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What Next | Daily News and Analysis

Trump Says We Won. This Former Rep Says We’re Trapped.

What Next | Daily News and Analysis

Slate Podcasts

News, Daily News, News Commentary

4.32.4K Ratings

🗓️ 19 March 2026

⏱️ 26 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The war in Iran is either already over, or almost over, or going to continue until Trump feels it is over in his bones? If you’re Congress, what are you supposed to do with that? 


Guest: Adam Kinzinger, former Republican Congressman for Illinois’s 11th and 16th districts, Jan 6 Committee member, former lieutenant colonel in the Air National Guard.


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Podcast production by Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme, and Rob Gunther.


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Transcript

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0:00.0

I think it's fair to say that former GOP congressman Adam Kinsinger and I, we disagree about plenty.

0:14.3

He got elected as a Tea Party guy. That's not really my scene. He saw Barack Obama's Iran nuclear deal as appeasement. As a result, Adam can totally

0:24.3

see why military strikes in Iran could have made sense. I'm a little more hawkish, probably

0:30.7

certainly than you want it. But part of my hawkishness is assuming that we go in with a plan, limited objectives, we can win and we can achieve what we're doing.

0:43.2

So, yeah, maybe we're a little different, but we're probably united on this specific one.

0:48.3

So when you learned, given all this a few weeks back that President Trump was joining this war in Iran. Can you just walk me through the stages of your process?

0:56.3

Were you initially like, huh, this could be, this could be okay?

0:59.6

Or were you immediately like, uh-oh?

1:02.1

No, I wasn't immediately like, uh-oh.

1:04.6

I didn't think it was the right move, right?

1:06.6

I didn't think this was the time.

1:08.8

I didn't know what the goal was here.

1:10.4

My biggest problem at the time was that the president spent no time preparing the American people.

1:18.4

Typically, if you do that groundwork, the American people will support you for a little bit.

1:23.4

And then it just seemed to drag on.

1:25.2

And the president, the other thing that really kind of a trigger point was right when he said, we've already won.

1:30.3

I mean, for them, it's a war.

1:31.5

For us, it's turned out to be easier than we thought.

1:35.9

And I know this enough about Donald Trump, that he doesn't want to put in the hard work of convince anybody.

1:41.4

He feels that he's above, like having to convince anybody of

1:45.0

anything. Like, if he makes a decision, that should be good enough. And so he was in such a

1:50.0

hurry to tell everybody it was over to calm the oil markets by like, oh, this is no big deal.

...

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