On Thursday’s RealClearPolitics podcast, Andrew Walworth, Tom Bevan, and RCP White House reporter Phil Wegmann break down the latest updates on the Trump administration’s posture toward Iran, and whether the intervention the world expected to see has been called off. They also look at the latest on President Trump’s quest to buy Greenland and the next steps toward stabilizing Venezuela. After that, former Vice President Mike Pence joins the show to make his case for why the post-Trump Republican Party should return to more traditional conservatism. You can listen to the show live each day at 11:00 a.m. on SiriusXM’s Megyn Kelly Channel 111 and then on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, and here on our website. *** The show opens with President Trump’s surprise declaration yesterday that the Iranian government has promised him “the killing has stopped” and the crisis is over. Is it possible the president knows something the public does not? “It seems this episode has concluded, and the long-promised hope that the president said was coming is not going to materialize,” Wegmann reported. “A reporter pressed the president on some of the deaths that had occurred, and Trump dismissed them as fighting in the street. He said some Iranian soldiers were killed, some protesters were killed-essentially, these things happen.” Tom Bevan pointed out comments from Treasury Secretary Bessent that Iranian elites are quietly moving money out of the country: “If that’s true, the regime is worried they may not survive. We’ve seen protests in Iran multiple times over the last 20 years, but I don’t know that we’ve ever seen the regime reach out to the U.S. to negotiate. That seems like a real sign of weakness, that they thought things were different this time.” *** After that, around minute 7, the group turned to Greenland, after Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Vice President JD Vance met this week with Danish diplomats to make it clear that the U.S. is serious about buying the territory. “The Danes described this White House meeting as ‘frank but constructive.’ That is diplo-speak, for anyone who doesn’t know, that means things didn’t go the way they had hoped,” Walworth explained. “But Greenland is-in real estate terms-a bit of a fixer-upper.” “With all due respect, but the Danes suggesting that they’d mount some sort of defense of Greenland is kind of silly,” Bevan said. “When it comes to purchasing it, I did see the number $ 700 billion in a headline, which to me struck me as kind of a bargain. That’s like just a few years of Somali fraud in Minnesota.” *** In the next segment, at minute 19, former Vice President Mike Pence joins the group to talk about where he disagrees with the president’s more populist second-term agenda, and the conservative principles he would like to preserve for the post-Trump Republican Party at his Advancing American Freedom think tank. “Advancing American Freedom is really committed to being that voice for traditional Republican principles,” Pence said. “I’m very proud of the record of the Trump-Pence administration. It was a conservative record, but I predicted going into this second term that there would be changes in the agenda of a new Trump administration, and that’s played out.” “We’ve seen not only some foreign-policy decisions that I’ve taken issue with, but also some that I strongly support,” Pence said. “I think the stops and starts on support for Ukraine against Russia’s invasion, economic policies like price controls, nationalization of American businesses, and the marginalizing of the right to life are very different than the Trump-Pence years.” Pence warned Republicans may be in trouble in the midterms if the party “drifts into boutique ideas that sound more like Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren” and “continues to marginalize the right to life.” “A president earns the right to set the party’s agenda, and President Trump has changed that agenda-sometimes in ways I’ve supported, sometimes challenged. But I don’t think he’s changed the Republican Party itself,” Pence said. “Everywhere I go, people express strong support for conservative values. Often in the same breath, they say they support President Trump and appreciate where I stand.” *** Finally, 44 minutes into the show, the panel does a little post-interview analysis of former VP Mike Pence’s comments about the future of conservatism. “I’ve covered the guy for years now, I think what he’s trying to do is preserve what he sees as the remnants of traditional conservatism,” Wegmann said. “What does the Republican Party look like after Donald Trump? What is Trumpism without Trump? Pence clearly believes there’s an answer and a constituency for that, but only time will tell.” “It’s hard to ignore that Trump has always been a populist. Tariffs are the perfect example. Trump has believed in tariffs for decades, and that’s one of the things Pence most strongly opposes. Trump didn’t suddenly become a populist. The party created a vacuum over forty years on things like trade and interventionism, and Trump filled it,” Bevan added. “Pence is in an odd position. I understand what he’s trying to reclaim, but I’m not sure there’s a path back to the pre-Trump Republican Party.” *** Don’t miss an episode of the RealClearPolitics radio show – subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
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