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Charlie Sykes
been forwarded to an automatic voice message system.
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Charlie Sykes
I'm Charlie Sykes. Welcome back to the to the Contrary podcast. Now I would like to tell you that the leaders of the White House Correspondents association who sponsored that dinner, are having real second thoughts, engaging in a deep introspection about the disgrace and the humiliation of that event. I'm not sure that's true, but we will still talk about it. Meanwhile, Donald Trump, who finds himself absolutely stuck in this war of whim in Iran, spent the weekend posting AI slop about the war. We've stopped bombing in part because we're running out of the stuff you need to actually wage the war. So Donald Trump has turned instead to fake AI images. I'm gonna share that with you in a little while. Meanwhile, do we have a nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia? No clearer today than it was a few days ago, since Donald Trump's art of the deal is only what he says it is at any given time. Also, do the Democrats have a reconstruction agenda if. If and when they get back into power? We have a lot to talk about at the beginning of this week. And joining me on our podcast today is our good Nicholas Grossman, who's a professor of international relations at the University of Illinois and the editor in chief of Ark Digital. Nicholas, welcome back from vacation. By the way, are you tanned, ready and rested from all the.
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Nicholas Grossman
I was tan. I was in the mountains in the Northeast. But, yeah, ready, rested, got some time in nature, some time with family, which feels good to dive back into stuff that feels bad.
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Charlie Sykes
Yes, well, I'm gonna be doing that next week. But you mentioned that you actually went to the Norman Rockwell Museum and you saw the famous Four Freedoms pictured. I mean, did that, like, recharge you a little bit? I'm looking for anything to recharge, recharge a little bit.
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Nicholas Grossman
And actually, there was other. A lot of the museum and his attitude towards it on attitudes towards race, for example, of being, you know, much more pro integration. And the idea of that as Americana, of asserting those different freedoms. Like, there's now the meme version of the freedom of speech where the guy's standing up and saying something. And what I think is great about the story of that is he didn't say something good. Like, the. The painting is about. The guy said something that everybody kind of hated and that was obnoxious and people didn't like, but they let him speak anyway, that. And Rockwell was supposedly struck by this and made it into a painting. But they had a lot of different Americana in this museum. And it was nice to see, again, a vision of America, real traditional America that was one that was more about equality and integration and diversity. And we're, you know, all in this together. And that seemed to be a big part of Rockwell's vision. And, yeah, I like that. It was a nice reminder.
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Charlie Sykes
You know, I mean, it's easy for people to say, well, that was sort of sentimental nostalgia, you know, of an America that never really existed. But actually it was the aspirational America where we actually had a shared story. And we didn't always live up to the values, but we had those values and those principles and the four freedoms are now, remind me, freedom from want, freedom of speech
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Nicholas Grossman
and freedom from fear.
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Charlie Sykes
Freedom from fear and worship.
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Nicholas Grossman
Freedom of worship. Just look.
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Charlie Sykes
Freedom of very important one.
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Nicholas Grossman
Right.
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Charlie Sykes
Well, Evergreen. Okay, so, Nicholas, one thing really quick about that.
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Nicholas Grossman
Just also where I don't think it was a rosy vision. So like his paintings on integration. Or there's the, the famous one of Ruby Bridges. He shows her at the center. And there are two. She's flanked by FBI people as racists are trying to prevent her from going to an integrated school. And, and she's the center of the painting. So like the FBI guys, you just see their legs. And I again, really like that part that she was the important thing here, that it wasn't the people attacking her, it wasn't necessarily even the people protecting her. It was that she was brave in going to the school. And that also symbolized something about America moving forward.
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Charlie Sykes
You know, as soon as you mentioned that I have that image in my head, these are such iconic pictures that we all know them. And so would these be considered woke now? I mean, if they, if they had an exhibition at the Smithsonian, would the Trump administration say you had to have plaques saying this was misleading? I mean, part of what we're living through, and the reason I'm bringing this up is we're also living through this erasure of history where one of the stories, maybe it wasn't the top 10 story, the Trump administration's attack on American history, telling the Smithsonian that they had to put up labels saying that anything that he disagreed with they would have to say might be misleading. And this is part of the struggle we're in right now, right. Remembering who we were and whether or not we're going to, you know, we're going to honor that history or whether or not we're going to whitewash that history.
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Nicholas Grossman
And with the Smithsonian in particular, I think it's both really bad in the sense of trying to erase history as a way to try to transform the present. But also there's an irony in, do they really think that Donald Trump saying this is the truth about American history, that he doesn't want you to see, that that's going to make people less interested, that if I were the Smithsonian, I would make that my marketing slogan?
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Charlie Sykes
Yeah. Well, I was also somewhat surprised, as we have been about the things that a president can do. If you would have asked me a couple of years ago, can the president order the Smithsonian museums to change their exhibitions, I would have thought, well, no, that's not something that the president could do. But I guess maybe it is. Okay. So we've gone through the weekend, and I was hoping that by now that we could move on and not talk about the White House Correspondents Dinner, which was a disgrace and a humiliation. But it was. I want to get your thoughts on it because the headline in the Washington Post was that, you know, Trump, Trump bombed, there's no question about it, with his insults and his slurs and his smears and the attacks on Kaitlan Collins. But the headline said that was greeted with stunned silence. And I focused on the word stunned because I can't imagine that anyone was really surprised that Donald Trump was Donald Trump. And so, you know, here's my question. For all those journalists sitting in that room who just sitting there silently, who didn't stand up and walk out, who didn't protest, what did they think was going to happen when they made Donald Trump the guest of honor at a dinner allegedly about the First Amendment and the celebration of the First Amendment? What did you think? What was your reaction to that?
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Nicholas Grossman
I thought the whole thing was, I don't know, pretty gross that the just that the event itself and the nature of it and some of the reactions, because obviously some of the journalists made a point of making expressions showing that they didn't like it, but by being there and their presence that they are promoting it and promoting that vision. And so you have this supposedly tribute to the First Amendment, and the guest speaker is somebody who is assaulting the First Amendment, who is abusing government power to try to censor and silence them, who has kicked a lot of them out of the White House, who even some, I'm still not over about how the White House press corps did not stand with the Associated Press when Trump kicked them out because they said Gulf of Mexico instead of Gulf of America. You know, the new name he's trying to make up and he's been filing these bad faith lawsuits. He was trying to silence the New York Times. He was, you know, manipulated cbs, abc, all these others that he's been going after. And there they are treating it like it's normal. And so while I'm sure that a lot of the journalists themselves, the individual attendees are don't actually think everything's fine and everything's normal, that the way that they're still going through the motions has this, you know, it's all just political theater, don't worry about it stuff. This is the same old as before and it's really not. And so the way when people keep on doing that, they are kind of Reifying, strengthening the normality of what he's doing when it's an incredibly abnormal moment and their very institution is under government assault.
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Charlie Sykes
I think that's well put. Okay, so there were a couple of maybe some highlights. I'm going to get to that before we get to some of the lowlights. The fact that Donald Trump had to sit through the handing out of awards to reporters who had written some pretty negative stories about him. I mean, the photographer who captured that picture of him standing completely indifferently as somebody had passed out behind him. The Wall Street Journal reporters were honored for that report about his birthday car, Epstein, you know, to Jeffrey Epstein. He had sued them for billions of dollars for that. But he had to shake their hand. So there was a little bit of that. But then you got, I think, the lower point. Now, I don't want to kick people when they're down necessarily, even though we do on a regular basis here, but there are some videos of prominent journalists who appear to be cordially yucking it up with Stephen Miller at this dinner. And look, you know, people can do whatever they want in their private time, but symbolism of that was, I would say, deplorable, that especially in an age in which people are wondering about the willingness of the corporate media in particular to stand up to power and speak truth to power. And you see some of the most prominent journalists who are like, yucking it up and chatting with Stephen Miller and everything. And I'm sorry, that just sends the wrong message. It does not enhance their credibility. It does not enhance their standing. And then, of course, and we can't have this conversation without talking about just the real vile personal insults. I mean, it's one thing to have a roast, and let's be clear about this, historically these things have been roasts. But his comments about Kaitlan Collins, oh, she's an attractive woman, she should smile more. And then comparing her to a transgender influencer, and people were appalled. Donald Trump was amused. He then doubles down and you saw he's posting memes on Truth Social in which Kaitlan Collins is portrayed as, what is it, Mulvaney? I mean, it's just so insulting. It's so vile. And again, the humiliation of the White House Correspondent's Dinner I don't think could be more complete. I mean, it's just the disgrace and the self humiliation.
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Nicholas Grossman
I thought so too. Where Dylan Mulvaney, that's the influencer, was somebody who became a hate object on the right because Bud Light did a niche promo with her. So she's got like Millions of followers, Gen Z followers online. And so they tried to sell Bud Light to those followers during March Madness, which seems like just a normal business decision. And they tried to turn her into a hate object. And so adding that. But even just the, the whole thing ends up being where the stuff of participating in it balances out any of the positives. So when they, yes, they do make him. So he sits there and there's an award for some coverage of Jeffrey Epstein. But then they go and there's laughter or applause when he jokes, not really joking about seeking another term in office. And it makes it seem like the whole thing where it's a show, they're giving him the adversary that he wants. The idea of it's Trump and MAGA and Republicans, whatever, versus the media as a whole and that they are an enemy that should be attacked. And so this is where a good example of the yucking it up with Stephen Miller of I'm the sort of person that if I am in person with people, I am almost always polite. I'm not going to do some sort of grandstanding shouting at somebody. Maybe I should, you know, I don't even know. But where if I, I can see myself potentially saying like, oh, how you doing? And shaking hand and, I don't know, walking on or like, oh, what'd you think of the speech? Or just trying to chit chat. But that's also why I wouldn't go in the first place, why I wouldn't participate. I wouldn't want to be in a situation where I am signaling to everybody, this is a normal social interaction. These are regular people. I work with them, everything's okay.
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Charlie Sykes
No, that's why you don't put yourself in that particular situation, particularly with Stephen Miller. Okay, one last comment on the Kaitlan Collins thing. Because and I think part of it is the numbing and the normalization process. This felt like a flashback to things that we had talked about back 10 years ago in 2016. Donald Trump has a long track record in a pension for making fun of women's looks, mocking them, you know, going all the way back. And so this whole thing about Kaitlan Collins and posting him is again, him singling out a young woman and trying to mock her and bully her based on her looks. And maybe in the great scheme of things, that's not the worst crime that we've seen in the last week. And maybe it's because, okay, so he's been doing that for decades now, and that's baked in the cake that we just sort of Figure, same old, same old. But it's just a reminder of how degraded our culture, our political culture has been. Okay, now to a much more serious issue.
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Nicholas Grossman
Yeah, sorry, last thing. I know we're harping on this, but where. Yeah, it's incredibly misogynistic of that. He is a. He's found liable in court for sexual assault. Thank you for mentioning that. So you know, is somebody who brags about sexual assault and rape and said incredibly misogynistic and a lot of it with the press. And I was reminded of where he said it was some White House presser I think was on Air Force One or like one White House press corps where a female reporter asks him a normal kind of reporter question and he says, you know, quiet piggy. And the thing that jumped out to me was none of the other reporters defended her at all. Nobody walked out, nobody objected, nobody said anything. And it is that type of attitude that was also present at the dinner that has this inherent sycophancy where it feels like abandoning the mission of the fourth estate. Truth to power. Inform the public. The whole reason why the press is designated as something special, having freedom in the First Amendment, why it's not merely freedom of speech and additional freedom of the press, is that their mission to democracy is supposed to be the opposite of kissing up to power and kind of glad handing people that are abusing the system.
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Charlie Sykes
Well, I totally agree with you. And we also should mention there was a couple of good developments last week. Number one, okay, so Donald Trump is weaponizing the Department of Justice to go after the New York Times which reported accurately it appears years about the winged bribe from Qatar, the Air Force One that was the flying palace that turned out to be a white elephant. And they reported about some of the safety concerns about it. He had the reporters subpoenaed. The subpoenas were delivered at their own homes. Major effort at intimidation. On Friday, the New York Times reported more in depth about all of the safety problems with the Air Force One and how it had improved, endangered all the people aboard that not to mention the national security. And I actually was on one of cable show and I said, you know what, I think this is actually encouraging that the New York Times is showing that it is not bullied, it is not intimidated by Donald Trump. So the fact that that story even appeared was positive. Number two, all the smart kids kind of blew off all of the state attorney generals who had filed lawsuits against the Ellison takeover of Warner Paramount Warner Brothers merger that would have led to the takeover of cnn. The insidification of CNN like they've initiated cbs. And over the weekend Paramount announced, okay, we're putting it on hold. We're going to be delaying the merger until next next summer. Now again, I'm not a lawyer, I'm not an expert in all of this, but this seems as if at least a small indication, a small pushback and slowing down that march of the MAGA corporate media takeover. So I was encouraged by that. Your reaction.
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Nicholas Grossman
I thought that was good too and that we've seen a lot out of Hollywood. I know there are various actors and filmmakers and others that have been pushing against this and have been trying to fight against this that they understand both it's probably bad for their business, bad for art, but especially bad for the country, bad for information flows, bad for public understanding that a few Trump connected oligarchs are buying up a lot of our media with the Ellisons as one of the big examples. And so it is. Yes, I agree it's good to and this is maybe searching for silver linings, but a lot of the lower courts are holding that they are upholding the law. There's still the big problem with the Supreme Court, but where a lot of the lower courts are doing that and with something like the Paramount Warner Brothers merger is the sort of thing that the government is supposed to block, not facilitate. They are corruptly involved at the highest levels of the White House. The people who were trying to buy it even pitched it as select our when they were competing with Netflix for Warner Brothers they said pick us because we have all these connections in the White House and we can manipulate the regulatory system. I mean they said probably cut away red tape or whatever. But it's because they are closely tied politically to the White House and to also the. We can see this in the degradation of CBS News and becoming closer to something like state media. And so the more that happens, the worse it would be. And so delays, as a bit of an ironic twist of where to get Warner Brothers to keep talking to them instead of going with the Netflix bid, they made a deal that when there are delays they have to make these payouts. So I'd have to look out the exact number. But yeah, they're Big Ellison's Paramount oracle. Just by this delay, by the judge saying you got to wait, they have to make additional payments. They lost money. Not in a they won't get the deal. The deal's more expensive, meaning they actually have to write a check check for it. And the longer we can draw that out, the better chance there is that There is a actual sane and legal regulatory environment, a non corrupt regulatory environment in which the FEC actually does its job and says this type of merger violates antitrust.
- [20:18]
Charlie Sykes
No, I want to talk to you about the US deal with Iran and the coverage of that story. Look, obviously everyone, including me, has lots of opinions about this deal. But if you also want to get down to the facts of the story rather than getting lost in the hype of the headlines, there's an app and a website that can help you do that. It's called Ground News and they have great tools to help you avoid getting caught in a bias bubble and avoid blind spots. For each story, they'll show you how the left, right and the center covered it. The Nobel Peace center even called Ground News an excellent way to stay informed, avoid echo chambers and expand your worldview. Take for example this story. A judge denied Joe Biden's bid to block release of transcripts linked to a special counsel inquiry. On the left, you'll see headlines like US Judge rejects Joe Biden's lawsuit asking to withhold memoir recordings. And on the right, you'll see headlines like what is the former President trying to hide? But then you can go to each source and see who's funding them and their factuality rating that shows how subjective or objective the source is. Ground News also has a blind spot feed that shows stories disproportionately covered by either side of the media. So. So if you want access to stories you may otherwise never see and the necessary context to make up your own mind, visit groundnews.com tc to get 40% off their unlimited access. That's groundnews.com tc so they know that I sent you. I believe that if you like this podcast and what we do here, you'll like their mission. Visit groundnews.com tc today. Your call has been forwarded to an
- [22:00]
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automatic voice message system.
- [22:01]
Running a business means you're always reachable. Until you're not. And the moment you miss that call, a competitor picks it up. That's why this episode is brought to you by Quo spelled Quo, the business phone system. Built so you never miss an opportunity. All your calls, texts and voicemails live in one place. Anyone on your team can pick up a conversation, see the full history and respond fast. Quo is the number one rated business phone system on G2, trusted by over 90,000 businesses. Set up in minutes on any device. Keep your existing number. Add teammates as you grow. No it, no hassle. Quo's built in AI agent, even handles after Hours, calls and books, appointments. So you're covered around the clock. Money is on the line. Always say hello with quo try quo free plus 20% off your first six months@quo.com tech that's quo.com tech.
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Charlie Sykes
No, I'm. Yeah, good take. Okay, let's get to the main event. You have written very, very extensively about the war with Iran which again over the last two weeks moved closer and closer to an all out war. Looked like we were going to escalate. The war was also spreading and yet over the weekend we got word that the bombing had been paused. In part it appear because we've kind of are running out of some of the munitions that we actually need. So give me your sense of where we are at with this war. Because you know, Donald Trump has kind of look, I don't want to be misunderstood but it's almost like he does have this almost superpower of being able to spin anything. This seems like the exception to that because he can't get out of it and he can't convince people that this failure is a success. But where are we at right now as far as you can tell? As far as we know. Nicholas Grossman, what do you think?
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Nicholas Grossman
So, I mean we're stuck is the broad picture that the, with Iran, with the Iran war and the fact that they have so much ability to fire into the Straits of Hormoon is they have this large land barrier and the fact that they're outside land border and that there is this major international choke point that happens to be right there. All they have to do is be able to fire into occasionally or even really just make insurance companies and shipping companies think that it's not profitable, that it's too risky. So the insurance premium for the few ships that actually want to try it is more than the shipping company's profit on their own. And so their vast majority of them are just saying it's not worth it. And, and he can maybe, I don't know, maybe bully some domestic American businesses into giving him favorable treatment or bribes or something like that. But he can't make shipping companies and insurance companies voluntarily lose money and he can't make the Iranians just quit because this really matters to them. It's not that type of, I don't know removes irony made for social media show it's not something where the United States can wash their hands of it. Of that Trump partially got away with this with the Gaza peace deal, which also has failed in numerous ways, but partially got away with it in an American media and political context because the United States didn't have any direct interests there. That meaning it was people in Gaza, people in the immediate region or in Lebanon. Those are the people getting hurt as opposed to something that would reverberate where Americans would feel it. And, and the global economy still has a lot of ties to these fossil fuel resources and additional things like fertilizer and helium and a lot of other products that come out of there. And he can't just make it go away. So it looks like we might be, if the pattern holds on our way toward surrendering for a third time that when Trump start, at least now this said would be the third time of where he does the these big over the top threats, while also there's a blockade in place and pausing on airstrikes. And that usually signals that he's about to give in, that he is. It has gotten through to him that the military option hasn't really worked. That just as anybody who studied this knew in advance of that a bombing from afar, just shooting at them a bunch, blowing some stuff up can do a lot of damage, but can't actually advance major strategic goals. That any real hope to do this militarily is a full on regime change war in Iran or say at minimum invading and occupying hundreds of miles of island and coastline. And that is extremely difficult. He's always been afraid of that, clearly afraid of that, of the different fallout problems from it, and so has never really committed ground troops or moved towards it. And even that would take some delay. So he does these big over the top threats and stops bombing, almost as if desperately hoping that this will make the Iranians finally, finally cry uncle. He even said in this interview of maybe they'll just quit, maybe they'll cry uncle, maybe they'll give in. And no, they won't, because frankly, no country will. And really when you look at the irony of watching seeing Ukraine not give in for years and then suddenly thinking that just now the Iranians are going to give in. And even in the way we always talk about the Iranian government, that the regime are theocrats or they're crazy, they're fundamentalists, they're true believers and they're all of a sudden that they would just be, I don't know, bribeable, transactionable. But so they clearly want to get something out of the war. They believe that they have time on their side and that they have effectively deserved spoils of a successful war. And that means getting to control the Strait of Hormuz, which also really means that then as a deterrent if there's threats about, oh, we're going to bomb you again, well, we'll try to crash the global economy again. You can't do anything about it. You, you really want to get back to that situation. So they want it, and they have been making clear throughout that they're going to try to keep it. And Trump and his negotiators, you know, Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff agreed in the memorandum of understanding that the US Signed, they accepted language that said Iran will make arrangements for the strait and that there will be no tolls for direct, quote, 60 days only. And they signed it. So they said Iran gets arrangements. Iran, you know, the clear implication of no tolls for 60 days means you can do tolls after. That's how the Iranians interpret it. And then Trump and company tried to pretend that they didn't just, they told a bunch of ships, try to go by Oman. They told everybody, you know, we won and it's over and we got all these concessions. And so the Iranians reasserted their claim, their attempt to claim over Hormuz. We ended up bombing again. And since the bombing once again just destroyed some stuff without actually accomplishing anything strategic, it seems like we're maybe in this now weird state basis of dueling blockades, which two times already has led to then the United States surrendering, only for Trump to then maybe realize how embarrassing it is that he started this war, failed and surrendered, and then deciding he's going to try to feel tough again by bombing again. So it's hard to say which one we're actually going to go in, but the pattern looks like we're heading for another. Okay, Iran, you get it.
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Charlie Sykes
So given that that's this weird stasis that we're in right now, what do you make of this? That the presidents over the weekend, again, having backed off the bombing, they're now trying to spin the casualty numbers. They're trying to spin the fact that the supply of munitions has been drawn down. So we're in this position, this weird position. But Donald Trump over the weekend spent a good deal of time apparently posting AI slop about the war. I think we can show you a couple of these images which are, okay, so here's one. Donald Trump. It's our oil tanker now showing Donald Trump himself planting the American flag on an oil tanker. Okay, that's one. This one is even more bizarre, I think. A cartoon image of strike on Carg Island. Can you see that? Showing US airplanes bombing, firing missiles, blowing up Kharg Island. Nicholas, do you think that he thinks that this is going to intimidate the Iranians? I'm sorry to laugh here, but I mean, when you have the President of the United States posting AI slop at the moment when he stopped bombing, does he think that this makes him look tough? This makes him look strong? This will be what goes. The mullahs will. Oh, shit. You know, have you seen what he's posting here? He's actually threatening to invade Carg Island. What do you make of it? Of that? Other than the fact that we have a cartoon president? I mean.
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Nicholas Grossman
Yeah, and which is, I mean, really bad. I do want to address the munitions and the casualty thing. It's just that war is such serious business and they're treating it like it's not. But with the AI slop, it's not a. I don't think the audience for that are the Iranians that, you know, with the idea that they'll be intimidated by this in some fashion or embarrassed by it in some fashion. That instead the audience is in part his own feelings, things and feelings of inadequacy with it. And so can be in this fantasy of where something's actually working or he's actually doing well. But a lot of it is for his hardcore supporters, it's for right wing media, it's for the MAGA base. It's that to be able to paper over the reality of this. One of the things that Trump has part of Trumpism inherent into it is this idea of what I'm Orwell called doublethink that I know or Orwell's referenced a lot. But doublethink is in this so much about where he's simultaneously the strongest president ever and a weak victim that needs your sympathy. And so he's simultaneously making peace with the Iranians and also being really tough and blowing up a lot of their stuff. And if you are somebody who you really want to believe in him, and you've been so into this fantasy and you've devoted a lot of yourself, maybe even ruined relationships with some people over fighting about it. And now maybe even you said something like, well, I'm voting for him because I don't want to start another stupid Middle east war, another forever war. And now that is exactly what he's doing. And it's going badly. And it's going badly in ways that are becoming increasingly unignorable for Americans with things like economic effects that they might be able to distance themselves from it. There's only a small percentage of the population is either in the military or directly connected to it. Not that many people. I care a lot about the Middle east itself, but not that many Americans prioritize. And so this gives them something to latch onto. Of I was feeling bad about supporting this and, oh, now I can just enjoy for, I don't know, another day or two of feeling like it's a movie or like it's cartoony and it's so. Just so unserious that the idea that he's gonna.
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Charlie Sykes
The fact that they're threatening to. Again, this may. My take may age badly, but the idea that they will put boots on the ground in Kharg Island. You want to talk about how you create an even worse sit in terms of the international oil markets. Okay. What do you make of also the widening of the war, the Houthis now getting involved, going after the Saudi Arabian oil? I mean, this seems like a major escalation that will at some point have a much more dramatic effect on the price of oil. I mean, there's been some discussion of the fact that, you know, yes, gas prices are up, but they're not up as much as people thought they were going to be up. We haven't had the price shot. There has been this optimism in the markets that sooner or later that everything would open up. And now we have not only the Strait of Hormuz, but also the Houthis shutting down their own waterways. What do you make of that?
- [33:41]
Nicholas Grossman
I'd also add Ukraine hitting Russia a bunch. So we have three wars that are going after the energy markets. So with the Houthis in Saudi Arabia. The Houthis are a rebel group in Saudi Arabia, sorry, in Yemen, that have controlled part of the country and. And Saudi Arabia backed the government and still did and had bombed them a bunch, including with US support in the 2010s, killed a lot of people, did not really seem to achieve strategic goals either. And then they settled down. And the Houthis are a great example of people where they do a lot of really awful stuff, a lot of war crimes. They cut off water to hundreds of thousands of civilians under a UN report, for example. But. But they had fired into the red Sea in 2000. It must have been under 2023. They started with. In response to the Israel war in Gaza. And then when Trump came in office, we already tried a war against the Houthis. And this was one that. This one where Hegseth was bragging about how many bombs were dropping. That also speaks to the munition shrine shortage. But all these different bombs are dropping that was one where they leaked the plants on signal, lost a few fighter jets, then claimed that victory and didn't really have it. The Houthis still could fire into ships and still block shipping. And so the Saudis, perhaps something tied up in the war with Iran, tried bombing a airport that was controlled by the Houthis. I think perhaps to prevent a plane from landing or hit who was on the plane. It's not totally clear. And they say they're going to retaliate. And so I think the key number here is that when the Iran war broke out out and the Strait of Hormuz got blocked, Saudi oil that went across what they call the east west pipeline went from about a million barrels a day to over 4 million barrels a day that comes out in the Red Sea. It needs to go on these really, most of it goes on these really big tankers that can't get out the northern route via the Suez Canal. They're too big. So they have to go out the southern route. That's the area where the Houthis control. They are much like Iran, able to just fire a few rockets, a few drones into that area, into that, that waterway, scare ships enough that they won't go. Some are still doing it, but they're turned around. And now there's been some back and forth exchange of fire directly between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis. And so that could escalate more. It could calm down like all the rest of these. But it makes for a third conflict that is now disrupting energy supplies. So I think there are also a few things going on. Why has that not really hit yet? One is that in the positive stories compared to say, the 1973 oil embargo, that we're less dependent on oil. The world is. There's more diversification of energy. In response to that oil supply Crisis in the 70s, a lot of countries built up oil reserves. That's why we have this Strategic Petroleum Reserve. They're drawing down those reserves. They've cushioned a lot of the market. And as negative as I have been about markets acting really rosy, there's also this. Is financialization working? A lot of the point of futures is supposed to smooth out immediate price spikes that you don't have. You have something calmed down in part because there are speculators going further out saying this will calm down eventually and so I will have future contracts that are less than this now. And yet it feels somewhat crazy, making to me that we are in the midst of history's biggest oil shock by far. It is bigger than pick Europe. So I mentioned 73, the Gulf War, in 91, the Iraq. Iraq war. Any others? Take your pick. So, biggest oil shock by far. And a lot of the world isn't really reacting that way. And it's giving me these sort of uncomfortable vibes. Kind of like the financial crisis in the housing bubble of where we saw a lot of problems in the housing market in, like, 2006, where a lot of them were showing up. And it wasn't until 2008, when Lehman Brothers collapsed, when they literally could not make even minimum payments on their various debt. And then everybody tied to it started collapsing when they were pretending everything was fine and everybody was making money and it was great and kept the music going right up until the point it really just smacked them in the face and they couldn't deny it anymore. And I worry that economically we are headed for something like that.
- [37:43]
Charlie Sykes
That and of course, the AI bubble as well out there. So there's a lot of reasons to go, okay. Are we on the precipice of saying, okay, so in the time we have left, what do you make of the Saudi nuclear deal? Because, you know, this took people by surprise. Why are they making this deal? Why now? What does it mean? Donald Trump's changed his mind. But put this in some context of why, when we're waging a war to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons in the Middle east, does Donald Trump choose this moment to say, yes, let's give Prince Bonesaw more nuclear capabilities, which I'm not sure they didn't already have many of them. But again, put this in perspective for me.
- [38:23]
Nicholas Grossman
So it's really bad. It's really bad. This feels like such a stupid move, and I can't explain it without the Saudis Brabham that I. I really don't know how there. There's no, like, national interest of. There are companies that he and his kids have a piece of that are going to directly profit if this goes through that early on in his first term, Saudi princes bought out whole floors of his hotel when they weren't actually staying there and overpaid for it. The two of them linked in live golf. Golf and having golf tournaments in his properties where they don't disclose how much they paid him, so that they bribed Jared Kushner a bunch. And so it's hard to explain without it. But for a national interest and a great example of Trump putting both lying to the American people and making money for himself as his main foreign policy goals over anything like US national interest is that the big argument, one of the big arguments against Iran getting a nuclear weapon weapon was that we feared it would set off a nuclear cascade. That if Iran would want one, then both that would make Iran decently stronger, but also it would be a big incentive for Saudi Arabia and Turkey and Egypt all to want nuclear weapons, also to be able to balance out Iran. And that the more that there's proliferation in general, that just multiplies all the possibilities of miscalculation or accident or all the other nightmare scenarios. Saudi Arabia in particular is where Al Qaeda, al Qaeda's from that, that is where a lot of al Qaeda, the September 11th attackers, that if we give the Saudi royal family every benefit of the doubt, the government every benefit of the doubt, then still having more nuclear material moving around there means it could be stolen, it could be taken by some sort of rogue officer that's sympathetic to jihadists, it could be sold on the black market. Any of those other possibilities. And to make it where the United States started a war, which at least in the official declared reasons was to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon weapon, and then is giving Iran about as big an incentive as it possibly could to get a nuclear weapon by giving its main regional rivals more nuclear technology. And so both it is disastrous for the region and also, and it might not go through, but even the announcement of it is really damaging and changes expectations. And that adds to Trump's legacy of nuclear proliferation. In his first term, he tore up the Iranian nuclear deal, let Iran out of nuclear restrictions in exchange for nothing. He normalized North Korea as a nuclear power, started lying, saying that they weren't, they didn't have nuclear weapons threatening the United States anymore, and now is giving authorization to Saudi Arabia to have more domestic uranium enrichment, which is the exact same thing that they're trying to prevent the Iranians from getting. It is much easier to just say no one else can get it than, okay, the Saudis are our friends and they bribed me. They can get it. The Iranians are not the case.
- [41:16]
Charlie Sykes
Well, and also, you can imagine, and this is a leap here, if you imagine that the mullahs are sitting around figuring out what are we going to do, does this make them more or less likely to agree to denuclearization to end the war? I mean, when they just announced Saudi Arabia is going to be able to enrich uranium again, wouldn't this make it less likely that Iran is going to agree to denuclearization than we were before? They were never going to agree to it. But this doesn't seem to be getting you closer from A to B in any way whatsoever.
- [41:53]
Nicholas Grossman
No, it makes it even less. And right. They didn't look like they were going to agree to it because they're winning the war, and so why would they be forced to otherwise? But it makes it even less. And I can put in a broader strategic context of a. A part that it's missing is that the Iranians have domestic politics just like everybody. They have arguments. I mean, we can say that it's an argument between, at this point, hardliners and even harder liners, if that's how people want to frame it. But there is still that argument. And there are forces within Iran, these are the ones that conduct a lot of the negotiations, who are saying, even if they're pitching it domestically, you know, we can get a lot out of the Americans here, but we can get a lot of financial benefits. We don't really have to push this. Hormu Singh. We can always do it later. Later. And they're arguing against a lot of the hardest core in the Revolutionary Guard who are saying things like, this is our moment, we're going to take it. You are appeasers. You're just going to get us in trouble again. And they're having that argument. And we both, when I say we hear both, U.S. national interest at this point, given all the problems, but U.S. national interest and global interest, global economic interests, regional interests, all wants there to be some sort of deal, some sort of end to this destruction, which war that is just destroying, not even possibly achieving anything. And so we all want an end to that. And by giving the Saudis this nuclear authorization, that makes it that the forces inside Iran saying, these are enemies, we have to fight forever. We need our own nuclear weapons, we need our own deterrence. We need to totally control Hormuz to really scare them and really cause them pain. There's no way we should deal, no matter what the deal is. And that is on top of all the not trusting Trump. So, yeah, it's. It makes the problem they caused even worse.
- [43:29]
Charlie Sykes
Well, I can imagine that conversation taking place in countries all around the world. We're saying, look what happened to Iran, look what happened to Ukraine. We need to have a nuclear weapon so we'll be more like North Korea. Okay, so in the few minutes we have left, you were involved in a very, very interesting project. I assume you're gonna write about it more extensively about. I suppose the best way to put it is what the Democratic Reconstruction Project, the Post maga. What would it look like if and when Democr get power. So give me your thumbnail version of your contribution to all of that. Because I have to admit that it's kind of hard to look past the elections. But, you know, one of the big questions hanging over us every single day is like, you know, what will it take to unravel this? What will it take to repair the damage that is going on right now? Is it even possible? What will it take? Nicholas?
- [44:25]
Nicholas Grossman
This was a project called the Reconstruction Papers that was put together by a publication called Liberal Currents. And the editors there, Adam Gurney and Samantha Hancocks Lee and I was pleased to be able to contribute to it. What their idea with it was. That one is we're clearly not going back. That is to accept that something important has broken. And it's not that maybe the attempt to say, you know what, let's just forget about that and bygones bego icons move on. That was the Biden presidency and it didn't work. That that was the approach. And yeah, it clearly did not work. And yet at the same time, that certainly doesn't mean we should give up, should look to build something bigger, build something better. That many times there are multiple times in American history, hence Reconstruction, following the Civil War, of where that things have gotten decently worse and then where we can emerge from it and then build something better afterwards. And that there's also value in doing this sort of thing now because then it is something to strive for, something to achieve. And of course, we didn't think that we got every detail right. It was more efforts to start the conversation. And so, and start the conversation now in a, you know, you can maybe call it kind of like a Project 2029, but you know, something whereas a vision to really hit the ground running and be able to accomplish a lot, a lot that wasn't before. And so there are, I think, a lot of interesting essays in it on big picture questions of things like say, what do we do about immigration, how do we move forward on questions about gender, of how do we deal with the political purges that Trump has put through the military and having getting a professional officer corps, well, all throughout the military and all those different things. So my contribution was, was that Democrats need to finally get really serious about power, actually take power seriously. So if you look at previous Democratic administrations that they focused on policy, that you have a policy and crisis response. So Obama comes in, they do financial crisis response and they then do healthcare and Biden comes in and he does Covid crisis response and then does things like infrastructure and green energy. And, and in both cases they didn't really take the question of power seriously, which Republicans have been taking extremely seriously.
- [46:40]
Charlie Sykes
What does that mean, taking power?
- [46:42]
Nicholas Grossman
What I mean by taking power seriously is things like. Because any, you know, otherwise policy can get erased. So basically my contribution was things that a majority Congress can do would be D.C. and Puerto Rico statehood. There's no reason why those Americans should be disenfranchised just because they would likely vote for Democrat. That's both anti democracy and anti, say Democrats, specifically Democrats shooting themselves in the foot Supreme Court reform and not being at all shy about saying Supreme Court expansion, that this is a response to the manipulations of the court, something done reluctantly but necessary. Ban gerrymandering, make it explicit that it's partisan gerrymandering as well as racial gerrymandering. New Voting Rights act and one that guarantees rights to vote and easy access to it. Expand the House would be one I think is underrated, but that the House all the way at the start is in the tens of thousands per seat and now it's up around, I think it's 600, some odd thousand per seat and was never really supposed to be that way. And it makes it that a lot of them are less representative and makes gerrymandering easier. And this also might mean getting rid of the filibuster and which is just a Senate invented thing that Republicans have abused and Democrats seem to acquiesce to. And so all of that where they would shy away from it saying you know, we need to focus on affordability, for example, is a big thing now if yes, that is very important but you focus on affordability and then you don't handle a lot of the political institutional problems. And then what happens is Republicans come in and like Trump has been doing now just illegally undo the all of it that even though it's the law, if you have a president violating the law and a Supreme Court that is cool with that and a majority of Congress that also seems to be on board with it, then you get rid of all of that policy. And so I think part of this is an attitude of not shying away from the idea that you have been given power and now you should use it that if you believe in basic principles of democracy, one person, one vote, no taxation without representation, of course that applies to people in D.C. and the argument that there, I don't know what there isn't an equivalent slave state, you know, it's something like we need to balance things out. It would be unfair To Republicans, if people in D.C. vote for a Democratic senator, that's absurd. And so using actions like that, and because that is things that can be done just with a simple majority in Congress, I didn't put anything in there that requires an amendment or a legal super majority or anything along those lines to do that as their crisis response quickly and then to open up a lot of the bigger questions and to try to rethink additional 21st century problems. One that I didn't really get into there, but I would certainly add, would be antitrust with the tech oligarchs. That the degree of power that these private citizens, with Elon Musk being the best example of it, have accumulated is just way beyond what individuals had in American history in the Gilded Age Age. And that a strong antitrust channel Teddy Roosevelt, but strong antitrust in the name of making markets function, both informational markets and making economic markets function and then additional flourishing, that can help more of the people. The main idea, I'd say behind with the Reconstruction papers, and there are a lot of interesting essays in there that people can read, but that, that was to envision something about a positive. Envision a positive vision of where we can go and not merely patching some holes, but actually moving forward and making American constitutional democracy work for everybody.
- [50:20]
Charlie Sykes
So I think that this is the conversation that we need to have. What will it look like? And some of those ideas I really, really like. I love the idea of the antitrust. I think the idea of expanding the House of Representatives, banning gerrymandering, these are all very doable things. I have to admit to being a little bit queasy. And again, I'm persuadable on all of this, but my fear is that you create this vast vortex where each administration comes in and says, okay, if not now, then when we're going to flex our muscles, you add states at one point, then the Republicans come in and they figure out a way to add other states or carve states up. You expand the Supreme Court, the Republicans also expand the state court. And so it becomes more and more muscular exertion of control and power, because the power will go back and forth as opposed to the tradition of restraint. On the other hand, I think that your initial thesis is exactly correct, is that we are not going back. We are not gonna go back to that sort of kumbaya, let's restore norms, let's pretend that somehow the fever has broken as we did during the Biden years, because that was, was an historic failure. The other caution I would, you know, Least throw out there is the term reconstruction. Because the first time, you know, reconstruction was not a complete success, was it? Reconstruction is not one of the great shining moments of American history.
- [51:44]
Nicholas Grossman
I mean, I'll admit I joined the project after they picked the name, but I think it does make sense in that part of how we got here today can be traced back to the failure of reconstruction destruction. But I think you raise an important objection. This is the cycle of a slippery slope. And that was something that I was a lot more sympathetic to before. And the simple answer is it's already happened. We're in it already. And so it's just unilateral surrender if you don't do it. That the Republicans under Trump and under the Roberts court have violated the Constitution and the law so much that what are they going to do? Do what? Are they going to artificially restrict the Supreme Court down to eight seats so they can manipulate it? Are they going to throw out the Voting Rights act on the grounds that the court just kind of doesn't like the results of it, even though Congress passed it by overwhelming majorities? Are they going to say that the President has immunity from prosecution and is effectively above the law, even if he commits crimes? Are they going to say act like Congress doesn't have have the power of the purse and do a legal rescission and just move around the budget? However, they're already doing all of that and a lot more. And so that is what I mean by accepting, and I really do not like that we're here, but we are accepting that it's already broken that any of those. Oh, yeah, well, then they'll do this. They're already doing all of that. They're doing everything in that that they can think of. We didn't even get to all the ways they're trying to manipulate the midterms, disenfranchise people, ICE and the paramilitaries. The fact that America has a secret police now that is going around violating rights and they're moving more and more in this direction. What else? So I don't think that at this point we should be afraid of that sort of slippery slope because they're already so incentivized, they're already clearly going for it, that they don't need more incentives. It's not. Well, if you do that, then I'm going to do this. It's their own. Ready to.
- [53:39]
Charlie Sykes
Well, I think this is going to be a fascinating debate. I am really interested to get into it. I think we should always be concerned about the Slippery slope. But just in terms of, like, we're already there. You know, it was just a few years ago that the, the, the phrase abolish ice was pretty much on the fringes, probably still a little bit outside the, you know, complete mainstream. And yet, you know, with every passing month, the case for you need to blow that up and start from scratch again, become stronger. So I do think the problem of radicalization is it leads to counter radicalization. And, you know, as you were going through some of the ideas, I'm going, okay, it's, you know, that's kind of making my conservative instincts uncomfortable. But on the other hand, I'm listening to other stuff, you know, realizing that how, you know, you know, we're not in the 1980s anymore. How are we going to respond? Are we going to, you know, lie down? Is there going to be this asymmetry where the other side is going to blow through all of these norms and that the restoration reconstruction is going to be what, like, you know, risk slaps? It can't be. So I am fascinated by this debate. Nicholas Grossman, thank you for at least starting us off on that because I think this is gonna be a big theme for the next couple of years here and elsewhere when people are having discussions of like, like, where's America gonna go? How did we get here? And what comes next? Nicholas Grossman, thank you so much.
- [55:06]
Nicholas Grossman
Thanks, Charlie.
- [55:08]
Charlie Sykes
And thank you all for listening to this episode of to the Contrary podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. These are the kinds of conversations that we're going to be having and that we need to have in order to remind ourselves that we and the rest of America are not necessarily the crazy ones. Thank you.
- [55:38]
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Nicholas Grossman
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Charlie Sykes
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Nicholas Grossman
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Charlie Sykes
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