O’Brien: Trump is Making America Weak Again

0:00I'm Charlie Sykes and this is the two-the-contro-ery podcast. So as we roll into the long holiday weekend, Donald Trump is laser focused on the needs of average Americans and says he's going to break ground on his massive arc to Trump in the next two weeks. Meanwhile, JD Vance can't seem to decide whether or not we are at war with Iran or whether it's just a skirmish, even as the administration's much-hyped economic D-Day seems to be turning into a damp squib and the Army Secretary resigns after telling Trump that his Secretary defense Pete Hegg's death is insidifying the Army and Trump says he has no idea. And Trump is now asking the U.S. Supreme Court to drop a massive new-thron bomb on the midterm elections by restricting mail-in voting. So let's dive in. And our special guest this week is Philip Szilbrian, author of the indispensable sub-stack, Philip's newsletter and a professor of strategic studies at the University of

1:03Saint Andrews who joins us from across the pond. Welcome back, Philip. Thanks for having me again. Thanks, sir. Very, very quick warning just for everybody that if we go dark, very, very suddenly, it's because we are in the middle of big storms. Now, it's not necessarily because we will be hit by lightning or a tree will fall on us because I have 140 pound German Shepherd under my dog who re-under my desk, who reacts badly to thunder. And twice this morning has managed to unplug everything in my office. I mean, everything goes completely dark. So just a warning that it's-so if things go dark, it's-it's not-it's not-it's not-it's not just the world around us. It may-it may just be Eli. So I want to get to the big, big, big picture, but I just want to ask you about two undercover stories, Philip's. And it was kind of apparent this week that Donald Trump has no interest whatsoever in supporting democratic reforms in Venezuela.

2:05And the whole idea of supporting the people of Iran, uprising against the Mullahs has just absolutely vanished from the conversation. Should we talk about this? Because I mean, it's just like-at one point Trump was saying in Iran, you know, you know, help is on the way. At one time, the democratic opposition in Venezuela had great hopes. They actually gifted him a Nobel Prize, a fake Nobel Prize. And yet Donald Trump is making just-has no interest in it whatsoever, does he? What does that tell? Well, I mean, let's start with Venezuela because that was the-the one-that wasn't January. So that was now nine months ago, eight months ago that the United States got rid of Maduro. And all they have done since that time is entrenched Maduro's underlings who in some way, so worse than Maduro. I mean, Maduro was not a great guy. But the people that have power now are in some ways some of the more hardcore people in Maduro's regimes. And what the United States has done is crush the democratic opposition they had hope,

3:09as you say. Yeah. They really thought this was their opportunity. And now what they see is the US government is getting into bed with Maduro's successors. And these people are, you know, weirdly, Shavistas, you know, they would have been, you called, dear, socialist comedists on the far left. And that is now who Donald Trump wants to rule Venezuela. And indeed, he appraises these people. Now by the way, he never did want to free them. I mean, the great fraud was that anyone in the press reported that he cared about that. He never cared about it. It's just now it's so transparent. We have to accept it. Well, and he likes doing business with these folks because they give him what he wants, right? It's not about, there's no other principle there. It's just that he has found people who will, who are as, who will be transactional with him, right? I mean, this is the kind of, this is, this is more like mob families cutting a deal than it is to nations coming to an agreement.

4:11Well, in many ways, I think this is also political, like this deal that was signed between the United States and Venezuela, which by the way, no one has seen the full, full text anyway. We've just had snippets of it. So you have to be careful. On the one hand, I think this is partly just political. Trump wants to say something before the election, look, I've secured all this oil for the United States and look what I've done with this. From what we can tell, it might be an old legal deal anyway. You know, this is not a deal. It's not going to be approved by the Senate. So it's not like it's a legal commitment of the United States to do this. And I hope Trump's successors move away from it as quickly as possible. So the idea that this is some long term deal makes no sense at all. Maybe there's short term payoffs. People get some money here or there to sign the deal. That's always a consideration when it comes to these actions. But a lot of this is just blue smoke and mirrors. You're Trump trying to say to the American people, look what I've done. Look what I've done. Don't look at your oil prices when you go to the tank. When you go get your tank filled up, but think about all this lovely bit as well in oil

5:13and we stolen that will come to us in the future. I think that's a lot of it. All right. What about the Iranian people? If the Iranian, I mean, originally, right, regime change was supposed to be one of our major war goals. Obviously, the regime has not been changed. But also the regime is not even being challenged now. It may be weakened, but the Iranian opposition is keeping its head down and Donald Trump is providing no support, either material or moral to them. It need their not necessarily weakened. The Iranian regime might be stronger and the more extreme elements might be stronger than they were because they killed a lot of the older leaders and the new people who are coming up our pretty hardcore from what we can tell. By the way, executions are going on in Iran. This government is killing opposition, which the United States said they would protect and would help and has shown to the Iranian people that the United States is not reliable

6:13and is not going to help them and is not going to protect them. Actually, all we've done is given the Iranian government more time to damage the opposition. We've probably made it worse for the Iranian people and the Iranian opposition. From what I can tell and what I hear is everyone's keeping their head down because they certainly don't trust the United States to help them. So why are they so... Well, I just think... Yeah. I mean, we're certainly not winning hearts and minds over the last couple of days. We got the reports of a bombing of a wedding with multiple deaths and injuries, which, of course, would be if it was intentional, would be a war crime. We've seen these accidents or crimes before. But let's not about JD Vance for a moment. He gave a press conference, which really reminded us that this guy is not ready for prime time, but declined to describe the war with Iran as a war. Even though Donald Trump continues to call it a war occasionally in social media posts,

7:16what do you make of that? Why is Vance, and some elements of the administration wanting to call it a skirmish or an expedition or a kerfuffle or whatever, was one of the... Why me? I mean, you probably understand this better than I do, but I assume that's partly Vance appealing to his base in the Maga movement, which is anti-war. So Vance was always the one who'd know forever wars. We're not going to be getting involved with Middle East. This is not our area. And so these are the people who support Vance. And I think this is his way of trying to say, look, look, look, I'm moving away from being a war. And it also might be Vance subtly distancing himself. Remember, Vance was the one who was against this to begin with, whereas Rubio was very much for him from what we can tell. So this might be Vance also getting a little dig in on Rubio and those who they'd look, this isn't a war. I don't want this war. So there are probably a lot of different Republican layers of activity going on in this thing. But there's also legal things. If they call it a war, then do they have to go to the War Powers Act and do that in

8:17Congress, which of course they don't want to do, and they're not going to do. So it's Vance probably doing a lot of different things. So one of the pivots from the administration was this announcement of the economic, de-date, this massive regime of sanctions that would utterly crush Iran. It seems not to have gotten off the ground. Vladimir Putin this week actually met with the Iranian leaders and said that he certainly wasn't going to honor it. He was going to continue to trade with Iran and encourage other countries to defy it. You wrote about one of the major parts of the initiative. They sanctioned some branches of the second largest bank in Egypt, which really told the Iranians, right? So how is that developing? What do you see there? Well, let's say what they have done and what they won't do. This week they put the first flesh on the bones of what these sanctions are going to be. So they announced it in the D-Day.

9:17We're going to economic constriction of Iran. We're going to hammer the Iranians and keep them from doing business. And now we have the first example of what they're going to do. And what they did is they sanctioned the second largest bank in Egypt's branches in the UAE. They didn't sanction all the branches or indeed the whole bank. They just sanctioned the branches of that bank in the UAE. And by the way, those don't go to effect for 30 days anyway. So they didn't actually sanction anything. They just said, we're going to bring these sanctions in on this bank in 30 days. But we're going to give time to see how they work out. It's the most meaningless thing they could do. I mean, they probably thought, oh my god, we have to do something. We have to find a bank. But it's what they won't. So what they can't do is do the one thing that would hurt, which is going against China. I mean, the really scary thing from an American point of view. And we have to be honest about this. It's United States is in decline vis-a-vis China, which Trump has accelerated.

10:19Greatly accelerated. The Iranian oil is not bought by everyone in the world. It's bought overwhelmingly by the Chinese. So the Chinese are buying, I think, 70% plus of the oil Iran cells. If you are going to hurt Iran economically, you have to keep the Chinese from buying Iranian oil. So if you're going to hurt anybody, you have to hurt the Chinese. And you have to go against the Chinese bank, major Chinese financial institutions, Chinese refineries. And the United States is not powerful enough to do that. They cannot accept the blowback of having an economic war with China. And that is scary, but also, I think, an important truth that we're seeing. Well, it's a scary, but it's also a reality check. But it would also suggest, if I'm reading this correctly, that you can't really have an economic d-day without including sanctions against China. And so we're not having sanctions against China.

11:21So basically, this thing doesn't get off the launching pad. I mean, is it that bad? Yeah, it doesn't get off of it because it's also political. I guess so much of this is about the November midterm elections. It might be the Venezuela thing. This is an Iranian version of the Venezuela announcement. OK, we've got to seem to be doing something. We have to seem to be tough. We have to seem to have the Iranians on the road because we have this vote that's happening in now, who wants time. And this will be very important. So we have to start changing the narrative. So this all might be just narrative changing for the next two months for a couple of you can tell, but they're certainly not doing anything. So I want to stick with this. And including in the frame of the midterm elections, because I am old enough to remember that when Donald Trump rose to prominence, it was the sense that America was being ripped off internationally by international trade. And that resonated in much of the country where a lot of the anger was directed at China.

12:26You know, all of the things that were made in China, all of the jobs that had been outsourced to China. And so you could certainly imagine exploiting the, we are going to go into a trade war with China. However, at the moment, we're basically appeasing China, but going to war with Canada. So somehow this pivoted from something that I think had some political juice behind it. I'm not supporting. I'm just saying this objective is speaking. I can understand why people say we need to do something about China. I literally have never met a single person who said we really need to do something about Canada. And yet here we are. The truth about Trump is he only bullies US allies. That is who he hates. He hates democratic countries. He hates liberal countries. So the countries he is mean as to and most aggressive cords are not America as you might say competitors or hostile states, China or Russia. I mean, he'll never do anything to really hurt Russia.

13:28He loves Russia. But what he'll do is he'll try to bully democratic states because he thinks they're weak and that they can take advantage of them because those states have relied on the United States. They're more vulnerable to the United States because they've had good relations with the United States. They've trusted the United States for decades to help them in their defense. And now the United States is repaying that trust by trying to screw them over. And so Trump is using that vulnerability. And that's why it's so pernicious what he's doing. And the United States is going to wake up in a few years with no friends. And it's going to have to realize it did it to itself. Well, I want to continue on this particular thread. I almost included a sound might was going to inflict a sound by the Donald Trump essentially saying that those Canadians are nasty, but the Russians are good people. And it's just like watching the President of the United States sit in the Oval Office and talk about our friends in Russia and our enemies in Canada.

14:29I mean, this is this world upside down. And of course, the whole world is watching this. We just go one layer deeper into this because you're right. He reserves his contempt and his bullying for democratic allies. And every time he has a chance to stand up to the world's thugs, whether it's North Korea or whether it's Russia or China, he blinks. Is it, you know, diving to his psychology? I mean, part of this is a geopolitical world, but a lot of it seems to be just Donald Trump's psychology, who he likes and who he doesn't like. Well, it's not, it's personally, he likes dictators. And I guess he likes them because they have no democratic restraints. They're often incredibly brutal and they rule with an iron. This is all what he will. They're the people who can throw up the victory arches. He loves that. So he loves Putin. He loves Z.

15:30He loves North Korea because that is what he would like to be. He would like to be that kind of dictator. He hates the democratic process. To him, it's just a colds and back. It restrains him. So he's even been far more complimentary. I mean, try to find a dictator that he has criticized. Try to find him in criticized. Yes, other than the Iranian leader or Maduro or something, but then again, he had his own transit. Okay. So you mentioned the arch, which in some ways sometimes feels like a comic digression, but it's really not because people who have met with Trump come out saying, I tried to talk to him about the future of the military. I tried to talk to him about the economy or affordability. And all he wants to talk about is his ballroom or building this arch of triumph. Now normally you build an arch after you've won a war. Yeah. Donald Trump will be one of the few people who built an arch after he's apparently lost

16:31a war. But in his mind, what is that arch represent? Because it does seem to be the kinds of things that the strong men and the authoritarians that he admires so much would do and he's emulating them in that respect. But also isn't it just kind of a monument to his endless neediness and narcissism? What do you make it? Everything. I mean, everything in Washington is being remade to be the glory of Donald Trump from trying to add his name to the Kennedy Center to either way, he's shaping the reflecting pool to the arch being the most extreme. He is trying to create a legacy. He wants to be able to say, I am the greatest president in the history of the United States. And I am going to change, put my mark on Washington DC unlike anybody else. It's all ego. There's no reason. I mean, it's actually an American. I don't think you could be more un-American than the victory arch. It really is a grotesque.

17:32It's the kind of thing Napoleon did, which by the way, Hitler was trying to do. These are the people who put up victory arches. The United States, the Democratic Republic does not put up victory arches like that. That's just not in its culture. But it's in Trump's culture because that's what he actually likes. But we shouldn't be surprised because he is now, he is obsessed with his legacy from what I hear. Well, and one of the questions that we always have to have, we always have to ask and we'll ask again, here is, is, can you get away with this? Can you do this? Will anyone stop him? And of course, there's a big question mark over this because the US Supreme Court just greenlit his, just greenlit his, his, his, his ballroom that doesn't appear to be the will to stop that. And what he's figured out is that if you just start building something or you knock something down, and by the time you have a legal challenge, it's like too late, right? It's we're all, it's all, the ground has already been broken. We're already doing this. So again, this is part of this restraint.

18:35What can Donald Trump get away with and who or what can stop him and will they even try? Right? Well, the Democrats, now the theme of the next year. Go ahead. If the Democrats take Congress, it'll be interesting to see whether they can use political pressure to stop it. If they can't and that's going to be a real open question because if he has the money and he starts, it'll be very hard to stop him because it'll be what an interior department project. So it'd be very hard to stop him if they have the money and they start building it. I would actually as the Democratic Party promised to tear it down if they won the presidency. I tear every brick of it. I wouldn't, I wouldn't allow it to stand for a moment and I would make that very clear politically. By the way, I think many Americans would appreciate that if that was said clearly, but it might be built. I mean, it might be built. I think we have to assume that it will be built. And by the way, I agree with you on this. I think there's been a lot of loose talk about tearing down the ballroom. I guess is that they're not going to be able to tear that down.

19:38They might rename it. I mean, you know, name it the Barack and Michelle Obama or you know, ballroom or the Nelson Mandela ballroom or something that would be just as sweet. But the arch, I can, I in my mind's eye and I think in yours, you can imagine that being torn down because there's some historical residents to that too. The, you know, the re assertion of values by tearing down the symbols of the old regime. So we'll see on that one. All right. So switching to the bigger issues in the New York Times yesterday, they talked about the risk. And I'm going to hold this up here. I have no three. The risk of Russian sabotage in Europe, a fight that spirals out of control. Europe's options are limited in responding to an unnerving set of plots and provocations. But the odds of unpredictable consequences are rising. And so, you know, there are some folks in Germany who are saying, you know, this war has already begun. It's not just speculative. You know, people have been speculating is Vladimir Putin going to test the West. Is it going to test the NATO alliance by attacking a NATO country?

20:42And yet these attacks are taking place. So give me your sense. Are we still in a hybrid war that falls short of a war? Are we edging toward a real war? Where are we at? What, what game is Vladimir Putin playing with NATO? He's doing what he wants to. He's committing acts of war against European states on the assumption that European states are going to be too weak to do anything in response because you cringe doing their fighting for them. But these are acts of war. To call an attack on an airfield with an explosive a hybrid war is ridiculous. That is a real act of war. And by the way, that's just one. There's been many other explosive attacks with weapons that have happened in European states like Germany. But what Putin realizes is those states are desperate not to get into a war. So he can do that and get away with it because they're not going to do anything that they could. But the idea that there's no response is wrong.

21:43The Germans could give Ukraine towers. If they don't want to fight Russia, fine. Give Ukraine towers. There's great German cruise missile, which would make a very big difference and be very helpful to Ukraine. The Germans could do that. But what happened? They did that. Because I'm trying to imagine if the Chinese government fired a missile at O-hair in Chicago, this would be a big deal. You would recognize it as an act of war. It would not be ambiguous. They are firing drones at the Leipzig airport. How is this not considered an act of war? Well, you know, Charlie, are we any different now? Right now the Russians are helping the Iranians kill Americans. Yes. They are doing that to the United States through Iran. And what is the President of the United States say? Russia is a great country. Russia is my front. Right. You might complain about the Europeans, but in some ways, this is exactly what the United States is like now, too.

22:44I am not going to defend my people against those who are trying to kill it. And I am going to abuse my soldiers. I am going to put them at risk because that is what I am. So I think what the Europeans are doing is weak, but I don't think what the United States is doing is actually any better at this point. I think we have become so twisted in this world that we are all willing to accept attacks from countries because we don't want to stand up for ourselves. That is remarkable, particularly as we are coming up on the anniversary of 9-11 when the country came together and said that an attack on the homeland that would cost American lives would be answered by the full force and might and fury of the United States. And now it is like a struggle. This week was rather extraordinary. It wasn't. We had the report with the Germans are formally saying that they think the Russians attacked the airport. The land reputant met with one of the top Iranians, pledged support for Iran.

23:49There is a report from the financial times that the Russians are going to be transferring supersonic cruise missile technology to the Iranians. And what does Trump do? He has chosen a piece when he invited Russia back to the G20 summit and he is sitting in the Oval Office saying, you know what great guys they are. And it is breathtaking. And yet I am getting a sense that there is a lot of shrugging like, well, what else are we going to do about this? Or were numb to the fact that Donald Trump has basically switched sides in the cold war? Yep, absolutely. It is to me sure I never thought it could happen, Charlie. But the Russians would be able to help the Iranians kill the American soldiers in the United States government, wouldn't complain and indeed would complement the Russians. Defend the Russians. As Trump says, oh, it's no big deal. We do that to them, which isn't true, by the way, because that states it isn't helping you, Craig. So it's just odd what we have become. We've become immune or maybe numb, as you said, I think, to what's going on.

24:53Well, it's not a bigger issue. How is this not a bigger issue? How are not Democrats and some Republicans not out there every day saying, we are now appeasing people who are actively trying to kill Americans who are providing our enemies with aid and comfort. Donald Trump throws out the word trees and all the time. Once more treasonous than providing aid and comfort to a country that is actually providing deadly missile technology to a country that might use it against one of our aircraft carriers. I mean, I don't think that's overstating it actually. Well, because the Republicans cannot criticize Donald Trump, they are the party of Donald Trump. That's all they have. Trump is all the Republican party has. It's their base. What about Democrats? It's their party. Well, the Democrats, in fact, don't have at this point a real core of a vendor to be opposed to Trump. I don't think the Democrats are particularly good on foreign policy. To be honest, I don't think that they've worked out their positions terribly well.

25:57So they're running as they should on an anti-Trump campaign, but they're not engaging with issues of foreign policy in the way that I think they would be more effective from my point of view. But they're not comfortable with it. They're not comfortable, I think, with a foreign policy of standing up to Russia right now. And I think they're trying to focus on Trump. Well, let's talk about you. You're writing now about the grand strategy for Europe. And I was reading your recent post and it strikes me that we are witnessing one of these historic, tectonic shifts in the world order. We're very reluctantly and slowly and maybe too late that the European states are now kind of realizing that they have to prepare for a strategic future without the United States, which means being willing to, without the United States being willing to defend them. It's taken a while. Is Europe there yet? I mean, Canada, the Canadian Prime Minister sounded this alarm.

27:00He said, we have a rupture in the world order months and months ago. Europeans tried to figure out a way to work with Donald Trump. So where are we at? Has Europe fully understood that they have a strategic future without the United States being willing to defend them? No work loss. I'd like to be more optimistic about it from a European point of view, but they're not there. At times they get close, but then they run away because they get scared of the reality of what it means. They, I think what we never realized, Charlie, is Europeans love the United States. They might have moaned about the United States. They might have protested about the United States. They might have seemed to Americans to be anti-American, but they actually love the United. They didn't want to look after themselves. They didn't want to defend themselves. They were delighted that the Americans would do it for them. And now the United States is basically un-reliable, and it's the Europeans who are having a hard time adjusting to that because they don't want to work through the logical implications. Now some are beginning to do it.

28:00Probably those in sort of Central and Eastern Europe who take security very clearly, seriously, they're understanding that they're going to have to look after themselves. There's a sort of halfway there, but halfway not there. You might see the Germans give certain speeches where they show they know the change is coming, but then they don't always act upon it. I think the key thing, as I tried to say in that piece, is that they have to stop listening to Americans. And I say this as an American, that what they've been hearing, particularly from an official Washington voice in the last year and a half, has not been the truth. It's been what the official Washington voice wants them to believe. Either Trump won't be so bad for Ukraine or Trump is committed to NATO or that won't be so bad. These kind of, you know, palliative kind of statements or numbing kind of statements, try and say, don't change, don't change, really do what we want. It's not so bad. And that worked.

29:02That worked very strongly. I think that is beginning to work less and less. I thought it had broken in January with Greenland, but it's not entirely broken yet because the Europeans are not taking the steps they need to, but it is scary for European states to think for themselves. That I think is fascinating. I didn't realize I wrote a piece September of 24 before Trump was elected, saying that Europeans have to get ready for Trump, but they have to start doing basic things for themselves, not a lot of, not complex things, basic things, but actually that scared people because the Europeans didn't want to think for themselves, but they've got to do that first. Yeah, you wrote that planning for a post-American NATO, you're, must prepare for a second Trump term. I think there was a lot of people in denial like, well, there's not going to be a second Trump term and it can't be that bad or we'll talk him out of it or we'll find a way to buy him off or suck off to him. All of those illusions have now been shattered. Okay, I always try to separate the signal from the noise.

30:05And so I wanted to run a couple of things past you whether or not this is significant or whether this is just, I don't know, to trivia. We're seeing now reports of the Dutch central bank moving vast quantities of gold out of the United States out of North America, you know, back into Europe because of geopolitical uncertainty, which would suggest, I don't know what, the Norwegians talking about perhaps reducing their investment in US bonds, is something going on or is this just the normal turn? Why would the Dutch not trust their gold in the United States? Are they afraid that Donald Trump is someday going to wake up and go, you know, we're going to seize those or we're going to freeze that. What's going on? What do you think? I think that's exactly right. They cannot trust the United States. They have seen the United States be very erratic, take very hostile economic actions against the Canadians.

31:07And their view is if we cannot trust the United States 100% with our gold, then we've got to get it out. So I think it's not amazing. It's an amazing story. Yeah. That's what it says. That is amazing. And I would think, well, what did they just experience here in the last few weeks when the United States wanted to prop up the yen? What did it do? It sold European bonds with no notice. Didn't actually help the European States. Oh, we're going to drive the euro down for you now without any preparation to help the Japanese. So the United States screwed the Europeans over economically with no notice. And by the way, they've screwed the Europeans over economically all year. The Iran war has been devastating for Europe much more so than the USA. So all the Europeans can do is look and say the United States does not care about us. And it will take actions that are economically very threatening to us without consulting and without having any care. So it's just sensible that the Europeans start hedging against that.

32:10So what did they make? Actually, not just the Europeans, but the rest of the world, of course, is watching what's going on with the United States and Canada. Well, let's start with with with with Europe. What do they make of this? I'm guessing that in Donald Trump's mind, he's sending a warning signal, you know, look what I can do. I'm going to kick Canada when it's down. I could do this to you too. On the other hand, Canada, United, Defiant, Standing Up for its own sovereignty. How is this playing in the European capitals? Well, very bad. I mean, they see they see what's happening to Canada and they're, I think, pretty nervous about it that if the United States will do that to Canada, what what what trust that the United States have for any ally that the United States will be something that will fight for you. So by the way, I think it's helpful in a way too that anytime the United States does this now, it should start alarm bells ringing for Europe. So it's important in the transition that's ongoing.

33:12I think as still though there's some European reluctance through the British we're talking about reinvigorating the special relationship the other day and I hung my head saying, oh, God, we're back here. But I think the Canadian thing, the Canadians are where Europeans should be, but they're not there yet. I think that would be the way to describe it. The Canadians got there more quickly. They understood more, you know, more immediately what the United States is now. Europeans had a lot more illusions, but every time the United States acts as it does now towards Canada, that helps Europeans accept the reality of where the world is. So what did you make of Donald Trump's changing the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America and the willingness of some of our major tech companies to go along with that? I don't know what's happening. I mean, there's a good question. I just wanted a few had said to this to me 10 years ago. I know. I said, oh, I'm really, you know what, I really called Lake Ontario, Lake America and Google.

34:14Don't do evil. Would go ahead and change it or has Apple Maps changed it too? Because I know that Google changed it. Apple Maps changed it too. Yes, I know. God, that is so, only map question. The question is now really, you know, the new hot map because it didn't do it. But no, you're right. I mean, 10 years ago, this would have been a laughable bit on Saturday night live or something in on South Park that he would do this. But then, I mean, first of all, it seems so incredibly petty and stupid. But then to see these major tech companies go, yes, sir, yes, we're going to go along with it because we don't want you to hurt us. You would think that at this point in the trajectory of Trump 2.0 that you get a little bit more like, yeah, no, we're not going to go along with, you know, insidification of geography. The whole thing, I just shows how corrupt the system has become. That and by the way, how scared these companies, we always thought the companies ruled the

35:17world. What we see now is how terrified they are at one 80 year old and continent, dude. And they will humiliate themselves. This is humiliating. And by the way, I think they know it's humiliating, but they don't have any alternative but to go along with the humiliation. And that American institutions have shown themselves to be so weak and these are major American institutions. It's again, something I didn't think possible. I thought the United States had institutions that could look after themselves. I'm not sure they can now. Well, that was the big shock of Trump 2.0, at least initially, because you sort of counted on them to stand at the civil society would resist this. And when one institution after another, you know, almost before he was inaugurated, began to cave in, I think that was really one of the big shocks. There was some sense that maybe the worm was turning, that there was more of a willingness to stand up. They more and more institutions and companies had realized you can't appease these guys.

36:18You can't buy yourself safety. And yet, on something as trivial as this, they're just willing to go along the absurdity of it. Okay, so back to a somewhat more substantive question. The one thing that Trump seems to be really sensitive about and with good reason, are the reports that are now coming out of the military coming out of the Pentagon about the depletion of weapons? The fact that this ill thought out endless war with Iran is really degrading America's ability to defend itself and our former allies and he's calling, he's lashing out and saying how treasonous it is and they're trying to shut down, you know, various outlets from being able to report this. But this has become a serious, well, how serious a problem in your eyes has this become that for a while that we had to withdraw the last aircraft carrier from Asia, we've

37:18shot off massive proportion of our patriot missiles and other munitions. America is substantially weaker than it was before February. But when you start, you start with that question, that the thing Trump was sensitive about, I thought you're going to say Natalie harm. Well, yeah, that's true. But no, it's huge. The United States is so, it's never been this week in the post-World War II period. It is, by the way, it could not fight China now. It does not have the resources to do it. There's never been a situation you would say the United States could not be the preeminent military power in the world. The United States could not fight the Chinese now for any length of time because they simply don't have the weapons stocks. And US allies and Asia know that the Japanese, the Taiwanese, the South Koreans all know the United States has no real ability to defend them now. And Trump's sense of it. The Chinese absolutely know it, which is why they're being more aggressive around Taiwan and around Japan because they know the United States can't do a single thing to really

38:23oppose them at this time. And Trump's sensitive about it because it's the truth. Trump hates the truth. And if he knows the truth might get out about what he's doing, he will do everything to pass off the lie. So Trump's sensitivity is a sign that it knows it's the truth. Well, he hates the truth, but he hates something more than the truth, which is if the truth suggests that he is weak because his entire presidency in his persona is that I am the winner. I am strong. I am the strongest man. Have you seen the AI slot? He's putting out about himself as kind of a superman, you know, rest up in these uniforms. You know, Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan reported that he compares himself to the great leaders of history like Napoleon, Attila, the Han, Julius Caesar, Alexander, the great. And so if in fact, he is basically presiding over the weakening in the decline of America, that undermines his entire sense of himself and what he wants to portray, right?

39:27Because when we put an irony, this guy who's building these massive monumental arches of triumph is in fact making this country weaker than it has been in decades. Yep. And he's lost a war more quickly than any war in US history. He's lost the war with Iran. I mean, there's no, there's no reasonable criterion you can say that this is going to be a US victory. That I say it's just bad. It's bases in the region destroyed. The Iranian government is more entrenched. It's not going to be overthrown. It is the United States that is losing its influence in the region because of all this. The US has lost the war and Trump did it very quickly. He is sensitive about it. Partly, he probably understands that. I mean, that's Trump understands that he has failed, but he's desperate to fight that and convince everyone that he's won. But it's a colossal strategic failure, what we've seen. Yeah, but at least we get the arch. At least we can get. There's actually some historical parallels that nations and empires and decline will

40:32become more and more gaudy. The uniforms become moral labr, the titles become moral labr, the symbolism so that maybe people won't notice that in fact, the glories of the pastor actually gone. Philips O'Brien, it is always a pleasure to talk with you. I always feel smarter after our conversations. Thank you so much. Well, thanks for having me again. And thank you all for listening to this weekend's To the Contrary podcast on Charlie Sikes. We will continue to do this for the duration because we continually need to remind ourselves you know, we are not the crazy ones. Thank you.