Trump’s Answer for Every Screw Up Seems to Be a New Screw Up

subbasement of the Ministry of Snark in Washington, DC and from other undisclosed locations

across America and around the world.

“Hello and welcome to Deep State Radio, I am David Rothkuff, you're host and we are here”

to talk about what's going on in the world as we do every week and we are very fortunate to be able to do it with two of our friends, two of our originators back from, I don't know, the Millard Fillmore Administration that includes David Sanger of the New York Times, I thought I was back to the Polkwood Administration, I did want to make you feel uncomfortable and Edward Lewis of the Financial Times, back then was covering Gladstone in this

Rayleigh.

That was what people knew had a one of British government, surely no one does today.

We were going to have Rosa Brooks here and she's unable to do it, which has given us a very unusual and embarrassing mantle and so we will continue this discussion tomorrow with Jessica Chen-Wise, who is a China scholar, really important one, really thoughtful one and if you consider her part of this discussion, then this is not a mantle which makes me less uncomfortable than that might otherwise be.

So part of the discussion today, part of the discussion with Jessica Chen-Wise, tomorrow. We've got a lot to talk about because we have President return from China, we have the President of China now meeting with Putin, we've got the President talking about his next invasion, we still have Iran to deal with, but where I'd like to start as subware over the Pacific, but David Sanger talking to the President of the United

“States and being accused did he call you a traitor, David, is that what he said?”

He said he used word "treason" on a few occasions. Well, those things go hand in hand, he said he said you weren't giving him enough credit for his great military victory in Iran and I just wanted to give you an opportunity to apologize. Well, it was interesting to see the question that set him off.

The question was given the fact that he had bombed for 38 days and hit all the Pentagon's targets by the accounting of the Pentagon, 13,000 of them, why did he think that resuming military action would have a different result politically? It was obviously those 38 days did not lead the Iranians to give up the nuclear program or to limit their missiles to certain ranges or numbers or to open the straight or to conduct

any of a number of the goals of the operation. But rather than answer the question about the transfer between achieving your military objectives and achieving your political objectives, he accused the Times, CNN, later he went after BBC just so that Edward Field, like Britain was included here, and said that we were denying the military victory and making it sound as if the Iranians were winning and that this

was virtually treasonous and you went on along those lines. So I'd just make a few points, David.

“First, reporting is not treason, reporting is going out, finding out what the truth is”

and comparing it to what the government is saying, sometimes the government's telling you the full truth, sometimes the government isn't. My colleagues have a great story last night about how an early goal of a war was to reinstall a former President, not even in a judge, a hard liner to power. I don't remember the government coming out and volunteering that or many other facts around

this.

Second, we never said that the U.S. had lost militarily.

We said that despite the military victory, which is to say the success of the attacks,

You could say that about Vietnam, right, where we all places where we outgunned the opposition,

but it didn't necessarily result in what we wanted. In the Iranians have figured out some ways to act asymmetrically, to avoid having to give in on these issues. So I thought it was really interesting that the President was that sensitive on it. I've had a lot of jokes from friends of mine who are dressing the dressing notes to Benedict

Arnold and so forth, and I've had a few editors note that the President at one point said to me, "It's okay, David, I understand you're just writing what your editors want to which my editors are responding, so when's that going to begin?" So there you go.

“Well, I think, first of all, I felt bad watching him do this, you know, not six inches”

from your face, but you maintain your equanimity and your occupational hazard.

David. No, well, but I thought, you know, I thought you certainly handled yourself well, and what you've also done in your answer, there is T-up, Ed's column so perfectly that it's almost as if you read it, and I'm sure you didn't. I actually did, because I read everything my friend Ed writes, "Well, Ed Ed is a column

which talks about this pattern in US recent history where we have the greatest military in the world and so we blow up a lot of stuff but we don't actually get what we want." And that seems to be a pattern that somebody on us sort of blow the whistle on, and I'm glad you did, Ed. That was the essence of what I was trying to get the President to ruminate on, but he still

hasn't. Well, the President reads that very closely also, so perhaps Ed, you could talk a little bit about the call. Well, I mean, to combine the themes of treason and blowing shit up, I mean, if I told you, this plot to bomb Iran in order to put my mood, I'm a dinnerjad in power, I'd think,

"Oh my god, that is treason." It's like, this guy is definitely not our friend, he's not Iran's friend either. He's an absolute fanatic, a bit of a clown, but well, that couldn't possibly be in anybody's national interest. So the idea that David is treason is just endlessly amusing, and I'm sure we can, I'm sure

we can squeeze quite a lot more out of that for us as we shall, for many years to come, I'm sure.

“So why are you guys, I know, yes, that's what friends are for.”

Occasionally, I get annoyed by the idea that Trump, although he is a uniquely obnoxious aberricious, eclectocratic, verbally incontinent, and corrupt figure, that everything he does is entirely unique, and I do think that even though epic fury is by the standards of wars of choice, even by those low standards, a very, very poorly run war, that it is part of a continuum, and it is a global continuum that really goes

back to, to Vietnam, and through every decade since, with the possible exception of the 1990s

when, you know, the first Gulf War was done in accordance with international law, having

built up strong alliances, and it was about expelling an invading foreign country from another Iraq from Kuwait, and then, of course, the belated Bosnia intervention, I think, had some justice on its side, but the big war was Vietnam, Iraq, and now Iran, was in which America is thinking with its missiles, not with its brain, and I'm sure, I can think of them. It's a fantastic metaphor there, it's the obscene metaphors, and I won't go there, but

“I think you already did, I'm excited, yeah, that's okay, okay, fair enough, I will withdraw”

that, Missile, the idea of the brawn is more and more important, at a time when it's less and less important, what was really not one in the way they used to be one, by victories on the battlefield, they are won by political victory, and the politics goes in the opposite direction to the degree of precision and firepower that America develops, and Trump is sort of the most absurd example of this, but he is not an aberration,

and would share all the things I've just said about him, and both of you, I'm sure,

“were in your different ways, echo, but the truth is that he's become part of this town,”

and nothing says that more than epic fury. To stay up to date on all the news that you need to know, there's no better place than right here on the DSR network, and there's no better way to enjoy the DSR network than by becoming a member. Members enjoying ad-free listening experience, access to our discord community, exclusive content,

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But if the answer is correct, then the real conclusion is different.

With "Beyroll", I've set up the first classic "Blessed Product" and "Blessed Embarrassing", for "Blessed Embarrassing" the whole summer. "Beyroll", my expert for "Blessed Embarrassing" and "Blessed Embarrassing", more on our "Beyroll.de". Yeah, no question about it, and this is, to some extent, it's a kind of a symptom of Dwight Eisenhower's warning against the growing power of the military industrial complex in

early 1961, because we spend billions and billions and trillions and trillions of dollars on a defense side in our economy, and then we think, "Well, that makes us omnipotent. We can force our will on anybody."

“I think what has happened over the course of the 60 years is that it's quite clear, we can't,”

and that there are other ways to win these battles in Vietnam, and in the war on terror, and here in Iran, by waiting us out as one. Another though is being deft politically, and so for that I'd like to go back to the trip to China. You are there, David, you've brought back with you, it seems to me judging from your recent

coughs, a China virus, but what we saw was the President of the United States go to sort of get "Blessed" by the President of China. He didn't really come away with a lot, and that point was then underscored by the President of China when he really rolled out the red carpet and gave a big warm bear out to Vladimir Putin a couple of days later.

It seems to me that Xi Jinping is doing some deft messaging about the soft power of China. What does it look like to you?

“Well, it's fascinating trip, and overall I think it's good that President made it.”

I mean, I think if we don't have the world's number one and number two economies and number one and number two military powers and number one and number two technological powers talking to each other, I think we're in worse shape. That said, as you noted, the President didn't come out even with the most basic laundry list of soybean sales and Boeing sales, there were some, and the numbers were fine, but not

particularly impressive or worth it from the trip. Then the question is, what did the President get out of this?

First of all, I think there was a bit of discussion less among the two leaders than their

subordinates on beginning to have a two-way conversation on AI and controlling its worst effects. I doubt that that's going to go many places. It was tried during the Biden administration. There was sort of one meeting and it ended badly or ended with sort of nothing, but worth

to try. The President did not indicate even when we pressed him on the plane that they had made any progress on the growth of China's missile capability, or that they had made a whole lot of progress on the question of Taiwan. In fact, there, the President indicated in other interviews that he viewed the Taiwan arm sales as something of a bargaining chip.

So I noted to him that in the assurances that President Reagan gave Taiwan in 1982, one of them was that the U.S. would never consult with the Chinese before they went out and made the missile sales, so they would do it purely on what Taiwan needed for its defense.

“And the President looked at me and said, "Well, '98, it was a long time ago."”

So he was making it clear that his view is Taiwan, like everything else is negotiable and it raises the interesting question.

We don't know the answer to this yet. Will Xi Jinping, at some point, say, "I can help you out of the Bramble of the Iran War, but you've got it back off on support for Taiwan." We don't know that that's going to happen yet, but certainly once the President has made it clear he's willing to negotiate on a new Taiwan, that certainly opens a possibility. So the third thing to watch for is that the Chinese issue to statement, which had said the U.S. signed up to, for a new phraseology about how the purpose of the relationship with a driving goal would be seeking out strategic stability.

And what we don't know is who defines that, in other words, if the U.S. withholds certain technology from the Chinese chips needed for AI, if it patrols the Taiwan straight,

if it goes and helps out the Philippines in their conflict over the South China Sea, if it issues new tariffs, are those all declared to be threats to strategic stability by the Chinese and thus, so the seeds of the next confrontation? Yeah, you know, it's interesting. An issue has come up a lot and it came up in the China trip as David is just reference, but it's come up in a lot of the conversations I've had with a lot of people.

As being something that people really seek out that we used to provide, that we don't provide any longer, that we, in fact, actively undermine,

and that now the Chinese seem to be at an advantage because they provide it, and that is stability.

“It's not strength. It's predictability. It's what kind of an ally will we be? What kind of an adversary will be? How will we act in certain circumstances?”

And during the Cold War, it was clear that the Soviets wanted to sort of disrupt the international system because they thought it gave the U.S. an advantage. One of the differences that we have with the Chinese is they've sort of said, no, we're comfortable with being in the international system. We just want to have more influence within that system. And the U.S. seems to be giving it away by giving away this one sort of major element of our power, which is that we are dependable, predictable, reliable as a market, reliable as a friend.

And I'm just wondering what you think about it. It seems very mundane, but it keeps coming up again and again because our president is so erratic. He is, I mean, I have to say if you look at the system, if you assume nothing happens and Trump, you know, is surprisingly predictable and unadventurous for the remainder of his time. The system is deeply under challenge anyway, because China's going to eat all our lunch. I'm really not surprised China's happy with the system. Because it's out-competed to some degree, out-subsidise, certainly out-scale this. On pretty much any industry you can't imagine.

The degree of panic and of angst in, you know, the former sort of booming export powers like Germany cannot be overstated.

“And the same applies, I think, you know, across across the world in different industries and different sectors.”

And that's you're at the real cheap commodity producing and China is coming for you. China has benefited enormously from the world that America made. And from the system that is, it is now plausibly presenting itself as being the chief upholder of. There's no doubt about that. If there was somebody other than Trump in the White House who was able to work with Europe and with other countries, Japan, etc. And with the developing world, then I think we would be confronting some of the problems of China's what they're called.

The consumption of domestic consumption and to some degree it's use of economic coercion.

But because of China's scale, this presents a threat to all our livelihoods in really quite short order.

Trump isn't that president. The, you know, with of Cordite is as at all times smelable in the air above the Atlantic. There's just a sort of horrible breakdown in relations between American and its partners and Americans allies and every continent in the world.

“And this is a dream for China, but I think it's a bit too much of a dream for China because the world is going to react.”

At some point, I think China's overplayed its hand. And we're not for Trump. We would be talking about this. But and then just sort of one other, not directly related point, but you mentioned Taiwan and and David gave a good summary of the Taiwan. Trump's seeming shift in America's Taiwan policy. The strategic ambiguity that America has followed since the 70s is deliberately quite complicated.

Quite hard to sort of grasp intuitively. And so there's just no way Trump grasps it.

“I think Biden had problems with it in the other direction.”

And many times he said we will come to Taiwan's defense as if they were a mutual defense pact, which was also breaking the strategic ambiguity. Trump's going in the opposite direction.

Basically signaling he doesn't care what happens to Taiwan. In fact, considers Taiwan to be something of a nuisance, because if it's strangle hold on high-end semiconductor production.

But the it does underline what you're asking David that, you know, America's America's protective shield is pretty much gone and nobody can rely on it. David, can I agree with 90% of what Ed said and take if you would like really about 10%. The one thing that struck me, I'd been back in China since I guess 2019 just before COVID. First COVID kept us out then you may recall that the Chinese removed most of our New York Times bureau. And we've gradually gotten back into the country, but I had not been there in seven years.

The scope of the property overhang of the manufacturing overhang of the deflation that seems to be taking hold really sort of grabs you when you were there. And makes you realize that if you're Xi Jinping, your biggest problem right now are at home. And that is worth our remembering and keeping in the forefront of our minds as we developed strategies to go to go deal with them. And I agree completely with Ed that, you know, the Chinese strategy right now is to look like the stable player among the three. It's not going to be Vladimir Putin.

And it's clearly the United States, it's more like a disruptor than not.

“And so I think he's playing it fairly cool, but I also got the sense, I'm not sure I'd be going off and trying to take Taiwan if I was in the midst of this kind of trouble.”

Can I just sort of, I think that's a very good point in what you observed of the deflation. And I think the demoralization of the Chinese consumer, this is lying flat that people in their 30s, 20 cities and 40s are using life flat because there's no point in trying. You're not going to get ahead, you cannot afford that apartment. And it's an extraordinary sort of passivity that my colleagues and others yours as well have reported on in some detail. And Jessica Chen Wise, I think, has been observing this too. But what you described in terms of domestic deflation is the flip side of the same coin of export surplus.

They have to, there's over capacity at home. And there's massive services, which have to be basically slowed off onto foreign markets and will flood them and will put them out of business. You're not disagreeing with me. You're putting the domestic side of that coin.

Yeah, I would say two things about that. First of all, Chinese leaders have always put their concerns about stability in China ahead of everything else for thousands of years.

And secondly, while there are these problems at home for the Chinese, going to China after six years must have revealed to you that China has just transformed itself by leaps and bounds. The country technologically speaking, development, so forth, is just remarkable. So it's a complicated thing that really jumps out of you of that is the Chinese cars, which obviously are every place except the United States.

And they're really nice. You step into what's essentially an Uber from the airport. And it's like you've just gotten into a BMW six.

Yeah, no, no. And look, I mean, China is the world's leader in automobile technology, green technology. Most areas of AI technology, quantum technology. Just one semiconductor, that's the one area where we've still been far. So far. And they'll crack it sooner or later. Yeah, well, they will. The latest deep seek to issue a couple of weeks ago was designed to run exclusively on Huawei chips. So they are making some progress in that area. But look, we've only got a couple of minutes left. And I will continue this discussion tomorrow. So people can come back for more of it.

But we need to stick also to the news and with the Trump administration being just as we described it. There are solution for any foreign problem is to supply it with a new foreign problem. We've just indicted the 94-year-old Raul Castro for his role in shooting down a couple of planes flown by dissidents over Cuba a number of years ago, which smells a lot like the predicate predicate for military action that we had in Venezuela. Naval vessels that were off the coast of Venezuela are not surprisingly not that far from Cuba. The USS Nimitz is making its way up the Brazilian coast and the direction of Cuba.

“The president is talking about wanting to stop foreign interference in Cuba by being a foreign country interfering in Cuba. I don't know, that's what he's saying.”

And I'm just I would like to go to each of you first David and then you add and get your sense of what's going to happen there. Is it just a side show or might it be of some greater significance?

Well, the indictment is for Raul Castro's role in the decision to shoot down two small civilian planes in 1996. Remember the moment well because I just gotten back from law and assignment in Japan. And this was in the middle of the Clinton administration. You may may recall. And what it ended up doing was completely torpedoing the Clinton administration's early efforts to see if they could figure out a way to normalize, or at least have something of a date on with the Cubans.

The second thing is it looks very much like the Venezuelan playbook as you described.

We don't know for sure that it is that dynamics are different than Venezuela.

“And I think the biggest threat to the United States from Cuba right now isn't as much implosion, although that may well happen.”

But explosion, which is to say, what happens if you have sort of the marielle sea lift all over again, that you have an influx of refugees coming into a country that is very much a failed state? A few months ago President Trump was indicating he didn't think he needed to do much with Cuba other than sit back and wait for it to just disintegrate by itself. But this action, especially today, I think was the anniversary of the shutdown, would suggest to you that, in fact, he's not willing to wait anymore.

It seems that way, what do you think of it?

“I do want to make a point there because I think the world may not have picked up on this.”

Trump doesn't give a shit who takes over these countries. And the Ottoman Jinnidad Ahmadinejad story proves that. Delce Rodriguez proves that he doesn't care about democracy, he doesn't care about progress. He just wants somebody is going to give him a little something in the way of a deal whether it's a little oil, a little this, a little something. So he can say, "Oh, I had a victory." So, you know, you can have the next most oppressive Cuban step up and the message Trump sends the world seems to be, "I don't care, I'll take them."

Well, I love it when you sing. I really like it. Thank you. I can sing all kinds of things on request.

Yeah, I mean, we also have Rubio's video message to the Cubans, which, you know, hasn't happened before, as you say, the USS Nimitz is on the way, Trump's losing patience, he needs a win.

Rubio is always wanted to be the sort of liberator of Cuba, the Bolivar of Cuba. This is his chance.

“And so I think the odds of this of something happening, I mean, it won't be a surprise attack after all this, but perhaps, you know, that won't make much difference.”

It wasn't really a surprise attack in Venezuela either. I don't know what the outcome would be. There's no choke points around Cuba. You know, there's not going to be global economic fallout,

but there will be this sort of continued, this deepening of the sense that you get around the world that America is now a predator nation.

“Well, there's a good reason for that. And you know, if Trump believes that this one would be fairly easy and certainly it would be easier than Iran would be as a distraction from the fact that the Iranian still control the straight”

and are sitting on top of their stockpile 60% nuclear material, you know, Cuba touches American wives a lot more American lives in a way that Iran does not, just by the existence. Yeah, no, Trump is a fan of football. He's embraced what I would call the bill, Bellachek strategy several years ago after big loss. The press was like, well, what about the loss? What was the reason? And Bellachek just kept saying, on to Cincinnati. He just was like, on to the next thing. We're going to, we're going to change the subject and I'm not going to talk about this anymore.

“And that has been Trump. Trump was, I'm going to solve the Ukraine war overnight. And when it became apparent, he couldn't. He went on to the next thing, never North Korea in the first term.”

That well, that's right. And we have that with Venezuela, which, by the way, was in a success and hasn't achieved anything and hasn't done anything for US national interests. Somebody got some money off of something we don't know it is. It's the case with Iran could be the case here. He's just going to keep turning the page. And, you know, who's next? He gave him a speech today a reference to Panama, something he mentioned when he took office. Greenland is around the corner. There are a lot of ways that he can keep turning the subject. The problem is, if you look at Ukraine or you look at the peace board in Gaza or you look at Iran, none of these problems are getting any easier to solve. They're now closer to resolution.

But for those of us who are talking about these things and writing about them, it does guarantee employment for many years to come. So we will be here. We will be talking about these things. It is good to see you guys. I wish you a happy Memorial Day weekend. And for all of you who listen to our other shows, we've got more on China. We've got words better with normal and seen tomorrow. We've got so consciousness. We've got the New Republic podcast. We've got our daily podcast. So there's a lot to get here. And of course, David, add our producing new gems every day. So follow them closely.

Until next time, therefore, thank you very much, everybody. Bye-bye.