Weekly Roundup: MAGA Masculinity, the Iran War, and the DOGE Files: What Happens When Power Rejects Expertise

Brad Onishi: Welcome to Straight White American Jesus. I'm Brad Onishi, author of American Caesar, How Theocrats and Tech Lords are Making America into a Monarchy, founder of Axis Mundi Media, here today with my co-host.

Dan Miller: I'm Dan Miller, Professor of Religion and Social Thought at Landmark College. Glad to be with you, Brad. I'm literally at, for those who watch, at Landmark College. And for those who want to know about the glorious existence that we have here in higher ed, they can note the hole in my ceiling. I'm aware that, like, the whole, like, I'm waiting to get emails about the hole in the ceiling that has been there as long as I've ever been in this office.

Brad: So it's not a euphemism, people. He's not, there's nothing weird there. There's a literal hole in the ceiling behind him. If you're not watching this on YouTube, okay, if you're on audio. All right, folks, we're going to talk today about the stupidity at play in our administration's approach to Iran and the ways that it represents a model of masculinity that is based on what we would take to be really poor virtues. And I know that sounds weird, and you're like, is that really what we need to do? This will run, but maybe...

Dan: This will be Josh Hawley's next masculine virtue, right? Maybe. I'm reading Josh Hawley's book, and it's in the code. And if stupidity shows up as a masculine virtue, then we'll really know. We'll really know that we're where we need to be.

Brad: We'll talk about intelligence. We'll talk about the Strait of Hormuz. We'll talk about the ways that the approach to manhood in the Trump orbit has led us to this point. We'll then talk about if there really is a split in MAGA over Iran, and there are those out there that would say there is not. I think I'm going to make the case that there is, and do so in a way that really leaves the future open in terms of whether or not this will help Trump and those aligned with him. I think it's up in the air at the moment. Finally, we'll go to the released videos of the DOGE depositions with two of the leads on the DOGE teams who were making judgment calls about grants and funding that should be canceled, and that'll lead us back into this idea of masculinity and men and the ways that they are operating in the Trump regime and in many ways destroying the livelihoods of Iranian girls at a school of higher ed and American administration in this country, the lives of people here and abroad. Lots to cover. Let's go.

All right, Dan, you know, sometimes we ease into it. Let's not ease into it today. Let me play a clip of Donald Trump saying the war is over and we've won. "Let me, we've won. You know, you never like to say too early you won. We won. We won. We won the bet in the first hour."

Now, just before we came on the air, Friday, March 13, Pete Hegseth did a press conference, and somebody asked him about the Strait of Hormuz. And I know that many of you now are experts on the strait. You've read three articles, you've posted 19 Facebook posts. Probably not you listening, but maybe some of your relatives or uncles or your favorite person from high school. You know, this has become a place that is now kind of in our news cycle continuously, global shipping, oil prices, the conflict that has now begun between Iran and United States and Israel. The Strait of Hormuz is sort of this place of focus, and for good reason. So here is a reporter asking Pete Hegseth why they didn't plan for Iran to shut it down. And Pete says it is, in fact, open for business, Dan. And here's what he said:

Pete Hegseth [Clip]: "The only thing prohibiting transit in the straits right now is Iran shooting at shipping. It is open for transit should Iran not do that."

Brad: So the Strait is open, Dan. I just, I need you as a like a liberal, woke guy in a Vermont College with a hole in his ceiling to get this straight. Okay, Mr. Fancy professor, the strait is open for business, Dan. It's open. Lame stream media lying to you. It's opened. Now Iran is shooting at the ships going through it. And if they were not doing that, it would be really open, but it is open. And so I just, I need you to get that straight and not wasn't lying.

Dan: Lib, okay. The ships and the mines and, you know, Trump saying the other day that they just need to have some guts and sail through there, right? They've asked for naval escorts, and the US Navy won't escort them through, but Trump's like, yeah, they should just go. They should just have some guts and sail through there anyway. But yeah, it's open.

Brad: Yeah. I mean, you and I were tired. I just think it's worth sitting on Hegseth's words here, because, just because life is what it is, and sometimes we need a little levity. I promise we're going to get super serious here for the next 50 minutes. But before we started recording, you said that you were completely naked, except for you were wearing clothes. And I was like, yeah. A, I'm glad you're not naked doing this podcast, but B, I think that's right. Except for your clothes, Dan, you're completely naked. That's kind of what Hegseth's doing here. I mean, I have like a four and a half year old who's like learning these tricks, like my four and a half year old sort of getting to that age of, like, you know, super close. Hey, how many chocolate chips did you take? And it's like, well, I accidentally took this many, but that was in my left hand, and my right hand didn't have any. So, I mean, it just depends on what you're asking me, Dad. It's just like, all right, this is very good. Thank you so much for playing.

But that's where we are with Hegseth and his lying and his spinning and everything. On one hand, Trump says we've won. It's over. We are awesome. We destroyed it all. And another sense, people are like, hey, did you guys not plan for the Strait of Hormuz sort of strategic centrality of this whole conflict? And Hegseth's like it's open, everything's fine. I mean, yes, people are being shot at as they try to take their ships through there. It's really, actually dangerous. There are ships that are ablaze because they have been lit up by fire and strikes. But if you want to say it's not open, you're just a lying piece of the woke stream media. And I'm just frankly tired of that, because I'm Pete Hegseth, and let me do some push ups and some pull ups, and then the press conference will be over. I just drank an energy drink. All right, thanks for coming, everybody. All right. Any thoughts on that, Dan, before I go through some statistics and some even more analysis here of what happened with the Strait of Hormuz. I mean, you want me to give you some of that? Or, yeah.

Dan: The only thing I'm going to say is aside, and what we'll get to like, you know, firing Iran experts and different things like that. But everybody, every, literally, everybody on Earth knows that Iran can't go toe to toe with the US militarily, right? So it's an asymmetric conflict. This is the most obvious strategic play. If you're a country like Iran, and you're sort of in an asymmetric conflict, what do you do? You find leverage points, in this case, the Strait of Hormuz. You do things like targeting or threatening to target refineries and things like that, knowing full well that the economic repercussions are one of the only things that can leverage the United States and Donald Trump and the Republican Party. So all of which is just to say you don't have to be an Iran expert to have seen that this is the kind of move that Iran was going to make, and everybody in the Trump administration seems to have not known it or anticipated it, or now, if you're Hegseth, you're just going to pretend that it didn't happen.

Brad: Here's what CNN says on, well yesterday, but they updated it today, so here's what it says. Zachary Cohen, Phil Mattingly, Kevin Liptak, Kylie Atwood: the Pentagon and National Security Council significantly underestimated Iran's willingness to close the Strait of Hormuz in response to US military strikes. His Trump's National Security team failed to fully account for the potential consequences of what some officials have described as a worst case scenario now facing the administration. Key officials from the Department of Energy and Treasury were present for some of the official planning meetings about the operation, but the agency analysis and forecast that would be integral elements of decision making process in past administrations or secondary considerations.

So a couple things. I'm not going to play you this clip, but Trump's, you know, Karoline Leavitt, Trump have basically said Jared Kushner told him something about Iran maybe attacking us. And so Trump said, I have a feeling, and therefore we need to start this conflict. Okay? And when they started the conflict, the planning and the expertise was not there to account for all of the scenarios, despite what Pete Hegseth will tell you. There's no sense here of there being experts in the room who are being listened to. Okay. Yeah, and I want to just, I want to frame today, you know, like we could go through all the facts, but I want to give you a framing today that I think is more analytical than just reporting.

And I think that what we have today is the emblem of MAGA masculinity, and why this model of manhood is so damaging. And I'm saying this as a man, a straight man, a cis man. I'm tired of these kind of men representing men and being supposedly the model of masculinity that all people show. So I wrote down three things, Dan, you ready? And someday this will be my, this is going to be my self help book for masculinity, and I'm going to sell 8 million copies. Get some, just get a place where I can eat all the rice that's not cauliflower, and buy you as many cargo shorts as you want. Okay, sweet.

Men like this say that we should do and not think. Number one: Do not think. Number two: They say that working with others slows things down. We need one person who has all the knowledge and the power to do things quickly. Three: investment in relationships is a waste of time. We don't need long term relationships. We don't need diplomacy. We don't need to understand context or the network of economic, cultural, other forces at play. We simply need to have brute force, one off encounters and defeating strikes. So do not think, one person versus the many, and strike. Don't invest in relationships. Those are my three things there, and I think we see that at play in everything that's going on with Iran and the Trump administration approach to it.

I'll throw this to you, Trump, excuse me, Hegseth has talked about JAGs, and I'll let you explain that and what that is, and taking away regulations related to those basically saying we need to concentrate power and streamline the chain of command so there's less discussion, less legal rumination and so on. Okay? Furthermore, the Trump administration has handed the expertise reins here to a few people who clearly have no idea what they're doing. Could be Scott Bessent. It's clearly Jared Kushner in some cases, and Pete Hegseth, who we know. And I'll just, I'll just give you a little bit of some tidbits here.

This is from August. This is not from like, you know, last week. This is from eight months ago. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, according to the AP, has fired a general whose agency's initial intelligence assessment of US damage to Iranian nuclear sites angered President Trump. So the guy who knew a lot about Iran was fired because what he said Trump didn't like. The article goes on, Hegseth also fired Vice Admiral Nancy Lacore, who is chief of the Navy Reserve, as well as Rear Admiral Milton Sands, a Navy SEAL officer who oversees Naval Special Warfare Command. No reasons were given, just that's what they did.

Now, this firing came two months after the initial strike on Iran, when we were told by the Trump administration that their nuclear capabilities had been completely destroyed. Okay? In addition, this is from March 4, just about nine days ago. Sarah Lynch, Daniel Clayman at CBS: most of the FBI agents fired by FBI Director Kash Patel last week worked on counterintelligence cases, including cases pertaining to, let me just see if I can see it on my screen here, Ireland? Nope, not Ireland, huh? Iceland? Nope. Iran, Iran, Dan. It says Iran. They fired the folks who worked on counterintelligence cases related to Iran.

A dozen or so FBI employees, including agents, analysts and support staff, were abruptly terminated over a two day period last week after Patel lashed out over the discovery that his phone records and those of White House Chief of Staff Suzy Wiles were subpoenaed by the FBI. This comes in the week that we now know, at least it's been reported by several outlets that Iran has ideas of conducting an attack on the West Coast of the United States. Jimmy Kimmel talked about this. Others talked about it. There is a, there is a, I have talked to neighbors and friends who are like worried about flying, not only because of the partial shutdown, but because they now see like us in a situation where a terrorist attack and a counter attack and an attack on American soil is possible, but we have fired the experts. We have fired the generals. We have gotten rid of the people in the room that know anything about the long term conditions in Iran, and we're left with kind of this small group of men who think that if you punch and fight and bomb and proclaim and do things without thinking, you will win.

These are men, and I'm going to get going here. Just give me 10 more seconds, Dan, I promise. These are, I just want to paint. Who are the men that the men in the MAGA world hang out with? Who do the men in MAGA want to be? Who does Trump want to be? Who does Kash Patel want to be? Who does Hegseth want to be? Well, they hang out with UFC fighters anytime they can. Anytime there's UFC, they're like, I'm there. Trump's like, let's have UFC on the lawn at the White House. Kash Patel flew all the way to Italy on your dime and my dime so he could drink beer and smash things on his head with the US Men's hockey team. They all think Putin is like the man's man, the many, the man of them all, right. So we know what kind of men they think we need. We need men who fight and batter and bomb. We need men who smash. We need men who yell at a camera and grunt. That is what we need if we want to win.

And all of a sudden, it turns out people don't back down. It turns out Iran's like, oh, we have other means, we have other measures. We have other ways. And the grunting, the yelling, the threatening, okay, we have stuff we're going to do too, and you know, we'll see what happens here. All right, there's the setup. Sorry, I got going.

Dan: I'm going to be Howard off. So the only thing I would add to the list of masculine elements is, and I think it maybe it overarches on all of them, is asking for advice is weakness, and it ties in with those other notions. So the things that I had just, you know, as I'm sitting here thinking about it, were things like, you know, the idea of being the, quote unquote, the man of action. And what does that mean? You go in guns blazing. You go in this swing, swing, swing. You just go in. You don't ask permission, you don't ask advice. You don't think about it, you don't ask for directions. If you're lost, you don't do any of that stuff. You just go in and you do that.

And I think that that's what it is. And we've been talking about this since the early days of the second Trump administration, when we talked about the attack on expertise, right? Any appeal to expertise is itself a kind of weakness. And what has Trump always done, especially in his second term? Anytime anybody has expertise and poses the question, it's the person who's like, well, yeah, but what about this? Have we considered this? Or you do that thing? I can see him around the table. Now, I'm sure you all have thought of this already, but I'm just curious if you could share how we're going to deal with X, Y or Z, right? That person's out. You're out. That person's not helping with wisdom. They're not helping us to do something calculated. They're woke, or they're afraid, or they're cowardly, or they're betas, or they're not, you know, whatever it is. It's dismissed, and we're seeing real world consequences of this to, like, literally go in and start a war with another country based on a feeling slash, one son in law after having explicit, one Epstein files, yeah, yep.

Having dismissed various experts for telling you this, the circularity of this, right? You have the attack last summer. You have the Iran experts like, yeah, I don't think we actually got like all the nuclear stuff that he says we got. Nope, you're out. You're out. How dare you question President Trump, whatever, and then what is Trump now saying? Among other things, if you can tease out a rationale for this, it's the nuclear threat. And everybody who's been like, but you said that that was eradicated, they just like, you know, well, we're just going to go down to Mar-a-Lago now, meet with the GOP, or we're going to talk about something else, or Hegseth can just yell at the woke media for asking hard questions.

Brad: Yeah, okay, I'm going to say something that's going to get me angry. So I'm trying to prepare for that, and then I want to reflect on this model of masculinity, because it's going to lead us into DOGE and the tech finance bros who were at our institutions a year ago, destroying everything. You know, if you are, we all know the kind of model of masculinity we're talking about often leads to outbursts of anger, to violence. It often leads to toxic relationships. It often leads to authoritarian styles of leading, whether in a job or in a family or in a church. We all know that when you think that a man should not ask others for help, should do and not think and does not need relationships, but just needs one off strikes in order to be a real man, that that's not usually somebody you want to be around in your community, in your family, in your church, anywhere.

And there's ramifications to that, and I think there's a lot of people listening who felt those ramifications from those kinds of men, their dads, their pastors, their bosses, their boyfriends, their partners, something. Unfortunately for us as a nation, we have allowed Pete Hegseth to be the Secretary of Defense now for way too long, and here's the result: the US military accidentally struck an Iranian elementary school on February 28, likely due to outdated information about a nearby naval base, according to two sources. So this happened. We could have talked about it last week. It had just happened when we taped. We'll talk about it now. Everything points to the US being responsible for that strike. And Hegseth tried to say this week that that was a result of, they were firing missiles from there. They're cowards. They fired missiles from a girls school daring us to bomb it. And so blah, blah, blah. Okay, but the stakes here are so high, Dan, that to me, if, and this is, here's a reflection on masculinity. You ready? I'm going to give you my little reflection on masculinity in the weekly roundup, which is, seems a little inappropriate, but I'll do it anyway.

I think we do need to talk about good ways of being a man. I think the only time we hear about masculinity often is when it's toxic, and I understand why. I totally get it. You don't need to explain that to me. You can, if you want. I'm open to learning more, but I do know that men, and we've seen the results here, whether it's the Epstein files, whether it's Me Too, whether it is any millennia of male domination, patriarchy, et cetera. But we do have to talk about ways men can actually be men in the world that's helpful. Otherwise we're just, we're diagnosing without.

And I think the questions I ask myself, and I would love for other men around me, especially other straight and cis men, to ask, is this: rather than how can I be in charge of this situation, I'd want to ask myself, how can I help with this situation? What role can I play in this situation? Rather than say it is my job to protect everybody around me by being physically imposing and threatening violence, I'd love to say, how can I invest in relationships and in actions and behaviors that would lead me to be somebody who will help protect those around me in ways that I'm able to do that? That doesn't mean I'm a big, bad UFC dude who's like looking to fight anyone who looks at my family or whatever. It means protection is expansive, and I want to say like, what is it that I can do to help protect my kids in every way possible, emotionally, psychologically, relationally, spiritually, et cetera, all that.

When you don't ask those questions, when you're a man who's just like, nah, we do, we don't think around here. And we don't need to talk about it. We need to do it. And I don't need relationships. I don't need to understand what's been happening in Iran in the Middle East for four and five and 10 decades. I don't need the nerds and the pencil heads talking to me about the different aspects of this whole political quagmire. I'm just going to show up and beat the shit out of these people. And then what? Then, what are they going to do? And you know what happens when you do that? You bomb a fucking girls school.

And I don't care what country you live in, I don't care who you are. I will always be the kind of person, you can call me whatever you want. You can call me whatever you want, and especially if you want to think about Christianity, I will always be the kind of person who thinks a seven year old person anywhere in Iran, in the United States, in Bangkok, in Berlin, if you are Muslim, if you are Christian, if you are atheist or agnostic, I don't care who you are, there is no way you should get your school bombed, period. And if you do that because you're the kind of man who does stuff and beats the shit out of people and doesn't need to listen to others, then you're a danger to all of us, and you're the exact reason why we should not have people like you in charge of church, of family, or of, dare I say, the most potent and lethal military in the history of humanity. So there you go. There's my impassioned set of principles on masculinity and the bombing of a girls school. Thoughts on this, before we go to whether or not this Iran conflict is actually splitting MAGA in any real way.

Dan: I think another piece of this that overarches, we've seen this in Trump as long as Trump's been this kind of political figure, and we've seen everybody else is the, also the men never acknowledge a mistake. That notion. So the bombing of the girls school. Everybody knows at this point that the US fired a Tomahawk cruise missile and it hit the girls school. It didn't come from somebody else. It didn't, you, whatever. So what does Hegseth do? As you say, when pressed on this is like there were cowards that were daring us to bomb it. They're like, you know what? You know what else, Brad, that model of masculinity can't walk away.

Like, okay, let's say that they were daring you to bomb it. You bombed it. You know what you do if somebody dares you to like kill a bunch of kids because, like, they're firing missiles that aren't very good missiles? Like, I realize they're lethal and other people die or whatever. But like, everything's also about how Iran doesn't really have the ability to very well target things that it's shooting at. And all of this kind of stuff and whatever. It's not an incredibly lethal context and all of that. You say, wow, oh, that sucks. They're using human shields. Well, I guess that means we're not going to kill the human shields.

So I mean, if we want to play the what would a positive vision of masculinity be? I don't like the real men game. But if I had to be like, yeah, maybe real men are the ones who can walk away, who are confident enough and secure enough and informed enough that they know when it's a good idea to not throw a punch, or to not go in guns blazing, or to back off or to de-escalate. And we could go into ICE, and we could go into like, there's so many things that this ties into that all define the Trump administration, right? That they flow out of Donald Trump and into every crevice of MAGA nation, and define this conception of masculinity all the way down to the 30 something percent of Gen Z men who say that the women should, you know, do what their husbands say, and so forth, all the way down.

And Hegseth said the quiet part out loud. They dared us to bomb it. Okay, you took that bet. Like, what kind of frat house, national frat house are we living in, where you can get anybody to do anything by just saying, I dare you to, in front of it? That's basically what this is.

Brad: Let's take a break. We'll come back and talk about whether or not there is a split in MAGA over the Iran conflict.

Okay, Dan, we've talked about how there is a potential here for there to be a significant split in MAGA, and I think it's worth talking about in light of data. So there is a piece here from, sorry, I got to pull it up, from Gabe Fleisher. And Gabe is writing at Wake Up To Politics. He says there's no, there's no MAGA split on Iran, despite what everyone is saying. And the rationale that Gabe Fleisher, and Gabe Fleisher does good work. This is not me sort of saying, what a haggard. It's just saying, you know, here's what Gabe said. And I think I have some things I agree and disagree with here, but here's what he's pointing out.

There have been polls in the last like week and a half by, you know, NBC, CNN, YouGov. And here's what they found, is, for the most part, Republican support for the conflict in Iran is three to one. So Republicans are three to one in support. About 25% are like, I'm out on that. Okay, so that's there. Now, non-MAGA Republicans, non-MAGA Republicans, which we know is a small group, only about half support it. The other half are out. Okay, now MAGA Republicans, nine out of 10 support. So what Fleischer concludes there is that there's really not a split in MAGA about Iran, and that if you look at this data, at least all of the discourse and all of the whatever, is kind of overblown. Okay, so here's my, I think, take on that.

I think that this data shows there's still widespread support for President Trump when it comes to Iran. However, one of the things that I've learned about the American right is that it is an elite driven ecosystem when it comes to media and culture and politics, and that is by design. If you read Chelsea Evers book, if you read other histories of the religious right and the takeover of the Republican Party in the late 20th century, what you realize is that there is a coordinated media ecosystem that is able to move from a few elites down through podcasts and Fox News and influencers and other talking heads to make sure that people think and hear what they want them to hear.

And so my argument here with Fleischer is not with the data. I think the data is clear. My argument would be, is we don't know yet. We've only just started to get that kind of Megyn Kelly, Steve Bannon, Tucker Carlson, Nick Fuentes and others on the Trad Catholic side, the Doug Wilson side, and others saying we're just not into this Iran war, and we don't think you should be either. Okay. The other question I have is, who is now identifying MAGA Republicans? What does that mean? Because I think there are people who are in those camps, the Tucker camp, the Megyn Kelly camp, the Nick Fuentes camp, and others who are like, I'm not a MAGA Republican. MAGA is dead. I mean, there's Doug Wilson pastors who would say that. So I'll start there, Dan, those are my two quibbles with Fleischer's thoughts. What do you think?

Dan: I also don't have any reason to challenge the data, right? And the reason I say that is like, let's rewind and imagine that those numbers held. Like, let's imagine that, okay, if you had three to one Republican support, non-MAGA Republicans, yes, small number, but 50%, what would the effect on the last election have been if you had defections of those kinds? Like Trump won the election by a super, super small margin. I know he keeps talking about mandates, and everybody on the right keeps talking about mandates, but he didn't win. I mean, he won a plurality of votes. He did not win a majority of votes cast. That's how tight it was. So the numbers don't have to be huge to be significant is the point that I'm trying to make, right?

And I haven't crunched all the numbers. I don't know if you had a three to one Republican support, if it mattered enough, and so forth, how that would play out, but I think it would be significant. And so I think that that matters for me. I agree with your point that we don't know yet, because, you know, it's easy to forget that Megyn Kelly and Tucker Carlson and these folks, they predate Trump. And when Trump disappears, they're going to still want to have their media empires and their listeners and whatever, and they're going to have an influence. And you know, so we don't know what that's going to look like. And as you say, there have been the kind of MAGA, kind of MAGA defections, let's say, or the sort of post-MAGA movement, whatever that is.

I think the other piece though, is, do we think that a lot of these people who maybe are in the MAGA camp and don't like Iran, does it mean they would vote against Trump? Maybe not, probably not. Trump's not running. Even Trump isn't playing the game of talking about running anymore, right? He's not doing a lot of people say there should, and that, I don't know if people have noticed, but that's kind of disappeared. That language. What have we seen in every special election that has happened since Trump got elected? We've seen Democrats over performing, and we've seen an enthusiasm gap, a significant enthusiasm gap among Republicans. Does this, should it continue for a period of time? Does this affect that? Does this keep that going on into fall of 2026 and the midterms?

That I think is significant, because we get enough dissatisfaction with the failed promises of MAGA, economic being probably the primary ones for most people, but now the America First, no forever wars, especially, especially if they have to commit ground troops, which every analyst I've read says if they're going to actually achieve the goals that it now seems like they kind of want to achieve, like, for example, forcibly opening the Strait of Hormuz, you're going to have to put boots on the ground. Does that keep enough of those people away from the polls in November? Because they're just, they've just had it, and they've been disillusioned. I think that's the other piece that's significant, and I think that's the nearer term point that matters, because it's not just about support of Trump anymore. It's about this open question of what is, or what will be the GOP post Trump, who's the heir apparent? We've already talked about, you know, JD Vance still kind of doesn't know where to position himself on this. I think all of those factors are in place. So I think even small raw numbers of defections are potentially significant.

Brad: Let me give you some more numbers that are at play into this, Dan. So here's PRRI from just March 2. So just like less than two weeks ago. White Christians continue to be more likely than Christians of color and non-Christians to view Trump favorably. So today, March 2, roughly seven in 10 white evangelical Protestants view Trump favorably. So it's 69%, but that used to be 76%. Okay? And Sarah Posner quoted a stat the other day that showed that there's even data that shows that in the like low 60s. Once again, that's a massive thing when it comes to like, if you redo the 2024 election again, or when you think about that energy and enthusiasm needed for the midterms, if you're feeling that way about Trump, if you've soured on him, if this is like, you know, end of George W. Bush's second term kind of feelings, right? Where, you know, people were really kind of like done with it. That's an issue. And remember, they'll give you one.

Dan: More that in the elections, it was in the 80s, the low 80s, right? So both the 2020 or Yeah. Prior election, 2016. Yeah. 2016, 2020. I can't, I can't do math. This is why the humanities. Yes, the two elections where Trump won, both times, evangelical support was in the 80s, so 69%, even down into like the mid 60s. As you say, mid to low 60s. It's a significant drop, and I would argue he wouldn't have won either one of those elections if those numbers, if that percentage of white evangelicals voted for Trump now, then he's in trouble in both of those elections.

Brad: Since Trump's reelection, PRRI reports, a slight majority of white Catholics have viewed Trump favorably. So the white Catholics have kind of held it like a little over half. However, when it comes to white mainline folks, it's gone from 55% to 45%. It's a 10% drop, and then we all know the drop among Latinos and Black voters. So I think those things are things to keep an eye on.

Let me briefly throw two ideas at you, Dan. I think that we don't know yet if the Iran thing is actually going to be favorable for Trump and MAGA, because, and here's why, I think it could go really sour if you have to send troops to Iran, and if affordability continues to just be a growing problem. IE, we're getting the like snapshots of people at the tank. Hey, here's what it cost me today. Cost me $4.50, it cost me $5.50, it cost me $6.50, whatever a gallon. I think if you get there, you're going to get the like America First folks being like, what are we doing? Like, my bank account hurts. It cost me $120 to fill up my tank. Food keeps getting more expensive, and now you're telling me 19 and 20 and 23 year old Americans need to go over there and fight for what? What are we fighting for? Why are people dying? Why are people coming home in caskets? This doesn't make sense. I think you can go there and it can just be really bad for Trump.

There's two scenarios to me that I think will lead to, well, there's one scenario and one lane that I think will potentially help MAGA. The scenario is one that two different people have pointed out this week. They've both said that there could be a terrorist attack on American soil, either propagated by Iran or a false flag operation that is conducted by the Trump administration itself that would lead American fervor for vengeance and bloodlust to a place of supporting this. So if you wag the dog of war and then you get hit on your soil, the people will support you. Because, oh, they got our people. Now we got to go get theirs. Here is none other than Tucker Carlson talking about that.

Tucker Carlson: And what does it mean to win? Well, the most obvious and often repeated observation about this conflict is totally true. Iran's threshold for victory is very low. It just needs to survive. The regime has to remain intact. Now in order to change the regime, everyone pretty much agrees you would need ground forces. You'd need troops, boots on the ground, American boots on the ground, in order to do that. And there is zero appetite for that in this administration, much less in the country. Israel would like us to commit ground troops, obviously, but it would take a lot to get us to do that. It would take some sort of terror attack in the United States, probably, like 9/11 in order for us to do that. But that hasn't happened yet. Happened yet. We pray it never happens.

Brad: And many of you are like, well, Tucker Carlson, Tucker Carlson. Well, here's Jimmy Kimmel, the comedian, talking about it.

Jimmy Kimmel [Cip]: Preparing to launch a drone strike on the West Coast, which is where we all are right now. So that's, isn't this how Iron Man 3 started? The movie? We can't handle a drone strike. We barely survived the writers strike here. Okay, and I hope these Iranians realize Donald Trump wants you to bomb us for him. That would be a win-win. He might even bomb us himself and blame it on you. Okay, just keep that in mind.

Brad: So two very different people pointing out this scenario. So that's one. Let me point one more out, and I'll see what you think. We have seen a rampant, disgusting resurgence of Islamophobia coming from the GOP. Tommy Tuberville had a picture of Mamdani holding a prayer gathering for Ramadan in the mayor's quarters, and he just said the enemy is inside the gates. Andy Ogles the rep from Tennessee said, I quote, "Muslims have no place in American society." Randy Fine said Mamdani should be deported. I think that conflict with Iran means you can ramp up Islamophobia. And so if you get an attack, especially, you're going to get that 9/11 style Islamophobia go wild. And that is a way to get that energy, you just talked about, that enthusiasm, you talked about at the midterms. What do you think of those two things?

Dan: I think it's, I think is there. It's interesting to think about what would happen. Like, I guess a couple things. One to think about what would happen when you would have, because he had the other wild card on the right, I feel like, is the conspiracism, right? That Tucker Carlson snippet, he's as much as like winking and nodding that when the terror attack comes, it's going to be the Trump administration who did it. Like, it's like a preacher. With her, yeah, it's a wink, wink. Nod da, I was like, well, it hasn't happened yet. Pause, pregnant. Pause, right? So that would be, and I obviously do not want a terror attack of any kind in the United States. That's not what I'm saying. But it would be interesting to hear all the same forces of conspiracism that Trump has unleashed and regularized and normalized for the last decade, continue to turn against him, as they have with Epstein, right? So we've seen that. And I think that's that's like a wild card in this.

I think another piece, I think you're right, the rally around the flag thing would be real. If I was Iran, I'm not Iran. I'm not calculating for Iran. Nobody. I promise. I'm not a secret agent. Nobody in Iran has contacted me. But if I'm Iran, I don't try to even attack the United States mainland. I think for exactly that reason. I think Iran has a bunch of military advisors who are like, if you do that, like, there's nothing holding this administration back. And you know, I would be for exactly that reason.

I think one other piece about this that, again, we don't know, but, you know, I was thinking about this this morning as we were getting ready to record, how long now has the GOP been doing this thing about, like, oh, we're losing the messaging on affordability. We need to talk more about affordability. We need to. We're coming up on like half a year. Like, sometime in the fall, they really started talking about this, and we're in March now, and Trump just guaranteed that they can't. They just went down to Mar-a-Lago, and they were supposed to be strategizing and talking about how they were going to talk about affordability and keep Trump laser focused on affordability. And instead, they're having to try to defend an attack that most of them think was ill founded, or they're spewing Islamophobic rhetoric, or, you know, whatever. They're not, they're not convincing anybody about affordability, and things are getting more expensive.

Again, I drive two hours round trip to get to campus and back every day, and like I know what I'm paying in gas now versus what I was a couple weeks ago. How long, again, to bring all these things full circle? Nobody has a sense now of how the Trump administration extricates themselves from this. How long does that go on? How long do they keep not being able to message about the things that they want to message about because this other stuff's going on, let alone the human cost and the toll and all of that? It's just a catastrophic kind of blunder at present. And as you say, I think there are some ways where it could be favorable for Trump, but right now, I think the unfavorability outcomes outweigh the favorable ones. I mean, if he could wave a wand and have this stop tomorrow, how much time have they lost again? How much of a news cycle have they lost again? What's the what's, you read all the things, what is the timeline from an end of hostilities or something, to a regularization of supply of oil and gas and different things like this? And you know, all of that. As I said, we're in March. A couple more months. We're coming into the summer, and then Congress takes their break, and then they come back, and it's September, all of a sudden. So I think, I think there's a time, I guess a clock factor here that's also really significant. I think.

Brad: I think that this is going to sound like very businessy, but I think Q2. I think quarter two of an election year often sets the table for what will happen in quarter three. So, like, when you go March to June, you're sort of setting the table right for, like, what is actually going to be remembered and at stake when people go to the polls, and if this, as you say, carries on into that, and people like go on, try to go on summer vacation in June or July, and they don't have a job, and gas is $6 a gallon, it's going to set the table for some midterm stuff that is going to be really ugly. So that's there. Okay, let's take a break. We'll come back and talk about the DOGE stuff and how it all fits into everything we're talking about, masculinity and other things. Be right back.

Estimates are, Dan, that in one weekend, we used $5 billion in strikes, missile strikes. That's what it cost. Other estimates put the war at $1 billion a day, and that leads us to the depositions of several DOGE leads who were forced to explain themselves in a legal setting, and the ways that they went about deciding which programs, which grants, which things would be cut from the federal government. And we now have videos of those, and I think it's worth going through them.

One of the ones that we're going to hear from is from Justin Fox, who was a lead. He's a former finance bro who helped Elon Musk with his assault on our institutions. If you watch the videos, he looks like a young man in his 20s who is a finance guy. He looks like a clean cut white dude who went to a fancy high school and a fancy college, and here he is now on Wall Street working for Goldman Sachs. He looks like that kind of dude. And here's what he said about cutting grants in the National Endowment of the Humanities, Humanities grants, and why they were doing it in terms of reducing the federal deficit, and if it did anything, here's what he said.

Attorney [Clip]: You don't regret that people might have lost important income to support their lives?

Justin Fox [Clip]: No, I think it was more important to reduce the federal deficit from $2 trillion to close to zero.

Attorney [Clip]: Did you reduce the federal deficit?

Justin Fox [Clip]: No, we didn't.

Brad: So Dan, question, do you regret it? No, I thought it was more important to reduce the federal deficit. Did you do that? No. Just, just now, you know. All right, it then goes to a question about a grant for HIV/AIDS prison movement and its legacies in the United States. So it's a book that got a grant, somebody who's writing a book about, you know, HIV and AIDS prison movements, and it's how activists fought the convergence of HIV/AIDS and incarceration from the inside and outside prisons across Reagan through Clinton years. Okay, so Fox identified this as, quote, "one of the craziest." And he says, yeah, I did. And when he's asked why this is one of the craziest, here's his response.

Attorney [Clip]: "This is a history of the HIV/AIDS prison movement and its legacies in the United States. My book project narrates how activists fought the convergence of HIV/AIDS and incarceration from inside and outside prisons across the Reagan through Clinton years, and argues that this organizing holds legacies in the prison abolition movement of the 1990s to today." This is one of the grants that you or Mr. Fox identified as craziest of any age. Is that right?

Justin Fox [Clip]: That's right.

Attorney [Clip]: Why did you identify this as one of the craziest grants?

Justin Fox [Clip]: Because it references honest and queer insights into prison abolition and LGBTQ studies.

Attorney [Clip]: Any other reasons?

Justin Fox [Clip]: No.

Attorney [Clip]: "Examining military service from the margins, the complicated service discussion series will bring together veterans and community members to examine the experience of service members who identify themselves as female, black, Native American, LGBTQ or an immigrant, the dynamics, reasoning and strength behind serving a country that does not always serve you in return." Did I read that correctly?

Justin Fox [Clip]: Yes.

Attorney [Clip]: You and Mr. Fox identified this as one of the craziest friends at any age. Yes?

Justin Fox [Clip]: Yes, it appears so.

Attorney [Clip]: Why did you do that?

Justin Fox [Clip]: Because it explicitly says LGBTQ.

Brad: It references feminist and queer insights and LGBT Studies. Any other reason that it's crazy? No, that's it. I'm going to stop there. We'll talk more about this in a minute. We'll keep going. If you listen to this, things are crazy and not worth funding, and they have no value because they mention LGBT people, feminism and are about people in prison. I don't know, Dan, you've watched this clip. Any other takeaways there? Is that strike you as a fair assessment?

Dan: Yeah. I mean, that's it. I mean, one of the things that comes up in these clips here and elsewhere, right? And is the question that we talked about earlier, the question of expertise, right? And they're like, you know, they're like, do you think it's a problem that you don't have any background in this, or haven't studied this, or don't have government experience, or, you know, any of that? And they're like, nope, nope. Not a problem, not a problem. And there's one where, you know, they ask, and he's like, yeah, well, you know, I think that people who like read books and things outside and beyond this. You know, I think that that's good, and they look cool. So what books did you read? He's like, there were no books.

Brad: Wait a minute, Dan, is that true? Let's listen to the clip and see if you're right. That can't be there's no way that's true. Let's listen to him in his words.

Attorney [Clip]: But this judgment call was made by you, and your personal judgment combined with Justin's personal judgment to cancel grants based on DEI, yes?

Justin Fox [Clip]: Yes.

Attorney [Clip]: Do you think it's inappropriate in any way that someone in their 20s with no experience with grants for federal government was making personal judgment calls about what grants to cancel?

Justin Fox [Clip]: Actually, no, I don't think it's inappropriate.

Attorney [Clip]: Why not? Objection.

Justin Fox [Clip]: I think a person can have enough judgment from reading books and being well informed outside of traditional experience to make judgment calls about obvious things like a grant that literally lists DEI in its description, to know whether it violates an executive order.

Attorney [Clip]: You just, I'm sorry. I'm saying books because you said books. What books would you have read that would have informed your opinion on what grants to cancel based on DEI?

Justin Fox [Clip]: There were no books. Well, my apologies.

Brad: Dan Miller, that's right, Brad, you were right. That's exactly what we were saying.

Dan: Sorry. No, it's, I mean, we were talking about masculinity earlier, and it's like anybody who's ever experienced the kind of the mansplaining phenomenon, as they refer to it, that's these guys. What gives them expertise? Nothing, except that there are a couple, like, just a couple guys, just a couple bros. Like, they don't need to know anything else. That's all they need to know. That's all it is. It's, you know, that's all the expertise they needed. And they appeal over and over and over in these, like, the clips that we're listening to, and a lot more. And it was like, what, six hours of depositions, or whatever it was, they appeal over and over and over to just kind of common sense. And, you know, always, whose common sense is it going to be right? Just the appeals to common sense and the easy dismissal and the appeal to DEI.

And they asked one for those. So like, what is what is DEI? Can you define that? And they're like, well, no, not really. I mean, like Trump had an executive order and that did enough. Like, cool. So, like, what did he say in his executive order? Yeah, I don't know. I don't know some stuff. It just the lack of expertise, but that, as we've said months and months and months ago, that is a feature, not a bug, for MAGA, for DOGE, for all of this. That's what you want, a lack of expertise. And instead, you just get ideologues for whom any reference to something queer or feminine or anything else makes it bad and crazy and what have you.

Brad: Let's listen to another one, and then we'll discuss what you just said. This is about a documentary on historical events and thenthe Black civil rights movement. Here it is.

Attorney [Clip]: Do you agree with ChatGPT's assessment here that a documentary is DEI if it explores historical events that significantly impacted black civil rights?

Witness [Clip]: Yes.

Attorney [Clip]: Okay, why would that be DEI?

Witness [Clip]: It's focused on a singular race.

Attorney [Clip]: What is not for the benefit, is not for the benefit of humankind. It is focused on a specific group of or specific race here, being black.

Attorney [Clip]: Why would learning about anti-black violence not be to the benefit of humankind? Objectionable.

Witness [Clip]: That's not what I'm saying.

Attorney [Clip]: Okay, then what are you saying?

Witness [Clip]: I'm saying it relates to diversity, equity and inclusion.

Attorney [Clip]: You said it's not to the benefit of humankind.

Witness [Clip]: Right. Is that what I said?

Attorney [Clip]: Did you read back the witness's response about benefits to humankind?

Court Reporter: "Question, why would that be DEI? Answer, it's focusing on a singular race. It is not for the it is not for the benefit of humankind. It is focused on a specific group or a specific race here, being black."

Attorney [Clip]: So what do you mean by not for the benefit of humankind?

Witness [Clip]: That's a very subjective. The way that I phrased it there wasn't exactly what I meant. It is focused on a specific subset of race, and therefore it relates to DEI. Okay, I'm not suggesting that this is not for the betterment of humankind. That was a misphrasing.

Brad: So there's this, like, quibble about humankind and whether it benefits it. He's like, that's not what I'm saying. He's like, what are you saying? I'm saying it relates to diversity, equity and inclusion. And I just want to agree with you, Dan, and I want to just like, you know, ask you again, like, if you listen to this show. And I was tempted, I was tempted to go back a year and, like, dig up clips of us saying this, but I didn't. We were saying, and so many other people were too, that the attack on DEI is code. It's code for saying, we don't want women in charge. We don't want women in the military. We don't want women overseeing us. We do not want there to be focus on black people, people who are not white, immigrants. We do not want there to be focused on people who are not straight.

DEI means we have included people who don't deserve to be here: women, black people, feminists, queer folks and so on. And the administration was like, oh no, we're getting rid of fraud, waste and abuse. And we heard it from the guy's lips. We didn't do any of that. We know that now they did none of that. They did not cut out any fraud, waste or abuse. What did they do? They destroyed grants and programs and initiatives that tried to make it possible for more people to flourish and for us to develop understanding and expertise that would make our society better, period.

And so when they're asked, what is DEI? To me, when I read this as somebody who, like, loves reading and analyzing, I'm like, DEI means anything that is black, queer, woman related, feminine related, or just not white. I don't know. Am I being too harsh here?

Dan: No. I mean, it comes through explicitly in what he says, if you just tease it out a little. So, like, so there's also, these guys are making, like, you know, $150K or whatever to do this for. Basically, like, they're using ChatGPT, but like, if it was printed out, they're just, like, Control F, that's all they're doing. It's like, take Word, searching for certain terms. But what was the argument for axing this, right? That it focused on, focused on a singular race and didn't benefit humankind. And of course, like 30 seconds later, he's like, was like, so why was that a benefit to humankind? He looks all offended, and he's like, read back his answer. Like, it's what you just said, dude, that it didn't benefit humankind.

So what do they ask him? They're like, well, what words did you search? He says, he looks up words like black, homosexual, LGBTQ, plus. And he was asked, what about white or Caucasian or heterosexual? And he said, no, I didn't look those up. Here's the point. The rationale given is those things focused on a singular race or a singular group. They didn't focus on everybody. They were exclusionary. Oh, but you didn't look up other singular groups, like white people or Caucasian people or heterosexual people. What's the logic there, right? Oh, well, if you look up black or homosexual LGBTQ, that's not humankind. We didn't need to look up white or straight or cis, because that's what humankind is. That's the logic.

The logic is not that this is about not focusing on particular groups. It's that only some particular groups represent the norm against which we measure humanity, and it's straight people and it's white people and it's men. I didn't hear them talking about, I don't know, looking for studies in masculinity, right? The word masculinity isn't going to show up there. None of those terms are going to. Why? Because those are the defaults. It's all there. Like, as you say, if somebody who likes to piece through these and read through a text or a transcript or whatever, all the stuff's there. The pieces are all there to say we didn't need to look at white people or straight people or Christian people or men, because they represent humankind. That's what humankind is. That's the norm against which we define humankind, and anything that departs from that norm is less than that. That's the logic of DOGE.

Brad: So if I just, I know we need to close down today. If I bring this back around to this sense of masculinity, what I take about DOGE was this. They assembled a bunch of Elon Musk and a bunch of guys in their 20s full of testosterone who were like, we're going to go in, we're going to smash, we're going to destroy, and we're going to grab, we're going to take all the data, we're going to destroy all the grants, all of the programs, USAID, USIP, all the humanity stuff, all the stuff related to the arts, that's all waste, that's all fraud, that's abuse.

And if you just think about that logic, Dan, what they're saying is, is things that are related to women, things that are related to racial minorities, things are related to sexual and gender minorities, people who identify differently, they are waste, fraud and abuse. We don't need to fund those things. Those things need to go away, because the real value is not in them. Okay, but the model of masculinity is there. Do, don't think, you don't need help from others. They were using ChatGPT. They asked this guy, do you know anything about peer review? No. Do you know anything about like these topics? No, I was using common sense. And I think you can be, you know, you've already mentioned, I think you can be trained in just non-traditional ways. Great. What books did you read? There was none. Okay, so think, no, do, don't think. Don't ask other people for help. And who needs relationships? Who needs to think about the long term ramifications? No, just punch the guy in the face because he dared you.

Who needs to think about the long term ramifications of flourishing, health protection, a sense of our community like working to progress? We don't need any of that. Smash, grab, go. And what did that get us? It destroyed lives across the world. It destroyed programs that lead our country as a scientific beacon across the globe. It destroyed humanities projects that give us key insight into various things. This did nothing for the bottom line, and it did everything to destroy trust, progress, research, knowledge, wisdom, anything. Any other thoughts on this before we go to reasons for hope?

Dan: Well, I think I'm going to use this transition of my reason for hope, because you made the point about in Iran, not back down, that they didn't back down, and the Trump administration wasn't ready for this. And we've seen this, these DOGE cuts and other things. Part of what struck me this week was there was an article about, I think it was in the Atlantic talking about it, and was talking about the colleges and universities that are winning in court, right, that are beginning to overturn some of these related cuts for funding, right? Though, that some came through DOGE, some just came through the Trump administration, targeting universities and colleges and so forth. But it's all the same nexus of reasoning, right?

I'm also thinking about, you know, remember Trump targeting different law firms, and you had the law firms that capitulated, you have the law firms that donated, like, millions of hours or whatever it is, a pro bono work to the Trump administration, but you had some law firms that fought back. They won in court. We all know the story of Columbia. It's going to look like the just folded before the Trump administration at the beginning of the administration, and has not come out on top from this and universities that fought back.

The point is that over and over and over, the people who stand up to Trump are starting to win. And I think that that matters, and I think that that's important. And if you sort of look across the board, we start seeing that the Trump administration's goal from the beginning was that, as they kept saying, flood the zone, right? Or if we wanted to use a Bushism, it was a kind of a shock and awe, so much so fast that nobody could respond. And the wheels of response have been slow, but they're catching up. And I think that we see that, and so that that just that was the theme, for me, was the what happens when somebody doesn't back down? And we want to tie it into the masculinity and the bully who punches first and all that kind of stuff. We know what happens when it encounters somebody who doesn't back down, right? It's meant to cow people, and it's not. And I continue to take hope in that and some findings and some stories this week, and in this case, in the legal, the legal realm, but we've seen it in places like Minneapolis and other places.

Brad: We haven't really been talking about ICE and DHS here, but that is still happening and still a problem. And in the state of Washington, the governor is set to sign a law that says law enforcement cannot mask. So if you're in law enforcement, you cannot wear a mask. I think we're seeing more of that. We're seeing the state of Minnesota and others pass measures protecting refugees and going down the similar route. So again, those wheels are churning. They're slow. It doesn't always feel like there's progress, but we have to notice the good news when it's there, and I think those things are positive.

It doesn't mean that ICE is slowed down. It doesn't mean that in Vermont and Minnesota and other places where ICE is not terrorizing people, it is, period. I watched a clip of Ms. Rachel Zoom calling, FaceTiming with a nine year old in an immigration detention center this week. And man, if you can make it through that without crying, I don't know how you can do that. That is the world we're still living in.

I'll just say quickly too. This is not good news, but it's real news. The Trump administration is stretching itself far and wide from Iran and all of that to trying to terrorize people all over the country with ICE and, you know, there's just not a lot of like expertise there, and there's a lot of like just trying to use brute force to win. And there's a sense there of being stretched across and wide and far, and we've limited the number of people who are actually running the government to like four guys, plus Jared Kushner. You know, that kind of stress, strategically, doesn't go well.

So all right, y'all, I need you to subscribe to our newsletter. Comes out every Sunday. You'll not only get our newsletter Sundays, which contains so many great stuff, but you'll get, if you want it, the written version of Dan Miller's It's in the Code and stuff you can share with non-podcast friends. If you've got people that are not podcast people, our newsletter and our Substack is perfect to share with them, because you can share It's in the Code and other things with folks who are not the podcast type.

Sarah Posner's Reign of Error this week covered Islamophobia, and if you want to deep dive into what we talked about with that today, I can't think of a better episode. She talked to Robert Downen of Texas Monthly, who, in my mind, is one of the most informed journalists in Texas when it comes to the legislature, politics, elections, religion, Christian nationalism and so on. So make sure to do that.

This Sunday, I have an excellent interview with Matthew Avery Sutton on his new book about how the United States shaped Christianity and Christianity shaped the United States. There's a lot of surprises in there, including the ways that we define evangelicalism is pretty much completely historically erroneous. And you'll want to hear that.

We'll be back next week with It's in the Code, the weekly roundup, and I'm going to be talking Monday about James Talarico and why people are so into him, and whether or not he's a Christian nationalist like those on the right are saying he is. We'll get into that and more. Thanks for being here. Y'all appreciate each and every one of you. We'll catch you next time.

Dan: Thanks, Brad.