I'm Charlie Sykes. Welcome back to the To the Contrary Podcast. The word of the week seems to be miscalculation, both abroad and at home.

New York Times reporting about all of the miscalculations by the Trump team about the war in Iran.

Apparently, the great geniuses who are running this war really did not think that there would be a global disruption of energy or that the

Iranians would fight back so hard. I mean, who actually knew? Who needs real experts? Who needs

people who actually know what is going on? Meanwhile, apparently the White House is telling

House Republicans to stop emphasizing mass deportations because it's just not working for them.

But isn't this a little bit like the political equivalent of unringing the bell,

considering the fact that at the convention, they're holding up all those signs, mass

deportations, mass deportations.

So in our land of confusion, we have a lot to talk about.

And joining me to make sense of our land of confusion, my good friend, Molly Jong-Fast.

How are you, Molly?

A little turnaround.

I did your podcast.

You're doing mine now, right?

I was honored to be asked.

Well, I hope you brought some opinions today.

Okay, here's my contrary question. There are people who actually believe that Donald Trump

launched the war against Iran as a way to distract from the Trump Epstein files, but it's going

so badly. Is it possible that this war has turned out to be such a foobar

that Donald Trump will be forced to actually release the Epstein files to distract from the

fuck up of the war? What do you think? I mean, that is a take I have not heard, but it certainly

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