World Leaders Outmaneuver Trump as New Global Alliances Take Shape

to his face, but he is too busy posting strange memes renaming Lake Ontario at 2 a.m. in the morning to realize the gravity or he simply doesn't care because his soul priority is to do quid proquos that enrich himself. You want to see why I'm saying world leaders are declaring "checkmate" exhibit a. China's president Xi Jinping will be visiting Kyrgyzstan for the Shanghai Cooperation

“organization meeting next week and then he will be going to Egypt for an important meeting”

with Egypt's president. Let's talk about it. The Chinese president will attend the Shanghai Cooperation

organization summit before traveling to Egypt the first state visit in the country in 10 years

at the same time we've seen over the past week military exercises between China and Egypt taking place a clear sign to the United States there is a new superpower in town in the Middle East in my opinion. China's president Xi Jinping will attend the SCO summit. We know that there will be meetings there as well with the leadership of Russia as well as the leadership of Iran. Then Xi Jinping will head to Egypt on a trip from August 30 to September 3rd and think about it. He only wants to spend

“one day in the United States when he meets with Donald Trump later in the month. I think that's”

going to be sending a message as well at the SCO summit to be attended by member states including Russia and Iran. Xi will discuss deepening cooperation as well as major international and regional issues the foreign ministry spokesperson says. The Chinese president will hold talks with his counterpart in Kiervstan and attend various state events during the trip. In Egypt, Xi will meet with Al-Sisi for talks aimed at making a positive contribution to safeguarding peace and stability in the region

as how they are framing it. This is at the same time that China's J-16's faced off against Egypt's airplanes, the refells in combat drills as the United States continues to pretend under the

“Trump regime. It controls the straight of our moves while it does not. I think a notable”

aspect of this is that the aircraft from China flew more than 6,000 kilometers, 3,730 miles, over 9 hours to reach Egypt, crossing 4 countries, according to a report by state broadcaster, CCP, not specifying which 4 countries in the region were flown over and you had these military drills between China and Egypt right there and a message was clearly being sent. What was the United States doing? These of Egypt, Treasury Secretary Scott Besant made the following announcement.

Treasury promised to sever every economic lifeline Tehran has left and finally in the threat

of the Iranian regime. We also warn that Iran's enablers cannot continue to enjoy access to the U.S. dollar and the global financial system. So bank, miser, UAE decided to find out the hard way in today. We're taking the first step in holding it accountable for its continued egregious support of the Iranian regime. So what's going on there? Remember at the beginning of the week, Treasury Secretary Besant said, "This is economic day and my Friday. We are going to inflict

so much pain on any country that does business with Iran. You wait and see, we mean business here." While China immediately responded and said, "We're going to keep on doing business with the Iran. They put out statements through Wang Yi, they're foreign minister. Russia put out a statement right away saying, "We look forward to meeting with the Iran's leadership at the SCO, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization meeting of taking place in Kyrgyzstan." And we are looking forward to talking

about expediting the $25 billion in nuclear capabilities and nuclear programs in Iran in addition to the Fushir nuclear power plant. Pakistan, the mediator between Iran and the United States, said that we do not support any unilateral sanctions on Iran. So Besant announced these sanctions against bank misor. And so, as Brett Erickson explains, and perhaps one of the most embarrassing

displays of taco throughout the entire war. That's Trump always chickens out. He always backs down.

He makes these bold threats and backs down. Treasury Secretary Besant's threats to take

but yet again the Trump regime caving. The reporting indicates that the US will be cutting off US dollar and correspondent banking to the UAE's branch of bank misor Egypt's second largest bank.

Now that may sound powerful Egypt's second largest bank is getting sanctioned. But the United

States didn't even sanction it. It can still legally conduct business. The Trump regime literally only cut off the dollar clearing and correspondent bank access to a single branch, a clear indication that the world can receive that there is no hope whatsoever that the United States will ever make good on its threats. And Donald Trump posting it to a aim along with his top advisors, weird AI videos of himself dancing over a sign that says Lake America. But while Trump is

“doing that again, world leaders are saying checkmate. China's Xi is also saying, you know what?”

I'm not just going to stop at Egypt. Maybe on the way back to, we'll see the timing all of this. We'll do a big meeting with India for the bricks block meeting. The bricks block asserting itself more as the Trump regime attacks NATO. Fricks of course stands for Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa. A lot of other nations have been joining. She is likely to visit India with a big delegation for the first time in seven years. So the first big visit to Egypt in many years.

The first big visit to India in many years right there. China's president Xi Jinping likely to attend next month's bricks summit in New Delhi with a large delegation. India's hosting the September 12th to 13 summit where Xi's presence would be watched less for the bricks agenda.

“Then for what it signals about Beijing and New Delhi's efforts to stabilize relations between them.”

And you'll see you see major growth there in that relationship at the same time, the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post got their hands on classified information or classified documents by the U.S. intelligence community, just showing how Putin sees U.S. as weakened by Iran War and how China sees the U.S. weakened by the Iran War. And we've also reported how former, I guess current, but U.S. is not really a good ally anymore. How countries in Asia

that were allied with the United States see the U.S. weapons shortage as being the, as the U.S. security umbrella collapsing in Asia. We also saw the same thing in Europe, the U.S. security umbrella collapsing there. As that's going on, we know that Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney will be addressing the European Union the day after the state of the Union. He will also be against the first time you have a foreign leader being invited as the guest of honor at the

state of the Union where you have Ursula von der Leyen giving the speech September 16th, he will give a speech the following day. And of course, we've been talking about new alliances like the mecca pact of course in the Middle East between Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkey and we are seeing other alliances growing there as well that we've been covering here in the minus time. I want to bring in someone who knows a lot about this, you know,

it has an incredible amount of knowledge. I want to bring in Susan Rice, Susan Rice, of course,

was the 23rd United States National Security Advisor under former President Obama. She was the 27th United States Ambassador to the United Nations, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations also under Obama. She served as the U.S. United States Ambassador to the U.N. from 2009 to 2013. And she was the United States National Security Advisor from 2013 to 2017. And I want to talk about

“all of this. I want to talk about all of this, these major international developments as I believe”

world leaders are declaring checkmate over Donald Trump as, you know, this catastrophic in a lawful war has demonstrated that the Trump regime unable to handle even the most basic of things, especially now we're in six months in Trump launched this catastrophic war. Right, let's bring in Ambassador Susan Rice. Ambassador Susan Rice, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, former National Security Advisor both under the Obama administration, Ambassador Rice,

great to see it as always. We are approaching, and we are in basically six months into this,

what I believe to be a catastrophic war in Iran, a catastrophic war we should never have been

seems like every day from Donald Trump and his regime. There's a new lie. We control this. We control

that. We're winning. It's amazing. It's great. It's the best. This is what we want to, what,

“what do you assess the situation at now? Well, sadly, Ben, I think your assessment is”

is very spot on. This has been a strategic failure that has been enormously costly to the American people. Obviously, first and foremost, we've launched 18 American service members, men and women. We've had over 500, some say, as high as 750 wounded, and Americans are paying for this every day in their daily lives. It's really extraordinary when you think about it. Americans were already paying an additional $1,100 per average family as a result of Donald Trump's tariffs. Now on top of that,

the Iraq, the excuse me, the Iran War, is costing American families on average another $1,200. And when you look at what's happening to prices of gas at the pump, up over 38% diesel fuel up 50%, and then you add in the direct cost to the American taxpayer in terms of the defense budget, over $100 billion already spent, they're asking for another $73 billion. This is money that could be used to lower housing costs, provide health care support, lower the cost of food and

and everyday necessities. And it's all going to a war which was ill-conceived in the first place, had no clear objectives, has been an object strategic failure and an extremely expensive one.

Yeah, and I always emphasize to my audience when I make this next point first, we should never have

been in this catastrophic war in the first place. Then I make the next point, which is observing the execution of the war and the idea that the U.S. was a superpower that could project strength, just seeing how the war was executed appears to have been done on all aspects, also just in a catastrophic way, from the execution of it, from day one, slaughtering little school girls in

“menab, and that's what gets a lot of attention, but there was also the mayor, a volleyball,”

a hall where little girls were playing volleyball, and that was even to this day, still being covered up by the Trump regime, but then running out of munitions, as well, running out of the interceptors, running out of the fads, the way our interceptors were even being used at the time to shoot down

drones, where we'd be using $5 million, $11 million missiles in batches of two, to strike down

a $50,000 or $200,000 shy had thrown, and you're looking at it and you're just saying, what is this? What are we even doing? There's that aspect of it too, from your assessment, and from all of the experience you have, what were you seeing there with, just the execution of this war? Well, all of the consequences you've described are absolutely accurate, and I would add that on top of the enormous depletion of our munitions to dangerously low level that has left

our forces in the region vulnerable, but also leaves our allies and our interests in Europe and Asia vulnerable. Our bases in the Middle East have been largely a damage to the extent that they're not habitable. We have had to walk away to a large extent from our core military bases in the Middle East, and those that remain are getting still attacked by the Iranians with relative E's, and as a result, as you said, of our loss of interceptors, which are so grossly depleted,

and we've left ourselves extremely vulnerable. But the thing Ben that you said the outset

“is one I think really needs to be emphasized. Before this war began, the world believed rightfully so,”

and that the United States was the greatest most powerful military in the world, and here we joined in a war with Israel, another extraordinarily competent military against a middle power adversary, and we have utterly failed to achieve our objectives. If the objective was regime change, that hasn't happened. If the objective was to end somehow by the use of force around nuclear program, that hasn't happened. We are status quo ante on that while their Navy and Air Force have

program. Well, yeah, we probably knocked out a lot of their missiles, but they have been able to reconstitute their launchers and to continue using their missiles, their drone capabilities. They now control the state of the state of Hormuz, and are using that control in a way that is detrimental not only to our interests, our economy, our allies in the region, but to the entire global economy. We have in effect given a ran through this conflict another nuclear weapon in the form of its

control of the state of Hormuz, and this is one they are prepared to use. They never had a

actual nuclear weapon previously. They still don't, but they have the wear with all and the knowledge and the stockpiles to build to one. And as a result of this war, if you're looking at this from the Iranian perspective, whereas before they were happy to be on the cusp of a nuclear weapon, from their vantage point, they may well have assessed by now that it is in their interest to race to get to one, so that in the future they're not vulnerable in the way to attack that they have

“suffered in the last six months. You know, I remember once upon a time you'd have these characters”

in armed conflict like the Baghdad bobs who would be so outrageous in their propaganda, it became

almost a punchline on SNL and in movies here in the United States, or there would be movies like the dictator, or whatever these movies were that would mock the behavior of the kind of Kim Jong-un style authoritarian abroad. Watching every day Donald Trump's behavior posting means of himself as a pirate boarding Iranian ships, or these bizarre memes that he posts of himself saying, like my ship now, my boat now, and just the behavior. And then the barrage of lies, just every

single day, every sound utterance, syllable, is like a lie about it. And it's so easily disprovable

what he said, but they keep on going. They have certain reporters that they utilize who push

this stuff out every day. People aren't buying it, but it just to me has just not as not a political

“way. It just it pains me because it just makes me feel like weakened, despite the fact that I think”

that, you know, Trump's the worst person to be anywhere near the overall office, he's still the commander and chief. I don't like that. It's just the reality. So if you had someone in that position, though, you're like, "Do just behave like a grownup." Like, "Why are you doing this?" And Iran, I believe, is ceasing the initiative. And they're talking and behaving publicly. We could say what's going on behind the scenes, but projecting to a geopolitical community, the type of rhetoric

of, let's get together, world uniting, you know, multilateralism that we used to use, and Trump speaking the way we used to say that the other side used to behave. Well, rhetoric aside, and memes aside, and I don't dispute that they are childish and grotesque, often laughable, and make him look like a laughing stock, sadly, which is very detrimental because, as you mentioned, he is our commander and chief.

“But I also think you have to add to that the repeated extraordinary threats of, you know,”

inflicting World War II style catastrophic damage on Iran only to walk them back and rinse and repeat. I mean, the bluster, the threats, the lies, of course, they're all horrible, and they all serve to undermine the perception and the reality of American power globally. So when you take the failures that I described in terms of the execution of this conflict, this war and our inability would achieve any of the varying objectives that have been stated. The world is looking at this and

seeing the United States and Israel throwing the military kitchens sink at Iran and failing. And if you're in China or Russia, sadly, they may look at that and see themselves as strengthened and emboldened and questioned or willingness and ability to use force when necessary when it directly serves our national interests or the national defense. In the Asia theater or the European theater, so it's more than the lives and the bluster and the memes and the threats. It's the real

perception of a weakened American deterrence and calling into to question the credibility of our

more effective than the actual use of force. And the ramifications of that, I think we will be

“living with for quite a while. Yeah, talk to us about that because, you know, as a national”

security adviser, as an ambassador to the United Nations, every word when the U.S. speaks, especially at the presidential level, but certainly at the national security adviser level, at the defense

secretary, you know, at these positions, how we speak, we would always kind of carry through. If you're

going to make a post and make a threat and say, we're going to do this on this date, we would do it, you know, or there would be some explanation about why we didn't, but the fact that to your point there's this Ponzi scheme approach now over the threats, it's going to be on this day, demolish, we're going to destroy you, it's going to be over. Then the day happens and then he announces a fake deal that Iran and nobody else in the world even knows what he's talking. Actually, we did

a deal, we're going to, I mean, it's just the damage that that does could be worse than almost

anything we, you know, that that may be out there. I mean, that is a death by a thousand strikes

on the United States credibility. Absolutely. And while these threats were horrific and many of them, if executed, would have entailed the commission of serious war crimes. Obviously, nobody wanted to see any of that happen, but the bluster, the threats and the walkbacks in rapid succession, as a matter of predictable course, is really damaging to our credibility. And, frankly, on the flip side, you know, when we do make a commitment, when we do make a deal,

whether it was the original Iran nuclear deal, whether it was the US Canada Mexico trade agreement,

or many other commitments we've made, this president, even when there are his own deals, his own

commitments as in the US MCA, he's willing to turn around and blow them up. And so, if you're an adversary or an ally, trying to assess whether, you know, if you make a deal, if you get an agreement with the United States that it's worth the paper, it's written on, you really have to question it. And that too is enormously damaging to our standing or our security and our credibility. Yeah, and Prime Minister

“Carney essentially said that, you know, you really can't even do a deal with these people. And I think”

it was Warren Buffett who said you can't do a good deal with bad people. The Premier of Manitoba Wobb can you echo that, and that seems to be the sentiment in Canada. Like, what kind of deal can you do at the United States now? We did Kusba, he tore that apart, and look at the behavior of them even right now after the weekend where we learned all about, you know, and this is Donald Trump's own admission, the bad faith tactics of the U.S. tried to change the terms Trump said, yeah,

I did it when he was asked by CNN, but then even the behavior afterwards in a lake Ontario to, you know, lake America. I mean, it's all ridiculous stuff, but it speaks to how could you even work with these people? How do you, how do you have a rational conversation? And when you turn on Fox or you turn on other networks, and you hear what the maga people are saying, if we just keep on forcing ourselves onto them, if we just do this, they will back down, and they will say, I submit.

And that seems to be the approach to everything. If we just keep on attacking and behaving this way,

“other people will eventually roll over and say, I guess I give up. I mean, but that's what they”

seem to be suggesting. Yeah, but countries that have a strong sense of national interest in national sovereignty and pride, whether China or Canada are not going to take it lying down. They're willing to endure pain to maintain their independence and their sovereignty and their stability. And, you know, Donald Trump doesn't understand the concept of national interest. I think in large part, because for him, the national interest is to a great extent self-interest, but most

countries operate on the perspective of national interest. And we're willing to do what it takes to secure their national interest, even if it means enduring tariffs from the United States or in the case of Iran, a relentless bombing campaign, back to the Canadian situation, though. I think, you know, people underestimate the Canadians resolve and anger and determination

But the real victims of this in the United States are you and I and American consumers across the board, because these tariffs are taxes on the American consumer. And as I mentioned earlier, tariffs in general have already cost the average American family 1100 additional dollars a year. And that's going to go up as the tariffs go up. And, you know, it accomplishes nothing. Canada's not going to bend. They are our friends. They are our allies. They have been our closest partner.

It's the longest peaceful border in the world. And Donald Trump is trying to turn it into an adversary. And I'm afraid he's well on his way. Canada, also attacking NATO countries and, you know,

“I think a reporter asks them the other day, why are you attacking our allies? And why are you”

hoisting up the adversaries? And his response was to say, you know, Xi Jinping is going to be

showing up to the White House in September. And whenever I'm with him, we always talk about,

we always talk about how Canada is the most difficult person, the most difficult country to deal with. And so even in answering the question, he answered his own state of mind about what's going on. But like Canada has a plan. I mean, Canada has its own plan now with EU and the middle powers united. China has a plan. I mean, we see the bricks block. And we see the Shanghai cooperation organization, meaning that's going to be taking place. The bricks that's going to be taking place

soon as well. And then you have Trump out there. Again, there's, there's also is no plan and no strategy. It seems other than to suck up to the authoritarianists who see him for what he is.

“I believe as as weak while we alienate our allies who are actually the strong powers in a post-world”

or two architecture that we built. And we're ripping it apart under Trump. Yeah, it's America alone.

And America alone will always be weaker than America with committed, reliable friends and allies.

And when you push them away, when you engage in threats and economic warfare against them, whether it's Canada or Denmark or the larger European NATO allies, it comes back to haunt you because trust has been broken. And trust is a very, very difficult thing to rebuild. Where do you see things right now? I often talk about on the show, post-World War II architecture, being ripped apart, in fast-forward by Donald Trump right now every day. Yes, I see some well-intentioned

NATO commanders and people, Grinco, which I highlight a lot in Europe, and other people who seem to be doing everything they can to hold on with these links. And I watch their press conferences and they dodge the questions about what the commander and chief is actually saying while they're doing what they can do, I suppose. But it just, it doesn't feel like it hasn't been labeled as such yet, but it just doesn't feel like that architecture exists. I mean, maybe in a future text, but, you know,

you know, it just, it seems over. It seems done. It seems lost right now, and it seems irreparable. And I hate to say that, but it just, it seems like it's a different world situation right now,

“and everywhere. How do you see it right now? Well, I think it's definitely understrain,”

and I'm not prepared to say it's irreparable quite yet, but it could become that, and we may be closer than we think. What worries me most, as we've been discussing, is the extraordinary damage that we are doing to our alliances and partnerships upon which American Security has rested, very successfully since the end of World War II. Whether in Asia,

with Japan, South Korea, Australia, and others, those are critical allies, and what are we doing?

We're pulling the rug out from under the South Koreans and our annual military exercises and presidents, making nice with his love letter counterpart Kim Jong-un. Whether it's Europe, where we already see the Russians engaging in efforts at hybrid conflict, trying to test the boundaries of NATO's determination, and Ukraine, which has valiantly, and to a large extent, effectively held off the worst of the Russian advances is now getting pummeled on a nightly basis,

provide. And so we are leaving our partners and allies high and dry, our adversaries are taking note,

“and they're sort of rubbing their hands and glee accordingly. This puts us in a very difficult”

situation, and we may find ourselves facing the threat of our biggest adversaries trying to see how far they can get with an administration in Washington that is alienated our allies and seems to naively want to cozy up to our adversaries who are not interested in a reciprocal kind of relationship. One other topic ambassador I want to hit on as well is our top military generals

have seemed to be pushed out. I mean, whether it's at the chairman of the joint chiefs level at

CQ Brown Jr., whether it is the army chief of staff, Randy George, whether it was one of our top commanders in Europe, Christopher Donnu, a lot of their team. She can make a lot of operations, Lisa Franke, yeah. The list goes on and on. The list goes on and on and then also this idea of we need 1920 to 1940 style battleships, and that we should spend hundreds of billions of dollars there versus assess the way warfare actually looks like in 2026 with drones and interceptors.

Talk to us about that because in the daily news cycle, game-ified politics rules the day,

but I say focus on what's happening behind the scenes because all of this is the most important

“stuff that's not getting a lot of coverage. Well, I think you're right to focus on this Ben.”

There are reasons to be deeply concerned about what's going on under the hood within our armed forces. The hexaf purges of our most experienced capable and talented flag officers, generals, and admirals in the like is really horrific. He is casting out people who are supremely highly qualified, some seemingly on the basis of race, where the fact that they may be women, where the fact that they have executed the policies and the orders of prior administrations,

or they just aren't bought into the priorities and the excesses of the Pentagon under Pete Hexaf. All of these people are being purged and we have half the number of army four stars in position than we had just a year ago. And these gaps are not being filled. Meanwhile, we've talked about the munitions shortages, the damage to our bases, but the damage to morale and discipline and to the expectation that if you are a high quality

performer, regardless of your race or your gender or your religion or your perspectives, if you adhere to the Constitution and you do your job well, that you will be denied promotion or forced out is going to lead to people choosing to leave the service. It's going to affect recruiting as well as retention and it's going to mean that our long historical tradition of an apolitical

“military is going to be eroded and I think the damage is frankly generational and then you add to it”

that we seem to have this retro concept of the kinds of munitions and hardware that we need. You know, spending billions and billions of dollars to take our, you know, our naval fleet back to, you know, a bygone time at our aircraft carriers back to a time before that the latest technology spending money to take us back makes no sense whatsoever. And meanwhile, the part of the army that was, you know, most focused on the warfare, the future drone warfare and how to utilize that

effectively and responsibly as we've seen done in other theaters, those leaders that unit was dismantled by the army leadership, and the new army leadership, the headset, hand picked army leadership, and we are now not preparing for the wars of the future to the extent that we should. We're sort of focused on some retro, you know, fantasy world that that's long since passed. And so the quality of the leadership is of grave concern to me. It starts at the top

the ranks. It sends a horrible message to the men and women who are sacrificing their families,

their time, their commitment, their, in some cases, their lives to serve the constitution, not an individual president. And it's corrupting an institution that we all have to rely on.

“Yeah, I mean, you may nature and how history repeats itself. I think it's just something we have to”

we have to stay. I mean, if you think about World War II, one of the issues when you do a post-mortem, there's a lot of issues. But when you think about Japan and World War II, the focus on Bushito, the warrior ethos in certain areas where it was, you know, what was it adapting to certain modern

technologies. And you have, like, you have headset basically doing an American version. We got

to go back to the warrior ethos and testosterone. And it's like, okay, but like, you also want to focus on what's modern warfare, technology and what's happening. And, you know, and I saw a general from NORAD recently give a speech at a convention where he said, we don't have the ability in the United States to protect the homeland from drones. So if drones were to hit us here, we don't have things that would stop at all. Like, we just, we haven't prepared for that. And it's like,

I don't know, maybe that's something that we think about anyway. Before we go, anything else

“that's on your mind. I mean, it's important that people get to hear from you. Right now,”

I know it's a broad question. It was a bad record. There's a lot of my mind. And we would be here.

Tell everybody the inside of your mind. But before we go, I mean, I wanted to focus on Iran. I wanted to focus on alliances. I wanted to focus on, you know, the US security umbrella weakening, you know, we see things like the mecca packed forming in the Middle East right now with Pakistan Saudi Arabia and Turkey to replace what used to be a US security umbrella. We see South Korea's foreign minister meeting with Xi Jinping and meeting with Wang Yi over there. And the

types of stuff that you and former President Obama were working on in Asia and the pivot there. I mean, has been kind of thrown out the wind to hope by Trump. And so, you know, it's, it must be very hard when you and others have very methodically planned and saw where things were heading to see somebody just to destroy it. I mean, or work hard to destroy very methodical thinking with this. It is hard to watch, but the reason it's so hard to watch Ben is not because, you know,

one might be frustrated. The things that I and others worked hard on have been undone. It's that we are now weaker. We are now more vulnerable. And our national security has been undermined by this combination of factors that we've been discussing, you know, eroding our alliances, making enemies out of allies, not investing in the personnel and the hardware that we need to be cutting edge military long into the future. The threats, the bluster, the damage to our

credibility and the message that we have sent to our adversaries, particularly Russia and China, about our resolve, about our strength, about our military efficacy and about our readiness and willingness to stand up in the event of aggression. And they are now stronger sadly vis-a-vis us in that

“war of perception. And I think particularly, I mean, Russia's bogged down to a large extent in Ukraine,”

but it's still, you know, probing and testing in Europe. It may be tempted to take advantage of this moment while we're very focused on the Middle East. And I worry much more even about China, who has been clear in its ambitions vis-a-vis Taiwan and the South China Sea, and rather than, you know, maximizing our deterrents and making clear that we have very strong red lines that we'll adhere to. We've pulled, you know, the only aircraft carrier out of Asia. We've undermined our partnership with South

Korea. And we are giving every reason to question whether we're ready if the Chinese were to test us. I'll try to do one quick pivot for the audience. And because this is what you said before, though, which is when I said, it feels irreparable sometimes, but you said it could be, but it's not irreparable right now. And it's close to being irreparable. So I, within that Delta, you see some

even a new administration, you know, he handed this, when you know also the other side's going to blame all these issues on them, too. And the arsonist are going to say, you did it, you screwed it up, you know, we've seen a movement. We've been to that movie multiple times, sadly, Ben, but look,

a reprobile is a very, very strong word. That means never. And I don't believe that.

“I think it's going to be difficult. I think to build back trust to restore credibility and deterrence,”

those are very hard things to do, whether things that we must do, that we have the capability to do, and with strong and principal leadership that is focused on the national interests. I think we can do that. But we're going to have to be patient, which is not our strong suit. And we're going to have to be a little bit humble because we're going to have to recognize that

that much of the damage that has been done is not going to go away quickly. Just take, for example,

the U.S. Canada Relationship. We've been talking about that for years and decades. We had a relationship of trust and partnership and mutual interest in mutual benefit.

“What we have shown in two successive Trump administrations is that that can't be relied on anymore.”

If you're sitting in Canada, whether you're a farmer or a citizen or in the Prime Minister's office, the only rational conclusion is that Canada has to reduce its reliance on the United States. It's got to diversify its economic partnerships, its security relationships. It's got to look out for its own interest and it can no longer count on a mutually beneficial and during relationship with the United States. That is a tragic reality. And a new United

States administration can't come in and say, "Okay, Canada," as it was said in the beginning of the Biden administration, America is back. Well, the Allies then asked for how long and it turned out

“not very long. And we have to understand that if you're looking at the United States from the perspective”

of Europe for Asian allies or Canada, we've proved ourselves to be very fickle and very unpredictable. And on that basis, they have to act accordingly. And so when we seek to repair this very significant damage, we have to do it with an understanding of the interests and perspectives of those that we're working with. And that's the thing that's been completely absent from the assessment of the Trump administration. They think that power alone and brute force alone

will cause adversaries and allies to submit. And they don't take into account the extent to which allies and adversaries have their own interests, which they are determined to secure and adhere to. Ambassador Rice, I want to thank you for your time. This has been a major priority for me and this network to be focusing on international affairs. We launch might as Canada. We cover on a daily basis kind of this changing world dynamic. And so when I get to have you on here and share your perspective

and your experience, I lose track of time. And we went a little longer than I told you it was going to be, but it's an honor to have you on. We appreciate you sharing with us your perspectives and all

of this thing. Thank you, Ben. It's always good to talk to you. Take care.

Ambassador Rice, everybody. Everybody hit subscribe. Let's get to 7 million subscribers. Before you go, our book WTF America is available for pre-order now. It's the story of how we got here and how we fight our way back. To pre-order, scan the QR code or click the link in the description. Let's do this. (upbeat music)