Speaker 1: On this episode of News World, I felt that there
Speaker 1: were so many different things going on that talking about
Speaker 1: President Trump's five biggest challenges would really be helpful in
Speaker 1: framing everything the White House is trying to deal with.
Speaker 1: And I got there because it occurred to me. When
Speaker 1: they get up in the morning and they're looking at
Speaker 1: all these different things, they have to keep all these
Speaker 1: balls in the air. They have to remember what they are.
Speaker 1: So the five challenges I want to talk about are,
Speaker 1: first of all, the domestic crisis of who governs. Second,
Speaker 1: the Israeli Iranian War. Third, getting to the big beautiful
Speaker 1: Bill and getting it signed. Fourth, dealing with the Russia
Speaker 1: Ukraine fight, which continues to go on, and five the
Speaker 1: challenge of reshaping the entire world trade system through tariffs.
Speaker 1: And I think if you look at the five and
Speaker 1: you think, you know, President Trump has to keep all
Speaker 1: five of these in mind all day, it'll give you
Speaker 1: some sense of how much change is underway and how
Speaker 1: really complicated it is. Let me start with what I
Speaker 1: think is going to be a growing domestic crisis. And
Speaker 1: while you might say that it comes out of the
Speaker 1: Los Angeles riots, it's really much bigger than that. There
Speaker 1: have been organized groups who were determined to take on
Speaker 1: the President and the United States government in a direct confrontation.
Speaker 1: You're going to see continued efforts at direct confrontation. And
Speaker 1: you can tell how determined some Democrats are to force
Speaker 1: the confrontation when you watch Senator Padilla try to interrupt
Speaker 1: the Secretary of Homeland Securities press conference to such a
Speaker 1: degree that he gets arrested, handcuffed, and taken out. This
Speaker 1: is a United States senator who deliberately is forcing a confrontation.
Speaker 1: You see this in the calculated strategic decision of Governor
Speaker 1: Newsom of California, who has decided that being the anti
Speaker 1: Trump is his road to get to be the Democratic
Speaker 1: presidential nominee. And there's this very odd coalition of illegal
Speaker 1: immigrants who don't want to be deported, radical groups, and
Speaker 1: a bitterly anti Trump wing of the Democratic Party. And
Speaker 1: if you see those three as a coalition, that's what's
Speaker 1: coming together is that constant sense that each of them
Speaker 1: has a common enemy and it's the Trump administration. And
Speaker 1: that because in their world the Trump administration is seen
Speaker 1: is so bad, anything they do to stop it, or
Speaker 1: disrupt it, or cause a confrontation is to their advantage. Now,
Speaker 1: it's an interesting strategy. It was tried in the nineteen sixties,
Speaker 1: and people tend to forget this, But the period of
Speaker 1: the late nineteen sixties was the largest left wing insurgency
Speaker 1: in modern American history. There were twenty five hundred bombs
Speaker 1: set off. There were a million people surrounding the Pentagon
Speaker 1: at one point. There were police riots in Chicago at
Speaker 1: the Democratic Convention in nineteen sixty eight. There was a
Speaker 1: huge fight at Berkeley where radical students tried to take
Speaker 1: over the campus and literally was an open fight with
Speaker 1: the California State Police, the California National Guard, and at
Speaker 1: one point Governor Reagan, who we now think of as
Speaker 1: a positive, friendly person, but at one point he got
Speaker 1: so angry he said in a speech, it's going to
Speaker 1: take bloodshed. Let's get it over with. There was a
Speaker 1: huge confrontation between all the different elements of the left,
Speaker 1: the anti war left, the anti racism left, the.
Speaker 2: Pro gay rights left.
Speaker 1: All of them came together in the late nineteen sixties
Speaker 1: early nineteen seventies, and the result was the American people,
Speaker 1: when forced to choose, gave President Nexon one of the
Speaker 1: largest majorities in American history. They carried to every state
Speaker 1: except Massachusetts. Again, Reagan, having been very tough with the students,
Speaker 1: ended up getting re elected by a seven point margin
Speaker 1: over the Democrat. So, when forced to choose the American
Speaker 1: people prefer orderly structured government, I think you're going to
Speaker 1: see a continued effort here. And if you think about it,
Speaker 1: it makes perfect sense because when you're dealing with the
Speaker 1: disaster of the Biden immigration policy, which essentially was an open.
Speaker 2: Border, and you have millions and millions.
Speaker 1: Of people here, why would you expect all of them
Speaker 1: to go cheerfully and pleasantly they want to stay here.
Speaker 1: They already broke the law to get here. Why wouldn't
Speaker 1: they break the law to stay here? And if you
Speaker 1: combine that with the radicals, people like Antifa, who had
Speaker 1: kept the city of Portland in turmoil for three years,
Speaker 1: the radicals are always looking for an excuse to be
Speaker 1: out there fighting. They were the people who in many
Speaker 1: ways were very helpful, both in Ferguson were clearly people
Speaker 1: were being bussed in during the riots and Ferguson clearly
Speaker 1: during the summer of twenty twenty, there was a nationwide
Speaker 1: network of people eager to cause trouble, riot and burn
Speaker 1: things down. We do have as an additional point here
Speaker 1: that the Democratic Party, I would say probably sixty percent
Speaker 1: of it, of the elected Democrats, are now so radically
Speaker 1: alienated by Trump that causing confrontation strikes them as reasonable
Speaker 1: because they can't beat him any other way. They're not
Speaker 1: going to beat him in the Senate, They're not going
Speaker 1: to beat him in the House. He's gradually taking over
Speaker 1: the executive branch, which they have dominated for ninety years.
Speaker 1: You see this floundering around. So President Trump's first great
Speaker 1: challenge is to communicate with the country, much like President
Speaker 1: Eisenhower did in the fifties when he sent troops into
Speaker 1: Little Rock, Arkansas, much like President Johnson did when he
Speaker 1: sent troops into Detroit during a riot. He simply has
Speaker 1: to communicate to the country that this this is a
Speaker 1: struggle between the legitimate, constitutional, elected forces of law and
Speaker 1: people who in fact want to seat usurp and take
Speaker 1: over governing America for totally different values and totally different reasons.
Speaker 1: In the short run, it's going to be a mess,
Speaker 1: and the long run, it's almost certain that the American
Speaker 1: people who will believe in support some process of enforcing
Speaker 1: the law in some process of having people who are
Speaker 1: here illegally leave the country. So that's the first great
Speaker 1: challenge and has to spend some time every single day
Speaker 1: dealing with that, because it doesn't go away. They don't say, oh,
Speaker 1: we know you're busy, why don't we come back Thursday.
Speaker 1: Every single day from here until it ends, you're going
Speaker 1: to see some kind of challenge somewhere in America, and
Speaker 1: you're going to see an entire network, some of it
Speaker 1: being the news media. You may remember the reporter in
Speaker 1: Los Angeles who's talking about how happy and friendly people
Speaker 1: looked as cars were burning, which, if you think about
Speaker 1: it's pretty weird. So you're going to have news media
Speaker 1: on the other side, you're going to have an effort
Speaker 1: to paint this and to use it as a device
Speaker 1: to disrupt the momentum of the Trump administration. Momentum which
Speaker 1: I have reported recently in a newsletter means that since
Speaker 1: the election, over a million people have shifted from the
Speaker 1: Democratic Party to the Republican Party, and as of this week,
Speaker 1: a Quinnipiac poll showed the Democrats in the House are
Speaker 1: down to twenty one percent approval, so from their perspective.
Speaker 1: They're desperate to find a way to change the momentum,
Speaker 1: and that has to be ultimately the number one challenge,
Speaker 1: because the president has to be able to govern the
Speaker 1: country in order to have an effective presidency. The second
Speaker 1: big challenge frankly blew up, although people could see it
Speaker 1: coming for months now. President Trump has said to the Iranians,
Speaker 1: why don't we arrange a deal where you give up
Speaker 1: your nuclear weapons program and we'll drop the sanctions. You
Speaker 1: re enter the world of prosperity, you have a great future.
Speaker 1: We don't have any particular reason to fight with you.
Speaker 1: And for months the Iranians have said no, that their
Speaker 1: bottom line is they have to have an ability to
Speaker 1: build nuclear weapons. Well, what that means is that you
Speaker 1: are dealing with a genuine crisis, because remember that this
Speaker 1: particular Iranian dictatorship says publicly that they want to destroy
Speaker 1: Israel and destroy the United States. And the Ayatola Hamenis
Speaker 1: actually gone to national television and reassured the Iranian people
Speaker 1: that these are not just slogans, that their policy is
Speaker 1: to destroy Israel and destroy the United States. So Prime
Speaker 1: Minister Netnahu is the longest serving prime minister in Israeli history.
Speaker 1: He was very patient, watched this for months, and the
Speaker 1: Iranians clearly refused to give up their nuclear program. And
Speaker 1: so the Israelis, who had very long time had a
Speaker 1: plan to do this, had a combined operation. Remember that Mussad,
Speaker 1: which is the Israeli intelligence service, focuses pretty narrowly on
Speaker 1: the survival of Israel, and at that job, it is
Speaker 1: probably the best intelligence service in the world. They perform
Speaker 1: astonishing things. And in the last couple of days we
Speaker 1: now know they infiltrated weapons into Iran so that they
Speaker 1: could take out a variety of missiles, of aircraft, defense
Speaker 1: systems and other things, and they could identify where scientists
Speaker 1: and generals were, so that when some two hundred Israeli
Speaker 1: fighter planes crossed into Iranian airspace, they knew exactly where
Speaker 1: they're going, exactly what they.
Speaker 2: Were going to hit.
Speaker 1: And Prime Minister Netniel who has said publicly and explicitly
Speaker 1: they're going to continue this air campaign until they completely
Speaker 1: destroy any possible nuclear program. So that is an enormous shift.
Speaker 1: You know, Israel has now I think really spurred on
Speaker 1: by the massacres in October two years ago, where they
Speaker 1: were so stunned to realize how vulnerable they were, and
Speaker 1: they were so horrified by the number of people, including
Speaker 1: children and babies, who were killed, and the grotesque hostility
Speaker 1: of women being drag naked through the streets, people behaving,
Speaker 1: rockstrown at them. They methodically set out to destroy Amas,
Speaker 1: which they're still in the process of doing. They broke
Speaker 1: the back of Hezbollah with a series of brilliant intelligence operations.
Speaker 1: So AMAS is on their south, Hesblas in the north
Speaker 1: in Lebanon, and by the way, now that has Bela
Speaker 1: has been shattered, the Lebanese government announced publicly that they
Speaker 1: would not in any way participate in an effort to
Speaker 1: attack Israel. Over this assault in Iran, then the Syrian
Speaker 1: government collapsed. The replacement government, although it's led by somebody
Speaker 1: who we've defined as a terrorist for years, has said
Speaker 1: very clearly they don't want to fight anybody. They just
Speaker 1: want to find a way to rebuild Syria, which has
Speaker 1: been damaged now for almost twenty years by an internal
Speaker 1: civil war. So that front now has been solved, and
Speaker 1: so the great opponent is Iran. Iran is a very
Speaker 1: big country, about twice the size of Texas. Israel's a
Speaker 1: relatively small country, I think about the size of New Jersey.
Speaker 1: So you have a David and Goliath moment. But the
Speaker 1: fact is that the Israelis have extraordinarily competent military in
Speaker 1: an even more competent intelligence service, and my guess is
Speaker 1: that they'll keep pounding on the Iranians, certainly until they've
Speaker 1: destroyed the nuclear program and potentially until they've destroyed the
Speaker 1: regime and allowed the Iranian people to reclaim their own country.
Speaker 1: Every poll I've seen says over eighty percent of the
Speaker 1: Iranian people dislike the regime. But it's a police state,
Speaker 1: and it's ruthless and it will kill you, and so
Speaker 1: they're not able to get rid of it. But I
Speaker 1: suspect if it's weakened enough that in fact it may
Speaker 1: fall and you may see sort of a post Byatola
Speaker 1: Iran in the not distant future. But that's again, that
Speaker 1: means every single day President Trump has to get up
Speaker 1: and get a briefing on his exactly what's going on
Speaker 1: and who's getting involved? Are the Russians going to try
Speaker 1: to get involved? On many ways, Iran has been a
Speaker 1: client state of Russian and the Iranians have sold the
Speaker 1: Russians a huge number of weapons to fight in the
Speaker 1: Ukraine War. Are the Chinese going to try to get involved?
Speaker 1: And pretty hard for them to do. It's a long
Speaker 1: way off and they don't have the kind of deep
Speaker 1: sea naval power we do. Over the next few days,
Speaker 1: we'll see how things evolve. What's impressive is that all
Speaker 1: of the Arab states, there's nobody defending Iran. The Saudis
Speaker 1: are terrified of the Iranians, the UAE is terrified of
Speaker 1: the Iranians. They probably deep down are pretty happy and
Speaker 1: hope these willies will finish the job. But that's the
Speaker 1: second challenge. So on the one sound front, President Trump
Speaker 1: has to look at home and deal with real opposition
Speaker 1: and real hostility. On a second front, he has to
Speaker 1: try to manage what's going on in the Middle East,
Speaker 1: and one try to keep the Americans out of it,
Speaker 1: which they've done a good job so far. Secretary Marco
Speaker 1: Rubio has a Secretary of State, has been very clear
Speaker 1: that we're not going to pick a fight with Iran
Speaker 1: unless the Iranians pick a fight with us.
Speaker 2: So that's a second challenge.
Speaker 1: The third challenge, in some ways, the definition of the
Speaker 1: success of this administration is the big beautiful bill that's
Speaker 1: currently in the Senate that passed the House, and you
Speaker 1: probably notice that as a second step, they passed in
Speaker 1: the House the Recision Bill to cut nine billion dollars
Speaker 1: in spending, which was a very direct, very specific cut
Speaker 1: they are now negotiating. There are a number of people
Speaker 1: who want really deep cuts. The fact is they can't
Speaker 1: get really deep cuts beyond what's in the current build
Speaker 1: that came out of the House because the House majority
Speaker 1: is so narrow that they'll lose the Moderates and the
Speaker 1: Water simply won't vote for really really deep cuts. On
Speaker 1: the other hand, if you think of this as the
Speaker 1: first in a series of bills, and I try to
Speaker 1: remind everyone that when we balance the budget, will I
Speaker 1: have a speaker. We didn't do it in one bill.
Speaker 1: Took us four years of constant work to get to
Speaker 1: a balanced budget. So I think there's going to be
Speaker 1: a very big effort made, particularly by Speaker Mike Johnson,
Speaker 1: to figure out a formula so that the people who
Speaker 1: want real deep cuts are going to have a chance
Speaker 1: to get them, but not in this bill. This bill
Speaker 1: has to remain pretty close I would say ninety five
Speaker 1: ninety six percent of what came out of the House,
Speaker 1: because it has to go back through the House again,
Speaker 1: and they simply don't have the margin. Something as simple
Speaker 1: as passing the recision cuts about nine point two billion dollars.
Speaker 1: They only passed it by a two vote margin. So
Speaker 1: I think it's really important to recognize that this is
Speaker 1: going to be a continuing challenge. If I were betting
Speaker 1: the bill will pass, it will be signed into law,
Speaker 1: it'll be a huge tax cut, a huge deregulation bill,
Speaker 1: and a modest cut in spending. But it will only
Speaker 1: happen because the President personally gets involved, listen to everybody,
Speaker 1: and gradually helps hammer out an agreement that everybody can
Speaker 1: vote for. So here you have the president who already
Speaker 1: has to pay attention to the domestic challenge of people
Speaker 1: who want to take on the American government. He has
Speaker 1: to deal with what's happening between Israel and Iran, and
Speaker 1: then he has to find the energy and the time
Speaker 1: to negotiate with Senators and then to negotiate with the House,
Speaker 1: and to find a way creatively to get to a
Speaker 1: bill everybody can vote for. I think they'll get it done,
Speaker 1: but imagine the amount of time and the level of effort.
Speaker 1: When we got to the balanced budget agreement with Bill Clinton,
Speaker 1: we spent thirty five days face to face. Now imagine
Speaker 1: what a drain of time and energy that is for
Speaker 1: a president who already has all these other things on
Speaker 1: his plate. The fourth great challenge is the Russian Ukrainian War,
Speaker 1: and here I think President Trump has been deeply disappointed.
Speaker 1: I think he looked back on his first term when
Speaker 1: he had a good relationship with Putin and he thought,
Speaker 1: somehow they could work something out easily, and I think
Speaker 1: he honestly believed he could get to.
Speaker 2: A peace agreement in a few days.
Speaker 1: He's gradually learning that, in fact, Putin has decided that
Speaker 1: this is the capstone of his life, that he is
Speaker 1: the man who is going to reunify the Russian Empire,
Speaker 1: and that the key step for that is to crush
Speaker 1: Ukraine so that it in fact cannot survive as a
Speaker 1: independent country, and so much a definition of his life
Speaker 1: that he's not backing down. And I think my sense
Speaker 1: is that President Trump has been very disappointed that the
Speaker 1: inability to get Putin to take seriously finding a way
Speaker 1: to get to a peaceful solution, and what Putin basically
Speaker 1: is gambling on is that while they talk that the
Speaker 1: Russian military, which is about four or five times bigger
Speaker 1: than the Ukrainian military, that it will gradually wear out
Speaker 1: the Ukrainian military and win a crushing military victory. Now
Speaker 1: there's not much evidence yet that that's going to happen.
Speaker 1: Ukrainians have turned out to be very inventive. They've always
Speaker 1: been a center of manufacturing in the Soviet Union. They
Speaker 1: have lots of engineers and lots of capable people, and
Speaker 1: they've been very inventive. They drove the Russian Black Sea
Speaker 1: fleet out of the Black Sea into the Cia of
Speaker 1: Azov because they've developed a series of drones that could
Speaker 1: sink ships. See, you have a five thousand dollars drone
Speaker 1: and a sixty million dollar cruiser, and the drone would
Speaker 1: beat the cruiser. The Russians just gave up. They pulled
Speaker 1: back to get out of range. The recent effort by
Speaker 1: the Ukrainians to hit the Russian strategic bombers, some of
Speaker 1: them thirty four hundred miles away from Kiev has amazing achievements,
Speaker 1: an achievement comparable to some of the things the Israelis
Speaker 1: have done. So that's going to.
Speaker 2: Continue to go on. The question.
Speaker 1: In my mind, the Europeans are going to stand firm
Speaker 1: because the Europeans genuinely do believe that Ukraine is the
Speaker 1: barrier that protects them from Putin and protects them from Russia.
Speaker 1: It's not clear to meident Trump comes down in this.
Speaker 1: He wants peace. He's also very worried about nuclear war.
Speaker 1: Somehow people convinced him in this first term just how
Speaker 1: truly horrible a nuclear war would be. Putin does have
Speaker 1: six thousand nuclear weapons, and so I think the president,
Speaker 1: while he's more aggressive than Joe Biden was, he's still
Speaker 1: careful because he doesn't want to push Putin into a
Speaker 1: corner where he decides that tactical nuclear weapons are better
Speaker 1: than being defeated. I think that this will go on
Speaker 1: for a while. I think it's a great disappointment to
Speaker 1: President Trump. I think he really did, sincerely believe he
Speaker 1: could get to a truce and it just didn't quite
Speaker 1: work out. So that's the fourth problem. Again. Put yourself
Speaker 1: in President Trump's position. You wake up in the morning,
Speaker 1: you look at home to see what's happening in terms
Speaker 1: of unrest. Then you look to Israel Iran to see
Speaker 1: how that campaign's going. Then you come back and look
Speaker 1: at the Congress to see what has to get done
Speaker 1: to move towards passing this huge important legislation. Then you
Speaker 1: pivot and you're looking at Russia and Ukraine. And then finally,
Speaker 1: the fifth grade challenge is fundamental effort by President Trump
Speaker 1: to reorder the entire world trading system. The trading system
Speaker 1: had grown up as a global system in which the
Speaker 1: United States sacrificed a great deal economically in order to
Speaker 1: sustain an open trading system around the whole planet, and
Speaker 1: other countries learned to take enormous advantage of this, and
Speaker 1: so over a period of about thirty years, the system
Speaker 1: became more and more destructive for the United States and
Speaker 1: more and more positive for Europe and particularly China. And
Speaker 1: Trump came along, and he had talked about this a
Speaker 1: lot back when he was a businessman, so this was
Speaker 1: not some new theme to him. But he came along
Speaker 1: and said, look, we're going to simply have to change
Speaker 1: the agreement. We're the largest market in the world. We
Speaker 1: ought to have the most leverage. People ought to in
Speaker 1: fact be paying us for access to our market, and
Speaker 1: we should not be allowing ourselves to be taken advantage of.
Speaker 1: So he has begun to build a tariff Bay East system,
Speaker 1: which ultimately leads to bilateral that is, one country to
Speaker 1: one country agreements across the whole planet. It is an
Speaker 1: enormous undertaking. The truth is virtually every country wants to
Speaker 1: get into the American market. You're seeing a huge increase
Speaker 1: in manufacturing in the US by countries where their companies
Speaker 1: have just decided in order to be able to be productive,
Speaker 1: they've got to be in the United States. And you're
Speaker 1: going to see every country negotiate a unique, separate deal.
Speaker 1: It's a very large change from the multinational system that
Speaker 1: had grown up and that had been kind of a
Speaker 1: global trading system, but one in which everybody else took
Speaker 1: advantage the United States. Working all that out is going
Speaker 1: to take several years. So again you have President has
Speaker 1: to meet with Secretary Treasury Vessent and others, sit down
Speaker 1: and look at each of these agreements, decide, you know,
Speaker 1: what happens with the European Union, what happens with Japan,
Speaker 1: what happens with China, on and on for about one
Speaker 1: hundred and ninety countries.
Speaker 2: So to wrap all of this up.
Speaker 1: I think the five biggest challenges present and Trump faces
Speaker 1: right now, and the way he has to balance his
Speaker 1: energy and his focus are first, re establishing domestic order
Speaker 1: while we in fact do solve the problem of illegal immigration. Second,
Speaker 1: ensuring that Israel wins the war with Iran and ideally
Speaker 1: that we help the Iranian people take control of their
Speaker 1: government again. Third, getting the big beautiful bill through the
Speaker 1: House and Senate and signed into law this summer so
Speaker 1: that the American people have money in their pocket so
Speaker 1: the economy starts booming by early next year. Fourth, sustaining
Speaker 1: the Ukrainians, pressuring putin potentially going towards something like Senator
Speaker 1: Lindsey Graham's sanctions bill, which has eighty five sponsors in
Speaker 1: the Senate and which would be imposed very very harsh
Speaker 1: sanctions on Russia, and try to basically bankrupt the government.
Speaker 1: And then finally continue day by day negotiate the tariff
Speaker 1: agreements with Fortunately somebody is smart and as capable as
Speaker 1: Secretary Bessen taking the lead. It is a big agenda,
Speaker 1: It is an exhausting agenda, and I think, frankly, I
Speaker 1: don't know of any other president who could carry simultaneously
Speaker 1: as many different challenges as President Trump, and I think
Speaker 1: it will be fascinating to see how it evolves, and
Speaker 1: in future weeks I'll report again on how I see
Speaker 1: this whole process evolving.
Speaker 2: Thank you for listening.
Speaker 1: Newtsworld is produced by Gangris Street sixty and iHeartMedia. Our
Speaker 1: executive producers guard Zie Sloan. Our researcher is Rachel Peterson.
Speaker 1: The artwork for the show was created by Steve Penley.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to the team at Gingrishtree sixty. If you've
Speaker 1: been enjoying Newtsworld, I hope you'll go to Apple Podcast
Speaker 1: and both rate us with five stars and give us
Speaker 1: a review so others can learn what it's all about.
Speaker 1: Right now, listeners of Newtsworld can sign up for my
Speaker 1: three free weekly columns at gangrishtreet sixty dot com slash newsletter.
Speaker 2: I'm newt Gingrich. This is Newtsworld.