Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here, and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election.
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What do we have, Crystal, indeed we do.
We're going to take a look at a few aspects of the Kamala Harris defeat. First of all, she did give her concession speech, so we have a little bit of that. Also some of the various competing theories of what exactly went wrong. Also a lot of finger pointing people on both sides of the like Biden Democratic Party, like his staffers versus the Harris staffers and the Obama staffers. So a lot of blame flying around, including people who are still I knew this would happen, credulously, like geez,
we shouldn't ditch Biden. One that was as wild wild to imagine that that could be the case. But anyway, we'll dig into all of that. We're also going to have David Serota on of course of lever news. Bernie Sanders put out a really scathing rebuke of the Democratic Party echoes, you know, some of the things I've been saying, some of the things others have been saying about where they went wrong, and very curious to get Serota's take
on that. And there's also been a funny development of people like David Brooks now being like, gee, maybe Democrats need like their own Bernie Sanders style disruptive movement.
It's like, dude, you were a core part of.
Destroying that movement, crushing it, salting the earth and making sure that there's no vestige of it less left to be resurrected. And of course, even if it were to be, we know David Brooks would be at the vanguard of once again doing the same exact thing. So anyway, excited to talk to David Serota about all of this, forgive.
Us his thoughts, forgive us for a more truncated, spontaneous, extemporaneous show. Today all of us are still from all of the sleep deprivation over the last couple of days.
We're going to do our best here.
Let's start, I think with the Kamala Harris speech, so control and please go ahead and get that queued up, and we will take a listen to some of the highlights. I watched the entire thing, and we'll break it down after. Let's take a listen.
And historian once called a law of history true of every society across the ages. The adage is only when it is dark enough can you see the stars. I know many people feel like we are entering a dark time, but for the benefit of us all I hope that is not the case. But here's the thing, America.
If it is, let.
Us fill the sky with the light of a brilliant, brilliant billion of.
Stars, the light.
The light of optimism, of faith, of truth and service.
At you and made that.
Work guide us, even in the face of setbacks, toward the extraordinary promise of the United States of America.
I thank you all.
Make God bless you, and may God bless the United States of America.
I thank you all.
About as perfect as an end to the campaign as we could get.
There. In that concession speech, Crystal.
Pablom and whatever the hell that was. The star stars to.
Me are very like twenty sixteen resistance, and you know, I just I don't think that the energy from the Democratic base is going to be quite the same because I mean, for when they're exhausted, right, yeah, and for number two. You know, back in twenty sixteen, it felt very much it felt like it could be just a one off.
Yes, like a fluke.
Okay, you had the Komi thing and Hillary was a bad candidate and Russian interference and whatever. Now it's like, okay, no, this this wasn't a fluke. By the way, people people aren't just rejecting Democrats.
They're doing that.
They're also embracing this particular candidate. I mean, he outperformed every Republican on the ballot, So let's reckon.
With that too and what that says.
But you know, on the on the Democratic side, I see Lisbon Warren put out like kind of a similar vibe of statement that was like, let's not point fingers, just like when is the time to point fingers?
If not right now?
Like Matt Stolar had a great tweet he was like, actually, right now is the exact right time?
Correct fingers? And for recruit Yeah, bitter recruitment.
Like that's like, now is the time your party has been burned down to the ashes.
Yes, thoroughly repudiated in.
State after state, county after county, demographic group after demographic group across the country. And there's no one to blame. There's no one, you know, there's no boogeyman out there that you can just point your finger at and say, oh, it was there, it was their fault. So you know, now is the time to try to learn those lessons. But you know, I like, I think that they will learn all the wrong lessons. I think that's already we see them moving in that direction. But the other piece
with Kamalo's speech, I'm curious your thoughts. Like, I think she's delusional enough to believe that she's still part of the future of the.
Dem That's actually what I wanted to highlight.
So an important part of her speech actually was her really laying the groundwork for the possible future run.
So I have a direct quote here Kamala.
While I concede this election, I do not concede the fight that fueled this campaign.
And she says, I'm so proud of the race that we ran the way that we ran it.
We have been intentional about building community and building coalitions, but the most important was really about the not conceding the fight and continuing or not. I'm conceding election, not conceding the fight. And I really do think that she is trying to position herself as a future of the resistance. And this is actually a very stupid bet in my opinion, because it's, like you just said, the quote unquote resistance is not going to be the same last time around.
They had two pillars that they could correctly cling to, right, Sorry, one was correct, the other was bullshit. The first one was the popular vote and the one off things. Right, I mean that's fair, right. It actually didn't win the popular vote. Hillary did, so they could talk about that. They're like, well, it wasn't a rejection of us, It was just a couple of ways the swing stay Trump is a one off et cetera.
Number two also it was Russiagate.
Is they were like, this is fundamentally like an illegitimate president. But if you so, obviously Russiagate turned out to be bullshit. And also, frankly, the entire like this is a one off thing is also.
Turned out to be bullshit.
So when you put those two things together, she is making a very incorrect bet. Let's be very honest here. This is a candidate who has performed worse than Hillary Clinton, right, this is a candidate who was thoroughly rejected by the popular vote and a landslide victory in the electoral college. You know, in the British system, somebody like her, it's over.
You resign, You're gone.
You know, at best, you pop up somewhere for constabulatory or whatever they call it over there.
And that's it.
You're just some backbencher and we never hear about you again. Fundamentally, it's an incorrect bet because it's, like you just said, the liberal mind and all that is both exhausted from eight years of quote unquote resistance, but also there is a baseline acceptance this time of the Trump victory and
of the thesis that this is. You know, Peter Baker over at the New York Times, he's a guy I respect, he does a pretty good job, and he was like, look, elites made a fundamental bet that Trump is not who we are. And he's like, actually, this is Donald Trump's America, and we are the ones who don't know what the hell is going on. It's kind of a trite take, but fundamentally like what Kamala is betting on in terms of her resistance, it cannot look like her because her
style of politics so thoroughly failed. Her entire theory of quote unquote resistance was incorrect from basically the entire time around.
So whatever does.
Come next, obviously there's going to be a lot of soul searching it like that inside of the party. But she cannot seek the nomination again because her electoral track record now is two times failure. She failed in the twenty nineteen Democratic primary. She did not win or even get close to the Iowa caucuses because of how she flamed out for some reason, mostly because of like twenty
twenty BLM craziness. She gets selected as the vice presidential pick, one of the worst modern picks obviously, I think we can say, and then there's no primary system. That happens, and she runs a terrible campaign in addition to having inherit the baggage of Joe Biden, and she loses in a historic margin like it is over and in any modern sense of like how these things should go, it
cannot be allowed. Now, the big question is whether Democratic elites will allow this nonsense, because right now all the recriminations are on Joe Biden, which we'll get to, but I haven't seen enough of Kamala herself and her own role in it. So she seems to think that she can just coast on it was Biden's fault that I lost.
Well not you know mine.
I've been saying the whole time that Democrats are never going to run a woman again, right, and I do think like the first woman president is going to be a Republican, Like, I think that that is pretty clear at this point. But I mean, I agree with all the critiques of Kamala's campaign, right, I mean, the thing I've been saying is like too much Mark Cuban and Liz Cheney and not enough Sean Faine and Bernie Sanders.
Right.
But I also I think it's sort of unfair to lay all the blame at her feet, because that would it would almost be too easy to just look at like, oh, you made this tactical wrong decision, you gave this tactically wrong answer, all that thing, all of that is, you know,
worthy of debate and discussion, et cetera. But there's a deeper problem with the Democratic Party, and you know, the medium term issue is that they even though they claimed to be fighting for democracy, they're actually very scared of democracy, which you see both in the refusal to have a democratic primary this time around, in the refusal to have like even an open convention after Joe Biden drops out
of the race. If you go back further, you see it in the crushing of the Bernie Sanders movement, you know, an organic democratic movement that sprung up that they moved heaven and earth to make sure that they crushed and put their finger on the scales and bring the primaries back in twenty sixteen.
And if you think about it.
You know, the last time that they actually allowed a democratic process to play out was two thousand and eight with Obama and Hillary. They got the candidate that the you know, the Democratic base actually wanted, and lo and hold turned out that guy was a really good politician and he won two terms and probably if you'd been allowed to run for more, probably would have continue to win. And I say this not as the biggest fan of Obama, but just you know, respect of his particular political talent.
So there's a democracy problem in the Democratic Party. I don't see I really don't see anyone reckoning with that. But there's also an ideological problem in the Democratic Party, and you know, Kama is a reflective of that ideological problem. Neoliberalism has been rejected. The right has offered, through trump Ism, their vision and their story about what went wrong and
what to do next. The left offered out of Occupy their own version of that story of you know, who was to blame, what went wrong, and how to fix it, and it was compelling. It was compelling to a lot of the very same people who now are supporting Donald Trump, including a like Joe Rogan being the sort of like, you know, figurehead of that shift. But many Listino voters,
many working class voters, et cetera. And you know, I would love to fantasize that, oh, now they're they're going to realize the error of their ways, and they're there's gonna be a new movement that springs up.
But I just don't believe.
It, because they've already crushed that movement so thoroughly. The people who previously we're a part of it, many of them are gone. They're disillusion they're even either like just liberals now or they're on the right, and so I don't know, like there is no less to speak of that could recreate that energy.
That's where we are.
One thing saga I wanted to get your view on is let's put this incumbent party graphic up on the screen.
Guys. The second element that we have here.
Yeah, this is very important.
This is this is important, and it is an important part of the story of what went wrong here. This is Derek Thompson tweeted this out. He said, for the first time since World War Two, every governing party facing election in a developed country this year lost vote share twenty twenty four. Democrats are the red dot absolutely critical context to any post mortem, and I think that is true.
But I also think that you can use that to just explain away the failures of Kamala herself, the Democratic Party, the ideology underlying, you know, because that's the other thing is like, well, what is the what we're the governing parties that were rejected, many of them were many of them were, you know, neoliberal parties, and it's one more reflection of the fact that the public is done with an ideology that is has you know, been proven to
be broken, you know, putting markets above human beings and you know, individual values, and Democrats have failed to recognize that this has been rejected and they have to offer a different story in a different ideology.
Let's go through that list is actually very important. So we have the British Tories, right, the Tories basically abandoned all of the spirit of Brexit and pursued like market based Brexit, whatever that is under Richie Sunac.
Just to start with trust, I mean even Bojo who.
Actually had a lot of respect for Boris back in the day because he, I mean he got himself elected Mayor of London. That's not exactly the easiest thing. And they have lect freaking Sadikon then goes on to become like this very dynamic figure. But he that's the farm, you know, all throughout COVID in the post Brexit era
on this like market managed Brexitism. It eventually evolves into Liz Tross after his own failure, and then of course Rishi Sunak and in all cases like they abandon the spirit of Brexit in the first place, which was about immigration, it wasn't just about the market. And so what happens is that the Reform Party under Nigel Faraj now surges takes all the energy away from the Tories and leads
to an immediate Labor victory. But in Tory or sorry, in the UK, it's not an accident that even though Starmer may have gotten himself elected, he's almost immediately as unpopular as the Tories, like what are we doing here them?
And they also with Corbin brushed there, oh, they absolutely left version of Bernieism too.
And so in both cases, like what you really have is you had the establishment forces in both the Tories and inside of Labor that try and crush them and keep the country on their you know, on this like one track direction. But the voters just keep saying, they're like, no,
this is not what we are asking for. They also point to well Emmanuel Macrone and his you know fall apart, you know, really there Macron bet the farm in twenty seventeen on like French they call it like jubiterarianism or something is basically like you know, call this like Napoleonic centrist figure. And he saw France as like the head of this liberal democratic European Union. And the French of course, like you know, even though they kind of keep electing him,
they also just keep grasping in different directions. And it's not a surprise that the you know, basically socialist leftist Coalition and LAPENN have basically been battling it out ever since that happened. Again, it's the same fight that's happening
over there. Theirs is actually way more intense than ours, or about the soul of France, about who we are, and it's about immigration, and it's also really about the like the future of their own welfare state and also have their own conception of themselves, whether they want to be like a French like liberal neoliberal managed economy or they want to return to, you know, the roots that
they've always had in their country. They even point to the Japanese Liberal Democrats, which frankly is kind of an interesting one. I don't know a ton about Japan. I'll be there in two weeks, so I'm actually excited to learn. But you know, that Liberal Democratic Party there actually lost as parliament terim majority for that first time in fifteen years, and.
The other's I mean, that's another thing about Japan.
Japan on all the countries that they pulled about, like how do you feel about Donald Trump. Israel was number one. Yeah, they fucking love Donald Trump and Israel.
Yes, I think Japan.
Was like towards the top of the list, a large like pro Trump sentiment in Japan.
Look, Japan, it's not a secret. This is a very conservative society. And I don't mean this in like the Christian Stanse so I think some of them are Christian. But look, I mean, you know, in terms of gender equality and their own like what they view is like masculine and feminine ideals. Also in terms of their economy and all of that actually aligns very very much with Donald Trump. Also, Shinze Abbe and Trump were great friends and they had a very good relationship in the past.
What makes sense.
But I guess the point in all of these cases is that you have very highly developed societies like Japan, like the UK, even like France, but also you know, the newer ones like in India where Narrara Modi also lost you know, some of his ground despite being one of the most popular figures.
I also would point to one of our own neighbors.
Mexico, like, look what happened on that not only with the election of Amlo, but then the continuation of that and the literal falling apart of the they're like predominant col I'm forgetting the name of that party that's there. And then also our other neighbor to the north, look at Canada.
Canada.
Justin Trudeau sounds like Donald Trump on immigration right now. He's like, we're done with immigration here Canada. I hear you and I see you. Their party is very, very unpopular, and they also are poised for some major political realignments.
So I think the case in all of them is that highly developed Western societies are asking what's next, and it's the first time since World War Two, which is what that's actually what Derek pointed out, and I actually think that's really because what's happening here is that for the first time since World War Two, we're asking fundamental questions about who we want to be in the global system and about our relationship to government. It was a titanic shock that they had to live through since such
a short period of time. For us, it's actually been like a slow burning disaster since two thousand and three and the invasion, I guess really since nine to eleven, then the invasion of Iraq, then the financial crisis in almost twenty years of just like feeling tense and constantly voting for these change elections. Now Trump has a chance to get that done and to actually forge some sort
of new consensus. But each country has to ask itself, like, Okay, what's like the relationship between the government and the citizen.
What is the relationship of what the citizen re means in terms of immigration?
And there's very different ways that's playing out across the West and in these developed societies.
What though, is our relationship to the globe.
And that's another one where I mean, you know, I don't want to you know, put the death knell yet, but Atlantis, which is like this worship of the alliance between Europe and the United States, like that's basically dead. Under Donald Trump, we are returning much more to a much more mercantilist like transactional relationship.
The rise of Asia. One of the reasons that Japanese loved Trump.
Is specifically because like he's very pro global like he's pro quote unquote fairness of trade. But more importantly, the Japanese have always felt shafted by the fact that we like love and respect like freaking Slovenia or whatever, and they're like a G seven economy sitting over there and like, hey, what about us? That realignment will happen too. So I know I've droned on a lot here, but there's that
graph says everything. Because if you think about it, Crystal, you know, nineteen forty six or sorry forty five, when the UK votes out wins in Churchill and puts Clement Attlee, that's when they're like, Okay, we're done with empire and we're going NHS. You know, we're going healthcare service. Same in a lot of the European countries they were like, we're done with this whole like global project. We're just gonna kind of retreat inwards. I guess a little bit
and figure out who we are. America also chose a little bit differently under Truman and Eisenhower. But we're back to that type of moment, which is really interesting.
Yeah.
Well, what I want my liberal friends, and I love my libs on there, what I want them to understand is that the right didn't actually defeat them. Liberals and Democratic Party elites who made it their project, their primary project, not defeating Donald Trump over the past basically decade. Their primary project was defeating the left wing Bernie Sanders movement that was grassroots and populist, and especially the twenty sixteen class first iteration.
They made that their project, and they.
Succeeded in that. I mean, it's crushed, it's done right. There's no clear successor. Listen, maybe I'll be wrong. I've been wrong about a lot, but I don't see it. You all defeated the movement that had a chance to be a competing vision. And you mentioned Amlo and Claudia Scheinbao. Amlow is, you know, not exactly like Bernie Sanders. Obviously it's a different cultural and political context, but a lot
of similarities there. And he was one of the most popular leaders in the entire world, including through a time that did include you know, massive inflation and COVID and UNRAE all that stuff. And he continued to be incredibly popular and was able to basically name his successor. As I mentioned before, just ask yourself who were the strongest supporters of Bernie Sanders. What was his coalition? And it
was predominantly working class. Many of the donors contributors was Walmart, Amazon, Starbucks.
Remember how we used to cover that. Teachers also were a big part of that.
It was predominantly working class Latinos loved Bernie Sanders. TiO Bernie, that was a twenty twenty iteration of Bernie in particular. They really capitalized on that support and quote unquote bros. And I think another one thing we've missed in the conversation about like the bro exit from the Democratic Party is, you know, this is a partial explanation, but you can go back and look at how were they male supporters
of Bernie, of Bernie Sanders movement treated. They were, you know, predominantly young men who were smeared as being toxic and sexist and racist, like that's how they were treated. So, you know, is it any surprise then that you have
this significant right word shift among men. I'm not saying that's everything that's going on, but if you look at the coalition that backed Bernie and you look at where they are now, I think it's it becomes pretty clear the Democratic Party instead bet on this college educated, upper class coalition in a country that is still predominantly non college educated and working class, and these are the results.
I mean to me, that's pretty clear.
So that's what I want people to really understand is that the Democrats, the liberals in the Democratic Party really did this to themselves by making it such a focus and succeeding beyond you know, anyone's wildest dreams in crushing the part of the party that had the most appeal to working class voters and had a chance, no guarantees, had a chance of actually competing with the vision of
trump Ism. So you know, I to me, like a lot of the die has already been cast, Like that's I'm not and again I'm not saying Democratic Party isn't going to win elections, win votes, whatever, But in terms of the ideological direction of that party, I think now it's going to be more Okay, well, how do we adopt and we already see this with immigration, we already see this with crime, We already see this in a lot of ways. Trudeau going down the same path in Canada.
How do we do like a kinder, gentler version of trump Ism? And you know that'll sell Bill Clinton, That's what he did in the nineties. He embraced the ioliberalism, did the Democratic Party version of it. There will still be don't get me wrong, there will still be very fierce surface level battles over things like immigration and cultural issues, but the underlying sort of narrative of the nation and economic direction, the general contours of that will be largely set.
You know.
Again, I could be wrong, but that's I sort of feel like the die is already effective.
No, I totally agree.
I mean that was actually, if anything, Trump's greatest victory is breaking the Overton window on all of these issues, from trade to immigration to foreign policy. And obviously there's been left right, you know, intercoalitional fight. The left chose to stick with the old direction, specifically because of like god.
Worship under Barack Obama.
Let's get to some of the inklings that we're getting right now out of the Trump transition. We don't know a ton and not a lot has come out, but there has been some interesting reporting by our own Ryan Grimm. We can go ahead and put that up there on the screen. Ryan and Mortaza Hussein over at the drop side are saying, quote, Trump is eyeing iron hawk Brian.
Hook as a first foreign policy pick.
Brian Hook, for those who don't know, previously started under George W. Bush, and there are inklings that he could be back in over at the State Department. People may remember him because He was kind of a Pompeo Bush type protege who was there for the first or the last two years of the Trump presidency, and he was one of those figures who really pushed the killing of Kassam Solamani. Whether he actually gets picked or not will be an interesting test case as to what it will
start to look like for secretary of State. I cannot reveal to a ton I've asked. Nobody really knows. The two positions where the biggest question marks are right now is over State Department and over Secretary of Defense. And also, to be clear, Hook is not being looked at as the next Secretary of State. It's more like an advisor figure,
like the US Special Representative or whatever for Iran. One name I had heard floated for Secretary of State was Bob Leitthheiser, which, by the way, I think would be fantastic. Lightthheiser was the US Trade Representative under Donald try he negotiated the USMCA. Perhaps like most importantly is he has a good report with the President, and Trump trusts him and likes him and actually kind of shares some of
his philosophy. Lthheisser also never took the like Bill Barr resistance route and denounced Donald Trump in public, so he's got good standing. There's a lot of other figures who could get it. One of them is Rick Grinnell, who I think is would be an interesting pick too. Grennell was the US Ambassador to Germany under Donald Trump. Grennell also is a major like Trump's surrogate and has been in the past.
He's from California.
He has critically also shares a lot of Trump's view of Europe and of in terms of his foreign policy. Prior to that, he served as I think he was a UN no, the UN spokesperson under George W.
Bush.
But he's had a real ideological one eighty. We did get some good anti Neocon news. Let's put this up there on the screen. Tom Hotton has reportedly told the trum team he will not accept any administration role, which, look, let's all also put a pin in this, because people say this until they don't say it, right.
That's that's one thing.
But I mean it is kind of curious because to me, I feel like his dream has always been to be Secretary of State, Like his major first thing when he became senator was to come into the US Senate and then immediately remember he had that whole brewhaha with Iran and sent them a letter saying that the US Congress won't abide by the Iran deal. And there was like a lot of this but this is like real twenty
fourteen deep cut energy. But anyway, the point is is that it appears that he wants to stay in the Senate and actually wants to run the Republican Republican Conference Chair and be maybe like number three in the Senate GOP. I mean, you know, also bad, but the number three SATEP is like that's you can do a lot less, dang.
I mean, he's a young guy. Maybe he doesn't do's want to give up his career.
You know, you can be a life in the US Senate whereas you know, you come in and Sectara state and Trump fires you by tweet like two hours later, like Rex Tillers didn't when I was released.
Sitting on the john not great, not a great place.
And that is true that you look at the graveyard of former Trump cabinet level officials.
It doesn't when you.
Think about it in that context, you you know, maybe this.
Maybe this isn't for me. So anyway, but it's good news.
I mean, I think Tom Cotton is a terrifying psycho, so to keep him as far away from the most powerful positions is a good thing. I wanted to get your reaction, cyber guys. Put this Celenski tweet up on the screen. This was so funny.
He'sa man.
He he understands, he understands the assignment.
Yes she does, he tweeted.
Yeah.
I had an excellent call with President Donald Trump and congratulated him on his historic landslide victory. His tremendous campaign made this result possible. I praised his family and team for their great work. We agreed to maintain close dialogue and advance our cooperation. Strong and unwavering US leadership is vital for the world and for a just piece. So you know Trump has always liked Zelensky.
Yeah, because Zelensky backed him up during.
His during his impeachment over remember the perfect phone call, right So yeah, so, and Zelensky never like trashed him during that threw him under the bus. But they met when Zelensky was here in the US and had a very like friendly rapport and whatever. So you know, Trump is very easily manipulated and this stuff works.
That is true.
Zelensky did make a huge mistake though whenever he was here the last time and he did meet with Donald Trump, is he said that JD. Vance was quote too radical, and that was obviously a massive mistake that he should have made.
And also, I will.
Be remiss if I would not point out that JD is the only cabinet of person who you cannot.
Fire because he's democratically elected.
So he's going to be there whether you like it or not inside of the White House.
Again, I've said a lot of things. If one thing I know about JD.
Vance is he is rock solid on Ukraine and specifically on ending the war there.
Also, he's non president. That's true, he's non president.
So let me make the case four and against So Mike Pompeo and all these other guys, these are Ukraine you know, fanatics. These are people who want, they would love nothing more than to declare war on Russia and go to war there. So if Mike Pompeo gets picked at a very prominent position, that's a problem. Yeah, there are previous people like Rob O'Brien. I'm not one hundred percent where he stands. A former National Security advisor. That's an open question mark. Another big signal for me is
where does Elbridge Colby stand up? So a Bridge Colby, he's been here on the show talking about Taiwan. Good friend and somebody I so deeply, deeply respect. This is somebody who has been absolutely rock solid on the Ukraine question. If he gets a big position inside the White House, maybe on a critical desk of the National Security Council, that's one direction where things could go. Another big signal will be from the CIA and the rest of the
apparatus in the intel community. So you've got people like Cash Patel.
A lot of people may.
Not know who Cash Ptel is unless you watch like War Room or something like that. He was a real like diehard Trump figure inside of the ADMIN last time around, who led the charge on declassification. The point though, is that on Ukraine, at least as far as I understand it, he is somebody who's very skeptical of like the neo conservative worldview and on that position. The other problem though, is that the people like Brian Hook and Nikki Hayley and that entire wing of the party, they're much more
pro Ukraine. And then there's a big question about Donald Trump himself, and there's there is a reasonable expectation of this. Let's say we could never get Selensky to play ball on any peace plan. Well, what's the reality, realistic alternative? Kiev is gonna fall right, Trump, watch what happened in Kabble. You don't want to deal with that shit. The media and everybody they're gonna freak out, and they're gonna be like, oh my god, this is the worst thing that's ever happened,
and you know, modern history or whatever. And so he has a political incentive to make sure that you have a quote like orderly transition to a peace plan, which is only possible if you can get Putin Zelenski to play ball.
Also, Putin is a wild card here too, because like does.
He even want I mean right Putin is literally winning right now on the battlefield everywhere, Like if he keeps us up five ten years, he'll probably gobble up like forty fifty percent of Ukraine.
He doesn't care how many hundreds of thousands of Russians.
But the media is also going to freak out if there is a deal that is struck, because that deal will involve some loss of Ukrainian territory.
Yeh, because they refuse to accept reality, like twenty something percent of the country is already gone, hundreds of thousands are dead in terms of the you know, the rest of what's happening in Ukraine like that is anyway, I could go on forever on this question. It will be, in my opinion, the ultimate test for Donald Trump. So last time around, to me, the ultimate test for Trump
was on Afghanistan. He ran on pulling out of Afghanistan, and then he appoints all these neo kan idiots to his cabinet and to his national security apparatus, and he basically allows himself to get fooled according to the narrative, and or just goes along with it with this actually Afghan surge of true groups in twenty seventeen landmark speech because it was really the first time that he actually
completely abandoned a major political foreign policy promits. He claims he regrets it, etc. But you know, we never actually got out of Afghanistan, even whenever he negotiated a peace deal. So on the Ukraine question, you know, he said, I will have it settled by the time I get into office. Zelenski is going to Zelenski is going to butter him up as much as possible. Also, people shouldn't forget this.
Trump shipped a ton of weapons, advanced weaponry to Ukraine when he was president because he wanted to combat the narrative that he was not pro Russia. Now has he learned his lesson on that? You know, he escalated the war in here.
Yeah, people forget Trump much more hawkish. He's a Russia than Obama.
Obama, yeah, way more.
Obama never wanted to send Javelin missiles to Ukraine. He was like, no, I don't think he's in a strategic interest, and he was right. The question then is does Donald Trump revert back to that twenty fifteen strategy? And this is also always the issue with having a guy like Trump in the office. He's very easily manipulated by people who stroke his ego, and you know, people around him
all have differing agendas. One of them is named Killian Conway, who is literally getting paid fifty thousand dollars a month from a Ukrainian lobbyist right now. So that's a bit of a problem, I would say, you know, in that regard. So this will be a massive, massive test for Trump. On the foreign policy question, and you know, I was thinking about it too. The last time that a Republican won the popular vote and had a real mandate was two thousand and four, and how did that work out
under George Rbush. The one thing that can truly sink you for all time in forever is a terrible war. And so I hope that Trump actually listens and doesn't get us involved in any He says he wants to avoid it, and I actually do believe him. But also, you know, you've got a lot of people around you who would love nothing more than escalate that war that they have to go to war with Iran. Well, and constraining those forces is going to be very very It's.
Also worth pointing out that many of the Republicans, including Elbert Colby, who are prominent like anti Ukraine, you know, anti funding of Ukraine, et cetera. Their analysis is we need to not be wasting our weapons here because we need to prepare for war with China over Taiwan.
Well, okay, so it's not war which he's like, we need to prepare and have we had current first stockery.
That's not true, We had it on the show.
I mean he laid out why he thinks that we should go to war with China over Taiwan.
Yeah, you know, if the question of a Chinese invasion happens, his entire philosophy is that we need to rapidly increase our deterrence in the Asia Pacific to prevent an eventual war with Taiwan. He believes that we should go to war with Taiwan basically, no matter what his entire act theory is, like.
We need to basically pivot completely to the age.
I'm just trying to lay on. It's not like it's a uniform anti war stance. The idea is we should not be wasting our weapons here because we want to be ready to use our weapons visa vi China. So just to lay out the war complete, you know, foreign policy worldview here Trump himself with regard to Iran, I mean he's been consistently hawcket visa v Iran. All the energy within the Republican Party, there's there's very little dissent with regard to you know, continued escalation and hawkishness and
more sanctions and more hostility visa of the Iran. So I don't have any expectation that'll change.
It's yeah.
Look, I'm not going to sit here and tell you that everything's gonna be rosy on that front.
I have no idea. And if anything, the last time is.
Usually a predictor, so that was a major issue. I would hope this time you have a guy like JD in the White House. But you also, this is critical, Elon is very anti war. So because Elon is going or at least not actually even on the Taiwan question.
He's got a lot of money message in Taiwan.
So just sorry in mainland China, so he's very dubbish on the Taiwan question. He's also extremely anti Ukraine funding and has been now for quite a some time. You also have Tucker Carlson, who last time around, let's be honest, he was not as influential as I would have liked him to be on the Iran question and on the Serio question two for escalating there. But this time I think he might be able to just because he independent media, you know, podcasts and all that. It's having a bigger
moment and seen is more important this time. And Tucker and JD you're very close friends. And also Tucker is I assume is going to take a much more interest in the transition process this time around, and that is one of those things that he also has been very very consistent on with respect to Iran. So I am somewhat hopeful. I want to be very realistic about what all this looks like.
And you know, anybody.
Who's expecting some major anti war you know position, like, that's not reality. It's a coalition party. Mariam Aidelson, don't give you one hundred million dollars for free. Okay, anti war himself, yes, But I'm saying like, in terms of the coalition, who you have to satisfy Paul Singer and Miriam Aidelson and Bill Ackman. They did not give you all this money and all the support and all this
to not cash in whenever they need to. And you're an idiot if you think that they're not going to so around, that's very important, Kam