Will Trump Start World War 3? with Ben Rhodes

(soft piano music) Lemonade. - Donald Trump asked RFK Jr. recently why he wasn't doing more to prove a link between vaccines and autism. Trump apparently wants to reduce the overall number of shots recommended for children. Now, I just think once you're in the Epstein files, you don't get to decide what's best for kids, but that's just me. I read about this story on ground news, our podcast favorite independent news platform. Ground news shows you all of the publications reporting on a specific story, including breakdowns on the political leanings, typical factuality, and ownings of each news source. It's not about completely eliminating bias, but it does help you be a more informed consumer of the news, factoring in potential biases with your analysis. With this story, I notice that the right leaning publications emphasize that autism is on the rise. Subscribe to Ground News today. Use the link in the description or head to groundnews.com/hussin to subscribe and get 40% off the unlimited access vantage plan, the same one that we use here at HMDK. That's groundnews.com/hussin to keep media transparent. Imagine setting your makeup, then forgetting it's even theirs. Meet new grippy setting mist from Maybelline New York. Gel to mist technology locks in your look for up to 24 hours, with flexible all-day comfy grip. No tightness, no stickiness, no residue. Just plump, dewy, hydrated skin that still feels like your skin. Try new grippy setting mist from Maybelline New York. Maybe it's Maybelline. One phrase the media loves to use about Donald Trump is that he is shattering norms. Trump is shattering norms as president. He is shattering norms. Shattering norms. Shattering norms. Shattering norms. Shattering norms. Shattering norms. Just shattering norms. Donald Trump has attacked legal precedents like birthright citizenship. He's attacked the media. He's even attacked little kids heads with candy. Everything he does seems to be in a front to the natural order of things. When it comes to foreign policy, Donald Trump is actually not that abnormal. Yes, he's crass. Yes, he's a racist. And yeah, he is posted more AI photos of himself as the pope than all the presidents before him combined. But if you look at his actions in his second turn, they're very much in line with American history. Let's start with his inauguration speech. When he announced to the world that it was time for America to go real estate shopping. The United States will once again consider itself a growing nation, one that increases our wealth, expands our territory. He even floated making Canada the 51st state and taking over Greenland. I would like to make a deal, you know, the easy way. But if we don't do it, the easy way, we're going to do it the hard way. Liberals, conservatives and the media were distraught about this. The president is talking about conquest. He wants to take the land of a sovereign nation. This is not normal. And it's true, it wasn't normal for the 2020s. But in the 1890s, oh, this was very normal. That was when the US Marines were in their empire era, snatching up Hawaii, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Guam, the Virgin Islands, and Samoa. And we weren't inventing some bullshit self-defense pretext. There was no rules-based international order. After we took a chunk of Panama to build the canal, Theodore Roosevelt literally said, I took the canal zone and let Congress debate, which sounds a lot like another commander in chief who was in big on consent. China is operating the Panama Canal. And we didn't give it to China. We gave it to Panama. And we're taking it back. [APPLAUSE] The fact is, expansionism is in our country's DNA. Those 13 colonies were never going to hold us. We needed some living space, some live in Trump. But I get it. I can already hear you in the comments. Hassan, I know American history is fraught, but Donald Trump is clearly taking it further than anyone else ever did. Is he, though, even when you look at his most insane foreign policy choices, he's biting moves from other presidents. Like last year, when he kidnapped the president of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro. 3.30 AM, the operation is over. This photo of Maduro was taken on board the Iwo Jima. He was wearing a gray Nike track suit. He's blindfolded and clutching the bottle of spring water. OK, politics aside, can we just admit Nicolas Maduro looks fucking sick? I mean, my man's full road man outfit from the neck down and then Danny McBride shades from the neck up. Fucking legend. He got dropped off to prison dressed like a high-piece in 2016. Now, while abducting a foreign leader seemed to cross a line for some, you don't have to go back that far to see the last time America did it. In fact, in 2004, according to the democratically elected president of Haiti, he was forced onto a plane chartered by the US military and then rendered to the Central African Republic. It was used him first to take an elected president out of his purchase. The ambassadors of France and the US told him that he would be killed, his family would be killed, and his supporters would be killed if he did not leave right away. After the abduction of the president, Bush spoke with Shirok on the phone, congratulating each other about how smoothly the abduction of the president had been carried off by both countries. Now, unfortunately, George W didn't tweet a photo of him in gray Nike sweats, so we'll never know how cool he looked. But at the time, the media reported that he was forced out and the Marines were sent into keep order, no talk of shattering norms, just American business as usual. Now, the pundit class mostly went along with the Maduro kidnapping because he was an official bad guy. But then Trump took it too far. I mean, this guy said something unbelievably vulgar. I mean, this is something America would never do. Donald Trump wanted to take Venezuela's oil. The United States seized 1.9 million barrels of oil on December 10th. We're going to keep it. We're going to take back the oil that, frankly, we should have taken back a long time ago. We're taking a lot of oil from Venezuela. Dude, you're not supposed to say it out loud. I mean, even if every president since FDR has had the exact same attitude, you don't just cop to it. Now, as you probably know, the American position towards foreign oil for the past 80 years follows three very simple rules. Number one, it's ours. Number two, if you f*** with it, will number three kill you. And when I say every president, I mean every president, even the Habitat for Humanity guy, President Cardigan. Let our position be absolutely clear and attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America. And such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force. You could read that speech back in the voice of Bain, and it would still work perfectly. Let our position be absolutely clear. So that brings us to the current war with Iran. Now, to be fair, Donald Trump's brutal invasion didn't start over control of oil. Supposedly, it started over control of nuclear material. And then it was about freedom for Iranians. And then it became about protecting Middle Eastern allies. But ultimately, Trump got America back to the fundamentals and focused on a prime piece of real estate that presidents have been obsessed with for decades. - The streets are removed. - The streets are removed, the streets are removed. I do not believe the free world could stand by and allow anyone to close the streets of our moves in the Persian Gulf. - Following America's bombing campaign, Iran retaliated by closing the strait of our moves and refused to reopen it without charging tolls. This destabilized the cost of oil around the world and made Trump commit, then uncommit, then recommit, then re-uncommit, to cease fire with Iran at least three times in six months. It's a classic will they won't they, but with bunker buster bombs. Now, Donald Trump's behavior in this war has been bizarre and cruel, but once again, he's just following a classic American playbook. It's Iraq WMD's just slightly dumber. The norms remain unshattered, which brings me to the most normal thing about Donald Trump's foreign policy. A rite of passage that nearly every president since Teddy Roosevelt has taken part in. Threatening or attacking or invading are somehow fucking with Cuba. - Maybe we'll have a friendly takeover of Cuba. - I do believe I'll be the honor of having the honor of taking Cuba. It's got a beautiful piece of land. You could have beautiful resorts. America has always viewed Cuba as a beautiful piece of land, the Puerto Rico that got away, ever since we tried to buy it from Spain in 1848. Now, back then, Spain refused saying they would rather see Cuba sunk into the ocean than handed over to us, which is so dramatic, Spain. Why can't you just give us Cuba? Stop being so difficult. We just wanted to build resorts. I mean, look at this, Spain. Haven't you heard of tiny homes? Minimalism is in. Now, Cuba eventually got its independence, and for a while, things were good between our nations. And by good, I mean, the American mob basically ran Cubes economy through corrupt dictators and corporations. You know, stability. That all changed in 1959, when Fidel Castro led a revolution that turned Cuba into a front line in the Cold War. In 1961, after a failed coup attempt at the Bay of Pigs, JFK approved a CIA program called Operation Mongoose to undermine the Cuban government with sabotage against civilian and military targets. It set in motion decades of CIA attempts to assassinate Castro. There were reportedly over 600 attempts on Castro's life, including with exploding cigars and a poison wetsuit. The CIA even developed a special gun that fired a dart with a shellfish toxin that would give the assassination targets a heart attack. Does this pistol fire the dart? - Yes, it does, chairman. - All right, hear me out, what was the pitch for the heart attack gun? Was the guy like, "Imagine a gun that kills you." Now, even though America failed to assassinate Castro, it succeeded in enforcing a crippling embargo for over 65 years, which, according to the UN, cost Cuba a country with the population of New Jersey, $130 billion. The only president who actually shatter norms when it came to Cuba was Barack Obama, who attempted to normalize relations. But now, once again, Cuba is on our hit list. In the justification is just rehashed Cold War tactics. Marco Rubio State Department is claiming that the rise in leftist activism in the United States was directly supported by Cuban espionage. - The Cuban regime's sprawling intelligence and ideological network helped to build the far left in our country, and in our hemisphere. - Okay, all right, obviously this is bullshit. You think that white leftists are being influenced by Cuban espionage? They're being influenced by Hassan espionage. What do we gotta do for the internet's three favorite Hassans to get our due credit? The fact is, even if it sounds callous and unsophisticated coming out of Donald Trump's mouth, Trump's foreign policy is nothing new. And I'm not saying it's good, it's definitely bad. But from Greenland to Iran to Cuba, Trump isn't shattering norms. He's upholding them. To discuss this further, I sat down with Obama's former deputy national security advisor, Ben Rhodes. Unlike a lot of people who have worked in the White House, he has become openly critical of the United States foreign policy, even dropping the e-word. - We have to come to terms with the fact that we have an empire. - Ben was directly involved with the Iran nuclear deal negotiations and he led the effort with Obama to normalize relations with Cuba. So we talked about how to think about the word threat when it comes to foreign policy. - When I hear threat in the context of American national security, I almost always look to, okay, where's the money going? - What the Trump administration has accomplished in Iran. - All we've done is succeeded making the Supreme Leader decades younger and more radical. - And what they have planned next for Cuba. Will the United States invade Cuba next? - I think so. - Yeah, I think so too. You know? What are you gonna do? ♪ Hurry right away ♪ ♪ No they may stop me ♪ ♪ Make your daddy pass ♪ ♪ I pass on your land ♪ - Imagine setting your makeup. Then forgetting it's even theirs. Meet new grippy setting mist from Mavily New York. Delta mist technology locks in your look for up to 24 hours with flexible all day comfy grip. Just plump, dewey hydrated skin that still feels like your skin. Try new grippy setting mist from Mavily New York. - Maybe it's Mavilyin. - Light political circles. America is oftentimes called, quote, "The global leader of a rules-based international order." - Yes. - What is the rules-based international order? - So the rules-based international order, when you hear that term, people are referring to the system that the United States basically designed after World War II. That is a whole system of institutions, international laws, and international norms. There's another term. - Yeah. - You know, with the United Nations at the center, the World Trade Organization, the kind of Bretton Woods financial system for cheat sheet for that is that the dollar is the reserve currency, like people ended up having to trade through the dollar. - The IMF. - The IMF and the National Monetary Fund. So all these institutions where the United States is essentially both the designer of the institutions and the main stakeholder. The problem with that is, the United States is pretty selective over the years about when it follows the rules that it wrote for everybody else. The United States, when it works, I think, best, is supposed to be a leader that tries to get other countries to come along with ideas and initiatives, right? But oftentimes, the United States just wants to dominate this order. - And by dominate, what do you mean by that? - They want everybody else, or we want everybody else to follow these rules, but we don't want to follow them when they're inconvenient to us. So we don't want a country to get nuclear weapons, but we can have as many as we want. Or we don't want a country to invade another country, but if we want to invade Iraq, we'll do that, right? And so, and now with Trump, the reason I think the rules-based order is dead is we don't follow any of the rules. I mean, everything he's doing from tariffs to invading Iran and Venezuela to some of the sanctions he's put in place, like they have no basis in the system we built. But the rules-based order was essentially what the baseline for how countries dealt with issues was from like, World War II to, I'd say the second election of Donald Trump. That was, it wasn't always adhered to, but it was kind of the system that people operated within. And I think one of the reasons why the world is feels so chaotic and like we're playing with that net right now is that that order's gone. - How did the United States get such unprecedented super-vote power in this rules-based order? For example, China's a huge country. How are they okay with this? At the time before the USSR was dissolved, Russia is a huge country. Why were these other countries kind of okay with the United States being number one on the call sheet? - Well, so it's interesting because at first, the rules-based order was kind of set up to prevent the United States and the Soviet Union from fighting a third World War. So they're gonna be all these institutions, we're gonna fight it out. And the institutions are kind of tilted in the direction of the United States, but the Soviet Union was a part of at least some of them. And because the Soviet Union had this big block of countries, it kind of balanced us out, you know, like put some constraints on what we could do in the world. So China was dealing with their own issues. Extreme poverty, communist revolution, they were shut out of the rules-based order for a long time. We actually had the Chinese seat at the United Nations Security Council was held by Taiwan for the first two or three decades after World War II. So they didn't even really start to emerge until kind of the '80s. Now, here's what happens is then the Soviet Union collapses and the United States is suddenly dominant. There's no peer to the United States. And you have to think of it in kind of two phases, the phase from World War II to the end of the Cold War, where everything is about the Cold War and these two superpowers kind of balance each other out. And then all of a sudden, this kind of window opens up where the United States is really calling the shots and dominating things through kind of the '90s, let's say to 9/11, right? Then the United States starts to overreach, right? And so we suddenly started invading countries. We made Afghanistan. We invaded Iraq. We're setting up extra-digital prisons like Guantanamo Bay. We're breaking all these rules that other countries have to follow. And the Russians are like, well, wait a second. Why do they get to break all the rules? And Putin starts to basically try to wreck the rules-based order, right? He invades George in 2008. He invades Ukraine in 2014. Even when I was in the White House, he starts vetoing everything at the UN Security Council to make it just not work. We're just going to show that this rules-based order is a sham. Then the Chinese are getting richer and richer and richer. And they're like, hey, we want our own rules-based order. It's just going to be a Chinese one. And so they start lending money to other countries and investing in other countries and building these kind of parallel institutions of countries. And so we've been living through this kind of weird phase where at first, the Russians were just taking a sledge hammer to the rules-based order. The United States is operating on its own over here and telling everybody else to follow the rules. The Chinese are building their own thing. And every other kind of normal country is looking around, being like, what's going on here? There's three empires that are doing whatever the hell they want. And we're still sitting here at the World Trade Organization or the United Nations trying to solve these problems. And we can't solve them without these three empires. Everyone brings up the international criminal court. Yes. What is that? So this is a perfect example of the United States not playing by the rules, because the international criminal court-- there's long been international humanitarian law. So the idea that you should not disproportionately kill civilians, those kinds of things are on the books. There's a Geneva Convention. But particularly after the Cold War, the most idealistic elements of the rules-based order are like, well, we actually need a international criminal court that can hold people accountable for crimes against humanity, for genocide, for war crimes. And it's kind of European led effort to develop the international criminal court. And it's set up around the end of the Clinton years. Clinton was interested in joining, but there's a huge right-wing backlash, and he backs off right away. And so the United States-- Why was there a right-wing backlash? Because the right-wing has always had, in the United States, has always been distrustful, like dating back to World War II. There's this kind of paranoid strain of right-wing thought. Distrustful of outside institutions, outside of the United government, that nobody should tell the United States what to do. There's a hawkish, say, neo-conservative element that's like, nobody should tell us what to do. If we go to war, they're going to say, we committed war crimes, and we can't, because we're America. And then there's a paranoid America first element that runs back into the isolationist of the '30s. There's a one-world government out there. The Builderburg group is meeting somewhere to make decisions for us. We don't want to part of that. So basically, the Republican party in this case. country was always hostile to the International Criminal Court, the ICC. So, the United States never joined the ICC. The ICC, in its early years, it was kind of going after war criminals from the Balkan wars, right? Like Milosevic, the Serbian Union. Yeah, mainly, in my rudimentary research of it, as the ICC is mainly for capturing African dictators for Slobodan Milosevic, but it's 98% African dictators, mostly African dictators. So, you know, the ICC, one after the leader of Sudan, it went after, for instance, the guy who's present Kenya now, Ruto, I would hear all the time from the Africans. Like, this is a colonial enterprise. Like you're only going after, you know, Africans because we don't have power, essentially, you know. But the US never joined, in the Obama years, we cooperated with the ICC. We couldn't join, it would take like Congress voting to join, so that was off the table. And, however, it's the classic example of the US saying, "We're for the ICC, we're for enditing the war criminals we don't like." Right. But the last thing you would want is an ICC arrest warrant on George W. Bush. On George W. Bush? He's painting in Texas, on his ranch, and they storm in and take him to the hate. Or more likely, he's giving a paid speech in Europe, right? And some judge issues a warrant, or the ICC has had in the past active investigations of American troops, for instance in Afghanistan, who would allegedly come into war crimes. So, you know, we had to protect the troops mentality, too. But, you know, in the Biden year something interesting happened, which is the ICC under the Chief Prosecutor, Kreme Khan, they went after Vladimir Putin. And we love that. You know, Biden's like, "This is great standing up for international law." And then the exact same prosecutor went after Benjamin Netanyahu for the exact same crimes against humanity as Putin and was like, "Whoa, you know, we're going to sanction the ICC, we're going to sanction their families, we're going to destroy the international criminal court." So it's a perfect, you know, window into this one set of rules for everybody else, particularly African dictators, and there's a whole other set of rules for that. Rules for the. Or for the. Rules for the not me, is what you're saying. Yeah. Understood. You're throwing around all the time, is threat. China is a threat to the United States. How do you become a threat to the United States? What does that mean? Well, can I give you a signal answer? Sure. Is that all right? It means it justifies budgets in the United States, right? So, if China is just a, you know, big economy that we compete with sometimes, that's one thing. Well, we have to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on ships and new nuclear weapon modernization plans and advanced autonomous weaponry, and when I hear threat in the context of American national security, I almost always look to, "Okay, where's the money going?" Because you have to cast something as a threat in order to pay for a new weapon system, a new intelligence finding to do some covert action. But who decides that? Who decides that these countries are threats? And these aren't. Ostensibly are elected leaders, but, you know, there's a kind of unelected, or at times elected in Congress, kind of national security set of, there really are elites, you know, that word is overused, but, you know, the people that run congressional committees, they tend to never change in both parties, tend to be hawks, you know, and see threats everywhere. And reward the Pentagon or the intelligence committee with budgets to deal with those threats. And then there's people coming out of the U.S. government, or they're sitting at think tanks. And one of the things I noticed in my career is that if you're writing an op-ed, or you're writing a think tank paper, well, nobody pays attention to you saying, "You know what? I actually don't think this is a big threat," you know? If you hype up a threat, and you're like, "Here's the reasons why if the Chinese get this technology before us, the whole world's going to end," you know, I mean, AI is the perfect example of this. I think this whole thing is absurd. Chinese are going to get AI. We're going to get AI. But it serves a lot of powerful people's interest to say, "It's a threat if the Chinese get the AI." That serves Sam Altman's interest at opening AI, because he doesn't want to be regulated. That serves the interest of national security people who sit around and design restrictions on things that can go to China or sanctions on Chinese companies. It serves the interest of the intelligence community that needs all these new technologies and budgets to understand, you know, Chinese AI. And so you develop this entire apparatus around the threat from the private sector to the national security state that kind of needs there to be a threat, or else what are we doing? Is there another way to see this? Because in 1985, President Ronald Reagan declared Nicaragua a threat to national security. Tiny country, no fighter jets, no bombers, no nukes. So it was basically the definition for being a threat to America. Is it basically a country that is willing to just be independent from us? Yeah. I think that the most threatening thing to America are countries that don't do what we want them to do. Some of those are big, powerful countries like Russian China, where we can't really impose our will, but we can justify trillions of dollars in defense spending and all these other things. Then consistently, if there are smaller countries that don't do what we want, we go insane. Right? And I used to find. What do you mean we go insane? Well, I found it. I used to find this interesting. In the Obama years, you know, I used to have to work on the state of the Union every year. And I used to go back and read the old ones. And if you had Reagans from the '80s, you would think that Nicaragua and, you know, in particular, but to some extent at times like El Salvador and Guatemala that we were going to get taken over by communism, you know, coming through there. But then what ends up happening is these are incredibly poor countries that have no capacity to project power. The worst thing that could possibly happen is there's a communist government that's like kind of friendly with the Soviet Union. I think we'd be fine. And we end up arming death squads. We end up basically breaking these countries to pieces with, you know, civil war and right-wing violence that leads to left-wing revolution leads to right-wing death squads. And then we wonder 20 years later why there's all this migration from Central America. Now after 9/11, this was entirely about, you know, became about the Muslim majority countries in the world. And those that didn't do what we want are very different collection of countries, like Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran, for instance, have very different governments, traditions, methods of worship. But they had in common as if they wouldn't do what we wanted. And so we broke those countries, you know. And Iran is kind of the last gasp of this, I think, post 9/11. You know, they're the biggest of the Muslim countries. It didn't listen to us. My entire adult life, I have been told that Iran is a threat to America. Is that true? Not really. It is certainly the case that Iran has sponsored groups, armed groups that have harmed and even killed Americans. At the same time, we invaded Iraq. We removed Saddam Hussein, who is an enemy of Iran. And we occupied that country next to Iran and in no way does that justify what they did. But what they would argue is kind of defensive. They need to kind of keep you at arms length, right? So they're a threat when we are in the Middle East. They don't like us there. They particularly don't like us in countries like Iraq and Lebanon where they have allies and influence. They've never been a threat that they're going to come attack the United States, that they're developing a nuclear weapon to put on a ballistic missile fire at the United States. That's the nuclear program is principally a threat to Israel, right? They're in Israel's neighborhood, they're obviously in this kind of on and again off-gen war with Israel. And so Israel doesn't want them to have nuclear weapons. We don't want them to get nuclear weapons for a lot of reasons. One of them is Israel. But another one is just, you know, we're against proliferation in general. If a unpredictable government like Iran gets nuclear weapons, does that give a nuclear umbrella to his blood? It's suddenly, wait a second, his blood, whatever they want or else they're going to, you know, Iranians might nuke you, do the Saudis then get nuclear weapons because they're worried the Iranians get it and there's a domino. So there's a lot of reasons to think it would be threatening if Iran got a nuclear weapon. I think in Iran without a nuclear weapon is not something that needs to, that any American really needs to spend that much time worried about though. Why are we at war with the Iran? We're at war with Iran, I think, for two reasons. The first is Israel and Benjamin Netanyahu. The entire eight years I was in the White House, he wanted the U.S. to go to war with Iran. Tried many times to convince Barack Obama that that was the right thing to do. Rock Obama didn't agree because whenever we were game that would happen. looked kind of like what's happening. They closed the straight-of-form rules. The whole global economy gets fucked. And had this big fight at the end. And Netanyahu clearly went to Trump, gave him the same presentation. This will be easy. The only thing they respect is strength. And he convinced Trump. So the first reason is Israel. And the second reason is Trump's, I think, strong man desire for a legacy. I not enough to pass tax cuts and enrich myself and my friends. I need to, like, slay dragons. I mean, but he's got a lot of, he's slayed a lot of dragons. I mean, he's got January 6th. He's got multiple Supreme Court justices and on his watch, UFC 250 happened on the lawn. I mean, he's got a lot of the highlight rules up there. I wouldn't do that. But there's something in psychology these guys who like Putin too. At a certain point, you know, that I got a assassinator. I need to, like, take over a con topple. Yeah, like, this is human history, right? Like, so Trump comes back and he's like, you know, I'm not satisfied with bombing countries and I want to remove governments. You know, I'm going to get Maduro out. Yeah, so it was part of this, was that that little spiciness, that feeling, did he get a little taste of it with the Maduro thing? I think I'm going to kidnap Maduro. Did you get the gateway drug presentation in high school? Because I think Maduro was a gateway drug. You know, it's like, you know, we grabbed this guy. I took a little hit of regime change. Yeah. And well, that worked, which I don't think it did. But, so now we're going to, you know, we're going to go after the bigger one or on. And we're working our way through Cuba. Greenland, I think, is still in the crosshairs. Like, I think he's never understood the gateway drug presentation in middle school because they, it went from weed, you know. It misunderstood drugs. Yeah, it just, and then they were like, and then you're going to do crystal meth. Yeah. And it's a huge gap between. Here's a, yeah, I mean, a little bit of hack. Smoked a lot of weed in high school. Yeah, to, I wasn't, you know, snorting hard, hard drugs, right after that. But, but I think with Trump, you know, maybe he, well, he isn't, I mean, not to be too serious here, but the man does have an addictive personality. There's a reason he doesn't drink. You know, I honestly think like he's, he's hooked on this, he got hooked after Venezuela that I can do these things. You know, I can conquer countries. I can rebuild an empire. I can expand the territory of the United States, which he said he was going to do in his second inaugural address. So that line, I remember I was watching that, unfortunately, and he said he's going to expand our territory. And I was like, what the fuck is he talking about? Yeah, what the fuck does that mean? Yeah. Well, let me just say this too, because we're talking about Maduro. Isn't it weird that Maduro's still in prison here in Brooklyn? Yeah, he's like right over there. Yeah, he's right over there. Like I shot a special, like literally just a few exits away from where Maduro is. So allegedly, Maduro's just still in that gray Nike tech place. Yeah, which is wife, too. He's wife, too. His wife's in there, too. Yeah, he's wife's in there, too. But why are more Americans like, that's fucking crazy? But people are just going to ticketmaster.com and then going into the Barclay Center to be like, I'm here to watch the nets lose. They don't think a lot about it. They probably walk right by there. I mean, honestly, like in some ways, because this complex, as you're talking about, the kind of CNN national security threat complex, has demonized Venezuela for so long. It's like, well, I don't really know why he's there, but I'm sure he's a bad guy, he should be there. Okay, let's get back to Iran real quick. Just to be clear, we're losing that war, we're winning. I think we've lost it already. Oh, we've lost it already. Okay, got it. Another thing I just wanted to clarify, the justification was to open up the Strait of Hormuz, yes? The original justification was the freedom of the Iranian people. Remember that? They were going to rise up. But I don't know what that even means. I think they thought that, and they were wrong, and frankly, any analyst would have known they'd be wrong. It's shocking to me that if the Mossad actually signed off on this presentation that they apparently made, but they thought that if you'd decapitated the government, if you killed the Supreme Leader, that there'd be popular uprisings, and then I think they thought they were going to arm all these Kurdish militias. So they're the Kurds are an ethnic group inside of Iraq, Iran, and Syria, and they hate the Iranian government. And I don't think these really thought there'd be some popular uprisings in the religious democracy. I think they thought there'd be violent chaos in Iran and kind of civil war. And that's their version of freedom, because what they want is chaos in the Middle East. They want violence in chaos, because it gives them freedom of action. Did Netanyahu anticipate that the Supreme Leader would just get taken out, and then his NEPO baby son would take over? I think anybody that, most Iran analysts, I'd talked to you over the years, anticipated that. I think that-- Because this new shot looks like the old shot, which is less gray hair. I mean, all we've done is succeeded in making the Supreme Leader decades younger and more radical. I mean, the young guy is more radical than his father. And the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, that's the kind of military dictatorship inside the religious government, is running the government. They're the ones who shut down the street. If we're moose, they're controlling things. That's no surprise. One thing America's always misunderstood, shockingly, in our interventions, is that-- or a war, as I should say-- is that if you create a huge power vacuum, the people with the most guns fill it. And so the IRGC, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps have the guns. They control the black market economy inside Iran. So when you decapitate the government, they're the ones who are going to call the shots. Kolkata Chai has brand new tea bags. It is so easy. I literally don't have to think about it. Hot water, tea bag, mug, danzo. OK, but what do I think about now? But real talk, what is a microwave? Actually, it hums, it dings, it spins, but what is making the food hot? [SCREAMING] Screw you, countertop Chernobyl, hard pass. OK, just enjoy this moment. For one second, without-- ooh, hello, fridge. Oh, my chilly little frenemy. I tolerate you, but I do not trust you. Do you remove heat? Or do you add coal? Ew. I'm getting coal just thinking about it. You know why should make some chai to warm up? Stupid person, you're already making chai, but I forgot about it because these tea bags are literally doing all the work. Wait, is it a tea bag or a chai bag or a chai tea? Nope, no, no, no. Not going there. Just add hot water, milk, and sweetener of your choice. Honestly, it's the best chai in the game. I should go tell someone. Because we're talking about Iran, I want to talk about Iran nuclear deal. Now, you worked in the White House during the Obama administration. And while Obama was negotiating the Iran nuclear deal, what was the JCPOA? And what happened to it once you guys left office? So this was a deal negotiated by the United States-- Yeah. --member of the rules-based international order. It was the UN Security Council. So that's the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Russia, and China, as well as Europe, the European Union, and Germany. So those all the big powers, essentially, negotiated with Iran a deal under which Iran would ship out its stockpile of an Mediterranean out of the country. That's the nuclear dust that Trump has been talking about, because Iran currently has a big stockpile. They would basically significantly reduce the number of centrifuges they're operating. And that's what turns uranium into this enriched, potentially nuclear material. And put most of them under lock-and-key, we had electronic seals on them so we could tell that they're under lock-and-key. And they could only operate a very minimal amount that could produce enough for medical isotopes of medical research, not anywhere near what you need for nuclear weapon. And they also had a plutonium reactor, and they had to destroy the core of that reactor. And we took care of that. That was gone. And then there were these international inspectors. So the rules-based order has these institutions. One is the international atomic energy agency, a bunch of nerds. They go in, they look at the nuclear, they make sure that they're doing all these things and complying with the deal. And they were. In return, they got some sanctions relief. So some of the money that Iran wasn't getting. They'd sold well over $100 billion worth of oil. But they backed the dollar. They couldn't access the revenue from the sales. So this is their money that's frozen in accounts. And we started to let them get access to some of that money. They're complying with the deal. Trump comes in. He says it's the worst deal ever. I think he probably couldn't even tell you what the deal was. He-- his own national security team says, don't pull out of this deal. The Iranians are complying. So even people like Jim Mattis, the Secretary of Defense, were saying that. But in 2018, he pulls out of the deal anyway. And so very predictably, the Iranians stop complying with the deal. Because there's not getting any sanctions relief. The US is out. And they start rebuilding their nuclear program and recumulating a stockpile of nuclear material. And now, Trump is desperate to get anything close to what the JCPI was. What's the best case scenario for a new nuclear deal now? It doesn't seem to me like the Iranians want to do any nuclear deal. I'm just watching this play out. So I think that it's a long shot to get anything. I think the best case scenario is you have some deal to open up the straight-of-our-muse in return for the US lifting a blockade. And the Iranians getting some money. They're going to need some money on the front end. That's been very clear. Some of the sanctions relief for tolls on ships going to the straight-of-our-muse. And then you negotiate a nuclear deal. It's pretty much the same one we had. It'll end up relatively around the way. the Obama nuclear deal. That's best case, or slightly worse. I frankly don't think they're going to get that. Because, you know, why would the Iranians make a deal? Trump pulled out of the last deal. He killed the negotiators, you know, a cycle, you know, who were negotiating before this latest war and generally bomb them, you know, last year in the middle of negotiations. So if you're the Iranians, and again, this is nothing the Americans do is we assume that these people are all like lunatics and these are I may not agree with the Iranians, but they're very sophisticated people, right? They're like, why should we make any deal with Trump? He's not going to keep any deal and he may bomb us again, you know. So I've never understood the Western narrative around that because two things are happening simultaneously. Iran is filled with these mullahs and lunatics simultaneously. They have some of the best filmmakers on planet Earth. I mean, Iranian cinema is absolutely credible and apparently they have great scientists. So I'll just give you one example. So, so what is it? I'll give you one example. Ernie Moniz was our Secretary of Energy in the Iran nuclear negotiations. He was a nuclear physicist. The guy who was negotiating with Ernie Moniz, who ran their nuclear program, went to MIT with him and is a leading international nuclear scientist. Like the Iranians, I mean, you know, they're 94 million people in Iran. It's a, I mean, Ted Cruz doesn't know that. He doesn't know that. It's a highly educated population. It has a tremendous scientific know how has very skilled diplomats. Yes, they have some fucking lunatics in the RGC, in the morality, please. The kind of people are going around like, you know, beating up women for not wearing headscarves. That's there too. But I guess I'd say this like, look at our own country, you know, like the, there's any countries comprised of people that are sophisticated, lunatics, violent, drawn violent. And what we were trying to do the Obama administration, we got a lot of shit for. It was like, let's try to empower the more sophisticated, less extreme people in their system. Let's deal with them. Let's show that they can deliver something. So like if they get a nuclear deal, they'll, they were empowered. Okay. And this is an important point, Nissan. When Trump pulled out of that nuclear deal, guess what happened? The bottom fell out from under those people. Like the next president was far more hard, hard line. The, you know, Western educated foreign minister, Javad Zarif, who went to the University of Denver. He's sidelined. The IRGC is like, see, we told you so. Don't deal with the Americans. Can't trust them. And so every time that we rug pull a country like that, we end up screwing the people that we would prefer have more power in their system. We, we'll get to it, but we did the same thing to the Cuban. Well, let's talk about worst case scenario of how all of this plays out. Ukraine bombed an Iranian ship. China is giving missiles to Iran now. So is this just a path to World War III? That's the worst case scenario. Because, you know, I hesitate to free people out. But I mean, if you were to do like a World War watch, let's look at the map. We're two thirds of the way to the map of the last World War. We've got a major war in Eastern Europe. We've got a major war in Middle East. And then we have like the Taiwan Strait, you know, where China could make it truly, you know, the whole map. Then we have Russian China as like an axis. Let's call it that cooperating. I think the Russians are sharing intelligence with Iranians. That's how they're targeting US military bases so effectively in the Middle East. I think the Chinese, you know, they provided arms to the Iranians. The North Koreans have sent troops to fight in Ukraine. Like so that bring the North Koreans into this. So they're all cooperating at the same time that we are arming the Ukrainians. We're attacking the Iranians. We are arming the Taiwanese. And so yes, the worst case scenario is that this all kind of situation becomes one fire and not separate fires burning. I read that the United States just signed an agreement with Saudi Arabia to start a nuclear program. Yeah. Is that bad? That's bad. Okay. Saudi Arabia has wanted a nuclear program for a long time. They've asked us to help them build it. Successive administrations have said no. You know, Trump got a son-in-law who's got two billion dollars in the Saudis. When he's out of government to start his investment fund, it's, you know, spoiler. I don't know. It's because of Jared Kushner's investment acumen. And they, you know, who knows what deals they do under the table with Trump. You know, they're building. They pledge to build all these Trump properties across Saudi Arabia. So some of this is we want to keep Muhammad bin Salman happy, the leader of Saudi Arabia, because he's our piggy bank. Some of this is the Saudis are great and happy with our war in Iran, because it's shitty for them. And they're losing money because of it. And so here's a reward to kind of keep them on side. God forbid, they drift in the direction of the Chinese, right? And, and from, you know, I think the concerns with it are one, what you said to Iran, too, is like what's to stop Muhammad bin Salman in 10 years from taking a peaceful nuclear program and flipping the switch and saying, you know, I'm, I'm just going to buy nuclear weapon. Now, he, he has a defense treaty with Pakistan, which has nuclear weapons. And so a lot of analysts have thought, if you ever wants a nuclear weapon, you can probably buy one from Pakistan, too, but it's certainly America building nuclear capability in Saudi Arabia is that I don't know any Americans are like, boy, that's really good use of our, of our time and attention resources. You not only work on the Iran nuclear deal, but you also help the United States and Cuba normalize relations between each other. I want to show you a clip from the historic first press conference with Barack Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro that I have a question about. Let's take a look. So, so what's going on here? Take me through what's happening here, because I feel like Raul wanted a full. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so I negotiated the normalization. Yeah, I spent hundreds and hundreds of hours with Al-Handra Castro, Raul Sun. Yeah. I had some very late nights with Raul Castro. I drank some very good Havana Club rum with Raul Castro. And kind of culminates in this trip. And first of all, that press conference was a concession, right? Raul Castro does not hold press conferences. And so what's in it for us? What's in it for us is, well, Raul Castro has to stand up there and have people raise hands and wire their political prisoners locked up. And so we were modeling, well, we opened things up here and this is what can happen. What's in it for Raul Castro is he wants that photo. Like Barack Obama is hugely popular in Cuba. Right. And so he wants to like lift Obama's arm and triumph. Now, Obama, very respectful person, happy to shake Raul Castro's hand, but you don't want that photo. And so it kind of led to a fairly unfortunate. Yeah. So Barack's doing the jump shot. And Raul Castro wants to go full. He wants to go full. Yeah. Hand in hand. Let's do it. Yeah. And you know, I mean, it didn't look good for anybody involved, I guess, but it was better, I think, in the long run than what's the meeting like with you guys afterwards? So you're with the president and he's with his team. It's awkward on all counts here. This is an important thing because there are hardliners in this country who hate the Cuban government too, right? So particularly the Cuban American community. Yeah. Marco Rubio. And that's a whole other conversation because, you know, we, that's the second APAC in American politics. They don't have as much money, but they do wield a lot of power in the Cuban Americans, the hardline Cuban Americans because they're Cuban Americans that support what we did, a lot of them. It's like they're Jewish Americans that don't like APAC. But we were pushing farther than the Cuban government wanted. The criticism of us was like you're selling out. Well, actually no, like, because I was there throughout that whole trip. I went there multiple times to set up that trip. So here's what happens. Obama goes down to Cuba. The entire international media comes. He meets with entrepreneurs, people that are not controlled by the Communist Party or building small businesses. He meets with dissidents. He gives a speech that we got aired on Cuban television in which he talks about in a very respectful way, not in a lecturing way, but he talks about democracy and the people of Cuba should be able to decide their future. So we're pushing like way ahead of their comfort zone. You know, in our view, we're demonstrating that if you open things up, it's more likely to bring choice to the Cuban people. I got an earful after that trip. What they were most upset about was not that picture. It was Obama's speech. Apparently, Fidel Castro personally hated that speech, was offended by that speech, thought Obama should not have been allowed to give that speech on television. I think Fidel had always been a skeptic. This is another problem with Americans as on. We think any adversarial government, particularly a closed government, is a monolith where everybody thinks the same way. I think Fidel and Raoul had different ideas. Raoul was more pragmatic. He wanted to open things up to the United States. Fidel wanted to die. and his boots, you know, standing up the United States. And so part of what happened is after that trip, the Cubans kind of were like, oh, wait a second, we got to like reign in the sand a little bit, you know, but they couldn't because things were opening up. Americans are traveling down there, they're staying in Airbnb's, internet's coming to Cuba, the Rolling Stones are playing concerts, like everyone to go to Cuba. Then Trump comes in and he, you know, winds back the Obama opening, shuts the door on travel, shuts the door on, why would you do that? Like if you actually want to change Cuba, wouldn't you want as many people to be going there as possible, sharing ideas, you know. And kind of hermetically sealing them once again in this, you know, well now that Trump is close things down, will the United States invade Cuba next? - I think so. They'll do something. - But there's nothing to really steal there. So what are they gonna steal, like universal healthcare or what do they want to take from them? - Real estate. - So Venezuela has oil. Cuba has a lot of beach front property. - Okay. - I mean, I mean this. Like when I was, some of the same Cuban Americans who talk about democracy wanted to like develop the keys off the coast of the, you know, there's beautiful, I've been there, there's, you know, dollar signs, probably in these guys eyes. When I was talking to the Cubans in 2016, and I was starting to be like, "Hey, you know, are you worried about Trump?" Like no, no, the Trump organization sent people down here. They want to build golf courses down here. So I think Marco Rubio wants to be the guy, the first guy who actually got it done, got regime change done in Cuba. I think Donald Trump is like, there's a lot of real estate there, you know? That's the oil. - Is this expansionist worldview really just about hotels? - Hotels and oil, you know, and natural resources for like drone components and, you know. - So just never been able to wrap my head around that. That kind of the war to marry up bond boy points pipeline. I just don't get it. - Oil in Venezuela, real estate in Cuba, rare earth minerals in Greenland. There's a bananza everywhere. - So the media narrative. - That's what Empire has always been about. - Well, well, let's talk about the media narrative of the American Empire. The media narrative around Cuba is always Cuba is this extremely poor, extremely depressing place to be. These people are poor, they are suffering. But how much of that suffering comes from America's own actions? - I would say most of it. The media narrative doesn't like to say that. They're like, well, you know, the Cuban Communist Party, you know, it mismanages the economy. Here's the thing, there's been a total embargo on Cuba. And there's been this thing where we designate them a state-sponsored terror. - Are you aware of Cuba sponsoring a terrorist organization? - Not that I'm aware of. - So we remove them from that. The reason that's important. - Is it still, is that still sticking around from 1962? - No. - There are roads. - They got thrown on that sometime after the Cold War. - Okay. - Because what that does is it cuts them off from the dollar. So the reason I say, and by the way, just quick aside, when we remove them, I went to, what is the justification that they're on here? And somebody had found that they harbored a couple of basks, you know, B-A-S-Q-U-E. Yes, who committed acts of terrorism in Spain. I called the Spanish. They're like, oh, yeah, we asked them. Please take these people. We don't want them here anymore. So they were doing a favor to our ally, Spain, and taking these guys. So we take them off the list. But still, banks are so worried about getting crossed into the United States. It was hard to get anybody to do dollar transactions. Now, the reason this is important is if you go to Cuba, it's one of the poorest places you'll ever go. They don't choose to drive 1950s cars, right? That's the thing that people have in mind. They can't buy fucking new cars, 'cause they have no capacity to access the dollar. They can't, I flew into the Havana airport. They wanted to build a new airport. They wanted the Europeans to build a new airport for them. But no European contractor would do it because they literally can't facilitate the transaction. They started a private sector, the thing that we claim we want them to do. People own small businesses in Cuba without the government controlling them. Stores, taxis, restaurants, right? I went to a palador in Cuba with Jose Andres, great food. But they can't open up their economy if there's nothing to plug their economy into. And so by keeping them hermetically sealed, we give them no choice but to be a controlled communist economy. And then we claim that the Communist Party is managing it. The Communist Party would open up their economy tomorrow if they could. They were studying Vietnam when I was dealing with them. They wanted to be Vietnam, you know? I would bet by the way that they couldn't maintain political control 'cause Vietnam's not 90 miles from Florida. But it's our fault. We are starving people of death right now. Now that we have a total oil blockade, the power shuts out in Cuba on some regularity. I've talked personally to people who are Cuban, Cuban-Americans who've had family members die because they were on a ventilator that turned off if the power shuts off, the NICU shuts off, the ventilator shut off. Those same family members couldn't even attend the funerals of the people who died because guess what, you can't cool body without power either. That's how dark it is. So while we're walking past Maduro and prison, we taxpayers are supporting a policy that is killing Cuban children and old people because some people in Florida would like to take back that island. And that is about as fucked up as it gets. Are you without naming names? Are you just basically saying Marco Rubio right now? Oh yeah, I mean, Rubio, Rubio and kind of the politics he comes out of. Is there any universe where he doesn't end up invading Cuba either a secretary of state or as future president of the United States? I mean, no, I think what he would prefer is like, can you send some CIA guys down there and do some sabotage? Can you do a special forces operation like Maduro? Now the problem for them is then the Trump administration is that Cuba's president, Diaz Canal, is actually not really like in charge. He's kind of the functionary who's the front man for the system. So like going and arresting Diaz Canal is not, nobody is heard of that guy in the United States, right? So then they're like, well, maybe we'll rest Raul Castro. Raul Castro is 93 years old. Going and arresting a 93 year old man with a bunch of Delta Force or Navy CEO guys feels-- so they don't have like a great military option. Let's pivot to NATO real quick. Are we going to take Greenland? I think he's going to come back at that one. Now, I actually think that part of what we've seen is when he tries to do that. It's one of the very few things that seems to freak out Republicans. And so I think it's a race against time. Can Donald Trump transform the Pentagon or the Department of War into an institution that will follow his orders to invade Greenland over the objections of the United States Congress and NATO? Or will a weakened, lame duck, Donald Trump-- or you're not from now actually be constrained? But speaking of rules and rules-based order, according to NATO, Article 5 isn't an attack on one of us and an attack on all of us. So based on that logic, wouldn't a bunch of Lithuanians now have the right to storm the beaches of Long Island? Maybe not Long Island, but yes, Greenland. They could argue that they're coming to the collective defense of Denmark in Greenland. And the last time Trump was making noise about taking Greenland, the Danes actually said they'd fight. And they sent a bunch of troops to Greenland. And importantly, like the French and the British, and I think a few European countries sent some troops. Now, they sent five guys or something. But I think they were showing, like, hey, you might actually meet resistance. It's a crazy thing to think about. But it is possible that if the US military followed Donald Trump's orders into Greenland, that they could end up in a shooting-- Imagine setting your makeup. Meet new grippy setting mist from Maybelline, New York. Gel to mist technology locks in your look for up to 24 hours with flexible all-day comfy grip. Just plump, dewy, hydrated skin. That still feels like your skin. Try new grippy setting mist from Maybelline, New York. I'm fighting with the Danes and potentially other European NATO members. Let's talk about your new book. All we say, the battle for American identity a history in 15 speeches. If you had to pick a favorite speech, what would it be? And you can't choose your own. That's cheating. I think my favorite one is Frederick Douglass, the composite nation's speech that I have here. And so the idea of the book is that each of these speeches, it's not like greatest hits collection, it's not anthology. I'm trying to show that we've been having the same argument from the beginning. And it's just taken all these different forms. And I'm going to use these words to show you the movements, the people, the inflection points of which Americans are debating identity. Douglass stands up. It's 1867. It's two years' episode of war. He's on top of the world in some ways. He's the most prominent abolitionist in the country, former slave, the slaves are free, the 14th Amendment. in this past giving blacks equal rights, although we've walked away from the 14th Amendment ever since. And he gives a speech defending Chinese immigration. And at the time, the Chinese being brought over to work on railroads and on farms. And Douglas basically says, hey, look, if I thought that white people should stand up for black people and abolition, if I believe in equality, if I believe in actually universal principles of equality, I need to defend these Chinese people. I guarantee you that pulled very poorly at the time. And then he gives this beautiful speech about what diversity actually brings to nation. And actually, we'll be stronger if we have the Chinese as a part of America, because they're the striving Chinese. They wanted to come here to make something better themselves. And so it's this wonderful speech about equality and diversity and immigration and strength, the true strength of a country. And he also has a lot in there about if the working class actually united across races, we would have nice things in this country instead of some rich, powerful people dividing us against each other. The reason I like this speech is not just because what it says, but on the surface, he lost. There's a Chinese exclusion act passed, not that long after, barring Chinese entry to the United States for decades. But did he lose because look around America today? How many Chinese Americans are there? How many Asian Americans are there? So I took it as a reminder that even in dark times, like Dorgot's shot in Douglas's faith on re-construction, the segregation in the Chinese year kicked out. But he ends up winning in the end. Well, and I think it's a way to think about progressive politics. What inspired in me is this idea that sometimes these speeches can introduce the somewhat at the time controversial dare I say spicy ideas into everyday lexicon or into public discourse. To bring it back to a speech that you helped write, you wrote Barack Obama's famous Cairo speech in 2009, in which he said the United States played a role in the overthrow of a Democratic-elected Iranian government in Iran. Now, at that time, I'm sure some of what Barack Obama was saying in that speech was a little spicy. Did you get pushed back for some of the stuff that was put in the speech? I knew what I was doing. We also referred to the occupation of the West Bank, which American presidents believe or not, used to be spicy to say occupation. We said that conditions faced by the Palestinian people were intolerable. We said there shouldn't be any more Israeli settlements. We said a lot about Palestine in that speech, too. And got ferocious pushback from APAC. I got an earful, both for what he said, and also for what he didn't say. They said, how come he didn't refer to Israel as the historic homeland of the Jewish people? And said we referred to the post-war to creation of Israel. He also talked about democracy in women's rights. And I remember I had a Palestinian friend who said, it's not just the words. It said, a lot of people in the Middle East were like, well, that guy looks like we do. And he's the president of the United States. Maybe we should have political power, too. So he's also the identity of Obama. And yeah, a lot of people say to me, oh, you must-- that speech was naive. But actually, my hope is that 50 years from now, it's like, whoa, Obama was kind of head to the curve on some of that stuff. Now, maybe he won't be. Maybe it'll look like it does today. And people will say, yeah, he was naive. But I think you're right. I saw Cal on this on your show. And he made the Cal pen, who's the friend of mine. And he made this point, too, that even the fact that Obama is not seen as progressive by today's progress. It means that he seeded some things. And now there's Abdul Al Sayed, who will be the first-- Abdul will be the first to tell you. Like, I couldn't run without Obama. And so yeah, I think if you just look at Palestine, the language that-- I mean, we have a mayor rightly calls, even to know, a war criminal. Like, things are shift. And I think words-- I mean, it's why I wrote this book. Words are really important. Even if you lose the debate in the moment, you are seeding ideas. And you're extending languages how we extend the art of the possible in politics. I mean, did your understanding of American history shift as you researched for this book? It did. In a couple ways. One, because of the book, and one, because of events. I think-- I'll do events first, which is it. I think, if I look back, I was like a post Cold War white liberal who thought the arc of the history is long and it bends towards justice, and there may be problems, but things get better inevitably. And I'd say the last 10 years have disabused me of any notion of the inevitability of progress, or the idea that America-- I used to say to myself, well, America does some bad things around the world, but it nets out good. Well, it doesn't always not out good. And I have to acknowledge that. Sometimes we're not the good guys. And that is what it is. That doesn't mean you give up on us being the good guys. It's much better to be in a world in which America is trying to be on the right side of things. Then the second thing I learned, it was really interesting. The book, I started it in 2021 and finished it in 2025. But so I started it right in the backlash to-- well, woke us up, right? All of a sudden, you know, the backlash to the backlash had begun. And yet, I was so struck by a, the absolute centrality of race to American identity. Like, at core, the thing we've been fighting about from the beginning is who is an American and who gets to decide who an American is. And that is very tied up in race. And then secondly, immigration, because we also often think about black, white, you know, racial relations. Well, starting from around the time of Douglas, you know, we argue about the Chinese. And then we argue about Europeans coming here. Which Europeans can come here? How many Europeans can come here? Nobody else can come here. But then we needed Mexicans to work during World War I. So we started inviting Mexicans. And then we-- there are too many Mexicans coming here. Immigration has been much more central to American debate about identity than, you know, people would have you believe, particularly in the kind of, like, let's not talk about woke issues or diversity or-- And so whether we like it or not, at core, these questions, they migrate back to race very quickly. I just think it needs to be remixed. It's-- I agree with you. It's always been the same. Yeah. But it just needs to be remixed. People get very triggered by some of these words. The way I would frame it right now is like this. America's always been debating how many people do we let onto the team? Yeah. That's one component of it. Then there's the other component. Whose team is this, really? Yeah. And who's the coach? Who gets the coach? And who gets to decide who gets to be in play, right? Yeah. Because you know what? And put it that way. And Douglas said this. He said no longer able to get the black man to work for nothing but want the Chinese to work for next to nothing. And the argument kind of always is-- Well, let these people come here. But that guy can't be capped into the team? Yeah, he can pick fruit in Delano, California. Sure. But he cannot be the captain of the team. But he can't get paid minimum wage. He can't get a uniform. You know, it's like they got-- like were you on the team where there was like the manager-- Sure. These managers. Yeah, yeah. I've had to be that. Yes. Me, too. And yeah, I think it-- now Douglas's argument-- Now, you know, this team manager gets-- And this is a great analogy. It gets to practice, doesn't get to play. Doesn't get to play, right? And Douglas's analogy was actually, our team will be much better if we have the best people from everywhere. We'll be like the French World Cup team or something, you know? And-- But as you know, people who hated Frederick Douglass, when he started really talking that talk and said, maybe I could be capped into the team that were like-- Oh, yeah. Fucking kill the sky. Yeah, yeah. Well, he was fascinating, too, because he pissed off-- the other thing you learn in writing these books is these people are always super controversial in their time. They become like kind of secular saints 100 years later. But Douglas, for instance, obviously pissed off the right-wing reaction of force in America just by being Frederick Douglass. And actually, you know what I learned about that? Is it what pissed them off the most about him? Is that he disproved white supremacy? He was so fucking smart, you know? Like he taught himself to read. And he was the most brilliant order in America, wildly famous. And I think, in the same way that Obama, the thing that pissed the right off the most is just this guy is really fucking smart. And you can do the job. Yeah. And so that's what he was dangerous to that group of people. Douglass pissed off the left. He remarried a white woman, which was controversial. You know, his first marriage ended and remarried a white woman. He kind of went into politics, you know? Like he became a Republican party man and kind of campaigned, different Republican party. By the way, I didn't even know this. He was the ambassador to Santa Domingo into Haiti. He was an ambassador to Haiti, I should say. Now, he quit that job because his job was to negotiate essentially the colonization of Haiti. And he said, that's too much for me. So yeah, he tried to get into active politics. And that pissed off the left because they're like, you know, don't dirty your hands with that. So very familiar, you know, like history just repeats. Yeah, there's also this thing how many years after your death Republicans co-opt you. Oh, yeah, Doug There's always that thing of conservatives being like we love this guy Muhammad Ali prime example of that as well Well, Martin Luther King who was Martin Luther King junior prime example radical yeah at the time died He was a hated and kind of marginalized figure because you come out against the Vietnam war You know not that long before his assassination The you know I've two speeches. I have a Reagan speech and a Trump speech in my book. Yeah, let me ask you about the Trump speech both of them name check king You know, so you have to name check Martin Luther King Well, what's what's weird is you included Trump's second? Yeah inaugural address. What was it about that second inaugural speech that became such an important Historical signpost for yeah, what did you see in it that was so powerful? I saw in it which is I'm describing this competition of identity and I have you know Vice President Confederacy Alexander Stephens saying white supremacy is the cornerstone of the Confederacy So I have people I disagree with But there's this competition what I found interesting about Trump speeches. He's trying to declare the competition over It's over I won, you know, he says in that speech is a line I Was saved by God to make America great again like it's a Radical fucking line, you know like Ronald Reagan is awesome, but he was shot and almost killed He never would have come out and said that even though make America great again with his campaign slogan Showing you again actually let's let's make America great a little bit more inviting Let's let's let's go to lunch. Well, I said Ben. Let's go to lunch. Well, that's let's make lunch great Yeah, but it's a let's do it together. Well together, but that's important because let's is a wee that speech is I I like it's a fascinating speech because I wanted to show what is common about Trump in American history and what's different Because he's the end of the book what's common is hey, we've always had xenophobia We've always had racism. We've always had America first-day solutionism We've always had kind of white working-class populism. What's different about Trump is the I Don't have to follow the rules. I was literally saved by God to like do what I want And so I think it's in one way to think about Trump is that is like where is he had a familiar American figure Impossible as president of any other country and Where is he actually a departure and he's a departure in the eye Like I get to do I don't have to follow these rules. I don't have to follow the Constitution I was saved by God to make America great again. Ben. This has been a Robust. Yeah, robust lively conversation in frank We reaffirmed the our bilateral. Yeah, yeah as we navigate this world order as partners We reaffirmed that commitment to the rules based order. There we go. Ben. Thank you so much for joining us. I think this is great Ben Rose ladies and gentlemen That was great, man. That was awesome. Thank you. We went everywhere Imagine setting your makeup then forgetting it's even theirs Meet new grippy setting mist from Mabelie, New York Gel to mist technology locks in your look for up to 24 hours with flexible all-day comfy grip No tightness, no stickiness, no residue. Just plump, dewy hydrated skin that still feels like your skin Try new grippy setting mist from Mabelie, New York. Maybe it's Mabelie