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- [00:00]
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- [01:57]
Charlie Sykes
I'm Charlie Sykes. Welcome back to the to the Contrary podcast. What a week. I say that every single Friday. So we may or may not have a deal to reopen the Straits of Hormuz. We'll talk about that. But this was the week in which Donald Trump escalated his fight with the Pope, compared himself to Jesus Christ. We learned that RFK Jr. The man who runs the Department of Health and Human Services, once cut the penis off a dead raccoon. And this is not the strange, strangest story of the week. And that because, of course, there was J.D. vance lecturing the Pope on theology and Pete Hegseth at a worship service at the Pentagon, not only once again compares his boss to Jesus Christ, compares the media to the Pharisees, but then again quotes a fake Bible verse that really was a ripoff from the movie Pulp Fiction from Samuel L. Jackson, who plays a hitman who is about to shoot a man to death. The folks from Morning Joe put together a little bit of a montage comparing Pete Hegseth's prayer with the rant from Pulp Fiction. And my friends, this is just Chef's Kiss. Listen to it.
- [03:12]
Pete Hegseth (reading fake Bible verse)
They call it Cesar 25:17, which I think is meant to reflect Ezekiel 25:17.
- [03:20]
Samuel L. Jackson (Pulp Fiction quote)
Ezekiel 25:17.
- [03:22]
Pete Hegseth (reading fake Bible verse)
The path of the downed aviator is beset on all sides.
- [03:27]
Samuel L. Jackson (Pulp Fiction quote)
The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the iniquities
- [03:32]
Pete Hegseth (reading fake Bible verse)
of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men.
- [03:34]
Samuel L. Jackson (Pulp Fiction quote)
By the iniquities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men.
- [03:39]
Pete Hegseth (reading fake Bible verse)
Blessed is he who, in the name of camaraderie and duty, shepherd the lost through the valley of darkness. For he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children.
- [03:50]
Samuel L. Jackson (Pulp Fiction quote)
Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and goodwill, shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness. For he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children.
- [04:04]
Pete Hegseth (reading fake Bible verse)
And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to capture and destroy my brother.
- [04:11]
Samuel L. Jackson (Pulp Fiction quote)
And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers.
- [04:22]
Pete Hegseth (reading fake Bible verse)
And you will know my call sign is Sandy1 when I lay my vengeance upon thee.
- [04:29]
Charlie Sykes
And you will know my name is
- [04:31]
Samuel L. Jackson (Pulp Fiction quote)
the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee.
- [04:36]
Pete Hegseth (reading fake Bible verse)
And amen.
- [04:38]
Charlie Sykes
Okay, so we have a lot to hash out at the end of one more remarkable week. Wow. So joining us to try to make sense of all of this is our good friend Richard Stengel, who's a former undersecretary of State for Public diplomacy under the Obama administration, previously the managing editor of Time magazine and the author of Information How We Lost the Global Battle Against Disinformation and what We Can Do about it, as well as a collaborator with Nelson Mandela. Rick, welcome to the podcast.
- [05:13]
Richard Stengel
Charlie, great to be with you as always.
- [05:16]
Charlie Sykes
What do we make of the deep thoughts of Pete Hegseth? I mean, it's as if there's a rivalry. Now, who can be the most absurd in their kind of fake Christianity? Whether it's J.D. vance with the Pope, Donald Trump himself, you know, continually escalating his war. But what do you make of Pete Hegseth coming out at the Pentagon and doing this Samuel L. Jackson rant which he's passing off as Ezekiel? I mean, it's not a parody, but, you know, irony and absurdity are basically saying we're done here. We can't compete with reality, not for
- [05:53]
Richard Stengel
the first time, Charlie. You know, it's all about this kind of performative Christianity, I think, which is not about true belief, but about seeming to be pious. And by the way, that's one of the things Jesus criticized of people who have this kind of false piety, false humility. You know, Pete Hegseth would have been exactly the kind of person that Jesus would have tossed out of the temple. And, you know, it's funny you mentioned I wrote a whole book about mis and disinformation, and we tend to attribute that to, you know, modern technology and social media. But it's like, no, I mean, you know, movies would do fake verses from. From the Bible, which is then picked up by people who don't even know enough about the gospel or the Bible to know what is true and what is not. So, you know, the other thing, and I. And, you know, the Trumpian kind of Christianity comes from the prosperity gospel, which was an American idea that was kind of uniquely American, which is not, you know, not that Jesus wants, you know, the humble to triumph and to welcome the stranger. It's like Jesus wants you to be rich.
- [07:06]
Charlie Sykes
He wants you to have your own private jet.
- [07:08]
Richard Stengel
Yes, yes, you can fly to heaven.
- [07:10]
Charlie Sykes
That's why I like the righteous gemstones so much.
- [07:12]
Richard Stengel
Yes.
- [07:13]
Charlie Sykes
I mean, it's so obvious that for them, Christianity, it's a cudgel, and they will use the trappings of religion when it advances the MAGA agenda, when it conflicts with the MAGA agenda, they insult it, they demean it, they just simply ignore it. And this has been, you know, really on display in the last week. And the rivalry between J.D. vance, Donald Trump, and Peter Hegseth, who can have the most bizarre displays of fake Christianity, has really been something truly remarkable to watch. And also, I mean, the Pope is not backing down. I mean, this is what's interesting about it. The Trump is so used to being able to bully people. And, you know, amazingly enough, the Chicago Pope is not backing down one bit, is he?
- [08:00]
Richard Stengel
No. And again, the amazing thing about Trump is just how predictable he is. Right. The Roy Cohn maxim that if somebody criticizes you, you have to punch him in the face, even if it's the Pope. It's like, that's not good advice. And the thing that I found breathtaking was JD Vance saying the Pope has to be careful about talking about theology. That's, you know, like. That's like saying Einstein has to be careful talking about relativity. I mean, the Pope is infallible. You know, that's the, you know, Catholic religion and the kind of bravado of these people, the kind of false confidence, the false piety. It's really astonishing.
- [08:46]
Charlie Sykes
Now, I had a contrary take to that yesterday. I mean, in my newsletter on Friday. My contrarian take to this is, I'm kind of glad that we're having this debate, this kind of fight, because it's gonna clarify for, I think, a lot of Christians and even non Catholic Christians, what does it actually mean to be a Christian? What is the heart and soul of Christianity? Who sounds more like Jesus in the Gospel? You know, a ranting Donald Trump revisionist J.D. vance, you know, a bloodlusting fake Bible quoting Pete Hegseth or the Pope who says Jesus is the Prince of peace, who rejects the prayers of people, who try to justify wanton destruction of human life. So there's kind of a moment where you rethink, what does it mean to be a Christian? Is it just sort of a political identity or, you know, does it have this moral basis that we find in the gospel? And really, frankly, nobody is in a better position to challenge this fake religiosity than the Vicar of Christ.
- [09:45]
Richard Stengel
Right.
- [09:45]
Charlie Sykes
The Bishop of Rome, of all people.
- [09:47]
Richard Stengel
Yeah. I mean, by the way, that is the discussion we should be having all the time. And by the way, that's the discussion that, that, you know, in the history of Christianity, that has continually been over and over, been debated. I agree that that's healthy. You know, what I find a little disturbing is even just kind of like comparing the temperament of the Pope versus the temperament of Donald Trump.
- [10:12]
Charlie Sykes
Yes.
- [10:12]
Richard Stengel
Who is more Jesus like, who is more Christian? I've always found the fact that people can stomach Trump's temperament, which is so un. Jesus like. And you look at the Pope, who's calm, who's measured, he's a spiritual leader, he's a spiritual man. I mean, he communicates that in every communication that he does. He's controlled, he's measured. You know, isn't that what we want in leaders? So I find it disconcerting that people opt for the other thing.
- [10:43]
Charlie Sykes
Well, I found it disconcerting over the last 10 years, I mean, to actually. And it's come to a head where you have this bloated avatar of the seven deadly sins, Donald Trump, and confuse him with Jesus Christ. Okay, let's have this out in the open. Let's actually go, this is the guy that you want to compare Jesus Christ to. And it was mildly reassuring that so many Christians looked at that and Went, okay, that's going too far. That is blasphemous. One more point, because you mentioned the contrast between the demeanor of Donald Trump in J.D. vance's, you know, his attempt to lecture the Pope on theology. I think that the full sentence was something like, you know, the Pope needs to be careful on theology, just like I, as Vice President, need to be careful when I'm talking about public policy. And it's like, wait, we're supposed to use your measured approach to things as the, as the standard. The guy that was demagoguing about the Haitians were eating cats in Ohio last year. The kinds of things that. JD VAN so, once again, we had, you know, the absurdity on full display. But let's get into the more substantive things with the caveat that by the time people hear this, everything might be changed. I mean, this is the problem with the news cycle, that whatever you say, you know, at 10 o' clock in the morning, by 11 o', clock, May be obsolete. But shortly before you and I began taping this, we got the word that there was a deal between the United States and Iran to reopen the Straits of Hormuz. There are reports the Trump administration is thinking about giving Iran something like $20 billion for their uranium stockpiles. And this comes after the ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon. So you're the diplomat here on this show. What do we make of this? Has Donald Trump found his off ramp, or is this just another false spring? What do you think?
- [12:39]
Richard Stengel
It's possible, Charlie? The way I look at it is that agreements, by the way, parenthetically, I hate the use of the word deal to describe treaties and agreements. It's just like we're buying into his conception of things. I never use the word deal fair. But the interesting thing here is that there has always been a kind of unanimity of interest between Iran and the United States in keeping the strait open. Iran wants to sell its oil, China wants to buy that oil. We want the free flow of oil so oil prices don't go up. So that's where you find an agreement when it's in the interest of both parties to do something. So I thought the blockade is a dangerous thing because it can be violated. It's reminiscent of the suez crisis in 1956, which finally was the end of kind of British naval power. I thought that could happen to the US and maybe it did provoke Iran to open it up. But it's in Iran's interest to do that. It's in our interest to do that. And in some ways that has almost nothing to do with, with a larger deal. I mean, because remember, you know, as we've talked about before the Iran deal under President Obama, there was nothing about the Strait of Hormuz. The Strait of Hormuz remained open. It was free shipping. It's like that wasn't even on the table. You know, it was only because of Trump's invasion, it's his deliberate invasion of Iran, that the strait got closed off. So he's negotiating to open something that got closed because of what he did. That's a kind of classic Trumpian diplomacy.
- [14:17]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah, you start the fire and then you claim you're the firefighter when you show up with a bucket. Right?
- [14:21]
Richard Stengel
Exactly.
- [14:25]
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- [15:32]
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- [16:33]
Richard Stengel
but. But it. But it could provide an off ramp. You know, the. I did welcome the ceasefire with Lebanon between Israel and Lebanon. I mean, but that was just another example of how our interest and Israel's interest in this war have never been perfectly aligned at all. You know, Israel's massive bombardment of Lebanon. We have no interest in Lebanon or Hezbollah. They're not in any way an existential threat to us. But part of the reason that Netanyahu triggered Trump into doing this is that he could go after Hezbollah at the same time. So the fact that Trump twisted his arm to do this ceasefire is a good thing.
- [17:18]
Charlie Sykes
Well, also, you know, let's step back for a moment. You know, obviously, Donald Trump wanted an off ramp. There's no question he wanted an off ramp. He was. He's been signaling it. The markets have made it very, very clear that they want him to end this war. The question is, okay, how does Donald Trump look? I mean, we know that Donald Trump is going to claim complete victory, right? This is the best deal ever. He's gonna use the word deal that, you know, won this. Absolutely. But pulling back, how is America's position better off than it was on February 28? Which of the goals that Donald Trump claimed to have in this war have been actually achieved? At the end of the day, what happened?
- [18:04]
Richard Stengel
Yes, of the myriad goals that they have sort of articulated over time, I mean, almost none of them are advanced. In fact, to go to the other extreme, you know, the military expression of mowing the lawn, that is, you disable an opponent temporarily, and then when the grass grows up high again, you mow the lawn again. I mean, that's essentially what he did in Iran. And by the way, that has been Bibi's strategy for 20 years. It's just you continually mow the lawn, and I don't think that's good for the U.S. i don't think that's good for international relations or international diplomacy. I mean, the only thing that I suppose he has achieved is it's put Iran, you know, back a few steps. But as you noticed, we're going to be giving them billions of dollars to rebuild. I'm not against that. It's just hypocritical in the sense that he accused obama of giving 1.5 billion.
- [19:01]
Charlie Sykes
I remember that the Pallets of cash thing was big, big on the right.
- [19:07]
Richard Stengel
And of course, part of the beauty of that in their thing is, like, people visualize pallets of cash. Whereas when Trump relaxed sanctions against Iranian oil, I don't know, 20, 30, 40, $50 billion in profit that they got from the relaxation of sanctions dwarfs any money that Obama was going to pay to the Iranians, which, by the way, we owed them. So, you know, it's. If I was looking for a silver lining here, I would hope it would make the administration more cautious in, in using the military, in using violence to get their way. It's exposed the myth of, Of Trump as a peacemaking president.
- [19:55]
Charlie Sykes
He lost interest in that.
- [19:56]
Richard Stengel
And, yes, he certainly lost interest in that. And also, it also exposes the fact that he actually has no ideology or belief system. Right. Because some people could say, okay, he's a guy, he's against foreign wars, he's against forever Warriors. He's not going to initiate a war somewhere. Can you imagine a Trump voter in 2024 fell asleep after the election and then woke up and looked at the headlines in the paper this morning? Trump's at war with Iran. He's blockading the Strait of Hormuz. He's sending 10,000American soldiers to the Middle East. It would be like his head would explode.
- [20:34]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah. And some of them actually are. So, you know, here's an alternative reality that, you know, after Venezuela, which went. Which he thought went extremely well, and which he thought the same thing was going to happen in Iran, let's say that he hadn't gone to Iran, that he had immediately pivoted to Cuba and, you know, liberated Cuba. That would have been, you know, in his. In his world, you know, kind of a win, win. Now, I wonder, I mean, first of all, do you think that he's going into Cuba? And the reason I'm asking that is that if we've sort of exhausted our foreign adventurism, you would think at least the patience of the electorate for the foreign adventurism. But all indications are that he's gonna pivot from one war to the next war, that he's gonna think, okay, I'm gonna oust the Communist regime in Cuba, which will make everybody forget the sort of the fiasco in Iran. How do you think that plays out?
- [21:27]
Richard Stengel
Well, I hope you're wrong about that.
- [21:31]
Charlie Sykes
I do, too.
- [21:31]
Richard Stengel
And the vast difference between Venezuela and Iran, I mean, Iran is a country of 90 million people. It has a huge economy. Venezuela is like a tiny little oil state where you can sort of decapitate the leadership. Not that I would ever have advocated that Cuba is a bigger country. We have such a kind of dangerous, instructive history with Cuba going back to the Cold War, Bay of Pigs, the Cuban Missile Crisis. I would hope that there are some people in the administration who know a little bit of history and know to be cautious. You know, what did we expect in Iran that didn't happen, that our attack would unleash the Iranian people to take over the government? That was something that Bibi Netanyahu persuaded Trump would happen to. Didn't happen, didn't happen in Venezuela either, by the way. Wouldn't happen in Cuba as much as, as, as, as the. Plenty of people there who would like that to happen. Part of the thing that happens with air attacks is that it actually steals the people in the, in the place that's receiving it and often makes them more supportive of the government than they were before.
- [22:43]
Charlie Sykes
Yes.
- [22:44]
Richard Stengel
And so it has a, it has exactly, you know, the opposite effect of what, what that's intended. So I just think Cuba is a dangerous place to try that. Again, not to hearken back to the Obama days, but just as Trump would now trumpet as a victory the deal that Obama had with Iran, by the way, which got rid of 98% of the enriched uranium, we established diplomatic relations with Cuba at the end of the Obama administration. There was going to be business exchanges, economic exchanges. That's the way you bring a country out of authoritarianism into democracy, through trade, not through bombing. And you'd think he would understand that. But I just think it would be dangerous to try to attempt that same thing in Cuba.
- [23:36]
Charlie Sykes
Well, this is now a great segue to something that you wrote in the Guardian last week. You wrote, I was the US Soft power czar. A reputation may never recover from this. And the oof line for me was. And again, you talk about that, that in some ways you thought of yourself as the chief marketing officer of Brand usa and the mission was to help shape and promote America's image abroad. And there have been ups and downs of all of that. But the offline is for me was your last sentence. No. We were never quite the shining city on the Hill we thought we were. But post Trump, the United States will become little Americ, smaller, meaner, less shiny. So let's talk about this because, you know, we don't just hit a switch and like, we're done with the war in Iran. This has been an extraordinary year of the alienation of allies, the alienation of our NATO friends, and the American image around the world. So talk to me a little bit about the importance of soft power, because this is one of the real dividing lines. Trump, Rubio, Vance, don't seem to care about soft power at all. So make the case for what soft power is and why it's so important.
- [24:54]
Richard Stengel
Thanks, Charlie. Well, soft power, the phrase comes from Joe Nye, the great Harvard Kennedy School political scientist. And it's the idea that we influence other nations by persuasion, by our culture, by our ideas, rather than hard power, by the military or economic power.
- [25:15]
Charlie Sykes
They like us. They admire us. They trust us.
- [25:18]
Richard Stengel
They trust us. And by the way, this goes back to the Declaration of Independence, where the Framer said, you know, we're looking for the decent opinion of mankind. From the very start, they thought of America as a model, as a model of something different, as a model of a country that didn't engage in wars of choice. And so we, you know, going back to Ronald Reagan, talking about America as a shining city in the Hill, I mean, this has been, throughout our history that we have been this model for people. Again, it hasn't always been true, but the thing that that actually was powerful are the story we told about ourselves, that this is a country founded on religious freedom, on freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of movement, freedom to engage in economic activity. This was an inspiration for people around the world. Sometimes we were not that. Some of the things that we did during the Cold War, before that were supported by the intelligence community. Even the sending of Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald to Europe during the Cold War to show that we're not racist, not good. And by the way, that was because the Soviet Union was telling a negative story that we were the exact opposite of a shining city in the Hill. But we have had this outsized popularity around the globe. I mean, it's kind of crazy. When I was looking at the article and I looked at the US's popularity and trust in America, when Barack Obama was president, it was 70 or 80% popularity. It was just absolutely insane. We've never even had that high popularity. And what we forget is at the end of Trump's first term, he was down to kind of a very. As low as in modern history in the 30s around the world. If you took all of his popularity in all nations and remember when Joe Biden came in, you know, he said, you know, this old era of that kind of ugly American is over now. America is back. And of course, what most countries said and European countries said is, yeah, you're back, but for how long? How real is this.
- [27:36]
Charlie Sykes
Good question.
- [27:37]
Richard Stengel
And Biden, and that kind of the Biden principle was that Trump was the anomaly between two kind of liberal internationalists. But it turns out that, you know, Biden was probably the anomaly. So the one reason that our ratings are so low now back to what they were at the lowest time of the Trump first administration in the 30s, is that people felt like, shame on you. You fooled us. We have these suspicions about you. You said that they weren't true. Well, it turns out that they are true. And all of the things that Trump has done, from treatment of immigrants, to getting us out of international agreements, to criticizing NATO, to making it difficult for international students to come and study here, each one is a sort of nail in the coffin of American soft power. Each was a kind of flower of American soft power. I mean, particularly you look at. I mean, I find that university stuff insane. I mean, international university students contribute $50 billion to the US economy. It's something that is still a kind of shining city for most people around the world. Trump has taken a hatchet to that.
- [28:50]
Charlie Sykes
Well, and, you know, a lot of it is that. That image. But also, as you point out, there were specific things. You know, usaid, you know, I mean, look, you know, a lot of conservatives have been, you know, objecting to, you know, foreign aid for years. But that's part of the soft power, right? That we were. That we, you know, we would come in, we would have food and medicine and technology and, you know, help people have water. The Voice of America, which was, you know, a real lifeline for a lot of people around the world. And within the first month or two, Donald Trump took a hatchet to both of them, destroying the aid programs and shutting down the Voice of America at a time when the world needed to know what was going on with American values. So, I mean, those were very, very tangible hits to this soft power, right?
- [29:42]
Richard Stengel
Yes, 100%. By the way, they shut down the Persian Service, which was one of the. That we did in Farsi. The thing about USAID and soft power, when I was in government, and obviously, foreign aid is something that's never been popular with a lot of people. And Americans have this very wrong sense of what percentage of the federal budget it is. I used to say to people, you know what? I can turn foreign aid into less than 1% of the federal budget, and people will go, how do you do that? I go, well, that is what it is. It is less than 1%, and it's never been a gigantic amount, but it has a disproportionate positive effect. I traveled around the world and I would see the USAID gigantic packages and pallets coming into docks with food and medicine. All of them had the same legend from the American people. I mean, the value of that so outweighs whatever even the immediate cost of it is. And because America was a donor nation, one of the greatest stories of American generosity, apart from the Marshall Plan, is the fact that countries that we were donors to for years, like South Korea then, have become donor nations themselves. What is a better outcome for the planet, and even for us too, is that we turn a nation that was defeated, we help them get back on their feet, and then they do that to help other nations as well. That was the knock on effect of kind of American generosity. And I've just never understood people who don't get it. And certainly the Trump administration, Elon Musk, the fact that they went after USAID first was because it was something that wasn't popular in part because people didn't understand it. And I think that's very, very, very damaging to perceptions of America.
- [31:44]
Charlie Sykes
Well, and there was also, you know, the saber rattling about Greenland, which apparently the Danes took very seriously, the Europeans took very seriously. There was, it seemed that there was a moment at which the European leaders who had thought, okay, we can deal with this guy. We know what, we'll just flatter him, we'll suck up to him, we can sort of massage him. And in the last few months, it seems that they've decided, no, we, we can't. We, we have to decouple ourselves from, from the United States in many ways. I mean, do you see it that way? Because it felt as if there was a time when they were content to maybe like, you know, muddle along and appease him. And there's been a, it feels like a much harder break in the last few months.
- [32:26]
Richard Stengel
Yes. And you know that the, the kind of storyline of that was Prime Minister Carney's speech, Canadian Prime Minister at Davos, where he really spoke truth to power about this idea that, you know what? Globalization didn't work for everybody. International alliances didn't always work for everybody, in part because we were dependent on the United States and the United States is no longer a dependable partner and that people now need to kind of cultivate their own garden. And I think there are actually unintended benefits to some of this. So, for example, NATO should do more for itself. The European countries in NATO should do more for themselves. Trump likes to say that he got NATO to increase its military budget more than Anybody in history. And the truth is, Vladimir Putin got NATO to do more for their military budgets than anybody in history by invading a European country. So, yes, they all boosted over the 2%, some to 4 to 5% of the GDP. But so I think a world where the US is less of a hyperpower, less of a hegemon, is inevitably going to happen. And you read that part of the piece about becoming Little America, that's from historians who talk about what happened to Great Britain after World War II. I mean, great Britain was the greatest imperial power in history at the end of World War I and between World War I and World War II. But after World War II, because of their defeat, they stood up to Nazism alone for years before we got into the war. They became Little England. And the kind of the death knell of that was them was Brexit, which was a kind of example of a national suicide. But was the continuing of this Great Britain becoming little England? I think in some ways, both good and bad, that is what's happening to America because of Trump, because he's taken us out of all these international agreements. People are not gonna welcome us back no matter who becomes the next president, and we'll be much more alone. And this idea that somehow alliances are a bad thing, I mean, I can't even understand it. I mean, one of the things that Trump has seen with the Strait of Hormuz and Iran is like, boy, these things are a lot harder to do without alliances.
- [35:05]
Charlie Sykes
You actually do need allies. Well, and also, and you make this point, the ugliness, and I want to come back, you mentioned this before, you know, that old. The Trump administration is reviving the old trope of the ugly American, but this time without the once obligatory peons to democracy, that old image of America as a narcissistic and culturally insensitive bully is back with a vengeance. Then you quote these headlines from around the world. A reckless imperial error. Read a headline about the Iran war in a French newspaper, from a German newspaper. How Trump is turning the US into a source of chaos. Again, French newspaper. Trump's outbursts no longer reassure financial markets, but the ugly American archetype was also the image of someone naive and even occasionally well meaning. Those clumsy crew cutted Americans just didn't understand the world. But Trump has turned the ugly American into the immoral American, a prototype of a predatory sociopath who is entirely transactional and probably does know better. The immoral American is more unscrupulous and corrupt than the ugly American and unlike the latter, cannot be Evolved, but only replace. Projecting Trump's venal Persona on the American character will do years of damage to America's image. I mean, that's kind of the heart of it, isn't it? Isn't it? What you wrote there, right there, is like, people around the world are going, is that who you are, America? That venal image, the immoral American?
- [36:35]
Richard Stengel
Because that. The ugly American in that. You know, that book that came out during the Cold war in the 50s that then Senator John F. Kennedy gave to all the other members of the Senate, by the way, that there was something. I mean, he was more naive than cruel. You know, Trump is more cruel than naive. And so even when we were doing some bad things, the idea was we were doing this in part to allow people to have their. Determine their own choices. Now, there's plenty of exceptions to that, you know, now this idea that we need to promote democracy, something every American president of both parties has done since Woodrow Wilson, is not part of the equation at all. I mean, I don't even think Trump understands what that means. And so people see us as not just hypocritical, but no longer. Well, meaning that we're doing stuff that is exclusively in our own interest, and we don't care whether it benefits other people. And so, you know, that goes from USAID to what happened in Venezuela. I mean, remember we talked about bringing back democracy to Venezuela. What we've done is made Venezuela into an American oil company that still is just as authoritarian as it was before, but now we get some benefit from it. I mean, that's immoral and ugly.
- [38:05]
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- [39:07]
Charlie Sykes
yeah, see, I think that's the key thing. It's not just the revival of ugly. It's the immoral and ugly. Now, speaking of which, you know, this was on display last weekend, right, in Hungary, where Donald, the Trump administration did something that I don't believe any other administration has ever done in American history. They sent the vice President of the United States to campaign for, you know, in somebody else's election, and not just for somebody else's election, but for this illiberal autocrat. So, you know, far from being the champion of liberal democracy, the Trump administration aligned completely with Vladimir Putin in supporting Viktor Orban and failed miserably. So, I mean, that's also part of it. So give me your thoughts on the defeat of Viktor Orban. Because in many ways, Viktor Orban was the model for illiberalism in the Trump administration. Kind of had a blueprint for what to do. But then his spectacular, overwhelming defeat kind of seemed like a model for what might come after. Your thoughts?
- [40:11]
Richard Stengel
Yes, I was incredibly heartened by it and cheered by it because, and here's what's so important about it and why it can become a model for democracy, including in the U.S. is that, you know, the Orban model was the Putin model. When Putin came to power, Russia could have been more democratic or less democratic. What were the first things he did? He took over the media. He put in oligarchs for nationalized industries, and then basically, he governed as an autocrat. That's exactly what Orban was doing. Taking over state media, getting rid of private media, independent media, bringing in oligarchs to run national industries. And the question that people had is, well, how do you run against that if you don't have access to an independent media, if you're not controlling, even if the economic engines of a society are bought by the government? But what Mr. Magyar and his party discovered is that, I mean, it sounds like such a cliche is you can take it to the people, you can go outside of those autocratic systems. He did multiple events a day all across the country, and he tapped into something that people felt every day, which is corruption. They knew that to get an Internet connection in the house, they had to pay somebody off. They knew to get electricity, they had to pay somebody off. And that somewhere along the line that went back to the government. I mean, you know, the person who became the wealthiest person in Hungary under Orban was his son in law.
- [42:02]
Charlie Sykes
You know, that sounds familiar.
- [42:03]
Richard Stengel
American voters can understand that now too. And so I think his campaign now has given a playbook to those people who want to restore democracy in their countries and people who want to restore democracy in America too. I think that the opposition to Trump, the Democratic Party independents, can look at what that opposition campaign did and say we can mimic that, we can copy that. That is a recipe for getting back your democracy.
- [42:35]
Charlie Sykes
So I agree with that. I mean, two big lessons here. Number one, first of all, they put together a broad pan ideological coalition. I mean, Magyar is pretty conservative. He actually is not the radical leftist that Orb would have liked to have compared him to. But he emphasized, and this is very interesting, I mean, the role of the bad economy, but also going right after the kakistocracy, going after the corruption. I mean, there is a lesson there because I'm not sure that the Democrats have fully gotten around to understanding how central going after that sort of corruption is to that larger theme of are you on my side or are you on the side of the oligarchy? And watch what happened in Hungary, I think is a great lesson for people to pay attention to.
- [43:26]
Richard Stengel
Yes, I think we're in agreement on that. The one caveat I have, and it still reassures my belief in the decency of Americans is that we don't have the everyday corruption that they have in a country like Hungary or China or Russia or any of these authoritarian places that we don't want to be like. So the most dangerous thing in politics is to tell voters what they think and what they believe or the circumstances of their own lives. They understand the circumstances of their own lives. I don't think there's the rampant corruption at the local level in the US as there are in any of those places. And so I think you can campaign against the corruption of the Castrocracy, although that's distant to people. But the circumstances of their own lives.
- [44:16]
Charlie Sykes
This is a good point.
- [44:17]
Richard Stengel
Unaffordability, gas prices, inability to buy a home, the fact that government is not working for them in a day to day way. Those are the things that I think the Democrats can campaign on. And it's not about restoration, it's about evolution. It's about change. It's about making the system work better for you in a non ideological way. Americans are not ideological. I always thought that was part of the, the hilarity of Trump Calling people communists or Marxists. It's like there probably is not one Marxist in the entire United States. And most of his voters don't have any idea what a Marxist is or what it's a reference to. So it's like, let's campaign on making people's lives better by eliminating the corruption, by making government work better, by listening to what people want. I mean, Trump doesn't listen to what anybody wants. So that's my.
- [45:16]
Charlie Sykes
This is an interesting point. Well, I know you're right. And in the last few days, I think what's become apparent is how tone deaf the Trump administration, Trump and company are. You know, when he says, well, gas prices aren't that high. And, you know, was it, you know, the Secretary of the treasury says, well, people in their hearts think the economy is good. This is part of the problem of this hermetically sealed world that, you know, Donald Trump has created of the billionaires and the oligarchs and the members of his cabinet, where they kind of have a sense that they don't understand, you know, how people are actually living their lives. And remember, he ran as the populace. I am the voice of the, of the people. And I thought that whole door dash thing was, was, it was a fiasco in part because it kind of felt like, okay, you know, we, you know, the super rich are willing to throw some scraps off the table to you folks. You may not have health care, but we're going to give you no taxes on tips for five minutes. It does seem. And also the optics. What do you make of the optics of Donald Trump's obsession about two things, his giant arch and his ballroom, which seem really radically disconnected from what I think people in the country are hoping that the President is focusing on right now.
- [46:29]
Richard Stengel
Yes. The fact that he's focusing on those things at all should be a lesson and immoral to voters. And of course, you know, in a more sane system, you'd have a political advisor saying, sir, you know, maybe go easy on the ballroom and the arch thing. It's like, you know, there's not, you're not going to get one vote, you know, for either of those things. I mean, there's not, I mean, literally, there's not one voter in America who's thinking, oh, yeah, I'm going to vote for that guy, because I think we need a bigger ballroom, you know, to host black tie events at the White House. But again, it's just this example of his toxic narcissism which, which creates this absolute cluelessness that, you know, he thinks that every one of his instincts is representative to other people. You know, he did have an original ins, some an insight that was powerful, which is Americans, a lot of Americans feel a sense of grievance that, that you know, they've been left out, that government doesn't work for them. You know, that was a powerful insight. But almost every other insight after that he has had, has been wrong. And so harping on the ballroom, harping on the arch, maybe his whole business career, he feels it's successful to put his name in gold on things and that helps, but I mean, didn't help Trump steaks and Trump wine and Trump University. Just think it's a bad call.
- [47:55]
Charlie Sykes
Well, it does seem as if that he did have that, what I've described as the reptilian instinct. What worked when he would go out on the rallies and he would pick up various memes from right wing media. Now it just seems he's in that YOLO stage. He only lived once and he's gonna do whatever he wants and just kind of screw it. I mean his collapse in the polls, his squandering of his coalition is almost completely self inflicted when you think about it. I mean it is not outside events that is driving that, it's the decisions, it's his fetish for tariffs, it's his fetish for cruelty, it's the weird going off onto endless wards after saying that he wouldn't. All of this is done and right now I'm just sensing a guy who is utterly tone deaf and really caught up in his own arrogance. I mean, which advisor said, hey, you know what you really ought to do this week, what would be a real winner for us is that why don't you go to war with the Catholic Church? I mean really. And why don't you double down on that? You can just tell because the other night somebody was asking me on one of the cable shows, you know, Republicans still think that they have time to turn this around. You know, if they have more message discipline, they can refocus on the economy. And of course message discipline means Trump's message discipline. To which my response is, have you met this guy? Are you paying any attention? If Republicans hopes rest on Donald Trump waking up one morning and being a much more linear thinker, get used to disappointment. I mean, it's just not gonna happen, is it?
- [49:24]
Richard Stengel
Yes. I mean the word discipline and Trump should never be in the same sentence unless it's that he has absolutely zero discipline. And of course it is 100% self inflicted that he's been doing things that undermine that initial kind of reptilian insight. That. And by the way, part of that initial insight was that he was a poor man's idea of a rich man, but he was betraying his class, that he was revolting against the very people that he was a part of. Like, yes, that's what I like. Well, it turns out that isn't the case. You know, that he wants golden monuments for himself everywhere and that he's also, you know, in a funny way, the most traditional thing about Trump is that he Is suffering from second term. ITIs, which a lot of presidents do, which is like forgetting the domestic environment. Like, I don't care about this domestic stuff. I want to be in the international stage. I'm going to create like a legacy. It's like, wow, he's buying into that. You know, if he had just stuck to his guns as America first, like, I'm just going to like, you know, cultivate our own garden, you know, make people more prosperous, you know, have the stock market, blah, blah, blah, you know, he would actually be much more popular. But everything that he's doing is shooting himself in the foot. And we see that, you know, in those, you know, 30% popularity ratings that he has.
- [50:56]
Charlie Sykes
I mean, the collapse of popularity is truly extraordinary. I mean, you know, you and I have watched this for a very, very long time. The speed with which he has squandered his own coalition, I mean, the drop of like 40 points among, you know, white, non college educated voters, the collapse of support among Latinos, the collapse of support among young voters, it's really remarkable and not easy to accomplish. I mean, so what he has done is rather extraordinary. I mean, you have to work really, really hard to move numbers at that speed and of that size, given the political environment. And yet here we are, this is what he's done.
- [51:33]
Richard Stengel
Yes. And if you look at how the numbers have changed with Hispanic males, for example, again, in a more thought through administration, someone would say, Mr. President, your immigrant policy is getting in the way of the support that you garnered among Hispanic men. Maybe there's some way to, you know, to do a kind of a more moderate course, to reach out to them. But, you know, there's nobody doing that. He's so headstrong that almost every one of his instincts, apart from that original instinct, you know, undermines the coalition that, that he created. You know, even the support among, you know, that he, the increased support he had among young black men, for example, like, I know, you know, what squanders that racist behavior.
- [52:23]
Charlie Sykes
Blatantly racist behavior. I mean, completely unsubtle racist behavior that they keep doubling and tripling down on. No, it's one of those things where what did you think was going to happen if you did this? If you actually cared about what was going to happen. Rick, thank you so much for all your time and your insight. I really, really appreciate it.
- [52:42]
Richard Stengel
Charlie, it's always a pleasure to be with you. And one of your virtues as a very smart person is you make all of us smarter too. So I appreciate that.
- [52:50]
Charlie Sykes
Well, I try. You can read Richard Sengel's work in the Guardian. We'll post links to that in the weekend newsletter. And thank you all for listening to this episode of to the Contrary podcast. We do this, and we will continue to do this because it is more urgent than ever to remind ourselves that we are not the crazy ones. Thank you.
- [53:21]
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