Trump’s Iran Clusterf*ck War Is The Ultimate Epstein Distraction
The Lincoln Project
The Lincoln Project
4.6 • 9.1K Ratings
🗓️ 13 March 2026
⏱️ 40 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week’s Elephant in the Room: everything is starting to fall apart. Trump’s escalating Iran War looks less like strategy and more like a desperate attempt to change the subject from the growing fallout around the Epstein Files, mounting scandals, and an administration that seems increasingly out of its depth. Wars don’t erase political crises — they amplify them. And this one is already shaping up to be wildly unpopular, dangerously unpredictable, and potentially catastrophic for American lives, the global economy, and stability in the Middle East. Rick Wilson breaks down why Trump’s Iran war, the political explosion surrounding the Epstein scandal, and a White House running on panic and distraction could collide into one of the biggest geopolitical and political trainwrecks of the decade.
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Rick Wilson is on X at @TheRickWilson, on Bluesky at @TheRickWilson.bsky.social, and you can check out Rick's Substack at therickwilson.substack.com. You can check out more of LP's work at www.lincolnproject.us and on X at @ProjectLincoln.
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#Trump #IranWar #EpsteinFiles #RickWilson #TheLincolnProject #PoliticalNews #BreakingNews #USPolitics #MiddleEast #ForeignPolicy #EpsteinScandal #Geopolitics #PoliticalCommentary #NewsAnalysis #WorldPolitics
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well trained, well equipped, and battlehardt. |
| 0:06.2 | There is not a liberal America and a conservative America. There is the United States of America. |
| 0:14.5 | Good night and good luck. |
| 0:16.9 | Hey folks, happy Friday. Welcome back to another episode of The Elephant in the Room, where every week I try to pull back the curtain on what I think is the story behind the story, what I think is motivating behavior and shaping the politics of the moment. |
| 0:30.1 | And today's elephant in the room is it's all falling apart. |
| 0:38.0 | Guys, the Trump administration is in very, very, very, very, very deep water right now. |
| 0:45.3 | They are in a world of hurt. |
| 0:47.8 | What's happening? |
| 0:48.8 | Well, as you're witnessing, the war in Iran is going into phase two, which is now not working out as they thought |
| 0:57.0 | it would work out. |
| 0:58.0 | A week into the U.S.-Israel war with Iran, President Trump today demanded the Islamic Republic's |
| 1:04.0 | surrender and again said he wants a hand in choosing the nation's next leader. |
| 1:08.0 | The Iranian Red Crescent says more than 1,300 people have now been killed by the American |
| 1:13.3 | and Israeli bombing. |
| 1:15.0 | Local officials in Tehran also said another school was hit with an airstrike. |
| 1:19.2 | The bombing of a girls' school last Saturday killed more than 150 people, mostly children. |
| 1:24.2 | U.S.-Israeli attacks intensified across Iran, pushing the war into a new phase |
| 1:29.6 | as it nears the one-week mark. A spokesperson for Iran's foreign ministry released this video |
| 1:35.7 | showing what appears to be a school in Tehran, smashed into ash by an airstrike. The IDF launched |
| 1:43.2 | what it called a broad-scale wave of strikes on Tehran |
| 1:46.3 | and the western city of Keremont-Shah, home to multiple ballistic missile bases. |
| 1:51.9 | And the U.S. Central Command said it struck this Iranian drone carrier. It all came alongside |
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