Make It Make Sense with Grant Hermes
Politics has never been more chaotic, and most podcasts just add to the noise. Make It Make Sense with Grant Hermes cuts through it.
Grant is an AP Award-winning journalist with over a decade of on-the-ground reporting on the biggest political stories, scandals, and elections in America. Twice a week, he takes the stories dominating the headlines and breaks them down in plain English — no jargon, no spin, no shouting.
If you care about what’s happening in this country but you’re exhausted by how it’s being covered, this is the show for you. Real reporting. Clear explanations. Actual context.
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Make It Make Sense with Grant Hermes
We Don't Know How To Get Out Of Iran And It's Everyone's Problem
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Eric Zuleger is back on the show! He's the reporter and analyst behind The Under Report. He spent 10 days on the ground in Lebanon during active conflict, got clearances from the Lebanese Ministry of Information, the Lebanese Armed Forces, and Hezbollah itself, and just returned. This is his first extended conversation about what he actually saw.
Grant and Eric open on Trump's election speech and what it looks like from a national security and information operations perspective. Eric's frame: there are three simultaneous information space operations happening right now, one from China, one from Russia, one from inside the White House, and the president is doing the work of America's adversaries for them. He breaks down exactly how Russian, Chinese, and Iranian information operations differ in their goals and tactics, including how China used Facebook groups to kill a rare earth processing plant in Texas without anyone knowing it was a Chinese operation.
On Iran: Eric explains why the US has broken the fundamental post-1945 security bargain with its Gulf allies. The deal was: host our bases, gain protection. Instead, they became targets. Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, and the UAE are now looking at Washington and asking what they're actually getting from this arrangement. Eric predicts the casualty numbers will keep climbing and explains why Iran has far more military capability than the US has publicly acknowledged.
On Lebanon: what Beirut actually looks and feels like right now, the Israeli drone that appears every day between noon and two that the locals call "our least favorite aunt who never leaves," 1.2 million displaced people folded into the city's architecture, and the four distinct rings of Hezbollah support that Israeli and American policy collapses into one category. He stood in a shrine to Hassan Nasrallah during Ashura, surrounded by men weeping for their dead, and explains what gets lost when that becomes a 15-second news clip.
0:00 America doesn't know what it's doing on the world stage anymore and a reporter just got back from Lebanon
2:03 Albania update: 50 days of protests, the flamingos are still marching, and Eric just returned from 10 days in Lebanon
2:42 Three simultaneous information operations: China, Russia, and the one happening from inside the White House
4:00 What "claiming the real estate between your ears" actually means in information warfare
6:36 China's self-own argument: Trump's election speech hands Beijing its best propaganda in years
7:54 The bargain of democracy and why more people on both sides are saying "tear the whole thing down"
9:50 Mile markers for democratic backsliding: we are a struggling democracy, not a failed state
14:59 What voting looks like in Transnistria: a Kalashnikov in the booth, a free iPad for the right vote
16:44 The president is doing the work of America's adversaries for them. There's no other way to see it.
27:43 How Russian information operations actually work: the fire hose of falsehoods and leaving gaps for people to fill
29:32 QAnon as Lovecraftian horror: why you never describe the monster
29:49 Russia vs. China: completely different goals, completely different tactics in the information space
32:00 How China killed a US rare earth processing plant in Texas using Facebook groups without anyone knowing
33:26 The Iran war as a bug in the American operating system: how the post-1945 security bargain is breaking
36:30 Gulf states as targets: Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, and the UAE are asking what they're actually getting from US bases
55:39 Four nuclear threats in five months: more than any president since Truman
56:42 "Death to America" chants vs. American leadership threatening to erase countries: the double standard
59:20 On the ground in Beirut: the Israeli drone that appears every day, 1.2 million displaced, and life folded into rubble
1:04:06 The four rings of Hezbollah support and why collapsing them into one category is wrong and dangerous
1:07:27 AI, bomb-making, and why the US military imagination is stuck in 1980s Afghanistan
1:10:24 Inside the shrine to Hassan Nasrallah during Ashura: what gets lost in a 15-second news clip
1:14:59 Eric's Lebanon reporting, the Next 90 Days forecast, and where to find The Underreport
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