Day 3 of War in Iran

Welcome to today's podcast sponsored by Hillsdale College, All Things Hillsdale at Hillsdale dot ed or I encourage you to take advantage of the many free online courses there and of course a listener to the Hillsdale Dialogue, all of them at Hugh for Hillsdale dot com or just Google, Apple, iTunes and Hillsdale.

A very good day to you all. It is Wednesday, the fourth of March, and we join you from Texas. Hugh is out today and the talk show gods are smiling. There are all kinds of things going on around the world. Obviously, I think you know why they call it the Department of War, now, don't you. Defense was lovely, Defense is part of the gig. But when it's time for war, you need a Department of War, and boy do we

I get it.

The press only wants to make the president look bad, but try for once to report the reality. The terms of this war will be set by us at every step. As I said Monday, the mission.

Is laser focused.

Obliterate Iran's missiles and drones and facilities that produce them, annihilate its navy and critical security infrastructure, and sever their pathway to nuclear weapons. Iran will never possess a nuclear bomb, not on our watch, not ever. And this is why President Trump's moral clarity and Iran today is so vital. Unlike the past, where vague redlines and endless negotiations let Iran fund terror and inch ever so slightly toward a bomb,

So that line at the beginning of Secretary Hegseth saying, I know what happens in the media. You know, if a drone sneaks through and we have a moment of tragedy like you're going to have in wartime, it's front page news. This led Caitlin Collins, so get ready of CNN to ask Caroline Levitt, is it the position of this White House that we're not supposed to cover, you know, troop deaths. And they went back and forth for a couple of month. You know isn't part of the story.

Great, It's good to be with you.

It is nice to have you. So we're almost a week into this whole epic fury thing. How do you think it's going over there? And how do you think it's going over here?

Well, it's too early to tell.

The real test will be what happens in the rebuilding effort, because I do think the Iranian regime will eventually fall, and then the.

Question is what replaces it. That's always been the tricky part.

We are, of course, much better than we were at knocking over these regimes. The Maduro replacement, if you will, was an example of really pinpoint attention to that.

But George W.

Bush was pretty good at knocking over dictatorship. She just wasn't that good at rebuilding societies. And Trump is not interested in nation building. So what happens next that's really the puzzle. But so far, from a military perspective, it has been a stunning success. Of course, there are about half a dozen American soldiers who've lost their lives, and more have been wounded by Iranian missiles.

We lost three.

Aircraft to friendly fire from our Kuwaiti allies. So all of that is to be mourned and hopefully to be avoided in future. But thus far, militarily it has been a stunning success. And also I think in the broader geostrategic picture of things, I think this is a major blow to Russia, which gets its drones from Iran. It's also a blow to China, which gets its oil from Iran.

There's very little here not to like on the list that you've made. And yet, and yet we don't ever expect us unanimity of support. But your use of language was perfect in going to the notion of nation building. A lot of people, maybe it's generational. If somebody's twenty five or even thirty five, all they remember is Iraq and were there any weapons of mass destruction? And that looked like nation building, looked like we were trying to turn Iraq into Indiana. That was never going to happen.

You know, Americans don't have particularly strong views on interventionism versus isolationism. Americans want to win, So if.

Your strategy is successful, people will support it.

If it fails, if it involves heavy costs and long periods of time, then people won't support it.

So I think the test of the war with.

Iran is going to be again whether this is successful or not. President Trump has done a good job of framing the Venezuela intervention as being very successful, because not only did he get Maduro, but he also got tens of millions of barrels of oil from the Venezuelans and a much more cooperative Venezuelan regime.

With Iran, there.

Is a possibility that you could see a transition to a stable government, perhaps a democratic government, but at any rate, a stable government that is not constantly trying to attack its neighbors and plant terror cells all over the world and launch missiles against Israel and perhaps even Europe, maybe eventually the United States, or you get a disintegration of the Middle Eastern state that is perhaps one of the most strategic places in the world, and then you have

All the wrong buttons.

I said before the war that the only way.

I could see a war happening, because I didn't think Trump wanted one, was if the Iranians miscalculated, and it appears.

That they did.

They came out, they made public statements about how they weren't compromising, they weren't going to give up nuclear enrichment, they weren't going to give up their missiles, you know, and with Trump, if you do that, then you're essentially begging for some kind of a response, and they got it.

You could say everybody likes diplomatic solutions, and I don't think it was inherent unwise to remain hopeful for one, but the Trump calculus was. I think we've tried quite enough for about forty seven years. Now it's time for something different. Joel Pollock is here, there's something different in your life. Let's take our final sixty seconds. If somebody looks at California Posts, they go, oh, that looks just like the New York Post logo, precisely tell everybody what the California Post is.

The California Post is the California edition of the New York Post.

But it's not just reprinting the New York Post.

It is a California news organization that's not just online but also in print. And it's really taken the California media by storm, and it's producing dozens and dozens and dozens of new articles every day, hard hitting journalism, investigative pieces, exposs and it's already changing the landscape of California politics. And I get to see that firsthand as the opinion editor, and it's really interesting to see.

What an impact it's made already.

Really just providing an alternative voice to the generally left of center publications that dominate local media in California. We are now providing something of a corrective to that, I think, and I feel that people are very happy with it.

It's been very warmly received.

Well well, every blessing for success. California Post dot com and follow Joel on the exit at Joel Pollock p o LLAK. Great to talk to you, Joel, Thank you very much. You know it occurs to me with Joel doing a lot of things that are California centric but also have a lot to do with the entire country. I'm going to tie California to the entire world. I just want to ask you something. This could be a

You, Good day to Mark, Thanks for having me.

Great to meet too.

My absolute pleasure. With a place that bears of Ronald Reagan, it is probably a good idea to sort of revisit a Reaganesque worldview. And I know a lot of people over plenty of beers or plenty of coffee talk about the ven diagram overlap of Reagan world versus Trump World. But I am brought to one Reagan quote, and that is that the world was never made more dangerous because America was too strong. Strength plus virtue is what I

Well, peace through strength is fundamentally built upon the notion that you need to have a real peace, that simply taking peace at any cost ultimately undermines our interests. And from a Reagan standpoint, it means that you're going to compromise American freedom. And I think that is the framework in which President Reagan approached foreign policy. He wanted America to be strong, as you said, so no enemy, no adversary,

In President Reagan's.

Time, he was dealing with sort of the emergence of the threat pose by iron.

Of course, he came to.

Office shortly after the revolution took place. We had our hostages held for four hundred and forty four days, were released on President Reagan's inauguration day. The first evidence of Hesbolottok place in Lebanon, of course, with the attacks on the marine barracks, the bombing there as well as our embassies. So we saw that emerge some forty plus years ago. And the reality is no president since has ever really confronted Iran until President Trump.

And now I think.

We have an opportunity to see a true piece play out in the Middleast because we're taking on the driver of the instability in that region.

You may be in a particularly valuable position to answer the following question that I get a lot and I have my answer, But I think yours will be better. And that is Hey, Mark, people will say so, I'll say, hey, Roger, how can this President Donald Trump, who said no more wars of regime change. I don't like war, and here he is starting a war to some Well, I think I just gave you the answer. He ain't starting one, he's finishing one. But we are at war and that

Well, I think what you heard for decade plus after Iraq and Afghanistan, the wars in rock Afghanistan, Republican and Democratic presidents have said we don't want forever wars or endless wars. It would be a mistake, I think, though, to say that is what President Trump is doing here. And as you alluded to, Iran has been at war of the United States for forty seven years. What we're doing now is finally getting into the fight and trying to bring it to an end. So this is not

In other words, there was really no choice.

It was trying to use Iraq to paralyze our foreign policy. What President Trump has done, really since January of twenty twenty five, since he came into office, has blown up that Iraq syndrome. Demis to the American people that we could affect events in the world. We could engage our military to drive outcomes that benefit America's prosperity and American peace by engaging our military, and it doesn't have to result

But that's the impact and a broader standpoint.

Of what he's doing in ran right now with the Operation up at Fury and the Midnight Hammer operation absolutely resolve in Venezuela as well. Americans are learning to win with the military again, and then understand our military can do great things.

Without sort of being bogged down in an endless conflict.

That is superbly put because somewhere between isolationism and quagmire, somewhere between the inertia and forever war, is a quick strike, a brief operation that is so successful and so concise and so effective in its brevity that it hits a reset button for the entire region that is of benefit to the region, of benefit to the world, and of benefit to America. Why is this so hard?

Well, I think our elected leaders have told us this for a decade plus that that's the choice, and so the American people have come to think of any time we engage in military operation, it's going to have to be this endless conflict.

And there's another level to this as well.

You know, you look at our amazing military personnel, the operations that they're carrying out right now as we speak, what took place in June to twenty twenty five with Midnight Hammer or the Operation Absolute Resolve of Venezuela. What our military is able to do is best in class. There isn't a close second in the world. That's what people in uniform want to be known for that. They

But the military is not fragile.

These are the strongest, most capable fighting men and women in the world's ever seen. That's what they want the sit intury in this country to know them for. And frankly, that's what the world is seeing right now as we talk during this operation.

Roger Zachheim, thank you so much and thanks for being with us, and thanks for everything you do at the Reagan Institute, at Reagan Institute on X and at Roger Zachheim zakhg. I am there on X. So just check all those good people on keeping the name, the concept, the beliefs of Reagan alive. If you want to start a conversation, what would Reagan think of Trump? If Reagan's

Hi.

Hi.

Thanks, it's great to talk to you as well.

I've been taking a look at various things that you've been tweeting and the things that you've been putting up there, and a Newsmax appearance on various things. I like to ask a very quite literally, as we're bombing people thirty thousand foot level question of your assessment of these opening days of Operation Epic Fury through the lens of your daily pursuit of stories that are of interest to you.

Sure well. I had the privilege of serving in the first Trump administration as the deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, so I have a sort of a particular.

Lens through which I'm looking at all this. I find this.

I find these opening days of this campaign to be remarkable, remarkably successful. I'm so impressed by our military and our partnership with the Israeli military and what they're accomplishing. I think I was listening before the show to the press conference that Secretary Heigseth and General Kane gave earlier today talking about the particulars of this military campaign and how really they've been focused these last few days on taking out the immediate threat of the ballistic.

Missiles and also these one way drones.

Which both of which have the attacks have reduced significantly. I think they gave percentages that were everything above fifty percent. Everything's been reduced over fifty percent, which is fantastic. That's what's been killing people across the region. So now, given they've mostly removed that threat, and certainly the air and missile defense on the Iranian side has been taken out

They don't have to be.

A long distance away, and that will really be helpful in increasing the you know how precise these munitions can be. These are very precise munitions. Now the standoff ones are a little less sometimes, so that also reduces the risk of civilian casualties, which is incredibly important in this type of a campaign where our government wants to encourage and they have said publicly they're encouraging the Iranian people to eventually rise up against the regime.

That would be the best scenario, and the likelihood of that a week or two ago is probably close to zero. The likelihood of it now is exponentially greater. What do you think, especially with Pentagon service in your background, what kind of flexibility might the President and Secretary Hegseth need on the four or five week time frame they put out.

Sure, I am absolutely not a I don't like to predict those things. Sorry, sorry to you in the audience. I think that they are hoping for four to five weeks, and that is what the plan is. But as you say, plans change. I have heard a number of folks I'm sure you have two saying it's going faster than we thought. I think that was Secretary Ruby who said that yesterday.

Uh, So they'll they'll be more of that.

Assessments that are made from the United States and from Israel, from from you know, outside of Iran will change once once we get closer and we're able to see what we were right about, what we were not right about.

And the enemy also is not destroyed right now. They're shifting. They're clever and uh and we're seeing.

Them protect different sites, protect move certain things and certain people to other locations.

Uh.

And we'll see how that how that plays out.

I've seen reporting I haven't seen it validated yet, but I've seen reporting that the some regime elements have been moving to schools and to hospitals. That's we saw Hamas doing that during the guys of war with Israel.

Uh.

And this is something that you know, the Iranian regime is a terrorist regime.

I don't need to tell you.

So the terrorists are are This is one of the things that they do. They want to drive draw fire to civilian location so then they can turn around and say, oh, look at the evil Americans.

You know, bomb to school, bomb to hospital.

Uh.

You know, it just happened to be their new headquarters for their military operations.

But let's leave that part out of the announcement.

So that's that's something that unfortunately, uh is I'm sure that our leaders have planned for that.

Uh, just like I'm sure that our leaders have planned for the day after.

I know a lot of a lot of us are concerned about what happens, you know after we're asking people.

To rise up the history.

You know, our history with that has has been checkered at best. I I served, uh, I served in Iraq. My both of my brothers are were served in the Marine Corps in Iraq and Afghanistan. So I uh, I have a particular Uh.

I think we all, I think a lot of us do.

We're concerned about what comes next and what what do we have in mind? I believe there's a plan, and I also think that I know that the population of Iran, they have tried to rise up many, many, many times over the years. There have been many, uh there have been many demonstrations of different kinds. But there's been the Women Life Freedom, There's been the Green Movie. There's been this new round of protests where tens of thousands of Iranians have been killed in the process.

So the desire is there, but they.

Have it's been impossible for them to overcome the uses.

And with the iron absolutely here, here might be their first real chance. Simone Ledein at the Strauss Center, wonderful time spent with you man. Thank you so much for your wisdom and your insights. Mark Davis, looking for your wisdom and insights. One one hundred and five to two oh one two three four. We'll wedge you between some of these guests that we are enjoying today. On this Wednesday, March fourth, you Uit Shoe will continue on the Salem

How you doing, sir, Good to be with you, Mark, Good to be that we're up and run here.

Not many missiles tonight, only a few.

Recounting having watched you in a previous interview a couple of days ago where your phone literally did go off you like, you know, it's like, hey, we have to put on the helmets and hit the bomb shelter. That is the reality of having Iran as a neighbor. I know it's a tense few days, but can you feel that we're on a continuum where you and everyone in Israel, and in fact everyone in the Middle East will indeed be safer within weeks.

Well, I say you, I'm going to quote an imminent source for my cab driver. It's really cab drivers are very our unique brand. By the way, we all listen to them, we all quote them, and it's simply is this. He said, we're not living during historical times. We're living during biblical times. And I think it's true. What we're

Times a day. But that's just the beginning of it.

It's the fact that Arab countries, beginning with Katar this evening, to be followed by other Arab acaders, are joining in the fight on Israel's side against the Islamic Republic of Iran. And who would have imagined such a thing? Who would have imagined that? The United States tonight and israel I just listened to Secretary of War Hegseth talking about his alliance with Israel. How were the ideal allies, the strongest allies.

That America has in the world, world.

These are biblical times, and we've just celebrated a Jewish holiday forum where we remember going up against a Persian evil ruler who tried to kill us and we won. So this is quite a remarkable period for the state of Israel.

I can only imagine. And you're the perfect person to help us navigate something where some people still need a little bit of help in understanding how allies work and how they often speak with the same voice and sometimes the same heart beats within a shared chest. And here's what I mean. It's what Marco Rubio had to work his way through there in the last forty eight hours, the notion of who went first, whose idea was it first? Did Israel come up with the idea that it's go

I think that the question is moot to you.

The frankly, you know, who got who into the war first is actually irrelevant.

The important point is that the Prime.

Minister and this now went to the President last February and said, listen, Iran has completely rebuilt, it rebuilt its ballistic missics program. Each one of these missiles takes down not an apartment building, but an entire neighborhood. Iran is trying to get thirty thousand of these rockets. They get thirty thousands of rockets, Israel will not be able to

We have to interdict.

We have to preempt this ballistic missile threat before it gets out of hand.

It'll be too late.

And the President said to the Prime Minister, Okay, I understand that you've got a green light from me.

So Israel, at some point, what's going to act.

And you can guarantee that when Israel did act, the Iranians would take with extract vengeance not against just the State of Israel, but also against the United States. So it's kind of a mood point. Who went first. I'm willing to believe what the President said that he was the one who acted first. Israel followed at the end of the day, it doesn't matter. We are allies where allies in the fullest sense of the world, and allies

Next thing, that's kind of a from the diplomatic lexicon. How can an operation be very very much about regime change and not be a dreaded regime change war that is such a bugaboo these days.

Well, it seems to me that in my father's generation Americans fought a very successful regime change war, in fact, to regime change war, once against Nazi Germany, once against Imperial Japan.

So you know, regime I've got a bad name.

I guess because of Iraq, But doesn't mean it.

Hasn't worked all the time.

It seems in the Civil War there was also maybe I shouldn't say this in Texas, but there was also a regime change in the Civil War too, It wasn't there, Mark, Yes, So in Texas I tread lightly and that, you know, it's kind of bad. That doesn't mean the regime change is going to happen here. Because the regime change here because there are no boots on the ground, least not

I hope it is the most peaceful of knights in Tel Aviv, with many more to follow, Doctor Michael laur And I'm joy to talk to you, Thank you, sir, and thank you for being with us on exit. Doctor Michael orn O, r E and former Israeli ambassador to

Doing okay?

How are you?

Thanks for having me.

Man Tazzy is a joy to have you. So anytime I'm in for you or even on my own show and I'm about to talk to somebody, I always figure it's kind of a stream of consciousness to see the kinds of things that they have been posting. So do me a favor, peel back to curtain, if you will, because you've been paying a lot of attention to what people have been saying about Steve Whitcoff, the negotiations that he's been a vital part of, and just sort of the moving parts of how all of this has come about.

Yeah, I mean, it's pretty a remarkable because Steve Whitkoff throughout this process. Throughout Trump's presidency has been seen as the kind of soft liner, the person who's.

Always been sent out there to cut the deal.

So it was kind of surprising for him to say that when he sat down for him and Jared Kushner sat down for their meeting with the Iranians, that was right before Trump made the final decision to authorize the attack.

Now, as we I mean, it's possible.

That that was just Iran trying to boast because as we know, they were hit hard.

Last June in an.

Israeli operation that America joined at the tail end to deliver a huge strike to its fort Ouse.

Facility, which is the sort.

Of heavily fortified bunker facility in the mountain region of Iran.

And so you Trump had said it was obliterated. So it's quite possible.

That both things are true that it was deeply devastated, but that Iran was at least boasting that they had all of this material. Maybe it was material that they had hid somewhere that was previously enriched, or perhaps they were just lying to just sort of act you defiant, But either way, it sort of clearly demonstrated to Trump that there was no cutting a deal with them, that no deal would be a deal that would be something that Trump was prepared to live with.

That is touching on that takes me exactly where I wanted to go, because so many people have said, hey, you crazy conservatives. All of a sudden, you people who voted for Trump because you didn't want any new wars, Now all of a sudden you're talking about, Hey, this has been terrible for forty seven years. Why didn't you call for it five years ago? Why didn't you call for it ten years ago? First of all, some people did, but I think the reason is nobody dreamed it was possible.

Yeah, I mean, look, I think that a lot of stuff that Trump said a lot of different.

Things, and I think we backed up sort of to where conservatives were laid Obama era after.

Conservatives had seen what had happened.

During the Bush era and what had happened to the Obama era.

And Trump clearly didn't like either approach.

He didn't like the sort of vast wars where there was we were stuck there for decades, it cost trillions of dollars, and we tried to do democracy promotion and nation building.

He was clearly not on board with that. But clearly he.

Thought that Obama was let America be stepped on all the time, and so a lot and so he clearly was talking about, you know, bombing the blank out of Isis, he was talking about water boring terrorists.

He was no sort of.

Buchananite on foreign policy, and I think people took some of his criticism of Iraq war and sort of dumb endless forever wars and assumed that he agreed with the sort of non interventionist for Strainer's isolationists.

Buchananies, whatever term you want to give them.

But people thought that he was on the same page as they were. But Trump, I mean, you could go back to even before he was a candidate for anything, talking about how Iran couldn't be allowed to get a nuclear weapon.

He was very critical.

Of Obama's negotiations with Iran and the deal that was cut with Iran. He said many occasions, Iran could never get a nuclear weapon, and what happened clearly, I think Mark Arubio the other day did a good job of sort of suctinctly explaining what the issue was here that prompted the action. It's not necessarily that right now they were weeks away from a nuclear weapon, but the issue was that they were building up their ballistic missile.

And drone program.

And he, according to what Mark Arrubio said, they were building one hundred ballistic missiles a month, whereas we could only produce six or seven missile interceptors a month. And so what their plan was was to build up a vast arsenal of ballistic missiles and drones.

That they could use as a shield.

To effectively grant them immunity to go back to build rebuilding their nuclear program. If they had a large enough stock of doing of ballistic missiles, then the costs of striking them would be much higher.

And you know, one could almost ask why, we could ask how long are we supposed to wait? Precisely Philip Prime, news at a National Review Online editor at NRO, author of Fear of Your Future. Thanks so much, Phil Klein there at NRO. Appreciate you, and we're going to come back talk a little bit some breaking news. The Senate has failed to pass a war powers resolution. Details next.

How you doing, sir, Oh great, great to be here. Thank you.

It's a real pleasure. Listen. I always ask, with all the great interviews we've done, I kind of like to open at the wide end of the funnel and ask if there's anything that jumps out at you from these opening days of Operation Epic Fury, that is the most important what is Is there anything that the public is not getting? Is there something you'd like to see get more attention? How's it all working out for you? Well?

I think the public is getting the main story, which is just that this has been a phenomenally success full military operation at a level of unprecedented cooperation between Israel and the United States.

We've never seen this before. They're operating together.

Like one military and the two of us together are a lot stronger.

So basically, so far, it's a good news story. I am a little.

Part of my job as a Middle East analyst and these situations is to remind everybody when things are going really well militarily that the real the hardest challenge in these situations is to translate military victory into lasting political change.

We have some challenges there.

But that's not meant in any way to criticize what's happening. I think it's a phenomenally successful operation.

It is after midnight in the Middle East, and you noticed on your own Twitter feed Door animated, which is fantastic. Love that title. Tonight, you say twice in one hour Israel attacked has Bola targets in Beirut. What do you make of the the geographic breadth of some of the Israeli operation.

Well, this is a war not just against the Iranians, but their entire network, which of course includes his Bela Hamas, the Houthis militias in militias in Iraq.

I'm sorry, I just got a call coming through. I don't know if you heard that, Uh.

And the Israelis have been frustrated, as I was just saying about their inability or the difficulty they've been having translating their military success in Lebanon into a lasting political change.

His Billah is trying to come back.

It wants to grow its capabilities again with the help of the Iranians, and they're using this opportunity.

To try to put his Billah back in his box.

Is there a Muslim nation that is to be spared from this odd conniption fit that Iron is throwing. Earlier about about seven or eight hours ago, apparently over Turkish airspace, an Iranian missile was like headed for istanbuler Ankorra or something like that, and the Turks of worn the Iranians that they will respond to such attacks. Help help me understand the universe in which it makes sense for Iran to drive just about everybody into our camp.

Well, there there is a method to this madness, although I have to say that that one surprised me. But there is a method here, and that one of the one element of the regionalization strategy of the Iranians is just to force the United States to burn in its allies to burn through interceptors. There's a global you know, there's a finite number of interceptors, and that the Iranians have more missiles than we have interceptors to uh to

Let's talk a little bit about pressure of another type. I can only imagine, and I've not been in the habit of trying to sort of channel the Chinese or figure out to be a whisperer for them. I mean, I understand the basic logic of the CCP and a communist regime and their global positioning. But if you'd have told me six months ago we're going to do something really aggressive about Iran. I would have expected a lot

Well, the Chinese have always stayed one step removed from these conflicts in the Middle East. They benefit from them greatly, and they benefit from building up the Iranians.

They have a vested interest here in the regime.

They are very very significant supporters of Iran's ballistic missile program. They provide targeting data to the Houthis. For example, there are only two entities in the world that have anti ship ballistic missiles. That is a weapon that is designed for one thing and one thing only, and that is to attack American aircraft carriers when they are maneuvering in confined waterways. And those two entities are the Chinese and

They're supporting them through the Iranians with.

Component parts for the missiles and and some of the chemicals needed to build solid fuel, propellant.

And so on.

So the Chinese are there in the background. They're also buying Iranian oil at a steep discount. They benefit from that greatly, but they are always reluctant to get.

Directly involved in these conflicts.

So what they want to see right now is they just want to see the conflict come to an end and the regimes survive so that they can again rebuild their missile program in a way that will benefit the Chinese, and that.

They will sell their oil to the Chinese.

Last thing, I'm glad to get it to fit this in in a world filled with people who very understandably say, I have no idea how this is going to work out. I have no crystal ball, and let the game come to me. I have no idea. Not twenty four hours ago, you wrote a piece called Trump's Endgame, in which you take a look at your tea leaves and give it and share a little bit about how you think this all played out. So please share with the class.

I think that Donald Trump, in let's say about a week, maybe a few days less, maybe a few days more, I think he will declare victory, and he will begin negotiating with the regime about ballistic missiles and the nuclear program and support for proxies. And I think he will move away from support for revolution in Iran. He doesn't want a huge revolution, could turn into civil war. It could then turn into a problem that can't be managed

Well. There are no solutions, there are only trade offs, and that may be less satisfying to the gut than hanging in there and then watching American flags and Iranian flags as they build statues to Donald Trump. We may get to that point, but what you've described I think may accentuate the positives and eliminate the negatives. As the old song lyric goes, Mike Doran, thank you so much, thanks for all you do. Pleasure to spend time with

Hello, Thanks for having me.

So this is actually quite the palette cleanser. We have been so steeped in Iran. I've thrown everybody some thoughts about Cornyn and Paxton and the Senate primary in my state. I want to go into some of what you've been paying some attention to and the kind of things that tend to be your cup of tea. Help me with something that was a story, seemed like a big story a couple of a few days ago, and then I

That that did happen? We learned from the House Judiciary Committee, who obtained documents from the Justice Department that under Biden, FBI was being even more aggressive in surveilling conservatives and people associated with Donald Trump's twenty twenty four campaign. Then we even knew.

And I think one.

Of the reasons why stuff like this doesn't break through is because people have sort of largely accepted that the FBI was aggressively going after Donald Trump, but because he won re election, people are, I guess, sort of willing

EXE. Where is the bar set for surprise? I mean, we're at war. You'll have to alert me when something else happens. I don't know. I just all right, then, let's give this a try. You've been paying some attention to some House hearings, one in which the Governor of Minnesota, Tim Walls, didn't seem to remember when he first learned

Well, it's not really working.

I mean, it was sort of remarkable that Tim Walls, who has had months to prepare for this hearing. Obviously, fraud started becoming a scandal in Minnesota years ago, and in the past few months, not just a Minnesota scandal, but a national one, and Mark Walls came in unprepared to answer questions about how much federal money his state was allocating towards autism services, towards some of these nutrition programs, and the other social service programs that have been targeted

There were some combative.

Political bonent moments, but it's pretty clear that Walls and Ellison still don't really have answers for how so much money was able to be stolen during their administration.

So, noticing a theme that could be put to some use both politically and practically, President Trump announced the establishment I believe. I don't know if this is on the business cards the Office of the Fraud Czar. Do we have enough fraud to occupy there their long in their long and busy days, and how might that even work?

Yes, there's plenty of fraud. I mean, the dirty little secret is that this type of fraud is not limited to Minnesota, and it's not even limited just to Blues states. There's just not a ton of oversight over a lot of these programs, like programs under Medicaid for example, or other social services programs, will mostly rely on people attesting to their own details.

So there's plenty of fraud to go around.

Makes sense, Well, listen, and plenty of stories to go around, keeping you busy. Sarah Bedford, investigations editor for the DC Examitor, Thank you. It's always a pleasure to talk to you, Sarah, And if history is a prolog I will again soon at some point here on the Hugh Hewitt Show, Mark Davis filling in Salem News Channel, Salem Radio Network. We will continue.

You've heard me talk a lot about Consumer Cellular how you can switch your carrier save money without the sacrifice. That's because Consumer Cellular uses the same towers as major carriers. Make the switch today and get twenty five dollars off at Consumer Cellular dot Com slash you if you're over fifty, get one line of unlimited talk, text and data for thirty five plus an additional five dollars per month off

I hope you act.

Text Hewitt Hgwitt, that's Hewitt Hgwitt to five to one five fifty five, that's Hewett to fifty one five five five, or visit hewit dot com right now and click on the blue giving living Water banner at the top to provide living water today. And thank you.

Precious minutes remain. We might have an opportunity to pop back on the phone with you at one one hundred and five two h one two three four in the final segment or here in our final quarter hour. But there is one more person making the list of wonderful folks that we've had the opportunity to talk to. Vice Chair of Public Interest Declassification, Adjunct Fellow at the Hudson Institute, Ezra Cohen, is here fresh off a plane or something.

Well, we were five days into this and we already have complete airs priority in Iran. But also, I mean, you know, I'll tell you other countries that perhaps were thinking of taking action that was against the US interest or definitely taking note here, and especially as the US just absolutely routes the Chinese military technology and hardware.

That the Iranians were equipped with.

I think it's sending a very very strong message to a lot of other countries around the world.

There's something really timely about you being here right now, because I've been this is my second talk show of the day. I've talked to a lot of people, I've thought about a lot of things. I'm really in the mood to tie sort of a bow around things just for this calendar day. So help me out with this one.

In a world.

Where there are some people who seem isolationist, who didn't really want to do anything, and there are other people who are deeply concerned about a forever war, a quagmires being you know, boots on the ground for years. Isn't there a third way? Isn't there a way to navigate a wonderful in between space where we take a limited engagement, a limited action that is so decisive and so successful that he hits a reset button and things are recognizably better within months.

Well, this is President Trump's doctrine, right, I mean, everybody and all of these you know, commentators online wanted to put him in one bucket or another. I mean, either he's an interventionalist or you know, he's an isolationist. The bottom line is the President Trump wants America to win, and he's only going to pick objectives that allow America to win. And we've seen this really from the beginning of his administration, whether you know most recently the Maduro raid,

I've had one crystal ball that yielded a scenario where as soon as maybe a week or two, President Trump sort of pivots. He doesn't pull out or say okay, that's enough, but goes looking for maybe some element, some you know how transactional he could be. Yeah, and I know the Delsea Rodriguez of Tehran is a tricky Venezuelan comparison because I don't think there is one, but just some way to get to a phase that says, I'm looking for ways to manage the next chapter and not have it happen in a year.

Well, look, and this is actually this started at the end of President Trump's first term. If you go back and look there there were a lot of critics saying, oh, President Trump's trying to start a war at the end of his first term. Actually, he was just trying to leave options for the next administration to make sure that this Iranian problem would not persist for many more generations to come. And I I think that's what he's trying

You know, we may not like you know who's there.

She might not be perfect in Venezuela, but the bottom line is that it's much more stable and much more in the US interests than it was six months ago.

And I think he's looking for the same type of.

Thing in Iran. Now we're clearly not there yet. There's a lot more work that needs to be done that you know, as Secretary Hegseeth and Chairman Kane have said, this is a way more complex operation, certainly just in terms of the capability that the Iranians had.

So it's going to take some time.

But the President isn't looking to create you know, another Afghanistan or Libya, right. He wants to leave a very very stable, lasting situation where the US can actually have you know, positive relations with with the government that's left in place there.

As ra Colan on Twitter on exs Ezra A Cohen and in going and paying a visit over there, I found a little chunk that you posted of your conversation I think just yesterday with the BBC. Do you get a feeling of not that the BBC represents all of Europe or even all of the UK. How did that conversation go of the people who just really don't like Trump in this country, around Europe and the UN and

Well, you know, the BRIT's like to be provocative. You just have to remain very calm when you're dealing with them, and I think they don't expect that from most Americans, but you just remain calm. Look, the Europeans and especially the Brits realized that they made a massive error.

They thought that they were going to you know.

Cast out and really call into question President Trump's the operation that President Trump is leading right now. They immediately regretted it, mainly because within you know, less than a day, the Iranians started striking British bases in the mediterran Granian they and the Brits because they stayed out of it stupidly, they had no forces pre deployed there, they had nowhere

I think they realized that now.

At the same time, they're also getting the Brits especially, are getting pulled by mac cron into his sphere of influence. It's not working well for them at all.

You just yesterday on the same day, retweeted a wonderful somebody who floated a famous Churchill quote, never be separated from the Americans. Well, we are glad to be joined at pahip with you and everybody the Hudson Institute. Thank you, very very much. It is Ezra Cohen pleasure spending time with you, sir, and our time together is about done.