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Speaker 1: Day, and welcome back to the Carol Marcus Show on iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 1: My guest today is Lee Smith. Lee is an author

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Speaker 1: and journalist at Tablet who has a new book out

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Speaker 1: called The China Matrix, The epics story of how Donald

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Speaker 1: Trump shattered a deadly pact.

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Speaker 2: Hi.

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Speaker 1: Lee, so nice to have you on.

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Speaker 2: Hi, Carol, thank you so much for the invitation. It's

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Speaker 2: a real pleasure.

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Speaker 1: So I don't think we've ever met in person, and

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Speaker 1: I'm very excited to talk to you because you make

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Speaker 1: a lot of appearances. In my various group chats, people

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Speaker 1: are frequently sharing Lee Smith's work and talking about Lee Smith.

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Speaker 1: So tell me how did you become a writer? What

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Speaker 1: was the path you took?

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Speaker 2: Well, my father was a journalist and my grandfather was

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Speaker 2: a journalist too. My great grandfather wasn't exactly a journalist,

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Speaker 2: but he was a typesetter at the New York Daily News. Wow,

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Speaker 2: And so it's a lot.

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Speaker 1: I didn't have a choice.

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Speaker 2: That was I had a voice, and you know, I

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Speaker 2: had my father been responsible, he would have said, you know,

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Speaker 2: there's there's other ways to make a living. But he's

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Speaker 2: happy that I pursued the same trade that he did.

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Speaker 2: So yeah, I mean, you know, and then just when

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Speaker 2: I was a I mean, I think the biggest thing

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Speaker 2: that what makes people want to want to write is reading.

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Speaker 2: You know what you read? Right? Oh? Wow, that's really

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Speaker 2: I wish I could. I wish I could. I hope

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Speaker 2: I can make people feel at some point how I

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Speaker 2: feel about reading this. You know. Do you know the

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Speaker 2: poet Delmore Schwartz. No, Delmore Schwartz was a famous, you know,

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Speaker 2: New York poet in the mid twenties, and very tragic story,

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Speaker 2: very moving story. Saul Bellow wrote a novel called Humboldt Gift,

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Speaker 2: which is basically Delmore Schwartz. But Schwartz had something which

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Speaker 2: I always keep in minds. I love him as a writer.

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Speaker 2: He's not a great writer, but he's very moving. And

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Speaker 2: he said, you know, he said, the kind of the

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Speaker 2: the kind of book that you want to write, write,

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Speaker 2: and the kind of thing you want to read is

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Speaker 2: something that you realize you have to do. There has

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Speaker 2: to be something out there that makes you happy that

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Speaker 2: it's a booked just for you. And so you have

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Speaker 2: to go out and write those books because no one

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Speaker 2: else will and write that story or that article or

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Speaker 2: that poem or whatever. It is because no one else

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Speaker 2: will do it. So yeah, I find that very moving.

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Speaker 1: Do you have a particular beat that you feel like you.

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Speaker 2: Cover, Well, I've had a couple of different beats. I mean,

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Speaker 2: you know, right after nine to eleven, I was writing

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Speaker 2: a lot about the Middle East. Moved to the Middle

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Speaker 2: East for a bit. Then I worked at AH so

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Speaker 2: you know, I still write about the Middle East.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it continues to be a topic for some reason.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, all right. You know. Then I worked at

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Speaker 2: a publication called The Weekly Standard. I remember it, yes,

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Speaker 2: and it's more controversial now that it was round. So

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Speaker 2: you know what, I got to write about a lot

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Speaker 2: of things for them. I got to write about sports,

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Speaker 2: got to write about baseball, which I you know, which

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Speaker 2: I know a lot about. Yeah, got to write a

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Speaker 2: little bit about literature. And that's actually where I come from.

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Speaker 2: I used to the publication that no longer exists is

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Speaker 2: the Village.

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Speaker 1: Voice, and I loved the Voice.

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Speaker 2: Well when I lived in New York. I grew up

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Speaker 2: in New York, and I grew up right around the

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Speaker 2: corner from where the Voice offices were. So later I

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Speaker 2: was named the literary editor of the Voice, and there

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Speaker 2: was a publication at the time called The Voice Literary Supplement.

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Speaker 2: That's really you know, I started off writing about literature

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Speaker 2: and published novelists and poets and so yeah, and that's

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Speaker 2: something I still still like to do, though that's not

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Speaker 2: really again the main part of my beat right now

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Speaker 2: and now my last few books, I've been writing mostly

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Speaker 2: about American corruption, the different efforts to top old Donald

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Speaker 2: Trump during his first term, and in this most recent book,

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Speaker 2: The China Matrix. I mean, I'm not a China scholar.

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Speaker 2: What I know a lot about is American corruption. So

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Speaker 2: this book is really about how American political and corporate

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Speaker 2: elites joined forces with the Chinese Communist Party to impoverish,

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Speaker 2: to impoverish Americans, and to damage our peace and prosperity.

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Speaker 2: So that's really what this book is about. It another

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Speaker 2: story about American corruption.

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Speaker 1: So what is the China Matrix is that?

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Speaker 2: Well, the matrix is really how these two groups of

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Speaker 2: cohorts of elites, the Chinese Communist Party elites on one

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Speaker 2: hand and American elites on the other, they basically become

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Speaker 2: the same thing. I mean, they're fighting for the same thing,

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Speaker 2: and that is for Americans. Are not most of the

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Speaker 2: Americans are not directly fighting to make China the great world.

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Speaker 2: What they're fighting for is their own money, which is

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Speaker 2: in turn making China an enormous power to replace the

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Speaker 2: United States. But clearly these Communist party elites, that's what

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Speaker 2: they want. They want PRC primacy. So that's the corruption.

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Speaker 2: It goes back to nineteen seventy two with Richard Nixon

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Speaker 2: and Henry Kissinger's Opening to China. That's really the origin

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Speaker 2: of the corruption. A lot of people say, well, wasn't

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Speaker 2: that a really a good, interesting, you know, political advice. No,

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Speaker 2: it was a terrible idea. Nixon and Kissinger profoundly misunderstood

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Speaker 2: what they were doing. Their idea of balance of power

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Speaker 2: was really wrong headed. And actually the person who who

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Speaker 2: keyed in on this was Donald Trump's. I have a

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Speaker 2: very long, long interview with the President. Interesting throughout this book.

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Speaker 1: It's interesting because I think we're in a moment where

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Speaker 1: nobody trusts anything anymore, and they are trying to rethink

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Speaker 1: all previous ideas. And you don't really hear as much

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Speaker 1: about China and Donald Trump's second term. You definitely don't

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Speaker 1: hear the China skeptics that I think existed in the

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Speaker 1: first term. Do you see that as well or am

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Speaker 1: I just missing it well?

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Speaker 2: As I show in this book that Trump's trade war

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Speaker 2: with China in the first term started early on. It

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Speaker 2: started March twenty seventeen, really sort of ended, didn't really

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Speaker 2: really end. But the high point was January twenty twenty,

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Speaker 2: January thirty, twenty twenty, when they signed a Phase one

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Speaker 2: trade deal. So this went on throughout Trump's term. I

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Speaker 2: mean you'll remember that. You know, all the other stuff

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Speaker 2: that was taking up all the oxygen, whether it was

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Speaker 2: Russia Gate or whether it's the impeachments Donald tr This

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Speaker 2: is one of the astonishing things. While all this stuff

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Speaker 2: was going on, Trump was still fighting China. There was

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Speaker 2: a trade war going and so right now that's happening.

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Speaker 2: We're still in a trade war. There's other stuff that's

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Speaker 2: rising to the surface, whether it's what's happening, whether it's

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Speaker 2: Israel's war against Tamas, whether it's whether it's happening in

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Speaker 2: the Katar whether it's the Ukraine Russia war. What's still

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Speaker 2: going on at the same time as the China trade war.

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Speaker 2: And there's a lot of people who were foxed on it,

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Speaker 2: but yeah, it's not there's so much else going on.

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Speaker 2: It's not right now the main people are concerned about.

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Speaker 1: Well, we used to worry, I would even say about

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Speaker 1: Chinese influence. It seems like everybody has stopped talking about it.

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Speaker 1: TikTok right, barely registers as a topic anymore. Again, maybe

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Speaker 1: I'm just missing it. Maybe I'm pretty involved, pretty involved

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Speaker 1: in like the Israel you know, Hamas war, reading about that,

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Speaker 1: Maybe I'm just not seeing it.

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Speaker 2: Well, there's a lot stuff pops up. You're right about it,

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Speaker 2: about the TikTok. You're right about the TikTok thing. And

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Speaker 2: you'll remember before that, one of the other things that

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Speaker 2: came up, Donald Trump was talking about letting in six

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Speaker 2: hundred thousand Chinese students. Yeah, that of course made people crazy. Right,

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Speaker 2: I can talk about both of these things. First of all,

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Speaker 2: Donald Trump does not want six hundred thousand students Chinese

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Speaker 2: students in the United States. I have a long section

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Speaker 2: in my book. During his first term, he was very

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Speaker 2: upset to find out there were more than three hundred

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Speaker 2: thousand Chinese students in the United States, many situated at

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Speaker 2: very sensitive research institutes, including US nuclear labs like Los Alamo.

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Speaker 2: So he was not happy. He does not want. He

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Speaker 2: does not want even three hundred thousand Chinese students here.

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Speaker 2: He realizes the threat that that poses to our national

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Speaker 2: security with TikTok. I think it's very important for people

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Speaker 2: to understand that the baseline for understanding stuff, for understanding

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Speaker 2: Trump and China, is that Trump does not trust Jijinping.

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Speaker 2: Trump has not trusted China, he wrote in his two

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Speaker 2: thousand book The America We Deserve. He's he goes very

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Speaker 2: hard on China there, so this is not going away, right,

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Speaker 2: It is very consistent. You'll remember that people were worried

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Speaker 2: for the President joined Benjamin at Yahoo in Operation Midnight

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Speaker 2: Hammer to obliterate Iran's nuclear facilities. People were concerned, what

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Speaker 2: is is Trump falling prey to the isolationist? What's happening here?

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Speaker 2: You know he's been talking anybody ron, but is he

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Speaker 2: gonna do anything? And of course he did, right, because

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Speaker 2: he's very he's very consistent on these things. So to

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Speaker 2: understand which way Trump is moving, I think it's important

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Speaker 2: for people to understand the historical record of what he's

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Speaker 2: talked about. He is a profoundly let's go on with

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Speaker 2: other things that we should another thing that we should

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Speaker 2: understand about Trump is people are talking about Trump and Gaza,

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Speaker 2: Trump and Israel, Trump US, Donald Trump's relationship with Israeli

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Speaker 2: Prime Minister Benjamin Att and Iowa, I think is one

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Speaker 2: of the most important relationships we've seen between world leaders

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Speaker 2: since certainly since Thatcher and Reagan, maybe since FDR and Churchill.

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Speaker 2: But it's not just that. Remember that Donald Trump is

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Speaker 2: basically the world's institutional memory for October seventh, right, all

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Speaker 2: the time reporters ask him, whether it's a you know,

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Speaker 2: in the White House or an ad hoc press conference,

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Speaker 2: what mos what about this? Did you see the video

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Speaker 2: from October seventh, eight? Yeah, all the time. So it's

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Speaker 2: not just that Donald Trump is pro Israel and he

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Speaker 2: worked very well with BB. It's that this was shocking

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Speaker 2: and moving, as it is to people around the world

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Speaker 2: of good conscience, right right, not just on the mind

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Speaker 2: of Israelis and Jews. It's on the mind of people

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Speaker 2: of good conscience around the world, and Donald Trump is

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Speaker 2: one of them. So that baseline for understanding Trump's foreign policy,

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Speaker 2: and that's what I do here in the China Matrix.

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Speaker 2: I explain, in addition to the history of this terrible

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Speaker 2: relationship I explain what Trump's baseline is, what he thinks

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Speaker 2: about China, where he's moving, what he thinks about the

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Speaker 2: United States, and how important it is to secure American

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Speaker 2: interest not just in the Indo Pacific, but globally, because

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Speaker 2: that's how the threat China is.

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Speaker 1: We're going to take a quick break and be right

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Speaker 1: back on the Carol Marcowitch Show. What would you be

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Speaker 1: doing if you weren't writing books and if you weren't

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Speaker 1: a journalist? What would be? What would be?

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Speaker 2: That's interesting? That was that was a quick transition. I

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Speaker 2: think I would I would be in I would be

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Speaker 2: in baseball. I think, really, I think I'd probably be

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Speaker 2: a baseball coach after I left when after I played

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Speaker 2: baseball in college and then I went to Cornell for

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Speaker 2: graduate school and I was the graduate assistant there. Oh no,

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Speaker 2: it's great. I mean coaching baseball, it's fantastic. I like coaching.

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Speaker 2: I like teaching. I haven't talked all the time, you know,

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Speaker 2: get to be get to be outside. Sure Rob is

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Speaker 2: outside and teaching young people. You know. I know a

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Speaker 2: lot of coaches now, baseball and other sports, and it's

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Speaker 2: very moving what they get to do. They really they're

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Speaker 2: not just teaching young young people a discipline of skill,

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Speaker 2: but also teaching them how to be accountable to themselves,

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Speaker 2: to their teammates, to other people, how to enjoy themselves,

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Speaker 2: how to how to succeed right, how to succeed in sports,

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Speaker 2: how to succeed in life. So, yeah, baseball.

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Speaker 1: I love that answer because when I ask that, sometimes

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Speaker 1: I mean writers will be like, maybe I'd be an editor.

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Speaker 1: It's always like something related.

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Speaker 2: If you want's a novelist, what would you do. I'd

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Speaker 2: write short stories.

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Speaker 1: I do get that. I get like, oh, well, I

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Speaker 1: would do fiction. You know it's nonfiction. I'd be a DJ.

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Speaker 2: Personally, really, I don't know.

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Speaker 1: I feel like I can get people on the damn floor.

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Speaker 2: That's good of.

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Speaker 1: What are you most proud of in your life?

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Speaker 2: All right? This is this is this is a I

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Speaker 2: kind of knew this was coming. I think the thing

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Speaker 2: the best thing that I did was, as I said,

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Speaker 2: I grew up in New York, and so I left

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Speaker 2: New York. You know, I left. It was right after

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Speaker 2: nine to eleven. But I remember one time sitting on

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Speaker 2: the subway and I was just looking. I was riding

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Speaker 2: the F train from where I was living in Brooklyn

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Speaker 2: into work. I said, well, look at all these other

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Speaker 2: people on the train. I mean, I mean, we're all

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Speaker 2: stuck here in New York, and I just want to

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Speaker 2: do something else. I mean I was in my I

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Speaker 2: guess I was in my twenties at the time. I

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Speaker 2: said I want to I want to try something else too.

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Speaker 2: And so then it was after nine eleven I said, well,

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Speaker 2: now I got to get out of here. Not because

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Speaker 2: I was you know, I wasn't scared. I was and

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Speaker 2: I was angry and I was sad. It changed a

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Speaker 2: lot of things, and I said, this is my hometown.

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Speaker 2: I have to figure out why these people wanted to

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Speaker 2: kill my neighbors. Yeah, and why they wanted to attack

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Speaker 2: my hometown. So that's really how I started writing about

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Speaker 2: the That's really how I started writing about the Middle East.

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Speaker 2: It came from a real personal sense of I would

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Speaker 2: say a loss, but it wasn't just lost. It was anger.

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Speaker 2: I was furious. And it wasn't until I was living

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Speaker 2: in Cairo that I realized how and all the fights

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Speaker 2: I was picking, how angry I was about about what happened.

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Speaker 2: So it was very important for me to leave New

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Speaker 2: York at that time. So I'm not sure if it's

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Speaker 2: what I'm most proud of, but I think it's one

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Speaker 2: of the one of the best choices I made, you know, professionally,

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Speaker 2: right personally as well, to understand to get a sense

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Speaker 2: of something that to get a sense of something that

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Speaker 2: was brought despare and many.

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Speaker 1: People leaving New York's very hard. Publicly left New York

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Speaker 1: almost four years ago. I talked about it all the

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Speaker 1: time because I can't get over it.

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Speaker 2: That you've written about it, about it it's hard, It's not.

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Speaker 1: I don't feel like it's like leaving other places. It

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Speaker 1: seems like the pinnacle, like you've gotten to the top

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Speaker 1: and you're like, no, I got to get out of here.

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Speaker 1: Is this is actually not not it at all.

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Speaker 2: I was there recently. I was there this past weekend,

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Speaker 2: and you know, we were staying at a hotel. My

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Speaker 2: wife and son and I were staying at a hotel,

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Speaker 2: a lovely hotel about two blocks from the Brooklyn Bridge

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Speaker 2: and about three blocks from ground zero. And I went

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Speaker 2: down there and it was you know, it's it's always

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Speaker 2: it's always a hard visit to be, you know, to

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Speaker 2: be around the World Trade Center. But this also there

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Speaker 2: was something I realized at a certain point, I said,

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Speaker 2: you know, I realized my and my son is young,

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Speaker 2: so he loves trucks and fire engines. We wanted to stop.

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Speaker 2: Wherever we go around the world, we go to a

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Speaker 2: fire station, you know. And I remember when when I

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Speaker 2: left New York nearly a quarter of a century ago,

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Speaker 2: iiremen later, very after nine to eleven, you know, and

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Speaker 2: it was just it was just different because I realized that, wait,

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Speaker 2: all these guys are really young. I mean they would

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Speaker 2: some of them warned, some of them were seven or

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Speaker 2: eight years old. And so just to feel to feel

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Speaker 2: both the shock and also you know, how how how

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Speaker 2: long it's been and how much much it's how much

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Speaker 2: that has shaped the city. And I would say in

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Speaker 2: many bad ways in fact.

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Speaker 1: Really like, what's an example of that?

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Speaker 2: People should not have forgotten nine to eleven as quickly

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Speaker 2: as they did. Right One of my colleagues at Tablet,

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Speaker 2: David Samuels, wrote an article about two months ago which

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Speaker 2: was about a building that they built right at ground zero.

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Speaker 2: It was amazing to me. I didn't know until I

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Speaker 2: wrote I read the article. Is a great article. David

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Speaker 2: is a great writer, great friend. But I didn't know.

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Speaker 2: What they've done is they've built a building that is

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Speaker 2: exactly modeled after the Kaba. It was mind blowing to

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Speaker 2: see it, and it was it was, frankly, i'm sorry, sickening.

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Speaker 2: You know, it was very shocking. And you know, I

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Speaker 2: mean the guy, the guy who appears to be the

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Speaker 2: front runner for the you know, for mayor. Yeah, mayor

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Speaker 2: of the city is a guy who you know, says globalized,

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Speaker 2: the Intifada, right, you know, it's that's it's hurt the

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Speaker 2: city to have forgotten these to have forgotten these different things.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a very different New York than it was then. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: you know, having hard time picturing a Giuliani as a

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Speaker 1: mayor ever.

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Speaker 2: Again, I still well, I mean that's another thing, of course.

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Speaker 2: I mean the way that people have turned on Giuliani.

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Speaker 2: I mean, the guy was you know, the guy was

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Speaker 2: heroic what he did eleven and also you know, he

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Speaker 2: served the city, you know, as did Michael Bloomberg in

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Speaker 2: many ways. But now now we're onto something entirely different,

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Speaker 2: and you'd like to think that if people did have

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Speaker 2: a little more sense of what of what nine to

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Speaker 2: eleven meant, that we might we might be in a

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Speaker 2: we we'd be in a different place right now. Not

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Speaker 2: that we should be at war with the no, I know,

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Speaker 2: you mean, yeah, let's respect our own traditions, Let's understand

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Speaker 2: our own history. Let's understand what happened here, who suffered,

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Speaker 2: who's still suffering from it. It's amazing just when you

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Speaker 2: think about the number of people who have died from

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Speaker 2: nine to eleven related injuries right, respiratory respiratory diseases.

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Speaker 1: Short, we just have a very short memory as a country.

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Speaker 1: I think we move on from things so quickly, and.

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Speaker 2: It's sometimes it's sometimes it's terrible, you know, terrible.

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Speaker 1: Give us a five year out prediction. It could be

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Speaker 1: about anything.

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Speaker 2: I want to give an optimistic prediction as this. I

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Speaker 2: want to say that I think that people will I

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Speaker 2: think that even people like you and me, who probably

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Speaker 2: spend a lot of time on social media, will start

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Speaker 2: moving away from it, will realize how destructive it is.

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Speaker 2: But we already do see how destructive it is. But

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Speaker 2: I think that it will get worse and worse, and people,

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Speaker 2: for for generous reasons, will move away from and said,

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Speaker 2: I don't I don't need this in my life because

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Speaker 2: it's so destructive. And we're seeing all this stuff now,

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Speaker 2: you know. I'm sure you're you're paying attention to it.

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Speaker 2: I mean, the anti Semitic stuff coming from the right

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Speaker 2: as well as coming from the left. And I mean,

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Speaker 2: it's just it's painful at times to look at this

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Speaker 2: stuff and the idea that our children are going to

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Speaker 2: be exposed to it too. So no, I don't, I don't.

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Speaker 2: I'm not saying that we're going to move move into

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Speaker 2: an era past technology. I just think that people will

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Speaker 2: will return to their senses after what's been yeah, straordinarily,

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Speaker 2: what's turned into a very dangerous fad.

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Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, there's something about that where I think that

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Speaker 1: the younger generation is already less interested in social media,

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Speaker 1: Like they don't really, they don't use social media anymore.

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Speaker 1: They don't. They don't, you know, post their lunch or

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Speaker 1: or even take selfies with their friends. Yeah, they watched

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Speaker 1: like the TikTok style videos, but there's already a move

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Speaker 1: away from like living your life online. It's entertainment and

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Speaker 1: it's bad in its own way. But I already see

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Speaker 1: a change and a shift from that's good. I'm instantly

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Speaker 1: being online.

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Speaker 2: That's good. I didn't know that, so maybe my prediction

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Speaker 2: is than I imagine. But yeah, that's certainly what I

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Speaker 2: hope for that people will become you know, yeah, people

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Speaker 2: will I don't know, well, we'll embrace their families, embrace

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Speaker 2: their embrace their neighbor spend spend that sort of time,

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Speaker 2: as you know.

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Speaker 1: Go live in real life. It's definitely important and so

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Speaker 1: much better. Well, I love this conversation, Lee, You're really

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Speaker 1: one of my favorite writers. I can't wait to read

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Speaker 1: The China Matrix. End here with your best tip for

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Speaker 1: my listeners on how they can improve their lives.

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Speaker 2: Okay, good, I'm glad you asked that. Memorize poetry. How's that?

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Speaker 1: I love that? Do you have one for us?

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Speaker 2: You know, I knew I knew you were going to

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Speaker 2: ask that, and so I re memorize. This is a

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Speaker 2: New York story. So there's a great one of my

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Speaker 2: favorite poets, Hark Crane. He wrote a poem about the

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Speaker 2: Brooklyn Bridge and it's it's very long. It's two Brooklyn Bridge.

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Speaker 2: So I'll just if I can, I'll just I'll recite

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Speaker 2: the first the first stanza. So how many downs from

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Speaker 2: his rippling rests? The seagulls wings shall dip and pivot

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Speaker 2: him shedding white rings of tumult building over the Chain

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Speaker 2: Bay waters liberty. So it's a beautiful poem.

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Speaker 1: Beautiful.

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Speaker 2: I recommended it every second out. Yeah, and whether whether

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Speaker 2: it's you know, some people maybe would prefer to memorize scripture.

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Speaker 2: But I remember the most important lesson I ever learned

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Speaker 2: in college was an English professor who said, who made

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Speaker 2: us memorize a short poem? She told us which one

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Speaker 2: to memorize, and he said, you have to memorize this

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Speaker 2: and come back next week and I'm going to give

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Speaker 2: you a quiz on it. And I'm like, oh, what

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Speaker 2: a drag. But it was great because to have to

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Speaker 2: have meaningful utterance in your body. And this is of

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Speaker 2: course the opposite from social media. To have something meaningful,

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Speaker 2: something that someone uh, someone spent time thinking, a rhythm,

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Speaker 2: a rhythm, a pace, and to have that not just

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Speaker 2: in your head and in your mouth, but to live

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Speaker 2: with that in your body. And that's that really is

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Speaker 2: the opposite of social media.

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Speaker 1: It is nobody's gonna remember tweets.

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Speaker 2: Right, you might remember some goofy video. To get a

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Speaker 2: poem in your body, do it maybe just one or

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Speaker 2: one a month, or maybe one a week at a

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Speaker 2: certain point. But have a home or part of a

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Speaker 2: poem in your body.

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Speaker 1: So good. He is Lee Smith. His new book is

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Speaker 1: The China Matrix, the epics story of how Donald Trump

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Speaker 1: shattered a deadly pact. Thank you so much for coming

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Speaker 1: on

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Speaker 2: Lee, Thank you so much, Carol,