America Is Losing Its Grip On The World

0:00economy sucks but that's not the only point that is going to manifest in these midterms i mean you know how i feel about the economy and i definitely think uh... that it should be uh... the primary thing but the reason that the economy is screwed up is because of what this administration has done with its foreign policy and you have to see that and you have to understand the architecture of it and how we got here and why we're stuck here and how they're playing with that Josh Rogan has been covering this so well for so long washington posties uh... there you know chief global policy guy and he does uh... intelligence work as well but he understands china understands tywan he understands the middle east and he understands the state of play in our politics and the state of play within the media industry so i asked josh to come on and talk about where we are and where we're headed and he said yes let's get after

1:05josh always a pleasure i have been out watching you i've been reading you i've been listening uh... to you and as somebody who uh... has worked with you for a lot of years it is really interesting to see the ascendance and the maturity and you you kind of like negotiating the space of reporting and also trying to balance right and wrong in the coverage of right and left how hard has your job gotten well honestly chris you know watching you all those years i kind of feel like we have the same philosophy on this business which is you do the reporting first figure out what's going on before you figure out what you think about it then you try to be authentic and honest with your viewers and readers those are the two rules okay and that will if you do that and it's not easy no one said it's supposed to be easy because you've got your

2:06sources interest you've got your bosses interest you've got corporate interest only to tell you about that but if you do that if you actually do the reporting to try to best you can the best obtainable version of what's going on and then you're just authentic and honest that will get you through most of the shifts in politics and and uh... you know in our industry it doesn't always landwell people don't always like it people don't like hearing hard truth people don't like hearing uncomfortable truth your bosses don't like it when you tell uncomfortable truth that they don't also agree with but at the end of the day to have a long career in journalism the only contract that matters is with that reader with that viewer that's that's the most important relationship and if you start to color outside the lines or if you start to pick one team over the other now i'm going to think this because this team thinks so and that's the team that supports me the readers can see that everyone can see that it's pretty obvious now what we're dealing with now as you know is that we're living in a broken information ecosystem

3:08where everyone can get whatever information they already want again if you're gonna be the you can make everybody happy but if you're if you're gonna be someone who survives in the ecosystem you just have to do it sounds crazy but you have to do the right thing you have to in that moment when you're on TV and someone asks you a tough question you just have to think to yourself what's the most honest answer i can give given the information that i have it doesn't always work but on balance that's how i think about it and i thought that's what you always did all those years that we were on TV together you were just speaking actually from the heart which is again why people liked watching you because they didn't know what you were going to say but they knew that you weren't gonna try to fool them or do someone else's bidding and again it's not a perfect solution it's just it's just the way to to survive i think in this broken information environment we're all operating in broken information environment what does that mean in terms of how the job has changed right i mean i think you know i've been uh working as a journalist for 22

4:08years eight different major news organizations you know basically doing the same thing trying to figure out what's going on in foreign policy and national security inside our government around Washington around the world and then add my own reporting analysis and yes sometimes my opinion and as transparently as i can't what change of course is that we had this sort of imperfect arrangement with the people who govern our country whether that be congress or in this case the Trump administration or the billionaire class or whoever it is that you could get to a some sort of working relationship where you could get to the best obtainable version of the truth they didn't always like it they would play games like don't get me wrong there's no partisan thing here the democrat administrations would play games sometimes they lie to you sometimes they catch you in a lie but there were rules to this game and essentially that's how we all functioned it wasn't perfect but you could check information you could reasonably find out if your information was wrong now it's like the moment that you have anything you know and you try to

5:10check it out someone's going to attack you they're going to expose that you're working on it they're going to run to their own outlets and try to screw over your story or there's just going to lie to your face and force you to try to prove or in the worst case they'll sue you or try to get you fired so that personalization of the job of journalism is really something i think that's really corrosive and toxic because it makes the the honest good faith effort which is antagonistic by design you know you're not supposed to like the government they're not supposed to like the journalists or any about them but you're supposed to be professionals it's pretty much gone okay and now we just live in a culture where you know if you get a piece of information you want to check it out man you get you someone's going to come after you and they're going to i mean just look at what happened that the Pentagon actually hired the trolls to do the work of the government to attack the journalist that's crazy and so that's the environment where we're operating in so to me what does that mean yet means you have to measure twice cut once you know you at like you actually there's a lot of stories that just don't make it out because

6:13there they have to be extra extra bulletproof that's how i look at it or and then you have to worry about if they're going to come after you and your family your job and try to get rid of you for reporting the truth you know so that's that's different that's that that's no rules okay and the amount of secrecy inside the government is way up the amount of you know just michigan's that goes on between the government and the reporter's way way up and uh... you know that's that and anyone who has a real story can either can easily go to the influencer or content creator that is going to pedal it exactly the way that they want it so why wouldn't you do that you know and you don't always have to hire the trolls but you could just use them so why why does Laura Lumer get more scoops than any journalist in town because she's doing the bidding of the people who are lit are giving her this information and some of it's wrong and some of it's right but it doesn't really matter so that's a topsy turvy world but also i think the broken information environment uh... and then of

7:16course you have the business of journalism which again and something i have to tell you about which is always been chaotic i mean i've never you know i remember twenty two years where i can sit at a journalism organization like oh yeah they've got all the business of this figured out it's all going to be hunky dory but it's worse you know the ad traffic is down the search traffic is down that means the revenue is down subscriptions well you know you subscribe to a lot of things people subscribe to netflix and spotify and disney and peacock and you know so there's only so many things an average person can subscribe to and you know essentially people have a lot of options so you have to be extra excellent to fight for that dwindling dollar and uh... the model's changing faster than the institutions the trump administration is unusually leaky in my experience um... which helps they're just also uh... very mobish and you're right now it's

8:19all a team sport as i had a senator say to me on my show um... that you know if you're not with them you're against them and they're going to go after you so it's an interesting it's an interesting duality you have there that there's a lot of information that these people leak um... either because they want trump to like them or to know that they didn't screw it up or you know i think that's especially true round a homeland security right now i think a big reason uh... that ice has taken the beating that it it should be taking is because of how much leaking they've been doing um... about you know priorities vetting and all these other things how do you balance those two that they try to kill you if they don't like you but there's a lot of information coming out of them yeah i mean i think it's a little bit unique for my beat you know so if you're on the national security farm policy beat there's actually not that many people who are actually in the know you know i remember the first trump administration you had

9:19factions you had sort of like the bolt-in Pompeo pens faction you had that's the peter nivaros d batten faction then you had sort of like you know the congressional republicans then you had some people inside the system and you could sort of map it out more or less so you knew where the leak was coming from you could check it against some of the other factions and sort of triangulate it right but you know now what you have is sort of like a like the real in stuff the real important national security information very very closely held okay they don't trust the intelligence community they don't trust the cia that national security council used to be 400 people now it's like 50 people they fired all those guys state department is marginalized and so when it comes to that kind of war and peace stuff it's very very few people who really get to make those decisions of the role in one single chat unless they accidentally add you to the single chat it's very tough stuff to get okay now then what you have is so you know let's say there's like cabinet people and sub cabinet people those are the only people in those rooms and then what you have is a lot of people trying

10:20speak to trump through the press so they can't get into those rooms again they're clearly different from trump one although some of this did go on so they'll use the the leaks to try to get their I think in front of trump's face you know and you know maybe I'm not the first guy they go to because I'm you know I'm not gonna present it exactly the way they want or I might actually check it out or they just go to fox news or Laura Lumer or whatever but I do catch a lot of that we need to get this in front of trump's face somehow but then that's also a kind of a corrupted process of its own because you know you can't represent that as real policy you can just represent it as like one person in the systems chirping and so it's just very chaotic and it just takes a lot more due diligence and a lot more reporting to so yeah there's a lot of noise a ton of noise but finding that signal was actually very very difficult in this administration unless you're you know again on a team doing the bidding of that team but that's just not who I am as a journalist I don't think that's who you are as a journalist so you just have to do it the old-fashioned hard way

11:23a fair assessment that when it comes to the mapping um of strategy and execution there on this administration is unusually inept yes it's completely incompetent I mean look at the ironware I mean the way you know we don't have a strategy in Iran it's because the strategy changes every day if the strategy changes every day that means you don't have a strategy objective change every day the tactics change every day the messaging changes every day and when it's one of these things that president trump is actually super involved in there's no solution to that because you know I don't know if you read Maggie and Jonathan's book but there's a ton of these stories where like trump will put out a crazy idea and every one of the world is like yeah sounds good if that's if that's what you want to do that sounds great because the person who says no gets thrown off the ship so in for those issues like warrant peace and the big things that trump really cares about that's there's no there's no mechanism inside the system to

12:24say wait a second what about the obvious horrendous consequences if we you know attack Iran with no plan on how to get out and no idea of what comes next and no support for the opposition and no protection for all the bases no connections with the actual Iranian people and no idea of what happens when the straight closes but those things that's exactly what happened and sure there was a ton of people like outside this is including me on TV every day and thing like there's a lot of predictable and predicted consequences of that that you're gonna have to no no no no no Josh don't worry you know the Iranian regime is gonna collapse trump said it's gonna collapse if we just do x y and z and none of it turned out to be true and that's so collaborative not just for Iran United States for the whole world the entire world is suffering every day under the strain of this Iran quagmire that there's there's there's absolutely nothing that anyone there's there's they don't even try to really tell you how we get out what is your best guess as to why they did this you know i think it's a combination of factors

13:29you know i think the number one factor is that trump got a big team of head after Venezuela he thought Iran would be just like Venezuela and he's like oh i think he thought it would be that way or he was told it would be that way both both again because nobody's telling him anything he doesn't want to hear it on these things but yeah they said it was going to be easy now who said it was going to be easy yes net tenyao but also hegg Seth also rubio all these guys although rubio i guess was a little bit more careful according to the reporting in magin john's book but the bottom line is he had no idea what he was getting himself into and he thought it was going to be easy and he was wrong and now he's doesn't want to admit defeat so we're stuck and did you believe they're playing with uh whether or not it's a war again remember it started this way with them playing with the idea and some people thought including me and i think i was wrong um that oh this is very clever

14:30they're trying to ignore the war powers act and they're trying to deal with the day and so call it a war don't call it a war i don't think that's what it was at all i think that there was nothing clever about it i think it was completely ham fisted and it was well if we say it's not a war then it's not a war it was almost like right out of wagda dog right it's gaslighting all right they're gaslighting people but here's the problem crisis you can't gaslight the families of the dead Americans and wounded Americans 750 wounded Americans you can't gaslight the the the military members who want their wartime benefits you know people have been displaced their families are a wreck and they can't get the benefits it's not a war and yes you can avoid the war powers act but you can't you know gaslight the American people they know you know it's it's pretty clear that they know or is it which group are we talking about because another thing that makes it so weird and different is the fealty of mega and the quiet of people who know better because they do not want to get sideways with him and get primaryed so they'll

15:34say nothing like Ron Johnson senator of Wisconsin coming on news nation and saying to me listen i don't like him taking this money i don't like his sons getting these defense contracts i wouldn't let my sons get them but look you know you're curious about it and you don't investigate your own side he said it to my face on live television so do the people really know or are we in a suspension of disbelief mode when it comes to political fealty where the lawmakers don't say shit because they're worried about the fallout the influencers don't say anything because they're getting paid to be on your team that's how they're making their money right um and they go for it and they they they go for it we're going to see it with their convention uh that starts for the midterms they're going to say shit that they know isn't true correct and people will agree with them even though they should know better i've never dealt with it at this scale before right it's it's

16:35again Chris it's like one of these things is like yeah that kind of always happened but it's a lot worse now yeah we always had self-dealing and you know hunter Biden made a few million but like the trump kids are making billions so if they didn't trump kids didn't invent corruption in self-dealing they just did it way way better and way way bigger than anyone had ever done a before and it's kind of shocking and i think people do know about it you know when you talk about the the influencers the the congressman and the the mega influencers who are getting paid yeah they know because you know you've been on these shows every time you're on a show with any of these guys they the camera let's look at me Scott Jennings okay yeah to me perfect example he is the archetype because again he knows what trump is about he condemned him roundly nothing changed except his ambitions just like vance but vance gets a different analysis from me why his politician he went where the power was let the voters deal with that Jennings is a different animal because CNN is platforming him

17:38paying him a lot of money because he's bringing him ratings but he's bringing them ratings by not just making the case he's lying and he's fomenting a lot of bad division and i'm again i'm not i don't want to see him hurt i it's not about hating none of that but that didn't used to exist pat bu cannon was a good faith arguer about the position in the orthodoxy they didn't just make shit up in the moment to keep justifying the status quo that's what he does that's what you have to do these days yeah i mean you don't have to do it you can choose not to do it but there's a lot of money in it that's for sure and you know here's the tell for Scott and you know i'm on tv with Scott a lot and the thing i always do is like you know if you follow trump's policy oh this trump policy is great whatever it is a ron you're great and then trump completely changes it and then you still say it's great that's the tell so usually

18:42if i'm on with Scott and i want to you know expose that tell i'll just ask him about the the time that trump said the opposite thing of the thing that he just said which is it do you believe in the thing that trump said today or the thing that he said yesterday with the thing he said the day before yesterday there's three different things you can't honestly believe in all three of those things trump can because he's trump and nothing matters when he talks and he can just changes mine every day but if you ever find a commentator who changes his mind at the exact same trump change time trump changes his mind that's the guy who's not being intellectually honest is pretty obvious and you know you know what are you going to do never have any trump people they're all like that so you got to have one but it's again i have a lot of faith actually in the viewer i have a lot of faith in the readers those who there are some who don't want to climb that curve they're you know they're always but if you look at the polling for example in the iron war you know yes there's a bunch like some percentage of mega people who think everything's going great it's wonderful we're an inch away from the iranians just folding and admitting trump's

19:42amazing and they're gonna call it the straight of trump and they're gonna give us of the oil it's gonna be beautiful and but that number is a lot less than it used to be and in republicans that number is a lot less than it used to be and what that tells me is that the number of people who are suffering under the iron war who know that it's not true because they're feeling it is up up up and we'll go up over time so i have a lot of i'm not a lot of faith but i have a good amount of faith in the american people to look at a scotch at it and be like oh again i know what he's doing he's saying the thing that trump wants them to say for money which is fine because there's money in it but that doesn't mean that they think that he really thinks that so support for the christ formal project comes from superpower look here's the good news when it comes to your wellness the answers are all in the blood and your blood is individual and specific and special and you have to know what it has to tell you and that's why you've got to get what is your real superpower and sign up today get the blood tests let super power use its technology

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22:50and they make it in a way that you can interpret the data along with an Apple watch or an oral ring or any of your other devices so it just works in a way that works better than other ways of figuring out for yourself what you need all right now after you sign up at super power they're gonna say where'd you hear about us tell him Cuomo sent me before I forget he wrote a book five years ago Josh it came he actually wrote it like seven years ago but it came out like five years ago and it's a must read about what's happening right now and not happening with China it's called chaos under heaven and it was it was years ago but it is necessary to read this weekend for you to understand the state of play that is extent in this moment it's just being ignored for really bad political

23:50reasons but please read Josh's book I read it at the time I reread it like a year and a half ago no like a year ago and then I was just going through it again because I see China everywhere um yeah so but anyway you got to read it and it's just one more reason to value Josh's depth of insight so how does 9-11 change the calculus of what's happening in the Iran war yeah I mean listen you know because I'm worried by the way let me give you the context for my question yeah it's 25 years that's something but we're playing with Islamophobia in a way that we really haven't since 9-11 yeah and that's a tragedy and you know we I think beginning after 9-11 and continuing to this day we've treated our Muslim and our American brothers and sisters cruelly as a from a policy level

24:52and at a personal level and I don't think that's again specific to one party or another and that's wrong but I think you know as a foreign policy reporter listen two things happen on 9-11 one is that we took our focus away from the China problem completely okay because everything became about terrorism for understandable reasons but you know member George W Bush he was going to be a China not anymore you know what I mean and that's what we see with every president since is there's always something on fire could be Ukraine it could be Iran it could be Iraq or Afghanistan that seems urgent to deal with that takes the attention of all the senior leaders away from the biggest shift in world politics in our lives which is the rise of China and what are we going to do where it affects us not that it's good or bad not that we have to beat China or contain China just the fact that in my view the US-China relationship is the most important relationship in the world obviously will be for the rest of our lives obviously China will be the biggest

25:53and probably richest country biggest manufacturer one of the biggest innovators it superpower for the rest of our lives and how we handle that it's like climate change it's like the two things we can't get wrong depending on our survival how do we deal with the planet and how do we deal with the rise of China where it affects us some things we doesn't affect us but when it comes to our security our public health there was a pandemic China had something to do with it you can talk about that I know that's something that you're interested in but the point is we're always taking our eye off that ball so you know even that ball you know China virus was Trump's phrase okay right and look obviously he came up with it out of expedience which is the same thing that's going on with the Islam hates us my concern is that the Iran war is about to become okay because we're going to be reminded of 9-11 that Muslims hate us and they're bad people and they're not like the rest of us yeah and I hate each and all of those statements and I also hate having to be on the defensive about what happened on 9-11 like you know I didn't lose

26:56dozens of people who I cared about and it changed my whole life that day but I got engaged 11 days later because of what happened that day but yeah that hasn't made that's what's about to happen because if Muslims are bad then anywhere your fight them is kind of justifiable and you can just easily say that the regime you know those are really the same guys as 9-11 no they're not but that doesn't matter to people the people you're trying to convince and they're going to say it the other concern for me is that my biggest fear is I can't believe we put the future of our economy right off China sure in Taiwan I can't believe we did that it's so stupid that you know no disrespect to the Taiwanese but the idea that there's such a concentration of economic need being manufactured there and not here it's crazy that we put it there but we did and nobody wants to deal with it

27:57so I would love to have that fight I would love our next election to be about that I think it's the number one national security issue that we have is that if they want to all they have to do is just put a blockade around Taiwan and it's game over for us in terms of getting what we need for the AI economy what am I missing right well I'm gonna ask your Taiwan question because it's a great one but one last word on the 9-11 uh 25 years later fallout you know what I see is a generation of young people who don't know weren't around in a pre-9-11 world and what they have grown up with is 25 years of failed interventions in the Middle East Iraq and Afghanistan and that has formed their world view in a in a way that is totally different and now I grew up in the 80s and 90s so I remember in America that could intervene for good that could intervene in places like Bosnia and stop a genocide of Muslims and you know that a system whereby American power was used to the benefit of America

28:59and the world and that's just not what people 25 years and under have experienced so they're against that and now we're gonna live in a world where those people are gonna come up and vote and elect their leaders and it's gonna be a world where American power is not treated as something that's a force for good in the world and that's a damn shame now on your Taiwan question now I don't know if you've ever been to Taiwan but the number one thing I would say is go there talk to the Taiwanese people meet them you'll instantly realize two things one is that we did not let the Taiwanese build the greatest technology manufacturing system ever known they did that they did that because of their there's a small country of 23 million people under constant threat spent 40 years becoming the best at the technology that runs the whole world okay and they deserve credit for that and when I look at them I think oh it's not that that's a problem for us it's that they're an asset there are friends they want to be our friends we can be their friends now

30:03the thing that you're saying is true is that it's also a vulnerability but to my mind that means we support Taiwan to make sure that they don't get swallowed up by China and the best way to do that is to deter China and that if we treat Taiwan like a chip factory that we want to destroy or steal their chips and then we can tell them to go F themselves well then we'll be pushing them into Beijing's arms and the thing about Taiwanese people is that they're all different you know they don't all think the same thing some of them are pro-China some of them are pro-America some of them are just pro-Taiwanese and don't want to choose and we we have a dog in that fight because we offer them something other than domination by the Chinese Communist Party which is not fun by the way it's not like any other Taiwanese look across the street like oh you know who I really want to Xi Jinping when that be awesome no one says that but what they will say again if you go there is like we may have no other choice because the Americans don't see us as anything but a chip factory not like a democracy where people have rights and dignity Taiwan is the most pro-LGBT country in Asia

31:08okay it's the most successful multi-party democracy on Chinese soil and think about that that's why the Chinese government hates it because it shows you that it's not actually about culture that all humans are the same we all want dignity we all want human rights and we all want to have a say in the future of our country and our families and that's what the Taiwanese have now so I think the fact that they also hold the key to the technology of the future should be another reason to be friends with them not a reason to say oh you we have to take that from you and then throw you to the wolves which is essentially the Trump administration Taiwan policy at this point I agree that makes sense oh makes 100% sense however on the dick side it's too close to China it's too close it's too close and too vulnerable to be so imbalanced in importance to us in a way that is almost existential it is almost existential

32:13to what would you have us do I would have America do what the Taiwanese don't want us to do which is make our companies not give them the chip business not give it to them and yes they deserve it yes what's the alternative if 95% of the advance chips we don't make those it's not like you can turn on a chip industry in a second no it takes time takes 40 years and Trump 40 years getting rid of the chips act the way he did we're well backwards and my opinion the dumbest thing he's done in terms of undoing that that was the dumbest thing because it's everything it's everything so look the way to do it is to do both you support Taiwan you support what they're doing and you do a lot to build up your industry here that you're not doing right now or anywhere else by the way

33:16that's closer to us because you know I tell people all the time if Mexico were Iran we would to use Hillary Clinton's word obliterate them we would raise the place it would it would be and it would have been done right away um why can't risk it all they have to do is just lob one thing over the border into Texas that kills a handful of people and we would have decimated them and that's what the young generation doesn't understand either because we didn't have this when I was running around in Pakistan and Iraq and Afghanistan watching a healthscape for months and years and years on end as we all endured um if they had seen that in real time they would have felt um just the same way they did watching what was happening with Israel and that's the part that people don't get is that

34:19you can feel anyway you want about Israel it's just as Americans this is why it's so important for them to go bad on America they have to go bad on America as young Americans because they cannot rationalize being against what they see Israel doing when we do the same thing and way worse you know what I mean so you have to reject America you have to that's their only way to stay consistent is that we are genocidal agents as far as a lot of people in this generation um feel and it's very complicated and that's why any good politician avoids it and that's why Trump's solution to it is remember muslims bad which is his new way of getting out of blame for this Iran war he is probably one of the few people in the country who's hoping we get attacked you know what I mean like a nice uh sleeper sell attack would be exactly what the president needs to justify

35:19what's happening in Iran and give him a winnable bad guy that's not him um and I hope it doesn't happen because I don't like to see terrible things happen I hear what you say and Chris I can't disagree with your analysis that people are down on America including young Americans and who could blame them you know but that's because we're not living up to our ideals not that we were always perfect not that mistakes weren't made but that on balance we're doing a lot worse in living up to our ideas and values than we ever have before so yeah that's the impression people around the world and especially people inside America are gonna come away with but I don't know call me crazy I still think the only way out of it is actually to rededicate ourselves to those ideals and those values and to do better and to not to train young Americans to hate the idea of America using its power both abroad for the good but to show them and to actually use it for good and that's why the destruction of USAID uh by the Trump administration was such a tragedy for a less than one percent

36:22of the budget millions of people were being saved you can't I mean you can buy that kind of self power but you can't once it's gone you can't get it back and you know we don't understand like in my view American power is really not about how many dollars we have in circulation or how many ships we have in the bay it's about the ability to rally other countries and other people around the world to work with us to do things that are in our common interest as we define them hopefully for the benefit of the money that's the scariest thing about the Iran campaign to me that's what we thought we destroyed that there we have never you know since that's all gone for now for now we were never alone right even the Iraq war had a coalition of 40 countries which at that time we've seen is very very bad and what do we have in uh in Iran zero really zero maybe one support for the Chris Cuomo project comes from a cozy earth look I dig it I like companies that do well and do good okay I like that they use bamboo instead of other textiles to make a lot of their stuff

37:26and uh why because it's better for the planet it makes me feel better that I'm supporting a business that does things the right way and I like the products you know the bamboo and the way that they mill the textiles and process them make them soft the more you wash them the softer they get they wear really well uh the leisure wear is cool and it holds up well there's technology in these textiles the way they put them together so that it actually helps you be cooler when you sleep uh which is a huge benefit and it's one of the reasons I like cozier so head to cozier earth.com right now and use my code chris and you'll get up to 20% off of home and sleepwear the code is chris and you'll get up to 20% off on home and sleepwear okay and they're going to ask you post purchase where do you hear about us tell him Cuomo sent you so the question then becomes you said you know we have to rededicate do you see things in the midterms and the two years beyond getting better or worse and do you believe

38:30there will be midterm elections and a presidential cycle yes yeah now we're going to have the elections but they're they're going to play some games with the the voting but the elections will come off think it's pretty well understood that the democrats are very likely to take one house like now that they'll take both this house and the senate just because of the way the races are shaping up and essentially what we'll be returning to is a a system of divided government policy paralysis now there's two ways to think about that one is that actually we do better when the system is divided because neither party can really run roughshod over the other and that's a measure of stability and predictability that we don't have so if you're coming from it from business perspective you're like oh okay it's good that the democrats have some party some power because they'll be able to stop the worst things influence the better things and basically even in a stuck government at least we know what's going to happen tomorrow which is not what we have now now the the fear and again I don't know but the fear is that once Trump has nothing else to run for and and he's had nothing to lose and he won't care about any of that and then the worst instincts

39:32will come out because he isn't even have to worry about another election and if he's willing to ignore the law to build a ballroom or an arch or to drain the rupting pool or go to war with Iran God knows what he would do once he realizes that even congressman is even less because he can't even work with the house because they're not under his control I think there's a good opportunity for more transparency I think when the democrats get these committees they're going to start a bunch of investigations hearings on things that we never figured out that'll be great that'll be a lot of information for the american people which is better than nothing you know but is it great or is it law fair and them just trying to impeach Trump again and if that's what it is is that enough yeah I don't I mean for what I hear I don't think they're going to rush to impeach anyone because they know that it's politically uh you know kind of like a a a a jump ball but think of all of those committees and all those subpoenas to get all that information in the government it's behind it yeah I'm for that checks and balances absolutely 100 percent it's really the only thing that can

40:34save us we got the judiciary does not perfect but they they're doing a lot of checks and balances on this administration all over the place I know organizations all over Washington who are getting abused by the administration who find solace in in that law fair so yeah that's our system and you know it has to be some sort of balance the the the the the the fear is that the power gets concentrated amongst Trump and his billionaires more than it already is and then absolute power corrupts absolutely that's the first thing they teach you absolute power corrupts absolutely our system was designed not to have that be the case and it's more ado act now than I've ever seen it I mean I do believe that that's a fair statement I've never seen the American mentality where it is right now and I've got 9-11 on the brain I'll be honest uh 25 years is affecting me in a way that I hadn't expected it to um I was there that day I lived the coverage I lost a lot

41:38of people there it was more of a personal story than a professional story for me um and I am not sure that if it happened again that we would respond the way we did I think that it would almost immediately be a blame game in a way that never happened in 2001 there was plenty of reason to say wow how did you let this happen what an epic fuck up and yet bush who was already seen as a dope wound up getting a pass on the past and just do the right thing right now and I don't know that that would happen today yeah I agree it would be more politicized but I again call me a crazy optimist I'd like to think that we might not also repeat some of the mistakes that we made as a country after 9-11 here I'm talking about the attack on privacy and the rise

42:42of the surveillance state and the use of national security as a justification to erode our our civil liberties and that happened and that does affects uh uh you know reverberate to where we are today and then like you said the demonization and attack on Muslim Americans and Arab Americans that's at a peak right now and that was a mistake that we could correct and then of course the invading of countries that had nothing to do with it and the expending of American life and treasure and you know arey fly sure still out there saying that there were there wasn't this yellow cake thing and this weapons of mass destruction we were talking about like it was real it was all real it's crazy so you know I think there are things that will be worse but hopefully god forbid there is another attack on this country of that scale uh maybe we learned a couple of things again not necessarily going to turn out that way but uh you know again like if we have like call me a crazy optimist but you know I think that uh you know there were big mistakes made in the in the wake of 9-11

43:42for somewhat understandable reasons that are it's a big reason that why we're sworn on its constitutional duty when it comes to war they got so burned voting for that and you know guys like Bernie haunting them about voting for it at lost Hillary the 2008 primary it definitely it definitely put of a big ex-owner um and I get it but I just hate that they um now just pretend like they're they're not supposed to do anything with it you did though give me a quick yes that I want to go back to why are you so confident that he's going to leave and that there'll be another cycle because I've changed something I used to say to people it's going to be fine don't worry about I don't say it anymore I'll tell you why it is wrong of me you're not doing this but I was doing it it is wrong of me to condescend to their concerns no no look we're going to have our election he's going to leave they wait I get why they don't believe it least of which is he keeps saying he may not

44:45leave which I know it's just Jack Assyrie but it's scaring people they are really scared so I don't answer it that way anymore you know I say look you know we got a hope for the best and and and check everything we can yeah I guess that's a good check because I didn't think he was going to try to stay in 2020 and he did and and he fermented a attack on the capital that was intended to keep him in power despite the fact that he lost a lot she's doing anything's possible I'm not here on record saying that he's not capable of it I'm just saying based on the best reporting that I really seems to be grooming a successor and he seems to see that as his legacy whether that's a answer someone else and I can't believe it's going to be events I can't I believe that when Trump leaves there will be a massive flight to I don't know I guess today would be quaint to say traditional

45:45conservatism I think they are going to fly back to God and character counts and all that stuff that Pence used to say he was about before he signed up to be next to Trump I think they're gonna just did a lot of things did save our democracy I mean you got to kind of give him that he could have walked away but he stood and completed the election and almost got hangs for it so you know just like one note on Pence and his defense but you know I'll tell you what I'm hearing from my sources you know right the Republican any parties run by the donors right so you got all the money right so of course all the money is going to the Trump graph grift because it's just such an obvious grift and there's no other way to get around it and when that goes away you know from what I'm hearing if you're really smart donor with a really smart Republican politician that you want to annoy the smart place to wait to 2032 and it seems pretty smart if you're a Republican billionaire and you've got like a Marco Rubio or a senator X or a governor X the last thing you would want to do

46:48is run him in 2028 for two reasons one is that you'd have to go against Vance which is going to be a bruising fight that's going to cost you a lot of money you could lose that fight and two is that Vance is not very likable he's probably going to lose I mean maybe I don't know depending on who he runs against and Trump's at that point the economy is going to be in the in the shitter their world round work could still be going on people can be upset Trump's numbers could be even lower maybe right we don't know and so that's a really good year for Democrats so if you were smart you would wait for president a.o.c. and then run against her in 2032 that's the smarter Republican play and then in 2032 you get your resurgence of like a Republican party that cares about things and democracy and freedom etc etc but for 2028 it's Vance you know what I mean they're going to line up behind him for better or worse now I don't think he's very likable but again you're running against somebody so we don't know who that is but I what I'm told like they're going to clear the field for Vance especially his rivals because they'd rather let him fall in his face and then

47:52come back four years later that part of it is savvy the a.o.c. part I would have laughed at if not for her obvious moves that she's making now which is where she does not have to carry the crazy anymore so she is now in the socialism does not become communism that's not right not going to happen it's not who we are she tells this story I'd like to know who the councilman is by the way because I don't think she's named him yet I have his councilman who says woke one was crazy woke one you know it's that's a very savvy thing she's doing yeah to move from the squad towards you know I am way more reasonable right then the new kids on the block right and you know so now I think there's I'd put her in from the possible into the probability market I still think I still just can't see it I can't see how it happens well you know I think a.o.c. is

48:59a very skilled politician and I think she's a very very prolific fundraiser and she doesn't have to be queen she could be queen maker or king maker from that position and so she's going to have a big role now what's interesting is that you know a lot of my friends on the left especially on the progressive left are aggregate her from the left you know she's taking more flags from the left now than from the right because she's in moving towards the center a lot of the people on the left that saw her as her champion her now upset and so she's going to have to worry about her left flank just as much as her right flank but you know the you can't deny the you know the her game and you can't deny the fact that that money machine is going to have a huge impact and you know for foreign policy it's not great like when I was in Munich security conference and when she was there and they asked her about Ukraine and Taiwan she didn't know what to say it was really embarrassing it's really pregnant pause that's going to come back to Haunter you know but I think she could study up on that you know it's not she's not there yet you know and or if you want to be president and look you

50:01know the beautiful thing about our business is tomorrow is that you know being a witness to history and just seeing how things happen that you didn't see happening or they matter in a way that you didn't see the mattering but I will say this I've never seen us where we are I am relying heavily on history and reviewing what happened in the gilded age what happened with Teddy Roosevelt I think there's a lot of similarities to what we're seeing now to what Teddy Roosevelt did and it is a reminder that sometimes it's good to get somebody from the group that needs to be targeted you know that Teddy being a Roosevelt and coming from money and understanding the prestige of it but having a different sense of a guess what they used to call noblesse oblige of he has a duty to do for those who don't have what he has and he's going after the people that his daddy did

51:03business with you know there is something to be said about that it was fundamental for him yeah I heard you it's on the other hand I know but look I mean that's not what the democrats want uh there's no question about that that's not the way that's not the way of the world they want new blood and they want from the progressive side not from the establishment side and that's where the energy is and maybe it doesn't happen in 2020 but eventually the democrat party will have to reconcile the fact that that progressive side is going to take over the party the same way that the far right took over the republican party on a different timeline it's an evident if you look at people under the age of 30 it's inevitable yeah maybe look when I talk about magga I tried and by the way the DSM people like what I'm about to tell you okay a lot of lefties don't and they take it as an insult or anti-Trumpers they take it but I didn't mean it that way and I don't see it that way I do see this as a reaction formation to magga and I do believe that this populist movement I call it

52:10mega um it is bigger it is deeper and it is not motivated by the kind of prejudice that was one two layers deep in magga for a lot of the factions that wound up joining that coalition and they're like oh you think we're like them no I don't think you're like them I think that in certain ways you're motivated by feelings about your reality feelings about leadership um desperation disaffection and that's those are all legitimate grievances right I don't believe that it's about keeping down a certain type of people or anything like I don't believe that but I do believe it's like a bigger populist movement than what magga was and I think it's deeper and it's going to resonate more they get mad at me and they say you're writing us off like we're a bunch of that's not what I mean and the DSM people get it they like the idea of being mega um versus mega but I do believe

53:12it's reaction formation and I do believe they want disruptors from outside the establishment yeah and I don't think that's the best way to get the best out of the establishment I don't think I think it's good to have knowledge of what you're doing in there I think there's something to being a politician that matters but doesn't matter what I think because that's not what you're going to elect right I I agree with you Chris what I would just say is from my perspective as a foreign policy analyst I don't I don't make a judgment as to whether or not the changes in our domestic politics are good or bad because again I think they're inevitable I think they're structural I think they're generational and I don't make excuses for any of the failures of the US foreign policy establishment over the last 40 years I documented many of them I spent 20 years writing articles about the failures of the establishment so I'm not here to defend the establishment what I'm here to say is that whoever takes over on the right of the left the far right the far left the socialists the mega people once you get that power once you're in control of the levers of power of the American

54:16government you wield an awesome responsibility to use American power for the good of American and the world in my view and so it's easy to trip at American foreign policy from the sidelines and when I try to communicate to people when I talk especially to these young audiences is that that when you'll have to confront that reality if and when you get power that but for American power an American involvement and caring about the world not just the war the aid the diplomacy the economic involvement the engagement with humans who we live with on this very small planet without America's role in that bad things will happen bad actors will fill that space people will suffer and to be in that game you have to have a core belief that you can do good things in the world and that what happens outside of our borders matters and that you know American power such as it is can be a force for the rising of human dignity whether you're progressive or mega or whatever

55:22and that means we don't you know just go and say okay Russia can do whatever it wants in Ukraine we don't just go and say the Chinese can swallow up Taiwan because that's bad for them and bad for us so I'm looking forward to that you know reconciliation between what sort of these people have thought about our foreign policy and the critiques that they've had and then once they assume the power of the realization that actually they both a responsibility and an interest in using it for good you know while acknowledging that to be honest mistakes have been made do you think there is a world where the war with the regime in Iran winds up being a win for the president for Trump yeah I don't really care you know I don't really care what's good like in other words do you think it ends well within the next two years no I mean it can it can get worse or it can get much worse and there's no good outcomes right that's the problem that's why you won't make a decision because

56:22all of the outcomes are bad either you essentially have three options you escalate you make a bad deal or you just get the hell out of there okay those are your three options now he's tried to escalate but he can't do it because we ran out of munitions and the troops have been at sea for too long and he reads he used the American military to its top capacity for nine months and they're still there so I don't think escalating is gonna work I don't think the escalating you know making it worse for the whole world is gonna work saying you've got two more make a bad deal because that's the only deal that's on offer or just leave and probably those are also have bad consequences out of those two I think make a bad deal is probably the less bad one now again Trump doesn't want to do that because he's got too much ego he doesn't want to leave because then he's going to say he's lost so he his decision is to do nothing that's the definition of a quagmire so you can go big or you can go home you can make a deal or you can just sit there right now we're just sitting that's the worst of all worlds is that good for Trump no it's terrible for Trump but that's not my concern my concern is what's good for the country what's good for the region maybe what's

57:26good for the Iranian people who deserve a mention as we bomb them you know they're not they're victims of their regime too all we've done is throw them onto the bus all we did was tell them to rise up and then let their then entrench their government and try to make a deal with their government as they repress them even more so we really screwed them over we screwed over our allies in the Middle East and you know we basically put every single country in the world into economic calamity for no reason not even an articulable reason you don't think that's bad for Trump but that's not my concern my concern now under a word so you wanted the regime to have nukes and because they were about to get new so silly and we're now doing something about that right and that works for mega they're they will parrot that answer and that's what scotch anything says every night right so you wanted them to have nukes right and just a straw man but a well the it's a straw man-ish because look at this is a big fight ahead with Bill O'Reilly Bill O'Reilly says well then you disagree with the ia ea i said no i don't you take

58:30grassy out of context no he said they wanted to make a weapon i said okay and he didn't say they were close to making a weapon yes he did he said that they've been enriching at 60 percent that you can get right the enriching of their uranium is troubling and is a part of the process but there's this whole other part of the process that can take months or years if you even get there that he also said which is why i know it so they were not days weeks months from having a weapon it wasn't imminent now by the way that is a hyper to it happens to be accurate everything i just said but it is hyper technical and unsatisfying and i would prefer the other side of the argument which is yeah they were trying to get one and trump had the balls to do something about that's their argument and it definitely works with maga and it made the maga people who were anti-interventionist quiet so they just don't say anything about it but i wonder if it's enough

59:37mixed with two not 25 years of a resurgence of islamophobia and not liking 1.6 billion people i wonder if that's enough for him to get that to be a net neutral in the midterms yeah it would be if everyone's gas prices weren't high because they run where it would be if the military families weren't suffering in all these communities because of the iron war it would be if the iron war wasn't obviously causing calamity for our economy and our military so yeah you can you can can fool all the people who want to be fooled there's no solution for that if you want to be fooled you'll be fooled i guarantee it but you know at the end of the day people feel it everyone feels it and here's the other thing here's the real counter to that is that you know it's not just about a ronkers any country in the world who was thinking about developing a nuclear weapon

1:00:39North Korea you know the obvious conclusion that they would draw is to get one as quickly as possible that's a generational effect that will be horrible for our national security and create more problems than it solves and yet even if you buy that trump did this for a good reason which i'm not conceding you can't argue that he did it well you can't argue that it's working it doesn't make any sense the economic stuff is what they should have started with the stuff that he's doing now going after their partners was always the smartest thing to do they should have done that first instead of the normal sanctions they were doing because there is a cleverness to this and an effectiveness to this that's got second and third orders of magnitude of relevancy to pressure points that may get the regime to act differently i just wish they had done it first but if you don't if you don't know where you're going any road will take you there i know that is exactly it is exactly true it's funny my mother just said that to me the other day um Josh i love talking to you again

1:01:40i point people to a book you wrote five years ago but it's it's such an interesting basis of what is still yet to be played out between china and the united states thank you for coming on thank you for the work that you do and i look forward to seeing you and talking to you again soon Chris always a great conversation thank you for being authentically you you're always authentically that's why people like you that's why people listen to you and keep it up keep doing great work a lot can change that is absolutely true without being cliche or banal but i don't think enough can change to change what is very obvious about what this election is which is man everything you've done has been screwed up and has made things worse and i don't know how the president escapes that without a distraction which makes me so worried about where we're headed um with

1:02:41the 25 year anniversary of 9-11 and the resurgence of islamophobia and who's pushing it and why they're pushing it i think it's really poison really poison and it puts people who aren't about that in a weird position because like what am i supposed to defend what happened on 9-11 of course not of course not defend the kinds of people that did it no of course not well it sounds like you're kind of doing that when you don't let me be angry at all of them i know it does and that's why it's effective as propaganda and demagoguery and hate but that doesn't make it right and that is not an american value is to blame an entire group of people for the acts of a few that's not what we're supposed to be about but that is what we're becoming with this administration so i wanted to talk to josh i hope you appreciated the conversation i hope are you going out and branding yourself as an independent and getting your gear show in your self and messaging that you're a free agent that

1:03:44you're a critical thinker that you're different you know you're not like these lemmings that are leading us all to a cliff so thank you for giving me the opportunity i'll see you again the challenges are real so let's get after