DSR Weekly Wrap-up: When Is a Ceasefire Not a Ceasefire?

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Hello, and welcome to the DSR Daily. I'm David Rothkoff, joined by Riley Fessler and Minestine. And want to congratulate both of you. It's Friday. Thank you.

Nice job.

I worked hard to get here.

You did that. You did that, man. Total kudos to you. Yeah, every week you get us here.

“Um, so why don't we look back and then look at what's going on and then look ahead.”

Because you know, it's Friday. That's what we do. Well, a big story from yesterday in the UK, Kear Stomor and the Labor Party got absolutely hammered in local elections. And the main beneficiary of their slip was Agia Faraj,

a reform UK party who made massive gains across historic labor strongholds. As we kind of talked about on this show before, this is a historic fracturing of the UK's a two-party system. And labor and conservatives both lost ground to populist and nationalist movements. In England, Scotland and Wales.

So, you know, Starmer has said that he made unnecessary mistakes. Since his 2024 victory, but pledged to try and salvage his leadership. I don't think it's going to work. David, do you feel differently? Oh, yeah, sure, because all of a sudden he's going to become competent and charismatic and a great leader.

Um, yeah, the problem is he's none of those things.

He's been a week and, and, and, uh, in effective prime minister. Um, and, uh, I'm sure he means well, he seems like a decent person. Uh, but the UK is really on a streak of bad prime ministers. Having said that, I can think of worse choice they could make the Nigel for rot. You know, um, now these are, you know, these elections don't lead to that.

But these are local elections. But, you know, he is, he is like a Trump accolite. He's not, he's not even a Trump, you know. He's kind of a, I don't know, he's kind of more of a Steve Bannon want to be. You know, he's just, he's just, um, odious and, and repugnant.

Um, but it does, you know, show that there has been this strain in British politics. He's been involved with it for a long time. It led to Brexit, possibly the worst collective major decision the country has made in the past 10 or 20 years. Other than electing Donald Trump. Um, it's just, it's just a, it's a very sad situation for the UK, which certainly deserves better.

Now having said that, political parties deserve to be reinvented. This is the market at work and labor and, and the conservatives, they, they just haven't measured up. They, they have not answered the bell for this moment. Um, and I think, you know, American political parties should take heed as we discussed with the JD on in need to know.

“A couple days ago, if you haven't listened to it, you should.”

The only thing I can imagine that's worse than being Steve Bannon as being a Steve Bannon want to be. That was a chilling distribution. Well, yeah, I mean, Nigel Fragedress is better. He probably showers more frequently. Um, on the other hand, I think he smokes, you know, he gives off that vibe anyway. He's, he's, he's gross. He, I mean, he's really, he's, he's, he's bad news.

That's my sophisticated political analysis. He's not good. Yeah, not a, it's not good. Bad. And speaking of not good, the US would make my job a lot easier. The US State Department announced on Thursday that it will begin pro-activity.

Okay. Yeah. Make it very digestible. Yeah.

“Now it reminds me, remember when I don't know if you were kids, but we play red light green light.”

You know, and he's just like, red light green light. Um, okay, green light green light. Yeah. The US State Department announced on Thursday that it will begin pro-activity revoking the passports of parents who owe at least $100,000 in unpaid child support. Starting with approximately 2,700 individuals.

The program is set to expand significantly to anyone, knowing more than 2,500 dollars.

A move official say has already prompted hundreds of parents to settle their debts since the plan was first reported in February.

While previously, only applicants for renewals were flagged. This new enforcement policy requires those affected to settle before their travel privileges are restored. With those currently abroad, it required to obtain emergency documents to return. Um, you know, I was trying to be outraged. I was thinking about it. I saw that it was on the list. I saw the story.

I'm not outraged. I mean, it doesn't sound like a bad idea. I mean, just because the government is doing it doesn't mean it's automatically a bad idea.

“And, you know, if you're not paying your child support,”

you know, you deserve to be, to pay a price for that, you know, and I don't think I don't think it's too much to ask that people who have the privilege of passport, you know, fulfill their legal obligations to their children. There may be some other dimension of this that I'm not quite getting.

But, you know, our first glance, you know, green light.

I have a riddle for you to start the story, David. Oh, I like a riddle. Yeah. Well, it is a ceasefire, not a ceasefire, but I know what that answer to that is. That says when it's a Donald Trump, they're on worst ceasefire. That is correct.

A direct military engagement in the straight and foreign moves involving U.S. destroyers and Iranian forces has sparked mutual accusations of ceasefire violations with additional reports of Iran strikes targeting the UAE and coastal regions. Trump, for his part, asserted that the ceasefire is still in place, which doesn't fit my definition of a ceasefire.

But he warned of a much more violent military offensive, if Tehran fails to agree to the proposed 14 point peace memorandum. Yeah, did you see what he said?

He said I'm not going to be able to quote it directly,

but in Mr. Peace Prize said something to the effect that there will just be a glow there. Like, it kind of implying that they're going to get mixed, but maybe not because I'm not sure he thinks that clearly, but certainly, you know, he just doesn't realize

that his posing and his threatening hasn't worked and is not going to start to work. And so he just does the same thing over and over again. We really want to deal. We really want one bad.

I think we're having a deal. We're talking to people, they're talking to us. They want it bad. We want it bad. We don't know who they are.

We're not sure that the right people are charged, but I think they want it bad. Certainly, we want it bad and we're on the verge of a deal and the markets are certainly reflected around the verge of a deal.

But if we're not on the verge of a deal, we'll kill them. And, you know, that's kind of what the pattern is here. And, you know, now he's that unique in that. I might prior comment was not fair. You know, when a ceasefire is not a ceasefire,

when it's a baby net, yeah, who's ceasefire. You know, when a ceasefire is not a ceasefire, when it's a Vladimir Putin ceasefire. You know, bad people don't honor their agreements. And, you know, the Iranians fall into that category as well.

“And that's why, you know, when you got bad people on both sides,”

it's pretty hard to make one of these deals. But Donald Trump is heading off to China. He wants a good trip with China. It really does seem to be driving this to a greater degree than anybody acknowledges.

And so, you know, my guess is because I am a foreign policy professional contrary to what you might think listening to this podcast. And I've been doing this a long time. So my guess is that prior to him going to China, they might reach, you know, one of those pre-deal deals.

You know, like, we have a framework agreement. We have a letter of agreement to lead to a memorandum of understanding

you know, to be succeeded by a, you know, pre-sease fire accord to be followed by a phased in multi-level ceasefire implemented over many years. You know, in other words, it's, you know, a non-deal deal. The art of the non-deal deal should be Donald Trump's next book.

But won't be because he probably won't, well, maybe he'll write a memoir.

“Maybe somebody, I think this is, you know, I don't know that he's really thought this through,”

but I bet he could get a $10 million contract to write a, to write a book.

Donald Trump, my years in the White House. Oh, God, can you imagine? I won't read it, but go for it, I guess. Oh, my God. I mean, Riley, I'll have to get it to put it next to his Trump watch

and his Trump gold card and all his Trump, you know, he's got a little like shrine of Trump. Well, what he gets is his Trump phone, his Trump stakes his Trump wine. You bought those things, don't you, Rhett? Yeah, I have a little shrine, I have a little collection, so what?

It doesn't mean I like the guy.

I just like all his merch. I just appreciate a good gift. Is that so wrong? No, it's not wrong. It's that's the American way, buddy.

That's the American way. That's what we do in America. I'm exercising my patriotism when you really think about it. It, it, no, absolutely right. And we are proud of you.

We are proud of you. We're so affiliate, grad, dark, glad to be associated with you. Do you have any stories here? Is this a grift, also? I do.

I do have one last story. A letter story. Sorry. Give him the tender of our usual conversation when you say we have one last story.

“I think it may be actually give my affairs in order.”

Okay, go on. You know, we normally call this looking ahead, but I guess this is something like a dread

because a presidential advisory council has finally unveiled their proposal for overhauling FEMA.

Oh, good. They would shift significant disaster response response, disaster response, responsibilities and financial burdens from the federal government to states. Some of the recommendations include raising the damage threshold for federal aid qualification by more than 50%.

Implementing parametric triggers to provide upfront lump sum funding based on disaster intensity rather than damage estimates. Plan also seeks to simplify the aid application process for survivors while shrinking the national flood insurance program to encourage a transition toward private insurance. Because that's really easy to get in areas that flood all the time as many of those as many of those. And as many of those as the former Florida resident who left because flood insurance was to expensive.

Isn't that part of the reason? Wasn't it like you and weren't you on like CS to key and you guys were up to your ass and it was like that? It's definitely part of the reason, like living on an island being back close to the beach.

“Not only is insurance expensive, but it's also scary just being like, is this the hurricane that takes out our house?”

And then like, what do we do after that? Well, it's also like, you know, a lot of these red, the red, a lot of these guys in the red states haven't really done the arithmetic of Trump on this one. Because a lot of these red states are net recipients of tax benefits from the rest of the country. Don't have as, you know, redness is actually associated to lower economic output. Though, you know, like the vast majority of the United States economic output comes from blue counties, comes from cities.

So the places that don't have as many people don't have as much to work with. So what this is saying is that those ones should go to their own bank accounts, you know, the states and, you know, manage their own crises. As opposed to having everybody in the country sort of pitch in to come together because we are after all a country. You know, this is, I think it's really Trump trying to get out of having the federal government blamed for blunders associated with, you know, major crises. You know, I think he's seen what happened. He saw what happened with Bush and Katrina.

And then he had what was at Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. He was throwing towels at people and people were laughing at him. And he was like, okay, well, we shouldn't be involved in this. And, you know, he's just trying to get it off his plate.

I say red light. However, when it comes to the weekend, I say green light.

“I mean, admittedly, the temperatures here are like mid February temperatures. I don't know what's going on.”

I blame the Trump administration. It is far too cool for me.

I expect it to be warm. In fact, I moved to DC from New York because I expected to be unseasonably warm year-round.

“Anyway, it's the weekend. So, that is a good thing. And we've got a good week full of podcasts and, you know, streaming content that you can go and get a new youtuber.”

Get it the DSR network.com or get where your podcasts are from going to support us.

Support us. We would really appreciate it by being a member, by being a subscriber.

“But, you know, spend a little year weekend listening to some of the good stuff we did this week because I think it's helpful in the context of events.”

And we have a pretty good record. Pretty good record of getting the analysis right on our various podcasts. So, join us for all that. Thank you, Mina. Thank you, Riley. Thank you, everybody, for listening. Have a good weekend. We'll see ya on Monday, barring, you know, an asteroid or something. Bye-bye.