Loading summary
Transcript1 lines
- [00:34]
A
It was a 2% moral victory, I think. Yeah, it's good to be here. It's. Thanks for having me. It's good to see you again. It's good to talk. How are things in Virginia? So there's not sort of the sort of freaking out that you're seeing in New Jersey or anything like that. So it sort of came out of the, the headlines that we all saw earlier this week when the, the national debt, I think, went up to $38 trillion. And, and more than that, it seems like we're adding to the debt at a faster clip than we ever have before and also faster than anyone expected. And I, I do think it's the case that right now and for a long time, Americans haven't really cared about the gap between our revenues and our expenditures and what that's doing to the debt. But eventually we're going to care. And so I was trying to sort of think through. You could just write a piece saying, hey, guys, these are the dangers. But it didn't really seem like that would hook people the way I wanted to hook them. So I decided to write it sort of as a retrospective, something in the New York Times or maybe in the Economist from the future 2039, sort of looking back over what the consequences of this might be, not just economically, but also in terms of our foreign policy, the rest of the world, and also our domestic politics, because this can't go on forever. And eventually something that can't go on forever is going to stop. And that's sort of just laid out some scenarios for that. I, it was sort of the worst case scenario. But then talking to some people and then Claire Balinski, your former colleague at the Weekly Standard, also wrote that she doesn't think it's a tail, a tail end scenario. She thinks it's sort of realistic and sort of right there in the middle of the bell curve. So, yeah, that was a background to it. Well, they do overlap. And I was, for some reason earlier this week, maybe it was the Rest Is History podcast or something, but I was thinking about, I was reading about or listening to something about the United kingdom in the 1970s whenever they were very much the Sick man of Europe. And I think, yeah, they had to ask for an IMF bailout, I believe. And then I don't think he'll mind me using his name here, but I was texting with Kevin Williamson, formerly at National Review, now at the Dispatch. I was like, what is going to happen if the United States has to ask for an IMF bailout. And he pointed out correctly that it just wouldn't happen. There's not enough money in the world. We're not like the United kingdom in the 1970s. So that, that's what got me thinking. And so if, if there's nobody, you know, the Calvary is not sort of coming to save us. In this sort of scenario where the bond market sort of revolt, they would want our political system to finally show that there was a plan to bring revenues and expenditures into line. And that's going to be painful if it gets to that point. It's, it's sort of like on a much bigger scale, the bond market's revolting against Liz Truss a few years ago when she came out with her sort of insane tax plan and the bond market said, no, this is going to explode the deficit. You can't do this. And that led, that led to the end of Liz Truss. So in this scenario, it's going to be something painful and it's going to be a combination of tax rises and expendit and spending cuts, which leads to the Pax Americana part of this, because it's a lot easier to cut the military than it is to cut entitlement spending or health care spending. And they're going to do that. I mean, obviously nothing's going to be easy. Military bases will be upset and military families will be upset, but in this sort of scenario, they're going to cut the Pentagon. Once you cut the Pentagon, you cut bases and are our credibility in places like Europe and Eastern Asia. And then it's a short, a short jump from that to maybe some bad things happening on the Korean Peninsula, maybe NATO really falling apart, maybe Russia, you know, making moves on the Baltics and then we're off to the races in terms of the, the domestic political, you know, the dangerous thing about Trump. There are a lot of dangerous things about Trump, but I'm very much worried about precedence. Precedence. This guy is a clown. He's a clown with the flamethrower. He's very much a clown. It's very much correct that he's probably not disciplined enough to be, I don't know, a sort of a Hitler figure or something like that. He's not smart enough either. But every. But what about the next guy? What about the guy who maybe was a general? The guy who is very smart, the guy who's very disciplined, the guy who maybe has parts of the military behind him. He's going to be able to point back to what's happening right now and say Trump set Tax policy, essentially, tariff policy unilaterally. It sounds like he's going to say that he has the ability to set spending policy unilaterally, that he can, I guess, deport people without abs corpus, you know, you know, all these things. And that's why we need to worry about it today. Even if the man himself has soup for grains, which he does structure it. Yeah. And it's, it's, it's all very scary because it's not just that we can't sort of get our, our spending or taxing under control, but it's also just, I mean, the entire political system seems to be sort of just collapsing around us. And I don't know. I'm in a very dark place. I don't, I don't know if you are. I know you're kind of optimistic about Virginia in the, in the near term future, but I'm, I'm pretty pessimistic about how this is all going to work out. It seems like our politics and maybe our economy eventually are just, just going to collapse. So you didn't think it was too over the top. You thought that maybe it was actually in pushing it out that far syndrome is the only way to approach this moment. American. It. I think that's right. I've been spending a lot of time, and I might try to write about this, is that most people have never really paid attention to politics. Most people are just getting on with their lives and that's been the case for a long time and it's the case right now. What I'm concerned about is it seems like elites, however you define that, don't really understand what time it is, to use the, the trendy right wing phrase right now. Some of them do, but I feel like a lot of like it. Do you think the Democratic Party, not just Joe Biden himself, but do you think the Democratic Party really Understood in late 2023, early 2024, how high the stakes were? Because it seemed like a lot of them really weren't acting like it. You were very brave, if that's a word to use, and A.B. stoddard and a few others saying it, it can't be Biden. It's going to be a disaster if it's Biden. But everybody just sort of beyond the president himself, everybody just sort of acted like this was just another election. And it, you know, I, I'm not really sure. It kind of seems like a lot of the Democratic Party, the opposition, the God forsaken Democratic Party that's supposed to help us get out of this moment. Sort of approaching the midterms in a very similar way. As if democracy. Yeah. As if we're still a functioning republic. And I, I don't think we are. I mean, are there any. There's a little bit of it, but is there creative thinking about how to win Senate seats and you that so do you think so? I wrote in one of my substack pieces that I've been in Easy Date for a long time now. Like, basically, if Trump's the nominee, then I'm going to vote for the Democrat. I'm, I've very much bought into this, this democracy argument. There's no Kings argument before it was even called the no kings argument. And I've been out to a number of marches, which is crazy for me. I'm not a march kind of guy, but I've been out there. Do you think just political gravity and sort of just the natural rhythm of American life, plus the anti tyranny message is going to be enough, or do you think Democrats need to speak more broadly about what they stand for? Because a lot of my thought right now is sort of about the Democratic Party or the anti maga coalition, what kind of an agenda they need beyond just, you know, pro democracy type stuff we'll need? I mean, do you think that's going to be enough to get us out of this moment? If it is, that's great. Yeah. And it's funny, I, this what you were just saying that this other Democrat was saying, I mean, we are just used to the military being deployed to American cities now. That playbook that Trump or Miller whatnot like that has worked. It probably. I don't think it would even make the front page if like active duty military were sent to, I don't know, pick your major American cities. I mean, that is a big deal. And to your point, we're only nine months into this, so. Yeah, I mean, who knows how to. Yeah. And actually, I mean on this we can talk about foreign policy or the military or whatnot, but I mean, I've, I fully embrace my Trump derangement syndrome, and I encourage everybody else to fully embrace it as well. And what I'm really worried about is I'm worried about active duty military being deployed to blue areas to sort of screw around with the midterms. I'm worried about, you know, very aggressive redistricting the way we've seen in Texas. And I hate to even put this out into the universe, but I'm, I'm worried about political assassinations with A sort of either an explicit promise of a presidential pardon or sort of an implicit promise of a presidential pardon. I mean, I know it sounds insane, but again, only nine months into this, and the guy thinks he's a king, even if he's not smart enough to articulate it that way in his brain, I think he thinks he's a king. And this is sort of the natural progression to this. And I mean, it's crazy to think. Think about how successful he's been versus where he was at the beginning of 2021. At the end of 2020, Napoleon invades Russia, Hitler invades the Soviet Union. Whenever you have success after success after success, it takes a superhuman amount of wisdom to sort of hold back and say, I can't do that next big thing. And I don't think he has that. So, anyway, Trump derangement syndrome, everybody should adopt it. He's got a reptilian mind, comes out of just decades and decades of living in New York City with that, know, hot house media environment, and he just. He couldn't articulate. I don't think he just knows how to push, when to slightly pull back. Maybe the greatest demagogue in American history. It. Yeah. And there. I mean, there is. If people don't realize it yet, they should. There is a whole sort of intellectual Claremont Institute type movement behind this insane man that's trying to put sort of intellectual scaffolding around all this. And they really do want a Red Caesar to crush right now their cultural enemies. But eventually, anybody who dissents politically, it. I was. Yeah, I mean, I. I mean, I was at the principal's first conference earlier this year, as you were, as well, in Washington, D.C. and we were there, I think, the week the Proud Boys were pardoned, and Enrique Terrio, the head of the Proud Boy, showed up and he made trouble, and he was walking around as if he was above the law, which he sort of is. He and his. And his ilk are as well. I mean, this is. This is bad. It. Yeah. Yeah. So it's. You know, as a former Republican, it's. It's hard to say, but it really is true that as far as I can tell, there are only two institutions in American life that have not bent the knee to Donald Trump over the past decade. And the first is the Democratic Party. I mean, we've already talked about the problems with them, but, I mean, they. They've opposed them. You got to give them credit for that. I'm voting for them these days. And the second one is the military. Thank God. Yeah. Okay, sure, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. But even the Federalist Society seems to be slowly bending the knee, so it's only a matter of time anyway. So I'd say the Democratic Party and the military both, but there's no guarantee that the military will, will stay that way. And then that is sort of a nightmare scenario if it sort of becomes, goes from being a, a nonpartisan institution to being sort of some sort of Republican Guard. And I, I wrote in one of my pieces whenever Heth was doing this absolutely dumb generals meeting, that whenever I look at the general officer for I think the 800 or so off general officers and their senior enlisted advisors who are in that room, I think they're probably solid. And it seemed like they were solid and they weren't raised. Rising to the bait to sort of turn that into a partisan political rally. Absolutely disgusting display. But they kept their honor clean. Whenever I look at them though, I really do think about sort of what the Senate GOP conference looked like a decade ago. And over time, people like Bob Corker sort of pushed back a bit. They retired, they got pushed out. Other ones didn't run for re election like Jeff Flake, I believe. And then over time you have a MAGA Senate conference for the, for the GOP and these guys, I mean, people think that whenever you put on a, a military uniform, you're sort of like Superman and it's not the case. They're just regular people who are worried about their careers. Some of them are pretty good, some of them are pretty bad. Most of them are in the middle. But if there's a real concerted effort to promote people whose first loyalty will be to Donald Trump and not the Constitution, just give it time and eventually you will have sort of a MAGA and general officer corps with all the, the, the, the follow on effects of that. I mean, if you're like a one star right now and you want to get a two star, if you're a full bird colonel and you want to become a general or you want to get some sort of command and let's say you have no moral stance or you're just, you're sort of amoral about all this, I mean, you know which way the wind's blowing. A few months ago it was reported that Trump was insisted on having one on one conversations, I think in the Oval Office with a lot of people who were up for maybe four stars, I think. And I can almost guarantee you that in all those conversations the word Constitution was never even uttered. I think he wants his generals as he said. And yeah, I mean, elections have consequences and I think we all just have. I mean there's not. We just have to push back against it, I guess. I don't know. Grass, right. And I mean, Mike Flynn, crazy Mike Flynn, I mean he, he got three stars. Like it's. There's no guarantee that just because you have something shiny on your collar that you're not secretly insane. Right? Well, I mean let's, let's talk about the Caribbean. Let's talk about what's going on. It seems like we're just killing people in the crater. I mean I might as well just. There's no beating around the bush as far as I can tell. It seems like war crimes are happening right now. It seems like we're just using military force without any sort of, certainly without any sort of congressional approval. But also there's no, like in Afghanistan we had positive identification combined with either a hostile intent or a hostile act. Right now there's really not any of that. And I think the military lawyers who are still around are going to have some very difficult questions to answer. And I mean this is. Was it the head of southcom? He's the one who resigned, but he didn't resign immediately. He's sort of waiting to do a turnover. Whereas if, if he's resigning because he's a UN that we're using American force illegally, then why don't you just resign? You've probably got enough of a pension anyway. Who cares about your pension and go give a press conference. It's all very. And also like, is the Secretary of State, is the president so checked out the Secretary of State is going to start a war without him noticing because he's upset about Venezuela. Like things are bad. It. Yeah, I mean we're very much in unchartered territory in a lot of ways here. And, and I will say that I was very low ranking officer, but nonetheless, at every level of being in the military as an officer, it sort of beat into your head the importance of submitting yourself to civilian authority. Civilians are in charge. That's the American people speaking through their elected representatives. And I, I wonder if a number of superior officers have sort of overlearned that lesson. And all these hypotheticals that were put through in OCS and TBS and whatnot, there's never really been a hypothetical about what if you have a criminal president? What if you have a Secretary of Defense who's asking you to do illegal things? This is unchartered territory. And I don't know, I mean there's also, I mean, General Milley, they threatened him to bring him out of retirement and court martial him. These people are ruthless. And I wonder how much of that is just. They just you put in 30 years, 35 years, and you just don't want to put up with that. But surely if this keeps going the way it's going, somebody can step up for the good of the country. You can't take your. Everyone's going to die eventually. You can't take it with you. So it, I guess right now it's just titled Michael Wood. I don't really know. And not her. Good with the clever tie, right? That's right.