Economic Costs and Political Consequences

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To get the full episode, you'll want to subscribe to the Raging Moderates feed on Apple, Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you listen. Again, that's the Raging Moderates feed. We're dropping new episodes every weekday evening so you can get Jess and me five days a week. Subscribe on YouTube or check us out on Substack if you want it ad-free. All right, here's a preview of today's show welcome to Raging Moderates I'm Scott Galloway and I'm Jessica Tarlov . If you're not already please make sure to get subscribed to our YouTube channel so you stay up to date on the latest politics news. All right, let's get into it. Uh we're a month into the war with Iran and the messaging couldn't be more split or I don't know if that's the right word, confused, sclerotic, head up your ass, makes no fucking sense. Really bad. There you go. Really bad. That's probably better. President Trump is touting real progress toward a deal, while Defense Secretary Pete Hagsath says we're closer than ever to winning. What is winning, white man? Even as he acknowledges Iran can still strike back, so which is it? Are we nearing a deal or bracing for more retaliation? At the same time, the conflict is expanding. The U.S. is flying B-52 missions over Iran targeting supply chains while Iran maintains its grip on the Straits of Formuz, driving tanker attacks and rising tensions across the region. And back at home, it's starting to bite. Gas prices are up, supply chains are tightening, and the risk of a prolonged conflict is turning uh into a real political task. So what's the end game here? Here's Secretary Hex Seth earlier talking about the timeline. Let's let's take a listen Military objectives that we're moving toward and things that we look at. And has he's articulated, you know, he's said four to six weeks, six to eight weeks, three we it could be any any particular number, but we would never reveal precisely what it is because our goal is to finish those objectives. And we're well on our way, and the chairman and I look at this every single day. It will be the president's determination and the president's determination alone. Uh when those objectives are complete and when it serves the interest of the American people to cut that deal, to make sure that Iran doesn't have a nuclear capability uh and and ultimately that our objectives are our interests are advanced. It was such a frustrating press conference because he brought up an objective that is now off the list. Secretary Rubio laid out the four objectives yesterday that are left. And by the way, there's no language anymore about obliterating anything. We're just trying to diminish things now, which of course on the sliding scale could be anything from like we nicked it to we blew it up a little to they're already firing more missiles than they were last week, which is a huge deal and change in the state of play. But when he talks about nuclear material, that's gone. Reg ime change that lets the Iranian people live freely, that's gone off the list. And I don't know if you saw this, the Wall Street Journal reported last night, and then Trump confirmed it this morning on True Social that he's open to an arrangement where he the US leaves before the Strait of Hormuz is reopened. So that essentially just leaves Iran in charge of the strait and they can negotiate any deal that they want. We know already they're making more money than they were before . They're cutting their own deals. Like all the tankers that are going through R tankers, right? They're Pakistani tankers, Indian tankers, Chinese tankers. They're supplying the world with oil again, just at a higher price and filling up their coffers, plus the 14 billion that we gave them back when we eased sanctions on them in a middle of a war that we said was existential for us is so unbelievably frustrating. And like it continues the, you know, the drumming from the right of you're not a patriot. If you're just calling out, using their language back at them. It's like my favorite thing to do on the five, where I say, you don't even have to trust me, right? I'm just gonna give you a series of quotes of high-ranking Republican officials and the things that they're saying. And you can see how they don't match what they said 24 hours ago. It's a completely schizophrenic administration when it comes to this war. And I'm worried that it's just gonna like the final nail in the coffin of the global world order. So Poland doesn't want to help us. Spain and Italy in the last 2 4 hours have come out and said, like, you can't land here en route to that. The UK doesn't wanna information share with us in the way that we typically could rely on. And we're saying we're gonna peace out before the strait is reopened. Uh will be the main achievement of any of this? Yeah, it's e even if uh the Islamic Republic was open to negotiations, how what do they even start negotiations around? It's not entirely clear what the administration is asking for, what their objectives are, and the most disturbing part of that word salad was it could be any number in terms of duration. Well, does that mean it could be eight years and three trillion dollars? Than we have with our European allies right now. And what's interesting is that China, who I initially thought was going to be a big loser here because of the dependence upon oil coming through the Strait of Formose, might end up being the big winner because the Western countries who fucked up and maintained a Western alliance and tried to be dignified with the president, South Korea, you know, the Philippines, Japan, they are just as energy dependent or dependent upon imports as China, but China's oil is getting through. So relatively speaking, China is about to expand its economic dominance in Southeast Asia or in Asia. Meanwhile, all of our allies are like, oh my God, it it all comes back to that great animal house quote. You fucked up, you trusted us. Whether it's Canada letting their export volume go to 75% of their exports into the U.S. thinking that they had a great relationship with us, or whether it's Asian nations and our allies thinking, well, the U.S. appears to be appears to know what it's doing. Even when we disagree with them, we're going to keep quiet, we're going to continue to share intelligence. And now, arguably, the strongest ally in history with us, at least for the last, you know, call it since 1945, has been with the U.K. And maybe with the exception of Canada, and now the UK is saying we're not going to provide provide you with information. So words matter, communication matters, and even if someone in the IRGC said it's time to negotiate or backchannel. Who do they call? What is the message? What is the administration looking for? And also , every day this goes on with this flail ing. It's like trying to deal with a drunk oc topus . It just m it makes them look like the adults and makes us look like the bad guys that the world community uh can't trust. Well, on top of it, you know, part of the calculus of the Trump administration has always been that we're going to rec enter our ally nexus to the Middle East, right? And create these great partnerships with the Gulf states. And the Gulf states are saying you have to keep going. Like you can't poke the bear and then leave us here, essentially, at this point. And so you have this push and pull from the signals that he 's getting from Americans at home. I mean, his approval rating was generous yesterday when I said it was at 40%. There are now a number of polls that have him in the mid-30s to even low 30s, right? You have gas hitting over $4 a gallon today. What's diesel up to? Like $550. So that decimates, you know, trucking industries, housing, construction, et cetera. And we're saying, like, you got to focus on what's going on at home. Our European allies are saying, this is so hare-brained and you haven't been able to give us a decent briefing to explain what a decent set of goals are or what an exit strategy is. And so no one's happy on that side. And then the Gulf states aren't even happy with what's going on. Would they prefer a world without Ayatollah Jr. in it and the IRGC as it's currently constituted, a hundred percent. But we've even stopped taking out key members of the leadership, which I feel like is an admission that this is kind of it, right? That you know, there is no Delcy Rodriguez waiting in the w ings for when you know she can come into it will definitely be a he in Iran. But you know what I mean? Like there's no moderate leader that you feel like you can make a deal with. And some of the more moderate forces that we've seen are now just out there trolling Trump online mercilessly. Like everybody knows what his game is, right? That he's gonna tweet a couple hours before the market o opens, try to smooth things over. And I feel like, you know, we tried to put out our best AI slop from the White House account with the, you know, Super Mario themed battle plans, but we're getting trolled worse than anything that we're producing at this point, which I'm sure is even more humiliating to him than whatever's actually happening on the battlefield. So just some data here. The war has now cost more than $25 billion dollars. And I think it's important that we start creating context around the cost. So that's enough to pay for Medicaid coverage for over three million people for a year, free tuition, for a two year associate degree for nearly three million people and give nearly thirty million children free school lunch for a year. I think Bernie Sanders' proposal for free college was fifty billion a year. And there are some people saying that this is a quagmire that ultimately is going to cost a trillion dollars. And I think one of the most so the first ballot Hall of Fame geopolitical catastrophes of the last of this, I would argue, of this century was George or W deciding to go into Iraq. You know, trillions of dollars , 4,500 U.S. servicemen, I believe, lost, hundreds of thousands of people in Iraq. But philosophically, I think the real damage that was done was that the administration, Bush said to America, we can have wars and cut your taxes. And the problem is the American people believed him. Before we go, a reminder that not only is raging moderates now five days a week, we're now available on substack subscribers get ad-free episodes live streams and a place to connect with me jess and the rest of the community find us at raging moderates dot prop ia dot com also as i continue to pat us on the back, big news. We've been nominated for a Webby Award for Best News and Politics Podcast. We need your help to bring it home. Please head to vote.webbyAwards.com. Vote.webbyawards.com. You want to send President Trump a message? Go to vote.webbyAwards.com and cast your vote for Raging Moderates for Best Politics Podcast. Show us some love. That's all for this episode. Thanks for joining us today. See you later.