196. Trump’s Iran Deal: One Big American Failure?

Welcome to the Restless Politics US with me, Catty Kaye. And me, Anthony Scaramucci, how are you, Catty? I am very good, it's been a fun sporting weekend. I've been watching the World Cup games, Team USA doing amazingly. I liked that on Friday, that was fun. Of course we have the next, Catty. I know, I realize. We have the Knicks for all of us, New Yorkers out there. As I explained to people I was watching with, I've been waiting for it longer than you've all been alive. Okay, so the last time the Knicks won, I was watching it from my Nana's little apartment on Rabbit Ear TV in black and white. And New York went crazy, but now look guys, you've won the basketball, you can start focusing on the soccer and the World Cup. That's what I'm thinking. We can move on. In the meantime, we had a UFC fight at the White House, I think at some point we have to talk a little bit about the culture of that and what the Democrats miss. But let's talk about the Trump Iran deal. Yeah, it's been a very busy weekend. It started with Donald Trump getting his name taken off the Kennedy Center too. That was kind of extraordinary to watch the live streams of that. Only in Washington is a Friday night's exciting entertainment, watching a name come off the Kennedy Center wall. But there you go, that's what kind of city this is. Yeah, on Sunday, the president announced that a deal has finally been reached with Iran. Ships of the world, start your engines, let the oil flow, he said. But honestly, there are a lot more questions than answers because none of us have actually seen this memorandum of understanding, which is meant to be a couple of pages long. It's going to get signed on Friday in theory. And we will look at whether the straight is really going to get opened and under what conditions, what will happen to Iran's nuclear program and perhaps the question that is most important to the Trump administration. Can he spin this deal, whatever it ends up being, as better than Barack Obama's deal? Because here's my new thought. I think that Donald Trump has Obama derangement syndrome. And that's what a lot of this was all of about. Oh, yes. I like that. Oh, yes. He could also be. Oh, yes. He would like that. Second half, yes, we will talk about Trump's ultimate fighting championship event that was held for his 80th birthday celebrations just down the road from me in Washington, DC. But let's start with the headlines out of this Iran deal. Here is what we know. He's announced a breakthrough that the Pakistanis and the Qataris mediated the Iranians have also said, yes, there has been a breakthrough. And that some document will be signed on Friday, which starts a period of about 60 days during which the Straits of Hormuz will be opened again. The Americans will open the blockade, release the blockade on the Straits of Hormuz. And nuclear negotiations will start over Iran's nuclear program. And then there's a lot of questions around about how much money Iran gets in terms of unfrozen assets and sanctions relief and reparations for the war. And when they get that, there's also questions about Israel, which was not part of these negotiations and has baller and what happens between Lebanon and Israel. So still a lot of questions. I've reached out to a couple of people who have been involved Anthony before the show. In previous Iran negotiations and the take is pretty similar from all of them. This looks like we're going to have open-ended nuclear negotiations that are going to blow past this 60 day period. The Straits of Hormuz will reopen but under greater Iranian control. And Iran will access some reserves that have been blocked. And that's broadly this framework and the conclusion seems to be from the people that I've spoken to this morning that we are probably in a worse off situation than we were before the war started because Iran now has more control of the Straits of Hormuz. And that any final deal that gets negotiated out of this is going to look very similar to the JCPOA, which was Barack Obama's negotiation. And we have not even got the big question of how a deal gets regulated. How are they going to be UN inspectors in there? Are they going to be international inspectors of some kind? Because the JCPOA was 150 pages long. It took 20 months to negotiate and the reason it was so long was that they wanted to make sure they had every contingency settled in terms of verification processes. They wanted to make sure there was no windows in there for misinterpretation or for the Iranians to wriggle out of inspection. So I'm not sure that you can really call this a deal that puts America in a better position. Donald Trump is going to try and spin this as a win, but I think that's a stretch, don't you? Yes, and no. OK. So hear me out for a second. I'm going to make the administration's case for a second. And then I'll tell you where there's some holes in it from my opinion. But in the administration's case, they're going to say this ongoing nuclear discussion is where the holy grail is. And so they're going to say that they're eventually going to get Iran to give up their nuclear weaponry. And now the question is at what price? And so, Katie, that's where that $300 billion number keeps coming up. So to me, what the administration is going to say, we have the straight, more or less open. We've signed this deal. It'll probably take six to 12 months to get the rest of the deal finished. And then the question is how much of that can they bury? How much of the money? I guess it's probably $300 to $400 billion that the Iranians have frozen around the world. Trump is going to give him that. I think it's pretty clear if you look at any of the tea leaves here. And the question is how is he going to convince himself and convince others like his buddies at Fox News that that's OK to do. And that's better than the JCPOA to your point about Obamac derangement syndrome. So to me, getting the straight open, again, just the administration's point of view, he's hoping to knock down oil prices, markets have responded to that. And I think he's going to ignore the tit for tat coming out of Iran in terms of how badly he got beaten by the Iranians here. But the issue that I'm super worried about is America standing in that area of the world. And so if I were an American cynic, I would say to you, OK, wow, they got their asses kicked over there. It's disrupted our golf state alliances. It's made China definitely more powerful, possibly even Russia, or they got their own problems with Ukraine, but possibly even Russia more powerful. And so what's at issue, basically, is what happens to the United States? Is it just a Western hemispheric power as a result of what it did, Cady? And so what's your response to that? I think that is the concern. And I had a long conversation with John Meacham, the historian, who was saying, look, this whole deal will be judged on whether Iran ends up being a problem in the way that it has been a problem for 47 years for America. And does it end up with a nuclear program? And that is how we'll judge this now. On February the 27th, the Iranians were in a position where they were offering to degrade their highly enriched uranium, water it down, and offering, we understand to have it shipped out of the country as well. So that deal was on the table before this bombing campaign. I'm not sure that we're in a better position than we are today than we were when those negotiations were taking place. But here is the bigger concern. This is not just about Iran and in your right to point to America's standing in the world as the critical component of this. Because that is where the risk lies for nuclear proliferation beyond Iran itself. We may deal with Iran's nuclear program, although most people I've spoken to are pretty skeptical about whether the Iranians would actually agree to whatever they signed to. Will they actually stick to that unlikely? They need a period of rebuilding their nuclear program. They're happy to delay rebuilding it for a while because they need to do their own reconstruction efforts. But here's the problem. We could be in a situation where the risk of global nuclear proliferation has been substantially increased because of what America has done over the last four months. If you're sitting now in South Korea, if you're sitting in Japan, if you're sitting in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia or you're sitting in the UAE, you're not as confident about the American security umbrella as you might have been. In fact, you're not confident about America's desire or ability or willingness to stand by its allies in the way that it has done for the last 30 or 40 years. And guess what? You might think, actually, you know what I need to do to protect myself? I need the ultimate deterrence myself because North Korea didn't get attacked by the Americans. Iran did. What's the difference between those two countries? North Korea has a nuclear weapon. I think we're in a position where the world is less safe because of this. It's cost an enormous amount of money. The devil is always in the details, but if there are not nuclear inspectors in there who are monitoring everything in the way that they were under the JCPOA and Iran was not in breach of the JCPOA, then we are in a worse position than we were before Donald Trump ripped that agreement up when he came into office. I think everybody around the world would agree, spending. A couple of, you know, I don't know, let's call it a couple hundred billion dollars on the war and then having probably a seven hundred billion dollar economic disruption to the global economy and then putting the entire region in a worse off position relative to Iran, everybody would agree that that was a terrible idea and that did not work out for the Americans. It also did not work out for the Israelis because it's not antisemitic to criticize a government and a government's policies, just isn't. People can say it is, but it isn't, but I think that the Israelis overplayed their hand here and I think that we're very successful in convincing Donald Trump that this would be a very quick, expeditious war and he would come out as a winner. So he's not a winner, we've laid out how bad it is for the Americans. But again, I want to give the administration's position because this is how they're going to pitch it and this is how they're going to sell it to the people that watch UFC fights from the lawn of the White House, okay? This is how they're going to sell it. They're going to say that he is uber terrific, they're going to say that they put a pounding while you're laughing. Because I'm not sure they're actually going to say uber terrific, that just, it doesn't sound very hexethy in language. That's just stalled of what it is, they're going to say he is the best. He is the best negotiator ever. He's sontering down the presidential hall of fame, like he did last night and he's just, he's a fighter. He's a fighter. Yes, so they do 17 flyovers to the White House and they'll shoot out red, white, and blue smoke. And they're going to tell everybody how uber terrific the guy is, okay? And then they're going to say that he won and then he's better than Obama, okay? And then those people, Caddy, we're going to say yes. He won and that he's better than Obama. But when you actually do the analysis here, he fell into a trap that was set for him by the Iranians who have observed the Americans in the Middle East for the last quarter of a century. And an historian will write that this was a very big miscalculation and not the Suez crisis, not saying it's that bad for the Americans, okay? It's not an Eden situation. You may disagree, but it's bad because it's weakened our standing and it's now made people question our relationships. And I'll just say that golf countries were probably paying America for protection coming through the Strait of Ormuz and protection in the region and maybe some of that money, that payment, that protection money is going to go to the Iranians from the Gulf. Maybe the Gulf countries are going to say, "Hey, man, we're going to ship you pallets of cash and we're going to help you rebuild your country." And you have to live on your side of the Strait. I have to live on my side of the Strait and I misplayed my hand with the Americans. So that's what's going to happen. But they are basically going to sell this as a win with a big fly over the White House. Yeah. I think, look, you have to believe in the tooth fairy to believe that this is a win. You take Donald Trump at his own words. On the night that he launched this operation and he gave that video address, he gave six different goals. Let's go back to what he said about this himself. The goals were to destroy the missiles that's not been achieved, to destroy the proxies, that has not been achieved, to have regime change, that has not been achieved, to annihilate the Navy that has been partly achieved, to raise the missile industry. The Intel community says, well, that's only half been achieved. And to ensure that Iran doesn't get nuclear weapons, that I think we have to say we don't know yet. So you take Donald Trump at his own words, only a couple of the things that he pointed out out of the six have actually been achieved in any substantial way. So I think he can sell this as a win. This is an emperor has no clothes moment. There is nobody serious that I have spoken to who says that this, we are better off than we were on February the 27th. And by the way, it's worth listening. Any of you who are out there who are interested, the daily, at the New York Times podcast, at the risk of committing pedaltry, sorry, Alistair Campbell, did a really good heart breaking daily last week on the boomerang effect of this war. Because when we talk about, oh, well, this has had a knock on effect to the global economy, they've gone to South Sudan and Somalia and they've talked to the people who have actually been impacted by this war in terms of lack of fertilizer and prices of diesel being too high and aid programs being shut. People have literally died in some of the poorest countries in the world because of the last four months of bombing. So yeah, we're worse off. And I think if anyone, I think if the White House tries to sell this even on Fox, I think even Fox is going to struggle to sell this as a big win. But again, hear me out, okay, we decimated them. We wiped them out. I don't know why he calls 1,000 pounds, 440 kilos of uranium, nuclear dust. I still can't figure that one out. Is it meant to make it sound like sort of more something out of a James Bond villain movie or something? I feel like it's like Crem Brulet on my brain. I feel like the top of my skull is open and they pour sugar on the top of my brain and they just, they just maybe he can't say highly enriched uranium. That's just too complicated. I don't get it. But I would just say this to you, here's my pitch because I got to bring this out there just with people listening in and if you're carrying a vomit bag while you're walking your dog just listen in, he is going to say that I devastated them and I blockaded them for a hundred days and they had tremendous economic pain. And don't please ignore those missiles and drones that are landing in the Gulf States because they don't exist because I wiped all of those out because we've got a ceasefire. Yes, exactly. They've all gone, been obliterated. And by the way, I did things in a way, you know, Obama didn't have the guts, didn't have the guts to do it. And again, for those of you listening, I'm tilting and swiveling my, my massive body as a whole. That's what it was all about. I'm just telling you, that's what's going to happen, Caddy. As a market participant, you've got to get some type of deal done in the hopes that you can lower oil prices and that you can lower the heat that's coming out of the Middle East and perhaps put a little bit of a dent in the affordability crisis in the West, not only here in the United States, but around the world. And look, the reporting from inside the White House is that the president, all of the president's advisors had turned against this war inside the White House. There was nobody who felt this was a good idea to continue this and everybody was urging him to end it. And of course, the Republican party above all is urging him to end it because ding dong, the clock is ticking on the midterm elections. And it's going to still take a while. I mean that this is where we are still not into the details of this because initially the president said, you know, get the ships moving, the oil will be flowing as of Monday. The Iranians have come back and said not so fast. We're not opening anything until Friday, but it's going to take a while to move those ships in and out. Yes, because of speculation, the oil prices have already come down. But in reality, this, it's going to be a few months before this all gets moving again. And I think the real drawback of this whole scenario and of this memorandum of understanding is that Iran is still in a stronger position to control the Straits of Hormuz. Let's say the Israelis decide they are going to bomb Beirut again. Do you think that Iran is just going to sit there and think, well, we've got this very useful weapon. Why won't we use it again? No. Well, of course. Well, listen, I think at this stage, the medium term outcome is that the strait does open and it does provide some level of economic relief for both sides, Katie. Because I do, I do believe. And the Iranians needed the relief too. Yes, I do believe that there's pressure in the Iranian economy that's led to them needing to get the strait open as well. So well, in the immortal words of Trump, well, see what happens. But man, is this a bad deal? And by the way, if you're a Democrat that's studying this for the 2028 presidential election, I have thoughts there, but I would just be careful with the culture, guys, because when you're shitting on Trump with the UFC fight, you're turning off 55 to 60% of the country. We'll get into that in the second half. Okay. So that's our take on the Iran deal. I still think actually we should not be calling a deal because there is no deal yet. We've got to negotiate this thing. It's a two-page memorandum of understanding until it isn't, guys. And in the Middle East and in negotiations with Iran, a lot can change between now and even Friday and a lot more can change from now and in 60 days. But the president wants some kind of a deal. Every single person around him in the White House wants him to get some kind of a deal because they know this was not in America's best interests, and certainly not in the best interests of the Republican Party heading into the mid-term elections. Okay. The break will come back and talk about the great fight on the White House lawn. I wish that was in my birthday. That's what I want, Anthony, by the way. So if you could start planning for November now because I expect a spectacle like that, please. You want it to be a woman's UFC fight or a male UFC fight because you have your choice, getting it. Just think about it. You don't have to answer right now. You've got plenty of time between now and November. All right. it's big and glitzy and loud. Sponsors too. We're gonna hook you up with some sponsor. Oh yeah, I want sponsors. Definitely for the White House. Somebody's got a finance America right now. Okay, we'll be right back and you have a few kids. I imagine you're looking forward to Father's Day. It's a special day in the UK also here in the US and look as a dad myself. I wanted to give our listeners a quick tip. This year, why not give your dad a membership to the restless politics US. And because we love all the dads out there, those who send us questions who are in our founding members club, those who come to our shows and come up and speak to us afterwards, we are offering a 25% discount on an annual gift membership. I mean, come on, Gary, what dad wouldn't want our exclusive founding members Q and A are members only mini series ad free listening early access to our live shows, ticketing and much, much more. Just head to the restless politics us.com. You can click on gifts and the gift will land straight in your dad's inbox right on Father's Day. It's an excellent Father's Day present. I would know. Go to the restless politics us.com and click on something to make your dad a founding member. Happy Father's Day, everybody. Happy Father's Day. With high confidence, it was Russian. Holding the Russians accountable is World Wars. They took down a British passenger jet containing 350 people. Man in the Kremlin is playing Alex. Go to ask yourself if you want to play or not. You're the Prime Minister. If done, not me. We would need to understand the policy context. All the relevant context will be structured as a framework today and disseminated into an operation order. Or Frago. Frago that says to kill the president of Russian. Yes. New from Golhanger. Who is going to be able to pull this off? You're my shoulder, are you Sergeant Top of Duffy? An audio drama journey like no other. Men like Duffy, they are our most valuable weapons. Devised as a technically rigorous geopolitical action forever. We're Britain plays its strongest arm against its strongest foe. Bear hunt. Available now wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back to the rest is politics, US. In this half we're going to talk about Trump's big birthday bash. And I was a little disappointed that the president did not mention our live tour as one of the exciting things that is happening during this 250th anniversary of the United States. Because we are going around the country, Anthony and I, for a bunch of live shows at Lanter, Boston, Toronto, we're going to Canada as well, Minneapolis, Chicago. New York and D.C. we would love to see you there. If you would like to get tickets, tickets are on sale now. Go to the rest is politics us.com. We will be taking your questions. We can't wait to meet you all. So please do come and join us. Daddy, do you want me to see if I can get a presidential tweet out there? I think that would be great. Would that, would that hurt or help ticket sales? I thought you were going to say, would we want the president to come to our show. Oh, shall we interview him on stage? I'm not quite sure we can put on quite the show that he had last night on the White House lawn on Sunday evening because that was wild. This big, massive structure and underneath it, a cage, literal cage fight. I'm not sure, Anthony, I know that we're going to get into the culture of this, but I'm not sure that the founding fathers, when they were sitting there thinking forward, would have thought to themselves in 250 years to show the best that our young democracy has to offer. We will celebrate with on the White House lawn a cage fight. But anyway, maybe they did. Maybe they did. Maybe that's what they wanted. Sponsored by crypto. Listen, I love the founders and it read a lot about the founders. And one of the things I learned, particularly from Mr. Franklin, Dr. Franklin, as they called him, is neuroplasticity. So Frank would be looking at this and he would be laughing to himself and saying, okay, they've gotten a little fat and happy and they are no longer focused on the rigors of what it takes to be fat and happy. So you're on the back end of it. If you're in the wealth management business, you always tell the client the first generation makes it, the second generation keeps it, figures out a way to keep it. The third generation squanders it. And we're now in the third century, the second half of the third century of this thing. And it seems to be squandery. I want to go to three things and then you respond please. So number one, the 60 million dollar expense was offset by logos and advertising coming from the White House South lawn. First time that's ever happened, right? Yeah, first time it's ever happened. But the UFC says that they're losing 30 million dollars on this thing. But they probably got half a billion dollars worth of branding off of it. But you know, the president himself is buying shares in TKO, the company that owns the UFC before the fight starts. So I mean, you just have to love the openness of all this. The transactional nature of it. I'm going to tweet about this company and tell you to buy it. But guess what, I'm also buying it. So that's number two. And then the third thing, which I think is for me, something that the liberals miss, this is a huge part of the culture. Okay. For those of you outside of this United States, this is America. Okay, what is America? It is Bud Light. Bud Light is back. By the way, they were one of the sponsors last night. It is NASCAR. It is hot dogs, trailer hitches, pickup trucks, gas guzzling SUVs and big flags, big flags, flyovers. Okay. Now you could sit there and you could sneer at it and you could look at it in a garage way. And you could say this is ridiculous. And this is the trailer park trash part of America. If you want to do that, that's fine. But then you're not going to win elections, Caddy. And by the way, this is the Platinum America. By the way, this is also the Platinum America. And that of course is the, now the Democratic nominee for the Senate in the state of Maine. So go ahead, react to all that, Caddy. Do I have that wrong or should, should we all be sneering? Should the Atlantic magazine write a sneer fest on Donald Trump hosting this event? I think the one thing that liberals must learn from the whole Trump experiment of the last 10 years is that part of the reason Donald Trump got elected was because liberals sneered at conservative America. And this UFC fight was kind of, you know, tailor made to prove the axiom that America is two countries sharing the same landmass. And that you have a very divided world. Liberals don't understand. And at their worst, they sneer at that everything that the UFC represents, the overt nationalism, the hypermasculinity, the deliberate torching of elite sensibilities. And look, some of it may have been understandably offensive when you had one of the fighters suggesting that Michelle Obama, by the way, is a man, that's a kind of, you know, deliberate offensive thing that the crowd there may have cheered at, Pete. Hegseth may have cheered at, but I think it's perfectly legitimate to call that up as an offensive moment in the course of the evening. But generally speaking, you're right. This is a part of American culture that liberals don't understand. And by the way, it's not just liberals that don't understand it and don't like it. This is very far. What we watched on Sunday night is a world away from the old Republican party. I mean, this is not how the Republican party of George Will and Bill Buckley would have celebrated America's 250th birthday. They would have had a kind of, you know, black tied dinner at the Heritage Foundation, Mitt Romney, who you campaigned with in 2012. I'm just going to take a flying hunch that this is not how Mitt Romney would have celebrated his 80th birthday party or be planning to celebrate the birthday party. So it's that you've got, yes, the Democratic party and liberals and coastal elites don't understand it and they don't like it. But you've also got all of these old school Republicans who don't understand it and don't like it. And they don't have a home to go to anymore. They're out there in the wilderness thinking, what is my home? It's certainly not, you know, the country club is looking increasingly like a diminished place and a diminished home for them too. All of that is true. Now, let me say a couple of things for Trump. And then I say a few things against Trump. Okay. If you want to attract low propensity male voters, the exact same voters that move for Trump in 2024 in large drove scatty, then you have a UFC fight. on the south lawn of the White House. This was incredible way to attract people to politics that don't normally think about politics. And by the way, those are the people, young men who have abandoned him since 2024. There's an economist Yu-Gov-Pol out from the beginning of June, showing that he is underwater with men 21 points. He's among young men aged 18 to 29. Trump's job approval is 34 points underwater, just 32% approve, 66% disapprove. That is a total turn around. Massive swing. That is on the against, you're right. He's got to pick those men up again. Maybe that's why he did it. I want to show you this. For those of you listening, this is a bejeweled American flag on my lapel. And my wife gave that to me for Father's Day about nine years ago. And so I wear it. And I was in Europe recently wearing it. And it's smacked of MAGA. And it turned off some of the Europeans who don't like Donald Trump. And I said to my son, "Hmm, Trump has done something that we should all acknowledge. He has hijacked American patriotism." So when you have the anthem, you have the Thunderbirds and the Blue Angels fly over, and the 250th anniversary of the birth of the present. If you're wearing a flag, you are now a Trumper. You see what I mean? So he's actually hijacked, which was, and by the way, I'm old enough to remember the bicentennial. The bicentennial under Gerald Ford was a bipartisan celebration. And if you had a flag in your hand or a flag on your lapel, you were just expressing your love of the country and patriotism. But this is something that Trump has done. He's hijacked this. It now looks like Jingoism, or it almost looks like a authoritarian sign to some people. And again, that would be represented in this UFC fight. Last point, Kadi, he gave 85,000 tickets out. Okay, a lot of American military got tickets. Someone called this a rich man's vanity event. Okay. But the optics are populist. They're not elite when you've had 85,000 people. Well, you did have to pay to watch it on television. You had to pay paramount subscriptions. Yes. It was not Marco Rubio. It said this is free a gift to the American people. You actually did have to pay to watch it. Yeah. But as Trump pointed out with the playoffs, everything else in sports now, you have to pay to get access to this stuff in the United States. Again, up against this is your point about his low approval ratings. He's reinforcing that he's governing for himself and not for the country with these pet projects. He's buying stock in the damn thing, which I think is unbelievable. Even Rogan, who was there, okay, he called the event unwise. Okay. He didn't like it himself. He showed up because he's UFC person. He showed up and he wouldn't put into the ring. And he he's the one that held a microphone up to the fighter that said the slur about the first lady Obama. And it's doing something. Kadi, we've got to be very careful of. It's blurring the military and a partisan spectacle. Remember, he used our color guard. He used the marines as part of the props there. Kadi, I want you to react to him walking down the presidential wall of fame with Dana White, the founder of the UFC, going past the Joe Biden auto pen picture. Think about what how these guys think. And again, if you're on the left, you'd be inflamed, triggered, and infuriated. And by the way, that's exactly what Donald Trump wants you to feel. Yeah. I mean, they want to own the lips and a lot of what drives Donald Trump is owning the lips. And I get your point about liberals sneering at conservatives and everything that UFC represents. And I think it's a really well taken point. And I think if Democrats want to learn one thing, they have to learn how to re-embrace those parts of America that the coastal elites don't understand. But I'm just not sure it's such great strategy because Donald Trump can divide and divide and divide and even keep slicing the salami. And all he does is he gets closer and closer to his base and a smaller and smaller base because he alienates so many people. I mean, that thing of his name being taken off the Kennedy Center. Yeah, okay. It was a bunch of Washingtonians standing there cheering. But it's emblematic of what Donald Trump has done. He takes something over. He puts his name on it. He destroys it. I mean, the Kennedy Center is a shell of itself. He gives out a no bid contract to his mate who fixed his swimming pool at his country club to fix the reflecting pool that is meant to be beautiful and shining. Guess what? Three days later now it's open again. It's already got algae. It's no longer blue. It's green because these guys are swimming pool people. They're not necessarily the right people to do this. There was no bidding process. There was not a thorough architectural review. And now we have algae back in the reflecting pool. And I think in the process, he's just not competent. So those are signs of incompetence. But you can plate your base and plate your base and you can own the lips. And at some point you alienate more people than you draw in. And I think Donald Trump's approval ratings at the moment, even among young men, suggest that he is talking to an ever shrinking pool of people. And he needs to get back to governing the country in a way that helps all Americans and owning the lips won't do it. It's not enough anymore. Yes, it might have got him into office in 2016. It scraped him back into office in 2024 when there was a very weak democratic party to run against. But I don't think it's going to be enough to either secure his legacy or help Republicans in the midterm elections. So the question is right there. That's the central question. Was it a good night or is it a setup for a good November? And the answer is he owned the lips. He triggered them. He got his buddies there. There was some great Instagram photos. There's a great flyover photo. There's a lightning strike photo. And you know, he's attached himself to the flag. I mean, the thing that blows me away, Gatti, it's someday you're going to have to explain to me how a three-time married guy will hang out with Jeff Epstein has attached himself to the religious right. That's the thing that blows me away more than anything. And it almost weirdly I give the guy credit for it because it's like the con of the con on top of the con. But there he is. He did it. And if you're a Democrat listening to this show and you are sufficiently triggered, and I'm not saying you shouldn't be triggered, but you should take a step back and you should say, okay, do I want to write off 80 million people that voted for Donald Trump? Or do I want to figure out a way to get them back into the fold? Because a lot of those people, their grandparents and their parents voted for Democrats, Gatti. Those are blue collar people that voted for Democrats. And if you are Democrats looking at taking back the house in the midterm elections, you would be smart to think to yourself, do you go after Trump and Trumpism or do you just go after the money? Do you focus on the corruption? It's about the corruption and the chaos. If I were them, forget impeachment, I would be laser focused on this idea that what you started by saying he has put corruption back into the White House and with the UFC event literally because there are the companies that he is selling stock in and buying stock in and promoting stock in right there on the White House lawn. Okay, we're going to leave it there. If you would like to listen to our bonus episode, we're going to have a big discussion about Anthropic and the Trump administration's relationship with Anthropic and shutting out all foreign nationals, what that means for America's allies, what it means for America, what it means for AI. And we'll also talk a little bit more about Joe Rogan getting into a bit of a fight with Donald Trump as well. You can become a member at therestispoliticsus.com and send us your questions. We'll see you later this week. Thanks guys. See you later this week.