Fareed Zakaria on the Moral Cost of Trump’s War

The Ezra Klein Show

New York Times Opinion

News, Government, Society & Culture

4.3 • 14.5K Ratings

🗓️ 10 April 2026

⏱️ 68 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When President Trump didn’t annihilate “a whole civilization” on Tuesday, as he had threatened to do, much of the world exhaled. But the damage of his statements — a U.S. president, the commander in chief of the world’s most powerful military, threatening to commit war crimes — continues to linger in the shadow of an uncertain cease-fire. Fareed Zakaria is the host of CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS” and the author of “Age of Revolutions” and other books. In this conversation, we discuss whether Trump’s threats on Truth Social worked as a negotiating tactic, the significance of crossing this kind of moral line and how the decline of American leadership is already reshaping the world. This episode contains strong language. Mentioned: Age of Revolutions by Fareed Zakaria “The Predatory Hegemon” by Stephen M. Walt “Iran is an imperial trap. America walked right in.” by Fareed Zakaria Book Recommendations: A World Safe for Democracy by G. John Ikenberry The Irony of American History by Reinhold Niebuhr The Quiet American by Graham Greene Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com. You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs. This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Annie Galvin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris with Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Aman Sahota. Our recording engineer is Aman Sahota. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Marie Cascione, Jack McCordick, Rollin Hu, Kristin Lin, Emma Kehlbeck, Marina King and Jan Kobal. Original music by Pat McCusker and Aman Sahota. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The director of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser.

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm I'm A few weeks back, we did a show on whether the Iran war would break Trumpism.
0:34.2	What we've seen over the past week is more specific.
0:37.6	The Iran War is breaking Trump.
0:40.6	At 8.03 a.m. on Easter Sunday, Trump posted this to True Social.
0:46.8	Tuesday will be Power Plant Day and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one in Iran.
0:52.6	There'll be nothing like it.
0:55.7	Open the fucking straight, you crazy bastards. There'll be nothing like it. Open the fucking straight,
1:02.8	you crazy bastards, you'll be living in hell. Just watch. Praise me to Allah, President Donald J.
1:09.7	Trump. That is even crazier when you read it aloud. But Trump followed it up with another post on Tuesday that began.
1:15.3	A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.
1:18.3	I don't want that to happen, but it probably will.
1:24.0	It didn't happen, Trump backed down, agreeing to a two-week ceasefire with Iran.
1:25.8	Then on Wednesday, he wrote,
1:27.8	The United States will work closely with Iran,
1:33.2	which we have determined has gone through what will be a very productive regime change.
1:40.4	Trump has oscillated in the course of days, even hours, from threatening an apparent genocide,
1:45.4	to then excitedly musing about partnering with Iran to charge tolls to ships passing through the strait of Hormuz and giving them relief from sanctions and tariffs.
1:50.4	This is not the art of the deal. This is behavior that should trigger a wellness check.
1:56.7	And look, maybe you'd expect a liberal like me to say that. But listen to some of the trumpier voices, or at least traditionally, Trumpier voices on the right.
2:05.2	Here's Tucker Carlson.
2:07.1	On every level, it is vile.
2:11.6	On every level, it begins with a promise to use the U.S. military, our military, to destroy civilian infrastructure
	...

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