Week in Review: Trump's Tariffs, Ukraine Negotiations, Possibility of War with Iran, and More with Glenn Greenwald, Lee Fang, & Michael Tracey
Lee Fang and Michael Tracey discuss the fallout from Trump's tariffs, developments in Mahmoud Khalil's case, Ukraine negotiations, and more with Glenn in this special "Week in Review" episode.
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Welcome to a new episode of System Update, our live nightly show that airs every Monday through Friday at 7 p.m. Eastern, exclusively here on Rumble, the free speech alternative to YouTube.
Tonight... As a program that covers really only two or at most three issues per night, because we prefer in-depth coverage to sort of cable-style, quick five-minute hits of each different news event possible, sometimes, especially these days, it is difficult to keep up with all of the news,
given how fast and furious things are always happening with this new administration.
In fact, there's a major development in the Mahmoud Khalil case, which we cover a lot and we'll talk about tonight.
As a result, we're going to try to devote one show per week or so to a sort of week in review where we're able to cover more topics than we normally would cover on a typical program by inviting friends of the show on to talk with us about those.
To help us do that tonight, we are joined by the independent journalist, Lee Fong, who continues to break stories of real import that we...
Always are interested in, and we're also then after that going to speak to the always delightful and agreeable Michael Tracy, the intrepid roving reporter who covers many events for us and sometimes serves, as does Lee, as a guest host for the show when I'm traveling or otherwise indisposed.
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For now, welcome to a new episode of System Update, starting right now.
Lee Fong is an independent journalist based in San Francisco, where he covers political and corporate wrongdoing on Substack at LeeFong.com.
He previously wrote and reported for The Nation, where he was my colleague for many years, as well as—no, that was at The Intercept, actually.
He did also write at The Nation and reported for Vice.
And he always is— Intrepid investigative journalist, always breaks lots of stories, working by himself or with an independent team.
We're always happy to welcome to the show and speak with him.
Lee, good evening.
It is great to see you as always.
Hey, Glenn.
Thanks for having me back.
Good to see you.
So excited to have you back.
All right.
Let's talk about a bunch of different things, some of which we talked about discussing, maybe a couple that maybe I didn't mention but I know that you've been talking about.
I want to start with the Mahmoud Khalil case where...
He was essentially the first test case that became public where the Trump administration, having promised to mass deport people illegally in the country, have instead devoted far more energy and attention to deporting people who are legally in the country for the supreme crime of criticizing Israel.
Somebody who was sort of snatched out of his apartment by plainclothes ICE agents.
Instead of leaving him where he lives in New Jersey or New York, they instead shipped him to Louisiana.
He sued the Trump administration, arguing in a federal court in New York that transferred it to New Jersey that his First Amendment rights are being violated because he's being punished for his views about Israel.
And earlier this afternoon, a deportation court, which isn't even a real court.
It sort of works within the executive branch.
Very limited in what they can do.
Essentially decided that Marco Rubio justified his deportation sufficiently and gave the go-ahead.
There's a lot more judicial process that has to happen before he can actually be deported, but this is a case that you've talked quite a bit about, and I want to know why you think it's important.
Well, let's think about this if the shoe was on the other foot, because I've kind of engaged with some of my more conservative-leaning subscribers and readers on this.
Imagine if the Biden administration was moving to deport a Christian activist here in the United States and send them back to their home country who was here illegally, was a permanent resident, had a green card.
And when asked for evidence, they simply go to the judge and say that this person was transphobic and the Secretary of State, John Kerry, deemed them a threat to national security.
That's basically the entire evidence that we've seen given.
...from the Trump administration that, oh, hey, look at this Columbia University student.
He was anti-Semitic, and he is a threat to America's national interests, our foreign relations, our kind of foreign affairs.
That's it.
That's the entire case presented to the court.
it really just defies any
of logic, any kind of principle around free speech.
For any kind of conservative who has been bleeding about this issue of free speech and a free, open society exchange of free expression, to see so many people who are just silent on this issue, who
have kind of towed the party line, I just find it disgusting if this was being applied to almost any other group on any other kind of major issue, there would be a larger uproar.
But because this is something that is in defense of Israel, that is on a kind of hated minority group, these kind of students who protest Israel's actions in the Gaza war,
You know, imagine as well, like I take your example, but imagine if, say, Joe Biden decided that he was going to deport anybody who was making statements or expressing views that the administration regarded as racist against black people, say, criticizing the Black Lives Matter movement.
Or challenging the new gender ideology, saying there are only two genders, or speaking against feminism, which they regard as misogynistic, or any of those other views that have been targeted with censorship.
Imagine people who criticized Joe Biden for financing the war in Ukraine, and the Biden administration said, oh, these people are promoting Russian propaganda and therefore are a threat to national security.
It's so ironic that, of course, they would be so indignant about that.
Oh, this is tyranny.
This is authoritarianism.
This is repression, violation of the First Amendment.
Now, because it's a topic they regard as sacred or they're too afraid to speak out on, which is Israel, they either are silent, as you said, or even actively justifying it.
But I just want to give the defense, if I could, for your analogy and what they're saying, which is...
They're saying, look, what your example is talking about, they go to Christian activists or whatever, those are American citizens.
They clearly can't be punished or deported for their views.
But what we're talking about here are not American citizens.
We're talking about green card holders who weren't born here, who aren't citizens, student visas, and they're just guests.
And... If you're just a guest in the United States, if you're not a citizen in the United States, you basically should just keep your mouth shut.
You shouldn't come here and opine on politics, participate in protests.
You should come here for what you say you want to come here for, to study or to work.
Or if you're a green card holder, wait until you're a citizen before you start participating politically.
And if you misbehave, you're a guest in our house, we can expel you because we don't like anything that you're doing for any reason.
Why is that not valid?
Well, look, I don't think that holds legal weight.
The courts have ruled on this before.
But let's just say that this was the standard, that any kind of student here studying, a permanent resident, green card holder, they shouldn't misbehave or promote any kind of political activism or radical forms of speech,
writing an op-ed or engaging in a nonviolent protest.
Sure, but let's see that equally applied.
I can see lots of conservative activists who are not American citizens.
I can name quite a few who are from Canada, from the UK, from other countries in Europe, who have come here, who have engaged in fairly radical rhetoric, who've talked about, you know, use inflammatory language,
have... Has there been any action?
Do we actually have equality before the law?
Is this equally applied, this new kind of rubric for foreign students and, you know, ejecting them out of the country for engaging in troublemaking behavior?
No. It's narrowly applied only to critics of Israel.
So this is not kind of a rules-based society or an equal application of the law or of any kind of principle here.
This is just a single, narrow interest group.
Many of these kind of students who have been identified, apparently, reportedly, have been identified by pro-Israel advocacy groups.
Those lists have been given to the government.
That are funded by Israel.
That are funded with foreign money.
That's right.
And it's being used to eject people out of this country.
So look, just for your counterexample, for your defense here, I don't think it holds legal weight.
But even if it did, it's not being equally applied, even in any remote sense.
Right. Just this week, it's really frustrating.
I've had this experience before from each side.
Every time there's a new party that takes control of the White House.
All the people who you thought were your allies on a particular cause or principle suddenly abandon it, turn themselves into pretzels to justify all the things they had been criticizing previously.
You know, in this case, it's particularly frustrating because it's so blatantly fraudulent.
I mean, for one thing, you...
Don't have.
There's tons of Israelis, tons of non-citizens in the United States who are protesting in defense of Israel.
I have tons of videos and articles from them doing that, or protesting in all sorts of ways, but just not on the topic of Israel, and none of them is being deported.
So this idea that, oh, it's just kind of an etiquette rule, like if you come here, you're a guest of the country, just keep your mouth shut, that is not the rule being enforced.
It's only and all about Israel.
And the other thing that really...
What frustrates me is that, and I've encountered this so many times, is the people that they're deporting are actually not the people who did things like vandalize buildings or occupied in Columbia, Hamilton Hall.
They're not the people who blocked or menaced Jewish students.
In fact, most of the most radical people who participated in these protests against Israel who did the most extreme acts are typically American Jews.
Like, Columbia just expelled some.
Who are all American Jews because they were the ones that occupied Hamilton Hall, for example, a thing that people always cite.
It wasn't Mahmoud Khalil or any of the other people being deported.
So they're always saying, yeah, it's one thing to express political opinion, but that's different than if you come here and vandalize a building or do property damage or threaten Jews.
And you say none of them did that.
But I want to just put a more kind of concrete example.
One of the most popular people on the American right, He is in the United States all the time, expressing all sorts of criticisms of our government, even though he's not an American citizen.
His name is Jordan Peterson.
He lives in the United States.
He's in the United States constantly.
During the Biden administration, he was slamming our government.
He was here as a guest.
And he participated in protests, too.
He didn't just write articles or criticize them.
He participated in protests.
Another person who does that is named Douglas Murray.
He's also a foreigner.
He's a subject of the British Crown.
He's not an American citizen.
And everybody watched.
He came to the United States.
He was in the United States yesterday.
I believe he lives in the United States.
And he goes on our most popular podcast and bashes our government and bashes our citizens and our political leaders.
Do you think there's a single conservative that would say, yeah, I want Douglas Murray and Jordan Peterson deported based on this principle that foreigners have no right to come to our country and criticize our government?
Look, I don't have the full extent of Mahmoud Khalil's biography or everything he said, but I've looked up any kind of public statement he's made, any interview, and I can't find a hint of violence or anti-Semitism or Jew hatred.
He's made many comments much to the contrary, that he wants to find a resolution to this violent conflict with Israel and Palestine where Jews feel safe and their security is protected, that he opposes anti-Semitism in any of its forms.
On the contrary, people like Douglas Murray are gleefully promoting conspiracy theories.
He falsely claimed after October 7th that Hamas was going door to door killing babies, promoting these kind of conspiracy theories that were promoted.
Putting them in ovens, cutting them out of wombs.
And he's gone on many podcasts.
openly calling for ethnic cleansing, that the Palestinians are all a death cult, that they are an evil people that need to be removed.
You know, this is far more incendiary, far more inflammatory than anything Mahmoud Khalil said.
But I guess because he has a posh accent and that he aligns with the Trump administration at the moment and with Israel, that his inflammatory rhetoric is okay, even though he's a foreigner here and kind of stirring up.
Look, I don't want anyone deported for their free expression.
You know, I don't really care if Douglas Murray goes and makes a fool of himself, you know, hopscotching around getting awards from the Israeli propaganda ministry, the, you know, the minister, Amihai Cheekly, who runs the Israeli foreign influence operations.
You know, I came onto your program last summer and wrote.
And discuss his ministry and how they're running a covert kind of influence campaign where they're funding groups to attack opponents of Israel.
and he was very involved in this effort as he presented at the Knesset that he would be leading the attack on students in the United States
There's no evidence that they engaged in any kind of violent activity or any kind of material support for terrorism, as some of the tabloid press has claimed.
There's no evidence for that.
But here's Douglas Murray, who's working with a foreign government, who's engaging in inflammatory rhetoric and promoting conspiracy theories, promoting ethnic cleansing.
And of course, he's under no risk of deportation under this new
that dangerous foreign citizens can't engage in the same speech rights as
Right. And if you are justifying punishment for the views of people, for people who express views that you dislike.
And not demanding equal punishment for people who express the views that you like.
Just please do not ever for the rest of your life claim that you believe in free speech and you're opposed to censorship.
Like, when there's a Democratic president and they start doing the same thing, just don't even pretend.
And, you know, it happens to be the case on the other side, too.
I see a lot of liberals, a lot of leftists who have been cheering the left liberal censorship regime over the past decade now suddenly becoming free speech champions as well on the other side.
You know, you look at it and you're like, okay, you happen to agree with me in this case, but I know it's because of a completely unprincipled, just like convenience of the moment need that you have to agree.
And I think what we're going to see next, and like they already have asked the Rubio State Department about this.
Which is now starting to target citizens who are naturalized, who were born elsewhere, who started off as citizens of other countries and start to argue that their naturalization, their transformation into an American citizen was based on fraud because they came here and had these radical views.
And it's sort of ironic since the whole Trump administration is filled with people who were not born in the United States, people like Elon Musk and like Melania Trump, Sebastian Gorka.
And David Sachs, like, you know, filled with people who are naturalized citizens, but I think that's going to be the next line of attack.
All right, let me ask you, you recently wrote this article.
It's an exclusive investigation that you published on your Substack, the title of which is Democrats Dark Money Fund for TikTok Influencers Social Media Craze.
And there people can see it on the screen.
And I want to ask you to sort of talk about your findings.
But the thing I found so funny about this article.
Is that when Kamala Harris began running, and we were so gaslit first about Biden, like, oh, if you say Biden's not mentally fit, it means you're spreading disinformation.
And then suddenly they were like, oh my God, we see he's mentally unfit after the debate.
And they had to get rid of him.
And then they put Kamala in.
And she was considered a joke for four years.
And then it suddenly became, she's exciting the whole country.
She's like a generational political talent.
And a lot of it was done based on this social media excitement that they were pointing to.
I'm sure some of which was organic, but a lot of which obviously was not.
What is it that you found in this article that suggests at least a good portion of it wasn't?
Yeah, so there's been a little bit of reporting over the years that the various campaign committees or candidates will fund an influencer on TikTok or Instagram, and it's $100,000 disclosed here and there.
There's a little bit of reporting on it last year that the DNC had given small amounts to influencers.
That was really just the tip of the iceberg.
I obtained documents from a group of Democratic donors, billionaires, folks like George Soros and others, who had put money into this dark money effort.
It was not disclosed during the election.
It was through this 501 LLC kind of arrangement that doesn't have to report any of its disbursements or its contributions.
And it had this parallel effort to the Kamala campaign.
To basically create, to orchestrate enthusiasm for this candidate.
So, you know, a lot of those brat Charlie XCX memes of people dancing and doing sketches and comedy shows, they even funded a kind of black voter-oriented YouTube talk show.
There was just a number of sketches and YouTube influencers, actually, the entire effort.
reached about 500 different creators across various platforms where they were coaching creators, directly financing them, creating this kind of shadow effort to sell Kamala Harris to voters.
And that was a very tough sell.
This was not a candidate that had organic appeal to Gen Z or to young voters.
IN FACT, IF YOU LOOK AT THE POLLS, YOU HAVE REALLY QUITE THE OPPOSITE.
BUT IT ATTEMPTED TO MANUFACTURE SUPPORT FOR THIS CANDIDATE.
AND FOR A BRIEF MOMENT LAST SUMMER, IT SEEMED TO BE WORKING.
BUT AT THE END OF THE DAY, THE WHEELS REALLY CAME OFF.
BECAUSE IF ANYTHING, THE TARGETED DEMOGRAPHICS, YOUNG PEOPLE, BLACK VOTERS, LATINO VOTERS,
I want to just ask you, and maybe this is kind of like an ambiguous...
Observation. Maybe it's even a little subjective.
But when I was reading your article and even some of the examples you gave about some of the content that was produced by secret payments, it was as always just so cringy.
It was just so embarrassing.
It always seems like Democrats have no capability to speak in any kind of an authentic voice.
When they try and like do content for TikTok or content for the kids it always just seems so contrived and and and just ah just you want to kind of run in the opposite direction and you can see now and it's so obvious that these Democrats are being told oh look one of the reason people like Trump is because he speaks the way people speak at home he curses a lot And now you see a lot of them cursing,
whereas they never did before, just like overnight.
They're like, that's bullshit when they go on cable or whatever.
It's so obvious they've been programmed that way.
And you know, I'm not saying everything the Republicans do along those lines is going to connect or is super organic or natural, but you cannot deny that one of Trump's real political talents is speaking to ordinary people in a way that they just are convinced seems like the way they think and talk about things.
I remember, As a matter of fact, maybe it was the 90s when I was living in New York, and I remember this.
I don't know why I remember this, but Trump had visited a construction site, and he was talking afterward about how when he goes to this construction site, he spends like an hour talking to the construction workers, and how the minute he gets there, they start screaming his name,
and he was like, that's real fame.
You know, like, anyone can be famous among, like, the elite, but real fame is, like, when construction workers call your name.
And he kind of was priding himself on that.
I think I remembered it because it's a little pathetic to be like, I'm really famous.
You know, it kind of comes from insecurity.
But that is, you know, that's why he was a successful TV star, too.
Like, he has that ability to connect with ordinary people, the way they speak, his humor, all of that.
And Democrats just don't.
Like, why do you think that is?
Well, you know, part of it is that the Democrats retreated from presenting an authentic Kamala.
I think Kamala actually does have an interesting life story.
Even though she's this kind of creature of the establishment, she's someone who's biracial, who grew up in a very segregated part of Berkeley, and who went to a Hindu temple most of her life and had lots of interesting kind of relationships coming up in the San Francisco political machine.
But she didn't talk about any of it, right?
Like she always presented this version of herself that I think polled well, or at least what seemed to kind of fit the mold of what voters are expected to support.
So she didn't, she just talked about her experience in the church as a Christian.
She only kind of talked about herself as a black woman rather than someone who had a very mixed race.
She even lied about her Berkeley upbringing.
She kept saying she's from Oakland because that seems to have a little bit more authenticity rather than triggering people and discussing her roots actually in Berkeley.
And in contrast to that, you had Donald Trump going on Theo Vaughn's podcast and talking for an hour about his brother's suicide and being, I think, very real and authentic.
I think voters, especially when they're looking at these more long-form...
platforms uh looking at you know on youtube or on podcasts or even on other forms of social media they're looking to connect with politicians as real human beings and come let harris could I don't know.
like they were kind of obsessed with pouring this you know 10 million dollar fund into getting people to do little dances and sketches to try to humanize her or to try to humanize her appeal you can't manufacture that you just have to be real with voters and kind of show all your your scars and warts and
not be ashamed of them and you know this constant attempt to refashion kamala as this you know super progressive you know almost like civil rights black power icon plus the
Yeah, I mean, I always thought, you know, I always had the impression once Kamala Harris became vice president, where she was expected to be responsible for a whole variety of issues I don't think she knew anything about because she just never had to deal with them before.
She wasn't an expert in them.
You know, she spent her whole career as a prosecutor, basically.
Attorney General, prosecutor.
And then when she got to the Senate, her moments where she kind of had good moments, where she sort of shined, were about the law.
She was very aggressive, questioning Brett Kavanaugh.
She kind of interrogated in a very kind of effective courtroom manner other Trump nominees in the first term.
But she really didn't know anything about international relations or anything else.
And I always got the impression that when she was speaking, she was petrified of saying a wrong word that Could be construed as like a mistake.
And she just seems so imprisoned.
And this is, you know, this is what I'm finding kind of confounding is, you know, for a long time, that was the role of politics, right?
Like it would be a scandal if you say the wrong thing, if you like speak out of line, if you make a mistake, whatever.
And then Trump came along and just blew all that away.
You know, I remember in 2015, that was when Trump spoke pejoratively about John McCain, who the press worshipped and loved and considered to be a saint.
I didn't mean to speak negatively about him.
He said something kind of shocking that people just didn't say, which is, you know, oh, yeah, he was captured as a war criminal, but I prefer the good pilots and people in the military who don't get captured.
I prefer that.
I think that's more impressive.
And I remember all these journalists, including like Dan Bald, sort of like the dean of the Washington press corps, wrote articles saying, oh, this is the end of Trump.
There's no way.
You could survive something like this.
And he just blew right past it, blew past every single, you know, didn't matter what he said, how he said it, you know, whether he was wrong, whether he made errors.
He was speaking so authentically that it changed the way people started expecting politics.
Probably the internet changed that as well, so now people aren't listening to, like, Lester Holt in a suit speaking in, like, an uber-formal way.
They're listening to people who have more authentic voices.
They expect that authenticity.
And it's taken the Democrats so long to realize they're not in that world anymore.
And it's almost like the whole party is programmed with these obsolete rules that they just can't get them.
It just feels like there's no core there.
There's no character.
Even now, when they're cursing and trying to be more rambunctious or whatever, it just seems so consultant scripted.
Like, there's no vibrancy to it.
I mean, do you think, like, this is inherent in the Democratic Party, or is this something that they can kind of finally break out of?
It's hard to say.
I feel that part of the problem for the Democrats is that for whatever reason, it's complex.
problem of both issue group issue special interest group politics and the kind of pathologies of modern liberalism perhaps and kind of the class makeup of the party but for whatever reason the Democrats tend to have non-competitive primaries Democrats kind of fall in line their voters and their interest groups and the kind of their leadership behind the kind of pre-chosen candidates that are part of the party echelon the leadership And
you just don't see that in the last 20 years of the Republican Party.
After the George Bush years, you had these really kind of chaotic Tea Party primaries where dozens and dozens of Republicans on the national and state level, or the Republican establishment was challenged and unseated, and you had this kind of upheaval of voters.
And yes, there were interest groups involved there, but at least these were competitive primaries with a lot of...
Fierce combat between candidates and that changed the makeup of Congress and it kind of laid the groundwork for a upheaval by Donald Trump for him to take on the Republican establishment and really kind of take his message to voters.
And, you know, just like the market, the kind of consumer marketplace, the business marketplace, the best products and businesses tend to rise because you have that competitive atmosphere.
That's a helpful dynamic in democracy as well.
You know, if we're going to have this kind of Winner-take-all two-party system, which is a really terrible system, but if we're going to have this system, the way that Democrats can compete with Republicans is to open things up and allow more competition and encourage their voters and kind of the powers that be to allow open primaries and real competition.
As long as you have these kind of pre-chosen candidates and this lack of competition, you have candidates who are not prepared to make the case.
To a general election.
And for Kamala Harris, she was really a creature of the machine.
She was very close to the Gettys and the kind of power brokers in San Francisco, and they kind of chose her to run against an unpopular district attorney, and they kind of shooed her in.
And she was again kind of chosen by the powers that be in the California Democratic Party to rise up through the ranks.
You know, that that's not a very healthy atmosphere for grooming and finding the best candidates to run for president, because it is, you know, a very difficult job and finding candidates who can connect with voters in a visceral way.
That doesn't happen from folks who are just chosen from, you know, a back room by party elders.
Yeah, and I think just to add one thing to that, I think you can go even back a little bit further to the 90s when the Republicans already had this kind of anti-establishment ethos to it.
It kind of manifested with Newt Gingrich rising to the speakership from the back benches.
And, you know, while Democrats were still reading the New York Times and NBC News or whatever, Republicans had already kind of created their more informal, entertaining, alternative media, like with Rush Limbaugh and talk radio.
And, you know, Rush Limbaugh was like an entertainer.
He was funny, even though liberals couldn't admit that at the time, like they can't with Trump.
They already were kind of, conservatives were already feeding on this alternative ecosystem, this alternative manner of speaking and doing politics that I think took some time to develop and then just all culminated in Trump.
And the Democrats are such institutionalists, I think more so than ever.
You know, they're kind of taken from all the same places where people are taught to speak in public very formally in a very constrained way.
And I don't know, it just seems like the whole ethos of Democratic Party politics is quite crippling.
Just stylistically.
I think that's an incredible point.
I've actually spent the first 12 or 13 years of my last 16 years as a reporter, as someone who kind of identified a little bit more on the progressive left.
And I couldn't really appreciate this dynamic until the last three years when I write for both conservative and left-wing publications.
My readership is almost half-half left-right.
I haven't taken a survey, but that's the gist I get.
And just interacting with more conservative reporters and members of Congress, they have an appreciation for new media, for blogs, for outsider media in a way that Democrats never have.
I've interacted with many Democratic members of Congress, and if they have a scoop that they want to share from an investigation or from some interaction with a powerful figure, they always just go to The New York Times.
It's that simple.
Maybe the Washington Post, maybe some other kind of very powerful legacy media outlet, where for Republicans, they are so primed to kind of be shut out from the legacy media, they will go and work with a talk radio host or a podcast or a blogger or an independent media outlet in ways that are just way more dynamic.
And I think that's given them an advantage because a lot of these outlets that are just Far more hungry for viewers that have to operate outside of the old media model.
They're more connected to readers.
And that's really shaped kind of the ethos of both parties.
Yeah. I mean, for me, you know, one of the most illustrative moments of the Democratic Party's problems, and it was actually personified by what supposedly is their new social media savvy politician, AOC.
I still can't believe this, but in 2020, when Bernie Sanders was running, Joe Rogan All but endorsed him.
You know, sort of said on his show, like, I think the most interesting, the most honest, the most authentic, the most compelling candidate is Bernie Sanders.
He kind of liked Tulsi too, but he really was putting his stamp of approval on Bernie Sanders, and Bernie's campaign did what of course it should do, which is it took that and kind of promoted...
Joe Rogan's endorsement because he's like the most popular podcaster in the country.
He's not on the left.
So it was a very significant one.
And AOC was so enraged that Bernie's campaign featured Joe Rogan.
And she was enraged because she said he was transphobic.
And, you know, there are people who are transphobic in my view, but he's not one of them.
He was like questioning, should trans women be playing in sports?
Should we be giving like puberty blockers and hormones to kids?
Like the thing, the whole society was questioning.
But they basically declared him off limits.
Like, you can't even associate with him.
This is 2020, not 2024, where they wouldn't even talk to him.
But 2020, where you couldn't even associate with him.
And imagine just how self-defeating that is for a political movement or a party to be thinking that way.
You know, like, we can only associate with people who agree with us on everything.
It's so pathetic.
All right, let me, I want to ask you about this tariff debate, unless you have something you want to really add to that.
No, one little thought is just that I wonder how AOC, I'm kind of wondering out loud, maybe we'll find this out later, but how AOC would view you or me, because we were some of the only reporters who talked to her when she was running for Congress in 2018 from a national media outlet.
I wrote three or four pieces about the race, and I know you interviewed her, but for whatever reason, there are these dogmatic views and this kind of Democratic Party tribalism that...
if you're not perfectly aligned on these hot button issues, you're kind of a non-entity or you're something who needs to be avoided.
And I think that applies to Joe, that applied to Joe Rogan, but I wonder how it would even apply
Oh, for sure.
I mean, when AOC was running against Joe Crawley in that primary, nobody knew who she was.
Nobody. It was not even a race that anyone was talking about.
Why would they?
Joe Crawley...
Was like the classic lobbyist funded leader of this Democratic Party machine in Queens.
He was in the leadership of the House Democrats.
People assumed he was actually the likely successor to take over the party when Nancy Pelosi finally went away.
And it was unknown.
Like, no one knew who she was.
She had no funding.
No one was talking about the race.
I remember Ryan Grim said to me, oh, you might find her interesting.
She, you know, criticized Democrats a lot from a populist perspective.
And the interview that I did with her was one of the very few interviews that anyone did with her.
And, you know, it went kind of viral because she does have a certain political talent.
And, yeah, she would never, ever, ever now talk to you, talk to me.
Actually, she won't even talk to anyone on the left who criticizes her at all.
Like, the only...
One she'll talk to on the left is, like, Hasan Piker, who's a fanboy of hers, who, you know, constantly praises her.
Or she'll go on, like, mainstream media, and she doesn't talk— she never goes on a conservative show.
She never, ever goes on, like, one of those podcasts where they would challenge her.
She has no confidence in herself, and she still has this idea that, like, speaking to people whose views are different than yours is kind of dirty or even— Immoral.
But yeah, I thought that Joe Brogan thing with Bernie was so illustrative of the problem.
I want to ask you about the tariff debate at the time we have left, because, you know, especially when you started, I always thought of you as a reporter who reports on economic issues, domestic debates.
Before you were at The Intercept, before you and I even knew each other, you kind of attacked me once over some union issue.
I forget what it was, but we had a little back and forth that was mostly Pejorative.
And it was about economic issues.
It's something that you've really been focused on.
It's like the trail of money and politics and all of that.
So I just want to tell you what I'm finding a little bit difficult to process about this whole tariff explosion over the last week, which is that for as long as I can remember, the view of the left, like the mainstream left,
and even parts of the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, was that Free trade is evil.
You know, it's destructive.
People on the left hated the Clintons, principally because of NAFTA.
And their support in general for free trade then under Obama became the TPP, which Hillary Clinton supported as well.
I mean, this was the ruination of the country, of the middle class, the working class, was free trade.
And the elimination of protectionism and all of that, Ross Perot proved right that all these jobs went overseas.
All the deindustrialized towns, you were talking about that recently when you were traveling in the Midwest and other places, and you saw how devastated these towns were.
So this is a serious problem that people on the left and even more close to the mainstream of the Democratic Party always understood, always maintained, always argued.
Now, I get that Donald Trump's scheme of tariffs is not necessarily what anyone else would have planned.
It was very haphazard, seemed a little arbitrary.
You know, you can make the argument that a kind of blunderbuss, like heavy imposition of tariffs is necessary to really try and reverse this economic system, but I'm just wondering what you make of The fact that the argument that Trump was making, that Scott Benson was making,
that Peter Navarro was making was, look, we don't care if the stock market's angry.
We have accommodated the stock market and rich people and Wall Street long enough.
It's time to now enact policies for the working class, for the people whose talents, as you described them, have been devastated.
And to do that, we have to reverse free trade and globalism and return to a...
I think it's just kind of a classic Trump dynamic where he's directionally right.
He's calling attention to an issue that both parties have ignored or have really made worse over the last couple of decades.
But in his actual application and pursuit of the policy, he's not achieving the stated goals.
Let me give you an example.
Tariffs are part of an industrial policy.
In the last two years, Texas Instrument, one of the big chip makers in America, announced that they would spend the next five or six years building new manufacturing plants to reshore chip building.
And in part, that was driven by the CHIPS Act, the Biden policy.
And what happened?
You had a number of Wall Street investors, including Paul Singer, a major hedge fund manager who gave big to Trump.
Last year as a big Trump ally, taking an activist stake, buying shares in Texas Instrument and demanding that they go back on that plan, that they continue building ships in other countries so that they can create more shareholder value, more profits.
Creating industrial policy to bring factories back, to bring manufacturing back, to bring high quality jobs to the Midwest and Rust Belt and other kind of neglected parts of this country, really all corners of this country.
That's a good goal, but that's not what's happening.
Trump has really kind of completely ignored or handed gifts to Wall Street, giving these blanket pardons to any kind of corporate criminal.
If your goal is to do this only with tariffs, it's not going to work.
And even if he's just pursuing with tariffs, with no labor policy, no kind of fiscal policy, no kind of new arrangement with Wall Street.
He needs allies.
And if anything, he's alienated the world, threatening Canada, threatening Greenland, threatening the EU, threatening Latin America and Mexico, and then expecting them to work with the U.S. in this anti-China policy.
And one day it's about bringing jobs home, and then the next day it's about raising revenue.
And the goals keep changing.
If the goal is...
Bringing back manufacturing, I think that's a wonderful kind of top line effort, but it's not what's being pursued here with these kind of manic tariffs that have disrupted the stock market.
And if he's just giving away these exemptions, which...
You know, it is a huge opportunity for political corruption.
SpaceX has already asked for exemptions.
Many other companies that trade with China are asking for exemptions.
I think that's going to be a very interesting area to watch.
But if your goal is to bring back manufacturing, these tariffs have to be a kind of unified strategy where the U.S. works with allies and a methodical plan that's long term.
That if you're going to build a new factory in the U.S., you have to have the certainty that these tariffs are going to be there for many years to come and there won't be exemptions.
If you look at the behavior of the last two weeks, there's no indicators that that's what's going to happen.
So if anything, I'm concerned that the chaos out of these policy moves are only going to discredit efforts for a new industrial policy where High-tech manufacturing jobs are brought back to America.
Let me just ask you one question about that because we're out of time because we have an extremely important guest, extremely important guest who's already waiting on the line.
His name is Michael Tracy.
He has an extremely busy calendar.
I don't like to keep him waiting.
Well, I've heard of him, yeah.
Yeah, have you heard of him?
He's really, he's like a bundle of positivity and he hates to be contentious, so I'm really looking forward to spending some time with him.
So I'm going to have to let you go in a second, but before I do, I just want to ask you about what you just said, which is...
Trump's argument now, and for sure it has shifted and changed even in the last week, is look, far from alienating the world, actually the opposite is true.
Every country in the world is calling me, asking to do a deal.
Like, hey, can we come to Washington?
Can we do a deal with you?
And his argument is that...
And I haven't really heard an alternative for people who don't like Trump's plan as to how the manufacturing base could be revitalized.
I'm not saying you have to present one to criticize Trump's, but his argument is that what we're going to get with these countries is not just the elimination of tariffs, but Trump wants to require they invest in the United States, they commit to opening up a certain number of factories in the United States,
that they produce their products in the U.S. If that really is his goal, if that really is what's happening, if he can kind of We heard from Peter Navarro last Sunday and Monday that the goal was a higher trade surplus.
that Vietnam needs to simply buy more American goods.
Now it's moving factories to the US. I mean, those are different goals, right?
And there were also goals from Howard Lutnick last week
Well. Is that still the goal?
Because now U.S. Treasury notes are exploding in value.
So the goals have changed and they've been four or five different things this week.
Again, if this was a unified government plan and an implementation of that plan to bring jobs back and to bring high paid manufacturing jobs to the U.S. I would have no problem with that.
There would be no criticism.
But it's just not clear if that's what the goal is.
And the opportunities for corruption, where they sell off tariff exemptions without actually creating any new factories, seems very apparent.
All right.
Follow Lee on Substack.
I mean, it's not just commentary analysis.
What makes it distinct is just kind of old-fashioned shoelace reporting.
Doesn't have a party, doesn't have a side, but really breaks a lot of important stories, especially about the flow of money.
Lee, it's always great to see you on here.
Happy to talk to you, and we will talk soon.
Likewise. Great to see you, Glenn.
All right, I'll tell Michael Tracy he's had a low.
All right, bye.
All right.
All right.
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He's constantly roving around the country.
One of the things he did that I actually think is truly impressive journalistically is that during the Black Lives Matter movement, he took his car when nobody else was willing to do this, drove around the country interviewing people, primarily in working class neighborhoods, people in minority dominated neighborhoods to document the damage that was being done to their lives,
to their economic life, to their neighborhoods in a way that was almost forbidden in major outlets.
That's the sort of journalism he does.
He's also...
Someone who comes on our show quite often, and we're always delighted to have him on.
Michael, good evening.
It's great to see you.
Thanks for joining us.
Glenn, I couldn't possibly be more delighted and overflowing, just radiating with joy to talk to you.
You always are.
All right, let me start with asking you...
I was going to ask you about the tariff debate.
You probably heard my talking to Lee about that, but I do want to get into that with you as well, about some similar points and others.
But I want to start first with the war that you and I both have talked about a lot with each other, but then also covered separately, which is the ongoing war in Ukraine.
During the campaign, Donald Trump said that resolving this war diplomatically would be his top priority or one of his top priorities.
Sad in, I think, a way that most people found hyperbolic and was trying to make a point that he would actually be able to resolve it in 24 or 48 hours.
Obviously, that didn't happen.
But they have made some progress, some advancement, moderate advancement, a couple of ceasefire deals about attacking each other in the Black Sea or oil facilities and the like.
And today, Donald Trump's sort of all-purpose I THINK THERE COULD BE SOME GENUINITY IN THE ASPIRATION TO END THE WAR IN UKRAINE ON TERMS THAT ARE FAVORABLE
TO THE US.
However, I think we should take a step back because there was something that really did frustrate me a great deal over the course of the 2024 campaign, which is that probably about 10 billion times, Donald Trump, when he was pressed to articulate his position on the Ukraine war,
which he also brought up on his own volition quite often, he would often say something to the effect of, the war never would have happened if I was president.
Now, that may be true, that may not be true.
Either way, it's impossible to prove.
It's an unprovable counterfactual.
And yet, the recitation of that line, all too often in my judgment, took the place of what might have been an articulation of a strategy by which to end the Ukraine war.
Because it's all well and good to say that you would like to end the Ukraine war, or you could magically do it.
In 24 hours, Trump also even maintained that he could somehow resolve the war as president-elect before even taking office.
The details of that plan were never really expounded.
But at the very least, it would have been prudent for one of the many people who were interviewing him, unfortunately, oftentimes in softball interview formats on hand-picked podcasts.
For him to say more than simply this counterfactual assertion, namely, would you continue to provision Ukraine with armaments?
Trump never came out in opposition to that.
People kind of just assumed that he opposed it.
There was a pause in early March of the intelligence sharing and the armaments provision, but that's still flowing as of now, as far as anyone can tell.
Or what are some specifics in terms of the territorial concessions that might be required of Ukraine or of Russia?
Just some detail rather than the abstract aspiration for ending the war might have been nice.
And it was just really never forthcoming.
So while it's true that there might be a sense in which Trump's
You could also argue that it was a bit of obscurantism, meaning there was no real strategy, and if...
And actually, Trump could be compelled or take the initiative to actually escalate the war on certain fronts.
Scott Besant, the Treasury Secretary, at his confirmation hearing back in January, said that he personally favored actually increasing the Biden administration sanctions, ramping up the sanctions on Russia to compel them to submit to U.S. demands for a settlement that was more favorable to the U.S. On the one hand,
yes, there has been a resumption of high-level diplomatic contacts.
I think that's preferable than not having those contacts or being ideologically insistent on there being no such contacts, which was a huge historical anomaly.
As you know, Glenn, even at the most heightened and tense days of the Cold War, high-level contacts between the president...
...of the United States and the leader of the Soviet Union still largely persisted to one degree or another.
So for Biden to forego that and Putin to forego that altogether from roughly 2022 to 2025, what stood apart in terms of the historical relations between these two nuclear superpowers.
But the resumption of high-level diplomatic contacts is not a be-all.
In fact, Marco Rubio has been going around saying that Donald Trump has limited appetite or limited tolerance for endless negotiations about negotiations.
And Trump posted on Truth Social today that, quote, Russia has to get moving.
And I think it comes down to what could be the core irreconcilability of the U.S. and Russian positions, notwithstanding liberals still being tied to this presumption that Trump is an agent of Russia or has this deep-seated sympathy to Russia.
Which is that if you go and look at Vladimir Putin's speech to the Russian foreign ministry of June 2024, that's where Putin spelled out his conditions for any resolution to the conflict in Ukraine.
And top Russian officials still point to that speech as encompassing the core of the Russian position.
And in that very speech, Putin said there will be no freezing of the conflict and there will be no ceasefire.
Without a final resolution to the core Russian grievances that gave rise to Putin's invasion in February of 2022.
All right, so let me just interject there.
Go ahead.
Just to very briefly complete the point.
Okay, go ahead and complete the point.
Did you complete the point?
Give me 10 seconds, Glenn.
It's a very well-elaborated point up until now, but please complete it.
Well, as of mid-March, when Rubio and Walt went to Saudi Arabia to meet with Ukrainian officials, the...
Ukrainian and American positions have been at least ostensibly unified, and they've called for the immediate ceasefire and the immediate freezing of the conflict, which Putin says is completely intolerable.
So while there might be some gestures toward amenability to the concept of negotiations, there still remains that Okay,
so the Russian position still is, and has not changed, and I don't think will change, that we're not going to have a ceasefire unless there's a final resolution of all the issues to bring about and then to the war, because a ceasefire would only favor the Ukrainians, would allow them to rearm.
The party that's winning on the battlefield basically or has momentum would never just freeze the conflict without an actual resolution that gives the Russians at least the minimum of what they seek to end the war.
So that's, I don't think that's going to change.
I think the fact that the United States is still nonetheless in Russia today negotiating indicates that that is not necessarily a deal breaker for the U.S. What I do think though about everything that you just said is that you're describing a type of diplomacy or negotiation strategy I've never ever seen anybody previously implement.
You don't engage in diplomacy by trying to mediate two sides in a conflict or two sides in a war by announcing ahead of time what you think the ultimate solution should be because you need to go back and forth between the parties to obtain their consent.
Pressuring Russia, pressuring Ukraine, both of which Trump did.
He pressured Zelensky, obviously, when Zelensky was in the Oval Office and since.
He's pressured Putin as well.
It's also something that you would naturally do if you're trying to facilitate a diplomatic deal.
And saying during the campaign we're going to immediately cut off all arms and funds and support for Ukraine would be the last thing you'd want to do if you're trying to facilitate a diplomatic resolution because that would be a signal to Russia.
You have no incentive to come to the table.
We're already cutting off the Ukrainians and we're not giving them any more weapons.
You can just roll right over them, which isn't what Trump wanted to do either.
So it seems like you're imposing on Trump a certain set of requirements for diplomacy that are never applied to anybody else and that would clearly be counterproductive to an attempt to actually incentivize both sides to come together.
It's not so much that I'm imposing that on Trump as I'm reflecting on what I saw as a flaw in the coverage of this issue during the 2024 campaign.
I think a lot of people would have been surprised if you had told them by April 11th of 2025.
Ukraine and supplying intelligence assets to Ukraine.
I think a lot of people perceive that to be in conflict with Trump's ostensible position.
So I think, therefore, the role of the media, not the partisan cheerleading media, but the people who actually want to explicate reality as best they can, would be to point out why that perception might have been misguided, so at least they could be better prepared
for what now does seem to at least be somewhat of an impasse in the negotiations.
So did I expect ever Trump to say, "We're going to cut off all arms to Ukraine"?
Do you think he should?
Do you think he should?
Do I think he should cut off all arms to Ukraine?
Before there's a diplomatic resolution.
Well, I'm not sure.
I do think that that would have certain potential downsides, which is to say if Trump cut off all armaments to Ukraine and Russia were able to obtain its maximalist war aims, that for one thing would be a blow to American...
Hegemony. Because whatever criticisms one might make of Biden's approach to the Ukraine conflict for the previous three years, it nevertheless...
...has imbued the Ukraine conflict with a certain level of U.S. investment that if Russia were just to completely triumph over, that could be seen as a blow to American hegemony, hence Trump's pursuit of this so-called minerals deal.
It's actually much more sweeping than a minerals deal, at least the last iteration of it, although the recent updates that have trickled out show that it could be even more sweeping than it had been initially understood, which is that the United States, under Trump's vision, is going to take...
...ownership of a vast swath of Ukrainian state assets, and then according to, including fiscal infrastructure like ports and refineries, and that could function as a de facto security guarantee according to how Trump and his administration officials have described it.
So if you're an American hedgeman, which I think Trump is, he might have his own flavor.
It's not liberal internationalist.
It doesn't necessarily...
America first.
profess these like liberal internationalist pieties, but nonetheless he is a certain...
America first?
...cast of America.
Well, America first is consistent, I think, with Trump's also pursuit of a certain kind of American hegemony where he's invoking William McKinley and saying he wants to take over or annex about like six different countries at this point.
And Ukraine actually fits into that dynamic because if the so-called minerals deal were to go through and everything that we hear is that Ukraine actually is ultimately going to sign this deal, it would turn at least the parts of Ukraine that are under the control
of the central government into a kind of official
colonial outpost.
Maybe colonial is not the right word, but whatever word you want to use.
If the United States is owning basically Ukrainian state assets and that's supposed to formally...
This would formalize that relationship.
So I'm not going to say that Trump should or should not cut off aid to Ukraine.
I mean, I think there are obviously pros and cons to that, given the current situation.
But I do think that there ought to have been a little bit more of a clear-eyed perspective on what Trump's policy was, so that people don't feel like they've been blindsided now that he's continuously funding Ukraine and basically carrying out the Biden status quo policy with
the...
addendum or with the qualifier that there is this active high-level negotiation underway, which is a marked difference.
But if it's not necessarily tied to a substantive resolution of the war, then it's probably not as consequential as some people might have wanted.
Well, it's a huge addendum.
I mean, the position of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris for three years was like, we're not talking to the Russians.
Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin never spoke, let alone tried to facilitate a diplomatic deal and you know
As for the mineral deal, I think we'll see how that ends up happening, but...
You know, I think you can make the case that if the United States has come to the aid with $200 billion, whatever it is, in cash and arms to a country, and that that country wants an ongoing security guarantee, and that's Trump's argument is,
look, if we're invested in your minerals, we're going to have an interest in your country.
no one's gonna want to invade it, to try and kind of pressure the Ukrainians to like, hey, the more this war goes on, the more you're gonna have to pay us,'cause we're not gonna just pay for your war and then not get anything back.
Those days are done, except with Israel.
And then you have on the Russian side, you know, this kind of
It just seems to me like if you were serious about fostering a negotiation and reaching a diplomatic deal of what is a very complex protracted war that has obviously produced hatred on both sides as wars always do They did announce
announce ahead of time before there's even a framework for a deal what you think the framework for that deal is and you certainly wouldn't cut off funds or weapons to one side and allow the other side to just roll over them in a way that would on your legacy being that you well they did they did announce a deal
They did preemptively announce conditions to the extent that after the initial snafu with Zelensky in the Oval Office, Ukraine and the United States merged their position.
And the position is a freeze of the conflict and an immediate ceasefire, which runs flatly contradictory to the stated aims of Putin and functions as a kind of imposition on what I think most people now agree.
is the warring party that has the advantage.
So there was a pre-endorsement of the framework of the ultimate deal that I think could make it a little more difficult than if it had been approached as more of a blank slate.
But let me ask you a quick question on this, Glenn, because I'm sort of interested in what you have to say.
Trump did say...
Countless times that he could end the war in 24 hours.
Was that a bit of hyperbole?
Was it not meant to be taken literally?
Perhaps, but he said it so many times that I think a tenable standard would be, like, could a reasonable person take that to have been his actual position, which was that he was pledging to end the war in 24 hours or even as president-elect?
Neither of those have come to pass.
He was saying that his personal...
Negotiating prowess is so world historically awesome that solving the conflict would actually be easy.
He said he would say things like, look, I know Zelensky, I know Putin, that's how I'm going to get it solved in 24 hours.
So I just want to know how like a responsible media is supposed to assess now the performance of the president after almost three months if one of his signature pledges has so far failed to materialize.
Are we just supposed to discount everything that Trump says, even if he repeats the same thing ad infinitum?
I think because.
Donald Trump has been around now for almost a decade in our political life.
I think people have gotten a very clear understanding of how he functions.
I think that people understand that he's prone to hyperbole, that it's part of his kind of charisma, the way he, you know, everything is, oh, we had the best this, the best that, never seen before in history, nobody thought it was possible, but we did it.
That's how he speaks, that's how he pitches, that's how he sells.
I don't think that many people really thought he'd end the war in 24 hours, but I will say that if he does succeed in ending this Truly horrific and bloody and costly war between two countries that absolutely hate each other in a way that no one ever tried to get close to doing before.
If it takes them six months or it takes them five months, then I will give him enormous credit.
And you can say, yeah, but he said he would do it in 24 hours and it took five months.
Fine. He didn't get it done when he said he got it done.
But if he gets it done, people who resolve wars, who get wars diplomatically settled, Yeah,
that's fair enough.
Alright, let me move to something else, if I can.
Let's move to the Middle East, because there...
We have a much different story.
There's no effort to diplomatically resolve anything.
He restarted the war in Gaza in a much more unlimited and horrific way.
He resumed and then escalated Joe Biden's bombing campaign against the Houthis in Yemen.
And I think most concerning of all is that there seem to be a lot of people Who not are alarmists, but are very close to the White House, Tucker Carlson, Charlie Kirk being a couple, who have come out and said, look,
this is real.
These war drums are really beating in Washington.
Tucker said, essentially, that it's a very real possibility that this could happen.
And when Netanyahu was in Washington to meet with Trump, For the second time already in three months in the White House, and they kind of gazed at photos of the two hanging up in the West Wing.
There's a whole wing, apparently, a whole wall, just like a shrine to Netanyahu or whatever.
And they visited that, they gazed at that, and they almost held hands and kind of gazed at it together.
Netanyahu came marching.
Did they pray together?
I don't know.
I don't know if Trump donned the yarmulke.
I mean, he has before.
I don't know if he did this time.
Netanyahu kind of gave his marching orders, and he said, yeah, I'm totally welcome.
I'm totally happy with the deal with Iran, if you can get one.
But the deal would basically, in order for me to accept it, would have to be basically what Libya agreed to do, like the Gaddafi deal.
They blow up all their military.
They blow up all their weapons.
They let us explode their nuclear facilities.
They put themselves under extremely strict monitoring to never get any more weapons.
The Iranians are never going to do that for just pride reasons, if nothing else, but because they're also being constantly threatened.
But the Gaddafi model is the West tells Gaddafi, give up all your weapons and we'll integrate you finally into the international community or whatever.
You'll get all these benefits.
Gaddafi gives up all his weapons.
And then 10 years later, the Obama administration is bombing the crap out of all of Libya.
He ends up, because the government is destroyed, getting raped anally to death on the street.
Then that country is filled with anarchy and slavery and ISIS.
Why would anybody ever follow the Gaddafi model?
I'd rather follow the North Korean model.
Let me get myself some nuclear weapons and then nobody messes with you.
What do you see as the likelihood that we could really be in a war with Iran?
Well, this is eerily reminiscent of what Netanyahu did around the time of the inauguration when the Trump Look,
wary Israeli public, this is a temporary...
Ceasefire. Don't get too exercised about it.
We've been told by both the Biden and Trump administrations, with Trump even being more permissive of Netanyahu potentially than Biden was, despite the historic quantity of armaments that Biden happily shipped over, that we're entitled to resume the war at the time and place of our choosing.
Don't think that this is actually supposed to constitute a final cessation to the war.
It's not.
And if anything, we will be given fewer restrictions in terms of the arms that the United States will ship us.
And sure enough, all that came to pass.
Trump did transfer 2,000-pound munitions to Israel with even fewer than the feeble restrictions that the Biden administration had imposed to placate people who were increasingly critical of the war.
Trump basically systematically undermined for two months the very deal which he came into office touting.
Or that he was being showered with praise for.
Now, a cynic might wonder if part of the motivation for why that deal was even struck in the first place was that Trump essentially wanted to pantomime Ronald Reagan coming into office in 1981 with the hostages returning from Iran and undercutting Jimmy Carter,
who couldn't get that particular deal over the finish line.
But Trump basically seemed to ensure that this deal What assurance is that supposed to give Hamas or the Qatari mediators in the good faith of the United States in
brokering the Additional stages of this particular ceasefire arrangement.
Probably not much.
And then, sure enough, Trump then launches this offensive against the Houthis at an even intenser ferocity than had been done during the intermittent bombings under the Biden administration.
And then he, quote, greenlights the resumption of the war in Gaza.
So I think a lot of that was actually pretty well foreseeable.
What's most interesting now, or most noteworthy now, is that Netanyahu is doing a similar routine.
He's saying, look, of course we support Donald Trump, who is the greatest friend ever to Israel, negotiating with Iran, even though in the past Netanyahu would vehemently object to any even attempts to negotiate directly with Iran.
Remember, he was invited by the Republicans in 2015 to address a joint session of Congress.
And basically undermine Barack Obama's signature diplomatic initiative, which was negotiating with Iran in pursuit of the JCPOA, or Iran Nuclear Deal, which the Republicans almost unanimously opposed, including Trump at the time in the 2016 campaign.
So, of course, Netanyahu now is going to say, look, of course, we support entirely Trump's initiative to negotiate with Iran because the only viable negotiating model is the Libyan model, which means that, and Netanyahu,
as I think you covered earlier this week,
that that Libyan model would entail Iran agreeing to blow up under U.S. supervision its own nuclear facilities, which nobody.
So these negotiations could well be.
I mean let's hope not if you want to avoid a war but you know a cynic might wonder if these supposed negotiations are entirely pretextual so that the administration can say look we tried to negotiate but we weren't getting anywhere this is a rabid theocratic regime which will never agree to our satisfaction to relinquish its nuclear program and then bombs away now Who knows?
There could be some about-face or some pump-fake and maybe the negotiations are more serious than we understand.
There's always a possibility of certain back-channel contacts or whatever.
But at least how this is being presented publicly does seem to telegraph that the ground is being laid for military action.
And during the 2024 campaign, Trump publicly declared that he would support Israel bombing Iran, presumably with U.S. backing or support, which is almost...
an inevitability or a given whenever Israel does anything militarily.
But it's not as if this should come as any surprise.
Trump did campaign on the wisdom of Iran and/or the United States bombing
Yeah, I mean, we'll see how this plays out.
I mean, like we were talking about with the Ukraine negotiations, you know, there is a possibility that the reason Trump is being so overtly threatening with Iran is because he believes he will get a better deal that way if he scares them.
Even the people close to the White House who worry about an Iran bombing say that Trump does want and strongly prefers a deal with Iran over starting a new war in the Middle East.
He doesn't want that on his legacy.
And I think what happened in Gaza is I don't think that the intention on the part of Trump was to restart it, and I think that Netanyahu was trying to placate the ministers and parties to his right that he needs for the coalition, who were quitting the government in protest of that ceasefire,
saying, oh, don't worry, we're going to get to restart it.
And I think what happened was, and there's reporting on this in the Wall Street Journal, that Miriam Adelson and Ben Shapiro arranged for some of the hostages who were released by Hamas.
And back to Israel to come to the White House and just, you know, tell Trump these horror stories about what they endured.
And that timeline was then when Trump said, hey, Hamas, you either release all of these hostages like by Saturday, not in accordance with the deal, which provides for stage releases, but by Saturday, or holy hell is going to rain down upon you.
And when they didn't release the hostages, I think you're right.
He wanted that Reagan moment.
And then greenlit it, which is not a defense of Trump at all.
I think he bears as much blame for what's happening in Gaza as Biden did.
But we'll see what happens in Iran.
I have to be on Jesse Watters' show in just a few minutes, which, you know, I cherish a great deal.
So I'm going to have to let you go.
I would love to continue to speak with you all night.
But unfortunately, that's not the reality that we live in.
But I do want to really thank you from the bottom of my heart for your taking the time to speak with us.
Can I give a 30-second point on the tariffs, Glenn?
If it's really 30 seconds.
It'll really be 30 seconds.
I'm going to time you very rigorously.
You can count down.
Go ahead.
I think...
That one need not repudiate an openness to the potential utility of tariffs as a tool for onshoring domestic manufacturing or for some other purpose that aligns with a protectionist worldview.
To note that it's probably warranted to take an instinctively skeptical attitude toward the president, whomever it may be, unilaterally declaring a so-called national emergency to, in the words of Howard Lutnick, quote, run the global economy,
which is what Lubnik exhorted us to all do, let one man unilaterally run the global economy at whim.
And so there's an argument to be made that if all this does go haywire or is abandoned because of the volatility in the markets, it could actually redound to the discredit of what I think is a legitimate position, which is a more protectionist way.
Right. I think what we saw...
I do think Trump intended to keep these tariffs in place.
He didn't want to backtrack.
And you see the power of bond markets.
You see the power of billionaires.
Jamie Dimon went on his favorite show, Maria Bartimolo on Fox, and sort of said, hey, we're heading to a recession.
This needs to stop.
He was hearing from Elon.
He was hearing from a lot of people who he respects.
But he was also scared of the outcome.
And it shows you that...
Power is more dispersed in the United States than I think Trump may wish it to be.
No matter how authoritarian you want to be, you have limits on what you can do and wrecking the stock market and the American economy and even the global economy is probably not within your power.
The backlash would be too great.
All right, Michael, I'm going to let you go.
Thank you so much.
Have a great evening, great weekend, all of that.
We'll see you shortly.
All right, Glenn.
It was such a pleasure.
Bye. All right, that concludes our show for this evening.
As I mentioned just a moment ago, I'm going to be on Jesse Waters in just a few minutes, I think like 15 minutes or so.
So if you want, you can look for me there.
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