Episode 885: Reflecting Pool Failures

Did JD Vance make progress with the Iranians in Switzerland? And the British won't have Keir Starmer to kick around anymore. We'll discuss all this and more on today's episode of The Editors. Rich is out today, but I'm here with you instead, Noah Roth. I'm joined today by Phil Klein, Charles C.W. Cook, and Jim Garrity. Our sponsors for today's episode are Made in Cookware and Vare Watches, more on them a little later on. If for some reason you're not already following us on a streaming service, you can get us everywhere you get your podcasts. If you like what you hear, please consider giving us a

glowing five-star review. If you don't like what you hear here, please forget I said anything. So Jim, JD Vance concluded the first stage of talks in Lucerne, Switzerland, with his Iranian counterparts, called it a foundation upon which a good deal can be built eventually. He said that one of the things they're most excited about, his words, are the return, the negotiated return of International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors, which were on the ground in Iran after the JCPOA, even after Operation Midnight Hammer, and before. Operation Midnight Hammer. No word on what they can inspect, when they can inspect it, or the safeguards that will prevent Iran from misleading the inspectors. Oh, and also Iran denies that it agreed to anything. The vice president also said that he's excited about the degree to which Americans can expect

to have to benefit from the unfrozen assets that they're going to release into Iranian hands. That money is going to be used to purchase American agricultural products like wheat. forgetting the fact that money is fungible and that that frees up Iranian cash to support terrorism and missile production no matter what and also Iran denies that too. It's almost like the Iranians are really comfortable with this status quo and are kind of determined to embarrass this president, which would be weird, right?

I mean, considering there are partners in peace now and negotiating party that's totally different from the last regime and is operating in good faith. if this deal was a product of Republican trepidation over the political calendar, which it probably was, what assurances to Republicans or Trump, for that matter, have that Iran will not make the next 60 days or the following 60 days after the inevitable extension of this deadline as painful as possible for the president? None. Good night, everybody. No. So, first of all, it is entirely possible, I suppose, that Iran, did say during negotiations that either they were agreeing to this or could be open to this. And then once JD Vance comes out and says, look at this great deal we got.

The Iranian Mullahs come out and say, ah, we never agreed to any of that. This is nonsense. We don't know where it's possible. It's not like the Iranian Molas are enormously trustworthy. Then again, it's not like there's been a sterling record of trust from this administration when it comes to, particularly its early characterizations of the deal when this stuff was coming out in dribs and drabs and drabs. And JD Vance came out and said, ah, don't fall for this or

Iranian propaganda and, you know, ah, you know, of course, you know, you can dispel all of these rumors about what's in the memorandum of understanding by releasing them, which they did not do until after the president had signed it in Versailles. By the way, to quote Nora McDonald, I don't know if you guys are history buffs or not, but the last treaty signed in Versailles did not work out so well. This is a really terrible deal, as I suspect was discussed on earlier editions of this podcast. The claim of, oh, they agreed to international inspectors. Well, in 2004, 2012, 2016, 2017. And earlier this year, various Iranian officials have bragged about how easy it was to fool international inspectors. And this is all separate from the question of, well, we're going to allow you to inspect in these places where we're not doing anything with nuclear weapons program. But we won't let you inspect over in these other places where we are doing something trying to create nuclear weapons. So it's unbelievable, like either JD Vance is stupid. Or JD Vance is convinced that everyone he's talking to is stupid and will genuinely greet this as, oh, my goodness, what a terrific deal that Whitkov and Gushner have managed to negotiate with the Iranians. It's a terrible deal. It's a terrible deal. And there's an action, if the terms of the memorandum of understanding, although I guess I disagree so much, maybe we could call it a memorandum of misunderstanding. But if we really keep to the words in the document that's been released, then the Iranian mullahs will end the war and all of this better. than when they started. The Iranian economy

getting $300 billion, like they only spend $27 billion on their defense budget. And as you mentioned, money is fungible. So every money, every bit of money that the Gulf Coast countries are providing them. Why would they give them the money to the Iranian Mollus?

But let's say they actually do that. That's like 13 times the Iranian defense budget. Every money that they don't have to spend rebuilding a bridge is money that they can spend on drones or ballistic missiles or rebuilding the traditional military. or secret nuclear research or anything else that they want to do.

It's a terrible deal from top to bottom. And it's kind of amazing that there are anybody in the administration, anybody not directly attached to the administration who's trying to say, yes, this is a really good deal. To use the term the kids you use, crashing out, the Rapid Response 47 account is crashing out and trashing the day of Rebois and Baccia Unger Sargon.

I'm probably mispronouncing her name. You know, the whole people who are usually Trump fans are looking at this deal and saying, wow, this is terrible. And the response to the White House has been, you're a traitorous left wing, nobody, and who cares what you say, or something like that. Again, not giving further confidence.

We have de facto surrendered. We have de facto lost the war, which, you know, they say you go to war. Rumsfeld said you go to war with the army you have, not the army you'd like to have. We went to war with the president we have, and the cabinet that we have. And this is what we've gotten with it.

So, Phil, to Jim's point about this $300 billion fund, which is an Article 6 of this 14-point deal and is subsequent to a bunch of progress on the ground. I've said this before. The thing about multi-stage Middle East peace deals with Islamist terrorists, which the IRGC absolutely is, is that they rarely progress beyond stage one. And that's kind of a Sotomocay feature of the administration's case for its own deal, that nothing is going to happen within the absence of progress. So I thought the stage one of the Gaza deal, the deal that ended high-tempo combat operations in Gaza, was great because what did it do up front? Almost nothing except international recognition of the Israeli defense forces presence in a much bigger Gaza envelope that included a lot of Gaza proper. This one gives Iran everything it wants up front. A lot of hard cash from oil sales at market prices.

That's all visible now. we basically legalized the Iranian shadow fleet that can all operate above board now and get hard cash directly from the market sale of oil in its derivative products. It drives a wedge between the United States and Israel, a spectacular Iranian success from their perspective, given how hard the administration has come down on Israel, for not respecting the terms of a deal to which it's not even signatory. And this is kind of a digression, but JD Vance and Trump both kind of confuse the issue when they talk about unfrozen funds because they're saying, ah, it's not going to be released. until much later, and it goes into an escrow account, and that'll be used to purchase American farm products, but the sanctions waivers are already in effect for Iranian oil to get cash upfront from the direct sale of oil in its associated products. So what is the administration's thinking about how this relief, this upfront relief, actually puts pressure on the regime? Is there

a case for this being coercive in any measurable way, or is that just spin? I don't think that there's a case for it being coercive. What they would argue is that Iran being able to sell oil on the open market would is going to reduce the price of oil. Also, under the sanctions regime, Iran was illegally selling oil on the black market to China and China was able thus to purchase oil at a steep discount and now it'll have to pay market price for oil that it was otherwise getting cheap because Iran was desperate for somebody to take it so they could get some money. So that's sort of the argument, but I would say it's a rationalization. And the reason I'm kind of a skeptic of the deal, although I will just say that on the 300 billion aspect

of the deal, as somebody who's skeptical of the deal, I would say, that I have questions about whether that's actually real. I think that the sanctions relief and the unfrozen assets alone are worth tens of billions of dollars and are a huge immediate windfall for Iran. This 300 billion, if you read the language of it, the idea is that there will be a fund that will be raised from money from all these gullible, of countries that Iran will have access to, that it will be able to facilitate sort of investments and rebuilding of Iran. To me, there was a statement that from a Saudi official that said,

well, we're not, we never heard of this and we're not giving money to any sort of fund, unless, you know, Iran dramatically changes. And it's a totally different situation. But Saudi Arabia and no one else wants to give $300 billion. So I see that $300 billion as akin toward the sort of talk of Gaza redevelopment, like all the talk about how if there's going to be a Trump-Gaza city resort on the beaches there, and we're going to turn Gaza into the Riviera. The $300 billion is starting to sound more like that. having said that, it is true that the deal itself, and this has been confirmed by all the subsequent

statements to come out of the meetings in Geneva, is that on every issue of import, the United States either completely abandoned its position toward the Iranian position or just significantly show. its position toward Iran, toward where Iran is. And you could go down the list. I mean, at the beginning of the war, we were talking about how help is on the way for the protesters. They can't slaughter protesters. That's a red line for Trump. Now Trump is saying he never cared about regime change. And the MOU says that the U.S. isn't going to interfere in Iranian affairs. When, meanwhile, Trump is talking about how he might try to, you know, support the opposition to BB if BB doesn't cooperate with his deal.

So on that issue, you know, that's out the window. Trump talked about how they were going to have zero enrichment. Now the talk is about having some enrichment. Trump talked about how they have a right to a civilian nuclear enrichment program, which is what existed under the Obama-Iran deal. Instead of removing the enriched uranium that exists, he's now saying that it'll be downblended, which again was the John Kerry standard during the Iran deal.

It used to say that they couldn't have ballistic missiles and couldn't fund terrorist proxies in the region. Both of those Trump has now given up on. There's no talk of terrorist proxies in the MOU. In fact, if anything, by looping in Lebanon into the issue, it legitimizes Iranian claims in Lebanon via Hezbollah. and on the ballistic missiles, Trump said, well, it's unfair to say that the Saudis could have ballistic missiles and Iran can't, as if there's been no difference in terms of how the Saudis have used missiles as opposed to Iran, which has used them to attack all of our allies in the Middle East, fired at American troops in the Middle East.

and has used missiles to try to shut down the Strait of Hermuz. And now we're in a situation in which the Iran controls the Strait of Ramuz. And it knows Trump has said, well, if that's closed, it'll lead to economic collapse. And I'll be remembered as Herbert Hoover. And I don't want to be remembered as Herbert Hoover. And so Iran, and keep in mind that when we talk about the Strait of Ramos being closed, It was never actually closed in terms of Iran has all sorts of ships that are lined up and other ships can't get through. It's open.

In theory, it had been open this whole time, but Iran threatened the ships passing by by sending drones and missiles in that direction. So it's sort of like saying, well, the George Washington Bridge is open, but but there's a group of people that might be planting IEDs on it or firing rocket-propelled grenades from boats below, and maybe you happen to get hit by one. I mean, nobody's going to go over that bridge. And so Iran has realized essentially that by making public threats, just declaring the Strait of Ramu's closed and sending some cheap drones in that direction, that essentially, you know, it could put Trump in the position of wanting to give Iran everything that it wants.

So again, I think that the, that there, we've seen a bit of vacillation among defenders of this Trump who, you know, and his allies who defended the war effort and now are defending this deal as assuming that the only, option was we have to send 100,000 troops in to do a long, drawn-out invasion, or the other flip side of that is that we just sign this awful deal. That's the same sort of argument that Barack Obama made. I would say the one thing, and I'll hand it back over, is that Jim said that Iran's better off now than they were before. I would just stipulate that on, I don't think that we could underestimate the amount of damage that was done to their infrastructure and their economy over the course of the heavy bombardment. I think the question, the issue is more that Iran is in a position to rebuild and let's say three to five years out be in a much stronger

position than they've been in a very long time as a result of this. I think that the sort of status quo of where they're starting from is worse than they were starting from under the Iran deal. And I think we have to acknowledge that even while arguing that you'll clearly, when you surrender on all of your stated war aims from the beginning of the war, it's a defeat. So Charlie, Phil's proposition at face value, there's really only two options here for the president. One is to allow the deal to collapse and either return to combat operations or threaten the return of combat operations augmented with some blockade or blockade light, which really returns us to a status quo that the president was deeply discomfited by and probably has no

interest in going back to. The other alternative is to extend these negotiations and the 60-day deadline again and again and again indefinitely and absorb humiliation after humiliation, which brings me to the premise that I'm going to ask you about, which is the domestic political impact of these negotiations on the president and Republican Party's standing. It's designed to get gas prices down, right? And gas prices are going down. Rent crude is going down. W2i is going down.

Still elevated from pre-war levels. But on the decline, and Trump touted the other day that the stock market was at an all time high. The stock market is very volatile. It's not doing so great today. So maybe that's not where you want to rest your premise. But it's what they're going with what they got. Maybe I'm a little bit more sensitive to national humiliations than most. But I don't see how this mollifies the president's critics or creates enthusiasm among otherwise listless Republican voters who needed some reason to go out and support Republicans. They have not yet been demonstrating the kind of enthusiasm to vote as the president's critics are. He can't take back everything he said during the

war phase about how he's not concerned with America's personal finances and inflation doesn't matter to him. He's trying to project resolve in a way that just communicates detachment from the day-to-day struggles that Americans are enduring. And now that he's backtracked, he's conceded all his critics' arguments. He's unlikely to recover all the ground that he lost in the polls. which depending on the poll you look at, he lost 20 points of support when it comes to the economy, 10 points on inflation, again, depending on the poll. And this all presupposes, I'm presupposing, that Iran will not test the parameters of this deal, which it is and will, with the potential for some horribly bloody miscalculation

that compels the president to respond however reluctantly with force, which is a distinct possibility. what is the administration's theory of the case for a political victory here or maybe just the best case scenario from their perspective of how to mitigate the political damage from this thing? Well, your latter most hypothetical is the risk for Trump that he's drawn back into it in a way that is deeply unpopular. But I think the case is fairly straightforward.

The, I don't mean to be pedantic now, but the stock market may be volatile, but it is at record highs. It's done extraordinarily well. And the fact that it's jumping around a little bit today and over the last few weeks doesn't change the fact that the Dow and the S&P 500 have never been higher that the S&P 500 was just upgraded to 8100 for the year in a forecast.

So I don't think the stock market is the president's problem. The case that Trump presumably believes, whether by necessity or not, is that the public didn't like this war. The public was never sold on this war, but that the public doesn't particularly care about it either way. And what it cared about was the consequences, that is to say, high gas prices,

and that the public believes that focusing on a war that it doesn't like at the expense of other things that it cares about, let's say inflation, the general question of affordability, wage growth, and so forth. and that the public if the conflict is ended, ignominiously or not, will reward the president if he gets those things under control or is seen to, and that walking away is more likely to do that than the alternative. That's the case.

And in a sense, Trump is a hostage to fortune on this. He was a hostage to fortune before. because we have decided as a country that presidents are magic talisman and that they are personally responsible for the state of the economy and everything else. And that if they coincide with a good economy, they're brilliant. And if they don't coincide with a good economy, they're evil. Now, it's not to say there aren't things that presidents can do to make things worse or better. Obviously, President Reagan made things better in the 1980s with macroeconomic policy.

Joe Biden made things a lot worse with the huge spending binge after COVID. Donald Trump made things worse with tariffs. But as a general proposition, Trump was already a hostage to fortune because he promised big, said we were in a golden age when we weren't yet, and people weren't satisfied with the economy. He's now even more of a hostage to fortune because he has only a few months before the midterms for what he assumes will be the positive consequences of walking away from Iran to come to fruition. But if he, you ask me for the rosy case, if he gets to the midterms and gas prices have gone down to where they were at the beginning of the conflict, if the inflation numbers improve, if wages grow, if the employment numbers are solid,

then, yeah, he might get away with it. And I think that the perhaps difference of opinion that one might see between the skeptics of that case and the advocates of that case revolves around whether or not one thinks the public cares about this at all. And I actually don't think the public cares about this. I don't think it was popular, but I don't think it was salient. So I assume that's what Trump is thinking. And he might be right.

But if he is, it won't be because of anything he's done. He will have locked out. All right. So with that, an exit question for all of you. The notion that this will be politically successful for the administration seems to me contingent on the Iranians being quiet. So by November, the Iranians will be, the Iran war will be in voters' rearview window because the MOU and negotiations have proven too valuable for the Iranians to mess about with.

Yes or no, Jim. No, because one of the Iranians just can't help themselves. I mean, their philosophy is stated in their chant every occasion, death to America, which means that even though this is like the most generous deal that they could ever hope for in their wildest dreams, their instinct of tweaking and harassing and annoying and attempting to hinder America at every opportunity means that they will continue doing these. We'll probably have some drone fly near a oil tanker at some point. They'll constantly be doing basically equivalent of what Russia does with its hybrid warfare,

constantly doing stuff right below what it would take cause of military response. And as we know, the bar for military response for a president who doesn't want to start the war again, it's going to be pretty darn high. Phil. I think, I mean, it depends what you define as quiet. I think that they don't want to blow up the whole deal because, it's too valuable for them. However, like Jim says,

I think that they're going to keep on doing more things to humiliate Trump and get more. I mean, they know that all they have to do is have Hezbollah fire some rockets and trigger an Israeli response, and then they get JD Vance and Trump to yell at B.B. publicly and saying B.B.'s blowing up the peace deal

that he didn't agree to. So I think that it's going to be hard for them to stop some sort of, you know, to rattle about the straight of Hormuz. I think that at any point in which they're not quite getting exactly what they want, they're going to start to do stuff. And I think that we're basically, I don't pay much attention to this whole 60 days thing because it could easily just be renewed. And I just think that it'll be.

Easily. It's guaranteed. Yes. And so. It's just going to happen. So I think that basically we're not going to have a change before the election. And that Iran, my guess is that Iranian violations will be more significant, the closer we get to the election, because we know that Trump, they know that Trump doesn't.

want to restart things in October. So I feel like the closer we get to November, the more humiliating it's going to get for Trump. Charlie, yes or no? Well, I take all of that. I think in one sense, the great fear here ought to be that Iran is quiet in that if Iran pockets this deal and then goes back to violating it as secretly as possible in the ways that we really care of. And, about, then that's the worst outcome. It's worse than Hezbollah firing a few rockets off and creating a spat between allies. So I think the rational thing for Iran to do would be to ostensibly follow the deal while violating every part of it, but I'm not sure Iran is rational. I'm not either. I think the answer is no, and my only outstanding question is whether the

administration blames Israel or Iran for Iran's violations of the MOU. With that, let's turn to our first sponsor of the day, Made In Cookware. If you're considering the pros and cons of different cookware brands, you should know that Made In has more of the pros. Pros like Tom Colicchio, Brooke Williamson, and many other professional chefs who all trust their cooking to Made In cookware. Even our own resident chef, Sarah Shudy, uses Made In to create her culinary masterpieces. Fact is, Maiden has a long-standing relationship with professional chefs.

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Once you try it, you'll be a pro made-in too. Order now and get your items in time to turn your Fourth of July barbecue into a star-spangled culinary spectacular. For full details, visit made-in cookware.com. That's M-A-D-E-I-N cookware.com. So Charlie, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer stepped down this week as laborers. leader and he will leave office within the next few weeks. This is the six British prime minister within a decade to depart prematurely. The British government is now arguably less stable than its Italian counterpart, which for some of us is quite the development. A lot of stuff contributed to

this. I'm not sure where you want to go with it. You could say any number of things. He had a shallow coalition. Sure, he won 411 mandates, but with just about a third of the vote, he angered the left by barely cutting spending, foreign aid, winter fuel subsidies, and modestly boosting defense spending. He angered the right by renationalizing the trains, vigorously prosecuting speech crimes and presiding over the rise of violent anti-Semitism in the UK. And he angered everybody else with some really dumb stuff like taking Taylor Swift tickets and, of course, appointing Peter Mandelson to be U.S. ambassador despite his ties to Jeffrey Epstein, which blew up very spectacularly in his government's face. What do you make of the rise and fall of Keir Starmer and what do you foresee coming

next? Well, I think that Keir Starmer was a particularly bad prime minister and he has led a particularly bad government. But I am not going to do what professional British politicians on both sides of the aisle do and pretend that the problems that face Britain were the product of Keir Starmer's incompetence, or even of his party's incompetence. The British public, as I wrote yesterday, is not ungovernable in a systemic sense, but is practically ungovernable

because it wants a whole host of policies that are both contradictory and aren't working. Now, of course I would say this, because I'm a conservative free marketeer, and I'm an expat who left mostly because I loved America and wanted to be in America, but also because I saw a certain lack of opportunity

in the United Kingdom. But if you look at those statistics, it is indisputable, irrespective of its course, that Britain is in a business. bad way. Britain has not grown much since 2008. The average growth rate, I believe, is 0.6% per annum. Productivity has been flat. Wages have stagnated. Relative to the United States, Britain has become much, much poorer. Per capita GDP in Britain is 50,000.000.000.

$53,000. In Mississippi, it's 56. If Britain joined the United States as the 51st state, it would be the 51st state. It would be poorer than Mississippi. And as we know, I say this with no joy I like Mississippi. And Mississippi, in fact, has made a great number of improvements over the last few years that I think a lot of people in the commentary have haven't caught up with, economically, educationally, and so forth. But Mississippi for a long time in America was the of the joke. Thank God for Mississippi. That's what people said in Arkansas, in Alabama, and elsewhere. Well, they would say thank God for Britain if Britain joined the United States. Within a generation, Britain has gone from being a world power. Britain has gone from being a center of finance.

Britain has gone from being a cultural force to being what exactly. And I don't blame Keir Starmer for this, I think Keir Starmer is a symptom, not a cause. I think that the British public is simultaneously aware that things are awry on their island and completely unwilling to do anything about it. They will not tolerate the building of new homes, even though they know that the cost of housing is a catastrophe. They will not deregulate, even though they are aware. that their country is not innovative. They will not drop their commitment to net zero, this preposterous climate change policy,

even though they know that energy prices are high and that many Britons have to be subsidized in their energy consumption by the state. They will not invest in defense, even as it has become clear that they cannot project power. they will not cut spending, even as they run deficit after deficit. They will not lower taxes, even though they've hit the highest tax rate since World War II. Now, I must correct that, not the highest tax rate, the highest tax burden overall since World War II,

while funding government services that pretty much everyone considers to be inadequate. And they won't do anything about immigration, even though Britain is a start. small island and people are aware that it's full. And I think that this ultimately falls at the feet of the voters who are demanding more of the same, who reject trade-offs, who are horrified by the prospect of being more like the United States, even as they become increasingly aware that the United States, that the United States is working and Britain is not. Of course America has lots of problems too. Of course here we have electorates that reject trade-offs. But it is simply not the case that America

is in great peril, that living standards are dropping, that life is difficult. And in Britain it is. So I see Keir Starmer as being one in a long line of prime ministers. who, while inadequate in their own right, didn't really have a chance because their mandate had been handed to them by people who had set them up to fail. So, Jim, if you were to read Western legacy media about Kiermer's fall, it's all Brexit's fault. It's almost amusing how frequently they defer to this long-standing grudge against Brexit. But if it's not Brexit, what done it? it's the UK's deep cynicism, according to a political piece from two weeks ago. Voters, quote, believe politicians are self-serving, that political talk rarely leads to

real action and that the public has little influence over what politicians actually do. It might be cynical, but it might also be the better part of wisdom gleaned from the British experience, depending on your perspective, over the last decade. If the UK is all bent out of shape about Brexit and its fallout, they're not acting like it. Nail Nigel Farage's Reform Party cleaned up in local elections in May, gaining 600 seats from both parties, but mostly labor, 450 local seats fell to reform from labor. If SNAP elections were held today, they'd probably clean up again. I don't pretend to be an expert in domestic British politics, and a lot can change between now and a general election, for example. But the duopoly is coming apart amid all this so-called cynicism.

The UK isn't bereft of agency. Its voters aren't, you know, just seeds in the wind being blown about by events. They're controlling them from their perspective, I would think. What's your perspective? So, first of all, an early bonus editor's pick for Charlie's piece yesterday. The British public is to blame for the UK's dysfunction. And I pretty much agree with everything that Charlie said in the past few minutes. But since I have to say something myself, I would, first of all, they, oh, this is Brexit's the fault.

guys, Brexit passed before Trump was elected the first time. How long does it get to be the universal scapegoat for everything that's going on in the United Kingdom? Come on. We've had very disappointing conservative prime ministers who haven't served for terribly long, and we have had labor prime ministers who have not served. It's like, what, seven in about 11 years? I look at this. And from an outsider up until fairly recently,

in British politics, it always felt like their conservative party was at least one significant step to the left of the U.S. Republican Party, and their Labor Party was one significant step to the left of the U.S. Democratic Party. Yes, that is capable, or at least the Democratic Party as it traditionally had been defined. And so it felt like the stakes in the election were somewhat lower, that there was more of a, the big decisions about National Health Service and things like that had already, been worked out. It's pretty clear. You look at everything from the rape gangs, you know, scandals. There are a whole bunch of people in the United Kingdom who are not happy with their de facto open door immigration policy for a long time. And this doesn't mean you have to go nativist and xenophobic, but you basically have to say, hey, we're going to do a lot more scrutiny of who's being allowed into this country. And when the people who come into this country break their laws or attempt to say, well, I don't really have to follow your laws because I follow Shillera law or something like that.

Well, then, you know, like those people got to, you got to get them out of the country. And people would yearning for this. This has been a pretty broad perspective, but you don't see this amongst the British elites who generally are living in communities where they are minimally affected by the consequences of mass immigration, poor scrutiny of those coming into the country, crime and things like that. So you can understand why people are turning to these other parties because there is this bi-party consensus that we're not really good.

Any changing we make to immigration, we're just going to be tweaking around the edges. We're not really making any wholesale changes to this. So I think, you know, and the other thing which is kind of interesting is you watch during the World Cup. I realize England and Scotland are competing separately. But you could see how much joyous enthusiasm there is for people to root for their own country. And this sense of like, I am not sure, you know, look, I was just over in Eastern Europe. The Poles, the Finns, the Latvians, they're all happy, or at least the ones we spoke to, were pleased as punch with the European Union.

It's their decision. They can make their own decisions. But I think it's kind of tough to have that European Union identity and that national identity coexisting. Maybe there's always going to be some tensions there. But if your governing class sees themselves as EU members first, even though they're no longer in the EU anymore, it becomes hard for them to celebrate the country

because you're always celebrating this supernational, extra national entity that you really see as your true identity to. So again, the British governing class, the British elites have been getting this message for a long time and they just don't want to hear it.

And the idea that, oh, and along the lines, over the last decade, as Charlie laid out, you've seen this decline in economic dynamism in this this willingness to innovate, this willing to adopt change. There is no British Tesla.

There is no British, SpaceX. There is no British companies that are there. I'm sure they're here and there, but you don't see on the global stage British companies making this big, huge dynamic change. Finally, let's just point out that the United Kingdom, you know, right now, with Keir Starmer on the way out, does not have effectively a prime minister, even though everybody kind of thinks they know who's going to be. It doesn't have a Dr. Who and it doesn't have a James Bond. The whole country is going through an identity crisis. Do you know, Jim, on that front, I did see a funny joke this morning because there's a heat wave in England. It said that Britain is on its seventh prime

minister in 10 years. It's 85 degrees outside and the English soccer team is good. It's finally become Italy. Italy's not even in the World Cup this year. I know. Everything's gone up topsy-turvy. Phil, too, you know, we don't know who's going to replace Keir Starmer, but Jim implied correctly that we have a pretty good idea that his most likely replacement will be Andy Burnham, a laborite. And like Keir Starmer, who described himself as a moral socialist, Burnham seems committed to the same course, ideologically at least. He's described Britain's problems as attributable to neoliberalism,

which he defines as deregulation, privatization, and austerity. He seeks more regulation and less private ownership. Charlie just went through the myriad troubles facing the British political economy, right now. Over half of the UK citizens received more from public welfare than they contribute, the highest tax burden since Clement Attlee, a crisis of anti-Westernism and violence from a core labor constituency, this migrant element. And we just got through, as Charlie described, the stage of grief in which the British raged against the notion that they would be the poorest state in the American Union if they were to join it, only for Europeans to descend on America

this summer and prove the point rather spectacularly. Burnham could depart from the doomed trajectory on which Keir Starmer has set labor, but he doesn't seem inclined to do it. It's just a spent force that is on this predetermined course and seems unable to break out of it, or at least unwilling to break out of it. So they're just going to languidly waltz into a reform government, no? I mean, if you look at the last decade or so in the UK, they've had, five prime ministers. And so clearly the UK political system has been unstable for the past decade. And I think it's because of all the reasons that Charlie pointed out, which is essentially

people are frustrated with the situation and with the reality of life in Britain, but they won't actually support any of the sort of radical changes that would be required to reverse course. I think as an American, what troubles me more is my fear that we could be heading in the direction of the UK over time. And what the UK shows us is that you can't defy the laws of economics and culture and that you can maybe get away with it for quite a long time, but eventually it catches up with you. And even though the UK we're talking about as a basket case, it should also be worth stating that the EU isn't doing that great. I mean, back, if you look back about 20 years, the EU collectively had a GDP that was roughly equal to the United States, depending on the year, sometimes a little higher than the United States. But now the U.S. has a GDP that's about 50% more than the U.K. Essentially, the EU and the U.K. have never recovered from the financial crisis. We've had two major economic disruptions being the financial crisis and then COVID, and the U.S. was able to emerge out of them, but the U.K. and Europe were not able to as well.

And I think that the problem, now, some liberals will make the argument, oh, well, that's because we didn't choose a sturdy policy. and we chose a lot of expansionary stimulus policies. Even if you take that tack, the problem is that the reason why the Europeans and the Brits didn't have as much financial flexibility to respond to the crisis as we did is that they are hand-tied by all of their. social welfare obligations. And the U.S. is just on autopilot to go on the same trajectory. We have trillions and trillions of dollars of unfinded liabilities to Medicare and Social Security. We have a bit of an accounting fiction going on now that's disguising some of the issues, but that won't be the case forever. And what UK really shows you is that, yes, for a long time, you could get away with,

you could sustain a large welfare state, but eventually you can't. And all of the issues that Britain's dealing with are issues that you could see in the United States. And you can see how the, in Britain, you have, in the U.S., you have run, you have these huge social spending obligations. We have mass immigration, which Trump is sort of, has been trying everything to stem the tide. But you can see how hard it is to do deportation. under our current system, even if you have an administration that's willing to do whatever it can to increase deportations, even bending or just defying the law to try to do deportations, how hard it is.

So it's hard for me to see the problems that the UK has, that I would confidently say that the U.S. is immune to in 20 or 30 years. Now you could talk about certain aspects of the sort of animal spirits that exist in the U.S., the striver mentality, the desire to make for everyone to make a better life for themselves. But the U.S. was and always associated with having people who are lazy and overly dependent on government. That happened because decades of socialism sapped their spirit and sapped that tendency and that desire. And so I guess in my doomerism take is that, yeah, in 30 years, can I confidently say that America won't wind up like this. I can't confidently say that because I don't see the American public any. more willing to accept the sort of trade-offs that Charlie said in terms of reduced government services that Britain has. A stark warning. It's kind of hard to imagine the American figure

who would, in figurative terms, throw down Hayek's the Constitution of Liberty on the table and insist this is what we believe. It's even harder to imagine it in the British context. In the interest of time, we will forego exit questions on this one and move on to our second sponsor of the day. Their watches. Charlie, take it away. Vare watches, indeed. Well, we've spent a lot of this year talking about tariffs.

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reflecting pool renovations are a genuine sham. For weeks, the press has covered this story with such vigor that it was pretty obviously to them a big metaphor for the Trump presidency, and there was a ton of hysterical resistance porn in there. But the problems with the renovation are now self-evident. It was a $1.8 million project ballooned to $15 million. One of the no-bid contracts to seal the pool went to a first timer, which just happened to have done some work on Trump's Virginia Golf Club, according to reports. Another contract for a new filtration system went to a Trump donor who also happens to be his neighbor at Palm Beach. And the thing is algified, which often happens when you drain and replace treated water. It's happened to me and my pool.

It happens to every pool. But we've seen workers pouring gallons of hydrogen peroxide into the thing to no avail. There are now national guardsmen guarding it because of the security threat to it, allegedly. Clearly, this thing is beginning to drive the president nuts because he tweets. about it with some regularity, what do you make of this whole thing? Yeah, I mean, I think like many of us, it seemed to be that the, some of the attacks on the whole project were Trump hysteria, anti-Trump hysteria, because you could, in his defense, it seemed like he had found a sort of outside the box solution to try to repair something that

need repairing and at least initially it looked better than it had before so it was kind of defensible but now in addition to all the algae there is all of this paint which was just put in a few weeks ago is now starting to peel and pop up some people have argued that this might have been a result of the hydrogen peroxide that they poured into the reflecting pool in an attempt to kill the algae. Trump has been trying to argue that the culprit is these vandals. He even claimed yesterday that there was a 300-foot gash in the paint. that was created by a box cutter or a knife.

I don't know what sort of knife that you'd need to make a 300. I mean, maybe you'd need, I mean, just thinking of the technical, you know, just the technical details of how this would work. I mean, the reflecting pool is in a very prominent part of the Capitol Mall.

It's a centerpiece of the Capitol Mall. All throughout the day, there are people milling about walking by there who would notice somebody sort of, I don't know how you do get 300 feet. Maybe you make a small dash before someone notices you. But this is a few, probably in the middle, a few feet of water. So the idea that somebody is going to be crouching down in like a waiting pool. with a tiny box cutter and somehow drag it 300 feet, like the length of a football field without anyone noticing,

is just absurd. Like, how would you even do that? Would you need a samurai sword to be able to do it without actually having to like submerge yourself in water to reach the bottom with a tiny box cutter? So the whole thing seems absurd. I mean, even if you did it at the middle of the night where people, you know, there are fewer people there.

There's always some parks police person or somebody milling about that would have found this operation. So it seems that Trump tried this out-of-the-box thing. It didn't work. And now it's kind of embarrassing. And unlucky for Trump is the fact that, you know, 90% of political reporters live within a, a few miles of the reflecting pool and could easily come there, and they're not going to let it up, and they've taken various samples of the water.

They've shown the paint coming up. So this is sort of harder for him than usual to just sort of play off. And so he tried to play it off for a while until now he came up with this. No, it is messed up, and we're going to have to drain it all over again. But that's only because of these mystery vandals. Yeah, that's the part of it, Charlie, that is beyond absurd at this point, verging on, from my perspective, abuse. We're up to six arrests now for allegedly tampering with this pool. And some of the stories just sound downright Soviet.

One guy was arrested, former Olympic rower was arrested for taking a piece of exposed coating. So it's flaking and it's above the water. And there are images to confirm this just off the pool's floor. And he reached down and picked it up. Arrested for that, for defacing federal property. The others have not gone public. But as Phil alluded to, Trump alleges this vast campaign of orchestrated by wreckers and saboteurs who are responsible for the thing's troubles, including this giant gash carved by vandals,

which nobody can prove, even though it's at the center of. Washington's penopticon. So you can't dismiss the idea that there are loons and vandals out there, but there's armed guards around this thing. And it just doesn't seem like that's the problem with the pool. The problem with the pool was maladministration and mismanagement. And now we're criminalizing this in a way that I think seems to me purely designed to deflect criticism away from the administration and its choice of contractors and how it

approached this entire project. is it a press obsession? Is it a Trump obsession? Maybe those two things always become one? I don't know. It seems like a real issue to me. And the president is making it one. Well, it's both. A lot of the coverage has been a completely absurd right from the beginning. It's worth saying that the reflecting pool often needs maintenance. It was a big maintenance project under Obama. When Obama reopened it for the second time, it filled with algae. This happens. The water source was changed about 14 years ago so that it took water out of the Potomac rather than using fresh water. The algae problem has followed multiple administrations around and will follow the next one around, no doubt. the real issue here does seem to be the bottom of the pool, both in that it is probably coming apart absent vandalism. And as you say, in order to make the case that it is fine when it's probably not,

Trump seems to be a little over the top in law enforcement. I think that a lot of the people who are now dancing around in celebration over this lucked out. I mean, there were people going down there after the project was completed, saying, look, it doesn't reflect, and taking pictures of water moving because of wind. So all sides of this project have been really quite silly. It's a real story. Is it the most important thing in the world? No.

It's brought out the worst in a huge number of people. I'm going to reserve judgment on the details because if you walk, what, half a mile less from the reflecting pool, you get to a large area covered in grass that from the air now says prominently 8647 on it, which was vandalism, which was sabotage. So it's not entirely beyond the realm of possibility something untoward happened here,

but it seems unlikely. Jim, two problems, issues, I guess, as I see it, with the pool story. One, if the pool is not a metaphor for the Trump presidency, it is now one. It's of a piece with the ballroom, with the arch, with his effort to put his name on everything, even if he insists he doesn't even ask for it, and it's just the initiative of his subordinates, what have you, who knows. But this is his interest. This is what he says his core competency is.

and this is clearly not up to his standards, certainly not up to ours, but it's the self-dealing problem too that will likely be the lasting legacy of this thing, if there is a lasting legacy of this thing, because if Democrats retake Congress and they're on a trajectory to do that, they will make corruption the centerpiece of their attacks on this presidency, as they claim, and this will be an exhibit in their prosecution of the president's conduct. Yeah, and let's point out that if the pool were looking terrific and was out, free, Democrats would be much less interested in bringing this up as an example of Trump's self-dealing or no-bid contracts or things like that. A whole bunch of people who say to me, why don't you write some nice things about the president?

Don't you look at how nice the fountains are where they've done refurbishing projects? And yes, the fountains do look really good. Fountains have the water moving around. It's much harder for algae to grow when the water is moving around and there's circulation and all that's why. You see algae in ponds that are still. You generally see less algae in rivers or streams where the water is moving. The real problem, as I understand it, from coverage of what's actually going on in the reflecting pool, is that the water, you know, it's a reflecting pool, so the top of the water is meant to stay very still.

So you get these nice, beautiful pictures. You want to take pictures of the reflections, right? The reflecting pool. The water at the bottom is supposed to go through and gets processed to a water treatment plant. They have these pipes that are running under now. the treatment plant is a little bit closer to the tidal basin. Sounds like the supply and return lines running in between the two of them are leaking, and that's why you're not getting the circulation of the water in the bottom as much as you want.

Trump comes in, his guy comes in and says, I can do this. It's going to be so much better and puts this sealant, darker blue stuff at the bottom, which is supposed to make the water darker, making for better reflections. Well, the problem is when you make stuff darker, it absorbs more sunlight, which makes it warmer. Guess what? Warm, still water is a really good. environment for algae to breed and spread and to grow. That's why the whole thing looks like an outtake from swap thing. So if you really want to fix it, you had to do it the right way, which meant replacing the leaking supply and return lines. Trump administration didn't do that.

It was convinced it had a better solution, it had an easier solution, it had a quicker solution. As our old friend, Kevin Williamson once observed, everything looks easy when you don't know the first thing about it. That is kind of comparable to the approach. Oh, we're just going to Iran into submission. We don't need ground troops. They're going to surrender before they can close off the straight-of-four moves, right? This administration charges into things, not really knowing that much. Who did the president send to negotiate with Iran? Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, who always, I understand it, neither one of them has security clearance, or at least they haven't gone through the traditional process of obtaining a security clearance. Because their president's

friends, they never had to go through Senate confirmation. They never had to go through any of the processes you'd usually get with somebody handling high-level negotiations for the the United States, particularly one as high stakes with negotiating with a hostile regime like Iran. This is, you know, an administration full of, with a lot of amateurs. This is administration with a whole bunch of people who don't have any background in government, are proud of the fact that they have no background in government, aren't interested in listening to people who have background in government, and charge ahead, and lo and behold, they don't actually know what they're talking about. They don't actually know what to do. And you end up in a situation like this,

where they're now deciding that vandals and saboteurs are the real. reason that the reflecting pools turning green. With that, let's take a moment to do a quick plug for NR Plus, our digital subscription service. It's your way around our metered paywall and your way to see 90% fewer ads when you sign up and log in. In addition, NR Plus subscribers are invited to comment on articles and blog posts, and they get invites to exclusive calls and events with our writers and editors as well as conservative

newsmakers. It's a great deal all around, but most importantly, NR Plus is a crucial way for you to support are valuable journalism. If you're not already a member, please consider joining tens of thousands of your fellow national review readers by becoming a member of NR Plus today. Let's move on to a couple of other things

while we have a chance. Jim, you're just back from a trip to South Carolina? Yes, family lives down there. Just outside of Hilton Head, did a day trip to Savannah. There are times where I've thought about family vacations as being some of the most stressful weeks of my year,

but it's always good to say, see these folks and it's always nice to get away. And I happen to coincide with the closing weeks of the runoff of the primary. For what it's worth, I'll be pulling for Alan Wilson. Finish second in the first round. Nancy Mace did

not make it. I saw a bunch of fading Nancy Mace signs by the side of the road. There were many happy sights on this trip, and this was one of them. Charlie, you have recently discovered the joys of pool volleyball. Yes, and we have a pool volleyball net, which is inflatable. and secured by weights.

So we have a real pro set up now and spent much of father's day playing pool volleyball. I, you would think, would have an advantage because I'm very tall. But I am consigned to the furthest point back in the pool because my kids and my wife can't stand up in as deep water as I can. And this actually prevents something of a problem,

present something of a problem, because it means that you can't jump in the way that others can. So I'm actually less good at pool volleyball than I suspected that I would be, but I enjoyed it anyway. There is a distinct advantage enjoyed by the team that doesn't have to be on the deep end side. And there should be some sort of a handicap associate. I agree. No such thing was forthcoming.

Phil, you just returned from a place I actually quite enjoy, Colonial Williamsburg. Yeah, I was there this weekend. And among the things they have there, are tradespeople and blacksmiths and silversmiths and wheel rights. And what's interesting is they're not just sort of actors that are kind of performing the techniques and trying to teach about it. But they're actually people that undergo real five to seven year apprenticeships to learn all of these trades.

And it just struck me when I was talking to some of them who, you know, dedicate their lives to being, you know, trainees at these old trades for five to seven years of their lives. And then they become masters. And then they, in many cases, just stay at Colonial Williamsburg. And they produce goods that end up being used within, uh, Colonial Williamsburg or sent to other museums with this sorts of thing. But it just sort of struck me. I mean, a lot of times the diversity has become a bad word among conservatives because

of its association with the radical left. But there is something beautiful about the sort of diversity of humanity and just how within our world and particularly within a capitalist. system. There are people who just, you know, could say, I'm just going to become an expert at learning how to make wheels for 18th century British style carriages and wagons. And that's what I'm just going to do. And I'm going to learn this and try to preserve this knowledge and the knowledge of this trade and kind of pass it down to the next person. And it's, kind of amazing that that still, you know, that there are people that are willing to do this.

That is cool. So I was asked on CNN the other day, you know, all these Europeans are descending on America and marveling at Buckees and what have you. And the question was, what would you show Europeans to really explicate American culture? And my choice was the county fair. And so we went to that over the weekend, our local county fair. And it is just really one of the best expressions of Americana that there are deep fried. thing, the young kids, you know, on the rides, the teenagers orbiting around each other, the dusty beer tent where you catch up with the locals who you didn't even know were present on the premises. It really is a joyous part of summer that I enjoy immensely.

With that, it's time for editors' picks. Jim, what's your pick? All right, so a lot of strong contenders. I mentioned Charlie's piece earlier, but I want to give credit to Brittany Bernstein's. The New York Times celebrates gender confusion on Father's Day, a belated happy Father's Day to all the dads out there, including my dad's still around and kicking. But yeah, we've kind of noticed that when the New York Times chooses to address something like Father's Day, they can't just say, hey, good job, dads, thanks for everything you do. No, no, no. We have to have a trans author explaining how they're a true dad as well. And, you know, I think there was a whole bunch of women's essays about the last person you could hear from on Father's Day, our actual father.

others. Brittany always does fun work, but this was a particular deserving target to get kicked around. Well done. Very good choice. Charlie, what's your book? Even though Jim Garrity only half shows my piece, I'm going to choose his piece. Trump's face takes over Washington. This horrible poster on the Department of Labor. Thank you, Jim, for saying this. I'm sorry that you had to walk past it. I haven't seen it in person. But it is so Orwellian. And of course, that is such an overused term. But it is very literally Orwellian. If you look at any book cover for 1984 or the movie, which I haven't seen, that's what this looks like. A huge picture of

Donald Trump's face on the side of a building. The only thing that I can think of that's similar is when I visited countries that have had dictatorships and you go from the airport into the major city. And on the way, there are these billboards with the king or dictator or Prime Minister for Life's face on them. I'm not suggesting this makes Trump a tyrant. He's not really a tyrant. But it is extremely un-American, and I'm pleased you pointed it out. Phil, what's your pick?

So my pick is a Jeff Blair piece. Donald Trump can't stop, won't stop cat fighting with our allies. We talked a lot about Iran, but it's just pretty amazing about Trump that, you know, in the midst of all this high state's diplomacy with Iran, he ended up triggering this diplomatic crisis with Italy over claiming that the Prime Minister Maloney was begging him for a photo at the G7 summit, and he was, he felt sorry for her,

because he was, she seemed so pathetic that he ended up doing this photo op with her. She came out swinging at him and it's just sort of, again, kind of crazy that with everything else going on, it turns out that we have this crisis with Italy that we can't even really address or talk about. So the J.F. Player, and I handled that well. Giorgia Meloni, whose government, we should say, is about to see its third British Prime Minister. Congratulations, Giorgia Meloni. It's Jim Day on the editors, and I'm going to also cite Jim Garrity's latest.

The U.S. loses its war against Iran. He's been gone for a week. He came back with the perspective that we needed to really assess a week of, in my view, atrocious news, detailing comprehensively all the leverage that the president secured during the combat phase of the war, and even with the blockade, and has subsequently sacrificed. It is worth your time. But that's going to do it for us. You've been listening to a National Review podcast.

Any rebroadcast, retransmission, or account of the show without the Express written permission of National Review magazine is strictly prohibited. This podcast has been produced by the incomparable Sarah Shuddy, who makes us sound better than we deserve. Thank you, Phil. Thank you, Charlie. Thank you, Jim, and thank you to the absent, Rich Lowry. Thank you also to our sponsors, Made In and Vair watches, and thanks especially to all of you for listening. We're the editors, and we'll see you next time.

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