← To The Contrary with Charlie Sykes
To The Contrary with Charlie Sykes
“The More Unpopular Trump Becomes, the More Extreme He’ll Get”
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A
I'm Charlie Sykes. Welcome to the to the Contrary podcast. Welcome to the month of May. You know, after a month like we had in April, I am reminded. Reminded of what Hunter S. Thompson said that when the going gets weird, the weird go pro. Words to live by. All right, what's going on here? This is not a parody. For those of you who have not been paying attention, the Department of Justice actually criminally charged James Comey, the former head of the FBI, for taking a picture of seashells on the beach. We can talk about that. Of course, this was the week in which the President used an assassination attempt as a pretext to build his ballroom. And in the annals of tone deaf politics, then Trump pushes Lindsey Graham out through the curtain to say that not only do we need to build the $400 million ballroom, but we need to stick the taxpayers with the tab. Pete Hegseth melts down in front of Congress. And this is also not a parody. Amazon, apparently in talks to reboot the Apprentice with Don Jr. So the craziness continues. All right. Joining on this weekend's edition of the to the Contrary podcast, our good friend Susan Glasser from the New Yorker. Thanks for coming back, Susan. After an amazing week, Charlie, I've got
- [03:21]
B
I need to take a deep breath listening to that introduction.
- [03:25]
A
My goodness, I don't even know where to start. What is the craziest story? Somebody asked me earlier this morning, what's the craziest thing that happened this week? And I actually was had a hard time, you know, because the, the indictment of Jim comey for the 8647 seashell thing strikes me as, you know, at the same time, I mean, on the one hand, completely ludicrous, but also sort of ominous and disgraceful, kind of a reminder that anybody that thought that, well, okay, when Pam Bondi goes away, you know, things will get better. No, it was pretty much a guarantee that whoever replaced Pam Bondi would be worse. But just talk to me a little bit about the Todd Blanche auditioning for the job of attorney general by coming up with one of the, I think, objectively stupidest indictments that I have ever heard of. And I'm not. This is not just me. The legal community, including MAGA types, are going, seriously, you are criminally charging somebody for posting 8647.
- [04:26]
B
Explain this to me, Susan, you know, when you've lost. Jonathan, truly. Right. Yes. Might be a niche for your listeners. The truth is, Charlie, you know, I think you're right to focus on this as emblematic of what we're seeing in Trump 2.0, which is essentially the abuse of power on a grand scale, in particular through the Justice Department. And the idea that revenge and retribution against the president's political opponents, real and perceived, is actually at the core of what they're about. Now, the fact that Tom Blanch is using this as his tryout to try to get the job of attorney general is revealing in its own right. But as always, it's revealing about the person because Donald Trump is a mirror for other people's cracked souls, but also it's them giving the president what he wants. And I also think it's important to point out we're having this conversation. Donald Trump was invited to be the keynote speaker at a First Amendment dinner of journalists, you know, sort of tragically disrupted by this terrible act of, you know, would be act of political violence. Thank goodness, you know, there was no one killed. There was no one, you know, seriously injured in this attack on the White House Correspondents Dinner. But remember, There was this catastrophic. And I. That is my opinion. I will share it. I know other people have a different point of view, but in my opinion, there was a catastrophic decision by the White House Correspondents association to invite Donald Trump to be the keynote speaker at a dinner ostensibly committed to the First Amendment. A man who has said that our most prominent independent journalists are seditious, that they should be jailed. He has sued many of our news organizations for billions of dollars. He has vilified the press corps in its entirety as enemies of the people. You know, if the thing were reversed, I can assure you that Donald Trump and his advisors would not be inviting his adversaries, you know, to be the headliners at a dinner because it's the right thing to do or something like that. And, you know, again, it just underscores what I think has been one of the signature problems for those who try, who are trying to stand up to Trump in this second term. And the problem is this. There are a lot of people here in Washington who don't believe their own rhetoric, who are not willing to act according to what they're telling the American people. The nature of the threat is. So how is it possible that the nation's major freedom of the press organizations say that Donald Trump is a near existential level threat to the First Amendment, and yet they're going to have a dinner honoring him? Right. Those two things are not incompatible. And I think what it tells the American people is that as dangerous and hypocritical as they may now consider Trump and his MAGA movement to be, that Trump's critics are also deeply flawed and still very much all about access for themselves. And they don't walk the walk that they talk,
- [07:42]
A
you know, and it was really an exclamation point on the inappropriateness of that invitation that, you know, number one, that he, you know, within what, 48 hours, he's calling for Jimmy Kimmel to be fired for telling a joke. I mean, this dinner, by the way, the White House correspondents was so concerned about how thin skinned Donald Trump was, they did not invite a comedian because they might have hurt his feelings. So they invited a mentalist. Jimmy Kimmel does a sort of, you know, what he would have done if he had been the comedian. And Donald Trump's instinct was twofold, is to demand that ABC fire him and then sicken the FCC on Disney and abc. I mean, if he wanted some evidence of how Donald Trump feels about free speech. And of course, the comey thing is pure speech, which is that if you can be sent to jail for taking a picture of seashells. And by the way, by now, I think everybody realizes that, you know, 8647 is not a secret code for assassination. It goes back to restaurants and things like that. Plus, a lot of MAGA influencers were doing the exact same thing. But what do you make of the reports that the White House correspondents might actually reschedule this? Knowing everything that Donald Trump did, knowing that he was planning to give a speech, by the way, the performance we missed, which was going to be attacking the media. So not only did they invite him as a guest of honor, but he was going to stand up there and he was going to insult and vilify the journalists in the room. And apparently knowing all that, they're thinking of doing a do over. Do you think that's gonna happen?
- [09:19]
B
Well, we'll see if it happens. You know, I think that the bottom line is it would be a mistake if it did. It was a mistake to invite him in the first place. And unfortunately, it underscores many of the bad things that about the media. And I will also say that, you know, the, the head of the White House Correspondents association, she has been praised for her level head, you know, under fire in a very chaotic and, you know, scary situation. And, you know, I think that is clear that she handled herself in a way that, you know, was, was dignified and was, was correct. But that's not the same as doing the right thing. And, you know, she spoke out before the dinner and said that, you know, oh, she hadn't actually heard from any of her members, you know, complaining about this. And that's, that's not accurate. That's not accurate. And it's a mistake. And the reason it's a mistake is because this is not a partisan moment in our country. I think that's, that's, that's the category error of thinking, Charlie, is, is too many journalists buy into the idea that, you know, politics now is team sports and that if they somehow locate themselves outside of it and just do the same thing as in the past, that they're fine. This is a moment about civil society and institutions of our democracy, including the free press that are under challenge as never before. And I think taking that leap is something that a lot of access driven Washington journalists have been afraid to do. And in my view, it's really crucial again, you know, not to undermine the, you know, the decision making or the thinking of those people, you know, many of whom were told that they had to show up by Their employers. But I just, I think that it's a moment for walking the walk that you talk.
- [11:07]
A
You know, it's almost become now this cliche that, you know, this is not normal or we should not normalize this. And yet what you're describing is the White House, you know, press corps normalizing Donald Trump acting as if like it's 1997 all over again or 1980s, whatever, that this is not, in fact, an existential threat to press freedom. And quite frankly, I think, I think it's hard. I wrote my newsletter yesterday. I mean, it feels like an understatement to say that free speech and the free press are under siege right now. And by the way, this is so ironic because Donald Trump ran as the free speech president. Remember, MAGA was all against the cancel culture. And they get into power and what do they do? They embrace this right wing cancel culture, which is as aggressive as anything we've ever seen. It's bad enough when it happens on a university campus. Right. It is much worse when it is the full, you know, power of the federal government, you know, very explicitly and unsubtly aimed at intimidating broadcast journalists, print journalists, anyone who criticize them. What do you make of this, once again, this conflation of criticism of Donald Trump with violence? I mean, it's become kind of the playbook. We saw it after Charlie Kirk. I mean, isn't this one of those moments to make the point that, that, you know, speech is not violence. That's, you know, describing Donald Trump as a threat to the republic is not saying he should be murdered. And yet there's this full court press now to suggest that if you call Donald Trump a fascist or you call Donald Trump a tyrant, you then become complicit in any act of violence by an unhinged individual.
- [12:50]
B
Yeah, that's right. And there are, as you pointed out, some members of the press who've bought into that and have gone after, you know, there was a really, you know, painful exchange between Congressman Jamie Raskin, you know, who's been an outspoken critic of Trump's in the House of Representatives, a constitutional law professor who, who knows his First Amendment, you know, being asked on CNN if somehow he was, you know, responsible for this overheated rhetoric. And, you know, I just, I think that again, you know, it's time for people to have clarity and to live their principles. And, you know, there's so much that's, that's out of their control. But to the point about Donald Trump, okay, so he's the free speech president who wants to throw people in jail for speech that he doesn't like. He's also the no new wars president who said it would be idiocy to start a new conflict in the Middle East. And here we are with Donald Trump single handedly upending the global economy by starting a war with no clear strategy or aims or endpoint in the Middle East. And so, you know, again, it's the, it's the unchecked exercise of power. This attack on free speech is one aspect of that. The idea of a, a sort of a rogue attorney general who is, you know, simply looking to please a capricious master, you know, by, by indicting his political opponents regardless of the validity of that indictment. And by the way, look, they've, you know, sicked on James Comey. You know, it's, it's, it's, it's some kid, you know, because in the entire Justice Department, there was no one, except for one, you know, untested prosecutors willing to sign his name to this, this complaint. I mean, there was another complaint this week, Charlie, as you know, that was literally dictated by Donald Trump's true social feed with the, you know, complete with the bizarre capitalizations and the crazy rants and stuff. It's, you know, it's an assault on the rule of law that we're looking at here and the sort of final kind of tragic comic endpoint of the post Nixon, post Watergate reforms that were meant to insulate our justice system and insulate our executive branch from the predations of a corrupt and capricious leader.
- [15:18]
A
Well, now, speaking of capricious and corrupt, you've been watching Donald Trump for some time. You saw that piece in the Atlantic that suggests that Donald Trump is no longer comparing himself to Abraham Lincoln and George Washington. You want to talk about hubris here, that he is now comparing himself to the great men of history, Alexander the Great, Caesar and Napoleon. I don't know, Susan, again, speaking of, like, we're in a different character. If you're at a bar and somebody is comparing themselves to Napoleon, you might make a phone call for an intervention, but this is the President of the United States. So what kind of, what was, what was your reaction to that? I mean, you know, we've talked about the megalomania and the toxic narcissism, but it feels like we're at a whole new level here where, you know, we can make fun of the big arch and we can make fun of the ballroom, but if Donald Trump is actually sitting around thinking, I want to be remembered as Caesar or Napoleon. What does that tell you about his state of mind?
- [16:16]
B
Well, it certainly tells you he doesn't know a damn thing about history. But putting that aside. Exactly. We did know that. Look, I actually think I was really. I thought it was very striking to see that story, because to me, that is a very useful sort of Big Ten explanation for a lot of the developments we're seeing in Trump 2.0. Like, I do think that a lot of the difference from 1.0 to 2.0 is in Donald Trump pushing 80 years old. This is Donald Trump in legacy mode. This is Donald Trump seeing himself as wanting to write his name on the map of history. That's where we get Greenland, for example. He sees that as sort of a relatively easy shot to write his name on the map of the world, to rewrite the map of the world. It also explains things like the giant arch. And by the way, who's the progenitor of the original Arc de Triomphe is Napoleon. You know, and it's very interesting to me. Again, obviously, Donald Trump has no idea, you know, what Napoleon actually did or how he ended up. By the way, in. In our book the Divider, we end the book with Donald Trump sitting like Napoleon in Elba in very unhappy, but he hopes, temporary exile in Mar a Lago. And, you know, I'm pretty sure that Trump, and my guess is many of the people in his White House as well, are not aware of what happened to Napoleon after he returned from his brief exile in Elba, let's just say.
- [17:56]
A
But he did return. But he did return from exile. So maybe Donald Trump has been told that.
- [18:01]
B
They were told what happened next, Charlie, which is the permanent exile, the final collapse of the Napoleonic folly, the final overreach that led to the end of Napoleon. And that, to me, is the story here that we're also looking at, which is the escalation of Trump's fantasies and delusions of grandeur at exactly the moment when his political fortunes are collapsing in ways that it's very, very hard to see them fully recovering. Right. Donald Trump is now sunk to his lowest levels of popularity in either of his two terms. He's really now down to what you and I in the abstract might have thought would be his kind of core following back in 2016, right. About a third of the public is supporting Donald Trump now. About two thirds are saying no. And many of them are saying, hell, no. That's what, you know, basically, I would have thought back in 2016, the shock and the disturbance that there was A pretty decent chunk of millions of Americans, many of them Republicans or Republican leaning independents who knew better and have gone along with Donald Trump anyways for a lot of the last decade. He seems to have lost, slash been losing those people now. And so I think this is the dynamic in different forms that we're going to see for the rest of Donald Trump's term here. Is that escalating, you know, dreams of grandiosity and extremism fueling ever more radical acts. Right. That he's untethering from public opinion. So the one thing is declining even while the other things are going. And frankly, the more unpopular he becomes, I think the more he will escalate, the more he will do things like knock buildings down and put his name on other buildings and, you know, move in erratic and extreme ways. So that I see as the dynamic that may be with us for a while. Charlie.
- [20:09]
A
Well, if irony was not dead along those lines, all of this takes place at the time when the King of England visits the United States. And as you point out in your column this week, 250 years into the American experiment, it turns out that it takes a king to tell us how to run our republic. There was a rather extraordinary moment when King Charles III speaks to Congress and reminds Congress about the Magna Carta separation of powers, how there should not be unlimited power in the Executive. All the members of Congress, including Republicans, stood and applauded. And Donald Trump is still very, very jiggy about being around the king. But that was kind of an interesting moment. So talk to me about this because you devote your column to, to how strange it is that the King of England has to talk about the fact that no one is above the law, essentially, in Donald Trump's America.
- [21:09]
B
Yeah, that's right. I mean, this pay into checks and balances, which is really the principle from the Magna Carta that he pointed out had been cited by the U.S. supreme Court at least 160 times in its history. The fact that this would be the big applause line in his thing. And I actually went back and sort of slow mo looked at, at the reactions in real time of the members of Congress as they leapt to their feet, Democrats and Republicans. But the camera sort of pans across many of these senators who are literally like, you can almost see the thought bubble. They're like, holy shit, the king is trolling Donald Trump. And what's amazing, first of all, right, is that Donald Trump appears not to have been in on the joke. And, you know, he sort of underscores the irony free zone, you know, would be autocrats don't have a great sense of humor. Right. And you know, I think so. That's, that's a part of it. And another part of it is that Donald Trump tends to pay attention not to the substance of things, but just the coverage. My guess is it underscores the bubble in which he lives that no one has dared in the, in the four days now since the king's speech, you know, that no one around him has told him what the speech was really signaling. Maybe what he's watching on Fox News, they're not telling him that either. But I think it's such a moment for me, it really underscores and I did learn something new this week. Maybe you already knew this. I don't know if the British monarchy is one of your side hustles, but I certainly did not know that King Charles III is not only a direct descendant of George iii, the king who lost the Revolutionary War, he is the fourth great grandson. So that means that he's the great, great, great, great, great grandson of George iii. Direct lineage there. I personally did not know that. But, you know, it's, look, it's, I think one of those kind of gut punch moments when you realize that it's not that Donald Trump just wants to sort of embrace the dazzling pomp and circumstance and splendor of the British monarchy. He's always been awed by that Meeting the Queen Elizabeth was a huge highlight for him of his first term in office. But for me, it was underscored. The next day, he takes a call from the would be modern day czar in the Kremlin, Vladimir Putin. And, and look, the truth is it's not that Donald Trump wants to be a constitutional monarch like King Charles. He wants the powers and the policies, many of them, of the czar and not of the king.
- [23:57]
A
Yeah. Let's come back to that phone call and what Trump tweeted out after all of that. You mentioned before that Donald Trump doesn't necessarily know any history whatsoever. My guess is that he knows nothing about the Magna Carta, does not understand the role that King John played in all of that, how the that actually worked out for that particular king. But also Charles, you describe Charles with his dry wit and sense of humor that was surely lost on the host that he so subtly trolled. I thought it was also interesting. I haven't seen a lot of commentary about that. He made a reference to Donald Trump's remodeling of the White House and tearing down the East Wing to build the ballroom and he said, basically, you know, we once tried to do a little bit of redecorating, a reference to when the British burned down the White House in the War of 1812, which is like. And Trump is like, completely, you know, not paying any attention. So let's talk about that call with Putin, because very, very shortly after that call, Trump put out a bleep that suggested that he was reevaluating having troops in Germany. And I didn't make any announcement or anything. And obviously he's been obsessed with this sort of thing for some time. But I guess was the timing seem, I don't know, striking? Because if there's anything that Vladimir Putin would certainly want, it would be to have Donald Trump, you know, continue to talk about abandoning NATO and pulling our troops out of Germany. And so they seemed connected, not coincidental. Your reaction to that?
- [25:32]
B
Yeah, I mean, look, a few observations, like, number one, what were the two foreign policy priorities that, that the King mentioned in his speech? They were a defense of NATO and a full throated plea to the United States Congress to continue to support Ukraine with the steadfast resolve in which the United States has fought previous conflicts and, you know, understood that the threat to democracy in Europe is actually a threat that affects the United States. And the timing, therefore, of getting on the phone with Putin the day after this, I think was really resonant. And so a number of things have been happening. First of all on Ukraine. I think it's important to note that, you know, when Donald Trump talks to Vladimir Putin, this is not the first time it happens, but many times he gets off and he immediately goes on the attack on Zelensky. He immediately goes on the attack, undermining Ukraine and amplifying Russian talking points. And there's a long pattern and practice of that. And this one was particularly notable, Charlie. There was actually a Russian readout of the call by Yuri Ushakov, who's the longtime foreign policy advisor to Vladimir Putin, who. He doesn't always do this, but he went to the effort, clearly in a calculated way of putting out an English language readout of the phone call between Donald Trump in which he pointed out, according to this readout, which may or may not be true, but it's fascinating that they said it was Trump. Trump and Putin essentially agreed that Zelensky was to blame for the lack of a peace deal. This is very notable to me. And basically then Trump seems like a big story. Exactly. Trump was then talking to reporters. And what did he say? He said, oh, Putin wants peace and it's other people who have, you know, somehow stopped it. This is a canard. This is an untruth, and it is just as much of a falsehood as Donald Trump having said publicly, which he said many times now, that Ukraine somehow now started the war in which Russia invaded Ukraine. And he said this again and again and again. Obviously, it's not only a lie, but a very malicious one that serves Russian interests. And I think for people to underscore, because it hasn't gotten as much attention as I believe that it should, Trump has used the COVID of this chaos generated by his new war in the Middle east to kind of make explicit what has been sort of implicit in his actions, which is that it's not just that we're uncertain about what kind of support to provide to Ukraine, but we're over it. And Trump has said Ukraine is not our war. Starting in March when he began the conflict in the Middle East, Marco Rubio, previously a staunch supporter of Ukraine, has said on the record, ukraine's not our war. The vice president, J.D. vance, who was always a skeptic about American support for Ukraine, he came out and said that literally cutting off funding for military weapons for Ukraine was one of the proudest accomplishments of this administration. And so I think when they're telling us something so loudly and they're all saying it, we need to understand that very clearly. The Trump administration is saying American support for Ukraine is over. We are on the other side, and we are essentially trying to do Putin's bidding in ending the war on his terms.
- [29:00]
A
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- [31:40]
B
Well, look, I think you're right and very insightful to point out that, that Hegseth seemed like a man who was really out of his depth. And the tell in Washington often is the guy who's rehearsed the response to the question but not the follow up response. And you know, that they're sort of, you know, optics obsessed. And when you hire a weekend Fox News host as your defense secretary, right. You're basically acknowledging that what you want in a defense secretary is somebody who cares about optics and isn't qualified to talk about the substance. And so I thought, thought this sort of was the visual confirmation of a lot of the reporting that we've had from inside Hexas Pentagon. And you know, does Donald Trump want this? Remember Pam Bondi's very combative, shrill performance going on the attack against members. She thought it might save her job. It didn't save her job. Probably accelerated her exit from the Trump cabinet. It's harder for Trump to do that in the middle of the war because then cashiering the Defense Secretary is not only admission that you made the wrong choice in that personnel decision, but also an admission that your policy, that is your war in Iran, is a mistake. So I think it's harder for him to do that. The consequences politically are bigger for Trump, although given how unpopular the conflict is, as we've alluded to in this conversation, you know, he, he may well want a scapegoat for it at some point, possibly at some point soon. I do think Hegseth had this moment very early on. That to me was very emblematic of what he's been doing at the Pentagon and, and the agenda that he and Trump have brought into the second term. And he basically went after those who dared to question him. And he said, you know, the biggest enemy we have are you congressional Democrats and a few Republicans who are criticizing.
- [33:40]
A
Not Iran, not Iran.
- [33:42]
B
And by the way, this is very consistent with what Donald Trump was saying during the 2024 campaign that people just were in deny about. Trump gave an interview in October of 2024, and I always refer back to this, in which he was asked, well, what's your foreign policy? What about our adversaries? He said, well, we have Russia and we have China and we have the enemy within. And of these, the greatest enemy is the enemy within. And I just think people need to stare that in the eye and accept that's what's happening.
- [34:19]
A
I could not agree more. I thought that whole thing was that Donald Trump has identified who he thinks is the real enemy. And he has said that this, this is not just a one off. He has said this repeatedly. The enemy is, you know, is not China, it is not Russia. It is the enemy within. He has said that, you know, in interviews. He said that in speeches. They said that when they addressed the generals at the Pentagon, remember when they were talking about using the military. And so I think this, this is something that, again, people do need to focus and that, that, that Donald Trump, especially at the time when he's asking for a $1.5 trillion defense budget because, you know, we need to footing, well, wartime against who when the president himself continually says that the biggest enemy is other Americans. Right. That that's we need to be concerned about.
- [35:09]
B
Yeah. And you know, look, the war is showing that a lot of what is needed from a national security perspective is transformation of the military to recognize a new age of asymmetrical warfare. That's very different than just throwing huge billions of dollars, trillions of dollars at the problem. If anything, what it's showing is the wastefulness of the existing American defense system. We have these gigantic aircraft carriers. We are literally throwing missiles that are costing three or four million dollars to knock down drones that Iran is producing for 20 to 30 thousand dollars. So that does not suggest to me that the need here is to spend trillions of dollars more. It suggests that we need to restructure and be smarter about learning the lessons of modern warfare, which by the way, have been innovated by our friend and strategic partner Ukraine in the course of those last four years of conflict with Russia. And it's just an amazing moment, right? You have Zelensky, you know, sort of exiled and dumped on by JD Vance and Donald Trump. What's he doing? He's going around the Gulf offering strategic advice and Ukraine innovated drones to help protect them from the Iranian conflict that Trump unleashed. He is saying, look, hey you United States, you want to clear the Strait of Hormuz? We have actually developed I this story, I don't know if you saw it this week. Fascinating. One of the things the Ukrainians developed in order to basically kick the Russians out of the Black Sea, which they amazingly managed to do without any real, real meaningful Ukrainian navy, they actually won the naval battle of the Black Sea against the Russians without a navy. And what they did, one of the things they did is they created an undersea drone that's an understory mine clearing drone. And they're offering that to the United States this week to clear the Strait of Hormuz. Again, you know, it's a small country, but history shows that conflicts like this are the laboratories in which new technologies are developed. Breakthroughs that change the nature of war are clearly happening. And it seems to me that the Pentagon has been behind on understanding what that means. And it's very serious. By the way, it actually suggests we have a lot of new threats to the United States that we're not aware of.
- [37:39]
A
Well, this is there. Was that the editorial you're alluding to, I think in the New York Times where they talked about, you know, that the army's been, you know, military has been losing its edge and now after Iran, everybody knows, knows it and making the point that, you know, with that old cliche that the generals are always fighting the last war, that we have all this expensive stuff that may give you tactical victories that do not actually win you the war because the nature of warfare has changed so quickly and they Talked about, you know, the difficulty of changing direction, a sclerotic government and an entrenched, you know, defense establishment that obviously has a vested interest in selling you a $30 million missile rather than a $300,000 or $6,000 drone. Trump was very triggered by that editorial actually saying that the New York Times was seditious for publishing it. But this is kind of a wake up call, isn't it, that the whole nature of warfare has changed. Iran has shown that you don't necessarily need a nuclear weapon to have a deterrence. You just shut down the Strait of Hormuz. So we're not just in a sort of a tactical fubar of the Trump administration. We're actually exposing the fact that these military doctrines are anachronistic, that they're obsolete. And that seems like a pretty.
- [39:02]
B
Well, that's right. It may be that we're entering the era when he who controls the drone swarm controls the straight or whatever the strategic object is. And, you know, certainly China and Taiwan are paying awfully close attention to this. And I just think, you know, there was a moment actually is really interesting when Dmitry Medvedev, the sort of disgraced, you know, ex president of Russia who's become a kind of online troll, but, you know, he often is used to put out official kind of messages from the Kremlin that sound distasteful. He made an observation a couple weeks ago. He said, you know, so Iran has a nuclear weapon, its nuclear weapon turns out to be the Strait of Hormuz. And I think that is really something that we need to take on board and to understand what does that mean? It really changes how we need to think about security going forward. And, you know, there's been a lot of talk over the last decade of, you know, that this is a moment of the resurgence of great power competition between the United States, Russia and China, but a lot less attention paid to what the changes in technology mean for the smaller countries, the asymmetrical powers. I mean, you know, have we unlearned all of the lessons of the post 911 era? Right? You know, like, imagine the possibilities for global terrorism. I will tell you that I recently had a conversation, Charlie, here in Washington with a very plugged in, very senior official who said that his biggest fear was exactly what the future holds in terms of these drone swarms and terrorism for the United States, and not as some long term abstract threat, but as a very short term concrete reality of something that we should be actively worried about right now.
- [41:00]
A
You know, as you're saying that I'm thinking about that one incident where the Ukrainians put a swarm of drones into a truck and they drove it deep into the heart of Russia and then just released them and talk about that as a nightmare scenario, the fact that they were able to do that. Okay. There's so many aspects of the Hegseth testimony. I thought it was very interesting when he was challenged on the imminent nuclear threat. And then people were saying, well, wait, you just said two seconds ago that you had obliterated the nuclear threat. And all of those moments. Moments. But also these stories over the last week about suggesting that J.D. vance has been very, very skeptical of things that Peter Hegseth has been telling the administration that the depletion of our weaponry is much, much worse than that. And so the Atlantic had a big article talking about that I think widely suspected that Vance or his team had leaked that out. To distance himself from this unpopular war, Vance did something I thought rather interesting yesterday. He denied the story and then immediately confirmed it. He said, don't believe the Atlantic. But of course I'm asking those questions. I mean, I thought, you know, it's one thing to have a non denial denial, but then to have a denial confirmation. Is that, is this like a new flex for people in Washington that. Yeah, that story's completely full of shit. But yes, I did say all those things. And this is why.
- [42:26]
B
Well, I don't know if flex is the right term for it, because he doesn't look very strong when he makes that kind of a thing. And that's the real thing. Here we are watching in real time the sort of humiliation of a vice president. Again, long Washington tradition here. You know, John Nance Gardner back in, you know, the 1940s, saying it's, you know, the vice presidency isn't worth a bucket of warm spit along bipartisan.
- [42:49]
A
He didn't say spit.
- [42:50]
B
That's true. Long bipartisan tradition of this. But J.D. vance's humiliation is, is particularly acute because Trump is doing the one thing that people actually thought he really believed. It turns out actually Donald Trump doesn't really believe anything in a fixed way because the one thing I think people really thought, and somebody like J.D. vance, I think he really thought, Donald Trump isn't going to start a new war in the Middle east because he said that over and over and over again. And he seemed to genuinely believe that was crazy. Maybe, you know, even the people who have given Trump all this enormous power might have thought twice if they thought he would actually use it. And so JD Vance is sort of the the, the kind of public vehicle of this humiliation for a big swath of the magarite that actually was against starting new wars in the, in the Middle East. And I, you know, I just think it underscores why we've had so few presidents in our history who have come immediately from the vice presidency. Because American, they like to move on, saddled with the record and the consequences of the president, even if you disagreed with elements of it that proved to be unpopular. And people don't like to vote for the past, and they tend to be ready to move on. That's certainly been true of the American electorate in recent years. George H.W. bush was the first sitting vice president to win election since early 19th century.
- [44:27]
A
Yeah, Dan Quayle is more typical of, I think, what happens to vice president. Okay, now this raises the question. I'm almost embarrassed to even bring this up because it seems so absurd, but we've lived it through an era of absurdity. If not Vance, then who? And this week we find out that Amazon Jeff Bezos is in early talks with Don Jr. To reboot the Apprentice. Now, I know that people are rolling their eyes, but, you know, before we dismiss. This is completely crazy, remember what people thought about Donald Trump back in 2016. Is it remotely possible that Donald Trump thinks the only way to extend his dynasty is to run Donald Jr. I mean, is this even a remote possibility? Because you and I have watched these little clouds on the horizon that get bigger and bigger and bigger, and you kind of dismiss them at first. But is it time to, like, have Don Jr. In the conversation, as insane as that sounds?
- [45:25]
B
Yeah. You know, Charlie, Donald Trump has always seen what he's doing as a family business. Now, it happened that Ivanka, and not Don Jr. Was always his favorite child until he went into politics. And I think the first term was a real transformation inside that family. Don Jr. Had always been the kind of dumped on elder son. Trump was not, not proud of him. In fact, you know, he was so critical of Don Jr. At many times that even many of his loyal retainers felt like physically uncomfortable watching the dynamic between the father and son at times. And, you know, that, of course, produced a situation where Don Jr. Was so desperate to please his father. Then they come into politics, and it turns out out that Ivanka doesn't sell well to the MAGA base, that Ivanka, with her efforts, you know, as sort of cringy and palpable as they were, to kind of maintain viability with the, you know, the more traditional establishment, you know, that just doesn't go over well. And obviously her inclinations were those of a kind of a relatively centrist or conservative Democrat, which is what she was until Donald Trump became a Republican populist right wing demagogue. Right. You know, that was not something that was anything Ivanka wanted to do with. And interestingly, in the first term, if you looked at the reception to Trump and his family in those MAGA rallies that he used to have that he doesn't really have anymore, mostly it was Trump himself those people came for, and they really, they weren't that excited by the other politicians. The one exception was Don Jr. He would come and warm up the crowd sometimes and the MAGA base, they really liked him. And, you know, he became then a kind of an Internet troll and a keeper of the Tucker Carlson wing of the party. So it's not insane that Trump might want to have an heir take over the family business, because that's what he thinks this is, is a family business. Now, mostly he and his family seem to be occupied with looting the country and monetizing the office to enrich themselves and their family. Right. That's the big thing that's been happening the last couple years. But I wouldn't exclude an effort by Don Jr. To get in politics. But it's remote possibility. He's a really only copy of his father.
- [47:54]
A
No. I've long thought that in Donald Trump's mind, the only way that he would be willing to pay to pass the baton is to a member of his own family who would then, then do his bidding. And also I can imagine the logic being that, well, you need to have, especially after, if Republicans do badly in the midterms, that it will make sense in Donald Trump's head that you need to have Donald Trump's name on the ballot and Donald Trump Jr. So this is a reminder that I picked a very, very bad week to quit sniffing glue if this is a possibility. Susan Glasser, thank you so much. I will post a link to your piece about the irony of the King of England reminding America what democracy and the rule of law was all about. Susan, thank you very much.
- [48:41]
B
Thank you, Charlie. So great to be with you.
- [48:43]
A
And thank you all for listening to this episode of to the Contrary podcast. We do this and this week is no exception because we need to remind ourselves that we are not the crazy ones. Although probably should take updates.
- [48:57]
B
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C
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