
Donald Trump returns to the White House vowing that his success will be judged by "the battles that we win but also by the wars that we end". Yalda in Washington DC and Richard fresh back from Jerusalem assess whether the world is a safer - or a...
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James Matthews
Donald Trump is heading back to the White House.
Donald Trump
Together, we can truly make America great again.
Mark Stone
We are in for an unpredictable but fascinating four years and we're going to.
James Matthews
Be following every twist and turn for the first 100 days. We'll be bringing you the latest updates and analysis first thing every morning. So join me, James Matthews, me, Martha.
Mark Stone
Calneck and me, Mark Stone for Trump.
James Matthews
100 every weekday at 6:00am, wherever you get your podcast.
Donald Trump
During every single day of the Trump administration, I will very simply put America first.
Yalda Hakim
Hello and welcome to the World with me, Yalda. And I am in France, freezing cold.
Richard Engel
Washington, dc, And with me, Richard Engel. And I am actually in lovely Lisbon right now. But I've just, just got back here. It is not freezing cold, but we have a lot to talk about, obviously. Trump and the world. Trump has now presented himself, his foreign policy, his team, his family. You were there, I was scanning the international reaction. Let's get right to it.
Yalda Hakim
And a reminder to follow us wherever you get your podcasts. And Richard and I love getting your questions, so don't forget to send us your thoughts, your questions. We'll try and answer them here on the podcast. It's at the usual place, the world.
Richard Engel
Sky.Uk and we have one today, we're going to be addressing about drug cartels and terrorism, so stay tuned for that. Yalda, you were there covering this for sky, bringing an international perspective, trying to tell people back home what was happening in the us. What did you see? What did you think? What are your impressions?
Yalda Hakim
Yeah, Richard, first of all, it's minus nine here today and our phones are saying it feels like minus 17, so everyone is in thermals. This feels like the coldest I've ever known Washington and I've come here over the years. It just is so cold. To the point where Donald Trump's inauguration, usually outside on the west front of the Capitol, moved inside the rotunda. And I have to say, initial impressions of it being inside was that it was much more intimate.
Richard Engel
So you were able to get that, get a seat in the room.
Yalda Hakim
The press was not in the room. There's only 600 people allowed inside the room.
Richard Engel
So you watched it from a feed room next door or something?
Yalda Hakim
No, we were still outside. So the guests were. The guests were nice and warm. And Donald Trump said, you know, it was, it was 75 degrees in here, but for the rest of us, I mean, the American press were inside their studios. We were on our rooftop.
Richard Engel
So you were standing out in the cold for hours and hours? Yeah, that's why it's so such, it's such a lasting memory.
Yalda Hakim
It's so front and center of my mind. But it became about the who's who of, you know, the new Trump orbit. And what was really quite striking was obviously the first family in the front row, the tech billionaires, the so called tech bros were and their partners in the second row and his cabinet, you know, in the third and back rows. So that gave a very clear sign to the world of what the world the American people should be expecting of this particular administration and a clear signal of who he's going to prioritize.
Richard Engel
It's funny, intelligence agencies always watch things like this in other governments they look at. It goes back to the well before, but it was very popular when trying to figure out who was in, who was out in the Soviet Union. The CIA would always look at these pictures and they, because the leaders, the Politburo would kind of radiate out in degrees of importance and the further away from the center you were physically often meant how significant you were at the moment. And then suddenly people would disappear. It's the same in North Korea. People watch North Korea. I'm not saying the US is North Korea, I'm not saying that Putin's Russia, but that that particular dynamic of watching who's standing where in the room is, is, is an old practice, particularly when it comes to tight, closed knit regimes, close knit political systems.
Yalda Hakim
Yeah. And, and you know, if we go by the first Trump presidency, one of the things we know is that people don't necessarily last. He divides and conquers his court. And right now we're already seeing this kind of tension between the MAGA base, the isolationists and the tech bros who, you know, in many ways future and they've all come to D.C. so did.
Richard Engel
It feel like, you know, I don't want to use the obvious analogy, but I have to. It's kind of. You set me up for it. Did it feel like you as a member of the press are now left out in the cold?
Yalda Hakim
If you watch American media on the tv, you know, whether it's CNN or Fox News, it feels like circa 1860, they are so tribal, so divided.
Richard Engel
1860, the eve of the American Civil War.
Yalda Hakim
Yeah, and I'm certainly not saying that's where America is now, but what I'm saying is it feels so tribal when you look at American media. So when you come in as an outsider to this country and I feel that foreigners can tell the story of this country so well, coming in from the outside and observing it's been quite an extraordinary experience. You know, I covered the 2020 election. I, I've. This is probably my fourth presidential election, going back all the way to 2012, Obama's second term. And this time has felt quite different, whether it was Trump's inaugural speech. And I have to say, he didn't necessarily bring everyone with him, and it felt like a different season of Trump each time. So he gave you season one in the inaugural room, and now we're in season two. And then, of course, he goes, makes his way to the MAGA base in the Capital One arena, and you see how performative it is. He is the ultimate showman. At the end of the day, he's a salesman. He had those executive orders on the table, for example, and then he. He had the marker pens.
Richard Engel
Then he threw out to the crowd.
Yalda Hakim
And then he threw it out like a rock star into the crowd. And they're all cheering and jeering, and.
Richard Engel
Someone called out, can I get a Sharpie? Can I have a pen?
Yalda Hakim
You know, and he says, joe Biden wouldn't do this. And frankly, I'm not sure how many people would do it, because ultimately, he is a performer. He is on show whether he. It was that assassination attempt on his life that grazed his ear at that rally. He fell to the ground, he got up again, and he understood the optics of that moment. Blood running from his fist in the air, chanting, fight, fight, fight. Which became the. The emblem of the rest of the campaign. So.
Richard Engel
And the song, the Kid Rock song.
Yalda Hakim
Kid Rock song. And Donald Trump understands all of those objects, and he used it to. To his full sort of ability over the course of the last few days.
Richard Engel
So as an outsider looking in, I couldn't agree with you more. I fit a bit in both worlds because I'm an American, but I always cover foreign affairs. I'm always abroad. I live abroad, I've traveled abroad. I don't cover the United States from. From the inside out. I cover it from the outside in.
James Matthews
So.
Richard Engel
But as someone who is truly covering it from the outside in, what were your takeaways from what he said in these multiple speeches? The rollout. Where do you think this is taking us, taking America as that outsider looking in?
Yalda Hakim
Well, you know, it's funny, when he gave his first speech in 2017, he basically described it as American carnage and went back to the whole idea of America first. And I remember at the time, George W. Bush turned around, and I don't know if he said it to Hillary Clinton or who was next to him. He said, that was some weird shit. I don't think it was American carnage, because there were moments of hope where he talked about American exceptionalism. And this is the start of a new dawn in America, and America will be great again. But let's get into, Richard, some of the substance of what he said, because as he promised, and it feels like one. I've forgotten what Trump as president feels like, but it does feel like one massive rally all of the time. He's constantly like he's on a campaign rally. And he'd promised to sign a flurry of executive orders the night before. He hinted that he'd sign over a hundred. And within 24 hours, that's precisely what he did. Dozens and dozens of executive orders. Everything from cracking down on immigration and the border, which was a centerpiece of his campaign, to January 6th and pardoning up to 1500 people who were either convicted or had accepted that they had committed a violent crime on. On that day.
Richard Engel
So let's get into the meat of it. And it can be hard to find because, as you say, there's so much he offloads so often and so in such sort of loud ways, it could be. It can be hard to find the substance because it's like trained to trying to drink out of a. Out of a fire hose. So I listen to. I couldn't sleep that night. I watched everything. And I was watching you. I was flipping channels, I was watching the Arab channels. And respectively, I found it just immensely interesting. And I watched the inauguration speech quite intently. And I read the transcript afterwards, because that was at least the controlled part. And I read in there and saw as it was delivered, a Trump doctrine. Amid all the chaos, I think a Trump doctrine emerged that is pretty clear. And it is America first and America foremost. So America first and foremost, America first at home. And we're always going to think about America and America foremost. Among all other nations. We are going to be in charge. We are going to be in charge of particularly our own space. And he talked about the Manifest Destiny. Now, Manifest Destiny has a very specific meaning in the United States. And the idea of Manifest Destiny was that that America would reach from one ocean to the next, that it wouldn't stop at the Rocky Mountains, it wouldn't stop at sort of the Mississippi river or some other natural border. It would go all the way to the ocean, and that it would be kind of a comfortably placed country sitting between these two natural frontiers, and that it would be more stable this. This way. And he talked about Manifest Destiny, and he talked about Expansion. It's the first, first US President in a century to say that we're going to expand our territory. So when he's talking about the Panama Canal, he's in Manifest Destiny. It's like this area, the Gulf of Mexico, Gulf of America is our space. It's what the Romans used to call mare nostrum. The Roman Empire described the Mediterranean as our sea. So he's describing the U.S. we control this area. This is our space. Don't go near the Panama Canal. China should not be allowed to control the Panama Canal, which is the enter. Entering into our territorial waters, our homeland, which is embraced by. By the. By the sort of larger American vision of itself. So when people talk about Trump as, oh, he's an isolationist, he's certainly not an isolationist. Wants about expanding, wants to take Greenland, he said, we're going to take Panama back. Renaming the.
Mark Stone
The.
Richard Engel
The Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf of America, and Manifest Destiny. So if you're Putin, that's really good news for you, because he also has a manifest destiny. He doesn't believe that Ukraine should exist. He thinks Russia should go all the way, as it does, to the Pacific and control the sort of. That central land mass of Europe. China has a very similar manifest destiny that the Uyghurs, you know, shouldn't. It shouldn't exist as an independent, you know, cultural identity, and that it should also expand its manifest destiny across its territory, including Taiwan, which it doesn't accept. So it's a kind of a geopolitical view of a hegemonic dominance. We control this area. This is ours. Don't come near it. America first and foremost, and stay out of our territory. And I thought. I think that was the Trump Doctrine as I understood it.
Yalda Hakim
Yeah. And what's fascinating, when you think about who Trump sees as his counterparts, he doesn't necessarily see European leaders as his counterpart. That's why he had so much trouble with the likes of Angela Merkel, for example. Who does he see and respect on the world stage? It's the likes of Vladimir Putin. It's Xi Jinping. But at the same time, he has rivalry and competition with them. He put that firmly in his national security doctrines the first time around. When we talk about great power competition, he's looking at the likes of China. And so when you're talking about this sort of maritime expansion and Donald Trump not being an isolationist, I think in many ways people misunderstand Trump and where he's coming from, because actually, he views these strong men as leaders that he respects and he also sees as his counterparts on the world stage and he does see have a level of rivalry and competition with them. So he wants to take them on when it comes to American expansion. So you're right. When he, I think when people sort of think is he joking that he wants to take Greenland? I think no, actually it's sort of misunderstanding the point.
Richard Engel
I don't think he's joking at all. I don't think he's joking at all. Also, you know what people don't miss in the sort of the Greenland is the whole Arctic, which is an enormous transit rate. And the power issue we're in now entering the world of AI. AI is very thirsty for power. It consumes an enormous amount of power, more than the United States power grid can produce. It's also hot. So I think and all these, the tech bros, they want to turn Greenland into a battery, giant battery that's cold. That powers the brain. That is AI.
Yalda Hakim
Yeah. And that's why he's launching all sorts of infrastructure initiatives. For example, with OpenAI and Oracle and various others. That's why he's investing so heavily, led by Elon Musk, in the tech billionaires who have come to Washington. I think the marriage between bureaucracy and the sort of tech billionaires, how that will work will be really interesting over the course of the next four years. But I think on certain issues and policies, if we break down some of these executive orders, for example on immigration, it feels very much like he has squeezed four years into 24 hours.
Richard Engel
Executive orders are exactly what they sound like. It's a way for the executive branch of government to implement a policy or try and implement a policy without going through the normal process. It's a way for the President to say this is what we're doing, try and stop me. And it's now up to the other branches of government to try and stop that executive order if they don't accept it.
Yalda Hakim
So when he is putting these executive orders in place, for example, and immigration certainly was high on the agenda, saying that he's going to deploy troops on the border, reshaping America's relationship with immigration and how people view that and whether they can come to the United States and what their role is and that is what this executive order is now going to do where. But I think what we're going to see is a number of things. On the one hand you're going to see people who have lived illegally in the United States, who have paid their taxes and who are law abiding, terrified now about sending their kids to school, for example, because the kids might return home and find that they're not there anymore. Because if there is a rounding up and a crackdown of people, and then there's the issue around the criminal gangs, the drug cartels, the war on the drug cartels. So there's, it's multifaceted and it feels like what he was trying to do over four years has been squeezed into one afternoon in the Oval Office and on stage at the Capital One Arena.
Richard Engel
Why don't we take a break right now? And when we come back, we're going to talk more about Trump and the world. Also, let's talk about Israel, the ceasefire. It's gotten a little bit lost in all of this. I've just come back from there, so let's talk about that when we come back.
James Matthews
Donald Trump is heading back to the White House.
Donald Trump
Together we can truly make America great again.
Mark Stone
We are in for an unpredictable but fascinating four years.
James Matthews
And we're going to be following every twist and turn for the first 100 days. We'll be bringing you the latest updates and analysis first thing every morning. So join me, James Matthews, me, Martha.
Mark Stone
Calneck, and me, Mark Stone for Trump.
James Matthews
100 every weekday at 6:00am, wherever you get your podcast.
Yalda Hakim
Welcome back. Richard and I have been talking about the inauguration of Donald Trump and, and the change that we're likely to see over the course of the last the next four years. And of course, we love getting your questions. Please continue to send them through the usual place, theworldatsky.uk. we were just talking, Richard, before the break about the southern border and the executive orders that Donald Trump has put into place. He talked about the war on the drug cartels. Donald Trump says, I will send troops to the southern border to repel the disastrous invasion. He continued to call this the invasion of our country. Country, under the orders I signed today, will also be designating the cartels as foreign terrorist organizations. Now, we've got a listener here who's sent us an email. It's from Don. And he says on day one, President Trump designated the drug cartels as terrorist organizations, which seems obvious, but of course, there is pushback. Is that real concern or just petty politics? Why wasn't this done before? What is the downside now? First of all, he has signed this executive order to designate drug cartels as terrorist organizations. It's up to the State Department to put them on that list. Now, when we think about the terrorist lists, the designated terrorist lists, we think, Richard, of al Qaeda, for example, isis, for example, we don't think about Mexican drug cartels or Venezuelan drug cartels. And I think the reason they do that is because they focus on politics and ideology. These terrorist organizations want to attack US Embassies, for example. They want to launch attacks on American soil. They want to kill Americans and American partners and allies. Drug cartels don't necessarily. I mean, they used to.
Richard Engel
They want your money, they want your money. They don't care what happens to you, but they would rather just have your money. If you die using their product, c'est la vie. But they would rather just take your money. They don't want to blow up your shopping mall.
Yalda Hakim
Yeah, they use similar tactics like car bombs, for example, but they are targeted.
Richard Engel
Against each other and against their rivals.
Yalda Hakim
Exactly. They are not going after indiscriminately against Americans. And so I think suddenly putting them on a terrorist list, I mean, what does that mean? Does that mean.
Richard Engel
Oh, so it has a big, it has an enormous significance, technical significance, but.
Yalda Hakim
It doesn't mean targeting them in their home countries doing over the horizon attacks you.
Richard Engel
Yes, it can do that. It automatically triggers a bunch of sanctions. It gives you other kinds of rights to detain. When you, the Ukrainians have been pushing to have Russia as a designated state sponsor of terror. And that was a bridge too far for the United States because if you do that automatically, a whole series of actions kick into place in the United States. It's a technical term. You know, look what happened in Guantanamo. We couldn't put these people in an American prison where they would have some rights. But since we're considering them, you know, foreign combatants or enemy combatants, terrorists, they'll fall into this other subgroup of not quite humans and we can do what you want to them. So there was a, it's an interesting sort of fact that you do this. So it means we're really going to go after you. And we can. And we can. When we're taking off whatever kind of cuffs we might have had bureaucratically to, to detain, sanction, potentially target with military force. It unleashes every kind of opportunity that you would want. Yeah.
Yalda Hakim
And just on a smaller scale, Richard, someone who supports terrorism in the United States can face up to 20 years in prison, for example. If you're a drug pusher selling drugs on the side of a street in.
Richard Engel
The United States now you're actually part of a terrorist organization. It's a whole different category.
Yalda Hakim
Absolutely. So just to answer Don's question there, I think while Donald Trump wants to do this and Joe Biden was pushed to do this back in 2023 and he resisted. I think that there are going to be a lot of agencies concerned about. While this feels obvious to put drug cartels on a terrorist list, it has a whole host of other issues around it.
Richard Engel
Oh, and think about all these people who are already incarcerated in the United States and in the appeals process. Suddenly they're members of a pick a cartel, Sinaloa Cartel or the Zetas or whatever cartel it happens to be. And now they're terror. They're members of a terrorist organization. It's a different legal challenge.
Yalda Hakim
Yeah. And Richard, just to sort of move it towards sort of where you were in the last week. I was in the Middle east, you were in Jerusalem. We spoke last week about this ceasefire deal. And of course, Donald Trump took credit for getting it over the line. And I think many people would say, rightly so, people I spoke to an.
Richard Engel
Israeli, believe that that's what they believe.
Yalda Hakim
And, and certainly the hostage families, when you speak to them, they say that, you know, they needed someone to put their foot down and say, we need this done.
Richard Engel
I said, I spoke to several hostage families just this week who told me exactly that, that this deal was basically the same as the deal that could have been there under Biden, but Netanyahu didn't want to do it, didn't want to sign it. There were issues. He was dragging his feet and he was afraid of Trump and he signed it. But so some hostage families who say that with, with great anger saying they blaming Netanyahu, you could have signed this deal earlier, you just didn't want to. And you only signed it when this bully who you're afraid of said, if you don't sign it, there's going to be hell to pay. And there was a lot of anger toward, but, and credit toward, toward Trump. They said, because basically that the Israelis, that, that the Bibi and Hamas are scared of the guy. So they signed the deal that they could have signed months ago.
Yalda Hakim
And maybe sometimes thuggish language is required in diplomacy because we've seen Joe Biden try and convince Israel try and speak to leaders in the Middle east to try and get the ceasefire deal over the line. Trump comes in within a few weeks, the same deal that they'd talked about for over a year gets pushed over the line. Now, one of the things that Donald Trump was asked in this impromptu press conference was was he confident that this cease fire deal was going to hold? And he sort of looked up at the reporter, shrugged his shoulders and said, no, I'm I'm not confident. It's not, it's not our war. But then he said something quite interesting, Richard. He said that, you know, Gaza, I looked at a picture of that place and it's like a demolition site. You know, you could really build that place nicely. It's, it's, it's got a lot of sunshine this time of year and it.
Richard Engel
Is a lot of coastline.
Yalda Hakim
So it's, it's interesting. We'll have to wait and see. He did talk about not being confident about the ceasefire deal. And we're seeing, you know, you've just come back. I mean, there's violence in the West Bank. The guns may have fallen silent in Gaza, but we're seeing a lot of violence continue in the West Bank. And peace in the Middle east is something that every American president comes in and thinks that they can resolve and they leave office realizing it's more messy than when they first started each time.
Richard Engel
So are you asking me do I think it's gonna hold? Yeah, I think it's very, very fragile. It's step by step, really slow. So I was there in, in what is generally called Hostage Square in Tel Aviv. And I've been following this story my whole career, but for the last, you know, 15 months plus since October 7, it's, you know, spent a lot of time there. And this rollout is three per week, three to four per week. They're starting with women, then they're going to move to sort of the elderly and the infirm, supposed to be children. There's the Bibush family. We haven't seen them come out yet. So there's the expectation that when they do come out, they're probably not alive and that's going to be very, very demoralizing because there's this young redheaded, you know, two year old and his pictures still everywhere and they just recently there were Mylar balloons with the two number two attached to the, his pictures because people went out and said happy birthday to this, to this boy hostage and he hasn't come out yet. And since he hasn't come out, people are starting to wonder, okay, maybe they don't have him anymore. That hasn't been officially said. But once dead bodies start coming, arriving, that's going to be a challenge, I think. But I say it's going to fall apart. I could say that with a great confidence that this thing is going to fall apart, but it might come back together again and then fall apart and come back together again. And that could become the new norm for a while. Which is still pretty miserable.
Yalda Hakim
So that is, Richard, your long term prediction, which is frankly grim. But we do these predictions, these short term predictions.
Richard Engel
My long term prediction is even grimmer than that.
James Matthews
That if you want, if you want.
Richard Engel
I'll give you, here, here's your, here's your tea. It's the longer term prediction is that I think Gaza goes into a state of sort of sustained lower level war where, because they don't, there's been no announcement of who's going to run the place. Hamas is still, is still strong. You know, you saw that they're weak, much weaker than they were. But they're still able to, to do this hostage deal. They were still able to muster hundreds of gunmen and people were watching. If you saw the videos of the, the release, they were out in force and they looked pretty good. They had new cars and their uniforms were, were kind of clean and pressed and, and you know, ready. So they put out the impression that, you know, they're still in, in charge, there's no alternative. So if you have a degree of Hamas there, Israelis will continue to keep hitting them. And so I think Gaza becomes a long term, lower level conflict and then the focus this year moves to the West Bank. So I think if 2024 was the Gaza year of destruction and hostage and pain and anguish after the intelligence collapse, this year, watch the West Bank.
Yalda Hakim
Well, I guess for me, I'm in D.C. and so my focus has been on, on what Donald Trump is doing and saying and what people are thinking. And I guess over the course of the next think all of these executive orders that Donald Trump has signed, we're going to see a flurry of court cases and people challenging him on it. And I think one of the things about Donald Trump when he speaks to his base and his supporters is that he makes these threats or promises during campaigns and at rallies. And so it's not so much about getting these things over the line, but appearing before his followers like he's fighting the fight. And I think he knows that, that these executive orders are going to prompt, you know, cases and they're going to make their way to the Supreme Court and, and people are going to be talking about it. It's, he knows that's going to happen. It's more that he wants to appear that, to show his supporters, I'm fighting and I'm fighting for you.
Richard Engel
Well, another fascinating conversation. We're going to be, we're going to be talking about this a lot, but here's a promise. While we're going to be talking a lot about, about Trump and the ins and workings of his cabinet and the First Family and who's in, who's out, the pictures that are coming up and coming down and going up in the Pentagon and other halls of power. I still think we need to keep looking around left and right. And I'm looking forward to doing that with you over this wild ride. It's going to be a wild ride.
Yalda Hakim
Yeah, buckle up. It's going to be wild. And I look forward to, you know, continuing this and talking to you, Richard, and getting your perspectives and as you say, talking about our world.
Richard Engel
Yalda, until next time.
Yalda Hakim
Goodbye, Richard. Always good to see you. See you soon. Foreign.
James Matthews
Donald Trump is heading back to the White House.
Donald Trump
Together, we can truly make America great again.
Mark Stone
We are in for an unpredictable but fascinating four years and we're going to.
James Matthews
Be following every twist and turn for the first 100 days. We'll be bringing you the latest updates and analysis first thing every morning. So join me, James, Matthew Beep, Martha.
Mark Stone
Kelnick and me, Mark Stone for Trump.
James Matthews
100 every weekday at 6am wherever you get your podcast.
Podcast Summary: "President Trump: 'Peacemaker'?"
Podcast Information:
Overview: In this episode, Yalda Hakim and Richard Engel delve into the multifaceted role of former President Donald Trump as he returns to the White House. They explore his inaugural actions, foreign policy stance, executive orders, and involvement in international diplomacy, particularly focusing on his designation of drug cartels as terrorist organizations and his role in the Israel-Palestine ceasefire deal.
Yalda Hakim opens the discussion by recounting her experience covering Trump’s inauguration in Washington, D.C., amidst extreme cold weather:
"I was in France, freezing cold... The Trump inauguration... moved inside the rotunda... it was much more intimate." (02:01)
She observes the seating arrangement, highlighting the prominence of Trump's family, tech billionaires, and cabinet members:
"The first family in the front row, the tech billionaires... a clear sign of whom he's going to prioritize." (03:04)
Richard Engel draws parallels with intelligence practices, noting how seating arrangements can indicate power hierarchies:
"The CIA would always look at these pictures... the further away from the center you were physically often meant how significant you were." (04:30)
The hosts discuss Trump's assertive foreign policy, framing it within the context of "Manifest Destiny"—a historical doctrine of American expansion:
"America first and foremost... Manifest Destiny... control this area." (07:07)
Richard Engel compares Trump's approach to that of other global leaders like Putin and Xi Jinping, emphasizing a vision of hegemonic dominance:
"It's a kind of geopolitical view of a hegemonic dominance... America first and foremost, and stay out of our territory." (11:24)
Yalda Hakim adds that Trump views leaders like Putin and Xi not just as rivals but also as counterparts deserving of respect:
"He views these strong men as leaders that he respects and he also sees as his counterparts on the world stage." (12:22)
The conversation shifts to Trump's rapid issuance of executive orders, aiming to implement his agenda swiftly:
"He had those executive orders on the table... within 24 hours, that's precisely what he did." (06:19)
Yalda Hakim notes the breadth of these orders, from immigration to criminal justice:
"Everything from cracking down on immigration and the border... pardoning up to 1500 people who were either convicted or had accepted that they had committed a violent crime on [January 6th]." (07:37)
Richard Engel explains the nature of executive orders as tools for unilateral policy implementation:
"It's a way for the President to say this is what we're doing, try and stop me." (14:53)
A significant portion of the episode addresses Trump's decision to label drug cartels as terrorist organizations, analyzing its implications:
Yalda Hakim introduces the topic with a listener's question:
"Why wasn't this done before? What is the downside now?" (17:23)
Richard Engel elaborates on the strategic shift, highlighting the technical and legal ramifications:
"It automatically triggers a bunch of sanctions. It gives you other kinds of rights to detain... They now fall into this other subgroup of not quite humans and we can do what you want to them." (19:28)
Yalda Hakim discusses the potential impact on individuals already within the legal system:
"Now, you're actually part of a terrorist organization. It's a whole different category." (21:00)
They both acknowledge the complexity and potential controversies surrounding this move, considering past defenses against such designations:
"While Donald Trump wants to do this and Joe Biden was pushed to do this back in 2023 and he resisted. I think that there are going to be a lot of agencies concerned about." (21:40)
The hosts examine Trump's involvement in brokering a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, assessing its effectiveness and long-term viability:
Yalda Hakim shares insights from interviews with Israeli hostage families:
"They said, because basically that the Israelis... the Bibi and Hamas are scared of the guy. So they signed the deal that they could have signed months ago." (22:19)
Richard Engel provides a critical analysis of the deal's potential downfall:
"I think it's very, very fragile... Gaza becomes a long-term, lower-level conflict and then the focus this year moves to the West Bank." (26:21)
Yalda Hakim reflects on Trump's diplomatic style, contrasting it with his predecessors:
"Maybe sometimes thuggish language is required in diplomacy because we've seen Joe Biden try and convince Israel... Trump comes in within a few weeks, the same deal... gets pushed over the line." (23:16)
Concluding the episode, Yalda and Richard share their predictions regarding Trump's presidency and its global impact:
Richard Engel forecasts ongoing instability in the Middle East:
"It's going to become the new norm for a while. Which is still pretty miserable." (26:21)
Yalda Hakim anticipates a surge in legal challenges against Trump's executive orders:
"We're going to see a flurry of court cases and people challenging him on it... he wants to appear that he's fighting and I'm fighting for you." (28:32)
They emphasize the unpredictable nature of the forthcoming years under Trump's leadership:
"It's going to be a wild ride." (28:32)
Donald Trump: "Together, we can truly make America great again." (00:03, 16:43, 29:35)
Yalda Hakim: "It's all about who’s who of the new Trump orbit." (03:04)
Richard Engel: "He is the ultimate showman... he's a salesman." (06:25)
Yalda Hakim: "He is constantly like he's on a campaign rally." (07:07)
Richard Engel: "A Trump doctrine emerged that is pretty clear." (11:24)
Yalda Hakim: "It feels like one massive rally all of the time." (06:21)
Richard Engel: "It's a kind of geopolitical view of a hegemonic dominance." (11:24)
Yalda Hakim: "Donald Trump understands all of those objects, and he used it to his full sort of ability." (07:07)
Conclusion: Yalda Hakim and Richard Engel provide a comprehensive analysis of Donald Trump's return to the White House, examining his strategies, policies, and their implications both domestically and internationally. The episode paints a picture of a presidency marked by assertive actions, controversial decisions, and an unpredictable trajectory that promises significant shifts in American and global landscapes.