8/20/26: Trump Bond Crisis Worsens, North Korea Humiliates Trump With Missile Launch

This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human. I survived nine months in captivity, and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are The Survivor Files. Every week, I'm with survivors who lived through the unthinkable, abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced. These are stories about what it takes to make it out alive. Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And I guess I can share that, uh. No way. Listen to the latest episode of Hey Jonas on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, this is Hayes Davenport. And Sean Clements. We host the podcast Hollywood Handbook. Each week, we talk to someone in show business and try to help them with their careers and see what they have to offer us. Everyone has a good time, and no one gets mad at their publicist for letting them do our show. We've had a lot of great guests like Sarah Sherman, Adam Scott, Danny McBride, Ben Stiller, and a lot of other big shots that wouldn't be where they are without us. Listen to Hollywood Handbook on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, guys. Sagar and Crystal here. Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election, and we are so excited about what that means for the future of this show. This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left and the right that simply does not exist anywhere else. So if that is something that's important to you, please go to BreakingPoints.com, become a member today, and you'll get access to our full shows, unedited, ad-free, and all put together for you every morning in your inbox. We need your help to build the future of independent news media, and we hope to see you at BreakingPoints.com. Good morning, everybody. Happy Thursday. Have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed we do. A lot of interesting stories we were tracking this morning. Trump panicked yesterday, and they intervened in the bond market, a major, major development. We will break that down for you. Meanwhile, he believes he can convince North Korea to give up their nukes. Good luck with that one, buddy. We'll see how that's going to turn out. A shipping expert is going to join us to help us understand what is going on with Iran in general, and also specifically with the issues of supplying our carriers. The tech world is freaking out about the data center backlash and trying to team up with Republicans to staunch the bleeding. Israel itching for war with Turkey. Definitely got to keep an eye on that one. And a Palestinian American who is under siege by terror settlers in the West Bank is going to join us live to tell us what is going on. There with his land and his property. Yes, that's right. Thank you to everybody who has been subscribing to the show. BreakingPoints.com. It's the last couple of days we're going to have our free month trial, which executes right at checkout. It's available. All you have to do is go to the website, sign up. You get access to the full show completely uncut early. And of course, you get access to those premium subscriber AMAs. We had a really good one on Tuesday, gave all of our reality television thoughts. Many are calling it the best AMA ever. All right. So yeah, if you want to see that, you're going to have to go ahead and sign up for it. If you're watching this on YouTube, please hit subscribe to our YouTube channel. If you're listening to the podcast, share an episode with a friend. It really helps other people find the show and rate us five stars. But as Crystal said, let's go ahead and get an update on the bond market. Some genuinely crazy stuff. We don't cover it nearly enough, but has massive impacts for everything that we do. You know, our whole economy, our debt servicing, interest rates, etc. You know, they say the bond market is where the professionals really pay all of their attention. Yes, that is right. And Trump seems to have paid close attention to the bond market, which is why we've paid close attention to the bond market. We had Jeff Stein on yesterday. It was pretty prescient of us, actually, to do that segment at that time because there was a lot of pressure on the bond market and the yields were going up. That means that the demand is going down. That has huge implications, both in terms of how expensive it is to service our debt, also in terms of your day-to-day life and how expensive interest rates are. Trump has long talked about how he wants to get interest rates down. They had their hand forced yesterday and actually took some extraordinary action in the market. With regard to long-term bonds in particular. Yesterday, Trump was speaking to reporters and he talked about interest rates and how he believes they should be much lower. Let's take a listen. Now, when we announce good numbers, the better they are, the worse it is for interest rates. So we could be, we could have a GDP of 10 times. You know, they say, oh, it's going to be three times or 4.1. We could have a GDP of 10, 12, 15 times if they just leave us alone. Let us, let the rates go down. We should pay the lowest interest rates. You know, every point of interest is $600 billion. Think of that. Every point of interest is $600 billion. Two points means we make a fortune, but we keep driving it up. It's a very unfair system. And I've said it now for a long time. When our country does well, interest rates should go down. I mean, every time I hear our country's doing well, I say, oh, it's too bad because they lift up interest rates. They should drop interest rates because it means we have a strong country. And it's all based on credit, meaning good credit. And we have the best credit. And we'd pay off the debt very easily, very quickly. So you hear I'm talking there about how important this is in terms of the debt service. Actually, let's throw a nine up on the screen here. The last element in this block, the U.S. debt officially hit $40 trillion. Obviously, America's borrowing continues. This was something Trump talked about at the beginning. I remember when Doge was going to do a lot about that. Didn't ultimately work. Now, this is something that in ordinary times, maybe it's not that big of a deal. But given how much our interest rates are going up, having to pay a lot more to service that debt, and given the fact that the world is moving away somewhat from the U.S. dollar as the world's reserve currency, this is now something we have to pay a lot more attention to. And, you know, a lot of that, a lot of the costs coming from the endless wars that we choose to fight. Trump was asked about whether or not Americans should be concerned about some of the volatility in the market. Let's take a listen to that. Even despite the fact of what's happening with interest rates. Should Americans be concerned about this volatility in the bond market? No, I don't think so. Because, like I said, our country is doing so well despite interest rates. We have interest rates that are artificially, they're actually artificially high. They raise them for no reason. And you can't go out to the market when you have a Fed that's raising interest. You can't say, I want to pay three points less than what the Fed says you're supposed to be paying. So, no, I don't think so at all. I think we have a, we're a very powerful country and we're powering through these ridiculous interest rates. They're ridiculous. So, there's two issues at play here. One is what the Fed is doing with their rate policy and then the other is what the market is determining with regard to the Treasury bond yields. As I mentioned, extraordinary action taken yesterday. Sargon put A4 up on the screen from the Financial Times. U.S. Treasury to boost long-term bond purchases in bid to steady market. This is a tell that they are very concerned about what is going on with Treasuries. This is an extraordinary intervention. The U.S. Treasury said it would at least double purchases of long-term government debt as policymakers seek to contain a sell-off that has sent borrowing costs soaring in the world's most important bond market. The more aggressive buyback operation affects Treasury securities maturing in 10 to 20 years and 20 to 30 years, increasing from $2 billion to at least $4 billion, the Treasury said on Wednesday. Surprise move comes at a time of growing strains in the $32 trillion U.S. Treasury market. As investors fret over the burst of inflation triggered by what? Trump's Iran war and Washington's mounting public debt burden. The way that they're going to do this is basically using short-term debt to buy the long-term debt is the actual mechanism here. So it's a little bit of, I guess, borrowing from Peter to pay Paul. But that's the concept. The bottom line is very simple, is that we're taking debt to pay down debt. And what that means in the long term is basically that it will try to affect interest rates, or sorry, in the short term, is they're trying to bring interest rates down immediately because the higher that they are, it increases the amount of federal spending, which is directly related to debt servicing. So I have some of the numbers here in front of me. Roughly 14% of current federal spending goes to servicing the debt today, which is obviously bad because that's literally just interest that's being paid on the debt. 3.3% roughly of total GDP. That is dramatically higher than where things were when we had much lower interest rate. That's why lower interest rates were really good for the government. But a lot of the other problem is that with interest rate demand side, et cetera, there's no idea that we could go back to where things were for a variety of reasons. It's number one, we got ourselves into this mess of the Iran war. So we have very high inflation, which is part of the Fed's mandate. We have weird things going on with our unemployment sector. We also have this crazy situation now where in terms of our debt and our, our bonds itself, we have great instability because of what's happened here with Japan and with the general reduction of reserve currency as far as the US dollar. So with the power of the United States now reduced, we're entering into territory, which is very dangerous. You know, Japan territory, where it's roughly 110% debt to GDP ratio. Like these are exactly the places that you don't want to be if you're not a global superpower. And we've always, been able to avoid the pitfalls of the Eurozone crisis or the Japanese crisis because of our reserve status, because obviously of the great United States military and power projection. As that all begins to fade, that will also have immense impact in our ability to trade, to compel nations. We're going to talk a lot about this with Iran, this latest, I'll just mention it for now. Trump is like, any economy which does business with Iran is hereby sanctioned. China's like, yeah, that's cute. We don't care. What are you going to do? He's like, what are you going to do to us that you haven't already done? You hit us with tariffs, we hit you back. Our banking system is totally proofed, US proofed after what we saw happen with Russia. What's Russia going to do? They don't give a shit. They're already sanctioned to hell. Venezuela, Iran, not Venezuela anymore, but the past Venezuela. There's all kinds of ways to circumvent sanctions now. We've shown our hand. We threw it all away basically on Ukraine. So all of this compounds together. And I guess the bottom line is, is that they have to panic. And Scott Besson, his entire career is built on currency manipulation, bonds and all this. And he's trying his best, but there's only so much that you can do. And we're already in extraordinary territory. The fact that the Japanese bailout basically fell apart after a month should be a real wake-up call. We don't have the magic wand that we used to. That's right. And what conditions are going to change over the next month, two months, three months, six months that are going to ameliorate the stress on the bond market? It's hard to see. It's hard to see because what are we talking about? So some of the factors that are leading to this situation are the fact that we're not going to be able to do anything. We're not going to be able to do anything. We're not going to be able to where, you know, just to break it down to its most basic level, when there is less demand for our bonds, when there are less buyers who are interested in taking on U.S. debt, we have to pay higher interest rates to lure them into the market. So that's why the rate goes up when there is less demand for the bonds. That's like the most basic sort of level of thinking about all of this. And so a few factors are tying into this. Number one, you've got this tremendous AI build out, largest debt investment that you could possibly imagine, which is creating all of the money that this demand for capital. So that means if you're somebody who has capital, then you can kind of demand a premium because there's so many companies and entities, there's so much demand for your capital. So that's one issue that's not going anywhere. The other one is inflation, as Sagar was saying, related to the Iran war. Another one is just the sort of uncertainty about the U.S. and how stable it's going to be going forward. And part of that is certainly the large amount of debt and the world moving away from holding treasuries. Now, the world's central banks, governments are holding gold more often than they're holding U.S. treasuries. That is a major shift in terms of the way that the world operates. So all of these pieces put together, it's hard to see how things are going to change. So how long can they continue to do these sort of interventions? And the rates are already quite high and at the place where, you know, there's a bit of a panic among policymakers. So that is the landscape we're looking at. And, you know, if we zoom out here in terms of the debt and where we are as a country and all of these sorts of things, we're going to see a lot of debt. And I think that's going to be a big thing. We really have we've got to reckon with some things. And I'm never I've never been a debt hawk. You know, I think we've been hearing for 30 years. Oh, my God, everything's going to collapse and we can't afford the debt, blah, blah, blah. And it's never turned out to be the case. However, we are facing a different landscape now where China is rising, where the world is trying to decouple in certain ways from the United States of America, where the previous system that had the dollars, the reserve currency, I'm not saying this is going away tomorrow, but there is a shift that is happening. So we are going to have to get our arms around it. And I think that's going to at the same time after the Cold War ends, there would have been a thought of, OK, the military spending can kind of wind down. That never really happened. And in fact, now we just keep every single president more and more and more military spending. And for what? Have you seen these destroyers? Have you seen these carriers? Have you seen the fact have you heard about the fact that our munition stockpiles are like down to the bottom of the barrel? So though for what is basically because the military industrial complex is a cartel that has been robbing us blind to build up a military that is not responsive to the realities of modern warfare. So we have to get our arms around that. And then the third piece here, too, is that rich people have figured out how to game the system and not pay taxes. The antiquated progressive taxation system has been broken. They broke it. OK, they figured out the loopholes. They bought the politicians. They broke it. If we don't figure out some way to tax the extraordinarily wealthy and only getting wealthy by escalating factors every single year, if we don't figure out how to tax them, then, yes, we are not going to be able to do anything in this country that will benefit the sort of broader public. And we will face at some point there will be a reckoning for the direction that we're going in. So that's kind of the big picture on all of this. I actually think we could have figured it out as bad as things were. Of course we could. Even if we just hadn't gotten into the Iran war. But if you want to go big picture, I really do. I mean, if we let's say we end the war and you Ukraine, thank God. All right. Now, diesel, we've got things that are flowing. We have a peace settlement. There's a level of stability there. We don't have to worry about that much. Then we don't do the war with Iran. Gas goes to 250. We frack the hell out of whatever is left in Alaska, whether you support that or not, it keeps going down. Right. I mean, life is good. You've got two twenty dollar gasoline. You got cheap energy. And even then, you know, with the data centers, like we would worry. I don't think we would worry as much. But in a finite environment, where energy is extremely, extremely expensive and now you have a demand for trillions more dollars in military spending and you have 40 billion dollar deficit and or sorry, for sure. And you have on top of that, this reduction of the overall empire. That's when things get really bad. And so, you know, my wife is an economist. She explained to me this way. It's called like a debt spiral where you have big. I wrote it down. Big deficits leads to governments borrowing more leads to investor demands. Higher yield leads to interest expense rises, leads to deficit gets bigger, leads to government needs to borrow more. So that is the spiral that you exactly don't want to enter into. I kind of see that that's what's happening right now, especially with the persistent high inflation. And and here's the thing. In another time period, it wouldn't really matter. So like, for example, Japan has much higher deficits debt than we do. That's right. Much higher is like percent of GDP hasn't really mattered because they have zero percent interest rates. So that's one scenario. And the other thing is, as I've been saying, like the fact that we have been the global superpower, world's reserve currency also means that it hasn't really mattered. We've been able to borrow from the world. The world's like, OK, you're going to pay your debt. No big deal. When you have start to have to deal with this reality is when those two factors go away. So already we have interest rates. You know, we had very low interest rates for a long time, too. That is changing probably for good. This is probably a new status quo, if I had to guess, unless a lot of analysts are saying that is changing. And then the sense of, oh, it's the U.S., the global superpower. They're always going to be fine. That is also getting a little bit shaky. So that's when you have to really start worrying about those sorts of things like the debt spiral. And and yeah, so that's that's the situation we find ourselves in. I do want to want to flag what you were talking about. Trump announcing we're going to have these crushing operations against Iran. Put a three up on the screen. Here's the new true social. Of course, this already. You've been broadcast. Scott Bassett said something to this effect. No one has given the Islamic Republic of Iran a greater opportunity to make a deal than me. Tragically for them, they failed to take it. Therefore, today I'm announcing the most crushing economic operation ever taken against any country. This will be economic warfare and isolation on an unprecedented scale. Their Navy's gone. Their air force is destroyed. Interesting. Their military factors are now rebel. Really? Their currency is worthless and their country is hanging by a thread. I feel like I've heard this before today. I'm also announcing that any country that allows its financial institutions, businesses, airports or government entities to provide any type of lifeline to Iran will itself face tremendous economic consequences. Oil smuggling, swap lines, cash transfers, exchange houses, ship registries, front companies. It all needs to stop now. You know who you are. This will be an economic D-Day and we need all of our allies to stand with the U.S. to isolate and defeat the Iran threat. These maniacs are on the ropes and these historic measures will cripple them and their ability to project in the future. Iran will never have a nuclear weapon. Thank you for your attention to this matter. As we've said before, hard to imagine how much more we could do to Iran. And certainly the maximum pressure we've ever been able to apply is to Cuba, which is in dire straits because of the blockade we have put on that country. That is a country that is very close. It is an island nation. It is much smaller, has much fewer internal resources than Iran. What we can do with regard to Iran is to apply a nuclear weapon. We have to apply a nuclear weapon. We have to apply a nuclear is much more limited. But Sagar, I was reading this morning that the Iranians see, yesterday we covered, Emily and I covered that the UAE cut off all trade because they claimed that Iran had fired missiles at them. Iran sees that as part of this program of economic strangulation because they do have a lot of financial ties with Dubai in particular. And so they're seeing that as part of the economic warfare project here. Look, I mean, you said Cuba. It's actually, I mean, Russia is empirically the most sanctioned economy in the history of the world. How's it doing? They're doing okay. And by the way, in terms of what's hit them economically, it's got nothing to do with sanctions. It's got to do with these drones that are blowing the shit out of their diesel facility. So what does that tell you? Is that their ability to export diesel is actually the only real thing which was keeping their economy afloat. They were doing fine. Their GDP actually increased. Their defense spending was 20% and all that. They transformed into a wartime garrison and they are still living to fight another day. Their population doesn't doesn't care, and they continue to just roll along with the war. It had nothing to do with the banks or the finance. If anything, it actually helped Putin because any of the Western oligarchs either threw him in jail or they had to leave voluntarily. Everybody is completely around him. So with Iran, what is left to that country economically that we haven't done? Nothing. They want you to believe that there's some super secret secondary sanctions. It's just not true. I mean, again, and maybe it is true, but if it is true, get ready for some crazy realignments because then China, Iran, all the, or China, India, South Korea, all of these different countries which previously have purchased Iranian oil, then they're going to have to actually make a real choice. They're like, okay, which one do we choose? Are we going to choose less oil, higher inflation, higher costs to ourselves over the United States? What are they really doing for us? Like, oh, I don't know, abandoning our military exercises and saying, screw you while we pursue a deal with the North. These things are all going to be taken into consideration by, world leaders and world economies. And the balance sheet looks very different than it used to. Last thing I want to highlight here is A6 about the Federal Reserve and high inflation. Yeah. Because this was to your point about why interest rates just probably aren't going down within the next five years, potentially even the next decade. And many members of the Federal Reserve are concerned that persistently high inflation will lead to these rapid price rises becoming embedded into the world's economy, according to their latest policy vote. And they said that it highlighted the policy vote. And they possibility after several years of inflation above 2%, continued elevated inflation rates could begin to affect inflation expectations and wage price setting decisions, basically saying it's baked in and they're choosing to hold borrowing costs at their current interest rate for their July meeting and potentially set for the future, maybe because of Iran having to even hike the interest rate. So that's important because their expectation, along with what's happening in the bond market, et cetera, is making it so that it becomes the de facto policy of these high interest rates and of all of this crazy bond trading. Even the Journal, their top headline this morning is, Besant leans into his role as America's bond trader-in-chief, a willingness to intervene after yields had hit a nearly two-decade high. And I know, as you guys covered, to see it back at 0.7 levels, that should give you jitters. I mean, we should not forget what it means to go through even a modest recession. It is a de facto policy of these high interest rates. And I know, as you guys covered, to see it back a genuinely devastating if we had to go into that. Yeah. And the high interest rates, what does that mean? Housing affordability out the window. And that's part of why Trump is so concerned about, you know, all of our, any sort of debt interest you pay is related to what we're talking about here, both with the bonds and with the Fed policy. And businesses. Well, that's the other thing, you know, we talk about high interest rate, you know, who are the, who can, the data center dies, they don't give a shit if it's 4% or 5%. But, you know, in another world, you and I are a different type of small business. The difference between two and six is a lot, right? Whenever you look at a loan, I mean, I may buy the machine, maybe not, you know, new cameras, something like that. If you have to, if you have to buy it on the finger, like, I don't know, you know? And so that's the type of stuff, which actually has a much more shrinking effect to the US economy. Restaurants, you know, whether you're going to do a small business loan, even a normal loan that people take out for ordinary capital expenditure purposes, that's what gets screwed. So the tech people can afford the high interest rate. It's average small business owner who absolutely cannot. And that kills your expansion period. So that's what that is. That I think is the biggest cooling effect on hiring as well as, like you said, at the personal level, whenever it comes to personal debt, like car loans and or house loans, none of it good, none of it good. Okay. Let's get to North Korea. I just remember this low taunting voice next to my ear saying, shut up, don't say anything. Every week I'm with survivors who lived through the unthinkable. I knew if he woke up without a doubt, he was going to hurt me. I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed and I just started screaming. They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced. But these aren't stories about what's taken from them. They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive. If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home. This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse. I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having. I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed. From bestselling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table. It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters, and that is a Trojan horse. Whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations, or a community of readers who love to think a little too much, you're in the right place. Listen to Prose Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. See you between the pages. I'm Hoda Kotb, host of the podcast Joy 101 with Hoda Kotb. If you know me, you know I'm always searching for inspiration, and useful tools to maximize joy. So this podcast lets us uncover those things together through meaningful conversations with fascinating people. Like when my friend Henry Winkler offered advice to aspiring actors, and really anybody hoping to stand out. You're not hired just to fill time and space. You're hired to fill the space with you. You have something in your guts. You go with it. And Shawn Johnson recalled the moment she realized her husband, Andrew, was the one. He was just so unapologetically himself, and knew nothing of Hollywood. He hadn't been on a plane before without his family. It was so pure. Listen to Joy 101 with Hoda Kotb on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Turning now to North Korea, some actually crazy situation happening there after Trump saying he was going to go to North Korea. He was going to go to North Korea, and he was going to go to North Korea. He was going to abandon military exercises with the South and try to pursue a meeting with Kim Jong-un. Kim Jong-un actually basically spit in Trump's face and was like, yeah, I don't care about your stupid meeting, your cancellation of military exercises. You're either going to bow down, kiss my hand, and acknowledge my nuclear weapons, or nothing else is happening. And to show that he's serious, let's put this up here on the screen. The prime minister's office of Japan releasing a statement this morning showing that there has now been suspected missile launches by North Korea. They say that, quote, is what they put out, ensuring the safety of aircraft vessels and other assets. They also put out another statement that it looks like roughly 10 different short-range ballistic missiles were fired by North Korea in the vicinity of Japan. Not exactly like new news, but you should pay attention because this is what they use to compel diplomacy and to shape these talks with the United States. It comes on the heels of Trump trying to create space for a grand diplomatic summit with North Korea. Just like he did with Kim Jong-un in Singapore in 2018. But this time around, the North, in terms of their demands, are much higher for what any sort of bilateral meeting actually would look like. Here's Trump trying to lay the ground, and then I'm going to give you the truth. B2, let's take a listen. We'll talk about that. But I do have a good relationship with Kim Jong-un. As you know, you've seen he didn't like Biden. He didn't like Obama. He didn't like anybody, but he likes me. And I like, you know, I just got along with him very good. We had we had great meetings. We speak. And I think our nation and I think other nations, frankly, whether it's Japan or or South Korea, they're a lot safer if I'm president of somebody else's president. It's always very funny that he thinks that Kim Jong-un likes him and didn't like him. Biden or Obama. Kim Jong-un doesn't care or think about any of those people. The only thing he cares about is dying filthy rich in his mansion and keeping the, you know, 57 nuclear weapons that he has. And to show you how delusional Trump is because he wants this imagery of meeting with Kim, which at this point, I think the North Koreans understand. And that's why their demands are so much higher. Let's put B3 up here on the screen. Trump still has the same policy as Biden and Obama, which is total denuclearization. So let's let's read. President Trump is pushing aides for a meeting as soon as this fall with the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, seeking to revive dramatic diplomatic quest from his first term to convince Kim to abandon his country's nuclear weapons program. Trump has privately discussed setting up this in-person discussion on his next trip to Asia. And while Trump sees another one-on-one as a chance to reopen dialogue, quote, analysts and officials said they would don't expect much progress because Kim wields a nuclear arsenal that has not only grown stronger and more capable of striking the U.S. since Trump and Kim's previous three summits. The That's actually why I think this is all so ridiculous is Donald Trump, in the midst of a war where he tried to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, struck them under the guise of diplomacy, failed to do so, failed to do regime change, and affirmed the strategic logic of Kim Jong-il and his father for pursuing a nuclear weapons program in the first place, which is, you will make us untouchable, and you, the American president, you will meet me as a peer nuclear weapons power, and I will demand what I want. You can keep your piddly denuclearization talks out, because we don't care, and we have more nukes than we could ever need to eviscerate your entire homeland. And yet, because in America, we've been bombarded with all this propaganda, and all this, like, oh, famine, and all of that is true, but it does not belie the strategic logic. They have nukes. They can wipe our cities off the map. Thus, we have to deal with that reality. They get to make demands. And, you know, it's like, we're still living in this total fantasy. Trump is. With Donald Trump. Yeah, and that's why I just find this so preposterous. And if anything, you know, Kim is humiliating him by now shooting these missiles at Japan, by being like, yeah, man, we don't care about your dumbass summits or your joint military exercises. Like, we have nukes, dude. Like, you're going to meet me, and at the end of the day, you'll be able to remove the sanctions or not, but my nuke's not going anywhere. If anything, we're building more tomorrow. It is hilarious that Trump imagines at this moment in time, when they have never been more vindicated. And again, this is not a moral judgment. This is just a reality check. They have never been more vindicated, and there has never been more clear-cut logic in favor of not just North Korea, but Iran and South Korea and all kinds of other countries around the world. Also, Saudi Arabia also acquiring nuclear weapons because of the logic we ourselves have created in the world. And you think that is the moment when North Korea is going to say, you know what? You're right. I'm going to give up my nuclear weapons. Zero chance. Zero percent chance. Not only that, we covered how North Korea, economically, they're doing pretty well. They're having some significant growth. They have, I mean, they've effectively waited us out. Remember when we did that article, how they have more housing than the city of Chicago in Pyongyang? You're like, I don't know. I don't even know what to say about this. Yeah, no, that's right. And again, not to like, yeah, we're not trying to sugarcoat things here or whatever, but they've found two partners in China and Russia that have turned out to be very beneficial. And they've found ways to also contribute to those relationships with Russia. Again, these are not moral judgments. This is just reality. With Russia, they have sent their own troops as effectively mercenaries into Ukraine. It's been very valuable there. They've also helped with industrial production. Yeah. They have millions of weapons. The fifth largest military in the world. Exactly. So they have, and so they've earned all kinds of money from that. They're now investing in housing and all kinds of things internally so that they're trying to make it so that there isn't so much wealth just concentrated in Pyongyang, that that wealth is spread more throughout the country. So economically, the picture is pretty good for them. They've got two pretty powerful allies in China and Russia. And so why at this moment would they come and do? Why would they come and do anything that we want them to do? So their response to Trump's reduction of these military exercises was, number one, we have a great personal relationship and friendship with Trump, you know, playing to his ego. But number two, we don't really care that you reduce the military actions. This means nothing to us whatsoever. And as a show of strength, we're going to go ahead and do one of our missile launches. So it's just, you know, it's really silly. And I think it, to me, reads as desperate. Trump sees what an L he has taken on Iran. He's desperately trying to figure out some kind of a win that he can get on the global stage. This kind of worked for him in the past. I think he genuinely does like Kim Jong-un and thinks that maybe, and he is so delusional about his own powers of negotiation and persuasion that he thinks perhaps this is some sort of a win that he could get on the global stage. And let me be clear, like, I support the idea of being. Less militaristic. I think that's going to be a necessity in terms of how we move forward in the world after this demonstration of incredible weakness in the Iran war. So I supported the original meetings with North Korea. I support figuring out how to coexist with the other nations of the world, whether they're doing things we like or don't like or whatever in terms of their internal domestic politics. But he is living in such a delusion to imagine that he has any position to demand anything from North Korea. That's my thing, too. I'm with you. I, I, I. I vehemently defended the original summit, which, man, if the young kids today who weren't paying attention to politics, they were like, oh, he's meeting with a brutal dictator. I'm like, yeah, the guy's got a nuclear weapon. That's how it works. Sorry. You know, like, what do you want? What do you want us to do? Lose Hawaii? I'll keep Hawaii. Thank you very much. And or Los Angeles. I'd rather make sure that they don't get wiped off the face of the earth. Oh, and make sure that we, you know, listen, I mean, Seoul and everybody living in South Korea has been living in terror and fear since 1950. Like, it's, it's actually. It's really insane that North Koreans have the ability. Well, they're sarin gas and chem of VX and the conventional artillery nukes aside. They could destroy the city of Seoul in 45 minutes. I was reading some of the work. It's terrifying what they were living underneath. Let's keep them safe. We can keep our economies well integrated. They're a great ally. Let's have good relations with the north. We don't have to keep them. We don't have to have that missiles and carriers and all this other crap, which is over there just to stop North Korea, let alone what's happening with China. But in this case, what Trump has done is he's actually. Being forced to go to them on their terms because not just of their nukes, because of the bad situation with Iran, but also everybody knows from Pyongyang to Beijing that there is nothing they can do if there actually is a war between North Korea and South Korea. They know that even with all the American troops, which are stationed there, push comes to shove with the interceptors and all that. We are going to take tens of thousands of casualties, millions if the ICBMs and all that get involved. Well, and we should. We should also talk about South Korea's response to this, because North Korea's response, very interesting of like, we don't care about your military exercise. We're going to do what we want to do. Sure, you could come, you know, maybe we'll have a meeting, but you're not getting what you want. South Korea also was like, that's fine. We actually support you having some sort of dialogue with North Korea, and we are going to move in the direction of decoupling from relying on you anyway. That was their response. So both of these countries are sort of like, OK, bro, whatever, dude, do whatever you're going to do. We're going to look out for ourselves. We're going to look out for ourselves, because we know how much you've been humiliated on the world stage. We know the limits of your power now. So we have to look out for our own interests at this point. And let me go into that, because it really does matter, because one of the things I've seen now, and actually, let me play Trump bashing South Korea. A bunch of MAGA people were backing him up. But the internal dynamics and the story here matter a lot. When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and held captive for nine months. I survived, and I've spent my life exploring the world. Exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them. I just remember this low, taunting voice next to my ear saying, shut up, don't say anything. Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable. I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me. I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed. And I just. I just started screaming. This is Prose Society. The weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse. I'm Eli Rallo, and every week, we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having. I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed. It's like, if you can hide some real message, inside compelling characters, and that is a Trojan horse. If you know me, you know I'm always searching for the right person. For inspiration and useful tools to maximize joy. Like when my friend Henry Winkler offered advice to aspiring actors and really anybody hoping to stand out. You go with it. And Sean Johnson recalled the moment. she realized her now husband, Andrew, was the one. He was just so unapologetically himself and knew nothing of Hollywood. It was so pure. Let's listen to B4, for example. South Korea has been protected by us for many, many years. And during my first term, they agreed to pay close to $3 billion a year for protection because we don't, you know, they essentially weren't there. And I asked them to do that at my request. I said, not right. They weren't happy about it, but they agreed. I asked for $10 billion. And they were very unhappy. But we agreed for a short term, there would be $3 billion. The next year would go up and the next year would go up. So they start paying for their protection. When the election was rigged and I ended up watching for four years and then coming back, I watched Biden rescind that $3 billion for whatever reason. When I called recently the president of South Korea, who I like, I think he's very nice, actually. But I called him. I said, would you like to give us a little hand? We don't need help with Iran. But if you'd like, give us a hand with Iran. He said, no, thanks. And I said, wait a minute. We have 39,000 soldiers over there guarding you from. Kim Jong-un, your next door neighbor. And you're not going to help us on a very easy military operation in Iran? That's strange. Right. So this is South Korea is a freeloader. Israel, though, that's a good ally. It's preposterous. But let's tell the story of South Korea because their most recent foreign policy decision, I've talked about this on the show about THAAD. When the United States deployed those THAAD batteries, those both the missiles, to help intercept North Korean missiles. But the radar, especially. The Chinese government, because that THAAD radar, the range extends well over Beijing. They were like, this has nothing to do with North Korea. It has to do with us, which is probably right. But anyway, the Chinese economically sanctioned Softwise, the hell out of South Korea. They took a massive hit. Chinese tourists stopped coming. They start banning all these exports. I mean, it was a real problem for their economy. South Korean government said, at the end of the day, we must gamble. The Americans are our blood brothers. We fought in the Korean War. We sent our troops to fight in Vietnam. 5,200 South Koreans died in Vietnam. Now, I'm not saying they should have been there in the first place, but they felt a moral obligation. We are together, right? They spent 3.5% of their GDP on defense, which is more than most people in NATO. They allow these tens of thousands of Americans. This was the decision point for them. They said, we will gamble. We must go with America at the end of the day, because they will protect us against China and against North Korea. Thus, we will take it. We will take the hit. And then, how did Trump repay them? He hit them with tariffs in the first term. Second time, then, Biden becomes president. He extends the stupidity policy of denuclearization first with North Korea. North Korea's nukes continue to dramatically expand. They have dozens now, nuclear weapons. Similar decision point. Remember, the previous South Korean president, 2022, I forget, it's like Yoon something, the guy who tried to do martial law. Well, he had this entire policy of, we'll only extend our hand to North Korea in exchange for total denuclearization. The Biden administration and the first Trump administration largely were supportive of that idea. So they took the hard line, which was very antithetical to how China wanted and Pyongyang. Then what happens? He's an idiot. He tries to do his martial law takeover of the nation. He gets removed. So the current South Korean prime minister, he's a liberal Democrat. And I mean that in their sense, like a liberal Democratic party. He has the opposite approach. And so if you are the leader of South Korea, now under the second Trump administration, let me tell you their story. You've seen what it seems to go all in on the American empire. You've also watched the THAAD missiles get removed. So even though you said that they would be there to defend you, they took it away from Iran. We hurt their economy when it came to Iran. And then this, I cannot emphasize how important this story was too. Remember when that Hyundai plant got raided by ICE? This was a national scandal. It was a national scandal over there. I am talking like front page news that their people were treated like this. Because remember, we told them, just go ahead and come in here under visa waiver, whatever, get this plant revving. They've built all these factories here. They have tens of billions of dollars invested in our country. To be treated and shackled like that and deported on national television on top of everything I just laid out. Now you arrive at this current situation where now we're saying no more military exercises. And the current president says, you know what, enough. I can't deal with this shit anymore. I have to maybe choose a different way. This is a disaster. They are our 10th largest trading partner. Samsung phones, the television I'm looking at right now is made in South Korea or designed in South Korea. The amount of bilateral economic trade and their importance to our economy is immense. So when I tell that story, if you're South Korean, what would you do? What would you, any rational country would say, I'm done with these people. That's the problem that we're living in. - And South Korea is a microcosm of there are many countries around the world that maybe in less extreme ways are learning the very same lessons and saying we can't rely on these people. I mean, think about the Gulf Arab allies, for example. Even the ones that are still rah, rah, let's do the war with Iran like UAE. Are they gonna invite us back to our bases in the region? Did that work out well for them? No, they're thinking about this all very, very differently. And so there's a tremendous shift happening in the world. The very fact that South Korea was apparently asked to be involved in the Iran war and we're like, so you're on your own on this one. That is a significant sign as well. And Trump took it that way and was pissed about it. But you can understand 100% where they're coming from. And not to mention, he says this thing of, oh, it'd be an easy, just an easy little war with Iran that we asked them to be involved in. How dare they deny us their assistance in our easy little quick war with Iran here. Of course, we've seen how that's turned out. So no, it's a new day in the world. And this is one example of the way that countries are, completely reassessing how they think about-- - And I forgot to mention this, this whole Navy thing. Guess which ally is the single most important node for American shipbuilding? Because we don't have to do anything more. Oh, it's called South Korea. Oh, which country has one of the best domestic munitions industry with its own interceptors and all that? It's called South Korea. It's like, I could go on forever how important these people are compared to some Latvia or Estonia, some other nonsense country, which everybody in Washington gets all upset about when Trump is like, oh, maybe we shouldn't defend them. It's like America, the media, everybody, we blink an eye and we just forget the entire area of Asia and how vitally important these people are. But this story I just told, that is now happening in Japan. They have a conservative PM. They have their own national politics. They just got screwed by Trump. And now, same thing with Shinzo, the current conservative Japanese establishment went all in on Trump, same thing. They got slapped around in these tariff negotiations. They're extremely pissed. The prevailing sentiment, as I understand it, inside the Japanese government is if we could go back in time, we would never build anything in America. We would rather just pay the tariff. We hate your country. We hate dealing with all of you people. And we'd rather just sell to China or whatever. So, and now we're militarily screwing them. And these are the number three economy in the world, the top trading partner outside of Canada, Mexico, and China. I mean, think about how important these countries are just to our own everyday existence. And so how much we've screwed them, like the bill will come due as we say, like nothing happens overnight, but empires die very slowly and then all at once. It will have one major event and then that's it, it's gone. - And ultimately, you know, this may force actually a better, it's possible it forces a better status quo, more realistic one, one that does allow us to trim our sails and cut the spending in terms of the military and be able to focus on our own people and not have these insane fantasies of world domination. But it's hard to imagine us getting there, the way that Trump has done it, it's hard to imagine us getting there without a lot of pain in the process. - Well, the flip side, and this is the danger. Guess what? South Korea, they're gonna have a nuclear weapon in a decade. They'd be idiots not to. Japan, already I read Japan Times yesterday, maybe we should rethink our constitution and nuclear weapons, right? And so look, that's how it starts. So 10, 15 years from now, you got no more. What do you do? You get a nuke, or you ally yourself with, the Japanese and the Australians are doing joint exercises right now. That doesn't really happen, you know, normally. Without at least the United States, what I mean is it doesn't normally happen separately outside of America. But this is what rebalance all starts to look like. And it's not to our benefit whatsoever. Now we're gonna welcome on a guest to the show, Sal from the What's Going On With Shipping channel. I'm sure he'll have plenty more to say about this. So let's bring him in here. - I survived nine months in captivity and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them. - Did you hear the new episode of the Hey Jonas podcast? - We are at D23, so we'll see who stops by. - The cast of Frozen. and stopped by Kristen Bell, Josh Gad, and Idina Menzel. frozen what for kristoff they said okay what are you going to be singing today i said i don't know that must have been why you didn't get it plus john stamos hayden christiansen from star wars and more and i guess i can share that uh no way listen to the latest episode of hey jonas on the iheart radio app apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts hey this is hayes davenport and sean clements we host the podcast hollywood handbook each week we talk to someone in show business and try to help them with their careers and see what they have to offer us everyone has a good time and no one gets mad at their publicist for letting them do our show we've had a lot of great guests like sarah sherman adam scott danny mcbride ben stiller and a lot of other big shots that wouldn't be where they are without us listen to hollywood handbook on the iheart radio app apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts this is an iheart podcast guaranteed human