Jonathan Swan: We Only Know 5%

Tim Miller (0:12)

Hello, and welcome to The Bulwark Daily. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Delighted to welcome to the show. It's been way too long. White House reporter for The New York Times, co-author of Regime Change. You might have heard of it, Inside the Imperial Presidency. It was number one for, what, like 19 weeks. I've got my trusty copyright here. Nine weeks.

Jonathan Swan (0:28)

Jonathan Swan. Maybe 19 Nine weeks eventually.

Tim Miller (0:31)

You might be back up this week. I don't know. We got Sarah Long while you're competing again. We'll learn tomorrow, but who knows?

You might maug her in the New York Times rankings. We'll see. Andrew, you have a child now. It's a big couple months for you.

Jonathan Swan (0:43)

I have three actually, but yeah, I have a new one. Yeah.

Tim Miller (0:45)

The third is when things go really downhill, I hear.

Jonathan Swan (0:47)

That's what it feels like so far.

Tim Miller (0:50)

Well, you're looking fresh, so that's good.

Jonathan Swan (0:52)

Praise from Caesar.

Tim Miller (0:54)

I was expecting, I don't know, wrinkles, bags, nothing.

Jonathan Swan (1:01)

Well, I've seen your commentary about various men as their skincare routines. So I did a glow up.

Tim Miller (1:09)

I'm doing a service to straight men. I'm trying to offer a service to straight men. You can moisturize too. That's all. I feel like sometimes I do that via positive feedback and occasionally negative feedback. I've only seen the negative.

I'll take your word for it, but there's positive as well. I want to start here. There's a story about JD Vance, another one of my favorites this week, the vice president, another anonymous sources saying that he had some skepticism about the Iran War. I know you're not going to talk about the sourcing, right? So I shouldn't ask you whether JD is calling the New York Times.

Jonathan Swan (1:41)

I find the reaction to that amusing slash farcical because we reported in April, Maggie and I, we did a big takeout for the New York Times. That was an extract from our book, which was a big piece on the probably the most deeply reported piece, Immodestly, on the lead-ups to the Iran War, which opened with that scene of Netanyahu coming down to the Situation Room and pitching Trump on the war. In that piece, we report in detail about how Vance was really the only one in the inner circle to argue against the war in those meetings in front of the other aides. Now, as far as I'm aware, every significant outlet who's done any reporting on the war and what happened in the lead-up to it and behind the scenes has confirmed that reporting and supported it. And the reason for that is it's true.

And we've heard it from people who hate JD, don't mind him, like him, support him. It just happened. It's just a fact.

And the other part of that, I would say, like, you know, we're obviously limited in what we can say about sourcing. But the other part of that, that I find, like, odd, is do people actually think that he's incentivized right now to be on the wrong side of Donald Trump when his single goal between now and January of 2028 is to have Donald Trump's endorsement, which Donald Trump has quite theatrically declined to give so far. Like, when he when he opposed the war early on, it did not endear him to Donald Trump. Trump was complaining about him, as we've reported, he was pissed off about it. This was not like some wonderful experience that played out really well. It actually empowered some of his opponents, both on the outside and on the inside. So, yeah, I mean, it's true.

Tim Miller (3:31)

This is kind of an interesting question, though, about how to deal with that. Because, yeah, let's explore it. Because I don't like talking about people behind their back. On Friday's podcast, you're a busy guy, you're not listening to every Bulwark Daily podcast, most of them, not all of them. We've met to tease you a little bit about this line from that article where it said, Mr. Vance, who opposed the war from the outset.

This is like the challenging part of that, which is, okay, that could be true. I don't have any reason to doubt your reporting, you've had the best reporting on this. But then simultaneously to that, publicly, he's talked about how Trump is not going to allow us to get into a multi-year war, how Trump's a smart president, not a dumb president. In July, he said Trump's been successful.

He said, we created economic, diplomatic and military leverage. Let's use that leverage to go accomplish an even bigger win for the American people. It's not over yet, so far, so good. He said, so far, so good in July. It's kind of hard to, how do you grapple with that? On the one hand, saying that he's opposed the war, on the other hand, publicly, he's like, so far, so good.