Before the hosts appear, a pair of sponsor reads set the commercial frame. BetterHelp's ad leads with its 2026 State of Stigma report — 2,000 Americans surveyed, 85% saying support is wise, 74% saying society pushes back against it — and offers listeners 10% off via betterhelp.com/TRIPUS. Tremfya follows with a detailed medical disclosure about its self-injection and infusion options for moderately to severely active Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, along with a full risk rundown. A separate ad for Peyronie's disease awareness (talkaboutpd.com) also runs before the hosts take the mic.

The hosts burst onto the mic with Scaramucci doing his best Trump impression — 'what the hell is going on, Catty?' — before Katty Kay lays out the episode's agenda. First half: the US-Iran deal, which Katty argues is significantly worse than Obama's, signed with great pomp at the Palace of Versailles with Macron in attendance and a visibly pained Marco Rubio hovering behind. Second half: JD Vance's new book Communion, and what his media blitz reveals about his 2028 presidential ambitions. To ease into the Iran analysis, Katty produces a prop Kleenex box — her 'time machine' — and invites Scaramucci to inhabit the role of White House Communications Director once more and make the case for the deal.

Katty's time machine conceit pays off in spades as Scaramucci channels his 2017 self — and immediately breaks character. He calls for Ativan, mocks Howard Lutnick's visible discomfort at the press conference, delivers a blistering impression of Trump saying Hamas kids are 'born with machine guns,' and notes a stunned Marco Rubio. The punchline comes fast: he declares the deal 'terrible' and Katty promptly fires him again, noting he didn't even last 11 seconds. The joke lands because it is also an analysis — there is no way to defend this deal with a straight face, not even for the man who once tried to defend everything.

Scaramucci's Lincoln-vs-Trump contrast crystallises the core dysfunction: a president whose inner circle reflects his self-image rather than challenging it. He reports watching Fox News all morning and finding hosts citing Wall Street Journal condemnations of the deal — not a trivial observation, since the right-wing media ecosystem rarely breaks from Trump this openly. His prediction: the deal won't even survive Trump's cable news habits, three days at most in the study off the Oval Office. The joke has real stakes. He also begins threading a historical argument about the Middle East — every negotiation for 110 years has publicly claimed to be about peace while actually being about oil, choke points, and basing rights.

With the role-play behind them, Scaramucci goes historical. He reaches back to the 1916 Sykes-Picot Treaty — the secret Anglo-French carve-up of the Middle East that created the tribal borders the region is still living with — and argues that nothing has fundamentally changed. The language of self-determination and stability has always been a fig leaf for resource allocation. And Trump, standing in Versailles, was no exception: he had already told the world earlier this year that America had plenty of oil and needed no one's, and then pivoted to crisis warnings about running dry within weeks. Katty adds the Herbert Hoover dimension: Trump is telling us his inner fears out loud at the press conference.

Scaramucci pauses his historical sweep to express something closer to personal bewilderment: Jamie Dimon, whom he calls one of the smartest and most principled people in finance, was sitting to Trump's left at the signing table and got his camera out to photograph the moment. Dimon and JPMorgan are actively being sued by Trump. Scaramucci admits he gets Schwarzman of Blackstone being there, but Dimon? Katty offers a charitable explanation — perhaps even Dimon was momentarily awed by the gold and the grandeur of the Palace of Versailles. But both agree: all he needed to do was read the document.

Katty pivots to what becomes the analytical centerpiece of the Iran segment. Trump emptied the Washington DC reflecting pool, painted it American flag blue, reopened it to great ceremony — and six days later it was full of algae. She traces the five-step pattern: announce you'll solve a problem no one else managed; ignore why predecessors failed; grab any quick solution off the shelf; fail spectacularly; refuse to acknowledge failure. She maps every step onto Iran — and the reflecting pool, and Ukraine, and the trade deficit. The American taxpayer picks up the bill each time. On Iran, the bill includes $80 billion spent on the war and a $300 billion reconstruction commitment, with no competitive tender anywhere in the process.

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.

Katty delivers the most damning material of the Iran segment: a direct conversation with a Republican senator on the Foreign Relations Committee who has reviewed recent intelligence. His three-word verdict — 'ludicrous, ill-informed, fantastical' — lands hard. What the intelligence shows is worse: the IRGC, Iran's hardline elite force, is more consolidated and in control than at the start of the war. Iran is not becoming Switzerland. The day-one injection of cash from oil sales will flow directly into weaponry, putting American allies at greater risk. The MOU that has been signed, Katty says, actively hurts American national security. Scaramucci adds the Kushner framing: Jared Kushner has always believed you can override any ideology with a business deal, from Palestinian condos in the first term to Iranian partnerships now.

Scaramucci lays out the Iranian playbook: negotiate when the pressure gets uncomfortable, secure sanctions relief, stabilise the regime, then wait. They have no electoral clock; America does. Every administration has fallen for this. He invokes Scott Anderson's book King of Kings about the Shah's fall, opening with a CIA report from March 1979 calling the regime 'durable, long-term, and sustainable' — just six months before total collapse. America got it wrong with the 1953 Mosaddegh coup, wrong by propping up the Shah, wrong by missing the theocratic revolution, and wrong again now. The bombs don't work either: bankrupt Iran just becomes more fanatical. What's needed, he argues, is genuine empathy for the adversary's worldview — American centrism doesn't travel well to Tehran.

Rubio's studied silence becomes its own story. Katty Kay and Mark Polymeropoulos have both noticed: the Secretary of State has gone radio silent because he is hoping the Iran deal becomes Vance's political obituary, not his own. Trump made this explicit to Fox's Peter Doocy at the Versailles press conference: if the deal fails, he'll pin it on JD. Scaramucci argues Rubio's only brave move six months ago was resignation — like Senator Cassidy calling this the worst foreign policy blunder in decades — but Rubio won't do brave things. His best play now is to work Susie Wiles for a graceful exit before Trump humiliates him. Katty closes the section with a bleak arithmetic: 13 Americans dead, 500 injured, Iran stronger, $80 billion spent, and now a $300 billion reconstruction bill.

Before pivoting to JD Vance's book, the hosts take a sponsored break to plug their own membership product. Scaramucci notes it's a special day in both the UK and US, and Katty details the 25% Father's Day discount on annual gift memberships, which include ad-free listening, exclusive founding members Q&As, members-only miniseries, and early ticketing access to live shows. Listeners are directed to therestispoliticsus.com to click on gifts.

The mid-roll break carries two ads: a repeat of the Peyronie's disease awareness spot directing men to visit talkaboutpd.com to understand their treatment options, and a new ad for Sally, a college scholarship and loan platform aimed at parents seeking smarter options for financing their children's higher education, directing listeners to Sally.com/go-parents.

Katty frames the book's significance: Hillbilly Elegy made Vance, and Communion is his bid to remake himself. The new memoir traces his spiritual odyssey and his wife Usha's role in bringing him to weekly Catholic practice. Scaramucci read both books and compared writing styles; he finds Vance genuinely authored Communion and admires the prose. But the analysis is damning. Vance claims in the book that Catholicism has reanchored him away from material ambition — yet he wrote it from the Vice President's mansion, hired Trump's deputy chief of staff to replace his own, and secured White House sign-off before publication. The spiritual journey and the political manoeuvre are happening simultaneously, and the manoeuvre is winning. Scaramucci's verdict: read it if you want to understand this man, because he might end up as president.

The book tour is where Vance's strategy becomes most legible — and most contradictory. On The View, he opens with a joke about being told by his comms team it's a 'MAGA Republican show,' bats away questions about immigration and detention with polished ease, and apologizes for the 2021 'cat lady' comment that called liberal women without children the ruin of America. In the same week, on Fox, he dismisses Congressional Democrats as 'terrible people.' Katty's reading is sharp: in 2021 it was politically expedient to perform full anti-woke MAGA; in 2026, with female voter numbers underwater, it's expedient to apologize. This isn't moral growth. It's market research. The problem is that voters can sense the calculation even when they can't name it.

Scaramucci opens his annotated comparison of the two books. In Hillbilly Elegy, Vance wrote that his family's problems were not created by governments or corporations. In Communion, the line is reversed: they were. He also traces Vance's intellectual lineage through Ayn Rand and Peter Thiel — Atlas Shrugged libertarianism — and now a pivot to populist protectionism. The arc is not a journey; it's a series of ideological costume changes driven purely by the ambient political temperature. Scaramucci compares it to Hillary Clinton switching from a Cubs hat to a Yankees hat depending on which city she's in. You can't do that. Katty adds the Zelensky moment as the clearest evidence of the 'real' Vance: the man who berated a wartime leader in the Oval Office and slammed America's allies at Munich is not the self-deprecating View guest.

The conversation arrives at its philosophical center. Katty argues that Trump's brand is built on a coherent, if bizarre, authenticity: he has always said contradictory things, always flopped positions, and always done so without shame. That shamelessness is itself genuine. Vance, by contrast, is doing the same thing but trying to clothe it in a narrative of spiritual discovery and family values. The clothes don't fit. Scaramucci agrees: you're almost better off saying 'my brand is that I'm unanchored' — that at least is honest. Vance's authentic self, Katty suggests, is simply a man who wants to be president more than anything else. If he'd just say that, it might actually work. But he won't.

Scaramucci steps back and asks for the objective tear sheet: what does the average American voter think of JD Vance? Katty's answer is that most don't have a settled opinion yet, which is exactly why he's doing this book tour. But the emerging opinion — anchored by the Zelensky dressing-down and the Munich speech — is not flattering. And the data confirms it: Vance was leading 2028 Republican nomination polls but is now sinking fast while Rubio rises. Scaramucci explains why: Rubio is simply more cunning. When Vance played to the Trump audience at Munich, Rubio played to the European room — and when he got hammered for it by Trump, he learned to shut up. Rubio's unanchored too, but he's not trying to pretend otherwise. That's a different kind of political intelligence.

Scaramucci's closing move is characteristically lateral. He invokes Spike Lee at a Knicks game wearing a Pope Leo jersey — signed by the Pope himself — and argues that if you're JD Vance or Marco Rubio and you're not paying attention to that image, you're missing something important. Both men have strained relationships with the Pope. There are 70 million Catholics in America. A 2% swing in the right swing states is a presidency. The book, ostensibly about finding faith, should be the vehicle to capture that vote. Instead, people see through the malarkey, Scaramucci says. The hosts close with a preview of a planned summer series on Vance for founding members.

The episode closes with the running gag of Scaramucci being extracted from the Kleenex-box time machine, fired as Communications Director once more, and sending Sarah Huckabee Sanders back to governing Arkansas. Katty signs off warmly before a post-roll ad for Zazzle, the custom merchandise marketplace, which touts 30 million customers over 20 years and offers 25% off a first order at Zazzle.com.