What the Hell Is Going On

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WTH is Going On in the Negotiations With Iran? Elliott Abrams Explains Apr 17, 2025

Show notes

Following a surprise Oval Office announcement by President Trump during Bibi Netanyahu’s trip to Washington, the United States has once again restarted negotiations with Iran over its nuclear weapons program. Thanks to Israeli attacks on Iranian air defenses and its proxies, coupled with crippling U.S. sanctions, Iran has never been weaker and America has never had more leverage over the Islamic Republic. However, Iran’s nuclear program is also significantly larger and more advanced than it was in 2015 or throughout the first Trump administration. What should Trump demand in a new nuclear deal with Iran? And is the administration’s current approach a recipe for success, or are they being played by the Ayatollah?

Elliott Abrams is a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, the Chairman of the Tikvah Fund, and the Chairman of the Vandenberg Coalition. He previously served as deputy assistant to the president and deputy national security advisor in the administration of President George W. Bush, where he supervised U.S. policy in the Middle East for the White House, and as Special Representative for Iran and Venezuela in Donald Trump’s first administration. His most recent book is If You Will It: Rebuilding Jewish Peoplehood for the 21st Century (Wicked Son, 2024).

Read the transcript here.

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WTH Extra! Does Trump Have a Tariff Strategy? Dany and Marc Discuss Apr 10, 2025

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On this episode of WTH Extra! Dany and Marc discuss Dany’s article, #WTH The Tariff Tsunami. No one should be surprised by Trump’s tariff war. The real question is, what is the President trying to accomplish? Some in the administration argue that the tariffs create leverage to bring about a myriad of free trade agreements the U.S. would not be able to get otherwise. Others argue tariffs will bring back American manufacturing. And some presidential advisors just seem to love tariffs for the sake of tariffs. Is Trump pursuing a radical free trade agenda? Or are these tariffs going to be a permanent fixture throughout his tenure?

Read the transcript here.

Read Dany’s article in the WTH Substack here.

WTH: Are Nationwide Injunctions the New Lawfare Against Trump? John Yoo Explains Apr 03, 2025

Show notes

President Trump’s executive actions are being blocked left, right, and center by federal courts issuing nationwide injunctions – or orders for the government to halt a given policy that judges deem unlawful. However, the constitutionality of these national injunctions is up for debate. Should the Supreme Court decide that judicial policy pronouncements are indeed unconstitutional, what will that mean for Executive power? Could it mean that Congress will need to resume doing the work it has shirked for years? And what will it mean for the Trump agenda?

John Yoo is the Emanuel Heller Professor of Law at the University of California at Berkeley, a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a Senior Research Fellow at the Civitas Institute, and a Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution and Stanford University. Yoo was a law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, the general council of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and the former head of the Office of Legal Counsel in the Justice Department. His most recent book is The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Supreme Court (Regnery, 2023) with Robert Delahunty.

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WTH? A European Supreme Allied Commander of NATO? Kori Schake Explains Mar 27, 2025

Show notes

President Trump is reportedly considering abandoning America’s longstanding role commanding NATO forces as Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR), changing the U.S. combatant command structure, and canceling modernization plans for U.S. Forces Japan. While it’s true that Europe needs to step up to the plate on its own defense needs, abandoning the SACEUR position would place U.S. troops under foreign command, give Washington less leverage over our allies, and weaken deterrence. How can Trump better advance his goal of boosting European defense spending? And where can the Defense Department make cuts that bolster deterrence?

Kori Schake is a senior fellow and the director of foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute. Before joining AEI, Kori was the deputy director-general of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London; a professor at West Point, University of Maryland, and Johns Hopkins University; and worked in the State Department, National Security Council, and Department of Defense. She is the author of Safe Passage: The Transition from British to American Hegemony, and a contributing writer at the Atlantic, War on the Rocks, and Bloomberg. Her upcoming book is The State and the Soldier: The History of Civil Military Relations in America.

Read the transcript here.

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WTH: Britain’s Net Zero Push is Economic Suicide. Robert Bryce Explains Mar 20, 2025

Show notes

UK residents are currently paying some of the highest prices in the world for electricity. How did Brits go from being an energy superpower to showering in the gym because it’s too expensive to heat water at home? Perhaps because both Labour and Tory politicians are banning the production and use of cheap hydrocarbons in the pursuit of a “Net Zero future.” How is Net Zero irreparably damaging Britain’s economy? And what does the UK example mean for other states attempting to permanently phase out hydrocarbons?

Robert Bryce is an author, speaker, and film producer. He has been writing about energy, power, politics, and innovation for more than three decades and is the author of six books on the subject. His most recent book is A Question of Power: Electricity and the Wealth of Nations (PublicAffairs, 2020). Bryce is also the executive producer of the documentary, Juice: How Electricity Explains the World, and the co-producer of the docuseries Juice: Power, Politics & The Grid. He frequently writes on his popular substack robertbryce.substack.com.

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WTH is Going On With Trump, Tariffs and the Economy? Michael Strain Explains Mar 13, 2025

Show notes

The fundamentals of the economy are strong. So why is the Dow Jones down and fears of a recession up? Perhaps because President Trump is rocking the economic boat by threatening tariffs on historic trading partners, only to rescind them the same day; taking a chainsaw to government expenditures when he should be using a scalpel; and talking about structurally changing the U.S. economy. Will Trump’s disruptive approach to the international economy enrich Americans in the long run? Or are the tariffs, and the flip-flopping, going to backfire?

Michael Strain is the director of Economic Policy Studies and the Arthur F. Burns Scholar in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute. He is also the Professor of Practice at the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University, a research fellow with the IZA Institute of Labor Economics, a research affiliate with the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and a member of the Aspen Economic Strategy Group. Dr. Strain also writes as a columnist for Project Syndicate.

Read the transcript here.

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WTH Canada Would Be a Terrible 51st State. Colin Dueck Explains Mar 06, 2025

Show notes

Canada’s economy is in the toilet, has an electorate that is overwhelmingly left wing, and a healthcare system that encourages physician assisted suicide over basic treatment. Canada’s systemic problems have meant that Canadian voters were slowly starting to wake up, and were on track to deliver a blow-out for the conservative party in the next elections. But while Trump’s tariff threats have been omnipresent, his threat to make Canada the “51st state” rallied Canadians around the flag and around the governing Liberal Party. How has Trump’s rhetoric hurt conservative chances of victory? And why would Canada make a terrible 51st state?

Colin Dueck is a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a professor in the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University. He is also a senior nonresident fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and has served as a foreign policy adviser on several Republican presidential campaigns. Colin is the author of four books on American foreign policy and national security and the AEI report True North: Canadian Politics, the Tory Alternative, and the United States.

Read the transcript here.

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WTH Extra! About That Trump-Zelensky Meeting… Dany and Marc Discuss Mar 03, 2025

Show notes

Partisans believe that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was “ambushed” in the Oval Office. The story is rather different. In fact, President Trump was genuinely enthusiastic about signing a minerals deal with Zelensky that would enrich both nations and vest the United States in Ukraine’s future. But Zelensky, acting on poor advice or out of his own stubbornness and exhaustion, used the Oval Office meeting to challenge Trump and Vice President Vance in front of American media, leading to a public spectacle that may permanently damage U.S.-Ukraine relations and Ukrainian security. Is the U.S.-Ukraine relationship salvageable?

Read Marc’s article, Zelensky must mend the breach with Trump — or resign, in the Washington Post here.

Read Dany’s latest commentary on the Trump-Vance-Zelensky meeting here.

WTH Do the California Fires Teach Us About the Need to Invest in Climate Adaptation? Bjorn Lomborg Explains Feb 27, 2025

Show notes

California has invested tens of billions of dollars in preventing climate change, billions more than California’s investment in adapting to the effects of climate change and directly preventing disasters. And now, the devastation of the recent Los Angeles wildfires is further proof that governments need to focus on protecting citizens through cheap and simple investments in climate adaptation rather than expensive and inefficient investments in climate change prevention.

Bjorn Lomborg is the president of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, the former director of the Danish government's Environmental Assessment Institute, and the author of the best-selling book The Skeptical Environmentalist (2001). He has been named one of Time’s 100 most influential people and one of the UK Guardian’s “50 people who can save the planet.” His latest book is Best Things First: The 12 Most Efficient Solutions for the World’s Poorest and Our Global SDG Promises (Copenhagen Consensus Center, 2023).

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WTH: Megyn Kelly On Trump 2.0 and Our New Political Era Feb 20, 2025

Show notes

Donald Trump’s first weeks in office have been beyond busy. With a flurry of executive orders and other actions, he is remaking the federal government and American society writ large at lightning speed. In this special WTH episode, Megyn Kelly shares her feelings about Trump 2.0, the direction of the country under his leadership, and how his approach the second time around differs from the first. How is Trump remaking the country in his own image? And how durable will his legacy be once he leaves office?

Megyn Kelly is the founder of Devil May Care Media and hosts The Megyn Kelly Show. She was a journalist at Fox News from 2004 to 2017 and moderated five presidential debates, including the 2015 Republican primary debate. From 2017 to 2018, she worked at NBC News. Kelly has been named one of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People, and her memoir Settle for More became a #1 New York Times bestseller. Before her media career, she practiced law for nine years.

Read the transcript here.

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Find the Megyn Kelly Show here.

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