We're equally aligned. I was kicked out of the early vote meeting. like the rnc and the you have a comms meeting to talk about the early vote numbers every day you come in and how you're going to talk about them and i was like i was looking at your buddy jeremy bird and mitch stewart's memos and i was taking them into the meeting and i was like we're losing i was like i don't know what you guys are talking about this is that we're gonna lose and they're all like no we're winning we're winning our models are consistent i was like that's crazy and finally they kicked me out of the meetings we don't need somebody being an app. We don't need the fucking deputy comms director salt in the vibe. So you and I were aligned. That is a wonderful story. Well, I'm happy that you and you and Barack Obama both turned out okay. Hopefully the country turns out okay. Will you check in with me 10 days before this election and let me know what you think?

I'd love to. It'd be my pleasure. I'd appreciate that. Thanks so

much to Jim Messina. Up next, Michael Weiss. Weiss. All right, we are back with Michael Weiss, editor of The Insider. He's also a host of the Foreign Office podcast, former investigative reporter for CNN. It's a forthcoming book about the GRU, Russia's intel agency. Thanks for coming back, Michael. Obviously, I want to talk about the situation with Israel and Iran. But just briefly, I feel obligated to touch on the foreign policy elements of the debate last night with you. Ukraine is not mentioned, not asked about, or it's mentioned, I guess, by Walt Waltz, but it's not asked about by the moderators. There's no meaningful exchange on it. I don't know how that's possible. And I was just wondering what your kind of observations were and also, you know, on J.D. Vance, given his isolationism and how he kind of presented that last night. Yeah, I think it was a colossally bad move

on the part of CBS not to ask about it because, look, Trump is, I think, a disaster on foreign policy. We've discussed this before. I think he has a weird Jones for autocrats and strongmen, particularly Vladimir Putin. But weirdly, the Ukrainians seem to think that he's malleable on this issue, for whatever reason. I happen to disagree with them. I think they're being naive. I think he's going to sell them down the river. There's a kind of congealing wisdom among pro-Ukraine Republicans that, well, you know, what will happen is Trump will try to strike a deal with Putin. Putin will rat fuck him, and then Trump will be so angry he'll give Ukraine everything except nuclear weapons, and maybe even those two. And I just think that's too clever by half. I don't see it going that way. Vance, however, is outspokenly anti-Ukraine. And what I mean by this is, he has trafficked in conspiracy theories and disinformation that are amplified wholeheartedly by the Kremlin and its agents of influence and surrogates in the media, from David Sachs to Elon Musk to, you know, you name it. What do I mean by this? Vance has gone around saying that US taxpayer money is going to finance yachts purchased by Zelensky. This is just false. It's been debunked. Also, Vance is posturing as this Appalachian good old boy who's done well for himself, but who came from real poverty. He cares about the working class, particularly the white working class in America. The Washington Post had a very, very good story the other day on how security assistance for Ukraine, all the money we've presidential drawdowns, congressional supplementals, the vast majority of it is being spent in the United States to create jobs at weapons manufacturing plants, including in Scranton, Pennsylvania, which is where Zelensky went rather controversially to some, not to me. So Josh Shapiro

signing the missiles? Yeah.

That was well received. That was received at Bulwark HQ. But

yeah, I did notice some negative feedback on that on social media. Good

on him. I was nobody complained when Zelensky went to Utah and met with Republican governor there. I mean, the idea that this is politicized somehow, I don't get it. This should be a bipartisan issue. And in many respects, it's a bipartisan issue, but for the MAGA cult, which wants to basically sort of cleave Ukraine away from America's foreign policy interests. But look, regardless, the money, U.S. taxpayer money is being spent in America to help Ukraine, because what we're doing is we're giving sort of our hand-me weapons platforms and ammunition to the Ukrainians, and we're simply investing in building better, newer stuff for our own purposes. And this is something I think the Biden administration has failed in terms of strategic communications to convey to the American electorate. They should have been out front from the beginning to say, not only are we doing this because it's morally imperative to help an ally and a friend and the victim of the largest land war in Europe since World War II, but by the way, we're getting a lot out of it too. So there's a utilitarian motive baked into this cake. And unfortunately, MAGA, I think, has been successful in convincing, well, certainly its own constituents, but then again, they'll believe anything and everything. But it's convinced ordinary people who might be on the fence about Ukraine that actually that this is, you know, this is sort of the welfare queen of Europe and they're, you know draining our coffers. It's just nonsense. It doesn't

work that way. Yeah, that was my main frustration with the debate last night. That JD is so extreme on this stuff, and he literally doesn't care about the Ukrainians. As you said, he's advanced all these conspiracy theories, and he's kind of able to present, I think, much more mainstream than he is on a range of issues, but on foreign policy as well. That was frustrating. Okay, let's move on to why I asked you to do an emergency bonus substitute here. We had coordinated attacks in Israel yesterday. Obviously, the Iranian missiles targeting Israel, largely unsuccessful. There's also a mass shooting in Tel Aviv. I talk about what you see as what happened, and then we'll talk about what's going forward.

Yeah, so this, I think people are getting it a bit wrong when they say that this is largely a replay of the missile salvo the Iranians fired at Israel in April. They fired in that point, 130 ballistic missiles, plus cruise missiles, plus drones. This time, it was 180 ballistic missiles, but of a higher grade of sophistication than the ones that they used in April. And I mean, we all saw the footage of, you know, the incoming. And sometimes it's hard to tell what's a rocket or a missile impacting and what's debris from an interception. But suffice to say, some of these things did get through. And Israel's got the best integrated air defense system in the Middle East. They were not using Iron Dome. I see a lot of people saying, oh, Iron Dome was working. Iron Dome is no capability against ballistic missiles. They were using the aero system and other platforms to take down these missiles. But look, the targets are interesting. So Iran clearly targeted Mossad headquarters. They targeted Nevatim and Telnov air bases. Nevatim is the home to Israel's S-35 fleet. So they were looking to degrade Israel's military and intelligence capability. And I mean, by all the sort of day after battle damage assessment that I'm seeing, including from comments that the White House has made, is that they failed. They didn't take out planes. They didn't damage or destroy any critical strategic infrastructure. So in a sense, this is a win for Israel. I mean, the only fatality in a sort of grim twist of fate was a Palestinian originally from Gaza who had the rocket booster, one of these things, fall on his head in Janine in the West Bank. There's actually footage of this guy getting beamed by a giant piece of a missile falling on him. So yeah, I mean, Iran is killing Palestinians now and when they're aiming at Israel. But you know, the question I have now, and I think it's one that we all have is what's going to happen. And here's where I think it gets a little bit interesting and provocative.

So just really quick before this happened, I just do like just on what happened, I just have one other element I just want to get from you. There's pretty significant U.S., I guess, Navy involvement in helping with those. Jake Sullivan said yesterday, we're proud of the actions we've taken alongside Israel to protect and defend. Do you have a sense for the extent of U.S. kind of involvement there? And then just to clarify, like, the mass shooting side of this was coordinated, right? I haven't seen the full

data on the mass shooting. I mean, this is the real problem, though, that Israel faces and is going to face. And by the way, also, we as Americans will face is asymmetric warfare. You know, Iran's proxies, I think they've been badly battered in the region insofar as they are paramilitary or organizations or militias. But as terrorist entities, they're still very capable. And so, yeah, I think what you're going to see is these kinds of gun, knife, bomb attacks. I mean, the kinds of things that Israel's been putting up with, you know, for decades in terms of intifadas and whatnot. But in terms of what the United States and also other countries, I mean, the UK evidently had a role in shooting stuff down. The Jordanians either shot stuff down themselves or allowed America to use their airspace to intercept things. But we had, you know, carriers and battleships in the Eastern Mediterranean that were on alert. It didn't seem though that this was as kind of coordinated, and there certainly didn't seem to be as much of a preemptive PR campaign waged by the White House to show that, you know, this coalition of nations, including pro-American Arab countries, were sort of quick on the trigger to take down drones, cruise missiles, and other things. I mean, in this case, the Iranians fired pretty quickly after both the Israeli and American government said that something is going to happen as soon as this evening. It was much more accelerated this time than last.

The other thing Jake said, which takes us back to your moving forward, is he has said, we have made clear that there will be consequences, severe consequences for this attack. And we'll work with Israel to make that the case. I mean, you know, and I guess just in a vacuum, you can see this as an escalating or deescalating moment just because of the failure. But clearly, it seems like an escalating one. I don't know what's your sense.

Yeah, you know, for years, I've watched as a consortium of enemies of the United States took us less and less seriously, you know, in terms of our threats of deterrence, so-called red lines in Syria. These things were violated serially. And the consequences were, we are gravely concerned, sanctions here, maybe, you know, anti-tank missiles there. But it took a while for America to kind of do something actually substantive, if not kinetic. What I'm noticing now is our allies increasingly are also not taking us as seriously, or we don't wield the kind of leverage we would like to think we can. We see this in Ukraine. We tell Ukrainians, please don't hit Russian oil infrastructure because we're worried about the price of gas at the pump. And the Ukrainians say, thank you very much for your counsel. And they hit them anyway. The Ukrainians are now saying they want to do deep strikes. They're already doing deep strikes into Russia with their own homemade missile and drone systems. They want to fire attack them in storm shadows. We continue to say no. The Israelis, look, we told them, don't go into Rafa. And they said, well, we're going. I said, well, you can only send a division in. And they said, oh, okay, great. So they sent a division and they kept stacking it with additional brigades such that it became the size of two divisions. We told Netanyahu, don't assassinate Nasrallah, which evidently was in the planning stages, if not in the offing, right, not long after October 7th. Remember, Hezbollah started firing rockets into northern Israel on October 8th, Israel invaded Gaza. So they made Lebanon and certainly themselves party to this war. And obviously now Netanyahu has killed Nasrallah, not just killed him. Frikizid, the genitals of middle-ranking Hezbollah operatives using a rather spectacular infiltration of a supply chain of pagers walkie-talkies they have decimated uh hezbollah's upper echelon i mean the entire command structure has taken out in the space of nine or ten days i was making this point earlier i mean hezbollah as a as a military force on the ground has never been weaker or certainly hasn't been this week in a very very long time um the other sort of dog that hasn't barked yet is for years, for almost 20 years since the 2006 Israel-Lebanon war, Hezbollah has been rearming to such a degree that they had over 100,000 missiles that they were going to fire at Israel. They haven't fired them. Is that because they're keeping their powder dry for later? Or is it because Israel's done a pretty good job of taking out this arsenal? The IDF released footage of cross-border raids that they had conducted already prior to the ground invasion earlier this week into southern Lebanon, where they've been uncovering vast tunnel networks, stockpiles of ammunition, weapons, command and control centers, etc., all in violation of the UN resolution that followed the 2006 war. So it looks like strategically Hezbollah is on the back foot, is probably never going to be the same organization again. And I think what's happening, interestingly, is the United States' instinct for de-escalation is now people are getting interested and intrigued by what has happened, largely as a result of Israel defying all of our... Winning

begets desire for more winning. Yes, nothing succeeds like success, right? And

we want to always take credit for things that we not only have no business taking credit for, but said, don't do it, you mustn't do it. And by the way, you won't be able to do it. And it was all done anyway. So Brett McGurk, the Middle East coordinator, I think Jake Sullivan, Hochstein, all these guys seem to now suddenly see a changing dynamic in the region. And I think, you know, not to be, well, you know, I am going to be very cynical. For them, it's sort of win-win in the sense that if Israel does manage to neuter or badly weaken Iranian hegemony in this neck of the woods without a direct American intervention, well, that's just good for America's interests, right? And so the question I have is, Israel has yet to retaliate for this fusillade of missiles that happened yesterday. That means they're coordinating the response with the Americans. Well, what are they going to do? Well, they relate evidently, and I've seen the reporting on this, to the Iranians by intermediaries that no matter what the Iranians do, no matter how many things they fire at us, and and no matter how many casualties we sustain, the response is going to be targeting Iran's oil infrastructure and or its nuclear weapons program. Now, I have a hard time seeing how the Americans get behind either of those things. The nuke program, clearly, it's always been a diplomatic solution for Barack Obama. This was Obamacare for the second term, according to his strategic communications advisor, Ben Rhodes, at the time. Biden wants to resolve this thing diplomatically. Oil, I mean, global oil prices continue to be a major concern for the United States. see under what I was just describing earlier about Ukraine's deep strike capability, and the reason the logic behind why the United States is against hitting Russia's energy infrastructure. But there is going to be a military response. And what would I envisage seeing go up in flames or get targeted anyway, IRGC HQ, Iranian military sites, there was a good piece in the Atlantic today where the correspondence querying his Iranian sources said, you know, we don't have an air force. I think they've got like, you know, seven knackered MiGs. Israelis could probably take those out as a show of force. I mean, the idea is to hammer home that Iran does not have a conventional capability that can match Israel alone, much less can it risk all out war, which would pull in the United States and which would probably be the end of its regime. And, you know, the Ayatollah Khamenei is 85 years old. So he's older than Biden. War could likely kill him. Yeah. And also, does he want his legacy to be the end of Khomeinism and the end of the Islamic Republic? I don't see it. He seems to be risk averse in that sense.

There's a good side of success begets success as far as taking out some people like Nasrallah. Some of these horrible terrorists have committed these atrocities and sort of positive momentum in the region. The other side of those, success against success for Beebe also, who's pretty awful. And it seems to me that he's in a stronger position as he's ever been. I mean, it seemed like Beebe was politically dead in the months after October 7th. And that doesn't seem to be the case anymore. I don't know if you have a sense for that.

His polling is up. I mean, keep in mind, you know, his political fortune is also inextricably linked to his personal freedom. I mean, this is somebody who could very easily wind up in jail for corruption and criminality. So he has to stay in power. But don't discount the Israeli electorate and what they think. In the West, we love to do this. We love to say, oh, you know, you just replace Netanyahu and they'll do America's bidding. No. I mean, since October 7, the vast majority of Israelis, left, right, center, have basically rallied around the country and been largely in favor of going after Hamas and Gaza. Nobody is shedding tears to see Hezbollah defanged and to see Hassan Nasrallah having a bunker collapse on his head. And yeah, I mean, Netanyahu's polling is up. he's in a pretty strong position. Also, there was a good piece by David Sanger in the Times today that said, look, from his perspective, you've got a lame duck Democratic administration, with which he's been at daggers drawn since a year ago, knowing though that he has serially defied American diktats and got away with it and now is seem seeming to be strategically successful in Lebanon. Keep in mind, you know, one of the reasons that Israel was caught completely off guard by Hamas is they'd spent the better part of two decades with a an overwhelming intelligence interest in Hezbollah, which was their most formidable threat in the neighborhood. They saw Hamas as something that could be managed and that was not going to pose any kind of military or terroristic threat to them. So with Hezbollah, they have incredible insight. Clearly, they have infiltrated the organization, which is how they did Beeper Gate. And now they seem to be winning that campaign. So he also looks and says, meaning Netanyahu, if Donald Trump wins, well, great, because they have a sort of bestie relationship and they see eye to eye on a lot of things. I think they share a lot of personal characteristics, to be honest. And Trump is not going to object in any way. In fact, he'll be cheerleading to see Israel strike at Iran and would probably be all too willing to get the United I'm

told on the left that Donald Trump is the peace candidate.

That's not correct. That's right. Yeah. I mean, he's the guy who's going to be more pro-Palestinian than Joe Biden. I've heard this line too. The guy who dropped the mother of all bombs on Afghanistan, whose son, I think, posted on Twitter not long after October 7th, a cartoon the caption that that donald trump jr said is this is how you solve the middle east and it was a very stereotypical arab caricature with a nuclear bomb shoved up the anus of a goat so the the idea i'll leave it to your readers to divine how how that conflict will get sorted so this is the peace candidate, right, Donald Trump. He doesn't care about Ukraine, but he does care about Israel or pretends to care about Israel and says he does. And I think would line up behind whatever Netanyahu wants to do.

So then the last thing is the momentum is positive for Israel on the military side of things, which it clearly is. How does that interplay with the remaining hostages, the humanitarian side of this? I mean, like, you know, does that, do you have any open thoughts on that? Yeah, I mean, the biggest domestic pushback Netanyahu has

faced is his failure to bring the hostages home. And whether or not that would be predicated on a ceasefire with Hamas or some kind of resolution to the war in Gaza, or simply, you know, why haven't we done more special forces raids and rescued them like we've done with a handful? I think, though, and, you know, I don't want to sound heartless and cruel here. I think that the Israeli security establishment is of the opinion that it's going to be very, very difficult to get these people back, at least most of them. And many may well already be dead. So I think, in a sense, their portfolio has has moved on, not that they don't want to have their people back. We've seen the lengths to which the Israelis go to, I mean, they've traded hundreds of terrorists to get, you know, one IDF soldier who was kidnapped back. However, again, they're now, you know, they find themselves fighting in two different fronts and now opening a third campaign directly against Iran. So, you know, this has expanded. We're not quite at the region-wide war that has been ominously foretold. It's not all-out war yet, but we are creeping ever closer to that point.

Yet? I mean, is your sense? I guess on the one hand, like when the news broke yesterday that the Iranian missiles were coming, like the initial instinct or wisdom of people was, man, we're really headed towards reaching a war here. After the failure of it, maybe, maybe, I don't know. How do you assess it now? Yeah.

And also the Iranians have telegraphed, you know, I mean, and they're not going to get their wish on this, but they said, for our purposes, this is the end of it. We want no further escalation. So they're advertising the fact that they don't want to go to war. What can they withstand in terms of Israel's response? That's another question. And as I say, I mean, a lot is going to depend on what targets are selected. I mean, I could well see if Israel does decide, let's go for the nuclear program, which they might not be successful in doing, because the conventional wisdom is that's going to require a lot of American assistance, including, by the way, assets on the ground. If they do that, Iran will probably have to escalate much further. But, you know, a lot also will depend on what Israel chooses to do in Lebanon. So, you know, the Latani River is sort of the cutoff point. I think what the United States has said was, okay, if you're going to go in, it has to be a limited incursion, but please do not attempt a replay of 2006. And I think, to be honest, would be incredibly strategically stupid for Israel to try to do that now. I mean, their biggest weapon in Lebanon at this moment is psychological. They have so demoralized Hezbollah. They have so kind of set the cat amongst the pigeons in Lebanese society, because unlike 2006 in 2024, a lot of Lebanese are not rallying around Hezbollah and seeing Hezbollah as the savior and defender of the nation. There's a lot of recrimination and anger. Why did you bring us into this thing? Nobody asked us to go to war with Israel this time around. And also Hezbollah are moving their constituents and refugees into the houses of ordinary Lebanese. So there's a real authoritarian aspect to what they're doing in terms of domestic calculations as a result of this kind of campaign against Israel that's rubbing a lot of people the wrong way.