Transcript
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Good morning. It's Monday, December 8th. I'm Shamita Basu. This is Apple News today. On today's show, the Supreme Court hears a major case on presidential power, what the Netflix Warner Brothers merger means for Hollywood and your streaming services, and why Trump is already regretting one of his pardons from last week.
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But first, President Trump has unveiled his vision for America's role in the world. On Friday, the administration dropped its National Security Strategy, an official document that's normally delivered once a term. It offered a window into the thinking behind the administration's evolving foreign policy. On Saturday, Defense Secretary Pete Hexseth celebrated the four priorities laid out in the document at the Reagan National Defense Forum in California.
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First, defending the US Homeland and our hemisphere.
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Second, deterring China through strength, not confrontation. Third, increased burden sharing for US Allies and partners and fourth, supercharging the US Defense industrial base.
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Hexseth presented Trump's thinking as a follow to the Monroe Doctrine, the 19th century policy that declared the Western Hemisphere as part of the US Sphere of influence, which in turn gave it the right to assert itself in the region.
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After years of neglect, the United states will restore U.S. military dominance in the Western Hemisphere. We will use it to protect our homeland and access to key terrain throughout the region.
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Some observers say this approach is becoming most visible in the military buildup in the Caribbean and the recent strikes on alleged drug boats, something that Hegseth defended again in his speech. The strategy document also took a scolding view of European partners who have by now become used to criticism over their military spending and approval approach to Russia. But this document went far beyond that and took aim at Europe's domestic policies. It said the continent faced what it called civilization erasure thanks to mass migration, policies on free speech and loss of self confidence. The administration urged Europe to change course and questioned whether certain European countries could remain reliable allies if it didn't. Some critics told NBC they regarded those comments to be echoing the Great Replacement Theory, a debunked racist conspiracy that says majority white populations are being replaced by non white immigrants. The White House rejected that comparison. But some elements of the strategy document are an echo of comments made recently by Vice President J.D. vance. The Atlantic Council's Matthew Kronig worked on strategy papers like this one for past Bush, Obama and Trump administrations, and he said the European section was a consequence of the changing gop.