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TRANSCRIPT

Jane Coaston: It’s Monday, March 23rd, I’m Jane Coaston, and this is What A Day, the show that has a one-second response to this two-second statement from Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy on ABC’s This Week on Sunday. 

[clip of Sean Duffy] But again, I think we have to offer the president grace. 

Jane Coaston: No. [music break] On today’s show, President Donald Trump threatens to escalate the war with Iran, but the White House says he’s only escalating in order to de-escalate. And with little to no plan in place, immigration and customs enforcement officers are being sent to airports to get those long lines under control. Our thoughts are with any travelers who have to interact with them. But let’s start with the war in Iran and the fight over how to talk about it here at home. You probably don’t spend a lot of time following MAGA podcasts or infighting on the internet, and that’s for the best. Former Fox News host Megyn Kelly accusing current Fox News host Mark Levin of having a, quote, “micro-penis” and Levin getting President Trump to post in his defense, while ridiculous, is not really critical to your day-to-day life. But what they’re fighting about is. The MAGA right is at war over the role that Israel, the country, and more importantly for our episode today, the concept, has over American foreign policy and America more generally. Because it’s true that the United States and Israel are at war with Iran. A war that is extremely unpopular with Americans. And it’s true that the two countries appear to have very different priorities when it comes to what success in Iran might look like. But if you listen to Tucker Carlson, another former Fox News host, or former counter-terrorism chief Joe Kent, you would think that President Trump was bamboozled into this conflict, lured by the evil, quote, “Israel lobby.” Here’s Tucker Carlson on his podcast explaining Joe Kent’s view on the war last week. 

[clip of Tucker Carlson] Israel got us into this war. Its lobby in the United States pressured the president, and its prime minister in Israel told the president we’re going without you. Join us, because if you don’t, your troops in the region, your interests in the region, and your citizens in the region will all be at risk. You have no choice. They led the way. That’s Joe Kent’s position. 

Jane Coaston: There are a few problems with this. For one thing, Donald Trump has been an Iran hawk for a very long time. Also, as we’ve said in the show before, Donald Trump tends to not be 100% truthful. But blaming Donald Trump would give him too much agency, I guess. So a host of people on the far right have decided that Trump was a victim of Israel and, by default, American Jews. And that’s a problem. Because the way some on the American right and the American left are talking about Israel has edged and in some cases bursted the damn wall like the Kool-Aid man into outright anti-Semitism. And with multiple violent attacks on synagogues around the world over the last few weeks, the lack of distinction between Israel the country and Jewish people is having a very dangerous impact. So to talk more about the war in Iran and rising anti-Semitic attitudes, I spoke with Zack Beauchamp. He’s senior correspondent at Vox and he recently wrote about the rise of anti-war anti-semitism. Zack, welcome back to What a Day. 

Zack Beauchamp: Hey Jane, it’s always a pleasure to talk to you. 

Jane Coaston: The now former director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Joe Kent, resigned citing concerns that Israel pressured the U.S. into the war with Iran. You wrote that his resignation letter suggests Kent is, quote, “laying the groundwork for an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that could define the future of the GOP.” I definitely noticed some what I think struck you as thinly veiled anti-semitism in the letter that wasn’t just criticism of the war or Israeli policy. What struck you? 

Zack Beauchamp: So the letter takes this view, right? That Israel pushed the U.S. into war, but it goes much more than that. It’s that Israel duped Donald Trump in a war, that he was tricked into a war he otherwise wouldn’t have wanted. Which is just, first of all, not at all true. Trump has decades and decades and decades of public statements talking about how hawkish he was on Iran. So it’s not as if this guy was an unwilling warrior here. But I think more importantly, it’s that Kent posits Israeli influence, not just as you know there’s legitimate debate about how much Israel played a role in the decision to go to war. But as a sort of catchall cause for everything that’s gone wrong in US foreign policy. For instance, he says Israel was responsible for the 2003 invasion of Iraq, a claim that has absolutely no basis in reality. And he also claims that Israel was responsible for the war in which his wife died, which is a tragic event. I don’t want to downplay that, but she died as part of the counter-ISIS effort. Again, had nothing to do with Israel. 

Jane Coaston: Unless you believe the conspiracy theory, which is kind of out there, that Israel is responsible for ISIS. And I think that something we keep seeing. There’s this level of like, MAGA denialism that ties into this, where Trump is just this poor, sad dupe, as you put it. Who is not responsible for the war that is very unpopular. It’s kind of that there’s this old saying, good czar, bad boyars, which is that you know the czar is great, but everyone around him is just giving him this terrible advice and that’s why bad things happen. And in this instance, it seems to be that Trump would be so great, but it’s Israel. It’s Israel that’s responsible for everything that’s bad that he’s doing. 

Zack Beauchamp: Yeah. That’s that’s basically the way that this logic is going in the circles that Kent runs in. And to be clear, This wasn’t actually that surprising from Joe Kent. In 2021, he had a phone call with Nick Fuentes about structuring his social media strategy. Like he comes from this milieu in the Pacific Northwest. He ran for Congress in Washington twice, unsuccessfully, in 2022 and 2024, of this very sort of extremist, fringy, militia-adjacent, white nationalist adjacent world that brings him in contact with people like Fuentes. He even paid a proud boy at one point as a campaign consultant. Alright, this is the world in which Kent comes from. And so for him to leap into an anti-Semitic explanation for why the US has entered into a war that he and I both believe is ill-considered, like we share that belief, but I can’t at all be associated with his explanation as to why that’s the case because it really is deeply conspiratorial. And it’s the way that people on that side of the GOP have been articulating this, right? And careful to avoid blaming Trump. As you say, there’s a good czar, bad boyars, uh dynamic that exists because Trump is all powerful in the MAGA movement. Right? It’s he can do no wrong in the eyes of the sort of core and base of the Republican Party right now, and going up against him is a losing fight. So every Republican who wants to criticize one of his policies has to find someone else to blame for it. Oftentimes, that’s you know one of his deputies. But in this case, among people like Tucker Carlson or Candace Owens or Nick Fuentes, it’s the Jews, right? Or oftentimes Israel used in as a very, very, very thin stand in for American Jews, right, and you see that in Ken’s letter too, where he talks about the American lobby for Israel and then the media, which is like the real tell here, because that’s what the– 

Jane Coaston: Right. 

Zack Beauchamp: That’s what the hardcore anti-Semites say when they want to blame the Jews. It’s the Jewish media or the media in parentheses with it. 

Jane Coaston: Right. It’s interesting also to hear the administration talk about Joe Kent as if this were not the person who was nominated by Donald Trump, but Kent is a Trump loyalist. He’s had those ties to far-right figures who’ve promoted anti-Semitic ideas, as you’ve mentioned, but Trump has always positioned himself as a friend of Israel, but he talks about Jewish people in a very stereotypical way and he always has. He’s always talked about how, you know, he wants Jewish people to be controlling his money and he thinks that this is being very pro-Jewish when it’s absolutely not. It’s always been interesting to me that you have so– 

Zack Beauchamp: Yeah. 

Jane Coaston: –many rabid anti-Semites who have become such big supporters of Donald Trump who is deeply philosemitic in a very strange way. What happens when these two strains collide inside the same administration? And does Kent’s exit signal deeper fractures among US officials who are supposed to be shaping a policy towards Iran? 

Zack Beauchamp: So Trump is a very interesting figure and philosemitism in general is very interesting because it’s always anti-Semitic adjacent. 

Jane Coaston: Right. 

Zack Beauchamp: Right. Because it basically just takes those negative stereotypes as you just suggested and turns them into something positive. It’s like, oh, the Jews are good with money. Isn’t it great to be good with money? Right? It’s always one hop away from anti-semitism. It is not a distinct thing, but rather a prelude to disliking Jews or spreading negative stereotypes about Jews. And in that way Trump’s bluntness about using antisemitic stereotypes, even if he does put a positive spin on them, has emboldened the entry of antisemites into American public life. Um. So that allows there to be in MAGA sort of both of these things at once. There are strains of the sort of Trump following who are heartily just very you know old school pro-Israel Republicans. And at the same time, Trump has normalized white nationalist stereotype or white nationalism and they exist, they coexist with each other and and don’t talk about each other except when they’re mad about a particular policy issue and then they fight online incessantly. And so you’ve seen huge fights between most notably Ben Shapiro and Tucker Carlson who are just like bitter enemies, right? Because they represent these two different wings in the very online way and sort of fighting about it all the time. I think that what happens later is going to happen after Trump is off the scene, right? Because Trump, in his person, papers over these distinctions. He allows both of these groups to exist together in the same coalition by picking up on different elements of Trumpism. But it’s only Trump’s magnetism. It’s only his unique personality and role in the base that allows them to coexist comfortably. And so I think once he’s gone, there will be a reckoning over what the true conservative or right-wing position on Israel and Jews is. 

Jane Coaston: I wanted to ask a bigger question because something I noticed immediately was how many people who are liberal Democrats saw that letter and were like reposting it and sharing it and talking about like someone’s finally standing up against this war. I’m like, okay, I totally understand that. But I also am like, you’re not seeing the part on how he’s blaming Israel for ISIS murdering his wife. You’re not seeing these little things about how it’s treating Israel as if it is responsible for all of this. And I think that you and I have both seen how anti-Israel rhetoric, which I completely understand if we’re talking about Israel as a country, if we are talking about Israel as a state with a government that is, I think, doing terrible things, both internally and externally, I think we’ve seen people turn you know talking about Israel, the country, into talking about Jewish people. And that those are two different things. There are clearly ways to talk about those goals and talk about the war, and even, as I have done repeatedly, criticize this war of choice, while treating Israel as a country, and not embracing anti-Semitism. Why do you think that has proven so hard for so many people across the political spectrum to do. 

Zack Beauchamp: Yeah, I mean, it’s it’s deeply and profoundly messed up and illustrates how badly our discourse on this particular issue is broken, right? We’ve talked a lot about the political right and it’s very obvious where people are getting the conflation of Jews and Israel from there. On the left, the dynamic is a little bit different, I think. It’s that there is an anger at the American Jewish community for having pro-Israel politics. And there’s an anger for you know being very, very critical of pro-Palestinian politics. And this means that sort of hardline anti-Israel politics will shade into an outright condemnation of many mainstream Jewish American institutions and blaming them for American policy when in fact, American Jews are not the real reason why the US has adopted the various policies it has over the course of many years with respect to the Israel-Palestine conflict. Uh it really isn’t the reason, but there is an anger and a mistrust there. And a lot of that, especially at the furthest left reaches, shades into outright antisemitism because antisemitism isn’t an exclusively right-wing phenomenon. Historically, it’s something that spans all ideological tendencies, left, right, and center. There are just different species of antisemitism. And the way that left-wing antisemitism manifests today is as a conspiracy theory in which Israel is pulling the strings of American politics, Israel and its Jewish allies in the US to ruin things and to ensure that the country does not do the right thing when it comes to the conflict in the Middle East. And you know sometimes there are gray areas here, right? Like you led in with people praising the Joe Kent letter on social media. Part of that may be that people didn’t actually read the letter and they just saw Trump administration official breaks over this. And the other part is that American politics is highly polarized. And so enemy of the my enemy is my friend logic leads people to say that, well, if someone in the Trump administration is breaking with him on the war, that’s great, right? It shows a splintering mug over the war. Maybe the war will end sooner. I don’t think Kent portrays that. But what it does suggest is that they they’re not attuned to the way in which antisemitism can very easily become mainstream and antisemitic mythmaking can become a really um powerful force, right? Kent’s letter will be cited by anti-Semites in the future as proof that someone on the inside knew what the Jews are doing. And that will happen on both the right and the left. 

Jane Coaston: Zack, as always, thank you so much for joining me. 

Zack Beauchamp: Thank you, Jane. It was a dark subject matter, lovely conversation. 

Jane Coaston: That was my conversation with Zack Beauchamp, Senior Correspondent at Vox. We’ll link to his piece in the show notes. Thanks for starting your week off right by listening to What a Day. If you like the show, make sure to subscribe, leave a 5-star review on Spotify and Apple podcasts, watch us on YouTube, and share with your friends. More to come after some ads. [music break]

[AD BREAK]

Here’s what else we’re following today. 

[clip of Scott Bessent] Every day, we are taking out their missiles, their missile systems, and the factories that build those missiles, and now our [throat clear] the General Kaine, Secretary Hegseth, are leading a campaign to destroy all the fortifications along the Straits of Hormuz. 

[clip of Kristen Welker] Just to put a fine point on this though, is the president in the process of winding down this war or escalating the conflict? 

[clip of Scott Bessent] Again, they’re not mutually exclusive. Sometimes you have to escalate to de-escalate [?]. 

Jane Coaston: Treasury Secretary and great communicator Scott Bessent spoke with NBC’s Kristen Welker on Meet the Press Sunday. Welker asked Bessent to clarify whether the U.S. is escalating the war with Iran because over the weekend, President Trump threatened to escalate the war with Iran. In a Truth Social Post Saturday night, Trump wrote that if Iran does not open the Strait of Hormuz within 48 hours, the US quote, “will hit and obliterate their various power plants starting with the biggest one first.” Iran’s parliament speaker responded on Twitter by saying that if the US attacks the country’s power plants, Iran will start to target infrastructure across the Middle East. Gas prices in the US have gone up by almost a dollar over the past month, according to AAA. In a response on Friday, Secretary Bessent announced that the US is lifting sanctions on Iranian oil that is already at sea and claimed, quote, “Iran will have difficulty accessing any revenue generated from the sale of this oil.” What? It seems odd to lift sanctions on oil from the country we’re currently at war with, and analysts who spoke with the Associated Press and The Guardian say the move won’t have much of an impact on gas prices. Great work all around. Robert Mueller passed away on Friday at the age of 81. Mueller, a decorated Marine Corps officer who received a bronze star and a purple heart for his actions during the Vietnam War, served as director of the FBI under presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Before serving as FBI director, he successfully prosecuted mafia boss John Gotti and Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega. But he’s probably best known for his work as special counsel during Trump’s first term in office when he investigated Russian interference in the 2016 election. And that’s when he became the object of Trump’s ire, which continued this weekend, when Trump greeted news of Mueller’s passing with what I’d argue was glee. Treasury secretary and, again, great communicator, Scott Bessent was forced to do cleanup duty of Trumps gross social media comments on Sunday, facing questioning during his interview with Kristen Welker. 

[clip of Kristen Welker] Is it appropriate for the president to celebrate the death of any American citizen, Mr. Secretary. 

[clip of Sean Duffy] Again, I think that given what has been done to President Trump and his family, it is impossible for either of us to understand what he has been through. 

[clip of Kristen Welker] So you don’t think that there’s anything wrong with the post saying good Robert Mueller’s dead? 

[clip of Sean Duffy] Again, I think that the uh we should all have a little empathy for what has been done to him and his family. 

Jane Coaston: Yes, empathy, a sentiment Donald Trump has never felt in his entire life. The Trump administration has a plan to make airport security lines even more unpleasant. Throw some ICE officers in there and see what happens. Transportation security administration agents are working without pay as the Department of Homeland Security shutdown continues. Hundreds of agents have quit and many more have called out from work, leading to long wait times at airports across the country. The GOP has resisted demands from Democrats to enforce new restrictions on immigration and customs enforcement officers. And over the weekend, President Trump announced that starting today, ICE officers will be deployed to airports to assist TSA. CNN’s Dana Bash asked White House Border Czar Tom Homan about exactly how much planning went into this decision on Sunday. 

[clip of Dana Bash] With respect, if you’re doing this in 24 hours, how well thought out could it possibly be? 

[clip of Tom Homan] Again, ICE has been at airports across the country for a long time. It’s just expanding those things. Look it does, how much of a plan does it mean to guard an exit to make sure no one comes through that exit? 

Jane Coaston: Because what could go wrong when Trump sends a bunch of poorly-trained ICE officers somewhere they aren’t supposed to be? The White House welcomed a new addition to its grounds on Sunday, a statue of Christopher Columbus. It’s a replica of the Columbus monument that was tossed into Baltimore’s harbor in 2020 amid protests against institutional racism. A White House spokesman told the New York Times, quote, “In this White House, Christopher Columbus is a hero, and President Trump will ensure he’s honored as such for generations to come.” It’s sure nice to know that during a war in Iran and a partial government shutdown here at home, President Trump is focused on the important things, honoring a man who has come to be recognized by many as a primary example of Western Europe’s conquest of the New World, its pillaging of resources, and Native people, and of course, of getting lost and getting arrested by the government that employed you. And that’s the news. [music break] 

[AD BREAK]

Jane Coaston: That’s all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review, please stop South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham from speaking on television, and tell your friends to listen. And if you’re into reading, and not just about how Graham went on Fox News Sunday and said this about seizing an island in the Persian Gulf critical to Iranian oil exports. 

[clip of Lindsey Graham] I trust DOD, we got two Marine Expeditionary Units sailing to this island. We did Iwo Jima, we can do this. The Marines, my money is always on the marines. 

Jane Coaston: Like me, What a Day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at Crooked.com/subscribe. I’m Jane Coaston, and Iwo Jima was one of the bloodiest battles of the Pacific Theater with 30,000 allied casualties over a five-week period, Lindsey Graham, so it sure seems weird to sound this excited about anything coming even close. Unless you’re signing up? [music break] What a Day is a production of Crooked Media. It’s recorded and mixed by Desmond Taylor. Our associate producer is Emily Fohr. Our producer is Caitlin Plummer. Our video editor is Joseph Dutra. Our video producer is Johanna Case. We had production help today from Greg Walters, Matt Berg, Sean Allee, and Ethan Oberman. Our senior producer is Erica Morrison, and our senior vice president of news and politics is Adriene Hill. Our theme music is by Kyle Murdock and Jordan Cantor. We had help today from the Associated Press. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East. [music break]