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 joined today by Jacob Harbram, one of our regular guests on this podcast, but I'm actually

in his office in Washington, D.C., where he sits as editor of the national interest.

And you have a very grand evening tonight, don't you?

You've got your big event of the year.

What's going on?

We do indeed, Freddie.

A dinner celebrating Secretary of Defense, James Mattis, who is one of the

leading members of Donald Trump's cabinet.

Mad Dog Mattis, as Trump likes to call him.

But he's mad dog, but some people think he's the only hope for sanity in American foreign policy.

Well, Trump apparently thinks that he's not barking enough. He called him moderate Mattis

the other day and inquired of European leaders whether what they thought of Mattis.

And apparently some of them thought that it was a trick question and that they extolled him too much that Trump would turn on Mattis.

Right. So do people have to be rude about him so that Trump likes him.

Exactly.

Right.

So he's just got to keep the mad in his name even if it's totally untrue.

Right.

But it's interesting about Trump's wrong policy because we had this tweet about Iran that

got a lot of attention a couple of days ago and the sort of knee-jerk speculation was that it was a distraction

...