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Nov. 14, 2024 - Uncensored - Piers Morgan
51:53
20241114_what-will-foreign-policy-look-like-under-trump-fea
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Trump's Decisive Electoral Mandate 00:03:05
He's clearly laid out a vision and agenda that was running against the system, if you will.
And the American people have delivered a decisive electoral mandate.
How did you call this so badly?
So I will eat halal.
Honestly, I was wrong.
Democrats embraced the deranged conspiracy theory that Trump was a Russian asset.
And they've only doubled down in the process they've embraced.
Donald Trump ran on strength, security, right?
The Secretary of Defense is Pete Hegseth.
You undermining him.
This is a reach.
This is just you being disrespectful.
This is putting lipstick on a pig.
This is a reach.
I think it's an inspired choice.
The way to solve broken elements of our government is not by bringing people who were part of breaking them in the first place into higher positions of power.
They're very hardcore right-wing pro-Israel hawks.
That's the one thing that's shared by all of them.
Why are you okay with anybody being occupied?
And why are you okay with denying people?
I want a two-state solution.
Part of a solution?
Part of a solution?
Yeah, okay.
Donald Trump is going to bring peace.
I really believe this, through strength.
Why did Vladimir Putin wait till Trump left office to invade Ukraine?
President Trump's overflowing intro includes two major wars, both of which he's pledged to end quickly and easily.
There's broad consensus on the right of the winding down USAID to Ukraine, but Israel's escalating war in Gaza and Lebanon will put new allegiances to the test.
Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy, Tucker Carlson, and Tulsi Gabbard all joined Trump on the campaign trail with a passionate and hugely popular anti-war message.
There's also no doubt that Harris was harmed by her muddled position on Israel.
And Trump humiliated the DNC in America's biggest Muslim majority city, Dearborn, in Michigan.
The new wave of MAGA peacekins were delighted by the decision to sideline Mike Pompeo and Nikki Haley.
Speaking before she joined Trump's team, this is what Telsi Gabau said about the newly minted Secretary of State, Marco Rubio.
He represents the neocon war-mongering establishment of Washington, D.C., which stands diametrically opposed to the very policies that President Trump has always stood for, going all the way back to when he ran for president in 2016 through that first term in office and the things that he's talking about wanting to do now.
And it would just, it would send the wrong message to a lot of folks who are very concerned about the fact that we are on the brink of war with Russia and China and Iran.
Well, Trump's foreign policy team so far includes some eye-catching pics.
Pete Hegseth, an army veteran and a Fox News presenter, is nominated for Secretary of Defense.
Mike Huckabee, who previously said Palestine should be moved to neighboring countries like Egypt, is the ambassador to Israel.
Elise Stefanik, who famously throttled college bosses over campus anti-Semitism, is heading to the UN.
And friend of this show, Dave Smith, who backed Trump, tweeted a quote that sums up the mood of some.
No matter who you vote for, you get John McCain.
So is Trump pursuing a policy of peace through the projection of power?
Or will both of these wars, including Israel's in particular, last a lot longer than everybody hoped?
A New Vision for Foreign Policy 00:05:59
In a few minutes, we'll discuss that and more with my panel of uncensored luminaries.
The first aid national security expert is tipped by many to play a significant role in Trump's foreign policy, Elbridge Colby.
Mr. Colby, thank you very much for joining me.
Good to be with you, Pierce.
What should we read into Donald Trump's early picks for his cabinet?
What's the message he wants us to receive from this?
Well, I mean, let me be clear, I don't speak for President Trump.
He speaks for himself and the transition and so forth.
But I think you really got to bear in mind something just listening to your intro is that President Trump is in command here.
He's been given a decisive electoral mandate by the American people.
He's laid out a very clear vision of America first, of peace through strength, as he said it in his memorable, I think, historic victory.
And then his victory speech that night in Florida, he said, I don't start wars, I end them.
He knows the crowd now.
This is not like it was in late 2016 when he was new to Washington.
He knows the kind of team he wants to assemble.
He's bringing together people who have shown their loyalty, represent different parts of the country and the constituencies and so forth.
But I think I just really stress that he knows what he's doing, I think, and he's got a clear vision.
He's got a mandate to pursue it.
So I think that's the message that we should receive.
People are reacting in different ways to some of these announcements.
Pete Hegseth, who I know from Fox, he's an excellent broadcaster.
He's obviously served his country very courageously in wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and others.
He's won medals for this.
But people say, look, the guy is not remotely qualified for a position of Secretary of Defense.
What would you say to people that think that?
Well, I disagree.
I think, as you pointed out, he's a decorated combat veteran, a highly educated guy.
He's published multiple books.
And I'd say with all respect, being a television, leading television figure is a very tough job.
And he's developed a real following.
He's shown a clear commitment to a kind of America-first agenda.
He's got a wide following and admiration in this country.
And I think there's sort of different models and different ways of having people who can lead a large department with people there supporting the principle, as you say.
And I think also Pete Hegseth has shown real commitment to veterans.
He has, I think, a clear kind of finger feel for veterans' concerns and what war means for the American soldier and his or her family.
I'd also point out that Senator Roger Wicker just recently said supportive things about Pete Hegseth.
And some of the critiques are coming from quarters that I think are validating.
Some of the people, you know, former Vice President Cheney's key advisor was critical.
There was a political piece that said there was an unnamed defense industry lobbyist who was criticizing him, which says to me, well, you know, maybe that's a good sign.
Yeah, I mean, it's interesting.
I mean, Trump is never going to do things the normal way.
And he certainly has always talked to draining the Washington swamp.
Is the nomination of people like Pete Hegseth, is that a clear message to the world that I'm just not going to play by the normal Washington rulebook?
I'm going to have left-field picks in here who are people who I think understand perhaps things like the Department of Defense better than some of the people who've been running it.
Well, I mean, look, Piers, I think it's, you know, if you ran things the normal way over the last 30 years, we would crash right into the iceberg, the proverbial iceberg.
And that's where the Biden-Harris administration and what I call the liberal primacist alliance has put us.
We're a couple thousand yards away from that looming iceberg right now, and we do need dramatic change.
In fact, I hope that's a signal of dramatic change.
I think Pete Hegseth has clearly been committed to that.
I don't want to speak for him or anything like that, but I think that's the signal.
And I think a lot of the voices, I mean, there's a bizarre presumption on the part of a lot of, like, for instance, these four stars or retired civilian officials who were instrumental in the invasion of Iraq, in the long and ultimately failed war in Afghanistan, et cetera.
And I'm thinking to myself, on what basis are these people passing judgment?
Of course we need change.
So if anything, I hope that represents change.
Again, I don't speak for President Trump, but I think he's clearly laid out a vision and agenda that was running against the system, if you will.
And the American people have delivered a decisive electoral mandate.
And I think this is important for people in the UK, Europe, and abroad to understand.
We already see encouraging signals that allies and others are getting the memo.
We see allies stepping up, Taiwan, possibly Germany.
And we see some of our adversaries starting also to get the memo.
Qatar making moves.
Even Iran, according to the New York Times, considering a softer policy towards the United States and Israel.
So I think this is a very promising new start to implement the president's agenda.
He has said he will try and resolve the Ukraine-Russia war in 24 hours.
How will he do that?
I mean, that's not actually possible, is it?
Well, I think it's possible.
I hope he does.
I mean, he has not tipped his hand, which is smart negotiating.
Neither did Eisenhower in 52 or Nixon in 68 or Reagan in 80.
So, I mean, we've already seen some relatively positive signals about the openness to negotiations from both Moscow and Kiev, as well as moves potentially.
It seems like Germans are more prepared to spend more on defense to help a sustainable solution in the United Kingdom, the Starmer government perhaps actually moving forward with needed increases in defense spending.
So, I think it's entirely possible.
I don't think anybody knows exactly what he has planned.
That's part of the negotiating plan, and that's just good sense.
But I think everybody knows at this point that the war in Ukraine hopefully will come to an end as soon as possible.
Finally, Elwood, you worked for Trump in his last administration.
Do you hope to get a call soon bringing you back?
Well, look, Piers, I have absolutely no presumptions.
I don't make any predictions for myself, and I don't want to be saying something that I, you know, and any kind of presumption there.
Why Men Left the Democrats 00:15:42
But let me just say this: I'd be deeply honored to serve if he or his team called me to actually implement the vision that he has laid out.
I think the most important thing, whether it's me or somebody else, is to put in people, which I think he's done so far, who are clearly going to implement the president's agenda.
There's a lot of hemming and hawing and wringing of hands that people aren't going to pretend to be the quote-unquote adults in the room or so forth.
His agenda is peace through strength, putting Americans first, getting our allies to do more together so we all end up in a better and more peaceful world.
I'd be honored to contribute in whatever way I can.
I'll take that as a yes.
Well, no presumption, but I'd be honored to serve.
Elvis Cobby, thank you very much indeed for joining me.
I appreciate it.
Thanks, Pierce.
Well, to debate all this, I'm joined by the co-host of Democracy-ish, Majahat Ali, broadcaster Emily Austin, the founder of Outkick, Clay Travis, the journalist with the Grey Zone News, Aaron Marte.
Well, welcome to all of you, a high-powered panel to thrash all this out.
Let's start with you, Wajahat, because last time I spoke to you, you said, quotes, that you would eat Crow on this show if you were proven spectacularly wrong with the results of the election.
And let's just remind you of what you said.
This is why Republicans are painting a corner, right?
I feel bad for them, the people who have come out and defend Trump.
There's two things they can't defend: January 6th, Roe v. Wade.
Those are two galvanizing factors, which is why I believe Kamala Harris, I'm going to say in front of the camera, is going to win tomorrow.
And if I'm wrong, he's buying me halal crow, which I will eat on your side.
I hope you brought some with you.
Johat?
Well, first and foremost, thank you so much for referring to all of us as your luminaries.
That makes me feel really good.
And I'm a man of my word, Piers Morgan.
This is not halal crow, but it's halal liver.
So I will eat halal liver on your show for you.
I was wrong, and I'm eating halal liver.
And at the very least, I hope you can say, you know, Wajat and I disagree, but he's a man of his word.
Hopefully, he's consistent in his principles.
So that's halal liver.
It's not that good.
I hope your fans are happy.
And at the very least, I hope you can jump out of my word.
That's halal liver.
Not crow, but liver.
Hopefully, I don't choke live on air.
In response.
The foreign policy.
Listen, Donald Trump says a lot.
Well, hang on, hang on.
Hang on.
I'm not asking you about that yet.
I actually just want to ask you one thing.
You want me to eat the crow?
All right.
No, no, you can finish your liver.
But I can't think of liver without the key of Hannibal Lecture, actually, but we'll keep off that.
Just to be clear, you weren't just wrong.
I mean, every reason you gave for why Kamala was obviously going to win turned out to be non-existent.
Women didn't rush to vote for her because of abortion.
There was no great rush to vote as a protester January the 6th.
Trump broke records for himself with almost every democraphic possible and he won everything.
The White House, the Senate, the House.
He's going to get more judges on the Supreme Court.
He won everything.
How did you, Vajara?
And I say this with great respect, but how did you call this so badly?
Why did you possibly think?
Because I kept trying to tell you, Kamala Harris is a terrible candidate and Trump's going to win.
Why were you so wrong?
So the reason why I was so wrong, I was wrong twice, 2016, 2024.
I thought it would swing 1.5 points her way.
And when we were talking on your show, if you remember, you asked us, well, how could be some reasons how he wins?
And you said, and just for the sake of entertaining it, I said, yeah, maybe the men come out for him, men of color, and he gets enough people in the swing states.
When all is said and done, Pierce, as the data is being collected, as we know, he will get less than 50%.
He will beat her by two points.
For perspective, in 2020, Biden beat Trump by 4.4 points.
It's not an overwhelming memory.
He won the popular vote, Wajaya.
Come on.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, wait, by less than 50%, number one, he's going to beat her by maybe two points.
Number two, there's a fascinating trend around the world.
In the past 140 years, this has never happened.
Every single, nearly every single incumbent party around the world has lost.
Fascinating, number one.
Number two, if you look at the polls, it's fascinating.
Most people, when blindly presented with Kamala Harris's policies, including Trump voters, supported it.
Most people who had incorrect facts about economy, inflation, immigration, crime, went to Trump.
Most people who had correct facts went to Kamala Harris.
So I think there's a lot of things that factor here.
Number one, I do think even if Biden would have run, I think he would have been even worse.
Looking at the internal polling, there's a fascinating phenomenon right now that's happening in 2024.
Nearly every incumbent party has lost around the world.
Number two, the racism and misogyny, I think, is caked in, which is why Trump attacked her.
A lot of people, I thought, Pierce, listen, I thought enough people in 2024 would be okay voting for a black woman.
I was wrong.
Number three, right-wing disinformation really worked on 140 million people.
But to be clear, it was a bunch.
Just to be clear, Wajaya.
Hang on, just to be clear.
So far, you categorize the reasons that people voted for Trump and not your woman, Kamala Harris, was racism, sexism, right-wing disinformation, and because they were basically too stupid.
No, I didn't say that.
The first, the number one.
Well, they didn't believe facts, as you put it.
So they voted on the wrong facts.
I mean, I'm not being funny, Waji, but it does seem to me you're the number one factor.
You are the number one.
If you don't mind me saying, you are sounding quite ludicrously deluded.
I've got to be fair to you and say I like you and I respect you, but honestly, you are.
Let's bring in Clay Travis.
You can't stop laughing.
I mean, Trey.
Hang on.
Hang on.
You've had a good start.
I'll bring you back.
Clay, I've really noticed this trend, which is rather than just admit what I was saying for the entire campaign from when Carmela Harris came in, which is she was a terrible candidate who couldn't seem to articulate any policy for how she would improve the fortunes of the country and quickly reverted to the Hillary Clinton failed playbook of surrounding herself with Beyoncé and pop stars endorsing you and then calling Trump a Nazi every two minutes.
That was never going to work.
And yet now that it happened exactly the way I told everyone it would happen, now we're hearing from the left that it was all just basically not very bright people reading wrong information fed by right-wing lunatics who were spreading this deliberately to contaminate their brains.
And they were racist and they were sexist, presumably including record numbers of Latinos who voted for Trump.
They were presumably racist and sexist too, as were the very large extra number of black people who voted for Trump this time around.
Were they also racist and sexist?
So I'm not really buying this defense.
Are you?
No, they got their ass kicked, Piers.
You were right.
I was right.
Trump won all seven battlegrounds.
And I actually think as we get more and more data, here is what I am seeing.
Lots of young men in America, maybe the most staggering of all movements was young men, as you just said, Pierce, not only white kids, but also black kids, Hispanic kids, Asian kids.
I was driving home with my 14-year-old from watching NFL football games on Sunday.
And he said, You know, dad, I'm going to be able to vote for president the next time we have an election.
And I was just gobsmacked, right?
The idea that I'm going to have two grown adult voting young men in my family that I've raised by 2028.
But what I have seen from them, and this is really important, Piers, what I've seen from them is they are growing up in an era when they say, Look, why are we getting blamed for everything?
Initially, the left wanted to say white men have ruined everything.
White men are the worst.
And then it expanded.
This whole concept of toxic masculinity took in black men, Asian men, Hispanic men.
Guess what's happening?
Young men, boys who are turning into men in this country, have seen all of this happening and they are fed up with it.
And look, if you want to talk as the panelists there said, oh, well, Trump only won by a couple of points and it's because of racism and it's because of sexism.
Democrats have a monster problem right now with young men that is only going to grow as more young men come on and vote.
Piers, you look at the Wall Street Journal.
They lost, Republicans did, young men by around 14 points in 2020 to Biden.
By 2024, Trump, according to the Wall Street Journal, won them by about 14 points.
That swing didn't happen because of racism and sexism.
It happened because the Democrat Party is fundamentally anti-masculine.
They know it because they tried to trot out Tim Walz and all his spirit fingers to appeal to men.
It didn't work.
Women are going to vote Republican oftentimes when they get married because they have young boys, a lot of them, and they're seeing it happen.
The Democrat Party is in danger of losing half the population for years and years to come because they won't get away from this woke ideology, from calling everybody racist and sexist.
Instead of that, how about they say this, Piers?
We're not going to let men win women's sports championship.
Congressman Seth Moulton from Massachusetts said it, and he's getting ripped to shreds.
I'm sure you saw the CNN debate over it where it was called transphobia to say that a man shouldn't be able to win a women's championship.
This is real life.
It's a foundational issue.
Democrats are lying to men and men are turning our backs overwhelmingly on them.
That's what happened in 2016.
Listen, I agree.
I mean, Aaron, Mate, I do agree with that analysis.
I do think that it was a combination of cost of living crisis and people trusting Trump to get things back on track.
Yes.
Better than Carmela Harris.
But also, I think the situation on the southern border where she was billed as the border czar and it was a complete disaster down there.
And everyone seems to accept it's been a disaster.
And without a secure border, as Ronald Reagan said, you don't really have a country.
And then the woke element of this, where I, as a liberal, have warned for years that if the left did not get off this extreme woke ideology nonsense, then it was going to come back and haunt them.
That's exactly what's happened, isn't it?
I mean, is there any better spin you can put on it, Aaron, than that?
I take this back to 2016.
2016 should have been a wake-up call for Democrats when a billionaire reality TV show host pretended to be a working class champion, pretended to be anti-war, and took advantage of the fact that Hillary Clinton and the establishment she represented had a neoliberal legacy that had left many people in the country without meaningful prospects for work and had taken the country to all these disastrous wars.
And Trump exploited the anger over that and also scapegoated people like immigrants and Muslims for that.
Rather than learn the lessons that Democrats should present a genuine alternative to Trump, an actual working class champion who's actually anti-war, someone like Bernie Sanders, Democrats embraced a deranged conspiracy theory that Trump was a Russian asset and that Russia had brainwashed millions of Americans into voting for Trump and not Hillary.
And that dominated, if we remember, the first few years of Trump's term.
I thought that was a disaster at the time.
I warned against it.
And they've only doubled down.
In the process, they've embraced neocons like Liz Cheney.
And you're right, there has been a focus on identity politics.
But I don't think the issue of identity politics, however you think about it, would be as salient if Democrats had presented an actual alternative.
If they had pointed out to Trump, for example, that Trump demonizes immigrants while creating millions of migrants through his policies.
In office, Trump tried to overthrow the government of Venezuela by imposing crippling sanctions that deliberately destroy Venezuela's economy, caused major damage.
That then creates migrants, which Trump then turns around and demonizes and scapegoats for America's problems.
If Democrats had learned the lessons of 2016, they would have said we shouldn't be going around and destroying countries.
We should be focusing on our own problems and taking care of our needs at home.
So Democrats, in many ways, by refusing to take on the pro-war neoliberal establishment, helped give rise to Trump and gave Trump an opening to pretend as if he was all the things that Democrats are not.
And we saw this in this election.
Trump went to Michigan, campaigned with Muslims and Arab Americans, said he would bring peace to the Middle East.
And now we're seeing a similar con where Trump, right off taking office, or as he prepares to take office, is appointing people who have no interest in peace in the Middle East and will continue to give unfettered support to Israeli mass murders.
So I see a real tragedy here in Democrats refusing to be the anti-establishment party that they could be and therefore ceding that lane to Trump, who pretends to be anti-establishment while still deepening the swamp that he's claiming he wants to drain.
All right, Emily Austin, your response to that.
I want to go back to Wajahat's point in the beginning and just address the racism issue.
We had a black president for two terms.
We had Barack Hussein Obama as the United States president as a black man.
So you cannot pull the racist card.
Kamala's strongest asset in her campaign was the fact that she was a black woman.
In fact, that's probably all she had going for her, because if she had had some policies and her celebrity endorsements and was a black female, she probably would have won.
So we can't put in the racism card anymore.
Now, I think Bobby Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., he said it best.
The Democratic Party, he always says, I didn't leave the Democratic Party, they left me.
They've went so unhinged, left-wing, and turned America into such a laughing stock, both domestically and internationally, that now we need someone on the right to just bring us back to the middle.
There's not one reason I would pinpoint that Trump won.
The border, our safety, the economy.
DEI is the most racist thing that has been implemented.
To segregate people by their gender or color or race rather than judging people off of merit is literally the definition of racism.
But the problem is over the last four years, we've normalized the insanity that now going back to normalcy and listening to Trump's normal policies have become radical extremism.
And I don't think it's that extreme.
I think that America's gone extreme, so we need to find the proper balance again.
And all of the excuses of why Kamala lost, incompetency.
She was not qualified.
She could not crack down on policies.
Even Obama chirping in your ear couldn't do it.
What they did to Biden showed their disloyalty in the party.
There was a million reasons why she lost.
And I could give you a million reasons why Trump won.
Yeah, I mean, I thought the two pivotal moments of the whole race were when Trump got shot.
and he stood back up at huge personal risk potentially, not knowing there was another shooter out there, and he punched the air and shouted fight, fight, fight.
And secondly, when the Democrats coronated Kamala, and it looks like it was a deliberate act of almost treason by Joe Biden to his party, that so he was so piqued by being driven out that he immediately said he was endorsing Kamala.
So it had to be her, knowing that that may not be the best choice, and then depriving them of having a proper convention where they could have thrashed out who was the best candidate.
I think those two things, precipitated by that shooting and then by obviously the debate that had happened, that led to this terrible decision to let her just be anointed.
Resolving Ukraine and Israel Challenges 00:12:57
And I think it also pierced a lot of people started to question why are the Democrats so afraid to have Trump back in office?
He was, they attempted to kill him two times.
They used the justice system against him.
They criminalized the justice system.
They've tried everything, every single thing that they were capable of doing to stop Trump from getting in office.
So now a common person who, let's say, knows nothing about politics can help but to question why are they so afraid of this man?
And the answer is he will expose with his avengers of a team right now all of the corruption that's been tolerated in the government over the last who knows how long and he's going to crack down on it.
Yeah, I listen.
I think that, again, I think that the weaponization of the justice system against Trump was a massive act of self-harm by the Democrats that came back to bite them.
It just, all it did was strengthen him, improve his standing in the polls, and make average Americans go, this is a massive overreach against a former president.
And they didn't like it.
And they particularly didn't like the fact that he was convicted of the crime of shuffling a bit of paperwork over a potential one-night stand he denies with a porn star 20 years ago.
It was just a ridiculous thing to do.
But look, they made their calls and they lost spectacularly.
Stay there, Pam.
I'm going to bring in, just for a quick chat about the foreign policy aspect of this, the former U.S. ambassador to the European Union under President Trump, Gordon Sonderlin.
Welcome to you.
You obviously have had a sort of rocky history with President Trump in that you worked for him, but then obviously you ended up testifying against him over the whole Ukraine issue.
How are things between you and President Trump these days?
Well, let me correct something.
I did not testify against him.
In fact, I had no agenda when I testified, contrary to some of the other witnesses like Colonel Vinman and Fiona Hill and others who are absolutely there to undermine.
They relished that testimony.
I didn't want to be anywhere near that committee.
I wanted to go back to Brussels and do my job.
In fact, when I was first asked to appear voluntarily, I declined until I was given a subpoena.
So I did not testify against him.
I told the truth.
I told what exactly happened, which if you read through the record, was very innocuous.
It really didn't hurt Trump and it really didn't help Trump.
It was actually pretty neutral at the end of the day.
My relationship with him, according to third parties, is still fine.
We haven't spoken in a while, but everyone who's been there where my name has come up said, oh yeah, I like Gordon.
What's Gordon up to?
So I don't know.
Well, we shall see, won't we?
Ukraine, Ukraine is going to be a crucial early challenge for Donald Trump because he has said he can sort this war out in 24 hours.
I've always been bemused how he thinks he could do that without giving Vladimir Putin a win in terms of keeping the territory that he's stolen, even if Putin was to accept that deal.
Can you see any other way that this gets resolved quickly in terms of making Russia do a deal that doesn't involve them being given the Donbass, for example?
Well, Piers, the first thing you have to do is learn how to speak Trump speak.
And 24 hours doesn't mean literally 24 hours.
What it means is that I'm going to focus on it relentlessly and I'm going to check my watch, not my calendar, when I'm working on this issue.
And I'm going to get it done in a matter of days, weeks, months, not years or decades, which is the way Washington tends to work from a timeframe standpoint.
I don't think that Trump wants to reward Putin with anything.
But I also think that our relationship with Russia vis-a-vis China in the future is going to be a very, very important consideration in this whole thing.
So this is three-dimensional chess, just like they used to play on Star Trek.
And I think that at the end of the day, giving Ukraine what they need in terms of weaponry, but not only the weaponry itself, not only the hardware and the software, but the ability to use it to its full capability will be an important negotiating tool that Trump will use to get Putin to back down.
And there will be rewards for Russia if they give back what they took, because in the long term, having Russia as a permanent enemy where they're constantly attempting incursions into Europe is not a good thing for our planet.
It's very, very different than China, who's made no bones about the fact that they want complete hegemony someday, and they're using what I call gradual incrementalism to get there.
They are far more dangerous to us than Russia.
Yeah, but Putin is not just going to give this territory back that he's taken, because to do that would be to admit to his own people that all these hundreds of thousands of Russian troops who've been killed, it's now running at about 1,500 a day, apparently, in terms of casualties, dead and wounded, on the Russian side alone.
If he was to now just give back what he's taken, that would be seen as an abject failure and he could get driven out of office or worse.
Well, no, he won't just give it back without cost.
It'll cost us something.
It'll cost Europe something.
But what it'll cost is not going to be the end of another Western democracy, i.e. Ukraine.
It could be oil revenues.
It could be a different type of alliance with Russia.
It could be carte blanche in terms of having Ukraine join NATO at some point where the Russians back down on that issue.
There are all kinds of cards to play, and I don't want to presuppose any of them, because actually President Trump has quite a few tools to resolve this.
President Biden did nothing but a cold, despicable political calculus, which is he treated this conflict with a thermostat.
He kept turning up the temperature, turning down the temperature based solely on the polls and his prospects for re-election without consideration to the long-term ramifications for us and for our European allies.
This was all about getting him re-elected.
Trump doesn't have that consideration any longer.
Ambassador Sonolo, thank you very much indeed for joining me.
I appreciate it.
Let's go back to the panel to discuss some of this.
But Jaha, some of the appointments that have been made early by Donald Trump in terms of nominees, Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseph, the Fox host, Ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee.
The Secretary of State is apparently going to be Marco Rubio, UN Ambassador Elise Stefani.
What do you make of these appointments or the people that Trump wants to be appointed?
Do you think they're all going to get through?
And what would the ramifications be of having these particular people running these departments, do you think?
Well, if Trump wants them, they'll get through.
Trump is the leader of the party.
And very quickly, we have a difference of opinions on the following.
I think a convicted criminal who was held liable for assaulting a woman and defamation and incite a violent insurrection to this day is the only president who refuses to admit that he lost.
I think he's dangerous.
I think that's a problem.
Maybe my panelists doesn't, but I do.
But I think facts matter.
Donald Trump, when he ran, right, the first time, he said, I'm going to be pacifist.
I'm not going to be interventionist.
Well, who did he appoint in his cabinet the first time?
Remember, Pompeo, Gina Haspel, John Bolton, all these people were war hawks.
And people forget when Donald Trump came in, right?
He promised, I'm not going to intervene.
I'm not going to be aggressive.
People forget drone strikes increased by 432%.
People forget he kept us in Iraq and Afghanistan.
People forget he ripped up the Iran deal.
People forget he bombed Syria twice.
People forget that he let Israel illegally annex the Golan Heights and move the embassy.
He ripped up the Iran agreement.
He killed Soleimani, right?
He funded Saudi Arabia to continue a genocide in Yemen.
None of this is peaceful, right?
This is all hawkish.
Now you look at the appointments that you just mentioned.
You see people like Secretary of Defense, right?
The rest of the folks we can get to.
But Secretary of Defense, this is putting lipstick on a pig, right?
A Fox host who, by the way, bragged about not washing his hands for 10 years, says he doesn't want women in combat, almost killed someone with an axe on Fox News, Pete Hekseth.
But in all seriousness, he's a Fox host who's not qualified at all.
I think this one is going to be deeply problematic.
The other ones we can quibble about.
Let me finish.
I did not interrupt anyone.
Pete Hegseth in his book, right?
Read his book.
In his book, he himself said he was too extreme for the military.
He is an Iraq veteran.
He is hawkish.
He wants a civil war.
He wants to embolden some of these right-wing paramilitary movements.
He wants Democrats and anyone who's a leftist to be attacked as the enemy.
He's not qualified compared to Lloyd Austin.
You could disagree with Lloyd Austin, Biden's pick, four-star general, which is why you're going to get a lot of folks, people, a lot of folks, even Republicans on the DL say, listen, this is Secretary of Defense.
Donald Trump ran on strength, security, right?
The Secretary of Defense is Pete Hegseth, a Fox anchor who's sure a veteran, has no experience and these extreme policies.
This was the one really big blunder.
This was the big blunder of all the picks.
All right, Emily, your response to that.
I just think it's so blatantly disrespectful to undermine him because you don't agree with his policies as unqualified.
He served in Iraq.
He served in Afghanistan.
He put his life on the line.
Correct.
After he served and did his duty to serve our country, he became a Fox News host very successfully for 10 years.
And that should show you, by the way, the range of emotion and how stable, in fact, he actually is.
He went overseas and saw the worst of the worst things on earth, war, death, and comes back to America and has a successful career as a media anchor.
That just shows you how stable, in fact, and qualified he is.
So by you undermining him, he's only a Fox host.
It's just you being disrespectful.
No, it's not.
This is putting lipstick on a pig.
This is a reach.
I'm just telling you, this is a big reach.
Clay, you want to jump in?
Let me also talk about...
Yeah.
Yeah, look, I know Pete really well, and I think it's an inspired choice.
And I think it actually reflects what Trump ran on, which is the way to solve broken elements of our government is not by bringing people who were part of breaking them in the first place into higher positions of power.
And this is like the universal rule here.
Usually people who fix things weren't involved in breaking them in the first place.
In fact, I would argue that was Kamala Harris's entire campaign.
Yes, I broke everything along with Joe Biden.
There isn't a single thing I would do different that comes to mind is what she said on The View.
How do you expect change when you promote the same people over and over again?
This argument that Pete Hegseth is dangerous is absolutely insane.
I was with him on Tuesday when Trump was elected.
We were doing the Fox Nation live show.
I've known Pete Hegseth for a long time.
Do you know who was sitting there with him?
His six kids.
He's a combat veteran.
His wife is phenomenal.
Look, this guy is going to be, you didn't mention that he went to Princeton where he played on the basketball team, by the way, really threatening dude there, went and got a master's degree from Harvard.
Super smart, brilliant guy, New York Times best-selling author, war on warriors, who has laid out things that 90% of real people serving in our military would agree with.
And let me also go back, Pierce, something you said earlier.
You were right.
The reason why Trump won, economy, border crime.
But the single most effective thing that I still haven't heard anybody on the panel try to defend was the ad he ran that I want to nail here.
He said, she's for they, them.
Trump is for you.
This is an appointment that is for the American people, that is for the American military, that is overwhelmingly popular.
And his choices, I think, have been inspired.
Pierce, what he learned, you know this.
If you come in and you start doing a television show and you've never done television before or any other business, but we're doing television, we're doing YouTube, we're doing shows here.
Sometimes you have people that aren't that talented as a part of your team.
And when you go back and you remake that team, you know who can do the job.
Trump was the ultimate outsider in 2016.
He would say, and I would say, and most people who followed this, he made a lot of bad personnel decisions, people who didn't actually reflect what he believed.
He loves Hegseth.
He knows him.
He's going to kill it as defense secretary.
And I think all of his choices are inspired now because he knows who's going to move the train in the right direction.
The Two-State Solution Debate 00:13:32
Okay, Aaron, I just want to pick up on what Gordon Sondland said about Ukraine and also move to Israel with you as well, because these are going to be big, big challenges that Trump's going to have to try and keep his word on in terms of resolving.
And yet he put Mike Huckabee in as ambassador to Israel, someone who's on record is saying he wants to basically get all the Palestinians out of there.
What do you make of, first of all, that appointment?
I think the appointment of Mike Huckabee signals that Trump will be continuing his policy not of America first, but Israel first.
And that reflects who his donors are.
One of his biggest donors is Miriam Adelson, the widow of the late casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, who's given Trump more than $100 million for this campaign.
And Trump has openly said that in his first term in office, he recognized Israel's theft of the Syrian Golan Heights, and he moved the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem as a gift to the Adelsons.
He openly said that.
And so I expect more of the same as we can see now with the appointment of Mike Huckabee, who refuses to even call the West Bank the West Bank.
He calls it Judea and Samaria, the Jewish biblical name.
So if we care about peace in the Middle East, if we care about a policy that reflects minimal Palestinian rights to self-determination and freedom, Trump is signaling that he's already going to be abandoning that.
And that's especially cynical after he exploited the Democrats' support for genocide by campaigning as a peace candidate.
So that's what we can expect when it comes to the Middle East.
And on Ukraine, it's hard to know what to expect.
Look, this is a real tragedy.
All this could have been avoided.
It doesn't get discussed very much, but it has to be stressed.
There was a peace agreement brokered between Ukraine and Russia right after Russia's invasion.
They immediately began negotiating.
And they reached the outline of a peace deal in Istanbul back in April 2022.
Well, according to multiple accounts, Boris Johnson, with the backing of the U.S., came over and told Zelensky that the West would not back Ukraine with the security guarantees that it would need to reach a peace deal with Russia.
And the message was, we think that Russia is weak, so keep fighting them.
Well, that has resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths, and now Russia has taken more territory.
I don't think Russia will be giving back that territory.
I think Russia's attitude now is, you had your chance.
We could have resolved this peacefully.
So now we are going to take essentially what we want.
And that looks like the ethnic Russian areas of eastern Ukraine, coupled with the fact that Russia already has Crimea.
So whether Trump will change the policy, I don't know.
But any kind of policy that goes forward will have to, I think, be a shift from Biden, who refused to acknowledge any kind of Russian security concerns, refused to rule out placing offensive weapons, U.S. weapons inside Ukraine, and refused to rule out NATO inside Ukraine, despite how disastrous that policy has been.
Whether Trump has the courage for that, the fortitude, I don't know, because in office, while his opponents, Democrats, were obsessing over this fantasy he was a Russian agent, he actually was a hawk on Russia.
He tore up the INF treaty, which is a really important arms control treaty that eliminated an entire class of weapons.
He tried to overthrow Russia's key ally, Venezuela.
Now, he sent weapons to Ukraine that Obama wouldn't even send.
So Trump is sort of all over the place.
He talks nice about Putin, but his policies in office were that of a war hawk.
Okay.
And Emily, on this appointment of Mike Huckabee, it is quite an inflammatory appointment if you're on the Palestinian side, given what he's on record as saying.
Is it wise to put somebody in there at this pretty crucial moment in this war where it seems like peace is nearer than it has been in the last year and a half or so?
Is it wise to put somebody like Mike Huckabee in there?
I trust Trump's appointment on it.
I've heard what Mike Huckabee said.
I read all about it this morning, preparing to come here.
And I appreciate his advocacy for Israel and I've heard his reasoning why.
And he talks about Abraham's promise to the land.
And I'm very obviously an observant Jew, but that's not a valid reason today in modern times to support Israel.
There are many reasons to support Israel that I'm not even going to begin to list right now because I'll go on and on.
But I want to point out, he's against a two-state solution.
I've said many times on this show, I am pro a two-state solution.
Donald Trump is pro a two-state solution.
Most of his cabinet are pro-Two-State solution.
And Mike Huckabee is not solely responsible for peace in the Middle East, nor will he be able to broker a deal of a one-state or a two-state by himself.
Of course, the president will have involvement with that.
Hopefully the Abraham Accords will continue.
But I want to bring up a point that I meant to actually mention on the last panel.
A two-state solution is supposed to be a solution for peace, hence the name.
But tell me what part about segregating the Middle East makes anyone more peaceful.
So Israel right now has religious freedom.
Muslims, Christians, atheists, Druze, Jews, everyone has the right of religious freedom there.
Arabs have full rights in Israel.
So explain to me how it's fair or right that in the West Bank and in Gaza, Jews are not allowed there.
Only Muslim Arabs are.
But that's a solution for peace.
Isn't that the definition of racism and apartheid to segregate people by religion?
Yet that's supposed to be a fair solution?
That doesn't sound peaceful to me, Piers.
All right, Majaha, your response to that.
Can I respond to this?
Well, Majaha respond.
You know, Piers, you've had me on your show for the past year, and even though we have our disagreements, we have several agreements as well, especially with Israel's occupation of the West Bank and its treatment of Palestinians under occupation and the emboldenment of the violent settlers.
One thing that is consistent with every single one of Trump's picks so far is that there are very hardcore right-wing pro-Israel hawks.
That's the one thing that's shared by all of them.
Now, what we're seeing in Israel for the past year, many people call it a genocide, war crimes, just numerous deaths.
You and I have been in agreement about the numerous victims that we have all seen being killed by Israel.
Donald Trump told Benjamin Nenyahu, he apparently speaks to him every day, you know, finish, go ahead and finish it, right?
Do what you want.
If you look at Mike Huckabee, of all the people to appoint us ambassador to Israel in this fraught moment, where a lot of folks it wasn't a major factor, but it was a factor.
The war in Israel is a factor for a lot of Democrats to not vote for Kamla.
That's why they either didn't vote or went for Trump.
Mike Huckabee refuses to call it, you know, Israel-Palestine.
He says Judea and Samaria.
He refuses to say it's an occupation.
He refuses to call them settlements.
He calls them communities.
He is a hard-right white Christian nationalist on this.
Also, the Mideast envoy that Trump picked, Stephen Witkoff, completely inexperienced, but hardcore BB supporter, Nanyahu supporter, hardcore Trump donor, zero experience, but it's all in.
Marco Rubio, Secretary of State, hardcore interventionist, pro-Israel hawk.
Now, look at the disaster of the past 13 months.
Of all the choices that he could have made, this does not signal a person who wants peace.
What it does is embolden Netanyahu, who's become more extreme, fired Yoav Gallant, who's already extreme defense minister.
They're going to take it all.
They're going to take it all.
And once they take it all, imagine the chaos, the violence.
And especially if Nenyahu fulfills his ambitions to attack Iran, the Middle East is going to be a tinder keg, a powder keg, and the U.S. is going to be completely complicit in that.
What will that do to us, our forces, our security?
It is a disastrous pick.
And I think that's one thing that all folks, regardless of who they voted for, should be really concerned about.
Are these going to be pro-Israel hawks?
We're going to throw gasoline into the fire of the Middle East and embolden extremists like Nenyahu.
I hope there's some sane, cool heads there.
So far, this.
I just want to respond quickly to that.
First of all, a lot of people don't know this, but Stephen Witkoff has a lot of experience in the Middle East.
Because of his businesses and Trump's words, everything he touches turns to gold.
He has a lot of foreign relationships as a politician would through his businesses.
So it's good that he has friendships overseas, including Qatar and all over the Middle East.
Now, to go back to Mike Huckabee's point, the reason I prompted this question, which you failed to answer, is I was thinking today: okay, let's say Huckabee gets his way and the Jewish settlements allegedly are removed from the West Bank and Gaza goes back to the Arabs.
How is that a solution for peace?
You didn't answer my question.
Why is it fair that Muslim Arabs are allowed in Israel, but Jews are not allowed in the West Bank or Gaza?
Before I come to Clay, Jaha, just on that point, what is the answer to that question?
I just want to know: does he think that that's normal or fair?
I think anyone who's witnessed this and anyone who cares about human rights and security knows that you have to end the occupation.
Israel has to end the occupation and get Palestinians.
You can't live in the West Bank.
Is that your answer?
Pathway towards self-determination.
Jews already live in the West Bank.
They occupy.
They get the best water, the best security.
They occupy Palestinian land.
They're not going to come out if he wants you to support them.
All that Palestinians have just on your show.
By the way, all the Palestinians have is a moth-ridden piece of land barely held together, 22%.
And with that, even Palestinians are saying, fine, you occupied us.
You took the best land.
You have the settlements.
This 22% of land.
Jews are not allowed in the West Bank.
Can I say this?
Why are you swimming misinformation?
Misinformation.
No, no.
Why are you okay with anybody being occupied?
And why are you okay with denying freedom?
Do you know what an occupation is?
If Muslims and Arabs are not allowed in Israel with full sovereignty, I want a two-state solution.
Part of a solution is part of a solution?
Yeah, okay.
Part of a solution is peace.
There's no peace when you segregate.
That's racist.
Aaron, you want to respond to Israel?
It's a segregationist state.
It's founded on ethnic cleansing.
Emily, if you care about segregation, listen to the Israeli group Beth Selim, which says that Israel is a Jewish supremacist state.
Millions of Palestinians live under military occupation.
And you also forget that millions can't go back to their homes inside what is now Israel because they were expelled in 1948.
You completely inverted reality.
It's Israel that practices segregation as official state policy.
No, they have never had freedom.
As long as people have supreme.
Millions of Palestinians under occupation do not.
It's a complete lie.
All right.
Let me bring in.
Let me bring in Clay to wrap things up here.
Clay, let's take a bigger picture view of the world.
Because Trump's now got an incredible mandate from the American people to pretty much do what he wants for the next two years.
In your ideal world, Clay Travis, what does the world look like in two years' time in terms of America's place and how things play out?
Look, Donald Trump is going to bring peace.
I really believe this through strength.
And let me give you an example of something that Kamala was never able to answer and that I've never heard a Democrat answer.
If Trump was such a stooge of Vladimir Putin, why did Vladimir Putin wait till Trump left office to invade Ukraine?
The answer, I think, quite clearly is he was afraid of how Trump would respond.
He knew how Biden would respond and he didn't fear him at all.
That actually makes things more dangerous.
Authoritarians, dictators respond based on threats, based on a fear of what the other side might do.
Democrats are too weak.
That leads to more war.
I think the same thing has happened with Iran.
I don't think, remember, all of this mess started when Hamas invaded Israel and killed 1,200 innocent people in cold blood, mothers, babies, children, entirely because of the fact that they were Jewish.
And let me just say this on the Mike Huckabee front.
So big picture, Piers, I think Trump is going to threaten dictators around the world with American power.
And that threat, which he's acted on with Soleimani and other instances, remember ISIS, they ain't around very much anymore, does motivate their actions to be more rational and more embracing of peace.
I also love, by the way, the argument that Trump is now putting Israel first with Mike Huckabee instead of America first.
Wait a minute.
What is the left-wing argument about Trump?
The closing argument from Kamala was that he's Hitler.
Did Hitler ever put Jews first?
So now we're shifting now that Trump has won the election to Trump doesn't care about America.
He cares about Israel more than America.
Wait a minute, is he Hitler or not?
Remember, Mike Huckabee, I think, is a great choice, Piers, because in America, there is a huge overlap of evangelicals in the South, but all over the country.
I was raised one as a Southern Baptist who believed that Israeli Israel and Jewish people are the greatest people in the history of the world because Jesus was Jewish.
Mike Huckabee fuses that union of the Republican Party between the evangelical base that also supports Israel.
And I'll also point out, by the way, the Hitler argument, always outrageous on its face, one reason that Trump won in Michigan in particular, he got more Jewish vote, Pennsylvania, more Jewish vote.
This argument that Trump is somehow a racist, sexist unifier of all of the awful things in America completely ignores that many minorities, Asian, Hispanic, black, Jewish, Muslim, all came together for Trump in record numbers compared to his run in 2016 and 2020.
America first doesn't mean the world last.
Minority Support Defies Racism Claims 00:00:34
It actually makes the world better.
You know, Clay, the problem the Democrats in America.
Hang on, we've got to run out of time, but the problem the Democrats are going to have in the short term is there simply is no answer to that.
The facts don't lie.
It was a massive, wide-ranging coalition of people from every demographic, every creed and color, all saying, you know what, we've looked at the Democrats and we don't fancy it, thanks.
We're going with Trump.
I've got to leave it there.
Thank you very much indeed to the panel.
Excellent debate, as always.
Really appreciate it.
Thank you.
Claire Walsh.
Thank you.
Thank you guys.
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