Susan Glasser: The President Is Crazy and Delusional

April 2, 2026·58 min·5 clips

Susan Glasser declares the president is crazy and delusional for claiming Iran has a new moderate leader who is the same guy.

First comes the trading ad. Capital.com gets its numbers in, then Tim Miller arrives with the stream notice and a quick aside about watching the speech. The question is what, if anything, explains it. Miller has looked for someone who liked the speech and could show him what he missed. Mark Levin gives approval, but not much context. Rich Lowry makes the sharper case, calling Trump a sincere and passionate Iran hawk. Miller hands that to Susan Glasser and asks whether sincerity and passion explain what is happening right now. Glasser starts with Lowry, noting that National Review once treated Trump as a mortal danger to democracy. Then she moves to the cleaner distinction. Trump does not have a foreign policy ideology. In her read, he has gut-level feelings about Iran, American weakness, and presidents he thinks looked weak. She traces that fixation to Trump's formative era, the late 1970s and early 1980s. The bleak part is that Trump can sound convinced about Iran without having anything close to a stable strategy. By the end, Miller and Glasser are joking through the gloom, landing on inspiration with a melancholy edge and more horrors promised next time.

As heard by us

A sharp look at Trump's Iran instincts, Rich Lowry's reading of the speech, and why taking that conviction seriously remains uneasy.

Tim Miller's conversation with Susan Glasser takes up Rich Lowry's argument that Donald Trump sounded like a sincere and passionate Iran hawk after the speech.

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Why you'd press play

You want to know whether Trump's Iran posture comes from doctrine, instinct, or feelings formed decades ago.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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