Trump’s Big Iran Announcement Raises More Questions Than Answers (ft. Ian Bremmer)

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But they have a lot more geopolitical leverage coming out of this than what anyone would have considered acceptable before you went into the war. So America's war goals have not been close to being reached. I see this for Trump as an enormous failure of policy. Welcome to Region Moderate, I'm Skat Galway. And I'm Jessica Tarla. So Jess, we're headed back to the 92nd Streetwide this September and tickets are on sale now. We'll be celebrating the release of Jess's new book and we'll be talking about New York politics in the future of the country. Look how cute, look how cute my book is. It looks very nice. Thank you. That's a good picture. I'll never look this good again. So let's remember it. Oh, I found it as I've aged. I've gotten much more attractive. You don't need to worry about that at all. Oh, is that how that works for the men? I would say it's equally bad for men and women, but it's pretty bad for everybody. Someone said to me, like, just don't look down. Like, if you could live the next 50 years just looking straight ahead, everything's going to be great. Just don't find a mirror. Yeah, I'm kind of, I'm at that stage. So when you get to a point where you get so fucking ugly to start leaning into it, you're just like, I'm just giving up. I'm just, I'm just going to give up. Anyways, back to the 92nd Streetwide. This is the best promo I could have asked for. Come out and see us talk about avoiding mirrors and sagging body parts and also how to fight with data and win all your arguments. Yeah. Yeah, come see Pete Juss and come see Scott as he's just given up. So these events are fun. You can grab your ticket now at 92ny.org or use the link in the show notes. And we hope to see you there. Speaking of a New York moment, the New York Knicks have finally done it. Won the NBA championship after a 53-year draw. Jess, what is, New York feels like, or it appears to be electric right now. Give us, give us some on the ground reporting. It's crazy vibes. I was actually in Maine over the weekend watching the Knicks game with a huge Knicks fan. Shout out Michael and Kathy who had us for a wonderful weekend. But producer Eric was in New York and he has incredible footage from Times Square. I've been consuming as much as I possibly can. But the community vibes, the, the togetherness of everything, like we're all experiencing something together. The vibes are all positive. People don't even hate Jimmy Dolan as much as they used to. He obviously did a good thing, you know, brought in Mike Brown said you have a year to win a championship. And Mike Brown was like, sure thing. I could do that for you. And I'm pretty sure you know this, but maybe not. So Jaylen Brunson took a $113 million pay cut to be able to build this team. So that he could put together the pieces and bring his friends from Villanova to New York. And just complete vindication, you know, to see someone who took that kind of pay cut to make sure he could put together the kind of team he thought could win a championship is really important. I also, my like Jewish timeline is meeting my sports timeline and everyone is obsessed with the fact that Jaylen Brunson's wife is Jewish. And my favorite was there was some wedding in Scarsdale on Saturday night and everyone was like, is that the guy from the synagogue? So Jaylen Brunson, a Jewish king by extension. It was great. Let's bring this back to me. So I left New York last Saturday morning because I wanted to watch the World Cup with my sons. And I was initially going to go to not one, but two of the next games and it was a mistake, Jess. My, you know, my, my boys are fine, whatever. And then Japan versus Netherlands was pretty good last night. I'll say that. The US game was exciting though, wasn't it? It is exciting for the US. The US looked amazing in the game. I'm most excited about hands down is Scotland. Anyways, but in New York, it just looks from an outsider's viewpoint. It literally looks electric right now. It looks as if people are having such a great time. I also think it caps off. I don't want to call it a Renaissance or renewal or rejuvenation, but I spent a lot of time in Manhattan. And crime is at historic lows. Banker bonuses are historic highs. There's lines to get into restaurants and the Birkenstock store. That's my favorite example. It has a line to get in. And if that's decline, I don't know what prosperity looks like. Tourism is up in New York versus being down in the rest of the US. It just feels, I mean, my sense of it, and you never know it at the time, but my sense is that in 20 years, we're going to look back on this era and it'll be identified by the next championship as a golden age, right? You never... I thought San Francisco in the 90s was a golden age. I would say New York and the OZ was a golden age. London kind of pre-Brexit was probably a golden age. I'm betting that we will look back and say this was a golden age for New York. I think that's completely correct. Obviously, there's going to be a huge boom as well of naming babies after these players. That's some of my favorite content. All the OGs and the Jailons that are to come at a moment where income inequality is the biggest problem facing the country. Hands down in New York is such a microcosm of that, right? Like people paying $500,000 for these tickets. When you looked at the scenes on the street and everyone pouring out of the garden and being together, it was the poorest and the richest New Yorkers feeling the same joy. That made me really proud and happy to be a New Yorker, which I am on most days. But that it meant the same thing or perhaps even more maybe for a cabbie, right? Who saved up everything to get that medallion. And the guy who was sitting front row, I also love our traveling circus. I think it was 37% of the seats in San Antonio were taken by Tri-State areaers. I have absolutely no interest in sports or the next outside of World Cup, but you couldn't help but get caught up in the fever. All right, let's get into the big story today. The three-day G7 summit kicked off today in France with Trump arriving after announcing that the U.S. and Iran had reached a ceasefire agreement. Trump said the deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran is now complete, claiming it would reopen the Strait of Hormuz and begin a 60-day negotiation period. But Iran has not officially confirmed the agreement and some of the biggest issues, including Iran's nuclear program, sanctions relief, and the broader regional conflict involving Hezbollah, remain unresolved. To help us understand what happens next, we're joined by friend of the pod, Ian Bremmer. He's the founder and president of Eurasia Group and someone we turn to when the world suddenly gets more complicated. Ian, welcome back. Hey Scott, Jesse, good to see you. Good to see you. So Ian, assuming the ceasefire holds, actually, I won't even start before that. What do you make of this? Could this even legitimately be called a ceasefire? Well, first, you started with the G7, so I should at least just mention that right now, I think the thing that is worrying and bothering the European allies of the U.S. the most is actually the fact that the Americans just shut off this new AI model for anthropic and they can't compete with it and they think the Americans have a kill switch and they have no idea what to do. So, I mean, just, I understand we've been really, really focused on this Iran war, this enormously failed policy of Trump, very, very costly, unilateral, which is costing the European economies much more than it's costing the United States. And it's a big deal, but I want to make sure that we level set in terms of how they're thinking about it in the G7. We can get back to that later if you want. But now I want to go into the question as you directly framed it, which is can we call this a ceasefire? Sure, it's a ceasefire, even though we had a bunch of back and forth when the American helicopter was shot down just last week. That feels like a whole bunch of news cycles ago. And, you know, the Americans fired back and then there was one more round of tit for tat on both sides. This is an agreement. It is an agreement that has been electronically signed by the Americans and the Iranians. It includes the end of fighting in Lebanon, though the Israelis are not a signatory and Hezbollah is not a signatory, though obviously the Americans have a lot of influence, though not direct control over Israel and Iran has a lot of influence and a lot of direct control over Hezbollah. I would also mention that the contents of the MOU as of right now when the three of us are speaking have not yet been made public, which is very unusual. And I believe that that is the case because people around President Trump aren't super comfortable that the terms make Trump look really good. They're not very strong terms. They're terms that will help the Iranians more than the Americans. And that's also why, in my view, Senator Lindsey Graham recently came out and congratulated Vice President Vance for being a statesman on this amazing deal, because if it turns out it doesn't go so well, then it's Vance's problem. If it was a great deal and a strong deal and were downed really well for the Americans, I promise you Lindsey Graham would be saying, what a great deal for Trump who made this happen and for Jared Kushner for running point on it. That's not what he's saying. That stuck out to me too. And we actually have JD Vance on the five tomorrow. So I will definitely be asking him about his new role as the leader of the free world, I guess, if things go badly. But I've been watching, you know, and in some ways I think this is just terrible timing for JD Vance that he's on book tour because he has to be doing media constantly. And he was on CBS and CNBC this morning. And what really stuck out to me is how much he's punting on everything. They asked him about the $300 billion reconstruction fund. He says, oh, you know, we're going to be talking about that later as long as they honor that they're part of the obligation. Same thing on the Strait of Hormuz. Same thing on Israel going along with this. He said, you know, well, we expect them to and we've seen BV do what BV wants a number of times during this conflict. So I guess could you comp, at least from what we've seen so far leaked out from this, where this MOU stacks up with the JCPOA? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I thought that's where you were going. Okay. So first point is the most important thing right now for almost everyone, not for the Iranian people, but for almost everyone else, the most important thing is getting the Strait open. And it shouldn't be the most important thing because the Strait was open before the war started. But the reality is this is costing the world a lot of money. And if it continues to be closed, oil inventories are going to become dangerously low and you could tip the world into a global recession. So we need the Strait open. And to the extent that this deal will reopen the Strait, and I think it will, that is a very big deal. And we should all be breathing a sigh of relief that this I would have wished it could have happened a month ago, two months ago. But I'm much happier at happening now than in another month or two months. So that is the headline. That's why oil prices are going down today. That's why the markets are going up. Okay. Now, but you didn't ask about that. I feel like I'm weaving a little. You're just making us all smarter and you're thinking about the stuff that we're not even asking. But the JCPOA is, of course, the right political question to ask because that's Trump all the way through. He's the guy that pulled out of that Obama deal. So how does it stack up? Well, first, one obvious thing is that the JCPOA was not a unilateral U.S. deal. It involved the Europeans. It also involved the Chinese and the Russians. So you had a lot of countries that had various degrees of influence and equities in their relationships with Iran that had a stake in ensuring that the deal actually held up, that the inspections actually went ahead, that the sanctions that remained on Iran remained on Iran, all of these things. So that's one point is that this new deal, it's only going to be the Americans. And if the Iranians feel like they have more leverage going forward, then breaking an agreement that's only with the United States is less consequential than breaking a deal that involves countries like Russia and China that Iran really does not want to antagonize for other reasons. That's one thing. Another thing is that the JCPOA was a pretty modest deal. It only involved the nuclear capabilities, uranium enrichment. It did not take all sanctions off Iran. It did not deal with their ballistic missile capabilities. It did not deal with their ability and willingness to provide proxy support for terrorist organizations like Hamas and like Hezbollah. This deal will be very similar in that regard. It won't deal with ballistic missiles. It won't deal with proxy support. And maybe it will have eventually a nuclear agreement that compares with the nuclear agreement that the Obama administration got done. And maybe it won't. I mean, the reality is that you've got the Iranians have 60 days to get that deal done. I doubt it's going to be done in 60 days. I think they're going to extend and pretend they're going to punt and they're not going to allow full inspections in. They're going to continue to water down because they know that Trump wants to move on to Cuba. They know that he doesn't want to restart the war. He's going to be pulling military capabilities away from the region. All of those things. Now, having said that, there's a big, big, big open question, which is let's even say that this eventually gets to JCPOA. But what about the pallets of cash? Because under Obama, the Iranians actually got access to a whole bunch of their own previously frozen assets. And Trump is saying, up and down, and the White House is saying they're getting no money. And the Iranians are saying, that's not true. We're not even going to reopen the straight unless you get us lots of cash. Now, we do not have the MOU publicly. And I do not expect that the MOU will say that the Iranians get money. But I know from talking to interlocutors in the Gulf that there have been negotiations with the Qataris and with the Emiratis. Didn't they already get 10 billion? I've talked about already unfreezing assets. Yes, yes, we have that. We have money that's apparently been unfrozen by the Emiratis already and money that will be unfrozen by the Qataris simply for free. Simply for reopening the straight. My understanding is that's a done deal. And my understanding from sources inside the administration, pretty high level, is that, hey, anything that the Qataris and the UAE agree to has nothing to do with us. That the timing is coincidental. There's nothing to see here. So again, this to me feels like an enormous failure compared to why Trump went into the war. What he is getting, there is no regime change. The Iranian people will continue to be brutalized. There is no movement on ballistic missiles where they showed by hitting Diego Garcia that they have ballistic missile capabilities that are far beyond what they promised they were not developing. And they're continuing to have influence over Hezbollah and the Houthis, for example, over the passageway in the Red Sea. So on all of those fronts, the Iranians to me, I wouldn't say that they've won the war because, I mean, you killed the Supreme Leader. You killed a lot of their military leaders. Their economy has been damaged massively. But they have a lot more geopolitical leverage coming out of this than what anyone would have considered acceptable before you went into the war. So America's war goals have not been close to being reached. You wouldn't even call it an incomplete. You'd say you haven't started your war goals. So I see this for Trump as an enormous failure of policy. Support for the show comes from Sam's.com. 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But this feels like Trump's gone from demanding unconditional surrender to a memo of understanding. It feels like he went in thinking he was going to buy a Ferrari and left with a Camry because he realized he has no credit. I guess, let me put forward a thesis. He declares victory and leaves and tries to pin this on vans or whatever. And then in 60 days, why would Iran not give up what is effectively perhaps more powerful than nuclear fissure material? And that is control or threatened control or perceived control of the Strait of Hormuz. I mean, what incentive did the Iranians have without Europeans enlisting and joining the Americans without some sort of pressure or leverage that doesn't exist, as far as I can tell? What is to stop the Iranians from going back to this weapon in 60 days after the Americans... The American public is going to have no appetite for going back in any... I think, in any fashion to Iran. So, I think you're right that the Iranians understand that they have a lot of capacity to continue to play hardball with the Americans and they're assigning this with very limited likelihood that the U.S. is prepared to re-engage militarily, at least not in a big way. Not in a big way. Because of the leverage they have that Iran has on the ground that they're prepared and capable of using. Now, let's keep in mind that in 60 days' time you will probably have the Strait pretty functional. More than 50% of the tanker traffic and boat traffic will be going through it. Demining should be near complete, if not complete. There will be a lot of European, Chinese, Indian ships involved in escorting. So, the Iranians would be upsetting a lot of countries if they were to try to disrupt the Strait again. And also Iran's ability, their pricing power over the Strait goes down over time. Because countries will find other ways, right? I mean, so for example, the Emiratis are now building as fast as they can a parallel pipeline to take 2 million more barrels a day out of the region bypassing the Strait. It'll be done in 2027. If you think about forward pricing, the closer that gets to being done the less the Iranians have the ability to use the lever. And again, once you've used the lever, you're already moving countries to take other steps. The Chinese are taking 5 million barrels less a day off the market right now. That is a lesson that the Chinese have learned with their massive reserves that they will continue to build, build, build when the Strait is reopened. Iran will have less leverage there. That's why prices now are only moved up to like 90, 95. They didn't go to 120, 130, 140. Why not? In part because countries were becoming more resilient. So I mean, you can only the first time you use the lever, you put the gun on the table, it has maximum impact. You keep doing it, then suddenly your pricing power has gone down. So I think that it is reasonably unlikely that the Iranians will actually start blowing up the Strait in maximal fashion again. But the question is how much upside did the Iranians have from actually playing ball on the nuclear front or on anything else on doing a peace deal with the Saudis on promising the Emiratis or the Qataris that they won't attack them going forward. This 300 billion reconstruction fund, which President Trump in principle is supporting is not being funded by the U.S. It will be funded by other countries, mostly in the region. President Trump and his organization and his family will have access, I believe, to those market deals, which matters to them and is part of how Trump was willing to elicit his support politically for it. But Iran is going to have to jump through some hoops in order to get this done. And going back to the fact that this is a unilateral U.S. deal, but there are multilateral negotiations with the Iranians. If you want to think about how the Iranians are going to negotiate going forward, you shouldn't just be thinking about what they're giving the Americans on the nuclear file. You should also be thinking what kind of guarantees they're giving for oil and cash rich Gulf monarchies to say essentially protection money for them. And that doesn't have to be a toll to go through this straight. That can be we won't attack you, but we want you to support this reconstruction fund. So there are lots of ways that Iran can continue to show leverage here with the straight open going forward. Yeah, I guess two things. One, how much do you think our domestic politics, you know, we're under six months to the midterms? The Iranians are very savvy. They are, you know, on everyone's algorithm, right? They know exactly what to say. They know what type of content to create, et cetera. So how much are they thinking about our domestic situation and how would you rate the odds that the Israelis do everything in their power to blow up this deal? Because, you know, I saw that Trump had another, you know, profanity laced conversation with Netanyahu over the weekend, or maybe it was on Friday. And to me, that seems like a big missing question, right? Or answer a piece of this puzzle. Agree. The second agree first, not so much. I don't think midterms matter much. I think they're basically priced in. I think Trump is losing the house. That's pretty clear. You can't really fix the affordability issue, even if gas prices come down. You've got other inflation across. You just had 4.2 in the last headline number, and that's going to continue to be a problem. Markets pricing in, rates going up, not down with Kevin Warsh running the Fed. So all of those things, you know, you kind of the cats out of the bag for November. I don't think the Iranians need to do much. I haven't seen them do much in that regard. I think their leverage comes more structurally from the things that we've already been talking about. Israel's a different story. And this is a disaster for Israel to allow this deal to go forward. And with the Americans saying you don't have the ability to hit back against Lebanon and Hezbollah specifically if they hit you. So first of all, the question is, will the Iranians over the next two months use their leverage over Hezbollah to hit Israel in the interest of blowing up the deal and less pressure extending the timeline, less pressure on them on the nuclear file? I could easily see that happen. And in response, sure, Israel would engage in lots of strikes in southern Lebanon, which I don't think would blow up the deal by itself. But would they hit Beirut? And if that happens, the potential for the deal to go away is real. Also, what might we imagine Israel going after Iran directly? And if they do that, what role would the Americans play? I don't think the Americans would be involved directly in that fighting, but I have a hard time seeing the Americans cutting off Israeli intelligence. Might they stop defending the Israelis in terms of sort of missile defense, air defense, all the rest, which is so important to limit Israeli civilian casualties? I don't know what Trump would do in that environment. So I think watching the BB piece of this specifically on Lebanon and how Hezbollah relates to Iran is extremely important. Ian, just while we have you, as bad as this deal is, I think it's overshadowed what I think is equally heartening. And that is a real victory for the West as I see it. And I always expect you to kind of temper my viewpoint is what's happening in Ukraine. It feels in just a matter of three or four months, the Ukrainians have gone from playing defense to offense. Am I overestimating how important and positive this is? I think it's a really big deal. And they're doing it without direct support from the U.S. No taxpayer money is being spent, though U.S. intelligence continues to be very important in helping the Ukraine targeting inside Russia. So it's not as if the U.S. has said we refuse to help you. Last April, President Trump kicked Zelensky out of the White House saying he didn't have any cards. It turns out Trump was wrong. And it's not about apologizing. It's about the fact that Ukraine has become something that Trump respects more than cards, which is a winner. They're taking more territory from the Russians, taking their own territory back, and they're hitting deeply inside Russia, threatening the Russian people themselves inside Moscow, inside St. Petersburg, during Putin's own sort of Davos, this spief of annual event that he has. And Iwan Musk has played a big role by shutting off Starlink to the Russians back in February, which really has meant that the Ukrainians now are the only game in town in their drone and unmanned autonomous vehicle weaponry systems. So, yeah, it feels to me like the Ukrainians are now winning. It doesn't mean that they're going to win, but they've been losing for a couple of years. They're now winning. And I think that's an enormous benefit for the West. I think that Europe, now that Viktor Orban is gone and was voted out by, with a constitutional majority for his former party mate, Peter Majar, and immediately the Hungarians stop fighting against Europe on supporting Ukraine and say that they're willing to allow the Ukrainians to join the EU. Full integration. So Ukraine has become, you know, actually a factor of strength for Europe and for NATO, as opposed to a vulnerability and a never-ending cesspool of aid requirements. That's a huge thing. And look, what we're seeing is to tie these things together. What we're seeing is that the Russians thought because they're bigger and better that they're necessarily going to win. Turns out that they have huge vulnerabilities to the Ukrainians. The Americans thought because they're bigger and better than Iran with a defunct economy and 90 million people in their population that they could destroy these guys forced into the Ben-Ni. They couldn't. And the Chinese, if they're thinking about Taiwan, might think, hey, this might not be such a great idea for us. We're kind of more vulnerable. I mean, asymmetric warfare and new technologies can hold a $110 trillion global economy to ransom in the Gulf and can bring the world's nuclear power of over 5,000 nuclear warheads, the Russians, bringing them to their knees. And that's a really big deal. Let's leave it there. Ian Bremmer is the founder and president of Eurasia Group and again, someone we always turn to when we're talking about world affairs. Ian, thanks for your time today. Great to see you, my friends. Support for this show comes from Deal. Let's be honest, most HR platforms are stitched together. That's why AI barely helps. Deal's different. It's a single AI native system for HR, IT and payroll built from the ground up. That's why AI and side deal can actually run real work onboarding, compliance, payroll, approvals, all under your rules, whether you're five people or 50,000. Deal scales with you. See it in action at deal.com slash audio. That's D-E-E-L dot com slash audio. Support for this show comes from Odoo. Running a business is hard enough, so why make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other? Introducing Odoo. It's the only business software you'll ever need. It's an all-in-one, fully integrated platform that makes your work easier. 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And last night the dream of holding a UFC event on White House property was realized. Let's get a taste of the event. The G7 summit is now open to all. The G7 summit is now open to all. The G7 summit is now open to all. End of the free. End of the free. Shout out to Trump for having the balls to put some shit like this on. And lastly, Michelle Obama is a man. Am I right America? It was an amazing experience. This was a one of one that will never happen again. You don't think there's a chance the president says that was good. Let's do it again next year. I can't afford it. There's no fucking way we can do this again. You thought that the spectacle was going to be something. It definitely was something. So I want your take first on what you thought about it. Well, I mean, the Michelle Obama is a man just ruins everything. I think it had to be in the supercut because when people are talking about it today, it features prominently. It's just such trash. I just don't think real men say that about real women. I mean, I thought to myself, memo to self, who is this fucking idiot and make sure that no one I ever work with or invest in ever gets near this idiot. And you're right, it did like, I think cast a pall over that event. I would argue so, and again, I never miss an opportunity to sound important. I was invited. I didn't go. I don't like, I think USC is a well run sport. I think it's a phenomena and it creates economic growth. I don't like seeing young men beat the shit out of each other. I just don't like it. It upsets me. I think a lot of these guys are going to have physical problems. They have the right to do it, but I find the sport for me unsettling. I don't like cricket either for different reasons, but I believe politically it's a savvy move. I think it just as Tucker Carlson was running for president is making excuses for Nick Fuentes. There is a large component of America that got so sick of a starched politically correct and in some ways feminized media that they really ran to and are very receptive to what they call a more masculine governance. And I think in your face aggression, I think there are a lot of people that conflate that with masculinity. And unfortunately it's a performative, violent, dominant form of masculinity, but the Democrats haven't been able to offer a cogent alternative to it. And while we get all excised about the bastardization of the White House lawn, and I don't like seeing an octagon on the White House lawn. It's not something I would advise the president to do. I think it's effective. I think it shows a certain like authenticity. I don't give a flying fuck with the woke mob. Thanks. It was a spectacle. Everybody was talking about it again. It is on a lot of levels, a great sport. It's an evolution of, I don't know, the brand attributes of the presidency. I think it very much appeals to sort of the, I don't want to call it the mannisfur part of America, but the part of America that wants, thinks it's time for the government to beat its chest a little bit. And so while I personally don't want to participate in it, well, that one comment I thought was just so unnecessary and depraved and evidence that the far right has conflated masculinity with some sort of weird coarseness and cruelty and dominance over women. I'm disappointed that the Democrats haven't been able to offer a really solid counter to masculinity other than act more like a woman. So look, I stick to my guns here. I think politically this was a smart move. Your thoughts. I mean, I'm wondering where Grand Platner is going to fit in the masculinity conversation because we now have a candidate who is getting a lot of free passes, hall passes, whatever, for certain behaviors because he's so fucked up from going to defend the country, right? And no one's going to be saying that that guy is feminine, right? If you listen to him at a rally. So that's one aspect of it. In some ways, I don't feel like I'm the best judge of this event because I don't even see the beauty at all in fighting. Like, I guess the elegance of boxing, I can sort of understand if I watch like an old Muhammad Ali fight, but, you know, people in an octagon literally just trying to beat the shit out of each other doesn't really do it for me. So I know that as my background and I try to be cognizant of that bias when I come into evaluating this. I thought the flyover was incredible. You know, I'm a sucker for that. Great production values. Unsurprisingly, right? And I thought Sean McCrash really hit it in the times. He said Mr. Trump eventually found a new Don King in Dana White, the chief executive of UFC. Together the two are doing what Mr. Trump has pretty much always done. The stage is bigger than ever. The context more surreal, but the stunt itself and the instincts behind it are similar. Money, ego, gore, vanity, hype, and the flash of the camera all mixing on the south lawn of the White House. He's whipped up the spectacle the same way he learned at 40. So we have a fight promoter for a commander in chief. We have a complete narcissist for a commander in chief. And I think that explains every aspect of yesterday and that he's already come out this morning and said that now the American 250, which is supposed to be about our 250th birthday, is going to be the greatest Trump rally of all time. And there are Republicans who that even doesn't sit well with. A little bit of polling. Only 16% say that these fights are appropriate. The UFC fight, even just 31% of the GOP does. Large majorities of everybody say the White House is out of touch and not paying attention to the things that actually matter to them. And so I think even if you say, oh, well Dana White footed the entire bill, people still see that like this is what you how you're spending your time, right? Like you couldn't go to the G seven when we thought that there was going to be a signing in Islamabad on Saturday. It was like JD Vance is going because I got to be here for my big birthday party. And this doesn't read as public servant to say the least. It wasn't available to everybody. You had to have Paramount Plus for this, right? Like watching David Ellison in the front row. Mark Zuckerberg is there. The sponsorships like Polymarket, Bud Light, the Saudis, you know, and the crypto coin, right? And so I think that if you're paying the fighters in crypto and advertising for the Trump crypto coin, like there is nothing that they do that isn't about lining their own pockets. And it makes it really hard for me to even look for the good, right? To look for the flyover. And I'll be really interested to see what my colleagues I have the five today are going to say about this. And I think that if you look at Michelle Obama as a man thing, Dave Portnoy, his credit is out there and it's like they got to do something about this. Like the fact Joe Rogan stood there smiling while he said something like that. You know, I get it that it's like all of this is happening because for so long they felt like the left just said, you're trash, right? Like your white trash, this is redneck stuff, like your bunch of racists couldn't stand having a black president. And then this comes out and you're like, I actually didn't think it before. But right now I think that you're absolute trash, especially if you're standing by something like this, whoever is laughing about it or just remaining silent. Like this is a good opportunity. If you really thought the Ape video was offensive, maybe you should say something now. Yeah, like in terms of Rogan, I feel the same way about Rogan as I feel about the US men's hockey team. In the moment, it's easy to look back and say it would have been great if he'd said, well, actually real men don't say this kind of thing about real women. That would have been a great opportunity for Joe Rogan to starch his hat white. He didn't. Just as the US men's hockey team didn't know how to respond when Trump said something really stupid about the women's hockey team. So I don't, I think it's difficult to impose what would have been the exact right reaction for Joe Rogan. I'll be curious what your co-hosts think about that. They'll claim that we're snowflakes and that we don't have a sense of humor and what have you. I'm going just to Graham Plattener. I think he's won his election. I think his sexting is a feature, not a bug in moderate size. I think we've gotten to a point where people say, okay, is his tattoo a mistake or is it a pattern? And I think when you look at him, you'd think these doesn't seem to be anti-Semitic. It's a mistake, not a pattern. I think relative to what we found out about some of our other elected officials that if we want to have these purity tests, okay, at some point the Democratic Party has to realize it's just fucking stupid to disarm unilaterally. At some point, we just have to get our heads out of our asses and realize these purity tests aren't doing us any good. And I think there's an element of the voting population that will see someone like Graham Plattener and say, he's human. I don't endorse the things he's done. But voting, being a solid vote in the Senate for a check on power, for bodily autonomy of women, for trying to figure out a way to redistribute income to middle class, and that's more important than whether or not he should be my rabbi or not, or even marry my daughter. So in a weird way, I think this might help him. I mean, I go back to the David From statement that I just love. He said, if progressives won't enforce the border, fascists will. If Democrats can't put forward a form of masculinity that is about strength and service, then it'll become about misogyny and violence. And Democrats have been unable to find role models and put forward any sense of talking about strength and service and that testosterone isn't about aggression. It's about seeking status. And guess what? People seeking status, mostly men, put men on the moon and found vaccines. And all that big dick energy comes in handy and that we should stop demonizing it. We continue to embrace this highly feminized vision of what it means to be a man. So I think they are filling that void with the absolute wrong narrative and we're letting it happen. But I'm going back to, I'm optimistic about Graham Platner. I think he comes out actually out of these controversies a little bit stronger. Your thoughts? Net-net agree unless I and I don't want to diminish the incident with pulling his girlfriend's arm behind her back and locking her in a room. Was this the Republican operative? Yes. Just to be clear. It's Lindsay Feifeld. Yes. Okay. So someone who has a vested interest in seeing him lose. And I realize that I will get attacked for endorsing or defending this type of behavior. But just to be clear, she has a vested interest. She is a Republican operative. Is this the first time she has brought this up? I'm asking sincerely. In a public way. I mean, her friends knew about it and knew how to mold her relationship was with Platner. You know, the New York Times was given a list of people to go and talk to who apparently they didn't. She said they'll corroborate my story and they didn't run the accounts of a couple other women who she says also said that Graham Platner had, you know, assaulted them in some way. But the whole thing is getting, you know, incredibly murky. And I think net net people feel the way that you do, which is who, who is going to be a reliable vote and check on the Trump administration and who is going to make sure that he can get another Supreme Court justice like a Brett Kavanaugh through because Susan Collins has said, you know, Brett Kavanaugh lied to me, but I don't regret my vote. And for someone who wants to be a pro-choice icon in a sea of, you know, in a sea of a party that I would just call anti-woman, like, you got to regret that vote, right? Like that has to be part of what you're campaigning on if you are supposed to be an independent voice for Maine. I will say though, having just been in Maine, I had some interesting conversations with everyone. I wasn't going like door to door, but just, you know, chats and Susan Collins has delivered for people in Maine, especially small business owners. She's the head of the Appropriations Committee. She has a good amount of sway with Trump. You know, he was going to surge ICE to Maine. She called and said, could you hold back? And so he didn't do it. And they will be taking a flyer on someone who is going to have no goodwill, quite the opposite with the administration if they go for Graham Platner. So there's just some interesting color from on the ground. I think people have consistently underestimated Susan Collins. And that is the voting populace of 49 states don't like Susan Collins. And that doesn't matter because the voting populace of Maine, as you said, think she has delivered for them and consistently underestimate her. And I mean, the question is, where is the line? If it comes out, he's been assaulting women. Right. And it's not, and it's from people that are reliable and don't have a vested interest in ensuring, you know, Republicans maintain a majority in the Senate. I think Maine voters have a very, we shouldn't be sending people who abuse women to the Senate. I think so far, the voting populace has decided that that is not, that is not an accurate description of Platner. But I think that's super interesting. What is the latest polling show? He had, you know, a few point lead and it's now all within the margin of error. And keep in mind that Sarah Gideon, who was the 2020 opponent who, you know, raised a ton of money, the usual, right, that we're all sending our money to Maine. She was either ahead or, you know, within the margin of error and Susan Collins won by eight and a half, nine points. Now, Susan Collins is six years older. She has shown signs of aging and also now she can't really make the argument that she is, you know, bucks Donald Trump. She votes with him 95% of the time. But Susan Collins is an over performer, to say the least. And the Republicans are going to have to spend money that they didn't want to have to spend on this race. But the idea that she can't win it, right, or that it's just time for a change and that everyone is going to be comfortable in the oldest, you know, state in the country where I don't know how, I don't think Janet Mills would have won. But there are a lot of people who are uneasy about Graham Platner who would have voted for Janet Mills in a heartbeat, right? Yeah, they're good reason. Even to describe your age. So. Yeah. Let's leave it there. Okay. Yeah. That's why over thousands of businesses have made the switch. So why not you try Odu for free at odu.com. That's odo.com. Support for the show comes from Odu. Running a business is hard enough. So what's the best way to do it? You can do it. You can do it. You can do it. You can do it. You can do it. You can do it. You can do it. You can do it. You can do it. You can do it. You can do it. You can do it. You can do it. 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