The Rest Is Politics: US

Podbit · The Rest Is Politics: US

197. Vance Vs Hegseth: Who Takes the Fall for Trump’s Iran Deal?

Explore episode Jun 18, 2026
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Hegseth's Cinematic War Lies

197. Vance Vs Hegseth: Who Takes the Fall for Trump’s Iran … · Jun 18, 2026 News

Pete Hegseth told America it was winning a holy war. He made cinematic videos of things being blown up and showed them to Trump in cabinet meetings on an iPad. Republicans are furious because those Hollywood-style briefings bore no relationship to what military commanders on the ground were actually advising. The gap between the show and the strategy was enormous.

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Hegseth vs Vance: Who Takes the Fall?

At 14:35 · chapter starts 12:55

With the deal's failures established, Scaramucci asks the essential next question: who gets blamed? He puts Hegseth in the frame first — the man who went to the podium daily to lie about the war's progress, rebuked journalists for negative coverage, and showed Trump Hollywood-style montages of explosions on an iPad. Republicans are burning with rage at the gap between those iPad briefings and what military commanders were actually advising. But Katty shifts the target to Vance: the Vice President is out on American television — including Fox — telling audiences that Iran is a normal country that has abandoned 47 years of 'Death to America.' The wood chipper metaphor, which the hosts introduced months ago, gets its sharpest application yet.

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