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James Matthewson and I were both sick for this Substack Live, but we powered through because the conversation couldn't wait and because nothing happening in the world right now is going to pause for a cold.
Donald Trump spent his entire first year of this term tariffing our allies, threatening Greenland, calling European leaders freeloaders, and treating NATO partners like adversaries. And now, with the Strait of Hormuz effectively closed and the war he launched without consulting anyone spiraling beyond his control, he is going back to those same allies and begging them to send their ships into a minefield to clean up his mess. They are refusing. And from where James sits in Edinburgh, that refusal looks not just rational but inevitable.
This conversation gave us the European view of what is happening in real time, from a Westminster contact’s frank assessment of where this ends, to a St. Patrick’s Day taxi driver in Edinburgh who surprised James with genuine sympathy for ordinary Americans. We also got into the historical ignorance behind the Venezuela comparison, the manosphere documentary that James says is required viewing, and what the next American president is going to need to repair what has been broken.
You can watch the full conversation above and read key takeaways below.
Trump Is Begging For Help He Has No Right To Ask For
The central absurdity of this moment is that Trump launched a war without building a coalition, without warning allies, without a plan for the Strait of Hormuz, and is now asking those same allies to put their service personnel and vessels at risk to bail him out. The request is not just diplomatically tone-deaf. It is structurally incoherent. And Europe is not buying it.
James made the political reality plain. No elected leader in Europe who wants to survive the next election would side with Trump right now. His approval ratings across Europe are staggering in their negativity. James noted that Keir Starmer, who was unpopular as UK Prime Minister, has actually seen his poll numbers improve since standing firm and refusing to join the war. The political benefit of opposing Trump is now measurable. That dynamic makes the coalition ask not just unlikely but impossible.
I raised the core contradiction that nobody in the administration seems able to answer. Trump has been declaring the war a success and saying it is essentially won. And then in the same breath, he is asking allies to come help him in the Strait of Hormuz. If you have won, why do you need reinforcements? And if you need reinforcements, what exactly have you won? James put it simply: one minute the war is won, and there has never been a better success. The next minute, send your ships. You cannot hold both of those positions.
James described what the ask actually requires of allies. Sending ships into an active war zone where Iran is laying mines, where Iranian drones and missiles are still active, where the US Navy itself has said it is too dangerous to conduct escorts. Trump is asking European nations to put their personnel into that environment for a war he started without consulting them, for goals that shift by the press conference, with no clear endgame. James’s answer was the answer of every European leader right now: why on Earth would we do that?
What Trump Fundamentally Misunderstands About Iran
James and I both landed on the same diagnosis. Trump projected his transactional worldview onto a regime that is ideological to its core. He thought Iran would be Venezuela. He thought you decapitate the leadership, find your Delcy Rodriguez, and someone raises their hand to make a deal. Iran is not Venezuela. It has never been Venezuela. And anyone with even a passing knowledge of the region’s history could have told him that.
I laid out the historical throughline that makes the Venezuela comparison not just wrong but insulting to the complexity of the situation. The US and UK engineered a coup of Iran’s democratically elected government in 1953 to secure oil interests. That led to the rule of the Shah, which led to the 1979 revolution, which led to the Iran-Iraq war, which produced the IRGC, which is what we are fighting now. Iran has been building its ideology and its grievance for decades. Trump does not know this history.
James made the point about ideological regimes that cuts to the heart of why Trump’s dealmaker worldview fails here. Nations and peoples do not act on a predictable set of transactional circumstances. They act on faith, belief, tribal affiliation, domestic political survival, historical grievance, and things that cannot be compressed into a business negotiation. James noted that Trump is surrounded by religious fundamentalists himself, and still cannot comprehend that Iran’s leadership operates from a belief system that does not have a price. America is the great Satan to them. That is not rhetoric. That is theology.
James quoted a Westminster contact who described the current situation as the final act of a Shakespeare play. The mad king staggering about, lashing out at everyone, the vultures circling, people knowing it is only a matter of time, and a protracted war where people are expected to die on his behalf and be grateful for doing so.
The View From The Other Side Of The Atlantic
James gave us something in this conversation that almost no American media outlet can provide: a ground-level reading of how Europe actually sees this moment, not from analysts or governments, but from ordinary people. The picture is more nuanced than simple anti-Americanism, and more hopeful than you might expect.
James described the scene on St. Patrick’s Day in Edinburgh. American students out in their green, celebrating. A taxi driver pointing at them, about to slag them off, and then stopping himself. He said, you know, you’ve got to feel sorry for them right now. It can’t be easy. James said he thought that moment was striking because sympathy is not what you expect from a rambunctious Edinburgh taxi driver talking about loud Americans in a bar. But it was there. The world, James said, is distinguishing between Trump and the American people. And that distinction is what makes restoration possible.
James noted that one unexpected consequence of Trump’s behavior has been the reunification of Europe. Brexit fractured relationships. Anti-European movements created friction across the continent. And now, from Pedro Sanchez in Spain to Keir Starmer in Britain to Friedrich Merz in Germany, leaders who disagree on many things are united in their position on the Iran War. James said the next democratically elected American president will inherit a stronger, more cohesive European bloc to work with, precisely because Trump forced them together.
I raised the 2028 parallel to the conditions that produced Obama. An economy with serious risk factors, a war of choice in the Middle East destabilizing the region, a surge in terrorism coming, a Republican Party that overreached catastrophically. James agreed that the pendulum swing is coming and said it deserves to be severe. But he also noted the UK could swing the other way at the same time, as it often trends toward the opposite of America’s political direction with a slight delay. The transatlantic relationship, he said, is bigger than any one government on either side. That is what conversations like ours are about.
The Manosphere, Fragile Masculinity & What Is Driving All Of This
James recommended the Netflix documentary Inside the Manosphere by Louis Theroux, and we used it as a jumping-off point for something we have talked about in previous Lives: the toxic masculinity that is driving not just online grifters but the actual conduct of this administration.
James described Theroux’s technique of the long pause, asking these men to explain themselves and then simply not filling the silence. The men end up doubting their own words on camera. James said he watched it and then flipped over to the news and saw Pete Hegseth. The embodiment of it right there.
I raised the broader cultural point. The manosphere is not a fringe phenomenon. It is a symptom of what our overall culture has been promoting to young men: fake toughness, dominance performance, and the idea that strength means controlling other people. Trump sits at the top of that ecosystem. This is the logical endpoint of a culture that valorizes aggression and calls it leadership.
James closed with something worth sitting with. He said he grew up politically with a lot of anti-American sentiment in his reading. Marx, Castro, and anti-imperialist texts. But seeing what is actually happening to the American people under this administration produced something he did not expect: genuine sympathy, and a renewed belief in the promise of America.
Bottom Line
Trump spent a year treating allies like adversaries. Now he needs them, and they are saying no. That is not a betrayal. It is a consequence. And consequences, as James noted, are something Trump is confronting for perhaps the first time in his life.
The war is unpopular at home, rejected abroad, killing children, destabilizing the region, and producing a more extreme Iranian regime rather than a compliant one. The Strait of Hormuz is still closed. The war has spiraled out of control, and hopefully, Republicans will begin to see what their votes have wrought.
The world is waiting to welcome America back. That is both the most hopeful thing James said and the most damning indictment of where we are.
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