The following is a lightly edited transcript of the January 6 episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.
Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
President Trump runs everything he does through a frame that pits strength against weakness. He just exploded at the media over coverage of his tariffs, claiming media figures are deliberately covering up the fact that his tariffs are making our country strong. Meanwhile, after his operation in Venezuela, he’s threatening at least three other countries. His threat to annex Greenland is spreading real fear in that country. This and his naked threats to take Venezuela’s oil after deposing its leader are meant to position him and our country as strong and dominant. But in every way, the truth is the opposite of what he’s saying. The tariffs, the action in Venezuela, and the threats to disrupt NATO are making us weak. And a new poll finds little support for his invasion, suggesting there’s an opening to undermine his strong-versus-weak frame in the public mind. We’re talking about all this today with international relations professor Nicholas Grossman, who’s one of the best out there at making the case that Trump is broadly weakening our country. Nick, always good to have you on.
Nicholas Grossman: Thanks, Greg. Great to be back.
Sargent: So let’s start here. Trump just erupted on Truth Social, saying his tariffs are taking in hundreds of billions of dollars. He then said:
“The fake news media refuses to talk about it because they hate and disrespect our country and want to interfere with the upcoming tariff decision, one of the most important ever, of the United States Supreme Court. Because of tariffs, our country is financially, and FROM A NATIONAL SECURITY STANDPOINT, FAR STRONGER AND MORE RESPECTED THAN EVER BEFORE.”
Nick, this may seem like a throwaway rant, but I think we need to appreciate how he frames everything as strength versus weakness: He’s strengthening the country and his enemies—in this case the news media—are weakening it. But the tariffs are clearly weakening the nation in various ways. Your thoughts on all this?
Grossman: Right, the tariffs in particular are weakening the country because, while maybe this is making him stronger personally vis-à-vis the U.S. democratic system, it’s making the United States weaker compared to other countries in the world. So tariffs end up being taxes on Americans, and there’s no particular way that taxing the American people more, taxing American businesses more, is going to make America stronger. But also because it is disrupting trade and disrupting the type of international relationships that have helped the United States become so strong and so wealthy—all to end up getting maybe more personal control for himself, but weaker overall for how the country actually operates with power in the world.
Sargent: I like the way you put that. I’m not sure Trump is capable of distinguishing between his own imagined strength and the strength of the country. What do you think?
Grossman: No, he doesn’t seem to be. He seems to be treating them almost as the same thing—or that, with the tariffs, as if they are opportunities for corruption and they are people effectively paying tribute to him, or at least that’s how he’s presenting it: as if he’s a mob boss who’s getting a little taste of something.
And sure, that makes the mob boss wealthier, I suppose, but it doesn’t make the United States as a whole any stronger because so much of U.S. strength, including economic strength, is based on having steady relationships, on having rule of law, on various companies being able to trust that the United States will be a stable place where they can make long-term investments, where other countries can build up these trade relationships as opposed to going in other directions.
And the U.S. ends up pushing countries more towards ones that are U.S. rivals, like China, where a lot of countries don’t want to deal with China. It’s authoritarian. It comes with a lot of strings attached, but at least they know that the Chinese are going to be consistent.
Sargent: Yes, it’s interesting that you put it that way because he is a destabilizing figure. And I think in many ways, the press is sort of conditioned to see disruption as strength because, you know, he’s making his mark. He’s making things happen. But in many ways, these types of things are weakening precisely because they’re destabilizing.
Grossman: Right, and destroying is easy. Maintaining and building is what’s hard. The reason why other presidents haven’t disrupted these relationships before is not because they were incapable of doing so, but because they correctly recognized that it was a bad idea, that it would weaken the U.S. rather than strengthen it. And they weren’t approaching this like a reality TV show character where bluster—of just showiness and yelling—is strength. There’s also a lot of strength in the world from things like quiet, from being stoic, from not flying off the handle at just a little poke.
If you can make somebody go nuts just with a little insult, then they are not strong. That’s an example of weakness. The ones who are strong don’t care that you’re insulting them. They don’t take it personally because they know that they’re strong and they know that their actions show that. The way that he’s yelling at the media shows a big insecurity where he wants them to see him as strong, but seems to know at some level that they don’t, that they have good reason not to—otherwise, he wouldn’t have to keep berating them to start acting like they do.
Sargent: Exactly. And so, after Trump ordered the military action against Venezuela and U.S. forces brought its leader, Nicolás Maduro, to the United States, Trump kept up the threats. Listen to this.
Donald Trump (voiceover): We need Greenland from a national security situation. It’s so strategic. Right now, Greenland is covered with Russian and Chinese ships all over the place. We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security. We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security and the European Union needs us to have it.
Sargent: In addition, Stephen Miller’s wife, Katie Miller, tweeted a graphic of Greenland as an American flag with the word “Soon,” implying an American takeover of Greenland. Nick, this too is about creating the illusion of a certain type of strength. He’s depicting the seizing of Greenland as both a strong act in and of itself, but also as something that would strengthen the country. How seriously do you take the actual threat at this point? And is there any way that strengthens us?
Grossman: I think we have to take it pretty seriously. That it was something where when he first said it, even [if] the United States hasn’t taken moves in that direction—which would be actual physical moves such as military movements, which would be the important thing to watch out for. But even making that type of threat undermines the solidarity that underpins alliances. Greenland is part of Denmark and Denmark is in NATO. Denmark has been a valuable U.S. ally. They, for example, sent troops to Afghanistan and suffered more casualties per capita in Afghanistan than any other U.S. ally there. So that was only because the U.S. got attacked on 9/11, not Denmark.
And so that undermines the solidarity. And while it is a type of strength, I suppose—like in a Risk game or a video game, or it is definitely the way that the Russian government uses strength... that something like the U.S. side looks like they’re fantasizing about it in a way similar to how Russia took Crimea from Ukraine in 2014: try to show up, do it quickly, make it relatively bloodless. But it would not make the U.S. stronger; [it would] make the U.S. decidedly weaker. And because national security is not the sort of thing that can be decided upon immediately—it takes longer-term planning—Denmark and the Europeans are right to take it seriously because they can’t afford the possibility that it’s not.
Sargent: There’s an irony here that I think is worth appreciating. You brought up the fact that Denmark contributed to our post 9-11 actions. Now Trump likes the idea that he’s not reciprocating, that he’s essentially taking what Denmark did and just pocketing it and saying, screw off, we don’t owe you anything at all. He thinks that’s strength because he confuses rapaciousness and thievery with strength in a way. What do you think of that?
Grossman: That’s the sort of thing that works only in a one-time interaction. You know, so I guess as a business person, he goes and he screws over some contractors that he’s working with. And there are so many contractors that there was always another one who would come along and be tempted by whatever offer he was making, and maybe they think they’re different or who knows what. A similar thing happened with banks where he would declare bankruptcy, he would stiff various loans, but then he went internationally, and this was part of how he got a bunch of business ties in Russia: by other banks not really willing to lend to him, but Russian banks would.
So there was always somebody else. With countries, it doesn’t work that way because there is a much more limited number of countries and the interactions between countries keep on going. The world keeps spinning. So, yeah, okay, the U.S. screws over Denmark now and it manages to maybe, let’s say, hypothetically get some land as a result. But the U.S. already has military basing rights on Greenland, has a U.S. military base there, has had there since the 1950s because Denmark is an ally and allows it. And the United States already has a good economic relationship and the ability of American companies to go into Greenland and do things like, for example, develop natural resources because the locals there and the government trust the United States and trust that a long-term relationship will be something worth entering into and that will make benefits for both.
And while the United States is dealing with Denmark in that regard, who is the U.S. really competing against? It’s not a country like Denmark; it is large rival powers like, say, China or possibly Russia, or a smaller country like Iran or North Korea. Those are America’s competitors in the world, and working with Denmark against a country like, say, China, or working with a country like Denmark on a shared problem like terrorism, leaves the United States a lot stronger, more capable of dealing with those problems and of advancing its interests in the world than if it is the U.S. alone picking fights with everybody at once while still trying to compete with other countries like, say, China.
Sargent: This notion of trust among the countries and that being essential to strength is really critical here. The Danish prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, issued a warning about Trump’s threats. She said, “I believe one should take the American president seriously when he says that he wants Greenland.” She added: “If the U.S. chooses to attack another NATO country militarily, then everything stops, including NATO and thus the security that has been established since the end of the Second World War.”
Now, Nick, if you just put aside whether Trump is actually serious about this or not, what you can see here in that response is that Trump’s own threats, which are spreading very real fears in Greenland and Denmark, are a weakening agent by itself. The fact that his threats will make our allies correctly more distrustful of us seems bad for America. I mean, I guess Trump thinks it’s good for our allies to be frightened of us. Can you talk about that?Grossman: I don’t know if he thinks it is good for allies per se to be frightened, so much as he doesn’t really consider the concept of alliances as a serious issue or a serious benefit. That if he approaches the world as [if] everybody is totally selfish, everybody is always untrustworthy, everybody’s lying all the time and just advancing their agenda all the time, then everything is zero-sum, and then it’s just a question of whether I get one over on you or you get one over on me first.
But as we can see from years, decades, of a successful Western alliance making the West stronger in the Cold War, then in the War on Terror, and still today... that making it stronger as a unit by being able to compete against others... that there really is a lot of benefits from those sort of alliances. And the United States, by interjecting that lack of trust, by undermining that trust that took so long to cultivate, weakens that. And [it] makes it that then the countries where the United States has been allied with and has been partnered with in ways that really treat problems as joint problems we can solve together as opposed to separate ones—it makes them more competitive with the United States. It gets them to start hedging in different ways.
It reduces the sort of trust that builds stronger alliances and leads to longer decision-making, and then prompts the type of zero-sum competitive thinking that Trump seems to approach everybody with. It gets countries in Europe, for example, or in East Asia or elsewhere, to start thinking things like: “Maybe we need to cozy up to a country like China, not because we like them, but because we need to hedge our bets.” Or: “Maybe we need to stop relying so much on American military equipment because we can’t trust [that] in the future, the United States will be there to help maintain it and help to send replaceable parts.” Or: “Maybe we need to stop sharing so much intelligence.”
And in fact, we saw some of that already as a concrete example. The U.K. cut off sharing intelligence with the United States about the Caribbean and Latin America and South America when the boat-strike campaign began because the United States was violating international law. It was violating basic principles that had underpinned the alliance between the U.S. and the U.K., and they cut off America. And the more and more of that there is, the weaker the United States is as a result.
Sargent: That last example is really important because, in the small minds of Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, the fact that they’re just blowing up people in the Caribbean in defiance of international law is yet another sign of strength. It’s America forging its own way in the world. But here’s a case where we are denying ourselves critical tools and critical information against enemies, which just strikes me as almost the perfect encapsulation of, really, the fallacies at the core of MAGA. What do you think?
Grossman: Yeah, I think that there are kind of two, maybe, broad conceptions you could think of as strength. One is the type of strength that makes other people scared. And another one is the type of strength that makes other people want to follow—that makes other people trust you and want to follow. And the United States became the world’s premier power by a mix of those types of strengths, but especially by cultivating that type of “you can trust us, you want to follow us.” The type of world we’re trying to build is one that you would prefer over the alternatives.
And this is in hard power: U.S. basing rights all over the place, and [as I] mentioned, intelligence sharing, and a lot of military partnerships. And where the U.S. hadn’t fought a war in a hundred years that didn’t have, for example, Australian troops helping out, and a number of other countries allowing flyovers and just other things that they... when it comes to, say, a country like Russia... where they reflexively say no, where they don’t allow it.
And so the type of strength of where everybody’s afraid of you—that is sort of like a reality show with the bluster, or it’s like a playground bully. It’s the type of strength that can destroy but can’t really build, can’t really build anything lasting. That, you know... maybe it can get other people... It’s Putin’s type of strength also. That it’s a type of strength where, yeah, he can hold tight power inside Russia, but he was unable to keep his ally Assad in power in Syria, has been unable to take over Ukraine, unable to develop the Russian economy outside of the oil industry, and [is] falling behind a number of other countries over the last decade or two because they can’t build those relationships and they can’t build that trust that allows countries to really be strong and advance. All they have is that fear and others recognizing: That guy is scary, but no, I don’t want anything to do with him. I won’t work with him. I’m not going to try to build something together.
Sargent: So well said. There’s a new Washington Post poll, by the way, finding that only 40% of Americans approve of the decision to capture Maduro by military force versus 42% who disapprove, and only 37% say this was appropriate without congressional approval, while 63% say it wasn’t. And a plurality, 45%, oppose the U.S. taking control of Venezuela.
Nick, there was a time when Americans reflexively would see military action through a strong-versus-weak frame, making people very reluctant to criticize it, at least at the outset. I really wonder whether Trump has broken that dynamic, though. He’s such a reckless figure that maybe that old rule doesn’t apply. Is that too optimistic?
Grossman: No, I don’t think so. Those numbers are remarkably low. So if you want to contrast it, for example, with the lead-up to the Iraq War, that was over 60% approval and disapproval down in the 30s. You had almost two-to-one that was supportive of it. There was widespread support and praise when the United States captured Saddam Hussein. There was largely a positive sentiment in Trump’s first term when the U.S. killed the Iranian general Qasem Soleimani.
And it stands out with such a tactically successful action—that’s separate from the questions of strategy—but as far as military operations go, this was relatively clean and low-cost. You can compare it to something like the Black Hawk Down incident in Somalia, where U.S. forces in the 1990s tried to capture a Somali warlord, failed to capture him, ended up having to try to fight their way out of a mob, killed hundreds of people, and still all the Americans there got killed in the process.
By comparison, Americans often react negatively when Americans get killed abroad or when America has some sort of embarrassing failure tactically. And so to see so many people... such a close, almost 50-50, slightly negative reaction to this action in Venezuela shows how much Trump’s recklessness has changed the American perspective on this.
We would usually expect to see—yes, some caveats—but overall, a positive impression of something where Maduro, even if removing him will destabilize the situation, was a repressive leader, had violated a lot of human rights, was just overall a bad guy, someone [who had] been under U.S. sanctions for a while. But the reaction from a lot of the American public—and possibly this is reflecting some of the lessons of the Iraq War, too—is showing that merely removing somebody because he is bad does not necessarily make the situation better.
And if the U.S. ends up either having to follow on in Venezuela with more force, with any sort of occupation, or with just removing the head of state and creating destabilization without removing the actual regime and all its underlings... either way, that, yes, sure, that got rid of a bad guy, but it is destabilizing the situation, not benefiting it. And overall, [it is] ruining some of those relationships that the United States has, that will then lead to the U.S. being weaker, not stronger, just because this one dictator is no longer there.
Sargent: Well, it seems like... broadly speaking, there’s an opening to challenge Trump’s overall framing of himself as a strong leader on all these fronts. He’s a weak, addled, failing, deteriorating figure, and the kidnapping of a foreign head of state—no matter how flawlessly executed by U.S. forces—doesn’t change that. And I wonder if there’s a way for liberals and Democrats to just go frontally at that and just take the strong-versus-weak frame away from him and take it for themselves and say: “Actual strength looks like X, Y, and Z.” What do you think? Is that possible?
Grossman: I think so. And it comes down to where bullying is not strength. Even in a school context people maybe think of the bully as kind of scary, but nobody really thinks of the bully as strong. The people that are stronger are the ones that others want to follow—that are stable, that have their shit together, that are making something that others want to join in, where it will actually build something, where it will actually last.
And so I think there’s a great opportunity for Democrats to show that things like stability is strength, that the need to lash out is a sign of weakness. It’s something that desperate people do. It’s something that abusers do. It’s not actually something that strong people do. And when you even think of the archetypes in American culture of something like, I don’t know, John Wayne, for example—it’s the stereotypical strong, silent type, not the Real Housewife who has to scream a lot in order to look like they’re creating drama to stay on the show.
Sargent: Nicholas Grossman, that was all very beautifully said. I hope Democrats are listening. Really good to talk to you as always, man. Thanks for coming on.
Grossman: Same. Thanks, Greg.
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