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In this episode of The Hot Dish, Heidi and Joel talk to Tom Nichols, staff writer at The Atlantic and professor emeritus of national-security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College, about the complexities of the U.S. military actions in Iran, the geopolitical fallout, and the state of American politics amid ongoing conflicts.
Nichols brings a sharp, clear-eyed perspective on military strategy, foreign alliances, and domestic political implications. This conversation offers valuable insights into how these military decisions were made, their global consequences, and the internal political ripples they stir.
Key moments in this episode:
- Tom Nichols explains the current state of military operations in Iran and evaluates their strategic effectiveness.
- He discusses the contradictions in Donald Trump’s foreign policy, including our strained alliances and his unpredictable decision-making.
- Tom and Joel discuss the internal U.S. political landscape, especially the disillusionment settling in among MAGA supporters.
- Tom explains how decades of U.S. foreign policy regarding the influence of foreign powers, such as China and Russia, in Iran and the Middle East have changed overnight.
Resources & Links:
The Hot Dish is brought to you by the One Country Project. To learn more, visit OneCountryProject.org, or find us on Substack (Onecountryproject.substack.com), and on YouTube, Bluesky, and Facebook (@onecountryproject).
- (00:00) - Introduction to the Discussion on Iran
- (01:12) - Operational Success vs. Strategic Goals
- (06:12) - The Political Fallout and Internal Conflicts
- (11:14) - The Role of Allies and International Relations
- (16:10) - Implications for Ukraine and Global Strategy
- (21:00) - The Future of Iran and Potential Ground Troops
- (25:33) - The Power Dynamics of Military Strategy
- (26:14) - Regime Change and Its Implications
- (28:35) - The Silence of MAGA Supporters
- (33:00) - The Exhaustion of the MAGA Movement
- (36:56) - Concerns Over Election Integrity
- (39:53) - Trump's Approach to Governance and Elections
- (44:08) - Closing
Creators and Guests
Host
Heidi Heitkamp
U.S. Senator Heidi Heitkamp served as the first female senator elected from North Dakota from 2013 – 2019. he is the founder and Chair of the One Country Project, an organization focused on addressing the needs and concerns of rural America. Heidi was recently named the Director of the Institute of Politics at the University of Chicago, a university she has long been committed to and a place where she enjoys engaging with students over civic discussions while encouraging them to seek opportunities in public service to our country. Heidi also serves as a contributor to both CNBC and ABC News.
Host
What is The Hot Dish?
Former U.S. Senator Heidi Heitkamp and her brother, KFGO radio talk show host Joel Heitkamp, engage in animated discussions with newsmakers, elected leaders, and policymakers who are creating new opportunities for rural Americans and finding practical solutions to their challenges. Punctuated with entertaining conversations and a healthy dose of sibling rivalry, The Hot Dish, from the One Country Project, is informative, enlightening, and downright fun.
Heidi (00:04)
Welcome back to the hot dish, comfort food for rural America. I'm Heidi Heitkamp.
Joel (00:09)
And I'm Joel Heitkamp. We have a great conversation for you today with returning guest Tom Nichols. Now, he's a staff writer at The Atlantic, ⁓ who writes about international security and the challenges to democracy in the US and around the world. He's joining us today for a discussion about the war in Iran. ⁓ Before I welcome him to the hot dish, I want him to know he needs to apologize to me because he's made me ⁓ late.
to work before. I'm a scheduled viewer when he's on TV. So Tom, welcome to the hot dish.
Tom Nichols (00:42)
Thank you. It's great to be back with you. Thanks a lot.
Heidi (00:45)
Okay, Tom, I'm gonna start out. Talk me off the wall. I just think that this wasn't well thought out. And no one can disagree that Iran is a threat to the region and certainly a threat to the world and given their given their partnership with ⁓ people like Russia and Syria and ⁓ North Korea. But is it as bad as I think it is? Is this decision as bad as what I think it is?
Tom Nichols (01:11)
I wish I knew what the decision was. You know, on an operation, I keep stressing this, you know, on an operational level, the actual, you know, flying jets in, dropping bombs, hitting things, that's going well because we're good at that. We had one terrible mistake at the beginning. had an, I think, my guess is that was an outdated map that still showed that girl's school as part of a naval base. ⁓ But
Heidi (01:14)
Yeah.
Tom Nichols (01:41)
You know, in war targets, sometimes targets are wrong and, you know, there are these terrible incidents that happen. But overall, the ability to, you know, control the airspace, to get in, to hit the things we want to hit, to kill the leadership, ⁓ that's going really well. But to what end? What is the end game here? Why are we doing this at all? And, you know, it's not it's the president has dialed through
whole bunch of reasons, right? Nuclear weapons, terrorism, the Iranians just being generally bad guys and all of that is right. I mean, if this regime falls, ⁓ I think we all can line up to congratulate them and say, okay, you know, it was a little shaky there for a while, but you got rid of one of the worst regimes on earth and let's hope that nothing that the next regime isn't isn't worse. But you know, so far so good. The problem is, ⁓ the president
has several goals and they seem to change day by day. I think what happened and this is where, you know, I'm going to have to get there on the ledge with you, Heidi, because what worries me is his assumption going in was I'm going to drop a lot of bombs on these guys and they're going to just give up. This will be over in days. And there was no plan B. Like, what if that doesn't happen? What if the regime
doesn't fall. Now we're seeing reports already that the military had warned the president saying, hey, you don't get this thing over with, you know, quickly that they they're going to close the straits of foreign moves. There's all kinds of bad knock on effects in the international economy. ⁓ And Trump basically said according to these reports anyway, yeah, I get it. Don't worry. That's not going to happen because that's how Donald Trump makes decisions. He tries to kind of wish things into existence.
He tries to of will them into existence. Like, well, they're just going to collapse and we'll be greeted as liberators and a new regime. Like Venezuela, I think he really got it into his head that Iran, this country of 92 million people halfway around the world, is just like this small Latin American country, you know, directly to our South in easy striking distance. And that all we have to do is, you know, change out one leader for another one.
Well, that hasn't happened. Now that doesn't mean it can't happen, but we're going on three weeks here and none of that has happened. And all we're doing is, you know, bouncing a lot of rubble. Now the president can still make the case. Now let me try and get you off the ledge that so far. Look, it's a good thing to bury the Iranian nuclear program under rubble. It's a good thing to destroy their ballistic missile launchers. It's a good thing to destroy.
their drone capability as much as you can. mean, this is a bad regime and they deserve to have their fangs pulled out, ⁓ you know, directly and without apology. But is he doing that? I mean, you know, the Gulf states are getting attacked. ⁓ The straits are de facto closed except to the Iranians themselves who seem to be going in and out of it with their oil. ⁓
You know, what was the point? What were you trying to achieve here? And so when you say, was this a bad decision? Yeah, it was a bad decision because it wasn't thought through, but the military is executing it as well as you could expect any military organization on Earth to do the discrete operational targeting things that he wants them to do. But those operations have to amount to some strategic effect, some outcome.
that lets us know when we're done and most importantly, when we've won. Because the president keeps saying, well, we've won. Well, clearly not. If we've won, 2,500 Marines wouldn't be on their way to the Gulf right now.
Joel (05:42)
Yeah. So Tom, there's two things I want to ask you about or have you speak to. ⁓ Number one, ⁓ you know, the fact that the president's own admission that he didn't know how the Iranians would respond, ⁓ who they would attack, what they would do. And he even named countries that he was shocked that they actually went after when he didn't realize that it was going to be about the economy. They were going to try to stifle how business is done. The other thing is Joe Kent.
I mean, Joe, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, said I quit. And he said they were no immediate threat to us. Iran wasn't. And we actually got taken into this war because of Israel. I mean, he pulled the pin on the president and he said, I quit because of this. What's your take on that?
Tom Nichols (06:32)
Yeah,
let's not be too admiring of Joe Kent standing on principle here, because Joe Kent has a lot of pretty kooky ideas. And the second part of his resignation was, I don't want to be a part of this war because basically the Jews dragged us into it. mean, you know, he... Yeah, you do not, let me put it this way, you do not have to hand it to Joe Kent in any way. On the other hand, if this is fracturing the MAGA coalition,
Heidi (06:46)
history.
Joel (06:48)
Yeah, but that's why I want you to respond to it. You know,
Tom Nichols (07:01)
⁓ All the better because the one thing that Joe Kent is right about is that Donald Trump lied to his own base Straight up. I mean whether you whether you think Joe Kent's a good guy or not And you know the man served his country his first wife gave her life for this country I'm not throwing any shade on that part of his record But he has really cozied up to some, know, pretty ugly folks and said some pretty ugly things ⁓ Whatever you think of Joe Kent the reality is
Donald Trump lied to people like Joe Kent and Marjorie Taylor Greene and other MAGA loyalists. mean, he ran on, we're not going to do this. And within his first year has launched a half a dozen wars all across the world because he just didn't, because he doesn't care about his own base, right? He doesn't care about anybody. So on that, think, you know, good for Kent to resign on, on principle Tulsi. Where's Tulsi Gabbard?
Heidi (07:59)
Yeah, isn't that the truth?
Tom Nichols (08:00)
⁓ you know, she,
she, she, if you think anybody ought to resign on principle, it ought to be her, but, ⁓ she and JD Vance are, you know, hiding under the table.
Heidi (08:06)
So.
So I I just want to make this point because I think when you look at the mega fracture, it really is fracturing on Israeli ⁓ loyalty and not Israeli loyalty. And I think that's really how he's been able to patch together a coalition of people who distrust ⁓ Israel and you could argue are anti-Semites and people from the neocon world.
who wanna see this kind of action carried out. so I think that's yet to be discovered, but I wanna ask you, Tom.
Tom Nichols (08:46)
This is
the most neat. I mean, the people who hate neocons, you know, I took a lot of static because I can't say I was ever a neocon. Yeah, I'm an old con, not a neocon, ⁓ paleocon. But I supported the war in Iraq and they were like, see, this is why we elected Trump. No more of people like you getting us into these crazy wars across. And OK, fine. You know, I've learned my lesson.
Heidi (08:55)
Well, you were kind of identified with them though.
Joel (09:01)
Ha
Tom Nichols (09:16)
about supporting regime change wars, not because I think regime change is wrong, but because you can't just do them and you need a high degree of government competence to do them. And I overestimated Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld and the rest of them and underestimated how badly they would screw this up. But you can't have, and this is an old Charles Krauthammer line, this is turning in...
You know into a generic anti son of a bitch policy and This this war in Iran Ironically is the most neo con more than ever neo conned I mean, it's it is, know the very definition of a neo conned kind of operation so
Heidi (09:47)
Yeah.
Yeah,
so the question that I have is, how could he have misread our allies so badly? I he's begging people to help and they're just saying, not my deal, not going there.
Tom Nichols (10:15)
because he doesn't care about our allies. He doesn't respect them. He doesn't think they have anything to add. And I think, again, it's evidence. I think his attitude toward our allies shows you he really thought this was going to be over in like a week. And he was going to be able to say to Britain and France and Germany and all those other, you know, poncy European pinheads, you know, that he thinks, you know, the EU, yes, getting the Canadians and all and all the other kind of limp-wristed
Heidi (10:39)
Don't forget Canada. Don't forget Canada. Yeah.
Tom Nichols (10:45)
you know, ⁓ countries that he he insults on the daily, that he was going to say, look at what we did. Boom. I knocked down that whole rotten thing in one shot. And I don't need you guys. And this is my victory. And they're going to be building statues to me in Tehran and not to Keir Starmer or, you know, Macron or anybody else. And now that it's all gone bad and we don't actually have any minesweepers in theater and we don't
We didn't have a marine amphibious, you we didn't have a force in place ⁓ before the war started. He's improvising and now he's saying, you guys need to help me. Well, that's not how that works. That's not how it works. you can't first in his first term, he made it clear that he loathes our allies. In his second term, he's he's been pounding on our allies regularly. ⁓
And then says, all right, I started a war. I can't finish it. I need some help. Everybody get in here. I mean, the European, you know, the Germans were very clear. thought making this point of saying we didn't start this war. This wasn't our choice and we're not coming. know, this, you know, America was not the one. The one thing Joe Kent said that I think was right was America was not facing an imminent threat. Even the Israelis weren't facing an imminent.
Joel (12:03)
Yeah.
Tom Nichols (12:13)
threat. They were facing a notional threat of a nuclear program and a daily threat that's been going on for years of missiles or rockets. ⁓ But there was no forcing function on this war. And I think, you know, when people say, they're our allies, they have to come to our aid. Yes, they have to come to our aid if we're in trouble, the way we did after 9-11. They don't have to come to our aid if we start some war of choice and then say,
When and we started by saying stay home, we don't need you and then two weeks later We're in trouble and saying all right send send your sons and daughters now ⁓ That other countries have agency they are not wholly owned subsidiaries of the United States
Joel (12:53)
So.
Yeah, Tom, I've been in a scrape or two and I can tell you this when I lost, I didn't stand up and say, you know what ⁓ I want? I'm going home. ⁓ You know, so what happens if he does that? I mean, what happens if he if he just tomorrow realizes how bad this decision was and says, all right, we won. I'm going home.
Tom Nichols (13:23)
⁓ Well, I actually think he could that taking that off ramp is probably one of his best options if there's no evidence that we can get this regime to fall. ⁓ Because the only difference between now and later is it's going to be the same regime, but with more risk to us and more damage to the international economy. ⁓ The only reason to stay in now, I think, is
You know, you just can't leave this regime in place and you have to say, all right, we started this war, might not have been the right thing to do. We might've bungled, you know, the, the, the strategy here, if not the operations. Um, but now that we're in it, we have to take down this regime. Well, then either say that to the American people or declare victory because you can't declare, mean, look, he's achieved some things militarily. The Iranians are not the military force they were.
three months ago, but even though they've always been a second rate power, ⁓ for a long time they've been a second stringer, ⁓ which is why they were trying to develop nuclear weapons. ⁓ One reason they were trying to develop nuclear weapons. So he could just say it. I think that would make his base happy. And I think he has a whole media ecosystem that would spin it as a huge win. The guys at Fox already have, I'm sure,
You know, the greatest victory in the history of arms, know, America triumphant graphics, but he's not going to do it because he's stubborn and he just can't believe that it didn't. He for the first time in maybe almost ever, Donald Trump has encountered a situation that he can't lie or buy or, you know, liar by his way out of, or that he can't just control by saying, all right, enough.
You know, he just can't control this situation. And so I don't know what he what he does next. I mean, it's a he has created for himself a series of unappetizing ⁓ alternatives. And unless the regime falls and we do get greeted as liberators, ⁓ this is I don't know that we're any better off than we were a month ago.
Heidi (15:21)
Well, thank you.
Yeah, if you look at kind of this through the light most favorable to Trump, he could say, look, we buried their nuclear program. I think there's a lot of reports saying that they still have the ability to enrich, but they certainly their economy has been injured and their their ability has been to attack Israel or to support terrorist activity. And we all know
that Iran was the largest in the region supporter of a terrorist activity against the state of Israel. And I think no one would dispute that. But I have a question kind of coming out of left field because I've been talking to my friends who are deeply invested and involved in Ukraine, basically saying, OK, what does this mean or what is the ⁓ fallout?
or the benefit to ⁓ American support in Ukraine. So how would you answer that if people said, I'm curious about how this speaks to what we're doing or not doing to help the Ukrainian people?
Tom Nichols (16:51)
Well, how ironic that the Ukrainians are offering us help.
⁓ Because you know they one thing if there's one thing Ukrainians know about it's dealing with Ronnie and made drones and You know, I think ⁓ this ⁓ This I think one good rule of strategy is don't proliferate conflicts that you don't need and try and fight them all at once and I still think we should have been keeping our eye on the ball with driving Russia from Europe from that part of Europe that Russians
Maybe it's my old inner Cold Warrior speaking, but the Russians are engaged in a massive war in Central Europe. I thought the whole point of American foreign policy for 15 years was to forestall that and not let it happen. And it's happening. ⁓ So in the middle of that, what are we doing? We're scattering our forces. pulling ⁓ our neck. Our next biggest competitor is China, which we were supposed to pivot to. ⁓ You know,
And apparently that's over because we're pulling assets and material out of the Pacific theater. ⁓ So I think this is a distraction from what should have been the... But let me back up and say Donald Trump was never going to treat Ukraine as the main problem because the one eternal principle in a man who has no principles was never get on the wrong side of Russia.
Heidi (18:21)
or Putin.
Tom Nichols (18:22)
and especially not Putin. So why that is, you can speculate. I don't like the conspiracy theories that Putin runs him or tells him what to do, but I think he's afraid of Putin. think that's clear that every time they're together, ⁓ kind of visibly cowers in front of Putin. That summit in Alaska was the greatest humiliation since the summit in Helsinki. ⁓
So that was never gonna happen. So why are we now at war in Iran and our forces are all tied up overseas and now we're talking about bumping off Cuba? I mean, you know, the guy's out of control. I think it's, I think people going for complex explanations have to remember that Donald Trump is not a complex man. A lot of this is about glory and his notion of being a war president.
Heidi (19:13)
You
Tom Nichols (19:18)
and trying to distract people ⁓ from, I mean, every time he launches a military operation, think, man, whatever is in those Epstein files must be incredible because he really wants to distract people away from that and from the economy and from, ⁓ you know, all of the other things that are happening. But of course, the economy is going to get worse now. So I don't I mean, I think he is just off the rails and there's nobody around him who can tell him to stop doing what he's doing.
Joel (19:49)
Tom, want to go back to Iran though. And I just physically, ⁓ you mentioned earlier in this conversation how, you know, he's taken out their capabilities, he's attacked their ⁓ military facilities. But if you look at some of the imaging ⁓ images and some of the coverage of Iran, he's blown the country to hell. I mean, we're talking about homes, we're talking about water. I mean,
What's going to be left of Iran when he does decide to quit when Pete Hagseth decides this scorched earth policy has to end? What's going to be physically left of Iran?
Tom Nichols (20:30)
Well, ⁓ a lot of rubble and here's the double edged sword that presents after this war, whatever after means, whenever the president says we're not going to do this anymore. ⁓ One problem is if a new regime comes in, ⁓ that becomes their problem. They're the ones that are going to have to provide water and electricity and heat and energy and all that stuff. If the regime, this regime is still there,
Joel (20:49)
Right.
Tom Nichols (21:00)
They're going to need help rebuilding it. And the Chinese have already raised their hands like, you know, hey, we'll do it. You know, we're not like the Americans. don't care. The Chinese have done this all over the world, say, we don't care about how terrible a regime you are. We don't judge. We're just here to help. then they say, just remember who your friends are in the world. And right now, you know, the guy who's looking, you know, statesman like is Xi Jinping, right? He's not involved in any wars.
He's managing Putin on one side and Donald Trump on the other and has already reached out to Iran. ⁓ And Donald Trump, I mean, it shows you just how incredibly ignorant he is of just everything, but international relations in particular. Donald Trump is now saying, well, I'm not gonna come to China unless they help us open the straits. What?
Heidi (21:57)
You know what? And the fact is, the Iranian boats that are going through with oil, guess where they're going? They're going to China. We're getting our oil. I don't know what your bitch is. Yeah.
Tom Nichols (22:03)
The Chinese are like, what are you even talking about? Yeah, you know, I mean, there's
Joel (22:03)
Yeah.
Tom Nichols (22:11)
no problem. We don't see a problem here. And it's just astonishing because again, just as I said earlier that, you know, 50 years of American foreign policy was meant to prevent the Russians from making a dash into the center of Europe. ⁓ Decades and decades of American foreign policy were meant to do things like keep the Russians and the Chinese out of the Middle East.
Trump is not alone in his sin here. I wrote a piece some years ago where I really stripped the bark off of Barack Obama for exactly this, to say, we're just going to get out of the Middle East. if the Russians and the Iranians kind of fill that space, that's just the way it goes. Because Obama had this notion that America was not a force for good in this region and that we just needed to get out. Donald Trump has gone one step further.
He's gone in and then invited the Chinese to come in and join us in the Persian Gulf. I mean, I can't, it's almost like I said to a friend the other day, if you wrote this whole thing up of the past month, of the president's behavior, the decisions he's made, the way this war has gone and you tried to sell it to Hollywood, they wouldn't have bought it. You couldn't make this as a movie because it's too ridiculous. know, American president castigates Canada and England.
invites China into the Persian Gulf. They send that back to you saying, you know, do more research. This couldn't, this is ridiculous. But that's where we are.
Joel (23:40)
Heidi, I want to bring a conversation you and I had into this discussion. And that was about the Iranian people and why those individuals that oftentimes are fighting for a regime change don't trust us and how they don't think we're going to be there in the end. everything you said to me on my drive to Fargo made sense.
Heidi (24:01)
I wonder why.
Yeah, I mean, you know, I wonder why history does in fact inform and where tell me where America ⁓ in recent history has engaged in regime change without and and I will say this. In many cases, we've been doing soft power, we have propaganda ⁓ assets, we have the ability to assist.
you know, keeping a civil society active. We've wiped soft power off the map ⁓ by what we've done. So now we don't have any assets behind that military asset. you never, and Tom, I don't think you disagree with this. You aren't going to ever achieve regime change from the air. And so the question is, the question is, and this is the one that makes my stomach turn, is he crazy enough to put boots on the ground in Iran?
Tom Nichols (24:57)
Well, I thousands of Marines are on their way into the theater. So, you know, and you've already got ⁓ I saw this morning Pete Sessions was saying, well, it's only 2500 Marines. That's not that's not boots on the ground. No, those are boots and they will be on the ground somewhere, you know, that is Iranian territory. So that's the very definition of boots on the ground.
Heidi (25:06)
Yeah, yeah, I saw it too.
Hahaha
and targets.
And targets because guess what? ⁓ We haven't kept ⁓ Russia active enough. They're sharing intelligence on what we're doing to the Iranians. And so you cannot...
kind of, ⁓ it's kind of like I have this all powerful military and no one should disagree with this loyal to the country believes in the chain of command is going to do what I asked them to do. And, and it, we're gonna, what, what was it? You know, we're going to create awe. I mean, it's going to be awe inspiring or awful shock and awe. There you go. And, and so, and, that's going to get everyone to fold and you know, the chess pieces
Tom Nichols (25:53)
Shocking off.
Joel (25:54)
Yeah.
Heidi (26:02)
are moving in ways that we never, that are not in the interest of our country, but yet he has created the initiative or the inertia to move those chess pieces. And now we're in a world of hurt.
Tom Nichols (26:14)
Well,
a couple of things about regime change. One is ⁓ he started out the night of the war saying your day of liberation is at hand, right? To the Iranian people, that has fallen off of all of the White House's lists of objectives now. ⁓ So when the White House puts objectives out, it says things like nuclear weapons, ballistic missile launchers, terrorism.
Heidi (26:24)
Yeah, to the Iranian dissidents.
Tom Nichols (26:42)
Now, the other day, they had one ballistic missile launchers. And of course, the president saying and forever no nuclear weapon. But the White House put out like a thing that said our one objective fulfilled, you know, mission accomplished. Well, if I were an Iranian opposition leader, I'd be saying, wait a minute, I what happened to this? What happened to all that Churchillian, you know, we shall fight on the beaches kind of stuff I was hearing two weeks ago. So if they're concerned, it's because they're not idiots. They
because they're worried about this. Now, what I think, again, as you said earlier, to try to be as fair to Trump as possible, he may be thinking, look, if I kill enough of the Revolutionary Guard and the paramilitaries that are keeping these people down, eventually they can rise up because there's just nobody that can keep them down because we just killed them all. I don't think in a country that size, you're to be able to pull that off. But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe in a couple of weeks, we're going to find out.
The IRGC just doesn't exist anymore. I would point out that after Tet in 1968, the Viet Cong fundamentally didn't exist anymore. And that war went on for another seven years. But there's one other thing I'd point out, which is every time the president says, they have to surrender. And I've said this every time I've been asked, surrender to whom? Who's there? It's not like there's, you know,
Heidi (27:52)
Yeah.
Tom Nichols (28:08)
some Kurdish army or some Iranian opposition unified front that's marching down the street. It's not like we're sending, you know, General Cain to go accept the saber, you know. What does he mean when he says surrender? Because they're not going to say, fine, we are going to step down. They're not going to do that unless you kill them all. And I don't think you can kill them.
Joel (28:35)
Yeah, I.
Tom Nichols (28:35)
I don't think the president
can kill his way out of this. Let's put it that way.
Joel (28:38)
I want to ask about our country right here, you know, in the United States. mean, through my talk show, I talked to the majority of people that call in that text in their mega, their mega through and through. Here's what I'm seeing, Tom. I'm seeing them not call in. I'm seeing them not text in. I'm not saying they don't support him or, you know, they'd shoot their dog for him. I'm not saying that. What I'm saying is they're quiet and
Tom Nichols (28:52)
Mm-hmm.
Joel (29:08)
I don't know if you guys are seeing the same thing that to some degree, they're pissed off.
Tom Nichols (29:15)
You know, even before the war, the thing that struck me is what one politician here called the heraldry factor, like the flags. I mean, I live in New England, but I live in a state that has a pretty big MAGA contingent in it, especially when you get away from the shore and you get into the interior of Rhode Island and.
southeastern Massachusetts, Fall River, Massachusetts voted for Donald Trump this year, which was this time around, which is really a remarkable thing for a working class city in Massachusetts, heavily Hispanic city too, to go for somebody like Donald Trump. But I've noticed that the flags are gone, the signs are gone, the bumper stickers are gone, the hats are gone. And I think
I sometimes think that this war has been a kind of final humiliation and exhaustion because I think what a lot of people in MAGA world wanted was to prove that they could reelect Donald Trump. They were so humiliated by 2020. I mean, look, they knew that the election wasn't rigged. They say it. I think most of them don't believe it, but they were humiliated by it. They're like, how can our guy
We worked so hard to get this guy elected over Hillary Clinton, and it wasn't fair that COVID happened, and he did all kinds of great stuff. then Biden just waltzes in and they wanted to show, we're going to put him back in as a kind of giant screw you to the rest of the country. Well, they got that. They got him back in. And immediately Donald Trump started screwing up in ways that I think, even though I disagree with a lot of MAGA Republicans,
I think a lot of them are basically decent people who are embarrassed by Pete Hegseth. They're embarrassed by Tulsi Gabbard. They certainly ought to be embarrassed by Robert Kennedy. ⁓ And I think they're saying, yeah, that was all funny and we're owning the libs. But that rush, that buzz of owning libs, you know, started to wear off when you had measles outbreaks and Hegseth, you know, texting war plans to my boss at the Atlantic and
know, Tulsi Gabbard hiding so she doesn't have to explain why she once sold no war with Iran t-shirts. The MAGA movement was always to me, and I'll try not to get off on this soap box here, but I wrote a book about this. I mean, the MAGA movement to me was always based in a kind of ⁓ fuzzy resentment and anger about everything, about just life, about...
you know, the world as it is about the fact that your barista has four nose rings and that, you know, TV shows have gay couples on them. And, you know, just, just this kind of itch that the dominant culture in this country for a lot of people. And look, I'm a former Republican. I felt some of it too, ⁓ is like itching powder, just covering them in itching powder. And they were like, Donald Trump's guy is going to fix all this. Well,
Donald Trump is not only the guy that didn't fix this, Donald Trump is the guy who has humiliated you. And the fears that a lot of these folks had that their fellow citizens are looking down on them have become reality because their fellow citizens are now genuinely looking down on them for re-electing Donald Trump. ⁓ And then Trump does the final just slap in the face to MAGA world says, yeah, all that stuff about ⁓ inflation and prices and
neocon wars now i'm gonna do all that i lied i lied through my teeth and i'm doing it all and your job is to shut up and support me and i think a lot of people have said i'm not gonna criticize him joel this goes back to your point about the silence i'm not gonna criticize him but i don't have to get out there and help him anymore
Joel (33:22)
Right. And that's what I'm seeing. I mean, I'm seeing that daily.
Heidi (33:23)
Yeah.
Tom Nichols (33:25)
Yeah. And that's what
that's I think that's a good I mean, because otherwise you're in a cult. How many times must a politician betray you before you finally stop? You know, and it's not that you're to start voting for, you know, Kamala Harris. I get that. But you don't you're not required to go out there and bleed for this guy every day when he's betraying you over and over and over again.
Heidi (33:39)
Well, it...
Yeah, and you know, if you look politically, he was able to win the popular vote because he won over younger people, especially young white voters. And he won over Hispanics and both of those groups and the Hispanic issue, think that Venezuela, know, obviously lots of cheers about ⁓ taking out Maduro and doing what he could in Latin America. But but the bottom line is they watched what ICE was doing.
Tom Nichols (34:03)
Yeah, that's over.
Heidi (34:20)
just randomly picking brown people off the street and they're like, we didn't sign up for this. And so he's got the double whammy of both foreign policy and domestic policy. He's not doing well in domestic policy. Wasn't before this war and the war didn't change it.
Tom Nichols (34:26)
Well, we signed up from
Yeah, mean, they sign, I mean, when you read some of these accounts, what they signed up for was those brown people, criminals, gang members, the worst of the worst. And they said, it's not gonna come from me. Certainly not me, I'm a veteran, you know, or I'm a, my wife, you know, has a green car, she's trying to get citizenship. we're, you know, there was one interview with a family of people.
Heidi (34:45)
Yeah, yeah, the worst of the worst.
or my auntie, my Tia.
Tom Nichols (35:03)
who's a Hispanic family in the Southwest, they supported Trump. And several of them admitted that they were here because of the Reagan amnesty in 1986. And that many of their family members were here illegally. And they were shocked. It's like, well, he's not gonna come for us. Yes, he will. He doesn't care about you. This is the part, the thing that I've never been able to kind of get past was a...
a focus group in New Hampshire, of all places, a place I used to live, ⁓ where a voter said, well, I'm voting for Donald Trump. He's just like us. And I thought, he's nothing like you. You're a small town guy in New Hampshire. He hates you. He doesn't want you to touch his car. He doesn't want to talk to you. Howard Stern tried to say this. Remember when Howard Stern came out and said,
Heidi (35:57)
Yeah.
Tom Nichols (35:58)
If you're a Trump voter, just understand he hates your guts. hates you. doesn't. Donald Trump wants to be accepted in Manhattan. If you're a small guy, you're a loser. ⁓ and, so, but my point to Heidi's point about, ⁓ losing those groups, the other problem is that I think a lot of people were just exhausted. think Donald Trump has been the luckiest candidate in history because he ran against Hillary Clinton, who was
Joel (36:01)
Mm-hmm.
Heidi (36:03)
If you're a small guy, you're a small guy. Yeah.
Joel (36:08)
So Tom, how would.
Tom Nichols (36:26)
probably the only candidate he could really beat. And then the Democrats have this complete meltdown with Joe Biden and a hundred day campaign by Kamala Harris. And he manages to squeak through with a public that said, we're just exhausted by all this shenanigans. Yeah, I remember inflation was pretty good under Trump and whatever, we'll just put him back in. And now I think Joel, what you're seeing again with your call in is people saying, you know, that seemed like a good idea only about 10 months ago.
And now it seems like a terrible idea.
Joel (36:58)
Oh, OK. What would you say to somebody that calls into my show and says, look, here's my fear of what he's doing when it comes to Iran. He's doing everything he can to put himself in a position where he can literally call off the elections this fall. What do you say to them?
Tom Nichols (37:15)
Well, the first thing I would do is reassure every American that elections are run by states and localities and not by Donald Trump. And he can say, well, I don't think we should have elections. And I don't know about a lot of other states, but here in New England, I can think of at least six states that are going to tell them to take a long walk off a short pier, ⁓ you know, as well as California and New York and Illinois and Florida and a lot of other places that are going to say, no, that's not how it works. Because if you don't have elections, then you can't see the Congress and you can't see the Senate and a house.
⁓ but what I think he wants to do and my friend David from the Atlantic has brought this up. yeah, he wants to be a wartime president. He wants to be able to put troops in the streets, ⁓ intimidate people, ⁓ delegitimize any criticism of him can't criticize me. We're war. ⁓ now the other thing I would reassure people about is how incompetent Donald Trump has approached this because
If you're going to be that war president and try to squash democracy and strangle democracy by being at war, then you have to stop saying we won and it's over. ⁓ know, you have to say, listen, this is dire peril. Our boys are in danger. You know, the country's at risk. And instead he keeps saying, another week. We beat them. Dude decimated them. They're morons. We got them. Nothing to it. Well, they don't got, right. And I think his plan before all this,
Joel (38:33)
Yeah, yeah, two don't go together. They just they don't go together.
Tom Nichols (38:42)
He was testing the idea of putting troops in the streets during the elections to see if he can intimidate people. That hasn't worked out. I don't know how often ⁓ you guys are in DC anymore, but I was in DC when the guard was there. Like I said, I live up in Rhode Island now. ⁓ And you know what it was to have guardsmen in DC? They'd walk by and we'd go, hey. And they'd go, hi. Because they were all in tourist areas. They didn't send them into like, know, ⁓ northeast.
Heidi (39:08)
Anacostia.
Yeah, it's sentiment to Anacostia.
Tom Nichols (39:10)
Right. They were like they were walking along the wharf
down, you know, by the by the Potomac and a couple of guardsmen go by and we say, hey, thanks for your service. Like,
Heidi (39:18)
Well, that's where
the litter was that they needed to pick up.
Tom Nichols (39:21)
Yeah, so that didn't work. And so I think the fallback position was he was going to create ICE as a paramilitary force that he could just send anywhere. And that gets him around Posse Comitatus. It gets him around all the civil military problems that he could create this kind of band of roving thugs that he could just put into the streets based on, you know, an immigration emergency and hope to. I still think he might do that and depress the vote, keep people home, keep
Heidi (39:29)
Yep.
Alright.
Tom Nichols (39:50)
⁓ That's why they're so desperate to get the SAVE Act right now. You don't try and push an act like that if you think you're winning.
Heidi (39:53)
You know, it's, I will say,
if you're smart though, and you watch what happened in Minnesota, you can say, not only will that not work, it will backfire. And, you know, he's going to sign an executive order on elections and states like yours, not ours probably, but I do want to make this point about North Dakota, states like yours will say, shut up.
Tom Nichols (40:06)
It'll backfire.
Heidi (40:20)
You don't control what we do. Goodbye. I don't care how many execs, which is why he knows he needs some kind of legislation. But there have been studies, Tom, that have shown that the vote that he's going to suppress could very well be Republican vote. Who has passports? I mean, think about who's got the kind of, I mean, he's just not very smart about all of this. yeah.
Tom Nichols (40:42)
No, he's not very smart about a lot of things. mean, he is,
I'm sorry, but you know, and I know, you know, I don't, I try not to be, try not, well, I'm just trying not to be, I mean, look, I have my feelings about Donald Trump and they're well known, but I also think he's the least intelligent person ever to occupy the Oval Office. And I think it shows in his inability. I mean, this is a guy who just said yesterday, Cuba is not in the hurricane zone. No, it.
Heidi (40:52)
Yeah, that's okay. That's okay. Yeah.
Tom Nichols (41:11)
it's pretty much smack dead center in the hurricanes on Mr. President. You know, I don't he just again. Yeah, well, he says things and just he said today I was listening to his just before we started the show. His press conference, I want all the swing states, I want a landslide victory. I did. He says them and repeats them because he counts on his followers to just go, OK.
Heidi (41:18)
Get out the Sharpie!
Tom Nichols (41:38)
You know, one of the scariest conversations I had just for the election was with a diehard Trump voter who was a small business owner in Pennsylvania of all places. Right. And I said, you're a small business. Are you really you're okay with tariffs? So he's going to put in tariffs. And I said, now, that wasn't the scary part. Right. This was her just kind of, you know, filtering it out. And I said, but he did the last time she saw. don't remember that. And I went, ⁓
You're a small business owner, you know, in a, I don't want to identify them. mean, I don't remember this person's name, but I don't want to call anybody out. But, ⁓ you know, you, you would have been affected by it. You'd remember this. And so I, ⁓ I don't, you know, and I said, well, he just said the other day and she said, no, I voted early a month ago. And then I don't watch the news anymore. And almost Joel, going back to your point, it's like, I don't want to hear it. I don't want to talk about it. I don't want to know. I just want him to be my agent of retribution.
Joel (42:28)
Yeah.
Tom Nichols (42:37)
and do terrible things to people I don't like, but I don't want to hear about what he's actually doing.
Joel (42:41)
It also shows the ineffectiveness of the opposition ⁓ in Pennsylvania, for them to not be able to remind her that the local economy is getting beaten down by these tariffs. I mean, that's the opposition's job.
Tom Nichols (42:45)
Oh, in fact, let's...
But you can't reason with people who say things like, I don't remember that happening when you absolutely must have remembered it happening. ⁓ And I think, you know, the the fecklessness of the democratic opposition here has been to get sidetracked into arguments about, you know, Gaza and student loans and, ⁓ you know, girls and boys sports and all this other red meat that Republicans
really seize on instead of questions of war and peace, economic health, and democracy. And that should be an easy thing to run on, but here we are.
Heidi (43:37)
Yeah. Well,
listen, Tom, I hope you come back ⁓ and spend some more time with us. It's always engaging, always enlightening. ⁓ But you did nothing to take me off the ledge. Nothing. Nothing. I'm still on the ledge.
Tom Nichols (43:50)
Sorry, sorry. You know, I am known
in some quarters as Dr. Buzzkill. So I wish I could help you Heidi, but I can't.
Heidi (43:56)
Ha
Joel (43:57)
You
Heidi (44:00)
⁓
Well, listen, thanks so much. Yeah.
Joel (44:01)
⁓ Tom, keep doing what you're doing, man. You're good at it. Thanks.
Tom Nichols (44:05)
Thank you
very much.
Heidi (44:09)
thanks so much for joining us with a really engaging conversation. And we are going to invite Tom back to have that conversation continue. So thanks so much for joining us on the hot dish brought to you by One Country.
Joel (44:22)
you can learn more about us at one country project dot org and be sure to follow us on Substack, YouTube, Facebook and Blue Sky.
Heidi (44:32)
And we're gonna be back next week with more hot dish comfort food for rural