Mark Penn
Subject: Why Does the Press Think We Lost the War in Iran?
Bio: Senior Advisor to President Clinton and was Hillary’s Chief Strategist for Senate and Presidential Campaigns
Transcript:
Larry Bernstein:
Welcome to What Happens Next. My name is Larry Bernstein. What Happens Next is a podcast that covers economics, politics, and history. Today’s episode is Why Does the Press Think We Lost the War in Iran?
Our speaker is Mark Penn who was a senior advisor to President Clinton and was Hillary’s chief strategist for her senate and presidential campaigns. Mark is now the CEO of Stagwell which is a advertising and marketing company.
I want to learn from Mark why the press thinks that the military campaign in Iran is failing and why the Democrats are not supporting arm sales to their Israeli allies at this critical juncture.
Mark, are the Americans winning in Iran or are they losing?
Mark Penn:
Well, as of this morning, the Strait of Hormuz is open to all vessels. Anything can happen over the next few weeks, but it seems that major progress has been made. What the president has been saying that the new regime is thinking over its position seems to be true.
Larry Bernstein:
Why do you think that the press has portrayed it so far as a loss?
Mark Penn:
I think the press’s position has been simple. Donald Trump crosses a street. The article: Donald Trump disrupts street. Street lights may break. Budget may not be able to cover street repair.
Rhey take every single aspect of the policy and look for everything that could go wrong. They write an article about it and then they call up favorable NGOs or favorable Democratic former administration officials who will say that everything is going wrong.
It has been remarkable in a war in which we decimated the Iranian military and regime leadership and lost almost no soldiers. In terms of the way that this has been depicted in the media is really shocking.
Larry Bernstein:
Why do you think they did that? Is it just pure partisanship or is it more complicated than that?
Mark Penn:
Well, it’s a combination of partisanship and Trump hatred. There was this New York Times writer who many years ago, when you’re dealing with Trump, I guess it’s okay to distort everything.
In this conflict, Tom Freedman said it best, which is they would rather Iran and Hamas won than Donald Trump be right. That absurd perspective, which is so counterproductive to the country and frankly putting soldiers more in harm’s way because it so undermines the effort.
As I like to say, the Iranians read the New York Times too.
Larry Bernstein:
Now, I can understand if a couple people behave that way, but there is no ombudsman above the media to put people in line. Why would the media behave in aggregate like this given what you’re describing it is absurd on its face?
Mark Penn:
It is hard to fathom. The media was trying to make this into Trump’s Afghanistan. And the truth is that the Biden presidency really fell apart over the actions in Afghanistan, which were, I think, fairly reported at the time.
The media was saying, “It can’t possibly work that he’s using extensive bombing and military actions.” They took their cues from the Democrats. The Democrats had a choice here. They could have sat quietly and then picked things up if it were unsuccessful.
What they did was they started illegal unconstitutional. Then even when those arguments fell apart, because after all Obama ran a seven-month war against Libya in a similar fashion, when those arguments collapsed, they clung to the idea that they should use the War Powers Act and try to stop the president.
It did not have any rationality behind it. They also knew they were never going to win. So, what they are really trying to do was keep their voters in line, not let a single voter who is a Democrat believe that the President or the administration, or the country, could do anything that was right here. I cannot think of anything so similarly distorted as what we have seen here in terms of the coverage of the Iran conflict.
Larry Bernstein:
You worked for the Clintons and for Hillary in a senior capacity during her 2008 Presidential Campaign, and her Democratic Party was very pro-Israel.
Mark Penn:
Having worked very closely with the President Clinton and Hillary, that there was a seminal event in terms of changing her opinion about the Israel-Palestinian conflict, which were the negotiations with the Palestinians that occurred at the end of the Clinton administration.
President Clinton was doing his best to do one more thing as he wound down his two terms as president, and that was to try to get a peace agreement. He got the Israelis to give everything. And then they both realized that the Palestinians were not negotiating in good faith, that there was nothing you could give them, that they just wanted to destroy Israel or had forces behind them that made it impossible for them to make any agreement. And that fundamentally changed Hillary’s view.
In recent times while a lot of Democrats defected or waffled or took various positions, the Clintons have stood fast because of that experience and because of that firsthand knowledge. President Clinton right after October 7th, recounted this experience that he had. And that changed their understanding entirely of the situation.
Larry Bernstein:
There was a recent vote in the Senate related to arm sales and bulldozer sales to Israel, and 40 out of 47 Democratic Senators voted against selling arms to Israel during a war. How do you explain the loss of over 80% of the Democratic senators to the Israeli cause? This is not just the progressive wing; this is nearly everybody.
Mark Penn:
Yes. And it’s up from the previous vote that was about 19 senators. This was a Bernie Sanders sponsored resolution. So, do you think all these senators change their mind that Israel in the middle of fighting a war against terrorist forces and being hit with thousands of missiles and drones should not have weapons?
Or do you think that what we have here is that all the moderate Democratic senators have become so frightened of the left and their potential ability to primary them and throw them out of office, that they’re going along in a vote that they knew would fail anyway.
In a choice between being on the record of supporting Israel or supporting the left, were they intending to support Iran and the other forces? No. They wanted to show that they should not be primaried.
They will fall in line. Even AOC has fallen in line when she voted for the iron dome to defend Israeli citizens. Clearly the left has asserted its power within the Democratic Party and Senators are falling in line. And that is a real problem for the party, for the country, and for people who care about Israel.
Larry Bernstein:
There is some theory in political science that the Congressmen or Senator votes reflect the view of their constituents. Do you think that this change in vote reflects their own belief that there’s been a switch in their local constituents’ views on this matter, or does it reflect what you described as a decision to fear a primary?
Mark Penn:
It represents a change within Democratic primary voting electorate. There is not a lot of change in the overall electorate. If I ask a question, for Israel or Hamas, it is like 75/25. If I ask the question, do you favor cutting off aid for defensive weapons? And in this case, including bulldozers for Israel, you would find a majority supporting it. The swing voters in America continue to support Israel. And what you have seen is a real change with young people who did not really have opinions before and have limited knowledge.
Within the Democratic Party this bizarre alliance between the Islamicists and the left that is changing the positions within the Democratic Party and particularly because of the perceived strength within the activist Democratic primary electorate. There are some changes. Israel is not as favorable as it was as a country, but people do not put that in perspective.
Right now, both parties are negatively perceived. The president is negatively perceived. All our institutions are negatively perceived. Hamas and Hezbollah and Iran are 30 or 40 points more negative than Israel is. When you look at the relative choices that people must make, Israel comes out way ahead of the choices between which you support Iran or Hamas.
What you see is a very unhappy electorate that is satisfied with no one. And Democrats may be winning, elections, but they are not winning because of anything that they are doing or that people support.
I would not want to be in power now until this electorate is significantly calmed down because right now, they are very pessimistic. They’re grumpy.
Larry Bernstein:
You mentioned that the progressives and Islamists are allies and that they’re mutually supportive, but who are these Islamists? I don’t think I know anybody who is an Islamicist. It’s more just anti-Israel. Who is a pro- Islamicist and what are their views?
Mark Penn:
Ilian Omar, Mamdani. The Democrats are not willing to stand up to Hasan Piker. Somebody who is not an Islamicist, he’s a full-blown anti-American, right? He says, “America deserved 9/11.” You would think it would be easy to disown people like this.
Larry Bernstein:
I don’t understand when you hear stuff like Gays for Hamas, I just assume that the individual who’s waving that banner is ignorant and doesn’t reflect a broad mandate. Am I missing something?
Mark Penn:
No, you’re not. What you see is social media, highly partisan environment in which information that particularly younger people receive is selective and tailored.
24% of the country would consider themselves liberal. Maybe half of that would consider themselves very liberal. And that change and their hardened position against Israel and willing to call it apartheid and genocide is what is creating this transformation within the party. And that is where they have come together here with the forces as you see.
There is no one saying that Ilian Omar should not be on the Foreign Affairs Committee anymore. No one’s saying that she’s someone who’s unfit really to serve and advance US interests.
The Democratic Party, as its DNC Chair said, is a big tent, and they are willing to take in this tent and even further it. It is tragic, but you see that when you look at that vote where they got 40 out of 47 senators, you see that it’s quite powerful and effective.
Larry Bernstein:
When you get 40 out of the 47, that is not letting someone in the tent, that is the tent.
Mark Penn:
Yeah, fair enough. But we are looking here at some real extremist movements that are not being condemned. Look at what President Trump did where it took a while, but he firmly blasted Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens.
You see Speaker Hakeem Jeffries moving away from mainstream Democratic positions day by day, becoming somewhat more hysterical and strident in tone. He is someone who previously would’ve been considered a moderate, quite reasonable. He’s going to be an incredibly effective speaker, and clearly he thinks the road to becoming speaker is to abandon a lot of his previously held positions and shift both left and sound somewhat more hysterical in tone.
Larry Bernstein:
The Republicans currently in the House have a very small majority, and there was a lot of fights over who would be speaker. It is very possible that when the Democrats win the House, that they would have an exceedingly small majority and Jeffries would need to get every single vote to go his way. How does that influence ...
Now, it may be obvious that the only way to win would be to go hard left, but then he may lose some moderates as part of that and then won’t have sufficient votes. How does that all work, the dynamics of a political system where you need to get everyone on the same page? How do you tailor it just to the progressive wing specifically versus say your more moderate side?
Mark Penn:
He has taken the steps recently to assure that he would become speaker without some intraparty brawl. The left has successfully asserted itself. And the question is whether the moderates are going to be able to do the same and win some concessions on their side. Let us see if they can get organized and come up with compromise like seats on the rules committee or other aspects where they don’t give complete control of Congress to the left. Of course, this election at the end of the day, what are the Democrats going to do with most of the House, do impeachments or investigations? They’re not going to pass any legislation. This is just an interim election for the big one in 2028, which will determine the flow of power within the country.
Larry Bernstein:
Impeachment has been used multiple times since the Clinton administration. It has been ineffective, mostly because they don’t have the two-thirds requirement in the Senate. It has been performative. Is that something that speaks to voters in a performative way or after a period it gets tiring and ineffective and not even successful as a performative act?
Mark Penn:
It went from an extremely serious, solemn event, which happened in Watergate and how the president resigned under pressure after the tapes came out and would not have survived an impeachment.
The Clinton impeachment we won, and I was working with President Clinton during that, and it was ultimately seen as an overreach by the Republicans. You see though that the impeachment has become almost like a ceremonial joke. It’s not serious in which real witnesses are called, in which evidence is put on. Let’s impeach the president and win some public relations points. It is a tragedy.
It will be a mistake for the Democrats to go down that path. It did not get them much of anything since the result is that they have none of the branches of government having gone down that path.
I doubt however, they will be able to resist that.
Larry Bernstein:
Going back to the first impeachment, which was President Johnson just after the Civil War, and the Senate by one vote failed to convict. And the Senator who changed his mind said that he thought it was bad to remove the president for policy differences and not for actual criminality, but that idea does not seem to resonate with the Democratic Party right now. If they had the votes, they would do it. Why is that? What reflects that change in heart?
Mark Penn:
Politics in Washington has taken a turn for the worse. In the Clinton years, you may remember, what we did was the House was Republican and the president made a few great legislative deals that got to a balanced budget and many other advances.
The president’s rating soared to 74% approval, even as they made the mistake of impeaching them, although they thought they had a good case against him. What has happened now is that this has become, is the word you used before, performative. Performative in nature as opposed to serious. They know they’re not getting the votes. They know that it’s not passing. It’s just a question of kind of airing their frustrations.
The most humorous thing is the 25th Amendment stuff. It’s like they’re holding congressional seminars on how we can use the 25th Amendment. Anybody who reads the 25th Amendment knows that it is a vote of the cabinet led by the vice president. Congress has nothing to do with the 25th Amendment. Giving voters the impression that they do to raise money is even more comical than what they are doing with impeachment.
Larry Bernstein:
So, why do that?
Mark Penn:
Clicks, dollars, anger. We are a victim of our social media world now, and I don’t know how we overcome that. I always like to say that everything that we would develop or innovate, you would find either in Star Trek or the Jetsons. When I go through all the science fiction movies that became true, the one thing that no one ever predicted was social media and the power that it could have to fragment communities and stir passions. We’re a long way from dealing with the dilemmas that are being created by this medium.
Larry Bernstein:
I had a book club with former Senate Majority Leader, Trent Lott, and I asked him about his relationship with Bill Clinton after the impeachment trials were finished. He said that immediately after the vote, Bill Clinton sent him a box of cigars and he called the president, and they had a good laugh and they moved on.
In other words, it was not personal. It was political, and they were ready to work together to resolve public issues. This Congress and the executive branch do not seem to be friendly. I can’t imagine Chuck Schumer picking up the phone and having some laughs with President Trump. What does that reflect, the lack of friendship across the aisle?
Mark Penn:
It is the growth of partisanship, the ideological sorting of the parties. When the parties were more ideologically diverse, each of them, it was the parties themselves would have to come up with compromises rather than compromise with their opponents. I think the social media world that we live in where the more extreme and hysterical they are, the more it seems to be their ability to raise funds or get clicks online. We have also had a breakdown of the committee process and that central leadership took over control.
That got rid of the horse trading that would go on at the committee levels to come out with legislation. So, we have seen a real breakdown.
Now, in fairness, could more legislation have been passed now with a Republican majority in both houses and the need to get seven Democratic senators across the finish line on some substantial legislation? That was certainly no more difficult to what President Clinton did, with Newt Gingrich. And I think more could be done here and we will see what the next president does. We have had a lot of presidents who talk in the campaign as though they’re going to bring the country together and work across the aisles. And when you get in, that’s just not what we see happening these days.
Larry Bernstein:
And why is that exactly?
Mark Penn:
Again, part of it is they start out or have several years in which they have all the branches of government, and then when they lose it, rather than say, okay, which I think President Clinton did. President Clinton tried during the first couple of years to get things like healthcare reform and ran into more problems that almost sunk his presidency. He did a lot better making deals with the Republicans whether it was welfare reform, the crime bill, the balanced budget that catapulted his popularity to 74%. That is just not the strategy that the presidents ... I think Obama said when he lost, he did not say, “Now I have an opportunity to roll up my sleeves and make deals across the aisle.” No, he didn’t say that. He said, “I have a pen and a desk.” And he said, “I’ll go do everything I can, “ basically contrary to that.
We have not seen anyone since Clinton take that on as their strategy for accomplishing things in the country and working to overcome what you see as the partisan resistance.
There are two presidents: Reagan and Clinton, who really broke through and had approvals in the ‘70s and even ‘80s, because they did work across party lines unifying the country behind an agenda.
Other presidents have failed to do that. Instead, they worked on their agenda and passed legislation during the small period when they had majorities that could sustain or pass the legislation or use reconciliation that only requires 50% to get it done.
Will another president come along and do the work that both Reagan and Clinton managed to do that genuinely unified the country instead of pointed fingers? That is a big question.
Larry Bernstein:
I want to give a case study example to you. I did a podcast about can Congress fix the tariff refund problem. As you know, the Supreme Court recently announced that the Trump tariff was inappropriately applied and therefore the government will have to refund $165 billion in tariffs. But the money can only go to those with standing and those are the people that paid the tax. That in most cases is the importer. And very often the importer merely passed on that tax to the consumer and therefore will get a windfall. In fact, I know someone who’s going to make nearly a billion dollars in the refund that he otherwise would not have received. And this seems like an unfair result. You would think that there could be a bipartisan solution to either giving money to some of the voters or paying down the debt, but currently giving the money to this importer does not fit the needs of either the Republican or the Democrats.
Just as an example of where the two parties could both agree on policy and decide to come up with a solution. Is that something that is possible or in the current setup is inconceivable?
Mark Penn:
Sorry. I would say the idea that the Democrats are going to agree with Trump to give every American a $500 check.
Larry Bernstein:
Yeah, exactly.
Mark Penn:
Is never going to happen because to go back to square one here, the Democrats do not want to do anything that appears like a victory for Trump on anything. A $500 check to everybody signed by Donald J. Trump is not something ... Now, Trump may be able to come up with this on his own and/or be able to do it. That I don’t know. But I don’t think Democrats are going to go for something like that.
Larry Bernstein:
Totally agree that they don’t want to give Trump a victory. So can you imagine that Democrats would come and say, “Let’s make a deal.” That’s how I imagine how it usually starts. There are things that Democrats want. They think that Trump has overplayed his hand on the tariffs. Could they somehow tie his hands, come up with some aspects of the legislation to make it better or give the money to Democratic Pet projects? Is there really no way to allow Trump to have any victory? I understand your instincts on that, but that reflects a complete breakdown. If we can’t allow the president to sign any piece of legislation, then you’re stuck.
Mark Penn:
Well, we are stuck because of that. That is the problem. Take something like the Iran war. If Democrats are not going to give fighting the evilest regime on earth that recently killed tens of thousands of its own people who are unarmed protestors, if Democrats are not going to rally for that, or they’re certainly not rallying for tariff refunds, okay?!
Larry Bernstein:
Mark, I end each podcast on a note of optimism. What are you optimistic about as it relates to the war?
Mark Penn:
Look, I’m optimistic. If you go back on December 31st, I put out a few predictions on my X. My first prediction was that Maduro would be taken out of office. My second prediction was regime change in Iran. And we do not exactly know who is heading Iran now. We do know it’s not the same people as were heading it before. We do know that there’s an opportunity for change no matter how it looks. And there’s tremendous pressure from 90 million people who must be fed, clothed, and watered. There is tremendous underlying anger about the killings. Imagine for a moment if 10,000 college-aged kids were killed in this country, the anger there would be among the parents and the communities.
They closed the internet, they have the guns, you do not see that anger, but it is there, and it is not going to go away. A new Middle East can emerge from this. The Gulf countries have seen the enemy, and Israel and America are not the enemy. And that is a sea change here in terms of the potential for the region.
Larry Bernstein:
Thanks to Mark for joining us. If you missed our last podcast the topic was Can Congress fix the Trump tariff refund problem John McGinnis, a constitutional law professor at Northwestern was the speaker.
The Supreme Court decided that $165 billion will be refunded to importers—money that, in many cases, could be seen as a windfall. I think there may be room here for a bipartisan solution to give money back to consumers and John explained how Congress can fix it.
I am doing a series of podcasts on the war in Iran. We had Iran’s Rope-a-Dope Strategy with Anthony King who is a Professor of War at Exeter University.
Previously to that, we had the podcast Allies Fighting Together with Yaakov Katz who is the former Editor in Chief of the Jerusalem Post and What Will Define Success and Failure in the Iran War with Hal Brands from Johns Hopkins.
I also did a podcast on the Opening the Strait of Hormuz with James Holmes from the US Naval War College.
We started the series with former Trump National Security Advisor John Bolton about what steps we need to take to win the war.
You can find our previous episodes and transcripts on our website. Please follow us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
I am Larry Bernstein with the podcast What Happens Next.
Check out our previous episode, Can Congress fix the Trump tariff refund problem?, here.
