← To The Contrary with Charlie Sykes
To The Contrary with Charlie Sykes
Ed Luce: Xenophobia, Murder on the High Seas, and Europe's Moment of Truth
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Ed Luce
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Charlie Sykes
Welcome back to the to the Contrary podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. A lot of things to talk about today. I did want to talk about the weird cabinet meeting where Donald Trump fell asleep but also managed to engage in this dehumaniz, racist rant about Somalians, whether or not that is a new low. We also want to talk about the latest spin about the extrajudicial murders that are going on in the Caribbean. We don't call them double taps because, in fact, they are either war crimes or they are premeditated murder. Also, the possibility of regime change in Venezuela, and this is, I think, very interesting, the decision that Europe has to make over the next few days about whether or not to seize the Russian assets and turn them over to Ukraine. It might be one of those moments that changes the geopolitical weather.
- [03:27]
I'm wearing black because I'm in kind of a black mood yesterday. As I wrote in my newsletter yesterday, you could describe, you're tempted to describe Donald Trump's performance at the open Cabinet meeting this week where he went off on the rant on Somalians, as a new low. But it's not a new low. I mean, we've been here so many times before, again and again. And of course, we have the continuing spin, the attempt to throw the military under the bus involving the extraditional murders in the Caribbean. And of course, we're waiting on the fate of Ukraine. Who better to talk about all of this than our guest today, Ed Luce, the US national editor for the Financial Times. Ed, thank you so much for coming back on the podcast.
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Ed Luce
Charlie, it's always a pleasure.
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Charlie Sykes
Well, I wanna start. There's so many other things I wanna talk about, but I do wanna start with what the President said the other day, because in many ways, as I said, you think it's a new low when he's describing people as garbage and saying, we don't want a certain group here. But the fact is, this has been, you know, a light motif for Donald Trump for years. He's attacked Mexicans, he's attacked Muslims, he's attacked Afghans, he's attacked anyone who's a migrant from, from a. What he used to call shithole countries, what he probably still calls shithole countries. And you know, the funny thing was the other day I was speaking to an international travel group in Washington, D.C. and I gave him the kind of, the blunt message that they needed to understand the reality of how much hostility there was to foreigners in this country. But I also said, but that's not totally true. It's not all foreigners. It's just foreigners of, of a certain color, of a certain type from certain locations. And it's not from the average American. The hostility doesn't come from most Americans who are Decent people. The hostility comes right from the top, from our government as a matter of policy. So can I just play a little bit of what the president said about the Somalians? Because I don't think I can do it justice. This is the President of the United States talking about an ethnic group. We're going to go the wrong way if we keep taking in garbage into our country. Ilhan Omar is garbage. She's garbage. Her friends are garbage. These aren't people that work. These aren't people that say, let's go. Come on, let's make this place great. These are people that do nothing but complain. They complain, and from where they came from, they got nothing. All right, Ed, what do you make of this? I mean, I feel at a certain point that we've become so numb. And I wrote earlier this week that, you know, the canaries in the coal mine, you know, they're. They're dead all around us because, you know, outrage really has not ensued. But the president seems to be upping his. His rhetoric at the same time that the federal government is upping its harassment of certain ethnic groups, certain racial groups. Your thoughts?
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Ed Luce
You know, I've. I've been based in different parts of the world over my career. I've been here in the United states for. For 20 years this time, so it's by far the longest chunk. But I've been based in the Philippines. I've been based in India. I've been based in Hong Kong. And so I've got many friends from the non transatlantic parts of the world. And there is no ambiguity in the rest of the world about the message Trump is sending, that this is purely racial. I mean, you can have a bunch of Brits come and misbehave. Trump wouldn't care. A bunch of Norwegians, a bunch, you know, of white Canadians. He wouldn't care. The only group around the world. Amidst its sort of.
- [07:02]
Brew of conflicts and of human rights oppression, the only victim group that Trump identifies are white Boa Africanas in South Africa. The only single group. If there's any sort of ambivalence still left inside America as to what this means, I can assure anybody listening that it does not exist in the minds of what we sort of rather loosely called the global South. The rest of the world. Yeah, the non west.
- [07:34]
That America has an openly sort of whites first regime. And that includes the Vice President. It includes the de facto prime minister, Stephen Miller. It includes the administration of this great nation, of this great superpower. And I can't sort of overstate how Much damage that does to. To the brand, to the American brand.
- [08:01]
Charlie Sykes
It does. And this came up during our discussion, you know, what can you do to, you know, change the. The image of the country, you know, to the rest of the world? The only thing I could say is that these people don't speak for Americans, for most Americans. Now, obviously, it's tapped into something that is. That is very deep, but that we thought we had gotten behind. But he's now given voice to it. He's given permission to it, and he has. He has amplified it. Now, there is, you know, always difficult to get into Donald Trump's twisted mind, but there was the story about some social service fraud by some Somalis in. In. In Minnesota. Okay, so that. That's a thing. But. But in Donald Trump's world, if some member of one of these groups commits it, then it is group guilt, group identity. And 10 years ago, Republicans would describe that as textbook racism. Right. One person from one group commits a crime, therefore everybody in that group is garbage. Now, I would say that I'm not downplaying the social service fraud in Minnesota, but could I just mention that there appears to be a group of white people, interlopers in the federal government, who are conducting their own fraud, their own scam on a global scale. And that does not necessarily implicate every white person in America or every, you know, every person of an ethnic group. But this is where we are. We've gone from Haitians to Afghans to Somalis, Mexicans, Muslims. The pattern is so obvious. And 10 years ago, the nation was, you know, many people were outraged. There was a huge pushback from. Even among Republicans, from the business community, from civil society. Now, the fact is that we're talking about this, and there's probably somebody listening to our podcast right now, going, oh, come on, Charlie, that was two days ago. Why are we even talking about the fact that the President of the United States used the form of an open cabinet meeting to issue this racist, dehumanizing screed?
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Ed Luce
Yeah. I mean, it used to be the case that conservatives, Republicans would push back, I think, very effectively and correctly on left identitarianism by quoting Martin Luther King about the content of your character. Well, that's. That position has now been abandoned, and we're back into the. What is your group identity?
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Charlie Sykes
Yeah.
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Ed Luce
And it's extended, you know, to the sort of. The. The most sort of chilling end of. Of racism, which is anti Semitism. The Republican Party is. It's now respectable to be pro Nazi to believe that Churchill was the Second World War villain and. And Hitler wasn't. This is now ceased to be simply trolling the liberals and saying something naughty to get a rise out of them. This has become an accepted belief, particularly amongst younger Republicans and younger conservatives, which.
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Charlie Sykes
I have to say, I continue to be just shocked that the Republican Party is having a debate about it. But then again, when you have somebody like J.D. vance, who will always parachute in and sort of defend that point of view, it is not a mystery. Okay, let's move on to the other big story, which, of course, is the fallout from the. I actually wrote down in my notes the double tap, and then I crossed it out, because that is a euphemism.
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Ed Luce
The.
- [11:22]
Charlie Sykes
The clear murder on the high seas. Whether it was a war crime or not depends on whether or not we think the laws of war apply. Tremendous spin going on here, as the White House is, you know, obviously trying to distance Pete Hegseth from it. They're acknowledging he issued the lethal order, but they're throwing the admiral under the bus, saying that he was the guy that issued the order. There is some question about whether or not the order came. Well, actually, there's not that much question. I mean, let's break it down. We know that a war crime was committed or murder was committed. We know that we have injured, wounded people on that boat who were then killed when they were unarmed, posed no threat whatsoever. The question is whether the admiral did that on his own, on his own authority, whether Pete Hegseth issued a general order of lethality or whether or not, as the Washington Post reported, rather credibly, that he had issued a verbal order to kill everybody. Where do you think we're at on that story?
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Ed Luce
Well, to go from, as Hegseth did, from this is fake news to, no, it did happen, but I'd left the room to, as you say, throwing Admiral Bradley under the bus and saying, but we've got your back, which, of course, means exactly the opposite.
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Charlie Sykes
It does.
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Ed Luce
We're stabbing your back. Right. I mean, this is obviously egregious, and thank you for, you know, not using the term unlawful killing. I mean, that is just a euphemism for murder. My only concern about the focus on the second strike and on this excellent Washington Post story, and I'm really pleased to see the Washington Post Post breaking this story, is that the actual first strike was also unlawful killing was also murder. There is no authorization for defining these boats as being lawful combatants. We are not in a war with boats that, you know, ply the Caribbean. And so I don't want us to define deviancy downwards.
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Charlie Sykes
That's a great point.
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Ed Luce
The deviancy begins with that first strike and with the whole basis of these operations, none of which the Pentagon or Hegseth have followed up with by providing details, names, evidence.
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Drugs, halls, et cetera. We're just asked to take this performative war on trust. And of course, we cannot.
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Charlie Sykes
Now, this is a really important point because you are right. The extrajudicial killings themselves, I think, you know, we need to focus on that. Okay, so they say these are drug runners who are bringing fentanyl into the country. Let's have some proof, right? Let's just accept that they, in fact, you know, have a factual basis for all of this. We should have the names, right? The identities of the people that we have killed. We should have some evidence. You know, shouldn't we have press conferences or court filings that cite in fact, what was found? I mean, is there. Is there no evidence? Don't we. Do we have bags of fentanyl? Do we have bags of cocaine? Do you have bags of heroin? Normally, when there's a big drug bust, right, you have. The DEA and other law enforcement will stage these. These big shows, and they will have all of the guns and all of the people, and we will see. This is who we are. This was our intelligence. This is why we identified these folks. That there is the possibility that we need to, you know, that first of all, that they're not drug runners at all. That is a possibility, that they are fishermen, that they are not who we say they are. And second, even if they are transporting drugs, this is not the way that American and international law allows you to deal with that. We are not dealing with an imminent threat. As long as there was the ability to interdict those boats and they chose simply to kill them instead. That is extrajudicial killing, which, by the way, Donald Trump has been enthusiastic for, for a decade. I mean, we're talking about Pete Hegseth. But Pete Hegseth knows that if he issued that order, he was deep inside Donald Trump's id, who's been talking about war crimes for pretty much forever.
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Ed Luce
Yeah, it's interesting. We should never forget why Pete Hegseth came to Trump's attention.
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In that he was writing books and talking on Fox about how there are too many woke rules of combat and that the Pentagon needs to regain the martial virtues of real men fighting real wars without having these pesky lawyers looking over their shoulder. This was Hegseth's usp. He helped persuade Trump at the end of his first term to issue pardons to three members of the so called kill company which in Iraq had executed civilians.
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And had broken all rules of war from before the Geneva Conventions. Rules of war that are sort of, that are commonsensical to anybody, that you don't shoot unarmed civilians. So we shouldn't forget what it is. Why it is that Hegseth got the job, came to Trump's attention is precisely because of this issue.
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Charlie Sykes
No, I think that's exactly, that's exactly right. He wrote a whole book about it, which he keeps now citing. Although I don't know, I don't know whether you saw this. I just saw this right before we began recording this. Apparently CNN has dug up a video of Pete HEGSETH himself from 2016 saying that, you know, members of the military will not follow an illegal order from the President. That's not what they're supposed to do. In other words, Pete Hegseth, back then in the before times, the pre Trump times was saying exactly what those six Democrats are saying now that Donald Trump is saying is sedition and requires the death penalty. Which I don't. If irony was not dead long ago, this would be, I don't know, Ed, Ironic.
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Ed Luce
It would be ironic. It is sort of Orwellian. You know, how he's learned the Big Brother's script and recites it and how this might well save him his job. I mean, what they are trying to justify is the methods we use to combat Al Qaeda and isis, that they are real combatants and even though they're outside conventional battlefields, they do present imminent risks. And there are moments where even though that particular terrorist might not be pointing a gun at you, that it's a narrow window, you know, he's going to at some point be involved in it and so we will zap him through drones or whatever it might be that they are trying to present the so called narco terrorists who for the most part, from what I understand, seem to be, if they are running drugs at all, low level schlubs basically, who are, you know, who are shipping cocaine across.
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Charlie Sykes
The Caribbean and anyone who is a thousand or more. Right. And first of all, okay, first of all, I mean anyone who's seen any movies about, you know, how we go about dealing with drug dealers, know that you try to capture the low level drug dealers in order to work yourself up the chain. You don't just kill them. Now my question is whether or not if they are going to double down on this justification of extrajudicial murders of narco terrorists in international waters, why not then apply that domestically? If there's a narco terrorist in California or in Texas or in Florida, why not apply the same rule? Have they explained yet, did I miss this? Why it's okay to kill someone without warning in the Caribbean, but not, say, in Miami?
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Ed Luce
I mean, the really worrying thing is that it is sort of joined up in their mind. I mean, Trenda, Iraq.
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Is presented as the biggest threat to American liberty and law and order on America's streets by Pete Hegseth and Trump at that Quantico event where they're lecturing 800 generals and admirals on fitness and whatever, facial hair. This was a central theme of that and has been all along. And so you're right, the logic of this is that if the enemy within, from within are the same people that you're zapping in the Caribbean, then what is to stop you from extending that logic to America's streets? And I don't know what the answer is.
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The enemy is amongst us. That is their message.
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Charlie Sykes
Well, this all is in the context of the possibility that we may be going to war with Venezuela. For reasons that have not yet been explained to the American public. Donald Trump keeps shifting.
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The justification. You wrote a piece for the Financial Times about regime change in Venezuela, Trump style. So let's talk about this.
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Obviously, the leaders of Venezuela are deplorable characters and the world will not be a sadder place if they are displaced. But again, give me your analysis of the peace president who was so desperate to have the Nobel Peace Prize apparently prepared to launch perhaps ground attacks, we don't know, against a rather large country in, in South America, Venezuela.
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Ed Luce
I mean, so we've got, we've got the USSS, Gerald Ford, we've got the bunch of destroyers, F35s in Puerto Rico, we got a nuclear sub. I mean, we've got an extraordinary little armada there in Venezuela's backyard of roughly 15,000, you know, highly armed, trained U.S. military personnel. That is 10 to 20 times too much for drugs interdiction operations. It's way overkill if you're just talking about drugs, but it's underkill if you're talking about an actual ground invasion of Venezuela. So what I suspect Trump is betting on is that he can intimidate and bribe Maduro to leave Venezuela and then, you know, sweep up, I guess, the accolades for peaceful regime change and, and some oil contracts in what is the country with the largest proven oil reserves in the world, 300 billion barrels under Venezuelan soil. But from what we know, of Maduro, who is a thug, who is a sort of. He's a mafia leader. I've no doubt that he's, you know, his, his henchmen have got some, some ties to the co trade, no doubt. But what we know about him is he's probably not going to leave voluntarily. And therefore, Trump sort of backed himself into a corner here because he has insisted on regime change. He's put a $50 million bounty via Pam Bondi on Maduro's head, and he's designated him as a terrorist and said there must be regime change. So Trump's now backed himself into a corner. What, what will happen if Maduro doesn't sort of go off to exile in Brazil or wherever he'd like to go is. I think we'll get airstrikes. I think we might get special forces operations. I think we'll get all the potential for blunder and escalation and sort of battle of pride and of sort of performative will that you would expect with somebody like Hegseth running the operation.
- [23:14]
Charlie Sykes
No, I think that that's exactly right. Okay. So meanwhile, and again, this could take place within minutes, hours, days, months. And the thing about war, which I think we all ought to keep reminding ourselves about, is that once you fire the first shot, all the best plans are, you know, not necessarily going to stay in place. There's a lot of unpredictable things that are going on, and the fallout from that, again, will be. Will be considerable, but we don't know what it's going to be.
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What I'm getting at here is I'm thinking about one of the last times I was, I was in Washington, D.C. i was actually at a. At an event at the Colombian Embassy where they were really touting their tourism industry and how anxious they were to have good relationships with the United States and how Colombia had become a major tourist attraction for Americans, particularly young American. And they've opened it up. They've dealt with all of the problems of, you know, the drug dealers and the drug gangs and everything, and they're trying to turn a leaf. And in the weeks since that conversation with them, look what's happened to American relations with Colombia, which is now in a war of words over what's happening with Venezuela. So at the event that I was at in D.C. yesterday, when we were talking about, you know, the problems of the government by whimsical foreign policy, by whim. Because there were people from all over the world, different countries, and, you know, some of them have been attacked by Donald Trump and others are like, keeping. Keeping their heads down. And I was saying, you know, this is the problem. You don't know from day to day whether or not you're going to be a target of Donald Trump's wrath. You know, just ask Denmark, just ask Canada or Brazil or India or. And then this one young man raised his hands and said, you know, that he was from Nigeria, I think he was from Ghana. But he was saying, concerning. Should we take this seriously? That now the president of your country is talking about invading Nigeria with guns blazing. Should we take that? And I said to him, you know what? At this point, you have to take everything seriously. But I just don't know because it's just so. I mean, this is what makes it so bizarre, isn't it, Ed? Is that from day to day, what is Donald Trump's focus? What is he interested in? What is he lost? Interested in what did somebody at dinner at Mar a Lago the night before tell him that he ought to do? Somebody, you know, slips him a piece of paper about, you know, Christian genocide in Nigeria, and he starts talking about invading an African country. And so these people were. It's interesting to get the reaction of people going, hey, you know.
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We'Re not quite sure.
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Are you Americans about to start attacking my country for reasons that we're not clear about?
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Ed Luce
Yeah, I mean, I was at the dentist the other day, and he might think, as a Brit, you know, I deserve to be at the dentist every day. But it was a rare visit to the dentist, and he's a lovely guy, but he is a bit of a Trumpian. And he said to me, whilst he had some drill in my mouth. Yeah, it's always an awkward moment. He said, so what about those Nigerian Christians? A. And I thought, no, I. I do not want to get into a debate while somebody's got a weapon in my mouth. Prudent. And so I didn't. I didn't give my point of view, but the point of view is quite clear, is that this is a complete distortion of what is happening. What is a complex and nasty situation between different groups in Nigeria, that the idea that the Christians are the target of persecution is just. Does not withstand any light scrutiny of the facts on the ground in Nigeria. But that Trump can, because somebody told him this, instantly weaponize it and have dentists with drills in their hand lecture you on it within a day or two. So the power of these things to go viral and the darkness in the MAGA base that it's appealing to is something, I'm afraid, that nobody in the rest of the world can discount this. This is Trump.
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Charlie Sykes
They're paying really close attention.
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Ed Luce
I mean, they're watching, and they are. They are watching and listening.
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Charlie Sykes
Okay, you know what? You triggered a memory. And I know that it's. It's hard to come up with the most embarrassing moment in the oval office in 2025. You know, we think about when he was, you know, dressing down Zelensky earlier. I mean, that embarrassing moment where, you know, he and J.D. vance were humiliating. But remember the time when the president of South Africa came to visit and Trump starts berating him about the white genocide that was going on, and he showed him some pictures of graves that, if I remember correctly, I should have this in front of me. If I remember correctly, they weren't even from South Africa. They were completely bogus. And the president of South Africa, who quipped at one point, I should have brought you a jet. I mean, maybe I should have tried to bribe you like the Qataris. And Trump said, yeah, maybe you should have. It was, what, an encapsulation. That Trump takes one of those bogus memes, insults. The president of South Africa, presents some evidence which is completely false, and none of it makes any difference whatsoever. Right. To him. I mean.
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Ed Luce
And none of it does. I have to add, my favorite recent sort of meme about Trump in the Oval Office, or certainly in the White House, was from his Cabinet meeting this week when he fell asleep.
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Charlie Sykes
Yes. Great.
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Ed Luce
Clearly, somebody posted a picture of Rubio talking next to a fast leap Trump, and it said, the war on woke.
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Charlie Sykes
That was pretty.
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Ed Luce
That was pretty good.
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By the way. That is a very good.
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Charlie Sykes
That is a hell of a picture. If anybody can go online and find that picture. And there's Marco Rubio, you know, doing his best. I am a good boy, Donald Trump, and I'm about to attack Venezuela. And there's Grandpa sitting there, clearly falling asleep in an open Cabinet meeting. Now, I am one of those that I have been slow walking to talk about the president's health, but, you know, that was not a reassuring moment. Nor was it a reassuring moment. I don't know. Did you keep track of how many social media posts he posted in the last 48 hours? Was it like 400? I mean, it was like something burst in his head. And it's just one thing after another, including threats to charge Barack Obama with treason in front of a military tribunal, which appears to be one of his darker fantasies that he's not letting go of. And again, is he serious? Is he not serious? Is he just fucking Nuts. How do we explain it to the rest of the world?
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Ed Luce
Well, so here's a really good example. One of those social media posts was, you know, without any legal or official sort of imprimatur on it, was to ban all air traffic over a Venezuela aspect. Now, we all know that, okay, he's just sort of, he's just, he's just sort of sounding off and trying to sound like the tough guy. And then the next day he even said when he was asked about it, oh, pay it no attention. But the fact is, if you're in a plane above Venezuela, you cannot afford to pay it no attention. And if you looked at the airspace charts, Venezuelan airspace went quiet. No pilot was prepared to sort of risk that Trump was just joking or it was 3am and he was bored and wanted to sound like the Emperor. Whatever it is, that sort of floats his boat. You have to, because he is President of the United States, you have to. If you're a pilot making a decision, even if there's only a 5% chance he's serious, you've got to act on that.
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And so we probably get jaded. The zone is constantly flooded with sewage, so we're understandably jaded. But the rest of the world cannot act as though Trump is just trolling. They have to take some of this literally.
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Charlie Sykes
They do. And I'm very much in the camp of no kings and no emperors, but I do think that even within that debate, we could say that, okay, there is a difference between.
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Emperor Augustus and Caligula. Emperor Augustus and say Emperor Palpatine, King George VI and the Mad King. So, I mean, folks, even those of you like Laura Loomer who were out there saying, no, to hell with it, I want a king. Okay? So while all this is going on, the fate of Ukraine continues to hang in the balance. It looked like a couple of weeks ago we were playing Lucy with the football again about a peace deal. The peace deal that was cooked up by the Russians.
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Ed Luce
It was.
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Charlie Sykes
To say it was embarrassing is understating it rather dramatically. Give me your sense of where we're at on all of that. What's going to happen between now and the end of the year? Vladimir Putin obviously is not going to be agreeing to anything that does not give him everything he wants. So what happens with Ukraine? What is the state of play?
- [32:39]
Ed Luce
So I was in Europe, in Vienna at a conference, when this 28 point peace plan, as you say, largely dictated by the Russians to Witkoff, without consulting any of the Europeans, without consulting the Ukrainians, was published and there was absolute sort of despair and consternation at this conference about it. And the analogy that I thought up of when I was participating in the session was asked, what could Europe do? The analogy that I thought of was 19 for June 1940, Winston Churchill sinking the French fleet because he did not want the French fleet transferred to the Germans. It was a brutal, A brutal thing to do. It killed 1700 French sailors. But because the French admiral had refused to hand it over to the British, he sunk it. That was noticed by Franklin Roosevelt in Washington and taken as a sign that Britain was very serious about fighting on, was very much a horse to be backed. And remember, the Lend Lease negotiations are going on then. Well, the reason why I mentioned that was the only, only thing equivalent that Europe could do today is to overcome the objections of the lawyers, the objections of Hungary and Slovakia, the pro sort of Russian parts of the European Union, and to overcome the legal doubts of the Belgians who are hosting this $200 billion of Russian Central bank reserves that Europe froze. To overcome all of this and say, no, we are using this money to fund Ukraine.
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Commercial Narrator
The.
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Ed Luce
That would change the weather. That would change the weather. That would give Zelensky the money to say, I can fight on, I can buy on, I can invest in new weapons. That would make Putin and Trump, who are trying to arrange this between themselves with a lot of money sort of interest involved there on Trump's side, this would change. This would be the equivalent of June 1940 sinking the French fleet. It would show Europe has understood what's happened. It's understood that America is no longer with them on this, and it has to grow up and take responsibility now for this situation. This decision is going to be taken in the next few days. I don't know which way it will go, but I cannot overstate the degree to which nothing more important.
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Is going to be decided between now and the end of the year.
- [35:12]
Charlie Sykes
So you think this is possible, that the Europeans would decide to override all of the, the qualms, the queasiness, the legal concerns, and just say, okay, we're taking that money and we're, we are investing it in Ukrainian victory? You think this is possible?
- [35:31]
Ed Luce
Absolutely, it is. It is. Russia's money.
- [35:34]
It'S frozen. But the Belgiums you host, Euroclear, which is where the assets were posted, are nervous that they would be on the hook for it. It's, it's, you know, like 40% of Belgium's GDP. So quite understandably, they want the rest of Europe to say pro rata will take on those liabilities, if that's what it comes to. It's Russia's money, but so is the liability for the damage that has been done to Ukraine. That's owned by Russians, too. And so it would be lent quotation marks to Ukraine on the basis of future Russian reparations for the massive war damage it's caused. And if where there's a will, there is a way. And so the question is, does Europe have the will to get past the legal objections and say, we will indemnify Belgium and we will provide Ukraine with this money? Because if Zelensky gets that money, then Russia is going to have to recalculate, and so is Trump.
- [36:35]
Charlie Sykes
So, okay, how much money are we talking about again? $300 billion.
- [36:41]
Ed Luce
A little bit less than that. So 200 billion.
- [36:43]
Charlie Sykes
Okay, so who is. Who just in terms of the politics, who would be the driving force saying, okay, it is time to pull the trigger on that? Would it be.
- [36:54]
Ed Luce
So it's gotta be the German Chancellor Friedrich Merz. You know, if the Germans are really pushing for it, it will happen. And they have to change the rules and say, we don't give a damn what you think. Hungary In Slovakia, you're 2%, we subsidize you to the gills. And so we're just changing the rules. You're not going to veto this. This is an emergency measure. And that's what's being discussed right now. That's what the head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, who is a German, of the same party as the German Chancellor, Friedrich Matz, these two can push this through if they want to. And I think because of this latest plan that. That Wyckoff came up with, I think, and I think I noticed this in Vienna at the conference, the level of reality really has finally hit that it's Europe or nothing.
- [37:45]
Charlie Sykes
So if that reality has finally hit, it obviously impacts this decision, but it will impact a lot of other decisions as well. So talk to me about that. That reality has settled in. Are we talking about. You're talking about changing the weather. Have we changed the climate where Europe is realizing we're on our own here, we cannot trust America anymore?
- [38:06]
Ed Luce
I mean, I think there are, you know, Mark Rutter, the Secretary General of NATO, had had this rather embarrassing moment where he called Trump daddy.
- [38:15]
Charlie Sykes
Yes.
- [38:16]
Ed Luce
And, you know, we have Keir Starmer flourishing. That invitation to Trump in the Oval Office from King Charles. I think probably the course of flattery gets you everywhere. It's run its course.
- [38:32]
I think the understanding is now, that whilst you don't want to provoke Trump because he can cause huge harm, that flattery is not a strategy, that taking action words are not a strategy, taking steps like this one, that's a strategy. And I think that sinking home, this.
- [38:52]
Charlie Sykes
Is interesting because, you know, I was thinking the other day that, that there does seem to be a changing in the, in the political, a change in the political mood, you know, and maybe it's because of the polls, maybe it's because of the prospect of midterm elections, maybe, who knows what else is happening. But up until now.
- [39:11]
Basically, giving Trump everything he wants has been the smart move, right? Paying bribes, you know, the smart move. You know, sucking up to him, you know, bowing the knee to him, it's a smart move some of these times. You know, in some of these cases, it's a smart move until it's not a smart move. And I, I guess I'm. This is a roundabout way of saying that. I think it's kind of an undercovered story, what Jamie Dimon said. And I know it just feels like it's a slight digression where, you know, all of the great business titans in the United States and actually globally have said, you know, basically, look, you know, with Donald Trump, you just have to, you know, give him what he wants, pay him off and, you know, pay him off, you know, tell him what he wants to hear, give him whatever money he wants. And Jamie Dimon gave an interview just a few weeks ago where he said, yeah, JP Morgan, he's CEO of JP Morgan, we are not going to be contributing any money to Donald Trump's ginormous new ballroom. And by the way, this does connect with what we're talking here, because first of all, it might look like a bribe, like we're trying to buy inflation influence. And there will come a time, there may come a time when there is a Department of justice that is not in the enthrall of Donald Trump, who will hold people who do that accountable. And I think that what you're starting to see is people internationally and domestically beginning to think about, okay, are there consequences to all of this? Do we need to change the way that we deal with this? Because we have been convincing ourselves do whatever it takes to get through this month or this year, but there may come a reckoning, a reckoning internationally and a reckoning domestic. I thought Jamie Dimon's comments and what you're describing happening in Europe is a very interesting shift in perspective.
- [41:03]
Ed Luce
Yeah, I think. I mean, there are so many interesting questions There should, should Democrats be saying that all of these things will be scrutinized when we regain control of the House or indeed of the White House.
- [41:19]
Or does that smack of, of lawfare? Again, I don't know. But therefore, it's very, very useful when people independently like Jamie Dimon feel able to do, to say things like this. It's also, I think, and I mentioned at the the beginning, and it might sound only tangentially related, but the fact that the Washington Post reporting, even though Jeff Bezos is busy sucking up to Trump, that the fact that the reporting side of the Washington Post is breaking stories on that show Hexeth to be potentially a criminal, that's extremely encouraging. So I do think something has changed since those off year elections. I doubt, you know, that before the Virginia, Jersey, New York. I doubt that Trump would have, I, sorry, I doubt diamond would have been quite so strong on the record in saying such a thing. I'm not sure that Marjorie Taylor Greene would have totally split with Trump. But I do think we're all now thinking of a potential post Trump era and the more people can talk about it, the better.
- [42:29]
Charlie Sykes
And now I was always surprised that people did not think about that. More people, particularly people who have to think about the long game. The long game extends beyond four years. And I understand the culture within the Trump administration that feels that they are absolute, they have absolute impunity, right. Absolute immunity. They will never be accountable. You know, he, of course, the Supreme Court has said that he is immune from virtually everything. He has made it very clear that he will use his pardon power in a raw political way, that he is telling his confederates and others, don't worry about ever being held legally accountable. I will pardon you. I will pardon the worst people in the world. I will pardon Democrats, I will pardon sex traffickers, I will pardon drug dealers, drug kingpins. And so between his own immunity and his ability to basically give a get out of jail free card, you understand, he's created this absolutely unaccountable moment. And I was thinking about this yesterday when I was coming back from D.C. that the, the founding fathers were not naive, but I'm trying to imagine what they would think of the situation we are in right now, where we have an administration that right now is lawless. And I think that's one of the reasons why people have been so fearful of him. Right. Because there is no mechanism to hold him accountable, at least not now.
- [43:55]
Ed Luce
Not now. I mean, there's a couple of things that, you know, a lot of these, including what happens at the Pentagon, a lot of these events and decisions and criminal acts occur on Virginian and Maryland soil. And there is a new attorney general. Controversial, but there is a new attorney general in Virginia and there is an attorney general in Maryland. There are things that can be prosecuted that Trump cannot pardon, that can be prosecuted at state level.
- [44:20]
So that, you know, there is scope to do things right now and not be completely fatalistic. But in terms of emoluments and bribery and the grift that's going on, the Swiss recently bought a dramatic reduction in the tariffs that Trump had imposed on Switzerland. He was up at 39%, and he reduced it to 15, which is the difference between recession and growth in a country as small as Switzerland. And how did they achieve that reduction? Well, a couple of senior executives from Rushmore, the Swiss company, turned up. They gave him a little ingot of gold, and they gave him a carriage clock collectively worth about $200,000, which is nothing in Trump's world, but which is about half the president's salary. Now, in any other administration.
- [45:14]
We know what an emolument was or is. This is an emolument. In any other administration, this would be an impeachable offense. This isn't even on the top 300 of list of Trump emoluments that have occurred since January 20th. I cannot believe that this system of law and of constitutional republic will not at some point catch up with this and.
- [45:44]
Analyze how the hell this could be happening with such impunity.
- [45:49]
Charlie Sykes
I think that historians and political scientists are going to be puzzling over that for generations. Okay, I'm going to ask you a very unfair question now, because predicting what the Supreme Court will do is always a tricky business. It is always a mugs game. But obviously, the biggest thing coming down the pipeline in the near term is the Supreme Court ruling on Trump's tariff policy, which will have tremendous implications internationally, but also domestically. At the oral argument, it certainly appeared that a majority of the justices were highly skeptical of Trump's sweeping claims of of emergency powers to unilaterally impose those tariffs. What do you. What should the smart money be betting on right now, Ed?
- [46:35]
Ed Luce
So I think it's been smart all along to bet that if there is some strand of an argument that even a ghost of a strand that this Supreme Court can find to legitimize Trump's actions generally, they'll try to do that. But I was as pleasantly surprised as you were by the oral arguments and the direction of conservative justices on this, because there's just no way under that 1977 law, the IEPA, the International Emergencies Act, Economic Emergency act, that you could justify normal, ordinary trade deficits as an emergency threat to America's national security. Even this Supreme Court, I suspect, is going to have difficulty finding a ghost of a thread of a rationale to justify Trump's actions. And therefore I do predict they will strike it down.
- [47:26]
Charlie Sykes
Well, from your lips to God's ear. Because I agree with all of that, because I think the legal principles, the constitutional principles are quite clear. However, I was pretty confident that they would also reject presidential immunity a year ago. And of course, I was completely wrong there. Ed Luce from the Financial Times, thank you so much for your time and your insight. And I am fascinated to learn what Europe decides to do with those frozen Russian assets. I think that that is an extraordina, extraordinarily interesting point that you made and something to watch. So thank you for joining me on the podcast today.
- [48:02]
Ed Luce
It's always a delight. Charlie thank you.
- [48:05]
Charlie Sykes
And thank you all for listening to this episode to the Contrary podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. We do this because we live in an era where it is continually necessary to remind ourselves that we are not the crazy ones.
- [48:20]
Ed Luce
Thank you.
- [48:34]
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- [48:48]
Charlie Sykes
Check.
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- [50:53]
Charlie Sykes
Paige desorbo they are Tommy John and yes, I'm stocking up because they make the best holiday gifts.
- [51:01]
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- [51:02]
Charlie Sykes
Well, I'm a generous girly, especially when it comes to me. So I'm grabbing the softest sleepwear, comfiest underwear and best fitting loungewear.
- [51:10]
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- [51:11]
Charlie Sykes
Of course I'm getting my dad Tommy John. Oh, and you?
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Ed Luce
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