Lessons from UK Political Resignations

I called up Tommy Vitor from over at Pods of America because this week The Senate did something surprising they voted to constrain Pident sort of They voted in favor of a war powers resolution that would limit his ability to continue the conflict in Iran. It does not have the force of law. It doesn't have the force of law. He could veto it. and also A little too late guys, you know, like R this on the front end, that would have been better. So I guess better late than ever, but not much better This vote comes at a weird time The war has gone on far longer than sixty days, which is when Congress is supposed to take the reins on military force And of course, negotiations over ending the conflict are already ongoing What is this food Me to you if anything. Like it's notable to me that four GOP senators joined in here, including Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who was just primaried out of his seat That seems meaningful. I was kind of asking myself like, where are you at, John Cornan in Texas? You also just lost your seat Is this meaningful in some way to you Um you're right that some of this is like the Yolo Cucus who, you know, people like Bill Cassidy who are primarary U It's good to see them decide to assert themselves a little bit too late. I do think it mostly reflects the fact that the war in almost every poll is catastrophically unpopular. We're talking like seventy percent of voters think it was a bad idea, that it didn't go well, that they just want it over. And so I think That small shift reflects that reality. It's unfortunate though So this is like a weCU vote A little bit. I mean, I think it's just sort of they know their voters hate this idea. they know it's not going well Yesterday, senators met with the president It didn't go great Bill Cassidy, that senator from Louisiana He said he got into a shouting match with Donald Trump over the War Powers resolution I lost my temper, he said later It's the Irish and me. Look, I mean, the downside risk of continuing the war is The street of Hormuz remains closed. There's no oil and gas shipments to economies in Asia that shut down and that there's a widespread famine because fertilizer is not getting out of the stit of Hormuz either. So I think people Ustand that we're kind of like a few weeks, if not a month or so away from that kind of thing happening. Yeah. I mean, to me, this vote This resolution Kind of good summation of where we are in the U. S, which is there are plenty of signals that things aren't going great in a lot of ways, maybe especially when it comes to American foreign policy. And at the same time It doesn't feel like much is happening. Like this is the first time since the enactment of the War Powers resolution. in nineteen seventy three that a vote like this has been taken so meaningful in some way I mean, I feel like I'm in foreign policy purgatory, but I'm just not sure if I'm ready to get into heaven You know what I mean? Like P Research released a survey this week. Yeah, they looked at like thirty six non US. countries thirty five percent of adults say the US contributes globally peace and stability while sixty three percent say it does not. That's A majority says the U.S is a bad actor here. Yeah I mean, if you look, they also ask people in like thirty some odd countries, whether they had confidence or no confidence in President Trump to do the right thing regarding world affairs.. You look at a country that is generally an ally like Germany or France eighty four percent in both countries said no confidence Well, in Turkey, ninety two percent said no confidence. Sweden, eighty nine percent no confidence The top of the list was the Philippines. in Israel where you had you know sixty eight percent and sixty six percent respectively saying they But yeah, America's standing in the world has just plummeted under therump administration, especially Today on the show. Everyone knows America's cooked in Iran even America. We're at the negotiating table anyway N I'm Mary Harris. You're listening to what next? stick her out Can you and I lay out where we are with the war in Iran at the moment in negotiations We're in the midst of things, high level negotiations have ended Vice President Jie Vance is leading those discussions But I think it's instructive to look at what happened on Sunday to get a grip on how Tentative these negotiations are Fragile First full day of talks about Iran Vice president's doing his thing And then all of a sudden, Donald Trump calls Fox News What happened onald Trum Call Fox News basically said The Iranians had threatened to close down the strait of Hormuz in response again in response to some back and forth fighting between the Israelis and Hezbollah in Lebanon is part of supposed to be part of the ceasefire agreement Trump saw that D didn't like it. called up Fox Ns, one of the reporters of Tel Aviv and said something like You won't have a country anymore if you do this and maybe the negotiators won't make it back home. So he was threatening to kill the negotiators who were sitting about to sit down with Jade Vents. In Switzerland, I believe, right? Yeah beautiful hotel, some chalet in Switzerland. So Not the best way to kick off a set of peace talks. He also said he'd take twenty percent of the oil going through the strait. I was just like, Wow, that's um This is a lot You know, this is driving me a little bit crazy. I think Lindsey Graham said something similar on face the Nation, which was that If the talks don't go well, then Trump is just going to fully take over the Stight oform moves and start tolling ships himself and And it's like, well Why are we letting this man go on CBS and say these things. We just saw Trump essentially lose a war to Iran mostly because he could not figure out a way to control this right oform moves. Why are we now suggesting that the U.S. can take control of it and charge our allies, know twenty percent not a great way to win a popularity contest So let's just tellell what we know about where the high level talks ended It's difficult to do. I'm not going to pretend like this is easy because we're relying on Iran and Donald Trump's administration to tell us how things are going and neither seems like particularly uh trustworthy as an information source. So where are we with the strait of hormz So the Strait of Hermz is Open, we believe for the next thirty to sixty days. I think there's some reports today that vessels are starting to move out of the Strait of Hormuz, whichich is funny because like vessels have been kind of moving for a little while. I guess it's just volume. Yeah, in the sort of the dozens per day when I think the average pre war was one hundred thirty per day So I think the challenge is going to be the straight of Herz is not a valve. you open and close, right? It's going to be a series of economic decisions made by shipping companies and insurance companies and oil companies And so I think All the vessels that have been trapped in the Strit of Fz are going to want to race out of there because they're tired of cooling their jets and waiting Um The question is, are these big shipping companies with these massive multim million dollar tankers going to want to send these very expensive assets back in. if they could get fired at or just stuck there for a couple of weeks. I don't think we really know that answer yet One of the sort of top line things Iran wants out of negotiations is end hostilities in Lebanon JD Vance has claimed there's a mechanism for making peace between Hezbollah and Israel. like the day after he made that claim, Israeli soldiers shot and killed two people in Lebanon Where does that part of things stand? Because it seems like before you get past, you can't get to anything else until you get past that Yeah. mean so JD Vance, he claimed that they had launched one of their sort of like four deliverables from the first round of talks was a deconfliction cell Yeah, what's a deconfliction cell I think just sort of it's probably like a conference call. It's probably a way for for the U. S. and Hezbollah and the IDF to communicate if something happens. So to a phone line. Or like literally like, you know, remember in middle school like a phone tree when there was a snow day, right? Okay, some Hezbwllah operative fires a rocket into northern Israel instead of just like, pounding them back at ten X the level like the IDF normally would do. Maybe you make a phone call and say, hey, what happened here? and they say, you try to work it out or find a way that's more proportional and commensurate. We'll see if that works. Yeah, we'll see if like Israel's picking up the line. Do you know what I mean? This relies on a lot of good faith here. It does, it does. And I think, you know, the last I heard was the IDF is occupying territory up to six miles into southern Lebanon Hezbollah is an organization that was born to resist Israeli occupation of their territory So the odds of them stopping firing at these IDF soldiers seems very low to me At the same time, you have Net and Yahu who is got an election coming up at the latest in October is getting attacked from all sides right now because of this deal. Israelis abbsolutely hate this deal. You're seeing members of his own cabinet, savage Donald Trump, savage Jie Vance, savage Steve Wikov, even though sort of candidates to the left of Netanyahu are attacking him from a hawkish perspective about the deal. So Netanyahu has a political incentive. to keep whacking Hezbollah and try to upend the entire deal. So the whole thing feels very precarious to me in this moment Yeah. And then there's the nuclear talks of it all for Trump Iran has agreed to the highest level of nuclear inspections. Iran does not agree with that This seems like the hardest thing, the thing that will take the longest to resolve, but where is it now Yeah, so right now the debate about the IAEA access. So remember, Before the twwelve dayay War, the IAEA had access to nuclear sites in Iran That's a good thing. I think it's a very important part of any effort to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. About a year ago, we did this bunker busting bomb and that stopped. And they got the boot, they got kicked out. Now JD Vance is saying the IAA can go back into Iran. Um the devil is in the details here. Like where are they going? There are multiple sites, right? Where are they going to go? What are they going to inspect? Can they inspect secret sites? Do they have unfettered access anywhere anytime? These are the kinds of things that Republicans demanded when the deal was Barack Obama and the JCPOA So Again, we don't know any of that. Now the Iranians are basically saying, now we haven't agreed to any of this. U so we will see where the truth lies Here's an actual thing. that has happened since the high level talks ended the Treasury department. issued a sanctions waiver on Iranian oil And I wanted to talk to you about this because there's so much chatter about like, this is happening, this isn't happening This is a real thing that has happened And it seems very consequential Um And I feel like you're going to have perspective on how consequential it is. Like it seems to me getting rid of the sanctions on Iranian oil For sixty days, which is what this does This is a big concession from the United States. B big. I don't know what we've concession How do you think of what this is We've gotone nothing for that concession. I mean, look, I mean, we reopened the Strait of Hormuus, which again, was open before this war started. On the general license to sell oil and gas. so they've U The U. S said that they can they have a sixty day sanctions waiver on the sale of Iranian oil, petroleum products, derivatives of those products and services. That includes a waiver on banking insurance, transportation, sort of like all these elements. So it basically unravels like forty, you know thirty years of U. S. sanctions. on Iran's oil and gas petroleum industry, which is their primary way of getting revenue. Yeah, the United States banned its firms from buying Iranian oil in nineteen eighty. So the idea that we're lifting this it's not just like we're lifting some sanctions that like Obama put in place or something like that. These are like real sanctions that have been place a long time This is a big deal, it's something that's in place a long time. And I saw Steve Ratner is a progressive economist. estimated that Iran can make up to ten billion dollars off of this move alone in the next sixty days So this is real money for Iran on the front end Um What does the US get out of it? Well, if Donald Trump is concerned primarily about oil and gas prices and wants to do everything he can to flood the market with more supply, maybe this is one way to do that. I was reading an article in the economist that sort of like prorojected forward. what is a concession like this Me in. It basically said if you look at u the agreement as it stands now and these concessions There's a possibility. that Iran could become one of the Gulf's richest states within a decade. I'm quoting without having conceded much on its nuclear program or its support for troublesome proxies. If that's what you're projecting forward We cannot say that whatever we're negotiating right now with Iran is a better deal then Obama's agreement, the JCPOA Right No, theres there's just no chance. I mean, again, just in terms of your list of like front end concessions, there's the general license to sell oil and gas There's some talk about unfreezing up to twenty four billion dollars in frozen Iranian assets. That's money basically that Iran made off of oil sales that got stuck in foreign bank accounts because of sanctions that they will get back at some point. And they can spend any way they want, by the way. Iran gets a commitment to remove all sanctions, right? This is, you know, it'll be in a phased approach. Um if they meet certain thresholds, but to your point earlier, we're talking about getting rid of U. S sanctions, UNcur, UN Security Council sanctions, all of the sanctions So decades of these sanctions regimes. And by the way, there is a conversation to be had about whether the U. S. overuses sanctions, and I'm very open to that and agree with a lot of those arguments. But in this case, like we should just talk about what we're doing And then there's this idea that they're going to pull together a three hundred billion dollars reconstruction fund with private money for a run They keep saying it's private money But like but I feel like we've been here before, right? withith the Gaza deal. That was gonna be private money that we were going to put forward for Gaza and that money, as far as I can tell, does not exist yet. So It either doesn't exist or it's not private money and then it's taxpayers or someone else funding it, right My guess is it never materializes. Reuter says there's been one hundred fifty billion in commitments, so who knows U, no one will tell us the truth about anything per your point earlier U But then in terms of your your broader point about what's not in the deal There is nothing in this agreement about support for proxy groups like Hamas and Hezbollah. not mentioned in the deal are limitations on Iran's ballistic missile program And look, I under the JCPOA, Those things weren't mentioned either. And my argument was always The nuclear issue was the existential one. So you have to carve that off and deal with it separately and then you can get to the other things later if you build trust, right? So I don't think it's unreasonable to focus on the nuclear issue first But if we are judging by The Trump administration rhetoric, decades of Republican criticism of the JCPOA The fact that those things aren't in there is a big deal especially considering that In the run up to the war in the early days of the war Republicans like Marco Rubio and Pete Hegseth were saying that Iran is trying to build a stockpile of ballistic missiles that is so big that will make them kind of impervious to U. S. strikes on their nuclear sites, which was self evidently dumb to me, but I mean, if that was what they believed They have then failed on that front Yeah It seems to me this sanctions concession It's like potential money being paid so that the Trump administration can say what they want. about this deal Do know what I mean? L It's like, okay, you can say whatever you want about this deal because we're we can sell the oil. You know what I mean? Like it sort of gives the breathing space for talks to continue even though there are real structural issues with those talks Yeah, I mean, I think what we're learning is that Trump just wanted this thing over. Maybe he feels like he was sold a bill of goods by Netanyahu and all these claims about how Easy the war would be and will decapitate the Iranian leadership and then the Kurds will roll in from Iraq and there willll be a regime change and you know, Kumbaaya You're a great man. Mr. Trump, and then he saw the much messier utterly predictable outcome that we have today and just decided, you know what? We're about to be out of oil reserves This is going to be cataclysmic in the midterms and maybe for the world. So let's just end this thing After the break The man, behind the man behind the deal in Iran And one resignation across the pond says about upcoming elections here at home. to talk about what these negotiations and where they stand, which doesn't seem great, the way that we have laid them out right now, what it means for our chief negotiator Vice Pident JD Vance All of the information out there is that JD Vance He seems to have not wanted to get into this war in the first place. Now he's the guy in charge of landing the plane and negotiating a way out Just last week, of course, you have Donald Trump saying Yes, he is my fall guy. It's true. If he negotiates way out, that's great. I'll take all the credit. and if he doesn't, I will just blame him feeling right about now if you were Jadie Vance Not great. I mean, he's both kind of leaning into the task and taking it on, but also kind of preemptively distancing himself from the result. Like I don't know if you saw did an interview where he was like, well, I'm not real expert on these things So I'm going leave oers It's like, buddy're the sitting in Switzerland task with leading this. I mean, it feels like in both All the times JD's gotten involved in negotiations like this It kind of shows up for twenty four hours and then gets the hell out of there U and designates himself the kind of high level political guidance guy. And then they leave it to the experts to work out the details. Now that's not a bad way to run a railroad necessarily But during the JCPOA negotiations, like John Kerry was locked in up hotel room with you know, Iranians for like weeks at a time trying to Hash this thing out And I imagine there's going to be a similar amount of effort needed to get some Trump deal over the finish line because The runningans are experts They're probably pretty pissed off and they got nothing but time S they can wait us out But Jadie Vans also wants to run for president Oh, the politics for him are terrible. Yeah, I don't know how you do that and do this at the same time Maybe it's like like, u, you know Trump made my bed and now I have to align it and see if I can fix it. I mean bad metaphor, The reporting on Vance is that he was opposed to regime change wars with Iran But then when he knew Trump was going to do it he told him to go all in That I think that was the Naggie Haberman Jonathan Swan kind of reporting So the idea that Vans can distance himself from this conflict, I think, is very difficult , especially if like Tucker Carlson runs Yeah You know what was funny about that moment that President Trump was sort of yucking it up about Yeah, I'll just blame JD. Is it behind him Howoward Ludnick, I believe. U Cerce sectary and Marco Rubio who is stone faced. Yes, they have completely opposite reactions. Lutnik is laughing his head off. He's like, this guy is hilarious. He's a real card. And Rubio is like disassociating coold is ice. And I wonder what you've made of that reaction because It's worth remembering Marco Rubio ran against Trump and had to really overcome that. And I feel like he just kind of sees flash before his eyes. Like I' this one guy between me and Trump and it's JD Vance and I got it, I got to keep him there to give me cover as long as possible Yeah, I mean, look, I guess to advance's credit, he has kind of leaned into this assignment. On the other Marco Rubio, as you mentioned, I mean, he I kind of did one press conference on Capitol Hill early on about The Iran conflict did a briefing for senators and then disappeared. He hass just been disappearing for weeks at a time And the man is the secretary of State. And the man is secretary National securityvisor. Yeah. And so I saw his face there and I thought I had a few reactions. One on a human level, I assumed he probably hadn't slept in like three days. and was living on, you know, trucker speed and coffee or whatever it takes to stay alive. Um, so that'll, you know, leave you kind flat. Um, I think you probably heard Donald Trump kind of unravel every bit of rhetoric about Iran or you know deeply held policy view. a little neocon inside Marco has ever had m, and that probably didn't feel good And then also, I think, you know, he probably heard his potential rival Given this assignment. Now would he want would Rubia want that assignment doubt it, but it is the kind of thing a Secretary of state would normally do I ironically hear like Iran has a position called the Supreme leadeer But they actually have a system in place where there are a bunch of power centers that will all have to agree on this deal. likeike the Supreme leadeer We'll have to work with the elected political goons to some extent. And then the IRGC of the military will like really probably make the call. Here in Amera we have a king And the Iranians know that. And the only person whose opinion ultimately matters is going to be Donald Trump. So we can send JD Vance We can pretend it matters that the Vice president of the United States is in the room, but this is going to be up to Trump's whims and they know that. So it's just kind of an interesting negotiating position to be in where Jadie Vance, you know, will face like a system and a process on one side and then just have his capricious boss on the other kind of dictating whatever he does. Are you saying the Iranians are more organized? I don't know if they I don't know if they're more organized, but they just have like they have politics, right? In Washington, people always talk about Iran like it's his monolithic place where everyone is evil and you know, it's the Mullers and blah, blah. They have a system. they have politics too. There's hardliners There's people that are more accommodating. like we just have to understand that them and treat them accordingly Mm. Okay, while you are talking foreign policy with me I did want to talk about one more story, which is kind of a hard pivot I don't think it's one hundred percent a pivot. I think it's important to the United States for a lot of reasons. It's what happened in the UK with Kurestarmer to kick off the week First of, just the very weird fact of Donald Trump like sending a message out to the world like Kure Starmer will resign and then Kure Starmer did resign the Prime Minister in the UK Um, Tell me about your reaction to this news and what you think it means for us across the pond because I see a lot of similarities and lessons to be learned here, but I'm not sure if you do First of, that on the Trump frront running that news thing, like what a jerk You can't let the guy just resign You can't let this poor man just announce his own resignation you had a front run that. His real main character syndrome. Yeah, it's just what a class list thing to do. So For folks who don't know, I mean, two years ago, K Starmer led labor into an election and a landslide victory. this historic victory and now two two plus years into what is supposed to be a five year term He basically got run out of office by his own party It's very likely that a guy named Andy Burnham will be the next prime mininister He just won what's called a by election over there. We called a special election But he won overwhelmingly over the Reform UK partarty in a part of the country that is more rural, more like kind of Brexit curious or Brexit friendly then, you know, London U and is seen as just a much stronger candidate. So I think everyone's wondering like what the hell happened with Starmer Why did it go badly and like what happens next? I think When you read like smart analysts They talk about Starmer had to deal with some scandals and some controversyies like he was accepting free gifts early on. then He u decided to name someone who was close with Jeffrey Epstein to be as ammbassador to the U. S. And that was a disaster absolute disaster. But he also ran a very particular kind of leadership, right? He was trying to be moderate. He was trying to say like, okay, we got to, you know, cut welfare benefits. We got to crack down on immigration. It was, um Yeah, when you think about Democrats over here moderating, you think about the kind of things Kir Starmer was saying When I think about the big failings for herearstarmer, it's that They ran on what a lot of people call a Ming vas strategy. like they knew that the Tory partarty after You know, decade plus of rule. was polling terribly. they were likely to win. and so they didn't paint a big vision for the future. They just didn't want to break the Ming vas And I think Starmer then got into office And no one knew What was your big idea? What's your narrative? What is the story you are trying to tell about your leadership, about the Labor Party's leadership and the future of the UK? So that was big problem number one B problem number two was he was just a terrible communicator And that made me think a lot about Joe Biden. Um, who was just sort of even when he did good things, neither of them were able to seell it to the people And it was not just like a lack of charisma or like speech making ability. It was again, this bigger vision, sort of a suny optimistic vision for the future about, you know, kind of where you are, where you want to go. and how you're going to get there. And I think that is a real lesson, I think for Democrats looking forward Yeah. I mean is we're saying we I don't think we have said this that this is going to be the seventh prime mininister in the UK in ten years. And I think most of the analysis basically pins this on Brexit Voters voted for Brexit Brexit has not been what they wanted. No one knows how to get the heck out of the Brexit problem And I think that's important to pay attention to for Americans because I think of Donald Trump as like Brexit in human form. Do you know what I mean? Like that's like sort of wedy. That's his animating spirit, which is like make America great again, cut yourself off from the rest of the world. And so when I look at what's happening with Kir Starmer, I'm like, I mean, we have a different system here. It's not parliamentary, etcetera, et cetera I do think there are lessons for American politicians, especially American Democrats who may want to just like and Move on. Not sure it's possible in this world I think it's really well said. I think look, here's Starmer effectively ran against the Tory partarty and thirteen, whatever, fourteen years of Tory role, whatever it was And I think that the next, you know, Democrats in the midtermss are certainly going to run against Donald Trump and his handling of the country, the economy foreign policy over the last two years But after that, well, not after that, starting today, really. We need to be figuring out what our story is, what is the vision for the Democratic Party How are we going to fix our branding problem? Be people don't like Democrats as much as they't like Trump. If you look at polls, they don't like Demrats either. and how we're going to pivot away from him because It's great to run in opposition to someone else, but then once you're governing, people get sick of hearing that right away. I mean, we dealt with this in the Obama administration with Bush Um Bush handed us two wars that were going terribly. financial crisis, all kinds of problems And people did not want to hear us blame him a few months and you had to just figure out how to fix it. You gott to own it Okay, Tommy, I cannot let you go without asking you one more question. Which is us How close are you I should explain to people. Meghgan Kelley recently said you were one of her favorite podcasters and a friend, which was surprising to me because the last time I saw you guys exchanging anything online publicly, you were like beefing about tampons and bathrooms in Minnesota on ads. So good old days. That' two years ago. So tell me more So Meghgan Kelly, I don't know her well. We've only communicated over DM When Charlie Kirk was assassinated Um I know she was close with him And I'll be honest with you. On that day, I was reading stories about what happened And I saw these videos of Charlie Kirk sitting on a set I think it was Fox and Friends in New York and his little adorable baby daughter running up to him and giving him a hug and it just absolutely My heart J just on a human level, I reached out and I said, I'm just want you to know, I'm so sorry That kind of like opened doors for us just to have an exchange of views back and forth. and I think we sort of continued to talk about some things as the war in Iran started and went south and she was I think saying things and raising interesting points about, you, her experience. at Fox News during the Iraq War and how she felt like she was forced to cheerlead for the wars. And you know, it was just an interesting conversation. So That's how we ended up sort having a conversation and Finy a little Tommy Thank you so much for coming on the show. Catch you back here soon, I hope Mary, thank so much for having me. alwaysways fun. and please tell Mean Kelly, I say hi Tommy Vitor is the host of Pod Save the World and a co host of Pod Save America And that's our show What nextext is produced by Rob Gunther, Evan Campbell, Madeeline Tames Ducharm, and Patrick Fort Pi Osburn is the senior supervis producer of Wite Next and the What Next TVD Nilo Bell is the executive producer of podcasts here at Slage Ben Richmond is the senior Director of Podcast operations and I'm Mary Harris, go dack it down a B bllue sky, sayay hello, I'm atatt Mary Harris Thanks for listening catch you back Next time