In This Episode
How can we make sense of America’s senseless war with Iran? This week, Alex asks if President Trump’s web of corruption extends to his foreign policy. First she speaks to Sarah Leah Whitson, the former Executive Director of DAWN (Democracy for the Arab World Now), to see how much sway Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman holds over Trump. Then, PSA co-host Jon Lovett joins the pod to talk about how America will claw its way back once this administration is done extracting from it for profit.
TRANSCRIPT
[AD BREAK]
Alex Wagner: Hi everyone. After another week of deadly and seemingly senseless warfare in the Middle East, President Trump is claiming great progress in discussions with Iran’s leaders. On the other hand, Iran’s leader say there are no actual negotiations happening with United States. And as these negotiations are or are not underway, Trump is also threatening to obliterate Iran’s electrical grid, its desalination plants and other civilian infrastructure, all of which could be in violation of international law. Which is really weird diplomacy. As is the new threat this week of a possible U.S. Ground invasion. Again, not your typical route to winding down a war. Meanwhile, over 1,500 Iranian civilians have been killed. Tens of thousands more are wounded or displaced. The Iranian government has turned the Strait of Hormuz into a toll road. And the national average cost of gas in the United States has officially reached $4 a gallon. Things do not seem to be going well on any front, which is maybe why Trump is trying to make this whole thing someone else’s problem. Here’s men’s grooming expert and Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, hoping out loud that some other country comes to the rescue.
[clip of Pete Hegseth]: Last time I checked, there was supposed to be a big bad Royal Navy that could be prepared to do things like that as well.
Alex Wagner: As of this recording, the big bad Royal Navy was not steaming towards the Strait of Hormuz, but there are a few countries who are in the fight, mostly because they have no other choice.
[clip of Donald Trump]: They are fighting back. Saudi Arabia is fighting back hard, Qatar is fighting back, UAE is fighting bad, Kuwait is fighting bad, Bahrain is fighting, they’re all fighting back
Alex Wagner: As a matter of fact, these Gulf nations have become targets in Trump’s war. So their involvement here isn’t exactly a surprise, but the New York Times and the Associated Press are reporting this week that Saudi Arabia is pressuring Trump particularly hard to continue the war in Iran until the regime falls completely. So will Trump listen to the Saudis or does he just pretend that the war is over and this whole thing never happened? Well, to understand what Trump is thinking to the extent that he is thinking at all, about how and whether to end this war in Iran or maybe just scale the whole thing up dramatically, we have to look at the only thing bigger than Donald Trump’s ego, his corruption. [music plays] I’m Alex Wagner, and this week on Runaway Country, we’re talking about how corruption shapes Trump’s motivations in the Iran War, as well as our strategy overseas, including the president’s unprecedented friendship with Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, and how all of this fits into the larger pattern of Trumpian self-dealing and enrichment. We’ll be unpacking the grift with Crooked’s own Jon Lovett later in this episode, from Trump’s pay-to-play ballroom pledges to his money-making meme coins. But first, I wanna get granular on the president’s dealings with the Gulf states and how they inform this current and very messy predicament. Over the past several years, Saudi Arabia and other countries, including the United Arab Emirates, have been bankrolling American businesses and specifically Trump Circle ventures. The Saudi Public Investment Fund gave $2 billion to Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner’s private equity firm, and then another billion to former U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin’s private equity firm. Then there’s Steve Witkoff, who, with Jared Kushner, is the top Middle East envoy for the Trump administration. And who has had some seriously suspicious crypto dealings with the UAE. And let us never forget the Boeing 747 that the government of Qatar gifted the president last year. But most notable in all of this, Saudi leader Mohammed bin Salman, or MBS if you’re cool, who has been personally cultivating a close alliance, if not an actual friendship, with Trump himself. Last fall, MBS was welcomed with great fanfare to a state dinner-style feast at the White House. In case you forgot, this is the same MBS who U.S. Intelligence revealed had ordered the brutal killing and dismemberment of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi back in 2018, and Trump would prefer it if you did forget, though.
[clip of reporter]: The U.S. Intelligence concluded that you orchestrated the brutal murder of a journalist. 9/11 families are furious that you are here in the Oval Office. Why should Americans trust you? And the same to you, Mr. President.
[clip of Donald Trump]: No who are you with?
[clip of reporter]: I’m with ABC News, sir.
[clip of Donald Trump]: You’re with who?
[clip of reporter]: ABC News, sir.
[clip of Donald Trump]: Fake news, ABC fake news. You’re mentioning somebody that was extremely controversial. A lot of people didn’t like that gentleman that you’re talking about. Whether you like him or didn’t him, things happened. But he knew nothing about it, and we can leave it at that. You don’t have to embarrass our guest by asking a question like that.
Alex Wagner: You kind of have to tip your hat to MBS. He’s been burying allegations, buying up capital, and buttering up presidents and their sons-in-law in the hopes that it will pay off politically down the line. Well, it is safe to say that we are now down that line. To explain this particular corruption and what has Gulf states privately cheerleading a war that is spilling blood on their soil, I’m talking to Sarah Leah Whitson. Sarah Leah is the former executive director of democracy for the Arab world now or DAWN an organization that she founded with Jamal Khashoggi, and she is the former director of Human Rights Watch’s Middle East and North Africa Division. She’s also the co-author of From Apartheid to Democracy, a blueprint for peace in Israel-Palestine. So there’s no one better to talk about the intricacies of Middle Eastern politics and Trumpian corruption. Here’s our conversation. Sarah Leah, welcome to Runaway Country. Thank you so much for helping me understand a little bit more of this strange world we are thrust into as a result of the president launching a war of choice with little thinking about how it’s all gonna play out. And I guess one of the things I’m interested in is who and what Trump actually cares about as far as this war and ending it. We know he cares about the financial markets. He seems to be telegraphing a lot of messages. Based on, you know, trying to stabilize the markets, but it also appears like he’s thinking about the regional allies he has. And I want to talk about the Saudis, because we’ve talked a lot about the Israelis, and it seems in recent days that the Saudis are clearly engaged in this and clearly want a certain outcome. And I wonder if we can start with you, given your vast, like, wealth of understanding about the region, what the relationship is between Trump and Mohammed bin Salman at this point.
Sarah Leah Whitson: Yeah, sure. First of all, I should just say I don’t think anything is perfectly clear or makes a great deal of logical sense. And, you know, many of us are scratching our heads saying how did he decide to go into this war when the risks and consequences are so predictable? How is this possible when it, you know appears to be not just against America’s interest, but against Trump’s own political interests. So there’s a lot of bafflement here. In terms of the relationship between the Crown Prince and President Trump, it is extremely close. And the recent visit, the first visit of Mohammed bin Salman back to the United States in November of 2025 was the first red carpet rollout since the murder of Khashoggi. And it produced promises from Saudi Arabia for up to a trillion dollars in investments in the United States. I don’t know that any of those promises have actually materialized. In exchange for these very high-level semiconductor chips, American semiconductor chips promises to be allowed to purchase F-35s, the most advanced defense aircraft. As well as a security agreement that was not quite the security agreement that Saudi Arabia wanted, which is a bilateral promise, NATO-level treaty guarantee that the United States would come to Saudi Arabia’s defense. But it was an enhanced security agreement that elevated Saudi Arabia to a so-called major non-NATO ally. And expanded intelligence and security cooperation. So it is a mercantile transactional relationship where Saudi Arabia is the largest purchaser of American weapons in the world and has been so for quite some time since not just the Biden administration that preceded Trump but the Trump administration before that, and Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Gulf states have long been the largest purchasers of U.S. weapons going back decades, really since the revolution in Iran and the sort of large-scale marketing campaign of Iran as the greatest threat to the Gulf States. Which created a bonanza for American weapons suppliers and European weapons suppliers, turning the Gulf into the largest dumping ground for American weapon in the world. So it’s a mercantile one, but obviously there are political dimensions with Trump sort of advertising himself as the man who saved Mohammed bin Salman from accountability for the murder of Khashoggi.
Alex Wagner: Right, and I want to get to that, especially given your personal and professional history with Jamal Khashoggi. But first, let’s just talk about, you know, where the Saudis sit. You mentioned the sort of, you, know, the Gulf States for decades being, you know, arming up effectively against this threat in Iran, and now we have outright war with Iran. And I’m a bit… I’m eager to get your thoughts on how the Saudis have, I don’t want to say played this, but their position in all this, right? Because initially the reporting was that the Saudis were angry that they weren’t given notice. Join the rest of the world, but yes, they were angry, that they were given notice, then they become targets for Iran. But this week we have reporting that MBS, the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is behind the scenes urging Trump not to cut bait, to stay in there, to… To see through the job, whatever the job is, presumably regime change, we don’t even have to touch how that’s tactically possible at this point, but that the Saudis want Trump to stay and to not retreat. How do you understand the situation, given the fact that of course there’s historic rivalry, Sunni and Shia Muslims, there’s what you talked about in the more contemporary lens as Iran is a major geopolitical threat for the Saudis, but where do you think MBS stands on this war with Iran and the degree to which he’s actually pressuring Trump to do one thing or another.
Sarah Leah Whitson: I think MBS, like the rest of the Gulf, stands between a rock and a hard place. Every public indication from the Saudis and the Qataris and Bahrainis was that they did not want this war and they tried everything to stop it. In fact, in the wake of the attacks on Saudi Arabia during the first Trump administration, it led to Saudi Arabia actually re-establishing diplomatic relations with Iran.
Alex Wagner: Right.
Sarah Leah Whitson: Through Chinese broker negotiations and wanting to have diplomacy and calm, had been involved in the back channel and then more front channel negotiations between the United States and Iran, but really did not want this war to happen because, as we were saying, the consequences, the devastating consequences are so predictable. This has been terrible for Saudi’s economy, not nearly as bad as what the UAE economy has been suffering, and has sort of ruptured all normal trade, investment, business, and so forth. But having started this war that has made them targets now, with UAE quite enduring the most Iranian strikes after Israel and Saudi Arabia, behind them, of course. They now see the prospect of leaving the Iranian regime in control, particularly of the Strait of Hormuz, where it’s now designated itself as the tollbooth operator there, as something that they can’t walk back from. And they know that the state of tension and the state near war will persist so long as the Iranian government purists, so long as it doesn’t completely give in to Israeli and American demands. So I think it’s calculating that it’s the better of two bad options to see the United States and Israel, quote unquote, “finish the job,” which is completely not going to happen, I had to predict based on the current trajectory and what comments are making. But the other thing I would say is that… There are no confirmed sources, there are no public sources of Saudi Arabia actually endorsing this war or pushing Trump to maintain the war or keep up the war. All of the articles that have been published so far, the first in the New York Times, relied exclusively on American sources. The Guardian said it had some sources from the region, all anonymous. And then the AP story that came out, I think yesterday, all anonymous sources. So. It’s very hard to see through this fog of war. What we know, as a matter of fact, is that Saudi Arabia and the UAE and all of the Gulf States have unequivocally said that they have not allowed the U.S. to conduct any strikes on Iran from their countries or using their airspace. And they have repeatedly called for diplomacy in terms of their public statements. So whether they are whispering one thing and saying something else publicly, frankly, like the United States has been and how Israel has been would not be terribly surprising.
Alex Wagner: I feel like we can’t really have this conversation without mentioning the role of Jared Kushner, right? Here, the two sort of lead negotiators insofar as there are any negotiations to speak of are Steve Witkoff and the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. So Jared Kushner is supposed to be negotiating an end to this war in Iran, but he’s also someone who has significant ties to the Saudis, financial ties, right? He receives $2 billion at the outset of the second Trump administration from the Saudi Public Investment Fund. Those $2 billion, against the sort of strategic advice of the advisors from the Saudia Public Investment fund. Those $2 billion go into Jared Kushner’s private equity firm. Can you talk to me about, I mean, as you say, there’s so much haziness here, but the idea that MBS and the Saudis have probably an outcome they would like to see even if they’re not hardcore advocating it. Now have you know in in some ways in their control one of the lead negotiators in all of this on the part of the United States, Jared Kushner. Can you talk about that dynamic and and whether or not you think I would argue that compromised position could potentially affect the negotiations that Jared Kushner’s being tasked with?
Sarah Leah Whitson: I think that this is not quite a scenario of the Saudis controlling Jared Kushner, but the Saudis needing Jared Kushner, wanting to reward Jared Kushner for a job well done under the Trump administration, number one, rewarding him with two billion dollars, which is also a form of protection money, and now I think… Discovering that their investment, that the Emirati investment, that the Qatari investment, which was meant to say to the United States, you have more reward coming from our side if you tamp down the war rhetoric and the war in Gaza, restrain Israel a bit. And in the wake of that November trip to the Gulf region and the gift of this massive plane, from the Qataris, the trillion-dollar promised investments, there was a sense that they could outspend AIPAC and the Zionist billionaires who are so strongly responsible for Trump’s policy decisions and Biden’s policy decisions in the Middle East. But then the war happened anyway. But then, Israel managed to yank the United States into the war anyway. And the invasion of South Lebanon is underway. And there’s no reconstruction in Gaza. And now there’s this war in Iran, which has been so damaging, more damaging to the Emiratis and the Saudis and Qatari and the Kuwaitis than to Israel in terms of hard numbers. So it seems like their efforts to compete with what they offer, which is, you know—
Alex Wagner: Money. Lot’s and lot’s of money.
Sarah Leah Whitson: Money. Israel is not investing a trillion dollars in the U.S. Economy, that it was not an investment that has brought the returns that they were hoping for. Is MBS and Jared Kushner, are they close? Obviously. Are they still having daily WhatsApp Chats? I don’t know. But, you know, the Saudis are continuing to cultivate where they see power residing in the United States, and power is residing with Jared Kushner.
Alex Wagner: I should say, in the grand scheme of things, this is not a big deal, but as we speak about Saudi influence in the United States, it’s just worth noting that the Saudi kingdom is giving a $51.6 million gift for a new exhibit at the National Zoo, for an exhibit of endangered Arabian snow leopards. This is not just about snow leopards. This is about, as the Washington Post reports, soft power. Right. The Saudis, as you say, as we point out, are always looking for ways to sort of move the current in their direction, whether it’s through the unvarnished bribery [laughter] of the president’s son-in-law or an exhibit of snow leopards in the National Zoo where tourists can go and see the sort of wonder of of the country perhaps be more encouraged to visit, or at least it will warm the cockles of their heart. But the Saudis play this kind of medium and longer term game, I think, that we are not necessarily as American news consumers that wise to. I’d love for you to talk about the net effect of all of this, regardless of whether the Saudis are influencing exactly what the U.S. does in Iran. The fact is they have their claws in, and what is the net affect of that given the history of Mohammed bin Salman and the person he has revealed himself to be, or person, the tactics he’s willing to use. To silence dissent and to embrace the most violent authoritarian tactics. And by this, I really would love for you to talk about this in the context of your friend and former colleague, Jamal Khashoggi, and someone who was brutally murdered at the direction of MBS. What does this all mean in service of, I guess, basic sort of fundamental human values that the Saudis play this, I think, instrumental role, regardless of what actually happens with Iran?
Sarah Leah Whitson: Yeah, you know, I think that the Saudis really were playing a catch-up game in terms of deploying soft power, namely money, to buy influence and control and support in the United States. You know, before them, the Emiratis had excelled at this, and of course, the role model for everybody is Israel and its supporters here in the U.S. Of deploying money to gain political influence. Um, and so the Saudis have been doing this in earnest since Mohammed bin Salman’s rise to power. This is not just about Jared Kushner or Steven Mnuchin, the secretary of the U.S. Treasury getting a billion dollar payout from the Saudi regime, um, but hundreds of American military officials, former State Department, NSC officials. Who are in one capacity or another doing business for Saudi Arabia, gaining a, tying their economic interests, their economic futures, their compensation to Saudi Arabia and the UAE and Bahrain and Qatar, this is a wide scale. So what the Gulf States learned is that the way to get power and influence in the United States is with money. And so they’ve expanded that and Saudi Arabia has expanded that into a broad swath of the American economy. So that what happened in the wake of the murder of Jamal Khashoggi with so many businesses pulling out of Saudi Arabia or not participating in the desert in the Davos conference and being too embarrassed to be seen associating with Saudi Arabia. They are not as independent as they once were because they are so much more tied to Saudi Arabia and Saudi investments in banking, in trade, in gaming, in sports, in movies, in art.
Alex Wagner: In media.
Sarah Leah Whitson: And now the museum, the zoo as well, right? So it’s a wide scale influence campaign. And this is what has allowed the Saudi regime to sanitize itself and for MBS to triumphantly return to Washington in a red carpet, despite the fact that everybody in the world knows that he is the red-handed murderer of a leading journalist in the world who was living in the United States, to say nothing of the political prisoners inside the country or the political repression inside the country. That being said, at this moment in time, Saudi Arabia’s conduct as a government, as authoritarian government. Just seems like small fries, seems like small potatoes compared to what Israel has been doing.
Alex Wagner: Yeah, right. [laughs]
Sarah Leah Whitson: I mean, it’s just, there’s just no comparison when you have a genocide underway in Gaza, when you the invasion of a half of Lebanon, South Lebanon, when you these unbelievable assaults and atrocities being taken by Israel. Just look at the West Bank if nowhere else. Then it’s hard to point the finger at Saudi Arabia because they’ve executed hundreds of people over, let’s say, the past year. And so what’s normalized authoritarianism, what’s normalized brutality is as much what Israel has done in the region and now the United States is doing in the region.
Alex Wagner: As anything the Saudis would have done. Well, that’s just like, isn’t that depressing that we’ve out-authoritarianed them in the region. Through our bedfellows and our ad-direct actions.
Sarah Leah Whitson: You know, one observation I’ve had as someone who’s been working in this space for decades now is that, you know, for so long, the rhetoric of the United States was, we’re democratizing the world. We’re gonna democratize the Middle East. You know? We’re bombing you, Iraq, because we love you and we wanna bring democracy to you. But rather than the United State’s democratizing the Middle East, the Middle East has autocratized the United States.
Alex Wagner: Yes.
Sarah Leah Whitson: Their authoritarianism, the very practices that Israel uses to suppress dissent, are now adopted by the U.S. Government in terms of speech about Palestine. The United States and the U S government acts more like the Trump monarchy than it does a Trump democracy. It’s modeled itself more after Saudi Arabia’s monarchy and autocracy than the other way around.
Alex Wagner: Right. In fact, what you have is not just a friendship, but a source of inspiration, that the Trump family operates more like a golf monarchy than, you know, any other model that we see the U.S. is engaged in. And that is a sign of the times, isn’t it?
Sarah Leah Whitson: It’s breathtaking.
Alex Wagner: Did you, just for, I mean, before we let you go, the idea that the template has shifted so dramatically and that we’re now looking at a world in which the U.S. looks more like what you see from MBS, both in terms of the corruption and the essential threats to free speech and a functioning society. How does that make you feel as someone who worked? I mean, you worked with Jamal Khashoggi. You knew the man. You started DAWN, which is Democracy for the Arab World Now, an organization with him. I mean to see kind of where we are now. Versus where we were then. I mean, how does it make you feel?
Sarah Leah Whitson: I mean, terrible, I would say, because in fact, I started my human rights advocacy work in Iraq in 1991, challenging the US war in Iraq, in 1991 where the United States destroyed nine out of 11 of the country’s electricity generating plants, causing mass spike in infant mortality in the country, waterborne disease spread throughout the country because If your electrical plants don’t work, you can’t purify your water, you can’t run your hospitals. And now, this is exactly what the United States is threatening to do in Iran, as if no lessons were learned from what the Unites States did in Iraq. So it’s pretty damn depressing, I would say. My only hope is that if our democracy survives and our democracy functions, that the American people will rise up against this and say they’ve had enough. So at least there’s possibility of hope and change.
Alex Wagner: There’s always hope. There’s also another day left to live, inshallah, as they would say in the Arab world. Sara Leah, you’re such a wealth of information and perspective on all this. It’s really great to have you on the podcast. Thanks for taking some time.
Sarah Leah Whitson: Thanks for having me.
Alex Wagner: After the break, how this fits into a larger pattern of Trump enriching himself off the US presidency with Pod Save America’s Jon Lovett.
[AD BREAK]
Alex Wagner: Making his Runaway Country full episode debut clarification. It may seem clerical, but it’s significant. The man upon whose back this whole show rests, my friend and colleague Jon Lovett. Thank you for joining me.
Jon Lovett: Wow a lot of pressure. Thanks Alex. Hi.
Alex Wagner: You’re gonna deliver.
Jon Lovett: Thanks for having me.
Jon I’m so eager to get your thoughts on all the stuff. We are focused on the ways in which Trump’s calculations in Iran are not just about ego, but also the insanely corrupt ties he has to the region and corruption in general being a hallmark of this administration. So like, let’s just first start with, I mean, I think it bears refreshing everybody’s memory. We think a lot about the bromance, the toxic and deadly bromance between Bibi and Trump. But Trump has a real intermingling, shall we say, financial and otherwise with the states, right? So Jared Kushner, lead negotiator in the Iran war talks, to the degree that there are any, is Trump’s son-in-law. He got $2 billion from the Saudis for his private equity fund. There’s Steve Mnuchin and Steve Witkoff also get on board with that money for private equity via Gulf bankrollers. There’s the Qatari jet. Of course that Trump received and then signed what has been described as a NATO like security guarantee with Qatar as a nearly in the same time frame that he got a free but used Boeing 747 jet. When you think about all the sort of cash and and valuables that Trump has amassed from eager Gulf states Do you think you forgot about all that when he launched his war in the Middle East? Like how do you think that level of corruption? And what he’s doing right now.
Jon Lovett: Yeah, so. I think this is more about the kinds of company Trump keeps, right? Because Kushner, Witkoff, these are people with their own equities in the region, their own business in the regional, their relationships are not in the public interest. And that’s not even, I think, a subjective way of describing it. They have business relationships with these countries and with these leaders. They are you know Kushner is a private citizen. He has no official role with the government. And one thing you see in authoritarian countries is there’s this murky distinction between what is a Private Act and what is the Public Act. Jared Kushner, his emails are not FOIA-able. He’s not part of the government, right? He’s no part of government, but he’s acting on Donald Trump’s behalf. And so when does Donald Trumps interest end and the countries begin? And so, like, to me, like… Why did we go to war in Iran? I actually think it’s not so simple as Trump is corrupt, right, like I think it is more complicated than that, especially because Donald Trump has made so much money off the presidency, he has profited in so many ways, far beyond anything we could have conceived of, forget the first term, anything we can have conceived in a democracy on the planet of Earth that he’s playing with the house’s money. Right, this war in Iran fucks over some of his business allies and maybe screws up a deal or relationship. He doesn’t care. He can’t be touched financially for the rest of his life by any decision that he makes that runs counter to his personal interest. And by the way, all of this is just whatever he does on a policy level is just another opportunity for another way to make money, right? Or to look elsewhere to make more money. Look, do I think Qatar is pleased that bombs are falling on their luxury hotels? Do I think they’re getting a great return on that jet? don’t I don’t know. But it doesn’t really matter to Donald Trump because Donald Trump is a short term actor who completely discounts the price of his words turning out to be lies he just does not value that and that to me is what we’re seeing right now.
Alex Wagner: Yeah, I think we all laughed and shook our heads and maybe cried a little bit inside our souls when there was talk of like the Gaza Strip being developed for a Trump real estate adventure. And like, I don’t know if that’s gonna come to pass, but it’s very hard for me to imagine, even in the moment we find ourselves in, which as of this recording is like… A war with no seeming off-ramp, a war that’s killed thousands of people and destabilized both the global economy and an entire region, there is no way that I don’t think there’s some grift that’s going to happen along the way as Trump either gets out of this or continues the war. There is definitely someone in his circle who’s going make money on this. And I would point you to the strange things that happen on the margins as this war unfolds, right? 15 minutes before Trump’s Truth Social post Iran and Iranian peace talks on the March 23rd oil futures trading spikes dramatically and there were 170 million dollars worth of bets placed in a single minute. I just feel like someone who made some millions there. It wouldn’t surprise me if they were in some way related to Donald Trump or in his administration.
Jon Lovett: Yeah, well, this is, to me, this gets at it, right? Because we’re talking about the individual act of profit taking from public office, which is a specific kind of gross brazen corruption. But it all flows from the deeper corruption of Donald Trump being president. You must be corrupt. To say Donald Trump should be president. You are corrupted when you make such a declaration as Republicans, many of whom, including those in his cabinet who said how unfit he is. So you’ve already corrupted yourself, you are corrupt. What makes it possible for someone to think they could trade on oil futures or on futures on the markets without being afraid that you’ll get arrested and go to jail? You have to have… Uh, no fear of the SEC. You have to have no fear of the Department of Justice. You have to have no fear of the administration itself being angry that you would do something like that. You have to have no fear of congress taking any kind of action you have to have so many guardrails not hold for you to believe that that is something you can get away with. And so all of this corruption, It’s unprecedented in American history. It’s shocking it’s It’s a complete departure, it’s a quantum leap, even from the first term and from any other president. It is more akin to something you would see in Putin’s Russia or, you know, Imelda Marcos’ closet full of shoes.
Alex Wagner: I mean, doesn’t that seem quaint? Just a bunch of shoes.
Jon Lovett: I know, I know. Just a bunch of shoes.
Alex Wagner: I mean honestly, don’t you feel like the Cheney Halliburton thing is like amateur hour compared to what we’re talking about? [laughter] Remember, it was like, oh, the real reason we’re going to war in Iraq is because Cheney wants the oil. Trump just says we should have gotten the oil, I mean, he doesn’t even make any bones about it. It’s just, he just announces it. He announces the corruption and it’s okay. I mean it apparently is okay with people.
Jon Lovett: Well, yeah, but the part of it, too, is corruption is also in, I think, in Trump’s brain, the way you get out of this stuff, too.
Alex Wagner: Right.
Jon Lovett: You can see your, like, because Trump views everything as transactional, he can see, we can imagine, like I… I can also imagine Donald Trump sitting in the Oval Office with some third-string ayatollah that managed to survive the fourth Israeli bombing, announcing some kind of a financial partnership and Eric and Don talking about a great new resort on the Strait of Hormuz. It’s not inconceivable. All things are possible when you have this level of corruption out of the White House.
Alex Wagner: Third string ayatollah a phrase I didn’t think I’d hear this year and here we are I think it bears mentioning as you talk about the just unprecedented and an unprecedented amount of grift that’s happened in this administration. The New Yorker’s David Kirkpatrick did a deep dive into all of Trump’s profiteering since the start of the year and he estimates that the Trump family has made more than four billion dollars. I believe that is since the site started the second administration. Do you Jon have a a grift that’s your favorite, there’s so much. And you can include the first term. It could be little, it could be big.
Jon Lovett: I do think the meme coins.
Alex Wagner: Yeah.
Jon Lovett Are, as an example, just so shocking and silly and embarrassing for all involved because it is just trying to just make money off your most ardent supporters. And I put in that category, the meme coin goes to me in the category with the watch. Remember that watch that came out?
Alex Wagner: [laughs] Yes.
Jon Lovett Where they were, it was a—
Alex Wagner: Made in China.
Jon Lovett Made in China with some kind of some kind of way they could claim it was a [unintelligible] move. He had a tourbillon or whatever those things are called very fancy. Some Trump watch like the Trump shoes. But I put the meme coin in that category, which is just trying to get every dollar from the diehard MAGA people and from people that are think they’re they’re actually naive, but they think they are cynical. So they think kind of like buying something that’s gonna be worth something someday. But that to me was incredible because it’s just so. It’s just so embarrassing.
Alex Wagner: Well, this is I really I did want to get your thoughts on this asking you to play an armchair psychologist for a moment. Like why is it that the meme coin is so popular with trump’s die-hard adherence, right? Like it’s just self-enrichment and they’re like sign me up. Like why doesn’t the brazen corruption of all that? Not only not resonate with him, but like why why would you buy into that? Like here’s a guy who’s a con man trying to make money off of me? Let me give him my money. That’s a part of it that I don’t really understand. I mean, I think it’s one thing to applaud him avoiding taxes or hustling his way into a free Air Force One. But like to bring cash into his own pockets, to line his own bank account with your own money, with his supporters’ money seems like, I mean we talk about liberals being cucks, that’s like the ultimate cuck move.
Jon Lovett: Yeah, so is Intel giving the federal government 10%. [laughter] It’s people that they think they’re part of the scam, but they’re actually the mark. That to me is what’s happening. It’s a lot of people they think they’re in on the scam but they are marks. Mike Johnson, he thinks he’s in on this scam, he’s a mark. John Thune thinks he is in on scam, he’s mark. These people are fucking marks. And there’s an old saying, you can’t con an honest man.
Alex Wagner: Yeah.
Jon Lovett It’s 2026. I think you can’t con an honest person personally, but.
Alex Wagner: Respect.
Jon Lovett Yeah. So that to me is what all of this boils down to. Like it’s a lot of people who think they’re getting one over, that they’re part of the syndicate. And really they’re just tools for Donald Trump to exploit until they’re no longer useful. Which is why I think people that are suddenly finding themselves on the outside of the circle can’t believe how cold it is. They just simply cannot believe how old it is out there. There’s nothing to me, like, you’ll see this with like, I think it was Marjorie Taylor Greene saying how she can’t belief how much Fox News is pumping out misinformation to the boomers.
Alex Wagner: You guys talked about this on Pods of America, and I’m so with you. It’s like a welcome, welcome to fucking reality, lady.
Jon Lovett: Right. Like, oh, oh do you think they started this week, ma’am? Like this is what you’re welcome to what it feels like.
Alex Wagner: This is the business model, lady.
Jon Lovett Truly, like when Donald Trump turns on people, insults Thomas Massie’s family, goes after Joe Kent, who is, you know, his own conspiracy theorist and you know talks all kinds of anti-Semitic nonsense, but Trump insults him for getting remarried after his wife is killed in Syria. It’s like, oh hey, this is what he does. You’re just on the losing end of it. You think you’re gonna be the first person on the wrong side of a right wing government that thought it couldn’t happen to you? Like this is what he does. And so all these people, they feel like they’re part of it and they feel they’re getting something out of it, meanwhile, Mike Jonson gets to keep his speakership, Corey Lewandowski tries to squeeze a commission out of a marketing contract at DHS. Trump is making. Billions.
Alex Wagner: Yeah.
Jon Lovett Billions!
[AD BREAK]
Alex Wagner: You brought up Kristi Noem and no, we’re not gonna talk about her husband on this podcast. We’ll leave that for your podcast.
Jon Lovett: Mm-hmm. Well, okay, you don’t want to talk about it.
Alex Wagner: Well, we’re gonna talk about—
Jon Lovett Look, we don’t need to talk about Kristi Noem’s husband and his magnificent yabos. We just don’t to talk it.
Alex Wagner: They are magnificent. We’re definitely not talking about the balloons.
Jon Lovett: Those those gorgeous bazooms. We’re not gonna talk about it.
Alex Wagner: Not even gonna say that word Kristi Noem’s husband’s bazooms.
Jon Lovett: It is is his name Bryon or is it just? Is it just Brian? What’s going on with B-R-Y-O-N?
Alex Wagner: I just know him as B-R-Y-A-N, but maybe I’m dealing with him in a different handle than other people on the internet. But I do want to talk about Kristi Noem.
Jon Lovett: Okay.
Alex Wagner: Because the Office of the Inspector General has launched an investigation into DHS contracts that were awarded under Kristi Noem’s brilliant shepherding of the agency. Like a lot of corruption here, the US government was apparently overpaying contractors by millions of dollars. Corey Lewandowski, I’m sure, had his sticky fingers and involved with this. Does it give you hope that corruption can still be ferreted out if the president hates you enough or if you’re foolish enough to get on his wrong side by spending $220 million on a self-promotional ad campaign?
Jon Lovett: You know, the problem is the pardon power combined with a DOJ that’s fully co-opted means like no, I don’t have a lot of faith in anything that happens while Donald Trump is president to investigate what happened while Donald was president. I just don’t, as long as Kristi Noem is in good standing in some way and presumably because—
Alex Wagner: Is she?
Jon Lovett: Well, she’s been given a really important real job.
Alex Wagner: Is this the shield of America?
Jon Lovett: Yes, it’s the shield of—
Alex Wagner: Is that a thing? Is that really? Is there a shield?
Jon Lovett: But this is what makes it all so sinister, because the question is not, was there wrongdoing at the Department of Homeland Security? There was, we all know that. It’s just, is she in good standing with the boss or not? That’s what will determine whether or not she faces any consequences. But I don’t think he would allow any kind of criminal case against Kristi Noem. I mean, maybe, look, who knows? But it seems unlikely that he would allow that to go through, because it reflects poorly on him, and everything’s about how things reflect on him. Like there was a story out of ProPublica, that in order for resources to be shifted towards immigration, DOJ dropped 23,000 other criminal investigations, 23,000, right? This is DOJ is not going to focus on anything, on anything that runs counter to Donald Trump’s specific personal wishes whether it’s internal corruption or external priorities white-collar crime, you can get away with it. Maybe potentially if you go to the right dinners, you can a part in, even non-political, non-ideological investigations are falling, by the way, corrupt nursing homes, all kinds of terrible things that are done just so that they can refocus resources on Donald Trump’s priorities. So is this Department of Justice gonna do anything to go after Donald Trumps former head of DHS? Like, it’s inconceivable.
Alex Wagner: I want to say one thing about ProPublica. If anybody is listening to this podcast and doesn’t give them money, you should start giving them money now because their reporting has been super essential. And they have another story out this week that reminded me of when I was a child and in like second grade and you’d go like to recess and there was like a log on top of like the mulch that was at the bottom of the playground and you lift the log up and it was just like there were creepy crawlies and it absolutely disgusting. You know, you never wanted to lift the blog up because there was like, God knows what was under it. I feel like we are due when Trump leaves office for a gigantic log lift in which we realize the level of disgusting, nefarious fucking behavior that’s been happening while we’ve understandably had our eyes trained towards disastrous wars of choice and the shredding of the U.S. Constitution, but ProPublica did a report on looking at the financial disclosures of 1,500 Trump appointees and it’s all up there on their website for you to see and the ties between the Trump administration officials and the industries they now regulate will like shock the conscience right like Steve Feinberg deputy defense secretary is handing out defense contracts to a company that he used to run and still has ties to. Pam Bondi made conveniently well-timed security trades including selling stocks just before markets plunged because Trump announced new tariffs. I mean, the broad picture is that Trump has appointed more than 200 people who collectively owned, either by themselves or with their spouses, between $175 million and $340 million in cryptocurrency investments. And now those people hold positions influencing or overseeing the regulation of the crypto industry, including Todd Blanche. Like the number two at DOJ. We haven’t been able to focus on it. Like we’re sitting on top of the log right now, right? These are the, like, what are they even called? They’re not called Trilobites, those little roly polies. Like these guys are operating in the shadows, just siphoning cash from the American public and putting it in their own pockets. And I kind of wonder, like what you think needs to happen with the great course correction that I am confident will happen. In 2028 or even in 2027 and the degree to which Democrats and progressives should really follow the corruption and reveal this to be an administration that is not only like morally bereft but, you know, potentially criminal.
Jon Lovett: Yeah, but are they happy? [laughter] So here’s my, like, I agree with what you’re saying. There is gonna be a tremendous amount of pressure to move on, to look towards the future. And I can just see a lot of Democrats seeing polls that will show, if you ask people, do you think that it is the job of a democratic administration to investigate the past, or do you it’s important for the administration to focus on the future? I am sure you’re going to see lots of polls that tell Democrats who are uh… You know you know like uh… Dogs can be food motivating a lot of a lot democrats are poll motivated and that will be that will show them that they need to not call for a bunch of investigations into the administration that we just have to move forward and then those of all aren’t you worried about this happening with what we have the damn we have to like you know they’ll they’ll have some sort of way of talking out of looking into the past too hard wall while saying we need to look towards the future and focus on the future and I think it is important for us to tell a story. In which we kind of defeat that way of thinking, like before it takes hold. And to me, that’s about saying we need to attack white collar crime and corruption, not just because of what had happened under the previous Trump term, but because of all the damage it can do in the future and the danger it poses. The lesson of the Trump administration is not just that with Republican control, you can get away with brazen corruption, is that that corruption… Doesn’t just allow a few people to steal a bunch of money, it actually hurts you. It actually leads to policies that are bad for all of us, whether it’s the proliferation of betting markets that lead a bunch of people to go bankrupt, or the fact that we have passed legislation to get healthcare while passing massive tax cuts for the richest people on earth, or we are doing a war that is causing gas prices to go up for consumers, but actually fossil fuel companies and defense contractors may make out like bandits. All of this is about the future. And Democrats need to like gird their loins and understand that the like top line polling may suggest that Americans don’t want big backward looking investigations into what went wrong. But what Trump understands and has I think sometimes a more sophisticated reading about polls than a lot of Democrats is sometimes you have to demonstrate what it means to to kind of you have a signal both to your friends, your opponents, and those that are indifferent or open to you. That what you really believe sometimes means doing something that on the surface looks like it’s kind of whatever in the minority, but demonstrates a value that people want in their leaders. And one value people want in their leader is a people that are so angered by corruption and abuse of power by the elites that they’ll run through a brick wall to try to stop it. And that’s like the vibe, like so many of our debates about Democrats, like, it’s like, oh, should they? Talk to this person or they shouldn’t go on this show or or should they go home for recess or stay in Washington. All of it is a debate about why do I not feel as though the Democrats are as mad as I am. And so that that to me is what this boils down to. And there’s a story you can tell about making sure that we have big hearings, truth and reconciliation style hearings into what happened isn’t just about the past, it’s about the future. And if Trump does blanket pardons and lets all these people off the hook, all the better, because now they don’t know the Fifth Amendment and they have to come and say what they knew and what happened. And by the way, that’s gonna mean threatening people with contempt, real contempt, with real teeth, unlock that room at the bottom of the fucking Capitol, put a lock on it. Like we have to like get serious about what legitimacy really means in a democracy. And it means a Congress that is willing to actually go toe to toe with the administration—
Alex Wagner: Yes! Preach! I’m with you. I also think it’s very understandable. Like, Pam Bondi, like, making a buck in a way that she shouldn’t be, and Todd Blanche and Steve Feinberg, like all these guys profiting off their positions in illegal and unscrupulous ways. People get that. Like people understood that Kristi Noem shouldn’t have spent $20,000 on horses for her ads right like that is that is not what is the normal or accepted behavior of a cabinet official.
Jon Lovett: And look, maybe we’re long past the days when people drove back to the bank to return the extra 20 they received in the envelope, but there’s something between where we’re at now and that where people believe that people that are instinctively open to corruption are afraid and people that are, instinctively, more desirous of a world in which following the rules is the right thing to do believe that they won’t be suckers for doing it. That’s all. Where being, doing the right thing doesn’t make you a fucking sucker anymore. Like that’s like where, that’s where Trump came from. He said the rules don’t work and nobody’s following them. And then he made it true. And like we have to attack that cynicism and one way you do it is by holding people accountable, even if the politics don’t seem exactly right for the moment.
Alex Wagner: Totally.
[AD BREAK]
Alex Wagner: Speaking of corruption, I do have to ask, because this is one of my favorite things to talk about, both because it’s so awful and because it, I think, is going to create problems, well, it already is creating problems for Trump, which is the ballroom. You hit some really interesting ballroom news this week, Jon.
Jon Lovett: Yeah.
Alex Wagner: Federal District Judge ordered Trump to halt his White House ballroom project and secure congressional approval for it. The lawsuit alleges that Trump exceeded his authority when he demolished the East Wing in preparation for his monstrosity. He has defended his plans by saying, I’m building this ballroom with private funding, so fuck off. Trump has also conveniently called for a crime bill that would prosecute rogue judges who hand down decisions like this, stopping his ballroom development. I first of all want to get your thoughts on the ballroom itself and the renderings that we’ve seen more of this week. I believe there are stairs to nowhere and there are columns that will block the main view from inside the ball room. And it otherwise seems like… You know, I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again. It’s like, Mussolini was better at the fascist architecture than Trump is. He’s got a long way to go.
Jon Lovett: So I remember when they first announced that they were doing a 90,000 square football run. I don’t know exactly what square footage they landed on, but I thought, oh, that can’t be right. That can’t right because the White House is smaller than that. The footprint of the White house, which is also three stories, is much smaller than, that’s an airplane hanger. That’s a big, that a Costco. You’re talking about putting a Costco on that lawn, like not even like a city center, like not a small target, like the city targets. No, like this is like a big old Costco. And it’s just massive. And you can decorate an airplane hanger with Corinthian columns, but you’re still looking at an airplane hanger sitting on that piece of land. And to be honest, I’ve never been one about the pomp and circumstance of the buildings. I don’t have any great attachment to neoclassical architecture that—
Alex Wagner: Historical preservation, taste?
Jon Lovett: Taste I’m a big fan of. I’m huge fan of taste but I don’t you know like we’ve decided that Greek and Roman architecture symbolizes something majestic to us and I think that’s fine but I actually think there’s all kinds of architecture that can signal that if you get the right hands on the on the controls we’re on our second architect that’s never a good sign for a project because we haven’t even so much as laid a foundation I’m glad that’s being stopped, here’s the thing, he’s a renter. And they don’t usually advise renters to do a lot of big construction projects because they don’t reap the value of it. We, the landlords, will reap the values of it, so I’m glad it’s being stopped. Of course Congress should have a say. You don’t get to knock down the White House because you’re not using any congressional money and did it by selling access to the presidency. He’s only supposed to be there for another two years. At this rate, I don’t know that he’ll get to spend much time in his ballroom. So. I’m sorry he’s having problems with his HOA, the HOA being the United States of America and its citizens, but that’s why we have an HOA down there at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Alex Wagner: Do you think, like, if you’re one of the many corporations that donated money towards the ballroom, you’re like, are you happy that it’s paused or are you bummed because you’re not getting quite the return you expected?
Jon Lovett: I think all these people, they view this as a tax. I mean, it’s a tax a local fucking sandwich shop pays to a mob in the neighborhood, which is just, they’re paying for security. They’re paying a tax to stay out of his evil eye. They don’t give a fuck what happens with the money. The money is nothing to them. The scale of the money they donate for the ballroom, it’s nothing. I mean Intel gave Donald Trump 10% of Intel. That’s real money to them, that’s real. That’s massive.
Alex Wagner: Socialist takeover of a private company, but I digress.
Jon Lovett: But a few hundred million to have Donald Trump thank you for being part of his project and to keep him from saying bad things about your company or unleashing regulators on your company, that’s a great deal. I get why they pay. I mean, they’re morally fucking bankrupt, but as far as morally bankrupt acts goes, it makes a lot of sense.
Alex Wagner: Let me ask you one more question, just like bringing it back to the initial topic of the war and the corruption that swirls around, you know, Trump and his moves in and around the war itself. He’s been really blustery this week, right? He’s threatening to pull out of NATO. He’s just calling our European allies every name in the book, at the same time asking his men’s grooming expert slash Secretary of War to get them to bring the big Royal Navy in to open up the Strait of Hormuz. There’s just, you know, I don’t think it’s an issue of The Boy Who Cried Wolf because it’s not that Trump is totally defanged here. He can make life bad for Europeans. The Trump the tariffs are a lever, even if he can’t execute the way that he had hoped. You know, America still has a lot of power in the world. But I just kind of wonder. And it’s not the taco scenario, but it is like the. He keeps, you know, you can only shoot your gun into the sky so many times before someone’s like, meh, I don’t really know that I need to respond to this. Like, do I really, and like, I think that that trickles down to like, do I need really need to give $400,000 to a ballroom project or $2 million, or however much it is? Like, I wonder if we’re on the down slope of his potency as far as, you now, squeezing people for money or concessions because by virtue of the fact that he’s Donald Trump president of the United States or do you think you know, American might is so you know significant that he gets to basically shake people down for another three years?
Jon Lovett: Yeah, I think it’s that one. The problem is the ratchet because you see this with the way the markets react to his various assurances and threats. So why is Donald Trump issuing these sort of bellicose threats to Iran while also claiming negotiations are going well? Well because he’s using strategic ambiguity to keep his options open. It signals to Iran that it will be therefore a fault for an escalation and he’ll pay a lower price. It signals the markets that he actually wants a deal and that he’s being quite reasonable. That helps keep the markets in check, which helps him with his leverage for an eventual hopeful deal. With Iran. The same thing is applying with how he threatens NATO. You have Rubio last week say, uh, after this conflict is over, we’re going to have to deal with the Strait of Hormuz. Okay, hold on a second. Wait, wait, what’d you just say? Go back, go back, Rubio. You’re saying that, so you’re going end the conflict. You said we were going to stop Iran from projecting power before the conflict, the Strait was open. After the conflict the Strait has a toll on it. That doesn’t seem like projecting less power. That seems like projecting more power, but it’s the Europeans’ problem. Why? Because we have our own helium? Okay. But clearly that wasn’t getting them the leverage they need. So you now need Trump to go further, to ratchet up the pressure on European allies, because that tells you that while Trump knows, or on some level is trying to signal, that he understands that the U.S. can leverage, can weather a closure of the Strait of Hormuz better than some of our European allies. It’ll still cost us a great deal. And the fact that the collective, the pain will be collective means Europeans still aren’t stepping up, so he needs to find another way to bring the hammer down on our allies now, to get them to somehow view this as their problem that Trump’s not bluffing, he’s not buffing. Now the problem with this is there are clocks on every threat and every assurance. And if people start to doubt, right, if people always think Trump is going to chicken out, he has to go further and be crazier, right? And if you think he’s actually going to, if, if people start to doubt, and then the other direction, people doubt that he’s going to actually do something terrible, he loses the leverage of the threat there too. So then he has take the action. He has to send people to Kharg Island or, or a bomb, uh, uh an energy plant or what have you, to reset the clock to zero and signal that he’s really serious. So that’s what’s dangerous about having someone so unreliable, both in terms of his temperament and in terms of being able to trust his word, because it requires the actions to back it up. So do I believe right now that Donald Trump is gonna pull us out of NATO? I’d bet against it. I wish I’d take more odds on it. I’m a little bit nervous about it. But I don’t think the odds are as good as they should be that Donald won’t back out of Nato. But if you’re thinking about this in some European country, you know, in some warm room without the, you know set to 76 or something, thinking about this. You’re concerned and you’re hoping it doesn’t go through with it. And each time we go through this, the threats get more extreme and maybe more likely to transpire. So that that’s what’s dangerous about someone like Donald Trump. And all of what makes it possible is he gets to spend the resilience of the American economy and the goodwill we built up over 75 years, and he spends it and he spend it and spends it. At a certain point, those accounts will run dry and. And, you know, we’ll pay for it.
Alex Wagner: It’ll be a Democrat’s job to fix it.
Jon Lovett: As always.
Alex Wagner: As fuckin’ always. Well, on that up note, I gotta say, we set the bar high for you.
Jon Lovett: Okay, how’d we do?
Alex Wagner: I think you exceeded.
Jon Lovett: Yeah, look, I think that. In a way, the magnificent bazooms are the friends you make along the way, you know?
Alex Wagner: But we’re not talking about Bryon Noem’s.
Jon Lovett: We’re not talking about.
Alex Wagner: Gigantic fake tits.
Jon Lovett: No, I will say. I think as a signal scandal of the Trump era. And by the way, I don’t want to shame Bryon—
Alex Wagner: I was just going to say, like, I want him to have whatever size breasts he wants—
Jon Lovett: Have a blast out there, my guy. Now, I think there’s some sadness in it.
Alex Wagner: —it’s the 21st century, go get it.
Jon Lovett: But, oh, Kristi Noem, what a story you wanted us to believe about who you were, this tough person, this real American, all American, real tough person.
Alex Wagner: Sanctimonious.
Jon Lovett: Sanctimonious. What a show you put on about what your life was, about who are, what you care about, and what you leave behind, because you know what? Whatever is broken in here, whatever thing is here, no amount of money. This is true. I really do believe this. And it is some solace and maybe this will be a solace for our dear listeners. Oh, are they making money is Pam Bondi walking away with millions? She’s fucking miserable because she has to look at Pam Bondi in the mirror every goddamn day. Kristi Noem made some money off of DHS wearing that hat and taking those pictures. Oh my god, does she have a Rolex Daytona in front of secant? Wow, that’s disgusting. I don’t think she’s happy. I think there’s no amount of money that can solve for the fucking darkness in these people’s souls. How about that? Does that do anything for you?
Alex Wagner: I think shtooping Corey Lewandowski is punishment of an extraordinary sort. So I’ll leave that there.
Jon Lovett: No plane in the world, no plane in—
Alex Wagner: No blanky in the world’s gonna make that bed warm. Okay, on that note, Jon Lovett, my friend and colleague, I loved having you on Runaway Country. Thank you for your time and brilliance. [music plays] That is our show for this week. If you are not sick and tired of me, please check out my sub stack, How the Hell… with Alex Wagner, and please do not forget to check out the show and our rapid response videos on our YouTube channel, Runaway Country with Alex Wagner. We have a bunch of YouTube exclusive content up there like this week’s rapid response video with Crooked’s own Ben Rhodes.
[clip of Ben Rhodes]: He says he’s ended eight wars, and he’s never asked what the fuck he’s talking about. And I will tell you, one of the eight wars he says he ended was the last time he bombed Iran. Another of the wars he said he ended, ended in the 90s. It was Serbia and Kosovo.
Alex Wagner: Last but not least, if you have been impacted directly by the Trump administration and its policies, please send us an email or a one minute voice note at runawaycountr@crooked.com and we may be in touch to feature your story. A huge and sincere thank you to everyone who has written in already. Runaway Country is a Crooked Media production. Our senior producer is Alyona Minkovski. Our producer is Emma Illick-Frank. Production support from Megan Larson and Lacy Roberts. The show is mixed and edited by Charlotte Landes. Ben Hethcoat is our video producer and Matt DeGroot is our head of production. Audio support comes from Kyle Seglin. Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Adriene Hill is our Head of News and Politics. Katie Long is our Executive Producer of Development. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writer’s Guild of America East.
