The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - May 06, 2025


PREVIEW： Brokenomics ｜ Geopolitical Flashpoints with Firas Modad


Episode Stats


Length

29 minutes

Words per minute

144.604

Word count

4,273

Sentence count

284

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged

Toxicity

3

sentences flagged

Hate speech

28

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Faraz Moudad returns to the show to talk about the Trump administration and the state of the US Supreme Court. He also talks about the challenges facing the judiciary and how to deal with them, and why we should be worried about them.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Hello, and welcome to Bureconomics. Now, about a month ago, I had a fascinating chat with
00:00:04.200 Faraz Moudad, who I'm glad to say is back. Faraz, thank you for coming back.
00:00:08.540 Thanks for inviting me. Thanks for inviting me back.
00:00:10.300 We got to skim over a lot of topics last time, but we didn't get to dive in. And I felt it
00:00:15.560 really justified a follow-up to dig deeper in some of these stuff. Again, there's so
00:00:21.300 many places that we could start, but we are coming up to about 100 days of Trump's second
00:00:27.340 term, his third election win. What's his scorecard looking like so far?
00:00:35.860 Better on the domestic front than on the international front. So in terms of showing judges and others
00:00:44.800 that nobody is above the law and that immigration laws are going to be enforced, he's doing well.
00:00:50.720 The arrest of two judges for basically harboring illegal migrants sent the right kind of message, 1.00
00:00:59.680 I would suspect, but it also is leading to a big backlash. On the DEI stuff, he's hammering away
00:01:08.200 at that issue. People are claiming that it's a question of academic freedom and it's a question
00:01:13.240 of this, that, and the other, but really it's just racism. Racism directed against the Europeans.
00:01:19.740 And he has the backing of the Supreme Court on this as well.
00:01:21.800 And he has the backing of the Supreme Court on this. There's a major crisis with the courts in general
00:01:27.840 because the judiciary in America and arguably in Britain and in Europe has accumulated a huge
00:01:35.620 amount of power and the ability to check the actions of the executive based on what some might
00:01:44.940 construe as a misreading of the constitution or as judicial overreach. This is still being debated
00:01:51.200 and litigated, but there is certainly a constitutional crisis that's brewing over how much freedom does
00:01:59.220 the executive have. Well, my understanding of the American system is supposed to be three
00:02:03.540 three co-equal branches. And in order for one of the branches to be effectively shut down or told
00:02:08.380 to behave, it takes the other two working in unison. Whereas from my perspective, what we're seeing
00:02:13.820 is a judiciary which feels that it can act unitarily to block one of the other branches.
00:02:19.960 Very much. Very much so. Especially the executive branch. Especially the executive branch.
00:02:26.380 And if you looked at the Biden and Obama terms, the quality of judges who were appointed was 0.95
00:02:32.160 absolutely ridiculous. You had judges who had absolutely no business being involved. Far-left 0.84
00:02:40.640 extremists being given federal appointments, federal judicial appointments, that allow them 0.99
00:02:46.660 to be activists from the bench and that allow them to put spokes in the wheels for the executive.
00:02:54.120 And what's emerging is the need to recapture institutions. I mean, we've ended up in a situation
00:03:00.720 in America where even economic data gets rigged regularly for political reasons to help Joe Biden.
00:03:10.080 Oh, I very much noticed there was a regular flow of, how should we put it, corrections under Joe Biden.
00:03:17.020 Revisions.
00:03:17.940 Revisions, yeah.
00:03:18.680 Yes.
00:03:18.940 Where basically it would turn out the numbers they scored on that were published in the media were
00:03:24.460 wildly too high.
00:03:26.240 Quite.
00:03:26.460 Then they get revised six to nine months later. And actually when he left, there was a massive revision
00:03:31.960 across a whole bunch of statistics that basically said, yeah, we've been rigging the numbers the entire time.
00:03:36.920 Yes.
00:03:37.340 And interestingly, of course, we have the same phenomena under Trump's last term, although mysteriously,
00:03:42.460 the errors always went in the opposite direction.
00:03:44.660 Yes.
00:03:44.820 So there's, what's emerging is the extent to which there are no neutral institutions.
00:03:51.780 Yes.
00:03:52.500 And what's emerging is that the idea of institutional neutrality is itself a bit mythical.
00:03:58.920 Institutions of this size must have a dogma, must have some organizing principle, must have values
00:04:05.760 that are informing decision makers at every node of the ladder, because these institutions are in theory
00:04:13.200 technical, but in human affairs, nothing is purely technical. There's always a human element.
00:04:18.860 Well, with your geopolitical hat on then, doesn't that place the US and the Western system as a whole
00:04:24.980 at a significant disadvantage? Because the geopolitical rivals, Russia, China, India, perhaps India,
00:04:31.920 whatever, they're not held back to the same extent by the entire system fighting itself continuously.
00:04:38.940 This is why I've written about the possibility of an American civil war,
00:04:42.260 and about riots in Europe, and about major problems across the West. Because right now,
00:04:48.800 there is an alternative religion that has taken over Western establishments, and that believes 0.80
00:04:55.780 that everything that it does is right and liberal and democratic and true, and everything that its
00:05:00.920 enemies do is crass, undemocratic, authoritarian, and false.
00:05:05.900 Yes. And by the way, when you say enemies, you're not talking about Russia and China.
00:05:10.380 No.
00:05:10.860 You're talking about the people who sit opposite you in the Senate.
00:05:13.340 Yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Absolutely. Absolutely. So the level of polarization
00:05:21.420 in Western polities across the board is very severe. And the existing establishment is deeply committed
00:05:33.300 to a set of values that is firstly, untrue. Secondly, deeply destructive. And they show absolutely
00:05:43.460 no sign of willingness to correct except in minor issues that help their electoral prospects.
00:05:51.580 So now you will see Keir Starmer saying that people who are convicted of sex crimes cannot be given
00:05:58.780 refugee status. Why not burglary? Why not murder? 1.00
00:06:03.220 Well, why not parking tickets? In fact, anybody coming here on asylum should be clean as a whistle 1.00
00:06:12.020 because we're giving them the privilege of asylum.
00:06:14.940 So I'm willing to forgive parking tickets. If this was my country, I'd be willing to forgive
00:06:19.260 parking tickets. But obviously, murder, burglary, assault, shoplifting, these are issues of equal
00:06:29.140 importance to the stability of society. So you see them conceding on some minor issues.
00:06:38.260 But you see them fully committed to the principle, which is, for lack of better terminology,
00:06:46.260 gay race communism. Yes. 0.99
00:06:49.620 They just want to turn everything into a massive blob indistinguishable from anything else.
00:06:56.100 But this surely throws up a significant geopolitical risk in that, okay, let's say I'm a rival,
00:07:02.500 I'm China, and I'm thinking, okay, I want to defeat the US over the next 30 years.
00:07:08.100 I can do it with aircraft carriers and planes and tanks. Very expensive, very risky.
00:07:14.580 Yes.
00:07:15.540 Or I can take a fraction of that money and pour it into exacerbating these exact differences
00:07:21.380 that you're talking about, and they will start fighting themselves.
00:07:24.500 My theory is that if you're China, you're funding the net zero cultists. 0.94
00:07:32.020 You're funding the BLMs and pro-Palestine and all of these assorted kinds of groups.
00:07:43.220 You're funding the feminists. You're funding the transgender lobby. 0.97
00:07:47.860 You're funding the LGBT lobby in general, with the intent of destabilizing Western societies. 1.00
00:07:54.980 This is something that the Soviets had spoken about.
00:07:59.220 The use of subversion to demoralize a society and to bring about its collapse.
00:08:03.380 The Yuri Bezmenov stuff.
00:08:04.660 Exactly, exactly, exactly. And if you're China, you have no reason to abandon this playbook. 0.79
00:08:12.100 And you have every interest in funding these extremists, these very nasty, very committed extremists.
00:08:21.540 And the irony is that they were being funded by USAID as well.
00:08:25.860 Yes, yes, that as well. But I mean, they've just got a big boost in
00:08:29.540 in Canada, haven't they, with the Liberals winning. And China immediately came out with a statement,
00:08:35.540 words to the effect of, we look forward to further strengthening our deep relationships
00:08:41.620 with the Canadian power elite, something like that.
00:08:44.820 Because Carney sees China as a lesser threat than America, which from a very narrow standpoint,
00:08:56.660 if he doesn't care about his people at all, and if he cares about only his own power base, then he's right.
00:09:03.380 If he gives a damn about Canadians being primarily British and French and people who've been integrated
00:09:10.660 into North American British and North American French cultures, then no, he's wrong.
00:09:16.100 But we know that the likes of Carney are only interested in their own well-being and don't
00:09:26.660 even recognize their people as people or as a nation.
00:09:31.300 So explain to me what the Chinese strategy is for getting the hooks in. Because we've witnessed 0.99
00:09:37.220 them do it in Africa through basically buying stuff and building stuff. We're witnessing them doing
00:09:41.940 it in Australia with, I mean, they're building out mines and ports and their own road networks,
00:09:47.060 their own whale networks and stuff. Is it something similar to that to get their hooks into
00:09:51.860 Canada and start to peel it away?
00:09:53.620 There are people who know a lot more about this than I do. So I don't pretend to know the
00:09:58.980 details of the Chinese influence in Canada. But you can see it in some of the mining companies that are
00:10:04.340 listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange. You can see it in the sheer extent of money laundering in Vancouver
00:10:13.380 that happens in relationship with the Chinese. You can see it with the way that they're buying up 1.00
00:10:19.460 properties and buying up assets up and down Canada. And you could see it in the fact that the Canadian
00:10:26.420 intelligence tried to cover up the extent of Chinese penetration of Canadian intelligence,
00:10:30.420 which would suggest that there is a deep compromising of the whole system in Canada.
00:10:39.460 But there are people who are more qualified to talk about this than I am.
00:10:44.580 But I guess what that brings me to is we've recently had the whole discussion around tariffs.
00:10:50.260 Yes.
00:10:50.740 Now, my perspective on that was that this was something that they, so it was presented as a
00:10:56.420 trade thing. It was presented as a jobs thing. My thoughts was that this had to be driven primarily
00:11:02.260 as a national security thing and it was primarily an anti-China thing. What was your perspective on it?
00:11:08.020 That they were trying to do a lot of things at the same time with some blunt instruments.
00:11:15.460 This isn't to accept the argument that there can be a surgical approach to tariffs. That's just not true,
00:11:21.700 given the size of trade. So there had been attempts over the last 30 years to do the surgical thing.
00:11:27.220 Yes.
00:11:27.540 It never worked.
00:11:28.260 It just doesn't work. Yeah.
00:11:29.380 It just doesn't work. So some things do require a blunt instrument. If you're hammering things with
00:11:36.420 a sword, that's pretty stupid. So blunt instruments do have a place in our lives and in politics. 1.00
00:11:42.340 That said, what Trump, I think what the ideal outcome for somebody like Trump,
00:11:50.820 given the different intersections of political allegiances that are around him and given his own
00:11:55.220 beliefs, is that you've got to make these countries pay for their own defense and not subsidize them for
00:12:02.100 defense and partner with them in that way. And you've got to get them to trade with you
00:12:09.540 fairly, if not freely. So if they're not going to give your agricultural producers access, you should
00:12:17.300 reciprocate. So this is the this is the animating principle, as far as I can tell.
00:12:26.660 Trade, by its very nature, works best between countries, works best for the average citizen,
00:12:34.020 between countries that have similar levels of income. If you have a massive gap in income
00:12:41.540 between one country and another that are trading together, then the low income country,
00:12:47.620 once this massive richer market is open to it, stands to benefit a lot more than the high income country.
00:12:55.620 So the extension of that would be that what Trump would want to do
00:12:59.300 is to get into a free trade arrangement with culturally compatible countries that have similar levels of income,
00:13:07.060 which would point to Europe, Japan, maybe South Korea,
00:13:12.340 and obviously Canada and Britain, as being the countries that are the most natural fit
00:13:19.540 for free trade and for shared defense.
00:13:22.500 because there is an overlap of interests and there is an overlap of security needs
00:13:28.180 and an overlap of perceived threats and an overlap of culture,
00:13:32.580 especially North America, Britain, Europe.
00:13:37.540 The issue is that European leaders don't see it that way
00:13:41.460 because they're mainly interested in their own parochial interests.
00:13:46.420 And that's fair because all politics is parochial, but that comes with a cost because you have China, 1.00
00:13:54.020 which is a behemoth in manufacturing and in population terms, that's eating all of your lunches. 0.89
00:14:06.180 Does Europe show any signs to you of thinking long-term strategically about the interplay with China?
00:14:14.180 No.
00:14:18.900 Germany is willing to pretty much sell everything to the Chinese 0.99
00:14:22.500 just to get through the next quarter with absolutely no long-term thinking whatsoever.
00:14:27.940 I mean, they were doing that with the Russians until very recently
00:14:30.660 when the chip in the back of their NPC brain got changed and all of a sudden they kind of cut their own legs off.
00:14:36.020 Essentially, essentially.
00:14:37.460 The problem that Europe has is that these aren't serious people leading it.
00:14:43.860 And it's a consequence, perhaps,
00:14:50.740 of Europeans becoming so distant from who they are and their identity, 0.95
00:14:55.700 ethnically and religiously.
00:15:00.820 Liberalism has rotted the minds of Europeans, 0.98
00:15:06.100 translating into just a collapse across the board from the family to local politics to national politics.
00:15:15.460 And these are linked, and these are tied together by faith and by ethnic identity.
00:15:22.260 And Westerners don't seem to recognize how the world works.
00:15:29.860 They don't want to.
00:15:32.980 Too comfortable for too long.
00:15:34.900 Too comfortable for too long.
00:15:36.660 Too comfortable for too long.
00:15:38.660 There haven't been real challenges.
00:15:40.900 And the state has come in and replaced the family.
00:15:44.420 You get cradle-to-grave welfare.
00:15:47.780 I prefer to call it cradle-to-grave atomization.
00:15:51.060 That's exactly the same thing.
00:15:52.100 Keeping us apart.
00:15:52.500 That's exactly the same thing.
00:15:53.540 Everywhere else in the world relies on the multi-generation family.
00:15:56.820 Yes.
00:15:57.460 And it works.
00:15:58.820 Here, we rely on a welfare state.
00:16:01.140 You have, therefore, no incentive to have children.
00:16:05.220 And you have no incentive to maintain relationships with your children.
00:16:10.340 Yep.
00:16:11.940 And this is a big part of the boomer illness. 0.93
00:16:16.580 They were the first generation exposed to it.
00:16:18.660 And it was sold as charity.
00:16:21.860 But fundamentally, the role of the state is not to provide charity.
00:16:25.780 The role of the state is to repel invaders and hang criminals.
00:16:31.140 Yes.
00:16:31.540 So it's failing at these basic functions.
00:16:35.060 But we're debating how much money should people get in welfare.
00:16:38.660 Yep.
00:16:39.060 And how much welfare should we give to foreigners? 1.00
00:16:41.700 I once did a pyramid of the functions of government.
00:16:45.300 And, you know, the bottom layer is that it's basically national security is the bottom layer.
00:16:50.100 Then it's property rights, because that then allows a market economy to emerge.
00:16:55.780 Yes.
00:16:56.180 Then maybe it's infrastructure and you go up and at the top of the pyramid, it's stuff like, you know, working out who goes in what bathroom.
00:17:03.140 And the entire pyramid has been flipped upside down, where they spend all of their energy at the narrow end of the pyramid and very little of any attention to the base of the pyramid.
00:17:13.380 Can you imagine how humiliating it is that the issue of whether or not men are men had to go to the Supreme Court?
00:17:20.420 Yes.
00:17:20.740 Isn't it insulting that this issue needs to even be debated?
00:17:25.860 Why is it up to the Supreme Court?
00:17:27.440 And isn't it a sign of decadence and decay?
00:17:30.820 Yeah.
00:17:31.760 But flipping this back to the geopolitics, so this is something, okay, so Europe is not aware of this.
00:17:38.680 No.
00:17:39.200 The US itself was not under the last presidency.
00:17:42.800 What are you seeing in this administration that has quickly and immediately grasped that they are in a civilizational struggle with China and they've got to do something about it?
00:17:57.340 And perhaps a follow on from that is, you know, what actually is China's strategy here?
00:18:02.440 Because from as far as I can tell, it's to basically wait for the US to destroy itself or maybe hasten that progress, that process.
00:18:10.900 So in terms of this administration being aware of the challenges, you saw them go after these particular issues immediately on day one.
00:18:20.960 Yes.
00:18:21.800 And you saw that, I don't want to say backfiring, but you saw the opposition using that in order to dominate the media and focus the narrative on these insane issues,
00:18:36.740 on these cultish issues of diversity, illegal migration, climate, etc.
00:18:44.300 You're seeing this administration saying we've got to grow the economy very quickly.
00:18:49.000 We've got to rebalance trade because you can't keep on having an endlessly negative trade balance without this coming at a price.
00:18:57.580 And the price being the loss of the dollar's value.
00:19:03.320 And you're seeing them focusing, okay, how are we going to build up our military and separate supply chains from China? 0.75
00:19:09.960 On a fundamental level, the US should be able to fire a missile at China without that missile having its supply chain based on the Chinese. 0.94
00:19:19.380 That's an excellent summary.
00:19:20.780 Yeah.
00:19:21.060 That's a perfect summary.
00:19:22.280 Exactly.
00:19:23.560 Exactly.
00:19:23.960 So they need, they know that they need to address this and they seem to be working to address this.
00:19:31.880 China's strategy seems to be to take advantage of the chaos in the West and not just work with countries in its own near abroad,
00:19:41.580 that is Southeast Asia, Pakistan, etc., but to also work with the Canadians and the Europeans
00:19:51.520 and even extend an offer to the British so that they could isolate America from its natural allies, 0.58
00:19:59.600 so that they could break up the West politically rather than take on the West as a whole.
00:20:05.820 I'd be shocked if China could peel Britain away because we are deeply embedded in the American structure.
00:20:11.060 But what about the rest of them?
00:20:13.860 Do you think they've got a decent chance of peeling away other allies like Canada and the EU and Australia?
00:20:19.520 Look, Canada can be solved militarily, but there is no appetite for that within the existing Pentagon leadership and the existing cabinet.
00:20:30.820 If it were up to Trump, I think he hinted at the possibility of, OK, just let's do this and go and invade them.
00:20:40.280 Let's just drill down on that point a little bit.
00:20:42.700 What would be the lead up to something like that becoming a pressing issue?
00:20:47.120 Because, you know, I already mentioned that in Australia, China has huge mining operations
00:20:53.180 and it's built its own ports and railway infrastructure and roads and so on.
00:20:56.940 If the Chinese start building their own ports, railway systems and other basically quasi-military setups... 0.90
00:21:05.400 That could be...
00:21:06.300 ...in Canada.
00:21:07.060 Yes, that could become a real problem.
00:21:09.260 The other alternative is that they try to use the tariff issue endlessly to instigate an economic crisis in Canada.
00:21:15.860 Because most Canadian trade is with the United States, so keep on placing pressure on that until there is an economic crisis
00:21:23.780 and until the liberal experiment in Canada fails.
00:21:28.420 I mean, remember, the Canadian...
00:21:30.320 I think I saw yesterday somebody claiming that nearly 5% of Canadians are immigrants with disabilities.
00:21:40.700 It was an astronomical figure.
00:21:42.440 I didn't verify it, but I remember it caught my eye.
00:21:48.880 There's an incredible number of foreign students who are living in Canada.
00:21:53.460 One in 40 Canadians, people living in Canada, is a foreign student.
00:21:59.640 So there are these deep instabilities within Canada that if you pair them with economic pressure
00:22:06.900 and try to make everything worse for Canada, this rallying around the flag effect will begin to crumble
00:22:17.240 as a result of internal conflicts within Canada herself.
00:22:23.980 Well, that's almost suggesting that short-term it was a loss that the Libs retook Canada.
00:22:31.080 But actually, it might be a better forcing function longer term because it's going to make the Libs own their mistakes.
00:22:38.360 A, and you can't have the level of demographic change that the Canadians are having without it coming at a price.
00:22:45.940 This idea that you can just bring in more Indians, more Pakistanis, more Chinese, and it's all going to be absolutely fine is crazy. 1.00
00:22:58.520 But the corollary of it is that given the citizenship laws in Canada, this is changing the demographics of who's voting.
00:23:06.080 And Pierre Polivier loses his seat.
00:23:09.180 And Pierre Polivier loses his seat.
00:23:11.140 So you end up in a situation where you can instigate a crisis of such an extent that the actual Canadians,
00:23:22.360 who are descendants of the British and the French, say, just, we've had it.
00:23:28.060 If you come here and do vast deportations, we'll help you. 1.00
00:23:32.160 And by the way, we're the ones in charge of the military anyway.
00:23:34.100 Because Indian migrants don't volunteer into the Canadian Armed Forces.
00:23:40.500 Well, actually, even in India, it's predominated by the Sikhs rather than...
00:23:44.800 Yes.
00:23:45.220 Yeah.
00:23:45.700 So the Indian martial tradition is not something to brag about.
00:23:50.440 No.
00:23:50.800 The Sikhs are pretty good, but not the Indian. 1.00
00:23:52.580 And the fact that the Pakistani has lost to the Indians all three wars is also something that is...
00:23:56.840 Yeah.
00:23:57.380 So what about the second part of the question?
00:23:58.880 The strategy...
00:23:59.980 The Chinese strategy.
00:24:00.760 Yes.
00:24:00.880 The Chinese strategy is essentially a try to get America to spend all of its efforts disciplining its own allies, 0.93
00:24:10.520 who China anyway sees as enemies.
00:24:15.400 Right.
00:24:16.000 They don't have a clear counter to the American idea of separating Russia and China by making peace in Ukraine.
00:24:24.880 But that proposal has its own problems.
00:24:27.420 And they don't have a clear counter to the possibility of an Iranian-American deal, which would also be a problem for China.
00:24:35.140 So they have some cards.
00:24:37.340 And these cards are mainly the result of the extremism of Western leaders, who are willing to say,
00:24:46.240 we'd rather side with China than with America.
00:24:49.120 So these are the dynamics that you're seeing.
00:24:54.120 Plus, if they end up with a spheres of influence arrangement, where they dominate, you know, Southeast Asia and have a very strong position against India,
00:25:06.080 this is an acceptable outcome for the Chinese.
00:25:09.140 This isn't the worst possible outcome.
00:25:11.260 So let's just talk around China then.
00:25:13.460 Sorry.
00:25:14.080 What they're also trying to do is see how they can build up their own economic autonomy
00:25:20.300 and reduce their reliance on trade with the United States.
00:25:25.960 Trade with the US, I think it's something like 1% of GDP for the Chinese.
00:25:32.060 Important, but not the end of the world.
00:25:33.500 Exports in general are 16% to 18% of GDP.
00:25:38.380 So important, very important, but not the end of the world.
00:25:42.060 The problem that China has is that it also has to import a lot.
00:25:46.000 And its imports include a lot of food and a lot of energy.
00:25:50.880 And that vulnerability to these imports is a problem, because if you tariff your own food and energy imports, you have a domestic issue.
00:25:58.220 Okay.
00:26:00.540 Well, this is why I've always said if the Eurasian bloc can be pulled off, it's an absolute powerhouse,
00:26:06.200 because you get the power from Russia and you get the workforce and the agriculture from India in the south.
00:26:11.840 Which is why it's so important to make sure that the Ukraine issue dies down.
00:26:17.620 Which is why Trump is so focused in his rage on Zelensky, because this guy is getting in the way of something that is much bigger than him and much more important than his country.
00:26:35.620 Zelensky can't see it that way.
00:26:37.520 And the Ukrainian nationalists cannot see it that way.
00:26:40.160 But for anybody who's got any understanding of how the world works, a Russian-Chinese alliance cannot be allowed. 0.92
00:26:54.560 And it doesn't matter what price Zelensky has to pay or what price Ukrainian nationalists have to pay.
00:27:01.940 Well, for the longest time, British foreign policy was one thing above all else.
00:27:07.360 Do not let Germany and Russia become buddies. 0.83
00:27:10.500 Exactly.
00:27:11.000 And it would seem the US version of that is do not let China, although that is exactly what Joe Biden was doing.
00:27:18.800 So you mentioned something to me before we came on air about, because I asked, because you mentioned before in our previous discussion that there has to be this strategy for the US to try and peel off Russia from China.
00:27:30.940 And I said, I've not seen anything from the administration that says that they're doing that.
00:27:36.780 But you mentioned an interview.
00:27:38.620 Steve Witkoff had an interview with Tucker Carlson.
00:27:41.220 Were you Steve Witkoff?
00:27:42.240 Steve Witkoff is the special American envoy, Trump's personal envoy, to deal with Russia, Ukraine, and to deal with the Iran negotiations, and to deal with Israel and Gaza.
00:27:53.240 So Witkoff is essentially a foreign secretary of state sitting almost above Marco Rubio, with Marco Rubio managing the bureaucracy of the State Department, but Witkoff being a presidential ambassador at large, managing the most important conflicts.
00:28:17.260 And so this is typical Trump, in that he appoints personal loyalists to these kinds of positions.
00:28:28.400 Is Witkoff a quality guy?
00:28:30.180 Do you rate him?
00:28:31.440 He's a real estate developer.
00:28:33.060 We have no idea who he is.
00:28:35.640 He has zero experience in this, and went from real estate developer to these negotiations.
00:28:41.660 So his deal-making skills should be pretty sharp.
00:28:45.040 These are different skill sets, though.
00:28:46.580 These are very different skill sets.
00:28:52.880 It is appealing, given the rot in the bureaucracy, to say, get an outsider to do it.
00:29:01.680 But you must understand at least some of the principles of the bureaucracy and why the bureaucracy is operating in this way.
00:29:08.240 But institutional rot in the United States is so severe that you can't rely on the existing bureaucracy.
00:29:18.960 Rubio needs at least two years to clean up the State Department, if not more.
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