Know Your Enemy
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MAGA's War Over the War with Iran (w/ Curt Mills)
🕑 Added 2025-06-27 11:00:17 +0000 UTCDonald Trump's rise in U.S. politics over the past decade has been inextricable from his "America First" foreign policy and withering criticisms of the Iraq War, nation building, and both the neoconservatism that led the Republican Party to disaster during George W. Bush's presidency and the Washington establishment that still thought America could police the world. Trump's message of a restrained foreign policy and pledge to avoid getting dragged into forever wars especially seemed to resonate as he ran to take back the presidency in 2024—there was no end in sight to the war between Ukraine and Russia, and Israel was committing genocide in Gaza as Bibi Netanyahu walked all over an exhausted, only occasionally lucid Biden.
But less than half a year into President Trump's second term and the failure of negotiations with Iran, Israel bombed that country's nuclear facilities and assassinated their negotiators and nuclear scientists—and just over a week later, so did Trump when he ordered the dropping of massive "bunker buster" bombs to try to destroy the nuclear facilities Israel could not.
In this episode, we once again talk to executive editor of The American Conservative, Curt Mills, a leading voice of the restraint and realism wing on the right, to try to understand the war within MAGA set off by the "Twelve Day War" with Iran. Why did Trump bomb Iran? Who was he listening to, or not, as he made that decision? How did the various factions within the MAGA movement respond, and what is the state of play currently in Trump World? What was Israel's role in all this? And how much longer will Trump tolerate Netanyahu's constant efforts to get the American military to fight in Israel's wars? We take up these questions, and more.
Sources:
Ian Ward, "The MAGA Split Over Israel," Politico, June 13, 2025
Joe Gould, et al, "MAGA Largely Falls in Line on Trump’s Iran Strikes," Politico, June 21, 2025
Katy Balls, "Trump is Taking Fire Over 'Forever Wars,' but MAGA’s Real Battle Awaits," The Times of London, June 22, 2025
Jude Russo, "What Next?" The American Conservative, June 24, 2025
Sohrab Ahmari, "Did Iran win the 12-day war?" Unherd, June 25, 2025
Comments
Chad Bailey
Nice interview!
Subodh Kafle
I think this episode was much much better than the last episode with Mills. In this one they are asking him specific questions about a specific conflict and also about his insight into the conflict between hawk and dove factions of his political sphere. Whereas the last one they had him on for was in the transition period so all they could really ask was "what do you think he will/should do about X" and it's pretty hard to challenge any of what he says there.
Tim Combes
I know apparently us patrons really can’t cope with having enemies on the pod but I do think this type of episode is one of the better formats for it: realtime punditry about a rift within a coalition that we are not a part of. Matt and Sam just have to trust that the listeners will remember that Tucker and MTG are bad actually
Heather McIntyre
I was talking with a friend a couple weeks ago about whether Trump was better on balance than Kamala Harris because he was more open to non-interventionism - so I wonder what the counterfactual here is. If Harris had've won the election do you guys think her admin would have escalated more, or not bombed Iran at all? Dems don't have that religious pro-Israel faction but they do have a deep strategic commitment to it. So I wonder if that extends to their attitudes about Iran.
Subodh Kafle
Was that a senate vote?
Jonathon S
This obviously occurred after the pod, but on Friday every Republican but Rand Paul voted against the Iran war powers resolution, and polls show 80-90% of GOP voters support the bombing. Ofc there are some MAGA anti-interventionists, but we are still dealing with a GOP that broadly shares a bloodthirsty hatred of Arabs/Persians, as we especially see in Gaza
Sigurður Hreinsson
At least this guy got what he wanted from Trump on Ukraine. More dead Ukrainian children.
David Gillman
Is it being used to mean general fuckuppery?
Nicholas Donofrio
It seems a weird misread to say Trump's presidency has been dominated by Iran, rather than calling out Israel's continuing escalation of conflict with all of it's neighbors. Not to mention Trump's multiple attempts to bully submission in Ukraine...
Christian
I thought it was a neat if awkward turn of phrase from Curt. to me, confections are ephemeral, made of individually inedible components, readily consumed, and ultimately not nutritious. it's a good metaphor for what Trump has done to this country
Joseph Larkin
What does it mean to confect American culture?
Owen Urech
I guess fundamentally how can anyone believe this “ceasefire” will hold and it’s not just a pause until Netanyahu feels pressured in the Knesset again? We saw this exact thing in Gaza in February when Trump “brokered” a ceasefire just to completely reverse in a couple weeks and let the killing resume unabated. If Trump is just going to start and stop a war over and over eventually you will get escalation beyond telegraphed show strikes by Tehran. “We’ll see what happens” isn’t a strategy it’s just a reflection of who talked to him last. And that’s just blundering into a war with extra steps!!!
Know Your Enemy
Yeah, definitely—this is one reason I underscored exactly when we recorded it near the start of the episode, ha. There's no great solution to this, at least for a podcast like ours (no staff, one editor, etc) so we tried to focus on how we got here, the players and dynamics at work, and other topics that hopefully stay a little more evergreen. But yeah, no disagreement. (Matt)
Ryeman
You know news moves fast when a podcast recorded 3 days ago feels a news cycle behind.
Evan Sweeney
No see it's honest to come into office with "eh we'll see" as his plan. Great man indeed Edit to add: I did enjoy the episode, been a while since I heard an Enemy episode and it was a bit jarring at first. Keep it up gents.
mark o'hare
In no world is the idea that a world leader cursing on a mic an indication of some kind of authenticity from which to extrapolate appreciation. We had an emotional response to it? So fucking what. The lazy child phoned in his work for the day. Yawn.
Seed Oil Sommelier
Re the back and forth about Bannon at around 32:00. He’s shown a pretty shrewd ability to connect with young people, particularly very angry young people, and to harness that anger for political power for a long time now. It was under his management that Brietbart became the central media outlet covering GamerGate™️ in 2014 and 15. He was also a mover and shaker of the early Trump 1 alt-right movement, which was composed of mostly angry young men. He’s always been something of a youth whisperer.
Peter Carlen
Burn After Reading - great movie
