The Remnant with Jonah Goldberg · The Dispatch

Has Trump Betrayed His Base?| Interview: Ross Douthat

April 6, 2026·1 hr 4 min·5 clips

Goldberg says Bannon and Tucker only cry betrayal when Israel is involved — they cheered annexing Canada and Greenland.

The opening is classic Remnant housekeeping. Goldberg hurries through the formalities because Ross Douthat, longtime friend and frequent guest, is waiting after the intro. The banter is dry in the usual way. Douthat says he has flatlined after Goldberg describes him as having reached the elite firmament. Then the conversation gets sharper. The excerpt turns on whether Trump deserves blame for a war choice tied to Iran. The guest resists making Netanyahu the whole story. He says the Israeli government wanted the war and helped talk Trump into it, while still insisting that, in American politics, this is Trump's war. Goldberg pushes on that wording. He hears a lot inside the claim that Netanyahu talked Trump into the war, and the guest slows down to separate influence from absolution. Trump has agency. The guest rejects the idea that Trump was tricked, and says the blame belongs to Trump. Still, Netanyahu matters. The counterfactual does real work: if Netanyahu had said the plan would fail, the guest thinks Trump probably would not have moved the same way. Goldberg gives some ground there. He also notes that Trump had drawn something like a red line with the Iranians, so enforcement became part of the case Trump accepted. That makes the blame messier, not lighter. By the end, the conversation is less about clearing anyone than about how persuasion, credibility, and presidential responsibility can all be true at once. Goldberg closes by saying he had meant to talk about the future of conservatism and the right, but that waits for Douthat's next visit.

As heard by us

A sharp conservative argument over Trump, Iran, Israel, and where responsibility actually rests.

Jonah Goldberg brings Ross Douthat back for a characteristically brisk Remnant conversation that lands hardest on Trump, Iran, Israel, and the question of political agency.

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Why you'd press play

A calm, sharp conversation about Trump, Iran, and who carries the blame.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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