136. How Trump’s Defense Doctrine Slams Europe

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Speaker 4 Hello and welcome to The Rest is Politics US with me, Katie Kay.

Speaker 1 And me, Anthony Scaramucci. I'm feeling it today, Katty, okay? I'm bringing back my Christmas t-shirt celebration, okay, starting

Speaker 1 with the Scrooge and Marley counting house. See that? Very nice.
Okay.

Speaker 4 I'm in Merida in Mexico visiting my daughter who's here for a couple of months. And there are Christmas decorations everywhere.
You would like it.

Speaker 4 The Scaramucci household would be impressed with the lights in Merida. They go full out.
There's a massive big crash in the main square with one of the wise men riding in on an elephant.

Speaker 4 Did they ride in on an elephant? Was that actually possible to come on an elephant to Palestine? Anyway.

Speaker 1 I don't know, Caddy, but for those of you that have watched the National Lampoon Christmas vacation, the Scaramucci's do channel the Griswolds, okay? You can see the house from space, Daddy.

Speaker 4 Yes, Elon Musk will be watching you when he gets there.

Speaker 1 Yes, it's very well lit.

Speaker 4 Anyway, today on the program,

Speaker 4 we are going to be diving into Trump's big national security reboot. It's called the National Security Strategy.
It's 33 pages long. I had a read of it yesterday.

Speaker 4 And it is a stunning departure in American foreign policy since the Second World War.

Speaker 4 It's not in some ways surprising that Donald Trump is rejecting post-World War II orthodoxy, but the way he's done it in this document and signed his name to it and put it down in print, I think is fascinating.

Speaker 4 And there's been extraordinary reactions from Russia and from much of Europe as well. So we're going to get into that.

Speaker 4 But the number one concern, security concern for the United States of America in the year of our Lord 2025 is...

Speaker 1 Anthony? Immigration.

Speaker 4 Immigration. The country of immigrants has decided that their biggest security concern is immigration.

Speaker 4 So we'll talk about that after the break and what it means and what American diplomats are now going to have to do around the world to make sure that this is not just an American concern, but a concern for everybody else as well.

Speaker 4 So the national security strategy will form the basis of Donald Trump's security ideology.

Speaker 4 Every president, as they come into office, produces a national security strategy that then forms what is known as the national defense strategy.

Speaker 4 There's a classified and an unclassified part to these documents. What we're seeing is the unclassified part.

Speaker 4 And what people I have spoken to, people who at a senior level have been involved in drawing up previous national security strategies say is so stunning about this one is the way that it totally reorientates America's priorities.

Speaker 4 Ever since the Second World War, we've sort of shuffled around. Europe's been a major priority for the first period after the Second World War.

Speaker 4 And then it was the Middle East and then it was Asia and those three areas of the world have shuffled around.

Speaker 4 But this document under Donald Trump 2.0 makes the Western Hemisphere, Latin America, America's main strategic security focus.

Speaker 4 And the focus is on stopping drugs coming into America and stopping immigration coming into America.

Speaker 4 But I think the most stunning part of this document is the whole scale rejection of ideology as something that

Speaker 4 underpins American security. This is not a document that is promoting democracy or pluralism or even particularly an American,

Speaker 4 America as a sort of shining city on the hill. This is a mercantilist document.
And I think in some ways that is not surprising.

Speaker 4 But what is surprising is that it's down there in black and white and that the most ferocious part of this document, the language that is the harshest, is reserved for America's traditional allies and that's Europe.

Speaker 4 And we'll get into some of that in a second.

Speaker 4 The person I spoke to had been very senior in the Pentagon, who had drawn up previous national security strategies, said to me that it was just extraordinary to see America walking away from the post-World War II international rules-based order and adopting this attitude that Europe is not an ally, really.

Speaker 4 It's a problem, more of a problem if you read this document in many ways than Russia is. So what did you think of it, Anthony?

Speaker 1 So I am proud to tell you that I read through the whole document and I must be a boring person on a Sunday, Caddy, because I took lots of notes and I'm ready for you today.

Speaker 1 I am so disappointed in that document in so many different ways.

Speaker 1 But because this podcast is about objectivity and telling people here in the United States and around the world that we have to be honest with people, this country has changed.

Speaker 1 This is not the country of 1947.

Speaker 1 This is a different country today. There's fears in the country of immigration.
There's xenophobic fears. The isolationist strand that the U.S.
has always had, Caddy, is in acceleration here in 2025.

Speaker 1 And there's no real leaders in the country that are turning the tide of that. And so

Speaker 1 if you don't mind, I'm going to give three things that I agree with in the document and three things I wish we had thought about.

Speaker 1 So the first three things I agree in the document, okay, if you want to protect the borders, I'm all about that. I understand that.
You have to have a tight border. That's every country.

Speaker 1 That doesn't mean you don't have legal immigration and a continual flow of legal immigrants, but you really can't have illegal immigrants, Caddy, because as Milton Friedman would say,

Speaker 1 You're in a welfare state. Market forces dictate that they'll come in and participate in the welfare state without paying taxes.
So that's not fair to the American people.

Speaker 1 The other thing is you've got to reindustrialize. We did make a mistake.
The end of history didn't happen. You have to reshore a lot of this stuff.
And I totally understand that.

Speaker 1 And the third thing, believe it or not, I do also believe in is having a pro-America policy related to South America.

Speaker 1 So when I say pro-America policy, this corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, I don't like the way the president's going about it, but I do think we need to strengthen our relationships with the people of South America.

Speaker 4 Remind people what the Monroe Doctrine is.

Speaker 1 Okay, this is interesting because it was the early 19th century. James Monroe wrote a policy brief that basically said, Europe, stay out of the Western Hemisphere.

Speaker 1 The United States, the ambit of power for the United States is our hemisphere.

Speaker 1 And yes, you've got colonies in South America and you've got, you know, allies in South America, but generally as it relates to war and diplomacy, this is the U.S.'s backyard.

Speaker 1 Leave us alone at your peril.

Speaker 1 Now, what's interesting when he said that, we didn't really have the naval power or the military right to project it, but it was a directionally thematic thing that I think was generally taken under advisement in Europe.

Speaker 1 And it probably, Caddy, not to get overly esoteric, but it probably prevented European theater allies from entering the civil war. I figured they looked at that and said, okay, you know what?

Speaker 1 We don't want to have a problem with whoever wins the war. You know, we don't want to have a problem and be in an adversarial situation.

Speaker 1 So the Monroe Doctrine, you're in Europe, leave us alone in our own backyard. But, Caddy, here's the problem, okay?

Speaker 1 There's the things I don't agree with. You don't have to be solitary to be sovereign.
You don't have to be America first and Europe last.

Speaker 1 Europe to me is a power multiplier for the United States. Europe to me is there's 500 million plus people.

Speaker 1 If you look at the whole Western European theater, that's places we can sell our goods, places where we can build relationships, export our culture, and protect Western liberal democracy.

Speaker 1 Last point that I want to make, and this is one that I really can't believe he's saying, is you can't take a regional, multi-power,

Speaker 1 neoclassical foreign policy approach, i.e. 1890.
You can't do it in a world like this. You're still one of the existing standing superpowers.

Speaker 1 We could say that China is challenging that, but if you really look at our two militaries, it really hasn't done that. You have to force this, Caddy.

Speaker 1 And again, I have said this to you before, but I'll say it here, then I will shut up.

Speaker 1 Go back to Thomas Hobbes and go back to the Leviathan. There's three sentences in the Leviathan.
Eisenhower always quoted them.

Speaker 1 When you have one hegemonic force that can suppress the internescent tribal conflicts around the world, you get the greatest levels of peace and the greatest levels of prosperity.

Speaker 1 And that is in America's interest. That is America first to somebody like me.
And the fact that the president wants to move to a multipolar world is dangerous. Okay, I'm done.

Speaker 1 But I just had to get all that out because I spent a lot of time on this this weekend. Look,

Speaker 4 I think all of that is true, but let's try and go through it a little bit systematically.

Speaker 4 And I do think the Europe part of this is so important and you're getting extraordinary reactions from Europe because in this document,

Speaker 4 they talk about Europe's civilizational erasure. It talks about ending the perception and preventing the reality of NATO as a perpetually perpetually expanding alliance.

Speaker 4 It talks about the risk to America if it carries on with immigration of these countries being non-majority European.

Speaker 4 I mean, interestingly, this document is kind of full of contradictions because on the one hand, the document says in the Middle East, we will no longer be the people that come in and tell you how to run your world.

Speaker 4 And, you know, if you want to carry on being autocratic monarchies, that's fine with us. Forget human rights, all of that kind of woke stuff that previous administrations had.

Speaker 4 But actually, when it comes to Europe, America is saying we can get involved.

Speaker 4 That is one of the most startling contradictions, right, in this document is that on the one hand, we're not going to get involved.

Speaker 4 But actually, when it comes to Europe, we do reserve the right to get involved and make sure that you stay European. And I guess the code there is European and more white.

Speaker 4 And we like these nationalist parties that I mean, they're actually getting involved in domestic European politics by saying we like these nationalist patriotic parties that are coming up.

Speaker 4 So what did you think of the section on Europe?

Speaker 4 And there's been a stunning reaction from Europe, by the way, about this.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but it really isn't a surprise to anybody in Europe because all of the ambassadors in Europe have been told by Trump and Rubio that they need to promote anti-immigration policy.

Speaker 4 And we'll talk about that after the break, too, the immigration stuff.

Speaker 1 Yeah, they're basically telling them that. But my question to you, Caddy, is, is the Kremlin happy? The Kremlin resists.
Are they happy with this?

Speaker 4 Okay, so this is what the Kremlin has said. I am now the Kremlin spokesperson.
Oh, I like this. I like this.

Speaker 4 In fact, I'm going to put out a statement saying this is broadly in alignment with Russia's priorities. Yeah, I think the Kremlin is making it absolutely clear that this is

Speaker 4 what they want. And one person that I spoke to over the weekend, a former general, said to me, this reads like Russian talking points.
What did you think of that?

Speaker 1 I think it's all of that. And I think this is the Trump view that we have to let people people know.
This was his view first term. This was his view in 1987.

Speaker 1 This is his view today in 2025

Speaker 1 is that we've carried people too long.

Speaker 1 People have freeloaded and looted the American society. And I'm not going to let that happen on my watch.
And I can make money off of the Russians and I can make money here and make money there.

Speaker 4 And I've said this before, Anthony, I have some sympathy with some of that, right? The idea, the document says the era era of burden sharing is now commencing and the era of America.

Speaker 4 I think it is a little condescending because it says, you know, Europe is not a bunch of children. Our allies aren't children.

Speaker 4 But I actually do think it's quite good for these countries to share some of the burden in Europe and in Asia.

Speaker 1 So, so again, as I started, I started my analysis, there are some things I agree with.

Speaker 1 You can fact-check me on this, but I believe there are 11 nations that have met of the 28 nations in NATO that have met the 2% threshold as of 2024.

Speaker 1 And so that's not fair. Okay, I think that

Speaker 1 Trump signaled that in the first term. I think Eisenhower said early on, let that go.
No problem.

Speaker 1 Let's let America be this force multiplying benefit bidder of people not spending a lot of money on their military. I don't want Germany to remilitarize.
This is all rhetoric from Eisenhower.

Speaker 1 But the world has turned, Caddy. We're now 70 years from Eisenhower, 80 years from Truman.
And so it is a different world today. And I recognize that.

Speaker 1 I would say to European leadership, guys, you don't have to go to 5%. I think that's a ridiculously high threshold and it would hurt those economies.

Speaker 1 I'd rather have those countries spend that money on innovation, venture capital spending, and things like that. But let's get to the 2%.

Speaker 1 Get the 28 countries to the 2%.

Speaker 1 Let's share the security. But you see, Trump doesn't want that because he's got buddies in the Kremlin and he's a very fearful guy of Russia and the fearful guy of whatever Russia has on him.

Speaker 1 And so all this stuff is being mandated by him. And by the way, even though Steve Miller is not technically a national security guy, That memo went through his office.
Yes.

Speaker 4 It reads like Stephen Miller.

Speaker 1 And I can guarantee you he wrote many of the passages. If you threw that memo at the chat GBT and says, who does this sound the most like? Who's writing does this sound the most like?

Speaker 1 It's say Stephen Miller.

Speaker 1 Okay, but here's where I would say, secure the border. I'm a yes on that.
Okay.

Speaker 1 Yes to legal immigration. When I hear the word immigration, Caddy, the next word that comes to mind to me is talent, workforce talent.
I want the immigrants here.

Speaker 1 I want the very poor Sergei Brin coming in poor and now worth hundreds of billions of dollars because he was the mastermind alongside of his friends like Larry Page of Google. I want that.

Speaker 1 But I'm going to say no

Speaker 1 to the xenophobic rhetoric and the nonsense of the national security effect of the Browning of Europe or the Browning of the United States. I think that that is very unfair.

Speaker 1 And I'll just finish by saying this. It's not our nation first and our allies last, guys.
You can't think like that.

Speaker 1 How on God's earth is there nobody who's a Republican thinking about running for president that doesn't get to a microphone right now and say, guys, this is not where we want to be?

Speaker 1 Where's the mature Republican that says, yes, we have to reform these institutions, no question. Yes, we have to freshen up the rules-based society, no question.

Speaker 1 But we can't go in the direction that Trump wants. This would be a disaster for us.

Speaker 4 Is there a world in which

Speaker 4 there is a sort of cynical but strategic way of thinking in the White House?

Speaker 4 And let's keep the focus on Europe for a second, because I think that's some of the most radical rhetoric in this document, where they're thinking, unless we really sound like we're going to pull the plug on Europe entirely and on Ukraine entirely, those feckless Europeans won't do anything.

Speaker 4 Because Barack Obama tried to get the Europeans to increase their defense spending.

Speaker 4 Trump won started the process by putting pressure.

Speaker 4 But, you know, when there's not a sense of urgency, the Europeans go back, the Germans go back to focusing on cars and exports and their export-led economy.

Speaker 4 And it's only very recently that Ryan Mettal has really got, you know, the political wind behind it. And there's an acceptance that Germany has to rearm.

Speaker 4 I mean, for all of the historical reasons that you say, obviously, no one wanted Germany to rearm after the Second World War.

Speaker 4 But could you be thinking in the White House, okay, we're going to sound really tough to make sure that those Europeans get the message? And there's a report out, a fascinating report out in Reuters

Speaker 4 this morning, which is saying that US officials have communicated to Europeans that they want Europe to take over the majority, all of NATO's conventional defense capabilities, everything from missiles to intelligence by 2027.

Speaker 4 I mean, there's no way Europe's going to be ready to do that. They are...
starting the process. Like you say, they are growing, but there's no way they can do that by 2027.

Speaker 4 And there are implications in this document that if Europe carries on allowing mass migration, if Europe is no longer a sort of, you know, effectively a white Christian majority continent, then America, the Trump administration wouldn't see a need to be part of NATO anymore, that NATO would no longer be what it was meant to be.

Speaker 4 So what I'm asking, I suppose, is,

Speaker 4 is this a kind of strategic thinking?

Speaker 4 I read this and I think this comes from genuine dislike of Europe and a genuine antipathy towards the continent and that kind of freeloading attitude that you talk about.

Speaker 4 But maybe they're actually just thinking this is a way to make sure that Europeans do spend more on difficulty.

Speaker 1 If I played you the speech at the Munich Security Conference of J.D. Vance,

Speaker 1 largely written by Stephen Miller, and then I and I said, okay, that's that, and now read this, largely written by Stephen Miller.

Speaker 1 You'd say, okay, that's the president's strategy, and that's what the president wants. And, you know, there's a humiliation component to this because Trump likes the humiliation component.

Speaker 1 There's fear tactic. There's bombast in it.
But remember, you can't take a 19th century strategy, Gaddy, and run the country in the 21st century. You can't do that.

Speaker 1 You know, if Kissinger was here, he would try to influence Trump by telling him, you're giving up too much cards on the table. Okay, you don't have to be Dick Cheney.

Speaker 1 where you think you're going to use the military muscle to flex on people that don't want to be flexed on. They're going to laugh at you.

Speaker 1 But you could use the military and your diplomacy and your soft power to burgeon democracies and to burgeon the free world and to make South America a better Western hemispheric cohabitating partner to the United States, better on energy, better on

Speaker 1 exportation, et cetera. Why are we going in this direction? This is a meaner and not necessarily tougher approach.
And if I'm a European, European leader, I'm turned off by it.

Speaker 1 But I'm also looking around saying, what happened to America, Caddy?

Speaker 1 You're the expat, 25 years in America. So go ahead.
You're briefing now a European leader.

Speaker 1 You're in one of the salons of Europe, and the European leader looks at you and says, Caddy, you've lived there for 25 years. What happened, Caddy? What happened?

Speaker 4 Look, I don't know that this is what's happened to America.

Speaker 4 And I think you're right to point out that there are Republican senators who are probably more of the old school way of thinking about you want to have alliances and alliances are important.

Speaker 4 But this really does read like a kind of J.D. Vance Stephen Miller document.
with Donald Trump sign-off because he writes that forwarding letter with his signature very clearly on it.

Speaker 4 And he has always believed that the Europeans are freeloaded. And he has this view of American foreign policy is transactional.

Speaker 4 And in some ways, American foreign policy has always been transactional.

Speaker 4 It's just that America believed in the need to have alliances and it found those alliances in like-minded, democratic, pluralistic countries. But that way of thinking has changed now.

Speaker 4 I think the risk for America of this document is that it has no ideological underpinnings to alliances other than making money.

Speaker 4 I mean, all of the sections on China are not really about the Chinese threat to AI or biotechnology or the cyber attacks, incredibly sophisticated cyber attacks that China is now launching.

Speaker 4 There's nothing, not very much really about China's military threat.

Speaker 4 It's about, and you heard it in Pete Hagseth's speech over the weekend at the Reagan Center out in California, that it's about respecting

Speaker 4 China as a commercial partner and trying to get the best out of the commercial relationship.

Speaker 4 A lot of this is about how do we make money and that might is right and money is the underpinning of our foreign policy. But

Speaker 4 that can get you so far in the short term. I don't know that it builds good long-term relationships.
Okay, this is what a couple of Europeans are saying.

Speaker 4 We've had the view from Russia, which is that this is largely consistent with our vision.

Speaker 4 Carl Bilt, the former prime minister of Sweden, put out on X, the only place the White House sees as a threat to democracy that is worth US intervening in is Europe. Bizarre.
That's what he put out.

Speaker 4 But let me give you Donald Tusk, the president of Poland. He put out, dear American friends, Europe is your closest ally, not your problem, Prime Minister Tusk posted on social media on Saturday.

Speaker 4 And we have common enemies. At least, that's how it's been in the last 80 years.
We need to stick to this. This is the only reasonable strategy of our common security unless something has changed.

Speaker 4 I mean, I think, you know,

Speaker 4 I would say Donald Tusk's comments kind of sum up the view from Europe on this document.

Speaker 4 They're not totally surprised, but I think the risk, I think the biggest risk, Anthony, here of this document is not so much to Europe's security, it's to America's security.

Speaker 4 Because if Europe now looks at China as a more reliable partner, and they don't want to, I've been, European leaders keep telling me this, we don't want to look to China, but they are looking at this and thinking, wow.

Speaker 4 that is not a United States that we can depend on. And I don't think that's good for America.

Speaker 1 You're saying a lot of different things. So let me just go over a few of them.
I think you're right about where European leadership is. I think it's sad for me because I see us,

Speaker 1 this alliance is so important for freedom and Western liberalism. Again, you've got 5.9 million people living under some level of totalitarianism.

Speaker 1 We in the West, we free speaking people everywhere, we are in the minority in the world. And it's important for America to flex freedom.

Speaker 1 And it's important for America alongside of its long-standing allies to push that agenda so that we have this space for our grandchildren and our great-grandchildren.

Speaker 1 Okay, we're at risk if we don't think like that. And then the second thing, as it relates to China, I'm sort of shocked by the whole thing with China in the document.

Speaker 1 You know, and I heard Besent's Secretary of Treasury, Scott Beset, speak last week at the deal book event. He was interviewed by Andrew Rosorkin, a bud of mine.

Speaker 1 And Besent said something, I said, okay, that does make sense. He said

Speaker 1 there's no change, meaning we have this strategic ambiguity related to Taiwan and China.

Speaker 4 Yes, I think that the document is probably comes as relief to Asian allies, right?

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. So that, that, that's the positive in the document, but the negative in the document is we let the Chinese do whatever the hell they want mostly.

Speaker 1 Right now, I mean, let me let me translate the document. So, right now, we're dependent on a lot of chips coming out of that island.
Someday we're not going to be.

Speaker 1 Once we're not, do whatever the hell you want. That's what I hear.
Do you hear something different? Please speak up.

Speaker 4 No, that's pretty much what I hear. Okay, we're going to wrap and talk about immigration after the break and the Western hemisphere because that's the other big shift in this document.

Speaker 4 But I'm just going to read you a couple of things from... the national security strategy that came out eight years ago in the first Trump administration.

Speaker 4 China and Russia challenge American power, influence, and interests, attempting to erode American security and prosperity.

Speaker 4 They are determined to make economies less free and less fair, to grow their militaries and to control information and data to repress their societies and expand their influence.

Speaker 4 That is what Trump said under the first administration when he was surrounded by the kinds of people who had a much more conventional way of approaching the world and America's strategic alliances and America's strategic problems in the world.

Speaker 4 I haven't seen, Anthony, I mean, maybe I'm wrong, maybe I've missed something. Have China and Russia in the last eight years become less challenging? Have they become more conciliatory?

Speaker 4 Have they become more keen on American security and prosperity?

Speaker 1 The only thing that's become less challenging are the people around the president. They don't want to challenge him.
And so it's Stephen Miller, Donald Trump, and the rest are minions.

Speaker 1 You know, Marco Weather Vane Rubio. Hold on, let me blow into the microphone.

Speaker 1 Okay, where's Marco now? Let me blow again.

Speaker 1 You know?

Speaker 1 And by the way, quick question.

Speaker 4 Which Marco Rubio is going to run for president in 2020?

Speaker 1 It's unbelievable. And George Will said, it is extraordinary the versatility of the principles of Marco Rubio.

Speaker 1 I know we got to take a break, but I'm going to create the Marco Rubio wind tunnel one more time.

Speaker 1 Where's Marco now?

Speaker 1 My God, my brother, what's wrong with you, man?

Speaker 4 After the wind tunnel has passed, we'll be back.

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Speaker 4 Welcome back to The Rest is Politics U.S.

Speaker 4 And we're going to to talk about the other big part of this national security strategy because it seems that after 80 years of American security policy, there is a new big threat, global regional threat to America that has not been mentioned so far ever as one of the big threats since the Second World War.

Speaker 4 And it comes not from Asia, not from the Middle East, not from Europe. It comes this time, Anthony, from America's own backyard.

Speaker 4 I didn't know that Latin America was such a a dangerous place, but there you go. We are in a new era.
So tell us what America wants to do in Latin America now.

Speaker 1 America is basically saying that the Monroe Doctrine means to us this Trump corollary.

Speaker 1 It basically says, not only leave us alone in our backyard, but this is our backyard, and we're the manor house leader of the backyard.

Speaker 1 So if you're doing something in your government in South America that we don't like, we may flex on you military power. We may engage in soft power to get your butt removed from power.

Speaker 1 And this is the best example I can give, the most current example I can give is the pressure that they're putting on Maduro right now in Venezuela. Do you see it differently?

Speaker 4 No, I think that's right. I mean, we've gone from the priority being focusing on Europe and protecting Europe after the Second World War.
And then kind of after 9-11, the priority was the Middle East.

Speaker 4 And then under Barack Obama, we had the private to Asia and the priority is going to be Asia. And now,

Speaker 4 under Donald Trump 2.0,

Speaker 4 sort of, I think, taking quite a lot of people by surprise.

Speaker 4 I haven't spoken to many national security experts who saw this coming before Donald Trump came back into office. There's going to be this huge, big focus on the Western hemisphere.

Speaker 4 But here's, I think, what the problem is in this national security strategy document is that it's very,

Speaker 4 I don't know if the word is bullying, that kind of sounds schoolyard and certainly Latin American. The word is is bullying.

Speaker 1 It's schoolyard. But it's bullying.
But it's

Speaker 4 literally saying that Latin American governments are expected to grant America control of key assets, key resources, and strategic locations, or at least not allow other hostile foreign ownership of them.

Speaker 4 But what they seem to be saying is that we...

Speaker 4 We, you,

Speaker 4 the United States, because we are the big dog in the Western Hemisphere, expect you, Latin American country, to give us control of your key assets and strategic locations.

Speaker 4 I mean, that's, how is that going to go down around Latin America, which has that history from the Cold War of America meddling in Central America and Latin America and influencing politics and helping dictatorships and helping right-wing dictatorships?

Speaker 4 I mean, I can't see this going down well just because America's the strongest.

Speaker 1 What we have found in Latin America is very culturally different from North America is they'll cut their noses off to spite their face. They've got no problem.

Speaker 1 If they want the Yank to go home, Yankees go home, you know, they have a revolution on New Year's Eve, 1958, and we're still dealing with it in Cuba. They don't care, Cad.
You know, and

Speaker 1 that's a cultural reality that goes on in Latin America. Roosevelt had it right better than everybody.
He said, I'm going to have a good neighbor policy. We're going to do our best to help them.

Speaker 1 I've always told you this. Help them in their own countries.
You won't have to run up the

Speaker 1 should have sounded like, if you don't mind me imposing this,

Speaker 1 because I am a former Republican or at least a non-Trump Republican. What would actually work? Okay, and I wrote it down, so I'm going to read a little bit of it to you.
Secure the border.

Speaker 1 Okay, we've doing that.

Speaker 1 I like that. So I'm going to say that that's good.
But expand the legal immigration to meet our economic needs. That's That's also workers, low-level workers, and intellect.

Speaker 1 Okay, the American superpower,

Speaker 1 Caddy, is not the military. The American superpower to me is talent attraction.

Speaker 1 You know, people have left the UK to find their dreams here in America, break out of the class bounds potentially in their country and other places in the world.

Speaker 1 And then the last piece of this is I get the need to crush the cartels, but you also contemporaneously have to modernize the asylum laws. Okay, so I get it.

Speaker 1 You see, there's always an element of what Trump is doing that you look at, okay, he's got his finger on the pulse of a few things, but why do we have to go way out into left field?

Speaker 4 That's like that Republican congressman who said to me, right question, wrong answers.

Speaker 1 Do you remember that? I told you about that one. No, exactly.
So, again, strong border with strong immigration policies, there's nothing wrong with those two things. That's very effective.

Speaker 1 It would be very helpful to America. Moreover, whether you like it or not, you're the big brother.
You're the richer brother in the family.

Speaker 1 If you're going to have a Monroe Doctrine, provide economic aid and support to those nations and the people won't be running for your border.

Speaker 4 So I have a question for you. Do you, it makes it very clear in the document this is that the focus on the Western Hemisphere is combined with this focus, as you said, on immigration.

Speaker 4 And at the same time, we have this order that is going out from the State Department to American diplomats around the world to highlight to their host countries when immigrants commit a crime or the problems caused by immigrants.

Speaker 4 I mean, talk about, again, a kind of weird conflicting messages, because on the one hand, America is saying it's not getting involved, but here it is saying that American diplomats should get involved directly and spread this anti-immigration policy, not just from the United States, but but to other countries too it's not just the us that wants to secure its borders and get rid of immigration illegal immigration it wants other countries to also have a

Speaker 4 immigration unfriendly policy as well but so the document says it's about immigration and it's about narco-terrorism and about drug trafficking and we've seen that with these venezuela boat strikes that you and i have talked about but is it actually when i read that

Speaker 4 section about allowing America to have access and control of these key assets and resources and not allowing specifically a foreign government.

Speaker 4 They don't say China, but I'm assuming they mean China, which has been moving into Latin America. Is this also about something else? Is this really about just this spheres of influence idea?

Speaker 4 China has Asia.

Speaker 4 I don't know, maybe Russia has Europe. And we have Latin America with the economic benefits that come from a certain amount of control of those countries' assets and strategic locations and resources.

Speaker 4 Is it as much about that as it is about securing America's borders? Because there are no people coming across the southern border anymore. It's done.

Speaker 1 I think it's about that. I also think it's about supremacy.
I think it's about, I'm the big boss. You know, there was this funny meme going around on Instagram yesterday.
It really made me laugh.

Speaker 1 And then I said, oh my God, this could be true. They were showing the ballroom.

Speaker 1 And at the front part of the ballroom, there was a Lincoln-esque, like Lincoln Memorial-esque monument of Donald Trump in all gold, like the golden calf in the Ten Commandments with Charlton Heston.

Speaker 1 And he's sitting there with a smirk on his face, looking down on everybody. I was just saying, could you imagine if Trump does that? You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 Could you imagine if he puts himself in the ballroom? I mean, it's going to be rough. It's going to be rough on the future president, right?

Speaker 4 Listen, I've spoken to the presidents of American universities who said, damn, we should have just put up a gold statue of Donald Trump in the middle of our quad.

Speaker 1 That's all you had to do. That's all you had to do.

Speaker 1 Gold stag, but you got to, you got to light it. You got to have 24 lighting on it and maybe a flag behind it.
You follow what I'm saying?

Speaker 1 And then maybe put it up on your website so anybody that logs into like harvard.edu, they would see Trump sitting there. But this is the thing, Kat.
This is the thing that is so anti-American.

Speaker 1 This is the thing that is against the interests of the United States. Okay.
This is the opposite of George Herbert Walker Bush. The wall is coming down.

Speaker 1 Gorbachev is about to cede power and break up the Soviet Union. Are you here to gloat, Mr.
President? Actually, no, I'm not here to gloat.

Speaker 1 I'm here to support. I'm here to help the Soviets or the former Soviets.

Speaker 4 He specifically said, I don't want any talk of winners or losers here, right? When he went into that Geneva summit.

Speaker 1 Because he didn't want to shove it in their faces because he understood human beings and human nature. But this guy, this very insecure man,

Speaker 1 he has to do it. He has to flex himself as a constant reminder.

Speaker 1 I mean, look at the freak show that he did over the weekend with the Kennedy Center, which I predict he's going to try to change the name of to the Trump Center for Performing Arts.

Speaker 1 But if you look at the freak show over the weekend, you could take the freak show that he did at the Kennedy Center and you could apply it to the immigration and you could apply it to the national security strategy.

Speaker 1 And so, so listen, you know, again, Caddy, it's unfortunate because if you and I were sitting at the table and you said to me, okay, what do we got to do? We got to modernize the system.

Speaker 1 We need to improve the meritocracy of the pathways in for immigration to help our labor force. We've got to grow our economy.

Speaker 1 We've got to project American soft power so that people like us and it's a tractor beam to attract more talent.

Speaker 1 And yes, I get the fact that we're not in 1948 and some of this rules-based society has to be altered, just like software goes from iPhone 1 to iPhone 17.

Speaker 1 You know, pick up the phone, call the European leaders and say, okay, listen, probably got to help Putin stay in power whether I like it or not, but I'm going to push him off that border.

Speaker 1 Okay, but I'm going to find ways to keep him in power because that's really what his self-interest in and I need him off your back. but you got to help me get up to 2%.

Speaker 1 You know, you've got 17 other nations, but we're not doing that. We're doing something bizarre and Allison Wonder-like.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 it's damaging. But again, you know, guys tell me, well, we're just waiting him out.
I totally agree with you, Anthony, but we're just waiting him out.

Speaker 1 You know, and I hope that accent is appropriate for a weenie, spineless congressman. Anthony, you're correct, but we're going going to wait them out.

Speaker 1 There's three more years to go and we're just going to wait. I'm shaking here.
I'm shaking. We're going to wait him out.

Speaker 4 You and I have spoken about the fact that the tide may be changing and, you know, you called the president a lame duck already, but he has three years left and a lot can be done in three years.

Speaker 4 And okay, this is a document that is a document of ideas and philosophy.

Speaker 4 But I've been told by people who have had close contact with writing these documents, it filters down to procurement, to assets, to deployments, to force deployments.

Speaker 1 It's reputational damage, Gary.

Speaker 4 And quick reminder to the White House, the only time that Article 5 has actually been implemented was when European allies and Canadian allies came to America's aid after the attacks of 9-11.

Speaker 4 It is worth having allies who believe in you.

Speaker 4 rather than just who think that you are trading with them and want to get the upper hand. Okay, that's it.
I think that's all we have time for. We've wrapped up the whole world.
That's it.

Speaker 1 I need more psychotherapy than that, Gaddie. I think callbetterhelp.com.
I need more psychotherapy than that, Gaddy. It's not long enough.

Speaker 4 We'll be back on Thursday with another public episode. But if you can't wait for that and you need more therapy, join us on Wednesday for a Q ⁇ A.

Speaker 4 We'll be talking more about Jeffrey Epstein, Venezuela, and whether the House and Senate should have an age limit. I think that's a really good idea.

Speaker 4 Sign up to become a founding member at the restispoliticsus.com. Thanks guys.
See you soon.

Speaker 1 Thanks guys. We'll see you later in the week.

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