Is the Resistance Era of Democratic Politics Finally Over?

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I don't know what the right term is, I've been consuming you for a very long time from books and political, foreign policy, all of it. So this is a real treat and a lot of politics to talk about, which you are obviously covering very closely. There has already been a lot of discussion about the primaries from Tuesday and the big implications. And I want to double tap on Alexander Vindan's primary in Florida for a second with you. Obviously you testify during Trump's first impeachment, covered all of that. This is primary to DSA member Angie Nixon, who has been on the interview circuit and I think has been doing a pretty exceptional job, which I want to talk about separately from this first point about Alexander Vindan, because what stood out to me in this was obviously you need to take all of your opponents seriously and hash doesn't win elections, knocking on doors, showing up, being in people's lives, caring about the things that they care about, having a spouse and soul to your opponent online, all of those things. But it did kind of sit with me that it feels like a bit of an end of an era of these resistance heroes that we had from the first Trump administration within men being a great example of that. But we also had other impeachment managers like Eric Swellwell, Diana DeGate, who are now not on the political scene one, had to withdraw obviously because of accusations of sexual assault, Diane lost her primary. What do you make of that angle? Dan Goldman, who is my congressman, won't be returning. What do you think about that? Yeah, it's really interesting. I might have a slightly counterintuitive view on this, Jessica, in the sense that my basic take is that we often, and I remember going back to my very first years reporting on Capitol Hill for a roll call about congressional races, we national writers, we loved nationalize individual congressional races. We're talking often in a democratic congressional primary in the middle of the summer, a few hundred thousand voters as opposed to millions, and then generalizing off of that can be a challenge. I also, as a proud Washingtonian for many years now, I do think we have this sort of institutional hazard of, to a certain extent, overstating the role of ideology, particularly a policy differences in individual races, which makes sense, right? We come to Washington, we care a lot about policy, we care about ideology, and what seems safer to generalize this year is a kind of visceral rage, actually in both parties' primaries, we can talk about that in the different ways it manifests itself, but certainly for Democrats, I think it's absolutely fair to say that people who are seen as complacent, who are seen as insiders or too tied to the establishment, they're going to face an uphill fight right now in the sense that democratic voters, in particular primary voters, what are they looking for? They're looking for resistance, but not of the go along to get a long variety. They want something that feels much more in your face, allowed, scream, a protest in many ways is what individuals want, feel about the state of the country, about the state of their own party, I think there's a legacy hangover, frankly, as well, about Joe Biden and the idea that, you know, Democrats were not served well by a party leadership that told them just everything's going to be okay, and we're going to restore normalcy, and that didn't happen. So that's a kind of long-winded way of saying, I don't, I'm wary of over-generalizing, but I think it's simply true that we're moving on, whatever the view of resistance was in Trump 1.0, it definitely looks different this time, I think you're going to see voters coming and voting for people who they think are going to shake things up. Yeah, I guess, I mean, that's a very valid point, and I'm in New York, so not DC, but we have a similar obsession with trying to find these big trends in everything, when sometimes it just boils down to the obvious, either like it's the economy stupid, or it's the person who you met, who asked you for their vote, and told you what they were going to do to make your lives better, which a lot of these candidates, even if they are running in local races that get, you know, tens of millions of dollars poured in from all over the country, don't always do on the same level. But I do think that this idea of closing the door on the old way of doing business vis-a-vis Donald Trump is something that is very salient today, and how members of the DSA, whose ideology, in a lot of ways, runs counter to where most of the democratic base is when you look at the platform, for instance, you know, and watching your colleague, David Rednick, with Megan Romer, for instance, you know, one of the co-chairs where she didn't have an answer for the most basic questions, certainly about foreign policy, a lot of the accounting that goes into making these policies on a domestic level happen, et cetera. But there is that visceral-ness to the way that they're talking about income inequality that is making people more lenient with their vote than I think they would have been stereotypically. Yeah, I think that's exactly the point, in many ways, for me, does because that it's not that we tend to think that people are just going down the line and trying to match up their set of personal policy preferences with, and I, you know, what does the DSA say about this, this, this, and this, and I don't think it's about checking the box like that. I think it's about who's channeling, you know, the feeling of the electorate right now best and who's best perceived as being able to wage a kind of active politics of confrontation with Donald Trump and what the Republican Party under Trump has become. And so there are two different axes, right? You can look at it as sort of the traditional left-right axis in American politics and in both parties, or you can look at it as the sort of in-out axis, and, you know, we'll see which is driving that more ultimately in some districts. It makes a lot more sense. Frankly, the voters have moved left in certain districts in New York City, for example. That doesn't mean that what works in Deon Goldman's district to defeat an incumbent congressman is going to work in a battleground state district in Michigan or in Wisconsin, for example. And so, you know, I think though we are seeing both parties in very, very different ways reflect this long-running rage at the system, you know, I think the last time there was a consistent view among Americans of all political persuasions that the country was moving in the right direction was in 2004 George W. Bush's era, right? So combine that with Democrats having a specific, you know, urgency and hunger to do whatever it takes, I think, for many voters to change the status quo. And that's powering a lot of these races right now. Yeah, I want to get your take on the other side, because you've been mentioned, you know, the lights talk about what happened in the Republican primaries. But at first, I do want to play this clip from CNN this morning with Boris Sanchez and one of the leaders of the DSA when Boris talks about his family's own experience under Cuban dictatorship. I get your criticism of foreign policy, as I said. It's not an uncommon one, but Lauding Fidel Castro is a different story. You talk about what things were like before the Revolution in Cuba. I'll give you a personal example. My grandfather was a revolutionary in Cuba during that time. He was affected by a previous dictator, Fuhensir Batista, having his friends disappeared in the street for speaking their minds. My grandfather found that revolution hoping to bring democracy to Cuba. And then what happened? Filled like Castro, locked my grandfather up, sentenced to 20 years for doing what you're doing now on live TV for speaking his mind, for expressing himself really, for trying to organize politically. So I wonder, again, how you think that lands with people who suffered under that dictatorship, who now you are trying to court as voters when your organization comes out and laws a hundred years of Castro. I don't think it would land that well with them, Ashik. We're seeing many people in the United States who are struggling under massive inequality in the United States. So putting out a statement about Fidel Castro supports those people? We want to expand democracy everywhere in the United States in Cuba and everywhere else. And that does not come at the barrel of a gun. It doesn't come at under the threat of economic blockade. That only makes that limit's democracy everywhere. So if we want to improve Fidel Castro as a beacon of democracy, I wouldn't say that. The pause was very notable and he loves shell-shocked by the story. And these stories are shell-shocking to a lot of people who even know about them. But then certainly those who haven't, I'd say, read enough, at least about the history of socialism and like in countries like Cuba. Do you think that moments like that are going to resonate with younger voters where they will want to see a shift like keep the talk about taxing the rich, universal childcare, pre-K, I'm in New York City, Mandani just gave parents four hours of free babysitting, it's a glorious thing. I mean, parents need to get out and have a date, right? But stuff like that, I don't think anyone wants that. >> Yeah, you know, I mean, first of all, let's just say that policies that are pro-family, that are pro, you know, the working in middle class in this country, they don't have to be illiberal, right? And what, you know, Boris really channeled very effectively is the idea that the history in the 20th century and the first part of the 21st century of state socialism as it is morphed in places like the former Soviet Union or in China has been fundamentally illiberal, unfree, you know, I spent four years covering Russia and the former Soviet Union for the Washington Post in the early 2000s at the very beginning of Vladimir Putin's tenure and I'll tell you, you know, 10 years only, not even after the fall of the Soviet Union, you know, you can't spend time in places like that that were just so recently unfree and sadly and tragically have gone back to being unfree in a new form of 21st century dictatorship, which Putin has managed to impose there and be so cavalier about, you know, what, what these values of liberalism and rule of law and the freedoms in our constitution. Those freedoms are under assault, not just from the far left, but from the far right in a very active way in this country. And I think that it is not incompatible to have American liberalism in trying to along with some of these very popular policies that support American families. And so I find a lot of the conversation around this is almost unbearably uninformed, to be honest. It makes me so sad because the idea that there is some kind of contradiction between supporting child care, you know, for women and, you know, freedom, I mean, come on, come on. And that's just buying into Bolshev talking points of, you know, the 20th century, that kind of red baiting that Trump engages in, you know, to me, it can only work with an electorate that, you know, is, is, is not primed to be able to sort out the difference here. And, you know, frankly, I worry as living memory fades of what the excesses of the 20th century were, that people are much more vulnerable to that kind of uninformed political discourse. Yeah. Republicans definitely benefit from us living in information silos and, you know, not having decent education. Frankly, though, I'm very into the story about the Mississippi miracle and how they have turned things around there. Yeah. But I see this all the time, especially because I work between conservative media and more liberal media. So I see both sides of it. And you look at the kind of source material that people are using and just how bifurcated we are as a society. I worry about it for the left as well that people are too in love with their content creators. And then their content creators ideas become bibl to them when a history book or frankly travel and experience could do a lot more good. You mentioned our rights being under assault by the Trump administration and you are seeing fracturing in his base that we have not seen before. We have not seen this with white men without college degrees. We're seeing it with white women as well. He is lost all the gains that he made with Latinos and black voters in the 2024 election Gen Z voters to how long do you think that lasts like do you think this is the real deal that people are looking around and saying we're getting nothing that we were promised or is this something that when you get into the voting booths and you see D versus R that you still go with the party that you've been a part of probably for generations. Yeah. No. These are like really core questions and anybody who claims they have a sort of solid answer. You know, I would definitely discount that and you know to the point I do think in the liberal media world of course we're understandably obsessed with the kind of ideological debates inside the Democratic Party, you know, we're not the Florida primary but in many ways like to me the more consequential vote this week was in Alaska where, you know, you had I think a development that pretty strongly suggested Democrats are in a much better position to pick up a Senate seat there as a result of the performance of, you know, a much more mainstream or whatever you want to call it, Democratic candidate, you know, in the end Alexander Vinman was very likely to lose the Senate race in November and so is Angie Nixon the person who beat him, right? So in that is not necessarily the most consequential ideological fracturing. Now on the right, I think, first of all, the dynamic that we are starting to see that I think is a real one and is a lasting one is the ebbing of power as Donald Trump moves into a lame duck status and that is inevitable. And I think it's already coming into play here, people looking over the horizon, whether it's possible 2028 candidates or Senate candidates who'll be in there for six years and looking to a time when Donald Trump is not the leader of the party anymore or it's voters on the ground in states that are so dominated by Republicans that ultimately it's the Republicans, whatever caucus they come from who need to be accountable to them. You mentioned the Mississippi thing, which is a great example of a very heavily Republican state where ultimately there were a Republican party decided it needed to deliver in a different way for voters. I am fascinated by the results this week in Wyoming where this is one of the only states that was basically completely dominated by the freedom caucus faction. There was essentially there were two parties in Wyoming for the last couple of years that were the mainstream Republican party, the old fashioned Republican party and the freedom caucus Republican party. Democrats basically didn't count at all. And yet amazingly when it came to the state offices and the primaries this week and the governors primary and other statewide offices, legislative offices, the Trump backed freedom caucus candidates got clobbered. They got clobbered at the state level because I think they weren't delivering the kind of governance that Wyoming voters wanted. So to me, that's a very interesting question about where is the Republican party headed post Trump. I do want to caveat this because I think it's really important just because Donald Trump is a lame duck. Not only does that not mean he's going to go away quietly, but from my perspective, it's suggest that Trump is very likely to escalate, to get louder, more disruptive, more erratic, more willing to challenge norms as he fears his growing irrelevance in politics. So I think when I say Donald Trump laid duck, that might give people the oppression. Well, he's just going to, you know, be totally slowly riding away into the golden sunset. Um, you know, it's, it's not going to be like that whatever it's going to be, it's, it's not going to be like that. Hey, what's up, guys, it's Babish, host of In the Booth with Babish. On this week's episode, I sit down with Dominic Cessa, who plays Anthony Bourdain in the new A24 film, Tony. We talk about getting into character as one of food's greatest icons. And of course, which castmates he'd fuck Mary or kill. Watch the full episode on YouTube or listen wherever you get your podcasts. People are big mad about data centers in the United States this summer, but don't sleep on how mad people are about flock. Flot cameras, if you haven't noticed them, don't worry, they've noticed you. You may have heard about them in your reels or on flock talk. I have never in my life been as pissed at the government as I am now that flock cameras exist. Americans are going to war against flock AI surveillance cameras and people are going around and literally sawing them down, absolutely destroying them. An AI surveillance apparatus goes against the very essence of freedom and the core values of our country. It's not right. It's not conservative and it sure is hell ain't American. Flot surveillance cameras have popped up all over the nation every state but Alaska. But this year dozens of cities and counties across the country have cut ties with flock. And on today explain from box, we're going to tell you why. I'm glad you brought up Wyoming. I want to throw in there also, you know, the Pennsylvania State House and also some exciting independent candidates that are popping up all over the map. I was disappointed for Montana Senate, for instance, that the Democrat didn't bow out. By the time of the deadline, because now there'll be three candidates on the ballot. And I think the independent there might have a better shot. But the board seems to be opening up differently, either for normy Republicans or the possibility of considering a common sense Democrat like we're seeing in Kansas as well. And, you know, Chuck Schumer is spending in places you didn't expect him to be spending. I think all in Trump back candidates, ten of them lost their primaries or races on Tuesday. I want to shift to foreign policy because, you know, a lot was made of Darling Graham's response about Taiwan. Lindsey Graham's sister who is mine now to win the seat on her own, not just being appointed to take over. And, you know, she was asked about what do we do about Taiwan. She said, I don't really know, I'm focused on South Carolina and has tried to clean that up. But it got me thinking, especially vis-a-vis Ukraine, where Lindsey Graham was such a dogged and committed supporter, friend of Ukraine, you know, Zelensky sitting there at the funeral. Like, Lindsey Graham changed a lot in the Trump era, but certain things didn't change about him. And this commitment to the post-World War II world order and knowing who our friends are and our enemies, in a case like Russia versus Ukraine was one of them. And, as someone obviously covered the part of the world very closely, what do you think happens in this next iteration of Republican leadership? I mean, Mitch McConnell won't be there anymore either. I mean, he's not there right now, but that's a different story. So what do you think that looks like? Yeah, I think you're exactly right to kind of focus on this, because whatever happens in November in terms of the Senate, it's going to be a different and I think much trumpier Senate Republican conference, whether they cling onto the majority or not. You'll see people like McConnell gone, people like Lindsey Graham gone, you know, even the other Republican senators who, you know, were more supportive, I would say I have a traditional view of America's role in the world, and the Republican foreign policy, you and I associate with the Republican Party pre 2016, you know, Tillis, Cassidy, some of the others, it's going to be a trumpier Senate Republican conference, at least for the next few years, and likely a smaller one as well. And I think that that is some of the turf on which the 2028 Republican primaries is going to be fond of this vision of what a strong America means in the future. And I don't, I don't see a coherent vision and anyone who tells you that Donald Trump's vision of foreign policy is going to be the vision going forward. I mean, that's frankly the first. Yeah, that's a joke because nobody can define a coherent, you know, version of foreign policy. And it all comes from Donald Trump's extreme personalization of the office and that that's the definition of foreign policy. Now, obviously that's not a doctrine that a party can run on in the absence of the candidate who was created and promoted that doctrine around his own identity. So what that tells me is that there is no consensus Republican foreign policy right now. And anyone who's trying to tell you about the brilliance of, you know, the Don Roe doctrine or whatever, you know, that that's not a serious person when it comes to talking about what it's going to look like after Trump. I do think that you've seen both parties expressing a fear that the US can no longer extend itself so much in the world. And frankly, Donald Trump's disastrous decision to embark on a war of choice against Iran and the Middle East will reinforce that feeling in the electorate and in politicians, I think, in both parties. You're looking at a situation right now where the war with Iran is the most unpopular war since the Vietnam war and that took years to to get to that point. Whereas I think Americans intuitively understand there was never any rationale offered for the conflict and it seems to have resulted in a national humiliation for the United States, which is desperately trying to claw back to a status quo ante that's that's not going to be possible when it comes to Iran's in effect weaponization of the straight of our moves. So, you know, I think it's really up in the air in many respects in both parties. You know, you have an ascended faction, as you pointed out, as we saw with Borscht as there. You have an ascended faction among the Democrats who don't have a coherent foreign policy except that Israel is bad, which might be an overwhelming consensus of Democratic voters but it doesn't exactly tell you what the United States should do when faced with Russian aggression against the Baltic states or against Romania, which might be something that we face sooner rather than later. Yeah, there are definitely a few folks around the globe who are most enjoying what's going on. I mean, Putin has the struggles obviously with Ukraine, but has seemed plenty happy with what's going on with our leadership. And then I guess North Korea got a big boost this week since we're choosing them over South Korea. It looks like, you know, you're not a fortune teller. You don't have the magic eight ball for foreign policy. But the latest news about the war in Iran is that there are no talks going on, not even the secret ones that get leaked out. And it's clear that the Republicans and that it has penetrated to Donald Trump's level but there needs to be some sort of exit strategy-ish at least to survive the midterms in some way. Like gas prices back down below $4, for instance. Do you have a sense of where this stands? And do you think that Iran is going to be in at least somewhat control at the straight of foremost going forward? Because it feels like they're just going to work at a deal with the Omanis and we're all going to be paying for, you know, any future traffic through there. Yes. I mean, look, the bottom line is why would Iran seed this incredibly valuable thing in effect that Donald Trump has given? They've suffered a lot, obviously, you know, Trump and Israel have taken out the country's leadership. They have inflicted enormous amounts of physical damage, human damage, once again, it's the people of Iran even more than, you know, their extremist leadership that suffers as a result of this. But the bottom line is it's very hard to see any kind of either a long-term peace deal or even an interim arrangement in which both parties at this point have an incentive to make. And so that's where you get these frozen conflicts. We've seen that happen in Europe with Russia, by the way. Now, unfortunately, and horrifically, Ukraine is hot war four years in. But the incentive for both sides has not matched up in any of that time to create even a short-term peace agreement. There's never been even a short-term ceasefire in that conflict. And unfortunately, my worry is that that's what we're looking at here with Iran because the political cost for Trump of making a bad deal, they increase every single day that you get closer to the midterm election. And for Iran, again, what is it that Trump is demanding that you could possibly agree to when the most important thing that you now have is the one thing that Donald Trump needs to take away from you, which is your control of the straight of our moves. I would also point out that, you know, technologically, militarily, you know, what we've seen unfold in the Middle East over the last few months is what we've seen happening on the battlefields of Ukraine as well. Russia, which is the future of war. The future of war is right now. And what we've seen about the future of war is that it is highly asymmetric. It means that a drone that costs $30,000, $40,000 is one of the most potent weapons that there is, not only that, but that around very likely would continue to be able to use weapons like that. have the possibility of disrupting almost at will, global energy supplies. And I just, I honestly do not see, given the technology and the geography, I don't know that I see a world in which Donald Trump is capable of solving that problem that he himself has made much, much worse in the last few months. - I'm glad you brought up the drones because I remember the early days of reporting on the war in Iran, where we were all kind of gobsmacked by the fact that we had to spend something like $34 million to take out a 30 to $40,000 drone. As the reporting trickled out, and I think this was part of one of Maggie Hibberman and Jonathan Swan's big scoops, that the Ukrainians had come to Washington and had a PowerPoint and said, we'll teach you. We'll show you how to do this, 'cause they completely remade their country into a smart warfareing place. I was reading a big article about a 33 year old woman who was like a clothing designer who turned her factory into a drone factory. And what's your sense of where the resistance is within the Pentagon to updating the way that we do war in the positive direction? I know the currents coming from Secretary Hegseth going in the reverse direction, talking about, we've got to do it like we used to, which I understand the nostalgia for the bravery of past American soldiers and the incredible things that we've done in World War II, but we've got to go in this direction, not in that direction. And I listen to someone like General Kane who seems incredibly sensible, right? And someone that you do want on your team for this. So do you have a reporting sensor just from being around there of where the block is in fully transitioning to the year 2026? Yeah, I mean, look, there's an enormous number of problems here, partially. It's, of course, we have this gigantic national security infrastructure and spend, I think we can spend our way out of problems when, in fact, the reverse is off in the case, but just to the point about nostalgia. You know, if you want to be nostalgic for how America came in and helped to win World War II, then you should be nostalgic for the idea of a fast, adaptive industrial powerhouse that is leading in technological innovation, which is the exact opposite of Pete Hanks' lug head approach to the Pentagon, the idea that you can, you know, have pushups as your way to, you know, reform the military, give me a break. I mean, it's just, it's just, you know, we've never had a more unqualified Secretary of Defense. And, you know, for all Dan Kane being, you know, perhaps not the mega-hat-waring loyalist that Donald Trump thought he was when he appointed him to the position of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. I think it's worth remembering that Dan Kane never would have been Chairman of the Joint Chiefs under any other President of the United States, Democrat or Republican. He simply doesn't have the background, wasn't qualified, and, you know, would never have had that position under anyone else. And it's not familiar, frankly, with the incredibly complex requirements of evolving in real time against such a multiplicity of threats. I think the stories that have come out in the last few weeks Jessica are fascinating and really important for people to pay attention to about how quickly the United States has spent down its arsenal of anti-aircraft and anti-missile weapons, pay-treat missiles, things like that. In the course of the conflict in the Middle East, remember when we were told that the United States military had to spend this much money because we needed to be ready and prepared to fight a two-front war if necessary against our great power adversaries? Well, how is it possible that a one-front war without any troops on the ground causes us to immediately and dangerously deplete our supplies of this crucial capacity in war fighting? This is going to have knock-on effects, by the way, this winter in Ukraine, where the Ukrainians are already facing the biggest missile barrage from Russia of the conflict in four years because the Russians are aware that they do not have the capacity right now. They simply don't have the supply of anti-missile batteries that they need. South Korea, Donald Trump or any unilaterally, took away from South Korea a sad battery that they had paid for, by the way, from the United States as a result of needing the munitions for this conflict in the Middle East. And so you'll see a whole wave of spillover effects from America's lack of preparedness. Right now, on Capitol Hill, Republicans are talking about spending $1.5 trillion, $1.5 trillion on the budget. And again, it's taking this classic Pentagon approach of wanting to spend your way out of errors. And it's not going to result in a short-term pivot. And people have spent their whole lives better than me trying to understand the particular dysfunctions of America's weapons procurement system and the like. I will just say this. I was just speaking with a few very well-informed people on the subject. They pointed out that part of what happened in the last four years was that the Russia Ukraine war underscored the need for changes in America's procurement system, or to get ammunition cranking out at a different rate from American factories, and then also getting drones at a different rate. But the response signal that matters is contracts and actual long-term planning. So an abstract demand for innovation is not one that our companies right now are set up to fulfill. So I think it's frankly a mess. And you can be sure that the Chinese and the Russians are paying close attention to this. And my question is, what happens when a drone swarm is unleashed by somebody in the continental United States God forbid, or in Europe right now? The Russians are every day conducting probing attacks of our NATO allies. There was an explosive-filled drone found at the airport in Germany just a few weeks ago. There have been drones that have crossed the border into NATO states in recent weeks. You know, this is going to continue at a low level until something really explosive happens. And I fear that neither we nor our close partners are really prepared for it. Well, it feels like they are prepared for it and so far as they are aware of this, and they are, whether it's an official meeting of like, how do we talk to Donald Trump at next NATO meeting, or G7 summit, or whatever it is? Like, they know that they have to be pushing this boulder up a hill to make it clear to him that this isn't a far-flung war anymore. This is the European front war. And I have a lot of sympathy for other world leaders and also like Secretary Ruta, who has to make this work. Right, like, has to, we elected him freely and fairly. And so this is what you have for the next four years. But my concern is something happens. It's really bad. And we were seed even further. Because the person who has actually, whether it's things that he's set out loud or the pointed leaks that his team has made, who is at least waving the flag of what is going on here is JD Vance, who I think has a very dangerous foreign policy view for the future of the entire world. Like, he's the one who's talking about blows it and says our munitions stock is down. Right, like the rest of them are out there lying about what's going on. And JD is like, wow, yeah, wake. Actually, this is a problem or sending those leaks into the Atlantic, which it seems pretty clear to me that it was coming from his orbit. And so how do you think a 2028 candidate, no matter their politics, can talk about this very real threat in a way that matters to Americans? Because we feel like we're in a very insular moment because when prices are at this high, you're just concerned about dinner. Right, like the story about what's going on in Germany or what's, you know, flying into Poland or Finland. Like, that's hard to make feel important to someone who's struggling to get by. - The world we live in is that one of the reasons the price is high is because of the leadership of this country internationally, right? So it's not some abstraction, even more than normal. It strikes me, this is a moment where Donald Trump's catastrophic foreign policy has come to bite American consumers in the pocketbook, right? And so there is actually, from my perspective, a much more direct connection than is often the case in many of our elections because Donald Trump is driving up the cost of energy, which is driving up the cost of almost everything. And not just in the conflict in Iran, of course, the more that there is an escalation in the conflict between Russia and our European partners, Russia as an energy power, that has the possibility of driving up costs further. The tariffs, another great example, every time Donald Trump threatens the EU and Canada with tariffs, the people who potentially would end up having to pay more for those products are American consumers, which to me has never been. It's amazing that it's taken so long for people to absorb this, so that's one thing. I think the other thing though, I'm really glad you brought up JD Vance and is it possible that one result of Trump's botched conflict in the Middle East will actually be America further pulling back? Because it strikes me that that's certainly a direction that you're going to see a big faction of the Republican Party pushing for, so you mentioned Vance. I also noticed reports this week suggesting that the Pentagon was going to evaluate whether we wanted to keep the same footprint, military footprint in the Middle East after the conflict. This is one of, I think, the under-reported stories of the war in the Middle East that Trump launched, which is the extensive damage on U.S. military facilities across the region that the United States and its partners have paid billions and billions of dollars for. Not only does it appear, and again, they've not been very forthcoming and have not really testified in any clear way about the extent of the damage, but from what public reporting we have, it strongly suggests that key facilities in Qatar, for example, where there's an enormous American air base that they've been damaged are possibly currently not usable and might not be usable in the future, not just because the U.S. decides to pull back, but also because of this new era of drone warfare, this new era of asymmetrical threats to American capabilities. And this is also why you may see America's alliances and partnerships across the region with the Gulf allies, suffering no matter how much Donald Trump has sucked up to the ameers of the Persian Gulf. They may be now finding that that bargain with the United States is not nearly as attractive because they thought they were purchasing at a minimum security by having these American bases here. I just heard, you know, a comment the other day from someone who's been in a very senior Gulf official who said, you know, well, why would we want to have these bases if they're now getting us attacked? And we thought the purpose of the bases was to make us more secure. And so I can already envision a world in which the pressure comes on the ground from the Middle East for the U.S. to pull back, and there's the political conversation here among Republicans who already wanted to have an American foreign policy that was far less forward leaning. Yeah. I mean, all really good points. And that Washington Post article was pretty scary when you think of what could happen to our footprint there. And then the idea that something happens and we have to like load up on these ships and it takes us like months to get there versus that there are people on the ground ready to help. If God forbid, something happens or an ally closer by needs our assistance. I don't know how to make this connection elegant. So I'm just going to say, I want to talk to you about a young man and what's going on specifically with the far right with young men because that was one of the problems. I probably should have done this earlier in the show, but you know, James Fishback, who was running in Florida, primarily, you know, open kind of like Nazi stuff that he would say, anti-Semitic, racist, all the things was primarily campaigning on college campuses. And we've seen this huge uptick in anti-American, certainly what are they called like groipers, like Nick Fuentes, kind of proto-gruipers. And you have a Gen Z son who was not part of this group, obviously not, definitely not. But I want to ask you about this because I understand how social isolationism and lack of opportunity, breeds bad things. And Scott, if you were here, like this is a wheelhouse, it's like obsessed with the young men, like the good ones, like your son. But do you have any insight into what's going on here? And if this is part of their core ideology or like they just won't need to belong to something, and this is in front of them? Yeah. I mean, look, I, you know, I think we should start by saying, you know, by the numbers, it looks like young men as well as young women are moving to the left and not the right in this country, you know, in the aggregate. But what you're also seeing, and this is not true, just of the youngest people, but it certainly accented there is moving to the extremes of both parties, right? So part of the fear is that not just that there is a fringe, there's always been a fringe in both parties, but that there's more movement in that direction, that the momentum in each party is toward the outer edges, right? And so I think we're aware of that dynamic. How much of that is generational, stylistic, whatever, that strikes me as a key question. Because again, it goes back to the very beginning of our conversation, Jessica, which is our, what we see, are what we seeing from democratic primary voters, actually an ideological embrace of socialism, or is it much more of a stylistic embrace of the politics of protest and resistance and, you know, screw you Donald Trump, right? And so I think that applies in spades to this question of how do we parse the politics of a new generation that's just coming into its own electorally amend all this dysfunction? I will say this, having, you know, a son who's grown up, it's such a different moment than we did. I do think it's really important for, you know, older voters to understand, like, you know, these kids, they came of age, the youngest of them have only known essentially what we would call the Trump, Aaron American politics. I was, you know, a fellow a year ago in, you know, at a university and the students were like, can you, old people, please stop talking about like what's normal in American politics and, you know, that this is some kind of aberration. This is all we've known. Your college, first year or second year student, you know, you are a product in effect of the Trump era. Even the older, slightly older, Gen Z voters essentially came of age consciously in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis and all the disruptions, including, of course, most importantly, the COVID pandemic, that really, you know, sort of uprooted social norms and political norms at such a fragile moment. So, I really think that's the most important thing we can do is not like, you know, as like, you know, older people be like, well, I'm going to, you know, explain the TikTok generation to you. No, I don't want to say that. What I want to say is that we need to stop talking about what is normal and recognize how much we've screwed up, frankly, generationally, to give our young people a situation where it turns out that they think that, you know, this Trump era and American politics is normal. What does that say about us as a country, so that's one observation. I do think the reckoning has not occurred. And I wish that it would, but I doubt that it will for what this kind of social isolation and technology fuel disruption has done to young people. I mean, honestly, we see what the power of social media and endless scrolling does, you know, to grownups who have a foundation and a mooring and a connection already in our society and it's terrible. And I just think it's horrible. I mean, you know, I really find it remarkable how disconnected Washington and our politics has been to addressing this radical transformation of our society. Washington has passed essentially zero laws that address this technology-filled revolution in our country. It tells you that there is a broken disconnect between what's happening in our business and our technology and our social life and, you know, the government that we have created for ourselves. It's broken. Totally broken. And you see it. I mean, it's manifesting in basically every piece of technology, folks can get their hands on. It's a data center problem, it's a social media algorithmic problem and you're right about this disconnect to Washington and there's some, you know, very smart thinkers on it. Even some in older generations like Mark Warner, for instance, you know, who's far from a Gen Z at this point, but everyone is just letting it sit there. And it's also remarkable to find something that is bipartisan. Like it is across the board concerns because we're all united by this, right? Like we're all moms and dads and sisters, brothers, whatever it is, we're concerned about people and quality of life and the impact of these technologies on them. So I appreciate you putting a bow on my very awkward transition, but I wanted to get it in because I was fascinated watching the results taken that, you know, fishback was just routing Byron Donald's on college campuses and I was like, oh, this is where this is manifesting, right? This kind of hateful rhetoric pushed out to you through your algorithms. Um, Susan Glasser, this was awesome, thank you for your time. It is so great to be with you. Thank you, Jessica. It's really nice to get a chance to talk. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)