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- [00:00]
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- [01:14]
Evan Osnos
Do you guys remember Pam Bondi?
- [01:16]
Leesa Mattress Advertiser
Who?
- [01:16]
Jane Mayer
Who?
- [01:17]
Susan Glasser
Who? I feel like we're five years from now. It's gonna be a reality show like the, you know, the ladies of the Trump cabinet, you know, her and Kristi Noem teaming up for, you know, sort of remember when maybe it'll be a quiz show.
- [01:32]
Evan Osnos
Well, you're right, by the way, that it does seem to be a pattern here that the only cabinet members who get axed are women. Right? I mean, I saw one of the late night hosts had a line that said something like, the only one who seems to have immunity in that cabinet is RFK Jr. You know, the truth
- [01:51]
Susan Glasser
is, Evan, I'm glad you brought that up. This is one of my rants, but I'm gonna repeat it here. The caricature of femininity required to get oneself a place in Donald Trump. These women not only abased themselves, got rid of all principles previously stated in their political or legal careers, they had to physically change their presentation in order to win this place in Trump's circle.
- [02:18]
Evan Osnos
What is also amazing is you can thrash around in front of Congress, you can perform for the audience of one, and. And in the end, you still get cast into the dustbin of history, and, you know, there's it will be interesting to see what this presumably lucrative private sector job is that she's going to.
- [02:39]
Jane Mayer
It's such a diss, though. I mean, the private sector thing is just a way of saying there'll be no space in my administration for even Kimberly Guilfoyle got an ambassadorship.
- [02:49]
Susan Glasser
But, oh, she's in trouble now, by the way. I don't know if you read this, but she's already in trouble. Surprise. Wait for it. What do you think? Excessive overspending on personal projects in the embassy in Athens.
- [03:08]
Jane Mayer
Welcome to the Political Scene from the New Yorker, a weekly discussion about the big questions in American politics. I'm Jane Mayer and I'm joined by my colleagues Evan Osnos and Susan Glasser. Hi, Evan.
- [03:21]
Evan Osnos
Good morning, guys.
- [03:22]
Jane Mayer
Hi, Susan.
- [03:23]
Susan Glasser
Hey there. So great to be with you.
- [03:28]
Jane Mayer
What a week. A few hours before Trump addressed the nation on Wednesday, he said, tonight I'm giving a little speech at 9 o' clock and basically I'm going to tell everybody how great I am. And that's exactly what he did.
- [03:43]
Zbigniew Brzezinski (archival audio)
Never in the history of warfare has an enemy suffered such clear and devastating large scale losses. In a matter of weeks, our enemies are losing in America as it has been for five years under my presidency. Is winning and now winning bigger than ever before.
- [04:02]
Jane Mayer
Trump went on to boast that Iran's navy is gone, their air force is gone and their missiles are used or beaten up. Claims that are all exaggerated. Trump offered no case for how the war ends, only a vague mention of two or three more weeks. Evan, this is of course a strategy that Trump's used before.
- [04:24]
Evan Osnos
Oh, I mean, we've heard two weeks is his preferred timeframe for all kinds of solutions. But I have to say, guys, just step back for a second. All of us in our lives are used to the moment when the President of the United States calls people for a primetime address on something as serious as grave as war. We're sort of used to what that means. You're going to hear something from that president about where it's going, what's happening next. And this was, even by Trump's standards, a truly bizarre performance because you had all of that sound and fury. I mean, he frankly loves that word, epic fury. And then what, what he didn't tell us was actually where this enormously grave moment is going. How is the United States going to get out of this? How is the global economy going to return to something normal? Honestly, what it reminded me of, I think we all had some feeling of this. It was like he was using the formula that he adopted in his business life, the kind of real estate formula, and trying to graft it onto something in the world of war and human life. This idea of sort of confidence, bluster, whatever it takes, and then nothing. And what we know from history, and this is where I think you guys sense where we're headed. What's worrisome about this is that when you look over his life, that the way that he goes from a moment of crisis like this is escalation. He doesn't say, okay, we're going to figure out how to back out of this problem. His patterns are that he escalates. So that's my dominant takeaway from this moment.
- [06:07]
Jane Mayer
Susan, you wrote a brilliant column about this. What was your reaction on this?
- [06:13]
Susan Glasser
I mean, look, we are more than a month into the most consequential decision, certainly foreign policy decision, of Donald Trump's decade in power, which is to unleash a war of choice in the Middle east with no clear aims. Definitely the plan is not to have a plan. In that sense, it's going well. Look, there's the fact of the matter of his address to the nation. As Evan pointed out, this was 19 minutes of meaningless catchphrases. In fact, Jane, when I wrote in the column that it sounded like a 19 minute long true social posting, really, it was a pastiche of all the true social postings that we've heard from the president over the last month. These are empty phrases. The quote that we just played here, America is winning like never before. Never before in the history of warfare has an enemy suffered. The American people, Donald Trump thinks, are really, really stupid if they think that this is an explanation for why this country should be doing something so consequential. When I wrote that, it sounded like there was no speechwriter, but just an intern cutting and pasting the true social posts. This actually infuriated the White House communications director, Stephen Chung, who went crazy about this and said, this is a terrible conspiracy theory. And the reason I mention it is because right now is a political crisis for Donald Trump such that he really hasn't experienced. And so he's unleashed a global economic crisis. He's unleashed certainly a global and geopolitical security crisis. And for himself, he's unleashed a political crisis. And for me, what that means is that we are at a moment. It's the moment that in some ways, we've all predicted, braced for, worried about ever since this volatile character entered our national politics. This is it. This is the moment that everybody braced for, that he would create an International catastrophe as well as a domestic one. Donald Trump is a rogue president, and he has now made the United States of America a rogue superpower.
- [08:21]
Jane Mayer
Well, before we go further, I feel I need to welcome you to the Steven Cheung Fan Club. He is the spokesman who tweeted about me. Shut the fuck up. So we've been there, and that is actually part of the playbook that Donald Trump uses, which is attack the truth tellers and lie, lie, lie, spin, spin, spin your way out of this. I think you're right. This is the moment that we've dreaded that somehow we escaped in the first term, which was, thank God he hasn't gotten us into a huge war. But if you knew his history, you knew it was entirely possible and probable, really. He has a history of creating disasters and then trying to maneuver his way out of it. And the stakes on this particular disaster are so much higher because he's taken it from the business world, the real estate world, to the world stage, and here we all are. And so today, what we wanted to take a look at is the box that Trump has put himself in and the world in, to borrow a phrase from David Sanger of the New York Times. First, where things actually stand in this war. Then the Trump playbook, the long pattern of crisis, escalation and improbable survival that has defined his career. And finally, what it means when the world is subjected to that playbook. It was interesting that this war started in the middle of a night on a weekend, without any advance notice to the rest of the country. And so this, finally, one month into it, was his attempt to. To sell the war to the public. Do you think he made the sale?
- [10:05]
Evan Osnos
Well, I think the clearest metric was delivered almost immediately, which is the markets responded very clearly. I mean, stocks dropped, oil prices climbed. In some ways, that's the coldest, clearest measure of whether or not he was able to reassure people. Look, it was most conspicuous by what was absent in that speech. People were seeking some sign. Even if this was going to be him saying, we're going to declare victory and go home, he couldn't even do that. He said, we're going to be wrapping up combat operations shortly. Then he said, very shortly. And I think the point is that there are enormous questions here. Why is it that the United States is, in fact, still bringing troops into the region? I mentioned earlier the idea that his patterns historically are about escalation. So what does that mean? Does it mean that he's going to, as has been discussed, use those troops, perhaps to try to seize Iranian oil facilities. Is it possible that there will be an effort on the part of the United States to try to go in and collect this highly enriched uranium? He has given so many mixed messages that it's the kind of thing that if you're in the midst of a domestic political negotiation and you want to sort of send mixed signals, fine. But when you're talking about something as serious as this, a war that is estimated to be costing a billion dollars a day, that has these kinds of consequences, all it does is leave the world essential captive to his whims. And I think that's why ultimately, this address left the country and left the world, I think, worse off than had we not heard from him at all.
- [11:45]
Susan Glasser
Yeah, I mean, there are two things here. So, first of all, there's the political crisis of Trump's own making, which is he already was in increasing bad odor with the American public. He's now sunk as a result of the war and the consequent economic crisis that it has generated. He's now sunk to his lowest approval ratings ever, which, by the way, are now really the worst for any president since recorded polling. CNN had a new survey out this week, actually just a few hours before the address, and it showed Donald Trump with a disapproval rating of 64%. That is basically the highest recorded disapproval rating for an American president, George W. Bush, at the height of the sort of mess in Iraq before the surge that he ordered. Before that, he hit, I think, 63%, disappro, 64%. We're talking close to two thirds of the American people are not happy with Donald Trump. It's hard to see him climbing out of that. In fact, his personal disapproval is high. The disapproval of his policies, especially concerning the economy, inflation, are even higher than that. So did he dig out of the political crisis? I don't think so. Then there's the broader question of the war itself. And to Evan's point, what, if anything, did we learn? Why did the markets react in that way? The markets reacted in that way not as a vote of approval or disapproval of Donald Trump personally, but because what they heard from it is, number one, the war was going to go on, and the Strait of Hormuz was not only going to remain closed, but I think the big takeaway for me in that address was that Donald Trump was basically saying, screw it. I might have made this problem, though he'll never admit it, but I'm not going to do anything to fix it. And if I want to leave the door open for myself, to walk away from this war. Hey, you allies in Europe, you Asian countries that rely on oil and gas at transportation, it's the strait. It's going to be your problem going forward. That meant essentially that the world's markets heard there is no solution for this enormous problem that Donald Trump has created with the war. So I think that explains in part the market reaction more broadly. I think it suggests why Donald Trump, even if he talks about two or three more weeks of the conflict, is not actually in a position to deliver it. Many times in his life he has just been able to walk away from messes of his own making. In this particular situation, Iran gets a vote. And I just, I wanna underscore that because it's so astonishing the gap between these empty, hollow social media posting type exhortations that the president is giving us and the actual reality on the ground. Just a couple weeks ago already, Donald Trump was claiming that he had destroyed 100 of Iran's military. 100%. Well, obviously that is not only a lie, but it's actually one of those Donald Trump lies that's so ginormous that I think people have a hard time processing how untruthful the American president is. Not only did they not destroy 100% of Iran's military capacity, there's a new report from CNN that shows that something like one half of Iran's ballistic missile arsenal may have survived this first four weeks of attacks. That's a lot of missiles to still be fired. In fact, in Israel, on the very evening when Donald Trump was giving this address to the US the first night of Passover, millions of Israelis had to take to bomb shelters and safe rooms in their houses because Iran was launching a major barrage of missiles on that country in response to the U. S. Israeli war. And just now on Friday when we're taping this, we hear that Iran may have actually shot down a US fighter jet. By the way, that costs millions and millions and millions of dollars. But again, their capacity has not been diminished militarily. Nevermind their capacity to hold the world's economy hostage through the Strait of Hormuz.
- [15:40]
Evan Osnos
Well, if you drill down on one point, we've talked about the fact that he has given no indication of how the Strait of Hormuz will reopen. He used this really immortal phrase, he said it will just open up naturally. And I think the other day you said something that was absolutely right, which is it was impossible not to that and not be reminded of how he used to talk about the COVID virus. It was just going to go away magically.
- [16:08]
Jane Mayer
Magic. That's what I was thinking too. It's magical thinking. Yet one of the other things he did was try to wish away in the speech the importance and the impact on the price of gas, even in the United States, and people are at the pumps and seeing it themselves. Can he just somehow get out of that particular.
- [16:32]
Susan Glasser
You know, Jane, it was remarkable to me that this address, which presumably was delivered for the political reason that the White House was worried about how the American public was viewing the conflict. And given that it was more than 10 minutes into this 19 minute speech before Donald Trump even mentioned gas prices. And when he did, that's when he delivered this line that Evan speaks of, the magical thinking. Don't worry. As soon as the conflict is over, whatever that may be, and I don't think it's gonna be anytime soon, it will somehow return to normal. Now, of course, I'm not an expert on the complexities of the world energy market. If you read and listen to what those people who are are telling us, what they're telling us is that the attacks on energy infrastructure in neighboring Gulf countries as well as Iran's own, mean that there won't be some easy magical snap back to normal. Even worse, Sec. Even were hostilities to cease immediately in the next few days.
- [17:36]
Evan Osnos
Susan, that really points to an observation that comes from Bob Woodward, who has interviewed Trump a lot over the years. And if you ask him what is the single most important takeaway that he has from that, it's that Trump fundamentally does not understand the consequences of going to war. That fact, this is something he said long before the start of the war in Iran, is a function of an entire life of decisions and the absence of consequences of those decisions. And that, in a sense, is the deep text of how we ended up where we are.
- [18:12]
Susan Glasser
You know, Evan, I'm really glad that you brought that up because it brings it full circle to the quote that we began this conversation with, which is really a, you know, classic example of Donald Trump. He said, I'm gonna give a speech to the American people in which I'm going to talk about how great I am. At the core of Trump's case, in his own mind, to the American people, were a couple lines impeded in this speech which essentially say, I am doing something that all of my predecessors as President of the United States failed to do. So we're left pretty squarely where we began here in this conversation, which is one man has taken upon himself and somehow, let's be honest, we, the American people, have let this happen, have taken upon himself to wage war, even possibly a war that many, many Americans and many people around the world could understand, had some worthwhile cause embedded within it. He has taken upon it himself to do this in the most reckless, unaccountable and risky way, not only for the United States of America, but for so many people around the world.
- [19:20]
Jane Mayer
I saw a clip, you may have seen this, too, a little video clip of former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski speaking about taking on Iran 14 years ago.
- [19:31]
Zbigniew Brzezinski (archival audio)
This is a country of 80 million people and they know that while we can inflict enormous damage on them, they can hurt us a lot. Can you imagine what the consequences would be for us if the conflict in Afghanistan expanded because of the Iranians, If Iraq was massively destabilized, if Bahrain was set on fire, if the northeastern oil fields in Saudi Arabia were attacked? Do they have the capacity to ignite all of that? To ignite, yes. To prevail, no. But in the meantime, the consequences, the costs would be cumulative and oil prices would go through the roof. Yes. And the global economy will be affected. So we're playing with fire here.
- [20:15]
Jane Mayer
Anyone who knows Brzezinski knows he was a hawk. It's not that he was afraid of military action, but what he's saying is you don't want to get into war with Iran. It's not that they are going to defeat the United States, but they can create just endless amounts of trouble. And he predicted all of the energy problems that would come out of this and specifically many of the actions that we're looking at, including about the Strait of Hormuza, and it was foreseeable. And so Trump casts this as he's the only one who has the brilliance to do it what his predecessors didn't or the courage to do it, when in fact they had the wisdom not to do it and there was a reason they didn't. And here we are stuck with the consequences. Well, in a minute. What at least to me is of interest here also is that Trump has a long history of self inflicted crises. He almost threw thrives on them. And so far he's managed to somehow wriggle his way out of accountability for most of them. But I think it might be worth looking back at the past, his MO and how that bears on where we are right now. Political scene from the New Yorker will be back in just a moment.
- [21:45]
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- [22:23]
Jane Mayer
Now I want to turn to Donald Trump and his long history of dealing with crises, many of them self inflicted, and the different ways he's gotten out of them. Evan, I know you've been looking at his history. What do you see there?
- [22:35]
Evan Osnos
Yeah, you know, I feel like I need to promise our listeners we are not going to do a potted history of Donald Trump's life here because what we actually see are these really clear patterns, this formula that explains in a lot of ways how he got into this situation and where he may be going. I was thinking about this beforehand, guys. There's that great quote attributed to the ancients that show me the boy at seven and I'll show you the man. In this case, it's more like show me the boy at 27 and I'll show you the man. When Trump was in his 20s, there is this moment that set the template. He and his father, of course, were sued by the federal government for systematically discriminating against minority clients in their rental properties. And what did they do? They countersued, of course. At the Council of Roy Cohn, they sued the federal government for $100 million. So they sort of punch back. Now, we know that he's a counter puncher. That's the way this has always been described as shorthand. But the point of it is he got out of there. Ultimately, after two years of agony here, of fighting, of press conferences, of muddying the facts, of confusing everything, he eventually settles without admitting wrongdoing. And he has carried that language with him forever, talking about it. Even as a presidential candidate in 2016, the fact that he admitted no wrongdoing, that became a recurring move. And in a way, that sort of self narrative that he is beyond conviction, he's immune to any possibility of accountability. That became not just one of the ways he tells his own story, but actually how he imagines history will unfold in his hands.
- [24:18]
Jane Mayer
I mean, I think that business of not admitting wrongdoing sort of translates to what we see about Trump the politician, which is he never admits failure, no matter how terrible the situation is that he's in and has created and that then somehow sprinkles fairy dust on him where the public sort of buys into his, you know, retelling of himself as an endlessly successful businessman and politician. I don't know, Susan, what you then went on, as we all know, the next phase is casinos, which people look at as the kind of business that you always make money in. And he managed to go into bankruptcy in them.
- [25:00]
Susan Glasser
Yeah. I mean, look, I think the problem is, is that we, as Evan said, We're 10 years into this phenomenon of Donald Trump the politician. We were familiar with the story. We've seen the playbook. He has a very clear playbook. Delay, deny, deflect, dissemble. If somebody punches you, punch back harder. One of his quotes that I always come back to is, I don't believe in win, win. I believe in I win.
- [25:29]
Jane Mayer
I never heard that before.
- [25:30]
Susan Glasser
Oh, yeah, that's in our book. Another one that's in our book that I think I really love is actually something from one of his. Not his original book, but another quickie book that he once put his name on. But I love this one. He was told that he was a narcissist. He said, actually being a narcissist is a good thing. And this is very relevant to the Iran war we're looking at right now. Quote, a narcissist does not hear the naysayers. Well, yeah, I think that, again, what scares me is that this history that we know pretty well at this point of Donald Trump, the reckless businessman of Donald Trump who is a serial filer of lawsuits, of Donald Trump who forces others, like banks, et cetera, to clean up his mess and somehow never has any accountability, this Donald Trump that we know so well operates essentially in the kind of political media, legal world of kind of American domestic politics. The war of New York City and the war of Washington, D.C. is the one that Donald Trump knows how to fight. And for me, the perilousness of this moment is that many of those rules don't apply in the raw power politics of fighting wars in the world, in the raw power politics of facing off with America's adversaries and whether Donald Trump considers them to be America's adversaries or not. Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin are, in fact, America's adversaries, and it's not an accident. I really liked the Economist cover this week, which had Xi kind of staring at Donald Trump in the background, and it said, essentially, don't get in the way when your enemies are making a mess of things. And that's the broader framing here for why are we talking about Donald Trump's reckless behavior in the past? Because in the end okay, what's the worst thing that happens when the Taj Mahal casino goes bust is that those gamblers who are being exploited in Atlantic City have to go to another casino to lose their money. Right. What's the worst thing that happens? Donald Trump has to sell his yacht. What's the worst thing that happens? He distracts New York City by getting into another tabloid scandal and having an affair on his wife. These are the kinds of behaviors and pathologies we've seen with Donald Trump and at previous chapters when he's created crises in his life. Well, that's not gonna apply in this kind of a situation.
- [28:06]
Jane Mayer
I just wanna say on the casinos, I mean, we were talking about. Susan was talking about, you know, well, what's the loss? You know, it's a couple suckers who, you know, will just go to another casino. But in fact, what he did to get out of that is really interesting. He went to a public offering of his company. So he was desperate for money to get bailed out. And so he does what analyst on Wall street says, you can't do that. He goes to Wall street, has a public offering. The suckers buy his stock, they lose their shirts, but he gets all their money and uses it to bail himself out while they go down. And that's so. It's just so. I mean, he's done that over and over again. He takes the public for a ride.
- [28:52]
Evan Osnos
What he does is he leverages the gap between the people who actually understand the mechanics of what is unfolding and the people who are looking at it through the lens who are just seeing it far away. That's been. You know, it worked as a financial strategy to keep himself alive. And he's angling to try to do that right now. That's why he puts himself in front of the cameras on a night like that.
- [29:13]
Susan Glasser
And I'm so glad you brought that up, Jay, because let's take this to the geopolitical stage. Donald Trump, the existing company corporate structure didn't work for him. NATO, he's blowing that up. It's obsolete. He doesn't really like them as partners because they're very pesky and they're always talking about corporate compliance and things like that. What does he do? He's gotten a whole bunch of new people who are willing to buy into Trump Inc. That's the people in the Gulf, right? So America's old allies were England, France and Germany. America's new allies are Saudi Arabia, gutter Israel, United Arab Emirates. And I think this is very interesting. First of all, we all know Donald Trump has a much more preference for the governance structure in those Emirates. He likes the idea of ruling with kingly, unchecked authority, number one. Number two, these leaders of these countries have made it very clear that they have Donald Trump's transactional approach both to business and to politics, including literally going into business and funneling billions of dollars through Donald Trump's family. His son in law, Jared Kushner, started up his fund at the end of the first Trump term with $2 billion investment. Number three, Donald Trump. Who's the sucker here? Is it the new investors in the Gulf who bought into Trumping, or is it Donald Trump who, by the way, is using the vast military power and might of the United States to go after not America's arguably number one geographic enemy? You know, despite the lying on tv, Iran actually cannot launch and is not projected to be able to launch ballistic missiles anytime in the future that could hit the U.S. homeland. Who can Iran hit? It can hit its neighbors, its Arab neighbors. The number one adversary of Iran, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates and Qatar. In fact, it was the king of Saudi Arabia who there was a great example during the Obama years where he was leaked to have said, you've got to cut off the head of the snake, meaning the regime in Tehran saying that because he was frustrated with the Obama administration for negotiating with Iran at that time. So who is the sucker here? Right? I mean, that's the thing that's fascinating is that Donald Trump has gone and
- [31:28]
Evan Osnos
got a whole new in a sense, what you're asking is have they become the latest students of Trump University or vice versa?
- [31:35]
Susan Glasser
Are they playing Donald Trump and getting the United States of America to fight their war.
- [31:40]
Jane Mayer
Maybe we're the suckers because instead of Trump's daddy bailing him out, it's now the treasury that's paying for his mistakes and we're the ones who are supplying the taxes for all of this. Well, listen, when we come back, I want to talk a little bit for a minute about the older allies and what this might mean for the old world order and NATO. The political scene from the New Yorker will be back in just a moment.
- [32:16]
Evan Osnos
Politics is confusing. Governing is messy.
- [32:20]
Jane Mayer
But talking to each other about all
- [32:22]
Evan Osnos
this stuff, it should be easier. And that's where we come in. I'm David Green, the host of Left, Right and Center, where we gather each week to talk about what's happening in politics from every angle. Listen to Left, Right and Center from KCRW every Friday, wherever you get your podcasts.
- [32:53]
Jane Mayer
All right. Well, Susan, one of Trump's defining characteristics in a crisis is to escalate and blame others. We've seen he's now blaming NATO and we're also seeing that some of the leaders of the countries who've been our allies in the past are outright criticizing him. I think Macron has been especially vocal in some of the things he said. So he didn't pull out of NATO. Was that a relief? Are you feeling relieved at this point?
- [33:21]
Susan Glasser
Donald Trump has actually already blown up NATO in a functional sense, Jane, at the heart of this 76 year old alliance that came about in the aftermath of the catastrophes of the 20th century. At the heart of that is this article 5 Commitment to mutual self defense. And is there a person in the world, I don't believe there's a person on this podcast, that's for sure, who believes that if Vladimir Putin invades Estonia tomorrow, and by the way, this is the easiest thing in the world for him to do, all he needs to do is send his boats across a tiny river that you and I could swim across at one point to invade Estonia. Do you think Donald Trump is going to go to war to protect Estonia? No. The answer obviously is no. It's not a mistake that the people in the short term reform at least, who are benefiting from Trump's war here are adversaries like Vladimir Putin, who is going to receive, even if the war ends in April, according to one study, he would receive a windfall being able to sell oil on the world market because the US Temporarily lifted some sanctions on them in order to relieve some of the pressure that Trump's war has created. So Donald Trump's war is now, in a practical sense, funding Vladimir Putin's war against Ukraine, another example of this. In recent days, Trump has not only threatened to pull out of NATO, he's actually explicitly said what we kind of knew he thought all along. But he and Rubio have both said Ukraine is not our war.
- [34:57]
Jane Mayer
I just want to say interject that for anyone listening to this. Susan and her husband Peter Baker are working on a book about the relationship between the United States and Russia and Putin. And I just can't wait and look forward to the show we do when we finally get the answer to what is it about Trump helping Putin over and over and over again. So that's something to look forward to in the future.
- [35:25]
Susan Glasser
Are you putting pressure on me just a little bit?
- [35:28]
Jane Mayer
Let's talk about your luck. No, but Evan, you know, do you think reality will catch up with Trump? And do you think I mean, we're looking at his numbers falling. And also, do you think, I mean, in the. His life story is escaping accountability and wriggling out of things. And in this war, do you guys see an escape plan?
- [35:52]
Evan Osnos
Well, no. Here's the thing. What Susan was describing so well is this kind of tipping of the balance when it comes to how the liberal international order exists in the world. Now all of a sudden you've got the Russians who are emboldened. And I think what that really is about is a kind of erosion of American influence and power and prestige, the idea that we are able to keep people in our orbit around the values that we at least express as a country. And I remember I came upon this just a couple of days ago. I remember interviewing Joe Nye, who was the great creator of this idea of soft power, the late Joe Nai. And he said at one point to me back in 2017, I said, do you think that Trump is fundamentally undermining American soft power around the world? He said, no, I don't think that's happening. Unless two things. One, if Trump is reelected, or two, if he gets us into a major war. And it's amazing now, nine years later, to think about how those conditions have both been satisfied. And when we look at the impact here, I think it's tempting in Washington to sort of think of it in the usual Washington way, which is we think about the political implications, we think about what the impact is for American prestige. I was just doing so. But you have to also, if you're trying to understand what the impact is on America's role in the world in the long term, you have to sort of skip over to the other side of the world for a second. There's just been fascinating coverage just this week in terms of what's happening in other parts of the world because of this global oil shock. Take, I mean, like in South Korea, for instance, people are being told to take shorter showers because of the energy that they need to heat water. If you go to Sri Lanka, you've got people working fewer days. You go to Laos, and people are actually just working and going to school on a three day week. So every day there are these little ways in which America's image as this place that could survive a shock. The Trump shock is being steadily chipped away. And that's the hardest thing for people to grasp in the moment, and in many ways is the most durable and damaging effect of this.
- [38:10]
Susan Glasser
You know, Evan, that is, I mean, absolutely right on the mark. Donald Trump launched, in effect, a war on globalization when he came into American politics without ever understanding what globalization actually was and what you would do if you tried to unravel it it without a plan. And that was the thing that I've heard in interviews from day one. And I think that's part of what we're seeing here is that sort of toxic ignorance combined with arrogance and a world system that's reacting in ways Donald Trump didn't anticipate because he didn't understand how it worked and he didn't listen to people who do.
- [38:54]
Jane Mayer
And he thought when you're a narcissist, it was a good thing because then you didn't have to listen. So anyway, guys, what a conversation. Thank you so much. Incredible. This has been the political scene from the New Yorker. I'm Jane Mayer. We had research assistants today from Alex d'. Elia. Our producer is Nora Richie mixing by Mike Kutchman. Steven Valentino is our executive producer. Our theme music is by Alison Leighton Brown. Thanks so much for listening.
- [39:47]
Podcast Host (Cup of Justice / Wired)
Wired has always put a microscope on the people, power and forces shaping our world. Uncanny Valley brings that same fearless reporting straight to your feed. Is Doge finally over? Will AI actually democratize American healthcare? Each week, Wired journalists from across the newsroom are going to unpack where politics, technology and Silicon Valley collide. From conversations with tech leaders across Silicon Valley, Internet fandom investigations and government crackdowns on rigged gambling. We're taking you all over the place news cycle going straight inside the priorities, pressures and power plays driving today's biggest decisions. Uncanny Valley tackles the questions keeping you up at night and helps make sense of the future taking shape right now. Listen to new episodes every Thursday. Wherever you get your podcasts.
- [40:40]
Jane Mayer
From prx.