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- [02:13]
Charlie Sykes
I'm Charlie Sykes. Welcome back to the to the Contrary podcast. Why What a hell of a week. Donald Trump prepares to address the nature and the networks for some reason have decided to air it all. He moves closer to wagging the dog in Venezuela with an embargo on sanctioned ships. Meanwhile, fallout from his incredibly even by his standard nauseatingly crass and callous attack on Rob Reiner, we continue to get that. And I don't know whether It's a sign of the apocalypse or not. But Marjorie Taylor Greene continues to make sense, saying that, you know, that Donald Trump is losing his grip on maga. I don't know. Is it a sign? I'm asking for a friend. We have an awful lot to talk about today. And joining me on a rather extraordinary week, by the way, that's true of every week, isn't it, though? Our good friend Tom Nichols from the Atlantic. How are you, Tom?
- [03:11]
Tom Nichols
I'm good, Charlie. Seasons greetings. Merry Christmas.
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Charlie Sykes
Yeah, Merry Christmas. And I know you just got back from London. You celebrated your birthday there. Congratulations. I hope things were calmer and nicer.
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Tom Nichols
You know, it's strange that you say that about this week, Charlie, because when I got off the plane last week, I got back on like Thursday night, I said, wow, Donald Trump's having a really bad week. Because I had, you know, my, my Christmas or my birthday present to myself was, I went to London and of course you can watch the BBC and keep up on the news and not have it be Donald Trump 24 7. So I got back and I knew that there was stuff going on, but when I got here, I realized he'd lost in Indiana. He was getting rolled by just about everybody that had anything to say about him.
- [03:55]
Charlie Sykes
Big deal.
- [03:56]
Tom Nichols
I mean, he was having a really bad week and I don't think it's gotten better. I mean, he's been appalling, but I don't think his week's gotten any better. And I don't think his political fortunes have improved any. So I, you know, it was kind of nice to get back and say, to see a majority of Republicans and you know, kind of nice to see some local politic, local and regional, I mean, state level politicians saying, no, thank you. I don't want to be pushed around by the President of the United States. No, I don't want some, you know, megalomaniacal narcissistic real estate developer in Washington sending people telling my fellow citizens here in the Midwest to threaten me. And I was pretty happy about that.
- [04:36]
Charlie Sykes
Well, and also you had, I think it was 13 members of Republicans in the House who bucked him on a discharge petition. And, but help me walk through this because, you know, part of me is like, this is good. I agree with you. But part of me is, as I watch all of these folks going, I am amazed. I am shocked. Oh, my God, he's a stark raving maniac. I mean, who knew that the man had no moral compass whatsoever? Part of me is like, good, good. I'M really happy to see that you're recognizing that. If only you had been warned or what were you thinking over the last 10 years? I mean, part of me is like, look, we need to welcome every single person who's willing to join the coalition of the rational and the decent. On the other hand, can anyone be surprised? I mean, there's something I wrote about this yesterday. What did we learn about Donald Trump and that Rob Reiner, his callous attack? And the answer was, we actually learned absolutely nothing. Because this is who Donald Trump is. This is who he has always been. And it's like, you know, you have looked the other way. You've put your head up your, you know what, for years and years and years. But on the other hand, thank you and congratulations for having the scales finally fall from your eyes.
- [05:48]
Tom Nichols
You and I are both longtime veterans of social media.
- [05:52]
Charlie Sykes
Yes.
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Tom Nichols
And there are some things that people. There are these little hiccups people have on social media that are really annoying. Like, if you post something about. About Donald Trump, they say, what took you so long?
- [06:03]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah, I know.
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Tom Nichols
And why are you surprised? And how could you not know this? And you just, you know, like.
- [06:08]
Charlie Sykes
And there I am right there. Yeah.
- [06:10]
Tom Nichols
I've gotten to the point, after 10 years, I block people like that. On the other hand, this is one of those moments. Whereas you say, we learned absolutely, absolutely nothing new. People like you and me and all, A lot of our colleagues and friends have been warning about this for years, that when, When Trump was ghoulish and that was the first word that came, he was literally being a ghoul, you know, reveling in the violent, bloody death of someone who'd had the temerity to criticize him. He didn't look at Rob Reiner as a father, as a man, as an American, as a. Anything. He was just. It was just a, you know, a scene in a. In a slasher flick where the. Where somebody that Trump didn't like got what was coming to him. But none of us were surprised by this. And I don't. I think let. Let's even be a little more optimistic, what with it being the Christmas season and all. I don't think they're really surprised. I think there's. I think it's. They've reached the point where it's okay to say it out loud.
- [07:12]
Charlie Sykes
No. So there's a couple of things about this. That's an interesting point. You know, this did break through. The whole Reiner thing broke through. And really, for you and I, you know, it's like, okay, he does this all the time. He has, you know, celebrated this, you know, he mocked, he was joking about the hammer attack on Nancy Pelosi's husband, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. We don't need to go through this. Why did this breakthrough, you know, number one, because I think, you know, Rob Reiner, a lot of people love Rob Reiner and for non political reasons, I mean, you know, all of the great, wonderful movies, he was an icon. And again, people who, for people who were not immersed in MAGA social media, somebody who, you look back and it was kind of the movies of our lives and everything. That's number one. But number two, I think you make an interesting point. A lot of the, the, the folks, you know, from the MAGA adjacent, right? Or the MAGA Curious, right? There's, I guess, a sense of exhaustion to do. I keep having to defend this bullshit.
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Tom Nichols
When can I come off this cross?
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Charlie Sykes
Yeah, and you know what? He is getting worse in a sense. You know, like, remember a couple of years ago when he used the term, you know, shithole country? Back then he denied it. It was all the people came out and said, no, I don't think he actually said it. And now he's basically, yeah, I said it. There's sort of a sense that he has no filter anymore and he's just gonna lay it out. And it is like, oh my God, we have three more years of all of this. So there is a willingness to say, yeah, I'm sorry. Also the hypocritical contrast between all the folks were saying, if you mock or say anything about the death of Charlie Kirk, we're coming for you. 600 people apparently were fired for things they said about Charlie Kirk. And then what does Donald Trump do? You know, he takes the, you know, so much for being, you know, the moral high ground. What do they. He does, you know, he does this with Rob Reiner and of course will face no actual consequences in the, in the world. But yeah, people are willing to take him on now.
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Tom Nichols
I think you know, your point about Rob Reiner, I'll just throw in a personal Antone. I had the pleasure of spending about a half hour. We were all trapped in an airport together for a late flight and I met Rob and Michelle Reiner and he is, he's a delight. He, he was, God rest his soul. He was a delightful guy. I mean, he was just, you know, we sort of recognize, I mean, obviously I recognized him. And he went, oh, yeah, you know, you're, I see you on tv. And we started chit chatted and we moved from politics to, like, talking about our families. And, you know, I said, you know, you're looking good. You've lost. Yeah. You know, and we started talking about. We were two portly guys talking about weight loss. I mean, he was just. And then he did something. And this is why the death of his. Two of them together really got me. He. His wife was kind of a bit away from her. She was doing something with Ticketing, and she said, I want you to meet some. Come here. And he put his arm around her. He said, this is my Michelle. Sweet, not my wife, or this is Michelle. He put his eye. He said, this is my Michelle. And I thought, what a delightful person, you know, and it was like a gut punch. And I think, as you say, we grew up with Rob Reiner. I mean, you didn't have to be right wing or left wing to love the Princess Bride or.
- [10:20]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah, the Princess Bride remains one of the great movies of our time.
- [10:24]
Tom Nichols
That was the other thing. I just watched Spinal Tap 2 on the plane to London and I said, this is great. You know, he's 77. He's 78 years old. You know, they're all having a laugh at themselves and then come back and you just hope for one minute that Donald Trump could just not be a ghoul for just a moment, and he couldn't do it. And I think that did. I think that did kind of impress itself, you know, because Paul Pelosi is just an abstraction, right? You could say, well, hammer attack on Paul. Pull. Well, that's Nancy's husband in San Francisco. And I don't know the guy, and I've never seen. I don't know what all the. But. But, you know, Rob Reiner killed by his son is something that I think really broke through to the public, and that's why it was nuts that Trump stepped in it. The other thing I was going to say, though, about the willingness to speak up, I think you brought up Marjorie Taylor Greene and this alternate universe where we've, you know, stepped through the. Through the particle collider and we now have rational Marjorie Taylor Greene. I think two people are finally capable of envisioning a world without Donald Trump politically. I don't mean that about his health. I mean just that even though there's three more years of this, he's done, he's a lame duck, it's over. And he doesn't. And Indiana proved that when he summons the flying monkeys, there aren't as many of them as There used to be.
- [11:52]
Charlie Sykes
No, there used to be the flying monkeys would always come in and people would obey in advance, and then they didn't. I mean, look, a lot of his power. And look, he's still gonna be president for more than three years, and it's going to be a rough ride. He's not going away. But a lot of his power has been his perception that he is unstoppable. Right. That resistance is futile. And at that moment, when you begin to sort of recognize that post Trump era, then a lot of the calculations change. Right. And the willingness to stand up. And I think you're right. Okay. By the way, this is a digression, and I'm gonna say something that people are gonna think is unserious, but actually, I've been thinking about this a little bit. Do you know who the best political commentator in America is right now? This is a rhetorical question.
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Tom Nichols
You mean besides us?
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Charlie Sykes
Yeah. Yeah. I think it's Jimmy Kimmel.
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Tom Nichols
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
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Charlie Sykes
I mean, I every. I. Jimmy Kimmel's stuff is so. I mean, it is on point. It is hilarious, but it is substantive. And he had a routine the other night where he talked about, you know, how vile this was, and he did not pull any punches whatsoever. I mean, people need to understand there's no backing off. There's no sane washing anything that's going on. And he had a couple of clips where two things, speaking of, you know, Donald Trump as a father in the relationship to, you know, father and sons, how he's got this thing where he talks about Melania has a son, Melania loves her son, and he keeps going, and he played a lot of them, and it's like, Donald, it's your son, too. You know, would you acknowledge that he's your son? Which is weird. And then the other night, he's giving a speech, and there's a. There's an attractive woman sitting in the. In the front row, literally in the front row, and he says, whoa, wait, you look just like Ivanka. Are you Ivanka? I'm saying, could you just turn around for the camera?
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Tom Nichols
Does she look.
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Charlie Sykes
Does she look like Ivanka?
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Tom Nichols
It's the most unbelievable thing.
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Charlie Sykes
So I wouldn't.
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Tom Nichols
I didn't want to take a chance. I say, is that Ivanka?
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Charlie Sykes
You look just like Ivanka.
- [13:46]
Tom Nichols
Which is a great compliment, actually.
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Charlie Sykes
Kimmel makes the point. How is it that you do not recognize your own daughter?
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Tom Nichols
What stage of dementia is not recognizing.
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Charlie Sykes
The daughter you are physically attracted to? 11. And again, and there's just something there is something about him. And it just, it's his, his willingness to be as crude and crass. And apparently there's no one around him, no one in that White House who between the time he put out that disgusting post that was denounced across the political spectrum, no one said to him, hey, maybe, you know, let's soft pedal it, because a couple hours later he's asked in the Oval Office and he doubles down. Speaking of the Oval.
- [14:25]
Tom Nichols
Yeah, he does it again.
- [14:26]
Charlie Sykes
He does it again. He does it even worse, you know. Yeah, I really didn't like the guy. I thought he was bad for America. So. So that, you know, there somewhere in the background, there are these aides, including Susie Wiles, the allegedly unflappable chief of staff, who now turns out to be the White House chief Gossip Girl. And I wrote in my newslet yesterday, you know, once again, we get these voices from inside the house, the call from inside the house, and Susie Wiles, you know, chattering about, what were all the things that she said that she said that she said he has an alcoholic personality. J.D. vance is a conspiracy theorist. Pam Bondi completely whiffed on the Epstein files. Elon Musk is an avowed ketamine user.
- [15:07]
Tom Nichols
Russ Vowed is a right wing fanatic. You know, he's. Venezuela is about regime change. I mean, just goes on and on.
- [15:13]
Charlie Sykes
Oh yeah, Venezuela, yeah, we're just gonna keep blowing up boats until Maduro leaves, which is like, wait, and we're gonna come back to this, wagging the dog with Venezuela because the embargo is a big deal. So Susie Wiles says this, and of course, you know, everybody is up in arms about it, but you think about the number of people who have worked with Donald Trump, who have seen him up close in his cabinet, his vice president, all the staffers, all the communications aides, all the legal aids, all the national security advisors who have broken with him come out of the White House and say, what the actual fuck, people, we gotta warn you about him. And so I asked the question, why does this keep happening? And we know why this keeps happening. Because Donald Trump is Donald Trump. And anyone remotely rational who's describing it is gonna describe this chaos and these misfit toys he's surrounded himself with.
- [16:07]
Tom Nichols
And Susie Wiles is the closest thing there is to an A lister in this administration. You had a lot of them in the last one. But you know, when you ask Charlie, why does it keep happening? It's because the people around him, geez, we haven't had a movie quote in forever. So they're like Richard Gere in An Officer and a Gentleman, you know, not wanting to get thrown out because why? Because I got nowhere else to go. You know, when, when the drill sergeant said, you quit? And he says, I got nowhere else to go. And these are all where, you know, on what planet, what is Pete Hegseth going to do after being Secretary of Defense?
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Charlie Sykes
Oh, absolutely.
- [16:48]
Tom Nichols
Where do these, you know, what job? We had a piece today. Yeah, well, that. And, you know, it's funny you said, because I was just going to say one of my colleagues had a piece in the Atlantic today about the mess over at the National Institutes of Health where Bhattacharya, you know, the titular head, he sits in his office podcasting all day. They call him Podcast J. And the actual NIH is being run by some functionary who has all kinds of crazy ideas, you know, that nobody knows because this is, these are, these folks are all realizing they'd better cash in soon. But my point is that their absolute loyalty to Donald Trump is premised on. This is it. They've peaked. This is the high water mark. You know, where does Carolyn Levitt go after this?
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Charlie Sykes
You know, which is why he chose them.
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Tom Nichols
Yeah, she'll be on Fox.
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Charlie Sykes
Oh, yeah, she'll be on it. You know, she'll get a job on Fox News or the many, many other spin offs that are out there.
- [17:49]
Tom Nichols
Yeah, well, Megyn Kelly thought that kind of way too. Right? I mean, there are, the media landscape is kind of littered with podcasters who now have to be, I mean, look at Tucker Carlson, I mean, the granddaddy of them all, you know, from, from the Olympian heights to flogging, you know, a podcast. And I mean, this is, that's why, that's why it keeps happening. Because I, when the Reiner thing, when the Reiner thing happened, there was a part of me that has always said, and I know you and I have talked about this a bit offline, but, you know, there's the part of me that says Donald Trump is so disturbed, is so unstable, that there's a part of him that is hard to even hold culpable, you know, that, that he's just, you know, from a, I mean, even as a Christian, you say, oh, it's terrible. He's. I said, does he even have the, is he a fully formed enough person to have moral agency? Because he's more like a goldfish. He darts over here and he darts over there and he has no, you know, but the people around him, they know.
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Charlie Sykes
Yes.
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Tom Nichols
That's where the moral Culpability.
- [18:52]
Charlie Sykes
That's why I'm always struck that I totally agree with you. You know, I have said this really almost for the last 10 years, that, okay, Donald Trump is Donald Trump. Let's take the lens and turn it from him. Because everybody's obsessed with looking at him to the people who are looking at him and going, yeah, we find that acceptable. That is the crazy making part. The fact that Donald Trump is a toxic narcissist, fine. There's a lot of toxic narcissists, you know, who are out there. It's the people who go, wow, you know, this is the new George Washington. Or I accept this. I think that the. The Reiner thing, just going back to our thing, it clearly rattled some people who. Whose capacity for rationalization, I think, you know, might be close to redline. Did you see Jim Garrity writing in the National Review?
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Tom Nichols
Yes. Good for Jim.
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Charlie Sykes
Jim Garrity has been writing for many, many years. I like his. I don't always agree with him, but National Review has, you know, one of those publications that maybe Trump, you know, a little bit. The editor is very. So Jim Garrity writing about this basically says, screw it. I'm just. I'm writing this. That the President of the United States is a hateful, raging lunatic with all the empathy of Jeffrey Dahmer. That wasn't me. That wasn't you. This is a National Review magazine. Okay, I'll let you decide whether the term psychopath or sociopath better describes the president's actions. Skip. Both. On some level, we always knew the President was a nut of some kind, obsessed with grievances, vindictive and prone to posting late night tirades on social media, uninterested in details, erratic, impulsive, spiteful. But he fights, right? We kind of like did that. And then it goes on talking about this, and he talks about the complete lack of any moral compass whatsoever. You know, he says, you can run a company that enjoyed a wildly lucrative role conducting financial transactions among criminals, terrorists, and hostile states, and this president will pardon you believing anything that he's told. Or you can run a massive cocaine smuggling operation while being president of a South American country. And this president will pardon you too, because he'll believe anything he's told about the prosecution. And basically, this is where I think he just nails it. Donald Trump cannot discern moral right and wrong through a person's actions like a normal human being. Donald Trump's entire worldview of whether someone is a good person or a bad person depends entirely, entirely on whether that person offers praise or criticism of Donald Trump, you kiss his ass, you're good, you criticize him, you're evil. And we will have no empathy. And you know what? Finally, National Review succumbs to Trump derangement syndrome. Welcome to the psych ward. Welcome to TDS world.
- [21:44]
Tom Nichols
Welcome to the resistance. National Review. And it's especially striking because, as you say, National Review. When I was a younger man and a young conservative, I wrote for NRO many times. National Review was kind of the benchmark of conservative publication. And they fell far and fell hard under Trumpism. Rich Lowry and others really made arguments that were, I think, morally reprehensible and hollowed out the conservative core of National Review. But this was the old time religion. This was somebody, you know, speaking the truth and saying something that, that again, that they all knew, that everybody's known for years, but that for, you know, either, I don't know, you know, what is it, donors or policy preferences that they were hoping something that you just didn't say it and now it's okay to say it?
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Charlie Sykes
I think they got tired of going on those cruises and being beaten up by, you know, know, the, the blue haired ladies. Why are you so mean to Donald Trump? You know, after a while it's like Oscar.
- [22:52]
Tom Nichols
I know, I know what he meant. He has a good heart. He loves this country. Oh, I wish he wouldn't say some bad things now and then. That was the thing that would drive me crazy. Well, I wish you wouldn't say bad things now and then. That's not, that's not a, like an ancillary problem. That is a function of who he is. And I think it was good to have, I mean, I thought Jim, you know, like you said, I haven't always agreed with Jim, but I think that was really something that needed to be said and good for him for being the guy to say it was good.
- [23:23]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah, it's very good. And by the way, I excerpted it in my to the Contrary newsletter. Hey, here's a little known fact. You're talking about how you wrote for National Review in your youth. I actually was the co editor of the National Review College Guide with an introduction by William F. Buckley. In a distant time, actually in a different decade, literally in a different century.
- [23:44]
Tom Nichols
And dinosaurs roamed the earth.
- [23:46]
Charlie Sykes
So that's how long that was. And, and I, and I was. And I was there. Okay. So more substantively, Trump is addressing the nation from the Oval Office Thursday night. I don't know, maybe by the time people see this, we'll have a clearer idea. I assume it's going to be just the usual, you know, you know, touting all of his many, you know, awesome accomplishments, but obviously he's moving toward wagging the dog with, with, with Venezuela. So just give me your sense of, as a former professor at the, at the Naval War College, when you declare a blockade on a country that is. That, that, that feels like virtually tantamount to a declaration of war.
- [24:35]
Tom Nichols
No, it's an act of war. You know, we did it to Cuba in 62, and we did it in this very. For people that actually still care about history. We did it to Cuba in 62, but we did it in this very careful way that said, rather than simply, you know, blockade, we were setting up a, we didn't call it a blockade, we called it a quarantine. Because, of course, the Kennedy White House said blockade. You know, that's, that's called war. Blockades, historically, are an act of war. And, you know, if Trump had said he might, and he might still, but, you know, because he has no filter. I was thinking. I'm digressing a moment, Troy, but I was thinking earlier about when you were talking about the Reiner thing. This is always the pattern, right? Trump says something, his supporters come out and say, he didn't mean it. And then there he is on the tree sawing the limb right behind them.
- [25:32]
Charlie Sykes
Right. I did mean it, you know, saying.
- [25:34]
Tom Nichols
No, no, I meant it watching. And then everybody goes off the tree. They might try to finesse this. I'll put my international relations professor hat on for a moment to say, well, we're just going to stop tankers that are sanctioned. We're not actually blockading, you know, food and medicine and whatever. But nonetheless, this is about as close to an act of war as you're going to get. The only thing that could be worse is if these boats that he was blowing up were flying Venezuela oil and flags, which, you know, obviously they're, they're not. But he wants, he's trying to get Maduro to react. And it was very interesting in that Vanity Fair profile that Susie Wiles blurts. I mean, that was just that, that was 10,000, 100,000 words of 10,000 words, Excuse me, of Kinsley and gaffes, you know, and she says, well, it's until Maduro cries uncle. And then she says, and people smarter than me tell me that that will. Tell me it will happen that way. I don't think that will happen that way. I, I hope I'm wrong before there's a war. But he seems to think that. And, and let's leave aside, Let's. I would argue all along this is not about Venezuela. This is about him trying to project being a war president, project strength, being able to use military action as a way to quash dissent, to enlarge the powers of his office, and to get people to stop talking about that goddamn Epstein business.
- [27:05]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah, no, I agree. By the way, just for some of our listeners, we should define what a Kinsleyan gaffe is, because that's a little bit dated. This is Michael Kinsley, who. Correct me. Because that in Washington, a gaffe is somebody that says something that's actually true, but they're not supposed to say. Right. You know. You know. Right.
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Tom Nichols
But Kinsley, Kinsley's definition of a gaffe was when a politician actually accidentally speaks the truth.
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Charlie Sykes
Yeah, exactly.
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Tom Nichols
And so Susie Wiles was just, I mean, and again, you know, oh, J.D. vance is, you know, an opportunist and who's changed his mind because of political reasons, because he's running for Senate. I, I wrote that years ago.
- [27:49]
Charlie Sykes
All right, so I, I agree with, I, I agree with your analysis of why Donald Trump is going to war with, with Venezuela, but it's interest in his tangled mind and he's going to have to explain it to the world and to Americans. Right. He's not gonna get, you know, congressional approval. But I don't know whether you saw, he had this interesting post. I'm just holding it up here. Interesting Truth Social, December 16, 5.46pm which was signed, donald J. Trump, President of the United States. So this, he wants to make it look like it's kind of official. Venezuela is completely surrounded by the largest armada ever assembled in the history of South America. It will only get bigger and shock to them will be like nothing they've ever seen before. Until such time as they return to the United States of America all of the oil, land and other assets they previously stole from us.
- [28:44]
Tom Nichols
You don't remember when the Venezuelans took the Louisiana rigs and the Texas oil fields, Charlie.
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Charlie Sykes
Okay, okay, okay. Now, this is the mine. But then you go through. And what's interesting is that, but remember up until like five minutes ago was all about drugs and fentanyl, which are now a weapon of mass destruction. As I'm reading, this highlight highlighted it here. All of the oil, land, other assets. The illegitimate Maduro regime is using oil from these stolen oil fields to finance themselves. That goes back on here. I am ordering a total and complete blockade of all sanctioned oil tankers and then it goes, finishes up and likewise will not allow a hostile regime to take our oil land or other assets. I don't know, it sounds like it might be about oil. I just. Given the fact that the President uses the word over and over and over again, maybe we're about to go to war actually for oil.
- [29:36]
Tom Nichols
Maybe he has no idea what he's saying because he was trying to bomb boats because he thought they had fentanyl on them and Venezuela doesn't make fentanyl. I mean, it's, I think it's about plunging America into a military conflict where then, and I think people have probably told him this, say then any dissent become. I mean, I think he's almost. Pardon my coughing. I'm, I came back from London with whatever this is, but the creeping crud. I think someone said, look, once we're at war, once we're in military operations, you can be like George W. Bush and say all dissent is unpatriotic. Now Bush didn't actually say that, but there were plenty of Republicans who did who said dissent is now unpatriotic and you'll be a war. I mean, he loves playing war. He loves playing commander in chief.
- [30:25]
Charlie Sykes
I know. I think you're right.
- [30:27]
Tom Nichols
He thinks of the military as toy soldiers and he's playing a big game of risk and he, he just enjoys it. And I think, you know, he, I think the other problem is there's no one. This goes back to the staff problem, Charlie. There's nobody there to filter out the straight, the stray voltage that, that just jumps out of his head now. And then when he says, you know, Maduro's a bad guy, we ought to topple him, and somebody says, well, maybe we ought to blow up his drug boats or maybe we ought to seize his oil tankers. And, and nobody's thought that through, you know, nobody. And, and there's nobody. There's no Chief of Staff, there's no Secretary of Defense who steps forward and says, okay, everybody just take a breath here, here. And they're just gonna do it because they don't. I said yesterday, you know, you and I been talking on TV about this for a while. I don't think they can explain why they're doing it, cuz I don't think they know.
- [31:22]
Charlie Sykes
But I wanna go back to the point that I think is absolutely crucial, that look, we've had wars in the past, but Donald Trump as a war president is, I would say, uniquely dangerous. It's why when one of my former colleagues said, well, we have to go to war with the president we have. I said, no, no, no. Now, the president we have is a convicted felon who tried to overthrow the government and will use any war or quasi war as a pretext to go after civil liberties, as, by the way, a lot of other presidents who were not as malign and malignant as Donald Trump. You look through the history of the United States, or, frankly, any Western country, and it is at war. It is during wartime, using war as the excuse that we've had the worst abuses of civil rights, civil liberties, clamped down on dissent, clamped down on free speech. I mean, Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus. I mean, look what Woodrow Wilson did.
- [32:18]
Tom Nichols
During Trump's looking at Korematsu, you know, and saying, hey, I can just round people up.
- [32:23]
Charlie Sykes
Korematsu, of course, is in World War II. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, talk about one of the great disgraces of American history. Rounded up all Japanese Americans and put them in concentration camps. You know, kind of a footnote to fdr. Woodrow Wilson was even worse. I mean, Woodrow Wilson was. Was basically almost fascist adjacent in his attack on dissent. And again, you can do this at every moment where there is this impulse that once you are at war, the rules change. And when the rules change for Donald Trump, that means that even those last norms are going to be shattered. And that's why I think that Donald Trump at war is not a foreign policy issue. It really highlights the danger. Yes, I agree with you.
- [33:09]
Tom Nichols
I think that's why he's doing it, Charlie.
- [33:10]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah, yeah.
- [33:11]
Tom Nichols
I think that's what's happening. I think Venezuela just happened to be nearby and convenient, you know, and Maduro.
- [33:20]
Charlie Sykes
He'S a bad guy.
- [33:21]
Tom Nichols
Easy. Bad guy. Right? I mean, there's nothing. There's nothing. You're not. Nobody's gonna make the case for Nicholas Maduro. And so, you know, and it keeps it also. I mean, in a way, it's a perfectly contained case for a splendid little war that allows Donald Trump to trample on civil liberties. And I'm sure someone's told him this. I'm sure someone in the White House.
- [33:44]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah. So somebody named Stephen Miller might say, or Pete Hags it.
- [33:48]
Tom Nichols
I was going to say, probably rhymes with Beaven Villar, but yeah, or someone like that has said, you know, you get to do a lot of things once we're at war. And this is perfect, because it's not. It's not near any of our major peer competitors. There's no risk of a great war escalation spilling over borders in Asia or Europe. There's no nuclear dynamic to it. There's nothing. It's basically, he gets to put. He gets to be like, you know, Teddy Roosevelt or, you know, putting together a big fleet and going down and, you know, carrying a big stick. And I think, I don't think, because again, I don't believe that Donald Trump cares about anything other than Donald Trump. I don't think Venezuela or drugs or even oil, which, which, you know, you, you point out, Charlie brings up a lot. I don't think he cares about any of that stuff. And, and that. Let's just go back for a moment that we're, we're on the verge of war with a president who thinks that Venezuela stole American land.
- [34:47]
Charlie Sykes
What the hell is that about?
- [34:48]
Tom Nichols
I don't know.
- [34:49]
Charlie Sykes
I mean, really. I honestly, what, what is that about except the craziness? I do think he wants. I do think he wants the war. I know. I think that probably someone's saying, well, Ronald Reagan went into Grenada, remember, we went into, into Panama, and these were great things. I think Venezuela is a little bit bigger, a little bit more messy. And of course, there's always that unpredictability. You put people in harm's way. I mean, this is the thing that, that I think people would need to understand. And you've talked about this before. You put American troops in on the streets of American cities, national government, you put them in harm's way. You put pilots, you put sailors, you put soldiers into a war like you put them in harm's way. There is nothing that is risk free. There is nothing that is absolutely certain or predictable. That fog is there. And to think that Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump will be the ones who will be in this situation room does not fill me with a great deal of confidence.
- [35:42]
Tom Nichols
I think this is. You're raising a really important point, and it's worth pointing this out to people who don't think, and I don't mean this critically, who don't think about military operations and don't have to. Right. I mean, the average American citizen doesn't have to sit around thinking about this all day. But the, when you talk about putting our, our men and women in uniform in danger, it's not just like, well, there could be a dog fight and some Venezuelan pilot.
- [36:07]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah.
- [36:07]
Tom Nichols
You know, it's gonna get lucky. I mean, it's things like if you are increasing the tempo of your operations, if you are flying a lot of carrier landings, you know, somebody could get hurt because landing gear fails and you have a crash on a deck Somebody transporting stuff has an auto accident that wouldn't have happened but for the operation that's underway. You know, life is risk, right? I mean, life on a military base, there's plenty of ways to get hurt. You know, people have car accidents, airplanes crashed. Stuff happens. But when you're, when you're engaging in large scale military operations, the odds of somebody getting hurt from moving all that stuff around better be worth it because people are going to get hurt. There are going to be screwed up landings and, you know, jeeps accidentally hitting people and, you know, stuff in warehouses falling over on guys and people having accidents with their rifles. That's. That stuff happens because that's a normal part of a major military operation. And Trump has not made. Trump's basically saying, you know, I'll just keep turning the screws and Maduro will surrender and we'll get some great Top Gun footage over the shores of Venezuela. This is nuts, especially because he has no idea Venezuela is surrounded. No, Venezuela has a coastline and the rest of it is surrounded by the rest of Central and Latin America.
- [37:36]
Charlie Sykes
Have they showed him a map? I mean, I would hope they would have shown him a map by now so that you realize they're not actually surrounded. But your point about the Top Gun video, I mean, how much of what this administration is doing is basically straight to video, straight to streaming when they repelled troops.
- [37:54]
Tom Nichols
You see it with the boat videos.
- [37:55]
Charlie Sykes
Well, okay, now here's an interesting tell about the boat videos. I mean, this is MAGA porn. You can tell that Hegseth gets off on this. You can tell that this really feeds Donald Trump's kink for brutality to watch those people being blown up, which we continue to do. And yet the one video they don't want us to see is the double tap, which I apologize for the euphemism, that all kinds of pressure from Congress say, show us that second missile that blew up those two shipwrecked guys who pose no threat. That looks like just flat out murder. And some members of Congress have seen it and they say it's appalling. Donald Trump at one point said, yeah, fine, I have no problem showing it. But Hegseth was yesterday doubling down and saying, I'm not going to show it. Now, this is like the only video of, you know, the Trump administration killing someone that they are not putting out, you know, to Top Gun music themes on TikTok and Instagram. And it's kind of a tell, isn't it, Tom, that they don't want to see that video.
- [39:01]
Tom Nichols
It's because it's evidence. It's murder.
- [39:03]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah.
- [39:03]
Tom Nichols
And frankly, I think, you know, most of these other videos are evidence of murder. I don't think any of these strikes are legal. But a video of two guys clinging to wreckage, you know, sitting there with their shirts off, waiting to get rescued and then getting, you know, vaporized by a second missile strike. Not only, I think they don't want to show it, not only because it's murder, but it. It probably looks pretty cowardly, right, that, you know, we like to think that the US Military engages bad guys who are tough, who can shoot back. We don't just take a couple of, you know, hapless dumb shits who were running drugs who are now sitting in the middle of the water, wonder if they're beaten by sharks, and just blow them to kingdom come. I mean, it's, it's dishonorable on top of everything else. And, you know, you and I are people. Every, anybody of a certain age remembers the first videos that were coming out of the war on terror and even before that, the 1991 Gulf War, you know, the high. Let me take people back for a minute. One of the reasons that we stopped the war in 91, I was working in the Senate at the time for a republic.
- [40:12]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah, I remember this.
- [40:14]
Tom Nichols
We didn't like the videos that we were getting from the highway of death. We had all these Iraqis that were fleeing Kuwait and they were stealing anything wasn't nailed down yet. Guys, these morons that were, you know, trying to get out of Kuwait with, you know, washing machines and stuff, and, and our pilots were just flying along this highway, mowing these guys down. Now these were military forces in active hot combat with us until that point. And the White House said, you know, this is bad. This we can't, you know, this is not the American way. Right. We're not just going to fly around and mow down people that are like, running away on this highway and we stopped doing it. Other videos that came out later, I remember there was one video of a strike on terrorists in the second in the war on terror. And you could see, you know, from the heat signatures, you saw these guys just getting blown, these little black dots flying all over the place. And while, you know, there was a part of you that said, hey, they were terrorists, These are the 911 guys. They deserved it. It made me uncomfortable. These are human beings and they've just gotten blown to smith. They're bad human beings and they've just gotten blown to smithereens. And it had to get done. And I'm sorry it had to get done, but we shouldn't be here reveling in it like it's a video.
- [41:28]
Charlie Sykes
Well, and I think another analogy would be when we first saw those pictures of Abu Ghraib. And I think that that was one of those. And again, these things are cumulative. Turn people against the Gulf War. We were the good guys going after the terrorists. When you started to see Abu Ghraib and seeing those pictures, that's when that question of, wait, wait, do we really want to do this now? Now imagine in fast forward to Trump that something like Abu Ghraib being celebrated and being touted by the administration is like. And again, this is one of the dangers, is that Donald Trump will not be around forever. But the way that he has coarsened the culture, the way that he has, that he has injected this sense of cruelty and encouraged this in so many others. I mean, you spend time on social media and you can see how many people out there revel in things that shock the conscience of most Americans. This is what I voted for. Over videos of massed ICE agents throwing people to the ground and beating them up. You and I and the listeners of this podcast, viewers of this YouTube video are gonna. That, that's horrible. That's disgusting. Unfortunately, after all these years of Donald Trump, there's a large segment out there that, yeah, give me more of that. I like that. This is exactly what I want to see.
- [42:48]
Tom Nichols
And you know what's, what's really sick. Charl spent. I spent over more than two decades teaching men and women in the military. A lot of those people had seen combat. I mean, my first year teaching, I had people that had actually served in Vietnam. I'm that old. I had people that were prior, what they call prior enlisted service in Vietnam who were now like colonels. And by the end of my career, I'd had a lot of people who'd been in the Gulf and Afghanistan and other places. One thing that's really striking, you know, sometimes when you hear the video of the guys, like in the gunships, I'll go, yeah. You know, because in the heat of the moment, young, young people, you know, we got the bad guys. But when you talk to those officer officers later, seeing that kind of carnage, it. And I don't mean our guys, I don't mean, you know, the guy next to you getting shot. I mean them seeing the enemy getting blown up, it changes them. And they take, they take it much more seriously than someone like Pete Hegseth, who, you know, some Young influencer on social media said, said, oh, I hope we keep blowing up boats and. And says, your wish is our command. We blow up another boat. People, people. He's a child. He's a teenager. And not a very mature teenager because, again, I taught dozens and dozens of officers who had been in combat, and they just. That's just not how they were. You know, they had a very. I will say this. Some of them had a very dark sense of humor. There's some very grim jokes about the battlefield that I heard as a professor at the war College. But this kind of, you know, you know, this. This little kid with toy guns on a cowboy hat is really despicable. And as I said, it's dishonorable. And I don't think it reflects what most people in the military really think. But the military. But the. The government, the. The White House keeps releasing these films to make people approach it like a video game game, where every time something blows up, they think, you know, America, like. Like from, you know, the guys that made South Park. Team America. America. Fuck, yeah. You know, instead of saying, well, eight human beings just got blown to bits. You know, good or bad human beings, but they. They have literally been executed on the high seas without warning and without due process, without a trial.
- [45:07]
Charlie Sykes
And you. And you want to get that taste. Look, I mean, the reality is there. There is a. A certain cruelty. There is a beast within a lot of Americans. You know, in American history, we would have public lynchings where people would turn them into picnics and whole families would come and they'd bring their children to watch someone being hanged. And so we, you know, used to have coliseums. So. But look, there is that dark part of the human psyche that will revel in this. One of the markers of civilization has been to say, no, that's not what we want to celebrate. There is a better part. We can appeal to the better angels of our nature. We are not those beasts. And there's thousands of years of effort in trying to do that. And unfortunately, that can be dismantled by a couple of videos put out by nasty, juvenile, you know, delinquents like Pete Hegseth.
- [46:02]
Tom Nichols
That's why we have laws of war.
- [46:04]
Charlie Sykes
That's why we have laws of war.
- [46:05]
Tom Nichols
You know, when I would teach this stuff about why do we have the Geneva Conventions, why do we have the Hague Conventions? Why do we force military officers to read Clausewitz, which is a form of torture all its own. You know, Clausewitz was a 19th century Prussian officer and he wrote like one. But, you know, because we want to keep, we want to keep putting the message forward that even in the darkest moments when human beings have to kill other human beings, that we are guided by some kind of limits that keep us from turning into animals, that keep us from turning into beasts so that war doesn't become a raging forest fire that serves its own purposes and exists merely to satisfy this, as you point, this kind of dark part of our psyche that just enjoys the bloodlust, that even when we are trying to kill other human beings, that we are not going to become savages, that we are not going to become animals, that if someone's wounded and they're out of it, then we, we don't shoot them, we don't bayonet them while they're lying on the ground.
- [47:13]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
- [47:15]
Tom Nichols
You know, the Trump administration is just trying to, to get us just. And this kind of links back to what we started with, Charlie, with Rob Reinhard, this ghoulish delighting in death and blood and people dying that you just happen to disagree with.
- [47:31]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah, that's exactly right. This is the test. These are the times that we live in. Tom Nichols, thank you so much for joining me. I always appreciate it. And we're gonna talk next week. We're gonna wrap up the entire year. Okay. So I'm gonna be doing my homework. The year in review. I don't know how we're even gonna cram that into one podcast, but, you know, start making notes.
- [47:50]
Tom Nichols
This week was a year in review. My God. But in the meantime, Merry Christmas. Christmas to you, Charlie.
- [47:55]
Charlie Sykes
Merry, Merry Christmas. And thank you all for listening or watching this episode of to the Contrary podcast. You know why we do this? In fact, this conversation is a good reminder that we continually need to remind ourselves that we are not the crazy ones.
- [48:22]
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Charlie Sykes
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