Due to technical difficulties, From and Fuller will not be available in video format this week. The Spy apologizes for the inconvenience.
Dave Wheelan: Al, I’d like to start with you. Over the last couple of days, Americans have been standing in line at major airports because TSA workers have not been paid since January and have not shown up for work. Congress has still not solved that problem, either by passing or postponing funding for Homeland Security. What’s your take on this? It seems like a big nightmare.
Al From: First of all, I think in the TSA situation, the budget crisis, or the funding of the Department of Homeland Security, probably in the end, there aren’t any winners, and the real losers obviously are the American people. But in these sort of government shutdown deals, it’s probably always a little bit worse for the party in power, and I would guess that given the whole context of a very unpopular war, and Trump taking this crazy position that he won’t fund TSA workers until he gets his election cheating act passed, instructing the Senate Republicans to turn down a deal that they had over last weekend, and just the context of his terrible political ratings, his low approval ratings, gas prices now a buck higher than they were when he started the war, it looks like, you know, a story on NBC, I guess, that said that the people in the administration treat him like a toddler. They prepare a video every morning of bombs going off to show him how the war’s going.
And I just think, as we’ve talked more and more in the last few weeks, things have caught up with him. And in that context, I think the Republicans are going to pay really dearly for this because everything, you know, people’s lives are really affected now. Trump may like watching bombs go off and pretending he’s, you know, General Eisenhower every time he gets on and off his airplane, but he’s the only one who can get on and off his airplane these days. You know, Joe Scarborough this morning said he couldn’t get out of New York yesterday because he spent three hours in line and then got on a plane and the flight was canceled. So I think the party in power is really going to get the blame.
My guess is that Republicans are about ready to go crazy. And I’ll tell you one thing: if John Thune lets them go out on recess before they pass this, I just think we might have a blue wave that will get into a lot of safe seats. I mean, we’re already seeing it. There’s the state house race in Florida in the district that includes Mar-a-Lago, where a Democrat who’s probably really a throwaway candidate beat a pretty good Republican candidate who had much more money and much more organization. And you’ve got to assume that that’s because Trump’s ratings are so low.
And with that, in another race in Florida this week, since the 2024 election, there have been thirty state legislative seats or special elections that Democrats have won, have turned blue that were red, and zero that the Republicans have turned from blue to red. So I think in that context, you get a sense that people are tired of Trump, and my guess is he’s going to get most of the blame, and he deserves it.
Craig Fuller: I don’t know how much I could add to that. I was thinking, as Al was describing it, you know, in days in which cities had responsibility for trash pickup, it used to be the case that no matter what else a mayor did, if he didn’t get the trash picked up, he could lose an election. And it’s because everybody sees it. And I think that’s what’s happening with TSA. So many Americans travel or know people who travel, have guests coming, or have to travel on business, that when you have a complete and utter failure, which is what we really have of the security system moving people through, everybody notices it. And they ask, you know, for what? I mean, why, Al is quite right, it’s the party in power that’s going to take the heat. Why, with Republicans controlling the White House, the Senate, and the House, can’t they come to an agreement?
And just letting this thing linger while war is being conducted and all the other things that fly around Washington are going on, all of which are very important, but seeing those long lines, my guess is today that everybody has a story from either their own experience or someone’s told them a story about three and four hour delays trying to catch airplanes, or as Al said, people who get on the plane and then the flight’s canceled. So I think it’s a calamity.
And as we approach this Easter weekend and travel over Easter, it’s only going to get worse if they don’t solve it. And I think the American people are going to demand a solution. The other thing that’s going to happen is members of Congress are going to have to travel, and they’re going to be in for a rude awakening at the airports.
Dave: Al, the other thing I want to talk about is week four of the Trump administration’s war in Iran. There seems to be very little hope right now that the president has an exit strategy. And even if they do exit, that doesn’t mean Israel wouldn’t continue the war. What are your thoughts?
Al From: Well, first of all, I don’t think Israel is going to be the problem in ending the war because Israel will probably go along if Trump wants to stop the bombings and his half of the war. I am sure the Israelis will reluctantly go along, but the problem is that Trump doesn’t control it; Iran controls this war. And I guess it may have been General Mark Hertling who talked about one of the American generals in 1975, as we were getting out of Vietnam, talking to a Vietnamese general and said, “You know, we won every battle.” And the Vietnamese general said, “Yeah, but you lost the war.” And that could very well be the situation.
I hope it’s not. I mean, I don’t think anybody would be sad to see the radical Islamic government of Iran deposed, and people don’t feel sorry, and they shouldn’t, for killing the evil Ayatollah. But the reality is, we can go in and inflict a lot of damage. The regime really doesn’t, I mean, obviously, the people in the regime probably don’t want to be killed, but they also are zealots who give their lives for terrorist attacks. And as long as they want to keep the war going, it’ll keep going. I mean, there were attacks all over the Gulf region today.
And we can obliterate, as Donald Trump likes to say, their military facilities, destroy their air force and their navy, but they don’t care. They don’t need that. They can sit back and fly those twenty-thousand-dollar drones, and it takes million-dollar weapons on our side to knock them out of the air. They also have the Strait of Hormuz, which they can control and disrupt just by small boats that drop mines or drone attacks on tankers.
Trump has survived because he sees the presidency as a reality TV show, and in the end, he can control the script. But this one, I think, is one where he isn’t going to be able to control the script. So I hope we can get out. But he’s really in a very difficult position because if we get out now and the regime’s still in place and they still have their enriched uranium, we’d probably get out by trying to return to the status quo before the war, but we’re not even going to be there because with the Strait of Hormuz it’s going to take months probably to really get it back operating normally and get everybody comfortable sending tankers through there.
I heard the foreign minister of the United Arab Emirates this morning on television, and I just think our relations throughout the Gulf region are going to be damaged. Because their position now is, “You got into this, now you’ve got to finish it.” So he can cut and run, but the circumstances in Iran are not going to be much different than they were on February 27th. And we will also have a much greater threat of terrorism in the United States because that’s the way Iran fights its wars.
Getting out would be great, but the circumstances aren’t going to be great. And the alternative is what the Gulf states want. They want him to finish the war. They have a hard time saying what that means, but basically it’s got to include a long term campaign and probably ground troops against Iran. So he’s in a no win situation.
People are against the war, but the other thing that is just killing them is that it’s going to drive gas prices and food prices through the roof. I paid a dollar more for gas this week than I did last time I filled up. And I can afford it, but a lot of people can’t. And it really affects Trump voters more because a lot of them live in the suburbs and exurbs and in rural areas where they have to drive longer distances, and a lot of them have pickup trucks that aren’t quite like my hybrid that gets 45 miles per gallon. They get about twenty if they’re lucky, probably much less. So this is a mess. He’s got himself into it and I just don’t see any easy way out for him.
Craig Fuller: I think Al makes a whole series of very valid points, to which I will add: while there is not a good military option for Trump available, it’s even worse on the diplomatic side. One of the things that I’ve been reflecting on as I’ve looked at what’s going on there takes me back to, I hate to even use the two words, Iran-Contra. But if we learned nothing else out of Iran-Contra, we should have learned that you simply cannot trust these people. I don’t care whether you call them moderates. I don’t care whether you call them business people. Trump’s saying, well, we’re dealing with the right people. He made this astounding reference to some prize that they had given him, and that told him he was dealing with the right people. Well, with all due respect, Mr. President, there are no right people. And I don’t understand how he’s going to negotiate a solution that’s going to be lasting in any way.
It’s absolutely clear that others in the Gulf area want to see him go all the way and wipe out the capabilities of Iran. Sure they would. Of course they would. But a destabilized Iran is really not all that more reassuring if you live in the neighborhood. The Europeans are certainly not going to want to put the lives of their citizens at risk for a war they weren’t consulted on, didn’t start, and didn’t want. I just don’t see them wanting to step up much further.
So he’s dealing with people where, you know, you wipe out the first layer, the second layer, the third layer, well there’s a fourth, a fifth, and a sixth. And it’s just not going to get any better. So I honestly hope that before we put more American lives at risk, he declares victory in his own sense of reality and we can get out of there. But I don’t think he has a military solution or a diplomatic solution in the near term whatsoever.
Dave: Well, we have to leave it there. Al From, Craig Fuller, thank you so much indeed. We will see you next week.
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