Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
Speaker 1: today's best minds. And Jack Smith has asked a judge
Speaker 1: to reinstate a gag order on Trump or punish him
Speaker 1: with jail time.
Speaker 2: We have such an interesting show today.
Speaker 1: Political scientists and og nor Morenstein joins us to talk
Speaker 1: about the growing radicalization of the House GOP with the
Speaker 1: elevation of Mega Mike Johnson to Speaker of the House.
Speaker 1: Then we'll talk to Eurasia Group President Ian Bremmer about
Speaker 1: the world on fire. But first we have the host
Speaker 1: of the Origin Story podcast, the one British person we
Speaker 1: have on here, Ian dunt Welcome back to Fast Politics.
Speaker 2: Ian wor third you very much.
Speaker 3: Thanks.
Speaker 2: I'm we're like best friends now, so.
Speaker 4: I agady to take that's pushing Its really the quinstances.
Speaker 5: Fuck you.
Speaker 6: So anyway, well, I'm not going to be quite as
Speaker 6: nicy and as I was before. Let me tell you
Speaker 6: so let's talk about your very fucked up country again.
Speaker 6: I do want to say at least you don't have
Speaker 6: There was a number of congress who tweeted at a picture.
Speaker 2: It was from January.
Speaker 1: I guess which I guess makes that better or less
Speaker 1: fake Newsy or whatever.
Speaker 2: A picture of January of the Speaker of the House praying.
Speaker 1: On the floor on his knees on the floor of
Speaker 1: Congress with a bunch of other lunatics. So I don't know,
Speaker 1: we may have eclipsed you again as Worst Country discuss.
Speaker 4: All you've done is been foolish enough to allow them
Speaker 4: to take photaes and film this stuff, because they do
Speaker 4: this every single day. You know, they start every single
Speaker 4: session in the Commons with a prayer, which, for some
Speaker 4: inexplicable reason, they would turn around and face the wall
Speaker 4: and pray to God before they start legislation, which actually,
Speaker 4: given the way the British legislation is actually probably not
Speaker 4: a particularly foolish way of looking at it. But for
Speaker 4: that period they cut the cameras so you can't actually
Speaker 4: watch them engage in this completely deranged spectacle. So really
Speaker 4: the only improvement is that we just made sure and
Speaker 4: no one gets.
Speaker 3: To see us like that. Munity.
Speaker 1: When you were last on this podcast, which was either
Speaker 1: yesterday or four months ago, you said to me that
Speaker 1: Richie Sudact was I don't want to say you were
Speaker 1: positive because that is a misnomer. But you were not
Speaker 1: as negative as I've heard you.
Speaker 4: No, because he remains better than any recent prime minister
Speaker 4: or for the last sort of let's say.
Speaker 2: Seven maybe you're talking about Liz. Let us talk of Liz.
Speaker 3: I'm talking about Liz Trusts.
Speaker 4: It was easily like the most catastrophic prime minister that
Speaker 4: this country has ever had. Really, I mean, you don't
Speaker 4: usually have prime ministers that last for forty seven days
Speaker 4: and result in, you know, the death of the queen
Speaker 4: and the complete collapse of the British economy.
Speaker 1: I want to fact check here, Liz lightest task did
Speaker 1: not kill the queen. Please add that to the rack
Speaker 1: the Queen the Queen Yes. Continue. However, can it really.
Speaker 4: Be a complete coincidence that, in the short period of
Speaker 4: time that this monstrously inect figure was in charge.
Speaker 3: The queen just thought about it.
Speaker 4: I'm done, after nearly a century undone with this.
Speaker 2: Can't now now it's true?
Speaker 1: Let the fact check reflect that we do actually think
Speaker 1: that Liz did murder the Queen.
Speaker 4: Continue to excellent edge. I don't think I can get
Speaker 4: done for Libel as long as I'm saying this in
Speaker 4: the US.
Speaker 3: So that should be fine.
Speaker 2: Now we are very loose over here, so should be fine.
Speaker 4: And then you know there was Boris Johnson, whose ego
Speaker 4: was passed only by his complete indifference towards the truth
Speaker 4: or any kind of basic moral standard. Theresa May, you know,
Speaker 4: one of the most blisteringly reactionary, anti immigrant, authoritarian prom
Speaker 4: minises as countries ever had. And before that you've got
Speaker 4: David Cameron, who was like a human void in an
Speaker 4: expensive way. So you know, when these are the comparisons,
Speaker 4: he's probably better than all of them. However, that does
Speaker 4: not make him good. He is just appallingly bad at government.
Speaker 4: And you look at him and you think, in any
Speaker 4: sensible country, this guy would have been a kind of
Speaker 4: anonymous junior minister, like lost in the bows of the
Speaker 4: treasury somewhere, and no one would have had to know
Speaker 4: what his actual name was. Because this country doesn't work
Speaker 4: at all. He somehow has found himself right at the
Speaker 4: peak of the political system, and he's starting to do
Speaker 4: proper damage, like really quite venal, right wing, mean spirited,
Speaker 4: self interested political damage. And it's a real spectacle to
Speaker 4: think of that, just the extent of the damage and
Speaker 4: the tininess of the mind and of the political vision,
Speaker 4: which is.
Speaker 2: Creat Yeah, so let's talk about that.
Speaker 1: We have a complicated political crisis going on right now,
Speaker 1: which is mushrooming into more and more. But he did,
Speaker 1: Richie Sidak, did go to Israel in that chain of
Speaker 1: leaders to go there to try to prevent what hopefully
Speaker 1: will not happen.
Speaker 2: So that was something you're very.
Speaker 4: Generous, I think, to think that he's trying to prevent something,
Speaker 4: I think he's it's more a.
Speaker 3: Kind of look at me, conka.
Speaker 4: So explain, well, I think realistically, certainly, when I've been
Speaker 4: in Israel, the impression that I got was that there's
Speaker 4: no country that had influence over Israel apart from the US,
Speaker 4: and even then necessarily all the time, but certainly any
Speaker 4: other country that decides to go over there, I mean,
Speaker 4: you don't really realistically think you're going to result in
Speaker 4: the change, of course, not necessarily should you.
Speaker 3: So really, when other.
Speaker 4: Leaders go over there, they're really doing it for the
Speaker 4: domestic audience at home, so that they look like they're
Speaker 4: a you know, great striding international leader. Except the thing
Speaker 4: is that when is Rashi's Sunak, he looks like a
Speaker 4: head boy.
Speaker 3: A prefect at a school.
Speaker 4: Has been given like a special prize to go hang
Speaker 4: out with world lead. He just looks completely embarrassingly like backbreaking,
Speaker 4: cringingly out of his debt. And of course, I mean
Speaker 4: he has no proper evaluation of any of the issues
Speaker 4: that he's discussing. So I don't think he really went
Speaker 4: out there to achieve anything. I think he just went
Speaker 4: out there to look like he's a proper world leader,
Speaker 4: which he is.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about what is happening sort of the larger issues.
Speaker 1: You have an economy that continues to struggle with its
Speaker 1: own self sanctioning.
Speaker 2: Yes, right, I mean, inflation is everywhere.
Speaker 1: It's problematic in the States, but you guys really have
Speaker 1: it bad.
Speaker 4: We have it bad in almost every economic way there
Speaker 4: is to have it bad. And it's not even resulting
Speaker 4: in a recession. It's worse than that. It's just like
Speaker 4: over ten years of just complete stagnation, like there's just
Speaker 4: no growth, there's no and most damagingly, there's no productivity
Speaker 4: in the economy, and the people.
Speaker 3: Can't really get to the heart of the puzzle.
Speaker 4: But we do have an impression of why this stuff happens,
Speaker 4: and it happens because we make a series of short
Speaker 4: term interested political decisions that completely undermined the investment environment
Speaker 4: and the kind of skills that you need to build
Speaker 4: in a country and the kind of regional economic performance
Speaker 4: you would want in a country. So one of those
Speaker 4: examples just obviously Brexit. You know where you spend years
Speaker 4: of one year it's gibbering away like a lunatic and
Speaker 4: an assign about you're taking back control and you know
Speaker 4: the great British destiny in the Land of Unicorns, And
Speaker 4: in fact all you're reading matual accomplished is putting up
Speaker 4: trade barriers with your largest trading partner. So then once
Speaker 4: the dreams all vade away, you just look at it
Speaker 4: and they so the some total of order that is
Speaker 4: we're just pouring and that's the summer complishing. But then secondarily,
Speaker 4: look at what we've just done with trains. Right, this
Speaker 4: seems like a small example, get really indicative of the
Speaker 4: way we're governed. Yeah, so there's a by election, an
Speaker 4: election in just one local area, one constituency where there
Speaker 4: was a local debate about charges for environmentally inefficient cards
Speaker 4: and the Tories, the Conservatives, managed to scrape a win.
Speaker 4: It's like the first when they've had an ages. It's
Speaker 4: basically because of about five hundred voters on a local
Speaker 4: issue that quickly passed away. But on the basis of
Speaker 4: that that one solitary wing rischie Sona decided he was
Speaker 4: going to tear up our entire environmental policy. Now Britain
Speaker 4: is not either US. There is no culture war on
Speaker 4: the environment. There is no political division rate on the environment.
Speaker 4: Right and left, Conservatives and labor are both signed up
Speaker 4: to the same plans at both internationally and national on
Speaker 4: climate change. There's belief in manual climate change.
Speaker 2: So you don't have Fox News, that's what you're saying.
Speaker 4: Well, remember we have GB News, which is this desperate attempt.
Speaker 4: It's an absolute hit show of.
Speaker 3: The high instrum.
Speaker 2: Can I tell you about how I was on TV
Speaker 2: news recently.
Speaker 4: Oh, I remember you went on GV.
Speaker 3: It was a gutting moment.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 1: I went back on and I said, you've sanctioned yourself.
Speaker 1: Your inflation is at deatata percent and America's is a
Speaker 1: third or fourth and it's because of all of your
Speaker 1: terrible financial policies.
Speaker 2: And he was like, we have to go now.
Speaker 3: I bet they did.
Speaker 4: So we've actually managed to build consensus on that and
Speaker 4: just because of that by election, because of five hundred voters,
Speaker 4: as Richie Sunat just decides to detonate it, to kill
Speaker 4: the consensus, and basically comes out as this big kind
Speaker 4: of like anti environmentalist, anti climate change action, anti net
Speaker 4: zero figure. He starts inventing these extraordinary, sort of just
Speaker 4: imaginary policies. He does a speech in Downing Street. It's
Speaker 4: the Prime Minister of the country saying there is a
Speaker 4: war on meat and I'm going to stop it from happening.
Speaker 4: So originally, just what on earth have you gone completely mad?
Speaker 4: And like, what is the war on meat? What are
Speaker 4: the policies that are constitute a war on meat? Which
Speaker 4: he is unable to make. He starts saying local councils
Speaker 4: are forcing people to have seven rubbish bids, would you
Speaker 4: guys call them trash cans?
Speaker 3: Whatever?
Speaker 4: Completely made up? I mean, none of it exists in
Speaker 4: the actual world. You start saying that local councils are
Speaker 4: trying to ban people from leaving their homes in order
Speaker 4: to create fifteen minute cities. It's basically as if he
Speaker 4: had gone that. And as part of this, he cancels
Speaker 4: HS two High Speed two. Now this is the big
Speaker 4: rail project, again consensus on with both parties.
Speaker 3: It's been being.
Speaker 4: Built for about thirteen years. He cancels the project as
Speaker 4: part of his I'm going to defend motorists and pull
Speaker 4: us back from this green lunacy, starts selling off the
Speaker 4: land that was bought, start sabotaging thirteen years of work,
Speaker 4: actively undermining it, including by trying to make sure that
Speaker 4: no future government can undo the decision that he is making.
Speaker 4: Him as an unelected prime minister, he didn't even win
Speaker 4: the election within the Conservative Party to become leader, and
Speaker 4: with zero mandate, he decides, I'm going to cancel the
Speaker 4: project now that obviously is environmentally catastrophic and morally and
Speaker 4: democratically deeply unsound. But what it also is indicative of
Speaker 4: why our economy struggles, because you have businesses investing, and
Speaker 4: they invest on the basis of stability and some kind
Speaker 4: of good judgment about the economics, and then one moment,
Speaker 4: after five hundred voters in one by election, we decide, no,
Speaker 4: you know what, We're going to trash it. And all
Speaker 4: that money you invested, all the plans you made, whether
Speaker 4: it's been to set up in HQ in a particular era,
Speaker 4: on the basis of the connectivity that you were entitled
Speaker 4: to expect, on the basis of what government told you
Speaker 4: we're going to get rid of all of that. And
Speaker 4: in that kind of thinking, I think you get an
Speaker 4: idea of why our economy as well as our political
Speaker 4: system is so comitate.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that doesn't sound good. I mean it isn't.
Speaker 3: No, it isn't.
Speaker 1: It isn't.
Speaker 4: It's national decay, kind of moral and intellectual torpa.
Speaker 3: Those those are the headlines.
Speaker 1: Of you guys have any kind of way to push
Speaker 1: back on this.
Speaker 2: Well, there's the election, right, Yeah, let's talk about the election,
Speaker 2: and it's coming up.
Speaker 3: It's coming up.
Speaker 4: He can decide when to hold it, but he has
Speaker 4: to hold it by late January twenty twenty five. If
Speaker 4: he was sensible, he would do it in May, because
Speaker 4: it's good, whether it's easier to get your volunteers out,
Speaker 4: and because he's basically destroyed the National Health Service, so
Speaker 4: you don't really want to run an election in the
Speaker 4: middle of winter when you're seeing lots of old people
Speaker 4: waiting in always not being seen on journeys, dying away
Speaker 4: because of a lack of the investments.
Speaker 1: I'm laughing to keep from crying. I want to point
Speaker 1: that out.
Speaker 3: Yes I do.
Speaker 4: I do an awful lot of that as well. Also drinking.
Speaker 4: That's drinking, I find order it was quite a.
Speaker 1: Bit as someone who's been cell person she was nineteen.
Speaker 1: No drinking, but laugh.
Speaker 4: And then how you get through politics without it?
Speaker 3: It just seems inconceivable to me.
Speaker 4: So he should really try and avoid any kind of
Speaker 4: election in the winter time, But he's just cowardly to
Speaker 4: hold it in spring the summer, because the truth is
Speaker 4: he can by himself a bit more time. And right
Speaker 4: now he is consistently twenty points behind in the polls,
Speaker 4: like that man is heading for extinction and the Conservative
Speaker 4: Party is heading for a water being on a scale
Speaker 4: that we really haven't seen in this country for about
Speaker 4: thirty years. That are kind of like generational event. People
Speaker 4: are utterly fed up. So he's light need to hold
Speaker 4: the election as late as he can, could be in
Speaker 4: the autumn of next year, or really in the winter,
Speaker 4: or really, if he's speaking particularly cowardly, he might just
Speaker 4: go ahead and hold it in January. I just ruin
Speaker 4: everyone's Christmas as one final act of constitutional and cultural
Speaker 4: vandalism before the Conservatives trist from all.
Speaker 2: But it does seem to me.
Speaker 1: And you tell me if I'm right, because I'm looking
Speaker 1: at this from quite far away that here Stormer has
Speaker 1: I'm mispronouncing it.
Speaker 3: You're making him.
Speaker 4: Sound so much more exciting than heure Stormtrooper.
Speaker 2: For so long I've heard people say that labor is just.
Speaker 1: And again, John Decaucus, if you're listening to this, I
Speaker 1: don't mean any offense towards your father, but that you
Speaker 1: were sort of run by a mic decaucasy kind of
Speaker 1: crew that nobody could ever kind of get the bazeal.
Speaker 1: I feel like there's been sort of an evolution a
Speaker 1: little bit.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 4: This isn't happening because Keir Starmer is a particularly inspiring
Speaker 4: or charismatic figure.
Speaker 1: Right, Why would just because he's the head of a
Speaker 1: political party. I mean, you should never put one of
Speaker 1: those people as ahead of your party.
Speaker 2: Yes, go on.
Speaker 4: It's like in the Victorian period, Thomas Carlyle was talking
Speaker 4: about the husband of Harriet Taylor, who ended up marrying
Speaker 4: the philosopher John Stuart Mill, and he was trying to
Speaker 4: sort of justify where they might not want to hurt
Speaker 4: the man's feelings, and they said he's an innocent dull
Speaker 4: good man. And that's the kind of what Kiir Star.
Speaker 4: It's he's just an innocent, dull good man, like he
Speaker 4: has genuine decency to it.
Speaker 3: He is competent, he.
Speaker 4: Wants good things for the country, he wants the country
Speaker 4: to work. He comes basically from the civil service.
Speaker 3: He's a form of prosecutor.
Speaker 4: You know, he's going to be one of those kind
Speaker 4: of slightly technocratic kind of guys thinking right, what are
Speaker 4: the kind of benchmark tests we'd want to assess for
Speaker 4: the health of the health service?
Speaker 3: What kind of steps would.
Speaker 4: We need to get there, what's the evidence based for it,
Speaker 4: what are the kind of competent, unremarkable, unflashy people and
Speaker 4: need to put in place to implement it. And you know,
Speaker 4: normally speaking, people would not really be into that. They
Speaker 4: usually want them more kind of Tony Blair, Boris Johnson
Speaker 4: or look at you look at the charisma or on
Speaker 4: this one. Actually, after the just the utter ramshackle chaos
Speaker 4: over the last few years and the commensurate decrease in
Speaker 4: Britain's standing.
Speaker 3: In the world and it's.
Speaker 4: Material circumstances in people's day to day quality of life,
Speaker 4: people are really in the position where they just want
Speaker 4: someone who just seems basically like they're decent and quite competent.
Speaker 3: And Keir Starmer is both of those things.
Speaker 2: Could Labor actually win an election now?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Yeah?
Speaker 4: No, they're going to win, yeah yeah, And the chances
Speaker 4: are they're going to win really really big.
Speaker 2: How is that possible?
Speaker 3: I suppose.
Speaker 4: The thing that's really happened is it's sort of the
Speaker 4: double rammy of Boris Johnson and Partygate, that moment where
Speaker 4: he had those big parties in Downing Street while telling
Speaker 4: everyone that they had to stay at home for COVID.
Speaker 4: As political scandals go, the thing that was really striking
Speaker 4: about that scandal was that the people who were most
Speaker 4: upset about it were the children. You know, your friend's children,
Speaker 4: if they would be like four years old, five years old.
Speaker 4: They understood the new story. You know, there was no
Speaker 4: complexity to it at all. It was as if someone
Speaker 4: had written a story and more powerable for children. You know, shit,
Speaker 4: the man who tells you to stay at home not
Speaker 4: be staying at home and party.
Speaker 3: The answer to that is known.
Speaker 4: So it was this huge Primary Colors kind of political scandal,
Speaker 4: and from that moment the Tories never recovered. But of
Speaker 4: course they followed that moment with Liz Trust with just
Speaker 4: this kind of spectacle of inadequacy and chaos. So on
Speaker 4: the basis of that, their polling just bottomed out and
Speaker 4: it never came back. So, I mean, sure, Keirstearmer had
Speaker 4: to detoxify the Labor Party. He had to get rid
Speaker 4: of the anti semitism that was there under Jeremy Corbyn.
Speaker 4: He's had to cover himself in the National flag to
Speaker 4: get rid of the fact, you know, that image that
Speaker 4: Jeremy Corbyn had of like I want to run the country,
Speaker 4: I don't actually really like it, and you all seem
Speaker 4: like kind of you know, ignorant reactionaries, right, So he's
Speaker 4: had to do all the b'sic you know, not and
Speaker 4: bolts two plus two equals for political activity to show
Speaker 4: that you're fit to govern, including demonstrating economic competence.
Speaker 3: But apart from that, he has.
Speaker 4: Mostly cleaned up on the bat that people have looked
Speaker 4: at the Conservatives and particularly those two crucial moments and
Speaker 4: just thought, you know what, mate, fuck that, We'll try
Speaker 4: something else, thank you very much.
Speaker 1: So that's what is looking like over there is just
Speaker 1: there'll be a radical shift.
Speaker 2: Will it be a radical shift.
Speaker 1: I mean, you have a coalition government, so it's not
Speaker 1: quite the same as it is in the States, right.
Speaker 4: No, it probably won't be coalition. I mean, we've had
Speaker 4: coalitions before, but it's quite rare. We have the same
Speaker 4: electoral system as you the first pass of both systems,
Speaker 4: so generally speaking, you're getting one party in charge. I mean,
Speaker 4: look the way the things are right now, you would
Speaker 4: be looking at a very very large majority for the
Speaker 4: Labor Party unless the polling changes significantly. And by very large,
Speaker 4: I mean I'm kind of talking an existential crisis for
Speaker 4: the Conservative Party. I mean that holding is it's on
Speaker 4: the floor. The really interesting.
Speaker 3: Thing now is what I suppose. It's two fold.
Speaker 4: The first is, you know what's Labor doing power and
Speaker 4: Labour's economic program is quite heavily based on Biden's program.
Speaker 4: There's there's some examples that they're taking from the European mainland,
Speaker 4: from Germany, from Sweden, but primarily they're inspired by what
Speaker 4: Biden's doing, So it's surprisingly left wi. You know, this
Speaker 4: is not like the Tony Blair, Bill Clinton era. This
Speaker 4: is a much more left wing program. It's much more
Speaker 4: Painsian program in envisagors using a fiscal stimulus and form
Speaker 4: of public works to try and stimulate the economy, in
Speaker 4: this case by creating a million new jobs and decombondizing
Speaker 4: the energy grid and trying to bring back some of
Speaker 4: that climate change action that we've seen get lost on
Speaker 4: the Sunak. The flip side of that is what happens
Speaker 4: to the Conservatives out of office is usually political parties
Speaker 4: use power and then they go insane. But the Conservative
Speaker 4: Party has gone insane while inpowt and so the only
Speaker 4: way for it to go is even further into the
Speaker 4: sort of conspiracy theory, right, and you see that happening now,
Speaker 4: like just the babbling gibberish that they are coming up
Speaker 4: with about, you know, conspiracies against conservative thoughts.
Speaker 3: I mean Nadine.
Speaker 4: Dorin's the former media sectually, she was the actual genuine
Speaker 4: secutary of State and media has just written a book
Speaker 4: on a shadowy conspiracy to unsee several prime ministers and
Speaker 4: which she says she went to a meeting with Google
Speaker 4: where she was told that there is a big dial
Speaker 4: that is dialed down to make sure that her own
Speaker 4: news stories about her are less prominent than they would
Speaker 4: otherwise be because she's a conservative, and you just think like,
Speaker 4: this isn't even a complicated it's sort of it's the
Speaker 4: kind of thing that makes QAnon look like a PhD.
Speaker 4: It's just this unbelievably childlike conspiracy theory Babbel. And they
Speaker 4: are firmly, firmly entrenched that, and we can expect to
Speaker 4: the Conservatives become more extreme in that respect when they
Speaker 4: leave Pown.
Speaker 1: It's funny because that's what our House of Representatives is
Speaker 1: up to.
Speaker 5: Ian.
Speaker 2: I appreciate you so much.
Speaker 1: I wish you lived in a country that was more
Speaker 1: relevant to our discussion. Well, oh, I had to get
Speaker 1: it in there, but please tell, please, always keep us
Speaker 1: a breath.
Speaker 2: Of the backwater.
Speaker 4: It's the unbelievable and increasingly inevitable sting in the tile
Speaker 4: of a conversation.
Speaker 1: Begin Norm Jay Ornstein is a political scientist and author
Speaker 1: of It's Even Worse than it looks How the American
Speaker 1: constitutional system collided with the new politics of extremism.
Speaker 2: Welcome to fast politics, Norm.
Speaker 5: It is so good to be with you, Molly, and
Speaker 5: this horribly crazy time in America.
Speaker 3: And the world.
Speaker 2: This is not your first rodeo? Is that fair?
Speaker 5: I think it's fair to say it's not my first
Speaker 5: or by second, enter my third.
Speaker 1: But yeah, Producer Jesse and I were talking about you
Speaker 1: and we were like, he seems like angry Norm Ornstein.
Speaker 1: I think of you as like a serious guy, but
Speaker 1: I feel like you're a little more irritated than usual.
Speaker 2: Will you talk to us about that?
Speaker 4: Sure?
Speaker 5: I can try and psychoanalyze myself, yes, please. A part
Speaker 5: of it, Molly, is that a large portion of my
Speaker 5: career has been spent trying to build up, improve and
Speaker 5: make function our institutions of government, and recognizing that a
Speaker 5: lot of this stuff doesn't happen quickly even when lots
Speaker 5: of people agree that we're doing the right thing. Just
Speaker 5: as one example, I started to push for an independent
Speaker 5: ethics operation in Congress more than thirty years ago, actually
Speaker 5: even longer than that. It met a lot of resistance,
Speaker 5: kept pushing, and eventually, at least in the House, got
Speaker 5: the Office of Congressional Ethics. It is imperfect, but the
Speaker 5: fact is it exists. Yeah, it exists. And no institution,
Speaker 5: whether it is in government or or medicine or the law,
Speaker 5: as we've seen with the inability to sanction criminals who
Speaker 5: happen to be lawyers, as we've seen with cosmetology, people
Speaker 5: just can't easily police their own. But we finally got
Speaker 5: something done, and I felt good about that, and I
Speaker 5: felt good about other things to improve institutions. When you
Speaker 5: see them falling apart, and when you see the norms
Speaker 5: that are supposed to keep the institutions and the system
Speaker 5: together failing, when you see two political parties that I
Speaker 5: used to work with, both of them pretty intently and intensely,
Speaker 5: turn into one traditional political party and one radical fundamentalist cult,
Speaker 5: it makes me frustrated and angry, and so I you know,
Speaker 5: some of it is I need a catharsis when things
Speaker 5: that should be going differently are not.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: One of the things that I've been really struck by
Speaker 1: with these Republicans is, for example, they seem to have
Speaker 1: taken a sharp turn against ethics of any kind. An
Speaker 1: example that I would like to bring up is Senator
Speaker 1: Bob Menendez, a Democrat who they refuse to condemn because
Speaker 1: if they get on that wagon, they'll lose too many people.
Speaker 5: Well, we know that's true with Menendez, although I have
Speaker 5: to also say that I find Chuck Schumer's unwillingness to
Speaker 5: call for Menendez to resign a little frustrating as well,
Speaker 5: but most Democrats in the Senate and many others have
Speaker 5: taken off after Menendez. Let's use another example here, though,
Speaker 5: that we find day after day after day, and that Ms.
Speaker 5: Clarence Thomas, who got a quote unquote loan from a
Speaker 5: wealthy friend of something like two hundred and seventy plus
Speaker 5: thousand dollars to buy his fancy RV that he's bragged about,
Speaker 5: and of course in the hagiographic documentary about how wonderful
Speaker 5: he is, he was there with the RV talking about
Speaker 5: how he's more comfortable in the parking lot of a
Speaker 5: Walmart with real people. And of course we know that
Speaker 5: he's far more comfortable on private jets, eating caviare and
Speaker 5: drinking thousand dollars bottles of wine. But he got this
Speaker 5: load never repaid. We know that Clarence Thomas got one
Speaker 5: hundred and fifty thousand dollars from Harlan Crow to pay
Speaker 5: for the schooling for his nephew, whom he has treated
Speaker 5: like a son. We also know that Clarence Thomas got
Speaker 5: a five thousand dollars contribution for that purpose from somebody else.
Speaker 5: He declared the five thousand dollars and never declared the
Speaker 5: one hundred and fifty grand, which makes it clear he
Speaker 5: knew that it was wrong, in a violation very likely
Speaker 5: of the law, but certainly of any ethical standard. And
Speaker 5: every day Ted Cruz, joined by many many others, praises
Speaker 5: Clarence Thomas as one of the greatest people on earth,
Speaker 5: not a word of criticism. The same with Sam Alito,
Speaker 5: who maybe even more corrupt than Clarence Thomas. So what
Speaker 5: we've seen is a party that's become a cult that
Speaker 5: also believes that their end justifies any means, illegal means,
Speaker 5: undemocratic means, unethical means, and no one steps up, maybe
Speaker 5: every once in a while, with the possible exception of
Speaker 5: Mitt Romney, but other than those who have left in horror,
Speaker 5: the Liz Cheney's and Bill Crystals of the world. If
Speaker 5: we look at elected representatives, they're all culpable in this
Speaker 5: criminal scheme.
Speaker 1: When you think about this Maga, Mike, this snooze speaker
Speaker 1: of the House, he's quite smart. He reminds me of
Speaker 1: a kind of if Sidney Powell look like Paul Ryan discuss.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: So Matt Gates, of course is smiling and laughing because
Speaker 5: the fact is having engineered this scheme to begin with,
Speaker 5: to get Kevin McCarthy and bring in somebody who was
Speaker 5: as extreme as him. What he knew was that if
Speaker 5: he and his mega mob basically objected to every nominee
Speaker 5: coming forward that didn't fit entirely their purest pattern of
Speaker 5: a radical extremist, that eventually the less lunatic members of
Speaker 5: the Republican Conference would cave and let them get the
Speaker 5: person they wanted, and that worked. What we know about
Speaker 5: Mike Johnson other than the fact that he's singularly unqualified
Speaker 5: to be Speaker of the House because he has no
Speaker 5: clue what it means to be Speaker of the House.
Speaker 5: He's hardly been in the House at all, much less
Speaker 5: in any kind of position where he's close to the
Speaker 5: responsibility are decisions that have to be made by a speaker.
Speaker 3: But far more.
Speaker 5: Significant is that he is a fundamentalist, Christian nationalist extremist.
Speaker 5: And the idea that every single Republican in the House
Speaker 5: would vote for this guy is mind boggling, and it
Speaker 5: tells me two things, Molly.
Speaker 1: I mean.
Speaker 5: The first is that it's not just Donald Trump. Obviously,
Speaker 5: Donald Trump had a lot to do with killing Tom Emmer,
Speaker 5: who all the bad choices was the least worst, and
Speaker 5: he killed them not just because Emmer had voted to
Speaker 5: certify the twenty twenty election, but also because he knew
Speaker 5: that I'm sure from conversations with others in the House,
Speaker 5: Emmer would go down and that he could look like
Speaker 5: the kingmaker here again. But we also hope that Emmer's
Speaker 5: support for same sex marriage was another nail in his
Speaker 5: speakership coffin, which is insane. Yeah, you know, you have
Speaker 5: somebody coming up to you saying you don't have to
Speaker 5: answer to me, you have to answer to Jesus because
Speaker 5: you're for these horrible things. So instead they got somebody
Speaker 5: who wants to criminalize same sex sex and have a
Speaker 5: national don't say gay law, who has come out with
Speaker 5: hatred towards trans people, and that fits their bill right now.
Speaker 5: But the other part of this that really needs to
Speaker 5: be emphasized is that we not only have these extremists,
Speaker 5: but everybody else who doesn't fit that descriptor none of
Speaker 5: them are moderates. And it still drives me up a wall.
Speaker 5: Another part of what me unhappy is and I saw
Speaker 5: this yesterday over and over on CNN and even on
Speaker 5: MSNBC referring to some of the House Republicans as moderates.
Speaker 5: There isn't a sick moderate, but there are some who
Speaker 5: are not crazy, and they're all moral cowards. They go
Speaker 5: on with this. And I saw this morning that there
Speaker 5: was a No Layle's phone call with some of these
Speaker 5: problems solver, and I use that term very very looselyeth
Speaker 5: Republicans going on the no Labels call, which was simply
Speaker 5: to try to mollify their billionaire Republican funders who are
Speaker 5: trying to make sure that Joe Biden will lose even
Speaker 5: if he wins some more votes and more states. And
Speaker 5: so you've got some of these so called moderates saying, oh,
Speaker 5: you know, he's a really good guy, he's not going
Speaker 5: to behave that way, he doesn't really mean that stuff,
Speaker 5: which is all a bunch of crap. They're going along
Speaker 5: with it. So they're no better than the Matt gateses
Speaker 5: or Marjorie Taylor Green's or Lauren Bobert's or Virginia Fox's.
Speaker 5: And that list is a very very long one.
Speaker 1: Were you struck by though, those backbenchers going not I
Speaker 1: mean that group. What you know, there's a clip that
Speaker 1: went viral of a journal as saying, you know, did
Speaker 1: you believe that the twenty twenty election was stolen? And
Speaker 1: they started screaming at her, and Virginia Fox was like,
Speaker 1: shut up. I mean, it's been three weeks of these
Speaker 1: backbenchers really taking the spotlight and it's not an impressive group.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 5: I often will say that the lunatic fringe is now
Speaker 5: the vast majority. And one of the things that's so depressing,
Speaker 5: Molly is that you look at this collection of people,
Speaker 5: and then you look at the farm team, you look
Speaker 5: at who's coming up, the next generation, the people who
Speaker 5: are in state legislatures, on city councils now increasingly on
Speaker 5: school boards, and they make this group look like Abraham Lincoln.
Speaker 5: We're not going to get better anytime soon. And the
Speaker 5: only thing that may help is if they suffer a
Speaker 5: withering defeat in the twenty twenty four elections. But with that,
Speaker 5: given that, they have allies, to say the least on
Speaker 5: the Supreme Court, and we now see that North Carolina
Speaker 5: is about to implement an absolutely outrageous, hyperpartisan jerrymander that
Speaker 5: could cost Democrats three seats there that may be balanced
Speaker 5: a little bit by gaining a seat in Louisiana and
Speaker 5: perhaps one in Alabama. But you know, so many of
Speaker 5: these districts are rigged, and the system is so tribal
Speaker 5: now in the country that while I think the Democrats
Speaker 5: will recapture the House, it's no sure thing. Well, let
Speaker 5: me say that if we somehow skate through the presidential
Speaker 5: contest and there are no labels Cornell West worrying me
Speaker 5: a good deal. If Democrats don't recapture the House, and
Speaker 5: if Mike Johnson is able to hold on and not
Speaker 5: suffer the fate of all these other Republican leaders because
Speaker 5: he isn't purest enough, in the end, we're going to
Speaker 5: have a leader in the election denying group that tried
Speaker 5: to overturn the election in twenty twenty running the House
Speaker 5: and very possibly overturning the results of the twenty twenty
Speaker 5: four election. So the stakes in the House could not
Speaker 5: be higher right now, not just for the immediate term.
Speaker 5: Whether we have an extended government shut down, cut out
Speaker 5: the legs from under Selenski and Ukraine and benefit Vladimir Putin,
Speaker 5: or begin to move towards truly destructive policies that would
Speaker 5: undermine almost everything that we do in government and protecting
Speaker 5: our democracy, but we could lose it all if we're
Speaker 5: not vigilant and work hard.
Speaker 1: Next year, we just keep coming to this precipice of democracy.
Speaker 1: The thing that I worry about a lot is that
Speaker 1: these Republicans really are so hot to hold on to power.
Speaker 1: And we talked about this so the Supreme Court. It
Speaker 1: feels like they just aren't bound by the same stuff
Speaker 1: the rest of us are.
Speaker 5: Oh, I think that's absolutely the case. The rules don't matter.
Speaker 5: And you know, the way I will often frame this
Speaker 5: is that the Constitution, the laws, the rules are kind
Speaker 5: of the exoskeleton of our political system. But the norms
Speaker 5: are like the tendons and the ligaments, and if they wither,
Speaker 5: the whole thing falls apart, and we now have a
Speaker 5: group of people for whom none of these other principles matters.
Speaker 5: It is truly the ends justify the means, and the
Speaker 5: fact that they have allies in the courts, that they
Speaker 5: are able to exploit the seams in the political system,
Speaker 5: and a political system that is heavily tilted towards the minority,
Speaker 5: but that they've used crowbars to make even more of
Speaker 5: that tilt work is a very frightening thing. It's true
Speaker 5: that Donald Trump was an accelerant of this process, he
Speaker 5: didn't start. It started a long time before he came
Speaker 5: on the scene. Some of these elements, I should say,
Speaker 5: go back before any of us were born. One of
Speaker 5: the things that I'm trying to do now is get injected,
Speaker 5: at least into the mainstream the idea of enlarging the
Speaker 5: House of Representatives. I mention this because effectively the size,
Speaker 5: which grew every ten years as the population group, was
Speaker 5: fixed at four hundred and thirty five in nineteen ten,
Speaker 5: informally formally in nineteen twenty nine. But if you go
Speaker 5: back and look at why they wouldn't keep enlarging the House,
Speaker 5: the fundamental reason is that we had all of these
Speaker 5: immigrants coming from Eastern Europe into through Ellis Island and
Speaker 5: occupying the northeast end the midwest, and we had former
Speaker 5: slave families who left the south and moved up to
Speaker 5: the north. And the Conservatives, then Democrats now they are
Speaker 5: all Republicans figured that they could limit the power of
Speaker 5: these people coming in by capping the size of the
Speaker 5: House and not letting them get more districts and more
Speaker 5: political power. And you go back even further. We had
Speaker 5: a Dakota territory, it became a North Dakota, in a
Speaker 5: South Dakota. You had a Virginia that became a Virginia
Speaker 5: and a West Virginia. Why so that conservative areas could
Speaker 5: have more representation in the Senate and more leverage. So,
Speaker 5: you know, the manipulation of the process often with what
Speaker 5: are you know, on the surface legitimate means, but for
Speaker 5: illegitimate ends goes way back. But when I look at
Speaker 5: it now, you know we're almost at a point, for example,
Speaker 5: where seventy percent of Americans will live in just fifteen
Speaker 5: of our fifty states. It's because people congregate to those
Speaker 5: states where the economic dynamism gives them opportunities. Two thirds
Speaker 5: of our GDP comes from those fifteen states.
Speaker 2: But if you flip that.
Speaker 5: Around, not only does it mean more distortion in the
Speaker 5: electoral college, but it means that thirty percent of Americans
Speaker 5: will elect seventy US Senators enough to veto anything to
Speaker 5: block action if they don't like it. And it's not
Speaker 5: that you know, the small states are all Republican and
Speaker 5: the big states are all controlled by Democrats, but that
Speaker 5: thirty percent don't reflect at all the diversity of the country,
Speaker 5: or its economic dynamism, or its larger political views. So
Speaker 5: our elections are on the road to becoming illegitimate for
Speaker 5: most people, even if Donald Trump disappears from the scene
Speaker 5: very very soon. And these people who are now running
Speaker 5: things are going to be able to manipulate the system
Speaker 5: even more to get their way, including having stacked the
Speaker 5: deck with judges who they've deliberately picked to be young
Speaker 5: enough that they can be there for decades even if
Speaker 5: they lose political power. So how do I put this?
Speaker 2: We're fucked nor Morenstein, Thank you.
Speaker 5: Have a nice thing.
Speaker 1: Wally Ian Bramer is the president of the Eurasia Group.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to vast politics.
Speaker 3: Thank you, MOLLI good to be with you.
Speaker 1: So it feels like a moment to have you to
Speaker 1: talk about. You know, I feel like Americans are so
Speaker 1: or at least this is my experience America centric, and
Speaker 1: then all of a sudden we remember that there's like
Speaker 1: a whole world out there and what happens and.
Speaker 2: It actually affects us.
Speaker 1: I feel like this was a moment where it was
Speaker 1: like a shift back to foreign policy, if that makes
Speaker 1: any sense.
Speaker 2: First, of all, you know, I love you, Molli, So
Speaker 2: I don't want to start.
Speaker 7: I don't want to start by disagreeing with you, but
Speaker 7: I have to tell me because for the last almost
Speaker 7: twenty months, the United States has focused an enormous amount
Speaker 7: on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, right right, right, And
Speaker 7: I will tell you that for the last two weeks,
Speaker 7: no one's asked me about it, not at all. Yeah,
Speaker 7: I've been thrown completely off the headlines. But it's enormously relevant,
Speaker 7: and we do care about it in the sense that
Speaker 7: we've been thinking about and talking about it, and it
Speaker 7: went from being a pretty bipartisan issue to becoming a
Speaker 7: partisan issue. I will say that it certainly when we
Speaker 7: talk about Israel, pallace Stein. Not only do Americans have
Speaker 7: strong views about it, but they are incredibly divided views.
Speaker 7: And there are also views that are very different from
Speaker 7: almost everybody else in the rest of the world. And
Speaker 7: both of those things are important here. How are they
Speaker 7: different from everyone else in the world. So I believe
Speaker 7: that it is almost inevitable that the Israelis are going
Speaker 7: to engage in a ground war against Hamas that will
Speaker 7: be long and brutal, with the effort of destroying that
Speaker 7: terrorist organization, and the United States, while privately the US
Speaker 7: has been saying, we'd really rather if you didn't do this,
Speaker 7: please delay humanitarian support. I strongly believe that when the
Speaker 7: Israelis engage in a ground war, the Americans will provide
Speaker 7: full throated support for that ground war, and indeed the
Speaker 7: US may well also be fighting in the region. There
Speaker 7: will be attacks, more attacks against American troops in the
Speaker 7: region that will happen, that will expand, and it's reasonably
Speaker 7: likely that the United States will be directly involved in
Speaker 7: the fighting. That will absolutely not be the position of
Speaker 7: almost anyone else in the world. The vast majority of
Speaker 7: countries will oppose a ground war, even the vast majority
Speaker 7: of democracy will oppose a ground war. So that's one
Speaker 7: way the Americans are very different. And then inside the
Speaker 7: United States, of course, it is true that Israel is
Speaker 7: America's strongest ally in the Middle East, and that's been
Speaker 7: true for a long time. But young people Generation Z
Speaker 7: in the US are actually much more sympathetic to the
Speaker 7: Palestinian cause, while the rest of the Americans are far
Speaker 7: more aligned with Israel, and that, of course we're seeing
Speaker 7: play out on campuses and on social media and everything
Speaker 7: else is going to be a lot more of that.
Speaker 1: So I want to stop here for a minute and
Speaker 1: just and to ask you why you think this is inevitable.
Speaker 4: There are many reasons, and the reason I think it's
Speaker 4: inevitable is.
Speaker 7: Because I believe that the Israeli war cabinet has already
Speaker 7: made the decision to go, and they have been delaying
Speaker 7: under a lot of pressure, particularly from the US. The
Speaker 7: most important reason they have delayed is because the Americans
Speaker 7: want to get more defensive capacity in the region, securing
Speaker 7: US bases, ships and the like, because the Americans know
Speaker 7: that attacks against Americans going to go way up once
Speaker 7: you have tanks streaming into Gaza. That's the main reason
Speaker 7: why they're delaying. They're also trying to get more hostages
Speaker 7: freed through indirect negotiations involving the Cuttery government and the
Speaker 7: Tamas political leadership that is based in Doha. And then
Speaker 7: also there is efforts to get more humanitarian aid. And
Speaker 7: I wish that was a principal reason that was driving
Speaker 7: the delay. It is not, but it is a reason.
Speaker 7: But I think the decision has been made.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 7: If you're asking me, why has the decision been made.
Speaker 7: I think they are. It's the fact that Israel has
Speaker 7: been so traumatized by what happened on October seventh. Non
Speaker 7: Yahoo is responsible for the failures of Israeli national security.
Speaker 7: He's still in charge, ultimately calling the shots, and he
Speaker 7: needs to prove himself, wants to prove himself.
Speaker 3: But it's not just that, it's the fact that.
Speaker 7: Everyone in Israel knows someone personally who's been killed or
Speaker 7: is a hostage. Said, three hundred and sixty thousand Israelis
Speaker 7: have been called up and mobilized to fight in the war.
Speaker 7: That's four percent of the population. When I'm talking to
Speaker 7: Israeli leaders, they are constantly being interrupted by air sirens
Speaker 7: and having to go into their safe rooms, and their
Speaker 7: sleep is being interrupted, and they're being all these demands
Speaker 7: are being made by the families of.
Speaker 3: Those that have been killed and those that are held hostage.
Speaker 7: I mean, I think that this is a level of
Speaker 7: emotional trucks that is really inconceivable for you and me.
Speaker 7: But that I'm trying to understand as the American government
Speaker 7: is working with these folks and saying, look, they're just
Speaker 7: not thinking strategically. This is about retribution. It's an emotional response.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think that makes a lot of sense,
Speaker 1: the thinking and what's happened. And this reminds us all
Speaker 1: of what it was like in New York after nine
Speaker 1: to eleven, certainly, where there was a sense that they're
Speaker 1: just it was sort of incalculatable. But what I'm curious
Speaker 1: about is the hostages. I mean, do we have any
Speaker 1: more of a sense of four hostages? There are two
Speaker 1: hundred plus plus maybe two fourteen I've read. Do we
Speaker 1: have any sense of like, will more be released? Do
Speaker 1: you get a sense of that. We think there are
Speaker 1: over two hundred and twenty hostages. We also believe a
Speaker 1: fair number of them are already dead. Because they're being
Speaker 1: held in a tunnel network inside northern Gaza. The ability
Speaker 1: to free them through a search and rest mission is negligible,
Speaker 1: so the only way they're getting out is through diplomacy.
Speaker 1: I absolutely believe.
Speaker 7: That more will be freed, But I mean, we're not
Speaker 7: talking about all of them. We're probably not talking about
Speaker 7: most of them. Keep in mind, I mean there's different
Speaker 7: types of hostages. You've got civilians and you have active
Speaker 7: members of the Israeli military. The latter very hard to
Speaker 7: see going anywhere unless there were massive numbers of Palestinians
Speaker 7: that were freed. And I have a hard time seeing
Speaker 7: the Israelis doing that. But I also know that there
Speaker 7: is a willingness on the part of the war cabinet
Speaker 7: to put those lives at risk through a ground war.
Speaker 7: This is not the same calculus as was experienced by
Speaker 7: Israel before October seventh.
Speaker 2: And how could it be? I want to pull.
Speaker 1: Back and talk about the region because it's such a complicated,
Speaker 1: interconnected region that will have enormous economic consequences for all
Speaker 1: of us. And also this war, I think there's a
Speaker 1: lot of anxiety, certainly that it could mushroom.
Speaker 2: So what does it look like in the Arab world?
Speaker 1: Like where do you see potential support coming from for
Speaker 1: the Palestinians? Where do you see the potential support coming
Speaker 1: to the Israelis?
Speaker 2: And do you think that some of this.
Speaker 1: Happened because of the normalization of relationships between Israel and
Speaker 1: Saudi Arabia?
Speaker 7: It absolutely came from the broader normalization of Israel with
Speaker 7: everybody while the Palestinians were being forgotten. The number of
Speaker 7: people that are complicit and responsible for the Palestinians being
Speaker 7: screwed is so substantial. It's the corrupt local Palestinian governments,
Speaker 7: both Hamas and the Palestinian authority. I mean, look how
Speaker 7: much military equipment Hamas has and just how little has
Speaker 7: been spent on the development of the Palestinian people.
Speaker 2: It is Israel taking.
Speaker 7: More of their land illegally in the West Bank and
Speaker 7: promoting Hamas as a counter balance to Fatah. It is
Speaker 7: the Gulf States and others happy to work with the
Speaker 7: Israelis for trade and investment and tourism while the Palestinian
Speaker 7: situation gets worse and worse and not doing anything about it.
Speaker 7: It's the Americans and the Europeans focusing zero on this issue.
Speaker 3: Everyone's complicit.
Speaker 7: Everyone's complicit, and so clearly, you know, when my friend
Speaker 7: Antonio Guchetz, the Secretary General of the UN, who was
Speaker 7: out there immediately condemning Hamas for terrorist activity, but when
Speaker 7: he says, let's talk about the context, that's the context
Speaker 7: he's talking about. Will remind me immediately of JFK saying that,
Speaker 7: you know, if people don't have a means for peaceful revolution,
Speaker 7: they will engage in violent revolution. And literally everyone in
Speaker 7: the region and the world was complicit in giving the
Speaker 7: Palestinians no outlet for peaceful revolution.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about what the larger landscape looks like.
Speaker 1: This is not the way it was during the Young
Speaker 1: pepop War war. This is not Israel versus the world,
Speaker 1: you know, versus the Arab world is a different posture.
Speaker 1: And can you talk to me about what it looks
Speaker 1: like there? Like, where does everyone stand on this?
Speaker 7: With the neighbor nations, the neighbor states that have normalized
Speaker 7: relations with Israel, both formally and informally in the case
Speaker 7: of Saudi, want to maintain that relationship. It ain't gonna
Speaker 7: get any better. It will get a little worse because
Speaker 7: there'll be a lot of pressure from the Arab street.
Speaker 7: But I mean, the Saudis came out and condemned both
Speaker 7: Israel and Hamas, which is right, which is unusual literary
Speaker 7: from the MBS perspective. Right, that's a big deal. And
Speaker 7: Israel is in as you mentioned, you're so right to
Speaker 7: say this, Molly. Their geopolitical position is so much better
Speaker 7: than it was in nineteen seventy three. Israel faced an
Speaker 7: existential war literally for its survival. There might be no
Speaker 7: state of Israel. There's no such concern here not YAHUO
Speaker 7: failed the Israeli people. He should be removed. They have
Speaker 7: the capacity to defend their border.
Speaker 2: And the polling says that the Israeli people blame him
Speaker 2: for this as well they should they blame him.
Speaker 7: In fact, far more Jews in Israel blame not Yahoo
Speaker 7: then want a ground war, and I think that is
Speaker 7: a message that should be delivered loudly, like how do
Speaker 7: the Israelis feel about all of this? And the same
Speaker 7: way that you want to know, how do the Palestinians
Speaker 7: feel about Hamas? And they're not all terrorists, but not
Speaker 7: all Israeli support what's been happening on the ground in Israel.
Speaker 7: That's why you've had these massive demonstrations inside the country,
Speaker 7: almost all peaceful over the last months and months and months.
Speaker 7: But the problem here is that this war is going
Speaker 7: to expand. It's not just a ground war in Gaza.
Speaker 7: There will be fighting in the West Bank. Dozens and
Speaker 7: dozens of Palestinians have already lost their lives in the
Speaker 7: last couple of weeks in the West Bank. That will expand.
Speaker 7: There will be more fighting with Hesbellah that could become
Speaker 7: a new front in the war. There will be more
Speaker 7: attacks against Americans in the region from Iranian proxiesis in Yemen,
Speaker 7: and like the Shia militants in Iraq and the United
Speaker 7: States is very likely to be directly involved in that fighting.
Speaker 7: So this is very different from Russia Ukraine in that
Speaker 7: in two critical ways. First that the Americans are going
Speaker 7: to be supporting the Israeli's militarily kind of by themselves,
Speaker 7: and secondly, that the Americans are going to be involved
Speaker 7: in the fighting. And neither of those things have been
Speaker 7: true in the last twenty months of Russia Ukraine.
Speaker 1: So that's a really good point. Now what does that
Speaker 1: look like for Russia and Ukraine? I mean, how do
Speaker 1: the Ukrainian sort of go from here? Because they seem worried,
Speaker 1: they should be worried. This has been a great a
Speaker 1: great two weeks for putin. The United States just put
Speaker 1: a new speaker, Mike Johnson in place. He's overwhelmingly interested
Speaker 1: in supporting Israel. He's absolutely not interested in providing support
Speaker 1: for Ukraine. At best, the US might be able to
Speaker 1: do a small fraction of what Biden asked for the
Speaker 1: Ukrainians for the coming year. That means they can still
Speaker 1: fight a defensive war, but they can't do another counter
Speaker 1: offensive and the last one hasn't gone so well. I
Speaker 1: have a hard time seeing the Ukrainians taking more of
Speaker 1: their territory back than the eighty two percent which they
Speaker 1: presently occupy. And I think the Europeans are going to
Speaker 1: be very worried, especially as we now enter the twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four election season with Trump wanting to cut the
Speaker 1: Ukrainians off completely. The Europeans are going to feel much
Speaker 1: more like they need to hedge away from the United
Speaker 1: States on a bunch of these issues. They aren't as
Speaker 1: aligned on Israel, They're becoming less.
Speaker 7: Aligned on Ukraine. This will affect them on China too,
Speaker 7: and especially because all of this is so much more
Speaker 7: of a direct security concern for the Europeans than it.
Speaker 2: Is for the Right, because it's so much closer to them.
Speaker 2: It's so much closer.
Speaker 7: They get the refugees, they get the potential for asymmetric attacks.
Speaker 7: I mean, all day, They've got to pay higher input costs, infrastructure, energy,
Speaker 7: all this stuff.
Speaker 1: And it does feel like netnya who is not interested
Speaker 1: in decruing business with the President of Ukraine.
Speaker 7: Oh god, yeah, you've got to remember that Natnya, who
Speaker 7: has not supported US and European sanctions, has refused to
Speaker 7: join them against Prussia. He has not provided Ukraine with
Speaker 7: any military support, unlike the Europeans and the Americans. Zelenski,
Speaker 7: of course, is himself Jewish, and after the October seventh
Speaker 7: attacks he immediately denounced Thamas express solidarity with Israel. Saw
Speaker 7: this as an opportunity and offered to come down to
Speaker 7: Israel in solidarity Natnya, who said no, it was not
Speaker 7: the time, and hours later took a phone call from Putin,
Speaker 7: who has been supporting Kamas. So I mean clearly, the
Speaker 7: Israelis are not remotely aligned with the Americans on the
Speaker 7: Ukraine issue, so Putin.
Speaker 2: Will not be involved in being anti Israel.
Speaker 7: I do think that the Israel Russia relationship has been
Speaker 7: signed magnificantly damaged. There are members of the Non Yahoo
Speaker 7: government that have actively denounced Putin because of his support
Speaker 7: for Hamas, not mil ferry or financial support, but his
Speaker 7: rhetorical support. But Non Yahoo will be very careful on
Speaker 7: this issue going forward, and I expect Putin will as well.
Speaker 3: Putin will be aligned with.
Speaker 7: China and the Gulf States in terms of what they're
Speaker 7: doing at the Security Council and broadly diplomatically. I don't
Speaker 7: see the Russians as being directly involved in the fighting
Speaker 7: on the ground.
Speaker 3: I don't see that.
Speaker 7: I see them taking advantage of the chaos and the
Speaker 7: vacuum that comes from this, and certainly it being an
Speaker 7: advantage for them as they continue this illegal war in Ukraine.
Speaker 2: Unbelievable. Thank you so much, Ian Suremali, good to talk
Speaker 2: to you.
Speaker 3: No moment.
Speaker 8: Jesse Cannon, my Jung fast, Maga, Mike Johnson. I think
Speaker 8: I texted this to you. I feel like we got Santos.
Speaker 8: No one knew what was coming, and now we're seeing
Speaker 8: a lot of horrors. What are you seeing with this guy?
Speaker 2: Do we get Santost? Is that like sandbag? Do you
Speaker 2: got Santost?
Speaker 8: When the OPO doesn't come as fast as the candidacy.
Speaker 1: I'm going to say, when the OPO doesn't drop, right,
Speaker 1: When the OPO doesn't drop, you get Maga, mic So, Maga, Mike.
Speaker 2: Everyone's favorite is a I don't know.
Speaker 1: He gave an insane speech where he said his wife
Speaker 1: was busy on her knees, which I think he meant prayer,
Speaker 1: but the implication is so dicey he's a Christian talk
Speaker 1: show host. He's like dollar store Mike Pence. And for that,
Speaker 1: my man is our moment of fuck Ray. That's it
Speaker 1: for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday,
Speaker 1: and Friday to hear the best minds in politics makes
Speaker 1: sense of all this chaos. If you enjoyed what you've heard,
Speaker 1: please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going.
Speaker 1: And again, thanks for listening.
Speaker 2: Think