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Tom Nichols
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Charlie Sykes
I'm Charlie Sykes. Welcome to the to the Contrary podcast. I have to say, yesterday I had the opportunity to write my newsletter with the headline how the Young Right Lost Its Mind. We'll get to that in just a little while. Of course, JD Vance makes everything worse if you notice that As a pattern, J.D. vance, you know, whenever he waves in, he takes a shitty situation and just makes it that much shittier. Well, listen, we got a lot to talk about today, so we are joined again by our good friend Tom Nicholstaff writer for the Atlantic. Welcome back, professor expert.
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Tom Nichols
Thanks, Charlie.
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Derek Klassen
Glad to be back.
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Charlie Sykes
Duad, it's great to have you back. Look, there's so much to talk about. I mean, we're blowing up boats. We have the no Kings rally coming up this week. We have the peace deal, ceasefire deal in the Middle East. Donald Trump makes it very clear that America first really actually means Argentina First. You had a great tweet about that the other day. I want to talk about the young Republican bigots and the way that that story's played up. But can we just start with the rather extraordinary development involving the media and the Pentagon? The Pentagon goes dark. Let me just read you this paragraph from Oliver Darcy's newsletter. In less than 24 hours, the Pentagon is set to carry out an unprecedented expulsion of the press, stripping virtually all news organizations from their badges that grant them access to the building. The moves comes after virtually every news organization in the world declined to agree to a set of new draconian rules that Pete Hegs forced upon them as conditions for maintaining a press pass. So, Tom, this is your area of expertise. By the time people listen to this, it's possible that the only report credentialed reporter covering the Pentagon, the Department of War, will be Oan everybody else will be outside with their noses pressed up against the glass. What?
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Tom Nichols
Yeah, you know, I mean, defense and defense policy is an area of my expertise, but this is really a free speech and transparency issue. You know, it, it makes it worse because it's the Defense Department. And if the Department of Agriculture said you have to sign all these papers or you can't report on, you know, wheat yields like it's, you know, like the old Soviet Ministry of Agriculture or something. We people roll their eyes and say, okay, whatever, you know, but really, when it comes to national security and national defense, there is only, at least for what the government's doing, this one, you know, five sided building. That is where America's sons and daughters get their orders to go in harm's way. And Hegseth, I think this just proves what a small, insecure man Pete Hegseth is and how much he is really in over his head at the Pentagon. Because this isn't, you know, this is now.
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Charlie Sykes
Trump is backing him on this now. This is now the official policy of the Department of Defense that you have.
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Tom Nichols
To say of course it is.
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Charlie Sykes
Yeah. The lack of understanding of the role of the press in a free society, the role of accountability is kind of breathtaking. I mean, I suppose we should have been prepared for it, but these draconian rules essentially say that the reporters can't actually do any independent reporting. Can't put publish anything that the Pentagon does not. Okay. Doesn't write anything that is, I don't know, even remotely embarrassing. I mean, isn't the history of war and the history of defense. Doesn't it underline the necessity of, in a democratic society, asking hard questions because things can go terribly wrong? When we look back, does anybody think, you know, I wish the media hadn't asked more, you know, tough questions during the Gulf War or during the war in Afghanistan. Boy, I wish the media had been kept out of writing anything negative about Vietnam or Korea. I mean, really, it is kind of breathtaking with any understanding of military history. And yet, here we are.
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Tom Nichols
We've come a long way from the days when it was a real innovation to embed reporters with military units in the field. This is just the Pentagon. And hegseth has this 17 pages of hoop jumps that really amount to him saying, Pentagon reporters should just be stenographers. We'll give you a handout. You copy it down. But. But here's the thing. I take issue with you in one place, Charlie. You said that Trump and Hexa, they have this real lack of understanding of the role of a free press here. I disagree. I think they absolutely understand the role of a free press. And they hate it.
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Charlie Sykes
Hate it.
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Tom Nichols
It's not like they don't get it. It's not like Pete Hegseth, who for years was a TV personality on major network. It's not like they don't get the role of the free press. They get it. They just don't like it. And Eggseth especially, I think, doesn't like it. Because, first of all, the biggest source of the biggest Pentagon leak in recent history was. Wait, let me just check my notes here. Pete Hegseth. But also the leaks, a lot of the leaks that are coming out of the building now, some of which are not even reportable because they're at the level of gossip, but they're about Pete Hegseth, and that's what he's trying to stop. There's no issue here. Look, reporters have always known since World War II that there are just some things when it comes to war and operations and classified information. There are things you can't write about or shouldn't write about or in danger, you know, our, our kids out there. But this notion like, you can't just bump into somebody in the Pentagon and say, hey, you know, I'm working on a story. If you have something you want to talk about, give me a call. That's. That is sorry, you know, then. And what hangs that has resorted to now is this false image of what Pentagon reporters do. And I say full transparency. I am not. I'm a former Defense Department guy. I'm not. I was never a Pentagon reporter, but I know many of them pretty well. They were never allowed to just randomly walk around the building without identification or going to classified areas or pick files up off people's. This, this was bullshit from the beginning. What? Hegseth really doesn't care about who's getting access to the building. He cares about who's writing what about him?
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Charlie Sykes
Yes. Yeah, I mean, after you, you mentioned the leak when he, you know, obviously, for some reason shared war plans with your boss, Jeffrey Goldberg at the Atlantic, I mean, that was the worst. The worst leak. So for Pete Hegseth to lecture the rest of us, including the media, on the need to stop leaks, it is beyond absurd.
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Tom Nichols
But again, it's a classic government move. The search for the guilty and the punishment of the innocent.
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Charlie Sykes
Well, the good story, I mean, the good aspect of this story is that the media, everyone in the media, the entire journalism community understands the red line that is being drawn here. And, you know, there's, there's, there's no actual professional journalist who would have agreed to these. Now, OAN obviously is a propaganda outlet, but it's interesting when you look at the list of all of the media organizations that refuse to do it. I mean, it, it is, it's across the ideological spectrum. You have the Washington Post, but also the Washington Times, the New York Times, the Atlantic, but also Fox, Fox News. So this was one of those moment. Okay, okay, can we just stop with that? I mean, how bad does it have to be that Newsmax says no, I'm sorry, we are totally in the tank for maga, but that just seems a bridge too far. So this is the kind of collective action that I think that we've been looking for that has been necessary to have. And they took a principled stand, and we'll have to see what happens here.
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Tom Nichols
Yeah, I mean, Pete Hegseth is a uniter, not a divider. He's managed to put Newsmax, Fox, the New York Times, you know, the Atlantic, the Washington Post, all on the same side of an issue that's that's pretty impressive coalition building right there. And, and I, you know, I'll just foot stomp your point, Charlie. When Newsmax says, you know, even we have lines we're not going to cross. And it really does tell you something about Oan that they're, that you, they were the ones who said, yeah, sign us up, we'll do that. And when no one else would. And I think actually you and I are usually so gloomy. Can we say that this was a good day for democracy?
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Charlie Sykes
It was, it was a very good day. You know, there were, there are these sort of green shoots out there that we've talked about before. The fact that the airport, so many airports are now saying, hey, by the way, that Kristi Noem video where she's.
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Tom Nichols
We'Re not doing that.
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Charlie Sykes
We're just not doing that. We're not going to do your partisan hackery, you know, for people standing in line at tsa, good for them. And you know, many of them did it not because they're, they're necessarily anti Trump, who knows who they actually are, but because it's like, look, this is just completely inappropriate. This violates our policies. We're just not going to do it. We actually have standards and we're not going to become complete toadies. That seems, that seems relatively positive. So let's, yeah, let's.
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Tom Nichols
I flew internationally last, last week and I came back through Boston, my, you know, my hometown area.
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Charlie Sykes
And they let you back in.
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Tom Nichols
They did. There was no, no guns were drawn, no phones were seized. Yeah, you know, I was wearing, I was wearing the big nose, though, and the Groucho thing.
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Charlie Sykes
So they didn't have to see your social media accounts because yours would be.
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Tom Nichols
My password on my hand. Yeah, but I, but you know, it was, it's, a friend of mine pointed this out because he, he also, you know, was going through the airport at roughly the same time. You have to remember these airports, they're not run by, you know, the MAGA faithful. They're run by local people. There are people that, you know, go to work every day and you get to, you get to Logan and you don't hear, you know, you don't see a bunch of, you know, red hatted folks from Wyoming. You, you see and hear people talking about moving over there to get your baggage to move back. You know, they're local, they're not nobod a time for that. And I think again, it's a good, I was kind of looking around saying I didn't. Now maybe somewhere at Logan, there's a, you know, a Christine like, like Max Headroom, you know, Well, I just dated myself there, didn't I? But, you know, in a corner, there's a Christy Gnome head talking, but I didn't see it. And I think, you know, it struck me. These are folks that have to go to work every day. They're from the local area. And, and like I said, just they got a bunch of people. They got to get through customs and immigration, and ain't nobody got time for any of that bullshit.
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Charlie Sykes
Yeah, no, that, that, that was a good. That was a good sign. And by the way, going back to the fact that even Newsmax said no, I don't know whether we should connect the dots here, but there is a little bit of dissonance out there. There's a little bit of disturbance in the force when, when Marjorie Taylor Greene is looking around at the Republican Party and say, you know, you guys are kind of nutty. I mean, it's like, okay, excuse me. When Marjorie Taylor Greene says, yeah, I don't know, some of this stuff seems way too extreme for me, I out the, the hypocrisy and the feculence that I'm seeing here, and it's like, wait, it's Marjorie Taylor freaking Green. Who, by the way, there's not a new Marjorie Taylor Greene. I want people to curb their enthusiasm here, but get your take of what's going on there and whether it means anything.
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Tom Nichols
Marjorie. Jewish space lasers. Taylor Greene, you know that until now, but, you know, it suggests, Charlie, that one thing is that all of this other stuff, you know, the Jewish space lasers and all the conspiracy stuff, it suggests that she knew all along what she was doing, that she didn't really believe any of that stuff. Now, whether that's true, I don't know. You know, there's a really good. I'm going to direct people. I'm going to flog my. My magazine for a minute and say that there's a really good profile of her a few months back in the Atlantic that I really think people ought to read. But either she didn't really believe that stuff, or she's decided that that stuff just doesn't play in her hometown anymore. And now, you know, and there's also that third possibility that people keep bringing up about her, which is that after Trump kind of said, we need you in the House and squashed her dreams of some kind of state ride run senate or governor or something, that she said, okay, fine, you know, it's every, Every man for himself now. But in either way, I mean, it is, you know, once again kind of like Hegseth getting everybody on the same side. Here's you and here's you and me saying, hey, you know, Marjorie Taylor Greene, she's making a lot of sense these days because she is saying things that are pretty much straight up sensible about the Republicans. Now I agree with you. I doubt this is a new Marjorie Taylor Greene. I think, you know, that the, one of the hallmarks of the MAGA movement has been to go a lot of people just, you know, tackle with, with the wind and adjust their sales, doing what they got to do to stay in office. But it is, it's got to be pretty, it's got to be pretty uncomfortable for the administration to have one of its top cheerleaders now as you say, kind of like Newsmax and the others now looking and saying, hey, you guys are going a little far here, aren't you? You know, this is, this isn't working out here.
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Charlie Sykes
Well, the, the thing I, I, I, I'm not going to go so far as to say she's making sense because that, that's, but, but I have to say that I thought it was very interesting when she called out, you know, all the weak men in the Republican caucus because we have been talking about this for years. You know, what a bunch of dickless wonders. I mean, you know, one of these leaders after another, you know, engaging in self gelding and it's one thing for us. And then she's turning around and going, you know, you guys are weak. You guys are a bunch of whims and it's, it, it, I, I have to say that I did experience a bout of schadenfreude. Okay, so there's other bigger things to talk about, but I want to talk about something that you tweeted out, you highlighted, which I think is just one of the, there's so many weird stories that, you know, even say the weirdest story of the week like, you know, take, take a, take a pick. So there was this press available. Maybe it was a meeting of the, of the cabinet. And someone asks Trump, what is the benefit for the US in helping Argentina? Because in case people have missed this, the US Government is shut down, we don't have enough money for health care, variety of things. We are laying off US employees right and left. But we are about to bail out the regime in Argentina. So ask what's the benefit to the United States in helping Argentina? Trump just helping a great philosophy take over a great country with we don't have to do it. It's not going to make a big difference for our country. Mr. Nichols, what happened to America first.
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Tom Nichols
You know, and also, you know, it's an old, it's an old joke, Charlie, but, you know, 20 billion here, 20 billion there. Pretty soon you talk about some real money.
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Charlie Sykes
Big money.
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Tom Nichols
Yeah, big money. And, you know, this is, I think, first of all, it really underscores how much Donald Trump thinks as president that everything in America belongs to him, including the Treasury. So he doesn't look at it as $20 billion of taxpayer money that could go to extending hate, going to an issue Marjorie Taylor Greene keeps bringing up, you know, Obamacare and extending the ACA subsidies and, you know, the things that people in her rural district actually need. Instead, he says, that's 20 billion bucks. I got, I got that lying around here. I can help you out.
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Charlie Sykes
I got a friend, I got a friend in Argentina. And I mean, if you're a right wing regime and you suck up to me and you show up at cpac, I'm going to, I'm going to throw you a few billion.
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Tom Nichols
I got a, I got an envelope here that can help you out. And, but that, because again, he doesn't think of it as, he thinks of that as his money. He doesn't think of it as money that was handed over by you and me and by people working in restaurants and bars and factories and department stores. He thinks that's his money. And a buddy of his who said nice things about him needs a little cash to get to kind of make it through payday. And he's going to hand them an envelope and say, pay it back when you can. And, you know, this is, and he says it point blank. I'm just, again, I, I know we always do this and it's tiring, but imagine if Barack Obama.
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Charlie Sykes
I know.
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Tom Nichols
Or Joe Biden had handed $20 billion to somebody to say, no, there's nothing in it for us, just a good ideology that I happen to like. Yeah, we're with this. I'm giving it to this. I don't know, you know, pick your. I'm giving it to the Prime Minister of Canada because he's a handsome liberal. I'm giving it to Trudeau because I like the cut of his jib. You know, people would lose their minds and rightfully so. $20 billion in the middle of a government shutdown is a lot of effing money.
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Charlie Sykes
You would think so. Okay, so I do want to get to the, you know, young Republican bigots and J.D. vance. But this leads me to the Mideast deal, because we're talking about envelope stuff with cash. There is a school of thought out there, of course, that Donald Trump was uniquely the right person at the right time for this deal, because in the Middle east, his transactional thuggery just helps him fit in. Right. It's a, you know, it's, you know, the cutter knows how to play the game. They give him an airplane, they get a. They get a military facility in return for all of that. Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff are, you know, making crypto deals with uae, all of that. So your sense of where we're at on the Mid east deal, and I want to read this because you may know that I am. I have staked out a contrary and rather negative view of the whole thing. But the Economist had a quick update on how the cease fire is going, the Gaza cease fire. And keep in mind, there's 20 points. The, the, you know, phase one is, was the release of the hostages, and then there's a lot of. But we're gonna have to negotiate all the rest, which are somewhat complicated. So the Economist reported almost immediately, the ceasefire has brought the first alarming sign of how the broader peace deal might implode. Hamas fighters have emerged armed and in uniform, to reassert themselves in the streets of Gaza City. The benign explanation is that in order to implement the first stage of the ceasefire, Hamas must be in control of the parts of the cities so it can carry out the hostage. But far from signaling magnanimous goodwill, which we never expected from Hamas, Hamas has started settling scores with killings and kidnappings of members of local clans who have tried to carve out their own fiefs. Heck, we have these scenes of public executions. So Hamas is still there. It is still armed. It is still killing people. It's wonderful that the hostages are home. But this is your. We're in your wheelhouse. Now. Give me your sense of all of the, I would say, exuberant optimism we saw earlier this week versus the actual facts on the ground.
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Tom Nichols
Yeah. I'll start by saying the limitation on my expertise here is that I'm, you know, I talk a lot about foreign policy, but I'm not a Middle east guy. So I'm looking at this also in some way as an outsider. I. But it seems to me that the thing that really unlocked this was Netanyahu foolishly attacking Qatar and carrying out that raid interest, and that that opened the door to a lot of stuff, because it was, I think that was A terrific strategic blunder. Let's give not three cheers, maybe one cheer for at least some of the diplomacy in the Trump administration that they were able to capitalize on that and not screw it up. Which, you know. Yeah, I mean, you know, look, Trump kind of like a relief pitcher, right? I mean, Trump gets credit for the win, at least some credit for the win. But that, the, the only thing I see that's a win is getting the living hostages back. I don't, I don't think that's going to end very much of anything else. You know, God rest this. So I had a colleague at the Naval War College, a brilliant man named Michael Handel, who used to say, whenever he was asked, he would say he was an Israeli himself and he'd say, well, I am sure of this, there will be strife in the Middle East.
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Charlie Sykes
Not going out on a limb there.
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Tom Nichols
Yeah. If Michael's, Michael's answer was there will be conflict in the Middle East. And I think, as you point out, look, Hamas isn't gone. The people of Gaza are still in a terrible situation. You can argue about whether the Israelis, you know, have re. Empowered what's left. But of Hamas, on the, on the other hand, they've destroyed most of Hamas, but that still leaves the people in Gaza at the mercy of, as you pointed out, people in the streets in uniforms. I think, I think what's going to happen here is that the Trump administration, as it is prone to do, is going to take this as a box check, because these things only matter insofar as they reflect glory back on Donald Trump. So they're going to take this as a box check, mission accomplished, I've solved another war. The hostages are home and they're going to move on and they're not going to care very much what happens next.
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Charlie Sykes
And yet what happens next is the hard part. I mean, the infinitely hard part. It's almost a cliche to say that, but first of all, the Mideast is still the Mideast. The reconstruction of Gaza, you know, under the best conditions would be, is infinitely complicated. But we don't have the best conditions. We have some of the worst malign, bad faith actors on the planet intimately involved in all of that. What could go wrong? Oh, my God. And if Trump just simply moves on, who knows what's going to happen? I mean, literally within a week, we could have, you know, Netanyahu begin bombing again. Right. Say they violated the terms, they're not going along with it, and we're going to start up again because we've had ceasefires before people. I know that nobody has any, you know, muscle memory here, but Joe Biden actually did help negotiate a ceasefire that resulted in the release of, I think 100 of the, of the hostages. And that cease fire didn't last. So, again, we have a ceasefire, not a peace deal.
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Tom Nichols
Well, and it's a lot easier, you know, the, that the, one of the, the truths in war. It's a lot easier to get a ceasefire when both sides are exhausted.
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Charlie Sykes
Yes.
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Tom Nichols
And both sides see some value in just catching their breath at some point. And I think, you know, as you point out, what comes next is, is the hard part. But that's never been something that, that doesn't interest Trump. Details bore him. And, you know, we'll, I hate to sound like Trump is saying, well, you know, we're going to see what happens. We'll look at it two weeks. But I still think that the, the nature of Trump's diplomacy is to go in, solve it, then let other people come in and, you know, make their deals and make money and whatever they're going to do that benefits them and people around Trump. But, but the idea that, you know, somehow this is going to be now, we have, you know, dedicated attention paid to this. And there's one other thing that we have to bear in mind here, Charlie Netanyahu has a personal political survival issue.
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Charlie Sykes
I was just going to ask you.
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Tom Nichols
That next, letting this thing peter out. You know, I mean, part of the reason this war went on as long as it did, and here I suppose you could give some credit to Trump again, to say this is finally the guy that was willing to say to Netanyahu, I've had enough of you. I mean, I'm just, I'm fed up with this, you know, instead of trying to, to, you know, work with him or placate him somehow. But, you know, Netanyahu, part of the reason this war dragged on is it was in Netanyahu's interest to let it drag on. Nothing has changed in that peace means.
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Charlie Sykes
That Netanyahu will, A, probably lose power, B, might end up going to jail. He has a massive incentive not to have this war come to an end politically and legally.
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Commercial Announcer
Right.
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Tom Nichols
Right. You know, that's, and that's why, that's part of the reason it went on for so long.
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Charlie Sykes
Well, let's talk about, let's talk about, you know, sort of move on to other things that obviously Trump was deeply disappointed he did not win the Nobel Prize. Probably figures he definitely deserves the Nobel Prize now. But on Friday, Volodymyr Zelensky is coming to Washington to meet with Trump. Now, Trump is still in this I can solve anything mode, and he's been at least suggesting the possibility of giving Ukraine Tomahawk missiles, which seems to, and correct me if I'm wrong, seems to uniquely bother the Russians where the Russians have really. Oh, yes, you know, you know, raise the red flag, the Tomahawk missile. Well, tell me why they are so concerned and whether that would be a game changer because this is, this now seems to be the biggest, the biggest card that Trump has to play. Hey, you know, Vladimir, you've been, you've been fucking me over, you've been screwing me around. I might give the Ukrainians the Tomahawk missiles. So talk to me about the Tomahawk missile.
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Tom Nichols
Okay, so let's talk. Let's. Now we are in my nerd wheelhouse. Let's talk Tomahawks. Tomahawk missiles are very capable cruise missiles that hypothetically can have a range of as, as far as 1500 miles. The versions that we have now, they're, I mean, think about 900 to 1,000 as a, as more reasonable but dual capable, can carry a nuclear warhead, hugs the ground. So even though they are subsonic and you can shoot them down, they're hard to spot because they're small and they, they come in low. And there's a psychological issue to this, which is that during the Cold War, Tomahawk, or as the Russians called it, Tomagov, you know, that was like a real boogeyman. The Tomahawk was one of the weapon systems that really worried them because that's the thing that, you know, could show up deep inside Soviet territory without them knowing it. We used to joke that we, you know, back during the Cold War people had studied this stuff, that there just weren't enough farmers standing in enough fields with shotguns to shoot them all down, you know, because they fly about as fast as a jetliner. You know, you just like the, the Soviets are like, oh my God, we're gonna, you know, stand there with like, you know, squirrel guns. So the system really bothers them because it has Cold War overtones to it, but it also is a very capable system. And yeah, it will. It will. Since you were the first one to drop an F bomb, I guess I'll follow you in and say it will fuck up their lives. And. Which is not to say, look, the Ukrainians already have other systems. The Brits provided some long range similar missiles. The Ukrainians have a native version that they're producing, but it is a symbol. It's, it's not just a more capable system. It's a symbol of a greater American investment in the outcome of this war. And I think.
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Charlie Sykes
So whether I'm an escalation.
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Tom Nichols
Well, yeah, it's an escalation in the sense of a political escalation. I don't think it adds that much more except that it is, it's an escalation in the sense that the, so the old Soviets, the new Russians, you know, because remember, Putin's always an old Soviet guy and at heart has said, listen, you know, we've bullshitted around about a lot of things. This will really bother me.
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Charlie Sykes
And he's made that.
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Tom Nichols
I think the Americans rightly, look, I, you know, for the first six months of this war, I was a go slow guy. I was very much supportive of Biden's approach of don't muddy the waters, don't send in a lot of Western systems, you know, don't. But, but in this case now, you know, Putin's the boy who's cried WOL many times and saying, no, no, this, this is the new red line. Now with all that said, will we really do it? The problem is that Trump was asked about this and as you know, Trump never says no to a hypothetical.
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Charlie Sykes
Right, Right.
- [32:30]
Tom Nichols
I mean, you could get on Air Force one and say, Mr. President, you're going to provide, you're going to provide Ukraine with B2 bombers and Minutemen missiles and hydrogen bombs. And he'd say, well, you know, I could, I have, I can, I have the right to, I'm thinking about it. I'm looking at it strongly. We might not, maybe we will. I mean, he answers all hypotheticals that way. So whether or not this actually is a policy change, I'll believe it when I see actual Tomahawks going to Ukraine. But then, yeah, you know, you're going to, it's going to get bumpy. The, the Russians are really going to react to that. I mean, again, what does that mean? They will provoke NATO more, they will do more border violations. They will murder Ukrainians at an even greater clip to try to get them not to do this. But, you know, maybe in this sense we've, we're, we, we all share Donald Trump's frustration with Vladimir Putin. Now, you know, part of the reason Putin is this way is because Donald Trump taught him to be this way by sucking up to him and by, you know, enabling him and defending him and talking about what a great guy he is and what great friends they are. So, you know, I'll believe it when I see it. But, yes, it's an escalation. It's a different kind of system, and it will have. It's a system that has a serious psychological impact on people old enough to remember the Cold War.
- [33:54]
Charlie Sykes
Okay, so technical question, and this is based on something I heard out of the Russians, which is that the Tomahawk missiles obviously are not just an escalation for the reasons you described, but also because they would require American personnel, American troops to operate them.
- [34:11]
Tom Nichols
Is that the case that, you know, my, my level of technical knowledge about how to operate a Tomahawk is pretty low at this point. So I don't know if that's true. I doubt it. I doubt that. I think what the Russians are trying to say is, see, this is going to be an escalation because they're going to be Americans directly involved.
- [34:33]
Charlie Sykes
I can't see Trump doing that. See that. That's where I would think that America is going to. I mean, that Trump is good to talk about. So, speaking of blowing things up, the one thing that Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth can blow up with, apparently with impunity, our boats in the Caribbean. We have another boat, six people killed. And once again, I'm struck by the fact that we never get much information about who they are. You would think that they would at least be, they would go through some steps of saying, these are the individuals. This is our evidence. This is nothing. So I don't know what the body count is among Venezuelans. The president of Colombia, an ally of ours, said that there were Colombian citizens who were blown up, but we haven't gotten any more evidence or information about that. But again, your thoughts on this? Because there seems to be little or no sanction in international law for just blowing up boats that we could otherwise interdict.
- [35:37]
Tom Nichols
First, let us, let us note that Donald Trump is puzzled why he can't get a Nobel Peace Prize. Well, it's amazing when you are ordering the US Military to engage in extrajudicial execution of people on the high seas by blowing their boats to smithereens. The Peace Committee frowns on this. This is not normally, you know, I mean, I'm sure, you know, Trump is thinking, well, if Henry Kissinger could get one, you know, I can get one. But, you know, normally just blowing up civilian maritime ships, you know, really looked down upon by things that call themselves peace committees. I think these are not legal orders. I think these are a violation not only of international law. Look, as an old. It's important to remind people that you and I were once and are still conservatives and that I don't sweat a lot of international law. In fact, I was going through some old editorial cartoons about Ronald Reagan that I, I kept for years and one of them was Reagan the off screen flashing mooning the the court, International Court of Justice about mining the Nicaraguan harbors. Remember that one? You know, we were found guilty of mining the harbors in the re administration said, you know, we don't care. There's a part of me that says international law doesn't really work that well unless, and here's the kicker, unless we are signatories to these treaties and agreements, in which case they become the law of the land of the United States. International agreements, international treaties. For you legal beagles, it's Missouri v. Holland, 1922. Treaties are the law of the land. So Trump is not only violating the law, he's violating American law because he's conducting military operations under an imperial interpretation of Article 2, which says I can kill anyone I want, anyone with the military, the U.S. and once again, right. Just like his money that he's sending to Argentina, the US Military belongs to me. It is not George Washington's military. Where we are, you know, I am the temporary commander in chief and steward of the most powerful force in the world. This is my army, my militia, my guys, my generals. And they do what I tell them. And we've, you know, again, we've come a long way from the 2016 debates when he said, well, if I tell them to torture, they'll do it.
- [38:24]
Charlie Sykes
I remember that.
- [38:25]
Tom Nichols
Remember that he said, the generals, I do what I tell them to do. Well, apparently we're now at the point where, because back then generals and a lot of other people pushed back and said they're not going to do that.
- [38:35]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah.
- [38:36]
Tom Nichols
Because that's not, that's against the law. We're now to the point where, yes, he's proving the admirals in the Navy will do what they're told to do, even if those orders are okay.
- [38:48]
Charlie Sykes
This is, this is, this is a huge point because I think that there's a little bit of wishful thinking out there that there's at some point you will have members of the military who will say, you know, Mr. President, I cannot obey that unlawful order or will push back or will resign in the case of these extrajudicial killings in the Caribbean. To your point, there is no pushback. There is no indication at all in the chain of command that anyone is saying, no, I'm sorry, I don't know who's in that boat. I think that would be unlawful to kill those people. Nothing. The admirals, everyone down has basically saluted and, and, and followed the order. This is, this is a significant and ominous development.
- [39:31]
Tom Nichols
This is why he fired the top military lawyers right away, because there are still military lawyers. And I'm sure several of them are saying this is pretty shaky stuff. But the people who would be the top, you know, the people that would give them top cover aren't there anymore. The people that are supposed to walk in and tell not just the President, but the Secretary of Defense, the Chief of Naval Operations to say this, this isn't going to pass the smell test. You can't just. The President does not have the unilateral authority to declare people terrorists and then execute them at will. And, you know, some of, some of the folks in MAGA world keep going back to Obama killing an American citizen overseas, which, you know, was a different. And I, and I warned, I warned that this was going to happen, that, you know, they were going to use this as an excuse because that was a pretty tough case. But Obama was acting under congressional authorization. He'd made the case that this person was identified, known to be in this activity, couldn't be apprehended, couldn't be stopped, had to be taken out. These are like, you know, we just killed a bunch of guys on the boat. Who were they? I don't know.
- [40:46]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah, maybe they were drug dealers, maybe they were gang members, maybe they were fishermen. We just do not know and we don't have any of the names. Okay, so in the, in the few minutes we have left, I have to talk to you about J.D. vance. I want to get your take on J.D.
- [40:58]
Commercial Announcer
Vance.
- [40:58]
Tom Nichols
Must we?
- [40:59]
Charlie Sykes
Because that's kind of the way I feel. It is interesting, you know, that J.D. vance has. Makes almost everything worse. I mean, when he was on with George Stephanopoulos over the weekend, he's asked about Tom holman and the $50,000 in cash. By the way, that story is not going away, which is kind of interesting to me. There's a couple of stories that have some stickiness, and he just blustered his way through this. But I want to talk about the young bigots of the GOP story, and everybody's heard this story by now. Politico broke the story. Leaders of young Republican groups throughout the country worried what would happen if their telegram chat ever got leaked. But they kept typing anyway. Referred to black people as monkeys and watermelon. People mused about putting Their political opponents in gas chambers. They talked about raping their enemies, driving them to suicide, lauded Republicans who they believe supported slavery. William Hendricks, the Kansas City Republican vice chair, used the word, the N word, several variations of it, more than a dozen times. Bobby Walker, the vice chair of the New York State Young Republicans, referred to rape as epic. Peter, his name is Ginta. Ginta, who at the time was chairman of the New York Young Republicans, wrote in a message that everyone that votes no is going to the gas chamber. Okay, so look, how should Republicans react? You know, with panic and then with introspection. The national Young Republicans, I think reacted very quickly and forcefully said that everybody involved in this needs to go. It is disgraceful, they need to resign. And yet so again, you know, almost every human being on earth says this is unacceptable, you need to do something about it. Most responsible Republicans said get rid of them. And then the Vice President of the United States weighs in and I just want to emphasize J.D. vance. Yeah, J.D. vance Vice President, United States could have like did not have to weigh in on this controversy. He could have been busy with the Mideast peace with a government shutdown. Instead though, he dismissed the whole controversy as pearl clutchen. And he does the sort of hackish what about ism Pointing to this controversy about the Democratic candidate for attorney general in Virginia who had had some, you know, musing about, you know, shooting a political opponent, which by the way is terrible.
- [43:20]
Tom Nichols
It's awful.
- [43:21]
Charlie Sykes
No, I'm not going to offer any defense. But Vance refused to join in the condemnation of these trolls who praised Adolf Hitler, described the NBA as monkey play ball and says that this is nothing but, oh, it's a college group chat and you know, not as bad as this other thing and referred to it as pearl clutching. I mean on Earth 2.0 you either don't weigh in or you reaffirm your commitment to non bigotry or you back up the young Republican. I mean, I'm sorry, since I've already dropped the F bomb, what the, what the actual fuck is going on in J.D. vance's mind?
- [44:05]
Tom Nichols
What's that line from a famous stand up comedian? I have the right to remain silent. I just don't have the ability.
- [44:12]
Charlie Sykes
You.
- [44:13]
Tom Nichols
Know, that, you know, Vance didn't have to weigh in on this, but he does if he's thinking about when Trump is out of the way and I'm the new standard bearer, these young guys are going to be my boys because they'll remember that I stood up for them against, you know, the woke weenies and Pearl clutchers. You know the person I thought that one of those comments. What's that?
- [44:40]
Charlie Sykes
You're exactly right.
- [44:41]
Tom Nichols
Yeah, he knows. I mean, he's, he's, you know, he's farming support for the future, you know, from guys that, you know, two, three years from now, be a few years older, get out there and start, you know, phone banking or whatever they're going to do for him. David French, I think, had one of the best comments on this and I even pulled it up because it really struck me as true. He says none of this is remotely surprising. It's in group signaling. You show your commitment to the cause through your disregard of basic decency. And where I want to bring that back to Vance is yes, young men do this. Look, Charlie, when I was 19 years old, I said a lot of. I'm so glad social media and phones didn't exist. I said a lot of terrible shit that when I was 18, 19 years old and I was in college and I thought it was fun to be shocking and transgressive and you know, I grew up in a working class home where we said a lot of inappropriate things. Right. But the way young men learn to not be that way is that older men tell them not to be that way and they set those guardrails up and they say, look, I was young once to stop being an. This is terrible.
- [45:51]
Charlie Sykes
Exactly right.
- [45:52]
Tom Nichols
You know, this is terrible.
- [45:53]
Charlie Sykes
I can remember having conversations like that. Absolutely.
- [45:56]
Tom Nichols
I get it. You're, you know, you're 19, you think it's funny to say you like Hitler. You have no idea what you're saying, what you're talking about. You just think it's a gas, you think it's a joke. You know, it's shocking. But okay, now it's time to put on your big boy pants and, and stop being a jerk. And instead Vance came out and said, my man, my boys, I got you back.
- [46:24]
Charlie Sykes
He sees them as a constituency.
- [46:26]
Tom Nichols
Of course he does.
- [46:27]
Charlie Sykes
A constituency that he has to defend. Well, I think this is a really important insight because JD Vance apparently has made the decision that he is not going to be outflanked on the right no matter how far it goes. And so it's the wink, wink to not just, it's a wink, wink to the Nick Fuentes is out there that, don't worry, I'm never going to go weenie on you. I'm never going to clutch my pearls no matter what you say. And I do think that he thinks he's banking goodwill. But you would think in a normal world that you'd be reluctant to do that knowing that there's a potential of alienating everyone else. But the Republican Party as a whole has become so supine and it has stopped. I mean, we're here today because all of the referees, all of the grownups who used to set the limits have either disappeared or have just figured, hey, just keep our heads down. Right. There's nobody who's going to excommunicate them anymore. Which is why.
- [47:30]
Tom Nichols
What has the Republican electoral and political system taught J.D. vance? Remember, he was losing to a guy who was Josh Mandela, who was really pretty bad. You know, just this, this Roman candle of offensive every day. Right. And, and Vance simply couldn't get on his right. He couldn't capture that, you know, the crazy, the crazy vote. And then Trump rides in and says, this is my guy. And he lifts him at the last minute over Mandel. I think, you know, just like Tucker Carlson saying, you know, the way I stay on in the public conscious would be as crazy as I need to be to keep, you know, the cameras on and the money coming in. Vance has said, I'm never going to let that happen to me again. Because that was a near death experience.
- [48:23]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah.
- [48:23]
Tom Nichols
For Vance. And the thing that saved him was move having Trump endorse him and that he had to finally get over to where Mandel was and say things that were equally disgusting and crazy. And when you said he's not going to be outflanked on the right, the word I, he's not going to be outflanked on the disgusting wing of the right, you know that he, he figures, hey, votes are votes, right. I mean, nobody asks you on primary day. And that's the other thing. Right. He, all he has to do is survive a Republican primary. He doesn't. As far as he's concerned, that's a, that's a lock once he gets past being Trump's successor. And so, you know, there's simply nothing.
- [49:06]
Charlie Sykes
So this is actually a very dramatic tell. This is really a tell of his read of the political environment and what it takes to flourish in even the post Trump political environment. This is not just some side story. This is what the Vice President, United States believes about the dynamics of Republican primary elections in politics.
- [49:28]
Tom Nichols
And is he wrong?
- [49:30]
Charlie Sykes
No, he's not wrong. But we'll.
- [49:33]
Tom Nichols
And there's the hard Brianny. But it also shows you the utter emptiness of JD Vance, a guy that just, you know, years ago was talking about. I mean, I, we keep repeating it and I know, you know, It's a trope now. But Trump, J.D. vance, the guy who called Trump cultural heroine, the guy who called Trump potentially America's Hitler, America's Hitler, you know, has said, okay, but I've been to the Emerald City. I like it. You know, again, I think so many people, I know I sound reductive when I say this, but so many people in this administration and so many people around Trump say to themselves, where would I be if not for this? Right?
- [50:16]
Charlie Sykes
Well, absolutely. That's not reductive. That's descriptive.
- [50:19]
Tom Nichols
I get picked up in the morning, people bring me coffee, a limo drives me to work. People are courtiers to me all day. And we're. If I weren't here, you know, what would I be doing? And J.D. vance would be, first of all, J.D. van's not gonna go back to Ohio. That was, that was a temporary solution, you know, you know, his Senate run problem. Where would J.D. vance be? Probably in, you know, one of the hated blue states being, you know, making money again. That's boring. And I think, you know, for once you've tasted that life and, and you've been inside that circle of power. You know, not just inside the beltway. We always talk about inside the Beltway, but just inside that federal triangle that's even smaller than the Beltway. You're not going back. And I think Vance has decided whatever that takes is whatever it takes.
- [51:15]
Charlie Sykes
We need a new phrase for that because you're exactly right. It's. No, the, the inside the beltway is, Is an obsol. Need to have the inside. Whatever it is inside that little sack of scorpions and snakes and frogs that we know where Pennsylvania Avenue.
- [51:30]
Tom Nichols
I mean, it's, you know, it's like Pennsylvania from, you know, that's it. I mean, you could, the, the kind of number of people that are the problem here, you could almost contain, you know, from Independence up to Lafayette Square. I mean, it's, it's really, it's really. I, I sometimes bristle at inside the Beltway because, you know, having been there, I'm always reminded that there are a lot of people serving their country and doing good work and trying to get things done inside the Beltway. You know, people who think that it's good to have their federal checks arrive and have the airports open and to have international trade going and have their passports work. All that happens because of stuff that happens, you know, air quoting. Inside the Beltway. The bigger problem is in a much smaller, tighter circle between 1600 and Capitol Hill.
- [52:23]
Charlie Sykes
So I'm going to work on that although I'm trying to resist coming up with a really gross description because that's not this kind of a podcast. Tom Nichols, thank you so much for joining me. Thank you for your time and for your insight. It's always good to have you, Tom.
- [52:38]
Tom Nichols
Thank you, Charlie.
- [52:39]
Charlie Sykes
And thank you all for listening to this episode of to the Contrary podcast. We will continue to do this for the duration because as you know, it is essential now. Well, it's always essential to remind ourselves that we are not the crazy ones.
- [52:54]
Commercial Announcer
Thank you.
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Tom Nichols
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Tom Nichols
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