What have we learned so far about Donald Trump’s approach to the Middle East in his second term? In this Conversation , Eric Edelman, former ambassador to Turkey and Finland and Under Secretary of Defense,shares his perspective on the president’s recent trip to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE. He presents a tour d’horizon of the highly dynamic and complex situation in the Middle East, not only covering the Gulf States butalso Turkey, Syria, Iran, and Israel. Edelman argues Trump has not been gu...
May 21, 2025•1 hr 9 min
What have we learned about the White House in Trump's second term? How are decisions made in the most consequential areas of national security? During the past week, Trump fired National Security Advisor Mike Waltz. To discuss this and many other matters, we are joined again by John Bolton, who served as National Security Advisor in the Trump White House from 2018 to 2019. Bolton shares the perspective of an insider who understands Donald Trump—and government at a high level of granularity. He d...
May 06, 2025•53 min
Where do things stand a month after Trump's “Liberation Day” tariffs and the announcements that have followed? In a thoughtful and wide-ranging Conversation , former Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers shares his perspective on the economic and political consequences of the tariffs—and the threats to financial markets. According to Summers, our difficulties now go beyond any individual economic policy pronouncement by the Trump administration: “The issue is becoming, in a meta sense, confiden...
Apr 29, 2025•56 min
What are the likely effects of Trump’s tariffs, and what do they mean for the US economy? To discuss, we are joined again by Harvard economist Jason Furman, who was Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers in President Obama’s second term. According to Furman, Trump’s tariffs represent an enormous "shock to the system” likely to produce both short- and long-term economic pain. Furman considers both the direct and indirect effects of Trump’s policies, including the effects of uncertainty on t...
Apr 09, 2025•45 min
Where do things stand five months after Election Day? According to veteran reporter and commentator A.B. Stoddard, Trump’s second term has been far more radical than many anticipated. As she puts it: “The more power you give [Trump], the more he’ll take. And the less pushback that he gets, the freer he is. So I think what we’ve seen in the last couple of months is that he’s been given permission and he will take it. That’s the way Trump is…. So people need to not underestimate the fact that thin...
Apr 03, 2025•1 hr 12 min
Where do things stand fifty days into Trump’s second term? According to Georgetown Law professor Steve Vladeck: “We’ve never seen such a wholesale attempt on the part of a president [to] hollow out the executive branch [and] install loyalists in all of the relevant positions of government.” Amid a blizzard of lawsuits in response to Trump’s executive actions, Vladeck analyzes whether and to what extent the courts, Congress, and other institutions might contain the Trump administration by asserti...
Mar 13, 2025•1 hr 11 min
Where do things stand on the third anniversary of the war in Ukraine? What is the situation in European politics after the German elections? How should we think about the continued challenge of countering autocracy at home and abroad? To discuss these questions we are joined again by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Anne Applebaum. As Applebaum explains, despite difficulties on the battlefield, Ukraine is holding up: “The [Russians] cannot win… without Trump." And she argues that the outcome of ...
Feb 25, 2025•48 min
What is the role of social media in our politics today? To discuss, we are joined by Renée DiResta, a leading analyst of the internet and its effects on politics and society. As DiResta explains, social media platforms today are significant sources of political power that are fundamentally different from traditional media like newspapers, radio, and television. Social media makes users active participants in the consumption of information and algorithms have reinforced the polarization in our po...
Feb 14, 2025•1 hr 11 min
What have we learned from the first two weeks of the Trump administration’s approach to executive actions? Ryan Goodman is a professor of law at New York University, former special counsel in the Department of Defense, and co-editor of NYU Law’s Just Security blog. According to Goodman, behind the Trump administration’s Executive Orders and actions is a claim of executive authority “different in character than anything that’s preceded it.” On issues such as birthright citizenship, TikTok, and im...
Feb 05, 2025•1 hr 20 min
What will immigration policy look like in the second Trump administration? How will it affect the country? To discuss, we are joined by Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a leading expert on immigration and Senior Fellow at the American Immigration Council. In a wide-ranging analysis that covers the complex situation at the border—as well as the political and policy choices facing Trump and Congress—Reichlin-Melnick considers possible paths forward on immigration for the Trump administration and for the co...
Jan 15, 2025•1 hr 30 min
Donald Trump will face major geopolitical challenges when he takes office. In this Conversation , Eric Edelman, former ambassador to Turkey and Finland and Under Secretary of Defense, shares his perspective. As he explains, Trump will face major decisions on all areas of the geopolitical landscape early in his term. Edelman argues that Israel’s military successes have weakened Iran’s “axis of resistance” and opened up new opportunities—but also raise the threat of Iranian nuclear breakout. Meanw...
Dec 21, 2024•1 hr 23 min
How well might the political and legal norms of constitutional government fare in the second Trump administration? To discuss, we are joined by Jack Goldsmith, distinguished law professor at Harvard and former Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Counsel. As Goldsmith explains, Trump has expressed ambitions to exercise unprecedented control over the federal government, with plans to change the Civil Service and administrative agencies, and wield the pardon power aggressively, among ...
Dec 12, 2024•1 hr 8 min
What should we expect in Donald Trump’s second term? To discuss, we are joined by John Bolton, who served as National Security Advisor in the Trump White House from 2018 to 2019 and with distinction in many prior Republican administrations. Drawing on insights from working closely with Trump in his first term, Bolton shares his perspective on what the second term might look like. Bolton argues Trump selected his cabinet nominees for “fealty” rather than competence—and he discusses the politiciza...
Nov 28, 2024•59 min
What do the results of the 2024 elections tell us about the state of American politics? Where might we be in 2026 and 2028? To discuss, we are joined again by Ron Brownstein, a senior editor at The Atlantic and a senior political analyst at CNN. According to Brownstein, the presidential election was a “national verdict of voters [who] were dissatisfied with what they got over the past four years. And whatever doubts they had about the alternative seemed to them less risky than continuing on the ...
Nov 09, 2024•1 hr 10 min
Where does the race stand two weeks before Election Day? To discuss, we are joined by Ronald Brownstein, a senior editor at The Atlantic and a senior political analyst at CNN. According to Brownstein, the election is “closely balanced on the knife’s edge” and very subtle shifts among coalitions in the swing states easily could change the outcome. Brownstein shares his perspective on possible paths to victory for each candidate based on the current data, and what we ought to look for on the campa...
Oct 23, 2024•1 hr 14 min
How would the economy do under a Trump or Harris administration? To discuss, we are joined again by the distinguished Harvard economist Jason Furman, who was Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers in President Obama’s second term. Furman shares his perspective on a wide variety of subjects including tariffs, trade policy with allies and adversaries, the dangers of a politicized Fed, inflation, and immigration. Forecasting economic policies under the two potential administrations, Furman co...
Oct 09, 2024•1 hr 1 min
We face an ever more dangerous geopolitical environment. In this Conversation , Princeton professor and AEI nonresident senior fellow Aaron Friedberg analyzes America’s foreign policy challenges and considers how a Harris or Trump administration might approach the threats we face. According to Friedberg, the cooperation among Russia, China, Iran, North Korea “has grown more and more sophisticated and complex” in recent times, making the challenges in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and Southeas...
Oct 01, 2024•1 hr 21 min
How might Tuesday’s debate shape the race in the weeks ahead? How can Harris capitalize on her performance? Will the debate affect the results in November? With less than eight weeks to Election Day, veteran Democratic strategist James Carville shares his advice to the Harris campaign and analysis of the race. As he puts it: “People still, for better or worse, know Trump. [Harris] had a great debate, a great convention, but still has some more to fill out here.” According to Carville, now Harris...
Sep 12, 2024•50 min
Where do things stand in the race after the Democratic convention and before the presidential debate? When veteran political strategist Doug Sosnik joined us the day after Biden’s withdrawal from the race he explained why the next month could be decisive in the fight to define Harris. Reflecting on the first five weeks of the campaign, Sosnik argues that she has been successful: “so far Harris is winning the battle about the campaign being about change, and she is the change candidate—making the...
Aug 28, 2024•1 hr 19 min
Where do things stand in the race now that the matchup is set? According to veteran Democratic strategist James Carville, the replacement of Joe Biden by Kamala Harris has improved prospects for the Democrats—though “not as much as some people think.” As he puts it: “It’s like I tell people, if you have an infected wisdom tooth and you go to the dentist and they pull it out, you feel on top of the world—[but] God, you really don’t feel any better than you would if you never had the infected wisd...
Aug 07, 2024•51 min
The withdrawal of Joe Biden from the presidential race three weeks after his disastrous debate performance, followed by the swift decision by Democrats to select Kamala Harris as the presumptive nominee, leaves us in uncharted waters. According to veteran political strategist Doug Sosnik, the broad contours of the 2024 election remain: “It’s a narrowly divided country. It’s a fairly even race. But Trump has the advantage in an Electoral College system that [today] favors Republicans.” Yet this e...
Jul 23, 2024•1 hr 5 min
What should we make of Trump’s plans for the federal bureaucracy in a second term? In recent days, there has been extensive reporting about “Project 2025,” an agenda and road map that openly aims to politicize the civil service and render it more compliant with the executive. In this Conversation , we are joined by University of Pennsylvania political scientist John DiIulio , one of the leading experts on the civil service and bureaucracy in America. DiIulio takes the Project 2025 proposal serio...
Jul 09, 2024•1 hr 13 min
What is the state of the economy today and where might it be at the time of the November elections? To discuss, we are joined again by the distinguished Harvard economist Jason Furman, who was deputy director of the National Economic Council during the Financial Crisis and then served as Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers in President Obama’s second term. As Furman puts it, in spite of the inflation of the past few years and other longer-term challenges, “We really are right now econom...
Jun 25, 2024•57 min
Where do things stand in Ukraine? How are European democracies faring? How should we think about the challenge from autocracies around the globe? To discuss these questions, we are joined again by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Anne Applebaum. Applebaum shares her perspective on recent developments in Ukraine, Russia, and Europe including the recent EU elections. She points to Ukraine’s continued resilience in the face of serious challenges, and Europe and America’s support for Ukraine in spit...
Jun 14, 2024•48 min
Where do things stand in the race as we head into the summer? According to veteran Democratic strategist James Carville: “It’s clearly very close. There clearly can be events that can impact the outcome. But we’re headed to an election that not many people are very excited about.” Carville argues that the Biden campaign needs a message on the economy that is forward-looking, and suggests it isn’t enough for the president to frame the election as a referendum on Trump. Carville considers how abor...
May 30, 2024•52 min
Is today's anti-liberalism a new phenomenon in American politics? What might earlier eras in US history have to teach us? To discuss these questions, we are joined, again, by Robert Kagan, the historian and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Drawing on his new book, Rebellion: How Antiliberalism Is Tearing America Apart — Again , Kagan argues that we “don’t realize that the [anti-liberal] movement we’re looking at today has been visible in every generation since the founding.” Kagan dra...
May 15, 2024•1 hr 19 min
Where do things stand in Ukraine? How will the recently-passed aid package help Ukraine on the battlefield? How does the war in Ukraine relate to rising threats from adversaries around the globe? To discuss these questions we are joined again by Fred Kagan, director of the Critical Threats Project at the American Enterprise Institute. Kagan explains that Ukraine continues to face serious difficulties, in part because of a critical shortage of weapons as a result of the delay in US support. Yet t...
May 01, 2024•1 hr 8 min
What was it like serving in the Trump administration—and what might a second Trump term look like? To discuss these questions, we are joined by Mark Esper, Secretary of Defense from 2019-2020. In this Conversation, Esper considers Ukraine, China, and other foreign policy challenges facing the United States, and reflects on his experience leading the Department of Defense during the Trump administration. Esper discusses accomplishments of American foreign policy during those years, but also raise...
Apr 18, 2024•52 min
Where do things stand in the 2024 race? What campaign strategies might increase Joe Biden’s chances? How might the economy, the border, wars in Europe and the Middle East, Trump's trials, and third-party campaigns affect the race? To discuss these questions, we are joined by David Axelrod, chief strategist for Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns in 2008 and 2012. Axelrod explains: “I would not count on the shock and dismay of people over the fact that [Trump] is under 91 criminal indictments, ...
Apr 03, 2024•1 hr 5 min
What do Joe Biden's successes, failures, and poll numbers reveal about the state of the Democratic Party today? In an era of polarization, can a spirit of moderation and bipartisanship be rediscovered? To discuss these questions, we are joined by Joe Klein, the veteran reporter, author, and analyst of American politics. Klein reflects on the changes of the Democratic Party over recent decades, including his perspective on the elevation of identity politics over unity. According to Klein, the Bid...
Mar 15, 2024•1 hr 8 min
