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- [00:00]
Al Franken
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Al Franken
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David Frum
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Al Franken
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- [01:35]
Al Franken
Hey everybody, we got a great one today. You know, for a change, David Frum, staff writer at the Atlantic and host of the weekly podcast the David Frum show, is my guest and we talk about Trump's adventure in Venezuela. Trump, of course, has been doing victory laps since the successful kidnapping and extradition of dictator Nicolas Maduro. And there's no question that Maduro probably should have listened to Trump and taken his offer to step down from power, leave Venezuela and take refuge in some other country. Instead, he will probably spend the rest of his life in prison. Well, too bad. And before we go to my conversation with David, I want to talk about what happened this week in my home state of Minnesota and especially the sickening reaction from Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and President Trump and Vice President Vance. They have all lied. All of them have said that. Renee Nicole Goode, the 37 year old mother of three ran over or tried to run over the ICE agent who killed her. I'm sure by now you've seen the videos and know that she didn't run him over and she wasn't trying to. She was driving away. Now here's Kristi Noem in her first press conference after the shooting.
- [03:14]
Commercial/Advertisement Voice
She then proceeded to weaponize her vehicle.
- [03:16]
Al Franken
And she attempted to run a law.
- [03:18]
Commercial/Advertisement Voice
Enforcement officer over it.
- [03:21]
Al Franken
This appears as an attempt to kill.
- [03:23]
Commercial/Advertisement Voice
Or to cause bodily harm to agents, an act of domestic domestic terrorism.
- [03:29]
Al Franken
Domestic terrorism. This is the Secretary of Homeland Security accusing a woman who is simply trying to drive away. And that is very clear in the videos accusing her of domestic terrorism. Here's what Trump wrote on unTrue social media. Four hours, four hours after the shooting, the woman driving the car was very disorderly, obstructing and resisting, who then violently, willfully and viciously ran over the ICE officer who seems to have shot her in self defense. Based on the attached clip. It is hard to believe he is alive, but is now recovering from in the hospital. It's hard to believe he is alive. This is the President of the United States. Four hours after the shooting. By now everyone in the White House has seen the videos and knows the ICE agent wasn't touched by the car and that Renee Goode was simply trying to drive away. So what happened? Everyone in Homeland Security and the White House just got on a conference call and said, okay guys, here's the plan. We're going to say it was a crazy lefty and we're going to put out the video from the angle where it looks like the ICE agent might have been hit and get Fox to run it. And then they had Vice President Vance go out and repeat the lie.
- [05:08]
David Frum
You have a woman who aimed her car at a law enforcement officer and pressed on the accelerator. Nobody debates that. I can believe that her death is a tragedy while also recognizing that it's a tragedy of her own making and.
- [05:19]
Al Franken
A tragedy of the far left who.
- [05:21]
David Frum
Has marshaled an entire movement, a lunatic fringe, against our law enforcement officers.
- [05:28]
Al Franken
There's never been a White House like this. By now half the country knows they're lying, but they don't care because they know enough of their base will never see the other video angles and they aren't letting law enforcement investigate so Cash Patel's FBI can control the narrative. Will this moment make a difference? Many of you probably remember 10th state when four protesters against Vietnam War were killed on a college campus by National Guardsmen. It turned a lot of Americans against the war in Vietnam. But that was a time when Americans got their information from reputable news sources. The Trump administration told the American people that they were going to go after the worst of the worst. They say that on the Homeland Security website that they would be focusing on deporting undocumented immigrants who've actually committed crimes not related to, to immigration status. Instead, they are doing everything to get their deportation numbers up and go after hard working immigrants who contribute to their communities. And that's why more Americans now object to Trump's handling of immigration than approve of it. Maybe this horrible tragedy will change how ICE conducts itself. Maybe this. Oh, what am I saying? This is just a terrible time. And David Frum joins us to discuss Trump's interdiction in Venezuela and adds historical context to what we're doing there and around the world. It's a great one, you know, for a change. Oh, David, thanks for joining me.
- [07:30]
David Frum
I would say such a pleasure, because it's a pleasure to see and talk to you, but it's not a pleasure to be out and about these days.
- [07:37]
Al Franken
No, for a number of reasons. And before we start, I want to talk to you about Venezuela and.
- [07:47]
David Frum
I.
- [07:47]
Al Franken
Guess Greenland and Cuba and stuff. But before we do that, what happened in Minneapolis yesterday, Trump has said a number of times now that Renee Goode, the 37 year old woman, mother of three who was shot and killed, that she had run over the ICE officer who shot and killed her. This is what he said. She behaved horribly and then she ran over. She didn't try to run him over, she ran him over. I mean, this is on video.
- [08:24]
David Frum
All right, so what do we think about this? Well, we all want to be a little more cautious in the way we speak than the low bar set by the President of the United States, because there's a lot about the incident that at least I feel, I don't know. So I want to be cautious about that. But the thing that was most disturbing to me in the videos, and I've seen many, and again, with all the understanding of the camera, is not to be relied on. It's important to understand that the ICE officials, ICE agents had no authority to arrest Ms. Good. They had no authority to write her a citation. So why did they race toward her vehicle when she was obviously on the way to exit? I mean, before the, the deadly part of the altercation starts? They were on their way to her. Why were they doing that? What, what did they imagine they could possibly do? They couldn't arrest her if they, they objected to her behavior, all there's nothing they could do except tell her be gone. And she was on her way to be gone. What it looks like to me is this. I see three men try to block the movement of the car, one of whom reaches to unlatch the door, which again, he had no right to do. So why? Well, the one thing that we've seen that ICE does with American citizens, and again, they have no power to arrest, they have no power to write a citation, but they have often beaten up people to teach them a lesson. They slam them, they choke them, and then they put false charges against them, which are then dropped. But there's certainly no accountability for the slamming, the body slamming, the choking. So I think they were there to teach her a lesson. That's where they're reaching inside the door handle. And when she began to move off, because there was a lot of aggression in their bloodstreams already, they were ready for a violent encounter. And a violent encounter followed. And a woman's dead. And it's not, it's the first deadly, deadly shooting by ice, but it's not the first shooting by ICE of an America.
- [10:03]
Al Franken
As we record this on Thursday, we're talking Trump and Kristi, Noem and Vance are still going with the fiction that Renee Goode either ran over the shooter or tried to run him over, thereby justifying him shooting her. And they've put the FBI in charge of the investigation and continue these bold faced lies. And it just seems that it's getting worse. What does this say about the moment we're in, in which you can, the administration continues to put up bald faced lies and getting away with it, and it just seems to be getting worse.
- [10:52]
David Frum
I'm not sure I agree that they're getting away with it. So I think what we are watching is actually a steady deflation of the administration's power. Not always for the reasons that I regard as most important, but it doesn't matter why the reasons. Trump won the votes of a lot of people who imagined he would maybe make the prices go down, at least stop the prices from going up so much. He made the prices go up more on purpose with his tariff regimen and the people who decide American elections who are not always following politics closely, but they know the price of every item in their grocery bin and they know what, what what? Their grocery cart. They know what those items cost today, what they cost last week, and they know how much money they have to cover those costs. And they're worse off. Job creation has stopped inflation, pricing price rises are continuing. And so you'd like there to be a national surge of support for the Democratic idea. I hope that that's going on in some quarters, but I think in the great sort of fairly detached voting center of the country, what is this going is Trump has been. His economic management has been a failure. It's a visible failure. It's an inexcusable failure. It's a failure you can't message your way out of. And that failure is just crushing steadily his support down, down, down.
- [12:11]
Al Franken
Well, but he's not running for reelection and he seems to be. Let's go to Venezuela. Because he seems to enjoy the power.
- [12:21]
David Frum
Yeah.
- [12:21]
Al Franken
And he seems to be using the power to reorder the world the way his national security strategy is talking about basically dividing the world into hemispheres. And we'll talk about Greenland and what he's doing there. Let's talk about Venezuela. It wasn't about drugs, was it?
- [12:48]
David Frum
Clearly not. Venezuela is a transshipment point for drugs. It's not a source. And the drugs that tranships, you know, you follow the story so closely, you know that they're sending cocaine onto Europe, which is bad, that shouldn't happen. But as you know from your service, I mean interdiction to work at all if you're going to do something. The way you can measure the success of an interdiction regime is with one simple question. Price going up, price going down. The price goes up, your interdiction is working. If the price goes down, your interdiction is not working. So cocaine is the one price that Donald Trump has successfully brought down in his first year in office. The Wall Street Journal reports the retail price of cocaine in most American Cities is down 25% from what it was on Inauguration Day. So if you're a cokehead, the Trump years are a big win for you or the Trump year is a big win for you. But they are not succeeding in this strategy of sending a quarter of American naval power to the Caribbean to blow up boats one by one as a way of stopping the flow of cocaine. That's obviously not a success.
- [13:47]
Al Franken
You know he pardoned Hernandez, the former president of Honduras. Right. Who was indicted by the same people. Right?
- [13:58]
David Frum
Yeah.
- [13:59]
Al Franken
During the Trump first Trump administration, by the way, as Maduro. This is amazing. Trump had a two hour session with the New York Times and outlined that he's. He said he's going to run Venezuela for years, working with the Chavista regime led by Delsey Rodriguez, who replaced Maduro. Do you have confidence that everything is under control I mean, does Trump run Venezuela? We don't have an embassy there. He says he might send troops there. What control does he have?
- [14:41]
David Frum
Well, we have three or four stories about what's going on in Venezuela from different administration sources, and we may have genuinely three or four different strategies, because there's no national security process. There's no way to bring ends and means into harmony one with the other. But it looks like the argument that sold Trump was that there's a big bunch of oil in Venezuela, which is A, not true, and B, meaningless, even if true.
- [15:04]
Al Franken
Well, they have the oil there. They don't necessarily have a way to get it right, do they?
- [15:09]
David Frum
So you'll hear this figure kicked around that Venezuela has the largest oil reserves on Earth. The way those figures are arrived at is each OPEC member country reports to OPEC what its oil reserves are. Now, some countries are very professional, the United Arab Emirates, the Saudis, and they have proper geological surveys, and it's based on some kind of science. So it is when you read about oil reserves in Canada or the United States or Norway. But Venezuela is a broken state. So the oil reserve number is something they more or less make up. And about a decade ago or two decades ago, when Hugo Chavez was still alive, he, for his own ideological and ego reasons, decided he picked the number 300 billion barrels and reported it to OPEC. And OPEC has no facility, no process of questioning it. That's his number. That's the number of the Venezuelan state. But anyway, your oil reserves don't mean anything. The only question is, how much oil can you bring to the surface? At today's market prices, it doesn't matter how much is in the ground. It doesn't pay anybody to recover. The question is, what can you bring to the surface? And the Venezuelan oil infrastructure is smashed and shattered. There's been no investment for 30 years.
- [16:15]
Al Franken
Well, I don't understand that. I mean, when Chavez took over, I think they were doing 3 million barrels a day or something.
- [16:22]
David Frum
Yeah, exactly.
- [16:23]
Al Franken
And now they're doing 800,000. If that's where you get your money, why don't you invest in the infrastructure?
- [16:30]
David Frum
Okay, I'm, as you mentioned, I'm originally from Canada. Canada also produces the same kind of heavy oil as Venezuela does. I've spent some time in the Canadian oil patch, so I can give you that perspective on what the problem is. So there are parts of the world where you sink an oil well and the oil under the earth's pressure bubbles up to the surface, and then you eventually, as the Pressure reduces. You need to put more and more effort into bringing the oil to the surface. But the heavy oil that you have in Venezuela and Canada, it doesn't come to the surface at all. You have to push it up to the surface. And you do that by injecting steam into the ground. And the pressure from the steam then exerts an upward pressure on the thick, thick oil, viscous oil that's in the ground. The steam needs to be produced by the use of electricity. So you need electrical power production, you need an electrical grid to connect the power production to the facility. You need very sophisticated facilities to move this thick, viscous stuff from underground to the top. And then you need facilities to move it. And all of it takes a very well organized state. So in Alberta, Canada, you know, you have modern tech, technology, you have a rule of law regime. These are enormous investments that pay out over many, many years. So you're saying to these, the oil companies like, you have to invest billions of dollars and you'll get your money back over the next 30 years. But it's Alberta, Canada. No one's going to confiscate your investment. You can, you know, you have a schedule of repayment over 30 years and that's how you make your profit. In Venezuela, none of those conditions exist. And so the state took over the monopoly and the state was stealing the money, had no interest in building this elaborate system that you have to have to bring this kind of thick oil to the top of the ground. Especially because at today's price, $58 a barrel oil is not so lucrative anymore.
- [18:14]
Al Franken
So are the oil companies going to come back? You're saying that what Trump is, Trump's whole theory behind this is that he's going to attract these American oil companies come back and he's going to share the profit with them.
- [18:30]
David Frum
Well, my hunch or guess, and I don't want to say more than this is this is not about Exxon or Chevron or some big company. This is about some fly by night operator who paid $300,000 to have brunch with the president at Mar a Lago or some other member of the Trump entourage.
- [18:46]
Al Franken
Remember when he went to, during the campaign, he went to the, the oil producers and say, give me a billion dollars for the campaign and I'll reward you.
- [18:59]
David Frum
What any American oil producer would want is give us a slight regulatory relief in Colorado and Texas, where we have facilities now, where, I mean, the United States is the. One of the things that is very striking about Trump, as you've observed is he's an old guy and he's not always conversant with the modern world. I don't know that it's penetrated his head that the United States is by, is now again by far the largest producer of oil on Earth. Sure is. One of the largest exporters of oil on earth. Canada. Throw in Canada. The United States and Canada together produce 28% of the oil on Earth at $58 a barrel. If the price goes to 80, they'll produce a lot more than 28%. But at 58, they're still producing 28%. And the world is not hungering, hungering, hungering for a lot more oil and a big reputable oil company that is contemplating where do we put our next $10 billion investment? I know. Why don't we put it in the jungles of Venezuela with no power, no roads, guerrillas who will kidnap our engineers. You'll have to have a private army down there to keep the oil safe. And we can make that same investment in Alberta or Texas and have none of these problems and make our living that way.
- [20:08]
Al Franken
Certainly he has people around him who are saying the same thing to him. No.
- [20:12]
David Frum
Well, but here's the if you are, I was going to my speculation. If you're a fly by night operator who's got some shady scheme and says, well, look, the American taxpayer will absorb all the costs and I will reap all the benefits, then the math of this oil thing can quite continue. So I don't think you should think of this as about the big oil company, Chevron and Exxon. I think this is about somebody who's got some much more small scale scheme for oil trading or tankers or something. I don't know exactly. But who is a much more fly by night operator who put a bug in Trump's ear, maybe put some benefits in the pockets of people around Trump because from a Chevron or Exxon point of view, none of this makes a lot of sense.
- [20:51]
Al Franken
Who is there? We have one company there right now, Chevron. Okay. All right. We're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back with David Frank. A new year means colder days and this is the moment your winter wardrobe really has to deliver. If you're craving a winter reset, start with pieces truly made to last season after season. Quince brings together premium materials, thoughtful design and enduring quality so you stay warm, look sharp and feel your best all season long. Quince has everything you need. Men's Mongolian cashmere sweaters, wool coats, leather and suede outerwear that actually hold up to daily wear and look good. Think down jackets, wool coats and Italian leather outerwear that keep you warm when it's actually cold. Each piece is made from premium materials by trusted factories that meet rigorous standards for craftsmanship and ethical production. That's important here at the Al Franken podcast. And by cutting out middlemen and traditional markups, Quince delivers the same quality as luxury brands at a fraction of the price. The result? Classic styles you love that hold up year after year. For example, I just ordered the Mongolian cashmere ribbed crew neck sweater in heather gray. If any of you want to embrace the Al Franken look this winter season, we can be warm and stylish together. Refresh your winter wardrobe with Quince. Go to quince.com Franken for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada, too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.com Franken free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com Franken. And we are back with David Frum. Well, Trump seems confident that this is all gonna go smoothly. Yeah. Is it, Is it gonna go smoothly there?
- [23:12]
David Frum
I don't think it's going to go at all. The thing that is so bizarre about this is it's not just that Nicolas Maduro is an illegitimate dictator. So the United States government and the governments of most of America's allies, to the extent that the United States still has allies, have recognized Edmondo Gonzalez as the rightful winner of the election of 2024.
- [23:32]
Al Franken
Sure. They got like 70% of the vote or something like that.
- [23:35]
David Frum
Exactly. So there's a person who the United States government is on record saying, we think this guy is. So if you're arresting Maduro, how is the United States arresting him then turning over power to the second in line illegitimate person?
- [23:48]
Al Franken
Right. Rodriguez.
- [23:49]
David Frum
Rather than working with the legitimate representatives of the Venezuelan people and letting them say, you know what, you new government of Venezuela, you do the policing, you rewrite your petroleum law, you figure out how to attract foreign investment, you be in charge of making sure that there aren't guerrillas kidnapping petroleum engineers in the jungle. That's your job. And then the world will come and buy your product from you.
- [24:09]
Al Franken
Why do you suppose that he didn't do that? I mean, was it feeling that the regime that is there has the power to and has the military and that putting Gonzalez's party in power would, would not work?
- [24:29]
David Frum
Well, that's the story we're reading in the, in the papers that given out by Pro administration sources that they just thought realistically that the keeping the present regime in place would be simpler with new characters. That would be simpler, I think. But I think there's a deeper problem if your plan is to steal the oil. Not that that makes any sense. Okay, it's a stupid plan, but that's your plan. A legitimate democratic government of Venezuela will of course want to increase oil production, but they'll want to increase it in order to buy things for the benefit of the Venezuelan people. They will have their own ideas about how to develop the resource and their own ideas about which company should get which contracts. And they will have the legitimacy of being a democratically elected government. And they will run it without reference to Trump's ego needs and Trump's business needs. They'll write it with reference to their business needs.
- [25:13]
Al Franken
Well, that's not happening.
- [25:15]
David Frum
That seems to be not happening.
- [25:17]
Al Franken
It's not happening. So what is going to happen? I mean, are we going to be there a couple years? Is any of this going to work?
- [25:25]
David Frum
There's no sense that we are there at all.
- [25:27]
Al Franken
Well, we don't have anybody. We don't have an embassy, do we?
- [25:30]
David Frum
So they've abducted the President, who will stand trial. I assume he will probably be convicted, but that's not a sure thing because he has some defenses. What jurisdiction does this court have over me? Do I have sovereign immunity of some kind? You know, there'll be arguments and they might work, who knows. But what seems to happen is that the next thug in line will take over. Trump has, has a sense, and he's probably right about this, that they will do business with his Mar a Lago friends on better terms than the old dictator did. But does that mean there'll be an American presence or any kind of American system of government, he says, running it? I mean, really, the United States is going to have troops in the Orinoco jungle battling guerrillas? I don't think so.
- [26:09]
Al Franken
So will there be a democratic process in a year, I mean, or two years, or.
- [26:18]
David Frum
I don't know the answers to any of these questions. I wish there, I mean, I, I come from very much a democracy promoting background. I mean, if this war had unfolded, or this war, this event had unfolded like this, that non sociopathic President of the United States puts together a coalition with Colombia, which Venezuela's nearest neighbor and the home of the largest group of Venezuelan exiles, Brazil, Guyana, because not that they're a power player, but they're right on the border. And Venezuela's immediate neighbors, with some backing from other Latin American governments, some support from European partners and said, we've got a multinational force that is going to keep order as we move toward elections. Redo the elections of 2024 with stability and security. Remove the old regime. That's something with a view to knowing how unpopular it is that the Venezuelan people want something. We have plans also to help repatriate the 8 million Venezuelans who are in exile so they can bring capital back to the country.
- [27:15]
Al Franken
We had about 700,000 thousand Venezuelans here, but many of them are being. They had temporary protection. You know, they could be here, but they're being sent back. Right.
- [27:26]
David Frum
Well, well, Venezuelans have been leaving, so there are many Venezuelans who now have US Passports are more than temporary. The people with TPS status tend to be the poorer people who came out after the final collapse of the economy in 2019. The people who control assets and property. They came out earlier, and many of them are now dual nationals. They live in Florida, where they're an important community, and they could help to redevelop the country. Venezuela was, from the 50s to the 90s, a quite successful country. It could be that again, but it needs a collective multinational effort. But that's the way this Trump administration just doesn't think about things anymore.
- [27:59]
Al Franken
The operation to get Maduro was thoroughly planned. You're saying that the rest of this really isn't?
- [28:06]
David Frum
Yeah, you've seen that. You've had these people in front of you in the chair. So the military plans things very meticulously, but they also have a very clear sense of not our department. There are things we plan and things we don't think about. And so the question of how is the next election in Venezuela to be staged? That's not a question that the Pentagon would have a plan about. That's the job of the national security system to bring together other departments of the US Government and the. Right now, there's no national security advisor to run that. There's Marco Rubio, who's both secretary of State and national security advisor. But you can't do both, as has been demonstrated. The one person to try it was Kissinger. Kissinger. And it doesn't work because the State Department is one chair at the table. And the job of the national security advisor is to make sure that every chair gets heard from, including agencies like energy, including environmental concerns, including democracy promotion. So that conversation doesn't seem to be happening. And so there's no meaningful plan to do any more than abduct the dictator and put him on trial.
- [29:13]
Al Franken
Well, let's Talk about Greenland. That's ridiculous, right?
- [29:20]
David Frum
Have you been?
- [29:22]
Al Franken
I have never been to Greenland. No. Have you?
- [29:25]
David Frum
No. I want to go. But the Greenland thing is another thing that seems like a crazy project because Greenland is part of the Kingdom of Denmark, which is of course a NATO ally. American troops have been in Greenland since March of 1941, even before the United States entered the Second World War.
- [29:39]
Al Franken
We have a base there now, but we had many bases there during World War II. Right?
- [29:44]
David Frum
Yeah. And before the American presence starts. So In March of 1941, Denmark is occupied by the Nazis, but there's an autonomous government in Greenland, a Danish government in exile in Greenland. And they ask the United States to make sure that the Germans don't build U boat bases on Greenland, which they have no way of even knowing about, much less stopping. And so there's an American military occupation of Greenland in cooperation with the local authorities that happened in March of 41. And the United States built bases in Greenland, the British built bases in Iceland, and together they patrolled the North Atlantic against German U boats. And the Americans have been there more or less ever since. Greenland was part of the gave its land in the 50s to build part of the distant early warning system that alerted the United States. If Soviet manned bombers came over the North Pole with Canada, there was a string of radar stations around the Arctic Circle that stretch from Western Canada into. Into Greenland.
- [30:37]
Al Franken
I did not know you knew this stuff.
- [30:40]
David Frum
Remember, I'm Canadian, so I know.
- [30:41]
Al Franken
Okay, okay.
- [30:43]
David Frum
So there's this deep, deep, deep practice of military cooperation. So what are they talking about? And then when they say, well, we want to mine rare earths in Greenland, that's where I ask. It's covered in ice. It's covered in ice. How are you going to mine there? First you dig down through the ice, then you start digging the earth. Meanwhile, the things you want, they're all available in Australia, if you just pay the cost of mining them in Australia, as with everything in mining, the question is not can you do it? The question is how much does it cost? Is it worth it? Why don't you dig somewhere where there isn't ice? Because the phrase rare earths doesn't mean that they're in fact objectively rare. It's just they occur in low concentrations. And so there's a sifting operation that you have to do. They're rare, not because they're rare relative to the size of the planet Earth. They're just any bucket of dirt you pick up. There's going to be not very much.
- [31:37]
Al Franken
Of this stuff, they're not distributed like iron ore or something like that.
- [31:41]
David Frum
So it's sifting. So it's a cost, but with technology, with capital, of course, you can recover it. And the reason China got such a grip on the railroads business again, I'm telling you things you know is because there are environmental hazards collected with sifting the stuff. And so developed countries have until recently not wanted to do it because they didn't want to have the annoyance and the cost. The Chinese were willing to filthy up their landscape to get the rare earth. Let them do it. But once you realize we can't rely on China anymore, then the stuff is there in Australia, it's there in parts of the United States, there in part Canada. You just have to bite the bullet and pay the environmental costs of the cleanup. And you can have it too. You don't. You have to go. Wars are really expensive. And the worst possible way to get stuff that you need when you can just buy it.
- [32:25]
Al Franken
Well, that's what I don't understand. And who's a big champion of taking Greenland?
- [32:33]
David Frum
Vice President Vance has been a big enthusiast.
- [32:36]
Al Franken
Steven Miller is saying we should just take it. Now, Denmark is a member of one of the founding members of NATO, right?
- [32:46]
David Frum
Right.
- [32:48]
Al Franken
So we can't do that. That's the end of NATO, isn't it?
- [32:54]
David Frum
Well, even before you get to that point, right now, if you're the minister of defense of Denmark, your top. Which has been worried for years, what happens. Your number one defense problem since 1945, as in, what if the Soviets or Russian navy try to blast past us to get from the Arctic into the North Sea or sorry, from the Baltic to the North Sea. Our number one problem has been guarding where the, the, the, the stopper in the Baltic guarding our, our water from the Soviet and then the Russian Navy. And, and in the past year, they've got the. You know what? That's our number two problem. Our number one problem is that our American friends are planning to Pearl harbor us in Greenland. And so that just changes. And then Denmark is bound into these very intimate ties with other northern countries. Norway, Sweden, Finland. Sweden and Finland just joined NATO again to say we have to guard the Baltic against the Russians. And if the Danes say our number one problem is that our territory might be invaded by the Americans and then in Sweden and Finland, well, that's now our number one problem too, because we're all such a unity. So we now have to start thinking about how do we defend our soil against our former friends in the United States and The Canadians have to think about that. Everyone has to think. What happens? What's our war plan? To defend democracy against the United States. And just having to even say such a thing out loud is a different world.
- [34:18]
Al Franken
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Al Franken
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- [38:21]
Al Franken
And we are back with David Frum. Now we put out a national security strategy as a. That's what it's called this November or December. And it seems like we are abandoning what our foreign policy has been for at least since World War II and before. Right.
- [38:43]
David Frum
So I went and read a bunch of these things. So they're produced theoretically, they're produced at the beginning of each administration. But sometimes administrations get a little slap happy and produce more. Clinton produced seven because they love producing, as you'll remember, they love producing these big think documents. And part of was that Clinton kept losing national security advisors. So each new one wanted to write a new strategy. But they're basically usually big mushy bureaucratic documents.
- [39:09]
Al Franken
This is like a 35 page document. I read this one.
- [39:13]
David Frum
Yeah, well Normally they're like 80 to 90 pages. So in 2017, HR McMaster's National Security Council released one that was, it was like a. Not too dissimilar from the ones that went. It was a little spicier, a little more aggressive, a little more America firsty but basically a sensible document. Not unduly provocative. And then Biden produces one in 2021 and it's just a Bland oatmeal mush as you'd expect. And it's very long and that this one is a third the length that they normally are. And it reads like it's written by angry right wing graduate students who have at last been given permission. Say whatever you really think.
- [39:53]
Al Franken
And a number of them, I mean it seemed like a changed style.
- [39:56]
David Frum
Yeah, but not a big, not the big committee, I'm sure. The Biden report was written by 20 people. It read that way. This feels like it was written by two or three people. Very like minded and very belligerent. At one point they welcomed the rise of so called patriotic European parties, meaning the far right parties of the alternative for Germany and other sort of neo fascist parties.
- [40:16]
Al Franken
Sure. The one advance champion when he was in.
- [40:21]
David Frum
Yeah, you don't normally take any side in the internal politics of friendly democratic countries, but you certainly don't take, if you're going to take a side at all, you don't take the pro fascist side.
- [40:32]
Al Franken
But Vance did and we did in this, in this thing. Well, but we seem to be saying we're doing sphere of influence, national strategic, that democracy is no longer a priority. And Hegseth basically said this when he made a speech about this national security strategy, that it's not a priority and that we are basically going to let China have its sphere of influence and Russia, I mean it appears that we're giving up Ukraine.
- [41:13]
David Frum
Yeah. The uncomfortable fact to face is spheres of influence are for losers. The traditional American view was the United States is big, earth is small and America's interests and values at stake everywhere. And while they're obviously practical limits on what America can and can't do, the United States is not going to accept on principle that if China wants to attack Thailand, they can do it. The United States always reserves, you know what we're interested. We have potential interests everywhere and we have the clout to do it. And we have a value system that explains why we do it and why what we offer is attractive to people all over the world because there's enough values in our foreign policy.
- [41:53]
Al Franken
But this is not Trump.
- [41:54]
David Frum
But this is not Trump. But what they're saying is we are basically, we feel weak. We are writing off the world because we feel like we can bully Denmark and Venezuela, but we don't dare stand up to China and Russia.
- [42:07]
Al Franken
Well that's sort of criminal and it's a departure from where we've been since when, when did we start having the view that we have now or had until this present?
- [42:22]
David Frum
You could write, tell this as a story of three chapters. So chapter one is the United States comes out of World War II and says, you know what? This idea that we can be absent from the world, it doesn't work. We try to absent ourselves from the world. We get Pearl Harbor. So we're going to try to build a community of nations. But we understand the Soviet Union is there, that we can only go so far. But we're going to certainly, where there are advanced industrial economies, Western Europe, Northern Asia, we're going to work there and build. We're going to build a democratic zone and hope that someday the rest of the world follows. That's chapter one. Chapter two is 1989. Soviet Union collapses. Communism retreats, and there's a breakout of democracy everywhere. Taiwan, South Korea become democracies. Chile becomes a democracy. Apartheid ends in South Africa. And the American view is chapter two. We're taking this. We think we can extend this all the way around the planet and invite every nation to a greater or lesser.
- [43:13]
Al Franken
Degree to participate in Russia for a while became democratic.
- [43:20]
David Frum
The door was open. The door was open to China, too. That's why they're invited into the WTO. And this is why Clinton had seven of these strategies. There was this moment from 1990 to 2001 where it looked like the whole world was going this incredibly positive direction and people were becoming freer and richer and trading more. And look, success after success, including some we don't even think about anymore. If you had stopped George Herbert Walker Bush on inaugural morning in 1989 and said, what one thing are you most worried about? What is the greatest fear that haunts you? He would have said, I'm afraid that One of those 50,000 Soviet nuclear weapons is going to roll loose and go off somewhere. And if the angel of God could have said to him, george, I tell you one thing, you're only going to have one term, but at the end of your one term, you're going to have ensured it that not a single one of those 50,000 weapons goes astray. They will all be accounted for. How would you feel? I think I'd feel like I was a pretty big success. I think. I feel like that was priority one, is to control the loose nukes. And that was done. And that policy starts under Bush. It was continued under Clinton. And Ukraine is denuclearized, and Kazakhstan is denuclearized, and most of the former Soviet weapons are denuclearized.
- [44:30]
Al Franken
What if Ukraine hadn't denuclearized? Would we be having a situation we have now?
- [44:36]
David Frum
Well, I think One of the things we've learned from the Russians have learned is that nuclear weapons are pretty useless as weapons.
- [44:43]
Al Franken
But they're threats.
- [44:44]
David Frum
I mean, they're not even because the Russians kept saying to the Americans, don't send the Ukrainians this and that, or we'll use a nuclear weapon.
- [44:50]
Al Franken
Right.
- [44:51]
David Frum
And that bought them, like, two, three months. And then people were, well, let's see what happens if we do it anyway.
- [44:58]
Al Franken
But I thought it bought them more than that.
- [45:02]
David Frum
But it's too big a threat. Right.
- [45:05]
Al Franken
It was Putin saying tactical nuclear weapons, which was a disaster.
- [45:09]
David Frum
I mean, obviously, it's like putting the gun to your own temple and saying, take one step forward and I shoot.
- [45:15]
Al Franken
Yeah.
- [45:16]
David Frum
It'll give people pause, but over the long run, it's not a credible threat.
- [45:20]
Al Franken
Okay, so Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons. And you think that it wouldn't have made any difference if they hadn't?
- [45:29]
David Frum
I don't think so.
- [45:30]
Al Franken
Russia would still have invaded.
- [45:32]
David Frum
But you know what? I also think it would have been a much more dangerous world because it wasn't just that Ukraine gave up its nuclear. The Russians gave up a lot of their weapons. A lot. There's a period in the 1990s where the single biggest source of fuel for the American nuclear power industry was former Soviet weapons, really, that they would ship. The United States bought this stuff because that was the. Sam Nunn was the principal figure, but it started under Bush, continued under Clinton. There was this program, and they provided jobs for former Soviet nuclear scientists so they wouldn't go looking around the world to terrorist regimes. It was one of the greatest American successes of our lifetime, and not one person in 10,000 even remembers it anymore. So the 90s were this hallmark of we could build a really functioning world community. Chapter three is the long slow. The Iraq war, the rise of China, the rise of Putin, and now the rise of Trump have put us all on the backward path away from the ideals of cooperation we had in the 1990s.
- [46:31]
Al Franken
We are now going toward our national strategic document that we are hemispheric. We're going to dominate our hemisphere and allow Russia to, I think, take over Ukraine. I mean, we're basically selling Ukraine out, right?
- [46:53]
David Frum
It looks that way. You know who gave a great speech warning against this? Franklin Donald Roosevelt in 1941. In the spring of 41, he said, there will be people who will say, well, we're secure in our hemisphere. And Roosevelt, 1941 said, but there's a problem with this theory, which is they've invented the airplane.
- [47:14]
Al Franken
Right.
- [47:15]
David Frum
And this is the speech, you remember, where he invites people to pull out their maps and follow along his fireside address because he wants them to see how close it is. It's not just the distance from Germany to the United States that matters. It's the distance from the French colonies in Africa that Germany has now conquered to Brazil. That's not a big distance that the old World and the New World do interpenetrate. And of course, in our modern world, it's not just airplanes, it's rockets, it's the Internet. We're all, it's the flow of diseases. We're all interconnected and you can't sever off one hemisphere from another. If you could, the Aztecs would still be in charge.
- [47:52]
Al Franken
So. So Trump feels that we are going to dominate our hemisphere again.
- [48:02]
David Frum
Yeah.
- [48:03]
Al Franken
Where does this at? What do you see happening in Venezuela in the next year?
- [48:09]
David Frum
The next year? I think there's an attempt by shady people to do business deals. And some people will make, some people with relationships with Trump will make some kind of money. The regime will try to come in from the shade and become a more acceptable like post Fidel Castro Cuba, where they don't give up the authoritarian structure, but they try to break out of their economic isolation. I don't see much happening because to bring that oil industry back to where it used to be, it's going to cost billions and billions and billions of dollars. And no reputable person is going to do that unless they have some kind of assurance of long term stability security. And they also have a price of oil that is higher than it is at $58 a barrel. You don't have to go looking to Venezuela to produce more oil.
- [48:52]
Al Franken
So you see Trump's move as a failure.
- [48:57]
David Frum
Look, if Nicolas Maduro faces justice, I'm sure for the many people who are victims of his oppression, that will seem to. There are many people will say, well, at least the man who tortured my father, at least he's in prison. So that's, you know, I wouldn't say that is a, that's. If he is convicted and goes to prison, that will be, you know, a small win for the cause of human decency, but a small win, not a big win.
- [49:19]
Al Franken
But we're talking about what Trump is selling this as. It's not going to be a success.
- [49:27]
David Frum
That's not going to happen, I don't think.
- [49:28]
Al Franken
And when will that become apparent.
- [49:33]
David Frum
If it's not apparent already?
- [49:36]
Al Franken
Yeah, well, I don't think it is.
- [49:39]
David Frum
I think just weeks will go by and nothing much will happen. What will happen is there's a big story in the Financial Times, I think today or yesterday, where. Where a reporter got access to the center of the oil industry and just reported just what a scene of carnage it is now. It's like no one has spent a dime there in 30 years. And people, I think we're very misled by this phrase natural resource. Natural resources. I mean, the resource itself is natural, but the project of bringing it to the surface and distributing it and turning it into something useful to human beings, that's not natural. That requires technology and capital and labor.
- [50:13]
Al Franken
When do we look at this and say, this is working out as well as Gaza?
- [50:19]
David Frum
Or I think you will see it in a very few months. But most people long since then, Trump will have changed the subject and created some other outrage, and we'll be talking about something else.
- [50:31]
Al Franken
And is this a change of subject? Is this a change of subject, or is this his attempt to enrich friends?
- [50:38]
David Frum
I think stealing other people's stuff is, I think, one of the great themes of Trump's career. It's one of his genuine personal interests.
- [50:46]
Al Franken
Okay, so he'll feel this is a.
- [50:49]
David Frum
Success if his business cronies get to dig some oil out of it. But there's a claim that the Venezuelans turned over some 50 million barrels of oil already. If that's true, and it may not be, then he's already stolen a bunch of oil. So, yes, he'll feel good about that.
- [51:07]
Al Franken
And, yes, 30 to 50 million barrels.
- [51:11]
David Frum
If that's true, if that's true, that.
- [51:15]
Al Franken
The regime was handing that over to.
- [51:17]
David Frum
Them as a price of leave us alone, Basically the way to think of that is that's their ransom money to let them keep power. And Trump now wants to take that oil and put it into a special account controlled only by the president. And as you know, it used to be illegal in the United States for the President to spend money that Congress didn't appropriate. That's the core of the Iran Contra scandal, that you can't just go around having international depredations and using it to create revenue sources for the president that the president can spend without reference. Article 1 says Congress gets to decide what is spend and what is not spent.
- [51:52]
Al Franken
Well, this Congress doesn't seem to agree with that.
- [51:56]
David Frum
No.
- [51:57]
Al Franken
Okay, well, a few months from now, we'll look at this and I'll go, David Frum was right.
- [52:07]
David Frum
Well, what I hope a few months from now that it'll be like the Venezuelan people themselves will liberate themselves, that there'll be enough pressure from below, there'll be a new administration in Colombia and that they will together work out some system for a peaceful transfer of power to a more democratic future for Venezuela. God, they deserve it. They've had it before. They know how to do it. It's not alien to their political culture. You know, between 1950 something and 1990 something, Venezuela attracted immigrants from all over the world because it was a place where you could. You could build a middle class life in a functioning democracy. It's been that before. Why can't it be that again?
- [52:47]
Al Franken
Okay. Well, from your lips to South America's.
- [52:53]
David Frum
Ears, always a pleasure. Thank you.
- [52:55]
Al Franken
Thank you. Well, I hope you enjoyed listening. That beautiful music is by Leo Kottke, the great Leo Kottke. I want to thank Peter Ogburn for producing this podcast. We'll talk again next week.