Hello and welcome to the Americano podcast, a series of discussions about American politics

and the Trump presidency for the New Spectator USA website.

I'm here with Kurt Mills, who's the Foreign Affairs reporter at the national interest,

and our favourite American guest, Jacob Halberon, who is editor of the national interest.

And Kurt, I'm going to start talking to you because on our last podcast,

Jacob and I were talking about Trump's Iran tweet,

and we talked a lot about what might have motivated him to tweet so aggressively at Iran at that

particular stage, which was two days ago.

What I'd like to ask you, Kurt, because you wrote a very interesting piece on national interest

website yesterday, as what do the Iran hawks behind Trump think that they're doing? What world are they existing in that? So it's very

interesting. I think that Trump is distinct from the Iran Hawks and everyone around him. He's his

own operator. And as I said, the piece, which you can find on the website, it's called, you know,

the Iran Hawks think that they're in 1989, not 2003. And what I said, the piece, which you can find on the website, it's called, you know, the Iran Hawks think that they're in 1989, not 2003.

And what I referred to that is Trump's motivations here are threefold.

One, I think, is just manifestly clear that he wants to move the news cycle away from Russia and Helsinki.

Even if he thinks the policy behind meeting of Vladimir Putin was sound,

he at this point knows it's a political loser.

In fact, a source familiar with the situation told me that, you know,

on the ride back from Helsinki, he saw all the daytime Fox coverage of the summit,

and, you know, it was very critical.

I think you have to understand there's a distinction between the daytime Fox coverage

and the nighttime Fox coverage.

...