← The Rest Is Politics: US
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- [00:01]
A
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B
Hello and welcome to the rest is politics. Us. With me, Anthony Scaramucci. Today, I am joined by veteran diplomat and backed by popular demand, Richard Haas, who has worked in four administrations and is now president emeritus of the Council of Foreign Relations. And he has an amazing substack which I am a subscriber to, called Home and away. You can find that, of course, on substack. It's a pleasure to have you on and I consider you a friend for a long time, Richard. So it's, it's great to have you back on the show. Of course, Katty is on vacation, God bless her. And just so that I can define our relationship for everybody that's listening and not watching us on YouTube, Richard has a Windsor knot on it. Looks like a Corvette shirt. It's probably a Brioni. I am wearing a T shirt that says, read books, lift weights, fight fascists. Okay, that's my T shirt for today. But we wanna go right to the naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. And I heard you this morning on Morning Joe and I thought you're making a lot of compelling points about this. So tell us where you are on the naval blockade, why you like it, actually, why you think it's a good idea, and tell us what the ramifications could potentially be.
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C
Well, if I may, in the spirit of this podcast, be self referential. I think it's a good idea because it was mine originally. I came up with it a few weeks ago. What I call that the strait has to be open for all or closed to all. Anthony, I find it preposterous that Iran gets to decide who goes through the strait, who doesn't. And here we are trying to pressure them to essentially compromise at the negotiating table. In the meantime, they're banking billions. I think I just don't get it. And everybody else, by the way, is unable to export their oil and it's causing havoc in the world economy. So I wish we had done this weeks ago. Better late than never. But the whole idea is to basically say, look, same point. The state's not Iran's to close or it's not for Iran to say who can use it. So either everybody gets to use it or nobody gets to use it, including Iran. That's our position. It turns out it's a lot less difficult to do this if we do it in a smart way than it would be to seize and hold Carg Island. This is a lot more efficient than trying to escort individual tankers, so it makes sense militarily. I've spoken to previous CENTCOM commanders and all that, and again, the idea is to essentially incentivize Iran to be reasonable about this trade. It's also to incentivize countries like China, who derive benefit from, you know, obviously the oil coming from Iran, to lean on Iran. So I want the Chinese, the Indians, the Pakistanis, the Turks, others who Iran has basically created exceptions for. I want them to lean on their buddies in Tehran and say, hey, open the strait for everybody, or we're not going to be able to get the oil and gas that we need. So that's essentially the argument. Let me say one other thing. What I'd really like, though, for the President to do is say, look, we're doing this blockade. It's a means to an end. It's not an end to itself. And we're open to the idea of sitting down with Iran at negotiations and talking with them about how the strait might be governed going forward, that maybe that we create some new authority, some new group, Iran, maybe the Saudis, the Kuwaitis, the Bahrainis, whatever, uae, and they would all decide how the strait is to be run for the betterment of all the countries that are living on it and dependent on it. I think there should be the blockade, but also there should be a diplomatic initiative.
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B
Okay, so take me through the practical application of this, just for our viewers and listeners. So an Iranian tanker heading for China is now coming through the strait, and the US Naval vessels interdict it. And then do what? They block it from leaving the strait. They block it on the exit of the strait. And then let's say they want to keep going. What does the Navy do then? They bomb the tanker or they take control of the tanker using Seal Team 6. How would it work?
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C
Well, I'd hope it wouldn't get to that. What I'm hoping is that tankers would stop short of it. And I would probably do the interdiction, so to speak, well into the Gulf of Oman. If you think about a map, you have the Persian Gulf, so to speak, or the Arabian Gulf. Then you've got the Strait. Then you've got the Gulf of Oman. I would do it out there. It's about 200 miles across. You could do it with aircraft and ships I wouldn't do it in close because in close also gives Iran more military options. But, yeah, I would hopefully that they would. They would think twice about it. These chips are expensive. The oil on them is valuable. If worst case, you got two options. One is you basically block the tanker with a naval vessel. Or technically, you could disable it. You could shoot something very specific out of propeller, whatever. I'd rather not have it come to that. But if worse came to worse, you could do that. But first I'd go diplomatic, then I'd go blocking. Then I would do, if I had to, some type of shooting, but again, not to hurt the crew, simply to disable the vessel.
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B
So you've been at this for over four decades. You've met most of the senior leadership in Beijing. You know the situation in the Gulf. How would the Chinese handle this?
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C
It's a good question. To me, it's the biggest question. When I came up with the idea three, four weeks ago, and I wrote about it in Home and Away, my newsletter, that, to me, was the biggest concern wasn't simply because we have a summit plan with China, but the US Chinese relationship is arguably the most important relationship in the world at this time in history. The last thing we want is a crisis with China. It's a complicated enough relationship as it stands. So I would talk to them, and I would make it clear that they have every incentive to get Iran to act reasonably. This is not Iran's waterway to close, and our goal is simply to make it open. It's not. Again, a blockade is a means to an end, not as an end. We're not trying to do this against China, and indeed, we're willing to work with Iran. So I would sit down with China, and my guess is China has a real incentive to open up the strait. So I don't think it's inevitable that this puts China and the United States on a collision course, literally and figuratively. But I'd obviously consult with them beforehand. I don't know if we did. I fear we didn't. But I would have sat. I would have sent, you know, that's why you have ambassadors and emissaries. I would have sent one to all the countries directly affected to get them to lean on Iran to explain what you're doing and why. The other thing I would have done is I would have gotten other countries to join this. I would have talked to the Europeans and the Japanese and the Koreans. Other countries, countries that depend on the oil. There's no reason this has to be a US Iran Thing, this should be a collective thing.
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B
You know, Richard, the economy, and you pointed this out this morning on the show, the economy in Iran is very, very fragile. Was teetering on collapse protests in January. They're going to lose. I mean, I'm just going off of estimates in the public press, something like 1 to 2 billion dollars a day. They've got 1.1 billion barrels a day going to China. Let's say this took place. You can't get the oil out any other real, real way. There's no real pipelines coming out of Iran heading to China to speak of. So workshop for me what happens to the Iranian economy. I feel like this is the, this is the potential kill shot without putting ground troops in 100%.
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C
And if allowing a digression for a minute, it's one of the reasons I think this war was so ill advised. Because the Achilles heel of Iran was its economy. As you correctly said, Anthony, that's why people were coming out in the streets. The government was beginning to lose the support of the businessmen, the so called bizarre, the middle class people who own the shops. I simply would have kept economic pressure on Iran. And I actually think if we had done that and never started shooting, I actually think there was a better chance of getting regime change than what we've done. I actually think we've interrupted the whole process of regime change. That said, the economy was weak then, obviously it's weaker now. We ought to keep pressuring them. I don't have a specific answer saying it's 9 days or 14 days or 23 days. But every day that goes by, as you say, they're no longer putting money in their bank account. And this is a country that ultimately needs to rebuild. You know, think about the history of the Iranian revolution. Towards the end of the Iran Iraq war in the 80s, the Ayatollah Khomeini basically agreed to a peace deal. Why? Because he needed to save the revolution. And he said this is like drinking poison to me, but I'm going to drink poison to save the revolution. Well, I want to get Iran to that point again. I want them to say it's really hard to make a deal with these Americans who have done all that they've done to us. But if we're going to save the 79 revolution and avoid a collapse, we have got to cut a deal. So that's why I want to put economic pressure on them. And I think there's a chance it could succeed.
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B
Okay. And so the deal gets cut. Richard, we're going to flip over to the negotiations. Now, over the weekend, as we both know, 21 hours of talks, negotiations stalled. Vice President Vance and his diplomatic team left Islamabad without a deal. But if. If you put this type of economic pressure on them and they want to keep the regime, as you're saying, do they keep the regime without executing on the nuclear weapons and enriching the uraniums? Is that what you're saying? Is that the red line for the Trump administration?
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C
So let me segue it. If I were running the negotiations, I think one of the mistakes we made was putting too much on the table at once. And by the way, anyone who thought we were gonna get a deal in 21 hours was nuts. It's not the way these things work. There's a lot of throat clearing and posturing and. And all that. So actually, I think the word failures is way, way, way off base. I would have focused on the strait because that's where the urgency is. For all the obvious economic reasons. The nuclear. I would have simply said to Iran, we want to negotiate something on the nuclear. We want to get the enriched uranium, the 900 pounds or whatever it is of enriched uranium either out of the country or we want to dilute the amount of enrichment. There's got to be a very low ceiling on your nuclear program. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. We're going to negotiate that. We got time to do that. That's really complicated. We got time to do it. We're just telling you don't. But don't mess around with your nuclear. Don't change the status of it. If we see you guys taking steps that looks like you're moving towards a weapon, then that we're going to have to break the cease fire. Other than that, we won't. So I would have basically parked the nuclear, put that aside, set up technical negotiations on that, and I would have focused all the energy initially on the conversation we're having about the strait. And I think that would have been a much smarter way to go it. Let's say one other. Anthony. Once again, the Jared Kushner, Steve Witkoff approach to negotiations is to promise a Middle Eastern country or entity Disneyland. If you do this, we're going to give you great economic benefit to turn it into kind of Palm Beach. I think that reflects a real misreading of most people in the Middle east, particularly places like Iran. The strongest emotion in my experience, having negotiated with Iran more times than I can count, having negotiated with Palestinians for decades, it's not a desire for material comfort, it's a desire to not be humiliated, that they want to have dignity, they want to be able to have pride. So our whole approach seems to be based on a premise as though these were businessmen who want a deal. But no, that's not what it's about. They want dignity. They feel they've been humiliated by history or by the United States or by Israel. So I think the idea that we can win them over with the promises of great material improvement is probably a misreading of who we're negotiating with.
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B
When the Iranian foreign minister says we were inches away from a memorandum of understanding, is that propaganda, Richard? Is that him just saying that to appeal to some people in the west that are adversaries of the president or perhaps his allies in country? Or do you think he really thinks that they were inches away? And then the secondary question, though is if you're the Iranians, why would you want to give up the nuclear? When you've seen how much of a deterrent that's been for North Korea, it seems like you've got two red lines where no one's going to move over the red line.
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C
In terms of the whether they were this close to a Memorandum of Understanding, an mou, I don't know. And a lot depends upon the detail of an mou. Sometimes you have Memorandums of Understanding framework agreements before you delve into the details, and a lot depends upon how detailed they are. If it simply says we're going to negotiate the following eight subjects, that's not that hard to get because it doesn't really. It's a pre negotiation rather than a negotiation. So quite possibly the answer is I don't know. And it sounds to me that the US wanted to accomplish too much in this first round. We were too ambitious. And also the idea that we could impose so many terms, say, on the nuclear at this is nuts. It's not only too ambitious, but at the end of the day, negotiations always reflect what happens on the ground and people's where their heads are at. So Iran coming out of the last, what, five, six weeks, they weren't feeling vanquished. They were feeling like they'd taken our best punch. We need the end to the war. So again, I question some of our tactics. Let me just be gentle. We can come back to that. Even if it turns out we were pretty close, I don't see anything that gets in the way of having a general framework agreement as long as we don't try to resolve too many of the big issues up front. Look, on the nuclear, I think you make a really good Point one of the ironies of this war might be that the Iranians say, hey, this never would have happened if we had had nuclear weapons. Now they look at, you know, North Korea doesn't get attacked. They look what Russia's done to Ukraine. They look at Libya, they look at Iraq in the old days, and they say, giving up nuclear weapons can be hazardous to your health. And so I bet there are people in Tehran who are saying, we can't say we're not going to do it, or we lie. That's a possibility. So that's why we either need really intrusive inspections, because the bottom line is we can't allow Iran to get a nuclear weapon for any number of reasons, the threat it would pose to Israel. But also, if they start getting nuclear weapons, half a dozen other countries in the Middle east are going to want nuclear weapons of their own. And if you think the Middle east is bad now, just. Just wait. But that's what you have to negotiate. I don't think we can solve this problem militarily. I do think there's going to have to be a negotiation. Ironically enough, Anthony, it's going to be a version of what Obama did. The JCPOA, the 2016 agreement. There's things you can and should improve on it. It'll be a version of what Witkoff and Kushner rejected in the days leading up to the war. There's going to be some ceiling that's going to have to be negotiated. I don't care what Iran says in the sense of whether they give up certain rights. What I care is what they're allowed to have. Intentions don't matter a whole lot. Capabilities do. So I would keep the focus less on what they promise and more on what they're allowed to have.
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B
When you were on with Kadi a few weeks ago, you talked a little bit about the divergence between Israel and the United States and just address that now that you're looking at the tenets of the deal. Where do you think the Israelis are on that deal, and what's acceptable to them and not acceptable?
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C
It's a really interesting question because the US And Israel over the last five or six weeks have really collaborated. When you read the New York Times piece the other day by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, Bibi Netanyahu's role in essentially persuading Donald Trump to go to war was clearly significant. I think he pitched things that were wildly unrealistic, but the president was more than willing to buy them. Promises of regime change and his potential to be this historic figure in the Middle east. And then militarily, we've really collaborated closely over the last, what, five, six weeks. But I think there is a growing strategic divergence. The US Priority is, one, to get the strait open, two, to prevent them from getting a nuclear weapon and so forth. For the Israelis, what got them involved in this war was the Iranian ballistic missile inventory. And they're worried about Iranian proxies. So the list of priorities is ranked differently between the United States and Iran. Plus, Bibi Netanyahu is prepared to have perpetual war. Now, it's not clear. The Israeli public is. But let's park that aside for a second. But he is, and the United States isn't. We want to get the straight open. We want to have normalcy, at least in principle. We should want to focus on other parts of the world, in particular the Indo Pacific. So I think for Israel, Iran is the big strategic consideration. There's no focus on anything else. For the United States, it's a strategic consideration. We've got any number of others. So I think there really is a strategic divergence here. And what I don't know. You would know better than I would probably, is whether there's resentment in some places in the administration where they feel that the Israelis, shall we say, persuaded them, quote, unquote, to go into this war based upon assessments that either were wrong or that they were disingenuous because the Israelis knew they would appeal to the President even though they knew they were wrong.
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B
Yeah, listen, I mean, I think the thing is way more complicated than even the press is reporting. I also think that the President, because I know he likes to eat his young, I mean, that's basically what he does. He set Vance up to fail. And I want to make the case for that. And if you disagree with me, I want you to push back. He sends Vance there. He knows Vance is not a fan of the war, so he's got to pin him and got to get him to adhere to the idea of the war. War. But, you know, he doesn't give Vance any proxy whatsoever. Vance calls him no less than 10 times in 21 hours. Okay, so that's a leash. Okay. That's not a. That's not anything other than super control. And then Vance also speaks to Rubio, Hegseth, Besant, and Cooper during the talks. So he's trying to manage five different principles simultaneously. And so there's a structural problem there as well. And so to me, we'll get to the Pope in the second half of this show. But Vance is now a devout Catholic, which I think, you know, Rubio is also a Catholic. I feel like Trump is making a stooge of J.D. vance, and I think he's going to really hurt Vance coming into the second half of the administration. What are your thoughts on that?
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C
Interesting. See, originally, I thought Vance couldn't lose. Let me, let me give you the opposite, that he was being sent over there to negotiate peace. And either if he succeeded, good for him. If he, quote, unquote, failed, then others like Trump would make the decision to escalate. So Vance's fingerprints are not necessarily on any military escalation, though I read just before we did this that the administration is thinking about resuming armed strikes, which I think is a particularly bad idea. I'm not sure what, if anything, they'd accomplish militarily, but I just don't. Again, if there's pressure to be had here in Iran, it's economic, not military. We're going to run out of targets at the rate we're going. Advance. The President may have been pissed off Advance. Because Vance signaled in the New York Times piece, shall we say, his lack of enthusiasm for the war. And he came out of that story so well that it tends to satisfy the first rule of who leaked, whoever comes out of a story best. So the President may, may have wanted to take him down a peg or two. But I'm not sure Vance comes off as a big loser here. I don't think you necessarily look awful if you make efforts to negotiate peace. Plus, the ceasefire still has a couple of weeks to go unless we break it and there'll be more negotiations. I don't think this is a one and done, one man's opinion. But again, I don't, you know, you know the president better, better than I do.
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B
That is definitely what Vance's staff is telling him to make him feel better. And I understand that. But there's a streak in the President where he wants Vance to come across as his errand boy. And there's a streak in the President where he wants Vance, particularly after that New York Times article, to be very compliant, very pliant to Donald Trump. And I think that that came across there, and I think that's existential for Vance as we go into the 2028, because he's going to try to separate himself, as most candidates do. Even your old colleague and dear friend, George Herbert Walker Bush tried to separate himself from a very popular president, Ronald Reagan.
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C
No, you're right.
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B
In 1988. But anyway, I want to go to something that's been bothering me about the US Involvement in all this. And I want to get your perspective because you're a peacekeeper, you're a diplomat. I think you've been one of the most articulate people on the rules based society globally and America's role in it. How damaged is American prestige by this? We're 40 days into it. I asked your successor, Michael Frohman, the following question. I'm going to ask it to you as well. Let's say you're a clairvoyant, you're in the Situation Room and you can open up your iPad and you show exactly where we're going to be 44 days after this war starts. And you're in a senior leadership position. So you now have full clairvoyance. Richard, do you transact on this war? Do you execute this war?
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C
No way on God's green earth.
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B
No way on God. Okay, thank you.
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C
We are so much worse off. We're so much worse off than we were.
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B
Okay, so please explain to our viewers and listeners why we are so much worse off. You know, and by the way, you wouldn't, you would have been against it even without the clairvoyance because you understand
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C
I was against it from the get go, Right?
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B
Exactly. But explain to people now. Let's say we're in the Situation Room together and you're being an honest broker of the events and you're saying we are so much worse off. List all the reasons why.
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C
Well, first of all, there was no reason to go to war. Let's just point that out. It wasn't as though Iran was about to do something in terms of some new action or unveiling a new threat. There was nothing new on the nuclear file, nothing new on the straight. Nothing new with the proxies. There was nothing new. There was no reason to launch this war. Second of all, as I said, Iran was economically reeling. If there was a policy to be had, particularly after the people were protesting and then hurt, you know, mowed down by the Iranian authorities, it would have been to dial up the economic pressure. That was the Achilles heel. This made no sense. Why are we, I mean, what have we accomplished? We've reduced Iran's conventional military capabilities, okay, but they will be able to regenerate one. They've saved some missiles, drones. They've meanwhile gotten control of the strait and they've denied use of it, which has potentially cataclysmic consequences for the world economy. We haven't set back their nuclear program. We may have increased their urge to have nuclear weapons. We've weakened American relationships in the region, around the world, because we didn't consult about this war, we didn't defend our allies in the region, region effectively. They're all much worse off. Indeed, the entire business model of this part of the world has been put at risk. The President's posts have raised questions about his temperament, his judgment. You can add the list of other characteristics. Oh, by the way, we've used up a lot of our military hardware. We've had to pull forces out of other regions, put them here. So we've left Ukraine with less of a pipeline of arms. Taiwan with less of a pipeline of arms. So this war is at odds, among other things, with the administration's own national security strategy. Totally at odds with that makes no strategic sense. The idea that we're once again concentrating on a part of the world where we shouldn't be concentrating. So, yeah, there's a long list of reasons why this is one of the most counterproductive excursions, if I may use the word, in modern American foreign policy.
- [24:54]
B
Yeah, because he thought that they were going to have a very quick victory here and they were going to have a move towards secularism. And he saw himself somewhere on the Red Sea meeting with the new Iranian leader like he met with The Syrian president.
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C
100%. The Venezuela experience clearly made them think this was gonna be quick and easy. Also, when you read the New York Times and other pieces, the lack of expertise or knowledge about Iran is shocking. Either people didn't know Jack, or if they knew it, they were too scared to speak up. Or if anybody did speak up and there's no evidence they really did, it was rejected out of hand because it didn't, didn't fit with the model that this was going to be another Venezuela. But anyone who knew the first thing about Iran would know something about Iran's resilience, about what it went through in its ten year war with Iraq and so forth. This is a revolution that was based upon anti Americanism and anti Zionism. So this to me was premised on such a misunderstanding. Anthony, after the Iraq experience in 2003, I wrote a book, War of Necessity, War of Choice. And one of my arguments was you should only go to war with countries, you understand? And we violated that in 2003 and we violated it now with Iran.
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B
But it's the lack of intellectual curiosity because none of them even understood what the Mosaic Defense Doctrine was. And by the way, all you have to do is read the Presidential Daily Brief, which they all had access to. I mean, I'll confess to you, Richard, I didn't know what the Mosaic defense doctrine was until I joined the White House and got a briefing from a CIA officer who explained to me the mechanisms of defense in Iran. And so the notion that they're sitting there saying, okay, we're going to do this and that, and that this is exactly what they prepared for to prevent regime change, that they would think, let's ignore that. It's just very, very odd to me. So we're going to take a break here. We're going to go to my religion, Richard. When we come back, we're gonna talk about my religion. And apparently the president of the United States is at odds with the world's Catholics.
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D
Hi there. Alistair Campbell here from the Rest IS Politics. And I'm here to tell you about a really important interview that's out now on our podcast channel, the Rest Is Politics. Leading this week I spoke to one of the defining political figures of our time. President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine is a fascinating interview. Reflects on his upbringing, reflects on his political rise, reflects on how he stayed in Kyiv during Russia's invasion, redefining leadership in wartime. And he warns us very much against anyone, not least Donald Trump, falling for Vladimir Putin's lies, warns that ceasefires may serve as a strategic pause rather than a sign of genuine peace. He offers a very blunt assessment of Putin, looks at his enemy's strengths, strategy and crucially, his weaknesses in a war he is convinced Russia cannot win. And he doesn't hold back on the international response at times, particularly from the US if you'd like to hear more, and I hope you do, search the Rest Is Politics Leading wherever you get your podcasts. And now back to your show.
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B
Okay. Welcome back to the restless Politics Us with me, Anthony Scaramucci, joined by veteran diplomat Richard Haas, who's a dear friend. Richard, I have been called a loser by the president and a nut job. I have never been called low IQ by the president. I'm not sure exactly why, but he's hammering people lately. And I just wanna go over some of the people that he's hammering. He took out Tucker Carlson. He took out Candace Owens. He took out Megyn Kelly. He took out Alex Jones. He's calling Marjorie Taylor Greene Marjorie Taylor Brown because green turns to brown when it soils. And these people, of course, are low iq. And then last night on Orthodox Easter, and just for everybody's perspective, the Catholics celebrated Easter last week, but the Orthodox churches, places like Russia and Greece etc, celebrated It. Yesterday, the President went hard at Pope Leo xiv, calling him weak on crime, terrible on foreign policy, and he said that it's okay for Iran to have a nuclear weapon, and he thinks it's terrible that America attacked Venezuela, et cetera. Even for me, in terms of the level of outrageousness of Donald Trump, you want to go after Mark Carney, Newsom Waltz, et cetera. You want to take out your own, the podcasting group that helps you get elected. That's awesome as well. But you got 70 million Catholics in the United States, and we want to talk about areas of the country like Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania. You've got millions of working class Catholics in those areas that actually went for Trump. And just to remind people about Catholicism for a second, the Pope has something called the doctrine of infallibility inside the church. And so, again, I'm not saying every Catholic believes in the doctrine of papal infallibility, where what the Pope is saying is the voice of God here on Earth. But, you know, there's a good 15% of them that believe it. You're alienating 10, 12, 15 million adult voters. And then last but not least, Richard Haass, he is putting a picture of himself up looking like Jesus on Truth Social. And I don't know, it looks like he's healing the young Jeff Epstein in the picture. So I don't know. I don't know who's putting these. I don't know who's putting these pictures together for him. But to me, I have had Catholics that worked in the administration. I'm not gonna out them, but I've had more than one Catholic that either war firm in Trump won or in Trump 2. Okay, texting me over the last 24 hours their outrage to this. What do you make of it and what are your thoughts on it?
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C
Well, now I know why you invited me to be on the podcast. Because you needed a Jewish perspective.
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B
I did. I needed a rabbinical analysis. I was hoping that you would be more objective than me.
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C
Actually, I wanted to be a rabbi at one point. So thank you for that. The picture the President put out on True Social, to almost paraphrase the old line, you don't have to be Jewish to enjoy Levy's rye bread. You don't have to be Catholic to be by that. That to me, I mean, I'll leave to you to use words like blasphemy or the rest.
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B
That's what it is.
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C
But I found that remarkably offensive also, just politically, to pick a fight with the Pope, who's extraordinarily popular and decent. Also, I was reading what he said. You mentioned what the President criticized the Pope for being soft on crime or something, which was just absurd or odd. But then here's something the Pope said. Enough of the idolatry of self and money, enough of the display of power, enough of war. I don't think it's reading into it too much to think a lot of that was directed at one Donald Trump, which leads me to think that you want to be really careful about who you pick your political fights with. This Pope may be low keyed and he may not be of the world of politics, but you don't get to be Pope. The Catholic Church is an institution, and you don't get there simply by, if you will, for narrowly religious reasons. You also get there for people skills and political skills. So I just think the President is choosing the wrong person to set up as a foil in the country and around the world. This is an American who's likely to be far more popular than Donald Trump.
- [32:44]
B
For me, knowing him pretty well, it's a sign of the pressure on him because when he pressurizes like this, and he's down to 84% of the Republicans now, he was at 100, so God bless him, but he's down to 84. And you and I both know that the Republican Party is shrinking. If you look at the actual registration base, it's at 28, 29%. So he's shrinking, his support is shrinking. And what he has a tendency to do when that happens, he starts lashing out at the people in the room. But going after the Pope, to me, was. Was outrageous. And I just want to bring up a historical context here. And this happened during the Second World War when Joseph Stalin remarked, actually to a French diplomat, Pierre Laval, he remarked it was precursor to the War, 1935. They were talking about the geopolitical footprint, the rise of Nazism. And he said, what of the Pope? He has no divisions. He has no army. Okay? And this was the pure realpolitic, military, material power argument. But if you remember, and I'm sure you do, Winston Churchill then said, well, he doesn't have a number of legions that are always visible on parade. Remember that great remark by Churchill? And I just want to point out that we've got 2,000 years of continuity from the Catholic Church. Soviet Union is gone. Stalin is dead. Pope John Paul ii, who is rightly credited for help in rolling back the Iron Curtain and also delegitimizing, at least morally, the Soviet sense of communism. I guess what I'm saying to you is that, does this further hurt US prestige? When I think of brand America globally, be the brand manager for America for a second, is that another chink in the image of America?
- [34:40]
C
Short answer is yes. The President's posting about destroying Iranian civilization were a part of that and the Pope was right to criticize him for it. Look, Brand America is much below what it was. I hate when I see polls that China now is more respected or more trusted than we are. We're not the shining city on a hill. We were never perfect. But what we used to project, the example we set, was something a lot of other people and countries aspire to. Our democracy, vibrancy of our economy and how we comported ourselves internationally. And look at it now. I don't think there's that many people who are waking up around the world who say, I want to be more like Donald Trump's America. This is not the America they remember. If they came to school here because of the excesses of ICE in our immigration policy, that has an effect. The President's posts have an effect. This war has an effect. Our lack of support for Ukraine, I could go on and on and on. So, yeah, brand America is tarnished and it has real strategic implications because countries, at the end of the day, Anthony, if they're going to be part of an alliance with us, essentially it means they're going to put their welfare, their well being in our hands. That means they have to trust our judgment, they have to trust our character. And I think a lot of countries are coming to doubt our judgment and our character.
- [36:04]
B
So I know this sounds sinister and it sounds strategic, but I believe that Trump is both sinister and way more strategic than people give him credit for. Going after the Pope and picking orthodox Easter to do it, okay, is another shot at Vance and it's another indirect shot at Rubio. And let me explain why. Okay? Vance is now considered an orthodox Catholic. Okay? He went to Francis's funeral. He's met with the Pope, with Rubio. There's pictures of them with their wives with the papal audience. Catholics represent 20% of the adults and Vance is a Catholic and he published the book on his conversion to the faith. And any normal person would then rebuke what Donald Trump is saying, going after a religious leader like this and somebody that has Vance's supposed now Catholic identity. But you know, and I know that Vance is not going to say a word about this. And for Trump, in all of his narcissistic glory, he loves that. He's like, you know, you're a supplicant to me. Forget about your religion. And I think that this is a shot at him. And I want to add one more thing to it and then get your reaction. He's also protecting Hegseth by doing this because the guys got the Cardinal, Christopher Pierre, the ambassador, into the Pentagon, and they threatened him, and they basically said, we don't like what the Pope is saying about this stuff. They talked about the Avidan papacy in the 14th century. Okay. I mean, this is crazy talk, Richard. Okay, okay. See, you know, you're laughing because you know how nuts it is.
- [37:50]
C
Okay, exactly.
- [37:51]
B
But. But. But this is pressure on Vance and pressure on Rubio, and it's to protect Hegseth, because a lot of Catholics, I know for sure, Catholic donors, and there are big Catholic donors, billionaire Catholic donors, that have called Trump and told him to fire Hegseth over the Pentagon situation. And so this was to rebuke the two Catholics in the room, and it was to protect Hegseth. And you say what?
- [38:22]
C
So let me turn it around as a. I'll be, again, rabbinical here and answer your question with the question, because I thought not having Rubio lead the talks in Islamabad was a bit of a rebuke of the Secretary of State. Odd thing, not to have him do it. So is Trump beginning to maneuver against both of his two heirs? Apparently, yes.
- [38:41]
B
Yes, he is.
- [38:42]
C
Okay. Because that's the bottom line, what you're suggesting, 100%, and that he's pitting them against each other. At the end of the day, he'll take neither, and he will then propose some relative or somebody else. Is that what this is about?
- [38:54]
B
That's exactly what it's about. It's very premeditated. It's very strategic. And he also knows that Vance cannot defend the Pope without, quote, unquote, betraying Trump. And so I'll talk about Trump the way he talks about himself in the first person. Right. You're not gonna betray Trump, Vance. Look at what I'm doing to your Pope. And by the way, I know you have a book coming out in June to talk about your Catholic conversion, and I'm going to take your buddy to the UFC fight on the night that you're talking in Islamabad. So I want you to know that you're not as close to me, even though you're my vice president, as your buddy here, Marco Rubio. You see what I'm saying? That's classic Trump. That's him, my man. That's what he does.
- [39:39]
C
Stay tuned, then, because it's interesting, all the conversation about Rubio vs. Vance, the comparing of their Munich speeches, and again, what I thought was the odd choice of Vance rather than Rubio to lead the delegation. But the idea that at the end of the there's a curtain three and the President's thinking about curtain three rather than curtains one or two, that's when this starts to get really interesting.
- [40:01]
B
Yeah. Again, I've stipulated on this show, and I'll say it repeatedly, he doesn't care. He almost would like Newsom to win because he could say, hey, you were nothing without me, you Republicans, and you'll be nothing after I leave. One last question for you before I let you go. When you think about the future of the Republican Party, are those the two guys, or do you see anybody else out there that could potentially come into the game in 2028?
- [40:29]
C
I do think there's others who could come in in 2018. Trump, in a funny sort of way, has opened the aperture. So might even be people who are not, quote, unquote, obvious, even professional politicians. It might also depend upon how poorly Trump and company Republicans perform in the midterms, how the economy looks. I don't know if ultimately it's 28, like with the Nikki Haleys or the former governor of Virginia, whether there's a place for more centrist Republicans, the kind of Republicans I work for in my career. I don't know if they make a comeback or maybe they have to wait till 32, maybe it's four more years. But I don't believe this is, to coin a phrase, the end of history when it comes to the Republicans. And the Republicans, at some point are going to have to decide whether they again become or represent a conservative political movement. They've gone off the rails. This is not a conservative Republican Party. You know that. This is a populist, radical party.
- [41:24]
B
Well, it's a party of one. It's whatever Trump's policies want it to be.
- [41:28]
C
It's a cult.
- [41:28]
B
He has said it more than once. You know, what's your MAGA principles? Whatever I want them to be. We're for the wars. We're against the wars. We're for this, we're against that. But it's always a pleasure to talk to you. We're gonna have Richard with us in our Members Only Q and A after the show, and we're gonna be talking about Hungary, elections, US Military service, et cetera, if you want to hear that stuff. Sign up for thereestpoliticsus.com to become one of our founding members. Ladies and gentlemen, Richard Haas. Thank you so much for joining us on today's show.
- [42:00]
C
Thanks for having me, Anthony.