U.S. President Donald Trump delivers remarks at the Future Investment Initiative (FII) Institute's summit at the Faena Forum in Miami Beach, Florida, U.S., March 27, 2026. REUTERS/Elizabeth Frant
Bulwark editor Sam Stein and podcaster Tim Miller took turns agonizing over Iran’s timely hack of FBI Director Kash Patel’s email. The attack, they said, revealed the mess of President Donald Trumpo’s low-quality staff and laid another case for his people’s lack of preparation for the Iran war.
“… [W]e picked the time of this war and yet simultaneously the FBI fired their Iranian experts and then a week after that the FBI director gets hacked and embarrassing pictures of him bro-ing out and being all faded in Cuba are released by Iranian hackers,” said Miller a former Republican speechwriter. “It just it makes us look like we're losers and the B team and this is pathetic and embarrassing and that is a real issue for these guys.”
What was worse, said Miller, is that nobody still knows even why we are at war with Iran in the first place.
“Nobody understands why we're doing this. There's no point. They can't offer a coherent explanation for why they're doing it. There's no material benefit to the U.S. Nobody felt materially threatened by Iran. And so now it's just like these embarrassments,” said Miller.
“There's definitely a lack of sobriety around it,” said Stein, suggesting the administration is out of its league and unfit to conduct many things, including a major international conflict.
“People who had been supportive of MAGA are going ‘what is this? This is a clusterf——!” said Miller.
Of additional concern they said was the fact that federal fail-safes have long been in place to chaperone even the most oblivious government workers into a place of relative safety, with dedicated servers and e-mails providing careful monitoring and safeguards for discourage hacking. Most federal jobs also come with exhaustive and frequent training requirements on how to recognize hack attempts.
“But they've got it now,” said Miller, disgusted. “They've got a cache of Kash material, if you will.”