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- [00:00]
Sponsor/Announcer
Foreign.
- [00:13]
Host (jvl)
Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, jvl, sitting in for Tim Miller. Before we get to today's show and our guest, David Frum, a couple programming reminders. We will not have new shows this Friday or next Friday. Some of the shows this week may be a little bit late because people like me operate on a different schedule than Tim. Thank you for your patience. Today I am joined by a very old friend of mine and friend of the pod, David Frum of the Atlantic. I think probably the single most insightful writer in our Trump age and also the host of the David Frum show over at the Atlantic. David, thanks for coming back.
- [00:57]
David Frum
Oh, thank you. And we have known each other since, I think, the first Clinton administration.
- [01:01]
Host (jvl)
Yeah. Wow. Okay. So because I think David's best point of leverage is talking about big picture stuff, we're going to do that. But we do have to talk about some news of the day first. David, earlier this morning, the president of the United States, the commander in chief, announced that from this point forward, anytime Iran fires on a ship in the Strait of Hormuz, he will be directing the US Military to blow up a bridge or a power plant or some other piece of critical infrastructure in Iran. What do you make of this plan?
- [01:39]
David Frum
I'm going to cite something that is said by, again, a friend of ours, Ed Luce, who wrote the biography of Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was national security advisor during the Carter administration almost half a century ago, reports that when the Iranians took American hostages in the 1970s, the very first move that the United States did was to consider military action against Iran. And when the United States considered military action against Iran in The spring of 1980, the very first thing that came up in the war gaming in 1980 was, and then the Iranians move against the Strait of Hormuz was our counter move. There are I think, probably entire suites of rooms, maybe entire floors in the Pentagon filled with filing cabinets about what to do about the Strait of Hormuz problem. So there's something kind of bizarre about the Trump administration acting as if this is some new problem that's never been thought of before. They need to improvise. A solution to this has been war gamed again and again, again and again since at least the spring of 1980, maybe even earlier. If you don't have an answer to the problem, what do you do about the Strait of Hormuz? Then that is a consideration that should stop you from doing the military action in the first place. But they're just improvising. And it goes to show something that has been very alarming about this war from the start. And I say this as someone who's broadly sympathetic to the aims of this war, who hoped it would go well. But this group doesn't seem to think very hard about things. Doesn't seem to have plans. Doesn't seem to have plans either for American public opinion, for Congress, or for bringing the war to a resolution. And if you haven't thought it through at the beginning, the middle or the end is a pretty late time to start the thinking.
- [03:12]
Host (jvl)
Do you think this could possibly work to reopen the Strait? Because it just seems to me that Iran has actually managed the escalation framework very well over the course of this conflict. They have done really pretty calculated proportional responses in escalation. And it was only once they started striking the real critical energy infrastructure in the other Gulf states that the Americans panicked. And that's really what forced Trump to back off. Why wouldn't they simply do that again?
- [03:50]
David Frum
Well, let's not make the Iranians out to be 10ft high. If you were to see the world from their point of view, I'm sure it looks pretty bad. Much of their military infrastructure is a wreck. Dozens of senior leaders have been killed that we know of. So the world doesn't look great from their point of view. But they have one thing going for them, which the Trump administration does not, which is a sense of time and a higher pain threshold. Because President Trump went to war promising quick, easy, cheap victory, because he didn't get buy in from Congress, because he made no effort to mobilize the public, and because he has no capacity to mobilize the public. His whole war plan was predicated on this. Better work within about 10 days, because after that, you're out of patience. And he's now got a problem, which is, yeah, America's resources are vastly greater than Iran's, America's capability are vastly greater than Iran. But America's pain threshold at this point is about zero. So all the Iranians have to do is stop one ship from moving through the strait, raise the price a little bit, and Trump panics because he knows he has no mandate for leadership. He never sought one, so he hasn't got one.
- [04:52]
Host (jvl)
I think that's right. And the other thing is that, I mean, the Iranians, I think they have a couple other advantages here, one of which is that their, their mosaic strategy of just really networking all their defense decisions means that a lot of these, these operations that they are having carried out against, you know, cargo ships in the strait, happen even without command and control. Right. And so this is, you know, they intentionally disperse the military to have units acting on their own. I don't know. It just looks to me like they have had the clear strategic view of how this conflict would unfold at basically every step, despite the fact that they have all of these limitations.
- [05:37]
David Frum
Every president from Carter onward has had to think seriously about a war with Iran, the hostage taking under Jimmy Carter, terrorism under President Reagan, more terrorism under the first President Bush, confrontations under Clinton during both. Both terms, and so on it goes. Even Obama, who's probably the one who considered, at least had to think about it at some point because they keep doing very provocative things. And the reason there hasn't been a war with Iran from the Iranian hostage taking until now is because. Not because the United States couldn't do it, and not because the United States couldn't win if it really set its mind to it. But when people look at the costs, every president from Carter on would have said, the cost isn't worth the benefit to us. It's just not an important enough fight from an American point of view to bear the costs that are likely to come. And Trump just didn't do that calculation. And so now he just told himself the costs weren't going to be real. And now the costs are here, and he has no permission. You can imagine some other president under some other timeline deciding, okay, now the time has come. They're too close to a nuclear weapon. I'm going to go to the American people, I'm going to mobilize the support in Congress. There is support in Congress for action against Iran. There are a lot of members of the Congress, especially in the Senate, who remember the long list of Iranian terror actions against the United States on American soil and elsewhere, would say, okay, Mr. Hypothetical Imaginary President or Madam hypothetical imaginary President. You have our confidence, you have our trust. You're going to go to the American people, you're going to say, this won't be easy. This won't be quick. There will be higher energy prices for 8, 9, 10 months, but it will be worth it. And here's why it's worth it. And if you can mobilize the public, we'll be with you. That's what didn't happen. All he said was, this is going to be quick and easy. And that what was so powerful about Senator Ossoff's line of questioning of Secretary of Defense, as he's legally called, Pete Hegseth, which Many people saw was that he held Hegseth to account for the boastfulness and vanity and stupidity and glibness and easy promises that these guys are patting themselves on the back on day eight of the war saying, not since Douglas MacArthur has there been a triumph like this. And then when it turns out that that was not true, and it wasn't true even because they were lying, it was true because they're idiots and full of vanity and puffed up ego. And now where are we?
- [07:50]
Host (jvl)
So at the Hegseth testimony, He requested another $67 billion in emergency funding for the war. Just before April, I think he had said the cost of the war so far had been 25 billion. So this is. I mean, the costs are moving pretty quickly upwards and there are all sorts of problems that happened elsewhere in the world. When you start funneling just munitions and whatnot, you know you're robbing from Peter to PayPal, right? You're taking munitions that should be based in other places away to push into the region. Do you think that Congress will actually exercise some oversight here, or is this basically just the theater that the administration has to go through in order to continue waging war? Because this is. I mean, this is a genuine question to me, like, can Congress shut this down or no?
- [08:39]
David Frum
Well, it's pretty humiliating theater because the whole theory of the second Trump term is they were going to govern in every respect as if the President had all the legislative authority of the country in his hands. Among the reasons why he didn't go to Congress was he doesn't believe that he needs to go to Congress. He was going to take the existing funding in the defense pipeline. Win quick, win big, win cheap. It would be like Venezuela, or maybe try to fund the war in some illegal way by seizing oil and selling it. Giving the executive sources, that's been one of Trump's big project is to create non constitutional sources of revenue, whether the tariffs, whether plundered and sold oil, that gave him sources of revenue independent of Congress. And a point I keep making about this is the central design of American constitutional theory and of English constitutional theory before that was the executive has nothing to spend except what the legislature gives it. And if the executive tries to spend money without going to the legislature, the second last monarch to try that was James ii and the English drove him into exile. And the previous monarch to try it was Charles I and they cut his head off. So this has been taken pretty seriously. No money except what Congress gives you. And Trump keeps saying, I'm like a Stuart king of the 1600s. I want to find some source of money that Congress didn't give me to pay for things that Congress wouldn't approve of. All the things that Trump has done that are revolutionary, that's maybe the most. And that's his problem with this war. Wars get expensive fast. You do to go to Congress and then there are questions and they're sure there's accountability, maybe not literally on this round. I mean, Congress won't pull the troops out of the field, won't cut off flows of funds to the troops, and Congress won't refuse and it can't refuse to rebuild the stocks of inventory that were spent so lavishly and fast in this war. So those have. There's going to be a lot of spending to restock. And what we've also maybe learned is that there's a lot of spending that has to come as the United States military is built wrong. One of the things that we keep getting hints of in this war is not only has it been a strategic failure, but it hasn't been an operational success. I mean, the United States is used to we win every battle, but that's irrelevant because we have a bad plan. We lose the war. Vietnam, you know, win every battle, lose the war. But in this case, it doesn't look like the United States is winning every battle. It looks like a military not set up for the age of drone warfare has been losing battles to people who are better set up for the age of drone warfare. And some of that is going to come to light too. And it's going to be expensive to say, you know what, the Hegseth military is not ready for the modern era.
- [11:05]
Host (jvl)
No, that is absolutely true. I wrote about that a few weeks ago. And the extent to which this war has exposed US Military doctrine is not having evolved fast enough. And you know, Iran is not a first ranked drone power. They're a second or third ranked drone power. But clearly, I mean, the revolution of drones is an economic revolution, right? It is. How do you get smart guided munitions without the platform costs to deliver them? And the drone takes that. And instead of having to develop a platform like a fifth generation fighter or an aircraft carrier or something like that, you can do it with these little things that you just take off because a guy launches it from a field.
- [11:49]
David Frum
One more point about this drones. A friend of mine who's been reporting from the Ukraine war points out the United States is used to taking all the time in the world to develop its aircraft carriers and fighters and bombers. And then there are incremental improvements along the way. But, you know, you take a decade to design the thing and then you use it for 30 years. So my friend who was in Ukraine reports from the front that in a drone war, your technological lead over your adversary is measured in hours, sometimes in minutes. You have an idea, you try it. The other guy notices immediately what you've done, puts his team to work, and they counter it. And so you have these brief opportunities that may last hours, and that's how fast you have to move. And so the American procurement system, it's not just that the weapons are obsolete, but the whole way the United States builds, tests, deploys, and fields weapons that may be obsolete, too. Maybe the United States has had a lesson here in good time before it fought a major peer war, that it's on the wrong track. But what a way to learn, and at what cost?
- [12:50]
Sponsor/Announcer
The bulwark is brought to you by the Freedom From Religion Foundation. So, quick question. Who gets to tell the American story now? Because the fight for America's 250th anniversary isn't just about fireworks and flags. It's about whether we tell the truth about what this country was built to be. And lately, some people are working very hard to rewrite that story. Recent federal religious liberty report called for building more bridges between church and state. But here in the reality based community, we should be clear. America rejected kings, it rejected divine rule, and it created a constitution with no religious test for public office. This wasn't anti religion, it was pro freedom. And that freedom, well, it includes free thinkers, atheists, agnostics, and the millions of Americans who don't want government taking sides of the on religion. The Freedom From Religion foundation works to keep state and church separate because freedom of conscience means the right to believe or not to believe. Don't let anyone turn America's story into a theocracy. If that matters to you, go to FFRF US Religion or text RELIGION to 511511. To join or learn more, go to FFRF US RELIGION or text RELIGION to 511511. Now it's about deciding what kind of country you want to be. Tax religion to 511-511-today tax fees may apply.
- [14:19]
Host (jvl)
One of your maxims that I think about nearly every day is that the Trump administration has many secrets but no mysteries.
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David Frum
Yes, and I thank you for remembering that.
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Host (jvl)
I think I have found my first genuine mystery of the Trump years, or at least the second Trump years, which is why didn't he simply walk away after signing the Memorandum of Understanding it would have been irresponsible to do so. It would have been irresponsible to cede control of the Strait of Hormuz to Iran and to allow Iran to become the dominant power in. In at least that half of the Gulf region and to force everybody else to normalize relationships with them. Yeah, but it wouldn't have been any. Any more irresponsible than launching the war in the way he did. Yeah, and Trump does irresponsible things all the time. And he could have just paused a beat and moved on and done Cuba.
- [15:15]
David Frum
Right.
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Host (jvl)
We're going to do a Cuba, and then we're going to start threatening Greenland again or something like that and just move on the way he always does. He creates a new story to cover his old failure, and yet he seems incapable of simply taking his loss here. He feels compelled to attempt to renegotiate over and over.
- [15:34]
David Frum
That's a great point, and it's a great mystery, and I'm not going to pretend I have an answer to it. But let me try a hypothesis, which is one of the things that's distinctive about the Iranian way of war is they also won't just pocket their wins. It's very important to them to humiliate their American counterparty. And maybe that's because the United States are so strong. So, again, this goes back to the days of Jimmy Carter and the Ayatollah. Carter was willing to give the Ayatollah almost anything to get the hostages back before the election of 1980. And the Ayatollah wouldn't take yes for an answer, even to the point where he held the hostages. Even when there was finally a deal, he held the hostages. So they were released under Reagan, not under Carter. What was that about? It's still hard to understand, but there's something about Iranian political culture, and I won't pretend to be any kind of expert on that, that says once we've won, we want everyone to see that we've won and we want to make you eat it. And the one thing that Donald Trump cannot accept, he can accept defeat. He's taken lots of losses, like the Iranians. He needs to create this cloud of squid ink around his retreats to disguise the fact that he's retreated. And the Iranians won't insist on piercing that cloud and saying, we want the whole world to see that you were beaten, you were humiliated, you ate it, and we won. And we want everyone to know that. So whatever the Memorandum of Understanding, there's going to be one more thing after it. That just makes clear we won, you lost. Haha.
- [16:55]
Host (jvl)
Great. So we got two, two narcissists going at each other. That's fantastic. Yesterday we also got word that Trump has reached a deal with the Saudis which is going to enable them to enriching their own uranium for, you know, for, for commercial purposes only, David, not for, for the purposes of, you know, becoming a nuclear state. I have long believed that the, the Trump doctrine, to the extent that it exists in any way, leads inexorably to nuclear proliferation. Because everybody and their brother is going to realize that without America sort of policing the world order, the only way to guarantee your integrity is to be a nuclear power. And so like Ukraine will have to be nuclear power at some point, Poland will have to be nuclear power, Japan will have to be nuclear power, et cetera, et ceter. Is that what this is? Is the Saudi deal just one of those many baby steps on the way to that world, or is this less of a thing to be upset about and worried about?
- [18:00]
David Frum
Well, the Saudis are not quite the nuclear virgins that you might think. Remember, they paid for the development of the Pakistani nuclear bomb. And people who know more about this than I do tell me that the deal always was that if the Saudis ever needed nuclear weapons, they would get the Pakistani nuclear weapons, which they paid for.
- [18:16]
Host (jvl)
Right.
- [18:16]
David Frum
Saudi Arabia is like a lot of these countries, they really are nuclear powers in all but name. The Japanese, the South Koreans, they could be in nuclear powers within. They may not have the missile capabilities, but they operate nuclear civilian nuclear reactors. They certainly the bomb is at this point nearly a century old technology. They know how to do it. And Poland doesn't need a nuclear weapon of its own. What it means is the French to agree that the French nuclear weapon is now an EU nuclear weapon and that nuclear weapon ended the force to deliver it. And that the British nuclear, those are European weapons that protect Poland. And probably they, to some degree they are. And then what the steps will be our French nuclear weapons forward deployed into Poland. Are they still French nuclear weapons or are the EU nuclear weapons also? As Putin has been demonstrating the whole world nuclear weapons are less useful than anybody used to think, because what do they get you in the end? Because what do you do with them once you have them? What the breakthrough with the Saudi nuclear program is? The Saudis have wanted a civilian nuclear program for a long time, for whatever reason they wanted it, whether military or whether, you know, maybe they do take seriously. They've only got so much oil. They don't want to burn it, lighting up their own cities. Whatever the reason, they wanted it. They've wanted it for a long time and they've been seeking it since the second W. Bush administration, at least to my awareness. That goes by maybe farther than that. And the American answer has always been the price of the permission for this is recognition of the state of Israel. That's the price. Your biggest ask comes with our biggest price tag. And what Trump has done is not. He's not broken through any new ground, and I don't know that he's advanced Saudi becoming a nuclear weapons state. But what he has done is under pressure from Iran, he's cut the price. And this is something that goes on again, I think because Trump is such a blowhard and such a braggart, I don't think people are understanding how much weaker as a country, the United States is, how much less power it deploys in the world. Because one of America's biggest assets was its system of alliances, which in turn rested on its credibility, which in turn rested on not being seen as a predatory power. And because America now is so distrusted, even by its closest friends, it has to pay cash for a lot of things it used to be able to buy with credit, and it has to cut its price for things that it used to set high prices for. So the Saudis are about to get this permission without the price that was set by Obama, by the others. You want to be a nuclear recognized nuclear power state, Recognize Israel. That's the price.
- [20:44]
Host (jvl)
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- [23:04]
David Frum
How much patience do you think Bulwark listeners have for a discussion of Canada's security predicaments? Because I can go on on this
- [23:10]
Host (jvl)
point for a lot.
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David Frum
Okay, a lot.
- [23:13]
Host (jvl)
I can tell you. I can tell you my patience for this is infinite. Okay, so let's go into some detail at will.
- [23:19]
David Frum
Okay, cut me off. So Canadians are very sophisticated consumers of American politics and not just at the high level like you stop walking to your average, like pancake house and just stop, people. And they know perfectly well that Trump is unpopular. They know perfectly well that these actions are illegal. They know that they don't represent a consensus. There is not tremendous ill will toward Americans and the degree of integration people. I mean the English language, common legal systems, a lot of travel, it's pretty bleak up here in the wintertime. A lot of people go south. There's just a lot of people to people contact. So Canadians know well the difference between the United States and the American people. And they know that Trump's actions are not universally supported. They can all see the comments from the California governor and Senator Adam Schiff saying, stop boycotting our wine in Canada, please. But what is enduring is if there had been one Trump administration, Canada, like many allies, I say you Know what? There are embarrassing passages in the life of every nation. We've all learned a valuable lesson from this. We will not speak of it again.
- [24:20]
Host (jvl)
Mistakes were made.
- [24:21]
David Frum
Mistakes were made. We will not speak of it again. Old Jewish joke. You'll forget it, Sheldon, and I'll forget it, Sheldon, but I won't forget it, Sheldon. And don't you forget it, Sheldon. There might have been some of that, but it's now happened twice. And Biden in between, from the point of view of allies, was not that different. Remember, Biden was the second most protectionist president since the war. He was the second most isolationist president since the war. He was the president who showed second least regard for the opinions and interests of allies. So from the point of view of an ally, Clinton, W. Bush, Obama, with difference of emphasis, they look pretty consistent. Projects like the Trans Pacific Partnership are thought of under Clinton, developed under Bush, executed under Obama. Obama's major trade deals are negotiated under Bush, executed. There's one with South Korea, there's one with Columbia. It's a W. Bush, Obama continuity. Trump, Biden, Trump look in many ways very continuous, not in domestic political terms, but Biden signs no trade agreements of any kind. Even Trump in one had the usmca, which was a bad trade narrowing agreement, but still an agreement. Biden signs none. Biden is very heedless of allied opinion on things like Ukraine and other issues. And so from a Canadian point of view and the other allies, Canada doesn't have a lot of options. The geography is the geography. If you get a piece of paper with a signature of the United States president on it, do you believe it? That's why this business about the Gordie Howe Bridge just north of Detroit is so important, because it's an act of American faithlessness. It just says a piece of paper with a signature on it isn't worth anything. And by the way, the story of that bridge is already a story working around American political dysfunction. Because I think, as most people know, Canada paid for the bridge. And the reason Canada paid for the bridge was there was this bridge has been in the works for a long time. There was a deal between Canada and the United States to build the bridge jointly and split the costs. And then this troll like billionaire, the guy who controls the bridge, he organizes a Tea Party protest, basically buys the Michigan State Tea Party, passes a law through the Michigan legislature that says no money can flow through the state of Michigan to the cost of the bridge. He's killed the bridge, he's preserved his monopoly, and the monopoly is Valuable not just because of the tolls, because there's a giant gasoline plaza at the bridge where you can escape some American taxes on your gasoline. So he has the right to sell discounted gasoline, and that's a big money spinner. So the bridge bypasses all of that. Canada putting up the cash and getting paid on the back end was a way to work around the Tea Party dysfunction, and now there's a new dysfunction. And it all just drives home the point. America's signature isn't valuable. And if you're Canada, that's one piece of news. If you're Taiwan, that's a different piece of news.
- [27:00]
Host (jvl)
What does Canada do? I mean, do they draw closer to the EU here and to China? Right. Pulled on both sides because of the geography. What is the response for Canada? I mean, they do have to live with us. It's a little weird to have the house that lives next to you that your neighbor used to be a nice guy who would have barbecues with, and now it's an axe murderer.
- [27:21]
David Frum
Well, one thing that is happening and happening just about everywhere is a shifting of arms purchases away from the United States States. And that's not just punitive. That's also because you can't trust American arms purchases. When Trump began talking about including kill switches in defense technology, I mean, everyone understood before that that probably the things you bought from the United States came with some kind of American oversight of the use of the weapons. But since you were in an alliance system anyway, it didn't really matter. But this is part of a pattern where Norway, which is a small but very wealthy country, renewed its frigate fleet to defend its waters from against the Russian navy. The American frigates were the best, but they were also the most expensive. And they came with maybe a kill switch, and they were intended to be used against the Russians. And you're not sure the Americans are your ally in a Norwegian resistance against the Russians. So they bought British frigates instead. And that's going to be the Canadian pattern. They will shift defense. Canada's about to do a big burst of defense acquisition, and those dollars will. Will flow to European and Korean sources rather than to American sources. It has a lot to do with the development of Canadian energy resources. And the resources tend to be not on the coastlines, and there's a lot of difference. Which way do you build your transportation networks, your pipelines and so on. You build them westward to Vancouver where they can ship the gas, the oil or whatever it is toward Asia, China, or do you integrate north, south? The lesson of this is Canada needs to have an equal capacity to sell east, west as north, south, because you need to develop some options. Again, Canada doesn't have a lot of options. But you know who's watching this story with much more attention are places like Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam. These countries do have options. And unlike Canada, they don't speak English as their native language, as most Canadians do. They're not integrated into a common culture of Anglo American legality. They regard the United States as just another rapacious, predatory imperial power, and one that they would be wise to make sure they keep in exactly parallel tandem with other rapacious, predatory powers.
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Host (jvl)
Yeah. The key difference being that the United States is not a predictable rapacious, predatory power in the way that the Chinese are essentially predictable. So, you know, harder to even make accommodations with us. Right.
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David Frum
Well, the point was, in the past, the United States was always non predatory.
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Host (jvl)
Right.
- [29:39]
David Frum
The thing that Trump complains about, which is the United States subsidized the defenses of its allies, which was true. It did. And in return, it got a lot of deference. And deference, not just from poor countries who are China's allies, poor countries. The United States had deference from Germany and Japan. The world's leading industrial and technological powers would say, when push came to shove, we did it America's way. Because America is paying a disproportionate share of the bill. And we're all kind of grateful and we trust them and we think, you know, even when we're mad at them, we think their intentions are ultimately Benign. It's been 10 years of Trump, Biden, Trump and the allies don't think that anymore. And so they're saying, you know, we'll take a smaller subsidy for more autonomy.
- [30:20]
Host (jvl)
All right, so I want to zoom out now and talk about some big picture America stuff. Big picture reform stuff. You on your show shortly before July 4th, you had Jeff Goldberg on. Jeff the guy.
- [30:34]
David Frum
Yeah.
- [30:35]
Host (jvl)
You spent the first two minutes talking about Jeff's stewardship of the Atlantic. And I would just like to recapitulate that here for 30 seconds, because the Atlantic was always a great magazine, but Jeff has made it the indispensable American magazine of letters in this moment. And it has been an extraordinary transformation. And my admiration for what he's done there is basically boundless.
- [31:00]
David Frum
It's amazing. The Atlantic, under Jeff's leadership, Jeff Goldberg's leadership, has tripled its paid circulation. It's in the black, and it's got an intense relationship with readers, mostly in the United States, but increasingly around the world, as you often say about the bulwark, if you are dependent on the goodwill of a single rich person, that person, even with the best will in the world, as you often say, is subject to pressure. And we've seen that with many media institutions in this country, that enormous pressure can be brought to bear on people you would think were too rich to be pressured. And the safety and independence of media depends on paying their way. And the bulwark, the Atlantic, the New York Times, these institutions pay their way. They have owners, your cell phone, but the Atlantic has an owner. The New York Times has owners. But because they're in the black, because they're reader supported, the owners can always say in the face of pressure, well, you know, Mr. President, I agree with you. No one would be more delighted than me. But you know what? They pay their bills. I can't threaten to hold, hold back the checks. So that's an important part of our compact with our readers, and it's important part of our readers compact with us.
- [32:06]
Host (jvl)
So the course of. I don't know if that conversation or the piece you wrote right around there, you, you either wrote or said, America can be itself again, America can be restored to itself again. I'd like to test that faith a little bit because another thing you said was we've been given a glimpse of if and when the American republic fails, we now see exactly how it will. Could you just unpack that for people briefly?
- [32:29]
David Frum
Yeah. Well, Americans talk about guardrails and checks and balances. And I think the story that Trump years is that some have worked and others have not. So the one that has worked best is federalism. And as Trump is discovering with his scheme to interfere with the 26 elections. And as he tried in 2020, when the constitution assigned responsibility over elections to the states, it took away a resource that authoritarian regimes all over the world have used. Hungary and elsewhere, that it is very hard for the central authorities. It's not impossible, but it's quite challenging for them to interfere with the actual operation of elections in all the many thousands of jurisdictions with all their many different rules, each set by its own state or even local authorities. So that's when this really has worked. The legal system has by and large worked with some notable exceptions. Even though the Supreme Court is very friendly to Donald Trump, it is not completely compliant with him and the other courts. Donald Trump loses more often than he wins, and he loses in ways that are binding. As E. Jean Carroll's heirs can Testify, there's now $5.6 million of Donald Trump's money in their pocket to punish him for lying about his relationship with her, which is what the jury found. And there may be tens of millions of more dollars of Donald Trump's heading toward Eugene Carroll and her heirs, and God bless them in that she took a lot of abuse. Other court cases too, the tariff cases and so on. What has not worked is the separation of powers, Congress versus President. And what is astonishingly not worked is Senate versus President. You know, you used to think of the Senate as this institution driven by both its grandeur, even petty vindictiveness of just senators didn't have to put up with crap from the president, and so they didn't. That just doesn't seem to have worked.
- [34:09]
Host (jvl)
There is no vindictiveness that has been astonishing to me watching Republican senators who Trump has poll axed and they have seemed to have no spitefulness in them. Yes, when did that leave American politics
- [34:21]
David Frum
exactly like what Petty, vindictive, spiteful. I think it left politics today when a senator thought my post senatorial career is staying in Washington and being an important lobbyist, not going back home and resuming my local law practice or enjoying the quiet of my ranch because they have their mind on future careers where good getting along well with the president will be important. Thom Tillis is already a rich man. John Cornyn seems to be really mad. So you hear some murmurs from them, but they don't necessarily vote the way they talk.
- [34:55]
Host (jvl)
That's exactly right. See, that's why I wonder if there's something psychological happening more than pecuniary here, because are they simply afraid of their voters? Is that what it is?
- [35:06]
David Frum
There does seem to be a rising level of fear of voters. You may have seen the statement from Adam Smith, the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, where he cast a vote with this measure that purported it was defeated to cut off aid Israel. But in his statement about the vote, he said, by the way, I'm doing this because one of my staffers has been assaulted, because my home has been vandalized and because I've been threatened. That's a tough thing to unpack. And why are you telling us this? Are you telling us this as an excuse? Are you telling us this to say you're doing this under duress? Are you telling us as a warning?
- [35:39]
Host (jvl)
Well, at least, I mean, Lisa Murkowski has spoken very openly about being afraid of her voters. There was the Pete Mayer quote in the New York Times shortly after the January 6th impeachment vote where he said that one of his colleagues had said to him, I can't vote to impeach this guy because I have a wife and kids. They'll threaten to blow up my house. This does seem new. Maybe not new in the annals of American history, but certainly new in my political lifetime.
- [36:07]
David Frum
Well, it's certainly new to admit it. We're marking the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, where the signatories, the 50 plus signatories, said they're pledging their lives and their sacred honor, they were willing to be hanged. And maybe there was somebody there in 1776 who said, you know, guys, in spirit, 100%. Absolutely. It's just that the British have threatened to burn down my farm. So I think on this one, I will be taking this as a. I'll abstain. I'll abstain. No signature, but certainly just go Via con Dios. But you have my blessing. I'm sure there are always such people, but they don't usually like to be known as such. And maybe that's one of the things that is different, is people step forward and say, I'm afraid of violence from the President's supporters. Or in the case of Adam Smith, from the far left.
- [36:55]
Host (jvl)
You said that you see how this all fails, how it all falls apart. Looking forward, do you think there are things that can be done to safeguard things? Right. So, you know, post Watergate, we have a bunch of reforms. You've written about this. A bunch. We have the Presidential Records act, we have the depolitization of the post office. Believe it or not, that was a thing we had to do. We had a campaign finance reform which did not work out all that well and created its own problems. But there are a bunch of post Watergate structural reforms to try to prevent at least that problem from happening again. This is a baited question because I have my own list of things that I think need to be done. But I'm curious as to what your thoughts are on this.
- [37:41]
David Frum
What are often called the post Watergate reforms are also pre Watergate reforms. The 1970s were one of those eras, like the area just before the First World War, of systematic revisiting of institutions. So the postal reform, which again, sounds kind of archaic now, but was really a big deal, was passed in 1970 or 71, before Watergate. And what it said was, postmasters are no longer going to be political rewards, and the Postmaster General is no longer going to be, in effect, the chairman of the President's political party in charge of dispensing the rewards. Postmasterships will be Just jobs, that's it. And you won't be fired if your party loses the election, which is what every American election had been about since the founding of the Republic, the dispensing of postmasterships. So it was an era of reform, and they come about once every half century. So you'd think we're due in the 2020s, but there's no sign of it now. Errors of reform have their problems, because what often happens in an era of reform is you take something that had been aspirational and you write it down. And once you write something down, then people say, so if I don't cross this line, I'm good. And what you wanted before it's written down, you can say, look, there isn't a line. There's just a general no go area.
- [38:52]
Host (jvl)
And if you go, this is why we need norms. I mean, once you start violating norms, you have to write it down. And you can't write everything down, right?
- [39:00]
David Frum
So there's a question no one has ever written down. The president can't operate a business while serving as president. So we write that down. Now, now we're going to have to write that down. The president can't operate a business. Next question. Can the president. Spouse. We can write that down. No, spouse, president's kids. Oh, I don't know what we do about that. Brother in law. President's brother in law, can he operate a business? I mean, eventually you come to, there's some relative of the president who will be allowed to operate a business and corruption will flow through that person if the president is minded to let it happen. Ultimately, you can't write everything down. And the effort where the old rule was just, just don't do anything unseemly, right? Just, just don't profit off the presidency. You and anyone you care about, don't do that. Stay away. And, and yes, there will always be the Billy Carter embarrassment. But we all, we'll all understand that the president is as embarrassed by Billy Carter as everyone else. And the punishment for Billy Carter is that everyone laughs at the, the president. But we don't seriously think that Billy Carter's activities are influencing the president. When you start writing it down, you bump into limits, but we don't seem to be in that kind of a phase. When I talk about America returning, I'll agree with you that there's something tragic with this. You never go back to the way things were. The elves pass out of the world. To borrow an analogy from Tolkien, you're not the people you were. But you can reconstitute and you can reform if you're minded to do it. And we can write down lists of things that might be done. But it starts with, understand with an agreement about what the problem is. And it starts with enough political pressure from the society to say we want things to change. And that pressure, I don't think we feel it yet. One of the things I worry about a lot is that there are many of the most energetic Democrats who think that what is important about Trumpism is not its manifestations and corruption, but its cause and social dissatisfaction. And so if you address the social problems, you don't need to deal with the corruption. In fact, it's kind of a waste of time to deal with it. You only have so much legislative time. So pass some healthcare thing, help people
- [40:59]
Host (jvl)
with COVID Medicare for all.
- [41:00]
David Frum
Yeah. Or help with deindustrialization and you'll take away the temptation to Trumpism. And then you don't need to stop the locks against this kind of predatory activity. First, is that true? And second, does it what can you even succeed? Do you have the votes for these things? And is the risk is, as happened under Biden, that the ambition to do social reform fails or stymies or is disappointing and no effort is made to do institutional reform? It's amazing that Biden just didn't do any of that, or almost none except for the Electoral Count Act.
- [41:28]
Host (jvl)
Yeah. I mean, so the Biden theory of the case, which was not crazy at the time, was that Trump, it was what we talked about before, you know, you forget it and I forget it and we'll both forget it. Trump was an aberration. Biden had just won the second largest victory in the post Reagan era. So Trumpism looked like, hey, that was just a one off. Instead of going for recriminations, instead of going for institutional reform, we're going to fake it till we make it. We're just going to go back to normal. That was a thing that happened and we never have to speak of it again. And that's, that's not a crazy view. It just turns out to have been wrong.
- [42:10]
David Frum
And he did one other thing, which he said, I do have this enormous mandate and I've won House and Senate, so I'm going to use that to implement a domestic reform agenda more ambitious even than Barack Obama's. There was a lot of pressure on him, but this was also his own motive. I will go down as one of the great domestic reformers along with Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Only Franklin Delano Roosevelt did His reforms in the context of tremendous deflationary pressures. I'm going to do mine in the face of tremendous inflationary pressures. And so what Biden did was. He did, he did a lot. And some people will like it. I don't love it, but that's not here, there. Some people like it. But what he also did was he uncorked and accelerated an inflation that was probably going to happen anyway. But his reform ambition made that inflation fiercer and hotter than it otherwise would have been.
- [42:54]
Host (jvl)
Yeah, but also he, he fixed it. I mean, the problem in all of this, and this is why I am, I am bearish on the idea of reform, is that I think the American people have shown that they don't really care, that they are eager to tolerate all of the norm breaking. They don't really care about anything. They are divorced from a lot of reality. We see this constantly in, like, consumer sentiment surveys. One of the things that I harp on is that both during the Biden years and during the Trump years, people have responded with like, you know, what are your sentiments about the economies? The numbers look like they did during the height of the Great Recession of 2008, 2009, and we are nothing like that. I mean, at that point, like 1 in 12 houses in America were foreclosed on. People were out of work and losing their jobs. It was very, very bad. Whatever the inflationary pressures and even the down economy of the Trump years have been, it's nothing like that. But people don't live in that reality anymore. And people change, right? Times change. People change. And at the end of the day, this really is a question of the American people. And this just gets back to everything else we were talking about earlier, about Canada and our allies and other people. The problem when they look at it, isn't the Trump administration was bad or the Biden administration was bad, is that the American people have kind of gone rotten. Right? And once the American people have gone rotten, you can't expect the government to be any better than the public demands it to be.
- [44:32]
David Frum
I'm hesitating how far to go, because this is one of those reveal your unpopular opinion moments. And my opinion, the opinions I'm weighing whether to reveal or not, are pretty darn unpopular. So I hesitate. But it's just us, okay?
- [44:44]
Host (jvl)
We go way back. Come on, David.
- [44:47]
David Frum
And 400,000 of your best friends. But I would say, look, people are people. They're always the same. They're selfish and sometimes selfless. They're fearful until they're not. They have capacity for Tremendous sacrifice. They have tremendous self absorption. But mostly they're focused on their own lives. And by and large they're probably better educated and less bigoted than ever before in American history. The difference is who leads and inspires them. When you look at a period like the 1970s, with all of its civil strife, riots, bombs going off, the Weathermen, school busing, protests that turned violent and often deadly, it wasn't that American society in the 70s was any more stable than it is by most measures. The society was probably a lot less stable in the 1970s than it is today. The difference was in the 1970s that the political system was a breaking element. The political leaders were looking for ways out, looking for possibilities of agreement. Whereas today it's the political system that is the accelerant. So I would say not how have the American people changed? They're probably the same as always, or maybe be a little better as education rises and affluence rises and so on. But the political leadership is much more desperate, competitive and unrestricted than it used to be. And so we have worse behaving elites. I think elite is not a bad word. I think it's an inevitability. And the health of a society is measured by the self sacrifice, the group mindedness, the continuity mindedness, the institutional mindedness of its elite. And that seems to be the thing to me that is really different and worse in 2026 than it was in 1976. You've changed Ford versus Carter for MAGA versus Democratic Socialists of America.
- [46:26]
Host (jvl)
So I would agree in part and disagree in part agree that people are always the same, right? I mean, the human condition is the same in all times, in all places. But societies change very meaningfully, right? There is a difference between Japanese Society in 1920 and Japanese Society in 1980. The mores in the conventions and the urges and wants and things they will tolerate and things they will, as a society form around change in very meaningful ways. And I think it is possible that American society has changed in really meaningful ways. But I would fully agree with you also that this is an elite problem as well. This is an and both, not an either or. I think.
- [47:09]
David Frum
Well, okay, so let me refine what I just said, because when I say human nature doesn't change, I mean, yes, people become more religious or less religious. There's times when people remember depressions very vividly and therefore are very frugal. And times when people feel prosperity to be more real and therefore are less frugal. So behaviors can change according to events. But when I'M trying to think about what is operationally different and what could you imagine making different again? Programs who say, well, let's see, better behavior from you lot out there strike me as unlikely to succeed in any way. The things that would make a difference are not things that anybody can contradict, consciously control. You can't say, you know what, let's, let's have more religion, please. There are people, there are podcasters who will say that, but you can't conjure up religion that way. And sometimes success and defeat make a difference. I mean, one of the things I. One of the passages in history that is maybe relevant here, you can see this on YouTube is when Richard Nixon in 1960, as Eisenhower's vice president, having just lost the election to John F. Kennedy, had to preside in the electoral count over his own defeat. I recommend people watching. This is only about three minutes long. And Richard Nixon goes through this ritual and then says, because the situation is so unusual, I would like to ask consent if I can add a few personal words, because that's not in the script. And then he makes a short speech in which he says, I hope the men in the Kremlin are watching what just happened here today. Now, Richard Nixon, we all know, was a person capable of great misconduct, but with the eyes of the world on him. He thought the most important thing he could say was a Cold War message about, about the sacredness of American democracy, the continuity of American institutions, and the non interference in American elections. That was something he wanted to say to the world because in 1960 it seemed important and in 2020 it obviously didn't seem important. And so there are lots of people, not just one bad president, but lots of people went along with an idea to try to actually overthrow an election in a way that Richard Nixon would not do in 1960.
- [49:02]
Host (jvl)
All very well said, David. Thank you as always for coming and being with us. It is an honor and privilege to have you. Thank you to all you guys listening for letting me sit in for Tim. Sarah will be back in the big chair tomorrow. Good luck, America. It's gonna have to be a different man down May change me but I can't trace. The Bork podcast is brought to you thanks to the work of lead producer Katie Cooper, associate producer Ansley Skipper, and with video editing by Katie Lutz and audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.