Tom Nichols: Impotence at the White House

Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Daily. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Delighted to welcome back to the show one of our Gold Jacket guests. He's a staff writer at The Atlantic and Professor Emeritus at the U.S. Naval War College. His books include The Depth of Expertise. It's, of course, Radio Free Tom Nichols. What's up? Hey, Tim. Thanks for having me back. I didn't know I got a jacket. That's so cool. It's like my five-timers jacket. It's not tangible yet, at least. I've been working on Longwell to get the budget for the jackets, for the Gold Jacket guests. I was going to say, you don't do enough swag. You're picking a scab right now, so I'm just going to move forward. From my lips to Sarah's ears is what you're saying? You're picking a personal scab right now, so I'm just moving forward. I want a mug. We're going to start with good bad news, which is Donald Trump's polling, particularly related to the Iran war. This is from Reuters this morning. Trump's approval rating fell to the lowest levels of his presidency. With an overwhelming majority of Americans concerned, the U.S. war with Iran will last a long time, according to a Reuters poll that concluded on Monday. 33% said they approved of Trump's performance. Ding. We're right at the bush line. 64% disapproved. This was the one that really caught my eye, though. 80% of Americans, including 71% of Republicans, think the U.S. involvement in Iran will go on for an extended period of time. Just 16% said the conflict would likely end in a few weeks. Ah. In other words, they get it. Yeah, right. Shock. Shock news report to start the podcast. The American people seem to be awake to what is happening in the world, which is a positive development. That's why that's good bad news. You know that I usually rail about the political illiteracy of the average voter and not paying attention and all that stuff. But, I mean, in the first two months of this war, you literally had people that were like, what, we're at war? With Iran? Where? What? And now, you know, I mean, he, he, you know, Donald Trump has engaged the American public. Look at that. He's actually got them paying attention. There's no good exit from this. And I think people are starting to realize that, you know, because we're there. And no matter how many times Trump tries to do the Jedi mind trick, you know, the straight is open. These are not, you know, the ships you're looking for. Everything on the Lincoln is fine. You know, for all the hits the media takes, you know, the media is doing their job. They're reporting on this stuff and people are getting it like, okay, the war's over. Iran's defeated. Then why is gas still four and a half, you know, four bucks, four and a half bucks, depending on where you are. And I guess the, the bad, good, bad news is people are finally clued into this primarily the way Americans do, which is it's finally, you know, it's finally affecting them personally, right. You know, and with that, we should say it's been affecting military families and military people personally for a long time. But the average person now is going, Hey, there is something going on and no, this is bad. And it's probably going to go on for a while. And 30, 33% is below our, I thought he would ever get. Yeah. And I was banging my door on this at the start of this war. I, cause I thought this was a rare thing that could get them there for that exact reason. Like people, a, it tangibly affects lives and B people have lived through whatever, you know, we don't, aren't going to waste this podcast discussing the merits and demerits of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, but like people live through this now, like it is their recent past. They know it. They saw how things, how they were told that things were going to be fast and easy. You know, we're going to shock and awe. We're going to make sure to accomplish. And then you get stuck in a quagmire. They saw that they might not, you know, know the ins and outs of exactly why that happened and counterinsurgency and all that, but like they lived that. And now they're seeing him get us into a stupid war that they, that many of them voted for. Cause I thought he was, that was the one thing he wasn't going to do. I was going to say, and it's not just that this is an easy cause and effect for people to see, right? I mean, part of what's, what has really shanked Trump on this is it's easy for people to draw a direct line between Trump did this and something happened over here. Right. You know what I mean? But the other reason it's going south on him is he won't shut up about it. And he has nobody else to blame is the other one. The COVID thing, it was like, cause anytime I bring this up, people are like, well, COVID was terrible. Why didn't he get blamed? That's a classic JVL line. It's like, well, he was good at like, look over there. It was the Chinese. It was Fauci. It was whatever, you know, like there's nobody to blame. Like he did it. I mean, he, the stuff that he's been throwing at the wall doesn't still, well, we've been at war for 47 years. I don't know. I like Ronald Reagan managed to get through, you know, eight years without attacking Iran, George Bush, George, George W. Bush, who attacked everybody, uh, managed to not attack these guys. Um, but also, you know, that it's, it's all about not getting a nuclear bomb. You're giving a nuclear bomb to Saudi when we're doing this also. I think most people aren't even following that far downstream. I see the, the other problem Trump has is he had a first term. Right. And so he can't you know, I totally stopped Iran from getting a bomb. And in three and a half years, Joe Biden undid it all or something. People, I mean, it's just, he's, and maybe, you know, maybe there's a bigger point here, Tim. Maybe he has, uh, maybe he has lost his mojo. Um, you know, that when he says this stuff, you know, he used to be able to kind of get away with it in that first term. He would say outrageous stuff and people would get, of course his cult would always go, yes, I believe. You know, and other people would kind of shrug. He, it seems like now he actually damages himself. I, and I, again, I'm glad to see it because that to me is accountability, but it's almost like he damages himself every time he gets out there and says something stupid and outrageous and people go, that doesn't make any sense. Yeah. This is fun and games. When I felt like I was doing well, that's the other thing. That's how this ties to the economy. Like, it's like, you know, people are decadent. It's like, you know, we have a clown president making fun of the people I don't like, you know, building himself monuments, like, all right, whatever. It's all bread and circuses. Yeah. But now wait, uh, you know, we're at war with a country of 93 million people and you're telling me about re-guilding, you know, statues. Yeah. It's, um, but there, there was, there's one other part to this, this business about the war that again, this kind of loss of the ability to because he is visibly weaker and more unhinged than he was the first time around. I mean, he, he looks, I mean, I think maybe it's my Trump derangement syndrome, you know, whatever, but I think when he gets out there and he lies, it's unnerving now to watch him in a way that, you know, in the, I mean, I remember watching that first state of the union. Remember we were all, we all held our breath for his very first state of the union. I don't actually remember the first state of the union. I don't think, I don't think I remember it. Blotted it out. Well, I remember I, and I was in, um, Milwaukee, I think. Why was I in Milwaukee? I don't remember either. And I remember thinking, okay, he's getting through this. He's, you know, that's incredible. Like he was kind of doing the, now I think he gets out there and he does this stuff and people say, I think even people that supported him are saying, Hey, there's something really wrong with the president. And when you're at war, that's unnerving. I'm going to go rewatch the first state of the union and some homework, just to kind of, I want to assess, I want to assess your assessment on that. And we'll report back next time you're on, um, his point, man, on the negotiation. He never said that it was the moment he became president. His point, man, I just don't ever remember having like a moment of like, man, he really is getting through this. I don't, I don't remember that could have happened though. It's been a long fucking 10 years. I just remember that we were all waiting for that first one. And I'm old, Tim, 10 years ago, you were, you were like in high school. Was that? Yeah. I was getting high all the time. It's just tough to remember. I was, and that first period is especially, I mean, I like, I had like a six months of darkness. Um, yeah. Yeah. Okay. Uh, his point, man, isn't on the negotiations. Isn't also delivering much confidence. Um, the son-in-law, the son-in-law emerged. We don't get to hear from him. I he's negotiating everything. He's negotiating the Gaza. Alleged ceasefire. And he was talking, uh, yesterday about how maybe Israel gets to finish the job. It's kind of an ominous quote from him. He's doing Ukraine. He's doing Iran. We don't ever hear from him. We had, we got to hear from him yesterday. He did an interview with Fox naturally, and I want to play a clip from it. And I have a lot of issues with the clip and we're going to hear about them. Today, president Trump told Fox news. There is a back channel between the administration and top officials. What does that channel look like? And are you making any progress with these other officials outside of the political echelon? Yeah. So I, I can't go into the details of it, but I will say that the conversations between the us government and, uh, and different areas of the Iranian government at all, uh, areas is probably more robust, uh, than it's maybe ever been. Short clip. I have four complaints. Uh, Tom, can you guess what they are? Uh, let me guess. Hi, I'm a private citizen with no security clearance and no standing in the us government, but I can't tell you anything that's going on because it's very sensitive. Yeah, that is an issue for me. i mean you're talking to the usb who are you i i love how he says the u.s government has additional relations is that you is that are you the u.s government are you speaking on behalf of the u.s government you're not in the fucking u.s government your dad your father-in-law is the president that's it you're actually a businessman who is receiving money from the saudis who are a player in this war and in this negotiation they're getting bombed by the hooties they are geopolitical rivals of iran you are kind of like their consultant you're a paid consultant to the saudi king you don't work for our government so why can't you tell us what's happening also why are you morphing into a lizard person what is happening with his face he looks he doesn't look like a natural human well i'm not going to do any mug shaming but when he said well i can't i can't talk about that really would you have a clearance is this a classified matter you know and and again the fact that the trump cult and too many of the american people just accept this as normal you know it's like yeah i'll send my son i mean imagine obama saying yeah well we got some problems i'm gonna send sasha and malia over what marvin bush is the point person on the iraq war negotiation you can't tell the deals he's seeing the weapons of mass destruction he can't tell you about them it's like what yeah ronald reagan well i i've sent my son michael over to figure this out with the soviets you know radio host he's also on the payroll of belarus meanwhile i mean it's just you know how do you how do people see this and again this is part i mean i'm gonna give you don't have to hand it to trump but i'm going to say with a certain grudging admiration that he has gotten americans to accept outrageous things as normal by just wearing people down you know and saying well of course my son-in-law is you know who is has business interests i'm just going to send him over and please don't ask him any questions these are very sensitive things he can't tell you stuff he has gotten people to accept this i can't wait to get that fucking lizard person in front of congress after the democrats take it back next year i can't wait to fucking drag his ass out there i want to see everything every financial dealing he has dealt with i'm going to subpoena fine if it doesn't happen in 2027 we'll see you see you in 2029 we're going to send a team of people to go through this fucker's books like you have never like you have never got a proctology exam like this guy's going to get in 2029 that is the other thing we've normalized you know and if if the democrats somehow manage to keep it together you know and trump is keeps doing awful enough things that they take over congress in the um in the midterms they'll say we want to we subpoena you we want to see this we want to hear about it and the answer is going to be um you know a verb and a reflexive pronoun we'll see we'll see how his business partners feel about that maybe they'll want to come come to congress maybe they'll feel maybe they'll feel concerned but it's just amazing to say accountability no we don't do that i'm not mug shaming by the way whatever teach their own on whether they think jerry kushner's handsome what i'm saying like he he like doesn't his mouth isn't i'm concerned he's an alien is what i'm saying his mouth doesn't have a natural movement anymore i don't know if it's like a lot of botox or if he's if he's actually a lizard person and i i just i think that would explain a lot like i don't understand why the kushner nepo boys like now own the lakers and are running the middle east like the fact that they're aliens that are wearing human skin suits you know offers me some kind of i refuse to speculate on whether my fellow citizens are actually avatars of a intergalactic advanced colonization force okay well counterpoint to what jared said yesterday uh which which you heard on this one molder okay that's fine uh you heard in that clip here it's saying that we've never had better i mean so strong our contacts with the iranians and at all levels of government uh trump bleeded this morning there are no talks or conversations going on or scheduled with iran so take that for what it's worth y'all know i travel a lot and i usually don't stop and think about whether my luggage is secure enough but if you think about it we end up leaving our bags a lot we store it at the hotel or in a storage locker hand it over to airline employees sometimes you have to use an overhead bin that's far from where you're sitting and uh a lot of these bags are pretty easy to pierce and get through luggage zippers in seconds our friends at noble have a solution for you noble completely removes the zipper it's a zipperless latch lock suitcase that closes like a safe the two halves meet with a tight seal you hear and feel the click when it locks peace of mind whenever your bag's out of sight and noble isn't 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threat of muscat uh they've traditionally been an ally and a key back channel for us in the region i don't know what what do you think you're a strategic military mind what do you think about bombing oman and we never did any sections on what happens if the president completely you know uh goes off the deep end um he i mean he just says stuff now this is what i mean about what i said earlier where it used to be this oh he right he fights and he speaks his mind and he's one of us and i think now people hear this stuff and they go what wait i'm sorry you weren't supposed to get in any way with the wars to begin with and now you're talking to you're gonna bomb who now oman i just like people just learned that that exists that's a country oh that's a play that's a real place or is that a fake place that we're bombing you know i think that's part of the problem is that trump always had a kind of oppositional defiance disorder right that if somebody said uh mr president don't you think we should i don't know you know pick a thing lower interest you know lower twice lower them a hundred times or you know double them or whatever manipulated by gary cone in them in the first term as they would say whatever they would like well if trump didn't want to do something they wanted him to do they would be like well obama did the opposite i love that all right obama obama would have done it and so it's the same thing with the deployment on lincoln have these deployments been going on too long no not long enough because it's he doesn't he has no other kind of reservoir of answers so when it comes to oman somebody brings it up and he says well we'll bomb the shit out of him because i don't think we have any plans my my personal opinion i don't think we have any plans to do that i don't i think you know there are people in the pentagon and state department going i have no idea what that meant um but that's what i mean now about people looking and saying you know this is beyond just his usual kind of weird um verbal hiccups you know in the first term it would have been we're working with oman we'll get back to you in two weeks two weeks right i want to throw something at you also that's the difference between the two of you i'm not going to be now and then um in addition to like people's lives being worse and and having less patience for it is i need to frame this in a way where it doesn't sound like i'm handing it to trump because i'm not but like the madman theory that that his butt sniffers pushed in the first term which is like it's actually good that he's crazy because it's intimidating people and people don't want to mess with them there was a little bit of something to that like it wasn't i knew that but like there were european countries did end up paying more in defense because they're just like we don't want to deal with the crazy person right like there were a couple of tangible examples where the madman thing kind of like got a result right and now like we see the limits of that which is like no the actual crazy guy is the gay ayatollah like trump has nothing on him he doesn't give a fuck like this country could be totally destined like trump cares about the stock market yesterday like their country could be totally dead he doesn't give a fuck about it he doesn't give a and so you see the limits of madman theory right now where he's like oh i'm gonna bomb oman and instead of people being able to like kind of backfill oh this is just this is just his smart strategy working it's kind of like no actually we've seen that this the madman theory is is not all powerful i'll leave the the ayatollah out of it for a moment and say the problem with madman theory is that you can't go to that well over and over and over again because then you can't you know the whole point of the madman con and you know even nixon didn't really get away with the madman theory right i'll go crazy i'll nuke north vietnam nobody really thought he was and even nixon um you know who i when it came to such matters behind the scenes was like he was never going to do that um but you can't go to that well over and over and over again because then you're not a madman you're just a bullshitter you know and i think that's partly what's happened with our allies with nato you're right you're right you're right you're right you're right you're right in that first term and i think also in the first year of this term a lot of a lot of and a lot of institutions in this country, let's face it, said, you know what, give him shiny stuff, give him $20 billion. And I think it was a mistake, by the way. I think these law firms and universities, I mean, they forgot the oldest rule in the book, that if you pay the Dane guild, they'll come back for another bite. But I think they figured, you know what, he's just shooting his mouth off. Give him X billion dollars, sign whatever stupid thing he wants us to sign, and he'll move on and he'll go somewhere else. I think in this, especially with our allies now, they have gotten to the point of saying, the problem isn't Donald Trump. The problem is an American public that will actually let this guy be president twice in a row and not stop him, and not stop him this time around. So now I think they're saying, you know, we just have to start making other arrangements. You know, we've got to start figuring out other ways around this guy. And that's really bad, because it says that the world is going to change. The world is figuring out how to live without America in the world. And that's really bad. I saw both you and Bill Kristol posting about this yesterday. So I'm going to bring it up with caution. Bill Kristol is like, I hate J.D. Vance, but I think it's obviously time to try to impeach and remove Trump with the Democrats take power. Sheldon Whitehouse tweeted essentially a 25th Amendment call, your senator there in Rhode Island, following the threat to bomb Oman I've kind of have a running conversation about that on the podcast. I've mixed minds of it, and I have evolving views on it. I mean, it's kind of a, there's a bit of a rock and a hard place elements to this. Like it's not, it's not as clear as people think, but I'm curious what you make of it. You saw what I posted, you know, just to kind of clarify for some of this with, with what Senator Whitehouse posted, which is, first of all, he chose his cabinet almost like 25th Amendment insurance, right? He chose a bunch of incompetent sycophants, who are no way ever going to decide that they're going to have to remove the only guy that would ever have hired them. Yeah, the 25th Amendment thing is kind of silly, honestly, just also because you still have to convict. Like the Senate still has to do it, right? No, what happens with the 25th Amendment is a majority of cabinet officers decide to remove him, right? And they transmit this to Congress. Now, the problem is that within that, the president, and they, and I think, you know, the, the people who wrote this amendment wisely built it in to prevent a palace coup. Yeah. If the president contests this, it can, it goes back and forth, basically, the short version is eventually two-thirds of Congress have to agree with the cabinet or else it falls apart. That's what I meant. Yeah. So, so yeah. So anyway, it's not any different than impeachment actually, right? Yeah. The convict was the wrong word, but like you, the, the political hurdle on Capitol Hill is insurmountable. Yeah. Even still, I bet he could nuke him on and not get two-thirds of, of. I think, you know, Marjorie Taylor Greene's been talking about whether, you know, he's talking about nuclear weapons. I, I'm sure Trump being Trump, he has sat there in a meeting and said, well, you know, how do we can, why can't we, you know, don't, what do we have nuclear weapons for? I don't think that's going to go anywhere. I mean, I think there is almost nothing he could do that would lead this cabinet to decide that he is, you know, I mean, short of a physical threat. I don't think that's going to be like a stroke or something. Even still, they'd weaken, they'd Mitch McConnell. You know, this punch, who knows? Okay. On the official home of Trump derangement syndrome, once a month, we have to at least bat around the 25th amendment. It's in the contract. Okay. That's right. It's in the contract with the viewers. And so we've done that. We'll revisit in September. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. You've heard me talk about BetterHelp for a long time. I don't know that we've ever actually talked about how much people love BetterHelp. I don't know how much people love BetterHelp. I don't know how much people love this service when they use it. You can check it out for yourself at betterhelp.com slash reviews to see the amazing customer reviews in real time. They're updated every day with hundreds of people saying how much they love BetterHelp. BetterHelp therapists have at least three years and a thousand hours of hands-on experience. They also hold all required education, training, and certifications across a range of mental health specialties. And they make it really easy to get started. Answer a few questions, get matched with a therapist based on your needs. And if that one doesn't work out, you can get a therapist based on your needs. You can switch therapists at any time real easy if it's not the right fit. So see the reviews, see what stands out, and see if BetterHelp is right for you. Visit betterhelp.com slash the bulwark. That's better h-e-l-p.com slash the bulwark. This takes us to what was happening in South Korea. You wrote about it this week for the Atlantic. Trump will make South Korea pay for his Iran humiliation. And I wanted to fully cover the Iran humiliation before we got there because I think that that is the right assessment. Of what was happening this week. Why don't you make the pitch? Okay, first, I think we've lost this war. Well, you know, but people, I mean, there are people out there saying, well, it's not over yet. And what do you mean by lost? And, you know, because how could we have lost when we've blown up everything they own? Look, who's achieved their strategic goals and who hasn't? The United States went in there with a list that started with regime change. Once regime change didn't happen, we had another list. You know, we wanted straight open, deal on nuclear weapons, you know, all kinds of stuff. All of that's gone. We have achieved none of that. And in fact, we are now facing the opposite of all the things we wanted. The Iranians control the straight. They've told us to go fly a kite about nuclear weapons. The regime is not only intact, but becoming more repressive using wartime as authoritarian regimes, totalitarian regimes often do in these situations. Ability to project proxies, right? And they're widening the war. They're doing all the things that are the opposite of everything we were trying to get. And the Iranians are achieving goals that I think they never thought they'd be able to get, which is screw the nuclear deal. We're going to start charging and, you know, we're basically going to control a big chunk of the world economy through the straight. You know, we're going to repress people at will because now we're at war. And, you know, this isn't even a national human rights. This is a wartime situation. I mean, they really, it's true, they're militarily weakened, but not in the way that matters in an asymmetric conflict with somebody like the United States where, you know, they send up a $25,000 drone and we send up a $4 million interceptor. And okay. Trump cannot process that kind of situation. He just can't. I mean, we've all been watching this guy. I mean, some of us even longer than 10 years, if you ever lived in New York or if you're on the East coast, you've been, you know, putting up with Donald Trump for a long time in your public life. He just doesn't, you know, when somebody walks in and he says, I want to do this, I want to do that. People say, can't do it. He, he loses his mind. So what's he doing? He's going to go punch a friend. He's going to go, you know, he's going to go out in the cat or something. I mean, he just, he has to show that he's in charge of something somewhere and that he can hurt somebody over something. And I think that's why he said, okay, South Korea, you know, they didn't help me with Iran, which to me is just astonishing, right? First of all, North Korea is sending troops to Russia. Yes. We, we ought to be saying to the South Koreans, let's think of a way to make North Korea pay. Thank you for bringing up this point. Cause I forgot to bring it up yesterday. And it sounded as if North Korea is just trying, was there actively, engaging in a war against the West right now? You know, that as an old guy, um, I cut my teeth, um, in, in my younger days as a Soviet guy, right? I mean, I, you know, I worked at think tanks and I did, I spoke Russian. I did all that stuff. If you had said to me back in the 1980s, you know, or early 1990s, Hey, Russia and North Korea are going to be fighting a war together. I would have said, no, I played that video game. It was very cool, but it's never going to happen. Um, you know, I, yes, I remember that it was command and conquer for, you know, where the North Koreans get involved. Um, and yet here we are. And instead of saying, let's figure out a way to kind of put the free world back on its feet, instead of allowing the North Koreans to just amble into Europe and, and act with impunity, um, and gain a lot of combat experience, by the way, which is a bad thing. Um, instead we're going to punish the South Koreans, um, because there are friends, remember Trump, never picks him. He, when Trump targets people, he does it with people he can get away with. Um, so he never goes after China. He never goes after Russia. He never goes after North Korea. Um, he goes after friends and allies because they just have to take it. I mean, it's basically, you know, in the, I think in his business world, it's the equivalent of some, you know, his stock tumbles and he turns to the first guy in the office and says, you're fired. His rage at this, at this impotence that he has when it comes to Iran is going to lead him to keep lashing out at Oman, at South Korea, at others. But it is absolutely fantastic. Um, in the sense of incredible, unbelievable to think that with North Koreans fighting in Europe, that Donald Trump is trying to figure out a way to screw the South Koreans and to take our last aircraft carrier out of the Pacific. Um, as some, you know, people keep pointing out, if he were, if he were trying to destroy America, you know, if he were consciously, like, an enemy agent, what would he do differently, and it would be hard to know. I noticed you said impotence. It's kind of the word of the week. So I just wanted to point out that watchword about Trump's impotence. I knew I was going to regret that. I want you to talk to me and any listeners that fit this boat who are, you know, not geopolitical experts who might come at this and think, well, anything that Trump does is stupid and obviously idiotic and against it. So I'm not trying to create any rationale for Trump here. But like, outside of Trump, as an academic exercise, used to be a teacher. Do we need to have all of these troops in South Korea? Like, do we need all this military personnel there? Like, is there a non-Trump related, like, legitimate objection to the amount of resources we're spending there or not? And if not, why not? Well, first of all, we don't actually have a peace treaty with North Korea. We have a ceasefire that's been going on longer than I've been alive. And the North Koreans, that's a dangerous regime. So, you know, do we need to have them there? What's your tolerance for risk? I mean, that's always the question you ask when you say, do we need U.S. troops in country X? You know, what's your risk tolerance? Do you trust that if there weren't American forces in South Korea, that the North Koreans would somehow not try to either blackmail or even attack South Korea? And I think the important thing for people to understand about the South Korean situation, as you say, people that don't spend a lot of time having to think about this, is look at a map and look at where the capital of Seoul is. It's so close to the border. Part of the reason we've had to put up with all this from the North Koreans for decades, I mean, and I'm going back to the 50s, you know, Nixon, we were talking about Nixon earlier. Nixon actually asked for a plan to use nuclear weapons against North Korea in 1969. The reason that people, that American presidents have a real problem with this is because the location of Seoul makes it a hostage to North Korea. The North Koreans can just start bombarding Seoul with artillery day and night without ever moving across their border because they can reach it from where they are. And that's a unique strategic problem that we have. And I think that's a huge problem that we have. And I think that's a huge issue. And so the question is, you know, what is it you're trying to achieve? Well, for one thing, you want to make sure that if these are your allies, just as in Europe, you put American forces there so they are in harm's way. So the North Koreans can never think, you know, we can start destroying Seoul without engaging the Americans. So let me pretend like I'm on a brain-dead isolationist podcast, you know, I'm on whatever. Okay. I'm on Candace's show right now. It's like, who cares about Seoul? What do they do for us? So North Korea bombs Seoul, whatever. I care about what's happening in my neighborhood. It's a legit question because people ask that about NATO. They ask it about all of our relations. The answer is this, the entire international economy and security system, the architecture that keeps you safe and prosperous as an American. And I know people can say, we're not prosperous. Gas is expensive. Okay. Compared to the world, you're pretty freaking prosperous. The thing that keeps goods and services and people and capital moving around the world and keeps bad guys from killing your sons and daughters, no matter where they are overseas and keeps North America safe in the end is this security and trade architecture that we created that is run by the United States, is guaranteed by the United States. And my answer to the, isolationists, whenever they bring this up is if you want to live in a world where China and Russia make the rules, you can have that. You're not going to like it. And you're going to wonder how it happened. Think about, and what that would look like. Think about this in a very concrete way. Remember all the supply chain craziness we went through during COVID? Yep. Imagine that the Chinese are pissed off at us about something. I don't know. Not something even as big as Taiwan. Some other place in the world where the Chinese say, you know what? They shut down whatever, the East China Sea. Or they just want to grab something that belongs to somebody else. And we say, hey, don't do that. And they say, oh boy, remember what happened to you during COVID? We're just going to make that happen now for a while. Enjoy that. We're going to shut down your shipping. We're going to make sure that certain ports are inaccessible to you. You don't have any allies. And so we'll just blow you up. And of course, the answer to that from a we have nuclear weapons. Well, I'd rather be able to solve most problems in the world without triggering Armageddon. Thank you. But that web of alliances is what prevents the bad guys from telling you what you can buy, what you can eat, where you can go, whether you can live in safety. And people who make this argument are either being disingenuous or they just don't genuinely don't understand it. But they don't realize how much of their lives depend on making sure that all those alliances and agreements stay intact. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk. Thank you for your attention to this matter. We're expanding the symposium because I enjoyed this. This was Daniel Dale over at CNN, did a little symposium on what's been happening in the South Korea relationship lately for people who haven't been following the blow by blow. It's pretty funny. It's not funny. It's like funny, but also depressing. It's just like this is the type of thing that if another president besides this had done this, it'd be like a massive news story that nobody talks about except Daniel Dale because he's president. He did like eight other crazier things during the same press conference. But during his Oval Office press conference yesterday, he talked about the situation in South Korea. And just to kind of sum it up, like here is the story that he told about the South Korea situation. He said that South Korea, quote, essentially didn't pay for the cost of U.S. military presence in the country before Trump became president. Trump then got South Korea to and his words agreed to pay $3 billion in a year with further increases coming the following year and the year after that. But then the 2020 election was rigged. And then Joe Biden became president. And then South Korea convinced Biden that Trump was mean and they shouldn't have to pay money. So Biden rescinded it. That's the story that Trump told yesterday in the Oval Office. Every single part of the story is a lie. Here's Daniel Dale. South Korea was paying for the U.S. military presence before Trump's presidency. It's not true that Trump got South Korea to pay $3 billion in any year. He got a one-year deal for less than $1 billion. It's not true that Trump got South Korea to agree to subsequent increases. It's not true that the 2020 election was rigged. And it's not true that Biden agreed to a South Korean demand to rescind the cost-sharing deal. They signed two new agreements, 21 and 24, that both increased spending from South Korea to us. How do you deal with this? This is what I said earlier about this kind of weird genius behind the whole Trump approach, which is firehose the public with enough lies. And finally, people just kind of give up. You know, the people who've written about the Russian system, you know, have made a really important point. You know, Garry Kasparov and Pomerantsev and others, right, have said, the point is not to get you to believe the lie. The point is to get you to not believe in anything. Right. It's to reduce the average person's brain to, you know, a bunch of spiders and tapioca, where you say, well, I guess, well, whatever, anything could be true, I suppose. And then the average person's response at that point, when they reach that level, is to say, okay, what's on TV? Is the Wi-Fi working? Right. You know, show me a funny. Who cares? Why does it matter? They all care. Yeah, yeah. And I'm going to go look at cat TikToks. And, you know, and that's what Trump wants. I saw a great TikTok yesterday. It was the first thing that's given me hope in a long time. I'm going to put the link in the show notes. And it was a kid. This is where I'm at now, that I'm doing boomer reels, where I'm watching, like, cute kids do cute things. This is where I'm at in life. That's because you're a dad now. We all go through this process. But this is a kid making fun of the Gen Z TikTok influencers. Girl, maybe, like, talking about how, like, ooh, I like making fun of food influencers. It's so good. I'm not going to imitate it. People can just watch it for themselves. But it gave me hope. I was like, if maybe, maybe, just maybe, the youngest part of the youth, I have no hope for the current college students, the youngest part of the youth, though, will look at the generation ahead of them and be like, you people went crazy. You stopped reading. And we're going back to being normal again. That's my hope. I really want to believe that, you know, you stopped reading, you stopped dating. Right. We're going to read and party, Gen Alpha. And also, you know, maybe that your primary mode of interacting with the world is being through gambling sites isn't a good idea. Just putting it out there. You know, actually, it's funny. I got lost in a TikTok, too. Somebody put something. It happens to the best of us. Well, somebody put up a, you know, what if an 80s sitcom? It was a bunch of superheroes. And it was, you know, John Travolta as Superman and Mel Gibson as Batman. And I just sat there and I said, you know, I find this calming. I find this comforting. You get it. The warmth. oatmeal of the AI slop. This is the warm embrace, Tom. It's headed your way. Hey, Gina Davis would have made a great Wonder Woman. That's cool, you know. As soon as you start to feel warm inside watching a short-form video, you need an internal Pavlovian response to be like, I'm putting this phone down right now. You need one of those little shockers buried in your chest. I'm either picking up a hard copy book or I'm going out into nature. I don't know how to transition into this because we got way off. I forget how we got out of cat TikTok, but whatever. We're moving on to Pete Hegseth. I mean, future presidential candidate Pete Hegseth, right? Exactly. We've now done 40 minutes talking about the disasters that he's overseeing all over the world. What is he doing about that, you might wonder. He's traveling to Iowa in his personal capacity. And officials familiar with his thinking. If people aren't seeing, I'm doing the Dr. Evil. And officials familiar with his thinking, which I assume is him or his wife, believe he is considering a run for president, according to the Washington Post. That's insane. But it's also a country where I believe, you know, anything can happen now. I'll say two things about it. One is, in a world that made sense, the situation on the Lincoln, the munitions shortages, the disaster sworn Iran, that would have been the end of any. I mean, even Don Rumsfeld, you know, couldn't hang on past the bad midterm. So we'll see what happens. Pete Hegseth has done all kinds of things, except his job. You know, he's out there doing jungle training, and he's doing sloppy chin-ups and, you know, all that other stuff, because he still thinks he's like a captain in the infantry, you know, 30 years ago. The thing about running for president, aside from the fact that I find it impossible to imagine that he could withstand the pressures of a presidential campaign, because the guy can barely get through a Pentagon briefing, there are a lot of other Republicans who have been patiently waiting for Donald Trump to exit the scene, who are going to look at Pete Hegseth and say, oh, no. Oh, no way. I mean, all these other potential Republican contenders are going to say, listen, I didn't answer constituent emails and go to town halls and take all this shit for years so that Pete Hegseth could go to Iowa. They all said that to Trump, too. The problem with Hegseth is he doesn't have a story to tell, because everything he's ever seen is a disaster. Like, Trump had a fake story to tell. He's a fake billionaire. He told people that, you know, he's the apprentice guy. I was going to say, he had a presence. It was fake, but it was fake. But he had a story. But Pete doesn't have a story to tell. Donald Trump was a part of our public life for 25 years. You know, Donald Trump had a show, he had a persona, he had a brand. Look, Pete Hegseth was a guy who sat on a couch at Fox and said dumb stuff. And his only record as a public official is disaster. So, you know, again, it could happen, but I think that there are going to be a lot of other Republicans who are going to say, hell no. I think, Pete, listening to you talk about how, you know, he does the jungle training and he does the push-ups and he's doing, like, the sauerkraut and meat diet and all this, like, you know, to show that he's a tough war fighter. Yeah, I think people should ask him if he would be willing to do the USS Lincoln challenge instead of doing all this. I think that he should have to sleep in a tiny bunk every night and wake up and only eat, like, disgusting hamburger helper and tinned foods. I think that should be his challenge. It has kind of amazed me that a lot of Hegseth's defenders, you know, had this happened under Biden or Obama, I mean, it would be, you know, that Muslim traitor is tormenting our soldiers kind of stuff, right? With Hegseth, it is amazing, and I think, again, this goes back to what we did at the top of the show, why is this backfiring? Why is Trump cratering? When you say, listen, those kids on the Lincoln, they're just a bunch of slackers and whiners and gold brickers, you know, that's not gonna work. Yes. They don't even know why they're there. And this is the other thing. Like, eventually morale gets down after Iraq and Afghanistan. Like, the initial part of this, like, terrorists had just flown planes into the Twin Towers, right? We knew why we were doing this. Yeah. Right? And so, like, obviously, like, in Iraq in particular, you know, that changes eventually. And gradually for some people, and whatever, quicker for other people. But, like, there's no rationale for this for the start. It's like, I'm out at sea for 240 days, way longer than anybody told me that we were going to. For what? For the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, which was open before? For a president who told me we weren't gonna do stupid wars? You know, for a war, for a defense secretary to tell me we were gonna be war fighters, taking up bad guys? I don't know, I'm just sitting at sea for nothing? I'm gonna, I'm of two minds about this, Tim, because there's a part of me, you know, as the civil part of the civil military relationship, which people forget is not 50-50, it's 99-1. Right. You know, as one of the civilian voters, you know, I, okay, I'm sympathetic to people who say, listen, every 19-year-old sailor does not need, you know, to be Henry Kissinger, and does not need to explain, you know, how we're here, you know, because the, okay. But it also, the leadership does have an obligation to tell them why they're, what they're doing, or why they're doing it. Well, to tell the American public, this is where I think they're really screwing the pooch, which is to say, that 19-year-old sailor is there because the chief and the lieutenant and the captain have said, you're going. And, you know, here are your duties. You make sure this piece of equipment works all day. Um, but to turn to the families and say, listen, your kid's just being a pissy whiner. Shut up. Um, you know, they're lying. This is you're being unsupportive. You're not supporting the troops. You don't believe in America. That's a loser of an argument. I came of age, I turned, um, I started high school the year the Vietnam fell. Let's put it that way. That's how old I am. By the time I started high school, the last American troops were going. The Vietnam War had ended six months earlier with the fall of Saigon. And I can remember pitched arguments in my parents' home and in our military town. We were in Air Force now. You know, why are our guys there? What are they doing? The people that were sent, the people in Vietnam, they knew what they were doing. They were staying alive. They were protecting their friends. They were you know, keeping, doing the things that soldiers do. Um, but the families at home were saying what is this about? And in that, when that happens, the answer can't be, uh, shut up, your kid is a wuss. Um, that is not an effective answer. And I'm, and it, it, I think it's really, it's not just a political mistake. It's a real disservice to military families who have legit questions about, you know, why is this happening? What are we supposed to be doing? And when the president's only answer is, it should have been longer. You know, that, that's not an answer. That's not a responsible, commander-in-chief. So I think on the one hand, I don't think you have to go and explain to every single, you know, E1, you know, or E2 why they're on a boat. On the other hand, it does degrade morale to say, uh, this is something we've never done before. This sucks. And we can't really explain to you why. But more to the point, that immediacy of being able to talk to your family through the internet and phones and things like that, that I think is a, is a new dimension to this problem. And the Trump administration's answer to it has been to basically to say, stop whining. Stop complaining. There's a, just kind of a niche story about guys that Tennessee Howler flagged. They just want to raise, um, just what's relevant to Hegs' leadership. You're seeing this across the board about how they're handling stuff. These guys all, like, went in talking about Doge. We're going to be more efficient, and it's going to be meritocracy. And, like, it's across the board. We've talked about this a million times. The firings, you know, it's, it's all women and it's black leaders in the military being fired. Um, and here's a, uh, just a little story about um, the, uh, company, or the small business, really, that makes the Blue Angels outfits. You know, the iconic Blue Angels uniforms. I said outfits. What a gay. They're uniforms. They're outfits. They're fits. Fit, Blue Angels fit check. Um, anyway. Um, a woman named Miss Candy, a black woman, runs a store called The Sewing Box in Pensacola, right next to where the Blue Angels Naval Base is. Um, she's made these uniforms for decades. And the contract was about a hundred grand a year. Sometimes it was less, sometimes a little more. This year, they, uh, re-bid out the contract. Didn't bid out. They didn't tell her. Didn't give her a chance. Um, and they just made a, made an announcement that there was a 1.7 million dollar contract. Went to some Virginia company to make the uniforms. I don't know what's happening in this deal. I, you know, looks fishy. Is it racism? Is it a hand, it's a handout for one of Pete Hegseth's friends? I'm not sure. But it's like, time and again these guys are just doing, doing this stuff. I'm surprised you didn't call them ensembles. But, uh, this is the first I've heard of it. But it's not out of character for this, you know, we're gonna save money, we're gonna fire people, we're gonna slash things. Um, except where we don't want to do that. And they don't, actually. They haven't saved anything. It's just, everything's cost more and more money. Well, let's, let's go to the much bigger issue, Tim. Let's rip out the catapults, on aircraft carriers because the president likes the look of steam. I mean, we are talking billions. I mean, you know, the same people that are like, we want Trump to come in because he's going to shake things up. I remember in the first Trump term, I would turn to my friends and I'd say, what were you thinking? And they would say, well, I just want to shake things up. We need to save money. We need to secure the border. We need to, you know, have a guy who speaks his mind, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay, fine. It's been interesting to kind of do this as a time-lapse experiment where I've talked to the same people because, you know, I still have the same friends I had 10 years ago. And they just kind of shake their heads and they kind of crouch and go, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. Because it's billions of dollars. These battleships, catapults. It's a thing to be in the middle of the ship or the back instead of the middle. Like, who cares? Because he thinks he's redesigning aircraft carriers the way he's decorating a ballroom. Yeah. He's not doing that well. He's not doing that well either. Well, I want to end with something, just a little palate cleanser. We'll be discussing a lot the Natalie story, Natalie Harp over on the Next Level feed. People, if they want a very lengthy discussion of that and the political implications, please check us out on the Next Level. Also, on a more serious note, I did a video last night about just another horrible story that I got tipped off to happening in the Dilley internment camp in Texas. So you can see that on the Bullock Takes feed. But here on this feed with Tom Nichols, I wanted to close, I wanted to close with some clips from OAN. Natalie Harp, Trump's personal aide, we'll leave it at that, was on OAN, had a show in 2021. I wonder how she got that for a little while. The people at Decoding Fox News did a clip summary of her work as the anchor of that program. And I want to play some highlights for you. 2021. We can't talk about winning back the House and Senate in 2021. 2022 and the White House in 2024 if we don't act on the fact that we actually did win the White House and the Senate in 2020. We shouldn't be afraid to say that because it's true. We the people know America as we know it could be ending in the next two or four years, which is exactly what President Trump is warning of. President Trump never got enough credit for being a president that never started any new wars that we would have seen peace even with Iran because we would have made a deal with them. President Trump was on track. It was beautiful to see and it's so beautiful to see President Trump's living legacy going on because this is a legacy of peace that will be passed on from generation to generation. Natalie Harv's Jonestown Kool-Aid Power Hour. Wow. You know, two quick reactions. One is the people that I knew that watch OAN, one of my friends told me, I said something to him at one point about something I'd seen on Fox. I said, even Fox said whatever it was. And he said, well, that's why I don't watch Fox. They've seen it. And I said, well, that's why I don't watch Fox. They've seen it. They've become liberals. I only watch OAN, which tells you how deep the kind of the denial has become that people say, I must filter out. It reminds me of the Trump voter who said, when I brought up something in like October of 2024 that Trump had done, she said, I voted a month ago and now I don't watch anything. I mean, not watching anything is better than watching that. And that's insane. But I think it's part of a bigger problem, Tim, where the internet created a world where a lot of attractive young men and women with a good patter realized that they could have a career by going out in public and saying crazy stuff that, you know, that you could actually get paid, that you could be on TV. And you don't even have to have any talent. I mean, like, look, I mean, that was like a down market. I like the North Korea anchor is looking at her going, girl, you need a few more reps if you want to make this believable. But again, it was, it was, a function, I mean, even in the cable TV era of the 80s and 90s when, you know, I am old enough to remember CNN going on the air, for example, you know, handsome, attractive men and women, but they at least had some background in the news industry. I mean, this to me was the, is the natural end result of basically being able to say, I have a camera. I mean, look, you and I are sitting here with studio quality cameras and microphones. I have a camera, a microphone. I have a beautifully symmetrical face. I can talk, you know, in a very convincing way. And I, I have a job, you know, you were, you were talking earlier about people like Candace Owens and others. I mean, there's a whole generation of people that became, you know, it wasn't just Andy Warhol's famous for 15 minutes. It was the ability to say that the, that the gatekeeping on being able to present things as news to the public became non-existent and that you could just serve it up. No editors. No, you know, a totally driven by the profit motive. And I think, you know, Natalie Harf to me is just one of many. Now the question is making that jump to the White House. I kept thinking when I wrote about the great airplane caper, the great, you know, food container caper. And I thought, man, if you're one of those White House staffers that didn't know, because there were people on the decoy plane apparently who didn't know. Right. And you're thinking later, okay, so Scavino and Harp, and no, no, Hegseth was already on the plane. There was a third guy in the container who it was. Oh, Walt Nada. Oh, it was Nada, right. So Scavino, Nada, and Harp made the cut and I got put on the decoy plane? Seriously? Have you ever been on a, whoever that staffer is, it's like maybe you should have considered in 2021 going on OAN and giving a non-blinking, completely unconvincing ode to the cult leader. And maybe then you could have been in the food cart with everybody else. I will end with a quote from, Kurt Vonnegut about this that I use a lot, Tim. Watching Harp and other presenters on these things, when Kurt Vonnegut wrote Mother Night about a guy who pretended to be a Nazi, to infiltrate the Nazi, he had a line in the prologue that said, we are what we pretend to be and we must be careful what we pretend to be. That's a great line. That's a great book. Since you call them presenters, I'm going to end it with a British music quiz for you. I came across a song, I know, I came across a song called Brain. That I really liked recently. Was by a band, a British mod band. I had to look it up. British mod band from the 1960s. Song really holds up. Talking about people with no brain. This was their most famous song. It was called Brain. The album was called Rolled Gold. Swing a bell for you. 60s mod act. Well, all I can think of is Spinal Tap saying, I'm not a mod or a rocker. I'm more of a mocker. So I don't remember. In the 1960s, the action had a strong grassroots following among British mods, but despite the support of George Martin, they never managed anything close to a hit record. So there you go. Brain. Okay, well. I'm going to give you a 60s mod act to listen to and take people out with Brain. How does that sound? Sounds great. Tom Nichols, I always appreciate you, brother. Next time you can quiz me. All right, no showtimes. Fair enough. All right, we'll see you later. Everybody else will be back here tomorrow with another edition of the Bulwark Daily. See you all then. Peace. Hang your brain up in the sky Hang it up, hang it high Remember me, remember me The Bulwark Daily is brought to you thanks to the work of lead producer Katie Cooper, associate producer Ansley Skipper, and with video editing by Dante DiCicco and audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.