Is Trump impotent?

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0:32This is a Global Player original podcast. I honestly think in years to come, people will look at Epic Fury as one of the greatest strategic failures in modern warfare. Donald Trump went into this to destroy Iran's nuclear capability. And what he's clearly given them is a much better alternative to a nuclear weapon. He seems utterly powerless or in a position where the limits of American power have been reached. And the idea that it can just tell a nation what to do and they will just salute politely and say, yes, sir, is not happening now. On the one hand, he's making a very clear point there.

1:16100 days of epic fury is not 19 years. On the other hand, what an idiot.

1:33The haunting sound of air raid sirens in northern Israel last night. Civilians scurrying to air raid shelters and the sound of explosions in the sky as the ceasefire between Israel and Iran looks like it is in tatters. President Trump has demanded that Israel and Iran stop shooting. The trouble is, they're just ignoring him. Is he impotent now? Welcome to The News Agents.

2:12It's John. It's Maitlis. And like two squabbling children and a parent who can't control them, It's hard to know who started it because the fingers are pointing in either direction. Was it Israel attacking the suburbs of Beirut? Was it the provocation of Hezbollah? Was it Iran firing the missiles? Was it Israel firing back? I mean, he pays your money and he takes your choice, frankly. But undoubtedly, the most significant escalation came with Iran firing ballistic missiles into northern Israel last night. Donald Trump saying this has to stop. I demand that it stops. And an hour after that, Israel saying, you know what, we're retaliating and firing their own missiles and bombers flying over Iran to retaliate.

3:02Yeah, I mean, certainly from Iran's perspective, they're saying we've had enough. It holds the US directly responsible for what they call ceasefire breaches, because they say that Israel's military activities, actions in Lebanon, which have been creeping higher and higher up towards the capital, in other words, not just areas where Israel is legitimately claiming there are Hezbollah targets, but right the way up the country. they say that those actions cannot be separated from US policies. And the Iranians say the actions of the Zionist entity within the region cannot be looked at in isolation from the United States.

3:40In other words, what are they doing? They're landing it all back on Donald Trump's plate. If you can't control Netanyahu, if you can't control Israel, then we will do that for you. And we will do that by firing rockets into the West Bank, into Israel, into a country that you have no control over right now. And so Trump has tried to knock heads together. He gave an interview yesterday where he said, I hold the cards, I call all the shots, I call all the shots. But he doesn't. What has become very apparent, if it weren't before, is that in the last 24 hours, he cannot control what Iran does and he cannot control what Netanyahu does.

4:24and it has not stopped him from telling journalists, including Ed Luce from the Financial Times, who we're going to hear from a little bit later, that he is in control, but he ain't. I honestly think in years to come, people will look at Epic Fury, Operation Epic Fury, as Donald Trump was so proud to call it on the 28th of February, will look at this as one of the greatest strategic failures in modern warfare, where you say, what we're going to do is in short order, we're going to overturn the regime. We are going to stop their ballistic missile program. We are going to destroy their military and we are going to retake their nuclear material.

5:05And it's all going to happen very quickly. And here we are over a hundred days on from that. And Iran, the regime is in place. The sun has taken over from Ayatollah Khamenei. You have got the Republican Guard still able, with command and control, to fire missiles with precision into Israel and into Gulf states. There has been no progress made on the nuclear material and the Strait of Hormuz, which was open before the 28th of February, is still firmly shut, driving up prices. Israel and the United States kidded themselves that they could achieve this militarily and it would all be done so quickly and nothing is any and nothing like that has happened the regime is in place Israel and the US have fired endless missiles have committed millions and billions of dollars to this campaign and they haven't succeeded yeah and I think to try and understand what is behind some of this from Israel's perspective you have to go inside Netanyahu's mindset and you have to go inside his party's mindset because the more that Likud heard that a deal was imminent between Tehran and Washington, the more concerned they got.

6:22They thought that this would hurt Netanyahu's chance of re-election. And I've been talking to Israeli political experts, one of them, Ayala Panievsky, friend of the podcast, has put it like this. She says, Netanyahu is always thinking about two things, his trial and the elections. Currently, this exchange of missiles just today has already postponed the trial today. We haven't even talked about the trial that he's facing, you know, this week, but it's already managed to push that not only out the headlines, but, you know, off the agenda today. He's hoping to get something he can present to Israelis as a win in Iran, because as soon as people start waking up the fact that we're currently losing on all fronts, then he's in trouble.

7:08On WhatsApp, there are groups calling it Netanyahu's comeback voters war. In other words, he is trying to find a way of giving the Israeli people something in an election that could be September or October, which reminds them why they need him as their prime minister. At the moment, they don't. He He hasn't achieved anything in Iran. He hasn't really made proper inroads into Hezbollah in Lebanon, despite the fact that they have targeted three and a half thousand places and killed God knows how many civilians in the process. He hasn't got anything to offer them. And Hamas still controls Gaza. And I think inside Likud, there are voices saying anonymously, we should say to reporters, without another round of the war with Iran, we will lose the elections.

8:00They're on a knife edge at the moment. There is some sort of strategic alliance between two of the opposition parties, which could make it harder for him to win. At the moment, they're looking like they could be September. If they get pushed back into October, because he doesn't feel, you know, he's achieved enough on this war with Iran, then it's even more complicated because October the 7th obviously is the commemoration, the three-year commemoration of the attacks by Hamas. And that is not a good look for Netanyahu because it is seen as a massive security breach on his watch. So he is in an absolute electoral fix.

8:39And if you're trying to work out what is happening in the skies above Iran or above Tel Aviv, that tells you some of the story, I think, now, which is it all comes back, as it always seems to, to one man, one autocrat's absolute necessity to stay in power. to avoid prison. And let's consider the other autocrat in the White House. And, you know, you just have to replay again. I'm sorry. All the things that Donald Trump said that propelled him to power, his disillusionment with what had happened with the war in Afghanistan and the war in Iraq and the forever wars and the commitment of American troops overseas that seemed to go on without end and body bags being flown back to America.

9:22And what was this all about? And it's to focus on America itself and to be America first and to close it, you know, just to draw up, pull up the drawbridge and live within America. That is what he told the American people. That was his big selling point. And hey, presto, he now finds himself having committed to this war and cannot see a way out of it. He cannot see the exit. He wants Iran to sign a deal which will mean that the Strait of Hormuz is reopened, that they hand over all their nuclear material. Why is Iran going to do it? I mean, Iran doesn't feel. Yes, sure. It's under pressure economically.

9:59Yes, sure. It you know, the Iranian economy and unemployment levels are high. But the Iranian regime is about self-preservation. Doesn't give much of a shit about what the Iranian people are going through. It's a dreadful regime and survival is everything. And at the moment, you would have to say it is surviving and it is costing Donald Trump. And as you say, you use the word impotent at the top of the show. He seems utterly powerless or in a position where the limits of American power have been reached. And the idea that it can just tell a nation what to do and they will just salute politely and say, yes, sir, is not happening now.

10:36Yeah. And I think the other thing is, I mean, Iran is a god-awful regime, right? We don't need to overstate just what happened in January of this year. It's dreadful to its own citizens. But it just so happens that the enemies it's picked on here, Trump and Netanyahu, are probably two of the most despised leaders in the world right now. And so there aren't a lot of people sort of pushing back, saying, oh, we must come to the defence of Israel. We must come to the defence of America. I mean, traditionally, they came to the defence of each other and that hasn't been enough. But you don't really see the rest of the world now saying this is shocking what Iran is doing.

11:13You say, well, I don't like them, but, you know, frankly, I'll leave all of them to it. You know, and you don't need to just talk about Iraq, a recent example, Afghanistan, a recent example. you can go back further and Donald Trump did when he gave an interview to meet the press with Kristen Welker at the weekend. How long are you willing to give Iran to make a deal? How much longer? You've been talking for quite some time. Well you really haven't. Again you were in Vietnam for 19 years. You were in Iraq for many years. You were in Korea for many many years. You were in all the I won't even talk about World War II because that was the big one.

11:53And we don't want to ever have that. But you were in all these different wars for many years with thousands and thousands of people killed. We've had 13 people killed, which I hate. We've had 13 people killed. And that includes two wars. That's Venezuela and that's Iran. But do you have a cutoff point in your head? I'm talking about speed, Kristen. You were in Vietnam for 19 years and you tell me about three months. And in three months, I've demolished the Navy, the Air Force, anti-aircraft. They have no radar. They have no nothing. I demolished their leaders. Their leaders are gone. Look, on the one hand, he's making a very clear point there, which is 100 days of Epic Fury is not 19 years.

12:40On the other hand, what an idiot. He is the one that raises the prospect of the Vietnam War. He literally puts that in the front of everyone's mind. And frankly, when he used that phrase forever wars, which people are now throwing back at him, which he now denies ever saying, that's exactly what people were saying. Right. You didn't see how long this was going to go on. and if somebody had said to Donald Trump you'll still be fighting this war in July back in February I don't think he would have liked that if somebody said you won't find a way out from this and your economy will be absolutely hamstrung three you know 100 days on three and a half months after you started the whole thing I'm not sure that would have been something that had gone well it was not Venezuela and that's the curious thing right he raises the prospect of both Vietnam which he says it isn't but has now put in people's heads and Venezuela which he did overnight and which it clearly wasn't either because people have been killed and the troops are still there and they are none the wiser in terms of getting out of it.

13:40What's so interesting in listening to that clip is clearly Donald Trump thinks, I should have won by now. I've destroyed their navy. I've destroyed their radar stations. I've destroyed their anti-aircraft batteries. Why haven't I won? And he hasn't. The fact of the matter is that, you know, Iran had its missiles in bunkers squirreled away, its launchers in missiles squirreled away. It has still got command and control. And yeah, it's true. Iran hasn't got a navy, but it doesn't need much of a navy to keep the Strait of Hormuz blocked. It doesn't need much of an air force to be able to fire ballistic missiles at Israel.

14:18And I think that there's something else there as well, that Donald Trump, you know, he can't compute that he hasn't won this war. And of course, yeah it's true that compared to Vietnam or Iraq or Afghanistan you haven't seen loads of body bags being flown back to America of young American servicemen and women killed on the front line. That is absolutely true but America is nevertheless feeling it economically and the other part of Donald Trump's promise to the United States of America was I was going to bring down prices, I was going to make this country affordable after Joe Biden. And what has happened?

14:55This war has sent prices spiralling. Yeah, I mean, the irony of all this is that Donald Trump went into this to destroy Iran's nuclear capability, their nuclear enrichment programme. And what he's clearly given them is a much better alternative to a nuclear weapon. This is their nuclear weapon. This is their economic nuclear weapon. And it just so happens that as he came in looking for one, they've invented a completely different one, which costs a fraction of the price, which has all the power and none of the relatable deaths. And they're just using it against him. We spoke a moment ago about Donald Trump saying, I call the shots.

15:42Well, he said that to the FT's Edloose and we'll be speaking to him in just a moment.

15:54From a range of trusted voices and award-winning journalists. Good morning, I'm Nick Ferrari. It's time to get to your calls. Find out the latest news and hear every side of the story. He was actually treated in a way that meant an accusation of a racial slur was treated more seriously than an act of murder. They wanted riots and they got riots, It's aided and abetted by people who really should know better. But the next dimension of this tragedy could be even more troubling. Listen on our free Global Player app or the LBC app. LBC, leading Britain's conversation.

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17:08Well joining us now is Ed Luce, the associate editor at the Financial Times based in the US. And Ed, you are one of the, what, lucky few that seems to have a direct line to President Trump as and when you want it. You were speaking to him at the weekend. How does that call happen?

17:29Edward Luce:Well, it's quite simple. I just pick up the phone and dial it, and sometimes he answers, and sometimes he doesn't. Usually he answers. It is surreal. The first time he answered, I wasn't expecting him to. It was a Sunday afternoon, and I was sitting there in my boxer shorts, and the president answered, and I wondered, should I stand up? But it carried on into this even more surreal telephone call. He a couple of times hung up on me because he had read a column I'd recently written, which wasn't terribly complimentary about how he's managing Operation Epic Fury. But he seems to have got got over that hump and picks up.

18:16Edward Luce:And the optimal time I have discovered is Sunday afternoon when he's padding around Mar-a-Lago, worried, I think, about the markets opening the next morning. and indeed that evening in Asia Pacific time. And therefore, I imagine the financial time sort of seems a more logical choice if he wants to calm the markets. And tell us how long you get with him. I mean, can you ask as many questions as you want? Can you interrupt him if he's in full flow? Or do you just kind of wait for him to talk and jot it all down? I'm relatively polite. I mean, the longest call I've had was 15 minutes. um there's average of being sort of seven or eight minutes um uh the most recent one was only a couple of minutes but he the 15 minute one he was getting quite repetitive so i found a way of ending the call and saying i know you're very busy um and i i would hate to sort of you know eat up your time so i'll allow you to carry on with your day and that's how it ended it's the whole thing is extraordinary.

19:24And, you know, I mean, so he'd read your columns before or after you'd had a conversation, because I wonder whether you get sucked into a sort of madness where if he speaks to you, you've got to parrot what he wants in a way that he wants, which is absolutely evidently not the case with you, Ed.

19:44Edward Luce:It isn't. I mean, I've had to sort of polish off slightly atrophied skills, reporting skills, because I've been a columnist for a while. I mean, I was a reporter for 20 years. And so these conversations, if there is something newsworthy in them, I will write up as a news report for the Financial Times and make sure that it has no impact on what I write in my columns, which I try to make analytically as clear and as non-euphemistic as I can. And he did happen to well, he asked me to send the links to text him the links. So there is a bit of texting dimension to this, I should I should mention to my recent columns.

20:30Edward Luce:And then he sort of I won't say went ballistic, particularly given, you know, that the conversation is about the Middle East, but he he was not happy, let's put it that way with and called back to say how wrong i was and that he was winning like never before etc so so you sent him a pdf or whatever of the column and then he comes back and says that's a crock of shit essentially essentially yes i mean he wasn't um abusive in the way that he is to some journalists um usually in public i mean i think he is more abusive in public in a performative way um than he is in private i know some of the journalists, particularly female journalists, who he's exceptionally rude and demeaning about in public.

21:17Edward Luce:When they talk to him on the phone, he's, you know, all charm and courtesy. So he's never sort of spoken to me in the way that he's spoken, say, to Caitlin Collins of CNN, or indeed to Kirsten Welker of NBC News, who he walked out of, he actually stormed out of that interview on Sunday, a few hours before I'd spoken to him. Ed, just to the content of the call and indeed to what is actually going on inside his head and outside. I mean, does he strike you now as an impotent man? He strikes me as a prisoner of other people's decisions. He has started the war, but he didn't know how he was going to finish it.

22:01Edward Luce:And so in classic sort of textbook style and in a way that he was warned repeatedly by the experts that he, you know, so disdains. He lost control of this war the moment he started it, particularly since he didn't have a clear idea in his head of how he would end it. And now he is prone. So I called him yesterday, about two, three hours after Iran had launched this salvo ballistic missiles in Israel. And I think it was about half an hour after he had called Netanyahu and asked Netanyahu not to retaliate. And he said to me, I said, are you confident that Netanyahu will follow your instructions to, you know, keep the prize in sight, namely a deal with Iran?

22:54Edward Luce:And he said, yes, I call the shots. I call all the shots. He doesn't call any shots. And then I guess about an hour after I spoke to him, Israel launched these attacks on Iran. I mean, I should add that the Israeli attacks were not sort of lethal regime decapitation-style attacks. So it is conceivable that on his call with Netanyahu, Netanyahu said, look, I have to do something. And Trump said, OK, make it a kabuki retaliation, not a real substantive one. So can I just follow on? Do you think Netanyahu is also impotent in a way? Or do you think he is able to do what he wants with Iran? I think Netanyahu is in a real vice also of his own creation, which is that he's campaigning for re-election in the Israeli general elections, not that far off.

23:52Edward Luce:It's in September. And as you know, each general election is do or die for Netanyahu. It's not the difference between governing and not governing. It's the difference potentially between freedom and jail. And he's governing, he's campaigning on the basis that he's the guy who once and for all ended the Iran threat, A, and B, that there is no daylight between him and the American president. Both of those cases look like they're in tatters. And it's very hard for us sitting here, day 101, in fact, of epic fury, a war in which Netanyahu was absolutely critical in persuading Trump to embark upon and apparently very influential in persuading Trump.

24:45Edward Luce:it would be over within a few days and they would be hailed as the heroes who, 47 years after the Iranian revolution, finally put an end to that regime. It's very hard on day 101 to see how either Netanyahu or Trump get out of this. You gave a very nuanced answer to Emily about, you know, how Netanyahu might have just given a pinprick kind of response to the Iranian missiles and that Trump would have blessed it. isn't there a real danger for Donald Trump that he gives an interview to you and says look Israel does exactly what I say I'm in charge they do as I ask and then they don't that that is what makes Donald Trump look slightly ridiculous in the end that he keeps saying things that are contradicted by events we're very close to a ceasefire and then nothing happens at all yeah I mean you go back to Mark Twain saying it don't make it so but you know Trump has 50 60 years of a business and political career in which saying things in which bluster say you're negotiating with banks to restructure your casino debt or you're dealing with you know non-union workers and a New York property development site or you're you've got Trump University and you've got a bunch of people suing you that bluster has served him in his business career for many decades and it's just the sort of inherent to his dna to his way of operating um and that therefore if you repeat something emphatically um people are gonna you know the deutsche bank you know restructuring team are gonna are gonna um climb down iran is not the deutsche bank restructuring team and neither is Netanyahu.

26:38Edward Luce:He's dealing with very different players here. But I think he's he's really set in old habits. And so, yes, John, for sure, this makes him look ridiculous and it makes him look impotent and it and it undermines his goal, which is to get around to agree to a deal that it believes that it would believe Trump could enforce and uphold. And with every sort of Israeli action that Trump says is not going to happen, and then it does happen, Iran thinks, well, what's the point in doing a deal with you? You're not going to be able to uphold it. There was a well-publicized rant between Trump and Netanyahu over the phone where he said, nobody likes Israel, nobody trusts you.

27:24I mean, presumably he wanted that to come out, right? That would have been leaked because what? He thinks it makes him look strong? I mean, do we know what the repercussions were of that, if any, at all?

27:38Edward Luce:So that, yeah, that was leaked, you know, to Barack Ravid of Axios last week. And Trump essentially confirmed it. And it involved, I don't know what, I know you have a family show and newsagents is a very respectful platform. but it did involve, you know, some swear words, which reminded me of what Bill Clinton said in 1996 about Israel when Netanyahu was, you know, doing very similar things. He said, who's the effing superpower here? And, well, the answer when it came to U.S.-Israeli relations is at best ambiguous. So what Trump leaked about him saying, like, everybody hates you, you've isolated yourself, you're crazy, which is what he said in that call to Netanyahu.

28:32Edward Luce:I imagine he thinks leaking it makes him look strong. And do you think that's partly sort of playing to where the Republican Party or elements of the Republican Party are moving towards now, which is actually the sort of days of Israel, America, you know, not a cigarette paper between them are gone, even for the right? They're gone even for the right. I mean, the opinion polls are really quite stunning. Until a year or two ago, more than 60 percent, usually more than 70 percent of Americans would say that Israel is a close ally and a close friend. That's dropped to below 40 percent in a very short period of time.