114. Why Trump Won’t Take On Putin

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Welcome to the Rest is Politics US.

I'm Catty.

In Washington, I'm so glad I'm not in New York for UN week.

I feel bad for you, Anthony, having to to sit through UN traffic.

It is the worst week to be in New York, always, every year.

I'm in New York, Addie, but my escalator works.

You know, when I get on the escalator, it goes right up to the top.

You see that?

Who pulled the plug on that escalator?

That's what I want to know.

But look, can I just say...

Melania handled it perfectly.

What do you do when an escalator breaks down?

You just carry on walking, which is exactly what she did, right?

Well, he was huffing and puffing.

Did you see him huffing and puffing at the end of it?

He was like...

And then he had a complaint to the UN people.

At least I'm in halfway decent shape.

But I texted one of the Middle East ambassadors I'm very close friends with, and I said, you know, the rumor has it that you unplugged the escalator.

He Hody wrote back, he says, well, the rumor has it that you shut off the teleprompter.

I mean, the poor guy, they were definitely doing a number on him.

To quote Trump and the way he talks in Queen's language, they were definitely doing a number on him.

And they were mocking him through machinery, caddy cat.

So, but anyway, he gave the ridiculous, embarrassing speech.

Now he's putting the wall of shame together.

America's finest moment, the shining city on the hill came to New York.

That was fun.

We're going to talk about Ukraine and that UN barn burner of a speech in just a second.

I want to talk about shallow things for a second, just because

I'm a shallow human being, okay?

I love shallow things.

He's got a glitter up the entire White House.

This beautiful columned walkway

back into the residence.

He's putting pictures of the people.

The Rose Garden is now a patio.

He turned the Rose Garden into a patio.

It's his quote-unquote club.

But now he's got pictures of everybody.

And then the Joe Biden picture is the auto-pen.

All right, so now he's a ball buster.

I'll give him credit for the ball busting, but it so cheapens the institution of the presidency.

He's literally made a mockery of all of these things that we once held sacred, Katie.

And by the way, that's going to make it harder to govern on a going forward basis because no one's taking anybody seriously anymore and no one's giving anybody the level of respect that we used to give people okay so i'm off my shallowness but one part of me was like i was laughing it's a little hilarious that he's that big of a ball buster joe biden with the auto pen but the other part of me is dude you really have screwed us up you really hurt the place you know actually there is a segue there a very nice television segue which is that you texted me last night to say you wanted to talk talk about the economy because you feel that the American economy is going, I'm not going to say the word you used, but is going, what was it?

I never, I don't even know that word.

I've never even, that must be another Queen's thing.

You said it's going to the what?

You texted me to say, let's talk about the economy.

Memory doesn't go back there.

The reason why I'm looking it up, I'm ready to say something that's probably inappropriate, so I got to look up what I said to you.

Okay, you said it's going to the shitters.

Yes, that's what I said.

It's hitting the shitter.

Yeah, I don't really f sound like anyway.

I think what you meant is the shit's hitting the fan, but that's kind of

meaning that they're going into the getting flushed.

The economy's about to get flushed.

Anyway, I want to hear what

your take on that.

And I had a couple of interesting conversations, actually, both before and after you sent me that text about the U.S.

economy.

And I think it all sort of ties together.

There's the short-term economy, there's the issue of inflation and tariffs, there's the issue of employment, there's, of course, the markets, there's AI boom happening, and then kind of at the under level, and this is what you were just talking about, is the direction of the country in terms of rule of law, fiscal responsibility,

protections of free speech, what we've called over office capitalism, and what does that do to undermine America long term?

You know, we're even going to talk about kind of the erosion of alliances and

allies' feelings towards America more generally.

And what does that do long term to the prospects for America's strength as a global leader?

And there's two slightly separate things, but I think you've just tied them beautifully, as you always do together.

But tell me why you texted me to say

we need to talk about the economy because you're feeling bad about it.

Well, because I want to give people a heads up because I've been doing this for 37 years and I'm looking at the data.

So when you're sitting on a Wall Street trading desk and you have an economic dashboard before you, you can see the data weakening.

You can see the unemployment data weakening.

You can see the growth weakening.

And you can see the capital allocation uncertainty that's going on for businesses large and small because they're trying to figure out what to do.

So I'm eating these tariffs right now.

And so I can't hire that incremental employee.

I'm eating the tariff so I can't build that plant or put that factory somewhere because I'm trying to hold the cost down.

I was with the CEO of a luxury organization.

I want to give up the name because it'll probably hurt them, but they said to me, I can't raise the prices.

I said, well, why can't you raise the prices?

He said, well, once I raise the prices, if the tariffs come off, I can't reduce the prices on this luxury item.

So I've got to,

and I understand the elasticity of the price points, meaning if I price it too high, Caddy, you're not going to buy it from me.

And if I price it high and then I lower it, then it looks like I cheapened the luxury good.

So So suddenly you mean that kind of

super expensive handbag that was costing $1,000 is now costing $700.

And me being a kind of shallow consumer is going to say, hold on a second.

Are they using less good leather?

Or is it now not as cool as it was?

Exactly.

It hasn't got the cachet.

Right.

So therefore, I'm holding the lid on prices because of the tariffs.

But the flip side is now I can't do strategic things that I was thinking about doing for my company.

And this is pervading everywhere.

And there's something else that's happened apropos to your last few statements the system is totally broken and we lived in denial about the breakage of the system but one thing Tony Trump has done for all of us he's woken us all up and said wow this thing is really broken they're gonna shut the government down Okay, the Democrats have no cards.

Trump canceled the meeting, which is evidence that they have no cards, the budget meeting.

And the Democrats are going to huff and puff and shut the government down.

Then they're eventually going to get blamed for shutting the government down.

And so they're going to reopen the government.

Markets are weakening on that.

Unemployment is going to get a little bit shakier.

All of this stuff is happening at the same time.

And Trump wants the Fed to cut rates, but he's also looking at these numbers and saying there's still a lot of systemic inflation in the mix, so I can't overly cut rates.

Here's the last bomb I'm going to drop, and then you can react to it.

I believe that the Supreme Court is going to rule against Trump on these tariffs.

That is not in the marketplace right now.

Everyone's thinking, oh, the Supreme Court is just a light switch for Trump.

Everything he does something, they'll turn the lights on for him in the room.

But I don't think so, because if you look at the law and you look at the actual Constitution, the law that Donald Trump is using to flex on these tariffs doesn't have any meat to it.

It has no decipherable substance to give him the purview, to give him the authority to do this.

And that's why he lost at the district court, he lost at the appellate court.

And I believe he's going to lose.

And so this means this is a trillion dollars.

Every company will then petition the U.S.

government for the taxes, the tariffs that were paid, and they'll ask for the money back.

Okay.

And this sentiment is starting to now filter into the market.

And people are saying, whoa, he inherited a great economy.

He inherited a growing economy, burgeoning employment, lots more interconnectivity into the global system post-COVID.

And he has shocked and awed us into which will likely be a soft recession.

I don't think it's going to be a steep recession, Caddy, but we're going to go down a notch unnecessarily as a result of all this stupid decision-making.

Can I just put an alternative point of view?

Because I had assumed that that was what was happening.

And then I spoke to an economist just this morning before we were recording who said something interesting to me.

He said, look,

that is one scenario.

They have been surprised.

Economists who study America have been surprised by the degree to which companies have been willing to squeeze their profit margins in order not to pass the cost of tariffs onto consumers.

The tariffs are actually less bad than we thought they were going to be in April.

If you look at Canada and Mexico, for example, a whole host of goods that are imported into the United States are exempt from the tariffs.

So will the tariff shoe drop?

At some point, possibly, The expectation is, but it may not be as bad.

And it's mitigated by the fact that these companies have had reforms to their tax codes, which are longer term.

And so they've been able to offset some of the kind of tariff pain with these benefits from the tax reform.

So actually, companies are in a pretty good position.

And one economist also pointed out to me that you've just had this huge boom in productivity.

Now, how much of that is driven by AI growth?

How much of that is driven by job market churn, which has increased productivity because people are moving into jobs in which they're more productive?

And how much that then rescues Trump?

Because we don't know how long term that is.

We don't know what the ultimate impact on jobs is going to be of that.

AI expansion, but it's certainly happening around the country.

And Trump is fueling it because he's handing out favors to companies that he likes and that have an association with him.

So I just, I heard less short-term pessimism from economists around the U.S.

economy than I had thought that I was going to hear.

And set against that, you know, the fact that the U.S.

economy is less trade-based than other economies, Western democracies.

So maybe actually the tariffs are going to have less of an impact on inflation in the country.

And I just wanted to put that to you and whether that also rang bells to you.

Yeah.

So, I mean, listen, I'm accepting everything that you're saying, which is why I think there'll be a soft recession.

I don't see a super hard landing.

We could still pull out of it.

You know, the productivity gains should help.

But here's the thing.

If he left the Biden policies in place and he didn't disrupt the economic system with these tariffs and he didn't cause all of this refactoring of decision making, we would be doing a lot better as a global society.

The U.S.

economy would be doing a lot better and we would be printing better job numbers.

And ironically, Biden was getting something that we didn't get in a while.

We were getting better job numbers and wage growth, Caddy, without a lot of inflation.

And so that's the big thing.

You know, that's sort of the mama bear strategy.

You want wage growth without a lot of inflation.

You want productivity gains and you want to move lower and middle income disposable income up.

Tariffs do not do that.

Tariffs are regressive.

Inflation is regressive.

They hurt the lower and middle income people.

So I'm just pointing out we're heading for another fulcrum because the court said they're taking the case early.

They're going to hear the case in November.

They expect to decide the case by the end of the year.

You could be in a situation, and Trump will go crazy on this, but you could be in a situation where the court says, look, it's just not in the Constitution.

I'm sorry.

You got to go back to the Congress.

Yeah, there'll be people around Trump who might see this as a convenient off-ramp, actually.

There may be people in the economics team who would not be totally displeased if the court ruled against the tariffs.

But, Caddy, it's about due process and it's about predictability in a system.

So right now, if I'm a capital allocator putting money into the United States, I'm like, okay, can't trust the system anymore.

James Comey.

The former FBI director who could be indicted, yeah.

Yeah, so there's no evidence to indict him.

So Trump has sent out a tweet to Pam Bondi.

I want you to go after my adversaries.

They have responded and they've said, listen, the Attorney General in New York, there's no evidence to indict her on mortgage fraud.

I don't care.

I want you to go after her.

James Comey, there's no evidence to indict him.

Well, I want you to indict him.

So now we're hearing that James Comey is going to be indicted.

So what's happening in the system is what authoritarians do.

You have predictable laws, you have a predictable system.

And so, even if there's tribalism in America, even if we're mudslinging each other in America, a capital allocator or a CEO will say, okay, America is a little nuts, but you know what about America?

I can trust the court system,

I can trust the Department of Justice to not be arbitrary or capricious.

I can trust them to do the right thing.

But now, Trump owns,

and also Trump is getting free

legal advice and he's getting free legal process from the nation's largest law firm known as the Department of Justice.

You see what's happening?

And this is now starting to weigh on people, Caddy.

They're looking at this saying, hey, F this.

And look, one international economist said to me this week, is America still a safe haven or is it starting to become a Latin America style emerging economy that is based almost entirely on politics and feudalism and patronage and not on policy.

And do things like the undermining of the rule of law that you've just pointed out, that we've seen a lot of over the last week, and that has constitutional lawyers very concerned about

long-term protections, legal protections for people, does that start to make America less attractive as a safe haven for international investors?

I mean, you can run through it all, right?

The undermining of the rule of law, the undermining of free speech provisions, the patronage system of handing out favors to certain companies, picking favorites, as you've called it, picking winners amongst certain companies,

the amount of corruption that there is in the Trump family around how much money they've made.

All of this is, you know, what Bob Rubin once said to me: you don't have to worry about Hungary, you just have to worry about this becoming Latin America.

And somebody who knows Venezuela well said to me,

it doesn't explode immediately.

It's a chipping away of the system that undermines the favorable environment for businesses.

But I think you have to weigh that right against the short companies are very short-term in their thinking, the short-term tech boom that America is going through, where America is still, I don't know, where it is compared to China in terms of the AI boom at the moment, because they seem to be kind of neck and neck at the moment.

But there is a huge tech boom happening in America america at the moment and that is like sugar to investors and they're seeing that and the economy is seeing the growth from that and that's very hard for investors to turn away from even if they see the long-term you know the fiscal problems that america is going through neither democrats nor republicans are remotely interested in shoring up america's fiscal health at the moment that we haven't seen that you know since clinton really so i i think it's there's two things happening in the economy at the same time one is a kind of long-term systemic failure of america which I have long argued makes the country weaker.

But you've also got this kind of short-term sugar high

of

AI and all that AI is bringing to it to the economy in terms of manufacturing boom and AI boom.

And by the way, we still, we haven't even mentioned the H-1B visas and the kind of madness of how policy is made without any sort of process, I mean, which is an indication of what you're talking about, by the way.

Well, that would also be a terrible decision by the United States to go in that direction.

Well, and is picking favorites, you know.

Yeah.

But, but let me let me just step back again because I think it's very important.

You come to the country, they make the country very decentralized.

They're worried about cronyism and feudalism.

They're worried about monarchial control, particularly George Washington.

They offer him to be king.

He says no.

We want this decentralized system.

So what are the founders?

Trump would have said yes, right?

Of course, of course.

He would have said yes forever.

So the founders have said, hey, we're not good at this.

We have a tendency.

We have a proclivity towards feudalism and tribalism.

Look at the rest of the world.

It always devolves into some level of cronyism around the leader.

Let's try an experiment where we put up process and procedure to prevent cronyism, to prevent a lack of meritocracy.

And let's see if we can experiment where they've got this huge flat system.

So guys like Anthony Scaramucci can start out with no money and let's see what they can do in a system of aspiration.

But now we've got a dude that's creeped into the system that wants to break the system.

And he's got willing dudes that wrote Project 2025 that have said, hey, this is how you could break this system.

And so he's trying to break the system.

And so you're sitting there, and I'm going to answer your question because you asked a really good question.

Is the system now broken?

Should we now not trust America?

And the question is, who's the next leader after Donald Trump?

Because let me tell you something.

He's put a playbook together.

If I'm the Vance family head or I'm the newsome family head, I could say, whoa, I could get the presidency, make $5 billion for myself.

Well, even if you didn't make the $5 billion, even if you weren't personally corrupt, you'd be a dummy to think, okay, well, I'm going to come in and I'm going to devolve all of that power power back from the White House to Congress and the other branches of government, right?

I mean, do you see somebody coming into the White House and saying, okay, let's get back to the status quo ante?

No, worse, better than that.

You would need somebody to come into the White House and say, okay, we're going back to the Federalist Papers and we're going to revise the Federalist papers, which are 240 years old.

We're going to revise them, Caddy Kaye, and we are going to create a better structure to prevent real checks and balances.

Correct.

And we're going to further decentralize.

And oh, by the way, the Justice Department, which has now become the Trump family law firm, we've got to figure out a way to get that out of the executive branch now because it's no longer impartial.

Okay.

And so that's not going to happen.

So

that's going to weaken the flow of capital into America at a time when we don't want that.

Okay, so we're weakening the flow of capital into America, but we are boosting the flow of capital into Argentina.

Who is the happiest man on the planet this week?

Javier Mille of Argentina, because Scott Besant, who is Wall Street buddies with Argentina's finance minister and the Trump administration have just decided that they cannot let Argentina fail because they cannot have an anti-woke, anti-leftist,

pro-populist, pro-MAGA government in Latin America fail.

And so Scott Bessett has said America will do what it takes, including investing tens of billions of dollars into Argentina to make it happen.

Even though Brazil, which is a much bigger economy, three times the economy of Argentina, and much more systemically important to America, they have imposed 50% tariffs and said to Brazil, you go and cozy up to China effectively, because we're no longer your friend anymore.

I thought that was stunning.

And amidst all the other news, of course, because there's always so much crazy news happening in Washington that almost got overlooked.

But I thought it was a real indication of what we've just been talking about, right?

I mean, that economic policy is not based on sound policy at the moment, or you can't trust it to be based on sound policy.

I mean,

that's the feudalism.

That's the feudalism that you're describing.

But I was in Rio de Janeiro last week, and I was asked in a small conversation.

As one is, Anthony, were you dancing on the beach, I hope?

No, unfortunately, no.

I mean, I didn't even get to the beach.

It was in the air conditioned conference room, but I was asked to do a breakout session with a group of Argentinian executives.

The first question they asked me was, what will the U.S.

do related to this $26 billion bullet that we're facing here in Argentina?

And I said to them, the U.S.

is going to step in because Millay is part of the access of populism.

And so Donald Trump, they'll call him and say, what do you want us to do?

And he'll help the guy out.

Well, how much is it?

$20 billion?

Okay, that's a rounding era.

Go help the guy out.

I want to send a message to people that if you're Bolsonaro, I want to help you.

If you're Lula, I want to hurt you.

If you're Malay, I want to help you.

If you're Orban, I want to help you.

Okay.

If you're Nigel Farage, I want to help you.

Okay, if you're Kier Stormer, you can kiss my ass at 10 Downing Street.

You can have the king wash my backside at Windsor Castle, and I'm still going to shit on your country in my UN speech because that's me.

That's how I operate.

The more you kiss my ass, the more I'm laughing inside at you.

And then what I'm going to do is do my very best to humiliate you.

So I've been saying that on this program for a year.

This is why I love Carney because Carney's like, hey, sorry, man.

I'm just not.

I'm just not doing that.

And by the way, I got a lot of natural resources in this country, and I've got a willing group of citizens.

And last time I checked, Caddy, one of my favorite places in the world, Disneyland, attendance is way down at Disney World in Orlando.

But it's way down, Caddy, because the Canadians are Canadians are flipping the bird to Florida.

Okay, 22% drop in tourism.

And, you know, I went on a cruise ship.

I got my driver.

It's been my driver for five years.

I come off the plane.

I'm putting my luggage in there.

I said, how's everything going?

Terribly.

I said, well, what do you mean terribly?

He said, well, there's no one to come in here anymore.

So Trump has done a masterful job of alienating the people that we would like to be our friends, and he wants to support the people that he thinks are in the philosophical camp of him.

And this is another great frustration for the American people.

Yeah, even if it doesn't make economic sense to do so.

And when Scott Besson says that Argentina is systemically critical to the United States, it just isn't true.

I think we export almost nothing to Argentina.

We're like one-eighth of all of their imports or something.

So it's just not the case.

Remember that Brazil is more important to America than Argentina.

It's a much more important economy.

And he's prepared to use economic tools for political retribution.

It's not the best way to run an economy.

Anyway,

clearly, we needed to get that off our chest this week.

So we're going to take a quick break and then come back and talk about that.

amazing speech at the United Nations and Ukraine and whether anything has actually changed because I'm kind of skeptical.

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Welcome back, everybody.

We mentioned that it's been UN week

and lots of news coming out of UN week, but particularly extraordinary speech that Donald Trump gave.

telling Western allies that their countries are going to hell and that climate change is the biggest con ever.

I think what was more significant, possibly, was the conversations around Ukraine and NATO this week.

I just was wondering what you thought when you heard Donald Trump, which even Zelensky seemed to be surprised about, saying that Ukraine could now win back all of its territory and possibly even more, and that Russia is a paper tiger and seemed to be kind of lauding the bravery of the Ukrainians, including Zelensky.

Are we looking at a big change on Ukraine and Russia, Anthony?

Or not so much?

Not for Donald Trump.

We're not looking for a big change from Donald Trump.

What we're looking at is a meek man, a beta man with yellowy orange hair that is very afraid of Vladimir Putin.

And so what we're doing is we're going to have mild criticisms of Vladimir Putin, and we're going to have a meek response since August 15th when we had the Alaskan summit to Vladimir Putin.

But when I'm in the room with Keith Kellogg, or I'm in the room with Ambassador Whitaker, Keith Kellogg, special envoy to the Ukraine, Ambassador Whitaker, the ambassador to NATO, and I'm in the room with them, and I'm in the room with my intelligence service, they're telling me,

wow, they're getting their asses kicked, the Russians, and wow, their economy is dilapidating.

And oh, by the way, we're picking up intercepts from people in Putin's inner circle that are saying this is really hurting us now.

We're seeing massive inflation.

We're seeing lots of unemployment.

We could have a potential riot.

Oh, last time I checked, Vladster, you killed one million Russians.

And so

the reserves of the Ukrainians, you see, when you fight brother against brother, Okay, just like we did in the Civil War, they're going to fight to the death, Gaddy.

They're going to fight to the end.

So the Ukrainians are not budging.

They're getting still reasonably well supplied by the Europeans and NATO.

And so Trump is getting the heads up.

And Trump is a momentum trader, to steal a phrase from Wall Street.

Holy shit, the momentum is going against the Russians.

So you know what I have to do?

I have to let people know that.

So I don't sound like I'm on the wrong side of this, but trust me, he will do, despite the rhetoric at the UN this week, he's going to do absolutely nothing.

to hurt Vladimir Putin or to help Vlodomor Zelensky.

He said, he's not going to do anything because he's afraid of Vladimir Putin and Putin's got something on him.

I was with a guy yesterday, came into my office.

He's here with a nation.

The leader of the nation is speaking at the UN.

He walks into my office and blah, blah, blah.

I looked at him.

I said, what does Putin have on

Trump?

And he says, oh, no, no, no, nothing.

Blah, blah, blah, blah.

I said, dude, we're going to have a real conversation or not, okay?

Because

you know they got something on on them.

And I know they got something on them.

You don't want to tell me what it is.

I'm okay with it.

But don't come to my office and bullshit me.

Because Trump has power, Caddy.

He's still running the biggest military in the world.

He still has the most advanced military technology.

He could have flexed Vladimir Putin out of power, but he's afraid of him.

Okay, because right now he's got him.

Okay, this is the same thing that Ash Carter said before he died.

Wow.

I didn't realize how antiquated the Russian military was.

Wow.

Yes, they're packed with nuclear arms, which they're never going to use, but they've got a weak system, and we could cut right through them.

And to quote Ash Carter,

if NATO wanted to, they could march on Moscow fairly easily.

Okay, of course, they would probably then use the bomb.

But you get the point I'm trying to make.

This is not

going.

the way NATO thinks it's going to go or the Ukraine thinks it's going to go based on Trump's rhetoric.

He's not flipping.

And I noticed today all of his buddies on CNN, all their commentators are beating the drum.

Oh, see, Trump is flipping.

Trump is flipping.

They've got their little drumsticks out.

But he's not flipping.

He's a very meek guy.

He's a very meek guy.

And compared to Vladimir Putin, he is a beta male.

A paper tiger, as he would say it.

Look, there's a whole load of people in the Republican Party that would like America to be more robust, would like stronger sanctions, which is why you've got 85 senators signing on to a bill in the Senate from both parties, obviously, to put secondary sanctions against Russia and really try to tackle the Russian economy and those flows of oil.

But they all say, I've had them say to me, you can't get ahead of the president.

So they're all kind of timidly waiting to see what the president does.

The phrase that's being used in Washington at the moment that I'm hearing is watch what Donald Trump spends, not what he says.

And

amid all what Trump said to Zelensky, and I think you're right, nothing changes really in any way.

He could say the next thing.

Depending on who he spoke to last, that's what he says.

But if something that didn't really get caught, get much attention recently was that Pete Hagseth, I think he's now the Secretary of War anyway, or the Secretary of Defense, let's still call him the Secretary of Defense, said that there should be spending cuts to reduce the amount of military training and American support to those vulnerable nations that border Russia.

That could be catastrophic for some of those countries.

It's certainly not the signal of America trying to oppose Russia.

And if you want to look at where the actual money is going, I think you should look at that rather than what Donald Trump said.

And he just, you know, he

spoke to Zelensky.

They had a good conversation.

So he says that.

But I don't think actually anyone in Europe or in NATO is expecting this to lead to what Zelensky really needs, which is more money, more weapons, more intelligence, more US support,

and that that isn't going to happen.

So he also needs more troops, but that he'd have to get internally.

So I actually don't think

for all it being hyped as a big change here, and I've seen them too, all of the Trump allies, and I think it's wishful thinking.

It's wishful thinking from old school Republicans who are going on television saying, yes, see, there is a sea change.

He is standing up to Russia.

He's calling Russia a paper tiger.

That shows that he's not in Putin's pocket and it shows that there's going to be a real shift.

Until America signs off on sending actual more armaments to Ukraine and not just getting the Europeans to buy those armaments,

I think this is Trump washing his hands of Ukraine and actually trying to find a way out, not a way to support Ukraine further.

It's the opposite of what it seems.

I total agreement with you.

And I just want to tell a quick story.

And this story took place in the late 1940s and the 1950s.

There was a very big fight over the Korean Peninsula.

And Stalin and Mao didn't like each other, but they wanted to flex communism down into the peninsula.

And a war broke out.

And the United States, MacArthur and Truman, said, hmm, we really like the free world and we have to protect the free world and we have to stand for democracies, otherwise we're going to get run over by these imperialists, these communist imperialists.

So we fought a stalemate that got negotiated into an armistice.

The war is still technically going on.

They picked the

latitude caddy and they said, this is where it's going to be.

We have a DMZ in between those.

And one side of the peninsula, the southern side of the peninsula, has been an economic miracle over the 72 years since the armistice.

And the other side has been a cultural wasteland where you can't even find it on Google Map.

And this was the power and the prowess of the United States.

And this was in concert with the UN.

And this was the United States sending a message to people.

We're here to help you with your liberty and your aspiration.

And now we fast forward to this situation.

We're not here to help you anymore.

We're here to enrich the Trump.

people.

We're here to enrich the Trump cronies.

We're going to be arbitrary and capricious in our administration of military aid, financial aid to places like Argentina or Brazil.

And we're going to flip upside down the apple cart that allowed you as an internationalist to fall in love with us here in America.

And so to me, I'm sorry I'm so fired up today.

I probably should take some more happy pills.

But to me, this is very, very upsetting because for America to stay strong, we need hard and soft power, Caddy.

Okay, it's not enough to have a great military.

It's enough to think that that military is going to be projecting itself benevolently.

That's why you call it the Department of Defense, Caddy, and not the Department of War.

And so that's where we are right now.

It's why you spend a tiny fraction of your budget on USAID, a fraction of your budget on Voice of America, which America can apparently no longer afford.

And so all of those programs have been cut.

You can spend 20 20 billion, as we just said, on Argentina, but you can't spend money on USAID.

And so you cede ground or spend that 20 billion on helping Ukraine stand up to Russia.

Now, I mean, it's the long-term, medium-to-long-term trajectory of America as a global superpower, I think, is what is the most interesting story of this second Trump administration.

Here's the bottom line.

Economy's weakening.

Doesn't need to be.

We could be in a huge tech boom and more global integration, lifting more people out of poverty.

The U.S.

could say to the Russians, hey, stick to your own territory, move off of Ukraine.

Whatever the Ukrainians' flaws are, whatever the problems they have with corruption in their own country, I'm not saying it's a perfect country, but we signed security agreements with them in 1994.

Leave them alone.

They gave up their nuclear weapons.

Leave them alone.

We're pushing you back.

We're going to send a signal.

Don't go flying over Estonia.

Don't send drones over Poland.

By the way, we're not pestering you in your own land.

Do whatever the hell you want there.

You got a very large land mass.

You want to destroy your people and you want to weaken them, no problem.

But these people are on our team.

Okay.

And these are the free people of the world.

And we're going to be here to help those free people.

Because you know why, Caddy?

Not only is it good karma, it's economically beneficial to the Americans and to the citizens of America, America's businesses.

But we're not going to do that.

We're not going to do that.

but we don't know the reason why yet.

But someday we're going to know, Katie.

Let's change the tone of this podcast.

On Monday, we promised you some positive news, some good news in this episode.

So we have teamed up with other podcasts to dedicate a short segment to the theme of hope, because I think we all need more of that hope at the moment.

We're going to highlight some of the areas around AI and gender equality around the world, two very hot topics at the moment, where there's actual progress happening, there is good news, and where wins are within reach.

So, let's start by talking about AI.

I had a really interesting conversation for a BBC show that I do, Anthony, with Sal Khan about the founder of the Khan Academy, the big educational online resource.

And he was talking about the kind of progress that AI is making in the field of education.

And I thought that was one area that would be interesting to talk about how AI could be used in classrooms to really help kids that are struggling.

I mean, you could imagine a world in which, yes, you still have a human teacher, but you have AI resources that can in real time say, look, you know, Anthony is struggling.

I have a daughter who is dyslexic.

And Sal Khan was saying, you could imagine a scenario in which the AI tools are being used and they will be used very soon to say, okay, it's not that this child is dumb.

And it's not that they're falling behind.

It's just they need a little bit of extra support and we can come up with the support for this child to overcome.

the kinds of problems they're having.

And they can do it in real time and they can make the classwork more interesting and fun for those children.

You could see AI, you know, taking kids on a real kind of, you know, sort of live simulated tour of ancient Rome, for example.

Anyway, I thought for all of the gloom we've heard about AI and some of the things that parents are worried about in terms of cheating, in terms of chat GPT and kids not reading, I thought it was really interesting to hear such a positive take on how AI could be used in classrooms to just make the learning experience so much more exciting and fun and tailored to individual children.

How have you, what are you hearing about AI that is bringing you some hope, Anthony?

You can definitely see a scenario where each kid almost has like an Alexa sitting next to them where they can ask questions, or maybe it's an Alexa with a liquid screen where the screen can pop up and explain to the kid what they need to understand or maybe give them a visual.

Remember, if you have dyslexia and my friend Richard Branson obviously has it, you're better visually.

So maybe you need to watch it.

That's a little name drop there, Mr.

Scaramucci.

Yeah, I like name-dropping, though.

I think if you go in the Oxford dictionary under the word name-dropping, there is a picture of me.

Okay, there's other people up there like me.

Donnie Deutsch would be in there, your buddy Donnie.

You know,

there's a few of us that there's a few of us that grew up with various.

There are name-dropping.

Yeah.

There's a few of us that grew up with various insecurities in the outer boroughs.

Me, Donnie Deutsch, you know, etc.

We like throwing some names around.

But what Branson would tell you, because I've talked to Richard about this, Sir Richard, is that he's very visual, which is what has made him aesthetic, which has made him have a great eye for airplane design or a great eye for designing a house.

But he has to get the stuff visually.

So just imagine an AI system where they understand your problem.

You have a very high IQ, but your recticular system is just processing information differently than the rest of us.

And they can help you see and decipher the information.

I think that this is going to be revolutionary.

And I also think the Tower of Babel is going to disintegrate, Caddy.

I believe we're going to be able to walk in any neighborhood, anywhere in the world, with an ability to communicate with each other, irrespective of our languages.

We might be able to have our phone out, and I talk into the phone, and the phone says it in Spanish or says it in German or whatever it might say.

And there's a conversation going back and forth with an AI intermediary that's offering expert translation to both of us.

Think of the facility of that.

Think of the advancements that

we could lead into from that.

I'm excited for the day when this podcast is broadcast in our voices with all our dumb jokes included around the world in multiple languages.

And I think we're not far off that.

Sort of feel like that was one-sided, though.

I sort of feel like they were dumb jokes from me, but like erudite jokes from you.

I thought that was a little one-sided.

Included the name-dropping that that will come with it, too.

And doctors I've spoken to are super excited about the prospect of localized solutions in multiple languages that can bring incredibly high-quality healthcare directly to people in rural areas, to frontline workers, to patients, and that can reduce the sort of inequity in healthcare around the world.

So I think AI is very exciting.

I have concerns about the job issues, but I basically think some of the technology in education and in health and human capital is going to be great.

I also want to talk about some of the progress that I'm hopeful about for young girls and for women around the world, but particularly really for young girls.

We've seen enormous progress in maternal health care, where maternal mortality has declined by something like 40% since the beginning of this century.

More women are surviving childbirth.

More births are being attended by skilled professionals.

There's access to modern family planning.

But really exciting, I think even more than that, is how we're closing the gender gap for girls going to schools.

You've now got 50 million more girls going to school today than even

in 2015.

So that's a very short period of time.

Over the course of 10 years, you've got millions more girls going to school.

That changes their future.

It reshapes the world.

It brings talent into economies, which I think is just as important.

Fewer girls are being pushed into arranged marriages as teenagers.

So all across the board, I think girls' health is improving.

And that is a long-term, enormous net positive around the world that i'm hopeful about yes i think it's fantastic so see that look at that look at you with this buoyant optimism today i know yeah i know look you see you brought you brought the doom and gloom i brought the sunshine no i listen i'm generally optimistic i just see stuff happening that will affect us in a negative way that are just not necessary.

We have unnecessary negative things that are happening due to bad policy.

Yeah, because there's so much we could be hopeful, I think, about at the moment, given how much technological advances societies are making for their people.

Talking of hope, Anthony, somebody that had an awful lot of hope about America and the state of the world and his life more generally is, of course, Ronald Reagan.

And we've been exploring his life and his legacy in a mini-series, which is available to our founding members.

The fourth episode of that miniseries comes out this week.

So, Caddy, America changes, America is adaptive.

The reason why I think you and I wanted to bring up Reagan at this moment in time is so that we could contrast and compare what America was like on the right 40 years ago compared to where we are today.

And of course, we're coming to the end of that mini-series, which I found fascinating to do.

I agree with you.

I mean, it's just been so interesting to look at some of the parallels.

The way that Reagan went into office in 1980, faced this huge economic downturn, committed himself to policies that, either because of the policies or because of the economic cycle, then led to a huge big economic upturn for him.

He wins his second term in a landslide.

Some of those parallels are there.

And I think some of the bigger questions for me that came out of that series,

which we've had so much fun doing, are, you know, what happened to the American right?

Are the seeds of the American right of division, of inequality, of people feeling left behind, of this kind of what was called then the moral majority.

Today, people might call it Christian nationalism that we're seeing on display.

You know, how much is that the seeds of what we're seeing today in the Reagan period?

Some of it's there, some of it, of course, is different.

Reagan was far more committed to immigration.

He was much more open about American leadership and American kind of being a shining city on the hill.

He was a very different personality to Donald Trump.

But some of the kind of underlying issues of America under Reagan, I think, are what we still see today in America under Trump.

So there are parallels and differences, and I just think this was a great time to explore his presidency in the context of where we are in America today and Donald Trump, didn't you think?

And it's also a sign, Caddy, that things change.

So

if you're feeling blue about the current situation, America does change.

America is adaptive.

We could be sitting here three, five, eight years from now in a very different, perhaps even more positive situation.

Aaron Powell, Jr.: And then at the very end of the series, we asked the question, could Ronald Reagan even get elected in today's America?

And you'll have to wait for the gripping end to find out what we conclude.

But thanks for listening to that series and thanks for listening today.

And we will be back on Monday with another episode.

And we'll be back over the weekend, of course, with our founding members episode, which will be episode four of our Reagan series.

And you can head to therestispoliticsus.com to become a founding member and get all the bonus content and these these mini-series as well.

Please do enjoy that.

We'll see you guys next week.

See you next week.