“There’s No National Interest With Trump, Just Personal”

To The Contrary with Charlie Sykes

Charlie Sykes

News, Politics, News Commentary

4.9 • 719 Ratings

🗓️ 26 March 2026

⏱️ 46 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Phillips O'Brien is a historian and Professor of Strategic Studies at the University of St Andrews, Scotland. In this episode, he joins Charlie to discuss the different ways Trump could operate in Iran right now and the biggest obstacle to it all — the fact that Trump is only motivated by personal gain and that many people have given up.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Charlie Sykes. Welcome back to the To the Contrary podcast. Hey, a quick reminder that if you want to listen to
0:06.0	free versions of the podcast or watch the YouTube video, you can go to our website to the contrary
0:12.1	newsletter. If you are not yet a subscriber to the newsletter, please consider doing that. There is no
0:17.2	paywall on the newsletter. It is free. But of course, we rely upon the kindness of strangers.
0:23.3	So we are very, very grateful to all of you who have decided to become paid subscribers as well.
0:28.7	What we're trying to do on a daily basis is make sense of things that don't make sense,
0:34.0	to maintain sanity amid all of the crazy. And this week is not unlike almost every other week feels like for years in which if you're
0:44.5	confused, you're not alone.
0:46.8	Are we in talks with Iran?
0:48.2	Are we not in talks with Iran?
0:49.5	Has Iran given Donald Trump some amazing, huge new gift?
0:53.5	Or is he just fantasizing that?
0:57.0	Who knows? We're going to dive in.
1:05.3	To try to make sense of all of this, we are very fortunate to have one of my favorite writers, Phillips O'Brien,
1:12.4	who is an historian and a professor of strategic studies at the University of St. Andrews.
1:17.7	It contributed to Atlantic Magazine. And really good to talk with you, Phillips, because I read
1:23.2	your stuff. I've been reposting your stuff. And I figured, you know, at some point I got to
1:26.1	talk to the guy. So thanks for coming on. I appreciate it very, very much. I was so, I was so excited when they asked me to come on, Charles, because I love your stuff as well. So this is, this is a big treat for me. Well, one of the things that I really like about your work is, as I think you have a perspective that's sometimes different from the folks on this side of the pond,
1:44.7	who are, I think,
1:46.1	insufficiently alarmed by what is happening. So I'm guessing that, you know, you have some
1:52.5	thoughts on that. Are we alarmed enough about what is happening domestically and what is
1:59.6	happening internationally? Because I think there's that default setting to how bad could it be, and what is happening internationally?
	...

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