A (3:30)

Sir, do you know where you are, sir? Sir. With tears in their eyes, they said, sir. The whole thing is, again, we just came off of a presidency in which everybody was constantly, I mean, how many New York Times stories did we have about the difficulties the President's age. And I don't think I feel like I hear a lot of that from the mainstream media with Trump. But maybe, maybe I'm reading different sources, I don't know, maybe they're different rules for different people. But also there's a lot of this sort of stuff everywhere, right? I mean, you've got a couple of your favorite old man Trump bits.

B (4:03)

Yeah. I mean, this is a thing we've been talking about since the campaign, Right. I mean, like there was all that stuff about the weave and the way that he increasingly kind of can't string sentences together. One fun thing about watching Trump now is it's very difficult to pick apart what's happening because he's old versus what's happening happening because he is Trump and has now sort of succeeded beyond his wildest dreams of before in surrounding himself with people who only give him information he wants to hear. Right. So he's like, he's like drifting outside of reality and outside of sort of the fact based universe for several different reasons. And it's kind of hard to pick them apart. He will, he'll sign executive orders that he's told them to go off and write, like, hey, go write me an executive order that says if you burn an American flag, you get a year in jail. And they'll say, yes, sir, right away, sir. And they'll go off, they'll write him up an executive order, they'll bring it to him. He'll sign it, he'll be like, this is the executive order where if you burn the American flag, you get a year in jail. The executive order doesn't say anything like that. But, you know, it's. It's. It's just fine. It's just he's. He's having a good time, you know, living his life around the people that he's with. And so, like, when. When he seems to be sort of, like, just drifting. This is a. This is a sort of unique example because it very plainly is just like, just. Just having no idea what's going on in sort of the ordinary way, like, not sure where to walk or where to stand or one other thing on the saluting. Sorry, I'm rambling. You mentioned the. The. The salute. And my understanding of this clip and of sort of the general protocols is that these are, you know, Japanese troops in this room. Like, that's. That's. These are not US Service members, which is important for the salute because, like, you know, when. When the president encounters our service members, he salutes when, you know, it'd be perfectly appropriate for him to do that during. During the national anthem or whatever, when our soldiers. When U.S. service members are playing the national anthem. But this is. This is, you know, a welcome reception from the Japanese government with their troops. Their troops playing our national anthem. Yes, but like, with our flag there. But it's just like, you know, for. For Donald Trump, you know, what's the point of a troop? The point of a troop is to, like, pay him honor and pay him obedience. And whether that's their troop or our troop, it's all basically the same thing, as long as they are, like, you know, saluting him and playing him the national anthem and all those sorts of things. So you go right to the salute. It's. It's all the same to him.

A (6:14)

It's very hugging. The flag vibes. And remember those days.

B (6:19)

That was good. That was good. We should do that more often.

C (6:21)

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A (7:43)

All sorts of interesting things here. The Prime Minister Takaichi is a, a ultra conservative in Japan and that creates all sorts of interesting cleavages because she has some views which members of the MAGA base, certain members of the MAGA base might be sympathetic with. For instance, she's not entirely sure that the Japanese were the bad guys in World War II. You know, I, I don't know if World War II revisionism is solely on the American right built around exonerating Hitler or if it also exonerates the Japanese. Maybe because the Japanese people aren't white. It's fine with saying the Japanese are the bad guys. I don't, I know again I'm not deep in, to the, that that groper subculture maybe. Do you know the answer to this? Are they.

B (8:35)

My, my somewhat more steel Manny speculation would be that, that you know, a lot of that World War II revisionism has like a load bearing. Pillar of that is the idea that like you know, Germany got a really raw deal coming out of World War I and all that stuff. And, and it's a lot harder to construct that argument, you know, for Japan, which just very obviously was like a first mover aggressor in World War II both to their west and to their east. I mean they pretty famously brought us into the war by hitting Pearl harbor out of nowhere. So, so I have not seen. I think it would be kind of hard for or what's that guy martyr made? Tucker Carlson's favorite Nazi sympathetic historian. I would be interested to see what he had to say about that. But I kind of doubt that he is quite as sort of like Japan, like Hirohito curious as he is Hitler curious.

A (9:24)

My guess is he's not because again, they do have a different skin color.

B (9:27)

There is that also.

A (9:28)

I think that's probably the dispositive part of it. But the other thing is she is interested in altering the charter which prevents them from having anything other than a self defense force. This is, I mean, this is interesting because she is seen as being a, whatever the Japanese version of Trump is, which is to say nothing like Trump, but, you know, more considerably more conservative than, than the average Japanese prime minister. But that leads her into the place of understanding that America is no longer a reliable ally in the region. And so Japan's got to chart their own course, which is really interesting. Right. So she, she's in the place where she, she is superficially trying to strengthen Japanese American relationships, but while doing all the things that one would do if you realize that you couldn't count on the Americans at all and at some point you're going to have to deal with the Chinese on your own.

B (10:24)

Yeah.

A (10:25)

Which is wild. Again, all the, the different internal contradictions of Trumpism.

B (10:31)

Yeah, it's a whole bunch of stuff that would be like geopolitical new things and new wrinkles and new angles, all of which would be very interesting to contemplate in some sort of alternate historical fiction and which are a lot less fun to have to grapple with in real time as America sort of pushes away historic allies and finds. I mean, the other angle in all of this, beyond the, you know, geostrategic stuff militarily, is the tariffs. Obviously that's been a big sort of bone of contention between the US and everybody, but between the US And Japan trying to hash out various trade deals here. I don't, I actually couldn't tell you off the top of my head, but the current state of, I think we did have a tentative deal with them at one point over the summer. I don't know, I haven't checked in on that recently. But that's another thing here is like, yes, conservative and in theory better able to get along with, with Trump for that than maybe otherwise. But also some of these conservative leaders still want to be able to trade pretty, pretty openly with the United States. And Donald Trump is not hugely into that for all the reasons we talked about a lot.

A (11:35)

I feel like there would be an amazing version of Lost in Translation where it's Trump at the Crown Plaza and not Bill Murray's character. And he's just sort of wandering around the halls, kind of lost, just like this, saluting people, randomly saying slower and with more intensity. I don't know, Andrew. This is the world we live in now.

B (11:55)

It would be amazing to just be able to, like, get inside the prime minister's head and all of this, because this is a character who, like, I mean, like, all these world leaders, right? Her job is to just get through these Trump interactions, do the best she can, butter him up the best she can, because that is the alpha and the omega of keeping a good working relationship with Donald Trump. You know, Mr. Trump, you're the best. Mr. Trump, you know, what were the Americans doing without you? You were not a hot country before, and you're a hot country now, all that stuff. And like, to do that and to, like, be grappling with the fact that this guy is sort of just screwing up your. Again. The geopolitical order that you sort of rely on as this country that's not really allowed to have much of a standing army while China gets more and more hostile and more and more aggressive in the region. And to. To be dealing with the fact that, like, you have economic pain, a lot of economic pain, based on the economic decisions this guy is making. And then after all, like, you know all that going in, and you know you're going to have to, like, suck it up and butter him up and, like, just do the best you can anyway. And then you can't even walk the guy to the podium without it being, like, so clear that he's.

A (13:05)

And then you meet him and he's a doddering old man who's just lost, and you have to, like, take him by the elbow, and you're bowing and scraping while also just trying to manage this ancient, decrepit, festering piece of lard. It's amazing. It's amazing. And we'll be back soon with more great news from this exciting world that we all get to live in. Good luck, America.