What’s the Left’s Vision for Foreign Policy After Trump?

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26:49And that requires looking back over the last 30 years and looking at it through the lens of the people that I grew up with in a working class town in the Midwest. West, those who I fought with, and those who I now serve. In those last 30 years, we've had over 20 years of failed military interventions,$3 trillion, 3 million combat tours, over 7 ,000 of our own dead, tens of thousands of others dead. And what's not in those numbers is the unequal burden that was borne by the working class. He goes on to say in that speech that we often mistake the core debate here for being a policy conversation.

27:41But what is, is a conversation about trust and that the foreign policy establishment has lost trust. It has broken faith. So you're sort of half in and half out of that establishment. I think a good place to start is how do you see this question of trust? How was it lost if it was and what builds it. Yeah. Well, again, I mean, what Congressman Crowe said right there about the key divide being between those who see Trump as the problem and Trump as a symptom, I think is right on. I think that explains a lot of the debate right now. I'm very much on the symptom side. And I think, you know, the lack of trust, I mean, it really does come down to this one line from Trump that others have used, and that is the system is rigged.

28:23And Trump gets traction with that because he's right. The system is rigged. Americans can see it. They can feel it in the lack of control that they feel over their own lives, economic lives, political lives, social lives. They feel, I mean, I think confronted by technology that is designed to entrap them. They feel kind of exploited by different, you know, costs, you know, to, you know, to extract the maximum amount of wealth of every step they take, every symptom of every disease, every, you know, every game that their kids play in sports. And I think that attaches to foreign policy because one of the big, you know, whether it's, you know, the war in Iraq, which was, you know, again, sold to the Americans on what people understand now are misstatements or outright lies.

29:07You had the interneedal financial crisis in 2008, which again, not necessarily a foreign policy crisis, but I think it's a global impact and certainly it's domestic impact. All of these things add up to, you know, an elite establishment that either doesn't know what it's doing or is simply looking after its own interests. And I think one of the speeches that I've referenced a lot is the speech that J.D. Vance gave at the Republican National Convention in 2024, where he talked about his own personal story, you know, as Congressman Crowe did there. But J.D. Vance, I think, spoke very, very effectively about, you know, someone who grew up in rural America as he did and what communities, deindustrialized communities suffered.

29:51The lie that was told about neoliberal trade economics, NAFTA, the war in Iraq that he served in. He laid out a whole story of elite failure, of lies that were told to working people like the ones that he grew up with. In small towns like mine in Ohio or next door in Pennsylvania or Michigan, in states all across our country, jobs were sent overseas and our children were sent to war. And somehow a real estate developer from New York City by the name of Donald J. Trump was right on all of these issues while Biden was wrong. And I think what Democrats really have to do, and I think what Congressman Crowe was starting to talk about in that speech, which I think was a really good speech, is, you know, Democrats need to come up, first of all, with an acknowledgement of the real problem that connects with the one that Americans are feeling, but offer a compelling vision.

30:44Okay, this is how we're actually going to govern in a way that can change your life and make it better. You mentioned J.D. Vance in the 2024 campaign. Vance ran that campaign very much articulating a view. that Donald Trump was the anti-war candidate, that Donald Trump meant an end to these kinds of foreign entanglements, these dumb wars. Now, obviously, we are enmeshed in Iran. What happened? Well, it turns out that Donald Trump lies. That is one of the things that happened. But you're right. I mean, both Vance and Trump, in the months and especially the weeks before Election Day 2024, leaned in hard on this anti-war message.

31:25Trump was a pro-peace president. We were going to get out of these dumb endless wars. That's actually something he ran on in 2016 as well. And, you know, I think it is very interesting. If you go back every election since the end of the Cold War, in every election, including starting with 1992, with the one exception of 2004, the more anti-war candidate has won. I'm not going to say that they won because they were anti-war, but I do think that is a very interesting set of data, which I think says at the very least that there is an audience for a much less militaristic vision of America's role in the world.

32:03I mean, even Joe Biden in 2020, he ran on a pledge to end the forever wars. He ran on a much less militaristic platform that he ended up teeing up for Kamala Harris in 2024. And Trump took advantage of that. But Democrats just abandoned the anti-war lane and left it wide open for Trump. And again, I said then and I say now, obviously, no one should believe Trump. But I do think he had at least the political intelligence to recognize that that was an attractive message. And I think Democrats really need to understand that. Let me try to make the case for the other side of this. Putting aside the question of who performs electorally, because I think that's kind of tricky and why they perform.

32:44You take Biden as an example. I think Biden thought he had learned some important lessons. And one thing that his people always bragged about was that he was the first president in some time to have not committed American troops to new wars. They ended the Afghanistan war. People hated the way that looked, at the very least. That's when Biden's approval rating fell beneath 50 percent and never recovered. but then it wasn't joe biden who invaded ukraine it was russia i mean you named earlier the very first value that a left foreign policy based on democracy right you have russia invading a democracy biden i think is trying through this period to calibrate a response to that that does not enmesh american troops but but nevertheless does not abandon ukraine to vladimir putin you know hamas attacks on october 7th it's another thing biden responds to as opposed to something he is creating.

33:36How do you think about those from this perspective? Maybe not where the Gaza war eventually went, but these are early moments because a lot of foreign policy is not what the president decides to do. It is something has happened. And now he has to make a decision. Right. I mean, let's take all of those. First, yes. I mean, personally, I think all things considered, his response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine was a good one. He's gotten, And, you know, criticism from his right, those who believe that he should have just given Ukraine all the weapons immediately, some on the left who say, no, we were provoking Russia.

34:13I mean, my own view is like, yes, Russia invaded Ukraine. It was reasonable to help Ukraine defend itself. I think there are legitimate, you know, criticisms that the Biden administration should have been more willing to, you know, get into talks with Putin along the way. I am still unconvinced that Putin was ever interested in ending this war. I don't think he's interested in it right now. Obviously, he gets a key vote. But I think, you know, comparing that to Gaza, and I think he made a huge mistake in twinning Ukraine with Israel in the speech he gave in October of 2023. Hamas and Putin represent different threats, but they share this in common.

34:50They both want to completely annihilate a neighboring democracy, completely annihilate it. Because, yes, the precipitating factor for the Gaza war, what became the Gaza genocide, were the attacks of October 7. But that war did not begin on October 7, as you know. I mean, it did not come out of nowhere. You know, Israel was not just sitting quietly minding its own business. There was an ongoing campaign of expulsion, of ethnic cleansing, of violence that existed in the Palestinian territories and had done so for many years. Biden came into the Middle East having promised to rejoin the Iran nuclear deal.

35:27He came in and more or less kept Trump's policy in place. We're going to keep pressure on them to try to get a longer and stronger deal. And I think this was based on a belief of the need to maintain the U.S.'s position as the regional security guarantor in the Middle East. And I think that was a huge mistake. So I don't think it's quite right to say just that he was responding to the events of October 7. I think his administration had taken steps that led to October 7. Obviously, Hamas deserves the blame for it. That's a big claim. Say more what you mean by that when you say they took steps that led to October 7.

36:00I do think by buying into the idea, I mean, let's understand the Abraham Accords were about a number of things. But one thing they were about was sidelining the Palestinian issue. Do you just want to describe these quickly? Because they started under Donald Trump, not Joe Biden. That's right. So the Abraham Accords were announced in August of 2020. an agreement first between Israel and the UAE, brokered, I guess, to some extent by the Trump administration, although they always like to take more credit, I think, than they really deserve, quickly joined by Bahrain. But they were significant because these were the first agreements in a very long time that normalized relations between Israel and regional Arab governments.

36:36They were presented as major peace agreements, despite the fact that the UAE had never really been at war with Israel. Still, the fact that this relationship between Israel and the UAE, which had gone on for years under the surface, was now public, was an achievement. There's no doubt. But from Netanyahu's perspective, and I think from Netanyahu's supporters' perspective in the U.S., part of why this was a success is that it kind of demonstrated their longstanding argument, which was that we don't need to solve the Palestinian issue first. as many have claimed, we can kind of just push this to the side and move forward and have normal relations with the rest of the region.

37:14And I think it's pretty clear that even though the Abraham Accords weren't like the precipitating factor for October 7, it was one of the factors that led to Hamas's thinking about why they needed to take action, horrific action, no doubt, to kind of put the Palestinian issue back on the regional and global agenda. So to stay there for a minute, although I want to ask broader questions about this, what do you think the Biden administration should have done immediately after October 7th? Because, I mean, that attack is a, I mean, it is a more than horrific attack. Yes. It is a genuine act of war.

37:48It is war crimes. Yes. And done to an American ally, certainly at that moment. What should the response have been? I mean, I think the response initially was the right one, which was to show, you know, strong support for Israel, for the people of Israel. for, I think, Joe Biden going there himself. But he didn't use that credibility to do what I think he should have done, which was very quickly, within weeks, certainly I would say by the middle of November, it was abundantly clear that this just was not an act of self-defense anymore. This was a series of atrocities meant to just obliterate Gaza and to kill civilians.

38:30I mean, I think this is kind of the core understanding is that, you know, the way that the Biden administration and many in Washington talk about this issue is that they treat civilians suffering civilian casualties as if it's a regrettable, you know, kind of consequence of an overall just objective. It is not. Civilian suffering is part of the policy. And I think that became very, very clear, certainly by November. I think by the end of Biden's presidency, the feeling many americans have about him is not so much that they dramatically disagree with any one of his decisions the public opinion on israel and gaza is split at that point it's not like a winning issue in one direction or another ukraine is a kind of complicated issue it's that they don't like the way america seems focused on these places that are not important to them prices are high here, and yet we're spending all this money arming Ukraine, we're engaged in somehow this war that Israel is waging in Gaza that seems like a mess, that seems horrible that you're seeing on your phone the atrocities of.

39:40And in some way, I think what people hated about Bidenism by the end was that the world felt out of control. There's something Chris Murphy, Senator Murphy, wrote on his Substack just recently. He wrote, we would be misreading a lot of the essential elements of Donald Trump's foreign policy if we just said it was about jingoism or xenophobia, because a lot of what he talks about is really about power. His message is that these global forces that we are endlessly told are just out of our control can be inside of our control. I think this is actually a pretty important insight because I think one of the tensions of American foreign policy and particularly American public opinion towards foreign policy is on the one hand, we do feel a sense of responsibility.

40:22We don't want bad things to happen elsewhere in the world. And particularly some set of them, we feel that we should engage in them. On the other hand, we don't want to engage too much. and then when we do engage and it turns out we cannot control them at an acceptable cost or maybe as we found in Iraq or Afghanistan at any cost we get angry about that and this tension of wanting control but not having it is I think a real knot at the center of the politics of foreign policy here and I'm curious how that lands for you yeah I mean I do you know I think Senator Murphy has really been a he's one of these he you know obviously he's a strong voice on foreign policy.

41:02But as you noted there, I think he also has a very strong, compelling theory of the deeper case of the problems in our politics right now. And I would agree with that. Although I think part of this, you know, the tension between wanting to do good, wanting to have control and losing control, I mean, that's going to keep happening as long as we have this foreign policy that is driven by, you know, sustaining American primacy, by trying to sustain America's role as a global, you know, hegemon. Well, what do you mean by that? Because the things we're talking about here, I actually don't buy that what we were doing in Ukraine is trying to sustain America's role as a global hegemon.

41:39I don't buy that in Gaza, what we were trying to do is sustain America's role as a global hegemon. I don't think that's how the Biden administration justified it to themselves. I don't think that's really how they thought about it. So either do you disagree that that's what they were really trying to do? I would agree with you a bit more on Ukraine. I do think there were habits of mind, especially from Biden, you know, who's not even a person, not a creature of the post-Cold War, he's a creature of the Cold War. So I do think that, you know, this idea of the U.S. helping to confront Russia was something that was kind of deep in his foreign policy DNA.

42:12And I think part of what we saw in Gaza and what led up to it, as I was saying, was driven by an effort through the Abraham Accords, through this proposed U.S.-Saudi-Israel peace agreement, which would involve, you know, security guarantees with Saudi Arabia, was based, in my view, on sustaining America's role as a regional security guarantor and also to box China out of the region. I mean, because that was kind of the overriding focus of Joe Biden's foreign policy. And if we remember going back, I think it was was at June 2021 where he had a summit with Putin. I think the goal of Biden's Russia policy initially was to be like, all right, let's just park Russia and Putin over here.

42:55We're not going to have a great relationship with them, but we want to kind of bring some predictability to the relationship so we can focus on the real problem, which is China. And I do think the China focus, you know, the kind of obsession with strategic competition with China. I do think that what underlies that is an effort to sustain America's global primacy. So I do agree with that. I agree with this on China, but I think all these are a little bit different. I think the reason this distinction might be important is that obviously people's goals matter. And the way I read these different events, involvements is the reaction of the Russian nation is really a view about Ukraine and Europe and what America's role was in that and not wanting to allow Putin just begin taking territory because that would be destabilizing for the world.

43:45and we had to do it because nobody else could. I think if it was the case that Europe was more capable of, you know, being the munitions factory for Ukraine, America would have been happy to have let them do it, at least to some degree. I don't know. I hope they are doing that now. I mean, I mean - Yeah, I hope they're doing that too. Yeah, because ultimately that's where this needs to go. On Israel, I think a lot was driven by Joe Biden's actual commitment to Israel, which is something sort of you said earlier as well. And then China, I think there's a different set of questions that are very real there about American primacy.

44:19But the reason I'm focusing on this for a minute is that I think that there is a difference that gets conflated often in foreign policy and we move on different sides of it between is what we are trying to do uphold responsibilities that maybe we don't really want to be doing, the American people don't really want to be doing, but in the long term it's better for the global system than somebody who's doing it. versus are we actually trying to dominate the system, bring it in our favor, keep competitors from rising up? And those are sort of two different problems because on the one level, if you say, we should stop just trying to ensure American hegemony, which I think is also a little bit different than primacy, right?

45:00Hegemony is a control, primacy is a leadership. I think a lot of people like nod and agree, and I probably nod and agree. and on the other hand i just think say ukraine is a hard problem yeah and that we don't really want to be doing this but a lot of things happen in the world that we don't like and we have to kind of make kind of tough decisions around them but i'm not sure that uh you know in some of these cases that a president bernie sanders a president aoc a president chris murphy would be free from the pull of american responsibility the sense that if we don't stop something from happening it'll happen and then we will be blamed both you know they we here being this imaginary administration by either the american people who don't like what just happened or bad things will happen in the world which will eventually end up on our doorstep i think that's all i mean i agree with that i mean there are certain things you know that are that are beyond the u.s's control it's not i've you know never said and i don't believe that it's all part of some grand plan um there are a lot of contingencies that popped up a lot of unforeseen events like the russian invasion of Ukraine that the Biden administration certainly did not want to happen.

46:07And as I said, I think all things considered, they responded to that pretty reasonably. But I do think that when you look at the sweep of Biden's foreign policy, you know, kind of captured in, you know, one of the things that he said upon taking office when he went to Europe, America's back. You know, we've gotten past this brief little hiccup with this weirdo Donald Trump, and now America's back doing America things and everybody can chill. And America's back in the business of helping, you know, the global system run. And I think we had already moved beyond that, both in terms of what America was capable of, what others in the, you know, others in the world were interested in.

46:43So, yeah, I would certainly agree. There are times when only the United States, as of right now, certainly the United States, you know, has the capacity, whether it's in arms, whether it's in convening capacity, whether it's an influence, whether it's an economic power, whether it's in diplomatic power to help solve and address certain problems. But I think the debate has to be, okay, what are those situations and what tools should we deploy in those situations? Let me take the American global hegemony question from a broader perspective. You said that the American foreign policy establishment often asks the question, how do we better sell continuing American global military hegemony to the American people rather than hearing that Americans just aren't that into it.

47:26Americans, you said, are just not that into global military hegemony because it's destructive, it's wasteful, it increases inequality, it steals money from the working class, and it funnels it upward to a tiny, unaccountable elite. I think there's a broader than Ukraine or Gaza or even China, I think there's a broader view on the left that America's view of its role in the world and what it puts into maintaining that role in the world is destructive. So make that broader case to me and what it would look like to turn away from that in our foreign policy. Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, Americans want their country to be strong, to be powerful, to play a major role in the world.

48:02I think any country's people do. And more than that, I'll say, I think Americans want their country to do good in the world. That's how I feel. I think that's broadly shared. But I do think we have to look really, really take a very, very hard look at what this, what global military hegemony, global, whatever term you want to use for it, is actually delivering. And this is where I would go back to J.D. Vance's speech at the 2024 RNC. We've had just multiple wars. We have them ongoing right now. They're not as big as Iraq and Afghanistan were, but we have many American troops deployed around the world on counterterrorism missions.

48:45Do we actually need all of this to keep us safe? How much are we spending on this? And And to whom are the benefits really accruing? I think the question a lot of Americans ask when they, you know, they see their communities having been deindustrialized, their children face a worse future than they do, is, okay, I want America to do good. I want America to be strong. But again, as you said earlier in the conversation, I don't understand how these conflicts and our engagement in them is actually doing that.

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50:35You have this line that elite impunity is at the core of our political crisis. Tell me what you mean by that. I mean, the sense that the wealthy, the powerful, the well-connected, the influential don't pay a price. They operate according to a different set of rules than the rest of us. I think this is part of political corruption. It's part of the loss of control. It's a reflection of the system being rigged. So there's that broad version of it, but you've also made this point, and I've seen others begin to make this point, around the foreign policy establishment and around people in Democratic politics, people in Republican politics.

51:11Brian Schatz, the senator from Hawaii, recently put out this tweet where he said, look, I'm not trying to blacklist anybody, but I think that the next Democratic administration should have sort of a full turnover in its foreign policy staff. You know, I've seen you sort of connect this to the need for a reckoning around Gaza. So what does it actually imply? I mean, I think there's two things about that. One is, you know, from Senator Schatz's comment, I think there's a sense that there has been just this kind of group of Democratic foreign policy professionals that tend to cycle in and out of Democratic administrations and they move up to the next job.

51:47And that we need to reach out to a much broader pool of talent. There are a lot of very smart, young foreign policy folks in Washington and beyond who want to get engaged. We need to draw them in to the process so we don't keep repeating and regurgitating the same policies and the same approach. But I think there's also a second piece of it. And I think Senator Chris Van Hollen got to it a bit more sharply in the op-ed that he wrote in The New York Times a few days after Senator Schatz's tweet. And that had to do with specific actors inside the Biden administration who he said should not serve in future administrations.

52:25And I think this is part of accountability as well. We're going to have policy disputes, policy disagreements, policy debates. I do think that the Biden administration's Gaza policy was beyond just a policy dispute. It was a policy of supporting genocide. side. And I think if, you know, part of restoring accountability is making clear that the senior officials who carried out that policy should not work in government again. So does Gaza here become, is it becoming? I mean, I'm sort of watching this in primaries, and I think it's a pretty important thing happening right now. You see it in the Michigan Senate primary.

53:00You see it here in New York, where Brad Lander and Dan Goldman are running against each other. You saw it in a New Jersey congressional primary. Does Gazir become sort of like the Iraq war in the Democratic Party? Or are Democrats more divided on that than they were on the Iraq war? I mean, there is this question of, like, do Democrats split over this? In the same way that I wonder about this for Republicans after Donald Trump, I mean, Israel and support for Israel really seems to me to be a question that is splitting both parties internally? I hope it doesn't become like the Iraq war, because I don't think anybody really paid a price for the Iraq war, at least, you know, the officials who carried it out.

53:43I want to see some consequences for the people who carried out the Gaza policy. I mean, in terms of the debate, you know, I do think, yes, this is becoming a litmus test. Your position on Gaza, you know, it really does go to credibility. The way someone chooses to talk about this, for example, you know, Kamala Harris, the language she used, oh, too many civilians have died and we're pressing for a ceasefire, it didn't convince anyone. Even for people who perhaps didn't care about the issue all that much, they could tell that this was not genuine. And I think the reverse is true, I think, for Zoran Mondani.

54:23He didn't raise Gaza, by the way. I mean, Gaza was raised by his critics because they thought it would be an effective way to weaken and criticize him. And they did that because they don't know what time it is. He stood firm on a set of principles under fire. And I think even for people who probably don't know or maybe care about the issue as much, they saw that. And that added to his credibility. So I do think, yes, for a lot of Democratic voters, many of them care about the issue. They want their leaders to be on the right side of it. But it also gets to a much larger, you know, idea of can I trust this person?

54:59Are they for real? Or are they just going to regurgitate the usual set of established talking points? So I want to play here something that Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez said at Munich. So I don't know if it's necessarily that we were in a post, if we are in a post-rules-based order. I think it's possible that we were in a pre-rules-based order. And we have an opportunity to explore what a world would look like if we upheld democracy, human rights, trade that actually centers working class people instead of accruing overwhelmingly the benefits of trade to the wealthiest. Tell me about that idea that we were actually in a pre-rules based order.

55:44Right. I mean, I think it's a great line. I mean, what I've, you know, when I'm in conversations about the so-called rules-based order, I've often referred to, you know, I think it was Gandhi's comment when he was asked what he thought about Western civilization. He said, I think it'd be a great idea. That's what I think about a rules-based order. I think that's what the congressman was getting at there. Yes, there is a lot about the post-World War II order that is admirable, that's very optimistic. There are elements of it that we definitely should try to revive and save. I think the United Nations and all the various organizations that work under its umbrella are very important.

56:22Having a global center where people can talk about their problems rather than fight over them is hugely important as a concept. Yet I do think we've gotten to a point where the double standards and the hypocrisies had gotten so stark that the system has just lost legitimacy. And, you know, what about the international system can we really revive and strengthen such that we can use the term rules-based order unironically? So you've been bringing up J.D. Vance, and I think one interesting difference between the way even skepticism of the foreign policy of the past 20 or 30 years emerges on the right and the left is on the right, it has taken shape as a critique of rules.

57:11And Donald Trump, I think, in particular, holds to the view that America should not be bound by rules, should not be bound by institutions. To the extent we argue just create our own that we dominate in a more thoroughgoing way. I think J.D. Vance has certainly been supportive of Donald Trump in his project to do that. I think on the left, there's more of this idea that actually the rules might protect us more than we think they do. That allowing ourself to be bound by them would be better than where we have ended up. that it would have kept us out of Iraq, right? Because we could not, in fact, get the UN to go along.

57:42So I'd like you to go a little bit further with this when you say, okay, like if we did try this rules-based order, if we were bound by rules in these slow, frustrating, multilateral institutions where Russia and China can veto things on the UN Security Council, there is a tension between positive restraint and then being subject to the agendas of bad actors. How do you think about it? Yeah, I mean, I think what you just laid out there is right. It's basically a zero-sum critique versus a positive-sum critique. I mean, for Trump, for Vance, as you said, it's all about America should be able to do whatever we want.

58:20If we're getting a good deal, others have to lose and vice versa. But also, this is the kind of positive-sum kind of principle that kind of undergirded the creation of the international system, the idea that countries, including the United States will agree to be constrained by a set of rules. And that ultimately makes us safer. I mean, I think that's it right there. But the process and the project of re-accrediting the concept of international order, the concept of international rules, I think is one we have to undertake. It's not going to be one administration. And in order to do that, I think we have to re-accredit with the American people.

59:04So I hope that we'll have candidates and hopefully a president. Is that possible to do? I mean, here I'm mindful of what Murphy said, because this to me is one of the deep contradictions here. I don't think people, I don't think Americans want what we've ended up doing. And also, I mean, I was around in Washington at a time when the rules-based international order was stronger, let's call it. And it was in many ways very unpopular. I mean, we got here on a pathway that comes, I think, from in the 90s, people feeling that the UN and others made it almost impossible to respond to genocides and, you know, Rwanda and Yugoslavia.

59:45It goes to sort of George W. Bush after 9-11 and the feeling that America just has to do whatever it needs to and it can't be held back. And that, I think, was obviously a terrible mistake. Like there's a sort of amazing moment in the Obama administration where he says there's a red line if in Syria, Assad uses chemical weapons. And then the last minute he says, I want congressional authorization if I'm going to do this. And he doesn't do it. And I supported that. I thought he made the right call. But I think certainly in Washington, he got an enormous amount of ongoing criticism from it, including, by the way, from Donald Trump for being weak.

1:00:23Right. And this goes to this broader point of like the fight over control, because what you're kind of saying to people is you will get better outcomes by giving up control, by binding yourself and the power you have to these rules and these institutions that you do not have full authority over. And you might end up not being able to do things that you think are a good idea that you were elected to do. uh and you know in the teeth of this moment where we have a completely i think unaccountable president acting wildly erratically recklessly all of a sudden there's a lot of interest in you know should we should congress retake its war powers should we you know reinvest energy in the un in the world bank and you know all these organizations but it feels like we just end up a little bit on this pendulum.

1:01:17And this pendulum, I think, is very much, again, about control. So how do you sell people on the idea that binding American power in rules that will bind us even when we don't want to be bound is a good idea? Yeah, I mean, first of all, you have to show people that they have to be able to feel that it's true. And let's be honest, I don't think an election is necessarily going to be won or lost on this argument. You know, it's just since you mentioned the red line comment, I think that gets to a lot of what we're seeing right now in terms of Congress taking control and taking responsibility. You know, there are some, as we see, that most, if not all Republicans, are fine with letting Donald Trump just carry forward.

1:02:03I mean, they have had multiple opportunities to vote for war powers resolutions, whether it's on Venezuela, whether it's on Iran, whether it's now on Cuba. I mean, they're choosing not to take ownership. And I think this goes to a much deeper problem. It's not a problem of one president or one administration. I think it really goes to the deeper political problem of how we've just, you know, the use of military violence has become just such a regular occurrence. And I think people do have an kind of, I think, an innate understanding that it is not supposed to be this way because it is not. This is something that Congressman Crow really emphasizes in that speech you gave at Cap, that I think is really correct.

1:02:44The first question you should ever ask a member of Congress before they ever start talking about foreign policy is, are you willing to reclaim your foreign policy powers? Our founders believed that Congress had fundamental role in our foreign policy, from trade to treaties to war powers and to appropriations. For decades, Congress has ceded and given up many of those powers. our founders knew that these things were too important to be entrusted simply to the executive because it needed accountability to those closest to the people i think i mean let's premise here the iraq war is a absolute unmitigated catastrophe and i think about the debate that led to it and the absence of debate that led to iran and i think that given how little support there was for iran you could not have gotten that vote through Congress.

1:03:48And so I'm not saying that having Congress will always stop you from making dumb decisions. Ultimately, Congress did give Bush power to go to war in Iraq. But nevertheless, it at least forces, it slows things down and forces a debate and forces a process that I think is valuable. And I think foreign policy can often seem very like hard to pin down because, well, it's Ukraine, it's Gaza, it's China, it's Venezuela. I mean, all these are different situations. But I think something connecting many of them is they're operating without a process that restrains the president. It's very strange to me how little the president can do on most domestic policy right now, given the filibuster and a polarized Congress and much else.

1:04:34And then we give him all this power on foreign policy, which, of course, also creates an incentive for the president when he can't get much done domestically to start trying to create a legacy through ambitious foreign policy adventurism. and that feels to me like a like an interesting place where something could really change and i've seen it from bernie sanders from roe connor from aoc from others a real focus on congress should you know reclaim its role here because at least forcing that through the more representative body where the american public has more say in the moment uh you can imagine that as a kind of more procedurally based order that at least is, you know, to the extent it binds us, it binds us domestically.

1:05:25I mean, I think that's right. It's not the whole story. Let's not, you know, put too much into the process. The process matters. But I do think that the criticism that some have made of arguments around war powers, and I tend to agree, is that, you know, for example, the problem with the Iran war is not that Trump failed to file the appropriate paperwork. It is a manifestly stupid idea from the beginning. And I think keeping that second part in mind is really important. I want leaders. I want leaders. Yes, it's important to reassert Congress's constitutional authority over military violence, but we need leaders out there articulating why this is just a horrible idea.

1:06:03But this is your whole argument. I mean, I agree that we need leaders articulating why it's a horrible idea, but I think your whole argument, or at least some of the rules-based argument is that sometimes you're going to have stupid ideas. And sometimes you're going to have stupid leaders. Yes. And the point of having rules and processes is because you don't believe you will always be governed by the wisest of philosopher kings. Absolutely. That's right. The other dimension of a lot of the foreign policy arguments I've heard from people like Gaiosi and Sanders is the idea that you need a foreign policy that centers the working class and that foreign policy is domestic policy on some level, that this kind of division we've created is not real.

1:06:44Now, Joe Biden also said that. He said he was going to have a foreign policy for the middle class. That was a big way that he and Jake Sullivan and others expressed themselves as having a pivot from what had come before. So what is different in the way that you and others more on the Democratic Party's left flank are imagining this compared to what Biden and his team were doing when they sort of announced this transformation. Yeah. And I do think that the foreign policy for the middle class, I think, was good. I mean, that's something I really think that deserves praise, like to the, you know, Trump shocked everyone by winning in 2016.

1:07:20And I think that the foreign policy for the middle class kind of represented a real effort, a real self-critical effort to say, what have we missed about what Americans believe and don't believe about foreign policy? I mean, in the language of recovery, the first step is admitting you have a problem. And I think that that effort was a recognition of the real problem. And I think its kind of conclusions were represented in a speech that Jake gave at Brookings in April 2023. And this was interesting because it was the national security advisor offering essentially a speech on the global economy, America's trade policy.

1:07:55And it represented a turning of the page, so to speak, from the old neoliberal era. So recognizing, first of all, that a lot of the theories that underlie that era, the idea that, okay, if we just get rid of taxes and we kind of let, you know, free trade, people trade and make money and kind of constrain states from imposing, you know, restrictions and regulation, then, you know, rising tide will lift all boats, so to speak. That was an important recognition that, yep, you know, that turns out that's not really true. It's produced a lot of very bad consequences that have led us to this moment.

1:08:26But I think the question is, having acknowledged that and having come back to the idea that, yes, it is right and appropriate for governments to play a major role in shaping and guiding the economy, the question is to what end? And I think obviously one of the main ends is to benefit the safety and prosperity of the American people. But going back to what we've talked about with China being the kind of guiding focus of the Biden administration's foreign policy, you know, I think there are a couple of ways you could have gone from that speech. One is, how do we really invest in a genuinely more equitable global trade order?

1:09:04How do we invest it, you know, build an order that protects workers not just in the United States, but empowers workers around the world, including in China, and does not pose American workers and Chinese workers as in a kind of zero-sum competition with each other? And then there's the other path, which I think they took, which is to say, OK, now we're getting back involved in the economy because we are in this strategic competition with China. And we now see trade as yet another weapon in a toolbox to kind of assert America in this competition. And I think that was the wrong choice. I think we need to go with option A.

1:09:44So what would option A have looked like in practical terms? What would they have not done that they did or what would they have done that they didn't do? I think certain ideas. I mean, the global minimum corporate tax is one thing that they worked on. I think discussing a global minimum wage is another thing. Just for an example, that's something that Senator Sanders has proposed for starters. Because I think part of the challenge that we face is, you know, we have, you know, a developing world. whatever term we want to use, global south, that has very young populations. They are already engaged in shaping the global agenda.

1:10:23The United States needs to have a relationship with these countries. Obviously, China has done a lot of work to build its own relationships in these countries. I don't want to treat these countries as simply an arena for U.S. and China competition, but I think we need to approach this in a positive some way. What would the global minimum wage look like? How would you apply that to a country? I was in Kenya not long ago. I mean, huge amount of Kenya is in the informal economy. A country where much of the country is very, very poor, right? And certainly not the poorest country in Africa. When you're imposing a global minimum wage on these countries, presumably with some of the stick being American trade opportunities, what does that actually look like?

1:11:03Yeah, I don't know what it looks like, but I'm saying the United… Wait, whose job is this? Yeah. I mean, I mean, getting the United States to propose this and putting the United States in the position. But I'm asking, is it a good idea? You have to know what it would look like to know if it's a good idea. Yeah. OK. Fair question. Still still working on what it exactly looks like. But what I'm saying is proposing, you know, putting the United States in the position of we are not just there to extract wealth. We're not just here to empower the people that have been dominating and exploiting you.

1:11:33I guess maybe the question I was getting at here is interesting to me where you went with that. I think the question I was getting at there is, is the global minimum wage an effort to protect American wages or to raise other countries' wages? Because those are two actually quite different projects. I mean, I think it's based on the idea that Americans' security is bound up with the security and prosperity of others around the world. I mean, this is not just a high-flown bit of rhetoric. I do think it, I mean, as someone on the progressive left, that's an understanding that I bring is that if we can diminish deprivation, disease and suffering in other communities around the world, ultimately that is going to accrue to our own safety.

1:12:11I agree with that. I think the thing I'm pushing on here is in what way would America imposing wage standards on other countries whose economies it doesn't really understand and certainly does not directly manage, right? You know, when I do foreign economic reporting, and probably when I do it from places that are poorer, I am always struck with how maddeningly hard it is to make a poor country, forget rich, just middle income. And so it's like I could see a version of this that is actually, you've found another way to talk about a kind of protectionism. Because we're not going to do trade with countries that can undercut our wages by a certain amount.

1:12:54That's not going to help those countries. That will hurt them. I think that's right. But ultimately, ideally, this wouldn't be just the United States saying we're doing this by ourselves. This would be something the United States could could work with other countries, including China on to propose. But this is also a place where the foreign policy for the middle class ideas that Biden had, some ones I read from Sanders and AOC and others, it seems to me that people don't always define clearly what it is the middle class wants. And one thing I think we've seen in recent years is, yes, the middle class, the working class, the country wants good jobs and good wages.

1:13:34And also they want things to be cheap. and people talk about the era of neoliberalism now as a sort of a huge failure and i think one thing we've seen is that whether it was a failure in some respects or not and i think in many respects it was people liked the cheap goods and being in this extended period where post-pandemic and then in the trump tariff regimes and you know the russia invasion of ukraine on energy prices and the attack in Iran, people are very angry about goods getting more expensive. And, you know, we could have much cheaper electric vehicles in this country if we would let the Chinese electric vehicles in.

1:14:11The Biden administration put huge tariffs on those to make sure we couldn't have those. But then also people were very mad about the cost of cars in that same period. And so there is this hard balancing of you can do quite a lot, actually, to protect American jobs and industries by making trade harder or raising the various forms of standards, wage floors, et cetera, within our trading regimes by walling off parts of the Chinese manufacturing juggernaut. But then you make things here more expensive. And then you get hit from the other side. I feel stretched, right? So how is somebody who's been part of these discussions about a foreign policy for the middle class, do you balance the effort to protect jobs, the effort to raise wages, and also the now demonstrated fury that people have when tradable goods increase in price?

1:15:08Yeah. I mean, I think part of it is the, you know, people are outraged, not just at the rising cost, but they're outraged at the idea they're being nickel and dimed for everything. You know, whether it's for healthcare, whether it's for education, as I talked about earlier, I mean, every step, it seems like someone is extracting some little bit of value from everything that you do. I think in order to address this question, we really have to take a bigger look at our entire social safety net or lack of one. I mean, I think, you know, that feels to me like a dodge. I agree with you that we need to improve our social safety net and get rid of junk fees and things.

1:15:41But on these questions like trade, you'll have a direct question. Like you can make things cheaper by letting by taking down the tariffs on China. You could make them more expensive by increasing the tariffs on China. Those things might have meaningful effects on American manufacturing jobs and wages. The question of what you're prioritizing, that feels like a fair question. I think it is a fair question. And I don't think it's a dodge because I do think that part of what we lack right now is a sense of a common project. I mean, people feel that they're just being victimized and exploited. They don't have a voice.

1:16:15They're susceptible to demagogues like Donald Trump who come in and say, listen, I will be the instrument of your righteousness. grievance. So again, I'm not going to say that we can tee up a good argument, restore America's, you know, the shared sense of the American project, and people suddenly won't care about rising prices of goods. But I do think that is part of the answer, is just addressing the idea that people just feel like they're getting hit with costs all over the place. These problems go back a long time, but I think the crisis that we're in right now is a legitimation crisis. People just don't feel that the systems under which they live are representing their interests, are really delivering for them.

1:16:55And I know this is a much bigger problem than I have an answer for, but I think that recognizing the conversations that we're having about foreign policy, you know, we can propose all the good ideas we want for how America should act in the world. But if they're not rooted in an actual durable political consensus, they will fall apart. I think one interesting, like maybe the sub-theme of some of what we've just been talking about is, is what you're trying to build here a left nationalism or a left internationalism? And the reason I ask it like that is that there have been some moments where what I've sort of heard is a, you know, very much a rising tide lifts all boats that, you know, America can be out there making other countries more stable, richer, more prosperous.

1:17:37That would, you know, rebound to our benefit as well. um you know and then there's also a question about our common project there are a lot of policy tools that i think are i mean it's not all zero sum but some of it is about privileging american workers over people in other countries and i think that's a very reasonable thing for a national community to do privileging american industries over industries in other countries uh but but there are choices on the margin of these two projects uh how do you see that i mean i see myself very much as a left internationalist, but I also recognize that to develop a durable and solidaristic internationalism, it has to be rooted in an American domestic political consensus.

1:18:19And a lot of Americans, probably most Americans, for very good reason, are mainly interested in themselves, their family, their community. And in order to kind of offer a workable foreign policy that people will support, I have to show and leaders have to show, we have to show that it is answering those concerns. What does that imply for how America and Americans understand the relationship, the competition, whatever you want to call it, with China? You know, you earlier were sort of critiquing the idea that our relationship with China should be built on maintaining American primacy. But if not that, then what?

1:18:56Like, how do you understand what we want vis-a-vis China? I mean, first, we have to understand we need to coexist with China. China has a huge economy. it is already a major player on the global stage. And I think there's a school of thought in Washington who believe that China's ultimate goal is to supplant the United States and to reshape the global order in its image. I'm less convinced of that. But for me, the question always comes down to, okay, what does the United States want? We're gonna need to find ways to cooperate with China. There are gonna be areas where we have competition. There's gonna be areas where we have conflict.

1:19:34But I think the problem with defining the relationship as competition is one that eventually will lead to conflict. And I do think it's interesting. I mean, Donald Trump, a lot of people were surprised, including me, given that in his first administration, he is really the one who made China the focus. And Washington very, very quickly shifted focus to that. And Biden picked up the ball in his presidency. And interesting, Trump, when he came back, relatively little attention on China compared to what a lot of people assume would be the case, given how prominent it was in his first administration.

1:20:10And I think you saw some of that reflected in the recent summit. If anything, you know, I think we should be conciliatory. He was very conciliatory because I think Xi has shown him that China has cards to play. The United States simply cannot assert its will on China. And that's a reality that I think Washington needs to grasp, is that we don't get to just set the rules and have China follow them. At the same time, I haven't really seen evidence that China just wants to supplant the United States. I see China acting within an order that the United States essentially helped develop. And I think we can work with that.

1:20:48Should American primacy be a goal? I think the question is, is American primacy necessary to keep Americans safe, prosperous, and free? And I don't think it is. I mean, I want an America that is powerful. I want an America that is influential. I want an America that can advance, you know, the safety of the American people. And as I conceive of that safety, it involves, you know, promoting safety and prosperity in other communities around the world. And then how does that make you think about immigration? You know, there's this interview I did many years ago with Bernie Sanders that always goes around where I asked him about open borders.

1:21:24And he's like, no, no, that's a Koch brothers plot. I think if you take global poverty that seriously, it leads you to conclusions that in the U.S. are considered out of political bounds. Things like sharply raising the level of immigration we permit, even up to a level of open borders, about sharply increasing the amount of foreign aid. Open borders? That's a Koch brothers proposal. Really? Of course. I mean, that's a right-wing proposal which says essentially there is no United States. I think people thought that I was asking him that because I support open borders rather than I was interested in what he would say.

1:21:58But the reason I asked him that is that I have always thought the question of immigration is very hard on the left. Because if you have solidarity with people in other countries, people who are trying to come here because their countries are unsafe, people trying to come here because the money is here, because the better jobs are here, because you can make a better life for your family here, and you actually do believe in the equal dignity of all people, it becomes hard to say, well, why shouldn't we let you in? Like the limiting principle of immigration at a moral level is a very difficult one.

1:22:30And I think it's more difficult on the left when there's less of a kind of bounding nationalism. But I think immigration is a much more central question in our policy, foreign policy than it was. And it is very tied up with a foreign policy for the middle class. I mean, and it's also tied up in this question of control. I think part of what people hated about the border under Biden was it was out of control. Yes. So what should the left's position on immigration be? I mean, I think the left's position should be that, you know, we need a legal and orderly system for people to immigrate here. But it's also based on understanding that we have long been a nation of immigrants.

1:23:10And I don't think that's just a slogan. Listen, And I'm the son of an immigrant. Me too. This country gave my family a lot. This country let my family in when they were fleeing war. That's true of so many other families right now today. That means a lot to me about, you know, that's part of being American as I define it. In addition, I think there's clear evidence that immigrants are a driver of economic growth. This country is stronger and more prosperous. because of immigrants. So I think we need leaders who are willing to make that positive case while acknowledging, yes, of course, we need to enforce the law.

1:23:51We need people to apply for asylum and migration legally. Unfortunately, it's one of these many issues that seems to have just become, you know, just an issue in the culture war. But I think that the, I think there are two questions here that are hard and that Democrats are going to have to come up with an answer for. Democrats of all stripes. One is ideally how many people should immigrate here, including legally. You know, in the first term, Trump would often fuzz. Was he talking about illegal immigration or legal migration? Including how he's talking about all immigration. He doesn't want basically anybody coming into this country.

1:24:29I mean, not literally nobody, but they have what they meant by seal the border. White South Africans are welcome. Yeah, white South Africans are welcome. So there's that. there's also the problem that the Biden administration faced. I mean, Kamala Harris took heat when she went and said, like, our message to you, I'm paraphrasing here, is don't come here right now. I think that's an actual quote. I want to be clear to folks in this region who are thinking about making that dangerous trek to the United States-Mexico border. Do not come. Do not come. And one of the things that I think we saw in the Biden administration was when the broad impression was that we were very, very friendly to immigrants coming here, that a lot of people came, you know.

1:25:19And so, you know, part of how Trump closed the border is a pulse of cruelty, like a constant pulse of cruelty. and for the Biden administration, they lost control in part because they, I think, were caught between the desire for an orderly border, which they did desire, and the belief in kindness. Like, that seems harder to balance. No, it clearly is. I think part of it is also addressing, you know, the sources of anger and grievance that drive support for dramatic crackdowns on immigration. This idea that people believe that these immigrants are coming and unfairly taking what's mine. They're coming and changing the way that I have to live.

1:26:04I think there's a way to address that. That has to be part of the debate we have on reordering our immigration system. And I want to end on this because it's already, I think, a very unifying idea for Democrats. But the question of how to make it tangible is harder. You, like many others I've seen, have said that corruption and probably anti-corruption should be at the center of foreign policy, that we should understand that as a domestic question. We should understand it as a foreign question and that Democrats, particularly as the Trump arrow wears on, should find a way to make that core to their vision of the world.

1:26:41So how do you make that core to your vision of the world? What does it look like to center that in the way you've been describing? Yeah, I mean, I think this goes back to the kind of key claim that we discussed earlier, Trump's refrain that the system is rigged. And again, this system is right. People can see it and feel it. I mean, there are ideas that we have and we've put out there as for like international efforts against kleptocracy, closing down international money laundering for which the United States is a main destination. I mean, who knew that trusts in South Dakota would be one of the main ways that kleptocrats abroad hid their money, but South Dakota apparently very popular.

1:27:20But I think starting here with campaign finance, and I know that's a tall order. We've got Supreme Court rulings that have determined that money equals speech. But I think teeing up a conversation about what Congress can actually do to change the laws around campaign finance, it may take a constitutional amendment. And again, given our political polarization, that sounds completely unrealistic. But I think Americans will really respond to an argument that really addresses their sense of loss of control, that elites have taken control of a system for their own benefit, not for the benefit of a country, the country at large.

1:28:02And I think one of the best messengers on this has been Georgia's John Ossoff, who seems to drop an amazing video on this every couple months. And I think something he said, you know, a few months ago that really struck me, he was like, even before Donald Trump came on the scene, the United States was the most corrupt modern democracy. And I think that's true. And I think, you know, getting out there on that message is a way to start addressing this. And so, but you think the way I agree with you that the way to start in the domestic scene is campaign finance reform. And I also agree that, look, it's hard to change the constitution, hard to change the Supreme Court, but you can build a politics as the right did on overturning Roe on an extended long-term effort to do that.

1:28:50And you can eventually succeed. And there's a lot you can do on that particular issue in the meantime, too. But in terms of foreign policy, what does it mean to make that? Are there people we don't work with? I mean, you know, one thing I remember seeing with the Biden administration was that they were holding Saudi Arabia a little bit more at arm's length. And then oil prices started to go up. Then all of a sudden they felt they couldn't anymore. And so all the questions of human rights abuses and other things began to dissolve. And that often is where I watch our foreign policy shift away from values.

1:29:23People have good intentions, but then there are other things that the American middle class wants, right? The American working class wants, like cheap oil, that means you're working with autocratic strongmen in highly corrupt countries. So what happens when the values you want to put forward and center in your foreign policy conflict with the things that, you know, you believe the American people want and can only be got at the price they want, you know, from working with these countries? I mean, again, it's going to sound like a punt, but I'll acknowledge, yeah, there's going to be trade-offs.

1:29:57There's going to be decisions you have to make. Sometimes you're going to prioritize those values. Sometimes you're going to have to kind of back foot them a little. I guess I'd have to look at the particular situation to give an answer. But I would say internationally, you know, the United States is a major destination for global Democrats, as is UK. I would say the U.S. and U.K. can do a lot. I mean, even from where we're sitting here in New York, you know, a lot of these buildings are just, you know, they're parking spaces for ill-gotten gains. The same is true of London. I think the U.S. and U.K.

1:30:31just addressing their own houses could start to have an international impact. I know that's separate from the question you're asking, but I do think that that is a way to internationalize an anti-corruption policy. I think in some of these issues we're talking about, it raises the question of where is the line between domestic and foreign policy? Partly when we're talking about a foreign policy for the middle class, like how do you think about what falls in one bucket, what falls in the other, what's in the wrong bucket? Is buckets even the right metaphor? Yeah, I don't have a great answer to it.

1:31:05I think a lot of the things we talk about, I mean, I'll say this, I think we talk about foreign policy in ways that we don't often recognize as foreign policy, like when we talk about immigration. There are obviously huge international implications for immigration. Climate, obviously, same thing. America's foreign policies impact these things. Global trade, global economics, jobs here. These all have a foreign policy component. So, and this is, again, something that I did appreciate about, you know, when I mentioned the Biden administration's global economic approach, they seeded that as a part of foreign policy.

1:31:41Trade was not over here and foreign policy over here. These things are deeply connected. I think I guess the way I would try to answer it is to say whenever we are talking about foreign policy whether it's about the Middle East whether it's about Russia Ukraine at least being mindful of OK how does this actually serve American communities even if every every speech doesn't necessarily have to have that paragraph you need to be able to answer it. What do you think about places where, I'm trying to think about the right way to frame this, that it doesn't serve American communities, but it is important elsewhere?

1:32:19And I'm thinking here about possibly interventions in humanitarian crises, certain forms of foreign aid. Obviously, the Trump administration has really gutted foreign aid. How do you think about those moments when you kind of can't say our foreign policy is actually a domestic policy? We're actually doing these things because morally we think it is good. We are a rich country. We are a powerful country. And we are going to use some of that power elsewhere. Yeah, I think there are going to be cases like that. And we need a president who's able to articulate that strongly to the American people.

1:32:47I think a lot of Americans are receptive to that, but they need to hear a convincing argument for why this is doing the right thing, even if that doesn't end with and here's how it's going to create new jobs in your community. Like I said, I think Americans generally want the country to do good. That doesn't mean we need to get up in everyone's business all over the place all the time. But I think when they're, you know, for example, I think it's very interesting how fairly steady support for Ukraine's defense has stayed, despite Donald Trump taking a very different approach to it than Joe Biden, to say the least.

1:33:19I think there is something about the justice and the morality of helping a country defend itself from the aggression of a more powerful neighbor that Americans get, even if they might not connect it directly to how that's good for them and their community and their family. I think that's a good place to end. Always our final question. What are three books you recommend to the audience? Well, the first is, you know, you mentioned Senator Chris Murphy and his new book, The Crisis of the Common Good. I've just been reading it. And I really, I really recommend it because, as I said, I think Senator Murphy has been one, someone who has really articulated a strong theory of the case of what really ails our politics.

1:34:00The loss of a sense of community, the idea that these systems are out of control and they are unaccountable. The idea that just wealth is being extracted from us at every step and what it takes to rebuild a shared sense of purpose. Recommend that one. And the second one is by journalist Susie Hansen. It's called From Life Itself. It's a book about Turkey through just exploring one neighborhood in Istanbul that she's reported on over 10 years, how this neighborhood changed, the influx of immigrants, refugees from Syria, looking at the country's politics, obviously the right of Erdogan and the AKP, how Turkey's democracy has changed and diminished.

1:34:46And the last one is a book by Leonard Cohen. It's called Book of Mercy. So my mom recently passed away. She was, among other things, a woman of deep religious faith. and when and i was raised in the church um and when i was younger we we i remember i've just been thinking about the time we would spend talking about the bible and the book of psalms was a particular favorite of ours the psalms of king david and the book of mercy or just book of mercy is what it's called it's by leonard cohen who people know as a famous songwriter and singer But this is a book of modern psalms. And like all of Cohen's work, it struggles with pain and beauty and suffering and meaning.

1:35:39And it's just been something that I shared with her in her last months, but has also been a great deal to me as I've been dealing with this and as I struggle with what this all means. Matt, thank you very much. Thank you.

1:36:25Thank you. Marina King, and Jan Koble. Original music by Amin Sahota and Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The director of New York Times Pending Audio is Annie Rose Strasser.