Trump and Pete Hegseth Under Fire as Questions of Competence Mount in Iran War

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They're celebrating 50 years in data and AI and long before responsible AI was trendy, they were building systems around transparency, governance and trust. If you're curious about what responsible AI actually looks like, visit sas.com to learn more. That's SAS.com. Secretary Hagsath is just sort of become almost a poster child emblematic of how incompetent this administration is and how this sort of frat jock meets testosterone, meets Bitcoin, meets head up your ass, weird reckless. You don't even know what you don't know. I mean it's sort of like at first it was unbelievable then it became upsetting and now it's just sort of like just disgusting. It's just sort of like for god's sakes can we get someone competent to get up there and talk about it? Welcome to Raging Moderates, I'm Scott Galloway. And I'm Jessica Tarlev. If you aren't already please make sure to subscribe to our YouTube page to say up to date on all the political news. Also before we begin, Jess has an announcement but even before that, more self promotion, please go to the webbies page and vote for Raging Moderates. It's the last day you can do it and then we'll never ask you again. The last day you can do it and we if we do get the award we are sending it to the White House. I was invited to the UFC fight at the White House. Maybe I'll go and just wear it. I was yeah and maybe I'll just wear the award around my neck. So big announcement just laid on us. I wrote a book. There it is. Hold it up. I disagree winning arguments without losing friends. I'm really excited. It comes out September 15th. It is my first book which feels like a big deal and it's kind of meta the answer to the question how do you do what you do which I get from Democrats and Republicans. The importance of having conversations with people who you disagree with. There's a lot of social science in it about how we hear things that we don't agree with, how you should process criticism, how you should pay attention to averages and not anecdotes. It uses a lot of my personal history, how I grew up, what my dinner table looked like versus the table at the five for instance to kind of map my course towards doing this and lots of helpful tips and hints for how you can also have difficult conversations about the things that are vexing all of us. It's fun at the end of each chapter there's a little tips box. So if you're more of a skimmer that you can just go to that and kind of see the summation of what I'm arguing in each chapter. So that's kind of the roadmap and then at the end I talk about our current political moment a lot about raging moderates and what we do here and the types of policies that I think will make the country better. So September 15th. Give us the cliff notes on how to process criticism asking for a friend. Asking for a friend. Don't comment dive all the time but it's a lot about reclaiming space and time where you just take a step back and really commune with the criticism versus responding right away. Also considering the source is massively important and there's an anecdote that I tell in there about when my uncle who I'm very close with gave me the heaviest criticism I have ever gotten. He read my PhD draft as I was on the precipice of submitting and basically said you're going to fail. Like this is really bad and I shed a lot of tears. I talked to my supervisor about it who was really the one who taught me how to process mega criticism and what to do with it and how important it is to consider the source and then to also make sure that you don't lose relationships that are important to you over something like that. That's in more detail in the book. So I disagree out in September if you read it and like it write a review if you read it and hate it buy another one and send it to an enemy. This is very this is very exciting congratulations to us. Thank you so much. I get the census the first of many. All right let's get into it. Okay Iran. Iran. I disagree. Iran. It's an easy it's an easy way. A second round of peace talks in the war in Iran may be back on the table with Pakistan stepping in as a key mediator after talks went nowhere but the clock is ticking the two weeks ceasefire expires April 21st and there's still no clear path forward. Defense Secretary Pete Hexeth is now warning the U.S. is prepared to resume combat if talks fail including potential strikes on Iran's energy infrastructure and an expanded naval blockade at the same time House Democrats are moving to impeach Hexeth over his handling of the war. Meanwhile the global picture is getting messier Donald Trump says China won't send weapons to Iran despite reports suggesting otherwise and is threatening steep tariffs if that changes and somehow amid all that uncertainty the S&P 500 just hit a new record high. Back in Washington 40 of the 47 Senate Democrats voted against a proposed weapon sale to Israel and Pete Hexeth complained this morning about the media covering the war. Let's take a look at what he said. A note to the press to the press corps to the American media as I just can't help but notice the endless stream of garbage the relentlessly negative coverage you cannot resist peddling despite the historic and important success of this effort and the success of our troops troops sometimes it's hard to figure out what side some of you are actually on it's incredibly unpatriotic. I'm so sick of this shit I really like when you actually listen to the questions that the press corps are asking they are pointed and specific about details of a war that we're engaged in that no one knew was coming that there is no popular support for the base we all woke up and we're at war and he's just using Donald Trump's anti-press talking points it's so frustrating and I imagine that that's also frustrating for our troops or folks in our armed services who are observing all of this I I'm not saying that there aren't some people who hate Donald Trump enough that they would want any sort of failure to happen I'm someone who thinks this man is deeply unqualified unfit should have never been president the first time definitely shouldn't have been president the second time but I can find space easily to praise him when I think it's worthwhile we've talked about that a lot with like the Abraham Accord specifically and it's just it's boring cable news talking points but from one of the more important podiums that we have in the world at a time of war it's so frustrating to me I think you could say about the first administration that he surrounded himself with some very competent people and that's no longer the case here and he's basically replaced confidence with Hackeleitz and the team with the best players wins and it always struck me that it took this long for the level of incompetence to bubble up and it is bubbling up and this guy I mean it just feels like a parody and you know I mean the most recent joke or ridiculous faux pas was he started quoting the bible not recognizing no it's that's not actually in the bible it was a mockery of the bible in a movie called pulp fiction and yet he decided I mean he clearly incompetent people hire incompetent people I'm sure he didn't write that but someone on a staff wrote that not recognizing no that that was just in a movie bozos so I will say though the move I don't know if you've seen this there's a movement to impeach him yeah I think that's I think that's an own goal on the part of the democrats I don't think he ever do an impeachment unless the votes are already there it's like I used to run proxy fights where basically you threaten to replace the board what I learned is you never do that unless you know you have the votes before you announce it and they don't have it we America is not up for another impeachment nostalgia tour and so at some point they might actually have the votes to impeach the president if this keeps going or the secretary of defense I think what they should be talking about is specific legal action in coordination with state ag's against people who have committed crimes of which there's a monopoly of them across the administration and friends of the administration but secretary hagsath is just sort of become almost a poster child or emblematic of how incompetent this administration is and how this sort of frat joc beats testosterone meets bitcoin meets head up your ass weird reckless you don't even know what you don't know I mean it's sort of like at first at first it was unbelievable then it became upsetting and now it's just sort of like you know just disgusting it's just sort of like for god's sakes can we get someone competent to get up there and talk about it guys have to stand there and listen to this and then they get to come out like the sencom commander or general kane for instance who have the real data they've got the charts right they're showing us actually what's going on with the blockade video footage of it of what's coming in and around and you know some of these reports are disputed and make sense that the oranians and the chinese are going to say things counter to what the u.s. are saying we are in always a propaganda fight with them enhanced by a i absolutely but i would pay to go to a briefing that didn't have the secretary of defense in it and that we could just listen to the guys one level below who treat the press corps with respect and come there with the data that we need to hear my big question right now because i i felt a bit gaslit at work yesterday which it isn't an irregular occurrence but it was particularly acute i would say in reference to what's going on with this war so it feels to me like where you you like to use quagmire like we're in a bit of a holding pattern and the administration is trying to tell us that everything looks good and they're talking about how much forward motion we have on these talks and i hope that that is the case and that we can you know get to a good deal i hope that it is not just you know a redox of the jcpoa and then chose why there was absolutely no reason to rip that up in 2018 but the question that still stands out to me is why the right is saying that iran basically has no power in this at all that they've been completely decimated and that the blockade which is costing them about half a billion dollars a day if it's true that no tankers are getting through or that they can't sell any of the oil either via oman which is possible or the oil that they already have on land like how long can that keep up so reuters is reporting that they can withstand a complete halt in oil exports for up to two months and that seems like a real amount of time to me the ceasefire is going to be over on april 21st that goes well beyond it and i'm curious as to what your impression is i guess of the power dynamic like how decimated is iran actually how much is china heating our warnings to stay out of this and what do you think happens on april 21st as i al jazeera also said that schools are going to go to remote learning on april 21st which kind of implies that you shouldn't be somewhere that the us might improperly target and blow up again which you know lends itself to ground war is coming or at least more aerial war i don't think this can get done i mean so far it appears that every day this goes on it seats more and more advantage to the iranians the irgc has the benefit of not caring i mean it's just so unthinkable to imagine how quickly we would well i don't know how we would respond but what the us suffers from is a bit of a glass jaw syndrome and that is the level of pain we are willing to endure doesn't even it's not even a mouse on the elephant of what other nations are willing to endure in terms of suffering it just doesn't even register and then it goes even parabolic with the irgc who quite frankly is clearly not that concerned when you're willing to kill 30 000 of your own citizens in a 48 hour period it's safe to say you don't have a lot of empathy or concern for your populace there are a theocratic regime that feels that their mission is a calling from god to destroy israel in the united states and spread you know i don't know if you call it into fadda whatever you want to call it but they're they have different objectives in the well-being of the iranian people so the notion that somehow we have leverage over them by even going after their civilian infrastructure i don't know i think that they're hoping that that just carries favor or garners some additional support the irgc so i think they look at it like wow this war so far has been really good for us maybe it's been terrible for iran and the iranian people but it's been really good for the irgc and we've discovered this new choke point called blocking or sequestering world trade i think these ceasefires create advantage to them because they get a chance to prepare i don't think the war going on is that frightening to them i think the only strategy here into the trump administration's credit i think they're pursuing this strategy i think the only strategy here is to try to the extent we can develop a multinational force and close the strait to all traffic in and out of iranian ports because they're not only cuts off funding to the iranian oil infrastructure or revenues to iran but one of the strange things i guess about oil infrastructure is that if oil backs up and has nowhere to go or be offloaded it actually begins to damage the wealth themselves so it not only stops that whatever it is half a billion dollars a day flowing into iran's coffers it could permanently damage oil infrastructure i guess it's a strange thing i never realized it it's like if you don't relieve the pressure and put the oil somewhere it backs up and damages the actual oil infrastructure i don't know what china's role is here but i do think that this is i i think we have no choice but to try and figure out a way to get the straight open again ideally the more people to join us the better but this is the definition of a quagmire and that is we have put ourselves in a box we've lost a ton of reputational value um and you know i and now and now senators are uh there's a new vote and i'm curious to get your take how significant do you think the senate vote is politically what does it signal about democrats on israel going forward what are your thoughts there jess i think it's a really big deal and the fact that you saw folks like alissa slagkin john ossoff both jews themselves as well voting to not sell offensive weapons to israel matters a lot and shows the damage that the net nyahu administration and the net nyahu foreign policy has done um to what they perceive to be u.s national interests um and certainly the relationship between israel and the party the next frontier in this fight will be defensive weapons whether you know we'll continue to fund the iron dome for instance um there's a movement already in the house um to suspend funding for that i don't think you would get 40 or 47 democratic senators to support something like this um but alissa slagkin posted a very thoughtful explanation for her vote um on social media which i think is worth people's times and when you look at someone like that who has been so dug in in support of democracy and western values and our relationship with israel vis-a-vis those two elements you know are only really aligned ally in the region that way um it feels seismic and i think it also speaks to how poor the leadership of the party has been in dealing with these concerns and you see a lot of people who have been kind of out there on the progressive left talking about this for a really long time that you know we're not anti-semites because we're talking about how we shouldn't be funding what israel is doing offensively and they were taking a victory lap yesterday saying oh you know alissa slagkin that big anti-semite right and we have to be much more thoughtful in how we have these conversations and i i i hope that this has jolted chuck schumer into figuring it out because this his leadership on this and especially as a jewish person who cares about israel has been abysmal i mean there is some what hillary what secretary clinton said i think is fitting here and that is if you're if you care about israel as we both do you have an obligation to speak out when you think israel is not acquitting itself well and it kind of comes down to a i think a very basic the most accretive thing that could happen to to the west and and to israel into the us right now is if trump and net and yahoo just left the stage it just feels as if it is getting the the damage here the net and yahoo administration has done to israel's global reputation i mean the reality is it is just very hard to support israel right now it's just getting increasingly difficult and uh this i don't know if you saw this representative uh rokhana came out and called out schumer and said he should resign and this is it does feel like a turning point it does feel like all of a sudden okay even people who have been steadfast supporters of israel have said okay this has just gone too far um but you're i i think your your assessment is right this is this does feel seminal okay let's take a quick break stay with us maria you have a podcast now and you need to start acting like it what's the first step as a podcaster well you have to ask lots of questions i'm rhea sherpova and i'm hosting a new podcast called pretty tough every week i'm sitting down with trailblazing women at the top of their game to discuss ambition work ethic and the ups and downs that come on the path to achieving greatness i have a few pretty tough questions for you okay ready do not sugarcoat something for me no no we'll dive into their stories and get valuable insights from top executives actors entrepreneurs and other individuals who have inspired me so much in my own journey pretty tough is your front row seat to the women who have demonstrated the power and being unapologetic in their pursuits i hope you'll join us new episodes drop wednesdays on youtube or in your favorite podcast app i want to tell you about a new podcast from box called america actually it's hosted by political journalist estad herndon who i love the show asks the question what will america look like after donald trump better happen trump's been running a one-man show for over a decade but we're heading towards the first open presidential election since 2016 and it'll play out in a country that'll feel very different america actually digs deep into the questions that you and your friends are asking about politics culture and the economy it'll map out the people and ideas that'll shape the future beyond trump you can watch america actually on the box youtube channel and listen wherever you get your podcasts secretary of defense ppeg sef has been talking about the war in iran in distinctly biblical terms citing psalms the resurrection of jesus and the book of quentin and i will strike down upon the with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to capture and destroy my brother president trump is comparing himself to christ vice president fans is fighting with the pope watching all of this is the increasingly influential pastor doug wilson he co-founded the church that heg set attends wilson's a christian nationalist who would like the usa to be a theocracy he'd also like to help us get there though he doesn't think it's going to happen anytime soon i believe that it is accelerating i believe that we're making significant gains i see assembling resources and i'm encouraged in that labor but i don't expect to see what we're praying for in my lifetime pastor doug wilson and how much you should worry about his plans on today explained from vox weekdays afternoons wherever welcome back health secretary robert f canady junior testified before congress today of course vaccine policy was a large topic of the conversation here is a heated exchange with congresswoman linda sanchez now one thing that i find incredible is that you suspended this pro vaccine messaging campaign but somehow you're spending taxpayer dollars to drink milk shirtless in a hot tub with kid rock and somehow you think that's a better public health message your time is in front of the public about the importance of vaccines general ladies time is expired i yield back he's such a joke it's so frustrating to me like why could he not have gotten a job at usda why could you have not just taken the decent stuff or the decent perspectives from rfk junior and applied that in a responsible manner and i know this is the job that he wanted and trump needed you know the support of the maha movement etc but he is such a wild danger to our health and longevity which he preaches that he knows so much about there is a set of policy concerns here you know besides the vaccine stuff but you know rfk junior is the most popular member of the trump cabinet and the maha movement still has a lot of support and we haven't seen democrats making inroads there as much as i would have liked to i'm and you know i'm not saying that the folks that live the maha lifestyle are necessarily obsessed with everything that's going on with the trump administration because there are a lot of you know liberal leaners in there but it is a force in american politics to be reckoned with and it will live on past this round of the trump administration so i do hope that we talk more to people who have concerns around you know food safeties and even people who have concerns about vaccine efficacy go a la my book i disagree go have the tough conversations right like talk them through all the studies and also hear them out about what their concerns are he's an embarrassment there's going to be unnecessarily there's going to be unnecessary death disease and disability because we have someone running our health and human services who not only has no domain expertise but promotes dangerous ideologies and the greatest innovation in history is american middle class a close second is vaccines and the fact that he would create this type of doubt and promote all these ridiculously stupid things it's emblematic of this administration that this level of incompetence has real impact on people and unfortunately in this instance it's going to have a lot of impact on children um yeah what it does appear it does appear that even the trump administration recognizes the damage to the brand of having rfk jr out there they've mostly like put him in a closet you just haven't heard much from him for seven days that's a lot of public stuff and now he has his podcast but not by the administration's choice no of course not but i'm saying there is an opportunity to amplify the horrible stuff about him and then he also has this book did you see that he cut off a raccoon's penis and saved it to study later like how many animals has this guy murdered defiled what what is wrong with him yeah i hadn't heard that one um well i'm here to educate you about the important stuff raccoon there you go god i don't even have sorry that i i put i put that in there now and you have to go through the whole day thinking about it um all right i think that's i think it's an opportunity to move on before we go the conflict between pope leo and the trump administration is continuing to escalate us bishops are now backing the pope after vice president jadie van suggested he should be more careful weighing in on war and politics police also confirmed that the pope's brother received a bomb threat that is in linoi home last night and pope leo isn't backing down in a speech this week he doubled down on his criticism of the war in iran warning against leaders who's religion to justify conflict and pointedly saying blessed are the peacemakers the remarks come as the trump administration continues to frame the war on moral and religious terms deepening the divide it just strikes me that we have i think correctly one of the wonderful things about america is we the framers and said look we want to move away from the king and we want to separate church and state and that we are we respect people's religions we are a very religious society but we're secular with respect to government and policymaking and then when you have the secretary of defense invoking religion and god and divinity and sam paxton yeah and and something from pulp fiction we are now we are now that theocratic batchid crazy rogue nation it's like we're we're specifically promoting ideals at the initial framers that were supposed to counteract in other countries just do you think this is starting to fracture the long-standing alignment between conservative catholics from the republican party yeah it is i mean the polling indicates that it is starting to what's more interesting is to see the evangelical response to it and i think that's linked more to trump posting himself as jesus slash dr trump or whatever he's saying but you know he's now moved back to actually this is all fine and good and yeah if you spend enough time telling a toddler that he's your lord and savior he's going to start believing you and he is buying what his suck up cabinet tells him that weirdo spiritual advisor paula white you know the one that are always those pictures where they're in the oval office praying around him and you know he's susceptible to whatever the last person in the room told him he's a complete narcissist so of course the guy thinks that he's at least akin to jesus christ and what pope leo is doing is so fascinating to me because pope francis was more outwardly political than pope leo and leo is much more conservative than francis but it appears that he also you know fully understands what maga means and what american jockeying on social media means in the trump era because he's fighting chicago style with trump on this he's not afraid of this conflict and there were was definitely an opportunity for him to kind of just you know stand back and go ahead and you know you do your sermons you deliver your homilies and you say what you got to say but not to respond directly this guy's not afraid of him he's posting on social media calling them out directly and i'm curious as to how this will evolve with trump's defenders who always say oh well he's just a counterpuncher you're talking about the pope person who leads 1.6 billion catholics worldwide and it's also adding to our fracturing with our allies i mean he's united italy prime minister meloni and also the opposition against him on this and other world leaders i'm sure will continue to speak out um so i think it is not a fight that he should be picking at all and i would like religion out of our government yeah this feels this feels politically really stupid catholics are actually america's largest swing religious vote trump won catholics by 12 points in 2024 55 to 43 it was a massive swing from 2020 when he basically split them with biden at 49 to 50 even before his attacks on the pope trump's approval among catholics had fallen below 50 percent and only 40 of catholics approve of how he's handling iran and 60 disapprove and also catholics i and i didn't realize this they're a hugely important part of the electric because quite frankly they're swingers not as they they they swing both ways if you will and and not like that there's swing voters in swing states in pennsylvania a third are catholics nevada a quarter michigan and arizona also a quarter so i didn't recognize what an incredibly important voting bloc they are so it seems like they're very politically active too yeah and they vote so this feels you know i mean this is an impressive man uh by the way villain overgrad um and thoughtful not afraid really articulate whoever's handling a social media does a really good job this this feels like the most feels like one of those moves that will get some press but not a lot but will have deep undercurrents in terms of the impact it has and well like jd vance can't go for an interview and not get asked what's going on with the beef with the pope and then as a catholic i mean as a convert from 2019 he has an opinion on this and he comes out with the pope should opine less on theology like isn't that the job who should appoint upon a small donald trump got yeah yeah it was a really you know what it was a real missed opportunity for the vice president because the bottom line is trump's not going to dump his vice president at this point and if jd vance is serious about being president he probably in his elegant way as possible should have come out for the pope and he would have got a lot of a lot of shit behind the scenes but if he was serious about being president this this was that moment where his sister soldier moment or where where vice president harris missed the moment on the view to say this is what i disagree with biden on this was that moment for the vice president for him to say i have a ton of respect for the pope and i think the president's comments i wouldn't have made the same comments he could have just left it at that yep all right before we go a reminder that not only is raging moderates now five days a week we're now available on sub stack our subscribers get ad-free episodes live streams in a place to connect with me just and the rest of the community plus you'll get access to the new raging moderates newsletter the monday rage out now find us at raging moderates profgmedia.com also again please vote for us for the webby for best news and politics podcast we need your help to bring it home but it is the last day that's all for this episode thank you so much for joining us today just have a great rest of the week and weekend you too the