Trump’s Relentless, ‘Utterly Incoherent’ Battles

0:01Michelle Cottle:In theory, I knew that this kind of thing can happen in any family. Upstanding citizens are always turning out to be secret criminals, and I wouldn't even call my cousin Alan an upstanding citizen.

0:12David French:But it's one thing to know and another thing to understand. Alan, murder me.

0:18Michelle Cottle:What the hell was Alan thinking? From Serial Productions and The New York Times, I'm M. Gessen, and this is The Idiot. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

0:31David French:This is The Opinions, a show that brings you a mix of voices from New York Times opinion. You've heard the news. Here's what to make of it.

0:49David French:I'm Michelle Cottle. I cover national politics for New York Times opinion. And this week, I am back with my fellow Southerners and political parsers, columnists David French and Jamel Bowie. Guys, how's it going? Hey, Michelle. Doing all right. Okay, that's what I like to hear, Jamel. We are now in month two of President Trump's war in Iran. And so this week, we're going to take a look at his speech to the American people on the conflict and what direction things seem to be going. And then, turning back to the home front, I want us to talk about the court battles over birthright citizenship and the judicial branches' attempts at dealing with this president.

1:32David French:So, lots to cover. Let's get to it. As always, we are recording Thursday morning. Who the heck knows where this is going to be by the time you hear us. But Trump arranged a primetime opportunity to reach out to the American people and convince us of the necessity and value of the war in Iran. After watching the speech Wednesday, how successful would you say he was? Jamel, you go first.

2:02Jamelle Bouie:You know, I would say not successful at all. I would say pretty low on the success reaching. I don't—that's a terrible sentence.

2:13David French:But fits, right? With the topic. I'm sorry. It is.

2:16Jamelle Bouie:It's very evocative. Yeah. I did, you know, I watched The Address. And I'll say the first thing I was struck by is how low energy he sounded the entire time. Thank you.

2:27David French:It's like he was sedated.

2:28Jamelle Bouie:Yeah. Almost like struggling to get through the words. He obviously made lots of claims that were just not true. sort of his attempt to make the case that there is an imminent threat from Iran was especially unpersuasive. But the big thing is that the stated objective, such as they were when this began, was to stop the Iranian nuclear program and do a kind of Venezuela-style regime change. Neither of those things have happened, right? Those objectives have not been accomplished. And worse, Iran may walk away with this with control, like undisputed control over the Straits of Hormuz, which is just a major strategic defeat for the United States.

3:14Jamelle Bouie:And nothing the president said got around those facts. It was all just an attempt to make those things sound like they represent a win, right? Oh, well, the rest of the world, Europe, can take care of the Straits. No, no, dude. That's a problem you created. Ending the conflict with the Straits firmly in the control of Iran is an outright defeat for the U.S. And I was just struck by how this was, like, it felt like he was protesting too much, you know? Yeah.

3:49Michelle Cottle:David, what about you? You know, I felt like it was just a live reading of his Truth Social posts. I mean, there was nothing there other than what we've seen in various screeds on Truth Social for weeks. And including this is about to wrap up, including we're winning, including, well, the strait is going to open. And there was nothing concrete. Maybe it's about to wrap up. Maybe it's not. It's just utterly incoherent, which is what this entire effort has been from the beginning. And one way to sort of think through, okay, who is quote unquote winning this war is to think at the end of it, which side is going to say, we don't want to do that again.

4:33Michelle Cottle:That's one of the, that's sort of how you think through deterrence. And I will guarantee you this, if this conflict ends with Iran in control of the Strait of Hormuz, and with Iran knowing that at any given time, it can achieve geostrategic objectives that it wants by closing the Strait of Hormuz, and that there is not the will to open the Strait of Hormuz, then I would say that Iran has probably emerged from this conflict with a greater level of deterrence than the United States has. in part because even though we are absolutely demolishing all of the targets that we're trying to hit, we are seriously degrading Iran's military capacity, no question about it.

5:19Michelle Cottle:We're also dealing with a regime that really truly doesn't care about its losses in the same way that, say, a Western military does, in the same way that we would. I mean, this is a regime that in the Iran-Iraq war sent teenagers running across minefields to clear the minefields. They do not care about the suffering of their people if they can achieve certain effects. And so if they can, at the end of this conflict, achieve the effect of essentially dividing America from its allies, that's happening. If they can achieve the effect of controlling the Strait of Hormuz, that's happening. if they can achieve an even worse, even worse, guys, a sort of tolling effect where in exchange for vast sums of money, they will let some people through and not others, then we may have just created a system that helps enrich this regime, like literally enrich it so that even if their factories are demolished, if their missile stocks are depleted, they can go buy more missiles.

6:25Michelle Cottle:They can go use the windfall from controlling the Strait of Hormuz to buy more weapons and to reconstitute the force. And I hate to keep harping on this, but it just really matters. The original sin here of not articulating a coherent plan, not going to Congress, not rallying the American people, democracies who go into war without public support do not fight those wars well, effectively, et cetera. And that's what he did is he just yanked all of us in. And it is costing us every day.

7:00David French:Well, the one thing that struck me, I think most of all, as I watched this, besides the fact, as Jamel pointed out, he looked like he was about to doze off, was this was just a series of distractions so that he could get people to look at the things that he wanted them to think were fantastic while skipping some of the bigger points. So he came back again and again to the destruction, the degrading of Iran's military capabilities. He started off by going through the Venezuela escapade as though that has any bearing on this situation and what we're looking at now. Now, it's clear that his strategy with the speech was, I'm just going to throw all these facts at you that I want you to think mean we've achieved our goal.

7:52David French:Mission accomplished, everybody. I think we all enjoy a good mission accomplished speech. Without addressing things like, what is victory? You know, Iran still has its nuclear stockpiles. It was not reassuring at all for me. And so I wanted you, Jamal, to talk about how can he claim victory if he is indeed planning to wind this down while the regime is still intact and unlikely to stop being a threat? What is Trump going to claim as a real victory that is going to look remotely like what's actually happening in the real world?

8:33Jamelle Bouie:Oh, I have no idea. I mean, I can't speculate about this. I have no idea what the president will claim as a real victory. Because it gets to, I think, one of the fundamental issues, not just with this war, but with this administration. And it's somewhat connected to David's point about not attempting to get authorization or have a debate. And that is, both David and I have been using this term strategic. I'm not sure that anyone in the White House understands what strategic thinking is. I think that all of their thinking happens exclusively at the level of tactics. So exclusively at the level of what is the specific thing we can do to an opponent to try to attain a very narrow objective.

9:24Jamelle Bouie:and not so much what are our broad goals that will establish a new status quo going forward. And so you fight wars to attain specific strategic goals. And if you do not attain those goals, then it does not matter how much stuff you blew up, how many battles you won, how much valor you displayed. None of that matters. You can still lose. And I do not think that they understand that in the least, or at least they are not expressing any understanding of that publicly. When I watch Hegseth in particular, I don't think he understands that. Here's the problem. Because of this understanding that blowing stuff up and killing people is the objective of war, not the things you have to do to attain your larger strategic goal, it seems to me that whatever victory they're going to declare, it's going to be after just blowing stuff up.

10:25Jamelle Bouie:They might look for some even more dramatic way to blow stuff up. And then they can say, oh, well, we've done so much destruction that we can say that the war is over. And that to me is the only conceivable exit ramp for them, given their own mindset. And I'll conclude this by just noting the reason I say this doesn't just extend to the war is because you see this way of thinking all over their actions with regard to domestic politics. That's especially true with the use of ICE and customs and border protection. They seem to think that if you can just sort of hit people hard enough that they'll stop.

10:56Jamelle Bouie:And they don't seem to get that A, the people you're hitting have their own designs, their own things you're trying to accomplish. But B, you have to have some larger goals, some larger aim beyond just hitting really hard. And if you don't have that, then someone who can take a punch will just keep taking the punch.

11:17David French:All right, I want to come back to this issue of agency. But David, what do you want to jump in

11:21Michelle Cottle:with? I just really want to underscore what Jamel said, because I don't think people appreciate how much it is core to the ethos and worldview of MAGA that on problem after problem after problem that we faced as Americans, the actual underlying mistake of previous administrations as we were just never tough enough, that we just didn't fight the war with the gloves off enough, or we haven't been punitive enough, or we haven't tried to bully people enough. And so you see this again and again, and there's this phrase you see on MAGA where it says, you can just do things. And what they mean by that is you can just exercise power and you can change the world.

12:05Michelle Cottle:And one of the reasons why they look at the Venezuela situation, they keep going back to that is that's probably their most successful version of it is that Venezuelan intervention. But you go again and again, and you see the same pattern. It's just we have to pummel people harder. And that works with Republican members of Congress, for example, but it doesn't tend to work with other sovereign nations. Other sovereign nations don't like to be pummeled. And so what they'll do is they'll find a way to stop or prevent the pummeling, and it's not always the way you want. So, for example, if you're trying to torment Canada, well, you can't go crying if Canada says, well, you know, we're going to forge a closer economic relationship with China and Europe than the U.S.

12:53Michelle Cottle:because we have self-preservation interests. No, they keep thinking if we pummel, then we'll achieve the results that we want, when sometimes pummeling has the exact opposite effect. what it typically does is alienate people at scale. It's not as if nobody thought of, well, why not use force? I mean, that's the oldest story in the book. I mean, that's Putin to the core. Again, sometimes that is appropriate, sometimes. But as a universal way of dealing with the world, it is extraordinarily dangerous and counterproductive.

13:29David French:Well, Jamel, you actually wrote a column last week that was focused on Trump's complete inability to recognize that other people have agency and, if you're applying force, are sometimes likely to push back against moves that they oppose. And, you know, not just with the war, but, you know, with Doge slashing at the federal government, the administration's treatment of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the president's crazy gerrymandering scheme, ICE agents rampaging through American cities. What opportunity does this blind spot with this president provide opponents, do you think?

14:09Jamelle Bouie:If you are opposed to the administration, you can just be aggressive towards them because they just don't expect it, right? The DHS shutdown, to me, is a perfect example of this. It's very clear that both the White House and their Republican allies in Congress were like, well, enough chaos at airports will just force Democrats to bend. And they didn't, which is just sort of a victory for the Democratic strategy here. The White House in particular didn't expect this and didn't know how to respond when Democrats were like, no, we're not going to back down. And that inability to deal with what to me are very obvious moves to make if you are on the other side, that's an opportunity.

14:48Jamelle Bouie:Just like make these moves because you have a pretty decent chance of encountering an opponent that has not thought one lick about what you might do just off your own accord. Because they don't imagine that you can do anything of your own accord. It's very strange. I've never really seen anything like it in American politics. Just an administration, a set of people who have no real ability to just conceptualize what their political opponents or their foreign enemies might want to do of their own accord. It's like they really do not believe that other people have independent action. All action is simply a reaction to them.

15:30Jamelle Bouie:and as per David this might just be a function of the fact that everyone's there so used to sort of like stunting on Republicans that like Mike Johnson doesn't seem like he does anything independently of the president so yeah sure I get it if that's if that's how you your mental model for everyone um but it's it's I don't know I if I sound sort of baffled because it's because I am because as much as I can sort of like describe this analytically I cannot get in the headspace of someone who just like does not, or a group of people who do not appear to think that other people actually exist.

16:03Michelle Cottle:I can't emphasize enough how much they think of the everyone else that came before them as a collection of idiots. Like that, you know, when J.D. Vance basically says, well, those were stupid presidents or those were dumb presidents or whatever he said talking about previous interventions, there really is a sense in MAGA that everyone who came before is just corrupt, woke, too empathetic, idiotic, etc. And they are the ones who've just figured out the world. And that arrogance is overwhelming in this MAGA mindset. Just overwhelming. Everyone else, complete idiots. We finally are the adults in charge.

16:45David French:Yeah, because when I look at this administration, I think telegraphing total competence. Yeah, right. Okay, well, what happens next? Before we move on from this, either of you guys want to venture a thought. I'm not asking you to predict the future, but Trump is a man of patterns. Do you have a sense of where this playbook, as limited as it is, might take us next?

17:09Jamelle Bouie:My hunch is that he'll just, at some point, some arbitrary point, just say, yeah, we won and end it there.

17:16David French:He'll get that mission accomplished banner back out?

17:18Jamelle Bouie:Right. And if everything isn't complete and abject chaos, I think Trump's view is, well, it's not my problem anymore.

17:25David French:Europe can handle it. David?

17:28Michelle Cottle:Yeah, it's so hard to know because I feel like two things are happening at once here. One is that there is an actual strategy to some extent that is being pursued by the military. I mean, I think the military absolutely has a series of tactical objectives that it is achieving regarding degrading the missile systems, degrading the Iranian forces. No question that these various tactical missions are being accomplished. But I can't help but wonder if what we've got are sort of two tracks at once here. There's a sort of military track that they're pursuing. And then publicly, they're pursuing a market manipulation track.

18:06Michelle Cottle:Because if you notice again and again, he will tease the end of the war. He will tease it. And you'll see the markets kind of rally. And so I feel like the one force that we know operates as a check on Trump is the Dow. He really likes his stock market numbers. Yes. When the Dow starts to plunge, Trump reacts. And so we've seen this again and again. And he engages in this sort of very blatant market manipulation. And that's one thing that makes it so hard to discern what he's actually trying to accomplish. When is he doing his market manipulation versus when is he actually talking about what American goals or objectives are?

18:45Michelle Cottle:I don't know, but I tend to agree with Jamel that essentially what'll happen is that he will declare victory at a point in the unspecified future and then essentially leave the rest of the world to work out how to cross the Strait of Hormuz. In other words, you know, if you want to transmit oil and gas now, you're going to have to pay Iran or you're going to have to work out your own deal with Iran. And so you're going to essentially leave Iran and control the strait or at least enough ability to influence the strait that people feel like they got to deal with Iran to get through safely. And in that circumstance, it's very unclear to me if we've actually accomplished a strategic objective or if in a weird and perverse way, we've strengthened the Iranian regime at least over the short to medium term.

19:33Michelle Cottle:But I'm with Jamel. I think we'll see in the absence of a military miracle, I see a declaration of victory and a lot of chaos unwinding this war.