Hopelessness Is a Resource for the Tyrannical: Katie Couric with David Frum

00:00:03
Speaker 1: Sometimes I think the only thing predictable about Donald Trump is that he'll find a new way to shock us every day, sometimes multiple times a day. In the last week alone, he posted an AI generated video of Chuck Schumer and a keen Jeffrey saying we're just.

00:00:20
Speaker 2: A bunch of woke pieces of shit.

00:00:23
Speaker 1: He pushed through the Komi indictment. He told military leaders who were summoned to Quantico, Virginia that they should use quote some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military. And despite the fact that the military is supposed to be apolitical, he urged them to applaud.

00:00:41
Speaker 2: I've never walked into a room so silent before. This is very Don't laugh, don't live. You're not allowed to do that, you know what. Just have a good time and if you want to applaud, you.

00:00:51
Speaker 1: Applaud by the way they didn't. And oh yes, we're in the middle of a government shutdown. It's exhausting and overwhelming. But as my next guest, Atlantic writer and host of the eponymous podcast, David from has said, hopelessness is a resource of the tyrannical. I love talking to David about all of this and more so. We covered a lot, because, let's face it, there's a lot to cover, David from It's always great to see you. Gosh, so many stories, so little time. Where do we begin, I guess with the government shutdown before we talk about this particular shutdown, David, as somebody who's covered politics, gosh, probably as long as I have, if not longer, can you explain to folks listening why we are faced with this dilemma on a regular basis?

00:01:49
Speaker 2: Well, I don't know that I may have covered it longer, not with as much distinction.

00:01:53
Speaker 1: But I would argue with that. But thank you for the sweet compliment.

00:01:58
Speaker 2: So the Constitution of the Knights says that every money bill must originate in the House of Representatives, must be voted by the House, then approved by the Senate. That's how the government of the United States gets money to pay for all the things the government does. And the theory is that the Congress is supposed to every year pass a budget that gives the executive the money they need to pay for the military and fund pensions and pay for health care and all of that. Now, the practice has been the system broke down a long time ago. A lot of the federal budget is on autopilot. That Congress no longer votes about what the pension should be or what the health care should be. That just happens on autopilot. And there aren't regular budgets anymore either. Instead, there are a series of funding measures that the House votes and the Senate votes and the President signs, and they passed with continuing resolutions, not with the formality that used to prevail, but in this kind of held you skelter way. There's one other problem, which is unless this rule meets very very strict conditions. There are strict conditions where you can pass it through the House with half the vote, it's in the Senate with the majority of the votes, but oftentimes you need sixty votes to pass things through the Senate. That's new that it also wasn't in the olden days. That's not in the sixty vote requirement is not in the Constitution, but it's something that has developed. So you have this failure machine, no regular budget, these stop gap resolutions. Much of the government, the health care and the pensions ticking along anyway, and this need to pass things through the House with half the votes plus one, but the Senate with sixty and that creates these deadlocks, and as the parties have lost the habit of any kind of cooperation, we've had these increasing government shutdowns. They happened, just to take one more sentence, In the seventies and eighties, they would happen sometimes for like a day or half a day as kind of symbolic expressions of dispute. But in the nineteen nineties there was a government shutdown that went out for quite for more than I think nearly a month, or maybe even longer. And since then they've flared up whenever the parties are especially at loggerheads, and we've had a number of these shutdowns. During Trump one, I think that was the second longest, and now in Trump two we're going to have another.

00:04:00
Speaker 1: It looks like, David, it sounds like such an fed up, antiquated system. Right. There's got a better way to build a better mouse draft? Right?

00:04:09
Speaker 2: Well, one way would be to say that the budget of the United States gets passed by fifty votes plus one in the Senate fifty plus one in the House, the way any other democracy would do it. And another thing that is really fed up is we have this crazy debt ceiling, which is the same problem, only only with nuclear weapons, and that happens in intervals where the Congress has a limit on how much the federal government can borrow. No other democracy does anything like this. And if Congress votes a lot of spending, votes less taxes, creates a budget gap, and that budget gap accumulates, Congress has to have a third vote to say okay, and we agree to borrow the difference. And if they don't do it again, all kinds of bad things happen. But the government is shut down, and this may go on for a while.

00:04:51
Speaker 1: What does it mean? I think people here, you know, a government shut down, and they don't quite appreciate what that entails.

00:04:59
Speaker 2: Yeah, well it entails again. Social security payments continue to flow because they don't go through the regular budget process, and a lot of health care spending continues to flow because it doesn't go through the regular budget process. But everything that does go through the regular budget process, like the military, for example, many of those functions continue. The air traffic controllers continue, but the people who do the functions don't get paid. They get their pay at the end. But this can have a catastrophic effect for you know, imagine you're a young military family. Maybe they're children, and so maybe the mother is not in the workforce at that time, the family lives on its pay and they're told, you know, you're going you'll get the money five or six weeks from now. You know, I hope you can negotiate a deal with your grocery store. I mean, what happens to them. I mean, it's just it's beyond irresponsible. But it's become a bad habit of American government.

00:05:49
Speaker 1: What else though, I mean, other than those situations with military families or other people who rely on the federal government, you know, to live, can you enumerate some of the other repercussions of this.

00:06:04
Speaker 2: Well, the United States federal government is the biggest purchaser of goods and services in the entire world, so it spends trillions of dollars, and much of that money goes directly into people's pockets, like Social Security, but a lot of it goes to people who provide services like Medicare and Medicaid. The sick person doesn't get the money the person who provided the healthcare to the hospital, and so those a lot of those providers get hit by long delays, and they have bills too. I mean the hospital, probably the hospital can do better getting a little bit of credit than the young military family that has to buy pampers and groceries. But the hospital also has suppliers that need to be paid. So this reverberates all through the US economy and it raises all kinds of questions in the rest of the world about the stability and seriousness of the United States government.

00:06:53
Speaker 1: Tell me how this government shut down is perhaps different than ones that have come before it in your view.

00:07:00
Speaker 2: Well, here's one way that it's the same. It is. The most famous government shut down, probably to this point, was the one back in the nineteen nineties between New King Rich and Bill Clinton, and that was about the Republican desire to cut health care spending, especially Medicare and Medicaid, and Clinton saying no, and the Republicans tried to force Clinton's hands and they ultimately failed. This one is also about health care spending. That there are a lot of subsidies that go to the Affordable Care Act that Democrats want to make permanent. Republicans don't, And so the Democrats are withholding that this the measure passed that got through the House with Republican votes. I finding measure went to the Senate and got some Democratic votes, but not enough to get it up to sixty. And what the argument is about is, well, the forward argument is about should the Affordable Care Act be funded in full? But there's a back argument because one of the things that Trump administration is claiming is that the president has the right to refuse to spend money that Congress has voted. Now, the courts have said that's illegal. The president doesn't have them. Once Congress votes to spend the money and the president signs the spending bill, he's obligated to spend the money, whether he likes it or not. That's what his signature on the funding measure means. I agree to spend the money that Congress has voted in the way the Congress said I should spend him. But Trump has claimed a bright not to spend money to withhold their technical terms of recision impoundment. But what that means if you're a Democrat, you say, wait a month, I'm going to strike a deal with you guys, and we want to spend a little more, you want to spend a little less. We're going to strike a deal on a certain funding level. And then the president says, okay, but I have a right after I sign the bill to Renegg, I can renegge at any time. And so one of the questions that Democrats are struggling with is, how do you do business what people say they're not bound by the deals they strike.

00:08:41
Speaker 1: How unusual is this? How unconventional is this kind of arrangement, given that Congress does have the power of the purse right, and that Donald Trump or the chief executive the US, basically has to sign it into law, but it's sort of kind of a half assed signature.

00:08:58
Speaker 2: Basically, yeah, well, he's an especially untrustworthy person and that makes it hard to do these kinds of deals. Now, in a lot of states, governors have the power to impound funds or to do a line item veto, so the legislature votes, the governor says, no, I zero this out. I'm not doing this. And that's true in a lot of states because the state constitutions permitted. And in the nineteen seventies President Nixon said that would be a useful power to have. It's not in the US Constitution, but let me find out whether I've got it or not. The Constitution doesn't say I don't have it, so let me try. So President Nixon tried it and there was a big crisis. This is during the water Gate buried he's unpopular. Congress objected, it went to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court said, unlike many governors, the president does not have an impoundment power. Once the president signs the spending measure that comes from Congress, he's obliged to spend the money whatever he personally thinks about the spending measure. If he doesn't like it, he can veto the spending measure and ask for another one.

00:09:52
Speaker 1: So who looks bad in this scenario.

00:09:55
Speaker 2: Well, that's going to be the real test of strength here. And one of the things I find interesting about this is the Republicans are much more in The Republicans in Congress are much more cohesive group. They hold together in a way that Democrats don't, and they're much more audacious. They're willing to try crazy things that a lot of Democrats are frightened to try. But the Democrats have that advantage of suit. So that's the Republican advantage. They're more cohesive, they're more audacious, or one more advantage. They also were the first movers that they set up. They said This is the confrontation we want to have, because we're going to say the reason the Democrats want to spend all this extra money on healthcare is to give it to illegal aliens, and everyone thinks they don't like those and don't you count on people. It's not true. But even if it were true, tell me if the person coughing next to you in the subway has pneumonia and you're worried about whether you're going to get that cough and that pneumonia, do you care about the citizenship status of that person or do you want that person to be treated so that you don't get pneumonia from them? That the viruses and bacteria don't care about status. The reason we would want illegal aliens to be treated is we don't want to get sick from the illegal alien. It's not It can be charity, but it's also self preservation.

00:11:06
Speaker 1: You say it's not even true, But it's not even true. So why are we even hypothesizing about this.

00:11:13
Speaker 2: Well, I want to take this one a little bit on the whole, because even on its face, even if it were true, I said, Okay, a school bus crashes and the kids are all hurt, and you bring the kids to the emergency room. Do you want to treat the kids or do you want to check whether some of the kids are not in the country with legal status. There's a school vaccination program to make sure that the kids don't spread measles to each other. Do you want to check the status or you say, you know if they're not if they're not legal, I'm happy to take measles from them. Fine, give me the measles. I need to make that point so firmly. But in any case, Medicaid Medicare are not illegal. Aliens are not eligible for those. So the Republicans are gambling. They've got they've chosen the fight. They've got the more cohesive group, they're bolder, but the Democrats have a bigger potential coalition bhyd them. More people are on the Democratic side of funding Medicare and Medicaid than on the Republican side, and the Democrats also have a more popular the issue. So we're going to see, we're going to have a little test and that's a little bit of what this is is kind of a mock contest in advance of the twenty twenty six elections, and the Republicans are going to see how much can we get away with because their polls are looking bad. But this is the way to test. You know, maybe our more cohesive group doesn't care so much about would the big numbers in the polls say, because those are kind of misty.

00:12:22
Speaker 1: Your colleague at The Atlantic, Russell Berman wrote, and letting the government close and risking an even more aggressive assault by Trump on the federal workforce. Democrats have shown they're ready for a fight they avoided in the spring. What's less apparent, however, is whether they've started one they can win. That is the key question, isn't it, David, Well.

00:12:44
Speaker 2: Whenever you start a fight, you have to take on board the possibility that you can lose. And fights fights only happen when both people in the fight think they have a chance of winning, Because if one of them thought they wouldn't, then the fight, then the fight would be backed away from. But Trump is vowing to take action again federal workforce. But you know, I think a lot of people don't understand what the federal workforce looks like, you know, the federal workforce. When people think of the federal workforce, they may think about the way state governments work. State governments provide a lot of services to a lot of people, and so their workforces are quite big relatives to their local economies. Their workforces are very female heavy, their workforces are very people of color heavy. Typically, the federal workforce isn't like just just think, think what it took in nineteen sixty two to mail a Social Security check file, Clerks all kinds of things. Now, what does it take to send a social serority country. It's like one person running millions of machines with vast computing power. So the federal government, where it employs people, it runs federal prisons. Where are those Red states? Who works in federal prisons Red state voters? Typically federal government spends a lot on the military and military suppliers where military services bought, typically in sun Belt State, if people not just the navy personnel, but the suppliers to the Navy, the people who do the laundry, the company that pays the people they're not getting paid. That is felt in Florida and Texas and North and South Carolina. So it is the risks here are pretty complicated and hard to compute, and that's one of the reasons why this kind of behavior is usually unwise, but right now that feelings between the parties are so strong and the Republican moves are so bold that a confrontation was growing for a while.

00:14:31
Speaker 1: Once again we find ourselves living in a parallel universe. According to this Fox headline, GOP accuses Dems of risking shutdown to restore illegal immigrant healthcare subtitle. Republicans accuse Democrats of prioritizing healthcare benefits for illegal immigrants over paying US troops. Can we go back to the veracity of that claim, David, because it's so much a the center of this whole debate, because you have both sides or each side saying different things, and I would love for you to clarify once and for all if this is happening, and how the Republicans are getting away with perpetrating this falsehood.

00:15:19
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, at the center of this dispute are the subsidies under the Affordable Care Act that have extended Medicaid to more Americans and that support hospitals and others who provide services and also help people pay for their insurance premiums. So Republicans tried in the first time term to abolish the Affordable Care Act. They didn't have the votes even within their own party to do that, So they're now trying to starve the Affordable Charact by turning off the flow of money. Problem is, the Affordable Care Act is pretty popular. The people who get the Medicaid who are newly eligible for Medicaid because it's now available to a much wider population than it was before, they like it. The hospitals who get reimbursed for emergency care people who they didn't used to get for they like it. And the many many people who are buying health care benefits for themselves and individual marketplaces who get a subsidy to do that. They like it. And Republicans still don't like it. And there's an argument. They have an argument to make, but they're afraid that they're true argument, the one that actually motivates them will not be acceptable, which is which is the Republicans basically healthcare as a services service like anything else, and if you can't afford it, you shouldn't have it. We don't subsidize people's Netflix subscriptions. If you can't afford a Netflix subscription, you don't get one. You know, we don't subsidize your groceries. You need food to live but you know, if you can't afford a steak, you don't get one. And they think it's a commodity in the marketplace, something you should buy. And there's certain classes of Americans, older Americans who get it no matter what, very poor Americans who get it no matter what. But if you're not very poor or old, if you can't afford it, you don't get it. That's their view of this.

00:16:50
Speaker 1: But where does the undocumented immigrant come in here?

00:16:53
Speaker 2: Well, under the Affordable Care Act made very clear, illegal aliens cannot get directs up cities under the Affordable Care Act, that's completely forbidden. They can't get them from Medicaid, they can't get them from Medicare. But the little bit of wiggle room truth is hospital emergency rooms are not allowed to turn away anybody by law. You show up, you've been in a car accident, you've been shot, you've been stabbed, the hospital has to take care of you. And I think most us think, yeah, obviously, sorry, mister shooting victim, card, mister burne victim. You know, a child in a school bus accident, person coming in with and you know you've got the plague, And if we don't treat you you're going to spread the plague to all your neighbors. People think, yeah, the hospital should treat it. So the hospital says, well, how do we pay for that? Especially if you don't think of like a giant, big city hospital, but lots of hospitals are smaller, they're in smaller towns. How do we pay we? Okay, we treated, we did thirteen hours of life saving surgery. We had doctors, we had nurses, we had you know, all kinds of equipment. Well, how do we pay for that? And we look to the government, state or federal support our operating costs. And if the hospital isn't checking whether the person who receives the emergency service is illegal, then yeah, there is some flow of government funds. But that's the picture they're trying to conjure up is not that one.

00:18:14
Speaker 1: What is the picture they're trying to conjure that illegal immigrants are flooding emergency rooms and costing taxpayers boatloads of money, and somehow if we deny this care, they are not going to come to this country.

00:18:28
Speaker 2: Yes, I think that's the idea. And what they're also trying to do is put together a bunch of words, and this is the way our minds work that whatever your political point of view, there are words that you don't like, and if I can string them in a sentence, I can activate your emotions. And you know, okay, let me give you one that made liberal more liberal mind than people may understand. So I just finished work on an article about this so called bailout for Argentina, which I'm in favor of, and we don't have to talk about that today. Why I'm in favor of it doesn't matter. The point is when I think the typical non Trump voter here is bail out for the Central Bank of Argentina. You're putting a lot of things they don't like into a sentence. And maybe they'll read my article in the Atlantic about why this is actually a good idea and why it's not going to be as costly and it's not taking home. But maybe they're busy, maybe they have something else to do, and so they just the power of these words lands on the earth, all the things you don't like. Bail out Central Bank Argentina. No, and Trump is trying to do the same thing, or Jade vance even more with Illealaliens healthcare. No.

00:19:38
Speaker 1: Hi, everyone, it's Katie Couric. You know, I'm always on the go between running my media company, hosting my podcast, and of course covering the news, and I know that to keep doing what I love, I need to start caring for what gets me there, my feet. That's why I decided to try the Good Feet stores personalized arch support system. I met with a Good Feet arch support specialist and after a personalized fitting, I left the store with my three step system designed to improve comfort, balance and support my feet. Meis and back are thanking me already. Visit goodfeet dot com to learn more, find the nearest store, or book your own free personalized fitting. I wanted to ask you, David about this AI generated video of Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries and Donald Trump posted it on x and probably I'm true social, but I just watched it on X and it was so fascinating for me to read the comments and how people thought it was hilarious and so funny, and of course many people on the other side of the aisle were completely outraged by this, and you know, it was just fascinating because basically the take on the Republican side or the MAGA side was, you know, Democrats have no sense of humor, right, And yet I couldn't get over that the president of the United States is posting something like this on social media that basically is undignified at best and really just vulgar and racist at worst.

00:21:31
Speaker 2: There's something else that's going on, though, and that sort of gets to something that is deep about well, why the government is shut down right now. So just think about any negotiation you've ever been in, in a price of a house, buying a car, contract your contract. So, I mean, there are may be certain psychopaths who begin a negotiation by insulting the person on the other side of the table, but most of us understand that the beginning of a negotiation is a very good time to be polite, because you're trying to get to yes. But you're trying to get the other person to say yes to something you want, and if you insult them, either you wreck the yes, or at least you make the yes more expensive, probably than it otherwise would have been. So negotiations are usually conducted in an atmosphere of at least pretend respect, because otherwise things don't get done. But Donald Trump's vision of how he should work with the world is that he never negotiates as an equal with anybody. He's the king. He dispenses and so one of the reasons we're going to this maybe for a while is he's going to have to yield somewhere. And Trump's whole theory of whether he's talking to the Chinese, whether he's talking to Democrats in Congress, whoever he's talking to, he decrees what the result will be, and then they submit to his power, and he does these demonstrations seemingly counterproductive of obnoxiousness. To make clear, I haven't given up on anything, but that makes it very hard to get to yes, because what may happen. Look, it may happen to the democratic position to disintegrates in public opinion. They are under a lot of trouble and they have to completely surrender. But it's also possible that the reverse happens, or something in between, and at some point this will have to be closed. And at that point all of this becomes more difficult and more expensive for the president. And maybe the president can't even be in the room because he so offended the people he needs to get to yes.

00:23:18
Speaker 1: When you saw that video, what did you think, David? And just like on a human level.

00:23:24
Speaker 2: You know, I think it's been a decade now since I had my first shock that somebody so crude and ridiculous and offensive could be an aspirant for president of the United States. I think those of us who came a political age before twenty fifteen, you know, you had presidents you like more, you had presidents you liked less. But there's a certain style and music that you expected of the President's a.

00:23:51
Speaker 1: Certain threshold of behavior.

00:23:54
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. And even the ones like Lyndon Johnson, who is so crude in private, I mean just he would do the most disgusting thing in private, but when he went out in public, he was the president and the rule descended on him, and he behaved in a certain way. It wasn't natural to him, but he did it. And then there are people who were more naturally gracious and proper, But even the ones who weren't, there was just an idea the president. This is what not what a president does. Like the president doesn't ask people come to the Oval office. Did you stay in the hotel last night? Did you stay in the hotel? I earned I own, yes or no? I need to know that I have two hundred dollars in your viewers in my pocket before we can discuss the arm sale to Turkey. Presidents didn't used to do that, and now they do, so I'm no longer shocked.

00:24:34
Speaker 1: Well, now one does one does.

00:24:38
Speaker 2: One of the questions I ask is do we ever go back? Is it going to seem kind of phony or artificial for a president to try to behave in a dignified and solemn way, Because if Trump had lost forever in twenty twenty, then the lesson would have been, don't do this this kind of behavior. But the American people do put up with it, and it did work, and in twenty twenty four he won an actual popular vote mandate, which he didn't do in twenty sixteen.

00:25:03
Speaker 1: So, in other words, the floodgates have been open and there's no shut Potentially there's no shutting them in the future, which is really depressing to me. And maybe that's because I, too, like you, observe presidents my entire life who had a certain amount of decorum and dignity and graciousness and all the words that, honestly that I would want my children to aspire to. As my father in law says, the sewer was always there. Donald Trump simply opened the lid.

00:25:35
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's right. And the look Gavin Newsom is now testing does this kind of style work on Democrats too? And Newsom's doing it in a kind of one step two step way that he's saying, Look, it's not me, Gavin Newsom who's personally doing this. It's this artificial character. It's pretend Gavin who have created tatroll and mock Republicans. But if I were president would be a completely different person. I swear this pretend Gavin is the one who's doing much better as a politician than real Gavin was doing. And I think pretend Gavin is going to end up being in charge of whatever presidential campaign the real Gavin Newson tries to run.

00:26:13
Speaker 1: Well, it's interesting because I agree he's gotten much more pugnacious, But I still think there are certain lines that even the pretend Gavin isn't crossing, right, I don't know.

00:26:23
Speaker 2: I mean, yeah, yes, I mean overt racism. He's probably not going to cross that line. But we're just into and maybe this is a consequence of social media. Maybe this is Donald Trump changing the United States, or.

00:26:36
Speaker 1: Maybe it's a combination of the two.

00:26:38
Speaker 2: Maybe It's also I think a lot of Americans are giving up on the idea that the United States should lead the world. That's I think one of the messages of those who support Donald Trump really well, as long as any of us can remember, the job of President of the United States is more than just the leader of a country. There's something different in being president the United States and Prime Minister of Denmark. President of the United States had this global role, these global responds abilities. Everything the president said. You know, when I work for President w. Bush as a speech writer, and one of the things that people said that was always weird about w. Bush was we referred to terrorists as evildoers, which sounds in English, sounds a little theatrical. And so the question is why did he hit that word? And it's because everything he said after nine to eleven he had to weigh how will this sound when it's translated into Arabic. How do I make sure that the word I'm using is translated into the Arabic word I want the translator to use, and not an Arabic word, because there are words for there are words for irregular fighter that in the in Arabic have a positive connotation and their words are irregular fighter then the in Arabic have a negative connotation, and Bush was trying to drive the negative connotation choice, and so he used where it sounded often quite weird in English because he was thinking in more than one language at the same time. And a president has to think that way.

00:27:56
Speaker 1: And I think Donald Trump thinks that way.

00:27:58
Speaker 2: Certainly, certainly not no, certainly not. You know, I just think of it. I mean, I'm originally from Canada. I spend a lot of time there. Canada's politics like everybody else. It has liberals and conservatives like everybody else. And in normal times, the conservative Canadians are more comfortable with Republican presidents and the liberal Canadians are more comfortable with democratic presidents. So the systems are so intermixed, and people know each other so well, and they have family on both sides of the border. I mean Donald Trump's greatest station with where everyone in Canada is offended by him because he's spoken about Canada and ways that give offense to every single Canadian. I mean all Canadians, liberal, conservative, socialist, radic, whatever their views, they all agree Canada should exist, a Canada should be an independent country. And when the president says, okay, my starting point is Canada. There shouldn't be a candidate at all. And he said, look, I might agree with you on eight issues out of ten, but when you're attacking my national existence, how do I agree with that? But I think a lot of Americans say, you know, we want to step back. We don't want to be responsible for the world. We don't want all these cares and concerns. Let China take over half the world and let Russia take over the other half, and we'll have Greenland and Venezuela and that's enough for us. We're not going to be world leaders anymore. That's why we put off all these tariff walls.

00:29:09
Speaker 1: What do you think is the danger in that?

00:29:12
Speaker 2: So in the summer of nineteen forty one, President Franklin Roosevelt gave a speech to Americans who imagined that they could do this with the access powers. We could let the access take over the world and we would have our little island of safety. And Roosevelt tried to explain to them in nineteen forty one, the world is too small and the United States is too big for Americans to be unaffected by what happens elsewhere. You can't draw a line around a country as big as the United States and say to the rest of the planet what happens over there doesn't matter us. Whether it's environmental like hurricanes and climate change, whether it's epidemiology plagues, diseases, epidemics, whether it's military threats, whether it's the movement of people. If you want to stop illegal immigration, it's going to be a lot better to have the countries of the Americas as your partners rather than as your enemies. If you want to stop the flow of drugs, stop the flow of drigs by blowing up speed boats in the Caribbean. If you want to stop the flow of dogs, you have to work with the governments of those countries, and they will have asks because they also politics. I'll say, you know, yes, we'll help you, but this, you know, you're asking us to do something that may be a little expensive here at home politically, there are people. We're going to be arresting people or doing things that they don't like. So get there's something we need from you. You know. The way the United States helped Columbia to break the power of drug cartels in Columbia was by helping Colombia to become the world's largest producer of cut flowers, all of which are flown into the United States, and it's had some impact on the American flower industry. But the United States said, well, to get Columbia to go on board with their anti drug efforts, you know, we're going to have We're going to buy a lot more flowers from Columbia than we ever imagined we would or could. That's the kind of thing that if you are globally minded, you realize as other countries exist and they affect the United States, and you can't hide from that.

00:30:50
Speaker 1: And let's take it a step further, David. You know, to give so much power to Russia and China has huge global implications.

00:30:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that power is felt in all kinds of ways that people don't have reason to think about every day. So Argentina, to go back to the subject I'm writing about for The Atlantic this week, Argentina is in a terrible currency crisis this month as a result of some good things they did. They tried to do some very positive reforms, but they made some mistakes and they now have a currency crisis. And the Chinese are saying, you know what, Argentina. You're a huge producer of agricultural products. We will take all of those agricultural product We will stiff the United States take your products, and we want to integrate you into our currency block as the price. I don't think there are many Americans who think much about our Argentine grain production, or are the Argentine Peso or the Chinese China Argentina relationship until it goes wrong. When it goes wrong, then you'll notice it.

00:31:43
Speaker 1: Talk a little bit more though, for us about China and Russia, and if we basically abdicate half of the world to those countries.

00:31:52
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not half, it's a lot more than half. And look, Americans, over our lifetimes have built a world that looks more and more like the United States. It's got rules of law, it's got concepts of human rights. It's got democratic ideals, even if people don't always live up to the ideals. It's got a concept that war should be the last resort and that war has to be justified to other kinds, to the community of nations. You've got the habit that you can speak English almost anywhere you go, and use a visa card almost anywhere you go and if you have a dispute with a merchant in Thailand over the purchase on visa card, that dispute will be adjudicated by visa in ways that you're familiar with and that will seem that will make sense to you, and that you've been warned about. And you, as an American, don't probably have to learn a second language except as a luxury. So the United States has built this world. If China and Russia are running the world, they'll make the world suit them very Here's one very dramatic example of this is so long as the United States is the most important economy in the world, the United States can say to others, you know what, in America, we don't pay bribes, or at least we didn't used to. And now the president wie, but before Trump, we didn't used to pay bribes. And because we have anti bribery is such an important principle, we are going to enforce on American corporations that do business anywhere in the world an anti bribery law. So even if they're in a place where there are bribes, we're going to say, in the American corporation, you can't do that. And when the corporation says, but that's unfair because the French corporation will pay bribes. The United States says, we have enough power to put weight on the French not to pay bribes either. And what we're going to do is we're going to equalize the playing field, but with the lowest level of bribery, not the highest. In China and Russia, they pay bribes all the time. And if they're writing the rules of the road, international bribery will be the normal way you do business everywhere on the planet, and Americans will just look like suckers and losers if they follow but played by the same rules, so they won't be able to So the United States, well, companies will begin paying bribes abroad. And the more you pay bribes broad the more you develop the habit of paying bribes at home too.

00:33:50
Speaker 1: And that's just one example. I mean, I think there are a myriad of examples of how treacherous it could be if Russia and China ruled the world.

00:34:00
Speaker 2: Yeah, the American since the Second World War, the United State has always said when people propose to carve up the war world and the pieces of this idea that Donald Trump likes, the American views, we're not. I mean, sometimes you can't help it. There was an Iron curtain and countries under communism, But the American idea has always been, Look, we're not going to be impracticable at this, We're not going to take crazy risks. But our idea, the thing we're going toward, if we can do it, is a world where it's all one world. It's all one world. We're not allowing some thug to rule a piece of it. We're going to have one world that tries to work by an increasingly common set of international norms and standards, from everything from environmental protection to corporate corruption to human rights. And we're going to try to encourage and promote the idea that governments everywhere should rule with the consent of the government to the extent we can. We're not going to be gamblers, but we have a vision of the world. We're not going to allow others to carve it up and say, in our piece, we do torture people and it's fine.

00:34:57
Speaker 1: What do you think has created this backline against having the United States as sort of a world leader. Do you think it's anti globalization? Do you think it's you know, pro isolationism. I mean, what do you think is fueling this retreat for so many Americans.

00:35:18
Speaker 2: Well, look, in some ways it's the default setting for Americans. The country's so big geographically and in population, it's separated by oceans from everybody except the Canada and Mexico. So it's natural if you're an American to to feel wrongly that the world is far away. And leaders have had to introduce Americans to the idea that what happens in the rest of the world matters, and Americans got a real lesson about that through the Two World Wars. We never want to fight a war like that. So the best way to fight a wars to prevent wars, and that means some American commitment to keeping the peace. And then the economy grew so strongly after the wars that Americans of the idea, yeah, we're all better off if we buy and sell with Germany and Japan and France, Britain, in Italy and Belgium. So I think two things have changed that one is the China Shock, where the United States is under enormous economic pressure from a huge country with a very sophisticated economy, and Americans say, well, maybe the best way to do that is to hide in the basement and lock the doors and turn on the taps, and we won't hear the Chinese economy. We can just make it go away. And the second is the shock of the Iraq and Afghanistan experience, where Americans fought these protracted wars that didn't feel successful, didn't feel worth it, and where Americans felt, you know, why do we do that? And the next time anyone asks us to do anything, it's going to be like that all over again. And they're both Americans who feel that. Sincerely.

00:36:38
Speaker 1: Well, I think there are reasons too, David. I mean, I think there are reasons for if you look at sort of I mean, you know this better than anyone, having worked with George W. Bush, If you look in hindsight about the rationale for some of those wars, at least Iraq, and you know, the whole fraud of weapons of mess destruction and the cherry picking of intel and the neocons and all that jazz. I mean, there's some legitimate regret by a lot of people for those wars, don't you think.

00:37:13
Speaker 2: I think a lot of people feel that way. I think it's wrong, but I don't need to litigate that here. But well, I says that feeling is a resource and that feeling can be used. So when Donald Trump wants to sell out Ukraine, that he invokes that feeling. As I said, I don't think it's a justified feeling, but it doesn't matter. Many people do that That is there is a resource. It's also there as a real thing, Like even if Donald Trump never existed, people would feel that way. Look, basically, the United States goes through these mood swings about the rest of the world. So after Vietnam, a lot of Americans said, that's it, We're giving up on the planet and we want to retreat. Then after the Reagan years and the fall of the Wall and the triumph over communism a lot, and then the victory of nineteen ninety and the Gulf First Golf War, a lot of Americans said, huh, you know what, maybe we do have something to offer and maybe our leaders do know what they're doing. And so there was this emotional high and then Afghanistan and Iraq lowered it. One of the things that's at stake in the Ukraine War is this is a hugely important global conflict fought for extremely good reasons where the United States and its friends could win if they weren't being sabotaged by a president who sympathetic more sympathetic to Russia than the Ukraine. I think one of the things that a lot of the people on the anti American side abroad and this doubtful about the reason they want Ukraine to lose so badly is because Anderson. If Ukraine prevails, and it calls into question a lot of the downbeat mood this country has been in, you know, violent. This recent phase in the Ukraine, not the most recent phase, but the backdrop to the war that started in twenty twenty two was this moment in twenty fourteen where Ukrainians went into the streets and drove out their corrupt pro Russian government and the flag they waved was the flag of United Europe, the blue banner with the gold stars. We want to be a part of that. And although a lot of Europeans are complaining about it, and it's not very popular with the far right, we here on the streets of Kiev where we're living with these hard lives and we want access to what you have, and we think we have something going to contribute and we believe in these ideals that you seem to have forgotten a lot of people are doing. That's those are dangerous people. They're reminding us of things that people might think again if they're not discouraged and dishearten.

00:39:28
Speaker 1: Hi, everyone, it's me Katie Couric. You know, if you've been following me on social media, you know I love to cook, or at least try, especially alongside some of my favorite chefs and foodies like Benny Blanco, Jake Cohen, Lighty Hoyke, Alison Roman, and Ininagarten. So I started a free newsletter called good Taste to share recipes, tips and kitchen mustaves. Just sign up at Katiecuric dot com slash good Taste. That's k A t I E c o U r I c dot com slash good Taste. I promised your taste buds will be happy you did before we go, and you've been so generous with your time. Can I just ask you about a couple of other big news events, David to get your take? Sure, let me ask you about what happened in Quantico, Virginia yesterday with Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump gathering the top leaders of the military and basically I don't know giving them, depending on your perspective, a PEP rally or a lecture. What were your thoughts.

00:40:43
Speaker 2: Well as with the big parade Donald Trump wanted. I think Trump and Hexath don't take seriously that. You know, the people in the military have jobs, very difficult jobs, and especially the senior levels of the military, they're under enormous time pressure. So it's not an they're not working for just for the president and the Secretary of Defense. They work for the country, and if you're subtracting their time for something stupid, you're burdening them, and you're also burdening the taxpayer because we don't pay their salaries for them to do stupid things. They were being there as props. I think the behavior of the generals and admirals was really admirable. They were polite, and I'm sure some of them support the president, but they all understood we are not political. We are not a prop for your rally. So when you tell us about your big victory, we sit on our hands. We do not clap because as a military we are we had no opinion on any of those elections we fought. Whoever is the legal commander in chief, we follow we have as individuals are our opinions, of course, but as an institution, we don't, and so we will not applaud you when you ask us to applaud. And Trump at one point threatened them that if you don't applaud me, you're going to be fired. But their safety and numbers none of them applauded. So the danger is that haig Seth and Trump took the measure of what they saw there, and they also in the first term, saw that the military didn't want to do illegal things, and they're thinking, how can we transform this officer corps to make the upper branches of the military as political as we want them to be as valuable?

00:42:08
Speaker 1: Really, right, David, Right?

00:42:09
Speaker 2: Right? So now that's a process that starts. You know, let's pit colonels who share our ideology, make them one stars. Let's find one stars who share our ideology and make them too. You can't do it overnight, but I think that's going to be a big heg Seth goal. What we also saw, I think was heg Seth trying to position himself as the biggest jerk in the Republican Party, remembering that in the last cycle, the biggest jerk in the Republican party won the Republican nomination, and well, Vice president of Vance can often behave in kind of loudmouthed ways. He's not by nature as big a jerk, and so I think we may be watching the beginning of an anti Vance drive for the Republican nomination in twenty twenty eight.

00:42:47
Speaker 1: It was more than just a military event, though. I think that forty minutes forty four minutes into his Quantico speech, Trump slipped in something pretty startling and stating, I told Pete we should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military. That was a whole different ball of blacks, was it not.

00:43:10
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, that is something I've worried about a lot. That they have in mind is deploying military units and testing it in twenty five to see can we use them to frighten away voters in the polls in twenty twenty six. And here's how this would work. So here in DC, the National Guard comes as no shock there here every four years to protect presidential inaugurations. We have a lot of big demonstrations and other kinds of events. They come out to protect those and keep those orderly, so we're what used to them and we welcome them. But in this case, the Trump deployment has really depressed the city so much that you can see a decline in traffic to bars and restaurants, especially in the central area of the city where the Guard are being deployed. They're not being deployed where the crime is in the poor areas. They're being deployed near the official areas to keep making impression. So if the kind of person who goes to a bar and restaurant is Central DC, they're pretty expensive. These are not illegal aliens. These are people on educated people with legal status who are I'm earning a good salary, but they want to keep out of the way. Now, imagine what happens if you deploy the National Guard in Atlanta during election time. In Charlotte, in Phoenix, there are a lot of people who are themselves legal to be in the United States, but are maybe married to somebody or living with somebody who's not. There are a lot of people are legal to be in this country, but maybe their parents aren't. And so those people when they see that this kind of force, they are afraid and they stay away. The way that people go to the bars and restaurants in DC have been staying away, and if they stay away, you can use the military to suppress turnout in elections in blue and I think the real target are blue cities in red states. And given how tight American politics is, you don't need to scare a lot of people to make a big impact.

00:44:51
Speaker 1: Do you think that's the goal.

00:44:53
Speaker 2: I think that's I think they've been experimenting with that. I think they're discovering the goal. I think that with a lot of Trump works by instinct. He doesn't know, he doesn't have plan, goal, method and arrange that, but he has a kind of instinct, but what do I need to do to survive? And then he tests who do I bully and intimidate? And then he sees what works. And often his ideas don't work, but sometimes they do. And I think this is one that they're experimenting with to see again, not in the kind of scientific mastermind way, but in a kind of crude survivor way. Let's see if this works. Let's see if that works.

00:45:25
Speaker 1: James Comey, the indictment of Jim Comey thoughts.

00:45:29
Speaker 2: Yeah, a lot of people begin their thoughts of saying whatever you think of James Comy, and I say to everyone says that you need to hit the backspace key a few times. It doesn't matter what you think of James com You shouldn't even introduce the thought. If James Comy was a genuine bank robber, really personally had robbed a bank, and the president of andited Slates gave orders to prosecute this particular bank robber ahead of that one, that would still be wrong because the system does not work by the president telling the Attorney general who to prosecute. The President and the Attorney General they lay down lines of policy, and then individual prosecutors, who are chosen for non political reasons, use this awesome power of the state in an independent way. Once the president is telling people, I want this person prosecuted, but not that one. That one I like. Maybe he took money in a paper bag, but I like him, so he's scott free. But this one I don't like, So go after him. You have lost what it means to be a free society. He lost what it means to be a rule of law society. And it's really ominous. And there are more of these. We've seen some of the past with the prosecution of John Bolton, and they are more coming. And I think the target here, and Trump has said this in his first TV broadcast after the tragic assassination of Charlie Kirks. He wants to use the power of the presidency to go after the donors to left wing causes, by which he means to the Democratic Party. He wants to shut down Democrats. He wants to use these methods to shut down the financing of his political opponents.

00:46:51
Speaker 1: And the rhetoric he's using constantly, you know, he's very good at, I think creating these earworms, like fake news, and now he's like radical left, radical left, radical left, the war within. These are very purposeful uses of language, are they not.

00:47:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, of course there is such a thing as the radical left in any society, and it's a small number of very disaffected people. But Alex Soros, the billionaire in his Tribeca triplex, he's not a radical. He's just a standard liberal Democrat. And if he's your target, what you're saying is, I think the real crime President Trump is saying is giving money to the Democratic Party. Reid Hoffman, who'said the big investor in Silicon Valley liberal views. Obviously he's there. He is in Silicon Valley investing in profit making corporations every day, picking winners and losers in the market. He's not an end he's not a rout. He's more pro capitalist than Donald Trump with his tech protectionism in his special favors. But he's a person of liberal views and he's giving money to the Democrat Party, and Trump named him as an example of somebody he would like to see targeted. So the goal here is not to Obviously, if someone throws a Molotov cocktail at a military recruiting station, that person should be prosecuted and I found guilty punished. But what he's talking about are people who say I think I'm for Kamala Harris, Hillary Clinton, and that's the crime he wants them punished for.

00:48:13
Speaker 1: Is this not insane?

00:48:17
Speaker 2: It's wicked, but it's not insane.

00:48:20
Speaker 1: I'm curious, just to bring the conversation full circle, you were talking about Richard Nixon and how the Supreme Court provided you know, gosh, what would the word be a bulwark against his wanting to exercise so much executive power. But you tweeted this recently, the new Supreme Court doctrine. Trump's probably doing unconstitutional things, but these plaintives don't have the right to object. Neither do these nor those. But go ahead and keep trying if you haven't gotten the message yet. Oh and not you either.

00:48:53
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I was making fun of a particular decision they had where Trump had tried to hold back some money for that Congress had voted that he should spend and that he had signed, so he had no right to withhold his money, and the people were to receive the money. Took the case of the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court said, we won't hear the case because you don't have what is called standing, meaning this is a legal doctrine that not anybody can sue for anything. You have to have an interest in the matter before we're entitled to sue. So that's not a crazy thing. But this court has often used these technical methods as a way of avoiding saying no to Donald Trump. Now, my late father had a joke. We used to travel a lot in Europe in the days of handwritten restaurant and cafe bills. My father, who grow up in the depression, always scrutinized these with great care, and he had this funny line. He said, if these waiters were just bad at math, you would think half the mistakes would be in my favor. Okay, So when all the mistakes go one way, the problem is not that they're bad at math. And when the Supreme Court is constantly find we've got some little dodge here where we were not saying we're in favor of Trump. We're just saying that the person whos opposed to Trump can't have a hearing today maybe tomorrow, but not to and not you and not you. That the Court is using what is called it's shadow docket, that is, the things it's doing but doesn't admit it's doing in ways to help Trump. And that has been a real theme of the Supreme Court, especially since twenty twenty.

00:50:12
Speaker 1: So have you lost faith in the High Court? I mean, do feel like when you look at ways to contain these impulses and you know, not just impulses, actions that are anti democratic? Is the Supreme Court a lost cause?

00:50:31
Speaker 2: Well, nothing's a lost cause. I studied law a long time ago, and one of the things that is good about setting laws it reminds you that judges are human and that courts are very imperfect instruments. But one of the things I've been saying consistently since twenty fifteen is we use these phrases institutions and norms, but they don't mean anything. It's just people, that's all. There are, just people, people doing right things, people doing wrong things, and the people include each of us. And so the idea that I can sort of offshore my responsibility as a citizen to somebody's going to look out for me, that's always an illusion. In more peaceful times than we have right now, more quiet times, the challenges are less, and so maybe you can pay less attention. But these times you have to pay a lot of attention because it's you and that's all there is. It all comes down to you.

00:51:17
Speaker 1: In fact, I like your expression hopelessness is a resource of the tyrannical.

00:51:22
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you. They want to make you feel like it's all lost. And so you see this a lot in certain circles where people say, well, you know, because people want to look smart and worldly, like, well, you were naive ever to think anything would make a difference. I believe everything makes a difference. It's just a lot of everything, and what we do matters, not what I personally do will decide everything. But what I do does matter, and what you do does matter, and the third person, and if enough people are motivated to do the right thing, it matters.

00:51:51
Speaker 1: I want to ask you one question, a personal question, before I bid you adiou, and that is, you know a lot of people ask me about how I'm covering the Trump administration and benow this sort of more objective era of news coverage, and you know, I have wrestled with that a bit, but not really because I feel compelled to speak out about some of these things and to not cover them as a passive observer. And I'm just curious if, as a result, does the media and that's of course it's not a monolith, certainly more than ever, but does that contribute to a loss of faith in the media. I wrestle with this, and I'm just curious for your thoughts as someone like me, because I think you've known my work and I've been sort of on the public stage for gosh for decades now, you know, about covering these stories and trying to help people, or covering these events and covering this administration and helping people understand. You know, I don't want half the country just to say I am a partisan.

00:53:06
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, you made your career at a company that was when you were there, one of the if not the very most powerful media corporation of the world. Certainly one of the three or four most powerful media corporation is certainly because whoever's the most powerful media corporation in the United States is the most powerful in the world. That world is gone, and our understanding of media has to adapt. What is the most powerful and important media company in the United States? TikTok? And who's second? Maybe Facebook, maybe YouTube? The company that the fact that you were an institution was important in nineteen seventy five doesn't tell us much about how important it is in twenty twenty five. Second, I say that media objectivity is not a matter of finding something nice and something bad to say about everybody, because some people are better, have more good qualities and bad qualities, and other people have more bad qualities and good qualities. And you know, look, if a hurricane strikes the Louisiana coast and shatters homes, there's somewhere somewhere in the world that is getting a little bit more rain than it otherwise might have. So there's a positive sign even to a hurricane, but you don't have to balance your coverage of the hurricane. I say, well, yes, all these people have been driven from their homes and many are dead, but the flower gardens in Idaho are going to be much better next spring than they were last spring. You don't have to cover it that way. And the Trump people always want to say, well, wait a minute, because we were we were on the receiving end of legitimate bonified a prosecutions for genuine criminal activity trying to sack the capital and murder the Speaker of the House and murder the Vice President of the United States. And that means that you can't complain when we do non bonified a personalized prosecution of people we don't like, because fair is fair. That's not how this works. I don't have to cover the bank robber the same way that I cover the person running the town soup kitchen. They're not the same, and so it would it's an injustice if I treat different things the same way. So I do try to be aware of things that the administration has done, right. I mean, the headline on the article I'm going to publish today or tomorrow is the Trump administration got this one right about something I think that they did right, and where they do write on things that are important. It's useful to say so, but we don't do readers a service if we blind them to the way that things are different from the way they've been in the past, the way that Donald Trump's presidency is different from previous presidencies. And I think one of the lessons a lot of people I will thinking about George W. Bush for whom I worked. I think a lot of people who said hard things about George W. Bush will look back and say, I don't recant those hard things. I genuinely disagreed with them and just like that. But I may not have had the right perspective on how grave the situation was then as compared to how grave it could be. And so it's important to keV to have a perspective. It's important not to overreact, but it's also important not to underreact.

00:55:51
Speaker 1: David from I really always get so much out of our conversations. Thank you for your time, and I know you've got that piece to finish. I'll let you go. Really enjoyed being with you.

00:56:02
Speaker 2: Thank you, Hi, bye, Thanks so much.

00:56:06
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening. Everyone, If you have a question for me, a subject you want us to cover, or you want to share your thoughts about how you navigate this crazy world, reach out send me a DM on Instagram. I would love to hear from you. Next Question is a production of iHeartMedia and Katie Couric Media. The executive producers are Me, Katie Kuric, and Courtney Ltz. Our supervising producer is Ryan Martz, and our producers are Adriana Fazzio and Meredith Barnes. Julian Weller composed our theme music. For more information about today's episode, or to sign up for my newsletter wake Up Call, go to the description in the podcast app, or visit us at Katiecuric dot com. You can also find me on Instagram and all my social media channels. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio appp podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Hi everyone, it's Katie Curic. You know I'm always on the go between running my media company, hosting my podcast, and of course covering the news. And I know that to keep doing what I love, I need to start caring for what gets me there, my feet. That's why I decided to try the Good feet stores personalized arch support system. I met with a Good Feet arch support specialist and after a personalized fitting, I left the store with my three step system designed to improve comfort, balance and support. My feet, knees, and back are thanking me already. Visit goodfeet dot com to learn more, find the nearest store, or book your own free personalized fitting.