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- [00:00]
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- [00:34]
Tom Nichols
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- [00:34]
Charlie Sykes
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- [01:01]
Tom Nichols
Bubba Wallace here with Tyler Reddick. You know what's more nerve wracking than waiting for qualifying results? Waiting for the green flag to drop.
- [01:07]
Charlie Sykes
Instead of pacing, you rev up with.
- [01:09]
Tom Nichols
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- [01:41]
Charlie Sykes
Welcome back to the to the Contrary podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes, joined by my fellow denizen of darkness, Tom Nichols. Tom, thanks for coming back on the podcast.
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Tom Nichols
Thank you for welcoming me back to the gloom, Charlie.
- [01:56]
Charlie Sykes
Well, okay. We need to find something to be, you know, positive about. So apparently work on the new White House ballroom has begun and is proceeding. It's going to be bigger, even bigger than we originally thought it was. So there's that good news. There is. There is something there. You know, when I say, you know, darkness, I feel like we are caught in this kind of this loop where you go, boy, things are bad. I didn't think things were going to get this bad. You and I thought that things were going to get this bad. You and I probably predicted this. But still, this last week, I mean, I know that people want to move on from all of this, but it is really extraordinary what we're seeing and how naked. I mean, you know, we had the murder of Charlie Kirk. We had some ghastly celebrations of it, which I've written about. You've commented on it as well. And then we have seen the weaponization of this assassination. And the Trump folks are not making any secret. There's no subtlety about what they are doing, that they want to weaponize this as really a way of quashing dissent. Now, I wrote this morning, look, I mean, several things can be true at the same time. Political violence is never acceptable, but political violence should not be a pretext to suppress political speech. And yet you can tell the way this is going. So let me just. Can I just start by reading you some stuff? Sure. You know, for people who think, you know, what are we talking about? Okay, so we have all this Civil War talk. We have all the. Again, I'm struck once again, and forgive me if we've said this before, the asymmetry where you have people on the right saying, you people on the left, you've engaged in this terrible rhetoric. You've called us Nazis, you've called us fascists. And yet at the same time, they are calling people on the other side terrorists. They're calling them evil, they're calling them communists. And then we have people like Laura Loomer. I would normally not mention Laura Loomer because she is a crazed conspiracy theory bigot, but Donald Trump listens to her. She has an end of the White House, and I want to read this little post that she had. I was thinking about this over the last few nights while I couldn't sleep. I have to say, I do want President Trump to be the dictator the left thinks he is. And I want the right to be as devoted to locking up and silencing our violent political enemies as they pretend we are. I've had enough of the left only thinking we will defund them, prosecute them, lock them up, and dismantle their power for generations to come. It just needs to happen now. I don't know. We're not supposed to say it, but that sounds pretty fascisty to me. And Donald Trump seems to be channeling that kind of attitude as well these days.
- [04:46]
Tom Nichols
And J.D. vance and a lot of others. And your point about the asymmetry is really striking because I do think it's dangerous to call people fascists and communists and Nazis and vermin and human scum. But apparently, you know, the people on the right only think it's dangerous, don't think it's dangerous when Trump does it. And I think it's important to point out, you know, and it's been, I'm laughing, but it's not funny that the only two people on record who have really called Donald Trump Hitler are J.D. vance and RFK Jr.
- [05:29]
Charlie Sykes
Yes. You know, so using the word Hitler.
- [05:32]
Tom Nichols
Yeah, literally using the word Hitler. And so, you know, there is this kind of immense. I kind of hate the term gaslighting because it, it's. People use it to mean anything they don't like and any lie. But that, that is gaslighting. It's like you people on the left calling people names, you know, and then saying, you're Marxist, you're fat. It always cracked me up, by the way.
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Charlie Sykes
Terrorist, you're scum, you're evil.
- [05:59]
Tom Nichols
Terrorist, you're scum. But it always cracked me up as a professor, I guess, trying to be pedantic and careful about words. I always kind of laugh when Trump would say these people are Marxist communist fascists. Like, yeah, those are all contradict. I mean, it's like saying that, you know, you're. These people are vegetarian carnivores, you know, it doesn't make any sense. Mad libs with it. He just throws out bad words. But, you know, let's go back to the original point, Charlie. None of that's an excuse for violence. Not, not from anybody. But apparently, as you say, the, you know, the Trump. Trump and his supporters are going to run toward this as a way of suppressing people's freedom of speech. And I think you could see that coming when Trump was already out there establishing a narrative that the shooter was, you know, this is a radical left. You know, this radical left lunatic guy. They didn't even have a suspect. They had no one in custody when Trump said that he was. And I think one of the things you saw them doing, because the narrative on this guy that shot, that assassinated Charlie Kirk, I'm willing to. I'm one of the people willing to use the term assassinated Charlie Kirk was definitely assassination. It was an assassination. It wasn't just a random murder. This guy that assassinated Kirk, his story, I'm gonna bet, having written many times about these killers over the past years, his narrative is going to be pretty tangled and weird and confused. Um, and what you're seeing is people on the right saying, no, no, forget all that. Let's get out there ahead of this, establish the narrative that this guy was, you know, far left, Soros funded, you know, crazed lefty, Marxist, Leninist, you know, with pictures of, you know, Brezhnev in his room. And, and so. And I think they're doing that intentionally to get ahead. Of course they are. The much messier story that's gonna. That always comes out when you when you find one of these shooters, okay.
- [08:06]
Charlie Sykes
Well, the story is going to be messy, but the narrative, I think is going to overwhelm it. As, as you point out, whatever comes out won't change the narrative because the narrative, there's just too much investment in it. There's too much ideological incentives behind all of this. I think Kara Swisher made the point that this is gonna be very, very messy and it's gonna be very, very hard. I think for a lot of folks to get their head around this would include any of us. You know, the people not in the gamer world that this guy was extremely online, was immersed in memes that are almost incomprehensible unless you are deeply, deeply in that world with, you know, layers of irony on top of irony. Very difficult. I think I read somebody said something like, there, there is no boomer journalist who's going to be able to translate any of this into anything coherent. But again, the narrative is going to be, well, it's Charlie.
- [08:59]
Tom Nichols
You know, I've always prided myself on being a gaming nerd, but I am an old school gaming nerd from the 90s and the 2000s and the, you know, 2010s. And I admit, I, I can't make sense out of. I'm, I'm not part of that gaming community. You know, I don't hang out on discord and I don't know all the kind of in stuff. I mean, I'm a nerd in the sense that I have too much disposable income and I buy big honking gaming computers for my amusement. And I think that's right, you know, that, that the, anybody under 50 isn't going to be able to disentangle this. And the reason they're getting out there, this, if this guy, if you walked into this guy's room tomorrow, it was covered in, you know, Nazi banners and, you know, it turns, you know, groiper propaganda and kill Charlie Kirk on his wall and all that stuff. It would just wave that away and say, this is all just the far left. And that is going to become an excuse. Just today, apparently Vance said something like, well, we're going to go after the funding for these NGOs that do that. I'm sitting here going, what is he even talking about? I mean, they're okay, well, they are.
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Charlie Sykes
Very serious about this.
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Tom Nichols
Oh yeah. What they're doing is they're making the jump from what happened to Charlie Kirk to let's go after people we've always wanted to go after anyway.
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Charlie Sykes
Okay? This is the key point, and wrote in my newsletter on Monday, I think people need to understand that, you know, Stephen Miller and J.D. vance and Donald Trump have wanted to go after those NGOs. They want to go after these progressive organizations in George Soros. And they've said it before Charlie Kirk was murdered, but they are now using this as a, as a pretext to supercharge this. Look, Donald Trump may throw the words up against the wall, but, I mean, Stephen Miller and I do think we need to take him seriously and literally. He is the chief ideologuer and architect of many of Trump's policies. And he has been out there for some time saying, in fact, just last month he was saying, the Democratic Party is not a real political party. It is an entity devoted exclusively, exclusively to the defense of hardened criminals, gang bangers and illegal aliens, killers and terrorists. It is not a political party. It is a domestic extremist organization. Okay? Now, if we even think about that for a few minutes, if the Democrats are not a political party, then you do not compromise with them. You do not treat them, give them the deference that you would treat your opposition in a democratic society. And, of course, this is the linchpin of authoritarianism. So let's go back to this weekend. You probably saw what Stephen Miller had to say, and both he and Trump are talking about jailing George Soros, and they're using the same language about using RICO to go after him. This is what, this is what he said. He's basically threatening to crush this political opposition by any means necessary. These are his words. I don't care how. It could be a RICO charge, a conspiracy charge, conspiracy against the United States insurrection. But we are going to do what it takes to dismantle the organizations and the entities that are fomenting riots, that are doxing, that are trying to inspire terrorism, that are committing acts of wanton violence. And then he says, we will not live in fear. But you will live in exile because the power of law enforcement under President Trump's leadership will be used to find you, to take away your money, take away your power, and if you've broken the law, to take away your freedom, implying that we're going to come after you even if you haven't broken the law. Look, I'm sorry. I know that we're not supposed to use these languages, but if that's not fascist, I don't know what is fascist. And I feel comfortable in saying that Stephen Miller is a fascist down to the last follicle on his head.
- [12:39]
Tom Nichols
Your thoughts Well, I said about Trump, one of the reasons I was trying to get people to be careful about you using the term fascist is because it burns out people's brains after a while that when you need the word at a moment like this, it just goes off into the ether because, you know, it's been, people have been using it for, you know, 50 years. I've said about Trump, he has the soul of a fascist and the mind of a disordered child. And I think that Miller is no different. That, you know, whether or not these, this government has become functionally fascist, these guys have fascist. Their, their inclination is fascist. And by that we mean exterminating all political opposition, all venues for political opposition, shutting down all non state approved modes of communication and expression. You know, even if you could argue that the government itself is not functioning like a fascist government yet, what Miller and others want to do is classic authoritarianism. And yes, verging into fascism. Shut down all modes of communication that are not state approved, orient everything around the leader. You know, just disband and extinguish political organizations that oppose the leader in any way. You know, authoritarian regimes will tolerate a certain amount of opposition, tolerate a certain amount of organization outside of its control. The way Miller's talking, this is, you know, basically the power of the government is going to extend into every corner of American life and find anyone who has said anything bad about the great leader and extinguish their right to free speech.
- [14:32]
Charlie Sykes
Well, and it's more than just simply demonizing the political opposition. I mean, again, talking about using the full power of the federal government, when the president muses about criminally charging somebody or locking them up, you have to take that seriously. Especially given the fact that the FBI has basically become now his personal police force and the Department of Justice. Justice is an extension of his own obsessions. You do wonder what the implications are for the midterm elections for 2028. I'm one of those who have been very, very skeptical of people. You know, the alarmism, like, oh, there's going to be something that's going to happen. I mean, look, we have troops in the street. We have, you know, the President of the United States talking about locking up and destroying the infrastructure of the political opposition. And yet, I guess this is the irony here. So are we now supposed to not talk about this? Are we not supposed to say this is a existential threat to democracy because that somehow is fomenting violence? Because I think we have to say these things. I guess my point is we have to say these Things more than ever right now at the time. And when they're escalating the pressure on people. And look, Donald Trump's made it clear that he's gonna go after people. There are lawsuits, there are threats of lawsuits. I will tell you, I think there are many, many more letters out there and threats of lawsuits, libel suits, defamation suits than have been actually reported. The level of intimidation through the civil, through civil law, through the use of government power is ratcheting up. And I don't know that we have a full picture, but we do know what their motivation is and how far they're willing to go, because they keep saying how far they're willing to go. Yeah, they keep saying it.
- [16:19]
Tom Nichols
We know their motivation because they keep telling us. Two things occur to me, though. First, let's not skip over the demonization of Democrats and other people in the opposition, because that's meant to sow division and fear among ordinary citizens. That's meant that a lot of the discourse from the right, a lot of the propaganda from the right around Charlie Kirk's assassination has been, if you say one bad word about Charlie Kirk or anybody, really, you are responsible. You. You've led to this murder, you know, in a way that no one said about the assassination of Minnesota State rep. You know, the attack on Paul Pelosi, you name it. No, it's. But you know that this is a. The people on the right are trying to hold everybody, and I won't even say people on the left, they're trying to hold everybody who isn't in their camp to a kind of collective guilt, which is meant to suppress people from speaking, from even talking to their neighbors about this kind of stuff. And that's really dangerous. The second thing that occurs to me, Charlie, is you were talking about troops in the streets and the elections. You know, when. When you and I and many other people became never Trumpers back in 2016, we. We were warning people about scenarios that weren't even close to this bad. And we were told that we were nuts. I know, like, and we hadn't even gotten to troops in the streets and trying to capitalize on. On young man's assassination, actually an attempt.
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Charlie Sykes
An attack on the Capitol. We didn't know that.
- [17:53]
Tom Nichols
Mass. Mass pardons for those people who had engaged in the attack, which, you know, I think we start. But if you had said all this in 2015 or 2016, a few months after he'd come down that escalator, people would have said, you are out of your mind. So I think it is time to say this stuff now more than ever and to remind people when they say, well, you're just being alarmist. Hey, a lot of you said we were being alarmist in 2016, and we weren't saying things that were even close to what's happening now.
- [18:20]
Charlie Sykes
No, I'm sure that if you've gone back and written. I mean, read some of the things when you wrote the COVID story, the warning cover story in the Atlantic last fall. And yet even, you know, as. As strong as a warning as that was, the reality has been worse. Okay, so can't you make a slight progression?
- [18:39]
Tom Nichols
I mean, our biggest sin, Charlie, was that we lowballed it.
- [18:42]
Charlie Sykes
I know. You know, five years ago, that was the thing. And I'm. I wish I felt better about that, but I don't. So. Yeah, a quick digression here, because I know that you like me. We. We look for things to, you know, get our attention off this, right? You watch tv, movies, games, right? All of that. All of that stuff. So I do the same thing. I stumbled across an old movie that, frankly, I had never seen before, an old Katharine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy movie, 1942, called Keeper of the Flame. And it is about this great American hero who dies under questionable circumstances. But everyone thinks that he is this great hero. He's a war hero. He's a major capitalist and everything. Long story short, it turns out that he's an American fascist leader and Katharine Hepburn was married to him and reveals to Spencer Tracy all of his plans. And she opens up this file, and you know, how they were going to manipulate public opinion to turn Americans against one another. Here's an article that will turn us against the Jews. Here was an article will turn us against the trade unionists. Here's an article we'll blame the Negroes for all of our problem. Here is the way in which they're going to mobilize. And you're reading that going, whoa, whoa, Whoa. Okay, it's 1942. Certain cheesiness of the 1940s movie. But it is a reminder that fascism was a thing, that it was an ideology, and that there are tactics. And when you see this back then, it is like, wow, this seems very powerful. So it's called Keeper of the Flame. I will. I will say this, that I think that the. The movie was, you know, I won't say was suppressed, but it didn't get great traction, because my guess is that in 1942, when we were actually at war, 1943, actually at war, people did not want to hear about the Danger from Within. You know, the, the, the agenda was. I mean, this is a George Cukar directed movie, and even he thought it was not the best movie he'd ever done. But I think part of it was there was pushback. Like, why are you making us distrust fellow Americans? That there are American fascists as opposed to focusing on the past. But it's worth watching again to kind of remember that, you know, I think there was a sort of a sense that fascism was kind of a just kind of this esoteric political fantasy. But it is worth remembering that two of the great civilizations of modern society, Germany in Italy, succumbed to it and that there was an attraction to it. So I just meant, I just mentioned.
- [21:19]
Tom Nichols
And there were fascist movements throughout Western Europe and in the United States. You know what I think the saddest thing to realize is Fascism, communism, the isms that we worry about so much during World War II and the Cold War didn't take in America because we had such a strong democratic immune system. And I think what's really, if you think of these kinds of terrible ideologies as kind of invaders in the host body, you know, that we're, we don't have that immune system anymore. We're open to these opportunistic infections of the, of the isms. And, and that's in part, I think, because people have withdrawn from the public square. They don't think of themselves as citizens, they don't think of themselves as members of a community. And because they spend, you know, huge amount of time, like Charlie Kirk's murder, they spend a huge amount of time.
- [22:22]
Charlie Sykes
Online.
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Tom Nichols
Instead of talking to other human beings and looking them in the eyes. And I think that's the part that disturbs me the most, is that the idea that American fascism, or for that matter, during the 1950s, American communism, that these things could somehow take in America, to me as a kid of the 60s and to you as a kid of the 50s and 60s, seems almost laughable. And yet here we are because we have become, you know, I guess my Soviet background, I always think we have become the weak and decadent society that the Soviets always accused us of being. And we finally become that thing which makes us really defenseless against propaganda, conspiracy theories, you know, again, collective guilt. Americans, you know, accusing each other of a collective guilt. It's really disheartening to think about it.
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Charlie Sykes
It is disheartening, you know, and I'm, I'm actually working on notes for a piece that I may write later this, this, this week that I agree with you that, that this never could have happened. And we. We thought it couldn't happen because of our. Our democratic immune system, but the reality is that maybe that immune system was a lot weaker all along than we thought it was. You know, you look back on, you know, Sinclair Lewis's famous book, It Didn't Happen here. But, you know, a lot of stuff did happen here. We did have the Red scare, you know, under, under Wilson McCarthyism. We did have concentration camps for the Japanese. We did have riots. We did have race massacres. We did have, you know, assassinations. You know, we did have moments in which political opponents were, in fact, jailed. We were able to. The center held, though, and I guess that was it, is that we had a critical mass of. And maybe it was the elites, maybe it was the political elites who were holding back something that was out there. But. But that's gone now.
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Tom Nichols
That's an important observation because the elites, you know, the way that populism, this kind of fascistic populism was held in check is that the elites of both parties cooperated to make sure that political. That they cooperated to make sure that this kind of political activity was not something they would support beyond the edges. You know, I think back to George Bush, for example, saying, you know, we're not. We're not going to support David Duke. He's not a Republican. He's not in our party. He's not our guy. You know, people on the Left in the 70s, you know, Democrat, the establishment Democrats, saying, no, we don't support the Weathermen or, you know, the SDS or any of these groups, you know, and they. And it's not like they extinguish them, but there was a certain amount of sense that, look, this is where American politics has to live, in this kind of center between right and left. And they spoke up for that. And the thing that's changed the most, I think, is that you have an entire political party, our former party, saying this is a path to power. This kind of, you know, generating this kind of white hot populist rage is. Is how Stephen Miller has a nice office in the White House.
- [25:29]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah.
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Tom Nichols
Now, Miller also believes in what he's. I think he's one of the few people, I do agree, you know, in the White House who believes in what he's doing. But, you know, for the rest of them, does it really matter? And Pete Hegseth is going to be Pete Hegseth and blather on about lethality and, you know, blowing up commies at sea and all that stuff. Because that's how he gets a. Somebody picks him up every morning for work and takes him to a nice office and brings him his coffee. And that is the difference. Now that there were things that people in both parties would not do. And I think we've become unmoored from any kind of political morality about this.
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Charlie Sykes
I agree. You know, and part of it is also, you know, these folks shelter under. Under the wings of. Of that. Of that tribal loyalty. They know they'll be protected. They know that they will not be held accountable as long as they are within that world. The moment they leave that world, you know, all bets, all bets are off. Okay, just switching subjects just a little bit before I get on to something much more substantive. You know, what does it take to get fired from Fox News these days? You know what I mean? We're having all kinds of firings all over the country. Columnists, people in the media, people on MSNBC being fired for saying things that were deemed to be insensitive or in bad timing about Charlie Kirk. And then you have Brian Kilmeade on Fox News, and they're talking about this terrible case out of Charlotte, North Carolina, where a homeless man murdered a young Ukrainian immigrant. It's a horrible story, and it is a legitimate subject of argument. But obviously, obviously, the right has turned this into a major cause. But in the conversation, they're talking about homeless people. And Brian Kilmeade, almost as a throwaway line, says, yeah, what do we do with homeless people that don't, you know, take advantage of the services? Maybe we should have involuntary euthanasia. Just kill them. And there's a couple of things about it. It's pretty shocking that he just says, just kill all these homeless people. And if you watch the tape, and I'm sure you have, the other hosts, don't even blink an eye. It's not like they go, whoa, whoa, what are you saying here? It was just like they just rolled with it. And so here you have a host who's just talking about killing people because of their status. And the guy, he apologized, but he still has his. He still has his job.
- [27:58]
Tom Nichols
Yeah. And the apology was like, yeah, it was stupid, terrible thing to say. Let's move on. I mean, it wasn't much of an apology, I thought, considering, I mean, that that's the kind of apology you give when you accidentally swear online or, you know, swear on on air or that you've insulted one of the guests saying that. And. And, you know, you were talking about fascism, Charlie. Euthanizing. I mean, this is straight up fascism. I mean, you know.
- [28:28]
Charlie Sykes
Now. Now we're getting into literally Hitler. I mean, now we're getting into the. The N word here, you know, and.
- [28:36]
Tom Nichols
And then says the next day. Yeah, you know, that was insensitive. I got carried away.
- [28:42]
Charlie Sykes
Whoa.
- [28:42]
Tom Nichols
No, again, as you point out, not only did you get carried away, you got carried away in a studio of people who kind of shrugged, you know, and that. What. What. What's going on that you and a seasoned television professional would even think to say this and blurt this out on the air, you know, I mean, it's important.
- [29:07]
Charlie Sykes
Okay, this is an important point, because you and I do this. Live television is always a little bit of a, you know, being on a high wire and it is possible to have, like, little brain. Brain glitches and everything. But you really have to ask, what is the mentality behind somebody who knows they're on national television and they're talking about a deeply emotional, sensitive issue, and you blurt out, maybe we should kill them all.
- [29:33]
Tom Nichols
Kill.
- [29:34]
Charlie Sykes
Voluntary euthanasia. I. I'm.
- [29:38]
Tom Nichols
That, you know, this wasn't this. This wasn't some kid from, like, you know, a Boondocks Young Republican Club, you know, who's never been on TV and thought he was being edgy or something. This is a guy who's on TV for years and has seen other people put their feet in bear traps, knows the rules and said it anyway and then got away with a. Yeah, I should apologize for that. Sorry. You know, no suspense. Not fired, not suspended, no nothing from the network. You know, and. And it normalizes it. I mean, a lot of people saw him say it, but fewer people are going to see that apology, and it should have been a big deal. And it tells you, you know, again, where this asymmetry. I think it's really important that you brought this up early on, Charlie, that, you know, it had a left lean. Had you or I. Or a left. You know, anybody had said something even remotely close to that, it would have been the end of a career.
- [30:39]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah. If we were to say everybody that attacked The Capitol in January 6th should have been hanged or something like that. But. But again, it's.
- [30:45]
Tom Nichols
Right.
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Charlie Sykes
So here. Here's. Here's another slight, slight digression. I have to admit that I am very grateful that I was not scheduled to be on cable television on MSNBC last week during the Charlie Kirk thing. I think one of the most dangerous places to be is on live television when there's breaking news. And I used to do a radio show and this was something, a mantra that I had every time there was a breaking story and we were live on the air, which was everybody needs to really, really slow down. Because every time there's a major story like this, there is a flood of. Of misinformation and disinformation. People get it wrong. There is that desire to be first with stuff. It's much more important to be right. Everybody wants a hot take. It's a very, very dangerous moment when you're supposed to talk about the larger meaning of something that you just heard about that you don't understand and you may not understand for weeks or months to come. So I have to admit that was one of those moments where I thought, okay, I am really glad that I don't have to go out there in real time and express these opin. Although I can guarantee you that I would not have pulled a kill mead and suggest that anybody be involuntarily euthanized. Okay, so I want to talk a little bit about one of the biggest stories of last week, which was, of course, Russia's attack on Poland. But can we talk about something else that I just can't let go of? I just feel it's such a sticky story and has kind of almost gotten lost in all of the news cycle. You know, the US Strike on that Venezuelan boat where the administration says that they were 11 drug dealers, that they were smuggling drugs into the country, therefore they were terrorists, and they were in international waters. There are some questions about this. Reports over the weekend that the boat had turned back. But I want to get your sense as kind of an expert in all of this. Is it the claim of the United States government that they can just kill people in open water, no due process, no identification? I don't know that they've shared the evidence. Do we really know that they were drug dealers? Might they have been human smugglers? Did they pose an imminent threat? What are the rules of engagement? Because the thing that really struck me was Marco Rubio at one point said, we could have interdicted that boat. We could have stopped that boat, but we chose to kill them all anyway. What are the rules of engagement? What are the standards here?
- [33:14]
Tom Nichols
Well, you know, back in the early days of the war on terror, we blew up a car in Yemen that had six guys in it that we said were al Qaeda terrorists. Now, you know, this was done under. I mean, again, I'm not a big fan of, you know, this. I'm not a big fan of these aumfin, these authorizations for the use of military force. But Al Qaeda was a terrorist organization that had declared war on the United States, literally declared war on us, that had attacked us, that was in a third country that we could not access. We couldn't get to these guys and, you know, arrest them or take. Detain them or take them into custody. And the Pentagon made clear. Now, you can. Can choose not to buy the story, as some people in the international community didn't at the time, but you can. The Pentagon said, we have ascertained that these six men are Al Qaeda operatives, and we are in a wartime situation under an authorization for the use of military force with the permission of the Yemeni government, which, you know, permission basically that was gained by saying, we're going to do this anyway. But. But that we went through all these steps to say, this is a legit. This is a good shoot. Shoot, as cops would say. Right? This is. This is a legit shoot. And. And these guys, you know, they're. This is what happens when you declare war on the United States. You cannot, by any interpretation of American or international law, go out on the high seas, hunt for drug dealers, and summarily execute them.
- [34:50]
Charlie Sykes
Wow.
- [34:50]
Tom Nichols
Because, well, from. For one thing, that makes you pretty much a rogue state because you've decided that your judge, jury, and executioner on. On the high seas. But again, to say, well, we could have interdicted them, well, then you would have been able to separate out. I mean, you just basically decide that anybody on this boat was guilty of a capital crime, everyone against the United States, which is nuts. You know, nobody wants cartels running around loose with drugs, but we have a coast guard that does this kind of work every day. And the other thing is that to say, well, and this is why I've been a bear for years, arguing with my military and my civilian undergraduate students. Don't overuse the word terrorism, because then you can start applying it to anybody you don't like and execute them summarily. Right. The problem here is, Trump says, well, they're narco terrorists, so they're terror. Well, did you. You seek permission from Congress? Have you made this? You know, there is a finding, I guess, that says that this Venezuelan group is a terrorist group. But were you certain that everybody on that boat were members of that group? You know, do we know any of.
- [36:10]
Charlie Sykes
The names that they identified? Anybody? I mean, have they given us any evidence that these, in fact, were the drug dealers?
- [36:17]
Tom Nichols
One of the most telling things here was that the Pentagon said, we're still working on the legal issues and the rationalization well, excuse me, you're supposed to do that before you blow up the boat, not afterwards. That's like cops, you know, kicking in the door of a, of a, you know, crack house or something, shooting everybody and saying, well, we'll sort out the search warrants and all the legal stuff later. Now, I'm sure to a lot of people in this administration, that sounds like a great way to do law enforcement.
- [36:45]
Charlie Sykes
It is. And Donald Trump has talked about this. Okay, so in terms of international law, though, I guess from the point of view of the Trump folks are thinking, okay, so what if we blew up the wrong people, so what if we violated the law? Who's going to do anything about it? Because they could, they can actually do whatever they want. Right. I mean, there are going to be no consequences. I mean, it could turn out that those were women and children, those were migrants, and there will be no consequences. Right.
- [37:15]
Tom Nichols
There's a saying those of us who teach international relations used to use international law works best where it's needed the least. You know, so it's great for things like, you know, trade disputes and passports and consular issues and things like that when it comes to this, where, you know, major power decides to just, you know, whack a bunch of people on a boat in the middle of the water. Yeah. You know, they can, I mean, the, the, the loved ones or the survivors or somebody could go to the inner, to an international court and say, we'd like a judgment against the United States. And, you know, the United States, being a powerful country, can say, and not for the first time, by the way. I mean, remember, we were, we were found guilty of trying to think of the case, I think it was the Nicaraguan harbor case, mining, you know, the Nicaraguan harbors. And the World Court said, America's in the wrong. And the Reagan administration said, you know, and what are you going to do about it? Well, how it works in the international system. So.
- [38:13]
Charlie Sykes
Well, it doesn't make it. Vladimir Putin is an indicted, you know, has been indicted for war crimes. Right. And there is an arrest warrant, international arrest warrant out for him. And yet when he landed in Alaska, in the United States of America, they rolled out the red carpet for him and the President.
- [38:33]
Tom Nichols
We have to point something out to your listeners, Charlie. He's indicted by an organization under a treaty to which we are not a signatory.
- [38:40]
Charlie Sykes
Okay, fair.
- [38:41]
Tom Nichols
So the International Criminal Court, the Rome Treaty, the United States has never signed that treaty. So we, but it tells you what we think of the rest of the world. You know, where Putin is reviled, and rightfully so, that we rolled out that red carpet for him in Alaska. But I think, you know, in fairness, have to point out that the positive obligation on us to do anything, we were not part of that court. We never signed onto that treaty for a lot of reasons, including that we didn't want it used against us in the international environment. But, you know, in the end, we blew up a boat full of people without any real proof. And the Secretary of State added, well, we could have interdicted them. Well, the whole point of blowing up the boat usually in a situation like that is to say, look, we tried everything and we couldn't interdict them. And the other thing is to say, and we had to fire on them in self defense.
- [39:34]
Charlie Sykes
Right.
- [39:35]
Tom Nichols
Which no one's claimed either. I mean, this was just, hey, there's a boat. I think there's some drug runners on it. Let's murder everybody on the boat.
- [39:43]
Charlie Sykes
Well, and again, this is very, very consistent with what, I mean, Donald Trump has been saying for years, has been talking about his appetite for the summary execution of drug dealers, his admiration for the extrajudicial murders of, you know, of Philippine President Duterte, the way the Chinese, he said the Chinese handled it. He has been talking about having trials and executions the same day. So you could see the ID behind all of that. Okay, but let's go back to Vladimir Putin because this is a good segue to the other story. Kind of gotten lost in the news cycle. Did I miss the two week deadline passing for Trump going after very, very unhappy with Putin? It was two weeks, right? Yeah, two weeks.
- [40:34]
Tom Nichols
He was gonna, you, you, you had that blocked out on your calendar and you missed it. Yeah, because in the meantime, Putin basically has been playing World War III games with Poland and Romania, you know, with sending drones into Poland and sending a drone into Romania. And, you know, so, you know, what do you expect the President to do when the Russians are basically probing and violating the airspace of our closest allies in NATO?
- [41:06]
Charlie Sykes
So what is your read on that? What is Putin's method behind that madness of intentionally launching drones? Assume you regard them as intentional launching drones at NATO allies who've now invoked.
- [41:25]
Tom Nichols
I do regard it as intentional, and I think he's both testing, probing, seeing what the polls would do. But there's a message behind these kinds of tests, and it's an old one in Russian and Soviet foreign policy, which is we can reach out and touch you and the Americans will not help you. Now, this is something that back in the 60s and 70s and 80s. The old Soviet Union used to do you think the Americans will come for you, but they're not going to trade Chicago for, for Bonn. You know, they're not going to trade New York for Paris. And this is, of course, you've got to remember Putin is a, is a product of that system. He is an old Soviet guy to his bones. And I think he's had enough of, you know, even, even the limited play acting that Trump has done. My, my guess is that when he went to Anchorage, Putin closed the door and said, said, I'm not here to hear anything from you. This is how it's going to be. This is what I want, this is what I'm going to do. And if you don't like it, tough. And, and then he walked out and said, no, I'm skipping lunch and I'm going back to Moscow. Thanks for the, thanks for a lovely day. He did, you know, this is his way of sort of underlining, I think this is Putin's way of underlining that point. I will do whatever I want and there's not a goddamn thing you can do about it. It because you, NATO, and especially you, Donald Trump and the Americans are not going to lift a finger to stop it.
- [42:54]
Charlie Sykes
So you wrote a piece in the Atlantic a couple of weeks ago that the world no longer takes Trump seriously. Talk to me about that.
- [43:03]
Tom Nichols
I think even at the end of his first term, I think most international leaders had taken Trump's measure and decided this is not a serious guy, not somebody you can really talk to, doesn't understand what the hell he's doing. You know, even Kim, Kim Jong Un, after all the love letter, is kind of laughing, you know, kind of smirking and snorting behind his back. But in that first term, you still had to take the American administration seriously because you weren't going to cross, you know, Jim Mattis, you weren't going to cross a lot of other people running the government because they were serious people. I think this time around, the Chinese, the Iranians, the Russians and even our allies have decided these just aren't serious people. You know, that this is not something we have to really think about. And you see it, even the way our allies treat us. And I brought this up in the piece, not just Russia and China, but, you know, our own allies, they rush over and they talk to Trump like he's 7. Oh, you're doing good. No, no, what you're doing is, you know, like that Twilight Zone episode. That's good what you did, Anthony, you know, but while you're doing this good stuff. Could you please not adopt Donald, you know, Vladimir Putin's policy preferences? But they have to manage up, right? That bureaucratic. They kind of manage up and they plump him and they stroke his ego to stop him from doing crazy stuff. And I think everybody's figured out that Donald Trump, Trump is easily manipulated. Manipulated, has no internal compass, has no real principles. And that is not a sign of seriousness in the world. And I think the rest of the world, as I point out in the piece, the Chinese, the Russians, other people, they're acting as if Donald Trump functionally, you know, that the United States functionally doesn't exist.
- [44:53]
Charlie Sykes
So, you know, you mentioned blocking out on, on the calendar. I was going back over, over the last couple of months and, and it is interesting about the moment, I'm switching subjects now, about the moment that the Epstein files began to hang fire, the incredible rush of actions domestically and foreign. You know, the summit with Putin, the troops on the street. And I know it's become now a cliche to say this is all a distraction, but I have to ask you, you look back at the last, what, three, four weeks from that moment when it was apparent that the Epstein story wasn't going away. Just give me your take on all of that. I mean, I'm at the point now where I'm not sure what the distraction is. The distraction from the distraction to the distraction. And even if it's a distraction, it's still real, it's still dangerous. But if you're making a timeline of things that happened over the summer, that appears to be, I'm sorry to use this phrase again, an inflection point.
- [45:55]
Tom Nichols
That's a phrase I was going to use. I was going to say inflection point, too, Charlie. You know, the reason that it's a cliche to say that it's a distraction is because it's a cliche. That's true. I mean, you know, that, that for a guy who claims that he has nothing to hide and there's nothing to see in these files, he sure is panicky about whatever's in these files. And, you know, you and I have talked about this. You know, the stuff I've written. I'm one of the people saying, look, I don't think, think, you know, I don't think there's anything that bad here. I mean, it's probably not, you know, I mean, these things would have leaked again. I, I don't really trust the ability of anybody in Washington or anywhere else to keep a secret for long but now I'm starting to think, well, geez, what is in this thing? You know, what, what the hell is going on here? Because, man, the only time he has seen really scared of something lately is this. And I think he has been undertaking all these actions to get the narrative off Epstein and onto. I mean, he would be. I think he'd be perfectly happy to say that we're all debating, is Donald Trump a fascist? You know, for the next three weeks, he's finally thinking about the Epstein file. He's okay with that.
- [47:09]
Charlie Sykes
And this is what is actually puzzling. What is possibly in there that he is so concerned about, given the fact that he's gotten away with so many other things. So actually I'd written an article that I put aside about somebody saying that they believed that, you know, that that whole birthday card thing was a. Was a hoax, was a fraud. It was, oh, my God, it was a forgery. And I was thinking at the time, okay, why go through the mental gymnastics of pretending that this thing, which is clearly real, is a forgery, when in fact, if it was real, you'd still be okay with it, right? I mean, the guy has been adjudicated as committing sexual assault. He has. You know, there's 26 women who have accused him, and yet none of that is registered negatively at all in the MAGA world. So what could it be? Given the fact that they've. They've accepted everything else. Why. Why is Donald Trump worried about what they're going to find out in those files?
- [48:09]
Tom Nichols
What's interesting, that the amount of energy and calories, the huge caloric expenditure to lie about this when telling the truth probably would have made this go away in a day. Right? I mean, Trump could have said, yeah, I sent him a racy birthday card 25 years ago because we were, you know, we were friends. And I didn't know the guy was, you know, terrible guy. And he had a lot of friends, including a lot of prominent Democrats. So, you know, yeah, I did something that was in bad taste. What a shock. My name is Donald Trump and I did something in bad taste. So I knew the guy. So what? And then it goes away, but instead every lie has required another lie to backstop it. Well, you know, the card doesn't exist. Well, it exists, but I didn't write it. Well, I wrote it, but I didn't sign it. Well, it's signed by me, but it's not my signature. And somebody, I mean, you know, why. What happened to I didn't send it? It doesn't Exist.
- [49:07]
Charlie Sykes
Okay, well, let me up the ante on this. Why at some point you say, you tell the truth, it might have gone away. Donald Trump coming out saying, hey, hey, I'm Donald Trump. I, when I was younger, liked to have sex with beautiful younger women. Sue me. You know, he's on record saying, you can do anything in the world as long as you have a hot piece of ass on your arm. Okay, so we know all of this about Donald Trump. This is not a secret. He says, yeah, you know what? I love beautiful women. And you know what? I probably had sex with some beautiful women. Back then. They were all, you know, you know, adults.
- [49:40]
Tom Nichols
They were all legal adults, but young.
- [49:42]
Charlie Sykes
Right, Legal, legal adults. Well, so sue me, you know, and you know, whatever. And you know what? I, 99 of MAGA would go, yeah, yeah, okay, fine, we're, we're okay with it. So there's, I think 99 goes on. The more I have questions about it.
- [50:01]
Tom Nichols
I said, I think 99 of the country would have shrugged and said, okay, you're a pig. We knew that you're a terrible, you know, that you're a cad and that you've done swinish things, you know, okay, fine, so have a lot of other men in politics. But there's something, he, let me put it this way. He is acting like there's something so bad in there that he has to go to the wall. You know, this is like when we used to argue with our, you know, friends on the left about the Iraq war. How could you have believed there were WMD there? Well, because Saddam Hussein acted like there were every day, you know, he would, you can't look over here, you can't look over there. You can't come into this camp. Well, sooner or later, you know, you start to believe that even, even if you didn't want to believe, you believe the guy's guilty. And I don't understand what is going. I, I guess I, I guess I'm, I'm now to the point of saying, well, I guess there's something, I guess there's something.
- [50:58]
Charlie Sykes
I'm, I am there.
- [50:59]
Tom Nichols
Horrifying, you know, but I don't, I.
- [51:02]
Charlie Sykes
Don'T know what it is because I agree with you about the. If it was there, why didn't it leave? But then again, look, the COVID up of Epstein has gone on for a very, very long time. It's gone on for decades. It has been bipartisan, has gone through different administrations. So there's, there's something there. And, but again, I, I don't know what? But you know what? I do sense that at some point we're going to find out, oh, there's.
- [51:30]
Tom Nichols
No way this stays. Yeah, there's only so many, there's only so much, so much chaff. He can explode in people's faces over and over again before this, this comes out. And you know the other thing about it, Charlie, as other people pointed out, there's probably a lot of terrible stuff about Democrats in there. Oh yeah, you think he would be anxious to get that stuff out and to say everybody does it. I'm not the worst. Look at all these other guys. Because that's a very Trump thing. Right? I mean, MAGA World loves the what about ism, you know, what about this guy? What about that guy? And yet, you know, and give credit, Charlie, this is the weirdest thing I'm gonna say. Let's give credit to MAGA world because they want these files released as much as everybody else in America.
- [52:15]
Charlie Sykes
Interesting.
- [52:16]
Tom Nichols
I mean, the release the files thing is at 80 plus percent approval rating among Democrats, Republicans and MAGA Republicans. All of them are at margins higher than 80% for release the files. This is the one thing, if there's one thing in American politics that has united Democrats, Republicans and MAGA Republicans, it's released the files. And.
- [52:41]
Charlie Sykes
Which is one of the reasons. Yeah, but still there's the asymmetry because, and this is kind of an undercovered aspect that you just touched on though, is the Democrats apparently are fully prepared to throw Bill Clinton under the bus, that if this immolates Bill Clinton, they're okay with that, that is fine. Whereas whatever comes out, I'm still skeptical that Republicans or MAGA would break with Donald Trump, but the willingness to basically, I mean, you kind of wonder whether there's some phone calls from Clinton World going, guys, are you really, really serious about this? Yeah. You know what? We have moved on from that and we are not gonna cover for you. Tom Nichols, it has been a great conversation. Thank you so much for going into the darkness with me today.
- [53:26]
Tom Nichols
My pleasure, Charlie. Good to see you again.
- [53:29]
Charlie Sykes
And thank you all for listening to this episode of to the Contrary podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. You know why we do this? You know why? Tom Nichols and I sit down and have these conversations because now more than ever, it is absolutely essential that we remind ourselves that we are not the crazy ones.
- [53:44]
Tom Nichols
Thank you.
- [53:58]
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