← Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar
Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar
11/7/24: Kamala Concession Speech, Trump Possible Cabinet, Zelensky Sucks Up To Trump
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- [01:32]
Crystal Ball
2024 is here and we here at Breaking Points are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election.
- [01:39]
Sagar Enjeti
We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio, add staff, give you guys the best independent coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that. Let's get to the show. Good morning everybody. Happy Thursday. Have an amazing show for everybody today.
- [01:59]
Crystal Ball
What do we have?
- [01:59]
Sagar Enjeti
Crystal?
- [02:00]
Crystal Ball
Indeed we do. We're going to take a look at a few two aspects of the Kamala Harris defeat. First of all, she did give her concession speech so we have a little bit of that. Also some of the various competing theories of what exactly went wrong. Also a lot of finger pointing people on both sides of the like Biden Democratic Party like his staffers versus the Harris staffers And the Obama staffers. So a lot of blame flying around, including people who are still. I knew this would happen credulously like, geez, we shouldn't ditch Biden. That was. Yep, that was wild. From all to imagine that that could be the case. But anyway, we'll dig into all of that. We're also going to have David Sirota on, of course, of Lever News, Bernie Sanders put out a really scathing rebuke of the Democratic Party. Echoes, you know, some of the things I've been saying, some of the things others have been saying about where they went wrong, and very curious to get Sirota's take on that. And there's also been a funny development of people like David Brooks now being like, gee, maybe Democrats need like their own Bernie Sanders style disruptive movement. It's like, dude, you were a core part of destroying that movement, crushing it, salting the earth and making sure that there's no vestige of it left to be resurrected. And of course, even if it were to be, we know David Brooks would be at the vanguard of once again doing the same exact thing. So anyway, excited to talk to David Sirota about all of those things.
- [03:23]
Sagar Enjeti
That'll be fun.
- [03:24]
Crystal Ball
His thoughts.
- [03:25]
Sagar Enjeti
Forgive us for a more truncated, spontaneous, extemporaneous show today. All of us are still recovering from all of his sleep deprivation over the last couple of days. We're gonna do our best here. Let's start, I think, with the Kamala Harris speech. So control room, please go ahead and get that queued up and we will take a listen to some of the highlights. I watched the entire thing and we'll break it down after. Let's take a listen.
- [03:48]
Kamala Harris
An historian once called a law of history. True of every society across the ages, the adage is, only when it is dark enough can you see the stars. I know many people feel like we are entering a dark time, but for the benefit of us all, I hope that is not the case. But here's the thing, America, if it is, let us fill the sky with the light of a brilliant, brilliant billion of stars. The light. The light of optimism, of faith, of truth and service. Hu. And may that work guide us even in the face of setbacks toward the extraordinary promise of the United States of America. I thank you all. May God bless you and may God bless the United States of America. I thank you all.
- [05:19]
Sagar Enjeti
About as perfect as an end to the campaign as we could get there in that concession speech. Crystal pablum and whatever the hell that was. Vibes are very about stars.
- [05:30]
Crystal Ball
Yeah, I mean the vibes to me are very like 2016 Resistance Lib.
- [05:33]
Sagar Enjeti
Oh, man.
- [05:33]
Crystal Ball
And, you know, I just. I don't think that the energy from the Democratic base is gonna be quite the same because, I mean, for one, they're exhausted, Right.
- [05:43]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah.
- [05:43]
Crystal Ball
And for number two, back in 2016, it felt very much. It felt like it could be just a one off.
- [05:50]
Sagar Enjeti
Yes.
- [05:50]
Crystal Ball
Like a fluke. Okay. You had the comey thing and Hillary was a bad candidate and Russian interference and whatever. Now it's like, okay, no, this wasn't a fluke. By the way. People. People aren't just rejecting Democrats. They're doing that. They're also embracing this particular candidate. I mean, he outperformed every Republican on the ballot.
- [06:10]
Sagar Enjeti
Yes.
- [06:10]
Crystal Ball
So let's reckon with that too, and what that says. But, you know, on the Democratic side, I see Elizabeth Warren put out like, kind of a similar vibe of statement that was like, let's not point fingers. It's like, when is the time to point fingers, if not right now?
- [06:24]
Sagar Enjeti
Matt Stoller had a great tweet. He was like, actually, right now is the exact right time to point fingers. And for recrimination, bitter recrimination.
- [06:33]
Crystal Ball
Now is the time your party has been burned down to the ashes.
- [06:36]
Sagar Enjeti
Yes.
- [06:37]
Crystal Ball
Thoroughly repudiated in state after state, county after county, demographic group after demographic group across the country. And there's no one to blame. There's no one, you know, there's no boogeyman out there that you can just point your finger at and say, oh, it was their. It was their fault. So, you know, now is the time to try to learn those lessons. But, you know, I think that they will learn all the wrong lessons. I think that's already. We see them moving in that direction. But the other piece with Kamala's speech, I'm curious your thoughts. Like, I think she's delusional enough to believe that she's still part of the future of the wwe.
- [07:13]
Sagar Enjeti
That's actually what I wanted to highlight. So an important part of her speech actually was her really laying the groundwork for the possible future runs. So I have a direct quote here. Kamala, while I concede this election, I do not concede the fight that fueled this campaign. And she says, I'm so proud of the race that we ran the way that we ran it. We have been intentional about building community and building coalitions, but the most important was really about the not conceding the fight and continuing. Or not conceding. I'm conceding the election, not conceding the fight. And I really do think that she is trying to position herself as a future of the resistance. And this is actually a very stupid bet, in my opinion, because it's like you just said, the quote, unquote, resistance is not gonna be the same. Last time around, they had two pillars that they could correctly cling to. Right, I'm sorry, One was correct, the other was bullshit, delusional. The first one was the popular vote. And the one off thing. Sure. I mean, that's fair, right? He actually did win the popular vote, Hillary did. So they could talk about that. They're like, well, it wasn't a rejection of us. It was just a couple of ways. The swing state, Trump is a one off, etc. Number two also was Russiagate is they were like, this is fundamentally like an illegitimate president. But if you. So obviously Russiagate turned out to be bullshit. And also, frankly, the entire, like, this is a one off thing is also turned out to be bullshit. So when you put those two things together, she is making a very incorrect bet. Let's be very honest here. This is a candidate who has performed worse than Hillary Clinton, right? This is a candidate who was thoroughly rejected by the popular vote and a landslide victory in the electoral college. You know, in the British system, somebody like her, it's over, you resign, you're gone. At best, you pop up somewhere for constabulatory or whatever they call it over there, and that's it. You're just some backbencher and we never hear about you again. Fundamentally, it's an incorrect bet because it's like he just said, the liberal mind and all that is both exhausted from eight years of quote, unquote resistance. But also, there is a baseline acceptance this time of the Trump victory and of the thesis that this is Peter Baker over at the New York Times. He's a guy I respect, he does a pretty good job. And he was like, look, elites made a fundamental bet that Trump is not who we are. And he's like, actually, this is Donald Trump's America and we are the ones who don't know what the hell is going on. It's kind of a trite take, but fundamentally, what Kamala is betting on in terms of her resistance, it cannot look like her because her style of politics so thoroughly failed. Her entire theory of quote, unquote resistance was incorrect from basically the entire time around. So whatever does come next, obviously there's gonna be a lot of soul searching it like that inside of the party. But she cannot seek the nomination again because her electoral track record now is two times failure. She failed in the 2019 Democratic primary. She did not win or even get close to the Iowa caucuses because of how she flamed out for some reason, mostly because of, like, 2020 BLM craziness. She gets selected as the vice presidential pick, one of the worst modern picks, obviously, I think we can say. And then there's no primary system. That happens. And she runs a terrible campaign in addition to having inherit the baggage of Joe Biden. And she loses in a historic margin. It is over. And in any modern sense of how these things should go, it cannot be allowed. Now, the big question is whether Democratic elites will allow this nonsense, because right now, all the recriminations are on Joe Biden, which we'll get to. But I haven't seen enough of Kamala herself and her own role in it. So she seems to think that she can just coast on. It was Biden's fault that I lost, not mine.
- [10:44]
Crystal Ball
I've been saying the whole time that Democrats are never gonna run a woman again, Right? And I do think, like, the first woman president is gonna be a Republican. Like, I think that that is pretty clear at this point. But, I mean, I agree with all the critiques of Kamala's campaign, right? I mean, the thing I've been saying is, like, too much Mark Cuban and Liz Cheney and not enough Sean Fein and Bernie Sanders. Right. But I also. I think it's sort of unfair to lay all the blame at her feet because that would. It would almost be too easy to just look at, like, you made this tactical wrong decision. You gave this tactically wrong answer. All of that is worthy of debate and discussion, et cetera. But there's a deeper problem with the Democratic Party and the medium term issue is that they, Even though they claim to be fighting for democracy, they're actually very scared of democracy, which you see both in the refusal to have a Democratic primary this time around, in the refusal to have even an open convention after Joe Biden drops out of the race. If you go back further, you see it in the crushing of the Bernie Sanders movement, an organic grassroots Democratic movement that sprung up, that they moved heaven and earth to make sure that they crushed and put their finger on the scales and rigged the primaries back in 2016. And if you think about it, the last time that they actually allowed a democratic process to play out was 2008 with Obama and Hillary. They got the candidate that the Democratic base actually wanted, and lo and behold, turned out that guy was a really good politician, and he won two terms and probably if he had been allowed to run for more, probably would have continued to win. And I say this not as the biggest fan of Obama, but just respect of his particular political talent. So there's a democracy problem in the Democratic Party. I don't see, I really don't see anyone reckoning with that. But there's also an ideological problem in the Democratic Party. And you know, Kamala is a reflective of that ideological problem. Neoliberalism has been rejected. The right has offered through Trumpism, their vision and their story about what went wrong and what to do next. The left offered out of Occupy their own version of that story of who was to blame, what went wrong and how to fix it. And it was compelling. It was compelling to a lot of the very same people who now are supporting Donald Trump, including Joe Rogan being the sort of figurehead of that shift, but many Latino voters, many working class voters, etc. And I would love to fantasize that now they're gonna realize the error of their ways and they're gonna, there's gonna be a new movement that springs up. But I just don't believe it because they've already crushed that movement so thoroughly. The people who previously were part of it, many of them are gone. They're disillusioned. They're either like just liberals now or they're on the right. And so I don't know, like, there is no less to speak of that could recreate that energy.
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- [16:27]
Crystal Ball
That's where we are. One thing Sagar, I wanted to get your view on is let's put this incumbent party graphic up on the screen, guys. The second element that we have here.
- [16:37]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah, this is very important.
- [16:38]
Crystal Ball
This is important and it is an important part of the story of what went wrong here. This is Derek Thompson tweeted this out and he said for the first time Since World War II, every governing party facing election in a developed country this year lost vote share 2024 Democrats are the red dot, absolutely critical context to any postmortem. And I think that is true. But I also think that you can use that to just explain away the failures of Kamala herself, the Democratic Party, the ideology underlying, because that's the other thing is like, well, what were the governing parties that were rejected? And many of them were. Many of them were neoliberal parties. And it's one more reflection of the fact that the public is done with an ideology that has been proven to be broken, putting markets above human beings and individual values. And Democrats have failed to recognize that this has been rejected. And they have to offer a different story and a different ideology.
- [17:40]
Sagar Enjeti
Let's go through that list because it's actually very important. So we have the British Tories, right? The Tories basically abandoned all of the spirit of Brexit and pursued like market based Brexit, whatever the that is under Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss to start.
- [17:55]
Crystal Ball
With too, which was the austerity.
- [17:56]
Sagar Enjeti
Liz Truss, I mean even Bojo who I actually had a lot of respect for Boris back in the day cause he, I mean he got himself elected mayor of London. That's not exactly the easiest thing. And then they have like frickin Sadiq Khan then goes on to become like this very dynamic figure. But he bets the farm, you know, all throughout Covid in the post Brexit era on this like market managed Brexitism. It eventually evolves into Liz Truss after his own failure. And then of course Rishi Sunak and in all cases, like they abandoned the spirit of Brexit in the first place, which was about immigration, it wasn't just about the market. And so what happens is that the Reform Party under Nigel Farage now surges, takes all the energy away from the Tories and leads to an immediate labor victory. But in Tory or sorry, in the uk, it's not an accident that even though Starmer may have gotten himself elected, he's almost immediately as unpopular as the Tories. Like what are we doing here?
- [18:51]
Crystal Ball
And they also with Corbyn, crushed their left version of Bernieism too.
- [18:56]
Sagar Enjeti
And so in both cases like what you really have is you had the establishment forces in both the Tories and inside of labor that try and crush them and keep the country on their, you know, on this like one track direction. But the voters just keep saying they're like no, this is not what we are asking for. They also point to Emmanuel Macron and his, you know, fall apart, you know, really there. Macron bet the farm in 2017 on like French. They call it like Jupiterianism or something. It's basically like, you know, Carlisle Napoleonic centrist figure and he saw France as like the head of this liberal democratic European Union. And the French of course, like you know, even though they kind of keep electing him, they also just keep grasping in different directions. And it's not a surprise that the you know, basically socialist leftist coalition and Le Pen have basically been battling it out ever since that happened. Again, it's the same fight that's happening over there. Theirs is actually way more intense than ours or about the soul of France, about who we are. And it's about. About immigration. And it's also really about the future of their own welfare state and also of their own conception of themselves, of whether they wanna be like a French liberal neoliberal managed economy, or they wanna return to the roots that they've always had in their country. They even point to the Japanese Liberal Democrats, which, frankly, is kind of an interesting one. I don't know a ton about Japan. I'll be there in two weeks. So I'm actually excited to learn. But the Liberal Democratic Party there actually lost its parliamentary majority for the first time in 15 years. I mean, that's another thing about Japan.
- [20:28]
Crystal Ball
Japan, on all the countries that they polled about, like, how do you feel about Donald Trump? Israel was number one. They fucking love Donald Trump and Israel.
- [20:35]
Sagar Enjeti
Yes.
- [20:35]
Crystal Ball
I think Japan was, like, towards the top of the list. Yeah, The Japanese pro Trump sentiment in Japan.
- [20:41]
Sagar Enjeti
Look, Japan, I mean, it's not a secret. This is a very conservative society. And I don't mean this in, like, the Christian sense, although I think some of them are Christian. But look, I mean, you know, in terms of gender equality and their own, like, what they view as, like, masculine and feminine ideas. Also, also in terms of their economy, and all of that actually aligns very, very much with Donald Trump. Also, Shinzo Abe and Trump were great friends and they had a very good relationship in the past. Interesting. So it makes sense. But I guess the point in all of these cases is that you have very highly developed societies like Japan, like the uk, Even like France. But also the newer ones, like in India, where Narendra Modi also lost some of his ground despite being one of the most popular. I also would point to one of our own neighbors, Mexico. Like, look what happened not only with the election of amlo, but then the continuation of that and the literal falling apart of their, like, predominant co. I'm forgetting the name of that party that's there. And then also our other neighbor to the north. Look at Canada. Canada. Justin Trudeau sounds like Donald Trump on immigration right now. He's like, we're done with immigration here. Canada. I hear you and I see you. Their party is very, very unpopular. And they also are poised for some main political realignment. So I think the case in all of them is that highly developed Western societies are asking, what's next? And it's the first time since World War II, which is what that's actually what Derek pointed out, and I actually think that's really apt because what's happening here is that for the first time Since World War II, we're asking fundamental questions about who we want to be in the global system and about our relationship to government. It was a titanic shock that they had to live through in such a short period of time. For us, it's actually, actually been like a slow burning disaster since 2003 and the invasion, or I guess really since 9, 11, then the invasion of Iraq, then the financial Crisis and almost 20 years of just like feeling tense and constantly voting for these change elections. Now Trump has a chance to get that done and to actually forge some sort of new consensus. But each country has to ask itself like, okay, what's like the relationship between the government and the citizen? What is the relationship of what the citizenry means in terms of immigration? And there's varying different ways that that's playing out across the west and in these developed societies. What though is our relationship to the globe? And that's another one where, I mean, I don't wanna put the death knell yet, but Atlanticism, which is like this worship of the alliance between Europe and the United States that's basically dead under Donald Trump, we are returning much more to a much more mercantilist, transactional relationship. The rise of Asia. One of the reasons the Japanese love Trump is specifically because he's very pro global. He's pro, quote, unquote, fairness of trade. But more importantly, the Japanese have always felt shafted by the fact that we like love and respect like frickin Slovenia or whatever, and they're like a G7 economy sitting over there and like, hey, what about us? That realignment will happen too. So I know I've droned on a lot here, but there's that graph says everything. Because if you think about it, crystal, you know, 1946 or sorry, 45, when the UK votes out Winston Churchill and puts Clement Attlee, that's when they're like, okay, we're done with Empire and we're going nhs, you know, we're going healthcare service. Same in a lot of the European countries. They were like, we're done with this whole global project. We're just gonna kind of retreat inwards I guess a little bit and figure out who we are. America also chose a little bit differently under Truman and Eisenhower, but we're back to that type of moment, which is really interesting.
- [24:21]
Crystal Ball
Yeah, well, what I want my liberal friends and I love my libs, I'm there What I want them to understand is that the the right didn't actually defeat them. Liberals and Democratic Party elites who made it their project, their primary project, not defeating Donald Trump over the past basically decade. Their primary project was defeating the left wing Bernie Sanders movement that was grassroots and populist and especially the 2016 class first iteration. They made that their project and they succeeded in that. I mean it's crushed, it's done right. There is no clear successor. Listen, maybe I'll be wrong. I've been wrong about a lot, but I don't see it. You all defeated the movement that had a chance to be a competing vision. And you mentioned AMLO and Claudia Sheinbaum. AMLO is not exactly like Bernie Sanders. Obviously it's a different cultural and political context, but a lot of similarities there. And he was one of the most popular leaders in the entire world, including through a time that did include massive inflation and Covid and unreal, all that stuff. And he continued to be incredibly popular and was able to basically name his successor. As I mentioned before, just ask yourself who were the strongest supporters of Bernie Sanders? What was his coalition? And it was predominantly working class. Many of the donors contributors was Walmart, Amazon, Starbucks. Remember how we used to cover that? Teachers also were a big part of that. It was predominantly working class. Latinos loved Bernie Sanders. To Bernie. That was a 2020 iteration of Bernie. In particular, they really capitalized on that support and quote unquote bros. And I think another one thing we've missed in the conversation about like the bro exit from the Democratic Party is this is a partial explanation. But you can go back and look at how were the male supporters of Bernie Sanders move movement treated. They were predominantly young men who were smeared as being toxic and sexist and racist. That's how they were treated. So is it any surprise then that you have this significant rightward shift among men? I'm not saying that's everything that's going on, but if you look at the coalition that backed Bernie and you look at where they are now, I think it becomes pretty clear the Democratic Party instead bet on this college educated upper class coalition in a country that is still predominantly non college educated and working class. And these are the results. I mean, to me that's pretty clear. So that's what I want people to really understand is that the Democrats, the liberals in the Democratic Party really did this to themselves by making it such a focus and succeeding beyond anyone's wildest dreams in crushing the part of the party that had the most appeal to working class voters and had a chance, no guarantees, had a chance of actually competing with the vision of Trumpism. So to me, a lot of the die has already been cast. Again, I'm not saying Democratic Party isn't going to win elections, win votes, whatever, but in terms of the ideological direction of that party, I think now it's gonna be more, okay, well, how do we adopt? And we already see this with immigration, we already see this with crime, we already see this in a lot of ways. Trudeau going down the same path in Canada. How do we do like a kinder, gentler version of Trumpism? And you know, that'll sell. Bill Clinton, that's what he did in the 90s. He embraced neoliberalism, did a Democratic Party version of it. There will still be, don't get me wrong, there will still be very fierce surface level battles over things like immigration and cultural issues, but the underlying sort of narrative of the nation and economic direction, the general contours of that will be largely set. Again, I could be wrong, but that's, I sort of feel like the die is already affected by that.
- [28:26]
Sagar Enjeti
No, I totally agree. I mean that was actually, if anything, Trump's greatest victory is breaking the Overton window on all of these issues, from trade to immigration to foreign policy. And obviously there's been left, right, you know, inter coalitional fights. The left chose to stick with the old direction specifically because of like God worship under Barack Obama.
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- [31:29]
Sagar Enjeti
Let'S get to some of the inklings that we're getting right now out of the Trump transition. We don't know a ton and not a lot has come out, but there has been some interesting reporting by our own Ryan Grimm. We can go ahead and put that up there on the screen. Ryan and Murtaza Hassane over at the drop site are saying, quote quote Trump is eyeing Iran hawk Brian Hook as a first foreign policy pick. Brian Hook, for those who don't know, previously started under George W. Bush and there are inklings that he could be back in over at the State Department. People may remember him because he was kind of a Pompeo Bush type protege who was there for the first or the last two years of the Trump presidency and he was one of those figures who really pushed the killing of Qasem Soleimani. Whether he actually gets picked or not will be an interesting test case as to what it will start to look like for Secretary of State I cannot reveal to like a ton I've asked. Nobody really knows the two positions where the biggest question marks are right now is over State Department and over Secretary of Defense. And also to be clear, Hook is not being looked at as the next Secretary of State. It's more like an advisor figure like the US Special Representative or whatever for Iran. One name I had heard floated for Secretary of State was Bob Lighthizer, which by the way, I think would be fantastic. Lighthizer was the US Trade Representative under Donald Trump. He negotiated the usmca. Perhaps most importantly is he has a good rapport with the President and Trump trusts him and likes him and actually kind of shares some of his philosophy. Lighthizer also never took the Bill Barr resistance route and denounced Donald Trump in public. So. So he's got good standing. There's a lot of other figures who could get it. One of them is Rick Grenell, who I think would be an interesting pick too. Grinnell was the U.S. ambassador to Germany under Donald Trump. Grinnell also is a major Trump surrogate and has been in the past. He's from California. He has critically also shares a lot of Trump's view of Europe and in terms of his foreign policy. Prior to that he served as. I think he was the U.N. no the U.N. spokesper under George W. Bush. But he's had a real ideological 180. We did get some good anti neocon news. Let's put this up there on the screen. Tom Cotton has reportedly told the Trump teen he will not accept any administration role. Which let's all also put a pin in this because people say this until they don't say it right. That's one thing. But I mean it is kind of curious because to me I feel like his dream has always been to be Secretary of State. His major first thing when he became Senator was to come into the US Senate and then immediately remember he had that whole brouhaha with Iran and sent them a letter saying that the US Congress won't abide by the Iran deal. And there was a lot of this is real 2014 deep cut energy. But anyway, the point is that it appears that he wants to stay in the Senate and actually wants to run the Republican conference chair and be maybe like number three in the Senate gop. I mean, you know, also bad.
- [34:43]
Crystal Ball
But yeah, whatever the number three GOP.
- [34:47]
Sagar Enjeti
Is like you can do a lot less damage. I mean he's a young guy. Maybe he just doesn't want to give up his career. You know, he can be a lifer in the US Senate. Whereas, you know, you come in under Secretary of State and Trump fires you by tweet like two hours later. You know, like Rex Tillerson when he was at least sitting on the john. Not a great. Not a great place to be.
- [35:02]
Crystal Ball
I mean, that is true that if you look at the graveyard of former Trump cabinet level officials, it doesn't.
- [35:08]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah, it's not.
- [35:09]
Crystal Ball
When you think about it in that context, you know, maybe this, maybe this isn't for me. So anyway, but it's good news. I mean, I think Tom Cotton is a terrifying psycho, so to keep him as far away from the most powerful positions is a good thing. I wanted to get your reaction. Soccer guys put this Zelensky tweet up on the screen. Oh, yeah, he's so funny too. He's begging, man. He understands the assignment.
- [35:33]
Sagar Enjeti
Yes, he does.
- [35:34]
Crystal Ball
He tweeted. I had an excellent call with President Donald Trump and congratulated him on his historic landslide victory. His tremendous campaign made this result possible. I praised his family and team for their great work. We agreed to maintain close dialogue and advance our cooperation. Strong and unwavering US Leadership is vital for the world and for a just peace. So, you know, Trump has always liked Zelensky.
- [36:00]
Advertiser 5
Yeah.
- [36:01]
Sagar Enjeti
Because Zelensky backed him up during his bullshit impeachment.
- [36:03]
Crystal Ball
During his impeachment. Remember the perfect phone call? Right. So, yeah. And Zelensky never, like, trashed him during that. Threw him under the bus. They met when Zelensky was here in the US and had a very, like, friendly rapport and whatever. So, you know, Trump is very easily manipulated and this stuff works.
- [36:22]
Sagar Enjeti
That is true. Zelensky did make a huge mistake, though, whenever he was here the last time and he did meet with Donald Trump is He said that J.D. vance was, quote, too radical. And that was obviously a massive mistake that he should have made. And also, I will be remiss if I would not point out that JD Is the only cabinet of person who you cannot fire because he's democratically elected. So he's going, whether you like it or not, inside of the White House. Again, I've said a lot of things. One thing I know about JD Vance is he is rock solid on Ukraine and specifically on ending the war there.
- [36:51]
Crystal Ball
Also, he's not president.
- [36:53]
Sagar Enjeti
That's true.
- [36:53]
Crystal Ball
He's not president.
- [36:54]
Sagar Enjeti
So let me make the case for and against. So Mike Pompeo and all these other guys, these are Ukraine fanatics. These are people who want, they would love nothing more than to declare war on Russia and go to war There. So if Mike Pompeo gets picked at a very prominent position, that's a problem. There are previous people like Rob O'Brien. I'm not 100% where he stands. Former national security adviser, that's an open question mark. Another big signal for me is where does L. Bridge Colby stand up? So Bridge Colby, he's been here on the show talking about Taiwan. Good friend and somebody I so deeply, deeply respect. This is somebody who has been absolutely rock solid on the Ukraine question. And if he gets a big position inside the White House, maybe on a critical desk of the National Security Council, that's one direction where things could go. Another big signal will be from the CIA and the rest of the apparatus in the intel community. So you've got people like Cash Patel. A lot of people may not know who Cash Patel is unless you watch like War Room or something like that. But he was a real diehard Trump figure inside of the admin last time around, who led the charge on declassification. The point though is that on Ukraine, at least as far as I understand, he is somebody who's very skeptical of the neoconservative worldview. And on that position. The other problem though is that the people like Brian Hook and Nikki Haley and that entire wing of the party, they're much more pro Ukraine. And then there's a big question about Donald Trump himself. And there is a reasonable expectation of this. Let's say we could never get Zelensky to play ball on any peace plan. Well, what's the realistic alternative? Kyiv is gonna fall, right? Trump, watch what happened in Kabul. You don't wanna deal with that shit. The media and everybody, they're gonna freak out and they're gonna be like, my God, this is the worst thing that's ever happened in modern history or whatever. And so he has a political incentive to make sure that you have a, quote, orderly transition to a peace plan, which is only possible if you can get Putin and Zelenskyy to play ball. Also. Putin is a wild card here too, because does he even want. I mean, he's winning right now, but Putin is literally winning right now on the battlefield everywhere. Like, if he keeps this up 5, 10 years, he'll probably gobble up like 40, 50% of Ukraine. He doesn't care how many hundreds of thousands of Russians are killed.
- [39:11]
Crystal Ball
But the media is also going to freak out if there is a deal that is struck because that deal will involve some loss of Ukrainian territory.
- [39:19]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah, because they refuse to accept reality, like 20 something percent of the country is already gone. Hundreds of thousands are dead. In terms of the rest of what's happening in Ukraine, like that is. Anyway, I could go on forever on this question. It will be, in my opinion, the ultimate test for Donald Trump. So last time around, to me, the ultimate test for Trump was on Afghanistan. He ran on pulling out of Afghanistan, and then he appoints all these neocon idiots to his cabinet and to his national security apparatus. And he basically allows himself to get fooled according to the narrative and. Or just goes along with it with this actually Afghan surge of troops in 2017. Landmark speech, because it was really the first time that he actually completely abandoned a major political foreign policy promise. He claims he regrets it, et cetera, but we never actually got out of Afghanistan, even whenever he negotiated a peace deal. So on the Ukraine question, he said, I will have it settled by the time I get into office. Zelensky is going to. Zelensky is going to butter him up as much as possible. Also, people shouldn't forget this. Trump shipped a ton of weapons, advanced weaponry to Ukraine when he was president because he wanted to combat the narrative that he was. Was not pro Russia. Now, has he learned his lesson on that? He escalated the war in Ukraine.
- [40:31]
Crystal Ball
Yeah, people forget Trump. Much more hawkish vis a vis Russia than Obama was.
- [40:36]
Sagar Enjeti
Obama, yeah, way more. Obama never wanted to send Javelin missiles to Ukraine. He was like, no, I don't think this is in strategic interest. And he was right. The question then is, does Donald Trump revert back to that 2015 strategy? And this is also always the issue with having a guy like Trump in the office. He's very easily manipulated by people who stroke his ego. And people around him all have differing agendas. One of them is named Killian Conway, who is literally getting paid $50,000 a month from a Ukrainian lobbyist right now. So that's a bit of a problem, I would say, in that regard. So this will be a massive, massive test for Trump on the foreign policy question. And I was thinking about it, too. The last time that a Republican won the popular vote and had a real mandate was 2004. And how did that work out under George W. Bush? The one thing that can truly sink you for all time and forever is a terrible war. And so I hope that Trump actually listens and doesn't get us involved in any. He says he wants to avoid it, and I actually do believe him. But also, you know, you've got a lot of people around you who would love nothing more than escalate that war than to have to go to war with Iran and constraining those forces is gonna be very, very important.
- [41:45]
Crystal Ball
It's also worth pointing out that many of the Republicans, including Elbridge Colby, who are prominent, like, anti Ukraine, you know, anti funding of Ukraine, et cetera, their analysis is we need to not be wasting our weapons here because we need to prepare for war with China over Taiwan.
- [42:04]
Sagar Enjeti
Well, okay, so it's not war with China. He's like, we need to prepare and.
- [42:07]
Crystal Ball
Have deterrence versus that's not true. We had him on the show. I mean, he laid out why he thinks that we should go to war with China over Taiwan.
- [42:16]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah, no. If the question of a Chinese invasion happens, his entire philosophy is that we need to rapidly increase our deterrence in the Asia Pacific to prevent an eventual war with Taiwan. He believes that we should go to war with Taiwan basically no matter what. But his entire theory is like, we need to basically pivot completely to the.
- [42:35]
Crystal Ball
I'm just trying to lay out. It's not like it's a uniform anti war stance. The idea is we should not be wasting our weapons here because we want to be ready to use our weapons vis a vis China. So just to lay out the more complete, you know, worldview foreign policy worldview here, Trump himself with regard to Iran. I mean, he's been consistently hawkish vis a vis Iran. All the energy within the Republican Party. There's very little dissent with regard to continued escalation and hawkishness and more sanctions and more hostility vis a vis Iran. So I don't have any expectation that'll change.
- [43:08]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah, look, I'm not going to sit here and tell you that everything's going to be rosy on that front. I have no idea. And if anything, the last time is usually a predictor. So that was major issue. I would hope this time you have a guy like JD in the White House. But you also. This is critical. Elon is very anti war. So because Elon is going, or at least actually, even on the Taiwan question.
- [43:30]
Crystal Ball
Elon is duff, got a lot of money invested in China.
- [43:33]
Sagar Enjeti
Elon's got a ton of money in Taiwan. So just. Sorry. In mainland China. So he's very dovish on the Taiwan question. He's also extremely anti Ukraine funding and has been now for quite some time. You also have Tucker Carlson, who last time around, let's be honest, he was not as influential as I would have liked him to be on the Iran question and on the Syria question, too, for escalating there. But this time I think he might be able to, just because he independent media, you know, podcasts and all that, it's having a bigger moment and seen as more important this time. And Tucker and JD Are very close friends and also Tucker is, I assume, is going to take a much more interest in the transition process this time around. And that is one of those things that he also has been very, very consistent on with respect to Iran. So I am somewhat hopeful. I wanna be very realistic about what all this looks like and anybody who's expecting some major anti war position, that's not reality. It's a coalition party. Miriam Adelson, don't give you $100 million for free.
- [44:35]
Crystal Ball
Okay, well, Trump has never been anti war himself.
- [44:38]
Sagar Enjeti
Yes, but I'm saying in terms of the coalition and who you have to satisfy.
- [44:41]
Crystal Ball
Yeah, of course.
- [44:42]
Sagar Enjeti
Paul Singer and Miriam Adelson and Bill Ackman, they did not give you all this money and all the support and all this to not cash in whenever they need to. And you're an idiot if you think that they're not going to so.
- [44:55]
Crystal Ball
Correct.
- [44:55]
Sagar Enjeti
That's very important.
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