president who sought to be the president of all the people, who sought to speak on behalf of all the people, not all of the time, but when it really counts. it. Because of that lack in him, there has been a lack in the job. And because of that lack in the job, there was no realistic assessment of the costs of war, no realistic plan to deal with those costs, no realistic rally to the country to absorb those costs, and no ability in the country to bear those costs when they arrived.
11:14And the result is a war that has turned into defeat when it really didn't have to do so. This loss is Donald Trump's fault and Donald Trump's doing as much as anything else that he has done in his two terms as president, more than anything else, because it comes from the same, it is one of the most expensive consequences of his most characteristic deficiency as president of the United States. And now, my dialogue with Jason Crow. But first, a quick break.
11:49A few months ago, I invited Atlantic staff writer Charlie Warzel onto The David Frum Show. As podcast hosts, we talked about the pressures and temptations of the medium. Outrage often gets rewarded. Nuance does not. Charlie doesn't take that bait. On his show, Galaxy Brain, he covers the ways technology is changing how we think and how we live. Not just the obvious stuff, but the subtle ways it shapes what we believe, how we talk to each other, how we see ourselves and our neighbors. If you've ever wondered how smart people end up believing implausible things online, Galaxy Brain is worth your time.
12:26It's thoughtful, surprising, and a little unsettling in the very best way. Find it wherever you listen or watch.
12:37Logging off. Rebuilding our attention spans. Trading in smartphones for dumb phones. Why are people trying to get off their screens? And what are they really after? I'm Natalie Brennan, a producer at The Atlantic. And I'm Julie Beck, a staff writer at The Atlantic. This season, we're exploring the often fraught, always changing relationship people have with technology. And examining the ways our devices affect our connection with one another. New episodes of How to Touch Grass come out every Monday. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
13:19Jason Crow represents Colorado's 6th District in the United States House of Representatives, centered on the city of Aurora, east of Denver. First elected in 2018, he serves on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Armed Services Committee. He is also co-chair for candidate recruitment of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Crow was a veteran of both Iraq and Afghanistan. He fought with the 82nd Airborne Division and the 75th Ranger Regiment. He completed three tours of duty and rose to the rank of captain. He was awarded the Bronze Star. Crow earned his bachelor's degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2002 and a law degree from the University of Denver's College of Law in 2009.
13:59Congressman Crow, thank you so much for joining me today.
14:02Jason Crow:Thanks for having me, David. So we've all seen your televised tangles with the defense establishment and the wry humor you bring to those encounters. And I want to draw today on your knowledge of that establishment and especially of the part that tends to get kind of a pass in the Trump era, the uniform part. There's a lot of criticism of the civilian leadership, but the war in Iran seems to be not going very well from an operational point of view. Aircraft loss, bases struck, and very uncertain reports on the amount of damage to military targets that the military has actually been able to inflict.
14:36So I want to get your assessment as a veteran and as a member of the two most important committees of the House of Representatives on this question. From a military point of view, never mind the decision to go in the first place. How is this war proceeding?
14:49Jason Crow:Yeah, I look at it in two different ways. So the rank and file, you know, those men and women in uniform who are carrying out their strikes, who are conducting the operations, they're doing a remarkable job. I mean, this is just operationally taking out the politics, whether or not this is the right thing to be doing. Operationally, our military is doing a remarkable job day to day in their mission, and it's highlighting how good they really are. I will I will parse out of that, though, how I believe the senior commanders, those who are testifying before the Armed Services Committee, those who are briefing us how they're performing.
15:26Jason Crow:And I think in many cases they have been less than candid at best. At worst, they've hidden the ball from us, haven't been straightforward. You know, I just recently cross-examined the head of Central Command, which has responsibility over the war in Iran, and wasn't giving me very basic answers to straightforward questions that weren't difficult questions at all. So that is problematic to me because there is a history in America of our senior commanders. This is in Iraq. This is in Afghanistan. This is in Vietnam. Simply looking at tactics and confusing tactics with strategy. A series of successful tactical missions do not make a strategy.
16:10Jason Crow:And that is a big part of our problem right now. There's a question about how even tactically, how successful. I mean, the military seems to be caught by surprise again and again by things that shouldn't be surprises. It's not a surprise that the Iranians moved to close the Strait of Hormuz. I'm guessing this, the question of a U.S. conflict with Iran has been war-gamed annually since the spring of 1980. I assume that in those war games, the Iranian players' first or second go-to move is the Strait of Hormuz. That's right. Nor, after the United States assassinated the terrorist commander, Qasem Soleimani, the Iranians hit back with missile attacks on U.S.
16:46bases, which did damage to individuals and to property. It shouldn't have been a surprise that there would be attacks on U.S. bases. And yet in both cases, the U.S. military seems to have been taken by surprise.
16:58Jason Crow:Well, I think those are different examples. So the attacks on some of the bases, some of the logistics hubs, their communications and radar facilities that killed six service members in one instance, I think that is a good example of not being prepared. I don't think that those service members were protected by counter drone capability. I don't think they had the battle hardened cover that you need in a drone environment. And I think that's because we raced into this conflict. Same with the Strait of Hormuz. I actually don't believe that our military commanders were caught by surprise by the closure of the strait.
17:35Jason Crow:I actually know that's part of our contingency planning and what is likely in a scenario like this. But what I think happened is you have the president and you have the secretary of defense who make decisions impulsively, who don't listen to the best advice of their military commanders and say, just go out and do something and do it now. And there are instances where our generals and our admirals say, okay, you are the commander in chief. We will do this now, but we need two weeks. We need three weeks to get the mine sweepers in place, to get air defense capabilities in place. And if the president disregards that advice, then it puts our service members in a terrible position.
18:12Well, there's another question about the uniformed military, which is there has been notice since the beginning of full-scale fighting between Russia and Ukraine in February of 2022 that warfare is shifting and that tanks and aircraft and ships are all much more vulnerable than they used to be to very cheap and very smart drones. The Ukrainians lead the world in this technology. The United States seems to have been hit by Iranian drones. And fighting in 2026, four years after the beginning of the Ukraine war, seems not to have been ready for that.
18:44Jason Crow:Yeah, our entire model of defense right now is not relevant to the current era of warfare. Like we've been shooting down$30 ,000 Shahid drones coming from Iran with$1 million missile interceptors, right? The math on that just doesn't work, right? Like we have a huge military and a huge defense budget. But even at that, our adversaries are at an advantage if they can just send swarm after swarm after swarm swarm of cheap, attritable drones or missiles at us. Well, we spend 10 to 20 times the cost of those same systems to knock them out. Right. That's not good for the taxpayer. That's not good for our service members.
19:27Jason Crow:And it's not good value for the money we're investing, which is exactly why a one and a half trillion dollar defense budget, which is almost a 50 percent increase in our defense budget, is absolutely absurd right now, especially if it's not coupled with dramatic defense reform, the change, how we're buying things, how we're fielding things and making sure that we're buying things that are actually cheaper and more effective. President Trump and Secretary Hegseth have had a year and a half since coming into office to remake the upper reaches of the military the way they want. And they seem to have done that in a very ambitious and aggressive way, firing lots of generals, hiring lots of generals.
20:06And they now have the high command of their wish. How do you assess the quality and merit of the high command that Hegseth and Trump have built?
20:15Jason Crow:So I think there's a really important point that I've been trying to make and I'll reiterate here. It's not that they're moving troops around or shifting troop footprints or firing generals and admirals. That actually is within the purview of the commander in chief and our political leadership to put the right people in place if it's done appropriately and for the right reasons. Right. I'm not just presumptively opposed to moving troops around Europe or pre-positioning them and making sure that we're responding to threats, that we're keeping our people safe or that if a general or admiral isn't performing, that we get somebody in place who does perform.
20:57Jason Crow:When it becomes my business, when it becomes Congress's business, is when that's being done for political reasons or someone's being targeted for their race or their gender, or they're making these decisions based on political loyalty and not competency. and it appears as though many of those decisions are being made for those improper reasons, right? Shifting 5 ,000 troops out of Germany. Maybe we need to do that. Maybe we need to put troops into the Baltics, into Poland, into Romania, because we want to move things into the eastern flank. But that's not what they're doing. They're moving them out because Donald Trump is pissed at the chancellor of Germany because he felt personally slighted, so he's making a decision to move a brigade of troops around.
21:42Jason Crow:Same thing with the almost 30 generals and admirals who have been fired without cause, without reason. Some are literally dismissed, showing the door, sometimes with 24 hours notice. And no explanation to Congress as to why that's happening other than a perceived lack of loyalty to Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump. One of the most mysterious of those shifts, and perhaps you can share some insight into this, was an admiral was removed from command over the forces in the Caribbean area shortly before there's a major change in the way the United States approached drug smuggling, where boats were already blown out of the water summarily on the basis of who knows what kind of information.
22:23It looks as if, and I don't know this, but you may, that the admiral was removed because he had objected to these strikes. Can you shed any light on that story?
Read the full transcript
22:31Jason Crow:I've been trying to get information on that, and information right now is hard to come by, but I agree with you. It It appears as though this is what's called South Com, Southern Command, right? Because the world is divided in the geographic regions called combatant commands. Central Command, Africa Command, European Command, Southern Command, Northern Command, all of which have responsibility over those areas of the world, as you know, David. And they're the ones who do the war fighting, right? So when there are wars that are being fought or contingency operations, it's those combatant commanders.
23:05Jason Crow:So what makes the dismissal of the Southern Command most suspicious is, A, it happened right after the Caribbean operation started, and B, this person was in office in their position for less than a year. So this is an out-of-cycle dismissal. So something happened here, what we're trying to get answers to, that led to this dismissal of this person right after they took the job or right after we launched a highly legally suspect operation. That, in my view, actually has been a violation of the law of war in several instances, including shooting on a vessel that was clearly a shipwrecked vessel with noncombatants clinging to the side of it who were targeted and killed.
23:52So you don't have conclusive information yet on that removal?
23:54Jason Crow:No, I don't. Same thing with the chief of staff of the army, Randy George, also fired without cause overnight, given almost no notice. Somebody who was in office before Donald Trump came to office and replaced, it seems, without any valid reason. Do you have any suspicion, or I should say we all have suspicions, do you have any basis for suspicion that Donald Trump is trying to build a more politically pliable military? No, clearly that's happening. Clearly it's happening. I think it's objectively true, right? They're holding campaign rallies at military bases with campaign apparel and gear. You have the Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, literally this past week campaigning for a congressional campaign while sitting as the Secretary of Defense.
24:52Jason Crow:It's unprecedented. It's a clear breach of the lines between being a civil servant, a political appointee of our biggest agency, and in my view, the most consequential, because we're carrying out our national defense mission and responsible for the lives of millions of service members, taking time and actually going to campaign stump for a pro-Trump member of Congress. It's crazy. It's crazy. So those lines have been more than blurred. They've been erased by this administration. And the consequence of that is several fold. Number one, what is so precious to me is that our military is a standard bearer, should be a standard bearer of our values and should reflect the diversity of this country.
25:37Jason Crow:And we have civilian military divide. We have civilian control, rather, of our military, which is precious. But our country has historically held our military in high esteem and had great confidence in it because it's nonpolitical. It's nonpartisan. It is run by career officers who have come up through that nonpartisan system. And it draws from our entire nation, black, white, Asian, Hispanic, Republican, Democrat, independent, urban, rural. it looks like this country. And the moment it stops doing those things, being nonpartisan, drawing from the diversity of this country, it will be the moment that it does not have the trust of our nation and will no longer be the venerable institution that it has been for generations.
26:28Do you worry about a scenario and how confident are you that the military would resist this scenario where President Trump announces a few days or weeks before the 2026 elections, He's got reports that Antifa are planning to attack voting stations in all the districts that Republicans held but are afraid of losing. And he needs to deploy the military to protect voting against Antifa and also to do a really thorough check of the identifications of anyone who looks to him as if they might be suspicious. Might be Antifa, might be an illegal voter. He just wants to have the military backing up the job because he doesn't trust local authorities to do that.
27:01That kind of thought came into his head. How confident are you that the military would find a way not to do it?
27:07Jason Crow:You know, my job is not to have confidence. My job is to prepare for every contingency, every possibility, and to be ready to defend our country, defend our institutions and our democracy. Right. Hope is not a plan, David. I've learned to listen to the president, to listen to what he says, because he's tried to do many of the things that he's floated trial balloons for or said he's going to do. And I think nothing is out of the realm of possibility for this man, which is exactly why last November I joined with several of my fellow veterans and we filmed a video that has since been called the Don't Give Up the Ship video.
27:46Jason Crow:But we simply reminded our service members of their obligation to follow the law and to abide by the Constitution. Which, you know, for folks in the military and veterans out there, there is nothing remarkable at all about that video, right? Because that's military 101. You get drilled in that in boot camp. You learn about it throughout your career. It's a part of daily military life when you're deployed, when you're at war. Nothing remarkable about it. But it did lead our president to threaten to have us executed and then tried for treason in that order, by the way. So he messed up the order.
28:19Jason Crow:Or not. Yeah, or not. But, you know, this is a man who has threatened to kill the families and children of terrorists, which is a violation of the law of war, who threatened a couple of weeks ago to wipe an entire civilization off the planet. Right. Like none of this is normal. And we have to my obligation as a member of Congress now is to make sure that we're ready for anything that might be thrown our way. So I want to repeat the question. You made the video. Yeah. You restated what is the clear law. The president went into a fury. Legal action was threatened against the people who made the video.
28:56So how confident are you that the military would do what you said, which is to refuse an illegal order if it came from President Trump?
29:03Jason Crow:What I'm doing is I'm trying to prepare what we call in the military, prepare the battlefield. I'm trying to send a message. This isn't based on competence or lack of confidence for that matter. What I'm trying to do is send a message and start a national conversation around what the obligation of our service members is. And maybe this is best illustrated with a very short story, if I may. When I was getting my platoon ready for the invasion of Iraq, my platoon of paratroopers with the 82nd Airborne Division, this was March of 2003, I was responsible for this platoon of paratroopers. And I had studied military leadership.
29:39Jason Crow:I had studied the law of war. I had studied the Sand Creek Massacre, the My Lai Massacre, when military leadership failed and terrible things happened at war. So what I knew is, is that, again, hope was not a plan, that I had to prepare my paratroopers. So I actually rented the video platoon, right? And I took all my paratroopers out of their rooms in their barracks, and I brought them down to the common room in the barracks, and I showed them the scene in the movie platoon that depicted the My Lai massacre. And then I led them in a discussion of how that happens. you know how do young men who come from places around this country end up doing something like that that's so antithetical to their humanity that that is such a clear violation of their obligation their oath and the law how does that happen how does you know as herman melville often talk about how he wrote about in moby dick how do you become the monsters that you're chasing in those instances and lose sight of who you are and where you come from.
30:45Jason Crow:So we had that discussion and then we did go to war several weeks later. And my platoon was faced with fear, with uncertainty, with the loss of their friends, not knowing who the enemy was, where the enemy was. And months, months went on and we grinded it out and the fatigue and the fear and the chaos just came down on us month after month. But my platoon did the right thing. We abided by our oath in the Constitution and we came back with honor. And I don't think that was an accident. I think it's because we had those conversations that I laid the groundwork to protect ourselves. And that's what I'm trying to do right now is lay the groundwork, have that conversation and get people ready for what are they going to do in that moment where they have to make a split second decision that will determine whether the law is followed or not, whether they pull a trigger or not.
31:39Jason Crow:right? Because you're not, I'm not going to be standing there right next to those folks when they're asked to make that decision. But what I can do is talk to them now and start that national conversation. And that's what we've done. Well, let's talk to a topic we touched on before, which is a place where war crimes may very well be happening, even as we speak. And that is on the Caribbean Sea. Now you're both a warrior and a lawyer. And as you just said, you're a goer. So you know that one of the biggest themes of American film is the rogue cop who sees that ordinary laws are no use against the most nefarious criminals, especially drug dealers, and goes outside the law to do a kind of primitive justice by killing people who the law can't otherwise reach.
32:23And that's, I think, what the government of the United States would like us to believe is happening on the Caribbean, that here are all these terrible people doing terrible harm to Americans, smuggling the drugs that are killing Americans through fentanyl. The ordinary channels of law just aren't equal to the challenge. And so they're taking the law into their own hands, just like the rogue cops and all those movies that you might've rented and just killing first and trusting the people to see they've done the right thing. And if Hollywood is any judge, Americans often go along with that way of thinking, at least when they're at the cinema, I don't know how they'd go along with it in real life.
32:54What's your answer? What is the answer to, let's suppose that most of the people or some of the people or many of the people being killed genuinely are engaged in the smuggling, trafficking of drugs. Why not just kill them?
33:04Jason Crow:Well, you know, there is this cinematic myth of vigilantism, which, you know, plays out well on the screen. Like, it looks good. It feels good. I like those movies, too. They're kind of fun to watch, right? And they viscerally feel good. The problem is, is that's not who we are as a country. We're a country of rule of law, and we all benefit from rule of law. Because vigilantism seems fine until you're on the wrong side of it, right? Because who gets to decide who's right or wrong? Who gets to decide who the judge, jury, and executioner is? Good thing is, is that in democracies, we have a system in place where you're presumed innocent.
33:44Jason Crow:We have a system where people, there's a process to protect the innocent and adjudicate the guilty, that we're not a society of vigilantism, or we shouldn't be, outside of what happens in Hollywood, right? So that's number one. Number two is there's no doubt that fentanyl is destroying our communities, right? As a parent of young kids, it keeps me awake at night, this idea that, you know, my child could be one mistake away from death. And there's no shortage of parents in my community who I represent who have suffered that, right? And we absolutely need to stop it. We need to stop it. But we need a real strategy to stop it, one that actually still follows our laws, that's still consistent to who we are with a democracy.
34:36Jason Crow:And I also want to be really clear that what's happening in the Caribbean is not stopping it because they're not blowing up fentanyl. That's point number three. They're literally not blowing up fentanyl. They're blowing up marijuana boats. Right. So the price of marijuana is going up. But fentanyl doesn't come by votes. It doesn't come over the Caribbean Sea. And it doesn't come from the places in Venezuela where those boats are originating from. What is going on is this administration wants a bunch of videos of boats being blown up so they can post them in real time on TV and say, hey, look, we're the ones getting serious about combating fentanyl.
35:14Jason Crow:But the fact is they're not actually blowing up fentanyl that is still flowing into our community. So how about we actually get serious about this and have a real counter fentanyl program that addresses the flow of it, what is coming over land into the United States and addresses the demand and the education side. What I've done back in Colorado is I've started a series of webinars with parents, teachers, students, where I invite the FBI and the DEA in and education organizations. And we're doing educational webinars and forums that teach folks about the dangers of fentanyl, how to detect it, how to stop it, how to prevent it.
35:54Jason Crow:At the same time as I remain committed to a real counter drug program in the United States. Do you have any estimation of the number of people who have been killed in the Caribbean by U.S. strikes? And do you have any sense of how many of them are actually engaged in what they're accused of? And do you have any doubts that there are people who have been killed who are not engaged in the activity they're accused of? I don't have the exact number, but we don't know. And that is the problem. Yeah, that's actually, that question proves my point. We don't know whether they are drug runners or not. Some of them are.
36:25Jason Crow:We do know that. I mean, I'm not saying that drug boats haven't been blown up. What I'm saying is we just can't go blowing up boats without some kind of system in place to make sure these are the people who we want to go after. A. B. We're not a country that just does things without making sure that we're following our own laws. And C. We actually aren't dealing with fentanyl. That's another key point here. We're not stopping the flow. And we're trying to let people believe that we are is the biggest problem. And that's doing a disservice to everybody. So the person who's sort of the command chair for these decisions is Secretary Hegseth.
37:06I hope everyone has seen the fascinating videos of your encounters with him. But in a dispassionate moment when you're not sparring with your favorite sparring partner, can you give us an estimation of the job Secretary Hegseth is doing? I mean, Saturday Night Live makes fun of him. Is there anything good to be said about him?
37:23Jason Crow:No, I mean, I can't think of something. We're just saying something, actually, right? Because I'm not, listen, I don't relish any of this. I don't feel good about the fact. This isn't just a game for me. I don't relish sparring with folks. I'm not doing it for cinematic effect. I'm doing it because I'm deeply disturbed by the conduct of this administration and department. I don't believe that there is leadership. I think leadership is MIA from the Department of Defense, which is responsible for the lives of millions of service members. who are sometimes at great risk daily because of the missions and the things that this administration is choosing to do.
38:04Jason Crow:And we have, by all accounts, a Secretary of Defense who's unqualified, has never run an organization anywhere near this size or complexity, and spends most of his time performing stunts, taking joy rides and helicopters and F-16s, and filming workout videos of himself instead of actually doing the day-to-day job of the really hard day-to-day work of running an apartment like this, right? But last interaction I had with him, he chuckled mid-interaction and he said, I know what you're doing. You're just playing gotcha like you do on TV all the times I see you on TV. And I thought to myself, this guy's watching me on TV, right?
38:46Jason Crow:Like, you know, yeah, maybe I like living rent-free in the guy's head, but I would rather other things be living in this guy's head? Like, how do we run the department? How do we reform the DOD to be relevant to 2026? How do we actually execute a war in Iran that is successful? Those are all the things that should be occupying this guy's head. You've got an important role in Democratic Party candidate recruitment. One of the questions about the Democratic Party in 26 and even more in 28 is, is there a candidate quality problem? Are forces that are sort of outside the party pushing far-left choices upon the party who returning seats that are potentially winnable into seats that are less winnable.
39:24Is that something you worry about? And what measures do you have in place to safeguard yourself if you are worried?
39:29Jason Crow:Yeah. I'm worried about it a little bit, right? I'm the, as you said, the recruitment co-chair. So it's a big part of my job to find what I call that next generation of servant leaders. People are going to step up because if you want to change culture, if you want to change policy, if you want to change any organization and move it in the right direction, in my case, the Democratic Party, which I think has been moving in the wrong direction. If I want to get that back on the rails, you got to get the right people to do it. It's all about the people, right? So I've been going, you know, throughout this country, traveling, sitting in front of, you know, people in their living rooms and bars and having meetings and Zooms and endless calls, finding these folks and identifying them.
40:10Jason Crow:And I can tell you, we have an incredible, incredible group of candidates. So by and large, we have amazing folks. There are some instances where I think there are people who are out of step with their community that, you know, aren't going to be able to flip a seat in the way that we want to flip a seat. But that's for primary voters to decide. Right. I'm not I'm pro primary. I think I think that's it tests candidates. It makes them better. And we are a party that embraces that. I actually had my own really tough primary in my first election. Maybe a better candidate. I don't shy away from that.
40:44Well, let me ask you a specific question. So this is not somebody who's in the congressional system, but the mayor of Seattle was caught on video speaking of businesses that were thinking of leaving Seattle because the taxes were too high. And she said, well, bye. And the whole world has now seen that video and has created an image of the Democratic Party's attitude toward business and job creation. That's not your problem. She's not running for Congress. But how do you protect your congressional intake from people who say things like that and brand the Democratic Party as one that's hostile to job creation and business?
41:14Jason Crow:Yeah, it's actually really easy. And that is most of the people in the districts that I'm recruiting for. These are, you know, red rural areas. Don't give a damn what's happening in New York City, in Seattle, in Boston. You know, that's an easy one. And it's like, I don't know why people are so obsessed with mayors and members of Congress and districts on the coasts when, you know, my community, what we're struggling with is we don't we're not getting enough farm irrigation money. We're not ready for wildfire season. We got too much lead in our drinking water in our schools. Our bridges are about to collapse.
41:50Jason Crow:And oh, by the way, you know, 100000 people in my district are about ready to lose their health care. So, you know, I let other folks worry about, you know, politicians thousands of miles away that are saying things that I wouldn't say and maybe I don't agree with. I'm just going to be relentlessly focused on my constituents and what we're trying to do in our community. And that's leadership. That's what people need. So that's an easy one. One of the things I read you say about this was you were interested in people with broad life experience that took them outside their comfort zone. Yeah. Could you expand on what you mean by that and why that's important?
42:24Yeah.
42:25Jason Crow:So, you know, generally recruiting people who have come from outside of politics, right? America knows that our politics are broken. I mean, I know that. It doesn't take a genius to observe that our system is not working. So generally electing career politicians is not the answer. And people want somebody different. People want to know that somebody has actually done something outside of politics successfully. That's transcended political boundaries, right? Have you built a business? Have you met a payroll? Have you led a military unit? Have you been in charge of a sheriff's office or a police department?
43:00Jason Crow:Have you run a parent teacher organization or a community organization or a rotary club of Democrats, Republicans, independents? Right. Have you actually accomplished something that has brought people together, that that has found common ground and built something and achieved something? And that can look like a lot of different things. But that those are the candidates who not only can win elections, but more importantly, who can actually do what we need to have done. And that is rebuild our country, bring us back together and be pragmatic. That is the bottom line for me. Those are the people who I'm looking for.
43:40Jason Crow:And the good news is they are stepping up in droves. You know, this class is potentially an amazing class of servant leaders that can help, you know, break the fever that's gripping this country and move us in a better direction. Congressman Jason Crow, thank you so much for talking to me today. Yeah, thanks for having me, David. Bye-bye.
44:05Logging off. Rebuilding our attention spans. Trading in smartphones for dumb phones. Why are people trying to get off their screens? And what are they really after? I'm Natalie Brennan, a producer at The Atlantic. And I'm Julie Beck, a staff writer at The Atlantic. This season, we're exploring the often fraught, always changing relationship people have with technology. And examining the ways our devices affect our connection with one another. New episodes of How to Touch Grass come out every Monday. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. A few months ago, I invited Atlantic staff writer Charlie Warzel onto the David Frum show.
44:42As podcast hosts, we talked about the pressures and temptations of the medium. Outrage often gets rewarded. Nuance does not. Charlie doesn't take that bait. On his show Galaxy Brain, he covers the ways technology is changing how we think and how we live. Not just the obvious stuff, but the subtle ways it shapes what we believe, how we talk to each other, how we see ourselves and our neighbors. If you've ever wondered how smart people end up believing implausible things online, Galaxy Brain is worth your time. It's thoughtful, surprising, and a little unsettling in the very best way. Find it wherever you listen or watch.
45:26Thanks so much to Congressman Jason Crow for joining me this week on The David Frum Show. As mentioned at the top of the show, my book this week is James Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson, a classic of biography and of English literature. This is a book that has probably entered your consciousness and your vocabulary, even if you've never read it or haven't read it in a long time or have barely even heard of it. Sayings from the book include, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life. Or that a second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience. Or no man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.
46:01Chances are you've heard or maybe even repeated these sayings without ever having read the book. Yet the book repays a revisit or a visit in the first place if you've never read it. Because it says something, reveals something profound about the importance of literacy. And one of the great themes of this segment of the program has been what we are losing as literacy recedes from our culture. And to understand the point I'm driving at, to understand what this book represents and what is lost as we lose contact with books like this, I want to begin by citing a famous negative review of the book by Thomas Macaulay, the great English historian of the early 19th century.
46:40He wrote in 1831 very scathingly, not so much about the book, but about the author of the book, James Boswell. He called him all kinds of names and described what Macaulay regarded as Boswell's mental feebleness and all of his other faults of character. And then he said, he wrapped up by saying this, logic, eloquence, wit, taste, all those things which are generally considered as making a book valuable were utterly wanting to him, that is Boswell. He had indeed a quick observation and a retentive memory. Those qualities, if he had been a man of sense of virtue, would scarcely of themselves have suffice to make him conspicuous.
47:17But because he was a dunce, a parasite, and a coxcomb, they have made him immortal. Now, the reason Macaulay talks that way is because the character of James Boswell in Boswell's book is indeed revealed in very unflattering ways. He doesn't quite address some of the things that he shows in his diaries, his alcoholism, his sexual compulsiveness. But he does reveal a needy ego and a kind of naive sensibility. And he makes himself a very small person and shows himself in all kinds of ridiculous situations in order to make Johnson, his subject, Samuel Johnson, look larger and more heroic. But of course, if you read the book carefully and think about it, you realize that all of this is an act of artifice.
48:01All of this is a work of art. And the apparent spontaneity and naturalness of the book, the sense that you are simply overhearing Johnson in conversation. That's a literary construction achieved through great effort and skill, not a happy accident of a fool's compulsive note-taking. Johnson is the author of the epigrams, but Boswell is very much the co-author. Did Johnson really say each of these things exactly in the polished, fine form that Boswell records them? Or did Boswell improve them? Did he compress the setup for some of the great sayings? Did he cast the spotlight in just the right way?
48:36Did he make, as a work of art, the rest of the scene more shadowy to make the central figure brighter? And of course, he did. Just as Dr. Watson is humbled to make Sherlock Holmes better, just as Plato humbles himself to make Socrates look better, so Boswell does the same literary construction or to make his hero Johnson look better. Now, as you read the book and reread the book, you notice that this is going on and you realize how wrong Macaulay is in his naive reading that just takes the book as a straightforward matter and doesn't think about how is it made, how do we know it, how are we encountering it.
49:11The act of reading is an act of thinking about how the subject matter, the topic matter we are reading was created in the first place. It makes us more critical consumers of what we enjoy. It forces us to reckon with something that if we purely subsist on short-term form video, we will not reckon. The camera always lies. The narrator is always part of the action. The narrator's job is to teach us to mistrust the narrator and thus to teach us how to read. And by teaching us how to read, teach us how to think. When we lose our literacy, we lose our cognitive skills. We lose our critical judgment.
49:50We lose our distance from the world. We lose our ability to understand through the power of the instruction not to trust. Thanks so much for joining me today on The David Frum Show. If you are minded to support the work of the program, you can so valuably help us by sharing it on whatever platforms you use, subscribing to the Atlantic's YouTube channel. And as ever, if you're minded to actually give material support to the program, the best way to do that is by subscribing to The Atlantic. That helps the work of all of my colleagues. Thanks so much for watching and listening to this week's David Fromm Show.
50:23See you next week. Bye-bye.
50:49This episode of The David Fromm Show was produced by Nathaniel Fromm and edited by Andrea Valdez. It was engineered by Dave Grein. Our theme is by Andrew Edwards. Claudine Abad is the executive producer of Atlantic Audio, and Andrea Valdez is our managing editor. A few months ago, I invited Atlantic staff writer Charlie Warzel onto The David Fromm Show. As podcast hosts, we talked about the pressures and temptations of the medium. Outrage often gets rewarded. Nuance does not. Charlie doesn't take that bait. On his show Galaxy Brain, he covers the ways technology is changing how we think and how we live.
51:34Not just the obvious stuff, but the subtle ways it shapes what we believe, how we talk to each other, how we see ourselves and our neighbors. If you've ever wondered how smart people end up believing implausible things online, Galaxy Brain is worth your time. It's thoughtful, surprising, and a little unsettling in the very best way. Find it wherever you listen or watch.
From the publisher
On this week’s episode of The David Frum Show, The Atlantic’s David Frum opens with his thoughts about the recently reported peace talks between the United States and Iran. David argues that these reported talks indicate the United States is losing the war in Iran, and that the loss highlights what has always been true: The presidency is too big a job for Donald Trump.
Then David is joined by Representative Jason Crow of Colorado to discuss Trump’s politicization of the American military, lessons from the war in Iran, and the chaos at Pete Hegseth’s “Department of War”.
David ends with a discussion of James Boswell’s classic biography, The Life of Samuel Johnson.
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