Dan Proft spoke with Taki Theodoracopulos, the longtime Spectator columnist and co-founder of The American Conservative, about the Trump administration’s economic pressure campaign against Iran, the fallout from a recent academic fraud scandal at Cambridge University, and, briefly, the return of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle to the headlines.
The conversation followed Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent outlining the administration’s strategy toward Tehran, describing it as an effort at “regime decapitation through economic isolation” rather than a return to large-scale military action. Bessent argued that oil markets were misreading the approach, saying the U.S. is pressing allies and non-allies alike to cut off financial and energy ties with Iran or face enforcement action from the Treasury Department.
Theodoracopulos, who noted he lives in the same New York building as Bessent, said he wished the administration had pursued economic pressure from the outset rather than military strikes, which he argued caused significant civilian casualties. He suggested Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had steered President Trump toward a more aggressive posture than was warranted. Proft pushed back, noting Iran’s decades-long role as a state sponsor of terrorism, a characterization Theodoracopulos did not dispute.
Much of the exchange traced the history of U.S.-Iran relations back to 1953, when a CIA-backed effort helped remove Iran’s democratically elected prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, after he moved to nationalize the country’s oil industry. Theodoracopulos argued that episode set the stage for decades of tension, while acknowledging that the Iranian government’s subsequent conduct, including its record on terrorism, remains a serious problem.
The conversation then turned to a Cambridge University scandal involving an academic whose credentials and published work were found to be fabricated, a case that ended in the man’s suicide. Theodoracopulos, who had written a column on the episode, argued the university had promoted the scholar despite an undistinguished and partly plagiarized record because of his race, and that the resulting collapse reflected poorly on the institution rather than on those who exposed the fraud. Proft questioned why a university with Cambridge’s resources could not have identified a legitimately credentialed Black academic for the position, citing economists Roland Fryer and Glenn Loury and linguist John McWhorter as examples of scholars at other top universities. Theodoracopulos responded that prominent Black conservatives and intellectuals often face backlash from within their own communities, and said he found the situation at Cambridge “mystifying.”
The two closed the segment on a lighter note, discussing the Chicago White Sox and Cubs before Theodoracopulos offered a brief, dismissive take on renewed media coverage of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, arguing the attention they continue to draw is disproportionate to other, more serious news of the day.