Raging Moderates: Trump & Pentagon Now Completely Delusional on War Strategy (preview)

Big news! We’ve just been nominated for a Webby Award for Best News & Politics Podcast! Now it’s time to bring it home—and we need your help. Cast your vote HERE: https://vote.webbyawards.com/PublicVoting#/2026/podcasts/shows/news-politics The Iran war keeps escalating, and the messaging from Washington couldn’t be more split. President Trump claims “real progress” is being made toward a deal, while Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth insists the U. S. is “closer than ever to winning”— even as Iran maintains the ability to strike back. Gas prices are climbing, supply chains are tightening, and the Magnificent 7 tech giants are taking a hit. Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov break down the chaos: Is Trump steering the country toward peace — or pushing the U. S. further into disaster? How high could energy prices go if the conflict drags on? And, at what point do the costs of war start outweighing the public's patience? Scott and Jessica also explore the economic fallout, the political pressure mounting at home, and what the future could hold if Trump’s Iran strategy collapses. And finally, Scott congratulates Jessica on her recent significant achievement: living rent-free in the president's head. Follow Jessica Tarlov, @JessicaTarlov Follow Prof G, @profgalloway Follow Raging Moderates, @RagingModeratesPod Subscribe to our YouTube Channel: https://youtube.com/@RagingModerates Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Scott Galloway?

  Support for the show comes from Northwest Registered Agent. Your business identity is everything that makes your business legitimate and professional. With Northwest Registered Agent, you don't just form a business, you start a complete foundation built for privacy, credibility, and growth. That includes registered agent service, a business address, operating agreement, domain, website, professional email, phone number, and built-in privacy. In other words, your home address, personal email, and phone number stay private. Don't pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for what you can get from Northwest for free. Visit northwestregisteredagent.com/profgfree and start using free resources to build something amazing.

• 0:37Scott Galloway?

  Get more with Northwest Registered Agent at northwestregisteredagent.com/profgfree. Thanks for listening to Raging Moderates here on the Prof G feed. This is just a preview of today's episode, and soon we'll be leaving this feed entirely. To get the full episode, you'll want to subscribe to the Raging Moderates feed on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. Again, that's the Raging Moderates feed. We're dropping new episodes every weekday evening, so you can get Jess and me five days a week. Subscribe on YouTube or check us out on Substack if you want it ad-free. All right, here's a preview of today's show. Welcome to Raging Moderates.

• 1:22Scott Galloway?

  I'm Scott Galloway.

• 1:23Jessica Tarlov?

  And I'm Jessica Tarlov.

• 1:25Scott Galloway?

  If you're not already, please make sure to get subscribed to our YouTube channel so you stay up to date on the latest politics news. All right, let's get into it. We're a month into the war with Iran, and the messaging couldn't be more split, or I don't know if that's the right word, confused, sclerotic, head up your ass, makes no fucking sense.

• 1:43Jessica Tarlov?

  Really bad.

• 1:44Scott Galloway?

  There you go, really bad. That's probably better. President Trump is touting real progress toward a deal, while Defense Secretary Pete Hagseth says we're closer than ever to winning.

• 1:55Scott Galloway?

  What is winning, white man? Even as he acknowledges Iran can still strike back. So which is it? Are we nearing a deal or bracing for more retaliation? At the same time, the conflict is expanding. The US is flying B-52 missions over Iran, targeting supply chains, while Iran maintains its grip on the Straits of Hormuz, driving tanker attacks and rising tensions across the region. And back at home, it's starting to bite. Gas prices are up, supply chains are tightening, and the risk of a prolonged conflict is turning into a real political task. So what's the endgame here? Here's Secretary Hackseth earlier talking about the timeline. Let's take a listen.

• 2:36Speaker 02

  Military objectives that we're moving toward and things that we look at. And as he's articulated, you know, he said four to six weeks, six to eight weeks, three. It could be any, any particular number, but we would never reveal precisely what it is because our goal is to finish those objectives. And we're well on our way. And the chairman and I look at this every single day. It will be the president's determination and the president's determination alone when those objectives are complete and when it serves the interest of the American people to cut that deal, to make sure that Iran doesn't have a nuclear capability and ultimately that our objectives or our interests are advanced.

• 3:15Jessica Tarlov?

  It was such a frustrating press conference because he brought up an objective that is now off the list. Secretary Rubio laid out the four objectives yesterday that are left. And by the way, there's no language anymore about obliterating anything. We're just trying to diminish things now, which of course, on the sliding scale, could be anything from like, we nicked it to we blew it up a little to they're already firing more missiles than they were last week, which is a huge deal and change in the state of play. But when he talks about nuclear material, that's gone. Regime change that lets the Iranian people live freely? That's gone off the list. And I don't know if you saw this. The Wall Street Journal reported it last night

• 4:00Jessica Tarlov?

  and then Trump confirmed it this morning on Truth Social, that he's open to an arrangement where he, the US leaves before the Strait of Hormuz is reopened. So that essentially just leaves Iran in charge of the strait and they can negotiate any deal that they want. We know already they're making more money than they were before. They're cutting their own deals. Like, all the tankers that are going through aren't our tankers, right? They're Pakistani tankers, Indian tankers, Chinese tankers. They're supplying the world with oil, again, just at a higher price and filling up their coffers, plus the 14 billion that we gave them back when we eased sanctions on them in the middle of a war that we said was existential for us. It's so unbelievably frustrating. And,

• 4:45Jessica Tarlov?

  like, it continues, you know, the drumming from the right of, "You're not a patriot if you're just calling out," using their language back at them. It's like my favorite thing to do on The Five, where I say, "You don't even have to trust me, right? I'm just gonna give you a series of quotes of high-ranking Republican officials and the things that they're saying, and you can see how they don't match what they said 24 hours ago." It's a completely schizophrenic administration when it comes to this war. And I'm worried that it's just gonna, like, the final nail in the coffin of the global world order. So Poland doesn't want to help us. Spain and Italy, in the last 24 hours, have come

• 5:24Jessica Tarlov?

  out and said, like, "You can't land here en route to that." The UK doesn't want to information share with us in the way that we typically could rely on. And we're saying, "We're gonna peace out before the strait is reopened." What will be the main achievement of any of this?

• 5:42Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, it's, even if the Islamic Republic was open to negotiations, what do they even start negotiations around? It's not entirely clear what the administration is asking for, what their objectives are. And the most disturbing part of that word salad was, "It could be any number in terms of duration." Well, does that mean it could be eight years and $3 trillion? What?

• 6:06Scott Galloway?

  It just feels as if we have absolutely no credibility in the international community. Russia has a tighter relationship with Iran than we have with our European allies right now. And what's interesting is that China, who I initially thought was going to be a big loser here because of the dependence upon oil coming through the Strait of Hormuz, might end up being the big winner because the Western countries who fucked up and maintained a Western alliance and tried to be dignified with the president, South Korea, you know, the Philippines, Japan, they are just as energy dependent or dependent upon imports as China, but China's oil is getting through. So relatively speaking, China is

• 6:46Scott Galloway?

  about to expand its economic dominance in Southeast Asia or in Asia. Meanwhile, all of our allies are like, oh, my God. It all comes back to that great Animal House quote. You fucked up. You trusted us. Whether it's Canada letting their export volume go to 75% of their exports into the US, thinking that they had a great relationship with us, or whether it's Asian nations and our allies, thinking, well, the US appears to be, appears to know what it's doing, even when we disagree with them, we're going to keep quiet, we're going to continue to share intelligence. And now arguably the strongest ally in history with us, at least for the last, you know, call it since 1945, has been with the UK.

• 7:31Scott Galloway?

  And maybe with the exception of Canada, and now the UK is saying, we're not going to provide you with information. So, words matter, communication matters. And even if someone in the IRGC said it's time to negotiate or back channel, who do they call? What is the message? What is the administration looking for? And also, every day this goes on with this flailing, it's like trying to deal with a drunk octopus. It just, it makes them look like the adults. It makes us look like the bad guys that the world community can't trust.

• 8:09Jessica Tarlov?

  Well, on top of it, you know, part of the calculus of the Trump administration has always been that we're going to re-center our ally nexus to the Middle East, right? And create these great partnerships with the Gulf states. And the Gulf states are saying, you have to keep going. Like, you can't poke the bear and then leave us here, essentially, at this point. And so you have this push and pull from the signals that he's getting from Americans at home. I mean, his approval rating was generous yesterday when I said it was at 40%. There are now a number of polls that have him in the mid-30s, even low 30s, right? You have gas hitting over $4 a gallon today. What's diesel up to, like, $5.50?

• 8:54Jessica Tarlov?

  So that decimates, you know, trucking industries, housing, construction, et cetera. And we're saying, like, you got to focus on what's going on at home. Our European allies are saying, this is so harebrained, and you haven't been able to give us a decent briefing to explain what a decent set of goals are or what an exit strategy is. And so no one's happy on that side. And then the Gulf states aren't even happy with what's going on. Would they prefer a world without Ayatollah Jr. in it and the IRGC as it's currently constituted? 100%. But we've even stopped taking out key members of the leadership, which I feel like is an admission, that this is kind of it, right?

• 9:37Jessica Tarlov?

  That, you know, there is no Delsi Rodriguez waiting in the wings for when, you know, she can come into, it will definitely be a he in Iran, but you know what I mean? Like, there's no moderate leader that you feel like you can make a deal with. And some of the more moderate forces that we've seen are now just out there trolling Trump online mercilessly. Like, everybody knows what his game is, right? That he's going to tweet a couple hours before the market opens, try to smooth things over. And I feel like, you know, we tried to put out our best AI slop from the White House account with the, you know, Super Mario-themed battle plans, but we're getting trolled worse

• 10:19Jessica Tarlov?

  than anything that we're producing at this point, which I'm sure is even more humiliating to him than whatever's actually happening on the battlefield.

• 10:27Scott Galloway?

  So just some data here. The war has now cost more than $25 billion. And I think it's important that we start... Creating context around the cost. So that's enough to pay for Medicaid coverage for over 3 million people for a year, free tuition for a T or associate degree for nearly 3 million people, and give nearly 30 million children free school lunch for a year. I think Bernie Sanders' proposal for free college was 50 billion a year. And there are some people saying that this is a quagmire that ultimately is going to cost a trillion dollars. And I think one of the most... So the first ballot Hall of Fame geopolitical catastrophes of the last, of this, I would argue, of this century was George or W. deciding to go into Iraq. You know, trillions of dollars,

• 11:12Scott Galloway?

  4,500 US servicemen, I believe, lost, hundreds of thousands of people in Iraq. But philosophically, I think the real damage that was done was that the administration, Bush said to America, "We can have wars and cut your taxes." And the problem is, the American people believed him. Before we go, a reminder that not only is Raging Moderates now five days a week, we're now available on Substack. Subscribers get ad-free episodes, live streams, and a place to connect with me, Jess, and the rest of the community. Find us at ragingmoderates.proptumedia.com. Also, as I continue to pat us on the back, big news. We've been nominated for a Webby Award for Best News in Politics Podcast. We need your help to bring it home.

• 11:57Scott Galloway?

  Please head to vote.webbyawards.com. Vote-webyawards.com. You want to send President Trump a message? Go to vote-webyawards.com and cast your vote for Raging Moderates for Best Politics Podcast. Show us some love. That's all for this episode. Thanks for joining us today.

• 12:17Jessica Tarlov?

  See you later.

• 12:29Speaker 03

  Your heart can tell you a lot about your health. Apple Watch Series 12 measures your heart rate every five seconds with the most accurate heart rate sensing in wearable. So your vitals app, now with heart rate variability, can tell you when something is off. And your readiness score can let you know when to rest and when to push. Hear the story in every heartbeat with Apple Watch Series 12. The features described are for wellness purposes only and not for medical use. iPhone 11 or later required. Based on Apple-conducted study of heart rate accuracy, August 2026. Visit apple.com slash Apple Watch Series 12.