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- [00:01]
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- [00:30]
JVL
Hello everyone. JVL here with the Bulwarks, Andrew Egger. And Andrew, we've got the peace. President Donald Trump threatening some more war. Last Friday he designated Nigeria a country of particular concern. Thank you for your attention to this matter because there's, there's some bad violence happening in Nigeria and Christians are being targeted by some Muslims. We'll get into the actual particulars this in a moment. But then the president tweeted the next day, if the Nigerian government continues to allow the killing of Christians, the USA will immediately stop all aid and assistance to Nigeria and may very well go into that now disgraced country. Guns a blazing quotes for some reason to completely wipe out the Islamic terrorists who are committing these horrible atrocities. I am hereby instructing our Department of War to prepare for possible action. If we attack, it will be fast, vicious and sweet. Just like the terrorist thugs attack our cherished Christians. Warning the Nigerian government better move fast. To which the Secretary of Defense, not the Secretary of War, replied on Twitter, a little cross platform action. Yes, sir. The killing of innocent Christians in Nigeria and anywhere must end immediately. So, Andrew, that's all happening. What are your thoughts? I guess America first is now Christians first. Is that how it works? Are we the world's policeman again? Did I miss that? I like that. I'm a guy who likes America being interventionist and standing up for human rights across the country, across the globe. I think that's a good thing. Is that back on?
- [02:27]
Andrew Egger
They turn it on and they turn it off kind of as, as Donald Trump feels the need to do. So this is the way it's gone, gone for a while. This is a story where you basically have like the old kind of normal way of doing things smashing very quickly into Donald Trump's style of doing things. And the two different styles bounce off of each other in very strange ways. It is true that, that for a while there's been a group of Republican senators who have been trying to get Donald Trump's attention about Nigeria and they've been saying that the US Government needs to declare that there are significant infringements on religious liberty happening in Nigeria. It's kind of a weird country. It's like 50, 50 almost Christian and Muslim. There's you know, different ethnic tensions and different religious tensions and there have been flare ups of violence increasingly according to these, these senators. Obviously people have probably heard of Boko Haram, which is an Islamist group that operates out of the north of there. So like all of that is like a real thing that's happening and there's like real policy and Nigeria is kind.
- [03:30]
JVL
Of an important country. People, people may not realize this, but Nigeria's got like 230 million people. I think it's the sixth largest country in the world. It's actually one of the big economic powerhouses in Africa. Lagos has 20 million people, 21 million. I mean Lagos is a really big city, right? I mean it's, Nigeria's not just, it's not like just some backwater, right? It's, it's like a big important country whose stability is important to America or at least used to be important to America back when we cared about global stability.
- [04:01]
Andrew Egger
Yeah, right, right, right. And, and, and so like all of that stuff is, is kind of like normal policy stuff, right? I mean this list, sorry, shouldn't have brought it up. The, the countries, the countries of, you know, most concern there, like under, under the International Religious Freedom Act. That's kind of normal stuff. Nigeria was on that list in the first Trump term. Came off during Biden. Now these senators are saying, put it back on. But then Donald Trump, it catches his eye. Some people around him have been talking about this a lot. So somebody brings it up and he's like, now we're in Trump world, now we're gonna do Trump stuff. So he is going to negotiate the way that he negotiates and that is by threatening to go in guns a blazing, which is very much not exactly what these guys had in mind. They were thinking, put them on this list, we'll get some diplomatic pressure, some perhaps some sanctions or things like that. But now the threat is active. Troops on the ground, I guess, or at least missiles in the sky, war against Islamist groups in Nigeria.
- [04:59]
JVL
Which is like fast, vicious and sweet.
- [05:02]
Andrew Egger
Yeah, yeah, vicious and sweet. I know, right? The lingering over that stuff is also always a weird part of this stuff. But the weird thing is like nobody knows whether to take it even a little bit seriously, right? I mean, here's the President, he's saying, here come the bombers if you don't solve this. These long simmering ethnic tensions immediately.
- [05:21]
JVL
But even like to the country where maybe some of the Christians require aid.
- [05:28]
Andrew Egger
Well, yeah, and that is the other sort of like, bizarre thing that's hanging over all of this, right, is that we being the US Government, the American people used to send quite a lot of aid to a lot of African countries and different countries all around the world. But, you know, Nigeria was previously getting about a billion dollars a year at least recently in various forms of humanitarian aid through usaid. Some of that is still, obviously, USAID is no more. We are still sending some humanitarian aid, but like different, different programs like, you know, HIV prevention and stabilization and treatment that, that we used to spend a lot of money on for a bunch of different, you know, population groups in Nigeria that, that has been completely canceled by the Trump administration. And now what, what humanitarian aid continues to go into that country. That is part of the threat here. I don't know if we kind of glossed over that at the beginning, but that was the first thing he said. He's like, putting this country on this list. And if the government can't figure out how to stop these terror groups from doing what they're doing, we're going to cancel all aid to the country. And furthermore, we are threatening war. So the threat of war is perhaps just like one of these Trump negotiating, do I have your attention now? Kind of tactics, maybe, who knows? But the threat of yanking the aid seems very real because that's, that is, you know, the way he has treated these sorts of situations is like, well, it's a win, win for us. Like, we'll, we will, we will save a little money and we'll punish you for this thing that we think you ought to be doing more. But, but if the question is like, how does the Trump administration want to make sure that a, any Nigerians, but also be Christians in Nigeria are like, treated well and like our, our cherished Christians are doing well over there. It's a completely incoherent and like, like just, just totally insane sort of approach to the whole thing that, like, well, you look, we're gonna, we're gonna cut every sort of like, financial lifeline that you might have been relying on. That's all gone. But don't worry if anybody comes and kills you, we're gonna like, drone strike them after the fact. You know, like that, that's kind of like the position that that is being laid out here. And it's, it's just a very, very weird sort of diplomatic and foreign policy.
- [07:33]
JVL
Moment we're all living in at this point. I raise a practical Question. Do you think the President is aware that the Christians in Nigeria are black?
- [07:46]
Andrew Egger
Stands to reason. Seems likelier than unlikely.
- [07:50]
JVL
Do you think he does understand that? Because I gotta say, I, part of me thinks that this all reads like somebody got in his ear on Friday and was like, sir, sir, Christians being killed in Nigeria really bad. You know, the Christians are your people. They voted for you very strongly. Many of your strongest supporters are Christians. And Trump was just like, yeah, okay, yeah, let's tweet about this. We got to make them stop. Not sure that he feel like maybe he's thinking about Nigerian Christians as like the front row Joes, maybe not like actually what Christians in the, in the global south look like.
- [08:25]
Andrew Egger
Yeah, there, there is absolutely an element of like, you know, it's the, our cherished Christian thing is very much like that. I mean, Donald Trump scenes Christianity around the world as one of his groups because that's been his experience in the United States is sort of like the evangelicals he has surrounded himself with being extremely gung ho. My guess is that like that looms larger for him because that's the biggest thing for him, for any person or any people group is like how they are on like the MAGA question in his mind. Much more so even than the racial stuff or whatever. I do think that Donald Trump has a pretty good sense of where the few white people who live in Africa are because he continues to give them preferential treatment for refugee policies over here.
- [09:06]
JVL
Also true.
- [09:07]
Andrew Egger
Yeah. Like the Africaners in, in South Africa have been, have been coming out pretty well under this administration. So my, my, my understanding is that if you were to quiz him on that particular question, he would be able to answer it correctly.
- [09:18]
JVL
Okay.
- [09:19]
Andrew Egger
And you know, maybe that's right.
- [09:20]
JVL
Maybe that's right. So the peace president. No more endless wars. Donald Trump. We are 11 months. No, 12 months. Well, no, I guess 12 months into his election, still like nine months into his term. Right. So far he has threatened to invade and annex both Greenland and Canada. He said that having those two countries be part of the United States was a vital to our national security interests and has refused to take military force off the table. As far as I can tell, even though he doesn't talk about them often, he hasn't said that they are no longer vital to our national security interest. So I mean, maybe, maybe they still are. I don't know. He has conducted a large scale bombing strike against Iran. He is in the process of attacking boats off the coast of Venezuela which from everything we can tell, they have alleged Drug. Drug suppliers on board them, but they are unarmed. And there isn't any proof or evidence that these people are narcotics traffickers. He has said that he wants to start testing nuclear weapons immediately, just start setting off nukes. And now he has threatened to go into Nigeria guns a blazing in an attack that will be fast, vicious and sweet. That's the peace president. No more endless wars. Are we still doing that? Or now are we onto the phase of consolidation of dictatorship where we don't have to pretend to be the peace guy anymore. We can just run around rattling our sabers and threatening people? Because now his people like that stuff.
- [11:10]
Andrew Egger
I'm very confused. I think they're both going to. I think both narratives will soldier on. I think we will still get him talking about. I'm serious, dead serious. I think he will continue to do the peacetime presidenc. It was only just last week that there were all those tweets about the console wars. I don't even remember this, but like the White House was like throwing the Xbox versus PlayStation thing on top of all of the wars he has prevented over the years. I mean, he's not gonna stop ringing that bell until he gets his Nobel Peace Prize or dies. Like he is dead set on getting that prize. And so he has to continue to make that argument. I think that it is somewhat difficult to do that. While you are also sort of like repositioning US Military units sort of again off the coast of Venezuela and like, more openly than ever, talking about regime change there, as well as all these other things. We didn't even talk about Yemen. I think in your list there was.
- [11:58]
JVL
Another one where we've been. The Houthis.
- [12:00]
Andrew Egger
We've been hitting them pretty hard. Or we were back in the day.
- [12:02]
JVL
Back in the day, maybe several weeks ago. Exactly.
- [12:05]
Andrew Egger
Yeah. Last week is as distant to me as the burning of Rome, as they say on Twitter. But yeah, I think we're going to get them both for a little while yet. At least until we actually get into a, a real shooting war with somebody. At which point it might be time to stow that away and start ringing the your country needs you sort of bell again. If we ever get there. We'll see.
- [12:23]
JVL
So let me, let me propose to you. My lens through which I view this is that I think his base loves when he threatens to go blow up people who aren't white. That is real good for them. That makes them, you know, you know what I'm saying? And, and so long as he chickens out and never does anything beyond like remote drone strikes. Right. Things that never involve a single person even getting shot at. He can always just declare victory and say, see, I rattled my saber, I told them I was going to invade and then they did what I want. Art of the deal. It's all art of the deal. And he gets to have it both ways.
- [13:13]
Andrew Egger
That part is absolutely true. I mean, I just think it works for him politically. Yeah. And that has been Trump's superpower forever is the sort of over promise stop whenever you feel like it's time to, like whenever you, whenever there's diminishing returns on like the moves that you're making in terms of just sort of like base excitement and things like that and. Yeah, and declare the problem solved. Declare that, you know, your theatrical over threatening or whatever was what brought them all to the table in the first place and got them where you needed them to be. And yeah, say mission accomplished and move on and go home. I will say that there has been a certain amount of ethnic equal opportunity in some of this saber rattling because, I mean, you did mention Greenland and Canada before. Famously home to quite a lot of fair skinned, fair haired types. But yeah, I mean, it is sort of like the same song and dance everywhere here. The thing that is so fascinating about this particular one, just to circle around, to me, I don't want to minimize the stuff that is actually happening in Nigeria. It does seem like there's like real violence taking place on the ground and like the policy in favor of that stuff.
- [14:10]
JVL
Like I'm, you know, I'm a humanitarian intervention guy. Like I. Yeah, yeah, I'm not, I'm not clowning on him for like, because I think like, oh, we shouldn't do the Nick. No, these things happen all over the world. Right? There are lots of the things that are going on in Darfur right now. Horrible, like horrific, horrific ethnic cleansing and genocide. I think they're not Christians though, so I haven't seen a lot coming from the White House about, about that stuff, have you?
- [14:36]
Andrew Egger
Yeah, yeah. And it always is just sort of filtered through like his own personal lenses on this stuff, which is, you know, sometimes every once in a while that, that is not that bad. Every once in a while it like adds up to something good. Like, I don't know, again, like we were just saying we don't mind that he is like trying to put the squeeze on the Nigerian government to do more about this stuff. That's the whole point of the law in the first place. But the problem is, of course, as you say, anytime he is called on to sort of extend the same sort of magnanimity toward any group that doesn't immediately code to him, as Trump loves. So, yeah, it's a. It's a bit of a problem.
- [15:13]
JVL
Great. Well, Andrew, this is all fantastic. Andrew, catch you on the other side. Everyone else, good luck, America.
- [15:20]
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