[MUSIC]
Hello, welcome to the Ballard Daily.
I'm your host Tim Miller.
“I'm welcome back to the show, one of our gold jacket guests.”
He's a staff writer at the Atlantic and Professor Emeritus at the US Naval War College. His books include The Death of Expertise, it's of course Radio Free Tom Nichols. What's up? >> Hey, Tim, thanks for having me back. >> I didn't know I got a jacket.
>> That's so cool, it's like my five-timers jacket. >> It's not tangible, yeah, at least. I've been working on Longwell to get the budget for the jackets for the gold jacket guests. >> I was going to say, you don't do enough swag. >> You're, you're picking a scab right now.
So I'm just going to move forward. >> I'm just going to move forward. >> You're picking a personal scab right now. So I'm just moving forward. >> I want to mug.
We're going to start with good bad news, which is Donald Trump's polling, particularly related to the Iran War. This is from Reuters this morning. Trump's approval rating fell to the lowest levels of his presidency with an overwhelming majority of Americans concerned the US war with Iran will last a long time, according to a Reuters
poll that concluded on Monday. 33% said they approved a Trump's performance, staying right at the Bush line. 64% disapproved, this was the one that really caught my eye, though. 80% of Americans, including 71% of Republicans, think the US involvement in Iran will go on for an extended period of time, just 16% said the conflict would likely end in a few
weeks. >> In other words, they get it, right? >> Jack, shock news report to start the podcast. The American people seem to be awake to what is happening in the world, which is a positive development.
That's why that's good bad news. You know that I usually rail about the political illiteracy of the average voter and
not paying attention on all that stuff, but I mean, in the first two months of this war,
“you literally had people that were like, what were war with Iran?”
Where? And now, you know, I mean, Donald Trump has engaged the American public. Look at that. He's actually got them paying attention. There's no good exit from this, and I think people are starting to realize that.
You know, because we're there, and no matter how many times Trump tries to do the Jedi mind trick, you know, the straight is open, these are not, you know, the ships you're looking for. Everything on the link is fine, you know, for all the hits the media takes, you know, the media is doing their job, they're reporting on this stuff.
And people are getting it. Like, okay, the war's over, Iran's defeated, then why is gas still four and a half, you know, four bucks, four and a half bucks depending where you are?
And I guess the bad good bad news is, people are finally glued into this primarily the
way Americans do, which is it's finally affecting them personally, you know, and with that we should say, it's been affecting military families and military people personally for a long time. But the average person now is going, hey, there is something going on, and no, this is bad, and it's probably going for one.
And 33% is below our, I thought he would ever get. Yeah, and I was banging on the start of this war, because I thought this was a rare thing that could get him there for that exact reason. Like, people aid it, potentially affects their lives and be people have lived through, whatever, you know, we don't, we don't, aren't going to waste this podcast discussing the merits
and the merits of the Afghanistan Iraq wars, but like, people live through this now. Like, it is the recent past, they know it, they saw how things, how they were told that things were going to be fast and easy, you know, we're going to shock and all, we're going to be able to accomplish and then you get stuck in a quiet mirror, they saw that. They might not, you know, know the ins and outs of exactly why that happened and encounter
insurgency and all that, but like, they lived that. And now they are seeing him get us into a stupid war that they, many of them voted for exactly what he was, that was the one thing he wasn't going to do. I was going to say, and it's not just that this is an easy cause and effect for people to see, right?
I mean, part of what's, what has really shank Trump on this is it's easy for people to
“draw direct line between Trump did this and something happened over here, right?”
You know what I mean? But the other reason it's going south on him is he won't shut up about it. And he has nobody else to blame is the other one. The COVID thing it was like, because anytime I bring to some people like, well, COVID was terrible, why didn't he get blamed, that's a classic JBL line, it's like, well, he was
good at like, look over there. It was the Chinese, it was Fauci, it was whatever, you know? Like, there's nobody to blame for us like he did it. I mean, the stuff that he's been throwing at the wall doesn't, well, we've been at more 47 years.
You know, I mean, you know, Ronald Reagan managed to get through, you know, eight years without attacking Iran, George Bush, George W Bush would attack everybody managed to
Not attack these guys, but also, you know, that it's it's all about not getti...
bump. You're giving a nuclear bomb to Saudi. Well, we're doing this also.
“I think most people aren't even following that far down the stream to see the other”
problem Trump has is he had a first term, right? And so he can't say, well, you know, I totally stopped around from getting a bomb and in three and a half years Joe Biden undid it all, or something. I mean, it's just he's and maybe, you know, maybe there's a bigger point here, Tim. Maybe he has, maybe he has lost his mojo, you know, that when he says this stuff, you
know, he used to be able to kind of get away with it in that first term.
He would say outrageous stuff and people would, of course, his cult would always go, yes,
I believe. You know, another people kind of shrug. It seems like now he actually damages himself, again, I'm glad to see it because that to me is accountability, but it's almost like he damages himself every time he gets out there and says something stupid and outrageous and people go, that doesn't make any sense.
You know, a lot of games when I felt like I was doing well, that's the other thing. That's how this ties to the economy. Like it's like, you know, people are decadent. It's like, you know, we have a clown president making fun of the people I don't like, you know, building himself monuments.
Like, all right, whatever, it's all red and circuses, yeah, but now. Yeah. Wait, you know, we're at war with a country of 93 million people and you're telling me about rebuilding, you know, statues, yeah, it's, but there was, there was, there's one other part to this, this business about the war that, again, this kind of loss
of the ability to lie so easily, and I think it's because he is visibly weaker and more
unhinged than he was the first time around.
I mean, he, he looks, I mean, I think maybe it's my Trump arrangement syndrome, you know, whatever, but I think when he gets out there and he lies, it's unnerving now to watch him in a way that, you know, and I mean, I remember watching that first state of the union. Remember, we were all, we all held our breath for his very first in the union. I don't actually, I don't actually remember the first state of the union, I don't think,
I don't think I remember it. Blotted it out.
“Well, I remember, I, and I was in Milwaukee, I think, why was I in Milwaukee?”
I don't remember either. And I remember thinking, okay, he's getting through this. He's, you know, that's a credible link. He was kind of doing the, now I think he gets out there and he does this stuff and people say, I think even people that supported him are saying, hey, there's something really wrong
with the president. And when you're at war, that's unnerving. I'm going to go rewatch the first state of the union at some homework, just kind of, I want to assess, I want to assess your assessment on that and we'll report back next time you're on.
Has point man on the negotiation.
He never said that it was the moment he became president.
It's my man. He just want to be, you know, I just don't ever remember having like a moment of like man, he really is getting through this. I don't, I don't, I don't remember that could have happened now. It's been a long, fucking 10 years.
I just remember that we were all waiting for that first one and I, for keep forgetting
“I'm old, Tim, 10 years ago, you were, you were like in high school, was that shit?”
Yeah, I was getting high all the time, it's just tough to remember. I was, and to do that first period is especially, I mean, I like, I had like a six months of darkness. Yeah. Yeah.
Okay, his point man is on the negotiations isn't also delivering much confidence. The sun and law. The sun and law emerged. We don't care to hear from him. He's negotiating everything.
He's negotiating the Gaza, alleged ceasefire and he was talking yesterday about how maybe Israel gets to finish the job. He's kind of an ominous quote from him. He's doing Ukraine. He's doing Iran.
We don't ever hear from him. We got to hear from him yesterday. He did an interview with Fox naturally. And I want to play a clip from it, and I have a lot of issues with the clip. And we're going to hear about him.
Today President Trump told Fox news, there is a back channel between the administration and top IRGC officials. What does that channel look like? And are you making any progress with these other officials outside of the political echelon? Yeah.
So I can't go into the details of it, but I will say that the conversations between the U.S. government and different areas of the Iranian government at all areas is probably more robust than it's maybe ever been. Short clip. I have four complaints, Tom, can you guess what they are?
Let me guess. Hi. I'm a private citizen with no security clearance and no standing in the U.S. government. But I can't tell you anything that's going on because it's very sensitive. Yeah.
That is an issue for me. I mean, you're talking to the U.S. Who are you? I love how he says the U.S. government has additional relations.
Is that you?
Is that are you the U.S. government speaking on behalf of the U.S. government? You're not in the fucking U.S. government. Your dad is the key. He is. He is.
And law is the president. That's it. You are actually a businessman who is receiving money from the Saudis who are a player in this war. And in this negotiation, they're getting bound by the hoodies.
They are as geopolitical rivals of Iran. You are kind of like their consultant. You're a paved consultant to the Saudi king. You don't work for our government. So why can't you tell us what's happening? Also, why are you morphing into a lizard person?
What is happening with his face? He doesn't look like a natural human. Well, I'm not going to do any mug shaming.
“But when he said, why can't I can't talk about that?”
Really? Do you have a clearance? Is this a classified matter? And again, the fact that the Trump called, and too many of the American people just accept this as normal. It's like, yeah, I'll send my, I mean, imagine Obama saying, yeah, well, we've got some
problems. I'm going to send Sasha and Malia over. What? Marvin Bush is the point person on the Iraq War negotiation. He can't tell the deals.
He's seeing the weapons of mass destruction. He can't tell you about them. It's like, what? Yeah, Ronald Reagan, while I, I've sent my son, Michael over to figure this out with the show.
It's you know what? What? HBO host. He's also on the payroll of Belarus. Meanwhile.
“I mean, it's just, you know, how do you, how do people see this?”
And again, this is part, I mean, I'm going to give, you don't have to hand it to Trump. But I'm going to say with a certain grudging admiration that he has gotten Americans to accept outrageous things as normal by just wearing people down, you know, and saying, well, of course, my son and was, you know, who is, has business interests. I'm just going to send him over and please don't ask him any questions.
He's a very sensitive thing. He can't tell you stuff. He has gotten people to accept this. I can't wait to get that fucking lizard person in front of Congress after the Democrats take it back next year.
I can't wait to fucking drag his ass out there. You know what? See, everything, every financial deal and he is dealt with, we're going to subpoena fine. If you don't have it in 2027, we'll see you in 2029. We're going to send a team of people to go through this fucker's books.
Like you have never, you have never got a proctology exam like this guy's going to get
in 2029. That is the other thing. We've normalized, you know, and if the Democrats somehow managed to keep together, you know, and Trump is keeps doing awful enough things that they take over Congress in the midterms.
They'll say, we want to, we subpoena, we want to see this, we want to hear about it. And the answer is going to be, you know, a verb and a reflexive pronoun. We'll see. We'll see how his business partners feel about that. Maybe they'll want to come to Congress.
Maybe they'll kill. Maybe they'll kill Congress. But it's just amazing to say, accountability, no, we don't do that. I'm not mug shaming, by the way. Whatever, teach their own on whether they think Jerkish is handsome, what I'm saying, he doesn't
his mouth is, I'm concerned he's an alien, is what I'm saying. His mouth doesn't have a natural movement anymore. I don't know if it's like a lot of Botox or if he's actually a lizard person. And I just, I think that would explain a lot. Like I don't understand why the Kushner Neppo boys like now own the Lakers and are running
the Middle East. Like the fact that they're aliens that are wearing human skin suits, you know, offers me some kind of. I refuse to speculate on whether my fellow citizens are actually avatars of a intergalactic advanced colonization force.
Okay. Well, counterpoint to a Jared said yesterday, which you heard about this one. Okay. That's fine.
You heard in that clip, Jared saying that we've never had better, I mean, so strong our
contacts with the Iranians and all levels of government Trump pleaded this morning. There are no talks or conversations going on or scheduled with Iran. So take that for what it's worth. You don't know. I travel a lot and I usually don't stop and think about whether my leg is a cure enough.
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Please support our show and tell them we sent you. The other thing Trump said is that I want to get to, because I glossed over it yesterday, was we're bombing him, oh, man, he told Fox on Monday that if oh, man gets in the way we'll bomb the shit out of them.
It's the second time he's directed such a threat of moscot.
They've traditionally been an ally and a key back channel for us in the region. I don't know. What do you think?
“You're a strategic military mind, what do you think about bombing him on?”
We never did any sections on what happens if the president completely goes off the deep end. He just says stuff now. This is what I mean about what I said earlier, where it used to be and it's all he fights and he speaks his mind and he's one of us and I think now people hear this stuff and
they go, what? I'm sorry, you weren't supposed to get in any worse to begin with, and you're going to bomb who now, oh, man, I just, like, people just learn that that exists. That's a real place or is that a fake place for bombing?
You know, I think that's a part of the problem is that Trump always had a kind of oppositional
defiance disorder, right, that if somebody said, I'm just present, I think we shouldn't, I don't know, you know, pick a thing lower and trust it, you know, lower twice or 100 times or double it or whatever, we have manipulated by Gary Cohen and then in the first term, as they would say, whatever, they would like, well, if Trump didn't want to do something, they wanted him to do, they would be like, well, Obama did the opposite.
I love that, right, Obama would have done it, and so it's the same thing with the deployment on Lincoln. Have these deployments been going on too long? No, not long enough, because he doesn't, he has no other kind of reservoir of answers. So when it comes to Oman, somebody brings it up and he says, well, we'll bomb the
shit out of him, because why don't think we have any plans, my, my personal opinion, I don't think we have any plans to do that. I don't, I think, you know, people in the Pentagon and State Department going, I have no
“idea with that meant, but that's what I mean now about people looking and saying, you know,”
this is beyond just his usual kind of weird, verbal hiccups, you know. In the first term, what have been, we're working with Oman, we'll get back to you in two weeks. It's really straight. I want to throw something at you also that's the difference between now and then, and
it is to dog people's lives being worse and having less patients for it is, I didn't frame this in a way where it doesn't sound like I'm handing it to Trump, because I'm not. But like the mad man theory that, that his, but sniffers pushed in the first term, which is like, it's actually good that he's crazy, because it's intimidating people and people don't want to mess with him.
There was a little bit of something to that, like, it wasn't, I knew that it wouldn't have sustainability, but like, there weren't European countries didn't uppaying more in defense, because they're just like, we don't want to deal with the crazy person, right? There were a couple of tangible examples with the mad man thing, kind of like got a result, right?
And now, like, we see the limits of that, which is like, no, the actual crazy guy is the AI at all, like, Trump has nothing on him. He doesn't give a fuck, like the country could be totally destined, like Trump cares about the stock market yesterday, like their country could be totally dead, he doesn't give a fuck. And so you see the limits of mad man theory right now, where he's like, oh, I'm gonna
bomb him on, and instead of people being able to like, kind of backfill, oh, this is just, this is just his smart strategy working, it's kind of like, no, actually, we've seen that this, the mad man theory is, is not all powerful. I'll leave the, the AI a toll out of it for a moment and say, the problem with mad man theory is that you can't go to that well over and over and over again, because then, you know,
the whole point of the mad man con, and you know, even Nixon didn't really get away with the mad man theory. Right, I'll go crazy, I'll nuke North Vietnam. Nobody really thought he was, and even Nixon, you know, who I, when it came to such matters
behind the scenes was like, he was never gonna do that.
But you can't go to that well over and over and over again, because then you're not
“a mad man, you're just a bullshitter, you know, and I think that's partly what's happened”
with our allies with NATO, you're right in that first term, and I think also in the first year of this term, a lot of countries, and a lot of institutions in this country, let's face it. I said, you know what, give him shiny stuff, give him $20 billion, and I think it was
A mistake, by the way, I think these law firms in universities, obviously, I ...
forgot the oldest rule in the book, but if you pay the pain, gold, they'll come back
“for another bite, but I think they figured, you know what, he's just shooting his mouth”
off, giving $X billion sign, whatever stupid thing he wants us to sign, and he'll move on and he'll go somewhere else. I think in this, especially whether allies know, they have gotten to the point of saying,
the problem isn't Donald Trump, the problem is an American public that will actually
let this guy be president twice in a row and not stop him, and not stop him this time around. So now I think they're saying, you know, we just have to start making other arrangements, you know, we've got to start figuring out other other ways around this guy, and that's written bad, because it says that the world is figuring out how to live without America
in the world, and that's really bad. I saw both you and Bill Crystal posting about this yesterday, I'm going to bring it up with caution. Bill Crystal is like, I hate JD Vance, but I think it's obviously time to try to impeach and remove Trump with the Democrats take power.
Sheldon White House tweeted, essentially, a 25th amendment call, your senator, their president, Rhode Island, following the threat to bomb him on, I've kind of a running conversation about that on the past, I've mixed minds of it, and I have evolving views on it. It's kind of a, there's a bit of a rock and a part-place element to this, like it's not as clear as people think, but I'm curious what you think of it.
You saw when I posted, you know, just to kind of clarify for some of this with what Senator White House posted, which is, first of all, he chose his cabinet almost like 25th amendment insurance, right? He chose a bunch of incompetent sick of fans who are no way ever going to decide that they're going to have to remove the only guy that would ever have hired them.
“Bill, it's probably the main thing is kind of silly, honestly, just also because you still”
have to convict, like the Senate does to build it, right? No, what happens with the 25th amendment is a majority of cabinet officers decide to remove him, right?
Then they transmit this to Congress. Now, the problem is that within that, the president,
and I think, you know, the people who wrote this amendment wisely built it in to prevent a palace coup, if the president contests this, it goes back and forth basically, a short version is, eventually, two-thirds of Congress have to agree with the cabinet or else, right? It falls. That's what I meant.
Yeah. Is that a different than impeachment, actually, right? Yeah, the convict was wrong word, but like the political hurdle on Capitol Hill is insurmountable. Yeah. Even still, I bet he could nuke him on and back it two-thirds of--
Ah, thank God. You know, Marjorie Taylor Greene's been talking about whether, you know, he's talking about nuclear weapons. I'm sure Trump being Trump, he has sat there in a meeting and said, well, you know,
“how do we can, why can't we, you know, don't want to have nuclear weapons for?”
I don't think that's going to go anywhere. I mean, I think there is almost nothing he could do that would lead this cabinet to decide that he is, you know, I mean, short of a physical incapacity like a stroke or something. It even still did. We can't admit my God.
You know, this bunch. Who knows? Okay. On the official home of Trump's arrangement syndrome, once a month, we have to at least bat around the 20th of the month, it's in the contract, it's in the contract, it's in the contract with
the viewers and so we've done that, we'll revisit and September. This episode is sponsored by Better Help. You've heard me talking about Better Help for a long time, I don't know that we've ever actually talked about how much people love this service when they use it.
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This takes us to what was happening in South Korea. You wrote about it this week for the Atlantic, Trump will make South Korea pay for his Iran humiliation and I want to fully cover the Iran humiliation before we got there because I think that that is the right assessment of what was happening this week. Why don't you make the pitch?
Okay first I think we've lost this work, but people are saying well it's not over yet and what do you mean by loss then because how could we have lost when we blown up everything
They own?
Look who's achieved their strategic goals and who has the United States went in there with a buck with a list that started with machine change. Once regime changed in half and we had another list, we wanted straight open, deal on nuclear weapons, all kinds of stuff, all of that's gone. We have achieved none of that and in fact we are now facing the opposite of all the things
we wanted. The Iranians control the straight, they've told us to go fly a kite about nuclear weapons. The regime is not only intact but becoming more repressive using wartime as authoritarian regimes, totalitarian regimes often do in these situations. They're widening the war, they're doing all the things that are the opposite of everything
“we were trying to get and the Iranians are achieving goals that I think they never thought”
they'd be able to get, which is screw the nuclear deal, we're going to start charging and we're basically going to control a big chunk of the world economy through the straight. We're going to repress people at will because now we're at war and this isn't even a matter of international human rights, this is a wartime situation, they really, it's true, they're militarily weakened but not in the way that matters in an asymmetric conflict
with somebody like the United States where they set up a $25,000 drone and we send up a
$4 million dollar interceptor and Trump cannot process that kind of situation.
He just can't, I mean look, he's not that kind of guy, we've all been watching this guy. I mean, some of us even longer than 10 years if you ever lived in New York or if you're on the East Coast, you can, you know, putting up with Donald Trump for a long time in your public life, he just doesn't, you know, when somebody walks in and he says, I wanted
to do this and I wanted to do that and people's like, can't do it, he loses his mind. So what's he doing? He's going to go punch a friend, he's going to go, you know, he's going to go out in the street and, you know, kick a cat or something, I mean, he just, he has to show that he's in charge of something somewhere and that he can hurt somebody over something.
“And I think that's why he said, okay, South Korea, you know, they didn't help me with”
a run, which to me is just astonishing, right, first of all, North Korea is sending troops to Russia. Yes, we are, we ought to be saying to South Koreans, let's think of a way to make North Korea pay. Thank you for bringing up this point because I forgot to bring it up yesterday.
And it's not as difficult there as just time was there actively engaging in a war against the West right now. You know, that as an old guy, I cut my teeth in, in my younger days as a Soviet guy, right? I mean, I, you know, worked at think tanks and I did, I spoke Russian, I did all that stuff. If you would said to me, back in the 1980s, you know, or early 1990s, hey, Russia and North
Korea are going to be fighting a war together, I would have said, no, I played that video game.
It was very cool, but it's never going to happen.
“You know, yeah, so I remember that it was command and conquer four, you know, where the”
North Koreans get involved. And yet here we are. And instead of saying, let's figure out a way to kind of put the free world back on its feet instead of allowing the North Koreans to just amble into Europe and act with the punity and gain a lot of combat experience, by the way, which is a bad thing.
Instead, we're going to punish the South Koreans because there are friends. Remember, Trump never picks, he, when Trump targets people, he doesn't people get away with. No. So he never goes after China, he never goes after Russia, he never goes after North Korea. He goes after friends and allies because they just have to take it.
I mean, it's basically, you know, in the, I think in his business world, it's the equivalent of some, you know, his stock tumbles, I mean, turns the first guy in the emphasis, you're fired. His rage at this, at this impotence that he has when comes to Iran, it's going to lead him to keep lashing out at Oman, at South Korea, at others.
But it is absolutely fantastic in the sense of incredible, unbelievable to think that with
North Koreans fighting in Europe, that Donald Trump is trying to figure out a way to screw the South Koreans and to take our last aircraft carrier out of the Pacific as some, you know, as people keep pointing out, if he were, if he were trying to destroy America, you know, if he were consciously like an enemy agent, what would he do differently and it would be hard to know?
I know she said impotence, it's kind of the word of the week. So I just wanted to point out that watch word about Trump's impotence. I know I was going to regret that.
I want you to talk to me and any listeners that fit this boat who are, you kn...
G.O. political experts who might come at this and think, well, anything that Trump does is stupid and obviously idiotic and against it, so not trying to create an irrational for Trump here, but like outside of Trump as an academic exercise, just to be a teacher. Do we need to have all of these trips in South Korea? Like, what, like, do we need all this military personnel there?
Like, is there a non-Trump related, like, legitimate objection to the amount of resources that we're spending there or not, and if not, why not?
Well, first of all, we don't actually have a peace treaty with North Korea.
We have a ceasefire that's been going on longer than I've been alive and the North Koreans, that's a dangerous regime. So, you know, do we need to have them there to, what's your tolerance for risk?
“I mean, that's always the question you have to say, do we need U.S. troops in country”
X, you know, what's your risk tolerance? Do you, do you trust that if there weren't American forces in South Korea that the North Koreans would somehow not try to either blackmail or even attack South Korea? And I think the important thing for people to understand about this South Korean situation is you say people don't spend a lot of time having to think about this is look at a map
and look at where the capital of Seoul is.
It's so close to the border.
Part of the reason we've had to put up with all this from the North Koreans for decades, I mean, I'm going back to the '50s, you know, Nixon, we were talking about Nixon earlier, Nixon actually asked for a plan to use nuclear weapons, it struck Korea in 1969. The reason that people that American presidents have a real problem with this is because the location of Seoul makes it a hostage to North Korea.
The North Koreans can just start bombarding Seoul with artillery day and night without ever moving across their border because they can reach it from where they are. And that's a unique strategic problem that's the map issue.
“And so the question is, you know, what is it you're trying to achieve?”
Well, for one thing you want to make sure that if these are your allies, just as in Europe, you put American forces there, so they are in harm's way.
So the North Koreans can never think, you know, we can start destroying Seoul without engaging
the Americans. So let me pretend like I'm a brain, I'm on a brain dead isolationist podcast, you know, I'm on so whatever, okay, I'm on Canada's show right now and it's like, who cares about Seoul? What do they do for us?
So North Korea, bomb Seoul, whatever, I care about what's happening in my neighborhood. So check question because people ask that about NATO, they ask it about all of our relations. The answer is this, the entire international economy and security system, the architecture that keeps you safe and prosperous as an American.
And I know people who say, we're not prosperous, gas is expensive, okay, compared to the world, you're pretty freaking prosperous. The thing that keeps goods and services and people and capital moving around the world. And keeps bad guys from killing your sons and daughters, no matter where they are overseas and keeps North America safe in the end is this security and trade architecture that we
created that is run by the United States is guaranteed by the United States.
“And my answer to the isolationist whenever they bring this up is, if you want to live”
in a world where China and Russia make the rules, you can have that. You're not going to like it and you're going to wonder how it happened, think about and what that would look like, think about this in a very concrete way. Remember all this supply chain craziness we went through during COVID? Yeah.
Imagine that the Chinese are pissed off at us about something, I don't know, not something even as big as Taiwan, some other place in the world where the Chinese say, you know what? Okay, they shut down whatever that East China is. Or they just want to grab something that belongs to somebody else and we say, hey, don't do that and they say, oh boy, you know, remember what happened to you during COVID?
We're just going to make that happen now for a while. Enjoy that. We're going to shut down, you know, you're shipping. We're going to make sure that certain ports are inaccessible to you. You don't have any allies and so we'll just, you know, blow you up.
And of course, the answer to that from a lot of these folks is, well, we have nuclear weapons. Well, I'd rather be able to solve most problems in the world without triggering Armageddon. Thank you, but, but that this, that web of alliances is what prevents the bad guys from telling you what you can buy, what you can eat, where you can go, whether you can live
In safety and people, people who make this argument are either being disingen...
just don't genuinely don't understand it, but they don't realize how much of their lives
“depend on making sure that all those alliances and agreements stay intact.”
Thank you for coming to my TED Talk. Thank you for your attention to this matter. We're expanding this symposium, because I enjoyed this. This was Daniel Dale over the NN did a little symposium on what's been happening in the South Korea relationship lately for, you know, people haven't been following the blow
by below. It's pretty funny, it's, it's not funny, it's like funny, but also depressing, it's like, this is a type of thing that if another president besides this had done this would be like a massive news story that nobody talks about accepting a deal, because this president said it like eight other crazier things during the same press conference, but during this
is a law office press conference history talked about the situation in South Korea, and just kind of summed it up, like here is the story that he told about the South Korea situation. He said that South Korea, quote, essentially didn't pay for the cost of US military presence
“in the country before Trump became president, Trump then got South Korea to unhappily, and”
his words agree to pay three billion in a year with further increases coming the following
year in the year after that, but then the 2020 election was rigged, and then Joe Biden became president, and then South Korea convinced Biden that Trump was mean, and they shouldn't have to pay money so Biden rescinded it as the story that Trump told yesterday in the old office. Every single part of the story is a lot.
Yes, here's Daniel Dale, South Korea was paying for the US military presence before Joe's presidency, it's not true that Trump cuts out Korea to pay three billion in any year. He got one year deal for less than one billion, it's not true that Trump cuts out Korea to agree to subsequent increases, it's not true that the 2020 election was rigged, and
it's not true that Biden agreed to a South Korean defender is in the cost sharing deal. They signed two new agreements at 21 and 24 that both increased spending from South Korea to us. How do you deal with this? This is what I said earlier about this kind of weird genius behind the whole Trump approach,
which is fire hose, the public with enough lies, and finally, people just kind of give up.
The people that who've written about the Russian system have made a really important point, you know, Gary Kasparov and Pomerance of another, it's right, have said, the point is not to get you to believe the lie. The point is to get you to not believe in anything, right? It's to reduce the average person's brain to, you know, a bunch of spiders and tapioca
where you say, well, I, yeah, whatever, anything could be true, I suppose, and then the average person's response at that point when they reach that level is to say, okay, what's on TV? It's the Wi-Fi working, right, you know, show me a funny. Why does it matter? They all lie.
Yeah, yeah.
“And I'm going to go look at cat TikToks, and, you know, and that's what's something great”
TikTok yesterday is that the first thing that's given me hope at a long time, I'm going
to put the link in the show notes, and it was a kid, this is what I'm at now that I'm doing boomerials, where I'm washing, like, you kids do cute things as well. That's because you're in dad now, we all go through this process, but this is a kid making fun of the Gen Z TikTok influencers, it's like a 10-year-old girl maybe, like talking about how like, ooh, I like making fun of food influencers, it's so good, I'm not going to imitate
it, people can just watch it for themselves, but it gave me hope, I was like, if maybe maybe just maybe the youngest part of the youth, I've no hope for the current college students, the youngest part of the youth though, will look at the generation ahead of them and be like, you people are crazy, you stop reading, and we're going to back, we're going back to being normal again, that's my hope.
I really want to believe that, you know, you stop reading, you stop dating, you know, we're going to, we're going to read in party, Gen L. And also, you know, maybe that your primary mode of interacting with the world is being through gambling sites, isn't a good idea, just to put it out there, you know, actually it's fun, I got lost in a tech tech too, there's so many, so many, put something to the best
of it. Well, somebody put up a, you know, what if an 80 sitcom was a bunch of superheroes and it was, you know, John Travolta is Superman and Mel Gibson is Batman and I just said there and I said, you know, I find this coming, I find this comforting, the warm oatmeal of the A.I.s love.
Yeah. This is the warm embrace, Tom, it's headed your way. Hey, Gina Davis, what have made a great wonder woman, that's cool, you know. As soon as you start to feel warm inside, watching a short form video, like you need an internal Pavlovian response to be like, I'm putting this phone down right now, you need
One of those little like shockers to be in your chest, I'll be the ficking up...
book or I'm going on to nature.
I don't know how to transition into this because we got way off, I forget how we got out of chat, TikTok, but whatever, we're moving on to Pete Hager.
“You mean, he's your presidential candidate, Pete Hager says, right?”
Exactly. We've now done 40 minutes talking with the disasters that he's overseeing all over the world. What is he doing about that, you might wonder? He's traveling to Iowa in his personal capacity and officials, you know, because if people aren't seeing, I'm doing the doctor evil.
Just familiar with his thinking, which I assume is him or his wife, believe he is considering a run for president according to the Washington Post. That's insane, but it's also a country where I believe anything can happen now. I'll say two things about it.
One is, in a world that made sense, the situation on the link and the munitions shortages
that disaster sworn around, that would have been the end of any, I mean, even Don Rumsfeld, you know, couldn't hang on past the bad midterm. So we'll see what happens. Pete Hager's set has done all kinds of things, except his job, you know, he's out there doing jungle training and he's doing sloppy chin-ups and, you know, all that other stuff because
he still thinks he's like a captain in the infantry, you know, 30 years ago. The thing about running for president aside from the fact that I find it impossible to imagine that he could withstand the pressures of a presidential campaign because the guy can barely get through a kind of con briefing, there are a lot of other Republicans who have been patiently waiting for Donald Trump to exit the scene, who are going to look
at Pete Hager's set and say, oh, no, oh, oh, no way. I mean, all these other potential Republican contenders are going to say, "Listen, I didn't answer constituent emails and go to town halls and take all this shit for years, so that Pete Hager could go to Iowa." They also said that to Trump too.
The problem with Hager said that he doesn't have a story to tell because everything he's ever seen as a disaster. Like Trump had a fake story to tell. He's a fake billionaire. He told people that, you know, he's the apprentice guy.
He was going to say, he had a president. He had a president. He was fake. But he had a story. But Pete doesn't have a story to tell.
Donald Trump was a part of our public life for 25 years. Donald Trump had a show. He had a persona. He had a brand. Look, Pete Hager Seth was a guy sat on a couch at Fox and said, "Dumb stuff."
And his only record as a public official is disaster. So, you know, again, it could happen.
“But I think that there are going to be a lot of other Republicans who are going to say,”
no, I think Pete, listen to you talk about how, you know, he does the jungle training and he does the push-ups and he's doing like the sour crowd and meat diet and all that. I'm going to show that he's a tough war fight or yeah, I think Pete should have asked him if he would be willing to do the USS Lincoln Challenge instead of doing all that. So, I think that he should have to sleep in a tiny bunk every night and wake up and
only eat like disgusting hamburger helper and tin foods. I think that should be his challenge. It has kind of amazed me that a lot of Heg Seth's defenders had this happened under Biden or Obama. I mean, it would be that Muslim trader is tormenting our soldiers kind of stuff, right?
With Heg Seth, it is amazing, and I think again, this goes back to what we did at the
top of the show. Why is this backfire and why is Trump cratering? When you say, listen, those kids on the Lincoln, they're just a bunch of slackers and liners and gold brickers, you know, that's not going to work. Yes, they don't even know why they're there, and this is the other thing.
I could eventually morale gets down after I can Afghanistan, like the initial part of
“this, like Tara said, just flown planes into the Twin Towers, right?”
So, we knew what we why we were doing. Yeah, right? And so, like obviously, in Iraq in particular, you know, that changes eventually and gradually for some people and whatever, quicker for other people, but like, there's no rationale this for the start.
It's like, I'm out at sea for 240 days, way longer than anybody told me that we were going to, for what for the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, which was open before, for President who told me we weren't going to do stupid wars, you know, for a war for a defense secretary told me we were going to be at warfighters, taking a bad guys out and just sitting at sea for nothing.
I'm going to, I'm of two minds about this, Tim, because there's a part of me, you know, as the civil part of the civil military relationship, which people forget is not 50/50, it's 99/1, right, you know, is one of the civilian voters, you know, okay, I'm sympathetic
To people say, listen, every 19-year-old sailor does not need, you know, to b...
does not need to explain, you know, our hair, you know, because the, but also the leadership
does have an obligation to tell them why they're what they're doing, or why they're doing it. It's how the American public, this is where I think they're really screwing the pooch, which is to say that 19-year-old sailor is there because the chief and the lieutenant and the captain have said, you're going, and, you know, here are your duties, you make sure
this piece of equipment works all day, but to turn to the families and say, listen, your kids just being a pissy whiner, shut up, you know, they're lying, this is your being unsupported, you're not supporting the troops, you don't believe in America, that's a loser of an argument, I came of age, I turned, I started high school the year the Vietnam
“fell, let's put that way, that's how it went. By the time I started high school, the last”
American troops were going on, the Vietnam War had ended six months earlier with the fall of cycle, and I can remember pitched arguments in my parents' home and in our military town, we were on Air Force now, you know, why are our guys there, what are they doing, the people that were sent, the people who, they knew what they were doing, they were staying alive, they were tucking their friends, they were, you know, keeping, doing the things
that soldiers do, but the families at home were saying, what is this about, and when that happens, the answer can't be shut up, your kid is a what, that is not an effective answer, and I think it's really, it's not just a political mistake, it's a real disservice to military families who have legit questions about, you know, why is this happening, what are we supposed to be doing, and when the president's only answer is, it should have been longer, that's not an answer,
“that's not a responsible commander-in-chief, so I think on the one hand, I don't think you have”
to go and explain to every single, you know, E1, you know, or E2, why they're on a boat,
on the other hand, it does degrade morale to say, this is something we've never done before this
sucks, and we can't really explain to you why, but more to the point, that immediacy of being able to talk to your family through the internet and phones and things like that, that I think is a is a new dimension to this problem, and the Trump administration, say, Institute has been to basically say, stop winding, stop complaining. There's a, just kind of a niche story by guys that Tennessee Haller flagged and it's one of the rays, just, it's relevant to
hexas leadership, you're seeing this across the board about how they're handling stuff, these guys all like when in talking about doge, we're going to be more efficient, and it's going to be the meritocracy, and it's across the board, we've talked about it so many times, the firings, you know, it's all women, it's black leaders, the military being fired, and here's a just a little story about the company or the small business, really, that makes the blue angels outfits, you know,
the iconic blue angels uniforms, I said outfits, what a gay, the uniforms, they're outfits, their fits, fit blue angels, fit check, anyway, a woman named Miss Candy, old black woman, runs a story called The Sewing Box in Pensacola, right next to where the blue angels naval base says, she's made these uniforms for decades, and the contract was about 100 grand a year, sometimes it was less, sometimes a little more. This year, they rebid out the contract,
didn't bid out, they didn't tell her, didn't give her a chance, and they just made an announcement
that there was a $1.7 million contract went to some Virginia company to make the uniforms.
I don't know what's happening in this deal, you know, looks fishy, is it racism? Is it a handout from one of Pete Higgs's friends? I'm not sure, but it's like time and again, these guys are just doing this stuff. I'm surprised you didn't call them ensembles, but this is the first I've heard of it, but it's not on a character for this, you know, we're gonna save money, we're gonna fire people, we're gonna slash things, except where we don't want to do that. And they don't actually, they haven't
saved anything, it's just everything's caused for us. Well, let's go to the much bigger issue, Tim, let's rip out the catapults on aircraft carriers because the president likes the look of steam. I mean, we are talking billions, I mean, you know, the same people that are like, what, we want
“it, we want Trump to come in because he's gonna shake things up. I remember that in the first”
Trump term, I would turn to my friends and say, what, what were you thinking, and they would say, well, I just want to shake things up. We need to save money, we need to secure the border,
We need to, you know, have a guy who's species mine, blah, blah, blah, blah, ...
fine, it's been interesting to kind of do this as a time lapse experiment where I've talked
to the same people, you know, I still have the same friends I had the same years ago. And, and they just kind of shake their heads and they kind of crouch and go, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, you know, because he's billions of dollars. These battleships, catapults, thing to be in the middle of the ship, or the back, and so the middle, like the carriers, because he thinks he's redesigning aircraft carriers the way he's decorating a ballroom.
Yeah, I don't think that will be there. Well, I want to end with something, little palette cleanser. We'll be discussing a lot, the Natalie story, Natalie Harp over on the next level feed. People, if they want a very lengthy discussion of that and the political implications, please check us out at the next level. Also, to more serious note, I did a, I did a video last night about just this another horrible story that I got tipped off
to happening in the Dilly and term a camp in Texas, so you can see that on the board takes feed. But here on this feed of Tom Nichols, I wanted to close with some clips from OAN. Natalie Harp, Trump's personal aid, leave it at that, was on OAN, had a show in 2021. I wonder how she got that for a little while. The people at the Coding Fox News did a clip summary of her work as the anchor of that program and I want to play some highlights
for you. 2021. We can't talk about winning back the house in Senate in 2022 and the White House in 2024. If we don't act on the fact that we actually did win the White House and the Senate in 2020, we shouldn't be afraid to say that because it's true. We the people know America, as we know it, could be ending in the next two or four years, which is exactly what President Trump is warning of.
President Trump never got enough credit for being a president that never started any new
words that we would have seen peace even with Iran because we would have made a deal with them. President Trump was on track to do that. It was beautiful to see and it's so beautiful to see President Trump's living legacy going on because this is a legacy of peace that will be passed on from generation to generation. Natalie Harp's Jones town, Kool-Aid Power Hour. Wow. Two quick reactions. One is the people that I knew that watch OAN. One of my friends told me
I said something to him at one point about something I'd seen on Fox. I said even Fox said
“whatever it was. He said, "Well, that's why I don't watch Fox. They've become liberals. I only watch”
OAN," which tells you how deep the kind of the denial has become that people say. I must filter out. He reminds me of the Trump photo who said when I brought up something in like October of 2024 that Trump had done. She said, "I voted a month ago and now I don't watch anything." I mean, now watching anything is better and watching that. And that's insane. I doubt it. But I think it's part of a bigger problem, Tim, where the internet created a world where a lot of
attractive young men and women with a good pattern realized that they could have a career by going out in public and saying crazy stuff that you could actually get paid, but you could be on TV. And you don't even have to have any talent. I mean, I mean, that was like a downward market note. I like that the North Korea anchor is looking at or going, "Girl, you need a few more reps
“if you want to make the believable." But again, it was a function. I mean, even in the cable TV”
year of the '80s and '90s, when you know, I am old enough to remember CNN going on the year. For example, but at least had some background on the news industry. I mean, this to me was the
is the natural and result of basically being able to say, "I have a camera." I mean, look,
you and I are sitting here with studio quality cameras and microphones. I have a camera, microphone, I have a beautifully symmetrical face. I can talk, you know, in a very convincing way, and I have a job. You know, you were talking earlier about people like Candice Owens and others. I mean, there's a whole generation of people that became, you know, wasn't just Andy Warhol's famous for 15 minutes. It was the ability to say that the gatekeeping on being able to present
things as news, the public became non-existent. And that you could just serve it up. No editors,
“know, you know, totally driven by the profit motive. And I think, you know, Natalie Harf”
to me is just one of many, not the question is making that jump to the White House. I kept thinking when I wrote about the great airplane paper, the great, you know, food container paper. And I thought, man, if you're one of those White House staffers that didn't know, because there were people in the decoy plane, apparently, who didn't know, right? And you're thinking later. Okay. So Scovino,
Harp, and, um, no, no, hexaf was already on the plane.
Who was, um, Walt Nada. Oh, it was Nada, right? So Scovino, Nada and Harf made the cut.
And I got put on the decoy plane. Seriously? I've you ever been on out, whoever that staffer is.
“It's like maybe you should have considered in 2021 going on OAN and giving a non-blinking completely”
unconvincing Oad to the cult leader. And maybe then you could have been in the food cart with
everybody else. Well, I will end with a quote from Kurt Vonnegut about this that I use a lot
to him watching Harp and other presenters on these things. Um, when Kurt Vonnegut wrote Mother Night about a guy who pretended to be an Nazi, to infiltrate the Nazi, he had a line in the prologue
“that said, we, we are what we pretend to be, and we must be careful what we pretend to be.”
It's a great line. That's a great book. Um, since you call them presenters, I'm going to end you with a British music quiz for you. I came across a song, I know. I came across a song called Brain that I really liked recently. Was by a, a British mod band. I'd look at that British mod band from the 1960s. The song really holds up. I'm talking to people with no brain. This was their most famous song. It was called Brain. Um, the, the album was called Rolled Gold. Swing
a bell for you. No. No. Steve's mod act. Well, I all I can think of a spinal tap saying I'm not
“a mod or a rocker. I'm more of a mocker. Uh, so I don't remember. These, the action had a strong”
grassroots following among British mods, but despite the support of George Martin, they never
managed to anything close to a hit record. Hmm. So there you go. Brain. Okay. Well, give you a 60's mod act to listen to and take people out with brain. How does that sound? Sounds great. I'm always appreciate you, brother. Um, next time you can quiz me. All right. No shows. All right. We'll see you later. Everybody else will be back here tomorrow at the other edition of the Borg Daily. See you all then. Peace.
The Borg Daily is brought to you thanks for the work of lead producer Katie Cooper, associate producer Anzley Skipper, and with video editing by Dante De Chico and audio engineering and editing by Jason Brett.
