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00:02:56I thought it was going to be a bloodletting like this, but I didn't want to say anything
00:03:01because I didn't want to jinx people I liked.
00:03:04So I wasn't surprised, but I am excited now, I find, because I think this could be the
00:03:11first step towards something very different. Was it the margin that you think mitigated
00:03:18the propensity of Trump to do everything he could to evangelize the truth and trust in the outcome
00:03:24of the election? I mean, that plus, as you know, I'm sure better than me, a huge amount of legal
00:03:29preparation all around the country and mobilization potential. Yeah. But the margins above all,
00:03:35right? Because it's not just Trump, it's all the people who would have to collaborate with him to
00:03:39do this. And when you think, A, it's not going to work and B, the other side's going to win and I
00:03:44might be punished for it, you're going to be discouraged from doing that sort of thing.
00:03:47Two weeks before the election, were you surprised by the feeble attempts in California,
00:03:55Washington State, obviously Alaska? Did you expect much more of that kind of activity across
00:04:00the country? Or was that alone alarming from your perspective?
00:04:04I mean, look, it's alarming to me that for the last 20 years, we've basically been rigging the system over and over and over again, right? Not just state legislatures, but also the Supreme Court.
00:04:18And it's alarming to me that we have a president who's tried to overthrow an election once already and declared in advance that he wouldn't necessarily accept these results.
00:04:28I was pleased that they were discouraged, disorganized and deterred.
00:04:36And you say disorganized in the context that just was the DOJ, but not necessarily the rest of the administration, disorganized in terms of the political operation, MAGA Inc.
00:04:48Well, I mean, broadly, I think that the pieces of MAGA stopped fitting together with the Iran war. And so although I don't have the same kind of insight that some of your guests would into that world, I think in order to carry out an overall election rigging, you have to have internal coherence and a sense of solidarity, which I think broadly speaking was gone.
00:05:10And then as far as the military, they lost a stupid war and they've hurt themselves. So that piece was out. As far as the National Guard, they lost lawsuits. As far as ICE, they managed to make ICE incredibly unpopular. So all the various ways that they could do it, aside from the traditional ways of throwing a lot of money at the problem, they had largely already been defeated or had already been ruled out by the time we got there.0.97
00:06:03Like, the order is going to be hard to predict.
00:06:05but I think a lot of the folks who are at the face of this administration are going to be also
00:06:09departing. I don't think Pete Hegseth has a long political life ahead of him. I got my doubts
00:06:15about Todd Blanche as well. And in general, I think it's interesting how we're in this form
00:06:19of politics, which is the politics on Trump's side, the politics of small numbers. It's him
00:06:24plus a very closed circle of people around him. And I think the way the politics of this is going
00:06:29to work in the next year is, can you chip away at those people and make it not worth their while
00:06:35to be in politics. And so getting to the very special case of Steve Miller, this is someone
00:06:40who is actually ideologically committed. And I think that makes him a bit different from
00:06:44the circle of grifters who make up most of the folks who are still around Mr. Trump.
00:06:49I think Steve Miller sees Mr. Trump as a way to change the world, as opposed to most of the folks
00:06:55around him who see him as a way to make money. And that is a difference. So I don't think he'll
00:07:00be so easy to get rid of as the other ones. Yeah, as for Susie Wiles, I mean, someone was going to
00:07:06be punished, and it was going to be a woman, and there weren't that many women left, right?
00:07:09It's interesting. So what did you make of the Miller decision then? I mean, I think it's an
00:07:14interesting distinction you just made there as it relates to so many others are monetizing from
00:07:18the Whitcoffs, obviously, Kushner family broadly, but Lutnick's, others in the administration
00:07:24look at the financialization of this opportunity. But you're right, with Miller, it does seem
00:07:29It's just worldview. I mean, he's you know, there's if there's a dark heart of the administration, it seems it's the policies of Stephen Miller. And so for him to double down on that post the election, what does it say to you about what's in Trump's mind right now?
00:07:44I'm going to say something general before I try to descend into Trump's mind.
00:07:50I think that in the first couple of years, the Miller part of the administration, which I think
00:07:57of as the fascist part of the administration, was basically there to make the oligarchy possible.
00:08:04So I think the Miller part is essentially instrumental. So I'm not saying that Trump
00:08:09is not a racist who doesn't hold terrible views. I believe he does. But I think at some level,
00:08:14ICE and the us and them and all of the anti-African-American, anti-immigrant stuff
00:08:21is there to create an opening for other folks to make a lot of money. I think that now might
00:08:28slightly be turning around. That's my broad way of interpreting this, that what has been
00:08:34registered in this election is that the American people, I hate to speak for them, but on this one,
00:08:39man, I'm pretty sure, have seen through the corruption. That is, everybody thinks the system
00:08:45is broken, but then a lot of people have recognized that Trump is at a different level,
00:08:50that this is a different quality of corruption. And what follows from that politically is the
00:08:54Democrats have an open window to do something about it. But returning to the subject, I think
00:08:58what we're seeing is a kind of flip where we're going to have the cruelty out front, right? That's
00:09:03that's going to be, and that's going to be the challenge to the Democrats. The cruelty is going
00:09:07to be out front. ICE is going to be out front. Deportations are going to be out front. And we're
00:09:13going to have this person who is actually committed to the project in charge. That's how I understand
00:09:19it. It's not a strategy. And this is my last point. It's not a strategy for somebody who is
00:09:25imagining that he's going to be reelected, right? Not that Trump could be, but it's also not a
00:09:30strategy for somebody who cares about his political party. And so I think the other thing which is
00:09:35interesting about this is that there's already a fight on that side as to who's going to be the
00:09:42next president. And Trump is not making it easy for them by going down this route because he's
00:09:49choosing things that are unpopular. And he's also choosing things that are chaotic because although
00:09:53I don't want to doubt that Mr. Miller is competent in a certain realm, he isn't a natural born chief
00:10:00of staff. And so I don't think this is going to be less chaotic than it was before.
00:10:05So what do you make? It's interesting, Trump, 60 Minutes yesterday, at least publicly acknowledging
00:10:11that he may have gone too far in terms of ICE and enforcement, not being able to tell the
00:10:17difference between a felon and a farmer. And of course, his willingness to point Miller as a point
00:10:26of contrast to that point of view, but also then saying in this sort of back and forth and back
00:10:32and forth that he hopes to work with Democrats to come up with some immigration reform. Is that
00:10:39just rhetoric? Is that just the show, not the story? Classic Trump. What do you make of it?
00:10:46I'll tell you what I make of it, but I'm going to qualify it, you know, and I'm going to accept
00:10:49your invitation to go into the mind of Mr. Trump, but which is a little bit like crossing the river
00:10:54sticks and going to Hades. You never know who's going to pull you back once you do it. But
00:10:58here's what I think. I think he is an oligarch of limited horizons. He's not in the Putin category
00:11:09or the Musk category. He's not someone who's thinking about how he's going to change the world
00:11:14or the universe. I think the extent of his imagination is, I get to stay in the White0.89
00:11:19House for a very long time. I get the Nobel Peace Prize. I want to have a few billion dollars.
00:11:24He's not in the world of hundreds of billions of dollars, transforming the world, life after
00:11:53What I don't exclude is that he would, to spite his own party and to spite the obvious challenge which is going to emerge or has already emerged from J.D. Vance, I don't exclude that he would do something like, I'm not sure if Alcide was joking or not, I don't think he was.
00:12:10I don't exclude that Trump would sign a law which was called Trumpcare and would give Medicare for
00:12:16all. I don't exclude that he would actually put his name on decent legislation, which would end
00:12:22up helping the Democrats because I don't think he cares about the 28 elections anymore. Nobody's
00:12:30talking about a third term anymore, right? All that is dead. The idea of president for life is
00:12:34dead. That's not even a joke that Republicans will make anymore. That's all gone. And so I think it's
00:12:40a bit, it's a bit wide open now. And because of the kind of person he is, it will, it will end up
00:12:46having to do with appeal, like appeals to his ego and appeals to his, his desire for personal
00:12:51comfort, the West, the way out. Do you, when you look back at, you know, your book and behind you
00:12:56on tyranny, and it's, it's interesting to think of 1933, Germany, and thinking about federalism
00:13:02in this country, think about the muscles and institutional muscles, thinking about the system
00:13:07is, you know, supine as Congress was, the courts reasonably held up, including three times I was
00:13:13in court the week before the election, at least the state of California was, trying to hold the
00:13:19line. And then how far we went, but didn't cross the line at the United States Supreme Court the
00:13:24day before, quite literally the day before the election. How do you, what would, do you look
00:13:29back at that book when you're writing that about the sort of the European framework? U.S. is unique
00:13:36indifferent, isn't it? I mean, these institutions reasonably did hold. We the people certainly did.
00:13:42But or am I overstating that? Or is federalism perhaps the secret sauce?
00:13:48So I guess the first thing I want to say is that people did it, you know? So we the people,
00:13:56that already gets into kind of the language of the Constitution and American exceptionalism
00:14:00and stuff, which I try to resist. But in my experience, Gavin, and I'm sure yours is much
00:14:06greater, but in my experience in the last decade, and especially the last couple of years,
00:14:11it's the organizers who made the difference. It's the people who got other people to the polls.
00:14:16It's the people, it's the black women in the South. It's the people who organized for immigrants,
00:14:23who were generally the same people who were organizing for elections. It's people organized
00:14:26no kings marches it's that layer which gets in between the way our politics is covered because
00:14:32our politics is covered as sports basically like it's red team and blue team and then you have like
00:14:36the halftime analysis which is all psychological like what are they thinking and what's the
00:14:40messaging and what's the narrative yada yada um and then you have like reporting which is about
00:14:45individuals and how they experience life and that's important but there's this middle layer
00:14:49of you know what people from eastern you know who work in eastern europe call civil society
00:14:53or non-governmental organizations or just horizontal self-organization. That's, I think,
00:14:58the people who made the difference. I don't think it was the institutions themselves.
00:15:01It wasn't Congress, right? The courts, I take your point, but the point has a big asterisk after it,
00:15:07which is the Supreme Court, which in my view for the last 20 years has been working pretty
00:15:11systematically to make something like this possible and which has made some terrible,
00:15:16indefensible decisions about money and politics and about immunity, which are going to have to
00:15:19be corrected one way or the other. So I think it was the people. I'm going to take your point too
00:15:25about federalism. I think rigging, I mean, this goes back to your question about rigging the
00:15:29election. It's just objectively more complicated to do it. And you've got so many different systems
00:15:34and so many different kinds of ballots. And you can see how somebody with a short attention span
00:15:40and limited appetite for actual work like Trump and the people around him would hesitate to take
00:15:45on a project like that. It's much easier to say, you know, the other side rigged it than to actually
00:15:53like go to all the trouble, especially as I say, when there are people who are organized to prevent
00:15:57it. So I wouldn't say the institution saved us. I mean, I guess where we are now, what I would
00:16:02emphasize is that Congress as an institution has to come back to life. You can't do democracy
00:16:08without a representative legislature, which actually passes legislation and legislation
00:16:15that people like, and that makes their lives better. And the way you do authoritarianism is
00:16:19you make a mockery of the legislature. You make a mockery of individual members. You prevent it
00:16:23from passing laws. And they've gone pretty far in that direction. So whatever happens in terms
00:16:29of investigations and laws these next six months or so, I'm hoping generally that people get a
00:16:34sense that, aha, Congress exists. Congress is a thing. We actually do have some kind of checks,
00:16:41and not just checks and balances, but Congress asserting itself and saying, OK, all of you who
00:16:45voted, we're not going to let you down. We're actually going to make a difference.
00:16:49And you've been now writing about that and talking to elected officials of all across the country now
00:16:54in the last few days and talking about the frame, talking about in terms of the frame, now we act.
00:17:01And so paint that picture. Let me first, though, back up and start. Are the leaders, I mean,
00:17:06you know, I don't want to pull you in the middle of it, but what do you think of this debate about
00:17:11our current leaders? Meaning, is it Schumer? Is it Jeffries in terms of those next steps? Or was
00:17:18this election calling for something else from your perspective? I'm happy to talk about that,
00:17:26but if you don't mind, I'm just going to take a step back and give my general theory of the case.
00:17:30I think that this is a once in a lifetime situation. I don't think Democrats are ever going to be in anything like this again. I don't think this conjuncture is going to line up again. I don't just mean the numbers, but I also mean a specific kind of opportunity, which is that people believe that the system is rigged, but they believe that Trump is worse.
00:17:52And therefore, the Democrats have a chance, not because everyone loves them, but because they think you are the only people who could possibly get us out of this. Now show us how you can get us out of this.
00:18:04And the second thing I think is that affordability and accountability are basically the same issue and that you can't dodge accountability just by going to affordability because you actually can't break through on the issue of everyday life and kitchen table and gas prices and all of these normal things without changing the way the system works.
00:18:27Those two things are connected. If there's money in politics, if the billionaires play too great a role, if there are super PACs, if there's presidential corruption, if there are stupid wars, then you're going to feel the consequences of that in everyday life, right?
00:18:39So that's how I see the case. And so what I want to see and what these conversations you kindly referred to are about is moving quickly in a way where people see the difference in their lives because both of these things are being addressed at the same time and quickly.
00:18:55And the other part of my view is that I think Democrats lose this chance somewhere around the spring of 27.
00:19:00Like, I think they've got roughly six months to show that they're capable of doing this kind of thing.
00:19:06And so that gets me to your leader question.
00:19:08And I'm not going to like I come to politics from various places.
00:19:11I'm a historian. I've seen contemporary politics and authoritarians in other parts of the world.
00:19:16I do not claim to be an insider on how things work on Capitol Hill.
00:30:58What do you anticipate there in terms of impeachment proceedings?
00:31:02I'm happy to tell you what I think about it. I mean, keeping in mind that I am neither an elected official nor an advisor to any elected official.
00:31:09You're talking to more of them than anyone.
00:31:14Here's my view on that. And I may turn out to be wrong and I may change my mind.
00:31:20But I think the Democrats have done their historic duty on impeachment of Trump.
00:31:25I think they were right to impeach him the first time.
00:31:29I think they were right to impeach him the second time, obviously.
00:31:34I think my personal view is that it's now on the Republicans.
00:31:38I think if the Republicans want to get rid of this guy, which they clearly do, let them
00:31:44figure out how they're going to manage it.
00:31:46Let them figure out whether it's going to be the 25th Amendment.
00:31:49Let them figure out whether they're going to initiate impeachment proceedings.
00:31:55And for me, the figure of Vance is very important because he doesn't, the only chance that man has of ever becoming president of the United States is being the incumbent and letting Democrats pass good laws. And he's smart enough to do that.
00:32:09And Vance being president of the United States would actually would be, you know, I think it's a remote scenario, but it's a terrible enough scenario because unlike Mr. Trump, who is a kind of unwitting and uncaring vessel for everything that is evil in the universe, J.D. Vance is a witting vessel for everything that is horrible in the universe.
00:32:30He knows exactly what he's doing. He's much younger and more energetic. He's delighted to be essentially carrying water, being the paid emissary of some of the most dreadful people in the world. He believes in the white supremacy stuff. He believes in these things in a way that I think more intensely than Trump does.
00:32:51So I don't think you want to set up a scenario where you give J.D. Vance two years to profit from your passing good legislation.
00:33:00So my view is that you let the Republicans get rid of Trump because they want to.
00:33:06And their view is going to – and they always want you guys to do the work.
00:34:40to impeach him, let it be the Republicans. So that's my view, Gavin. It's not a view I've
00:34:45heard like anybody else, you know, announce. There may be something deeply wrong with it,
00:34:48but that's how I see it. I appreciate it. I appreciate the novelty. I want to go back
00:34:52to that or at least pick up on that. But I want to just go back a little bit just because I think
00:34:56from an historian's perspective and your unique understanding of the world, obviously what
00:35:03happened in brazil which was interesting serbia notably what happened uh with orban and hungary
00:35:10um this lesser degree just even you know oh three and i guess you know poland and elsewhere i mean
00:35:17what do you what what what do you make of that momentum sort of the sort of macro in terms of
00:35:23what happened in the u.s was that sort of leading indicator from your perspective of a trend uh or
00:35:30are we over reading sort of the international and how that played into what happened here in the US?
00:35:36I mean, I think as Americans, we're never in any danger of over reading the international.
00:35:42I mean, I've been I've been beating the drum about Poland in 23 and then Hungary earlier this year
00:35:48and then Serbia a few weeks ago. I don't notice that in general, the way that we see the world
00:35:54has been too affected by that. I wish we paid more attention for a couple of reasons. The first is
00:35:59that the oligarchical right, to call it that, is international. It's much more international than
00:36:08the labor movement or anything on the left. They are very closely connected. They communicate
00:36:13tactics. They copy from one another. They meet. CPAC is basically a cosmopolitan organization at
00:36:19this point. The C might as well stand for cosmopolitan. So when Viktor Orban lost the
00:36:27elections in a landslide in Hungary, that mattered for an overall trend. But you could also kind of
00:36:33physically see how it hurt J.D. Vance and how it hurt Trump, right? Because he was their mentor.
00:36:39He was their guy. They looked up to him. They copied from him. And then suddenly he was beaten
00:36:44down. So there's a trend, but there's also a kind of collective demoralization that when you,
00:36:51because these guys, they depend upon politics of small numbers. They depend upon being the
00:36:56being the central guy and then being friends with the other central guys. That's how they think
00:37:00politics works. And when the other central guys get knocked off, it's demoralizing for them.
00:37:05But on the positive side, it goes back to some of what we were talking about. In Poland,
00:37:11especially in Hungary and Serbia, the winning combination was to say accountability. I'm not
00:37:18going to use our American words. Accountability and affordability are the same thing. And if you
00:37:23committed crimes are going to prosecute you, which is an important part of the story. And there was
00:37:28much more of that in those campaigns than there was in our campaign. And that's understandable
00:37:33a little bit because Congress, of course, can't prosecute. But I do think it's important for
00:37:37folks to be reminded that if you're going to break the law, you probably will be punished
00:37:41somewhere down the line. But yeah, I think there's a turn here. And I think the other side,
00:37:46this will be the last thing, the other side, and again, J.D. Vance is a great example of this,
00:37:51They have drunk their own Kool-Aid about how there's only one way the future can be. And their view is that the future is going to be dominated by a few centibillionaires. Our impulsive ideas about who's better and who's worse racially are true.
00:38:11we're going to have a combination of a few billionaires controlling the culture and0.95
00:38:16politicians who basically serve those billionaires telling you who's us and who's them.
00:38:22And this is the important thing. Everything else is hypocritical. Everything else is fake.0.99
00:38:29Everything else is woke. Everything else is nonsensical. You're a fool if you believe in
00:38:32anything besides that. And that view of the inevitability of this kind of thing,1.00
00:38:38whether it's in Russia or whether it's in America or whether it's in Central Europe,
00:38:42has been challenged and I think probably broken by the string of elections. Because
00:38:47however else you interpret these American elections, it's quite clear that they've
00:38:52opened a possibility for all kinds of new things, which a year ago might have seemed impossible.
00:38:58So that's how I see it. I do think there's an international trend and it has to do with people
00:39:02wanting to have, and it's actually a patriotic desire, wanting to have their own country ruled
00:39:07by people who will not themselves be ruled by oligarchs and who will allow folks to have a
00:39:14decent vision of what the future is going to hold for them and their families. Do you pick up any
00:39:18lessons, sort of contra lessons in, you know, Bukele in El Salvador, the newly elected
00:39:26president in Colombia, Chile? Obviously, Bolsonaro bucked that trend a little bit in South America,
00:39:31in Brazil, but with the loss. But how does that play out? I mean, it's interesting sort of
00:39:38from the European perspective, or even Le Pen's ascendancy right now, or the AFD's ascendancy a
00:39:44little bit as contra indicators in Germany. How does that throw, mix that into the basket? I'm
00:39:52curious, your thoughts. I'm not going to try to wax wise about Latin America because it's not a1.00
00:39:58place that I know very well. So I'm just going to stick to Europe and North America. I think the
00:40:06first point is just to accept that there is no overall trend. So one wouldn't want to be
00:40:11triumphalist either. That was in a way our side's problem up until Trump. Deep into the 2010s,
00:40:19I think we were a bit, we were sleepwalking with a dream of there are no alternatives to
00:40:26the stuff we wanted. And I think they then did the same thing. They started to believe there's
00:40:32no alternative to the way they think the world works. And the truth is that it's a back and
00:40:37forth. It's an up and down, unexpected things are going to happen. And neither of these narratives
00:40:41is true. It's not true that we all have to be brain slaves to fascist oligarchs. It's also not0.80
00:40:46true that we're all going to have lovely pluralist lives automatically because history is going to
00:40:50bring it to us, right? So any of those things is true. It's going to be a struggle. One thing that
00:40:55I would point to or repeat, though, is how international all this stuff is. So Afda in0.99
00:41:01Germany, which presents itself as the national party of Germans, is basically a kind of Russian
00:41:08or Russo-American creature at this point. I mean, not American you and me, but American in the sense
00:41:13that it's supported by this administration. And this habit of going for the most nationalist thing
00:41:22while opening the way for international influences, that is a pattern of politics that one has to
00:41:28watch out for. And it's very, it's very present in Europe at the moment. So yeah, I'm worried
00:41:35about Germany. I'm worried, I'm worried about France, but I'm also hopeful because people
00:41:40didn't expect the Serbian election to go the way it did, or even the Hungarian one, right? So
00:41:44I'm, it's, it's, it's, it's a, it's a back and forth. One thing that I am, you know, one thing
00:41:49I am kind of hopeful about is that when we get out of this or as we get out of this,
00:41:54knock on wood, we'll be able to take part on the positive side on this again, because, you know,
00:42:00I live in Canada now and I spend a lot of time in Europe and I've been watching and sympathizing
00:42:06with allies who have seen us fall away and who now have to rally and try to do things on their
00:42:13own, which has a positive side. And I'm hopeful that in a couple of years, we will be able to
00:42:19join up with them in a slightly different spirit. Not that we've always been right, because we
00:42:24haven't always been right clearly, but rather in the spirit of, okay, there's a struggle going on
00:42:30here, and it's an inherently international struggle, and maybe we can get on the right
00:42:34side of this thing this time around. I'll stick in the European frame,
00:42:40because we'd be remiss not to bring up the obvious, particularly this week, where
00:42:43there's sort of renewed negotiations, I think in Abu Dhabi, if my license serves me correctly,
00:42:51that Ukraine, Russia, the prospect, you mentioned Xi a moment ago, that he could get pulled in
00:42:59to sort of these three-way negotiations. Of course, I don't know where Ukraine is in terms
00:43:04of that. But the idea that we can see some progress in Ukraine now that the midterm is
00:43:14behind us, more likely, less likely, where do you think we are right now?
00:43:19Well, okay, number one, I try to remember when good things happen, that there's always folks
00:43:31out there who helped it along that we're not remembering to thank and uh and in this case
00:43:37i think that we do we owe a lot to the ukrainians so this whole conversation that we're having
00:43:44and indeed this election and the and the whole state of democracy owes a lot to the fact that
00:43:51the ukrainians resisted in february 2022 if they collapse if they don't resist then we're in a much
00:43:57more Russian world, we're in a much more oligarchical world. There's probably some kind
00:44:01of other land war in Europe happening right now. The forces that we've been talking about in the
00:44:06United States, given how international this all is, would have been emboldened. I think we'd have
00:44:10been dealing with a stronger and richer Trump. I think we'd be dealing with a stronger and richer
00:44:15set of allies around Trump. I think the struggle here would have been much different. So I just
00:44:19want to take a moment to frame the conversation that way, because it's one of the ways that1.00
00:44:24it's international positively, but the Ukrainians are the ones who are really paying a price,0.96
00:44:30every day paying a price. I was there for some of the summer and pretty deep into September.1.00
00:44:37And so going to your question, Ukraine is doing militarily quite well in this war at this point.
00:44:42There's no chance that Russia is going to take any territory. The Russia is actually losing
00:44:46territory at the moment. The one shot that Russia has at winning this war is precisely through
00:44:51Trump. I mean, the White House has always been the weak point. The White House is the one thing
00:44:55that the Ukrainians can't actually secure. So Putin's hope is that he can get the Americans1.00
00:45:02and others to break sanctions, as Trump is doing, that he can get the Americans and others to cut
00:45:07off aid to Ukraine, which Trump has mostly done, and to artificially create a situation where
00:45:12Russia can then destroy Ukrainian utilities, destroy Ukrainian water supply, destroy Ukrainian
00:45:17energy, kill civilians over the course of this winter, and force Ukraine to concede.
00:45:22But meanwhile, things are not going well for Russia. Losses, they have to mobilize now.0.72
00:45:29That means they have to take people involuntarily into the army. They're having a hard time
00:45:34producing the natural gas and the petroleum because the Ukrainians are actually hitting1.00
00:45:38the refineries. So the Russians want there to be peace, but they want to do it. They want to use0.99
00:45:45trump to do it right they want to they want to they want to in this that you can see how they
00:45:50you can almost see how realizing that trump is becoming a spent force the russians are in a
00:45:56hurry now to get him at some table where they can force something interesting through and so my hope
00:46:02is that we will be able to get through this winter um that the the democrats will pass legislation
00:46:08to help ukraine um that we can find a way for that not to be vetoed that's one of the areas
00:46:13where I think we might actually be able to get to a big enough, you know, a veto-proof majority.
00:46:19And that as Trump weakens, that hope for getting to peace will diminish. I don't think you can
00:46:25make peace in the format that we're talking about. I don't think you can make peace without
00:46:29the Ukrainians. I mean, you can agree that Russia will take things from Ukrainians, but that's what,1.00
00:46:33I mean, Russia has been saying that all along. The Ukrainians will have to have some say in the0.96
00:46:37final process. And it's very important for Americans who care about them, but also for
00:46:42Europeans when they're doing it, to insist on this, that the process has to include the country0.53
00:46:47which was attacked in this criminal war. So you don't have a sense, you know, this week,
00:46:52I mean, just another meeting, which is good. I mean, by definition, anytime anyone's presumably
00:46:57meeting, that's healthy, but you don't see necessarily any breakthrough in the short term
00:47:02without more pressure from Democrats pushing support for Ukraine, forcing the president's
00:47:08a bit, and then just a little bit more time? I think so. I mean, what Mr. Trump has been
00:47:17saying over and over again, that there's about to be peace, the meeting in the White House
00:47:20with Mr. Dmitryov, he's somebody who has been for the last decade, you know, offering
00:47:27Americans various financial incentives to give away part of Ukraine. I mean, even before the
00:47:31full-scale invasion, that was his job. And he's been at it the entire time. The fact that he was
00:47:36in the White House and Trump only chose to talk to him and didn't talk to the Ukrainians who were
00:47:40there, it's not surprising. It's not surprising. It's sad. It's shameful that we would have a head0.72
00:47:45of state who's on the wrong side of this war. But I don't think it means anything in terms of whether
00:47:51there will be peace. I mean, peace is, they will get to a ceasefire when the Russians think that
00:47:57everything has been exhausted. And the last thing to be exhausted is Trump. The Trump resource is
00:48:03the last resource they've got. And so that resource also has to be exhausted. And then I
00:48:08think we will get to a ceasefire. The Russians know they're in a tough space. The only one who
00:48:16doesn't know that is Trump. The only people who talk about this war as going well for the Russians
00:48:21are in the White House. There's nobody else in the world who thinks that. And so we got to get
00:48:25through that. We have to get through that moment where they're trying to prop up their guy and get
00:48:30a piece of paper in front of him, you know, and basically shove it through that way. I think if
00:48:34we get through that, where the Russians are trying to get an unfair settlement, basically by, you
00:48:39know, sock puppeting Trump, if we can get through that moment, I do think then the ceasefire might
00:48:44not be too far away, but no sooner than spring of 27. No sooner than spring of 2027. So let's,
00:48:51let's, I want to get to where we are in spring of 2027 and why you have a six month deadline in
00:48:57terms of what you think we can get done. You worry that has been the case historically as an historian
00:49:03that so often parties that, you know, win by landslides that tend to do well, tend to over
00:49:11reach. And then the inevitability of that overreach is a reaction in kind. You concerned
00:49:19that the Democrats, we may be over reading, quote unquote, this moment, this mandate,
00:49:25our mission it's interesting i i think that in this case the things the basic things that have
00:49:36to be done which in my view are cleaning up how our elections work and um addressing obvious cases
00:49:45of corruption and then undoing things i mean just undoing that you know that huge omnibus thing that
00:49:53they call the big beautiful whatever like just undoing that you know i think that there's so
00:49:58much undoing to be done and so much obvious work that americans agree about to be done that i'm not
00:50:05really concerned about my that my concern lies elsewhere when it comes to your tribe um and that
00:50:12is that it's a fractious tribe and um and it's it's it's a tribe so i mean i thought this was
00:50:20going to be, I mean, it's a lovely tribe. You're great. But my concern the whole way through
00:50:25was not that you were going to lose. I thought this was going to be like it was. My concern the
00:50:30whole way through is that not enough people on your side like to win. And so we're going to find
00:50:37out if people like to win because, you know, I want to say you've been given this because so many
00:50:42people worked so hard to get there and there's so many talented organizers and so many talented
00:50:47candidates. But in some sense, this has come to you for reasons which go beyond the virtues of
00:50:54the candidates and the party. There are historical reasons why you are where you are. And this
00:51:00doesn't, like this kind of combination doesn't arrive very often. And the question is, when it
00:51:04comes, do you seize it and you do the basic obvious things or do you let it pass? Do you
00:51:12fritter away the time? Do you choose something to disagree about? Do you choose to have an
00:51:19intra-party fight about something? Do you let the moment pass? That's what I worry about. I'm not
00:51:24worried about overreaching because I don't think that there's much overreaching to be done. I think
00:51:29the stuff that has to be done is pretty basic. And as far as I can judge, there's a pretty strong
00:51:33consensus about most of it in America itself. I'm worried about that. I'm worried about the moment
00:51:39passing without like the dramatic things being done and the dramatic messages being sent
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00:52:53My brother David is the story of the last chapter of my brother's life.
00:52:58It's weird and messy and vulnerable, and I'm going to share all of it with you.
00:53:04The constant back and forth battle about how do I, how do I not just be alive, but actually live.
00:53:12Listen to my brother David on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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00:55:15And so I look at the U.S. from the point of view of its foreign policy as well as its domestic policy.
00:55:23And I think when you look at the foreign policy, you see an essential truth, which is that our federal government, especially at the top, has not been operating as a body representing Americans or the American state.
00:55:49If you look at how we've dealt with China or Russia or essentially anything abroad, we have, when I say we, I mean the Trump administration now. The Trump administration has enjoyed hurting people it doesn't like. People who win democratic elections, for example. They take sincere pleasure in that.
00:56:06But aside from that, what they want to do is they want to find a way to extract money from any given situation. Whether it's Iran, whether it's Gaza, whether it's Ukraine, it's all about extracting money. And this is clear to the rest of the world. And our enemies are reacting accordingly. Our friends have to as well.
00:56:25But our enemies understand that you can get things done in America by bribing the right person, finding the right moment, and that the people who are in charge of the United States, you know, they're – I mean, Trump is a guy with some entertainment talent, and he wears a red, white, and blue suit, and he's old and white.
00:56:49To use one of his phrases, he kind of looks the part of an American, but he is in no sense an American when it comes to representing the country abroad. That's the thing, Gavin, that I notice, that they're just not an American government. They don't believe in the United States as a country at all. It's a junkyard for them.
00:57:09It's just something where they're going to take the shiny objects or they're going to use America, institutions they never could have built themselves, to get some kind of personal advantage abroad.
00:57:21So this thing, in America, we say transactionalism, but I think we don't see the depth of it, right?
00:57:26So transactionalism, because we think about money a lot.
00:57:30Oh, it's a transaction, so there must have been something good and like da-da-da.
00:57:33But transactionalism also just, it really means nihilism.
00:57:36It means that there's no value. There's no virtue, including the basic things like patriotism, rule of law, believing in sovereignty. That stuff's just gone. So I guess when you start from, when you look at it from that point of view, then domestic politics also starts to make more sense, right? That this is also how they see the country domestically. They don't really believe in it. They don't really care about its future. It's really just a scrapyard for them. And if you think something's a scrapyard, you make it more of a scrapyard, you know?
00:58:01And that's how I see it, that like the central thing about this crew is that they don't actually believe that our country exists and they've been behaving accordingly.
00:58:13And in so doing, they've damaged the thing.
00:58:15And how easy do you think, I mean, we talk in the spirit of Isaiah being repairs of the breach.
00:58:35I mean, I was there at Davos Carney's speech and, you know, talking about middle powers and, you know, this notion, this romantic notion that we can go back to our original form.
00:58:48And that would seem to be the good old days compared to where, in some respects, we are at the moment.
00:58:52What do you make of our capacity now for renewal as it relates to the breach of Trump and Trumpism on the international stage?
00:59:02I'm going to reverse course and start with the domestic here because I think, in general, it's better not to think about renewal or restoration or reform at this point.
00:59:13And I think that just, if you'll excuse me, going up to a very high level of abstraction,
00:59:18I think we got here because of things that were already wrong.
00:59:24And regardless of party, some of us have contributed to that, or we as a people have contributed
00:59:40And then add to that, they've already destroyed so much. There's so much rubble lying around. I'm not sure it makes sense to rebuild USAID exactly the way that it was. There should be something like it, but I bet we could do better.
00:59:55um you know the national institutes of health maybe that can be reformed but or maybe we could
01:00:00just do it in a better way this time around but more broadly i think in domestic politics
01:00:06and this has some you know implications for how people run campaigns in 28 but
01:00:10i think it's better to think about a a better future right than to imagine that we can restore
01:00:17or recreate or or or reform i don't think we can at least mostly i think it's i think we do have
01:00:24the resources, human, technical, financial, and otherwise, to be a much better country than we
01:00:28are. And that's how I would frame it. So in foreign affairs likewise, no one's ever going
01:00:36to see us again the way that they used to see us. And that's okay. That's all right. I mean,
01:00:41I think it's fine. It's terrible for the Ukrainians, right? I mean, just it's terrible1.00
01:00:46for the Ukrainians that we've abandoned them. We've caused a lot of people to die who didn't0.98
01:00:50need to die. And we've created security risks that we didn't need to create. But it's okay
01:00:57that the Poles and it's okay that the British, it's okay that the Canadians are thinking about0.72
01:01:02how to deal with Russia and China without us. That's okay. That's probably good practice.0.84
01:01:10It's okay that they're working through scenarios where we are just not present or we're on the
01:01:16wrong side. That's okay. I think that's fine. I think it's led to a greater maturity in politics.
01:01:22I think Carney's actually an example of that precisely. I think that's okay. And then I think
01:01:28when we get out of this, we will look at Canada and Canada will be something different than it
01:01:32was before. Maybe something better. I mean, maybe it always deserved more respect. Clearly it always
01:01:37did. But maybe there will be things to respect in Canada because of what they went through.
01:01:42And likewise with the Europeans. There may be things that we will respect there that we didn't respect before, and that's okay. I think it'll probably be okay for us that when we come out of this and we have conversations with the Japanese and the South Koreans and the Europeans and other democratic allies, I think it's going to be okay that we're in a different position, that we'll be forced to say, well, okay, how did you guys ride this out?
01:02:05And what can we learn from the Ukrainians and drone warfare? And okay, you did some good trade deals amongst yourselves while we were being idiots about tariffs. What can we learn? I think that will be fine for us. And I think five years down the line, we may end up with a sounder view of our own alliances and our place in them.0.96
01:02:28Because we're in a position now where we can listen a little bit.
01:02:33And we're in a position now where we might have some things that we realize we can learn.
01:03:17And so I've always felt a deep kindred connection.
01:03:22What do you make of the United Nations in all this?
01:03:25Well, I'm very happy to hear Eleanor Roosevelt get some credit for one thing. She was a remarkable person. And I think the original mission of the United Nations was very sound. It's stuck in its formulae, right? The Security Council and the veto and so on makes it very difficult for the United Nations to be any sort of active agent.
01:03:52um i i don't think i would say oh let's get rid of the place i mean i i think it serves
01:03:59a very useful purpose what i think is that it's not set up to deal with some of the most basic
01:04:08problems that the world has like it's not set up to deal with financial issues issues involving
01:04:14capital it's not set up to it to deal with cyber problems with data with privacy with cyber warfare
01:04:21with interference in elections. It's in that sense, you can't turn it towards those things
01:04:28because it's not really built for them. So I would not get rid of it. I mean, it doesn't,
01:04:34despite what the Trump people say, it doesn't really cost us anything. And it is very good to
01:04:40have one forum where everyone is present, if nothing less, right? And there are agencies
01:04:48of the united nations which do terrific work involving children and health and even sometimes
01:04:54a peaceful resolution of complex so no i wouldn't get rid of the thing i don't think his instincts
01:04:58are sound but i do think that it's indispensable for there to be other kinds of international
01:05:04organizations that we help to build right so if like one thing which i found very interesting is
01:05:11the way that the european union and canada are moving closer to each other there's going to be
01:05:16some kind of union, not union, but there's going to be a broader coalition of democracies
01:05:20that emerges to use, you know, Carney's term, middle powers that emerges. Where are we going
01:05:26to be with respect to that? You know, can we, can we be respectful about that? Can we be,
01:05:30can we be good with that? NATO. I think, I personally think NATO is, is a good and necessary
01:05:35thing. I am not among people on the left who think that they're the only dangers in the world
01:05:41come from the United States. Plenty of dangers come to the United States, but Russia is carrying0.99
01:05:46out the most horrific war since 1945. China is a real rival. There are real dangers in the Pacific.0.99
01:05:52It makes sense to have a military alliance. So we need, and with the European Union,
01:05:59we should be a friend of the European Union. I mean, the whole premise of the Vance-Trump
01:06:04approach and the white supremacists they've got now in the State Department is that the Europeans
01:06:11are not good enough at being European. They don't understand that they're supposed to be white,0.97
01:06:15you know and they're not white enough and therefore we're going to punish them we're0.97
01:06:19going to support the far right we're going to break up the european union and behind all of this0.93
01:06:23of course is all the silicon valley capital which wants to move in and dominate the european
01:06:28conversation the way that alas they often dominate our conversations by it could because if you break
01:06:34up the european union you also break up european union regulation of social media platforms so
01:06:38you have you know that's that has been a hostility which i think is indefensible i think we should
01:06:44try to be a friend of the European Union. We should try to be a friend of this cluster of
01:06:47democracies, annoying and, you know, and fractious as it sometimes is, because that's as good as it
01:06:53gets, right? So we should try to be on the side of these institutions, these middle institutions
01:06:58between us and the UN. So that's, yeah, that's roughly how I see that. And we have to recognize,
01:07:05I mean, we have to also recognize when coming back to something I said earlier, when one country is
01:07:10doing a lot for us. And that country is Ukraine. There are many terrible things happening in the
01:07:15world, but Ukraine is in a slightly specific category of a sovereign state that is fighting
01:07:20a war where the war has only positive consequences for us. And if we're going to be responsible
01:07:25actors on the international stage, we have to be able to recognize when someone is our ally.
01:07:30And that, I mean, it's a very simple thing, but Trump and Vance and that crew have just,
01:07:34they failed as, as statesmen, they failed as humans. And if I can, if you'll let me put it
01:07:40this way, they've also failed as men because they've, they've been unable to recognize the
01:07:44courage of others and they've been unable to recognize the sacrifice of others. So part of
01:07:48responsible foreign policy is being able to nod and recognize, ah, yes, there are, there are states
01:07:54out there which are doing things for us. And it's, it's, and we need to recognize that and to,
01:08:00and to support it. And I appreciate it. I mean, so interesting what you said about the courage
01:08:07of the Ukrainians and how that contagion is reflected in many respects what's happened
01:08:12globally, but also here in the United States and that thread that you connect to the outcome of0.74
01:08:19the election and the activity in the streets in my state and Los Angeles in response to the
01:08:23federalization of the National Guard and the militarization of 700 active duty Marines that
01:08:28were sent to the city to what happened in Minnesota, which was extraordinary. And those,
01:08:33again, small acts of courage that you write so evocatively about. I appreciate that insight. I
01:08:39think there's so much there. But I'm curious, two things, and I want to get back and close where
01:08:45I left off as it relates to this six-month frame that you have. But I'd be remiss because it was
01:08:53interesting, and I was struck by the language you used on Iran, talking about superpower suicide
01:08:59in terms of what the U.S. has done in Iran. And that is a festering room that seemed also
01:09:05on the ballot as it relates to diesel costs, fertilizer costs, inflationary pressures,
01:09:10obviously gas, and military treasure. It's why we're going to likely have a secretary,
01:09:16quote unquote, of war impeached this week. Talk to me. Has it been suicide, superpower suicide?
01:09:23Or is that just evocative framing? I like it, by the way, but is it a bit hyperbolic? We're still superpower regardless, but how the hell do we get out of this? What do you make of it?
01:09:35Yeah, let me warm up a little bit there. I want to repeat a point which you just made. I think that what happened in LA and then in Minneapolis on a domestic scale is like what happened in Ukraine on an international scale.
01:09:53I think that if people don't organize, act courageously, look upon their neighbors as neighbors, if people don't do that, I think this is a very different election.
01:10:07I think if we had normalized ICE more, if we'd normalized these deportations more, I think then we would have been worse as a people.
01:10:13And so I think we owe a lot to those organizers in L.A., organizers in Minneapolis, Texas, all over the country, not just because they were doing good deeds, but because they reminded us that there's a dimension of politics which goes beyond just caring about yourself.
01:10:32and uh without that you know without that version of how we can act it's you can't i don't think
01:10:40you get from there to here so i i appreciate your saying that i'm glad to have a chance to
01:10:45to repeat and acknowledge the good work that folks in california and elsewhere did
01:10:49and i'm also glad by the way that you're going to poland um i heard about this from another
01:10:53source and i hope you'll be doing some more traveling i understand you may have time to
01:10:58do some more traveling sometime pretty soon. There's a lot to see in Ukraine. I hope you'll
01:11:03find your way out there as well. On superpower suicide, I mean, I was seeing, Gavin, the war in
01:11:09Iran is symptomatic. So you're supposed to be a superpower. And yet, in my view, we lost within
01:11:17a few days. But you lose a war immediately in a kind of humiliating way to a middle power.0.98
01:11:22And then you can't get yourself out of it. You just keep generating more and more costs while0.98
01:11:28everyone laughs at you i'm sad to say it um or if they are our enemies they just seek ways to0.99
01:11:35extract more and more advantage out of it as the as the russians have been doing and we're in this0.95
01:11:39ridiculous situation where the russians are the russians help the iranians to target american
01:11:44troops and the and meanwhile we're trying to siphon money towards russia right all of the time0.87
01:11:51with the diesel deal. It's just this extraordinary thing where it's humiliating basically in every
01:11:58way. But as I see it, it's a symptom. I mean, you go a step deeper and you have this Department
01:12:05of Defense, which is being purged of a lot of its best people. You take a step deeper and you see
01:12:12that the Department of Defense is in trouble in part because we're not learning about what modern
01:12:17warfare looks like from the Russia-Ukrainian war, but also because we're starving the research
01:12:22which is at the foundation of having a modern military. And then you take a step deeper and
01:12:27you realize, well, that's just an example of how all in all this administration has been starving
01:12:32science in the federal government, outside the federal government, in general. And then you
01:12:39think, well, isn't that a foundation of being a superpower, right? That right there. And so that's
01:12:44Iran is one example where it's terrible in itself. But if you follow the chain of logic down,1.00
01:12:49you realize the harm that they're doing, just taking the science example, it is the kind of
01:12:55thing which could prevent you from being a superpower decades ahead, half a century ahead.
01:12:59Because if you look at the sources of our power now, they have to do with investments in science
01:13:05and specifically, by the way, recruiting scientists and grad students from other countries,
01:13:09which is something we don't seem to do anymore. You have to look back 50, 75 years and say, yeah,
01:13:13you know, the roots of where we got to had to do with that. They had to do with wise post-war
01:13:18policies. And so it's not just that we're, you know, that Hegseth is wildly incompetent and
01:13:24unsuited for the office he holds. It's not just that. And it's not just that Trump made a mistake0.58
01:13:30about this war, although the fact that he could get us into this war shows us something about
01:13:34the weakness of Congress and the need to rebalance that. It's that it's a symptom of
01:13:40things which are much deeper. And that's why I do think it's okay, justified to speak about
01:13:44superpower suicide, because I think the war in Iran, it is what it seems to be. It's just as0.94
01:13:49bad as it seems, but it's also a sign of some fundamental things which they've been doing.
01:13:54I mean, if I could say one more thing about this, if I could imagine one way for our enemies to
01:13:59weaken us, it would be to rip out the scientific undergirdings, the research undergirdings of our
01:14:05future. And it's impossible to imagine our enemies doing that as effectively as Trump and Musk and
01:14:13what's his name, Russell Vaught have done in the last couple of years. Yeah, it's not just a war
01:14:17on Iran, it's a war on affordability and innovation, a war on education and science and health.0.72
01:14:24And that needs to also be repealed, as we say, in the next six months. Why, Tim, six months? What is0.93
01:14:31it about your numeric i mean what is it about the spring is the summer is what too hot in dc the
01:14:39fall it's too late uh we fall prey to complacency what what is it why the spring okay i'm really
01:14:45i'm really flattered that you know an an experienced public servant such as yourself
01:14:52would even ask me about these tactical questions because it's a look it's a gut feeling about
01:14:57Americans, basically. It's a gut feeling which comes from having talked to folks in the fall.
01:15:05It's a gut feeling which comes from reading the polls. It's a gut feeling which comes from
01:15:09sensing a moment where everybody's sense that the system was broken, tilted to, well, yeah,
01:15:14it's broken, but Trump is something different, right? So the sense that the system is broken,
01:15:20that's going to stay until somebody does something about it. And, and I think the way that I read
01:15:28this election is that your side has been given a chance, but it's been given a chance by an
01:15:34impatient people. Americans have many admirable qualities, but patience is not one of them.
01:15:43Right. So that's it. There's no genius behind the six months. It's just, it's, it's rather a gut
01:15:48feeling that if they don't say, if they don't say what they're going to do in November, in this
01:15:54month, and if they don't, if they don't start doing in late January, I don't think there's
01:15:59going to be much patience with this because the underneath all of it, I mean, underneath the joy,
01:16:05underneath the victory, underneath the big margins, there is still the basic American sense
01:16:10that this system is rigged against us. And that sense is correct. It's correct. And so that's,