Tom Nichols: Impotence at the White House

(upbeat music) - Hello and welcome to the Baltimore Daily. I'm your host Tim Miller. delighted to welcome back to the show. One of our Goldjack and guests. He's a staff writer at the Atlantic and professor emeritus at the U.S. Naval War College as books include The Death 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 a, my five timers jacket. - But it's not tangible. Yeah, at least. I've been working on long well to get the budget for the jackets, for the Goldjack and guests. - I was gonna say, you don't do enough swag. - You're picking a scab right now. So I'm just gonna move forward. - I'm just serious ears. - You're picking a personal scab right now. So I'm just moving forward. - I want a mug. - We're gonna start with good bad news, which is Donald Trump's polling, particularly 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 a 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% of the conflict would likely end in a few weeks. - In other words, they get it. - Yeah, right. 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 were a war with Iran, where, what? And now, you know, I mean, 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 link 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 where you are? And I guess the bad good bad news is, people are finally clued into this primarily the way Americans do, which is 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 one. And there's 33% is below our, I thought he would ever get. Yeah. And I was thinking I don't want this at the start of this war, because I thought this was a rare thing that could get him there for that exact reason. Like people, a, it tangibly affects their lives, and b, people have lived through whatever, you know, we don't, we don't, aren't going to waste this podcast discussing the merits and the merits of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. But like, people live through this now. Like that, it is a 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 accomplish. And then you get stuck in a quagmire. They saw that. They might not, you know, know the ins and outs 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, because I thought he was, that was the one thing he wasn't going to do. I was going to say, yeah. 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 any time I bring to some people like, well, COVID was terrible. Why didn't he get blamed? It's a classic JBL 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 for us. Like he did it. I mean, the stuff that he's been throwing at the wall doesn't still, well, we've been at war for 47 years. No, no, no, I mean, you know, really? Ronald Reagan managed to get through, you know, eight years without attacking Iran. George Bush, George W. Bush who attacked everybody managed to not attack these guys. But also, you know, that it's all about not getting a nuclear bomb. You're giving a nuclear bomb to Saudi? Well, we're doing this also. I think most people aren't even following that far down stream. See, the other problem Trump has is he had a first term, right? And so he can't say, well, you know, I totally stopped Iran from getting a bomb. And in three and a half years Joe Biden undid at 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, maybe he has lost his mojo, 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 go, of course, his cult would always go, yes, I believe. You know, and other people kind of shrug. He, it seems like now he actually damages himself. Like, and 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. You know, 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 what? Wait, you know, we're at war with a country of 93 million people. And you're telling me about re-gilding, you know, statues? Yeah, but there was, there's one other part to this, this business of up the war that, again, this kind of loss of the ability to lie so easily. And I think it's because he is visibly weaker and more unhinged than he was the first time around. I mean, 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, 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. Actually, I don't actually remember the first state of the union. I don't think I remember it flooded it out. Well, I remember, and I was in Milwaukee, I think. Why was I in Milwaukee? I don't remember him though. And I remember thinking, okay, he's getting through this. He's, you know, that's a credible way. Could 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 of some homework, just kind of, I want to assess, I want to assess your assessment on that. And we'll report back next time you're on his point, man, on the negotiation. He never said that it was the moment he became president. It's my man. You just want to be, you know, 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 for keep forgetting I'm old Tim. 10 years ago, you were, you were like in high school, was that? Yeah. I was good. Hi, all the time. It's just tough to remember. I was in that first period is especially. I mean, I like, I had like a six months of darkness. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. His point, man, is it on the negotiations isn't also delivering much confidence. The sun and law, the sun and law emerged. We don't care from him. He's negotiating everything. He's negotiating the Gaza alleged ceasefire and he was talking yesterday about how maybe Israel gets to finish the job, just kind of an ominous quote from him. He's doing Ukraine. He's doing around. We don't ever hear from him. 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 him. Today President Trump told Fox News there is a back channel between the administration and top IRGC 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 can't go into the details of it. But I will say that the conversations between the U.S. government and different areas of the Iranian government at all areas is probably more robust than it's maybe ever been. Short clip. I have four complaints. Tom, can you guess what they are? Let me guess. Hi. I'm a private citizen with no security clearance and no standing in the U.S. 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 US people. Who are you? I love how he says the US government has additional relations. Is that you? Are you the US government? Are you speaking on behalf of the US government? You're not in the fucking US government. Your dad is the father and law is the president. That's it. You are actually a business man who is receiving money from the Saudis who are a player in this war and in this negotiation. They're getting bound by the hoodies. 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 doesn't look like a natural human. Well, I'm not going to do any mugshaming. But when he said, well, I can't talk about that. Really? You have a clearance? Is this a classified matter? And again, the fact that the Trump called and too many of the American people just accept this as normal. It's like, yeah, I'll send my son. I mean, imagine Obama saying, yeah, well, we've got some problems. I'm going to send Sasha and Malia over. What? Marvin Bush is the point person on the Iraq war negotiation. He can't tell the deals. He's seen the weapons of mass destruction. He can't tell you about them. It's like, what? Yeah, Ronald Reagan. Well, I have sent my son Michael over to figure this out with the Soviets. It's, 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 going to 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-laws, 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. You know what I'll have. I want to see every, every financial dealing he has dealt with. I'm going to subpoena fine. If it doesn't happen to 2027, we'll see it. You see it in 2029. I'm 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 keeps doing awful enough things that they take over Congress in the midterms, they'll say, we want to subpoena, we want to see this, we want to hear about it. And the answer is going to be, you know, a verb and a reflexive pronoun. We'll see. We'll see how his business partners show about that. Maybe they'll want to come to Congress. 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 I think Joe Kusher's hands on what I'm saying. He 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 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, which, which you heard in that clip on this one, Mulder. Okay, that's fine. You heard in that clip, Jared saying that we've never had better, I mean, so strong, our contacts with the Iranians and all levels of government. Trump pleaded this morning. There are no talks or conversations going on or scheduled with a run. So take that one. It's worth. The other thing Trump said is, not want to get to, because I glossed over it yesterday, was we're bombing Oman. He told Fox on Monday that if Oman gets in the way, we'll bomb the shit out of them. It's the second time he's directed such a threat of mascot. They've traditionally been an ally and a keyback channel for us in the region. I don't know. What do you think? You were 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, goes off the deep end. I mean, he just says stuff now. This is what I mean about what I said earlier, where it used to be and it's, 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 worse to begin with. And now you're talking to, you're going to bomb who now? Oman. I just like, people just learned that that exists. That's a control. 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, Mr. President, don't you think we should, I don't know, you know, pick a thing. Lower interest. You know, lower twice, lower 100 times or, you know, double. We have manipulated by Gary Coney, them in the first term, as they would say, whatever, they're like, well, if Trump didn't want to do something they wanted him to do, they'd be like, well, Obama did the opposite. I love that. 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's just, well, we'll bomb the shit out of him. Because I don't think we have any plans, my personal opinion, I don't think we have any plans to do that. I don't, I think, you know, people in the Pentagon and State Department going, I have no idea what that meant. But that's what I mean now about people looking and saying, you know, this is beyond just his usual kind of weird 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 that you also that's the difference between now and then. An addition to like people's lives being worse and having less patience for it is, I didn't 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, you know, but 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 him. There was a little bit of something to that. Like, it wasn't, I knew that it wouldn't have sustainability. 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 guys, the gay I had told Trump has nothing on him. He doesn't give a fuck. Like, the country could be totally destined. I Trump cares about the stock market yesterday. Like, their country could be totally dead. And so you see the limits of madman theory right now where he's like, oh, I'm going to bomb a man. 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 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 Viet Nam. Nobody really thought he was, and even Nixon, you know, who I, when it came to such matters behind the scenes was like, he was never going to do that. 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 happened with our allies with NATO. You're right in that first term. And I think also in the first year of this term, a lot of countries 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, obviously, I mean, they forgot the oldest rule in the book. But if you pay the, pay the dane guild, they, you know, 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, 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 gone 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, other ways around this guy. And that's written bad because it says that the world is, is figuring out how to live without America in the world. And that's, that's really bad. I saw both you and Bill Crystal posting about this yesterday. So I'm going to bring it up with, with caution. Bill Crystal's like, I hate JD Vance, but I think it's, it's obviously time to try to impeach and remove Trump with the Democrats take power. Sheldon White House tweeted, essentially, a 25th amendment call your senator there in Rhode Island. Yes. Following the threat to bomb a man. I've kind of a running conversation about that on the box. I've mixed minds of it and I have evolving views on it. It's kind of a there's a bit of a rock in a part-place element to this. 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 what Senator Whitehouse posted, which is, first of all, he chose his cabinet almost like 25th amendment insurance, right? He chose a bunch of incompetence, sick offense, 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. The 25th amendment thing is kind of silly, honestly, just also because you still have to convict, like the Senate does 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 I think, you know, the people who wrote this amendment wisely built it in to prevent a palace coup, if the president contests this, it goes back and forth basically. The short version is eventually two-thirds of Congress have to agree with the cabinet or else-- Right. It falls if that's what I meant. Yeah. So, yeah. Well, anyway, it's not any different than impeachment, actually, right? Yeah, the convicted is wrong word, but like the political hurdle on Capitol Hill is this insurmountable. Yeah, even still. I bet he could nuke him on and not get two-thirds of football. I think, you know, Marjorie Taylor Greene's been talking about whether, you know, he's talking about nuclear weapons. I'm sure Trump being Trump, he has sat there in a meeting and said, "Well, you know, I know 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 incapacity, like a stroke or something. Even still, they'd weaken the Mitch McConnell, you know, this punch. Okay. On the official home of Trump's arrangement syndrome, once a month, we have to at least bat around the 20th of the minute. It's in the contract. Okay. It's right. It's in the contract with the viewers. And so we've done that. We'll revisit in September. 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. But why don't you make the pitch? Okay. First, I think we've lost this work. 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 loss? Then, 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 but with a list that started with regime change. Once regime changed and happened, we had another list. You know, we want to 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 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 a war. And, you know, this isn't even a matter of, you know, international 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, look, he's not that kind of guy. 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 these 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 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 street and, you know, kick a 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 the wrong, which to me is just astonishing, right? First of all, North Korea is sending troops to Russia. Yes. We have to be saying to South Koreans, let's think of a way to make North Korea pay. Thank you for bringing up this point because I forgot to bring it up yesterday. And it's not as if North Korea's just term was there actively engaging in a war against the West right now. You know that as an old guy, I cut my teeth in my younger days as a Soviet guy, right? I mean, 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. You know, yes, I remember that it was command and conquer for, you know, where the North Koreans get involved. And yet here we are. And since 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 ambled into Europe and act with impunity and gain a lot of combat experience, by the way, which is a bad thing. Instead, we're going to punish the South Koreans because there are friends. Remember, Trump never picks, when Trump targets people, he doesn't want people to get away with. So he never goes after China. He never goes after Russia. He never goes after North Korea. 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, he's, you're fired. His rage at this, at this impotence that he has when comes to Iran, it's going to lead him to keep lashing out at Oman, at South Korea, at others. But it is absolutely fantastic 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. As some, you know, as 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 know she said impotence. It's kind of the word of the week. So I just wanted to point out that watch word about Trump's impotence. I know 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 an arrest now 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, what, 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 to what's your tolerance for risk? I mean, that's always the question you ask me to 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. 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, 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 in Korea in 1969. The reason that people that American presidents have a real problem with this is because the location of soul. 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's the map issue. And so the question is, what is it you're trying to achieve? Well, for one thing, you wanna 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 that the North Koreans can never think, we can start destroying Seoul without engaging the Americans. - So let me pretend like I'm on a brain, I'm on a brain-dead isolationist podcast, you know? I'm on-- - So what? - Whatever, okay. I'm on Candice's show right now. And 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. - So 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 isolationist 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 gonna like it. And you're gonna 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 some, not something even as big as Taiwan, some other place in the world where the Chinese say, you know what? - Oh, great, they shut down whatever the Chinese say. - 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, you know, remember what happened to you during COVID? We're just gonna make that happen now for a while. Enjoy that. We're gonna shut down, you know, you're shipping. We're gonna 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 lot of these folks is, well, 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, 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 'cause 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, you know, 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 like, this is the type of thing that if another president besides this had done this, it would be like a massive news story that nobody talks about except Daniel Dale 'cause of this 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 US military presence in the country before Trump became president. Trump then got South Korea to unhappily and his words agree to pay three 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 was the story that Trump told yesterday in the oval office. Every single part of the story is a lot. Here's Daniel Dale. South Korea was paying for the US military presence before Trump's presidency. It's not true that Trump got South Korea to pay three billion in any year. He got one year deal for less than one billion. It's not true that Trump got South Korea to agree to a subsequent increases. It's not true that the 2020 election was rigged and it's not true that Biden agreed to a South Korean demander to ascend 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 fire hose the public with enough lies. And finally, people just kind of give up. The people that who've written about the Russian system have made a really important point. Gary Kasparov and Pomeran's of another's, 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 a bunch of spiders and tapioca where you say, well, I, yeah, 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, you know, show me a funny-- - Of course, why does it matter? They all lie, okay. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'm gonna go look at cat TikToks and, you know, and that's what's-- - That's a great TikTok yesterday. It was the first thing that's given me hope in a long time. I'm gonna put the link in the show notes. And it was a kid. And this is where I'm at now that I'm doing boomer reels where I'm watching, like, you kids do cute things. - Yeah, I'm a kid. - That's 'cause you're a dad now. - We all go through this process. But this is a kid making fun of the Gen Z TikTok influencers. It's like a 10 year old girl, maybe, like talking about how, like, ooh, I like making fun of food influencers. It's so good. I'm not gonna 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 stopped reading. You stopped dating. - Right. - You know, we're gonna read in 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 to point out everything. - Put it out there. You know, actually, it's fun. I got lost in a tech tech too. Somebody put something the best of it. Well, somebody put up a, you know, what if an 80 sitcom was a bunch of superheroes and it was, you know, John Travolta is Superman and Mel Gibson is Batman. And I just sat there and I said, you know, I find this calming. I find this comforting. You get a warm oatmeal of the AI's love. This is the warm and brave stone. 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, like you need an internal Pavlovian response to be like, I'm putting this phone down right now. - You need one of those little like, shockers there in your chest. - I mean, they're picking up a part copy book or I'm going on to nature. I don't know how to transition into this 'cause we got way off. I forget how we got on a cat TikTok, but whatever. We're moving on to Pete Heggs. - I mean, it's your presidential candidate Pete Heggs, right? - Exactly. We've now done 40 minutes talking with 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. 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 all sort of a country where I believe 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 around, that would have been the end of any, I mean, even Don Rumsfeld couldn't hang on past the bad midterm. So we'll see what happens. Pete Heggs has done all kinds of things except his job. He's out there doing jungle training and he's doing sloppy chin-ups and all that other stuff because he still thinks he's like a captain in the infantry 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, 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. Well, 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. He was going to say he had a presence, 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 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, listen to you talk about how, you know, he does the jungle training and he does the push-ups and he's doing like the Sauer crowd and meat diet and all that. Like show that he's a tough war fight or yeah, I think people should ask him if he would be willing to do the USS Lincoln challenge instead of doing all that. So 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 defenders, you know, had this happened under Biden or Obama. I mean, it would be, you know, that that Muslim trader 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 backfire? Why is Trump cratering? When you say, listen, those kids on the link and they're just a bunch of slackers and whiners and goldbrickers, you know, that's not going to work. Yes. They don't even know why they're there. And this is the other thing. I could eventually morale gets down after rock and afghanistan. Like, like the initial part of this, like terrorists had just flown planes into the Twin Towers, right? So we knew what we, why we were doing that. Yeah, right? And, and so, look, obviously, like in a rock in particular, you know, that changes eventually. And gradually, for some people and, and whatever, clicker for other people. But like, there's, there's no rationale 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 president who told me we weren't going to do stupid wars, you know, for a war for a defense secretary told me we were going to be at war fighters, taking up bad guys. I don't just sitting at sea for nothing. I'm going to, I'm of two minds about this. 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 one. Right. You know, it's one of the civilian voters. You know, I, okay, I'm sympathetic to people say, listen, every 19-year-old sailor does not need, you know, to, to be Henry Kissinger and does not need to explain, you know, our here, you know, because the, okay, also the leadership does have an obligation to tell them why they're, what they're doing, or why they're doing it. It's how 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. But to turn to the families and say, listen, your kids just being a pissy whiner. Shut up. You know, they're lying. This is your 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, I started high school the year the Vietnam fell. What's put it that way? That's how it went. By the time I started high school, the last American troops were gone. The Vietnam war attended six months earlier with the fall of Psychon. 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 were, they knew what they were doing. They were staying alive. They were taking their friends. They were, you know, keeping doing the things that soldiers do. But the families at home were saying, what is this about? And when that happens, the answer can't be shut up. Your kid is a whus. That is not an effective answer. And I'm, and I think it's really, and 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'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, 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 new dimension to this problem. And the Trump administration's answer to it has been to basically say, stop winding, stop complaining. There's a, just a kind of a niche story of my guys, the Tennessee Hullar flag that I just want to raise. Just, it's relevant to Hexel's 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 some million times, the firings, you know, it's all women, it's black leaders, the military being fired. And here's a, just a little story about the 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. Anyway, a woman named Miss Candy, a black woman, runs this store called the sewing box in Pensacola, right next to where the Blue Angels naval base is. She's made these uniforms for decades. The contract was about 100 grand a year. Sometimes it was less. Sometimes it's a little more. This year, they rebid out the contract. Didn't bid out. They didn't tell her. They didn't give her a chance. And they just made an announcement that there was a $1.7 million contract went to some Virginia company to make the uniforms. I don't know what's happening in this deal. Well, you know, looks fishy. Is it racism? Is it, is it, it's a hand out for one of Pete Higgs's friends? I'm not sure. It's like time and again, these guys are just doing this stuff. I'm surprised you didn't call them ensembles. But this is the first I've heard of it. But it's not out of character for this, you know, we're going to save money. We're going to fire people. We're going to slash things, 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. 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 what we want to, we want Trump to come in because he's going to shake things up. I remember that in the first Trump term, I would turn to my friends and say, what, what are 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. 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, 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 he's billions of dollars. These battleships, catapults seem 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, you know, something that we'll be there. Well, I want to end with something just a little pallet cleanser. We will 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 of the next level. Also, no more serious note. I did a video last night about just this another horrible story that I got tipped off to happening in the dilly in term of camp in Texas. So you can see that on the board takes feed. But here on this feed of Tom Nichols, I wanted to close with some clips from OAN. Natalie Harp, Trump's personal aide, 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 Dakota 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 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 to do that. 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 Harves, Jonestown, Kool-Aid Power Hour, 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 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 who reminds me of the Trump voter who said, when I brought up something in October of 2024, the 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. 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 pattern realized that they could have a career by going out in public and saying crazy stuff that you could actually get paid, that you could be on TV. And you don't even have to have any talent. Look, that was like a downmarket note. 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 a function. I mean, even in the cable TV era of the 80s and 90s, when I am old enough to remember CNN going on the year, for example, people, handsome, attractive men and women, but they at least had some background on 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 on my phone. I have a beautifully symmetrical face. I can talk in a very convincing way. And I have a job. You know, you were talking earlier about people like Candace Owens and others. I mean, there's a whole generation of people that became, you know, wasn't just Andy Warhol's famous for 15 minutes. It was the ability to say 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, totally driven by the profit motive. And I think, you know, Natalie Hart to me is just one of many. Now, the question is making that jump to the White House. I kept thinking what I wrote about the Great Airplane Caper, the Great 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 Skavino and Harp and no, no, no. Hexuff was already on the plane. There was a third guy in the container who was a Walt Naughtta. Oh, it was Naughtta. Right. So Skavino, Naughtta and Harp made the cut. And I got put on the decoy plane. Seriously? Have you ever been on a, whoever that staff ever is? It's like, maybe you should have considered in 2021 going on OIN 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 to watching Harp and other presenters on these things. When Kurt Vonnegut wrote Mother Knight 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. It'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'd look at that British mod band from the 1960s. The song really holds up. We're 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. No. No. No, X-D's mod act. Well, I can think of his final tap saying, "I'm not a mod or a rocker. I'm more of a mocker." So I don't remember. 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. I'll give you a 60s mod act to listen to and take people out with Brain. How does that sound? Sounds great. I always appreciate you, brother. Next time you can quiz me. All right. No jokes. Fair enough. All right. We'll see you later. Everybody else will be back here tomorrow with another edition of the Borg daily. See you all then. Peace. The Borg daily is brought to you thanks to the work of lead producer Katie Cooper, associate producer Anzaly Skipper, and with video editing by Dante DeCicco and audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.