Rubio’s Speech, The Supreme Court on Tariffs, Jesse Jackson, Iran vs the U.S.

The Politics Guys

Michael Baranowski

News, Politics

4.4 • 783 Ratings

🗓️ 21 February 2026

⏱️ 64 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Trey and Justin open with a deep discussion of Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s 2026 Munich Security Conference speech. Trey argues that the speech fits into a Huntington Clash of Civilizations modality, which while it unites with Europe attacks the larger evils of the other. Both hosts dive into what Western Civilization means, why it isn’t a bad thing, but why it is important to be careful in drawing good guys and bad guys into civilization conversations. Next, the guys turn to Learning Resources v. Trump, or the Supreme Court’s rebuke of Trump’s tariffs. Trey comes in hot and argues that the minority opinion’s view, especially Justice Thomas, completely misunderstands the Constitution and elevates the problematic unitary theory of the executive view of the presidency. Justin believes that the Trump administration will simply bring forward the tariffs again. Both hosts agree that the president’s comments after the ruling are troubling. After that, they move to discussing the death of Jesse Jackson. Here, they focus not only on his legacy but what this means for the future of civil rights and the underlying changes to political protest in the age of social media. They close with an in-depth discussion of Iran’s attempted closure of the Strait of Hormuz and the ongoing U.S. pressure on Iran. The Politics Guys on Facebook | X Listener support helps make The Politics Guys possible. You can support us or change your level of support at patreon.com/politicsguys or politicsguys.com/support. On Venmo, we’re @PoliticsGuys. The Politics Guys is part of The Democracy Group, a network of podcasts that examines what's broken in our democracy and how we can work together to fix it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:35.4	Atheists, agnostics, long-haired, weirdos, short-haired, weirdos, vandal, Lugust.
0:36.1	Love, the government, hug the government, love the government, hug the government, love the government. Welcome to the politics, I'm Trey Orndorff, a political scientist at Oklahoma Christian University, and I'm joined by Justin Holmes, a professor of political science at the University of Northern Iowa. Justin, it's been too long since we've done the show together. I know,
0:55.1	Trey, it's good to be here. It is, it is. It's been a lot of me and Mike, which is good, but it's just
1:00.1	different than the me and and Ken and the me and you. And so it's a different dynamic every time.
1:07.1	Yeah, it is. Well, I was thinking a little bit about Ken today because he was doing the show last week. And I think we actually kind of get to beat him in a way because despite him being the con law professor, we're going to get to deal with con law.
1:20.4	So lucky us. Exactly. Exactly. But I thought before we dive into the details, because I know everybody's going to be asking you, what's about the tariff case? I thought we'd talk about what has been something that's really been focused on our listeners this past week. And that was the Secretary of State Marco Rubio at the 26 Munich Security Conference. And so we're going to start there first.
1:46.5	Now, again, there have been a lot of questions about this. We've had a lot of questions on
1:49.8	Discord about this. But from my point of view, what I'm going to kind of put forward here for
1:54.6	just a few minutes is I can't help but read this speech kind of as more manifesto than policy. And when I think of this man,
2:02.8	when I think of this manifesto, I'm thinking, and maybe you're going to get this, I'm thinking
2:07.0	of Samuel Huntington's clash of civilizations. I can't help but read his speech through that
2:12.9	Huntington lens. I don't think I've ever seen it quite so articulated that way before. So for those of you, which is probably all of you who aren't up on Huntington lens. I don't think I've ever seen it quite so articulated that way before. So for those of
2:19.3	you, which is probably all of you who aren't up on Huntington, maybe there's three of you out there who are,
2:24.0	he argued way back in 1993. And in the post-Cold War era, the primary source of conflict wasn't going to be
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