You tell that birdie to keep its trap shut for now. Ask not what
your country can do for you, and what you can do for your country.
Either you were with us or you were with the terrorists. All of
it began the first time. Some of you, who know better and are
old enough to know better, let young people think that they had their righting
to choose the laws they would obey as long as they were doing it in
the name of social protest. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Peter Robinson and Stephen
Ham. We're sitting in for rob Long. I'm James Lilyx. Today we
talked to h R McMaster about the world and the war. So let's ever
so it's a podcast. Welcome everybody. It's the Rickashy Podcast, number six
hundred and ninety ten to go until seven hundred, which point nothing happens except
the usual conversation you've come to expect here. You can join us at ricochet
dot com. Why don't you no good reason not to be part of the
most stimulating conversations in community on the web. I'm James Leadlex. Here in
sunny, beautiful spring Minneapolis couldn't be lovelier. Roblong is peregrind adying somewhere,
don't know. Stephen Hayward is in for rob and Peter Robinson in California.
Gentlemen, welcome. Last week we discussed what was going on in the campuses.
It seems to be winding down in some places and flaring up in others.
And what I'm curious about is what you guys think is going to be
the lasting, if any impact on the twenty twenty four election. Are you
going to have the old silent majority types that might have gone over to Biden
because they're sort of instinctively dispositionally kind of old liberals looking at this and saying,
oh my god, it's a replay of these of these smelly hippies of
sixty eight again. And no, Siah, I don't like it. What
do you think? What do you think it's going to play out to be?
Well? I look at the protesters, the pro Palestinian protesters, the
encampments, and even more, the irony strikes me as even richer when faculty
at these institutions back them up. Because here's what. I look at that
picture of the faculty linking arms in Columbia and I think to myself, congratulations
you are aiding the campaign for reelection of Donald J. Trump. You are
providing unpaid what is it called the unpaid advertising for in a pre media,
pre media, free media for Donald Trump. Think they could not assist his
campaign more directly if they'd written checks to him. Steven, you've probably seen
the famous picture, now famous, a statue of George Washington on the left
end and on the right add of the statue, the same statue after the
encampment had had their way with it, and it's covered with Palestinian stickers and
they are a headdress and the rest of it his face is covered. It's
turned into a symbol of Islamisist resistance. Which somebody said, there's Trump's to
twenty four ad right there. Yeah. I mean there are two notable more
than two, but two notable infuriating ironies of this whole scene. I think
you guys mentioned last week. I you know, we really have to do
this again. You spent all last week's episode covetching about this and convetchings.
Guy was not covetching, was It was full throated denunciation. Yeah, Ok,
that's right, covetching, he says, covelling. Maybe maybe I was
am I covelling I could have been developing, was covetching? Well? Things
things have gotten worse in the last week. You just when you you know,
I've been saying for a while or asking for a while, are things
going to get worse before they get worse? And the campuses seem determined to
prove the answer is yes. I think you guys mentioned or somebody has mentioned
a lot recently that it was not but six seven years ago that uh,
you know, one hundred or one hundred and fifty tiki torch bearing young deluded
white kids caused an international crisis at Charlottesville, and Trump was miss taking out
of context about find people on both sides that was about the statue contravery,
and just to you know, again correct the record. Briefly, Trump said,
don't think this is going to stop with taking down the statue to robbery
Lee. They're going to come after Jefferson and Washington next. And reporters were
incredulous of this, so how can you say that? And Trump said they
were slaveholders. That's why the left is going to come after those statues.
Queed, the scene you just saw or just described James at Columbia with people
trying to be many Christo's I guess, than wrapping the George Washington statue,
but without the imagination behind it. Right. The other one is and I
don't think anyone has commented on this, but we've been hearing for decades now
that oh, if the United States or Israel does anything tough in the Middle
East, the Arab street will explode the street. Yes, I don't.
I'm not aware of any Arab streets exploding in the Middle East or anywhere else
in the world. The streets that are exploding are on American college campuses,
and that, I'll tell you something about how deranged we are that that is
where you're seeing the unrest about all this. Finally, Peter your point about
the faculty. What an amazing scene that in the last two or three weeks,
Google, of all places, managed to fire forty or fifty employees who
had protested on their grounds. And yet no one is going to get this
mys from a university for canceling classes, for impeding students getting into classes,
and for all the disruption. I think those ought to be fireable offenses.
It is absolutely right it is possible to cancel tenure of professors, but nobody
has the guts to do it anywhere, it seems, and so I think
it was going to fester for a while. And if the war widens to
in the northern front with Hesbela, then I think we have a whole nother
round starting in the fall. So this takes me back to a little bit
to the themes we discussed last week. But I'm going to do it anyway
because this feels good. God bless America. And here's why. The institutions
that have seized up over Gaza, we know, we name them and at
the Columbia above all at the moment, and they dominate the news. But
there are two wonderful aspects about the United States of America. One is federalism.
Ben Sas is not putting up with a moment of this nonsense. Ben
Sas, former Senator from Nebraska, now the president of the University of Florida,
Florida, is not putting up with this. And down at the University
of Texas they brought in I think it was the Texas Rangers. They brought
in some force and just move the encampment out. There are places in the
country where we were used to this notion of the red and the blue model.
But it goes deeper, I believe than we may even have supposed.
We tend to think of it as tax policy. Now we're thinking of it
as states trying to sort out abortion policy. That's true. Now Texas is
enforcing the border even if the Feds don't want them to, and California isn't.
And now we see that they are even different approaches to higher education.
That is a glorious thing because when bits of America aren't working, you can
be pretty sure there are bits of America that are going to work. And
then, of course, the other bit, the other piece of this is
what do Americans do when institutions fail? They start new ones. They start
new ones. The one that seems to be getting a lot of news right
now is the University of Austin and Texas, close to my heart because full
disclosure, my oldest son works there. They'll be accepting their first incoming class,
their first students this fall. But there are a lot of little Catholic
schools that have been founded in recent decades. There are between four and five
thousand universities and colleges in this country, and maybe twenty of them have been
dominating the news. There are opportunities all over the educational landscape for these,
for institutions in the Midwest, for smaller institutions, for trustees and creative trustees
and presidents to make moves here, and some of them will, I think,
we hope. So trying to cheer you up boys, No no,
no, that's good, that's good. What I like is for people to
self reveal, for the revelatory aspects of these things to be chewed upon and
digested by everyone. And I think a lot of people have seen obviously that
the left in this country valorizes protest, but only a certain kind. They
may talk about how they admire the protest tradition, then that's what it's really
about, free expression and the rest of it. But everybody knows that if
this had been a group of ruer right wing people who had done any of
these things, that the whole country would be up in the media would be
absolutely a twitter and inflame with horror over this imminent fascist takeover America. Without
a doubt, somebody taken down the American flag and put up a thin blue
line flag, this would be a sign that the fascist boot of the police
state was about to smash down on the poor phases of the people, and
college people would be irrevocably shaking at the sight of the thing if you had
genial you know, kids in maga hats who occupied a college office and didn't
trash it, didn't spray paint the walls, didn't put demands all over everything
of things that they wanted to be done. Now, because they're basically toddlers,
that itself would be again tied directly back to the Brownshirts and the way
that Hitler disrupted civiliits. Everybody knows it. So the reason that these things
are being encouraged and winked upon and given the blessing is because they adhere to
a specific set of ideas, and those ideas are manifestly outside of the general
conversation that we have about the future of America. They are not about whether
or not we should be pushing more towards liberal policy or conservative policy. They're
about whether or not we should end the systems and institutions that define this country
and replace them with some sort of transnational communist nonsense. And I mean,
when you see the hammer and sickles, take them at their word. When
you see everybody get up there and talk about the necessity of dismantling capitalism with
the worldwide into faughta and shouting with glee over these things. Take them at
their word. So between the anti semitism and the ant to capitalism, which
okay, fine, they're under thirty, they can do it, and the
inflation of these academic no nothings to avatars of the generation speaking diet were deathless
truths. Everybody see, they've revealed themselves to be anti American, and uh
maybe that's maybe it's okay to call them that because they are, and they
revealed themselves to be profoundly ignorant of history and economics and the rest of it.
So so yeah, I'll shut up with this. The one thing I
always notice is that at they're done occupying a place that it's trashed. It's
filthy, strewn with a lot of plastic. For some reason, they love
their plastic. There was a building I think at UCLA, this beautiful landmark
in a sort of Roman and late Romanesque style, and they'd spray painted it,
of course, with the necessary things. Because if you don't deface a
carving with the words free Gaza, you have failed to do your part for
the revolution. And there it was. It was. It was piled with
garbage and tarps and chairs and the rest of it, and this sort of
animalistic gleat It's no, it's not animalistic. Animals don't know beauty. The
sort of anti human joy in defacing beauty is one of the most telltale things
about these people. I'll shut up now, I okay. I asked a
question of the two of you. No, you may not, because the
thing of it is, Peter, is that you may ask that question if
you pay me a dollar. You want to pay me a dollar for that?
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the Ricochet podcast. Boys, I wasn't in Rome when Michelangelo was painting the
Sistine ceiling. I never got to know Leonardo, but I have lived to
see James Lilacs performed segues. Yeah, and it is enough, It is
enough. I have to leave a little early to complete your nomination for the
Nobel Prize for segues. Yes, right, well I'll take it for Rance
perorations Philippics. And also you know, well, but only one prize a
year. I think I think they limit them. All right, and now
we welcome to the podcast. Hr McMaster, retired United States Army Lieutenant general,
served as the twenty fifth United States National Security Advisor. He's a senior
fellow with the Hoover Institution and the author of Dereliction of Duty and more recently
Battlegrounds. The fight to defend the Free World, and then there's the fight
to defund the free world, as we're seeing. Welcome to the podcast.
Let's go right to Israel. We all know that Joe Biden is quite proud
of telling the Israeli government that they should not invade Haifa. But we have
the situation. We have this situation where we're looking at Rafa and wondering exactly
what the delay is. Can you give us your take on the machinations,
the negotiations, who stands to lose? Where do you think this is going
to shake out? Well, the Israeli Defense Force is going to go into
Rafa, There's no doubt about it. And I think what's happening now is
that Israel's dealing with the administration's calls are exhorting them to not go into to
Rafa, which of course makes no sense. If you're going to destroy Hamas,
you have to destroy the entire organization. The Israeli Defense forces have destroyed
about eighteen of twenty four battalions of and for their own population after the heineous
attacks of October seventh. How do they say, well, we just thought
that was enough and we're gonna call it a day and not really destroy the
organization. Also, you have these negotiations that are ongoing about the release of
hostages and so forth. So I think that the Israeli government is just letting
that play out. But certainly there's going to be a military operation against Rafa,
And what I hope is there'll be an opportunity to evacuate civilians and screen
them in advance of that operation, and then they can go after what remains
of Hamas, including the leadership, in a less constrained manner in terms of
the use of firepower. Let's for the people who don't have their head around
this yet, let's define what battalion strength means for Hamas. How many fighters
that mean they've eliminated, and how much of a force is the idea face?
Now, yeah, it varies, right because these terroisted organizations they organize
along the line the lines of Battalia's catabs in Arabic, But they really depend
on what the purpose of that battalion is. So you have to remember that
there are two purposes for Hamas battalions. Purpose Number one, UH is to
is to make good on their pledge to try to destroy Israel and kill all
the Jews. I mean, that's what they're determined to do. So those
people who lament you know that you know that that you know Israel may not
be fully committed to a two state solution. How does that sound about Hamas's
point of view in connection with the tuestate solution. But the other purpose for
these for these Hamas battalions is to intimidate the population, the Palestindian population,
to maintain the Hamas's iron grip on power in Gaza, which they use obviously
to divert international assistance, economic aid, economic activity, to enrich themselves the
Hamas leadership UH, and to build up terrorist capabilities and infrastructure to attack Israel.
So those who are concerned about the welfare of the of the Palestinian people
in Gaza have to recognize that the principal cause of the grievances of that population,
the destitution in Gaza, is Hamas itself. And so UH, these
organizations use their their monopoly on power UH to course and intimidate the population,
to brainwash the youth UH and and to to mobilize the entire population toward the
destruction of Israel and the killing of all the Jews. I mean, that's
really that's that's really their mission. And so it's important. I mean,
so the battalions vary based on their overall purpose. But what you have now
is you have the remaining combat power from Hamas, whatever that is. You
have them with their leadership cowering, cowering in the in the tunnels while they
leave the population exposed. I think it's important to point out that none of
Hamas's tunnels have been used for the purpose of civil defense. And the reason
is, you know what if Hamas's tactics is to get as many people from
their own population killed as possible. You know, most military organizations, all
that you know that are I think legitimate, exist to protect their populations.
Hamas acts in ways to deliberately cause casualties so they can use them on the
world stage and tap in to this kind of stream of self loathing youth that
we have in the West. Who who then can champion the cause of a
heinous criminal organization like Hamas General. It's Steve Hayward out in California. And
you know, I don't think I've ever had the honor to meet you,
and I've long wanted to say that. Almost thirty years ago now, I
did a very deep dive in the Vietnam literature, and I tell everybody still
here twenty five years later that Your Dereliction of Duty is one of the four
most significant books for anyone who wants to understand the whole Vietnam scene. And
I won't list the other three now unless Peter ask me, okay, Steve,
we get one. Are the other three? Well, I will,
I'm sorry that was bad in me. I think Gunter Louis book American Vietnam,
which was a fairly early book, is one of the best. But
Louis Soreley is actually more than one book from Louis Soorley, I think understands
the endgame best of all. Absolutely, this is a better war. Is
where that war right exactly? And then and you know what, Louis Sorely
is just a fantastic human being. By the way, he's one of is
a dear friend of mine, and he's one of these people that you really
want is your friend because he's one of these people who if you ever need
anything, ops everything to help you. He's a wonderful person. Really.
Yeah, that's what my ex marine Vietnam VET mac Owens always tells me about
him. And you know what, mac Owens is a phenomenal human being too.
Oh, yes, that guy I think maybe the most underrated scholar of
his era. If you go back to essay he wrote in nineteen ninety nine
an Orbis Magazine journal, he predicted everything we're seeing today in terms of the
return of geostrategic competition. Now he's a phenomenal phenomenal. And the last book
has real contemporary relevance. It's Peter Brestrom's book called The Big Story about the
misreporting of the Tet Offensive. So it not only tells the media malpractice,
but also it tells the story of what really happened on the ground in Tet.
And you know what an important revisionist work. And you read those four
books, those three other authors in you and you will understand what you need
to know well. And I would add, now since those works Mark Moreyr's
right as well, great revisionist of the revisionists. Wait a minute, Wait
a minute, boys, what about Michael Lynn The Necessary War? Michael Lynn's
an odd character, but that book, I think that book is indispensable.
No, well, look, there are a lot of other books that are
very good. I can name four or five brothers. You started at Hayward,
I know, I know, I didn't well, I actually didn't want
to extend the derelution of duty question to a contemporary version of it, which
is I mean a couple of forms of this. The general form is,
have our joint chiefs of staff learned not really from your book and reflection on
what they did wrong in the sixties and so forth, and the more specific
form of the question, and what makes me raise it is we know that
President Biden ignored the advice of the Joint Chiefs and a lot of senior military
people about what should be done about Afghanistan, how we should get out.
And I don't know what do you make about that. The chiefs still have
a ways to go, Our military leadership have a way to go in civil
military relations advising the president. Well, you know, a president can get
the military advice he wants, but by virtue of the way he structures those
those relationships, what his expectations are, and he can just ignore it.
You know what, in the case of President Biden, President Biden didn't want
to hear it. Remember when he was vice president, he said that the
advice he got from the military, the President Bob was getting from military was
was painting President Obama into a corner. Well, what he meant was he
wasn't getting the military advice he wanted. He was getting uh you uh,
honest military advice and didn't want that from his senior military leadership. And so
I think your President Biden when he heard, Hey, you know, it's
a bad idea to evacuate the military before you evacuate civilians. Hey, uh,
it's important to keep Bagram open if we're gonna have any any uh any
hope of of of of supporting Afghanist who are still in the fight. You
know, Hey, it's it's important for us to not adhere to this timeline
that uh uh that that that actually the Trump administration agreed to. When when
actually the Trump administration signed a surrender document uh to to to to the Taliban?
I mean, which is which is terrible? And whoa whoa hr you
want to hold on? You just said the Trump administration, in which you
served, not at the time you served, but in which you served,
signed a surrender document to the Taliban. Do you want to stand on that
statement? Oh? Absolutely, this is this is an in February of twenty
twenty when Zal Khalilzad signed the document in the presence of the Secretary of State,
and essentially, you know what happened is the Trump administration replicated the policy
of the Obama administration in the latter years. President Trump made a I think
a courageous, important decision in August of twenty seventeen to fundamentally change our approach
to Afghanistan. He put into place the first reasoned, sustainable approach to that
war that prioritized US interests and incentivized by the way he explained himself to the
American people in a detailed speech on the matter. Correct, it was the
best speech on Afghanistan in the long history of that war. And I would
I would encourage you know, your view listeners, Hey, dig it out
that Afghanistan speach in twenty seventeen. But then, you know, he abandoned
that whole approach. You know, he listened to the mantra of end the
endless wars, you know, and the Taliban, you know, they're really
different from the way they were, you know before two thousand and one.
Now they're going to respect women's rights. They're really separate, you know,
from all these other terrorist organizations. Utter bullshit is what that was. And
self delusion, you know, And and then you kept hearing, well,
you know, there's no military solution in Afghanistan. Hey guess what. The
Taliban came up with one, didn't they. And so you know, I
think, you know, I think that what he did, is he just
bought into that nonsense. Now, the Biden administration continued that policy. You
remember, you know when the disaster happens in August of twenty twenty one,
the buyers just said, oh well, we couldn't, we couldn't change that
policy. Really, you changed every other Trump policy you stopped. You stopped
us securing our borders, you know with Mexico. I mean, you could
go back on that policy in Afghanistan. So what I'm saying is, you
know, this is a disaster, a catastrophe, a stain on America for
the responsibility for which is shared by both those administrations. Hr you finished,
I understand. I ran into your assistant the other day, and I understand
you have finished the manuscript. In fact, I think you have it in
galley form of your new book, At War with Ourselves. I want to
advertise the book and the show that we are going to do. We're going
to do an uncommon knowledge together on that book. So the book is on
your service in the Trump administration. Correct, it is all right? So
everybody who loves hr McMaster, which should be everybody, The book is at
War with Ourselves. It will be out in August. Hr, could I
ask I would like to return to the Middle East to the extent of one
or two questions and then ask sort of step back and ask a question about
this country, the politics of the current moment in this country, not the
part is in politics, but the overall mood of the country. But first
to Israel and Gaza. What would victory look like if you were advising bb
Net and Yahoo and even more miraculous he were listening to you. In other
words, one of the things that I find just perpetually exasperating about this conflict
is that this goes on to another topic, which is the corruption or at
least the degeneration of the American press. There's really very good, very little
good military reporting, so that the Hamas fighters do they simply fade away into
the civilian population the way the Viet Kong did. How do they surround the
bad guys? How do they know who the bad guys are? Do they
fill in the tone? What is the end state in Gaza that represents a
victory for Israel. Well, the victory is first of all to destroy Hamas,
to kill or capture every single one of those fighters they can get their
hands on or get in the sight of guns. That is immensely important.
And then they can identify those fighters. They have the intel to know who
they are, where they are. Absolutely they can, oh they do,
Okay, Yeah, Now what will happen is Humas will come back in right,
They'll blend back into the civilian population. Maybe in the areas of the
north. You've already seen, you know, some instances where where they've coalesced
back into small groups and attacked Israeli forces. But if Israel is in control
of that territory, they can identify and those fighters and use their asymmetrical advantages
in terms of their vast military capabilities against them. But to your question about
like what is enduring defeat of hump Amus, how does that happen? Well,
it's particularly difficult for Israel to do that because they don't have a great
deal of credibility legitimacy among the Palestinian population for a number of reasons. I
mean, some of which go back to nineteen forty eight, but some of
which are attributable to the brainwashing to which the Palestinian population has been subjected since
Mamas took power by force in two thousand and five. And this is the
systematic foamenning of hatred among the youth in Gaza, and to use that hatred
to justify in the minds of these people who are sort of brainwashed, subjected
to this propaganda, the heinous crimes that you saw on October seventh of last
year. So how do you break that? How do you break the cycle?
There's really a cycle, you know, like of ignorance, which and
using ignorance to foement hatred and hatred to justify violence. And the only way
that that's going to be able to happen, I think in Gaza is with
a multinational security force that is a peace enforcement force that when Hamas shows its
head, which it will, that they just they crush them. And that's
not the UN and that'll that's not the UN. Look at UNIFIL in southern
Lebanon, it's a disaster. So it has to be a multinational force with
that mandate. Could it be Egyptian led, Well, the Egyptians haven't been
very cooperative. They didn't they didn't they didn't let Palestinians evacuate, which I
think we should have put more pressure on them to do that. Maybe it's
a it's a conglomerate of nations. I mean, heck, maybe it's Kenyans,
who knows, But bring a multinational force together, probably with American support
and some degree of American logistical and communications and intelligence backbone, to lift the
pall of fear off the population. There cannot be a restoration of some form
of governments in Gaza without a strong security arm that can prevent Hamas from intimidating
the population and regaining control like they did in two thousand and five. And
then what can happen. Well, Hey, those tens of billions of dollars
that is that have flowed in to Gaza since two thousand and five, you
know, maybe they can actually go to the welfare of the Palestinian people.
Maybe Gaza can become a viable economic entity where people want to live, you
know, instead of the and fresh water and streets. Right, all that
aid has been diverted into a rich Himas and and and to build their terrorist
infrastructure and capabilities. I wish it so if I were advising your question about
advising Promiser ne Nial, I would say you've got to do more to begin
to at least be a contender on the battleground of perception internationally. And with
the Palestinians. Why wasn't there the equivalent of a lifestyle the rich and famous
documentary of all the all the other Hamas leaders you know, and their and
their villas, you know on the Mediterranean and then quick cut you know,
into to the the destitution of the of the Palestinian people in Kaza. So,
I mean, why isn't there a better effort to trace, you know,
to trace this back to its source, which is Tehran and the ir
audience, right, I mean, you know, if you, if you're
Propoustinian, you should be protesting against AMASU and against Iran because Iran's Iran strategy,
cynical, horrible strategy, is to expend every Arab life you know in
the in their pursuit of extending their hegemonic influence across the region, destroying Israel
and killing all the Jews. Hr one one more, one more military question.
How many degrees of freedom so to speak? Does BB have to act
on his own even in defiance of Anthony Blincoln and the Biden administration, Meaning
can as far as I can tell, they need I think we have two
carrier groups in the eastern med right now. They need money from us.
They need weapons and materiel. They need our carrier groups holding down Hesbala in
the north so that they can continue to take care of business in Gaza.
But now we have the Biden administration all wrapped up in domestic American presidential politics,
terrified in particular as far as I can tell of losing Michigan, where
there's a Muslim population of about two hundred and fifty thousand people centered on Dearborn.
And so the Biden administration is saying, don't go into Rafa. We're
going to keep pretending that there's a real negotiation going on with a mass so
that you don't go into Rafa. Don't go in, don't go in,
don't go can be be going without us or not see. I think that's
part of the dynamic. But also I think it's going to backfire on them.
You know, a lot of the Muslim population in the United States or
in Michigan, they've they've been the victims of Jahadist organizations like Habas. I
mean, that is not a monolithic population. I mean a lot of those
people understand completely what Israel has to do, you know. And and the
other factor though, besides obviously wanting to keep the United States on side,
are not completely alien eight. I think you're right about that. Is the
is the tension of trying to maintain the strong relationship that they have with Golf
states UH and golf state leaders who have a real problem because even though they
understand what Israel has to do, even though they know that their interests are
aligned. These are the golf state leadership, mainly the Arab monarchies and you
know, in the in the UAE and and then Saudi Arabia and and you
know, and Bahrain and and UH and so forth. They they know that
their their interests aligned with Israel on on the threat from Iran, but hey,
their population is not with him, you know, and on this and
so there are real checks, I think on what Israel can do. And
I think it's smart, right. I mean, if the Rafa operation happens
two weeks later, doesn't really make a difference. I don't think it makes
a difference. What the only difference it might make is in preparation for the
next operation, which is going to be probably the Southern Lebanon. And I
think what Israel has already concluded is that they will conduct an offensive operation against
Hezbolah and so on before the beginning of the school year. And the reason
is there are seventy thousand Israelis displaced from northern Israel. We want to get
their kids back into school. Well wait a minute, wait a minute,
this is here. Are you saying they want to clean out hasbalt or just
push them back, brush them back. We're going to push them back X
number of kilometers, fifteen twenty kilometers, and I could see a scenario in
which in which they stay there, you know, right, hr, So
let me ask you this question about American politics, because we've got here's the
way it looks to me. On the democratic side, we've got the Biden
administration tying itself into the shape of a pretzel to try to keep one constituency,
which is Jewish Americans who are largely democratic, overwhelmingly democratic, honestly pleased
with the support the administration is offering to Israel, but at the same time
just desperate for the youth vote, which Biden will need in November. And
all the statistics show that the youth are the most pro Palestine of any demographic
in the country. And so there what seems to be the case right now,
is that the policy is to help Israel, but the rhetoric is to
slow Israel down. But this is complicated. On the Republican side, we've
got a man, you know, for complicated and it's feckless. Actually,
okay, it's more than complicated. It's idiotic. It will not work.
Secklas is a nice way to put it. You're good with words. Hr
you know you ought to consider writing sometime. And then we've got and then
we've got the Republican side. You know President Trump, you worked with him
to sort out a strategy for Afghanistan that made sense and I don't know how
to put it. He lost patience, he listened to the he was persuaded
by the endless war argument. We just got to bring him home. And
now you've got very intelligent people. JD. Vance In the Senate, Senator
from Ohio, Josh Hawley, Senator from Missouri. By the way, I
can tell you firsthand that he's smart because I knew him and it was an
undergraduate here at Stanford. We've got Tom Cotton of Arkansas, and they are
broadly signing onto the argument. Know to Ukraine, we have we have limited
I would I would not put Tom Cotton in that camp, you would not,
Okay, okay, so then correct me to the extent that you want
to correct me. But the general point, I'd say, what do you
want to take your point there? Do you want to say to Americans?
What do you want to say to Americans? And in particular, what would
you say to Donald Trump right now? Well, first of all, I
think you have to try to understand what is motivating those who are maybe fall
into this, I don't know, neo isolationist camp, or maybe that might
be too harsh. Maybe they're not really isolation as much as they are skeptical,
right, skeptical about sustained US commitments abroad, especially military commitments are broad
and so so I always I believe in and you know, I make the
argument for strategic empathy in the book Battlegrounds. You know that bar the great
historian who's a These are not stupid people, they're not patriotic, they're good
people. No, but think about what they're what they're what they're tapping into,
and what they're drawing this perspective from. Is it's really the big transitions
in the global economy that occurred in the two thousands, the loss of manufacturing
jobs. The numbers of Americans were left behind by the transition of the global
economy. Hey toss in a financial crisis. How about about an opioid epidemic?
How about the unexpected uh unarticipated length and difficulty and cost of the wars
in Iraq and Afghanistan and the borders. Get look at our look at our
national debt, you know, look at look at uh the degree to which
you know we we see that we have problems here at home, even with
those who you know, who who have lost faith in our country and and
are part of the self loathing movement among our youth. And so they're saying,
hey, we got problems here, you know, Like, hey,
you know, let the Middle East solve their own problems. Dammit. Well,
I mean the counter argument, I think is that, you know,
challenges to our security that develop abroad can only be dealt with at an exorbitant
cost once they reach our shores. And you know much better than I do,
because you work for him. I think Ronald Reagan's Peace through Strength is
more relevant today than at other times since the end of the Cold War.
And so there is this dissonance among many of those, especially in the Republican
Party who make the argument for our disengagement from complex challenges abroad because they too
believe in peace through strength, But it is actually communicates weakness if we don't
have the ability to sustain a commitment in Afghanistan for example. I mean,
hey, even the Obama administration when they're when they left Iraq, they didn't
negotiate with al Qaeda when they left Iraq. I mean, the Trump administration
negotiated with the Talibot. Don't we've at data Istan. If you're going to
leave, just freaking leave, you know. So you know, I think
that you know that that this argument is either it's like often in all or
nothing. We're going to solve all the problems in the least, so we
need to get the hell out. Well, you know what, Actually,
the problems in the least don't get better when we disengage, When we demonstrate
our irresolution, when we demonstrate weakness, that emboldens Iotolahaminae. That's what it
oldened. Putin Look what the Bide Admistration did. They withdrew our naval vessels
out of the Black Sea. They suspended lethal assistance to the Ukraine, your
own forces. President Biden, went over, you know, to meet with
Putin in Geneva and said, hey, you know, here's all the things
I won't do to support Ukraine. Here's our red lines. You know.
Then they evacuated all of our advisors, they evacuated our embassy, and they
scuttled our embassy right and and so you know, it's like they green lighted
the invasion of your But they threatened, they threatened sanctions, and man,
they had some stern, tough words, you know, and the United Nations
for Vadimir Putin, what the hell good did that? Do? You know?
You know what matters, you know what matters, hard power matters,
you know. And and so I think that there is a certain dissonance among
those who call for our disengagement because many of these same people also recognize that
it peeced through strength is the right approach. Right general, I know you
need to go. So let me give you an exit lightning round question that
draws back from the Gaza theater and whatnot. It's a general geostrategic one.
You know, all the discourse right now is about war in the Middle East,
and Gaza, Iran, China and Taiwan, possibly Russia, Ukraine are
there any other sleepers out there. Are there any potential conflicts we're not paying
attention to one in particular that makes me think of this question. About two
months ago, you know, the news was about how Guyana had a major
oil discovery, one of the largest in the world, and Venezuela said,
well, actually that belongs to us, and Venezuela it was reported was massing
troops. And now I've heard nothing. I mean, are there any sort
of spots that the public and our leaders are ignoring that you think could be
a surprise, maybe even in our own hemisphere. Absolutely, and I think
it's it's really important to point out our inattention to our own hemisphere. UH.
Just yesterday or a couple of days ago, Colombia UH ended a diplomatic
relations with Israel with a far left government. You have Lula da Silva who
stood next. Was that Columbia the nation was the Columbia of the university.
I'm not right now, they're both they both got it now, but you
know, Columbia was our staunches to ally, you know, in the in
the region. We partnered with Columbia when when everybody thought that was going to
be a totally failed state, you know, and and President Reba showed strong
character and so did so many others who sacrifice to rest control of that country
away from the drug cartels. And we've had a strong partnership with them,
and they've become they've become part of the pink wave in the Western hemisphere.
Now Melee and at Artentina, he's bucking that, right. There's a pendulum.
This one's back and forth. Chile is resisting the peak wave. But
Lula de Silva in Brazil and his relationship with Russia and China, his supplication
to them. Look at what's happened in South Africa. There is I think
a movement happening in the world into these blocks, blocks of free and open
democratic societies who have confidence in our democratic principals institutions and confidence in our free
market economic system, and those who who are are leaned towards the statist,
mercantilist, socialist model. And I think that's what we're not paying enough attention
to, is that competition that's going on in other theaters. There are a
lot of people and this, Peter, this is goes back to your point
about disengagement from certain areas. There are some who think we should play little
kids soccer because the Inner Pacific's really important and we should just all run to
the Taiwan straight and stand there. You know, China would love that,
because China they could kick our ass everywhere else in the world, you know,
And so it's important for us to recognize that there's a there's a competition
going on across the world, and that we have to work together with our
like minded partners to advance advance freedom. You know, the mission of the
Hoover Institution promote promote our free societies. Well, you know, we ignore
Brazil because according to the left, it doesn't matter because the guy cannot be
described as Trumpian as Bolscenaro could, so they just if he's not truggling,
they can ignore him. And the Argentina thing will be interesting because you have
people in the right rallying to this gentleman as an example of how much you
can change a country quickly while having a bad haircut. I mean, people
are really impressed with him, and so I'm waiting for him to throw down
the other card and say that the Falklands now belong to Argentina and watch that
whole thing play again. But that's for another podcast, and we hope to
have you on it, h R McMaster. The upcoming book is At War
with Ourselves, My Tour of Duty in the Trump White House, scheduled for
release in late August. Can wait, and I hope to have you back
on then or probably with Peter or both oncomon Knowledge to talk about it.
It's been a pleasure, sir, always, always in an instructive interval.
He's so great to be with you. Thank you. Take care. Well,
that was fun. Now it's just us lads here. Let's see Peter,
you had something you wanted to bring up. Yeah, so we touched
on the politics of all this a little bit in our conversation with HR.
That was the politics of foreign policy. Let me just go to the politics
of politics. I this, this strikes me as so strange that I'm mentioning
it to the two of you to check my own sanity. Four almost four
years ago, four years ago, Joe Biden ran on normality and he said,
in effect, Donald Trump is too chaotic. He has brought us Trump
didn't bring it to us, but Biden claimed, you did. Trump has
brought us COVID demonstrations in the streets, cities burning across America. Vote for
me and it will end. And now four years later, Donald Trump is
emerging a couple of times a week from a trial in Manhattan to say,
folks, things are so bad that now I'm the normal one. Yeah.
The border, we're being invaded on the southern border. The campuses are erupting,
the world is on fire. Vote for me. I'll take us back
to normal. Is am I losing my mind? Or is that what's happening?
No, I think it's actually even deeper than you put it. Peter.
First of all, I think Trump right now, what I think is
Trump's going to win, and I think he might win big. And you
know, we see these new pole numbers showing him opening up a lead,
and it's fun to speculate that maybe they should keep him in court more often
because it's yes, yes, his speeches are more disciplined, I think,
right well, you know when he does speak now, I mean, he's
getting his game on. He's really getting back in the top form, I
think. But there's two things here that the plan into this. So you
know, in twenty sixteen and actually going back to nineteen eighty, big question
marks about Ronald Reagan, right, is he too extreme? And all the
rest of that, and he ends up winning the landslide as people decide that
we can take a chance on him. Trump in twenty sixteen, Oh my
goodness, right, all the crazy things he said, and okay, I
don't need to recite that litany. But he's been president now, and as
the polls show that a majority of Americans now look back fondly on the Trump
presidency, at least the results for the first three years. And yeah,
maybe he's chaotic, and maybe his personality is repellent, but they certainly like
the way the country was covered. And this is the fact that he's been
president, which means he's less of a chance for undecided voters. Is something
that I don't see any of the pun that's your polster's talking about. You're
right about that, right, But then the other thing you said about,
you know, Biden's Biden's own chaos and craziness. In political science, as
you probably know, they have the famous median voter theory, which is,
you know, there's an advantage of the person who's clustered around the issues that
attract the median voter. That person in this election is Donald Trump. Trump's
opinions on the issues and Republicans generally are much closer to the median voter.
That's another reason to think that he has an edge in this election why he
is likely to win. And so the only question mark is are there going
to be some surprises? Is he going to be thrown in jail? Is
he going to make some crazy mistake? Is Iran going to launch a missile
at us? And people rally around Biden? I don't know, but as
of right now, the shape of the race I think is fixed, and
I think it favors a solid Trump win. And could I you mentioned that
something was even deeper than it seemed or it seemed to me. I've also
again, this is a sanity check for me, because I have these thoughts
in my head, but I don't have very many people to check them against.
My wife doesn't want to hear it, but you two. So here's
something that I have. The feeling is deeper than is assumed or supposed.
This notion of Biden's age. Everybody can see that man. He walks stiffly,
He loses his place in speeches A and B. He has failed before
our very eyes. You can see it happening in real time. You go
to a clip of him even two years ago, and he was in better
shape, all right. So people see that, and the press presents it
as Americans have reservations about whether he's too old to do the job, and
that's true. But the deeper bit I feel, I don't know it,
but I feel it. The deeper bit is that Americans are sick of being
lied to, and the press and the administration is saying no, no,
no, he's fine, he's up to it, he's absolutely fine. And
I believe that there are lots of people people on who may be otherwise swing
voters, who just in some way this represents the way they feel that the
press and the liberal establishment has been lying to them all along, and they're
saying, no, damn it, don't tell me to disregard the evidence of
my eyes. We assume there's going to be a lot of lying. We
assume we're going to be lied to, and we factor a lot of that
in. We never would think that the administration would say, you know what,
we screwed the push getting out of Afghanistan. That was we scuttled out
without honor, and that's not going to happen again. We're taking a good
hard look at it. If they say, if they continue to insist that
it was by the numbers and it was a great thing to do in a
complete success, let them. I mean, we know that they're going to
lie about stuff like that. But when it comes to lying about Biden's obvious
descent into Joel Joe Gillism, his his his inability to craft a wake up
persona who knows what kind of be twelve cocktail, they'll shoot his butt before
he talked, before he debates Trump. But everybody knows it, and that's
baked in and you're right there, Peter, But there's another lie. And
the other lie is that the economy is great and we're not paying thirty seven
more for groceries every but he knows that. Now, whether or not an
administration will have the guts to get out there and say, look, we
absolutely know what you're paying at the grocery and it's ridiculous. Here's why your
eggs went up, It's because you know, and tell us why that.
Here's why your cereal went up, Here's why meat is so expensive. We
know there's only so many things we can do, but we are well aware.
Instead of that, they tell us, wait a minute, what are
you talking about. I mean, yes, the price of hamburger did go
up a bit, but your wages went up fourteen percent, don't you realize
that? And nobody's looking around and looking at their paycheck and looking at their
groceries and saying, boy, I feel rich or I feel richer, and
nobody is doing that. People are seeing that, they're seeing changes, like
when they go to the the to McDonald's or to Wendy's to find out that
McDonald's now costs as much as some of the premium burger places like five Guys
and the rest of it. It's stunningly expensive to get a hamburger at McDonald's,
which used to be the thing you got for a buck on your way
home, just just a plug a hole in your stuff. Everybody knows it,
and everybody you know, whether or not they have a complete and encyclopedic
and economic knowledge of why we have this inflation and why spinning is to blame
it? Who did the spinning over the last few years, They know it,
and they're being all I do about whether or not it matters, And
even if they don't, they're gonna say, was I paying this much for
a burger under Trump? I was not? Ergo, that's the guy.
And you know, that's what it comes down to for an awful lot of
people, And it's not a stupid decision to make because they can't afford to
take the kids to McDonald's anymore. Matters more perhaps than leaving Afghanistan. Anyway.
One of my favorite pictures of Trump of all time was the when he
had the athletes in and he had a huge spread of all the past Foodenburgers.
I think that should meet camp. You know, you want a corner
copy of this back and at the price you can afford, then you know
what to do. I that was great. The Prince, Well, the
principal argument, sorry this is I'll let Steve comment and I will fall silent
after this. But the main argument, in some ways, the only argument
that Biden has is Trump is crazy. You can't vote for him because Trump
is crazy. But you know, here's why that argument is now losing its
effect, its purchase on the American psyche because lots of voters are admitting it
and saying, yeah, Trump is crazy, but you know what, there
are things that would be worse and another four years off you buster is starting
to look just like that, or another one of three in Kamala Harris or
exactly. You know, Peter, this is something that it's often said that
people in the White House are in a bubble, or parties in a bubble.
That's of course true. You know. One of the things I showed
to students often on the first day of class, depending on the class,
is the great time series from Gallup and other posters going back to the fifties
of trust in the federal series. Steve've seen that, right, it's all
downhill with the significant backtrackor in the Reagan years, that's the only significant restoration
of confidence in the federal government in the last sixty years. So I went
from seventy eight percent people saying they think Washington's got the doing a good job.
Now it's in the mid teens. And so don't people in Washington and
sort of the rest of the establishment, for lack of a better term,
don't they understand that confidence in our institutions is so low that calling someone a
chaos agent will bring smiles to the faces of a lot of ordinary citizens,
right, ye, And that's what I want. The line and trust goes
down as the line of government involvement in our lives goes up, and from
that they learn nothing about our attitudes towards their competence and their occasional intrusiveness.
Right, sounds like great, he's an agreement. No. No. The
other thing is, so this is Steve, Steve, Steve. This is
a Steve would actually and on this, I think both of you. But
Steve has written books, whole books about Ronald Reagan and Reagan and Churchill,
and I draw this distinction, although part of it is I have to admit
his supposition speculation. Biden is an old man and he's surrounded by young technocrats,
and their loyalty to him is going to be limited one way or the
other. He's about ready to retire, either into four years at the White
House or back home in Delaware. But these people have careers to consider.
And whereas I believe Steve would confirm this and maybe elaborate on it, Winston
Churchill by the time he became prime minister. Of course, he became prime
minister in time of war, but even apart from that, by that point
he had close advisors and supporters who would do any thing for him and Ronald
Reagan, by the time he took office in nineteen eighty had ed Mese and
he was surrounded by people who would do anything for him because because they loved
him, because they believed he was the way forward for the country. There
are no such people around Joe Biden, with a possible exception of doctor Jill,
I think, yeah, no, I've been saying for you, can
you please define for me a Biden Democrat. We knew what Clinton Democrats were,
and it was a little fuzzy, but it was sort of that new
Democrat vibe and and you know Obama was a cult of personality. But yeah,
Biden, look, I mean this is not an original thought with me.
I think I got it first from Henry Olsen, who you guys have
had on a couple of times. We all steal from Henry all the time,
right, No, no, no need to credit him. Yeah.
Well, but the point is is, you know, Biden's political ability was
always to find the center of the Democratic Party, figure out where it was
going, and then get in front of it. You know, he saw
Paray going down the street and he gets in front of it and thinks he's
leading it. The problem is he is hell Bliss when the party is divided
between these factions as a wreck. No, he is no core principles of
his own. Did you know Peter, that not only did Biden vote for
all of the tax cuts starting with the Capitol Games tax cut in seventy eight,
all of Reagan's tax cuts, he was endorsed for re election in nineteen
seventy eight by Howard Jarvis. Wow, because he know he was known as
a conservative Democrat. I mean, it's all on the record. You know,
you can quote Biden against himself now from the Biden of the seventies in
the eighties, there's no core principle to the guy. He's always and that's
what made him attractive. I think in this last election cycle when the party
panicked that Bernie or Elizabeth Warren were going to win the nomination, and that's
why they grabbed onto him. And he's very pliable and I think, as
you say, see now, by the way, did you notice this week
not only did he let fly with impromptu remarks about how the Japanese and the
Indians are zeophobe, but then there's now a feelanx of people around him who
surround him when he walks out to the helicopter on the south lawn because they
don't want it visible that he can't walk like a normal human being. I
don't know why don't they just put him in this sedan chair and bear him
out on that goodness? Have him tossed, have him tossed, sasteries out
as asses. Yes, indeed, both sides well, and there isn't there.
It's it's it's you're right the division. I mean, Joe Biden would
probably see a nuclear missile that we had paid for coming out of Iran heading
towards Israel, and there's the iron dome system knocking it down, which we
have helped them to develop, and think, well, you know, my
work here is done. Uh, it's it's extraordinary. But time moves on,
and next week, who knows what we're talking about. I almost hope
we're talking about the same things, because it's fascinating. All of this stuff
is tremendously important to where this country is now. I am this is not
just the usual politics stuff, and I always say it's the most important election
in my life ever. But you know, this one does seem to have
more hefton weight and meaning than the rest. It feels like a cal climination
in a lot of ways. And it's hard to say that, you know,
it's culminating with two old guys, but here we go again. Anyway,
we'd like to thank you for listening to the show. Of course,
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