Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
Foreign policy writer and podcaster David Rothkopf has a good new piece arguing that Trump’s war has basically put us on a path to all bad options. So we’re talking to him about all this today. David, nice to finally have you on, man.
Sargent: Well, you guys have contributed a little to it. So thank you for that. So in his speech, Trump claimed that Iran’s defenses have been decimated, but that the war will go on for a few more weeks and that we’re going to bomb Iran back to the Stone Age, including electricity plants—which means commit more war crimes. And Trump seemed to admit we’re not really going after Iran’s nuclear material. David, what was your overall takeaway from all that?
There’s a reason people haven’t attacked Iran, although we’ve been adversaries for almost 50 years. And the reason is, of course, this: there are 92 million people there, it’s a big country, and when you attack it, it has a lot of options. And so we’re sinking into yet another quagmire this time because we have a president who doesn’t take advice, who has no foresight. And, frankly, it’s been a fiasco so far, but there are a lot of signs that it could get much worse.
Donald Trump (voiceover): To those countries that can’t get fuel, many of which refuse to get involved in the decapitation of Iran—we had to do it ourselves. I have a suggestion. Number one, buy oil from the United States of America. We have plenty. We have so much. And number two, build up some delayed courage. Should have done it before, should have done it with us as we asked. Go to the strait and just take it, protect it, use it for yourselves. Iran has been essentially decimated. The hard part is done, so it should be easy. And in any event, when this conflict is over, the strait will open up naturally. It’ll just open up naturally.
Rothkopf: Well, he had said that earlier in the day—he had said it a couple of times. He was trying to shift the responsibility. You may remember former Secretary of State Colin Powell had something he called the Pottery Barn rule, which was if you break it you own it, right? Trump has a corollary to that, which is I broke it, you fix it. And that’s what he’s trying to do here. He’s trying to say, well, look, you want their oil, go get their oil.
And so what is he doing now? He’s talking publicly, and since the speech he gave an interview with the Daily Telegraph in which he said he’s seriously thinking of pulling out of NATO, which has been one of the foundations of U.S. national security for 80 years. It’s been one of the most important successful alliances in history. It’s probably one of the most important reasons we did not have World War Three. And here he is wanting to pull the plug on it, which is a disaster for us, very bad for Europe, but it’s good for one guy. You want to guess who that is?
So he spends the last year crapping all over our alliances, basically telling our allies to fuck off. Then he launches this illegal war with absolutely no consultation with our allies. And then when it goes badly, he says, bail me out, please. That’s not how you do this.
That’s why the National Security Council was created. I wrote two books on the NSC. Well, we effectively don’t have an NSC now because he doesn’t listen to advice. And so you have this ignoramus who ignores the fact that when war games like about this were conducted, we lost.
Sargent: Right. Well, Republicans are not reacting well to the speech. And I think the reason for it is what we’re saying here. Politico reports that a bunch of them are wondering what the point of the speech was—it didn’t provide any kind of clarity about the mission ahead or what will count as success. And it didn’t say anything meaningful about how Trump intends to get costs under control now that his war is driving them higher.
Rothkopf: No, particularly since he’s going to keep bombing. This is what happened today, right? They went in, they bombed a bridge. We can debate whether that’s a war crime because it’s civilian infrastructure. He threatened now to go in and bomb their electrical systems. That is a war crime. That is punishing civilians. Obviously, this is going to harden resistance. It’s going to have an effect on how the Iranians handle, for example, the Strait of Hormuz. And what we saw even during the speech was the price of oil going up. And you’re now at $107, $108 a barrel, going to $110 a barrel. I saw an interview today with a noted energy expert who said we’re on a track to get to $200 a barrel.
Sargent: Well, and I think that’s why Republicans are so deeply disturbed by what they witnessed there. Politico had another interesting nugget. It’s that other Republicans privately say they wanted more specifics from Trump on an exit strategy. And that’s really telling because it shows that Republicans know that this is a serious problem for them in the midterms and they’re just desperate for Trump to end this thing. But of course, they’ll rarely say anything like that publicly. David, I think the key question is this: is there a way out of the war that works politically for Republicans at this point? Can you envision one?
I mean, look at him right now. He just fired the head of the Department of Homeland Security in the middle of a security crisis. He just fired his attorney general, who is a critical partner in this process. He is out of control in the economy, he is out of control on national security, he’s out of control with our allies. Everywhere you look, America is on fire, and Donald Trump is the guy holding a box of matches. And all of a sudden, these Republicans are sitting there going, gee, did we hitch our wagon to the wrong star? And guess what? You and I knew that answer before, right?
Sargent: Well, I sure hope you’re right. Let me ask you about what you mentioned earlier, which is the future of NATO. Where do you see this going? How seriously do you take the prospect of Trump pulling us out of NATO? He doesn’t have the authority to do that, but he could try to do it. And he’s already obviously more or less done so much damage to the alliance that it’s in real trouble. Where do you see this going in specific terms?
He can’t get out of the alliance because Congress, recognizing he might try, passed a law that says he can’t. And of course, it’s a treaty alliance anyway. But what he can do is disengage, reduce funds, be less cooperative. And that’s what I’d expect. I would expect the worst relations between the United States and NATO to start right now and extend through whenever Trump leaves office. And at that time, the next president—there are not a lot of things where I think a president can just come in and sort of hit reset, but the next president’s going to come in and try to do that.
I understand that that’s a big lift, but it seems like Democrats should be saying more clearly that there’s another world coming, that we don’t have to live under President Donald Trump forever. Would you like to hear more of that from Democrats?
The main competitive force in the region—we haven’t even mentioned here—but it’s China. Look at the cover of The Economist this week. The cover of The Economist is a picture of Xi Jinping saying, don’t interrupt your enemy while he’s hurting himself. And it’s not just the Middle East. We’re going to have to redo what we’re doing in Europe. We are obviously going to go into a very different kind of relationship with Russia. The United States is going to have to figure out how do you have a principal rival in the world—China—with whom you are interdependent economically. You can’t go back to a Cold War. AI is going to change the nature of warfare, the nature of competition, the nature of jobs, the nature of economic growth. That has to be factored in.
And all of those things may not sound like national security to you, but if they pull the country apart, if they make Americans uncomfortable taking risks, growing new businesses, going to school, investing in the future, if we don’t have the dollars for infrastructure, for R&D, to create the economies of tomorrow, then we’re going to get weaker and weaker within. And that’s going to be much more damaging than anything we might do from a foreign policy perspective. And that’s what I want to see a Democrat talk about—how do we make America strong inside out?
Rothkopf: Yeah, and in the end, look, Donald Trump is also 79 years old. He’s going to be 80. You watch him give that speech—he was mush-mouthed, he was confused, he’s clearly on his way out. And I think one thing Democrats need to start thinking about is how do they lead in a post-Donald Trump environment? How do they formulate messages in a post-Donald Trump environment? And this is going to be a lot harder for certain people. How do they move on from the boomer-dominated Democratic Party that has very old school attitudes from everything from, sort of, AIPAC to, what our policies ought to be towards, sort of a Cold War-like continuation—that, the China hawks now are essentially saying, hey, let’s do what we did with Russia with China. It’s absurd.
Sargent: I couldn’t agree more. Just to return to the basic theme of this overall podcast discussion—I do think that Donald Trump essentially made a major admission during that speech by saying that he is washing his hands of the Strait of Hormuz. And I want to ask you about that. Do you see that as sort of a weirdly revealing concession, almost an accidental concession? And also, where does that part go?
Rothkopf: Well, he doesn’t know how to open up the Strait of Hormuz. But I think it’s indicative of a bigger problem. And part of it is, you know, everybody in America has learned the term malignant narcissist—Donald Trump is a malignant narcissist. He only thinks of himself, and if it doesn’t help him, he’s easily able to turn the page. But I’ll tell you something. It’s worse than that.
We need leaders and presidents who live among us, understand what our lives are like, understand the challenge. And when they fuck up something like the Strait of Hormuz, they go, holy shit, this is going to be real for my family, for me, for the people in my community. So compassion, yes, but also sort of grounding in reality, a place Donald Trump has never visited in his almost 80 years on this planet.
Rothkopf: Nice to see you, Greg.
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