Will Iran Break Trumpism?

The Ezra Klein Show

New York Times Opinion

News, Government, Society & Culture

4.3 • 14.5K Ratings

🗓️ 27 March 2026

⏱️ 68 minutes

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Summary

Is Trumpism crashing on the shoals of the Iran war? That is what Christopher Caldwell thinks. Caldwell is a prominent thinker on the right. He’s a contributing editor at the conservative publication the Claremont Review of Books,and he’s one of the people who’ve been trying to define, and even craft, a coherent Trumpism. So his recent article in The Spectator, “The End of Trumpism,” sparked a lot of debate on the right. At the core of this debate are some fundamental questions that I think remain unresolved, despite Trump’s decade-long dominance of the Republican Party: What is Trumpism? Is there Trumpism, or is there just Donald Trump? Caldwell is a contributing writer for Times Opinion and the author of “The Age of Entitlement: America Since the Sixties.” In this conversation, he explains how he understood Trumpism as a movement of “democratic restoration” — and why he believes the Iran war betrays that. And I ask him why he sees the seams of Trump’s base fraying, despite polling that suggests otherwise. Mentioned: “The end of Trumpism” by Christopher Caldwell The Age of Entitlement by Christopher Caldwell “Is the West Becoming Pagan Again?” by Christopher Caldwell Self-Rule by Robert H. Wiebe “Trump as Alexander the Great” by John B. Judis Book Recommendations: The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn Common Ground by J. Anthony Lukas Ball Four by Jim Bouton Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com. You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs. This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Jack McCordick. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris with Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Aman Sahota. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Marie Cascione, Annie Galvin, Rollin Hu, Kristin Lin, Emma Kehlbeck, Marina King and Jan Kobal. Original music by Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The director of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser.

Transcript

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0:00.0	The
0:07.0	The Is Trumpism crashing on the shoals of the Iran War?
0:35.1	That is what Christopher Caldwell thinks.
0:37.9	Caldwell's on the right.
0:38.7	He's a contributing editor at the Claremont Review of Books.
0:41.7	He's one of these people who's been trying, I think, to define and even craft a coherent
0:46.3	Trumpism.
0:47.8	But he seems pretty dispirited.
0:50.2	He recently wrote a piece in The Spectator magazine titled simply The End of Trumpism, where he wrote,
0:57.8	The Attack on Iran is so wildly inconsistent with the wishes of his own base, so diametrically opposed
1:04.1	to their reading of the national interest, that it is likely to mark the end of Trumpism as a project.
1:10.4	The end of Trumpism as a project. The end of Trumpism as a project.
1:13.7	It wasn't just Iran that had led Caldbalt to that point.
1:17.5	It was also Trump's brazen, self-dealing,
1:20.1	the waves of influence peddling,
1:21.9	the sense that this man was supposed to represent
1:24.7	the will of the people in some way
1:26.5	was doing something
1:28.0	very different.
1:30.4	But this has led to a debate on the right.
1:32.2	Many noted a very obvious counter argument.
1:34.8	Poll showed Trump's base is largely sticking with him.
	...

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