#1697 The Trump World Order: Are we the Baddies?

Okay. So a mass firing of ambassadors at the beginning of a new Trump administration next January would cripple our ability to conduct foreign policy, it would send a terrible message to our allies all over the world, to adversaries all over the world too, that basically, we're asleep at the switch.

If you're just going to get rid of all of the ambassadors, rather than having some of them stay on until you can replace them through the normal senatorial approval process, you're just going to get rid of them and then have some sort of deputy ambassador that Trump appointed who didn't get confirmed by the Senate actually running our foreign policy with regard to that country, that is a very terrifying thought. That is the way that you end up with drastic lurches in foreign policy.

And also, it's going to it's a sign of weakness. It's going to make America look weak everywhere we do that. It's going to make America look weak that we don't have continuity, that there's this jarring schism in how the foreign policy of this country is going to be operated. We can't have that. We simply can't have it. Even if you believe in a more conservative foreign policy, this is the exact opposite of that, too. You can say, oh, we want a more hawkish foreign policy.

You might want to say, oh, you want to be tougher on China. Pick what you want. Okay. You might have a different position on how you would handle foreign policy in the world. Okay. What you never want is to show a vacuum, is to show weakness. So this isn't about making America strong. This is about making the government loyal to Donald Trump. Make no mistake about it. That's what's really going on here. Ending foreign aid for a time? Again, awful.

It would sacrifice America's role in leadership in the world. It creates a vacuum that a country like China or Russia can fill. Or Iran, but especially China and Russia. That's the last thing that we should want, is to suddenly say, oh, all you countries that rely on American aid, we're not going to, we're just going to stop all foreign aid just because a new president comes into office. All of that money is going to stop coming to you. What message does that send to these countries?

And then if I'm the Chinese, it's well, great. That's perfect. We're just going to swoop into that vacuum. You can't have a vacuum because another country can fill it. If we stop exercising our leadership role in the world, it will still be filled. It's going to get filled by a different country.

China, first and foremost, Russia secondarily, although they don't have as many of the resources and clout as we thought that they did; that's been exposed by their completely humiliating attempt to invade Ukraine. Speaking of Ukraine, they want to end aid to Ukraine. Let's just be crystal clear. Now we're getting into the real heart of this. They want to end aid to Ukraine. They do not recognize Russia as an enemy.

Check out page 182. So, there's occasionally been attempts by Trump to maybe have it both ways on Ukraine. Same for a lot of his cronies. But make no mistake about it: in Project 2025, they make it clear. Ukraine would get cut off. It would be over. And we would effectively be letting the Russians take the country. Even though Ukraine is very, very much winning the war. That's very obvious.

And this is one of the most successful -- I'm just going to say, triumphant foreign policy moves, military moves by America in decades. This has been an absolutely wonderful slam dunk of a foreign policy move to be funding Ukraine, exposing Russian weakness, causing this deterioration of the Russian military apparatus, of the Russian industrial apparatus. And it's not because America had to actually go and send in the Marines into part of Russia or part of Ukraine.

That is a triumph in foreign policy. And we're going to reverse it by then basically saying, you know what? We know Ukraine, we know you're winning the war, but you know what? We're just going to cut you off now and just let the Russians take you. That would be one of the biggest catastrophes, maybe the biggest catastrophe in American foreign policy ever. Ever. I can't really think of another one that would be that bad.

But that would be taking something that has become a victory for us, an emerging one, knock on wood. It could change. But right now it has continued to look like a victory every day that that war goes on and Ukraine keeps on getting more ground and defending itself better and better is a net win for America and for the West and for the whole world, for every country in the free world. And yet the Project 2025 Donald Trump, they would end aid to Ukraine and just let the Russians come in.

You have Russian tanks in Kyiv. Zelensky would get assassinated. You would have mass kidnapping, deportation. They've already done this. We think there could be hundreds of thousands, if not millions of women and children that have already been abducted and forcibly moved to Russia. You'd see even more of that. It would be absolute hell on earth in Ukraine if the Russians end up occupying the entire country. And that's what Donald Trump wants to do.

And he wants to basically say, go ahead, Putin. Roll right in, as he put it a couple of months ago. Do whatever you want. We surrender. Go ahead and retake Eastern Europe. Rebuild the Eastern Bloc from the communist days. That is what Donald Trump wants to let Vladimir Putin do. It doesn't end there. They want to end aid to the Kurds. They want to cut off all aid to Africa. These would be huge reversals of long standing American foreign policy that we really cannot tolerate.

This is such a drastic turn compared to any other administration, Republican or Democratic, of the last 20 years, 50 years, 80 years. Then get to page 191, where they're a little bit vague about it, they're a little bit Insinuating more than stating, but there's a very clear sign there about Donald Trump and Project 2025 wanting to cut off American participation in NATO. And this would just be, it would be the end of, we would effectively be saying, you know what? We liked winning the cold war.

We liked winning World War II. But let's just go ahead and reverse those things. The international order that America helped build in the ashes of World War II, yeah, forget about that. We don't care about that anymore. So forget NATO. NATO's colossal success as a defensive organization to protect Europe from Soviet predation and aggression? Nope, forget it. That was a great success, bipartisan, from presidents from Truman to Reagan to Biden. But forget about that.

We're just going to we surrender. We're just going to take the American flag wherever it flies in any place in that part of the world in any embassies, any military bases, and just replace it with a white flag. That's what you're going to do. You're going to just say, you know what, bring back the hammer and sickle, bring back the marches on Red Square, bring back Stalin. Bring back Khrushchev. That's what you're doing if we do that.

We are basically letting the Kremlin run Eastern Europe and be knocking on the doorstep of Western Europe again. If we get out of NATO, the rest of the world instantly becomes less safe. No one will ever believe America ever again for any alliance, for any military protection. We will be sending a clear message. These people talk about wanting to fight China. If you get out of NATO, what do you think the Japanese are going to think about us?

What do you think the Koreans are going to think about us? What do you think the Taiwanese are going to think about us? China's going to look at us pulling out of NATO and be like, that's it. They're pulling back. The whole tough on China thing that the Trump people like to say is complete and utter bullshit. It is a talking point that they like, because they know it sounds good to their base because their base is fundamentally xenophobic and views China as a threat, as an alien other.

But that's the only reason they actually pretend to be tough on China. They're not tough on China. Tough on China is America standing by its alliances, standing by its military commitments. And not letting any of those down, not letting down our guard. If you start pulling out of NATO, the rest of our military alliances and protection arrangements will not be believed anymore. We will lose all credibility.

And our enemies, like China, like Russia, like Iran, like North Korea are going to light up. They're going to think, that's it. Trump is pulling them back. They are going home. It is isolationism. And it's exactly what the enemies of America from within wanted to do back in the thirties, the first time somebody ran around saying America First.

It was a fifth column inside this country that was backed in part by the German government to try to intercede in American domestic politics, to influence her foreign policy, and to keep America from entering World War II, to keep America from being a deterrent or a threat against Germany and its aspirations to control much of the world. Okay, that is what was going on back in the thirties with America First, and it's what Trump is wanting to do today.

It is a -- we know how friendly he is with Russia. We we don't know exactly what the arrangement is. Maybe we're never going to know. But we don't need to know the specifics. We just need to see the results. By their fruits ye shall know them. And we know that Trump is pro-Kremlin all the way. And the Project 2025 proposals make that even more clear.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: As you look at what’s happening at USAID, the complete dismantling of this agency, can you share your critique of the agency, but what you think must be done?

I think that this is a complex that renders the causes of global inequality invisible, hiding the ways that often U.S. policies, U.S. trade agreements and other forms of sort of extractive capitalism are often the causes of these crises, these challenges that people around the world have, that then aid steps in to help or to solve.

But, in fact, it’s not solving it at all, because it’s making sure that we never, ever are asking questions: Why is it that the United States has the resources, has the power to help in this way, while other people are often suffering in ways that are caused by the U.S.’s own policies?

And it’s that sort of paradox that I was trying to grapple with, because, of course, suddenly taking away what are in fact necessary, as we just heard earlier in the show, necessary programs that help people who need help, is certainly just a bull in a china shop and doing, again, only harm.

So, it is, for me, a complicated paradox, because if I argued for any kind of changes, it would be that a country like the U.S. should be offering reparations for the climate damage that they’ve done in the Global South in the interest of their own economies, in the interest of their own lifestyle.

And certainly, one would like to see a sort of thoughtful set of plans and questions around what is it — what is it that a country like the U.S. is doing to produce this kind of inequality, to produce or reproduce the inability of countries like South Africa, for example, in making its own HIV medication and providing it to its people. And so, there is this danger, I think, of — produced by the humanitarian-industrial complex that allows people to go, “Well, we’re doing the right thing.

We’re doing a good thing,” but allows them to feel OK about their implication, their participation in a system that, in fact, helps to produce and reproduce that poverty or that inequality. AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: You have worked with USAID-funded projects in adult literacy and voter education in South Africa. And you write that the work was largely dependent on Western donor funding, but, quote, “it always came with strings, especially the money from USAID.” What

kind of strings are you talking about? How do you think USAID’s goal is ultimately about supporting the U.S. economy? And that’s a really interesting point. People may not realize, for example, that millions and millions of dollars go to peanut farmers in the United States to provide a substance that goes to babies and children to fight malnutrition, but the money doesn’t go to those other countries. It goes directly to the farmers in the U.S.

Exactly. And certainly, USAID does not make any — is not deluded about this. It works in the interest of the United States and of the U.S. economy and of its own sort of sense of self in the world, at least before this month. But a large, a large amount of its budget, small as it is, in fact, as you just described, goes back to U.S. industries, to U.S. farmers, to U.S. manufacturers.

And even with a small project like ours, which is not buying anything, so we get to use that — we got to use that money on our programming, a large amount of it goes to the auditors in D.C., for example. So, it is a sort of cycle of, you know, we’re giving you money for this, but much of it ends up coming back to the U.S. And in fact, it does its job of supporting sort of U.S. interests, to a large degree.

The other sort of set of strings, in a way, was that it was never really possible for an organization like us to just do our work. Project Literacy had a sustainable, working structure that was doing really good adult basic education, literacy, numeracy, financial education. But to just get funding from an agency like USAID, and it’s certainly not unique in this way, was almost impossible. You know, give us funding to do the work we really do. We can prove we do it. It’s really successful.

And so, every six months, you’re writing funding proposals that are bending our work into the current sexy language about what matters in aid or development. And what matters in aid or development is decided in D.C., in New York, in London, in Geneva. It’s not decided on the ground where people are doing the work. And there’s this reluctance to support that.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: I wanted to ask you, Professor Mathers, about the history of critiquing USAID in many parts of the world, when it’s been used, for example, as a front for the CIA. I’d like to mention a couple of examples from Latin America. Back in 2010, USAID covertly funded a Twitter-like social media platform in Cuba to spark a “Cuban Spring,” with the hope of bringing down the government.

Last week, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author and historian Greg Grandin spoke to Al Jazeera’s UpFront about USAID. This is what he said.

And these were all — you know, when the National Endowment for Democracy, which operates under AID, was founded in 1983 under the Reagan administration, the first director of it said, “We do in the open what the CIA used to do covertly,” meaning that they fund oppositional groups.

… When in countries that are out-and-out, you know, dissenting from U.S. hegemony — say, Bolivia — you fund these organizations that basically raise the alarm that the country is heading toward dictatorship, and, you know, it manipulates the press. You know, in Bolivia, the reason why that coup didn’t take hold is because Evo Morales kicked out AID.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: And you also have, for example, Peter Kornbluh of the National Security Archive saying among the most infamous examples of USAID funding was the Office of Public Safety, a USAID police training program in the Southern Cone that also trained torturers. We only have 20 seconds. It’s not your total focus, but your thoughts on how it’s been used?

JAMES STOUT - CO-HOST, IT COULD HAPPEN HERE: So his previous foreign policy was a pretty mixed bag. And he bombed the shit out of the Islamic State, right? Cool. Based. He also bombed the shit out of thousands of Syrian and Iraqi civilians. Not so cool. Also, we should note, not so different from every other president this century, bombing civilians has been pretty much the through line of American foreign policy in that part of the world for a very long time.

In particular, in the Trump administration, I want to talk about, there was a single US strike cell called Talon Anvil. I think they were mainly CAG guys from what I read, so Delta Force guys, Army Special Forces guys, who were making these decisions. They hired an office building in Syria, and these guys were constantly looking at drone feeds and various other information and then calling in strikes on various targets, right? I'm not sure if they had the CAG guys in there watching computers.

I'm not entirely sure. And well, didn't have someone else, who knows. But this strike cell dropped more than 120,000 bombs. MIA LONG - CO-HOST, IT COULD HAPPEN HERE: Christ. JAMES STOUT - CO-HOST, IT COULD HAPPEN HERE: Yeah. The amount of ordinance we dropped on Syria is insane. It circumvented procedures are in place to prevent civilian deaths in order to do so. They had embedded lawyers who were supposed to approve the strikes.

But these lawyers tried to raise the alarm that some of these strikes were reckless. They weren't hitting things that were actual targets. And they ran into an organizational brick wall. At some point, pilots even refused to engage targets because they didn't think it was MIA LONG - CO-HOST, IT COULD HAPPEN HERE: Jesus. JAMES STOUT - CO-HOST, IT COULD HAPPEN HERE: Yeah, which is, it's not usual.

MIA LONG - CO-HOST, IT COULD HAPPEN HERE: Yeah, like that's been pretty fucked for a fighter pilot to be like, no, I don't think I've ever heard of that before. JAMES STOUT - CO-HOST, IT COULD HAPPEN HERE: No, I, so I found this out in, what is it? I think it was the New York Times. New York Times did a pretty good investigation, which we linked in our sources. And yeah, it's like a throwaway line, but I would love to hear more about that.

It could have been a drone pilot too, which is slightly different gig, if you're sitting north of Las Vegas, they're flying a drone kind of a different scene. So in the battle to defeat the Islamic State, thousands of innocent people lost their lives. As we reached the end of that battle, Donald Trump, who was president at the time, personally called Erdogan, who was the president of Turkey at the time, in late 2018.

Trump asked Erdogan, "If we withdraw our soldiers, can you clean up ISIS?" That's the quote. According to an unnamed Turkish official interviewed by Reuters, Erdogan replied that Turkish forces were capable of the mission. Quote, "Then you do it," Trump told him. And his national security advisor, John Bolton, who was also on the call to, quote, "start work for the withdrawal of US troops from Syria," what this resulted in was US troops pulling out from some locations in Syria, right?

Look, local people threw tomatoes at them. Even worse than the tomatoes were the fact that it gave NATO's second largest army, which is Turkey, of course, free reign to attack the autonomous administration in northeast Syria, which it did in 2018. It did again in 2019. Those two operations have claimed considerable ground in Syria, cost countless civilian lives, continue to perpetrate human rights abuses, to rehabilitate people from ISIS and other jihadi groups, says Turkish Free Syrian Army.

And, they killed some people who were people I care about and I continue to care about. The cause of Rojava or autonomous administration in northeast Syria very deeply and it really fucking sucks to think about the potential of the US abandoning those people again, not that Biden has done very much. Now, I think this anecdote of what Trump does with Erdogan tells us a lot about his approach to foreign policy, which is he really sees it as very transactional.

Which is no different from everything else he does, like he's a very transactional person. And he seems really only to be concerned about what he can get out of it. So in this case, I guess he wants to say he brought US troops home from Syria, like he's anti-war. This is one of his things he says now, right? He's prepared to also, in the case of the bombing, right? He's not so concerned with civilian casualties as long as he can claim that he was the one who defeated ISIS, right?

Obama couldn't do it. He did it. He did it on a pile of civilian remains. And also using chiefly the Syrian Democratic Forces, right? Not US forces. MIA LONG - CO-HOST, IT COULD HAPPEN HERE: Yeah. JAMES STOUT - CO-HOST, IT COULD HAPPEN HERE: There were US forces on the ground. They were engaged in combat, but in minuscule numbers compared to SDF, who lost 15,000 of their children in a battle against ISIS. I think Trump would be very willing to admit that he's transactional, right?

That's his brand is like America First and then fuck everyone else. So I think he'll probably be similar in this term, right? He will act unilaterally. He'll pivot whenever the fuck he feels like it. He will continue with his affection for strong men and dictators all around the world.

And today we stand here, not just the survivors, but the people who continue to fight to live their lives, to rebuild and to dream of a Ukraine that is liberated from chains of both foreign tyranny, be it full fledged imperialist or economic neocolonialist power, and domestic injustice as well. It should be noted that this Ukrainian defiance, with the working class at the core of the Ukrainian resistance, was assisted by international solidarity.

And in many cases, this solidarity was quite feasible. So today I also wanted to convey our gratitude to those in the international leftist and labor movement who stood in solidarity and who continue to do this. And our thanks from our organization, social movement, and from our comrades in the unions. Miners, construction, transportation, healthcare workers, like the latter have their movement be like Nina.

also from individual militant unionists like Yuri Samoylov and Alexander Skiba from the Free Railway Workers Union. And he asked me to thank you for your successful fundraiser that actually helped to purchase generators, because they are literally saving lives. There was a story about an elderly grandma and one of the generators was quite helpful because Russia never ceased attacking Ukrainian civilian infrastructure.

It never ceased attacking Ukrainian energy infrastructure, power stations, energy grids. They often speak of peace negotiations, but it was never about proper talks on their side. It was always about forcing Ukraine to unconditional surrender. Now we see that they do no good field gestures, just to show. They instead are doubling down their attacks with drones, with the missiles on Ukrainian cities.

And again, we can say that this was doubled down since Donald Trump was elected because with his return to the White House, well, it was made clear that Russia's Putin's impunity is directly fueling the rise of fascist forces in other countries and vice versa. So now we see that the most reactionary circles of the ruling class, they feel empowered by Putin, Trump, and they're colluding this unholy alliance of Putin's and global far-right neofascism, Trumpist reaction, and Moscowian oligarchy.

It seeks to reshape the world into this playground for the ultra rich, ultra authoritarian. So now you can see this multi polarity in action, the multi polarity that Kremlin was talking a lot. It's not about making the world order more democratic or equal. It's about carving the world into spheres of influence of a handful of powers with the worst of imperial ambitions. Now their goal is for Ukraine to be left squashed by Putin.

While Trump can turn to his ridiculous expansionism in the Western Hemisphere, unleashing hell on, I don't know, Greenlanders, Mexicans, Cubans, other Latin Americans. So, while Ukraine isn't even allowed to the table where its future is decided, so these forces of global reaction, they do not simply conspire, like in some smoke filled rooms. They act actually in broad daylight.

They are just blatantly sabotaging international support, treating Ukraine's fate as just a bargaining chip in their power games and their appetites. So just in the news, yes, we had this information about the resolution in the UN General Assembly that was just voted, advancing a comprehensive peace in Ukraine. It was drafted by Ukraine and more than 50 co-sponsors. So it still was voted by the majority of the UN members. But the U S voted against together with Russia, Israel.

North Korea, Orban's Hungary, a couple of military juntas. So this seems like the, I don't know, the biggest crossover of Marvel villains. Not even to speak about these horrendous claims that are made by the billionaire president on a daily basis. How even fact check a person whose every single statement, every digit he comes up with, is just a made up lie. So the worst of everything is, of course, this mentioned so-called deal that is essentially a blackmail on rare earth minerals.

But you can say that it's about the entirety of Ukrainian resources and infrastructure. So the terms of this so-called deal are reported to be worse than the reparations that were imposed on losing German side in World War I. This just opens Ukraine for looting by US capital in the future, but also it's forcing retroactive payment on Ukraine. Because they expect everyone bowing down without any objection.

So even the still very servile approach of Zelensky's government, it infuriates them because they can't stand any sort of subjectivity agency. And also what comes with their deals is this hyper-capitalist vision. So now we have the richest capitalist in the world, who is literally destroying the social security, public education, healthcare, and this Is a template to be replicated throughout the world. So if they succeed, we are getting to even worse hell.

And in Ukraine as well, because even more deregulation, even more anti-labor legislation to appease the US investors. So now we also see that uber capitalist goblins like Musk and JD Vance, they declared war on democracies in Europe and worldwide, and also try to install far right, ultra conservative, Quisling style governments everywhere. So we see that our class enemies, oligarchs and dictators, are united. So we should unite too. Because the moment to act and resist is just now.

So far it seems that the resistance both internally in the US and internationally stills atomized scars and we need to really build this network of solidarity, not just with Ukraine but with the entirety of the oppressed people throughout the world, and to raise this fight to a new level. Because essentially this may actually lead us not just to betraying Ukraine, but essentially to losing any prospects for progressive development throughout the world.

JEFF SCHECHTMAN - HOST, WHOWHATWHY PODCAST: Where does NATO fit into all of this right now?

But for the most part, the alliance was cohesive. NATO actually was able to expand during the war by bringing in Sweden and Finland over the objections of Turkey and Hungary over the course of time. And now all that solidarity, all that cohesion, all that strength seems to have frittered away and given way to weakness. Because there's this fundamental divide between the United States and Europe on how to proceed.

I think in the long run, it's still possible that NATO could end up stronger from this moment, because European countries will just be able to spend more on defense. European countries will be able to spend, for example, Britain will be looking at going from 2.5 percent to 3 percent of GDP, Germany might eventually be compelled to lift the debt break, which restricts its deficit spending, to spend more on the military, the Poles are already taking their defense spending up to 5%.

So it's possible that NATO in the end could emerge stronger from this rift because European countries start spending a lot more on defense. But that's a long term thing. Right now, the cohesion and the solidarity has been severely tested, and it does appear as if the Russians and the Chinese are achieving their long term goal, which is to separate the transatlantic alliance and pit the U. S. against Europe.

JEFF SCHECHTMAN - HOST, WHOWHATWHY PODCAST: Does all of this represent some broader shift away from the decades old idea of collective security and mutual alliances, that we're now looking at everybody for themselves? Well, I think that that's certainly played a part. I think that's certainly now the guiding doctrine of American foreign policy, right?

It seems to be transactionalism and America First means just looking out for what the narrow interests of the United States and not really looking after your allies. It seems to be questioning the very notion of alliances and lasting partnerships. So yeah, I think that this is a very significant change that we've seen coming from this. But it may also leave about this crisis, not just us European one. There's also a crisis within Europe for alliances too.

France and Germany have fundamentally different visions on the collective security system inside Europe and NATO, from things ranging from the French nuclear umbrella to the Sky Shield defense system to where to invest.

And also when you look at polling numbers, you see only maybe 15 or 20 percent of people in Britain or France or Germany, especially those who are under the age of 50, would be willing to volunteer as troops or see their country's troops deployed in the event of a Russian invasion of, let's say, Germany. Not that many people in Britain or France will want to send their conscription at home and send troops on behalf of their allies.

So there's a crisis of alliances, not just being in the US and Europe, but there's also a crisis at a popular level within the European Union and within European countries of NATO. So it's a problem that extends well beyond Trump, even if Trump is the leading poster child of that phenomenon. JEFF SCHECHTMAN - HOST, WHOWHATWHY PODCAST: And what underlies Putin's attitude at this point and the potential of Russian, further Russian aggression?

I think that Vladimir Putin is viewing the latest developments, obviously, with a lot of confidence and with a lot of strength. The Russian media was replete with celebrations after the Oval Office meeting against Zelensky. I even saw the Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, quip, they were surprised that Vance and Trump didn't start hitting Zelensky in some kind of an old, 1990s Russian-style parliamentary brawl.

And we saw a lot of confidence now to even reject the European conference out of hand. The Russian response to the London summit was that it was just leading to more war and it wasn't really a peace summit. So the Russians are feeling pretty strong and emboldened by their position. But can they actually convert that confidence and that strength of character into military success? That's where it proves a lot more difficult.

Because the Russians are still having to bring in a second tranche of North Korean forces to prevail in Kursk. Those North Korean forces may well have learned more about drone technology because the Russians have been spreading JIRN 2 technologies to them, which JIRN 2 are the kind of versions of Iranian drones.

They may have learned a little bit more about moving in smaller units and having more tactical adaptations, but they'll still suffer heavy casualties and the Russians also will suffer heavy casualties there. The Russians are still grinding in Donetsk. They're making incremental gains village by village, inch by inch, but they can't even take over fully the logistical hub of Pokrovsk, which is what they need to be able to advance in Slovyansk and Kramatorsk.

And any hopes of the Russians taking over Kharkiv or making some kind of gains in the Zaporizhia zone or the front line do not appear to be realistic. The Russians are trying to attack Sumy, as I mentioned earlier, and Putin bragged of this brand new offensive, which the Ukrainians denied, but there's still a long way from being able to actually make a breakthrough in that region, which they took earlier in the war and they lost, to be able to cut off the Ukrainians logistically from Kursk.

So right now I see the Russians having a lot of confidence, but it's not really bearing out on the battlefield because the Russians cannot really make anything more than very incremental gains at immense casualties. And also, it's important to keep in mind that Russia's resources are not infinite. This narrative that Russia is de facto winning the war and Ukraine is losing, I think is misleading. Neither side is winning. That's really the point I want to make.

The Russians are not only losing unsustainable large numbers of casualties without a full, general mobilization, which is going to be highly unpopular, but the Russian war economy is also weaker than we assumed. It withstood the sanctions better than we thought in 2022 and 2023, but already we're starting to see a potential declining growth to the one, one and a half percent range to the 2 to 3 percent range.

We're seeing inflation continue to soar in the high double digits in the major cities on consumer goods, even though interest rates are at 21%. This is not a sustainable economy. And the Russian war economy could have serious cracks or even see serious signs of strain if the Europeans intensify sanctions on oil and on other forms of revenue like the shadow fleet over the coming year. So Putin has got a lot of reasons to celebrate, but the picture is not rosy for him at all.

It's actually quite murky because of the losses of Russian lives, their inability to make major gains on the battlefield, and the ticking time bomb that is the Russian war economy.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy spoke tonight.

Real negotiations to end this conflict in a way that's acceptable to both sides, sustainable, and that ensures the stability and security of Ukraine for the long term.

Today, French President Emmanuel Macron hosted military leaders who are developing plans to support Ukraine's military for the next 15 years, said French Defense Minister Sébastien.

But Russia is making its own gains, raising the Russian tricolor over a village in the Russian region of Kursk that since the summer had been occupied by Ukraine. Earlier this week, Russian soldiers said they walked through a nine mile long natural gas pipeline in Kursk to surprise Ukrainian soldiers from the rear in now devastated villages. This war has taken a terrible toll on land and lives, and now there's a tentative step to negotiate its end.

SARAH MCCAMMON - CORRESPONDENT, NPR POLITICS PODCAST: Just remind us, there's been so much tariff talk from Trump, but what has actually been put in place so far? SCOTT HORSLEY - CORRESPONDENT, NPR POLITICS PODCAST: I think that caveat that we always put at the top of the podcast, things may have changed by the time you hear this, is particularly apt in this circumstance because it's been a wild week. On Monday, we had no tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico.

On Tuesday, we had suddenly a 25 percent tax on nearly all imports from Mexico and Canada. On Wednesday, that tax was relaxed as far as cars go. Today, it was relaxed further as far as most imports from Mexico go. That is imports covered by the U S Mexico, Canada Free Trade Agreement. So it's changing hour by hour, day by day, but it's certainly put the economy into a lot of questionable territory.

SARAH MCCAMMON - CORRESPONDENT, NPR POLITICS PODCAST: So, Asma, like Scott just said, there's been a lot of back and forth here. I mean, what is the White House trying to do? Just bring us up to speed on where they're focusing these tariffs and why.

ASMA KHALID - CORRESPONDENT, NPR POLITICS PODCAST: So, to me, these tariffs feel a lot more widespread and expansive than the tariffs in Trump term one, when you're talking about 25 percent tariffs across the board on Canada, which at this moment in time, as of taping are still in place, there were also additional 10 percent tariffs on China that the Trump administration announced last month. Then just this week, they increased that to an additional 10 percent tariff.

I've spoken to some manufacturers who say that they are now looking at about a 45 percent cumulative tariff on imports coming in from China, because I don't know if folks remember, but there were actually tariffs put in place on China during Trump's first term. The Biden administration kept those in place. So those are still there and they're just tacking more on., right.

And, and then on top of that, they have announced plans for across the board, 25% tariffs on steel and aluminum imports coming into the United States from any country. And then the big headline is on April 2nd, Trump, is calling for something called reciprocal tariffs. And his basic philosophy here is that this is about fairness. He says that other countries put high tariffs on the United States. And so, we as a country ought to tariff those countries back at an equal rate.

SARAH MCCAMMON - CORRESPONDENT, NPR POLITICS PODCAST: Asma, you just mentioned the Trump administration saying that this is about fairness, but I just want to step back a little further. Both of you, what is Trump's ostensible rationale for doing this? SCOTT HORSLEY - CORRESPONDENT, NPR POLITICS PODCAST: They've offered multiple rationales.

The tariffs against Mexico and Canada, and to some extent China, are ostensibly a reaction to fentanyl coming into the U. S. illegally, even though, in the case of Canada, virtually no fentanyl comes from Canada. It's also about illegal immigration. But the president has also talked about using tariffs to encourage people to manufacture in the United States as opposed to in other countries.

And then he's also talked about using tariffs to raise revenue, to offset the expected loss in revenue from extending the 2017 tax cuts. The thing is, tariffs can't do all of those things. They're mutually incompatible. ASMA KHALID - CORRESPONDENT, NPR POLITICS PODCAST: I don't think that the deluge of tariffs should be a particular surprise to a lot of folks because Trump campaigned on tariffs. He famously said that this was the most beautiful word in the dictionary.

I think we anticipated this. They have come, though, I will say, with such a degree of speed. I mean, we didn't even mention this, but there's also investigations to possibly add tariffs to other specific things like lumber and copper. He's also floated the idea of putting tariffs on semiconductors. So this is an across the board tool, and as Scott was saying, it feels like the White House. House thinks that this is like a multipurpose, a Swiss army knife, right?

Like you can pull it out for all sorts of things. And at some point you wonder, well, what is this? Isn't this a negotiation tactic? Is it a political tool? Is it an economic tool? Is it about raising revenue? Is it about immigration? I don't know that we have a clear vision of that. Trump officials have been asked multiple times on different television interviews what this is about.

And I don't think that they have delivered a clear, concise answer about what these tariffs are actually meant to achieve. SARAH MCCAMMON - CORRESPONDENT, NPR POLITICS PODCAST: And it's not just about goods. It's also about jobs. I want to ask you both about something that U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said on Fox News recently. Why are our Michigan jobs in Canada? Why are our Michigan jobs in Canada? And that's what the president's going to address. He's gonna say, come on back.

Come on back. We're going to build Michigan. We're gonna build Ohio. SARAH MCCAMMON - CORRESPONDENT, NPR POLITICS PODCAST: I mean, Scott, help us put this in context. Is it really that simple?

SCOTT HORSLEY - CORRESPONDENT, NPR POLITICS PODCAST: Well, the administration certainly sees it as that simple, and as we've said, they do think tariffs are a way to encourage domestic manufacturing, and this is one reason that the United Auto Workers Union has been supportive of these tariffs, even though, as we mentioned now, autos have gotten a one month reprieve from the import taxes. But the answer to Secretary Lutnick's question is, why are those jobs in Canada?

Because in this country, we've generally left it up to business people to make decisions about where factories should be located. We don't leave that up to central planners in Washington at the Commerce Department or the White House. Republicans traditionally have said we don't want the government picking winners and losers. Well, this is exactly the government picking winners and losers.

When the president can, with the stroke of a pen, impose a 25 percent tax on imports and then grant selective exemptions to industries or executives or foreign governments that cozy up to him.

Trump has this idea, Fortress America is based on this idea that if we go and put all these trade barriers into place, the rest of the world's just going to sit there, they aren't going to retaliate. And so what we're going to get is we're going to put pressure on other countries to lower their prices. If that were in fact the case, there's an element to that argument that goes through. We would put downward pressure on the rest of the world's prices.

We'd be still paying more for those goods because we're tacking tariffs on top of them. But this is the optimal tariff argument that the proposed chair of Trump's Council of Economic Advisors, Steve Marin, has put forward. But the rest of the world's not going to sit idly by. They're going to retaliate. So what happens?

We get a beggar thy neighbor situation, which we haven't seen since the 1930s in terms of the global response to the Smoot Hawley tariffs that the United States put in place, which we then spent the next several decades dismantling. Beggar thy neighbor? Beggar thy neighbor. The idea is I'm going to make myself richer and you poorer by putting downward pressure on your prices so I can enjoy your goods at a cheaper price and you have to pay more for mine.

You can do this by manipulating your currency. You can do this, if you're a big buyer of goods on the global market, by exercising your, what we think of as monopsony power, your ability to restrict demand and put downward pressure on the prices of other countries exports. That only works, me making you poorer, if you don't retaliate. If you do retaliate I make you poorer you make me poorer and we both end up worse off than when we started.

MICAH LOEWINGER - CO-HOST, ON THE MEDIA: That doesn't sound very good. It doesn't and you might think oh, this is just abstract economic theorizing. But no, we actually lived through this in 1930s, what did we do? We jacked up tariffs to around 33, 34 percent, and we lived with the retaliation of other countries, a more segmented, a more fortressed off world. And after World War II, we realized this just doesn't make sense.

And that's where the movement that ultimately created the World Trade Organization came from, that we would be richer if we are producing for each other's markets. MICAH LOEWINGER - CO-HOST, ON THE MEDIA: And does the Trump administration not have access to this history? Do they think it will play out differently? I think they have an alternative read on it. The Trump narrative would be countries then systematically cheated.

It was Japan in the 1980s and early 1990s, and then it was China in the later 1990s and the 2000s. And somehow Europe has cheated along the way too, though it's not entirely clear how Europe has cheated. I'm not sure what exactly Mexico and Canada are guilty of, but what the Trump administration has said is the rest of the world hasn't treated us right. He uses trade deficits as evidence of this, but man, that is an argument that it'd be very hard to find economists to endorse.

MICAH LOEWINGER - CO-HOST, ON THE MEDIA: The news about tariffs has just been so chaotic. It's really hard to follow, I think, for most of us. What context would you like to see in news coverage as this storyline unfolds, that we haven't been seeing enough of? What we're all trying to figure out here is what's the trail map. We don't know what the intended destination is.

My guess is that that destination is not going to be what Trump is advertising today, which is high tariffs across the board, because markets are going to rebel, major US companies are going to rebel, and the regions, the workers who are involved in that manufacturing production are going to rebel because you're upsetting a set of economic arrangements which has allowed them to hold on to their jobs. So I guess what I would want.

To see from the media is pressing the Trump administration on telling us where you're going. What are the steps along the way, what is the ultimate destination and what do you think that destination is going to provide for us that we can't get out of the constitution of the international economic order today? Just saying that America is going to be richer in the future by cordoning ourselves off from the rest of the world's goods and services is not sufficient.

TRISTAN SNELL - HOST, THE TRISTAN SNELL SHOW: Europe has now looked now looks more united than ever, even more than in 2022, where the original invasion, or full scale invasion, of Ukraine, I should say—because they already had invaded much earlier than that—the full scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 led to much stronger European unity, increases in defense spending, lots of aid to Ukraine, $132 billion of it, more than the US has spent, just keep saying it. Guess what?

If we keep saying it, eventually it'll sound true to people. We just need to make sure that, look, repeat a lie, it'll sound like the truth, we need to repeat a truth so it sounds like the truth. Just keep frickin doing it. Just keep it up, every goddamn time. $132 billion for Europe, $114 billion for the US. Say it every time.

Okay. But what's happening now is, back then, you had oh, suddenly Finland and Sweden, which had historically remained neutral and we're not part of NATO suddenly became NATO members because of all of that. You saw european boycotts of russian. Goods. You saw european countries band together to freeze assets of russian nationals held at banks and other financial institutions within their borders. All of that back in 2022 2023.

Now you're seeing a new wave of pro Ukraine sentiment in Europe and Europe's leaders banding together, without America, they literally held a NATO meeting, invited Canada, because NATO is basically the US, Canada, and then most of Western Europe and then a few countries you wouldn't necessarily expect like Turkey. That is NATO. They basically said, "psst hey, Trudeau, get over here." And he flew over and then the rest of them huddled and hung out with Zelenskyy and they didn't invite Trump.

America got, again, national honor? Try me this. We're getting kicked out of a club. We started and ran and led for 75 years. We started NATO with our allies, but we were the driving force behind it to be a bulwark against Soviet aggression. That is what NATO was built for. It has been a defensive alliance from day one all the way to day today. And they're now meeting without us, because we've shown that we're basically not going to be part of that alliance anymore.

Trump has not yet tried to announce that he's leaving NATO. By the way, he might try to do that at some point. Although it is a treaty, it's in the name, North Atlantic Treaty Organization. That's a treaty and that was passed by Congress, so he can't get rid of it without Congress. So if he tries to do that, that's going to be an interesting one, but he basically left NATO. That was a constructive. NATO departure is what just happened. That's what just happened there.

But now the Europeans are stepping up, and now they have decided to come up with a lot more money for Ukraine. I mentioned the $132 billion before. The headline that we are not really capturing here is that, as part of what is an 800—hardly any play in the US—$843 billion from Europe that is going to be spent on defense, including defense of Ukraine, and about $150 billion of that, just so far, there probably will be more, is going to go to help Ukraine.

So you know what the headline really should be. It's not Donald Trump's lies about the $100 billion versus 350 billion, it is that Europe, only days after that debacle, is now in the process of more than doubling its already very robust support for Ukraine. The idea that they haven't been in there with this fight is absolute horseshit. They have absolutely been in this fight and helping Ukraine with this fight. And they're about to completely double down on that.

That is probably not something that Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump were expecting, I think it's safe to say. I don't know if I was necessarily expecting it. There were rumblings of it right before the German elections, but I think they were trying to keep it on the DL because they didn't want it to mess up the German elections.

Now, with the German elections, having gone well, and clearly there being a strong effort to bring together a government in Germany that will be anti Nazi by excluding the AFD, sorry, Elon, and anti-Russia/pro-Ukraine. There will be plenty of support in Germany for both arming and helping the Ukrainians as well as rearming and beefing up the defenses of Germany and the rest of Europe. There's no talk of having a European army separate from NATO forces.

This is a Absolutely gigantic change and it's happened in less than a week, not even, were basically like 5 days after that meeting and all of this has already happened. And there's more. I'll throw one more thing in there, which is that now, today, early this morning, the EU is now announcing that it is going to take steps to remove Hungary's voting privileges in the European Parliament. This is a good one. I really enjoy this, because the problem is that within the EU, Hungary is a member.

They are now ruled by a pro Russia dictator, Victor Orban, who is widely loved by the American right, which tells you a lot of what you need to know. Orban, there are no other political parties in Hungary. There is no freedom of the press in Hungary. Political dissidents have been oppressed and jailed. It is very, very much a dictatorial one party state, is what is what Hungary is. And true to form the Hungarian government, Orban, has been extremely obstructionist.

When it has come to Europe helping Ukraine, over and over and over again. There's a lot of things that the European Parliament, and this is probably something they may want to think of fixing in the future, but whatever, I'm not here to tell them what to do, but there are a lot of things for which they actually need unanimity in order to pass it. And so every member country has to be okay with it. That's a bit of a problem.

You can't really do that super well, but they're going to do the next best thing, which is that they're going to basically say, okay, yeah, everybody except Hungary gets to vote on this thing because you have a collaborationist in your European Parliament. Like, you have somebody who's cavorting with the enemy. You have an enemy within when you have Hungary there.

So, if Hungary gets to vote and it's unanimity that's required is going to thwart the attempts of Europe to prevent, I wanted to say Soviet, but it's prevent Kremlin domination of Europe all over again. Europe wants to resist the Iron Curtain coming back. Germany wants to stop another Berlin wall or worse being erected. This is what they're up against here.

Of course, they want to defend themselves, and I think they're finally really standing up and saying, if the US isn't going to help lead the way, we're going to do it ourselves. So what this means for Ukraine is they're going to be, I think you're going to see the Ukrainians have more than enough support to reject any bad Russian deal and keep fighting and be able to pay for humanitarian aid and reconstruction, weaponry, everything. That's what this is bringing to the table.

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: We've just heard clips starting with the Tristan Snell Show explaining that Trump's US foreign policy is all about Trump and not at all about the US. Democracy Now! didn't shy away from highlighting problems with USAID. It Could Happen Here looked at Trump's hawkish and transactional foreign policy. Jacobin Radio discussed Ukraine's fight for self-determination and the broader struggle for democracy.

WhoWhatWhy explained the Trump-induced crisis within NATO. The PBS NewsHour reported on the ongoing negotiations between the US, Russia and Ukraine. The NPR Politics Podcast discussed the chaos of Trump's tariffs. On the Media looked at some of the historical context and past negative consequences of unthoughtful trade wars. And the Tristan Snell Show explained the knock-on effect in Europe of the US threatening to withhold aid from Ukraine. And those were just the Top Takes.

There's a lot more in the Deeper Dive sections. But first, a reminder that this show is produced with the support of our members who get access to bonus episodes featuring our team of producers, and enjoy all of our shows without ads. To support all of our work and have those bonus episodes delivered seamlessly to the new members-only podcast feed that you'll receive, sign up to support

the show at BestOfTheLeft.Com/Support (there's a link in the show notes), through our Patreon page or from right inside the Apple Podcasts app. And as always, if regular membership isn't in the cards for you, shoot me an email requesting a financial hardship membership, because we don't let a lack of funds stand in the way of hearing more information.

If you have a question or would like your comments included in the show, our upcoming topics that you can chime in on include what resistance there is to Trump and Musk's takeover, which is more heartening than you might imagine; followed by a focus on the far right war on the LGBTQ community. So get your comments and questions in now for those topic or anything else. You can leave us a voicemail or send us a text at 202-999-3991.

We're also findable on the privacy-focused messaging app Signal at the handle bestoftheleft.01, and there's a link in the show notes for that, or you can simply email me to [email protected]. Now, as for today, I just have a quick note that feels particularly relevant today as we tackle this slate of topics that collectively feel like the entire earth is shifting beneath our feet.

We just started experimenting with a new episode format, the "monthly-ish mix," which is basically a roundup of highlights from recent episodes that we plan to put out monthly-ish. If the entire world shifting beneath your feet makes you feel a little bit overwhelmed, we get that, but it is no excuse to check out entirely.

So if you or someone you know are the kind of people who could benefit from a monthly-ish roundup to keep you in the know, keep an eye out for those episodes or tell the people you know to do the same. Secondly, I want to mention again that this coming week is going to be a big one for activism with Congress on recess, and we're releasing an episode full of inspiring action-oriented resistance type stuff.

I hope that you'll share that one as far and wide as possible to help rally the troops Now as far as nuts and bolts activism, we'd recommend connecting with Indivisible as they always have good and timely calls to action. So make sure you're following them closely in the coming days. And now we'll continue to dive deeper on four topics today. Next up, section A, Russia and Ukraine, followed by Section B, trade, wars and Tariffs, section C-U-S-A-I-D, and Section D, US realignment and nato.

We won't get to them all, but we'll start with the most crucial one, probably. Unity, which was penned in a paper called Synopsis by a German monk 300 years ago. A myth of the unity of Slavic nations is very new. It was created only three centuries ago by that German person named Innocenti Gesell. So how does Gesell's chronicle read? It starts from the creation of the world, then goes all the way to Noah and Moses and the first princes of Kiev and Rus, according to that chronicle.

direct descendants of characters of the Bible. The first statehood was created in Kiev, but then the grandsons of grandsons of the first Kievan princes moved the capital of unified Rus to the city of Moscow. He draws that imaginary line that unifies old Kiev with new Moscow. BROOKE GLADSTONE - HOST, ON THE MEDIA: You say Gazelle's synopsis went on to be used as a textbook.

It was one of the first scientific texts on Russian history, and Nikita Gezel could not have foreseen that, but Peter the Great loved it, and it was used by all the official historians. Actually, it was the main source of the information for most Russian historians in 18th century and the 19th century till 20th century.

BROOKE GLADSTONE - HOST, ON THE MEDIA: Okay, so stay with the era of Peter the Great when the Ukrainian leader, or Hetman, Ivan Mazepa, was navigating two different empires, Sweden's and Russia's, now rapidly expanding. How did Mazepa become a symbol of betrayal? That would be the second myth that still resonates today. During that period, Ukraine has become part of Russian Empire, and he was considered to be one of the very close military leaders to Russian Emperor Peter the Great.

As Mazepa He always considered himself to be first Ukrainian leader and only then ally of the Russian czar. When the situation for his homeland has become really dangerous, he has chosen to switch sides and ally with Swedish emperor. And that symbolic choice is still considered for many years to be a symbolic betrayal by Russian historians. At the same time, for Ukrainian historians, on the contrary, he chose his own people and his own nation.

And he might have been A traitor, if he had chosen Peter the Great, but not his people. And is right now, during the current war, it's associated with Ukrainian words, zhrada. That means betrayal, a very important political term in today's Ukraine. That moral dilemma of Ivan Mazepa. It's always raised when a politician or an activist has a choice between real interests of his nation and his people.

And BROOKE GLADSTONE - HOST, ON THE MEDIA: it explains so much because in the last year or so, at various international cultural events like the PEN conference, which stands for the Freedom of Writers, Ukrainian writers simply won't appear on the same stage with Russians, even if those Russians are dissidents and at risk and opposed to Putin's war. I never understood until you explain the idea of Zrada. Why Ukrainians would shun those Russians.

Ukrainians blame not only Russian government and not only Vladimir Putin, but Russia as such, and all representatives of Russian culture. Ukrainians blame Pushkin as well as Joseph Brodsky, Dostoevsky, or other representatives of Russian culture, claiming that they were imperialists. That's a very important idea for me because I think that we won't find common grounds before we address all those issues.

And we cannot, as Russian writers, Russian intellectuals, we cannot say, don't touch Pushkin, he's sacred, he's our everything. That would be just blind. We should reconsider. all the mistakes and crimes of Russian culture as well. And we are not the first. Very symbolic example is, for example, Kipling, who has written the infamous poem about White man's burden. Yes. And Jungle Book is not canceled, is still loved by kids all over the world.

But this particular Concept of Kipling is widely discussed and is denounced by British intellectuals and by British historians, and we must do that. We must get rid of our historical myths and of our sacred cows, including Pushkin or Dostoevsky or Solzhenitsyn. Do BROOKE GLADSTONE - HOST, ON THE MEDIA: you want to just get rid of Dostoyevsky? No, no, I BROOKE GLADSTONE - HOST, ON THE MEDIA: You mean that we have to understand that he's a creature of his time? We should read him in full.

And if he was terribly wrong, we must find courage to admit it and to say it. BROOKE GLADSTONE - HOST, ON THE MEDIA: You liken the Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko to Frederick Douglass, because Shevchenko was basically a serf who happened to become the greatest Ukrainian poet, liberated at the same time as Frederick Douglass ran away from slavery to New York City and liberated himself.

There are no parallels in history, definitely, but there are rhymes, and different countries were facing very similar political and social process and serfdom is a form of slavery. Serfdom in Russia was abolished the same year as the American Civil War started. And Taras Shevchenko is the first writer who used classic traditional literary Ukrainian language, because before him Ukrainians could reach the highest positions in Russian cultural elite or political bureaucracy.

They could have become members of government or chancellors with only one condition. If they abandoned their Ukrainian background and started speaking Russian. So Shevchenko, even after being liberated and even after he had become one of the most popular artists in St. Petersburg, he never stopped writing in Ukrainian and he has become a moral example. BROOKE GLADSTONE - HOST, ON THE MEDIA: It's interesting though how many Russians suggest that Ukrainian is actually just pigeon Russian.

The words look alike. They sound alike. How do you address the language issue or the language myth. A lot of Russians, and we know that Vladimir Putin is one of them, consider Ukrainian not as a real language but as provincial Russian. Unfortunately, all those people don't know anything about Ukrainian literature or the history of Ukrainian language, and they don't know, for example, the history of Russian authorities, especially in 18th and 19th and 20th century.

To suppress the usage of Ukrainian languages. Ukrainian books were banned. The education in Ukrainian was permanently banned. So yes, that's a real historical tragedy, and it's funny that the language that does not exist was banned and then still exists even after all those centuries. SEENA GHAZNAVI - HOST, THE FOREIGN REPORT: But I wanted to talk a little bit about history at the top of the show here. Because at the time of Going back to the Soviet Union falling.

The time of Ukraine's independence. Okay? 1991. The former Soviet Union had nuclear weapons spread all across the Union. But when the Soviet Union fell in Kazakhstan, Belarus, and Ukraine, there was nuclear material. In that time, in 1991, Ukraine held the third largest nuclear arsenal in the world. They had 1, 900 strategic warheads, 176 intercontinental ballistic missiles, ICBMs, and 44 strategic bombers. All those missiles technically belong to the new Russian government.

And so there was a deal done called the Lisbon Protocol in 1992, where Ukraine, along with Belarus and Kazakhstan, agreed to return the nuclear weapons to Russia. But in 92, the states all agreed to join the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, uh, which is, you know, Russia and U. S. and Kazakhstan, Belarus and, Ukraine all agreed to reduce their nuclear weapons, of course, and they all signed on to it, and this was supposed to create a framework.

But you know, you don't just like, as we've seen this week, you know, a deal says, someone says a deal's gonna get done, and then it takes a while to sign the deal. Sometimes they say they're not gonna sign the deal. Sometimes they say, I'm gonna sign the deal, but you gotta do X, Y, and Z. That's basically what was happening here. In 93, the people inside Ukraine elected officials started admittedly, you know, becoming skeptical about handing all these nukes.

That after they just got independence from the Soviet Union, whoever thought they wouldn't, they wouldn't be, I don't know, they wouldn't feel confident giving all these nukes to the Russians. It's hard SAMAN ARBABI - CO-HOST, THE FOREIGN REPORT: to imagine. SEENA GHAZNAVI - HOST, THE FOREIGN REPORT: It's hard to imagine. I know. And so they are saying to themselves, well, wait a minute. What if we just, we just fought all this way. We just did all this, all this stuff.

I don't want to just give hand these people all these nukes. So in April of 1993, 162 Ukrainian politicians. signed a statement that added preconditions to the START treaty before it was ratified. That included security assurances from Russia and the United States for an aid for dismantlement, because you can't just copy and paste or cut, copy and paste these weapons. You got to dismantle them. You got to do all this stuff and then compensation for all that nuclear material.

Okay. Yeah. What the beak. So there was some back and forth. And again, the Ukrainians still didn't want to give up all their delivery vehicles and their warheads. So there's all this back and forth. This is now two years after they are now independent from the Soviet union. And they're like, are we going to just give them everything?

It wasn't until 1994. A trilateral statement was reached where Ukraine committed to full disarmament in exchange for economic support and security assurances from both the United States and Russia. So Russia was like, listen, we'll make sure no one fucks with you. United States was like, we're definitely going to make sure no one fucks with you. Russia is chill now. You have nothing to worry about.

I promise you, nothing will happen in Russia that will upend this entire agreement and make you feel like you're going to be at war again. What could possibly go wrong? The United States and the Russians literally had to, like, drag these weapons out of Ukrainians hands. Because they didn't trust the former Soviet Union, of course. They had to get security guarantees, funding. I mean, this is crazy. And here's the thing, Russia has wanted Eastern Ukraine since the very beginning.

Okay, demographically speaking, it's all these things. They've wanted. And so, of course, things unravel. The reason we bring all this up is because in 2018, a clip was going around recently on the old social medias, and it was from our current Secretary of State, then Senator, Marco Rubio.

Well now, this was signed in 1994. Twenty years later, one of the three countries that signed that agreement hasn't just not provided for their defense, they actually invaded them. And I want to make a point on this for a second. Think about if you're one of these other countries around the world right now that feels threatened by your neighbors. And the United States and the rest of the world are going to you and saying, Listen, don't develop nuclear weapons.

Don't develop nuclear weapons, South Korea. Don't develop nuclear weapons, Japan. Don't develop nuclear weapons, Saudi Arabia. We will protect you. We will watch out for you. What kind of lesson do you think this instance sends to them? I think the message this is sending to many nations around the world is perhaps we can no longer count on the security promises made by the free world. Perhaps we need to start looking out for ourselves.

And that's why the Ukrainian situation is so much more important than simply what's happening in Europe. This has implications around the world. Yeah. BRAD FRIEDMAN - HOST, THE BRADCAST: So here's how some of that hearing, uh, this past week and the questioning by Senator Merkley in that, uh, hearing of those two nominees, here's how that went in the Senate foreign relations committee hearing on Tuesday.

Second of all, he gave away key things on the negotiating table before the negotiations even started, U. S. would absolutely oppose, um, any possibility of, of NATO, uh, membership for Ukraine. Uh, third, he's cut off the arms shipments to Ukraine, completely undermining their ability against a massive neighbor next door with short supply lines and, and huge resources.

Fourth, he's undermined the partnership with Europe, which has been essential to security over the last eight, 80 years, a major.

Major goal of, of, of Putin's and then he's done everything to discredit and dismean Zelensky on the international stage with the Just shameful press conference in which he teamed up with the vice president to attack Zelensky I can't imagine that if he was a Russian asset, he could be do anything more favorable than these five points What else could a Russian asset act actually possibly do that that Trump hasn't yet done?

Senator the The president has made it absolutely clear that his top priority is to try to bring peace and end an absolutely savage war. I know you're familiar with the savagery. This is turning into World War I style trench warfare now in eastern Ukraine. The president is an exceptionally gifted Dealmaker he is probably the only individual in the entire universe that could actually stop this the president understands as part of his deal Well, let's turn to another of that.

You've got the carrots and say thank you very much since you're now off the topic I was raising Mr. Whitaker these five things that the president has done that are so favorable. So to Putin and so Damaging to Ukraine and to our partnership with Europe. Do you approve of them?

Well, he's an exceptionally gifted deal maker and the only person in this universe Who could negotiate an end to this war? That was Senator, Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon on Tuesday on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, confirmation hearings questioning Trump's choices for Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau and for NATO Ambassador, former toilet salesman Matt Whitaker, asking them the simple question, what else could a Russian asset?

Actually possibly do that Donald Trump has, has not yet done stick a pin in that question for the moment, cause I'm going to get back to it because we've got, uh, some fresh news of a sort today on exactly that, but as to the once kind of ridiculous now, not ridiculous at all question, as I see it as to whether Donald Trump is actually a compromised Russian asset, well, maybe AI. Has some answers for us on that.

Well, I wouldn't normally turn to AI, which can be notoriously unreliable and or programmatically biased. I wouldn't normally turn to AI for insight on this or really anything right now. But this AI answer is actually somewhat amusing. And or enlightening if only because of the particularly specific AI system that it happens to actually come from, as you probably know, there are a lot of, a lot of competitors out there in the AI space these days, including in the AI Chatbot industry.

It's it is one that Donald Trump's best buddy and arguably co president Elon Musk is heavily involved and invested in. He has his own, uh, AI company or program. He calls his. XAI and he makes it a avail. He makes available a, uh, a, a a bot, an answer bot, a chat bot that he calls Grok on his social media site once called Twitter, now called X since Elon bought it and ran it into the ground.

But Elon Musk's own artificial intelligence, large language model chatbot named Grok was asked the following question this week, what is the likelihood from one to 100. The Donald Trump is a Putin compromised asset. And that question included the direction to quote, use all, all publicly available information from 1980 on and his failure to ever say anything negative about Putin, but has no issue attacking. Allies. Now, in actuality, this is actually kind of a good question to pose to AI.

I don't use it a lot, but it's a good idea because it requires the system to examine, as the question says, all publicly available information from 1980 on up through the present regarding this topic, something that would otherwise Take, uh, yeah, cut, you know, a few months, if not years for a human being to actually do exactly. So it's kind of seems like a good, uh, reasonable use of AI and AI chat bot.

So what did Elon Musk's own AI program called Grok have to say in response to the question of the likelihood that Trump is a. Putin compromised asset using all available public information going back to 1980. Well, it's pretty detailed answer cites a lot of sources before it comes to its conclusion.

It begins, for example, this way, assessing the likelihood that Donald Trump is a compromised asset of Vladimir Putin based on publicly available information from 1980 onward involves analyzing a complex web of financial ties. personal interactions, political behavior, and circumstantial evidence. This is not a definitive determination, but an estimation grounded in patterns and data accessible as of March 4, 2025.

Writes Grok. The question highlights Trump's consistent reluctance to criticize Putin juxtaposed against his frequent attacks on us allies, which is a key behavioral.

Indicator to consider alongside historical and financial context from the 1980s onward writes Grok trump's business dealings provide a starting point public records show He pursued real estate ventures with significant russian financial involvement in 1987 trump visited moscow a trip facilitated by soviet officials sparking speculation about early cultivation by russian Intelligence speculation later fueled by former KGB agent, Yuri Schwartz,

who claimed Trump was targeted as a potential asset due to his ego and his financial vulnerabilities throughout the 1990s and 2000s. As Trump faced bankruptcies, he increasingly relied on funding from sources tied to Russia and former Soviet States. His sons, Donald Jr. And Eric made statements reinforcing this Donald Jr. 2008 said, quote, Russians make up pretty disproportionate, make up a pretty disproportionate cross section.

Of a lot of our assets and Eric in 2014 claimed, quote, we have all the funding we need out of Russia, unquote, the Trump organization's partnerships, like with the Bay Rock group led by Tefiq Arif. And Felix Sater, the latter, with known Russian mafia ties and sales of properties to Russian oligarchs. Example, Dmitri Rybolov, uh, Rybolov, his two hundred, his two thousand eight. Purchase of a Trump property for 95 million suggests a dependency on Russian money that could create leverage.

Intelligence reports and investigations add weight. The 2017 U. S. intelligence community assessment concluded Putin authorized interference in the 2016 election to favor Trump, a finding supported by the Mueller report, which, while not proving criminal conspiracy, documented extensive Trump campaign Russia contacts over Counts.

Now, it goes on and on with specific detailed information from source after source, including counterarguments to the idea that Trump is a compromised Russian agent before concluding this way, quote, from Grok, Elon Musk's own artificial intelligence, a chat bot, quote, weighing this, the financial ties decades long, opaque and substantial. Intelligence suggesting Russian intent and Trump's unwavering refusal to criticize Putin despite attacking allies tilt the scale.

The lack of transparency, example, hiding tax returns, seizing interpreter notes after talks with Putin, amplifies suspicion. No smoking gun proves direct control, but the useful idiot scenario where Trump's ego and debts make him unwittingly pliable. Fits the evidence. Adjusting for uncertainty and alternative explanations, example ideological alignment or naivete.

I estimate, says Grok, a 75 85 percent likelihood that Donald Trump is a Putin compromised asset, leaning toward the higher end of that due to the consistency of his behavior and the depth of historical ties. This range reflects the strength of circumstantial evidence tempered by the absence of conclusive proof, a gap Unlikely to close without classified data.

In other words, without classified data, just based on the public sourcing that we have going all the way back to 1980, like 25 years, based on all of that evidence, there's a 75 to 85 percent chance that Donald Trump is a Russian asset closer to the 85 percent mark that according to Elon Musk's own artificial intelligence program, his own chat bot. Thinks Donald Trump is more likely than not. A Russian asset BROOKE GLADSTONE - HOST, ON THE MEDIA: Another myth you address is the myth of Lenin.

Putin's claim before invading that Ukraine was an invention of Lenin's, you write that an independent Ukrainian state was formed in spite of Lenin.

He is still considered to be probably the founding father of the political Ukrainian nation because he was the first author to write the academic history of Ukraine. BROOKE GLADSTONE - HOST, ON THE MEDIA: That was written in 1898 and it was the first impactful response to the history written by the monk Gazel. He was successfully trying to prove that Giselle's concept written in synopsis was fake. So how Ukraine became the independent state back in 1918.

In October of 1917, there was a Bolshevik coup in St. Peterburg and Russia had become a communist dictatorship, and that was a catastrophe for. all the democratic movements in Russia and in Ukraine. So after Lenin has become Russian dictator, there was no other choice for Ukrainian authorities for Khrushchevsky, but to proclaim the independent Ukrainian state. So it's really ridiculous when Vladimir Putin says that Ukraine was invented by Lenin.

BROOKE GLADSTONE - HOST, ON THE MEDIA: Khrushchevsky was Interrogated by the Soviet secret police in the thirties, historians arrested in the Soviet Union were called wrecker historians by the government. So the Russian government has always been extremely sensitive to how history is depicted. There's a curse of Russian history that it has always been very close to the power.

All famous classical historians were always appointed by the heads of state and were reporting to the emperors or to the secretary generals. Nikolai Karamzin, probably one of the most famous Russian historians of 19th century, was reporting directly to the emperor Alexander I. In 20th century, Stalin himself was editing the official version of the Communist Party history. So, yes.

It was absolutely clear for Russian leaders that they have to create the version of Russian history that proves they deserve to be in power. It should explain why Russia needs to be the empire. That was very clear for me that the moment when Putin started to build his ideology around his version of Russian history and to justify the current brutal aggression.

BROOKE GLADSTONE - HOST, ON THE MEDIA: In the epilogue, you write that imperial history is our disease, and that future generations of Russians will, quote, not tread the same path if we, their ancestors, bear the punishment today. So, if imperial history has been the problem, you're turning to a revision of that history as the solution. Yeah, that's true. We have never had a proper people's history of Russia, and that's right time to start writing it.

And if in history, Russian army or Russian leaders have committed war crimes, they should be named this way. We should know everything about history of peoples of Russia, history of of Siberia and how Siberia was colonized, history of Far East, history of Urals, history of North Caucasus, all the neighbors of Russia, and confess to ourselves and apologize to all other nations which have become victims of Russian imperial history.

BROOKE GLADSTONE - HOST, ON THE MEDIA: Have you been following the fight here in America over history? How to teach it, how to advance it? You know, the debate about history in America is an inspiration for me.

To what Senator Merkley asked in that Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, a confirmation hearing this week. What else could a Russian asset actually possibly do that Donald Trump has not yet done?

While neither of the, uh, two Trump nominees who were giving testimony chose to, uh, you know, try to simply answer the question and they instead chose to change the subject or try to change the subject in their answers, unwilling or unable to come up with anything, a Russian asset could actually possibly do that Trump has yet to do. Well, it looks like Trump, according to an exclusive from Reuters today, has come up with something all by himself.

So, what else could a Russian asset actually possibly do that Trump hasn't done? Asked Jeff Merkley this week. Well, neither of the Trump nominees were able to answer that, but it looks like Trump, according to an exclusive from Reuters, has. According to the news service, which has recently, by the way, also been barred along with AP from White House events and Air Force One, today is reporting U. S. President Donald Trump's administration is planning to revoke.

Temporary legal status for some 240, 000 Ukrainians who fled to the U. S., who fled the conflict with Russia. That, according to a senior Trump official and three sources familiar with the matter. Potentially, putting those 240, 000 Ukrainians on a fast track to deportation. A fast track back to their still war torn country, still in the third year of its valiant effort of defending itself against the full scale invasion by Russia.

Its much bigger neighbor, who unlawfully invaded it three years ago and has been carrying out war crimes against Ukraine's civilian population ever since. That's war. Where Trump is reporting to, uh, reportedly planning now to send back some 240, 000 refugees from our allied nation of Ukraine or our once allied nation of Ukraine, people who fled to the U S for safety after Putin's yes, unprovoked invasion of Ukraine 2022, the move, uh, according to Reuters, uh, is expected as soon as April.

And would be a stunning reversal of the welcome that Ukrainians received under President Joe Biden's administration.

The planned rollback of protections for Ukraine's, uh, for Ukrainians was reportedly already underway before Trump's public feud with Vladimir, Vladimir Zelensky recently in the Oval Office is part of a broad Trump administration effort to strip legal status from more than 1. 8 So while one could argue, uh, Hey, this isn't only a favor to Vladimir Putin, Trump is sending back a lot of immigrants from elsewhere who are here fully legally.

So it's not just a favor to Putin, but it's certainly something that Putin I suspect would approve of. Making life even harder for Ukrainians amid his unrelenting war, which, by the way, Russia could end tomorrow if they wanted to by simply leaving their neighbor's country.

DESI DOYEN - CO-HOST, THE BRADCAST: And that's one of the reasons that you can think maybe Trump might be working on Putin's behalf because he has never once He's publicly said that he would ask Putin to just withdraw from Ukraine. BRAD FRIEDMAN - HOST, THE BRADCAST: Just leave. Just leave. He wants a peace treaty. He's going to work for Russia to, to help get that treaty. Why doesn't he just ask Russia to leave?

DESI DOYEN - CO-HOST, THE BRADCAST: You want to end the war in one day, as Trump has promised for months during the campaign. Just do that. BRAD FRIEDMAN - HOST, THE BRADCAST: A Trump executive order, issued on January 20, called for his Department of Homeland Security to quote, terminate all categorical migrant related parole programs. As CBS News was first to report, the administration plans to revoke parole for about 530, 000 Cubans and Haitians and Nicaraguans and Venezuelans.

As soon as this month. Migrants stripped of their parole status could then face fast track deportation proceedings according to an internal ICE email that has been seen by Reuters. Immigrants who cross the border illegally can be put into the fast track deportation process known as expedited removal for two years after they enter.

But for those who entered through legal ports of entry, Without being officially admitted to the U S as with those on parole, for example, who came from Ukraine at the beginning of war, well, there's actually no time limit at all. To put them on rapid removal, according to the ice email. So essentially anybody they want who was admitted here legally can now be put into the rapid removal program.

The Biden programs were part of a broader effort to create temporary legal pathways to deter illegal immigration and provide humanitarian relief. In addition to the 240, 000 Ukrainians fleeing the Russian invasion, and the 530, 000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans, these programs covered more than 70, 000 people.

Afghans who were escaping the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, a takeover accelerated, as you'll recall, by a deal that was made by Donald Trump before he left office with the Taliban in his first term that resulted in the withdrawal of U. S. Forces from that nation just months after Biden took over and carried out the terms that were struck by Donald Trump in his deal with the Taliban.

You'll recall at the time the chaotic scramble to help tens if not hundreds of thousands of Afghani people who served as allies to the U. S. during our long war there that scrambled to get them out of the country before they would likely have to face retribution from the returning Taliban.

DESI DOYEN - CO-HOST, THE BRADCAST: And you'll recall the reports when the Biden administration first entered that term, that they said that there was zero planning that was done by the Trump administration in preparation for that rapid withdrawal. BRAD FRIEDMAN - HOST, THE BRADCAST: Now, while Trump and Republicans have long been claiming they're not against immigration, They love immigration. Immigrants are great. They're just against illegal immigration.

Well, in fact, the Trump administration last month paused processing lawful immigration related applications for people who enter the U. S. under various Biden parole programs. Placing, for example, Ukrainian Liana Avetisian, her husband, and her 14 year old daughter. In limbo from Ukraine, I have a Tizian who worked in real estate in Ukraine now assembles windows here in the U. S. Her husband works in construction.

The family fled Keeve in May 2023, eventually buying a house in the small city of Dewitt, Iowa. Their parole and work Permits expire. However, in May of this year, they said they spent about 4, 000 in filing fees to renew their parole and to try to apply for another program known as temporary protected status.

Now, if Reuters report is accurate and it seems quite detailed and well sourced, well, the, uh, avatissians, uh, and I know I'm pronouncing that wrong, forgive me, but they could face deportation by Donald Trump. And his administration back to Ukraine in the middle of the still ongoing war, along with 240, 000 other Ukrainians. Arguably, even more disturbing, perhaps, is the administration's apparent plans to send back Afghanis who helped the U. S. during our war there.

Whatever you think about that war, these were Afghanistan people who helped us and that we helped to escape in the wake of Trump's agreement to withdraw all U. S. forces before the Taliban then took over control of the country again. U. S. allies from Afghanistan, according to Reuters, who entered under Biden, have also now been swept up into Trump's crackdown. JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: Now entering Section B trade wars and tariffs.

AARON BASTANI - HOST, NOVARA FM: So one part of this I think is perhaps sort of technical people Maybe don't uh fully appreciate yet is that trump has been trying to sort of devalue the dollar And the idea of getting a weaker dollar seems like it would weaken america But in fact the opposite is the case that it would be enable america to bring manufacturing capacity including military manufacturing capacity back to the u. s do manufacturing there. Do you see that as part of this strategy?

Or do you think that's sort of a another slightly extraneous, you know, kind of component in this chaotic, uh, form of governance that I think Trump is pioneering?

So it's not that tariffs are inherently bad that From a kind of left political economy perspective, we should always be against tariffs. Tariffs have had a, a really important role to play, especially for countries of the global south or the third world in developing strategies in opposition to, to US power. But applied in the American context, I think what's interesting about them is that they're fundamentally weak way of delivering the objectives that Trump is trying to deliver.

So my, my colleague, Melanie Bristler and I wrote about this recently for Commonwealth. Basically this idea that What Trump is trying to do is to restore this kind of American manufacturing dominance, but without really taking public or social governance of investment. So he's trying to basically induce private capital investment in manufacturing, and that's unlikely to happen in the way that he's trying to provoke it.

Basically, because what you have is a political economy in which companies are used to keeping cash reserves because it's in their interest to do so. Especially in a world destabilized by tariffs and they're also used to pumping money out to their shareholders So the idea that just through this kind of relatively crude tool He'll be able to restore or revive american manufacturing Is very unlikely and the other point that i'd add very quickly is that?

Just like with biodynamics, it's, it's unlikely to do anything really about the conditions of most of the American population where you have nearly two thirds of the population living paycheck to paycheck, it's not going to do very much for them. In Britain. We also AARON BASTANI - HOST, NOVARA FM: have this sort of ongoing process of deindustrialization, um, much more in some ways, um, completed in the UK. Uh, there's a kind of a imaginary that I think we have of.

Britain, which is that it's dominated entirely by professional services firms and, um, you know, financial interests and that really Britain has been hollowed out as a country In your report you do point to the ways in which britain still maintains a domestic arms manufacturing capacity Tell us about that. What does Britain actually make? What is Britain capable of doing in this kind of manufacturing, particularly military manufacturing?

So I'll speak a bit about the first part of your question and then move to the second. On the first point, we have to start from that de industrialization context that's had a massive transformative impact on the economy.

Between 1962 and 2008, We um, we lost manufacturing as a share of employment at the fastest rate of any g7 country So it's it's it's it's been transformative and obviously people who live in this country are very aware of that But I think what's interesting is that military spending in real terms since 1980 Has actually been maintained at a relatively consistent level Although there have been some kind of peaks and small peaks and troughs um at times of of war or kind

of supposed a ceaseless kind of war on terror and It's now larger in real terms, the military budget than it was in 1980. And that supports the domestic manufacturing industry that supports the manufacturing of fighter jets, submarines, high end electronics for military equipment, um, warships, helicopters. Quite a significant range of, of different types of military kit. What I would say that's important is that there's been a double hollowing out.

Almost you've had this wider hollowing out of the UK economy. And then within the arms industry, what you see is this kind of interesting form of state capitalism, where you have an industry that is. Entirely reliant on government contracts.

It's it's run by government money So when bae and the government go around talking about the great economic benefits What they're not telling you is that this is all government money anyway But even though it's a it's a manufacturing base that relies on the state its own privately now So it was privatized under thatcher a lot of the military manufacturing base And, and subsequently some privatization continued even at the start of the new labor government.

And it basically operates almost as a way of money flowing through from these state contracts through to the asset management firms that own military companies. And they're often multinationals. So although there are companies like BAE, Babcock, Rolls Royce that are headquartered in the UK, BAE is interesting because most of its revenue actually comes from the U. S. These companies are big multinational firms. They're publicly listed. So you're, you or I could go and buy a share in one of them.

And those benefits from the contracts ultimately kind of flow through. So, so it's, it's not like this kind of great. Um set of national champions that is, you know run by the state for the state It's an area in which there's private interest and there's a state interest RANIA KHALEK - CO-HOST, BREAKTHROUGH NEWS: You know, Zoe, it's pretty impressive. Claudia Schoenbaum has been in office for not very long.

And she's already had to deal with a change in administration to her north, the most powerful country in the world, the United States of America, um, under a presidency that was trying to punish Mexico with these tariffs and has also added Mexican drug cartels to the foreign terrorist organization list, uh, essentially doing what Elon Musk openly said, which is laying the groundwork for being able to carry out drone strikes in Mexico, which is a huge threat.

So can you put, um, I don't know, some of this and some of these acts of, I would say aggression by the United States in the context of Claudia Sheinbaum as president and what she in the movement she represents and what that means, uh, to the U S because there's a reason that there. attacking Mexico. I'm not trying to put this, you know, say the tariffs are are the reason for this because obviously Canada is being subjected to potential tariffs as well.

But there does seem to be a heightened aggression towards Mexico.

And again, this opens up an entirely new kind of scenario and threat. Um, it's something that a lot of analysts have been warning about with, uh, the designation of these organizations as foreign terrorist organizations, because essentially this designation just gives power, you know, gives powers to the U S government to go after them in a certain way that Again, you know, they're threatening, doing drone strikes across the border, um, threatening the use of military force.

There's already been kind of this militarization of the border. Um, so all of this is very concerning and, and again, despite the relief on tariffs again, uh, Trump did mention in this address to Congress, uh. Kind of this. We will go after these organizations. We will kind of crack down.

Um, and you know, that is definitely concerning and Mexico has continued to maintain this position that they are doing everything they can, you know, on in the area that concerns them, which is again, continuing this very, very difficult and long war on drug cartels in the country, which again, If we just look a little bit into the past, uh, which have been propped up by, uh, past administrations that were directly collaborating with the United States, backed by the United States,

receiving support from the United States. Um, so, you know, important to just add that, that element that, um, you know, Mexican governments like of, uh, you know, Vicente Fox, Felipe Calderon, there are. Cases against members of those members, uh, members of their administrations for having links to drug cartels. Um, and so now there's this, oh, we're going to go after the drug cartels.

At the same time in Mexico, there's a narrative that, oh, the administration of Morena is working with the cartels. And so it is in some senses, of course, there actually is a very real struggle, um, going on in Mexico to actually Crackdown on organized crime, which once again has been bolstered and in many ways supported by the right wing in the country.

Um, of course the left and progressive movements do not want huge criminal organizations to exist in the country, but also the attack and this kind of like, we're going to go off the, the, the U S and the right wing look more in us with the cartels. This is also sort of a smoke screen, um, to attack a government that.

Um, is, is attempting to rebuild Mexico's sovereignty to give a prosperous life to the people and is challenging some of those vested, some importantly, some of those vested U. S. interests in Mexico. EUGENE PURYEAR - CO-HOST, BREAKTHROUGH NEWS: You know, it's a number of good points there. Uh, sorry, I got distracted when you mentioned Vicente Fox, who put out this video. Denouncing Claudia, Sean, I look like a hostage video.

It looked ridiculous, but I thought the point you ended on is very important, which is the sort of what the fourth transformation is doing. I mean, I, a little bit before this, and like I told people at the top, I was sick, so maybe I misread the graph, but I think I'm right. You know, since the USMCA has been signed, which of course, uh, AMLO, the predecessor of Claudia, Sean bomb, um, uh, negotiated during the first Trump administration, uh, contrary maybe to popular belief.

In the auto parts sector in the United States, the employment in the U. S. has gone up at the same time, actually, that the Mexican industry has boomed, but I'm saying not to say is the idea that somehow U. S. Mexico cooperation is inherently undermining all workers seems, you know, a little bit. So. put to the side by that.

And when you look at what they've been talking about, the second floor, the fourth transformation, I mean, it seems like they're trying to raise the incomes and raise the living standards of Mexican people. And I feel like so much of this is trying to pit working people in America against working people in Mexico, as if there's not a possibility for shared cooperation around similar goals on both sides of the border, I think for workers to improve their livelihood. Yeah, definitely.

I mean, a lot of the kind of rhetoric and narrative around, uh, Uh, you know, industry leaving the United States and going to Mexico relies on the fact that these previous governments, these conservative governments, uh, were also kind of complicit in lowering the, the, the standards of work, lowering the safety standards and allowing it to be profitable to have their companies located in Mexico, not just because of, uh, maybe parts or certain other things being cheaper,

but also Next clip Uh, the, the labor itself being cheaper and, and precisely part of Morena's fourth transformation has also been to, I mean, one of the major things is to increase wages. Um, you know, the, the wage discrepancy of course, between Canada, uh, between the United States and Mexico is, is massive. Um, you know, if you're working in a automobile plant in, in Mexico, you're definitely making way less than you would in the United States. But whose fault is that?

It's not the Mexican worker. Uh, it's it's, of course, the the companies that are trying to exploit this labor. So I think this also brings out really important discussions and debates. Um, of course, there's, you know, a history and a legacy of the impact of deindustrialization on the U. S. working class that that cannot be kind of erased. But I think that this moment is opening up important dialogues and opportunities to actually be able to identify Um, who is at fault?

And as the Mexican government is trying to actually hold those companies accountable, um, demanding that standards be raised, um, demanding that Mexican workers are treated with dignity, um, it is a good opportunity to not kind of engage in this, oh, well, these workers are scabs. They're actually also trying to make a living and trying to survive in this, uh, environment. And of course it is, Uh, these companies which, which have, you know, benefited from this scheme, which are to blame.

So I think it's important, uh, you know, there's a lot we can learn from the model of the Fourth Transformation, you know, not only with regards to workers rights and benefits, but the idea that Mexican resources can be used to the benefit of Mexican people. One of the main pillars of the Fourth Transformation is also energy sovereignty, um, using Mexican resources, trying to make the country completely you know, dependent on their own resources.

In the press conference today, Claudia Strainbaum mentioned, um, for many years, you know, because of different commercial agreements, uh, Mexico was importing fuel, was importing energy when they actually have so many resources. And so turning that around, um, I think that this model of fourth transformation can really serve it as an inspiration, even in terms of, you know, women's rights. There's so much.

So many advances that have happened in Mexico, a country that faces, you know, an epidemic of femicides and a lot of misogynist violence. This government, Claudia Sheenbaum, the current, uh, mayor of Mexico City, the head of government in Mexico City, Clara Brujada.

Taking very strong positions, you know, in a moment when Donald Trump administration is cracking down on, on women's rights, just the south of the border, we see a really interesting example of public policies being put in place to actually, um, help women workers, um, to create centers where women are able to exchange and to have, to collectivize, for example, reproductive labor, really interesting things.

So I think these, you know, in moments like these, where we see kind of this attempt to pit workers against each other, as you said, Eugene, there's also a really interesting opportunity for exchange and, and, and building together and learning from these examples. TRISTAN SNELL - HOST, THE TRISTAN SNELL SHOW: It's the smooth Holly tariff. Of 1930. No, it doesn't have anything to do with Josh Hawley, although the tariff is not good. And Josh Hawley is not good.

But other than that, they have nothing in common. Here's the thing. It was 1 of the highest sets of tariffs that have ever been passed in American history. This happened in 1930. It was. Right after the crash in October of 1929, the stock market crashing was really what we think of as kicking off the Great Depression. Here's the thing though, it wasn't like all of a sudden the stock market crashed one day and then the depression was on.

It took a lot longer over the next few years after that, before we really got to the bottom of the depression, like things grew steadily worse with more bank failures, more company failures, unemployment going up, up, up, up, up, right? There were a whole bunch of things that happened during the rest of the time between 1929 and then in 1933 with FDR, uh, coming to the presidency. And one of those things that made it a lot worse.

Was the Smoot Hawley tariff Republicans at the time ran the entirety of Washington. They had the White House. They had both houses of Congress. They had a Republican appointed majority on the Supreme Court. They had a majority of governors and state legislatures. 1929 1930. Herbert Hoover was the president now infamously. Uh, in American history is widely considered to be one of the worst presidents we ever had.

Well, the Republican President Hoover and a Republican Congress passed the Smoot Hawley tariff. They thought that passing sky high tariffs would actually help improve the American economy that was reeling and just having much higher unemployment. Consumer demand was cratering. You had banks that were teetering on the edge of going under, and they thought that tariffs by passing all these taxes on imported goods, it would actually help things.

It set off another whole cascade of awfulness where a whole bunch of other countries, including our big allies, including we're talking the UK and France, they all decided, well, we'll shoot, we're going to turn around and we're going to pass really sky high tariffs also.

And that just snowballed it contributed also to really horrible inflation, which had already been very bad off and on in the in Europe, especially in the 1920s for reasons that have originally had more to do with recovering from World War one. Similar to in a way how the inflation of recent years had to do with the recovery from covid. But what happened was you had more taxes, more inflation, higher costs, lower consumer demand, a terrible economic catastrophe.

Both in Europe and in the United States, and it led to all sorts of terrible things, including contributing to the rise of fascism. Adolf Hitler came to the chancellorship of Germany because the German economy cratered even more, in part because global trade completely went in the toilet. And the americans we were to blame in large part because the holly smooth tariff the smooth holly tariff Whatever you want to call it was really bad and resulted in retaliatory tariffs.

Why am I giving you a history lesson? I think it's really really important to understand exactly what Fire we are playing with here. It really is true that the last time we did something like this in American history, it helped trigger the great depression.

It already was moving in that direction because of the stock market crash, but really, and historians generally agree on this, that one of the biggest contributing factors, and one of the reasons why Hoover is considered to be one of the worst presidents we ever had was those tariffs. That is generally considered to be 1 of the worst moves that we made. We took a situation where our house was already on fire.

And instead of bringing a fire brigade to put it out, we decided to take a 1 of those gasoline delivery trucks that brings the gas to the gas station. We took 1 of those and then we sprayed that on the house. That was on fire. That's what we did. With those tariffs, it made everything exponentially worse. And even if you're a conservative and you're like, you know, oh, we shouldn't have been doing those tariffs.

Like if you're a true free market conservative, by the way, there's a lot of where the consensus on this came from, because you had people that were conservative Republicans. Who then looked at this entire situation and they're like, oh, my God, we passed those tariffs. They did really bad things to the economy. And if they were partisan conservative, they were like, and it led to the new deal, which, of course, they thought was anathema and they still do.

And honestly, they have been fighting against the new deal. This whole time. That's literally the thing that they have been trying to resist this whole time and fight against and tear apart despite all of the good that so many of those programs did for the American people and that they made America great. So, why the hell are we passing tariffs again? Why would Donald Trump want all of this? I think it's very simple.

The reason why that this era of far right people want tariffs is because they legitimately think or they don't they don't care about the consequences. But I think a bunch of them legitimately think that they can somehow tax foreigners rather than billionaires. That is what they are trying to do. They think that by taxing these foreign countries and the goods that come from them, they can somehow raise enough money.

To bring in revenue for the federal government while managing to make it so that the richest people in this country don't get taxed at all. We already have the lowest taxes in the world for the super wealthy, except for countries that really just don't have any taxes at all. And we're talking like those put those ones aside the ones that are tiny. And they basically just serve as like very, very small population tax havens. We're talking about like the Caymans or Monaco.

Put those aside for actual like large countries with a large population, where they actually need to provide social services and have and have millions of people to care for America of those countries has the lowest taxes for the super rich. The effective tax rate. For billionaires in America is about 8. 2%. That's it. That is, I guarantee you way lower than what you pay, right? It's on your forms when you fill it out.

You know, if you go through the turbo tax or whatever, or sometimes it'll actually like, tell it to you as you're doing your IRS work. And now there's the free filing system with the IRS that the Trump people want to get rid of because God forbid that anything actually work in this country for the middle class. You know, as opposed to having to pay some big company instead. Right? Don't want that want to be able to it's a boondoggle for these for these big companies.

Let's just compare it even to somebody that we think is well off a doctor. Right? A doctor pays a tax rate of 39 to 50 percent or so, depending on what state they live in, or what city they live in. The highest rate would be for somebody who lives in, like, New York City. And a billionaire like Elon Musk or Donald Trump pays an effective tax rate on average of 8. 2%. They want to pay 0 in the case of Trump. He already basically pays 0 all the time.

Like, Musk has been finding all sorts of creative ways to get his tax bill completely eliminated, but that's what these people are doing and they actually think that they can go ahead and tax foreign countries as opposed to taxing, uh, billionaires and large companies. Like, that's what they're really trying to do THOM HARTMANN - HOST, THOM HARTMANN PROGRAM: And, and it got me thinking that I really, you know, I haven't written about this in years, outside of my books.

My newest book, uh, which will be shipping in just a couple of weeks from, you know, booksellers all across the country. Uh, it's called The Hidden History of the American Dream, The Demise of the Middle Class and How to Rescue Our Future. And in that book, there's a couple of chapters about tariffs. Um, and I reference that in today's article.

But, uh, you know, this all began in 1789 when Henry Knox rode up to, uh, Mount Vernon on his horse to tell George Washington that he'd just been elected President of the United States, unanimously. And, uh, Washington asked Knox to do two things. He asked him to, number one, tell people he was going to be a little bit late for his inaugural because he had to visit his mother, who was, uh, dying. She, in fact, it was the last time he ever saw her.

And secondly, he asked, uh, General Knox if he would ride up to Connecticut to meet with Daniel Hinsdale, who was a tailor who was making fine American clothing, which had been illegal prior to the American Revolution, and get him a Made in America suit that he could be worn in, that he could be sworn in on, uh, wearing.

And, uh, you know, so, uh, Knox took his measurements and went to Connecticut, and sure enough, George Washington was sworn into office wearing his A made in America suit, which were quite rare back then because for 200 years, England had forbade any American company or tailor from manufacturing fine clothing. You could, you could, you could sell homespun, you know, cheap clothes, but you could not sell expensive clothes. They had to be made in England. We shipped cotton over there.

They shipped fine clothing back over here. And thus we maintained their industrial base. So they also forced us to buy tea, the primary American beverage from the East India Company. And that ticked us off. Tipped off the, uh, the Boston Tea Party of 1773, which I've, you know, written about and talked about at some length here. So, this, so when Washington was sworn in, his big challenge was how do we create, how do we turn America into an industrial superpower?

And he turned to Alexander Hamilton, his Treasury Secretary, and said, what do we do? And just like The same way that, uh, James Madison had spent five years studying republics, how, how countries put together governments, including Native American communities, the subject of my last book, The Hidden History of American Democracy.

Uh, the same way that James Madison had spent years studying how to, how to construct a constitution, Alexander Hamilton had spent years studying how countries developed industrial policy, or what today we would call industrial policy. Back then, uh, It wasn't quite called that. And, you know, Adam Smith had laid this out in 1776 in his book, uh, titled An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. And what Smith laid out was that only manufacturing creates wealth.

Uh, well actually there's three ways to create wealth for a country. Number one, you can dig it up out of the ground. You can dig up gold, you can dig up iron ore, you can dig up coal. These are all things that represent wealth. Uh, so number one, you can extract it, extractive industries. Number two, you can steal it. You can do it by colonialism.

You can go over to another country, you know, like Spain did with, uh, uh, you know, with Central America, and just steal all their gold and bring it back to Spain. And this produced a boom in Spain, in addition to a massive inflation in the late 1500s, early 1600s. And, uh, so you can steal it. But the third way, and the really legitimate way to create wealth for a country, is to manufacture things.

And, you know, the example Smith used was A tree branch laying on the ground in the forest has no intrinsic value. It has no wealth. It does not represent wealth to the nation. But if you apply labor and tools to it, in other words, take out a knife and turn it, and whittle it down into an axe handle, it now has value. It's now something that can be sold or can be used.

And that value, even if you sell it overseas, even if that axe handle got shipped over to Japan, The wealth from that axe, from that manufacturing of that axe handle stays here in the United States because Japan pays you for that axe handle. So the only way, the only real way outside of extraction or theft to create wealth for a nation is manufacturing. And Alexander Hamilton understood this. George Washington understood this.

Every American president right up until Ronald Reagan understood this. And that's why we had average tariffs from 1792 until the 1980s in the neighborhood of around 20 to 30 percent. You know, pretty much across the board. to keep manufacturing here in the United States. And now what's happened is that because of Reagan's neoliberalism, the average tariff on goods into the United States is only around 2%. And the result, actually, it's 1.

2%. And the result of that is that we don't make things here anymore. You know, in the 44 years since Reagan began the crusade to do away with tariffs, a very successful crusade, by the way, that, you know, in Reagan's era was GATT and the World Trade Organization, Um, uh, then George Herbert Walker Bush wrote the North American Free Trade Agreement, NAFTA, and all that kind of thing. So anyhow, the bottom line is that we have lost trillions and trillions of dollars of wealth.

Much of it coming out of the pockets of average working class people. And where did all that wealth go? It went to China. That's why China is the second wealthiest country in the world right now. Because they adopted Alexander Hamilton's plan at the same time we abandoned it in the 1980s. And here we are. MICAH LOEWINGER - CO-HOST, ON THE MEDIA: Okay, let's talk about the bigger plan at work, if there is one. You had talked about this sort of loose coalition within the Republican Party.

What they want out of this administration, what they're all vying for, and how it kind of fits into a plan. Can you break it down?

They basically want to gut the so called administrative state and put up tariffs and rebuild American industry on carbon lines in particular. And then the third wheel of this is the tech lords. The tech lords want tax cuts, which is what Rubio's crowd also wants. But they also want something else. They want us to be nice to China because of their investments. What is it the Rubio crowd want? They want us to be bad to China. Okay, what's the commonality? They also want the state smashed. Why?

Because they don't want to be regulated on their digital platforms, so they continue to make more monopoly profits. So you've got these people that have certain interests in common, certain very divergent interests, and in the middle of this, you got Trump. Now what does Trump see himself as? I think he's a latter day McKinley. He believes in 19th century spheres of influence. This is why the Greenland stuff and the Canada stuff make sense.

This is turning away from NARO, this is dumping the Europeans, this is the way that he wants to see the world evolve. Tariffs are at the heart of that. Changing the nature of the American state and his commitments are at the heart of that. So there's a lot at stake here and it's that coalition around Trump that basically are influencing which way this plays out. MICAH LOEWINGER - CO-HOST, ON THE MEDIA: And how does this inform what's happening right now with our economy?

So, why would you bully Canada? I mean, just stop there and just ask this question, right? I mean, basically Canadian industry as a whole, Canadian finance, everything, it's all integrated in the United States already. You already have it. You want any rare minerals in the north, they'll be happy to open a mine for you, right? So why are you doing this? Because the supply chains that cross the border multiple times and things like the auto sector, Trump wants them back home.

He wants them on this side of the border. The bigger picture here is that We've been running a global system for about 30 years where you've got too many exporters and the one big consumer, right, the importer on the other side is the United States. The United States has been paying for this with digital dollars for the past 30 years and in exchange has been great. We got cars, we got pharma, we got toys, I got a room full of musical instruments. It's all fabulous, except for one thing.

When you do that for 30 years, what's the largest private sector employer in the United States? MICAH LOEWINGER - CO-HOST, ON THE MEDIA: I know the answer. It's Walmart. Boom, you got it. What's one of the fastest growing private sector employers in the United States? Amazon Logistics, the guys in the vans. So essentially you're importing stuff made elsewhere, which you no longer make here. Eventually you end up hollowing out the economy.

So we've seen this movie before in a very different frame. It was Biden in the IRA. That was tariffs and green industrialization. What you've got now is tariffs and carbon led industrialization. Two sides of a similar coin. MICAH LOEWINGER - CO-HOST, ON THE MEDIA: What you're talking about here are efforts to address one of Trump's favorite issues, the trade deficit.

According to the Wall Street Journal, in 2024, the U. S. 's annual goods deficit reached a record 1. 2 trillion, as the nation relied on other countries for electronics, cars, machinery, and oil. Is this as urgent a problem as the president and his supporters have made it out to be? So there's two schools of thought on this. One of them says, no, it's not a problem because what it's really all about is the aggregate balance of savings and investment around the world.

And there's another one that says, well, strictly from the point of view of a national economy, do you really want everyone to work at Amazon? Do you really want everybody to work at Walmart because we had a big scare in the pandemic when we found out we didn't do a lot of stuff and maybe we should be doing this.

Biden's response to this with the Inflation Reduction Act was to essentially incentivize the private sector We to come here, lots of foreign investment and build green manufacturing and get into that game. Trump's coalition is totally different. It's based upon what I call carbon heavy states, right? So they're very much on the other side of this, strangely looking for a rebuild of not just manufacturing, but some notion of a national economy, a turn away from the globalization that we've had.

So there's two ways of looking on it. We could adjudicate which one's better in theory, but the fact is one of them is in power and practice. MICAH LOEWINGER - CO-HOST, ON THE MEDIA: Okay, but I'm trying to understand your perspective as an economist. You think addressing our big importing problem is worthwhile, but you don't think it's quite as urgent as Trump and his ilk have made it out to be.

I'm more interested in the fact that in one way or another, both parties have decided we can't keep doing what we did before, and we need to build some kind of domestic industry back up. Irrespective of how they got there, that's where we are. My question then becomes, where do we go from here? How does this play out? MICAH LOEWINGER - CO-HOST, ON THE MEDIA: I want to ask you about another term we hear discussed a lot by, uh, this administration, the national debt, which sits around 36 trillion.

For years, Republicans have said our government spending is unsustainable. Is it? Well, if it's unsustainable, why do they want to add to it by 1. 4 trillion in tax cuts? Oh, the answer is trickle down, right? That hasn't worked at all. There is zero evidence for this. So that tells me right now they're being disingenuous. Is there a genuine concern over this? Well, it depends how you look at it. Again, you know that clock in Wall Street buzzing around the size of the national debt?

That's literally also national savings because that bond market where they say the private sector, how about you give me a bunch of money and I'll give you this promise that 10 years from now you'll get all the money back with interest. You know the only thing you can redeem the bond for? Money. What does the government print? Money. But 70 percent of American bonds are in the United States.

They're basically savings bonds that sit at the bottom of loads of credit arrangements for banks and financial firms. If you reduce the United States stock of debt overnight, you would cause the world's largest financial crisis. These things are called. Assets as well as liabilities.

So when you only look at this as a liability that we need to pay back, which so far hasn't actually seemed to be much of a problem because the whole world wants to hold them as the savings asset, then you're only getting half the picture. The other side is this is the positive side of the balance sheet. That's the savings asset that everybody else uses.

Now there are costs to this, which is everybody's so willing to hold this stuff and then give us stuff in return that we've had this hollowing out effect on the economy. So maybe you want to do something about that. But the notion that this is leading to bankruptcy, etc. is just nonsense. MICAH LOEWINGER - CO-HOST, ON THE MEDIA: So, when we hear Republicans talk about this debt crisis, is it That they don't understand this math, or is this just a politically expedient story to tell?

I think some of them would reject that math and just simply say that's not true and it can't be the case. For others though, just look at the track record. I mean, Reagan went on about this, and then he did huge tax cuts. Bush, the first one, actually raised taxes and lost the election because of it. Then the second Bush administration made exactly the same noises. When Trump, you know, did tax cuts again, all they care about is getting tax cuts.

And one way to get tax cuts is to say, this is unsustainable. We've got to do something about the deficit. We have to cut spending. So the cut in the spending pays for the tax cut. If you cared about the deficit and the debt, you would basically not do the tax cut. MICAH LOEWINGER - CO-HOST, ON THE MEDIA: Yes, to your point, as reported by ProPublica in 2021, Trump added 7. 8 trillion to the national debt when he was in office, largely due to these tax cuts, followed by a worldwide pandemic.

That ranks as quote, the third biggest increase relative to the size of the economy of any U. S. presidential administration. And what gets blamed for that? It's not that, it's Biden sent out all those checks, right? This is all about the political manipulation of selected facts to tell the story you want. What matters is the narrative. And these guys are brilliant at controlling the narrative.

SARAH MCCAMMON - CORRESPONDENT, NPR POLITICS PODCAST: How much does the White House, how much does President Trump respond to those signals from the business community? I mean, as Scott said, he certainly ASMA KHALID - CORRESPONDENT, NPR POLITICS PODCAST: takes a lot of cues from the stock market, but, but I will say it's sort of broader in terms of their vision on tariffs. I don't see President Trump completely dialing down tariffs entirely. And I would say that for two reasons.

One is because, as I mentioned, he campaigned heavily on them and he did keep in place some tariffs. I mean, I know there was a lot of trade war tit for tat during his first term. But he did keep in place some tariffs on China. And the second reason I will say is I think there are like multiple reasons why he is doing this. And one reason you'll hear from the administration is that this is about bringing more jobs back to the United States.

And I know Scott, you were talking about that just a minute ago, but, you know, they'll say that this is across the board. Um, you know, you. President Trump was joined earlier this week at the White House with the CEO of the largest semiconductor chip maker in the world. This is a Taiwanese company, TSMC, and together they announced this 100 billion investment in U. S. factories down in Arizona.

And, and, you know, the Trump administration's argument is, hey, look, we were able to achieve this through a threat of tariffs on semiconductors. We didn't use subsidies like the Chips Act that former President Biden was touting. They. See opportunities for economic investment to occur on the soil of the United States through tariffs. And, you know, there are individual companies that they can point to.

There certainly are. And I'm Scott, I'm sure you've talked to them to that that will say we have benefited from the implementation of these tariffs. I mean, there's a wire company not far from here out in Maryland. Who, you know, is really optimistic about these tariffs. They make their products in the United States. They rely on American made steel.

And yes, there are individual companies that perhaps have benefited from these tariffs, but I think on the totality, when you look at what happened from 2018, 2019, if we're going to look to the past, most economists would say the tariffs were not a net positive for the United States economy. SCOTT HORSLEY - CORRESPONDENT, NPR POLITICS PODCAST: And look, manufacturers in this country want to sell their products, not only in the United States, they want to sell their products around the world.

Farmers in this country desperately depend on global markets to sell their products. And these tariffs that the Trump administration is imposing to protect the domestic market are going to be a turnoff for those international markets. And we saw this in 2018, 2019, when US businesses lost foreign customers, lost foreign market share because the retaliatory tariffs that were imposed during the first Trump trade war.

And as Asma says, This round of tariffs, what's already happened and what's in the pipeline is far more sweeping than what we saw in 2018 2019. This is akin to what we saw in the 1930s with the Smoot Hawley tariffs, which economists are almost unanimous in saying that global trade war worsened. Okay, SARAH MCCAMMON - CORRESPONDENT, NPR POLITICS PODCAST: we've talked a bunch about businesses and how they're responding, but what about the countries that are being targeted with these tariffs?

I mean, I'm thinking about Canada, which has, of course, been for such a long time, such a close U. S. ally and others. I ASMA KHALID - CORRESPONDENT, NPR POLITICS PODCAST: mean, we've seen the political and economic reaction in Canada where we've seen them impose reciprocal tariffs of their own in response to what the Trump administration has put forth.

You're also just seeing, I would say, the political culture sort of shift in real time where the United States and Canada have long been close allies and friends and, you know, to the degree that other countries retaliate once these April 2nd. Big tariffs are announced. We'll have to see. I mean, the Trump administration's argument, and this is true, is that certain countries do have much higher tariff rates on U. S. exports than the other way around. And so that is their argument.

They want to level the playing field. SCOTT HORSLEY - CORRESPONDENT, NPR POLITICS PODCAST: But again, Canada and Mexico, we had a free trade agreement with Canada and Mexico, which the Trump administration signed in 2020, and which they have now ripped apart. Now it is interesting. Uh, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum took a more conciliatory approach, a softer approach. She didn't impose, uh, retaliatory tariffs right away, although she threatened that she would do so on Sunday.

And maybe that's why she's gotten her reprieve a little bit more so than Justin Trudeau, the Prime Minister of Canada, with whom the President has a notably frosty relationship. And some people have said this all comes down to personalities, kind of like what we've seen with Ukraine, you know, it's, it's just, who does the President Trump personally get along with?

ASMA KHALID - CORRESPONDENT, NPR POLITICS PODCAST: I do think it's worth pointing out, though, that a batch of tariffs from the Trump administration, the ones that were put on China, were kept in place during the Biden years. Because I think if people just hear this at the outset, I think there's an assumption that tariffs are inherently good or bad. And one of the questions I've had is, well then, why did a Republican administration put them in place on China and a Democratic one didn't?

Kept them in place. And I think that this is partly about like, what is your end goal with the tariffs? And that's what I keep coming back to with the Trump administration. I don't have clarity over what is the end goal. Um, you know, if the end goal is to diversify your supply chains away from China. Then, fine, you've actually achieved that, I would say, to some degree, you have more things maybe being produced in a place like Vietnam.

But I think the challenge right now is when you have such sweeping tariffs on a whole bunch of countries, including your neighbors, who you had a trade deal with, it's really not clear what the end goal is for putting all those tariffs in place. JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: You've reached section C-U-S-A-I-D. AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: Nicolas, can you give us some examples of some of the programs that got defunded, but also explain?

It’s not only that Congress appropriated the money, right? It is that the money, in a lot of cases, it’s paying back for services already rendered.

So, whatever policy disagreements the current State Department has with the work that Congress has directed it to fund, the executive doesn’t have the authority to override congressional directives in that way. Another one of our clients, the Journalism Development Network, they do global work protecting journalists who are exposing corruption in governments worldwide. Our clients have had to substantially cut down their operations, terminate staff, and that’s really just the tip of the iceberg.

The scale of the foreign assistance funding freeze has been catastrophic and unprecedented. Food has been left rotting in warehouses that would otherwise be distributed to victims of famine. Children have been left without essential medicines. In some cases, lives have been lost. Aid workers have been stranded in hostile areas without access to emergency medical care.

And there has been no justification for this dramatic action by the executive branch, that, again, we maintain was an abuse of its constitutional authority. AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: Can you talk about Justice Alito, in his dissent, calling the majority’s decision — that’s the Chief Justice John Roberts and Amy Coney Barrett — stunning, arguing a single judge shouldn’t have the power to compel $2 billion in payments?

What’s stunning here is the extent of the executive branch’s failure to comply with a clear court order requiring it to lift the foreign assistance freeze. To be clear, there is nothing unusual about judges ordering a likely unlawful practice — there was a judicial determination that this foreign assistance freeze was likely unlawful.

And it is very par for the course for judges, once they have made that initial determination, and where they have determined that irreparable harm is likely to be suffered if the unlawful practice is not paused while the litigation continues, it’s very common for judges to enter temporary restraining orders requiring a return to the status quo before an unlawful practice was instituted, while the case sort of makes its way through the courts.

The only reason that this case found itself at the Supreme Court at this stage is the fact that the government took no steps to comply with the temporary restraining order, requiring the district judge to sort of put his foot down and say, “Look, there has been no evidence that you have taken any action to lift the foreign assistance freeze, so I’m going to require you to make certain funds available by tomorrow. You’ve had two weeks already to do this, and you haven’t.”

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: I want to bring in Mitchell Warren, executive director of the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition, or AVAC, also on the board of the PEPFAR organization, which was, PEPFAR, of course, a major project of President George W. Bush. Can you talk about the work you do and what this funding freeze has meant for you and for people around the world?

PEPFAR, as you described, for 20 years, first founded by President Bush, has been the most lifesaving program imaginable in global health. And AVAC is just one small part of it. We’re a small advocacy organization focused on HIV prevention. And right now what’s most alarming is that we stand in one of the greatest moments in HIV prevention, as PEPFAR and other partners in countries around the world are looking at the introduction of new prevention technologies.

And that’s a lot of the work that we do at AVAC, in really trying to make sure those products get developed and then get delivered to prevent new infections. And so, projects around the world were stopped a month ago, and for no good reason and with no clear strategy. No one’s arguing that an administration can’t make policy changes, and of course that’s in their purview. But you do it in a way that follows process and follows the law. And that’s all that we’re talking about here.

If you want to make changes, describe them, articulate them, and work together with the implementing partners and with host countries to ensure that people have healthy lives and that countries and economies stay robust. And what is remarkable is PEPFAR has demonstrated for 20 years that it is truly the project that makes America and the world safer, stronger and more prosperous — precisely what this administration describes as their policy.

So, it’s working in complete opposition to what they’re actually saying and, clearly, acting in a capricious, vindictive way. AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: An official at the Desmond Tutu HIV Center is warning the funding cuts to HIV projects could lead to half a million deaths in South Africa over the next 10 years, Mitchell? Exactly. You know, PEPFAR, over 20 years, has helped to save — get 20 million people on antiretroviral therapy that saves lives and prevents infections.

Millions of people’s lives have been saved. And, you know, remember, George Bush started this with bipartisan support, because people were dying. And PEPFAR has ensured that people are living and economies are growing. And the United States benefits from that. South Africa has been the epicenter of the epidemic. I worked there throughout the 1990s setting up the first HIV prevention programs at the beginning of the epidemic, when HIV and AIDS was actually a death sentence. Now it’s not.

But if we don’t allow drug supplies to happen, as Nicolas was describing, there are many ramifications, not just in HIV, with food rotting, but also medicines in shipping containers destined for countries around the world. Even if the new administration wants to stop that program, you’ve already made the investment. You’ve spent the money, appropriated by Congress, to procure those antiretrovirals, to deliver them, and now people can’t actually access them. And people will die.

And it’s not just about HIV, tuberculosis, malaria. We have an issue — you know, the executive orders coming in January were concurrent with an Ebola outbreak in Uganda. So, you’re seeing the inability to do surveillance of outbreaks and to deal with emerging pandemics, as well as HIV. And so, you’re seeing ramifications left, right and center. We may not see the numbers tomorrow. You know, people won’t die tomorrow without antiretroviral therapy.

But if they fall out of therapy, they will get sick. They’re more likely to transmit the virus, and they will die. And we’ll see those numbers coming up in the months and years ahead. MELISSA - CO-HOST, CONFRONTING CAPITALISM: There are a lot of people who are critical of USAID, and they've been very vocal in paying attention to what's going on with Trump's attack on USAID.

But, you know, even among those who are kind of celebrating this as a good thing, A lot of them are concerned about trying to preserve the supposedly good parts of USAID. VIVEK CHIBBER - HOST, CONFRONTING CAPITALISM: Right, right. MELISSA - CO-HOST, CONFRONTING CAPITALISM: So the most commonly cited example right now is PEPFAR, which is responsible for helping to administer Medicine and other kinds of preventative care care for babies around HIV AIDS. So, I don't know.

What do you think about that? Do you think that means that we should be trying to preserve the good parts of USAID and just get rid of the bad parts, you know? VIVEK CHIBBER - HOST, CONFRONTING CAPITALISM: Yeah, it would be a great idea. Here's the difficulty of it. USAID is not itself an agency that distributes syringes or distributes medicines or food or something. What it does is it contracts out to other organizations, which are then entrusted or empowered to carry this out.

Now, what are these other organizations? About half of all of AID's disbursements go to what's called non governmental organizations, okay? Those non governmental organizations Around half of them are for profit, and the other half is what's called non profit NGOs. Now, this means that a substantial section of everything that USAID is handing out is to private actors of some kind, either profit or non profit.

Furthermore, 90 percent of those So when it goes to Nigeria, it's not contracting with local Nigerian actors who know the scene, who know the landscape, who have distribution networks. It's actually contracting out to American agencies who fly down there to do the work. That means then, in the first instance, AID is Much of the time, creating profit opportunities for private actors.

There are of course the not for profit private actors as well, but this is a very, again, tricky distinction because a lot of these so called NGOs, nonprofits, actually are either arms of the for profit organizations or have to conform to what the for profit organizations are doing because that's what's really driving the train. Why does this matter? It matters because the for profit organizations are not in it to make sure that the programs are run according to the humanitarian principles.

They're in it to try to maximize their profits. Now, why does that matter? I'll give you an example. The largest recipient of AID funds is a firm called Chemonics. Now, Chemonics is an interesting firm. This last year, it got something like four billion from AID. Wow. Chemonics was one of the key players in Haiti in the 2010s in helping organize opposition to the popular government.

But it was also, in terms of humanitarian aid, the recipient of one of the largest humanitarian contracts for healthcare globally. I think this was in 2013. It was around 9 billion. Two years after this healthcare initiative, which included things like HIV, which included things like medicine against measles and malaria and things like that.

Two years after they got the money, it was discovered only 7% Of the medical supplies that have been purchased with that money ever made it to the recipient countries. MELISSA - CO-HOST, CONFRONTING CAPITALISM: Oh gosh. VIVEK CHIBBER - HOST, CONFRONTING CAPITALISM: 93 percent could not be accounted for. Okay. And I love this. The investigation found that unnamed actors within these agencies, within Chemonics, had made off with I'm quoting large sums of money.

We don't know how much we're assuming it was in the millions upon millions. Okay, so sounds very morally good to me at its peak after these investigations Somewhere around 63 to 64 percent of the actual supplies at its peak were making it to the recipient countries, which means at its best, Chemonics was making off with around one third of all the supplies that were being supposedly distributed to them. Now, why does this matter? It's not random corruption. It's built into the model.

Because the model is this. AID receives funds. It says, okay, we're going to distribute medicines through these funds. It then starts looking for tenders. Contractors start making tenders to them. All of this is done behind the scenes. Almost no oversight. All of these revelations have been post facto. We just happened to discover that Chemonics was doing this. We don't know what the other agencies are doing. All of it's post facto. Chemonics, in fact, in Haiti, was put on retainer.

And what do we mean by that? AID had Kimonix on international retainer so that whenever there's a disaster somewhere, there will be an automatic contract going to Kimonix to be the agency in charge rather than what's called competitive bidding. Which means basically, it's a racket. There's what's called a contractor racket.

All these firms, remember, 90 percent of AID's money goes to American Much of it is done without any kind of oversight, none of it is done above board, very little of it is competitive. So it's essentially a gigantic handout to these companies. So what looks to be the one defensible component of AID is actually a gigantic boondoggle. It's a racket. If you're going to preserve those components of AID. It's charter is going to have to be overhauled.

It cannot be this essentially contractor mafia, which is what it's created over the last 25 years. I mean, I hate to say it, but what Musk is saying here and what Trump is saying, it's probably an understatement. The level of corruption in this agency and the entire developmental industrial complex It is so profoundly corrupt, and it is so profoundly enmeshed in illicit profits, in counterfeiting, in making off with public money, and then in extremely aggressive geopolitical designs.

MELISSA - CO-HOST, CONFRONTING CAPITALISM: Yeah. VIVEK CHIBBER - HOST, CONFRONTING CAPITALISM: It's really hard, I think, to disentangle these things. NICOLLE WALLACE - HOST, DEADLINE WHITE HOUSE: Let me also ask you something from my vantage point as a former White House employee, um, about shredding and destroying documents. This was, um, not only unethical, but I think illegal. Um, but NBC News is reporting this, USAID staff is being told to shred and burn other classified documents.

Quote, the U. S. Agency for International Development is instructing its staff in Washington to shred and burn documents, according to an email obtained by NBC News. The document destruction was set to take place Tuesday, according to an email from Erica Carr, the agency's acting executive secretary, quote, shred as many documents first and reserve the burn bags for when the shredder becomes unavailable or needs a break, Carr wrote. I, I worked in government for almost a decade.

I've never heard of so much shredding being required that you would know ahead of time that, quote, the shredder would become unavailable or need a break. What is that about?

When are documents, you know, burned by the State Department or USAID? Typically at an embassy when it is about to be overtaken. Marines have the authorization as a means of ensuring that classified records and personnel data do not get in the hands of individuals, uh, of who are seen as threats. They do go and burn documents, but that's not what this situation is here. And I was talking to a national security records lawyer.

Here who is already sent to the National Archives a demand to have the records stopped from being destroyed. We should note that this was all taking place today here in the way that this lawyer put it to me was that this is number one of a violation of the Federal Records Act, but number two.

That there is a standard operating procedure when it comes to processing records, and unless all of these records were digitized or there was a clarity that, for example, records older than 10 years old that have been appropriately deemed by necessary officials is no longer having to be archived. may be terminated. Those can then be ultimately destroyed. But this email is very explicit to these individuals who received it.

Quote, shred as many documents first and reserve the burn bags for when the shredder becomes unavailable or needs a break. They were directed to go and clear out these classified safes and personnel documents from what used to be USAID headquarters and Marco Rubio, the state department that is now overseeing USAID.

They just earlier this week said that 83 percent of the contracts that U. S. I. D. oversaw have been eliminated, and the way the USAID official suggested to me is that if they're truly trying to, uh, get rid of waste, fraud, and abuse, many of these documents would have records as to exactly where payments have gone and how contracts have ultimately been executed across the, uh, across the world.

And so if you are shredding documents, you're effectively removing a paper trail that could be paramount to actually understanding how USAID has executed and used its capacities overseas. And so much of that could be understood by these archived documents that were clearly been ordered today to be burned and destroyed.

We're hearing that they have cancelled contracts. Almost 10, 000 contracts, leaving very few. I think it's around 500 contracts under USAID. What does that exactly mean? And what are we hearing has been canceled?

Now, what that means, um, we're hearing that a lot of programs that previously had been given waivers for life saving humanitarian aid, which is something that many lawmakers have kind of repeatedly said, well, you know, we've done this, and there's this assumption for life saving humanitarian aid. We know through our reporting that that hasn't worked out exactly as, um, kind of has been described.

On Capitol Hill, um, it's been a messy Process even before this week of organizations not getting funding to deliver that life saving aid, but now even those programs that have been exempted are cut. Now that includes PEPFAR programs. I'll give you one example. I spoke to an organization in South Sudan last week.

Now, remind, I'll just remind you, this is before the mass amount of terminations, but this was a program that was specifically providing ARVs to 1, 000, give or take, active patients, and then prevention for another 9, 000 terminated. So those people can't get access to their ARVs, even though. This is, you know, kind of the definition of what a life saving program would be lots of other programs that we're hearing have been cut.

Um, and again, you know, I think this just feeds into a little bit too of the chaos that Sarah was describing. Organizations have gotten multiple termination letters. Um, so. It's, it's very unclear exactly, you know, how exact, how this process played out with the administration and how they reviewed each contract. We had previously reported on what we knew about the 90 day review, and a lot of that came from a lot of the court filings and documents.

Um, and that process that the State Department had said that they would go through would be several months long. You know, it would be finished on April 19th. It would take input from organizations. It would take input from implementing partners. Even diplomats were at their first listening session, so foreign governments.

But over the past several days, The Trump administration has said that Rubio himself, the Secretary of State, has individually reviewed all of these programs and made determinations. So it seems that actually that review process has finished and we're still waiting to kind of get some answers and clarity on what happened to the original plan for that 90 day review.

It's really questionable on, uh, for people to understand what kind of programs are in line with this administration's, uh, foreign aid policy. And, um, I think one thing that we're beginning, we're beginning to see a lot of, as you alluded to, you spoke to an organization that provides HIV services. We had a colleague who was in Uganda, Andrew Green.

He also spoke to, um, organizations providing HIV services, and they were basically saying everything that's associated with prevention has stopped. Uh, we're able to give out ARVs, but there's confusion amongst that. Our colleague, Tanya, um, Karas also did a story on malnutrition services. And, um, there was a waiver for RUTF, which is this, um, sort of. paste that we give to malnourished children.

And there was a waiver for that to supply that, but there was an instance where there's a factory that is holding boxes of this life saving aid. And basically they don't have an order to open the factory. So you're allowed to distribute this life saving aid, but it's locked away in this factory and they are awaiting.

In order to open this factory, which has re resulted in so much chaos, and I think we're going to begin to see the effects on recipients as as well as we are seeing the effects on staffers as well as implementers.

VIVEK CHIBBER - HOST, CONFRONTING CAPITALISM: Kennedy recognized in 61 that the scope for traditional forms of power was Contracting in the latter half of the 20th century and the reason it was contracting Was that, unlike the 19th century, nation states in the 20th century could fight back a lot better if you just invaded them. In the 19th century, most of the global south, nation states weren't really a finished project.

Which means that they didn't have standing armies, or if they did, they were very small. It means that local elites weren't very well organized, and Many of these countries were still very, very poor, which means they couldn't really put up a fight, even if they did have armies. So, invasion and outright takeover were still very much a viable option if you wanted to dominate them.

By the 1950s and 60s, state formation is largely complete in a lot of the global south, which means if you're gonna invade them, they're gonna fight back. So, now, you don't give that up, you still Continue to do that where it's viable. But because the scope of its viability has now shrunk, you need to find other ways of influencing the policies of these countries. That other way is called soft power.

One boilerplate description of soft power Is that it's trying to get, instead of forcing your policies down the throats of these elites in the global South and populations in the South, what you're trying to do is elicit their voluntary cooperation. That's why it's soft. How do you do that?

Well, the way they traditionally describe it is, you do it through things like, American media, culture, movies, you try to shape their culture so they identify with Americans and the, what's called the American way of life. And if they identify with you, then they will align with what you're trying to do because they think they're part of your extended family. The problem with that is this. It's always and everywhere the case, it'd be great if the left, the contemporary left recognized this.

Ideas and culture come into conflict with interests, interests always win out. So elites, local populations in the South will be happy to go along with you because they like your movies, and they like your ice cream, things like that. But when it comes to having developmental prospects, developmental agendas that are set up against American interests, that culture industry isn't going to be able to do much for you. So now comes the real, I think, core of what soft power is.

What soft power actually is trying to do is use non militaristic means. Not to simply get people to internalize your culture, because that's only going to get you so far. But it becomes a mechanism for coordinating interests. What you want to do is make Local ruling classes, local political elites see that their agendas are aligned with your agendas. That's a question of aligning interests. So the real core of soft power is to bring interest in line. How will USAID do that?

That's where things get tricky and this whole notion of a firewall between hard and soft power starts to break down. MELISSA - CO-HOST, CONFRONTING CAPITALISM: So If this firewall is so unstable, does that mean that soft power starts to morph into more traditional forms of hard power? VIVEK CHIBBER - HOST, CONFRONTING CAPITALISM: Yeah, that's exactly what happens. Or let's just say that soft power becomes accompanied and backed by hard power. all the time.

And the U. S. uses both of them when necessary and upon request. So I'll give you an example. So suppose the U. S. sees that there is political contestation in some country in the South where there's a nationalist stake or a left wing party that's vying for power. All right, so now there's a clash of interest inside that country. It's not so simple to say we want to get their elites to align what they're doing with what we want them to do. Now you've got to make a choice.

between contending factions of elites, right? All right. So suppose that the more left wing elite wins power. Now they're still elite. He's not communist. He's not socialist. They're going to be people who are mildly redistributed, but still have a base in the local ruling classes. Now, if they think that their version of nationalism is going to require some independence, some autonomy from the United States, it means there's not a lot of talking that's going to bring them along to you.

So what you now have to do as the United States in wielding your soft power, You won't invade them. You won't engage in assassinations. That's hard power. But what you'll do is actively start steering political alignments in that country by what bribery, by actively fostering certain business groups, by taking money away from groups that you think are helping the political opposition if they happen to be getting funds from you and aid from you and such things.

So now it's not any longer giving them ice cream and having them watch movies. Now you're Actively intervening in their political affairs, no MELISSA - CO-HOST, CONFRONTING CAPITALISM: more Lakers posters. VIVEK CHIBBER - HOST, CONFRONTING CAPITALISM: Yeah, that's exactly right. And that now easily bleeds into just nudging them a bit. If the electoral malfeasance isn't working when you fund political groups that align with your interests, a lot of them are going to be. Quite vicious.

A lot of them are going to be very right wing, so technically you're not doing the assassinations, but you're funding people who are doing the assassinations. The point is, you don't ever give up the more militaristic, the more vicious means. You're simply saying, If we can step back from them, let's do it.

But the second the soft power doesn't get you what you want, you will go back to either yourself using the militarism or using the soft power to fund more militaristic, more aggressive groups because they're the ones who happen to align with your interests. That's why I said there's no firewall between these two things. All you've done is you've added a component to the repertoire of global domination. But because it's domination, you never let outcomes.

Go against you because those outcomes might be what the soft power is producing. MELISSA - CO-HOST, CONFRONTING CAPITALISM: So let's look back at the 60s when USAID was founded and the quintessential 1960s American conflict is Vietnam was USAID involved in Vietnam at all. VIVEK CHIBBER - HOST, CONFRONTING CAPITALISM: It was deeply, profoundly and disgracefully involved in Vietnam.

If you read the official histories of AID, they will tell you that they were very productive and very useful in helping set up village level education campaigns, village level employment centers, village level agricultural growth centers and all that. And that's kind of true.

What is hidden from it though, is that the USAID helped design what's called rural pacification and the strategic Hamlet program, which were both geared towards reducing the scope of the activity of North Vietnamese, the Viet Minh forces, and to try to, as it were, dry out the lake in which the revolutionary forces were swimming.

And the way they did that was to say, well, we don't really know which of these villages Is sympathetic to the north and which ones is not so what we're going to do is physically relocate peasants that we suspect are sympathetic entire villages of peasants and move them to new locations. And that's why they were called strategic hamlets. MELISSA - CO-HOST, CONFRONTING CAPITALISM: Rural pacification. Exactly. VIVEK CHIBBER - HOST, CONFRONTING CAPITALISM: So now, this is not the worst of it.

Now in this, AID, of course, you could say all they're doing is setting up rural employment programs. But what they're actually doing is helping design what you might call massive ethnic cleansing. It's a massive. Relocation programs of forcibly removing peasants from their homes and putting them into new ones and then forcing these economic programs down their throats. Is that soft power , it doesn't look like it. Right, right.

MELISSA - CO-HOST, CONFRONTING CAPITALISM: I was gonna ask, so is the idea that U-S-A-I-D, is this humanitarian font just a complete facade, or it was a VIVEK CHIBBER - HOST, CONFRONTING CAPITALISM: total facade at the time? Because this was actually the soft edge, what I've just described, what they were doing. There was an agency within a ID called the Office of Public Safety. Now again, this sounds very anine.

It sounds very, very like we MELISSA - CO-HOST, CONFRONTING CAPITALISM: love safety. Yeah. Who VIVEK CHIBBER - HOST, CONFRONTING CAPITALISM: doesn't like safety? Their job was to help train police forces, so as to create order and stability inside countries that were wracked with violence. That, that's their official mission. MELISSA - CO-HOST, CONFRONTING CAPITALISM: Mm hmm. VIVEK CHIBBER - HOST, CONFRONTING CAPITALISM: Now, what was their job in Vietnam?

It was to create a South Vietnamese police force, pivotal to the counterinsurgency effort. So, AID now, through the OPS, is involved in counterinsurgency in Vietnam. Now, this program became notorious because it was institutionalized in something called Operation Phoenix.

Now, Operation Phoenix was the counterinsurgency wing in South Vietnam that became the, one of the most notorious operations because basically the South Vietnamese elites used it for two things, ostensibly to root out communists, which basically meant it became an assassination program. But on top of that, it became an instrument of gang warfare within the South. Transcripts provided by Transcription Outsourcing, LLC.

aggressively and actively with the CIA, with the Department of Defense, and it resulted in thousands of assassinations and deaths. It was so bad that in 1974, Congress, after congressional hearings and after discovering just how deeply AID through the OPS that was involved in this actually shut down OPS altogether.

And so in Vietnam then you have what is ostensibly an aid agency involved in rural pacification, involved in assassination plots and attempts, and involved in every aspect of the American war effort. And the reason for that is The late 20th century wars in the United States are not traditional battles where armies line up against each other. Nearly every American engagement, from Vietnam and after, has essentially been counterinsurgency of some kind.

Counterinsurgency means you take on, not armies, but local populations. Which means, inevitably, just like Israel is doing today, you are destroying cities Hamlets, regions, physically. So that means the complement to this destruction campaign has to be some kind of redevelopment campaign. What AID does is that it gets involved in both ends of this. Both the destruction, in seeing where the insurgents might be, in helping intelligence agencies.

And then what's called reconstruction, but that reconstruction can't be separated from the larger project of destruction, which the US is engaged in. So Vietnam was just one example of this. You see it happening again in Afghanistan. You see it happening in Eastern Europe during Kosovo and the bombings of what used to be Yugoslavia. USAID was involved in Every one of these conflicts and it liaised with and coordinated with the DOD, with the State Department and the CIA in all of them.

So whether it's independent or not, whether it's a part of the State Department, whether it's soft power or not, these distinctions don't hold a lot of weight because really what's driving the whole thing is it is part of the American foreign policy machine and it cannot separate whatever constructive efforts it's engaging in from the destructive components of that power. JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: And finally, section D, US realignment and nato.

AARON BASTANI - HOST, NOVARA FM: I just struggle with what that actually concretely means. Like, what does it mean to project power? Imagine you're a small country in the region and you have a base that is sort of nearby, or you have this aircraft carrier fleet that can sail sort of close to your, your national waters. What is the concrete actual threat that is being made there? Presumably it's not that we will.

bomb targets in your, in your country because we couldn't do that without, you know, an act of war. And that would be a major escalation. Why does a aircraft carrier? Near your country actually convince governments in that country to act differently. Iran might be the kind of close example

I mean, it's it's it's all absurd and it kind of goes down to the absurdity of this which is that You know, we're surrounded by this panic at the moment that somehow we We're under massive threat and we don't have the necessary defenses, but, but at the same time, we're governed by the strategy that the British military needs to be able to intervene anywhere in the world.

So the idea of these aircraft carriers was basically to kind of create the sense that Britain could, if it wanted, intervene somewhere in the Asia Pacific. It's completely stupid, but that's the, the idea that they're trying to get across by creating this infrastructure that doesn't work. AARON BASTANI - HOST, NOVARA FM: Throughout the whole Cold War, there was a great deal of fear that Russia would basically launch a ground invasion of, of Europe.

It had a huge number of tanks, right, and it could simply roll through Europe. Their NATO response to this was to construct what's called the European Security Blanket, which basically sort of guaranteed that if Russia attacks any of these different NATO allies, I'll trigger Article 5. Article 5 says that, you know, the collective defense, uh, will prevail. That strikes me as a preposterous threat. It doesn't seem to me that it's possible that Russia would actually invade Europe.

And yet that is sort of the imaginary that is being conjured at the moment in this, this Europe wide rearmament program, which, you know, I think yesterday, uh, finally got the deal over the line, which is 800 billion. Euros of rearmament costs. Is that really the thing that people are worried about? Because it just strikes me as Illusory like it just strikes me as not a real threat Russia is not going to pay Poland or do you do you maybe see that more more plausibly than I do?

No, I think you're completely right to identify the illusion. So the 800 billion euros is not necessarily what it's going to amount to Um, the the details were kind of still still yet to come out and it'll depend on what each country does The kind of broader project is exactly this as, as you've described. It's to create this illusion of, of imminent threat basically. And this illusion of, of this idea of we're going to create a sort of strategic autonomy for Europe.

We're going to try and create. European military power that can be used without the support of the US in order to appease Trump. So I think what's kind of beautifully horrible about this moment is that you have European leaders beating their chests and saying, you know, the US is no longer a reliable ally. We need to create independence. We need to create autonomy. We need to be able to act on our own. Because Trump has asked them to.

Because the agenda of the Trump administration has been That they want europe to increase military spending so they can move us resources elsewhere.

They want these allies who are more Um have more military capability, um, you know more military power arms to teeth They also want them to buy american weapons, which is where a lot of this money is is ultimately going to go um, and That's what european leaders have fallen for basically And and in doing so they're creating this idea that Um, Russia is not just a threat to Ukraine, obviously Russia's invaded Ukraine, that, you know, that, that's clear for everyone to see.

It's taken some Ukrainian territory and in the war, um, it looks like hundreds of thousands of people have died. It's, it's absolutely horrific, you know, the, the, the, the legacies of, of that war and I think it will become clearer, um, you know, how terrible that has been over the next few years. I AARON BASTANI - HOST, NOVARA FM: saw something like 35 times, uh, more deaths on the Russian side than happened during the Afghanistan war in the 1980s, which was.

People normally ascribe that to being the part of the downfall of the Soviet Union, 35 times more casualties. Like it's extraordinary amounts of destruction on both sides. Exactly, exactly. And the loss of life on both sides from the invasion is, is immense and it's horrifying. Um, and, and the kind of the ultimate.

Outcome of that has been this stalemate in Ukraine and and it's likely to be some sort of settlement now That that is kind of emerging over over these weeks So the idea that russia is going to move from that to somehow then pivoting to invading another country Um seems extremely unrealistic It seems to be this, this kind of lack of imagination, um, in the UK and in continental Europe about how they can respond to this changing world order. And at the moment, their response is basically.

So you've asked us to spend more on our military industrial base, absolutely. And there's this kind of cloying and sort of horrible nature to it. If you watch, there's a video of John Healy from the last couple of days where he's kind of proudly telling, um, Pete Hegseth, as if Hegseth is kind of his school teacher or his parent, you know, look how well we've done with our, with our increase in military spending.

Like, please, um, don't put tariffs on us or, or, or please keep that close relationship. That's what's actually going on. And I think the kind of the layers of, of inaccuracy and reporting over this real agenda are really clouding, you know, how people are thinking about it. AARON BASTANI - HOST, NOVARA FM: So it will happen.

The spending, if that's assumed that it happens, actual capabilities, would that give both Britain and a wider European army, which certainly Macron has been calling for for a while. Doesn't look like it's maybe going to happen, but you know, what actual capabilities would they get for the 800? It's really interesting.

If you, if you look back at this idea of rearmament in the, obviously Germany has to, you know, relied on us military capacity in us military deployments, but it's still one of the world's top 10 military spenders. It spent more on its military in 2023 than France did. France has a lot of independent capability and sort of touted as the country alongside the UK in Europe. That's one of the. the top military powers, it's got independent nuclear weapons.

So if Germany spent more than France last year, and it's massively increasing the budget. What is that money going towards? What is it going to give germany? That that it doesn't already have why is it needed and in relation to what threat these questions are not being answered at the moment Um to turn to britain.

Um, I think it's really important again to challenge the idea of rearmament We have the world's six largest military budget as I said before it's increased in real terms since 1980 during the cold war We have global military commitments in the middle east in the asia pacific region We have you know bases all across the world. We're spending nine billion pounds to lease some of Mauritius to keep this joint military base with the U. S. Air Force.

This global project of trying to be a power that can intervene anywhere, anytime has not been revised or considered while they say that it's somehow now essential for national security. And for regional security to invest a lot more on the military. So we, we don't know where that money's going to go or why it's needed. There'll be more detail in the strategic defense review, I'm sure.

But in both contexts, although it is different here, it's arguably worse here in, in, in, in some ways it's being led by, by money and not strategy. And I think that's the key point. BRIAN LEHRER - HOST, BRIAN LEHRER: A DAILY POLITICS PODCAST: So you've covered Washington for decades. Have you ever heard it come to this in the context of world affairs?

A leading congressman saying, we're on the side of the bad guys now, meaning the authoritarians who George W. Bush as president called the axis of evil.

And I do think that not only was the Argument unprecedented, but the realignment. It signals is unprecedented because it aligns the United States, uh, increasingly with Russia and decreasingly with the European allies that we've fought two world wars with. Uh, so yes, I thought it was a, quite an important event, I think, in, you know, you never know. History unfolds in its own ways, but I think we could look back and see this event on Friday as a real pivot point for the United States.

BRIAN LEHRER - HOST, BRIAN LEHRER: A DAILY POLITICS PODCAST: Yeah, and you went right to the paragraph from your article that I wanted to cite from anyway. Uh, I'll back you up by reading this. You wrote, in time, the shouting match in the Oval Office may turn out to be a pivot point in a realignment. that moves Washington closer to Moscow and further from European allies.

How do you see what Trump really wants by aligning with Putin as much as he does, turning reality on its head, we should say, saying Ukraine started the war and calling Zelensky a dictator, which he doesn't call Putin. What does Trump actually want from calling democracy dictatorship and not calling dictatorship dictatorship? So I think some of it is personal.

You know, he has From the beginning, from 2015, from the 2016 campaign, he's expressed admiration for Vladimir Putin, often to the bewilderment of other, uh, conservative Republicans who see Putin as a thug, uh, and a despot, but Trump has repeatedly expressed admiration for him as a strong man. Uh, you remember that Helsinki news conference where he said he believed Putin's assurances over election interference over his own intelligence agencies. Uh, so that's not new.

What's also not new is Trump's irritation with president Zelensky. Uh, you know, they met. Uh, over the phone when, uh, Trump was urging him to investigate his rival, Joe Biden, on grounds of corruption. And Zelensky not only refused to do it, but it led to Trump's first impeachment. So he has a history with both of these guys, but there's a policy here too. It's a different United States policy than we've seen before. It's the United States less.

As a NATO, a prominent member of NATO, a strong support of NATO and more like a kind of neutral observer in the world that might sometimes act as a, as a go between. That's really the role that Trump is now setting up for himself when it comes to Ukraine and Russia.

BRIAN LEHRER - HOST, BRIAN LEHRER: A DAILY POLITICS PODCAST: And not just neutral, but As Quigley was alleging, on the side of the bad guys, I mean, this comes after Vance lectured Germany at the Munich Security Conference, we'll remember, the other week for having weak democracy because it restricts the kind of hate speech associated with its undemocratic Nazi past and limiting parties.

of the far right that seem to recall that past, like the AFD, even though the AFD aligns with some authoritarian governments abroad today as well, meaning abroad from Germany. So we're telling Europe that it's against democracy for limiting parties that are against democracy.

One's head could explode from the contradiction, but what position does this realignment that you cite Leave a global alliance for democracy itself in the U. S. Imperfect, though it's been has long been a leader in that respect. You know, along with I just mentioned along with Vance's speech in Munich, which I agree was very important. There was the United States vote in the United Nations where we refused to support a resolution that cited Russian aggression against Ukraine.

We sided with Russia, China. Iran and North Korea. There's BRIAN LEHRER - HOST, BRIAN LEHRER: A DAILY POLITICS PODCAST: that, there's that George Bush axis of evil, right? Yeah, precisely. Those countries, I don't think China was on that list, but the other ones were, and now we're voting with them at the United Nations against the democracies. France, Italy, the United Kingdom. Uh, so that, that was also, I think, a really uh, crucial moment. We've now seen a couple of them.

So clearly it's deliberate. This is not some accidental slip of the tongue, uh, in the Oval Office. And it changes the world order. This changes the way the world is aligned. And that's what we're seeing, I think, right in front of our faces. BRIAN LEHRER - HOST, BRIAN LEHRER: A DAILY POLITICS PODCAST: I also want to play one very short bite. Don't worry folks, I'm not going to subject you to the whole thing again. Uh, but, and I watched it like five times over the weekend.

Um, to, you know, not just because it was unbelievable in general, but because there were a number of specific things in there that I wanted to be really clear on. And I'm going to replay one of them right now. Um, It relates to this question of where democracy and governing styles interact. We know they were lecturing Zelensky that he should be thanking the United States more. But there was also this that seemed consistent with other things going on domestically as well.

Just purely showing who's in charge for who's in charge's sake.

But, was he also Showing Zelensky who's boss, you know, like you do what I say give us those mineral rights from your country Congressman Quigley called it ransom in a CNN interview like a demand from a thug and get ready to give up some of your country To Russia because I'm the one in charge here.

He irritated the White House by not showing up in a suit. Uh, they say he didn't do enough to say thank you to the United States. Although of course he said thank you over and over again. And you heard him there challenging Trump and interrupting him. And that may seem totally natural and right, but that is a recipe trigger Trump, uh, and to make him assert.

BRIAN LEHRER - HOST, BRIAN LEHRER: A DAILY POLITICS PODCAST: And I noticed in your article that you quoted Trump's post on Truth Social from after the Zelensky incident. Trump wrote, He disrespected the United States in its cherished Oval Office. It wasn't our constitution that called cherished or our interest in peace or democracy.

It was our cherished oval office, which means him AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: Foreign policy wasn’t the main focus of President Trump’s address Tuesday night, but he did once again threaten to annex the Panama Canal. He said he already started. PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: To further enhance our national security, my administration will be reclaiming the Panama Canal, and we’ve already started doing it.

Just today, a large American company announced they are buying both ports around the Panama Canal and lots of other things having to do with the Panama Canal and a couple of other canals. The Panama Canal was built by Americans for Americans, not for others. But others could use it. But it was built at tremendous cost of American blood and treasure. Thirty-eight thousand workers died building the Panama Canal. They died of malaria. They died of snakebites and mosquitoes.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: President Trump Tuesday night once again talked about Panama. He talked about Panama. And again, in addressing in his Tuesday night address, I wanted to ask you, Juan, if you could talk about what he said, what he reiterated, the points that he made, as we hear that BlackRock, the corporate giant, is leading a consortium — that’s what he was referring to.

BlackRock said it would lead a consortium to purchase two Panama Canal ports from a Hong Kong-based conglomerate. You’ve discussed all this before, Juan. You spent time in Panama. You were there when President George H.W. Bush invaded, led troops invading Panama. Talk about the significance of what he’s saying. JUAN GONZALEZ - CO-HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: Well, Amy, no matter how many times you repeat a lie, it still doesn’t make it true.

The fact is that during the construction of the canal from 1904 to 1914, it wasn’t 38,000 people who died. It was a far smaller number of people, 5,600 people, who died. And most of those people were not Americans. They were Black West Indian laborers who were imported by the Panama Canal Company to do most of the construction. Only about 350 white Americans died in the construction of the canal. That’s about a hundred times less than what Trump is claiming.

He’s trying to include in there the fact that there was a first attempt to build the canal by a French company in the 1880s where tens of thousands of workers died in that failed effort to build the canal. But also, most of those workers were West Indians, largely from Barbados. So the real bloodshed in building the Panama Canal was workers from the Caribbean islands.

And now, as you mentioned, comes the news that BlackRock, one of the world’s largest private equity firms, its CEO Larry Fink is spending $23 billion not just on the two Panama ports of CK Hutchison, but a bunch of other ports that this Hong Kong company owns around the world.

And this is an example of the Panamanian government, which is a conservative government, basically currying favor with Trump, and at the same time Larry Fink and BlackStone currying favor with Trump, because they’ve been under a lot of criticism from right-wing groups because of their emphasis on socially responsible environmental investments, and they’re trying to clean up their act as far as the MAGA supporters are concerned.

So, it’s really outrageous how Trump continues to repeat this lie of all the blood that Americans shed in building the Panama Canal. SAAGAR - CO-HOST, BREAKING POINTS: Let's go ahead and play this from Donald Trump, talking about how he wants to have a deal with Iran, rather than go to war with them. Let's take a listen.

SAAGAR - CO-HOST, BREAKING POINTS: So as you can see, he's like, we would rather have a deal. Uh, but the problem that they're finding is that Iran actually just rejected the deal. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. The Supreme leader of Iran rejected any nuclear talks with the quote, so called bully states of the United States and they're pursuing, you know, they're continuing their Nuclear program.

We don't know how much of this is bluster yet per se, but part of the problem is we talked about this with Trita Parsi, the reneging on the original Iran deal. It's like, okay, well, to what end? For what purpose? The purpose was to increase the sanctions regime and to hopefully see the country fall the regime that didn't happen. Um, you know, in terms of their nuclear program, Yeah.

Their so called breakout time or whatever apparently remains relatively static, uh, to their ability to create it. Uh, their ability to conduct war abroad and or in the near abroad, as they call it, you know, in that area. Well, you know, seem to be doing pretty well in Iraq, uh, seem to doing okay enough in Syria. Uh, Hezbollah, of course, uh, in Lebanon. Have they taken some, some hits? Yeah, absolutely.

Uh, especially with Israelis being able to, you know, assassinate people literally in the middle of their capital. And, of course, they had that whole back and forth, um, with Israel. And then Israel retaliated against some of their nuclear, uh, uh, missile defense systems near their bases. But, you know, they haven't fallen, which was the ultimate deal of what they wanted. So now, we're in this situation. Basically of everyone's neocon making, where we've tried the maximum sanctions.

I mean, what sanctions could possibly be even left to levy on to the country? And Trump is in some ways in a problem of his own making. Because now, what do you do? You know, if they do get a nuclear weapon or pursue that, uh, that nuclear program, you've said explicitly that we'll go to war for that. That would be a nightmare for most Americans. Also, though, you're saying that you want a deal. And so, two sides of your mouth, and especially full of an administration.

Which, historically, has been incredibly hawkish on the Iran question. It's one of those where you could easily find ourselves in a major crisis over this issue if we don't revert to what I hope is Trump's best instincts. Like with the North Korea deal, there's no reason that we can't go and sit down with these people.

And at the very least, that's what Trump has shown, his ability to overcome, you know, these previous idiotic statements, like, we will never negotiate with Hamas, we'll never negotiate with the North Koreans. It's like, well, they're in power and they're the ones with the guns, so, you know. What are you supposed to do? So anyway, I hope that we pursue this, maybe we can get over it, and it is, it is still important that he's saying he wants it.

I'm still worried, especially with Mike Walsh and some of these other folks in that administration. Because if there are other people doing the deal, there's never going to be any deal. KRYSTAL - CO-HOST, BREAKING POINTS: Well, and you can understand the Iranians perspective as well. Like, dude, you're the one who walked away from this. Like, how can we make a deal with your country? We did that before and got stabbed in the back by you.

So, like, you know, when they're responding with like, no, we're not going to do another deal with you. That's part of the background that you have to understand. That and the fact that just the Trump administration has put on even more sanctions than existed under the Biden administration. They're targeting oil exports in particular to China. And also apparently there was previously a waiver that allowed Iraq.

to buy Iranian oil, and they've gotten rid of that waiver, and obviously Iran is heavily depo uh, dependent on their, you know, their oil exports, that's a, a key part of their economic picture. Um, apparently there were also sanctions that were put on Iran's metal industry, so they are going all in, in what he calls the maximum pressure campaign, which means Amping up the sanctions even further and really trying to destroy the economy.

So when the Iranians are talking about, you know, you're treating us like a bully would that's what they're ultimately referring to so Yes, obviously it would be much better to like the best one of the best things that the Obama administration did certainly in terms of international policy was the Iran nuclear deal. One of the worst things that Trump did was getting out of the Iranian nuclear deal.

One of the failures, there were other worse ones, but one of the failures of the Biden administration was not jumping back into the Iranian nuclear deal, especially in the early days. This is something we did multiple segments with Trita Parsi about, like they had four years to try to restart these negotiations, to try to get back into a deal, which for a time Iran continued to adhere to, even after Trump had pulled the U S out of the deal and they didn't do it.

And now the Iranians, you know, are feeling disinclined to want to go back to this rodeo. So, you know, I hope the, the, I hope Trump's instincts to negotiate and desire to avoid war in this region to the extent that he has one. I hope that's what prevails, but I think there's still a lot of big question marks here. There SAAGAR - CO-HOST, BREAKING POINTS: are. And, and the Israelis, KRYSTAL - CO-HOST, BREAKING POINTS: obviously like they know what they want.

SAAGAR - CO-HOST, BREAKING POINTS: Nightmare. Yeah. This is the worst possible situation for them. KRYSTAL - CO-HOST, BREAKING POINTS: Yeah. They, they want us to be. Shoulder to shoulder with them in a war against Iran. That is the longtime dream. And, you know, they have a lot of purchase in terms of, um, power in the, uh, Trump administration. You know, you have Miriam Adelson, who has already gotten quite a lot in terms of, uh, her 100 million investment in the Trump campaign.

And, um, Bibi is a savvy operator as well in terms of getting what he wants out of whoever the political leader is in charge in the U. S. So I would say at this point, you know, there's There's certainly nothing off the table. JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: That's going to be it for today. As always, keep the comments coming in.

I would love to hear your thoughts or questions about today's topic or our upcoming topics, which include what resistance there is to Trump and Musk, which is more positive than we thought it was going to be when we started doing the research, followed by a focus on the far-right war on the LGBTQ community. You can leave a voicemail or send us a text at 202-999-3991.

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