← To The Contrary with Charlie Sykes
To The Contrary with Charlie Sykes
Daniel Drezner: Baseball, Billionaires and the Breakdown of the GOP
00:44:18
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- [00:00]
Daniel Dresner
Did I talk too much? Can't I just let it go?
- [00:04]
Mays
Thank you so much.
- [00:09]
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Daniel Dresner
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- [01:02]
Mays
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- [02:11]
Shirley Seitz
I'm Shirley Seitz. Welcome to November 2025 and the to the Contrary podcast. Look, we have a lot of things to talk about today, including keeping my scorecard up to date on who we're going to war with this week. I mean, I had Venezuela down, but apparently I have to add Mexico and Nigeria. We had that Great Gatsby party on the night before all of the food stamp benefits were supposed to expire, which seems like the metaphor. Showrunners are like working overtime. Donald Trump goes on the new 60 Minutes show and says that he doesn't even know the guy, that he just pardoned, the crypto billionaire. We'll talk about that. We have big elections all around the country, including in New York City, Virginia and New Jersey. Also, maga, right, seems to be melting down on this whole question of can we have any enemies on the right, including neo Nazis? Tough times for the Heritage foundation. And we have some new polls out. So. Joining me on the podcast today, Daniel Dresner, who actually made me happy with something you wrote yesterday, which is very rare in 2025. We have to get to the wars, we have to get to the foreign policy, the trade, all of that stuff. But could we just take a few moments to talk about baseball and the piece that you wrote, I would view baseball the best world series since 2016 was an epic novel. You were deep in it, weren't you? I mean, this was a hell of a World Series.
- [03:41]
Daniel Dresner
Oh, yeah. I mean, so first of all, full disclosure, I'm a Boston Red Sox fan, so ordinarily I would like to see my team advance to the playoffs. I assume you're a Brewers fan, Charlie.
- [03:51]
Shirley Seitz
Yes, absolutely.
- [03:52]
Podcast Host/Ad Voice
Of course.
- [03:52]
Daniel Dresner
So you, I, you had, your team had a bit of a brutal ending in terms of the Dodgers, sort of. We did dispatching them. And I think a lot of people thought that the Dodgers were going to be able to dispatch the Toronto Blue Jays with equal amounts of, with equally minimal effort. And the Dodgers are a team that is hard to root for at this point because they are the best team in a lot of ways. And I don't begrudge their ownership for doing that. I begrudge the rest of the owners for not, you know, trying to compete with them. But this was, you know, I, this was a World Series where first, you know, the Blue Jays surprised the Dodgers. You know, they absolutely stomped them on game one. And then the Dodgers won game two and won an 18 inning game three that I did not stay up to watch till the end of, but I think I lasted till the 12th inning. And when the Dodgers won there, I think everyone thought, well, okay, that the series is over, it's going to be the Dodgers. And then Blue Jays won the next two games and suddenly the momentum shifted back and the last two games were going to be in Toronto. And I don't know if you assume you watch the games. The Roger Center's crowd was just, was really on their feet. It was quite impressive. And the Dodgers, to their credit, won game six and came back to win Game seven, down three, nothing and four, two. And just the feats of athletic prowess in this series were awe inspiring. I mean, you know, Shoehei ohtani is a two way player.
- [05:16]
Shirley Seitz
Just amazing.
- [05:17]
Daniel Dresner
Yeah, you know, in that 18 inning game he was on, he went nine, he was on base all nine times he went up for bat in part because after I think the second or third hit, the Toronto manager basically decided, screw this, we're walking and we're intentionally walking him every time. Vladimir Guerrero Jr. Was equally transcendent for the Blue Jays, not just as a hitter, but on the field. He made a couple of tremendous catches that I didn't know he had that in him. And you know, it was just, it was just a seesaw battle. And there were some tremendous plays made by both teams. And the amazing thing about Ohtani is that he was only the second best Japanese pitcher on the Dodgers. This, this World Series. I think it's Yabusori Yamamoto, just a truly epic performance. He pitched a complete game victory in game one, game six. And the next night, after throwing about a hundred pitches the night before, came in and threw two and two thirds.
- [06:18]
Shirley Seitz
That was amazing. That was amazing.
- [06:20]
Daniel Dresner
No, that was, it was like, it was like the Series. It was like this was the 1925 World Series. Because normally the trend has been, you know, pitchers to. The trend has been to baby pitchers, for lack of it, of putting it.
- [06:33]
Shirley Seitz
Absolutely.
- [06:34]
Daniel Dresner
This was just an Ironman competition. I couldn't believe that. And, well, I mean, just to be.
- [06:38]
Shirley Seitz
Able to watch Ohtani, I mean, what Ohtani did to the Brewers, I mean, you know, the Brewer defeat was painful, but the game that he put up, you know, was going to be one of the greatest of all time. One of the greatest of all time performances. So, I mean, reading your stuff, you know, you're not a fan of either one of these teams. Usually you need a rooting, you know, just some rooting interest in order to get as deep into it. And yet it was such a masterpiece, as you said, that every once in a while there's a World Series so good, so competitive, so filled with so many ridiculous ups and downs, but staying disinterested is no longer possible. The drama is too damn compelling. So much happens that it is impossible not to yell at the television because of what just happened. I imagine it was noisy at the Dresdner household.
- [07:20]
Daniel Dresner
Actually, this is, I think, one of the other reasons I enjoyed it. My son, who, you know is in his 20s and lives about an hour away, came over to watch, came, spent the weekend at our house and watched both Game six and game seven. And the two of us were just. It was one of those games where you just started laughing because. Because something extraordinary happened and you couldn't believe it. And, I mean, the Blue Jays came within literally a microsecond of winning the game, because of winning the series, because in game seven, the bases loaded and the run, there was a ground ball that the second baseman bobbled and the runner on third almost made it home, but not quite, and they lose the next inning.
- [07:59]
Shirley Seitz
Well, again, for people wondering why we're spending time talking about baseball is because we need a break from everything else, from the flood of everything else, to be able to sort of. Of step outside the news cycle and just experience the true joy of something that's just quintessentially. Well, it is quintessentially American, even though this was obviously international. So as we ease into everything else, though, I assume that you followed the party weekend, the Halloween party weekend. A lot of people had Halloween parties that at Mar a Lago, Donald Trump chose to have a Great Gatsby party party on the eve of the shutdown of SNAP benefits. Now, I mean, it does feel like the metaphors are just straining. I mean, the, you know, week earlier, you have the president posting that video of himself shitting on fellow Americans. Then you have him tearing down the White House, and it's like somebody's going, okay, what else can we do to really drive home with this administration's about, let's have a black tie, you know, wretched, you know, the, you know, wretched wealth at Mar a Lago when 40 million people are about to lose their food stamp benefits? I mean, they just don't give a shit anymore, do they, Dan?
- [09:16]
Daniel Dresner
Charlie, have you ever seen. This is not a great movie, but have you ever seen a movie that came out in the early 80s starring Richard Pryor called Brewster's Millions?
- [09:23]
Shirley Seitz
Oh, sure, yeah. We all saw that, right?
- [09:25]
Daniel Dresner
So you remember the premise, right, that, like, it's. He's this, like, long, like, very distant relative of a multimillionaire who dies. And the challenge that Bruce Brewster has is that he can inherit the whole fortune, but he first has to, like, spend, like, $10 million and, like, spend it down. Like, he can't have any valuable assets at the end of it. And so, you know, it's just watching him try to come up with ways to waste money. There is a small part of me that wonders whether someone like, did. Did Steve Bannon or Susan Wiles or someone else just make a bet with Trump. That said, I bet you can't get your Approval rating under 35. Your, your base is so rock solid, it doesn't matter what you do, they'll be with you. Because this stuff doesn't even, like, even, even if you have a rooting interest in Trump succeeding, this stuff doesn't make sense. It's, as you say, it is almost designed to maximize the callousness. And there might be some Americans who go for that, but most people just think it's a tremendously dickish way to cope with what's going on.
- [10:29]
Shirley Seitz
Well, again, the dickishness is there. I mean, so we have a new CNN poll showing that he has, now has a disapproval rating, which is actually one point above the 62% disapproval rating he had when he left office after January 7th. So it's working. I guess, you know, part of it is on this that, you know, the one thing that, that Trump had going for him was that he was, for, he was the voice of the little man. Right? He was running on this populist wave. And Democrats have ahead of elitism problem, an intellectual elitism problem. But if you really, really wanted to undermine your populist cred and make people think, okay, maybe you're not necessarily on my side. It's like they're running a weird playbook that I, and the only thing I can attribute it to is sort of the arrogance and the hubris that I can do absolutely everything and we're just going to try it all because my base is so solid. I mean, how else do you explain it?
- [11:29]
Daniel Dresner
I mean, I will say this. There is an aspirational quality, I suspect, to some of Trump's base and to Americans more generally, where, you know, I think this is something that Democrats have been frustrated by for a long time, where they try to point to billionaire, large, you know, excess, or, you know, how can you tolerate this? And the answer, I think, is that a lot of people who aren't necessarily that well off right now see themselves, they're optimistic. They think, well, I could be that person someday and I want to be able to do those things. And what, what I think is interesting is that right now, however, the reason this isn't working is because as the economy starts to sour, as you see headline after headline about mass layoffs, as prices continue to rise and people start feeling the effects of the tariffs, even more Americans are less optimistic about the future. And so this, you know, this, so the aspirational thing becomes less credible, becomes more fantasy based. And so I think an increasing number of Americans are actually having that perspective of this is not what I signed up for. And this is a party perennial of 2025, which is people who voted for Trump saying, yeah, I wanted them to do this thing. I wasn't in favor of this other thing.
- [12:45]
Shirley Seitz
Yeah, this point about being aspirational is really actually important because I remember having a conversation back in 2016 about how could he be pulling off this remake of himself as a popul when he's got, you know, gold plated toilets. And I said, okay, you need to understand how a lot of Americans look at him. They see him as this incredibly successful businessman. Yes, okay, it's all bullshit. So they see a guy when he stands up there, he's, he's living the American dream, he's a billionaire, he's got his own airplane, he's married to a supermodel. They like the whole package. And Donald Trump knew that. Now, as I said that, that, that wears out after, after, after, after a while. So let's talk about this weird CBS interview over the weekend since we know we have to keep moving here. Trump says he has no idea who Binance's CZ is after pardoning him. What is the guy's name is the founder of this, this crypto company, Changpeng Zhao? Would that be pretty close? So he grants him a pardon last month. One of the sleaziest, one of the sleaziest moments in a tremendously sleazy administration, you know, nothing really stand. CZ had pleaded guilty to failing to sufficiently combat money laundering on his crypto exchange. And he's involved with World Liberty Financial, which is a crypto finance platform that sends 75% of token sales revenue to a company linked to. Wait, Donald Trump and his family. So he's asked about this Charlie, that's.
- [14:19]
Daniel Dresner
Just a coincidence, I'm sure.
- [14:22]
Shirley Seitz
So he's asked about this by Norah o' Donnell and amazingly, the President of the United States says, okay, are you ready? I don't know who he is. I have no idea. I just heard things. I have no, okay, make it make sense.
- [14:39]
Daniel Dresner
Again. Part of this is what I keep coming back to is again, all through the campaign and all through this year, Donald Trump has talked about how I don't know if we can trust the Biden pardons, cuz maybe they used an auto pen or something or Biden is old and feeble and he doesn't know what he's doing. And I'm beginning to wonder if this is just self projection because he's basically admitting he pardoned this guy with no reason whatsoever except someone must have told him, hey, this would be a really good idea. And this ties into what you said before, which is the one area where this administration has been truly and legitimately innovative is that they have found brand new ways to legalize corruption or to basically tolerate corruption. The crypto thing in particular is just an astonishing example of, you know, finding a sort of end around whereby anyone innovative. Yeah. Domestic or foreign, can basically buy Trump off by buying into their crypto scheme. And there's no, you know, like there's nothing stopping it. And so it honestly is. There's a way in which I'm kind of impressed by, like, that kind of innovation. Of course it's awful for US Foreign policy and for US Policy more generally. It basically, government integrity. Well, it erodes the norm of, you know, one of the things that the US had going for it was the idea that, that corruption is not a strategy that is going to work in the long term here. And with Trump, it's going to work for at least a little while. And it's a profoundly depressing development.
- [16:15]
Shirley Seitz
It is profoundly, you know, depressing. And of course, it puts other Republicans in this weird position. I mean, I'm thinking about Mike Johnson.
- [16:23]
Podcast Host/Ad Voice
Yeah.
- [16:24]
Shirley Seitz
Who now has had like several weeks. It's not like he's got a day job to do. Every day they ask him about some other outrage. And every day Mike Johnson says, I haven't heard that story. I knew nothing about that story. I, I never read the papers. I never, I never look at my phone. I never do anything. And all of the Republican candidates who are running have the. No, they cannot distance themselves from Trump in any way. I think it was Jonathan Martin in Politico who said, this is kind of like the Democrats. You know, their superpower is that they're running against people who are joined absolutely and irretrievably at the hip of Donald Trump.
- [17:01]
Podcast Host/Ad Voice
Right.
- [17:01]
Shirley Seitz
So if you're running in New Jersey or you're running in Virginia, and you're asked, so what do you think of Donald Trump? A plus, best president ever. No problems, didn't see it, whatever.
- [17:10]
Daniel Dresner
So, yeah, I mean, it's, it's, it's been an ongoing problem and I don't see it changing anytime soon. Because Trump's superpower within the GOP remains the fact that if you cross him, he can make sure that you get primaried or make sure that you don't have a political future within the party. One thing that he did from the get go when he first came into office in 2017. Basically, he has colonized the GOP. And so as a result, yes, like you, I have been extremely amused by the, you know, Mike Johnson is, is less informed than your typical new college freshman at this point. You know, that's how little reading he does. But it's almost become sort of kabuki theater where anytime Trump does something ridiculous, it's not just Johnson. Almost every member of Congress pretend, you know, Republican member of Congress pretends that they're not aware of what's going on, even though they obviously are.
- [18:06]
Shirley Seitz
So, you know, again, we're Almost, you know, 16 minutes into this conversation, haven't mentioned the fact that the government is actually continues to be shut down. I think we're, we're headed toward a record the polls that. And by the way, I'm, I'm not into the polls in a big way here. So, you know, bear with me. The polls would seem to suggest that, that so far the, the public is blaming Republicans rather than Democrats. And I am mildly sur that the Democrats actually are pulling this off, that they actually seem to have. I mean, they were, they were playing a dangerous, very, very risky hand. And now we've gotten to the point where we've gotten to the elections, which are, you know, Tuesday, which we can get to in a moment. A lot of focus on the food stamp benefit. Food stamp benefits, and of course, these massive increases in health care premiums, which they've built it all around. So is this your read that the Democrats seem to be doing better than one would have expected, given their track record on, quote, unquote, winning the shutdown. As if anybody wins the.
- [19:12]
Daniel Dresner
I mean, I would say so. But I would issue two large caveats on this. The first is, again, recall what Trump has done over the last month while the government has been shut down. You know, normally when the government shuts down, the president takes it seriously. They're trying to negotiate with the other party, they make it a big deal. And, you know, he went on a Asian tour, which, to be fair, was previously scheduled, but I think Obama canceled his trip to the Far east when it shut down and threatened them. He went down to Florida and had this Great Gatsby party. He, you know, he, he decided that he would tear down the East Wing. You know, yeah, there were all sorts of events where I was like, wait, isn't the government shut down? Why are you doing this? How can you do this? And so it's not just the Democrats messaging, which has been perfectly adequate. It is also that the Republicans messaging on this has been horrible. And the other. The other problem the Republicans have, and this is particularly true, I think, for. For uninformed voters, is that their logic is, look, this is in the. The balls in the Democrats court. We can't do anything. And that just doesn't pass the smell test, because even uninformed voters are fully aware that Republicans control the presidency, the Senate, and the House. And so there is a small part where the Republicans, I'm sure, are a little frustrated about this because it's true, you know, because of the filibuster, they need Democrats to vote on stuff. But the problem is they are trying to paint themselves as powerless, and that dog won't hunt.
- [20:44]
Shirley Seitz
Well, you mentioned something interesting, and this was. Looked like it was gonna be a big story over the weekend. Turns out not to be, at least as far as our conversation right now. Donald Trump demanded that Senate Republicans nuke the filibuster. Now, he's done that. He did that before during his first term. It seems as if in one of the rare occasions Republicans are saying, no, we're not gonna do it.
- [21:07]
Daniel Dresner
It is actually one of the few times the Republican members of the Senate decided, no. We actually like our institutional prerogative here because they recognize that there might come a time when they're in the minority. Susan Glasser, the New Yorker, last week published a column about what had surprised everyone over the Trump second term. And she asked a bunch of people, including me, and my answer was, I have genuinely been surprised at the abject fecklessness of sort of House and Senate GOP leadership. I mean, I get they want to be loyal to Trump, but they have just completely surrendered all their institutional. Almost all their institutional prerogatives, you know, on tariffs on the budget. And that's the part where I honestly have been a little surprised. I was not expecting Mike to be this.
- [21:53]
Shirley Seitz
Well, you're surprised. I'm surprised. The Founding Fathers, I think, are completely gobsmacked by it because, of course, you know, they drew up a constitution that just simply assumed that Congress would have a great deal of power and never imagined that people would just voluntarily turn themselves into potted plants.
- [22:09]
Daniel Dresner
No, I said this is an unfortunate falsification of Madison's, I think, Federalist 10, where ambition is supposed to counteract ambition. And it turns out that the ambition that most Republican members of the Congress have is to just stay in the good graces of Donald Trump. Yeah.
- [22:25]
Shirley Seitz
So you and James Madison. So let's talk a little bit about the elections that are coming up to be so much smarter on Wednesday morning. And we're going to have all the hot takes and everything. Obviously, the major, major contest would be Virginia governor, New Jersey governor, New York mayor. Now, the California referendum vote is Tuesday. Is that right?
- [22:48]
Daniel Dresner
Yeah.
- [22:48]
Shirley Seitz
Now that's a very, very big deal, obviously for Gavin Newsom. So I don't know, do you got any, you have any takes on all of this? Because my sense is that both parties are going to say they had a really good night. If the Democrats win, the govern, you know, objectively, you know, a good night. Republicans can barely conceal their giddiness about the prospect of nationalizing the New York City mayor's race with Zoran Mandani. You had some thoughts about the focus on the New York City mayor's race on social media? I believe I did.
- [23:23]
Daniel Dresner
I also wrote a substack post about this, which was the only substack post I have written and ever intend to write about the New York mayoral election, which is, I swear to God, I wish everyone would shut up about it. Don't get me wrong, if you're a New Yorker, this is an important race and there is no doubt some compelling, like, personal and political drama. Also, I honestly, and I confess this is my own fault, I was not aware of the Eric Adams video involving like looking for guns or drugs in your kids rooms. And it was just, it is, it is something to behold. So yeah, like I get. And also New York is the media capital of the world, so I get why this has been over covered. But I think the thing that does bother me about it is this presumption. And this is not a new presumption. This has been going on for every New York mayoral election since, you know, Giuliani was mayor. Is the presumption that whoever wins the New York mayor's race is offering a template for how a national campaign could be run.
- [24:24]
Shirley Seitz
Exactly.
- [24:25]
Daniel Dresner
And just kill me now, Charlie, because that is so evidently false and falsified by previous elections. You know, Giuliani attempted to then run for president and crashed and burned. Bloomberg attempted to run for president and Elizabeth Warren ended his campaign in 60 seconds. And Bill de Blasio, no one remembers this. Also tried to run for president and dropped out before the first primary. Now Mamdani can't do this because he's not a natural born US Citizen. But, but I know everyone is talking about Mamdani as like an example of like, this is how you run an exciting campaign for progressives. And no doubt that may very well be true, but this would be like Republicans drawing A lesson from the 2nd Oklahoma District of how to nationalize a campaign. The New York voters do not represent New York City. Voters are not emblematic of the wider country, nor are deep red, you know, congressional districts. And so I think this is the thing that frustrates me. If you are a progressive Democrat, you should be obviously happy, I guess, that Mamdani looks like he's going to win. That's fine. And there might be certain campaign tactics that he has done in terms of, you know, engaging disaffected voters that might play or might travel. But the idea that a Mamdani platform is going to play well in rural Pennsylvania or the suburbs of Nevada, I find highly risable. And also, I do think Republicans are not going to really succeed in making Mamdani like the face of the face of the Democratic Party. They can try. Mamdani's not an idiot. And I'm pretty sure he'll be able to deflect a fair amount of that in the same way that, let's say, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez can. So I get why Republicans are giddy. I get why progressives are giddy. I just, you know, want to yell a line from a movie that both you and I watched when we were kids called Meatballs. It just doesn't matter.
- [26:31]
Shirley Seitz
Doesn't matter. So this isn't.
- [26:35]
Daniel Dresner
Sorry.
- [26:37]
Shirley Seitz
No, I love that movie, too. So now, fact check me if I'm wrong in this, because, you know, all my information comes from. I get more information, apparently, than Mike Johnson, but all my information comes from social media. Is Jeremy Corbyn actually appearing at a Momdani event?
- [26:54]
Daniel Dresner
The former label headline to that effect. Again, I'm not joking when I say I've been trying to tune out the election, but I did see something to that effect, which isn't a great thing if you're mum.
- [27:07]
Shirley Seitz
And so this comes back to the way that Trump and the Republicans try to weaponize things like anti Semitism, accusing Mamdani of anti Semitism because of what he said in the past about whatever. So this is the segue. It's very interesting to me how much energy the Trump administration and the right have put into going after anti Semitism on university campuses. We all know that we don't need to go into that. The attack, the number of university presidents who lost their jobs because they were not more forceful in standing up to it. And here we are, as you and I are speaking, and the right is embroiled in a. I won't call it a civil war, but it is A nasty shitstorm over right wing anti Semitism. And of course, people probably know this by now. You had the Tucker Carlson who grew up platformed neo Nazi Nick Fuentes and was a very friendly, very, very chatty conversation that generated a lot of controversy. Then you had the president of the Heritage Foundation, Kevin Rober, for reasons best known to him, parachuting into the controversy, basically defending Tucker Carlson and saying, you know, that Nick Fuentes shouldn't be canceled and all hell has broken loose. I understand that Ben Shapiro has devoted his entire show to attacking Tucker Carlson. Ted Cruz is attacking Tucker Carlson. But, you know, what's pretty obvious is that it's dawning a lot of people that the MAGA right has a real anti Semitism problem, which strikes me as really as completely predictable, by the way, if you've been following the trajectory of things. But also ironic, considering the incredible projection of the right about anti Semitism from the left. What do you make of all this?
- [28:58]
Daniel Dresner
I mean, I think this is emblematic of. You could argue that if Trump had a political strategy to rise to power, it was, you know, there had long been on the Republican side an idea of thou shalt not criticize fellow conservatives. That's sort of the 11th Commandment. But that referred to Republicans that were elected and usually were, you know, not consorting with neo Nazis. I think what was interesting was Trump. One of one of Trump's consistent things from when he first entered the national stage in 2015 was that he refused to disavow racists. He refused to disavow, you know, armed militias or, as it turns out, neo Nazis. And this has now become, I think, with Trump as the head of the party, the general doctrine of the party, which is we shall not criticize enemies on the right or shall not criticize anyone to the right of us. What we want to focus on and keep our fire on is on the left. And that led to that truly bizarre Kevin Roberts video that you. You highlighted. That, I think it's safe to say, backfired pretty badly on Heritage. And there's a lot of speculation now that I think his former chief of staff. What is his name?
- [30:17]
Shirley Seitz
Newhouse?
- [30:19]
Daniel Dresner
I think so, yes, yes, Ryan Newhouse, yeah. That he was responsible for this. But it really, it actually, it highlights the true devolution of Heritage as a think tank, where they become much more doctrinaire, much more in the bag for Trump. Roberts, among other things, refuses to acknowledge that Trump lost the 2020 election. You know, it's sort of going full Claremont at this point in terms of that organization. What is interesting is that Roberts, I think, himself seems to have recognized that maybe this was a misstep, because he then released, like, another tweet where he blasted Nick Fuentes himself, saying, I don't tolerate this. Which of course raises the question of, well, then why are you tolerating Tucker Carlson? Tolerating it? And I.
- [31:09]
Shirley Seitz
It's. It's a tangled web, and they're. And they're deeply meshed in it.
- [31:13]
Daniel Dresner
The one thing I will say, I think the issue here is that I do think there are some on the right that are concerned about the tight relationship between the United States and Israel, particularly given what has happened since the October 7 attacks and Israel's prosecution of the war. And the one thing I will agree with, or at least partially agree with Kevin Roberts on, is that it should be possible to criticize Israel without being accused of being anti Semitic. Now, that said, Nick Fuentes is a raging anti Semite. This is not a.
- [31:47]
Shirley Seitz
That's a long way from that.
- [31:48]
Daniel Dresner
That is a long way. Yeah. So, so, so, like, if Roberts wants to hire someone to critique why the US should support Israel, that's fine. That's actually an interesting thing to do. That's not what he's doing. I think this is more about sort of following Trump's lead when it comes to politics. Remember, Trump had dinner, was it in October, like fall of 2023, with.
- [32:09]
Shirley Seitz
With Fuentes.
- [32:10]
Daniel Dresner
With Fuentes and with Kanye West? Yeah, Kanye West.
- [32:16]
Shirley Seitz
Remember what he said afterwards? He said, I like this guy. This guy gets. Gets me referring to Nick Fuentes. See, I think, you know, one of the puzzles with. With Trump is that, you know, I mean, Trump has got a Jewish daughter. He's got, you know, Jewish grandchildren. And my critique of him, and I've been writing about this now for 10 years. I'm exhausted by it. It's not whether or not Trump himself is anti Semitic or not, because I can't possibly know. It's that he certainly gave permission. He opened the door to them, he refused to condemn them, and he sent one signal after another, one winking signal after another to the folks at Charlottesville. He has done is he's taken the people we used to call the alt right, and he has helped mainstream them and people like J.D. vance come to their defense. And by the way, I mean, Vance's role in this, I think, needs to be. We need to highlight this because this didn't take place in, you know, in a vacuum. Remember, it was just like last week or the week before. We had all those young Republicans who were putting in their text chain and who came to their defense, but J.D. vance, and J.D. vance has made the calculation that he's not going to be outflowing flanked on the right. He's not going to call out, you know, these, these folks. And so a lot of the anger that you're seeing on the right about like, how the hell did we get here? Which by the way, if only you'd been warned is someone had predicted that.
- [33:38]
Daniel Dresner
This might be the consequences. Yes.
- [33:40]
Shirley Seitz
Yeah, yeah. I mean, yeah. I mean, actually, you know, back in 2017, I even wrote about what was the, the take out the word neo from neo Nazi. The, the Sturmer or whatever it was. The, what was the storm front or something like that. The, the, the, the, the Nazi newspaper. And they were all in for Trump and, and they were the Daily Stormer, I think. Yeah, something like that. And there were plenty of opportunities for Trump and for Melania to distance himself, and they didn't. And all of those folks recognized, okay, this is a green light for us. And now 10 years later, everybody's shocked, shocked to find out that these guys are hanging around.
- [34:20]
Daniel Dresner
I suppose if there's some marginal good news from this, it is that you are seeing people who normally do not have spines actually decide this is kind of reprehensible. So I think like Ted Cruz. Yeah, Ted Cruz is who I'm thinking of, you know, and again, I don't want to praise him in any way because, like, this is literally the bare minimum that he's done. But that said, he did do the bare minimum and there are others that have not. So I do, you know, acknowledge that point. I think Robert George, actually, who's a conservative professor at Princeton, might have given some of them intellectual cover to say yes, for the love of God, this is ridiculous.
- [34:55]
Shirley Seitz
Oh, yeah, he's a principled man. I think that this is where you go, come back to Kevin Roberts, who has insidified heritage, which obviously played a huge role in Project 2025, to the point where he apparently was numb or deaf to the fact that, hey, there are still some red lines. And Neo Naz Hitler fan Holocaust denial is still a red line. And this is what seemed to have taken him by surprise. So he's sitting around with his chief of staff and going, this is how we need to talk to the kids. The bros want to hear this kind of stuff. And it's like suddenly you have everyone rising up and going, okay, no, we have gone so far down this road of maga. We have thrown away so many principles. We've embraced so much cruelty and brutality. But, you know, the Hitler Holocaust thing, that seems to us to be a bridge too far. So, yeah, you know, kudos to Ted Cruz, but it is, as you point out, kind of the bare minimum, man.
- [35:57]
Daniel Dresner
But this actually touches on something. I would say two things on this. The first is I am legitimately curious about whether or not this affects Heritage's fundraising, because Heritage, more than most think tanks do, you know, they have a pretty dedicated donor base. And what I'm wondering is whether Roberts is making the calculation that as many people as he's turned off from this, it means like a seven, you know, eight or nine figure Peter Thiel donation or something like that. And he would probably make that trade off.
- [36:27]
Shirley Seitz
Or Elon Musk.
- [36:28]
Daniel Dresner
Yeah, or Elon Musk.
- [36:29]
Shirley Seitz
Yes.
- [36:30]
Daniel Dresner
The second thing I would say is you were talking about how out of touch, you know, a lot of concern, like a lot of MAGA folks are. I was, you know, reading both the Atlantic and the New York Times, had stories this past week, week about how so many Trump officials, White House officials and cabinet officials.
- [36:45]
Shirley Seitz
Oh, yeah.
- [36:46]
Daniel Dresner
Are now living on military bases. They're basically decided. And I do want to be fair here, because some of these people have actually received legitimate threats of violence against. And. And in that instance, it's probably justified that they move on to these bases. But it has now become almost like a perk or a prestige action of like, do you get a plum position or plum, you know, house on a military base? But these are not barracks.
- [37:15]
Shirley Seitz
These are. These are. These are big houses, These are mansions. Right, right. Suitable for big entertainment. Yeah.
- [37:24]
Daniel Dresner
And what I kept thinking is, is like in some ways the MAGA community, they're trying to crazy. Create their own government subsidized Mar a Lago in the D.C. area, which means they are. That is one step further removed from, you know, just even waiting in line at a Starbucks or, you know, interacting with ordinary people. And this is how you lose any sense of empathy about what's going on in the rest of the world.
- [37:50]
Shirley Seitz
Well, I'm really glad you brought this up.
- [37:52]
Podcast Host/Ad Voice
This.
- [37:53]
Shirley Seitz
This is really extraordinary. It is the. A symbolism of the elites, like, almost like the Soviet Politburo elites would have their own compound. Right. And so are complete. They're insulated from, you know, critics and from protesters, but they're also insulated from real life while living in this very, very rarefied environment. No, I mean, that is. That is one of the strangest kinds of things. So that they've created their own little. It is sort of the man in the high castle kind of stuff.
- [38:26]
Daniel Dresner
And the other thing is that they're only interacting with each other now. So again, this. This makes them, you know, even more out of touch. So it's. It's just something to keep an eye on. If you are surprised by, you know, other actions that seem politically tone deaf, this might be one of the reasons.
- [38:44]
Shirley Seitz
Okay, so in the time that we have left, your specialty is foreign affairs. Can you, like, on. On your bingo card of, like, all the wars that the peace president is about to launch? I mean, let's just, you know that. That during that 60 Minutes interview, apparently he, like, pulled out a sheet of all the wars that he'd saw, which was basically a tweet or like that, and really desperately wants the Nobel Prize at the same time that we are now talking about a land war in Venezuela, land operations in Mexico, and maybe even getting the military involved in Nigeria. Yeah, I don't know. Are we going in all those places is just saber rattling. Is this just Trump waving as, you know. What, what do you think?
- [39:29]
Daniel Dresner
First of all, I'm going to say again, yeah, I'm gonna say one small positive thing, which is very weird, but the fact that Trump craves the Nobel Peace Prize so much is, in and of itself not a bad thing. Like, it's. It's actually nice that he wants to be known as a peacemaker as opposed to, say, someone who wants to be known as winning a war, you know, because very often, you know, politicians know that if you often win a war, that's a surefire way to get reelected. So, yes, that I will give him a modicum of credit about, even though. So he has no idea how to actually negotiate stable pieces now. And of course, it's contradicted by the fact that he is perfectly willing to use military force. He's used it twice already. Well, three times now, if you count the Houthis, the Iranians, and whatever illegal activity is going on off the coast of Venezuela.
- [40:18]
Shirley Seitz
Various boats.
- [40:20]
Daniel Dresner
Yeah, various boats. And actually, the most disturbing thing I've read this week is the idea that apparently the administration has argued that they can target anyone, I think, within three hops of a drug. Of the drug cartels. Charlie, you and I are probably three hops away from, you know, a drug cartel. That's not a hard connection to make. And I think it's a dangerously tenuous assumption or, you know, doctrine to have. But that said, you were asking about Nigeria, about Mexico, and about Venezuela, I think Nigeria is just a bluff. The one thing that Trump is successful at is that all he has to do is post something on Truth Social and you get at least 24 hours of media coverage about are we going to go to war? With some. I find it hard to believe that he would actually send troops into Nigeria. It would defy all sorts of logic. Now, that said, it would be as illogical as throwing a Great Gatsby party when the government is shut down. So that doesn't mean that it won't happen. And this is the disturbing thing. There are no adults in the room at this point. Like no one is going to push back on him, you know, on this. I mean, maybe Vance might, because I think he would view that as a potentially bombing too far. Although again, if it's a Christian thing, he'll probably go along with it. The Mexico thing, I think will. What is interesting is the fact that he's announcing these sort of COVID missions because traditionally covert missions are not supposed to be announced.
- [41:55]
Shirley Seitz
That's what the word covert means, right?
- [41:56]
Daniel Dresner
Yeah. As I understand it, you're not supposed to do that. But it is possible that it kind of depends on what the Mexicans respond to this. I could see the Mexicans tolerating some degree of sort of on the ground US Presence, so long as it doesn't become a story. There's a way in which this be going public actually makes Scheinbaum less likely to authorize it. And if that happens, I think Trump will save a rattle. But in the end, it'll probably be a negotiation that we won't notice about because I don't think US Forces are going to be comfortable operating in Mexico without the awareness and indeed cooperation of Mexican officials.
- [42:36]
Shirley Seitz
And your point? I can't imagine President Sheinbaum now politically being able to greenlight foreign troops any more than any American president could countenance foreign troops on American soil. I mean, just think about that, what that would feel like.
- [42:54]
Daniel Dresner
The Venezuela one, I honestly don't know. I think there's a couple of possibilities on this one. The first is this might be a rare case where it's not so much Trump. Trump wants to do it. Like he obviously, I think, is incredibly annoyed that Maduro was still around, particularly after he tried to sanction him. You know, Lasko around the difference this time is that in Marco Rubio and Stephen Miller, he's got two powerful aids that really want to see Maduro gone. And so it might be that he's being egged on in a way that he wasn't during his first term. And I think it wouldn't surprise, you know, it doesn't surprise me that they might be some of the folks behind the more aggressive moves, the more, you know, the targeting fishing boats. But the thing that this most reminds me of from Trump's first term is what he tried to do towards North Korea before he wound up actually meeting with Kim Jong Un, which is, if you remember, launched all kinds of bellicose rhetoric, taunted Kim in his UN General assembly address, evacuated all sort of dependents from South Korea, indicating were preparing for war. I mean, it was about every. And then imposed a maximum pressure campaign. And, you know, it alarmed a lot of people. I mean, the idea was that we could actually do this. And then the North Koreans sent out a feeler saying, hey, can we have a meeting? And that was when Trump took the bait. I don't know if Maduro offering to meet with Trump is going to have the same effect, but I'm also pretty sure that this is. The fundamental question revolves around whether Trump is convinced, convinced or is persuaded by others that if he actually takes military action in Venezuela, it'll be a cakewalk. If he thinks it'll be a cakewalk, he'll do it. Trump's military record on the use of force is actually extremely consistent. No matter what anyone thinks about the madman theory, which is if he thinks his opponent will fold quickly, he is happy to use force. He is happy to use limited amounts of force and then walk away and declare victory. I don't think he's going to be able to do that in Venezuela. But then again, I don't have Marco Rubio in one ear and Stephen Miller in the other telling me that it'll be a cakewalk.
- [45:05]
Shirley Seitz
Yeah, no, and that's excellent. And as you point out, there are no other grownups in the room. We ought to at least mention before we close up here that there's also the Epstein files out there. They are still hanging fire. There's still an obsession on the part of Donald Trump and Mike Johnson not to release them. I think just the contrast between the way they are playing out in Great Britain and here. Here is. It's pretty significant, you know, watching, you know, Prince Andrew being stripped of his title and his house, the. The ambassador being sacked, that the Brits are actually taking rather aggressive, very, very dramatic historic action because of the Epstein files. Well, are in, in this country, no prominent American has been treated that way. So again, that, that's, you know, stay tuned because that's still coming. Daniel Dresner Always a pleasure talking with you. Thank you so much.
- [45:59]
Daniel Dresner
Thank you and thank you all for.
- [46:01]
Shirley Seitz
Listening to this episode of to the Contrary podcast. Just a reminder we are not crazy ones. Thanks.
- [46:21]
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Shirley Seitz
Par le tu francais hablas espanol Parli Italiano?
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