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Trump Administration is SLIDING Toward DICTATORSHIP w: Robert Kagan | Bulwark On Sunday
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- [01:30]
Ryan Seacrest
Hi, I'm Bill Kristol, Editor at large of the Bulwark. Thanks for joining us. Bulwark on Sunday and my guest today is my friend Bob Kagan, contributing Editor to the Atlantic, Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, author of very important first two volumes of what will be three volumes? Four or five? I don't know, History of America.
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Bob Kagan
Depends how long I live.
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Ryan Seacrest
Yeah, must really excellent books and then in 2024 of a shorter book on anti liberalism in America which really stands up well and needs to be read today. Needed to be read a year ago but not everyone did so they should read it today. And and actually for the purposes of Ted, I also mentioned an article you wrote about in November 2023 that caused a bit of a uproar when you said a Trump dictatorship in America could be coming, and people didn't like the fact that you were both, well, you thought that. And they used the term dictatorship. So here we are on, what, February 23, 2025, a month into the Trump presidency, and it's looking kind of dictatorial, huh?
- [02:33]
Bob Kagan
Well, I, yeah, I would say so. Although I, I noticed that people seem to be very confused about whether that's what's happening or not. So that was part of the thing I couldn't predict, is that even when the efforts would be clearly made to impose a dictatorship, that we would spend a lot of time arguing about what was actually happening. So.
- [02:52]
Ryan Seacrest
So what did you tell me? I guess I don't want you to say, like, you know, I would. You were right or something, but, I mean, what, what did you see a year plus ago and what are you seeing today? That, that sort of, I think, saved you a little bit from everyone up from a lot of people in good faith, you know, just saying, oh, my God, it's, it's surprising. It's worse than I thought. I mean, what, what, what was your, what was your, what were you looking at?
- [03:12]
Bob Kagan
Well, a lot of it is just about, you know, some basic truths about power and the fact that, you know, it was pretty clear that Trump was going to get the nomination. Of course, at the time, people were still hoping he wasn't going to get the nomination, but it was pretty clear that he was. And then once he got the nomination, his power would begin to snowball. Republicans who'd been criticizing him would stop criticizing him and fall into line. I think I even predicted that businesses would start bending the knee in advance, because, of course, what choice, and to some extent, what choice do they have? If he's gonna be the most powerful man in America, then they have to start getting right with him. And of course, they did do that. You know, really, the only wild card was whether he was gonna win the election. And I couldn't be sure. We couldn't be sure he was gonna win the election certainly back in December of 2023. But if he did win the election, I worried that there would be no constraints on his power at that point, because he would have basically already have defied the courts. He would have a majority in Congress. The Congress was already, Republican Party was already making it clear that they were going to follow him no matter where he went and support him because they were afraid of his supporters. And at that point, what would the checks be? And so whether, you know, even if he was Someone who was not interested in grabbing power, the availability of power to someone like that. He was going to be the most unconstrained president in our history. And that includes people like Franklin Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln. And so that's, and that's kind of where we are. And he's using that power now. Now, of course, the power comes from the fact that everybody accommodates. He doesn't actually, he didn't actually have all this power until it was given to him. That's the thing that I think we tend to miss. It's not, you know, what are the guardrails. The guardrails were us, the guardrails were Congress, the guardrails were the people. The institutions didn't, you know, snap into place automatically. So, and it, and it continues to be the case that what he's able to do is because people are letting him do it and most importantly, the Republican Congress is letting him do it.
- [05:15]
Ryan Seacrest
Yeah. I think one of the insights you had back then, and this really, you know, Putin, correct. Is the momentum he would get from having won the election. Well, both the nomination, of course, and all that. But then the election just that people had a static view of, okay, well, he's still not, you know, what if he wins by a couple of points? But he still will only won by a couple of points and the margins in Congress will be narrow, as they did turn out to be. And you know, first term he kind of snuck in and didn't succeed in doing so many things. I think the momentum he had from, from the whole thing, from the comeback, from surviving January 6th, from benefiting conceivably, or at least turning around the narrative on January 6th. I mean, I think a lot of people on the pro democracy side didn't quite appreciate how just how strong he would be or how strong he could be having winning the second time. It's very different from winning the first time.
- [06:13]
Bob Kagan
Yeah, well, I just think we are so used to thinking about things in a sort of normal way or the way we analyze our, our own country, I think is also somewhat flawed. I mean, for one thing, we seem to be obsessed with everything as an economic answer. It's the economy, stupid. So every way people. So I think we haven't understood his movement from the beginning. That's what I attempted to get into in the book that I wrote, Rebellion last year, which is this movement is not about economics. And so all the post mortem discussion about what happened in the election, which is about how the Democrats lost the working class, et cetera, which has weakened the Democratic Party considerably in fighting. This is because we're not. We're just not used to saying that there's an ideological conflict in this country. That's the part of it that I think we, and I would say still don't understand, even though it's now apparent both domestically and in foreign policy that this is a battle over the fundamental nature of our country. And as I tried to point out, it's a battle that's been going on since the founding. But this is the first time that a truly, a movement that is truly dedicated to changing the Founders system. This is the thing that I think, you know, it's the founder system that they object to. Some are very frank about this, by the way. Russell Vaught is very frank about wanting to change the founder system. And I just think the press and our intellectual class is just, for whatever reason ill equipped or unwilling to want to see that that is what we're having, which is a fundamental ideological clash in this country.
- [07:43]
Ryan Seacrest
I mean, you used the term in the book anti liberalism and I think that was pretty, as you say in the book, maybe you always said to me, anyway, everyone else is talking at the time about illiberalism and you wanted to make the point that no, it's a real opposition to liberalism. Liberalism broadly understood. It's American liberal democracy.
- [08:02]
Bob Kagan
Liberalism understood as. Liberalism understood as what the Founders principles are, which is to say liberalism, which is about defense of individual rights primarily. And of course, you know, if you think about American history, the south did not agree that everybody had equal rights. They in fact argued against the Declaration of Independence principles very openly. That was a huge part of the country. And then in the Reconstruction era, that was a total victory for anti liberal, which is to say anti the Founders principles. Government throughout the South. When, you know, when the civil rights movement began in the 1950s, the south was pretty much ready to secede again. Eisenhower had to send troops to Little Rock, Arkansas. And so I don't know where we thought all those people went or the people who think like that went, but it turns out that where they went is into the Republican Party and have.
- [08:57]
Ryan Seacrest
Now taken it over in the 1920s. I think I was just thinking another moment on the history. I was very struck by that part of your book, the degree of just all out anti liberalism in the post World War I.
- [09:12]
Bob Kagan
Yeah, I mean we tend to think about the 1920s as, you know, the jazz age and flappers and it's a boom time in the economy and those kind of boring presidents, you know, Hoover and Coolidge and harding. But the 1920s were a very ugly period in American history. They were a real effort by white, primarily white Protestants to sort of get control of a country that they thought they were losing ground in because of vast immigration, the arrival of, you know, the, the growth of the Catholic vote, the, all the immigrants coming in. And, and they really set up, you know, that was the period in which the Klan, the Ku Klux Klan, the second Klan as people refer to it, had millions of followers around the country and was pretty much respectable organization. Politicians thought nothing of speaking at Klan. This was also the period in which, you know, xenophobia was at its height. The anti immigration legislation, 1924 was the most restrictive legislation in the world. It was a high tariff period because it was mostly about being angry at people who were not white Protestants. And so it was. And you know, only the Great Depression and World War II sort of changed all that and basically gave a boost to the Founders original liberalism of a kind that we hadn't seen before. And that has been that liberalism has been dominant until recently. And now we're seeing an anti liberal movement pushing back and trying to undo that. But the thing is, and again it's important, I was reading in the Times today Senator Chris Murphy, who is I think been very brave and outspoken about explaining exactly what's happening. He's been reading Patrick Dineen and if you read Patrick Dineen, you understand that the goal of this is to change the Founders system, not to return to the Founders system because they understand that a system based on protecting individual rights of all people equally is contrary to what their goal is. And I think that's the other thing that people are missing about this. This isn't just a takeover of the government so that Donald Trump can be king, as he calls himself. Although from his point of view that's what it is. But from the people around him, they really do want to refashion America and again they're very explicit about this into a Christian nation. And really what we mean is a white Christian nation primarily. There's a lot of writing about how that's what they want. That's what Russell Vaught talks about and other people. That is what the ultimate goal is. The first goal is to destroy the system, take it over. The second goal will be to refashion America in an anti liberal, as I say, you know, to turn it into a white Christian country.
- [12:01]
Ryan Seacrest
Yeah, and we've had all these movements of course in our time, so to speak, you know, Buchanan and others and on the right A little bit on the left, some on the left, at times very strong, at other times receding on the left against the founders liberalism. But of course, people always want to give these deep explanations which are true and you've touched on them. But it also, what matters so hugely is that Trump won the presidency in 2016. I mean, he was the first president to embrace this, which is very important in the US the president's quite an important figure. And then he does, then January 6th happens and you think, okay, enough of all that. It was an unfortunate parenthesis in American history. You got to come back from that to win the nomination, to win the presidency again, to reverse the judgment on January 6, to pardon the January 6 rioters, to have Cash Patel, this FBI director who was part of January 6, et cetera, et cetera. I mean, the degree to which that changes. We're not in the same situation when you've got the president and a whole administration that's basically on the anti liberal course. I mean, you mentioned the word power several times when we were talking the first few minutes of our conversation. I do think that's one problem with an awful lot of the analysis. In a funny way, it's too, the right word is intellectual or, you know, too much about the, you know, I don't know, these ideas, they don't really stand up and stuff. And it sort of just misses the importance of the power dynamics. And the anti liberals have a lot of power. Right?
- [13:25]
Bob Kagan
I mean, you know, if you go look at any dictatorship around the world or historically, the, the key thing in order to have a dictatorship is to control what in other countries they refer to as the power ministries. And basically the power ministries are the military, the domestic sort of law enforcement, what in other countries are called the Interior Ministry, but which we call the FBI and Justice Department. And then there's the intelligence community. Those are three, those are the three power ministries. That's what Vladimir Putin relies on. And so a lot of people are like watching what's happening now in the Pentagon and the State Department and the CIA and the FBI, and they're sort of, well, Trump wants to have, I read in the papers, reading the Washington Post, Trump wants to have everything in line with his policies. But this will ultimately be about policy. But in the first instance, it's about power. And it's, it's important for what Trump wants to do that he has a military that is loyal to him personally. And that's what's going to happen in the Pentagon. He's going to everybody's going to have to take a test. And you know, when you, when people are trying to get a job in the administration now, they have to basically say they agree that the 2020 election was stolen. That's sort of the key, one of the key sort of loyalty tests. So you're going to have a Pentagon filled with military people who have agreed that 2020 was a fraudulent election that Donald Trump actually won. That's going to be our military now. And so, you know, that is the, he controls all three of the power ministries. And we've been living through a period where I think if there had been any bravery of even the most minor kind by Republican senators in particular, he wouldn't be able to do these things. But I'm afraid that, you know, I know there's resistance growing in the United States now, but what I'm worried about is that by the time that resistance reaches the point where people say, well, we really shouldn't be doing this anymore, it'll be over. Trump will already have all the power and then it won't matter what Congress thinks and it won't matter what the Supreme Court does. And that is how, that is how you have dictatorships. He's basically going to sideline and is in the process of sidelining the other two branches of government. There's a reason the founders set up three branches of government and there was one reason alone. It was to prevent tyranny. The reason he gave Congress the power of the purse was not because they thought Congress would be better at spending the money. It was to prevent tyranny. That's what they learned from their revolution. And so the degree to which Congress is now unconstitutionally ceding its authority over control of the spending of money is basically making it possible for Trump to be, you know, to rule this country by himself without recourse to any other institution in this nation.
- [16:24]
Ryan Seacrest
I mean, just a couple of questions. Let me ask my Defense Department quickly since that was so much in the news Friday night with a firing of, of General Brown and the bringing in of a three star retired three star General Kane and, and the firing of the Jags. You at the time we talked that night, that evening and you know, I think you were very insistent and I think correctly so that this is more about, this isn't about, oh, he doesn't like, you know, CQ Brown because he was Biden's choice and he likes this other guy because he met him once in Iraq. I mean, that's not the right way to think about it. And it is much More fundamental what's, what's happening there. I mean, say word more about that, I think, and maybe about Patel at the FBI. People, again, are very focused. I mean, it's, understand. Well, you focus on the personalities and the, you know, and not a little less on the under. What's going on more fundamentally, I guess. And then I want to talk about Congress as well. Yeah.
- [17:14]
Bob Kagan
I mean, the key thing is not who he hired to replace Brown. The key thing is the firing and all the firings, because the message is what's important. The message is if you don't get in line, you're going to be fired. And in fact, they are going to fire people who they think may not be in line before they even have a chance to not be in line. So and so who was put in place. We can already see that people who are in cabinet positions clearly have no authority over anything that's happening, including their own department. I think that's pretty clear of the State Department. I don't think Marco Rubio has any authority really to do very much. And he certainly is not making policy if we understand what we once thought his policy views were. And so I'm not sure it matters who holds these positions because all the power is going to be consolidated in the White House. That's what the purpose.
- [18:04]
Ryan Seacrest
Or to continue to hold those positions. They have to utterly succumb to Trump so that whatever Rubio thought a few years ago or a few months ago doesn't really matter because he, if he, I mean, it would matter if he quit, I suppose, but it won't matter as long as he wants the job. And I kind of think that's. People are missing that side of it. They look at people's backgrounds and bios and sometimes take a little bit of heart, but that's like taking heart from the fact that Elise Stefanik was a friend of ours 10 years ago and was a hawk on foreign policy and a pro democracy. You know, bush Republican, Bush, McCain Republican.
- [18:33]
Bob Kagan
Yeah, we should. We're too focused on personalities and, you know, we're used to that. That's the, that's the game, you know, the press, I have to say, and I don't like beating on the press. I know everybody's been beating on the press for years, etcetera, And I, and I, and I sympathize with that. But they really cannot adjust to what's happening. And I think their tendencies, which are admirable, by the way, I mean, it is. Makes American journalism great. Is this sort of almost bending over Backwards, to sort of at least present the other side of an argument. But in this case, I think they are, they're ill equipped now to really talk about what's, what's happening because it doesn't fit the journalistic param, the parameters of how you talk as a journalist, you know, and so we're just, we're not seeing the key thing, which is, which is the exercise of power. That, that is, that's what's at stake here. And again, I worry, I know you want to talk about Congress, but I worry that, you know, the moment when con, like right now, I feel like it's still the case that if four senators, four Republican senators, that's all it takes, stood up and said, no, we're not, this is not good, we're not going to support this, we're not going to fund it, then they would force him at this moment to say, well, I'm not going to pay any more attention to Congress. I don't think he's ready to, I'm not sure he's ready to quite do that yet. But there's going to come a time where it won't matter when, when the four senators, if they ever do, which I doubt they ever will, but if they ever summon the courage to oppose Trump, it might be the point at which it doesn't matter anymore because as I say, he'll have all the relevant power in a, in a nation in order to rule without a legislature, rule without the courts, etc.
- [20:05]
Ryan Seacrest
No, that's what, that's all I wanted to say about Congress is it's striking when you think about it that way. What would it take four senators? Actually two or three House members, conceivably. Right. And what are we asking them to do exactly? It's not, you know, they're not standing in front of a tank, it's in Emmett Square. They're casting votes, which incidentally, they may pay a political price where they may not even. Because these senators aren't up for, for four or six years in some cases and retiring and stuff. I mean, it's really not.
- [20:32]
Bob Kagan
They're almost all millionaires, so they would have to. The price that they face if they stand up to Trump right now is that they would have to go back to being normal millionaire citizens. You know, that's intolerable for them. The thought of not being a senator is so impossible for these people that they are unwilling to defend, by the way, the constitutional position that gives them any power whatsoever. So now they're just in an honorific I mean, they're gonna, they can, they can win elections and, but they have no influence over anybody and. But they're willing to pay that price. It's the shameful. It's unbelievably shameful when you think about the risks that our founders, many of our founders took. You know, Alexander Hamilton, like, fought in the war. You know, he was a, he was a, he was a soldier. And they all risked their lives. And we remember, you know, Patrick Hannamy, give me liberty or give me death. These people, they just have to go back to being normal citizens. That's the only risk they're taking right now. Unless we're at the point where. I know some of them are worried about the physical risk, but in some respects that's even worse. You know, you have to be. Have a modicum of bravery in a situation like this. And it's precisely the lack of really any bravery that is. Makes Trump pop again. Trump could not do this, what he's doing, unless he was actively permitted to do it. And, and that, and that, unfortunately, is what Congress is doing. And you get back to the election question again. You know, we clearly, it is true that our educational system has failed us when it's pretty clear that not only members of Congress, but journalists as well, think that there is some legitimacy to saying that, well, this is. The people voted. They voted for Donald Trump. And without understanding that the founders were pretty clear on that. Not pretty clear. They were entirely clear, which was that the voters have no right to ignore the Constitution either. They can't vote to tell Congress that they no longer should have the power of the purse. That. That's not a, you know, the Constitution. The founders created the Constitution, it's the precursor to government. It's. It exists apart from the people, because they didn't. They knew the people couldn't necessarily be trusted to protect their own rights. That's what they were worried about. And so all that I was reading in Politico, somebody was saying, well, you know, the power of the purse to the president. Mike Johnson does not have the right to cede the power of the purse to the president. That is an unconstitutional act, it seems to me. So. But there's, again, I think there's just, for all kinds of reasons we can get into. There's just a lack of clarity about the things that I think are pretty clear.
- [23:21]
Ryan Seacrest
Right. I mean, the guardrails. The Constitution is the guardrails of the guardrails. And now it still needs to be enforced. The founders thought a lot about, also well, okay. Parchment barriers don't enforce themselves. So we're going to have ambition against ambition and we're going to have an extended republic and we're going to have separation of powers. As you said, the ambition against ambition seems to have totally collapsed on the part of members of Congress. They're not defending their own branch. The party comes first. The party loyalty. But even not even party loyalty, just personal loyalty and fear of Trump. Right. What about the international side, something you've obviously spent most of your career studying and participating in? I mean, how the relationship of the anti liberalism abroad and at home. I'm interested by what you think of that. Gary Kasparov said on the panel I was on with him at the principal's first conference yesterday that it's not that we. Someone's asked a question, you know. Well, meaning, you know, I don't really understand the America. First off, what is it? What is it? You know, we seem to be checking out of our responsibilities in the world. And he was, no, we're not checking out, we're switching sides. I mean, he was very insistent on this, which I think is maybe correct. Maybe. What do you would talk a little bit about? Ukraine in general, but also. Yeah, Ukraine and the general stance of the Trump administration and foreign policy.
- [24:34]
Bob Kagan
Yeah, I think it, you know, it was a mistake. I actually wrote about this in 2018 and you know, I feel like I recycle the article again. It was a mistake to think that the alternative to the internationalism of the post war period was isolationism. I don't think that this is an isolationist foreign policy. And I also, by the way, think we all owe an apology to the America First Committee because America first was not like this. They did not want to. They really wanted to have nothing to do with the world. They were not trying to sell anti liberalism as a global doctrine, even though they themselves may have been maybe some of them somewhat anti liberal, but they really were about Fortress America and pulling back to the Western hemisphere. This administration is ideologically driven in foreign policy in much the same way that American foreign policy was ideologically driven throughout much of its history, but certainly after World War II in a pro liberal direction. Now they are ideologically committed in a foreign policy in an anti liberal direction. So for instance, they're horrified, apparently, like the National Endowment for Democracy for meddling in the affairs of other internal affairs of other nations, while the administration right now is actively interfering in the internal affairs of other nations, such as when Vice President Vance goes and gives a boost to the far right. AfD party in Germany against the sitting power. So apparently the problem is it's not meddling in foreign affairs, in internal affairs. It's meddling on behalf of democracy or liberalism as opposed to meddling on behalf of anti liberalism, which I think is what we're seeing. And so we've known for a long time that this movement is very sympathetic to Vladimir Putin. Vladimir Putin presents himself as the quintessential anti liberal leader. He wants to roll back liberalism too. And they have, you know, Tucker Carlson and others have been very open in their approval of Vladimir Putin. So I don't know why. You know, it is shocking that we could change sides in the middle of a war, but it is not shocking if you look at the background of these people. So it's important again on both domestic, foreign, domestic and foreign policy to understand the ideological roots of this. It's hard to, because it's hard to think of Trump as an ideologue and I don't think he is. But the people around him, and he is certainly mouthing their views are, are definitely on a global anti liberal crusade.
- [27:19]
Ryan Seacrest
Yeah. And then as you say, each of the things is shocking. So it's because you can't say, don't be shocked. I mean, you know, I mean with the idea that we having, with the rest of the world supported a resolution on the anniversary, previous anniversaries of the invasion of Ukraine, the all out invasion of Ukraine, condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Now we don't want to do that at the UN this and you read that and you think, God, we're like, the Europeans are willing to do it. I mean the people who over decades we've always found a little hesitant to stand up, everyone else is willing to do it and we're saying, nope, just call for peace. No, no, no, no, no judgment here about what Russia did. Then this guy Witkoff, who's Trump's buddy, the negotiator, was on TV this morning a few saying, well, you know, just talk about NATO, Ukraine joining NATO. That that really did provoke, that could have, well, it provoked the war. But I'm not going to criticize anything about what Russia's done and our negotiating position right now, the peace, our peace position is not, I mean it would be somewhat dishonorable in my view to be asking equal things, let's say of Russia and Ukraine in terms of concessions for peace because one is the aggressor, one isn't and so forth. But, but we're not asking equal things. Right. All the asks are from Ukraine. Isn't that right? I mean.
- [28:25]
Bob Kagan
Yep. Yeah. No, I mean, you know, including picking up on one of Putin's central points, which is calling for elections and basically the removal of the, of the Zelensky government. You know, what Putin wants, and again, we need to be very clear about this. Putin is not interested in an independent Ukraine of any variety. Putin wants to end this when this war ends. He wants to be in complete control of Ukraine. Whether he has an elected stooge in place in Ukraine to do things for him, or whether they simply take over the Russians take over and then install somebody. I, I don't, you know, whichever of those is going to be. But, but to, to pick up one of his critical and, and clearly unacceptable demands and make that one of our demands is a, is a pretty striking thing. And, and then this other, you know, this $500 billion mineral deal is really, it's one of the most shameful. I, it's hard to imagine a more shameful suggestion made by an American administration that I can imagine. And because, you know, here's a country that's, you know, a sovereign country whose sovereignty was recognized. It's worth remembering Moscow recognized Ukraine's sovereignty years and years and years ago. It's not like they didn't think Moscow didn't accept that Ukraine was an independent country. So here's an independent country, democracy, being invaded by a brutal autocrat. And our answer to that is, why don't you give us $500 billion for, for nothing, by the way, in some vague sense that this will make them committed to Ukraine. But they're not going to spell out how. It's pretty, it's, it's, it's, it's pretty amazing that we could be in a place where we would do something like that. And also, what for? Why? Because we need the $500 billion. What for what to make, Cut the taxes so that the oligarchs, Elon Musk and Jamie Dimon can get their tax cuts. Is that what the, you know, is that what the money's for?
- [30:27]
Ryan Seacrest
You know, it's not even to guarantee the next tranche or tranches of aid to Ukraine. I mean, that's what's so, I mean, it's so shameful on 8, on so many levels, but just even as a kind of, okay, we're greed. Trump is greedy and repulsive and he wants to be paid off for helping Ukraine, but he's not even being paid. He's not even saying he's going to help Ukraine if he's Paid off. He just wants to be paid off, I guess. You know, it's a lot of, some.
- [30:49]
Bob Kagan
Of, it's like, I could see a lot of it is anger. You know, Zelensky had the nerve to cross Trump by suggesting that he was in a misinformation or disinformation zone. And then Trump got angry at him. And everybody told Zelensky, oh, you shouldn't get Trump angry, because then he'll do things like switch sides in the greatest conflict that is going on in the world. And by the way, that is a real indication of what it means to have a king. The whims of the king become policy immediately and then have to be defended by all the courtiers. They have to, whatever they may privately think, they have to sound like what the king wants them to sound like. And so that's why I think when they were negotiating the G7 statement and taking out everything, I don't even know if that was a directive from Trump. That was sort of them realizing they better be careful and not say anything negative about Russia, because that was the signal that was being sent by the president and others.
- [31:49]
Ryan Seacrest
Yeah. So depressing. And we, this panel yesterday, we, I, I ended, I mean, everyone was, it was pretty dark, and everyone was giving good analysis, I thought, because far off, Tom Nichols, I did my bit, but. And then there was a little bit of, okay, give us a moment of hope. And so we each did our one minute of hope, you know, and, and I made your point about it both very gloomy, but on the other hand, it wouldn't take that many senators and members of the House now at least to check to insist on aid for Ukraine before they vote for March 14th budget resolution, you know, continuing resolution or appropriations bill. I mean, it wouldn't. There are members, Republican members of both bodies who genuinely, I think, care about Ukraine, who've done a lot of work on it, who've put some political capital on the line for it, and that's all they have to say. That's they're fine with all Trump's other priorities. They can say, you know, but just, I just, we just need to make sure we don't let Ukraine be, you know, lose and be terrible circumstances that would follow from that to Putin. And, But I don't know, that seems, Anyway, so there's a little bit of hope. But then I did point out at the end that I couldn't resist that. Of course, John McCain, you and I knew, well and admired, used to love to say that the, it's always, it's always darkest before it turns pitch black. Yeah, give us, give us a non pitch black ending here to this.
- [33:11]
Bob Kagan
Oh, no, look, I mean, again, this isn't. I don't think we've quite reached the point of no return. But, but, and there is a very simple thing that everybody can do. Everybody should be deluging the representatives offices with, with complaints and concerns. I mean, we read about, I've read about, you know, there were town meetings that some of these Republican congressmen go back to, and they're being yelled at and, but I think that this ought to be, you know, if everybody says, well, what can I do? Well, what you can do is start making it clear in the way that matters. And you know what that's like. You know, if you want to complain about property taxes, you know what to do. So let's pretend that this is as important as property taxes. And I think it's important because at the end of the day, there is a vulnerability, at least until Trump has so much power that he doesn't have to care anymore, which we're heading toward. But until then, there is a vulnerability that members of Congress, their number one fear is not being reelected. And so you've got to put political pressure on them to show some, a tiny, tiny, tiny bit of courage to oppose Trump. By the way, there are indications so far that people who do push back on Trump find that then the administration does begin to back down. So there have been some various areas where some of the cuts have cut the too deep in certain constituencies that maybe they're a little worried about. And when those constituents have pushed back, they've, they've changed the system. And so, you know, we're just sitting here assuming that they're unstoppable. And I think, you know, I don't believe that's true yet. And so I think that this is the time if, if ever you were going to do something as a citizen to save your country, this is your time. And you don't have to do anything other than place a phone call, write a letter, go to a protest, go to a legal protest. Everything can be done legally, but people are sort of sitting around going. Half of them don't understand even what's happening. I mean, that that's part of the problem, I find, is that people just don't understand the seriousness of what's occurring. And I don't know what that's, you know, again, I feel like that's a failure of our educational system or our civic virtue or what have you. But I think Enough people are being affected by it now and will be affected by it that if they just do what citizens are supposed to do and really give their elected officials a hard time, you don't know what effect that might have.
- [35:38]
Ryan Seacrest
Well said. Well said and eloquently said. So, Bob, thanks. And hopefully, and I think people, yeah, people can act. And if Republican members of Congress think they'll pay a price and other Republicans, incidentally, people in the administration, I think also be a little more inclined to resist. I mean, it's just amazing. Like, and I'll just say I was at this again at the conference day talking to a couple actually of civil servants who just came, I mean, on their own time. Obviously they are, they were talking about how they're trying to resist and one of them was going to accept a buyout and she was going to just make them fire her. And you know, she didn't care if it hurt her pension a little bit. I guess different pension ranges for fired as opposed to you resign. I don't, didn't fully understand it. Retire. And I admired what she was saying and I just wish that people more, you know, who are, as you say, millionaires and, and who are, do not taking any risks, you know, in terms of their really their personal well being and standing up to Trump would do so. But I think, yeah, if citizens really can make a difference, it's as you say, it's not, we're not yet at a time of where it becomes so hopeless. And so those town halls are a little encouraging. So anyway, thank you for ending on a somewhat upbeat note. That was good.
- [36:46]
Bob Kagan
I did my best.
- [36:47]
Ryan Seacrest
Truthful, actually. Truthfully. So. So, Bob, thanks for joining me here on the bull market Sunday.
- [36:53]
Bob Kagan
Thank you.
- [36:58]
Ryan Seacrest
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- [37:25]
Bob Kagan
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- [37:25]
Ryan Seacrest
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- [37:26]
Bob Kagan
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