The Art of No Deal: Trump’s Approach to the Iran War
The Political Scene | The New Yorker
The New Yorker
4.3 • 3.9K Ratings
🗓️ 4 April 2026
⏱️ 39 minutes
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Summary
The Washington Roundtable discusses Donald Trump’s address on the Iran war and the playbook that has defined his career in business and politics when confronted with a crisis: escalate and blame others. The panel discusses how that same playbook is being applied to the Iran conflict with potentially disastrous results. “He’s immune to any possibility of accountability,” the staff writer Evan Osnos says. “That became not just one of the ways he tells his own story but actually how he imagines history will unfold in his hands.”
This week’s reading:
- “Donald Trump’s Case for War Fails to Mention How to Win It,” by Susan B. Glasser
- “The Team Behind a Pro-Iran, Lego-Themed Viral-Video Campaign,” by Kyle Chayka
- “He Helped Stop Iran from Getting the Bomb,” by David D. Kirkpatrick
- “How Pakistan Became a Major Player in Peace Negotiations Between the U.S. and Iran,” by Isaac Chotiner
- “The Spectacle of War and the Struggle to Protest,” by Jay Caspian Kang
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| 0:00.0 | Do you guys remember Pam Bonding? |
| 0:02.5 | Who? |
| 0:03.5 | Who? |
| 0:05.3 | I feel like we're, five years from now, it's going to be a reality show, like that, you know, |
| 0:09.8 | the ladies of the Trump cabinet, you know? |
| 0:13.1 | Her and Christine Noam teaming up for, you know, sort of remember when? |
| 0:18.0 | Maybe it'll be a quiz show. |
| 0:19.1 | Well, you're right, by by the way that it does seem to |
| 0:21.8 | be a pattern here that the only cabinet members who get axed are women right i mean i saw some one of |
| 0:29.7 | the late night hosts had a line that said something like the only one who seems to have immunity |
| 0:33.6 | in that cabinet is rfk you know the truth, Evan, I'm glad you brought that up. |
| 0:39.3 | This is one of my rant, but I'm going to repeat it here. |
| 0:43.3 | The caricature of femininity required to get oneself a place in Donald Trump, these women not only abase themselves, got rid of all principles previously stated in their political or legal careers, they had to physically change their presentation in order to win this place in Trump's circle. |
| 1:05.4 | What is also amazing is, you know, you can thrash around in front of Congress, you can perform for the audience of one, |
| 1:13.1 | and in the end, you still get cast into the dustbin of history. And, you know, there's, it will be |
| 1:19.9 | interesting to see what this presumably lucrative private sector job is that she's going to. |
| 1:26.1 | It's such a diss, though. |
| 1:27.8 | I mean, the private sector thing is just a way of saying there'll be no space in my administration |
| 1:33.4 | for her. |
| 1:33.8 | Even Kimberly Gilfoyle got an ambassadorship. |
| 1:37.0 | Oh, she's in trouble now, by the way. |
| 1:38.5 | I don't know if you read this, but she's already in trouble. |
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