189. Rahm Emanuel: China, Technology, and the Future of the Democratic Party

20:59And what's your view from your experience down the years of how we, the world, get out of it?

21:04Rahm Emanuel:Well, you've asked like seven questions there, so let me try to pick each of them. June was different in the sense that it was limited, it was strategic. And it was also, remember, at that point, you had pushed Hezbollah back and it was on its back heels without leadership and showed a capacity integration. Syria, another sponsor of Iran's octopus strategy, had been the Assad regime. And you're literally taking in and owning Syria and Lebanon, making them shells of themselves as homes for the Hezbollahs and a home for terrorists. That had been destroyed. So two weaknesses from the President Obama's policy, which was the kind of threads of terrorism, that had been basically eliminated and pushed back from Israel's border.

21:59Rahm Emanuel:And in June, you had not ended, but you had seriously degraded the Iranians, and they were not only on their back heel, but this massive rupture between the Iranian people and the Iranian government emerges. Now, one fact, I went and checked it on Google and clawed. In the last 12 years, there have been civil disruption in Iran every two and a half years. And every disruption has led to more and more and greater violence by the Iranian government on its own people. You know, we have a rule in politics. When your opponent's in the middle of a night fight with themselves, don't get in the way. Iran had an 89-year-old cancer-ridden head of state with no tradition or real policy in 40 plus years of transitioning.

22:53The government had become

22:56Rahm Emanuel:an occupier of the Iranian slash Persian people who wanted to be part of the world economy and wanted to go back to their trade. And for the first time ever in those dozen years, the youth of Iran and the merchants of Iran opposed their government. That's as good a playing field as you can get in politics. And the Iranian government was a serious threat. And every president from Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden, had in one way or another maneuvered in different tools and different instruments to isolate Iran. And they were on their back heel. Now, on this effort, you can't unring a bell. I would not have rung this bell.

23:39Rahm Emanuel:And you have a situation, I think, that given where we are, as I said, it was a war of choice and a bad choice. And you went in to deal with, quote unquote, the nuclear capacity of Iran. And they found out in this process that they have a nuclear option. It's called the Strait of Hormuz. So I have a short, medium, and long term. One. The president's policy, I articulated it before it was, and I think he was, like always, because there's no strategic thinking going on in this administration, way too late. Either all boats out and in, or nobody. medium term, if you're trying to secure a deal, have the United Nations International Maritime Association, monitor the Strait of Hormuz, charge a toll where the revenue is split, but it doesn't go to Iran.

24:27It goes to Iran, Kuwait, UAE, Oman, Bahrain, Qatar, all the

24:33Rahm Emanuel:countries affected. It's an international toll, if you wanted a toll, only because it's part of the negotiations, but it's not managed, organized by Iran. The Strait of Hormuz will not be your little lake. And then long term, since the Iranian goal is to push America out of the region, use the Abraham Accords to becoming a funding vehicle to build pipelines for the Gulf countries around to circumvent the Strait of Hormuz. Not only is it good economics, not only is it good energy policy, but it says to the Iranian government, we're not going anywhere. Your goal to get us out of the region? And they said it just yesterday again.

25:17Rahm Emanuel:Get this foreign government out of here. So it would say to them, we are a permanent Middle East power, and it would remind our allies, both on energy, economics, and security, we're going to be your partner. That's what I would do.

25:30Rory Stewart:Rom, one of the things we're interested in talking to you is you're a potential U.S. president and i guess one of the questions people might well we haven't decided that uh

25:40Rahm Emanuel:and the american people haven't potential let's just use a capital p on that a capital p potential capital p president um do you feel that in some ways your candidacy is stronger and in some ways

25:55Rory Stewart:weaker than it would have been in another period right we're in a world in which we hear about aoc we hear about governor newsom we're looking of course at president trump these are lots of different look at uh mem amdani in new york we're looking at many different styles of politics emerging it's a different world from the world of bill clinton very different world right so what do you think in this new world let's start with you being honest about where your weaknesses and limitations might be and then where your strengths might be in this new world look i'm one thing i

26:26Rahm Emanuel:know in life, as in politics, by the way, all your strengths are your weaknesses. So as I jokingly say, but I'm serious about this for the Democrats, on day one, you have to have somebody that knows something about the family room, something about the classroom, something about the boardroom, something about the break room, and something about the situation room, not just the bathrooms across America, which is where the party's been. Day one. And not only that, this is a party known as Weak and Woke, and nobody looks at this as Weak and Woke. Every time I've had a fight when President Clinton wanted to get kids health care, 10 million children, somebody by the name of Rahm Emanuel got that bat and ball.

27:06Rahm Emanuel:When he wanted somebody to take on the National Rifle Association to pass the assault weapon ban, somebody by the name of Rahm Emanuel got that bat and ball. When President Obama wanted to get financial reform and universal health care, I got that call. When it came to taking our public school system in Chicago, which was Secretary Bennett under Reagan called the worst in America, and then Sean Reardon at Stanford at the end of my tenure called it the single best of the top 100. We took a graduation rate from 56 % to 84%. Two-thirds of our kids were going to college. And a very system with more than a majority, 84 % of our kids are from poverty in the city.

27:46Rahm Emanuel:So I have taken on every battle, and anybody that's walked into the arena with me has walked out with a bloody nose. Sounds to me like you're running, Rob. No. Well, let's just finish one question before the next Brit jumps in the middle of it, okay? This is not the Emanuel dinner table, okay? But you asked me a question. Now, do I have that experience? Yeah. The question is, do you want that experience put to work for you? Again, I want to be clear. I haven't decided what I'm going to do. Now, has politics changed? Yeah. it's changed and it also hasn't changed. Okay, and I know one thing that wasn't in your question.

28:24Rahm Emanuel:I'm laying out, as you know, one of the few people, your FT paper and others, I'm winning the ideas primary. I agree with President Clinton. Ideas are the most underappreciated thing in politics. I'm laying out a very clear distinction on education, social media to kids. You can go through how I would tax predictive markets, online sport gaming to go into our science and technology and doubling it, et cetera, without going through every policy. What I also know about politics, if you want somebody that can tell you about clicks, I'm not your guy. You want somebody to make sure your kids know calculus?

29:00Rahm Emanuel:That's what I work on. You want somebody that can be really cool on social media posts? Go for it. I want to make sure that tomorrow's kids know something about social studies. That's what I do. And I know one thing for sure about these ideas, that we don't have a day to waste or a person to overlook or a community to ignore. We're in an existential battle with China, a country three times our size. We've had two presidents, President Biden and President Trump, who have spent their entire tenure of the last 12 years debating the past that's never coming back. I think 2028 will be a fight about the future and not just the ideas, but who's got the strength to get it done.

29:43And we'll see.

29:45Rahm Emanuel:And the good news is you're going to have, unlike in 2024, unlike in 2020, you're going to have a choice, 31 flavors, and I'm going to be rocky road in this. So you want to go into a course that, okay, look at him. He's got a great TikTok. Doc, I'm not the guy. You want to make sure that you get health care. You want to make sure that kids who go to college don't end up in their parents' basement. You want to make sure you're not one sickness away from going into bankruptcy. I know how to get that done and make it happen. And I know how, in this period of time, that you cannot have an American dream where only Rahm Emanuel's kids and some other people's kids get access to it.

30:26Rahm Emanuel:My whole life has been fighting for that. And I've made opponents. Now, I don't agree with you about where the party is. I happen to think something different about where the Democratic Party is. But we'll test it. And if not, I'll go fly fishing the rest of my life. That's okay with me. I'm going to tell you what I think needs to get done. I'm not going to sit here and just tell you what you want to hear. I'm going to tell you what I think needs to get done. If you like it, great. If you don't, okay. Who cares? Okay. Anyway, what I was interrupting you to say was it sounds to me like you're running.

31:00But that's for you to know. But Rory and I interviewed Gavin Newsom when he was over in the Munich Security Conference. And he said, and I'm not convinced that he was telling the whole picture, he basically said his wife and his kids, they would get the only vote on this as whether he's going to run or not. Now, he's running, right? But with you, what are the factors that you're weighing up?

31:19Rahm Emanuel:Look, I mean, I've been a I've run six a bit or part of six national races, two for President Clinton, two for President Obama. And when I did it to take on the Republicans and Tom DeLay and get Nancy Pelosi to be speaker and took back the House after 12 years of being out. I've been in five national races. I have won them or been part of winning teams. And I've run my and put my name on the ballot six times and I'm six for six. So what I know about politics is, do you have the ideas to move this country forward and the strength? And what you're offering is that scratch the itch that's there for the American people.

31:58Rahm Emanuel:That's it. And B, your head, your heart, and your gut have to be aligned. And if they're not, you shouldn't do this because it's a brutal process. So where's your head, heart, and gut now? Okay, well, wait a second. I'm at a point when I first ran for Congress, my kids were five, four, and three. And then throughout my career, you know, when I ran for mayor, my three kids were high school, seventh grade, fifth grade. They're all through college now. Zach just finished being a Navy intel officer after UCLA. He's now a reservist in the Navy, and he's launched his career. My daughter, Alana, is also a Navy reservist, and she's going to graduate school for law and business degrees.

32:42Rahm Emanuel:And Leah, having left Princeton, is a consultant to the Pentagon on national security and climate change. So my real thing isn't about me. My thing is my family will support me. But they also know I have to think about not just myself, but them. And so it's kind of a different place. Now, my head, my heart, my gut, more aligned it is today than it was a year ago. But I'm under no illusion. This is just the flirtation period. Once you say yes, you guys and the colleagues of yours, this is pot shot time. So the question is, do you, is this what you want to do? And I don't, I never like in life saying woulda, coulda, shoulda.

33:25Okay, Rahm, Rory, quick break and then we're back for more.

33:32Rory Stewart:Welcome back. Welcome back to The Rest of Politics Leading with me, Rory Stewart. And me, Alistair Campbell. And we are with Rahm Emanuel. Let me ask you this. I mentioned that you work very, very closely for three presidents. Yeah. And you've talked about your own strengths and weaknesses. What did you see as their strengths and weaknesses? If you go through them one by one, Clinton, Obama, Biden.

33:50Rahm Emanuel:Let me zoom out and say something about having been a mayor and then in and out, when you add off all the time, eight years in and out of the Oval Office. It's true about being mayor, at least of a big city. The only decisions that get into the Oval Office, that get into the fifth floor of City Chicago, which would be also true about New York. If you're trying to do big things, I'm not talking big things, is bad and worse. And you have to have the judgment, the character, the inquisitiveness to distinguish between bad and worse. One point out of history in the United States, you had the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis.

34:30Rahm Emanuel:If history had been different and they'd been reversed, God knows where this would go. But Kennedy takes the Bay of Pigs, which is not a success, and is honest and learns something about himself, the people around him, and his capacity. There's other intervening, there's Vienna, there's other things that happen. And so you're going to, ready breaking news, if I ever ran and I was successful, I'm going to fail. Do I have the capacity to learn from it? Do I have the capacity to know who I trust and who I don't? whose judgment is important? And do I have the discipline to be inquisitive, etc.? Now, to both President Clinton and President Obama's, and they had different styles, etc., different temperaments.

35:14Rahm Emanuel:And I learned a lot from both of them. They were not scared to be challenged by people. And I wasn't scared to challenge them. There's an infamous story between President Obama and I on the difference between our health care or banking and financial reform, which goes first. They weren't scared to have smart people around, have thorough debates, sometimes to my impatience, way too long a debate. But they had those discussions and they had the ability to ask tough questions of themselves and the people around them. Because what happens, whether it's in the Oval Office, the Cabinet Room, etc., you don't get good and bad.

35:53Rahm Emanuel:You get bad and worse. And I'll give you an example from my Obama years. I wanted to do financial reform after the banking financial meltdown first. I thought the country needed to see the president fighting the bankers and fighting the insurance company executives who have caused 7 million Americans to lose their homes on a thing called liar loans. If you didn't start health care immediately, you are going to probably endanger the ability to get health care. and to do health care, the lesson out of Bill Clinton's tenure was the pharmaceutical, the health, hospitals, the insurance companies, the doctors, all the interests had to either be neutralized or on your side of the table rather than the other side of the table.

36:33Rahm Emanuel:That's the only way to get it done. Now, he picked. The good news is we had a thorough debate. I gave my two cents, went to work to get what he wanted done. In the end of the day, the American people got health care. If you had pre-existing conditions, you got for the first time in America the ability to have insurance. But we also got a tea party. So you've got to understand that in politics there isn't good and bad. There are tradeoffs between equities and losses. And every leader has to be able to know why they're doing what they're doing and then the strength to get it done. It's not good enough to have a good idea, but the incapacity.

37:14Rahm Emanuel:And it's not capacity just to have strength, but no knowledge of where you're taking the country and where you're leading it. And I also think they both shared one other thing. I think President Obama said it probably a little slightly more eloquently or rhetorically. You run your race. You hand off the baton and the next individual runs their race. and hopefully between the time you picked up the baton and you hand off the baton, you've picked up the pace and you've improved the competitiveness and the posture of your relay team.

37:51Rory Stewart:Rum, can I come in and...

37:53Rahm Emanuel:You can do whatever you want. It's your podcast. Thank you. That's very sweet.

37:55Rory Stewart:I really appreciate that. That's generous of you.

37:58Rahm Emanuel:I don't think I'll listen to you, but you can do whatever you want.

38:00Rory Stewart:You can pretend to listen or you could just... I can.

38:03Rahm Emanuel:Don't tell my wife that I did that. She doesn't think I'd do a very good job of that.

38:07Rory Stewart:um rum listen we felt when trump one came in in europe maybe this was an anomaly yeah and that america being able to turn away from its traditional allies and weaponize our dependency on the united states was something that was just happening once we didn't need to worry about it very much yeah trump comes back a second time and the whole world changes nobody's going to trust you yeah in the way they can again you can come in rum you can be president you can be like ah it's all over. Don't worry about it. We're all friends again. The post-world order is operating. We believe in the United Nations.

38:42Rory Stewart:You know, we're not going to wipe tariffs on you every time we feel like it. We're not going to weaponize the dollar. We're not going to exploit your dependence on us for defense and trade. So what happens? I mean, we basically feel at the moment as though we are an abused partner in a house owned by the United States. The United States saying to us, you can't afford to leave. You got to suck it up.

39:02Rahm Emanuel:Yeah. Well, let me say this. About six weeks ago, I write for the Wall Street Journal. I wrote a column of what I call a first draft of a new national security policy. Because one, having been in the Oval Office for eight years of my life, there's no reset button at the Resolute desk. You just don't go in and hit, oh, rule of law. Trust allies, alliances. If you think that, you're a fool. Two, you also don't appreciate the sentiment behind Prime Minister Carney's there's a rupture. You don't just walk around squeezing super glue on this broken pottery. It's too stupid. So you have to rethink and reevaluate.

39:46Rahm Emanuel:And this is a generational battle because you're going to approach next time with buyer's remorse from last time. Now, do I believe that alliances are a strength of the United States? 100%. Do I actually think Russia, China, North Korea, Iran are trying to harm us? 100%. And when I say us, I mean us. In the big capital U, us, not just the United States. We're the target of it. You guys are also the target of it. Not just Great Britain, but Europe and our Asian allies. So I look at this and I said, there are four instruments of your national security. These are the tools in the toolbox, not the toolbox.

40:29There's military power, economic statecraft, political persuasion, and cultural attraction.

40:38Rahm Emanuel:Every region of the world, we have to assemble those four things into a different order of prioritization. As it relates to Europe, not limited to, but these are my first three things that I would put front and center. One, if everything west of the Rhine River from American troops in NATO, if it's not nailed down and you can't describe essential, move it east into Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Czech. And I would challenge the rest of Europe. Follow suit. And whatever, in Belgium, at headquarters, 10%. Cut it. Move it to the front line. as an active deterrence saying to Europe, our allies, we are going to be part of a rebooted deterrence.

41:25Rahm Emanuel:Second, NATO needs to promulgate a set of real rules and guidances that communicate to the Russians, we're done with these gray zone attacks. If you do this, it's Article 5. Or if we do this, here's what happens. Third, forget tariffs and forget what we've done on the economic state graph. Here are the supply chain choke points we know of that affect all of us. Here are the emerging technologies from quantum computing to fusion to life sciences, da-da-da-da-da. And that's an economic agreement to work together on ameliorating the known and future supply chain choke points. And these are the technologies that are going to keep the Western world in a dominant position.

42:11Rahm Emanuel:Your universities, our universities are prominent and we're in a scientific, technological cold war with China and we want you to be part of muscling up. Now, there's other pieces to it, but those are my top three. And I think if we showed that, executed on it, and showed respect, you're not going to snap back in because you're always going to be jaundiced. You should be. But I believe in the alliances and then you have to have a set of actions that reinforce on that philosophy and et cetera, and we will hopefully earn, again, strength in the alliance. Now, two things I would say I would add to my position on this.

42:52One, I don't want to go through, you guys can say what we did bad.

42:57Rahm Emanuel:You know, the truth is, how many times over 20 years did we say, get the 2 % of GDP to defense? And how many times, basically, the European NATO countries, outside of those on the eastern side, ignore it. So while you can say, okay, you did this Trump. So I'm not interested in doing, we all screwed up in the past. We told you not to get dependent on Russian oil and gas. You didn't listen. Do you want to sit here? I don't want to debate the past. Both, all of us come with the culpability. I want to talk about the future. And what do we got to do? And what do we got to invest in? And what do we got to be a part of?

43:28Rahm Emanuel:The truth is, European countries, we're freeloading. The truth of the matter is, alliances are also important. They're good for America.

43:36Rory Stewart:And I'm sorry, I don't really follow this. What is the connection? What's the connection between the fact that Europe didn't spend enough on defense and was too reliant on Russian gas and America thinking it can threaten to threaten to take Greenland, intervene in Iran without consulting with us? What's all this got to do with it?

43:53Rahm Emanuel:Well, because your comment was about Donald Trump and what's wrong with America.

44:00Rahm Emanuel:My point is both sides have a culpability of what happened in the past. If I decide to run, throw my hat in, and I get through the primary and general election, you said, okay, what would you do? And you know that Europe and the United States, mainly Europe, is going to be pretty cynical about our politics, etc. So my attempt was to lay out a prospective agenda, A, and B, also appreciate the fact that, yes, President Trump has his challenges. He likes to punch down and suck up, as I like to say. When it comes to Putin and Xi, he wants to be admired by them as it relates to Great Britain, France, or Germany, or Canada.

44:42Rahm Emanuel:He likes to punch down. We have to get past that and set up an agenda that I think starts to rebuild the relationship. I do believe while you were critical of President Trump, and trust me, I'm also critical of President Trump, Europe has some culpability in the last 20 to 30 years that also weakened NATO to the point that Emmanuel Macron eight years ago called it a paper tiger. I don't disagree with you about the European NATO spending point. I think what we find particularly confusing at the moment is the fact that you just mentioned that Trump must be admired by Xi and by Putin. It's very hard to escape the notion that Trump is actually on Putin's side when it comes to Ukraine.

45:27You mentioned the troops west or east of the right. When J.D. Vance says that the thing he's proudest of is stopping American funding, he's basically saying, I'm supporting Russia and I don't mind that they've taken sovereign territory and they're killing kids and bombing hospitals and all the rest of it. And so I actually would be hopeful if Trump and Vance, let's say Vance disappeared with Trump, that something maybe Democrat would come better and the cynicism could be worn down fairly quickly. But from your vantage point, what are we to make of an American president who, as per just recently, had a phone call with Putin, comes off the phone and says, I'm thinking of pulling the American troops out of Germany.

46:07Why did he say that? Because Putin asked him to. I'm not for Donald Trump.

46:13Rahm Emanuel:I don't think I need to say that. I know that. I know that. Okay. And I don't think his strategic actions are in America's self-interest, let alone its national security interest. No. I think, as I said, he punches down, doesn't realize the value of allies, expressed in the Strait of Hormuz, which is that you didn't come to our defense, well, you didn't consult. And more importantly, having spent a year and a half degrading people and punching down on them doesn't make him really want to forthcome and be stretched. And do I think he is both in awe and appreciate and admire President Putin? Yes, I do.

46:50Rahm Emanuel:And I think he does it for all the wrong reasons because he loves the fact that President Putin got wealthy in this job as President Trump has gotten wealthy in this job. and sees power in the same way. He's jealous of him. And then to put the two questions that both of you have posed to me together, my point is there's a lot of finger pointing going on. I don't agree with Donald Trump's approach and I don't agree with President Biden saying America's back. We all have new challenges. NATO has to be modernized. The EU and America's economic statecraft has to be modernized. Our understanding of the challenges around the world have to be modernized and we have to embark on a joint effort.

47:31Rahm Emanuel:Do I think you're going to turn around and say we're going to follow America today because Donald Trump is gone and a Democratic president, whether it's me or somebody else? No. So my vote is here's the agenda that gives you trust and confidence that if we embark on this, I appreciate that you have a real threat called the Russian bear. And we not only appreciate it, we think it's a threat, which is here's how we're going to activate our deterrence on the economic front, the political front, the military front. Because you need to, the one thing Ukraine, there's a lot of things Ukraine showed, but one of the most important things, and I'm writing my new piece for the Wall Street Journal on this, America set up militarily to fight two wars simultaneously.

48:14Rahm Emanuel:Post-Ukraine, Russia, post-Iran, America has to actually be in a position to fight two different types of war. simultaneously. Neither Ukraine or Iran have a Navy and they both control their waterway. That tells you everything you need to know about the future. And that means, okay, to NATO and everybody that's part of this, not just what amount of money you're spending, how do you spend it? How do we deal with gray zone attacks? How do we have active deterrence? How do we have a conventional, unconventional military? And in that process of working together, consulting together, training together doing strategic thinking together we will be renew their friendship

48:53Rory Stewart:in the alliance rum on ai what what sort of effects do you expect over the next five years

49:00Rahm Emanuel:feel like i should go back to the swimming pool listen it'd be worse if you're president it'd be a lot worse if you're president well let me say this if i was president i wouldn't be doing this interview you might be you might be that's true that's true you never know when you need it

49:15Rory Stewart:hope you remember one day okay what's it going to mean for jobs in the u.s what's it going to mean for productivity in the u.s what's it going to mean for american power in the world how's it going to change the world in the next five ten years you know i i have consulted with

49:29Rahm Emanuel:leaders of ai dario sam holman everybody i've come to the inclusion they don't know not because they haven't thought about it. But there isn't just a glass half full and a glass half empty. It's both. It's not one or the other. And it's going to be revolutionary. Well, we have to make sure what I call is democratizing AI. You just can't have five bros who are all taxing each other in a court case right now decide for everybody else and get all the upside and everybody else gets the downside and the downdraft. That's the lesson of China. And that's the lesson of the internet. Not happening. Now, for us in the United States, which I also think is true for Great Britain and the rest of Europe, our government set up, we issue a regulation, and we wait 25 years to see the result.

50:19Rahm Emanuel:That's not going to work. We're going to have a total change. You're going to need a new board made up of industry, made up of academia, made up of both Democrat, Republicans, and House and Senate, and then made up of what I would call more than just business, but also consumers or citizens that actively is making regulations and oversight in real time with the technology. I don't want to live in a world and this world won't, the political system won't accept it, that one CEO decides not to produce and distribute a product because he's worried. I'm thinking of Dario and Mythos from Anthropik of the consequences.

50:58Rahm Emanuel:That should have been a board that made that decision. And it was so much of a bell ringer that the Federal Reserve and the Secretary of Treasurer told the financial system, you guys got to get on top of this. So I'm not living in a world where one CEO, and I appreciate that Dario acted with some ethical guidance here. What if they were trying to, in the battle between Anthropic and OpenAI, given they all are trying to do up each other, What if they decided to release it because it was going to be important for the IPO, but yet unleash a cyber capacity and an attack capacity that would bring our health care, our financial and our economic system totally grounded to the whole?

51:40Rahm Emanuel:So you need a board set up by the president with all the representatives that is making decisions, not one regulation, pause, wait 30 years, see result. Decisions in real time that give guidance. Now, I do think we're in a competitiveness with China, but I also think it's an opportunity because China's scared of this, of collaboration and cooperation. I don't think it's either or either. I think we're competitors and we need cooperation, collaboration. I think the idea that you're going to say no to everything is also unacceptable. So we have to find a way through policy and government that we have one national and slash international type of working but one national set of rules and regulations made in real time and not made for the benefit of just four or five wealthy individuals who are as far as i can tell trying to kill each other this has to be a technology that you actively regulate that works for more people in real time ram my um final question if i can you you as i said in the introduction you spent uh well rory will probably have three more final ones but it's my final one for now okay i can have another final one then maybe a couple more but anyway this is my final question it relates to your time as as ambassador yeah you said in one of the interviews i read i read that you said you learned more about america in three years in japan than you expected to what did you learn about america and what did you learn about china two nice small questions for you.

53:13Rahm Emanuel:Yeah, I appreciate final thoughts for the next three hours. Look, I said, I wrote this piece that I learned a tremendous amount about Japan, I learned a tremendous amount, I laid out what I learned about the Indo-Pacific and China specifically in it, but being 8 ,000 miles away from America and 12 hours away, I had a distance that gave me some perspective of both our, you know, to quote the movie, the good, the bad, and the ugly. Let me sum it up this way. because this is like a 20-hour discussion. Nothing China does scares me. It's what America's not doing that scares me. China does not decide whether we're complacent as a country that 50 % of our kids cannot read at grade level, a 30-year level.

53:59Rahm Emanuel:That's on us. And if you think you're getting from here to there with 50 % of your kids not reading at grade level, let me just give you one comment. Kids drop out of college in third grade. You're not going to take on a country that's three times your size and population with only 50 % of your kids reading at grade level. China does not decide whether, like our president, we cut the funding for the National Institute of Health, the National Science Foundation at DARPA. Going back to Ben Franklin, this country has been on the cutting edge of science and technology, which is why I said a 10 % tax on predictive markets, online gambling, And the$50 billion in the year goes into additional funding for National Institute of Health, National Science Foundation, and our defense to new technologies.

54:44Rahm Emanuel:I want to win the war of science and technology in the future. And I want Europe to be part of that. Third, China doesn't decide whether we put all our eggs in fossil fuel. They did all the above of President Obama's strategy. We're the ones that abandoned it. I want to modernize our distribution, transmission, and our energy sources. not just around new energy, although I believe that's a promising thing. You have a 21st century energy and digital infrastructure, then the 21st century economy can prosper. It's now operating on the 20th century. And so my look at this was, we have divisions. We have a president who never misses a day to exacerbate those divisions.

55:29Rahm Emanuel:Xi's top political philosopher spends years in the United States, and it comes away and it's one lesson is America is hopelessly divided. So when you said what I learned about America, nothing that meets our challenges is if we have a purpose, a singularity, a focus and start to invest in our future and more importantly invest in the people that will make and populate that future. Beijing, game on, let's go. I'm ready. But if we don't and we spend our time fighting each other, thinking our politics is nothing but the Game of Thrones, and Braveheart, and we sit here and decide to cut our science and technological advantage, decide to declare wars on our universities as part of the cultural war that the president's brought on, then we're going to basically be living on fumes that will come to an end.

56:21Rahm Emanuel:Now, I happen to think China is a real threat. I happen to think what we developed when the United States, Japan, and Korea, which I was prominent in, a coalition that was a good day for America, a good day for our allies, and a really bad day for China. Because their entire strategy is built on Korea, Japan, and the United States never getting on the same page. And we push that with the Quad. We push that with AUKUS. We push that theory with the United States, Japan, and the Philippines. Isolate the isolator. They are trying to dunk our heads in the toilet. They do engage in intellectual property theft.

56:56Rahm Emanuel:They do engage in active cyber attacks on the United States infrastructure. You know, as we joke, paranoid people have enemies too, you know, so they are trying to do us harm. This president loves Xi. I don't love Xi. I don't hate Xi, but I'm not in admiration of him. He doesn't have a win-win. China has a theory. Their theory is everybody will be dependent on us and we will be independent of everybody else. We have a different theory. And the unfortunate is we have a president of the United States who wants to adopt the same theory that Xi has when it comes to allies, when it comes to economic impact.

57:31So I believe America has wasted 12 years trying to recreate a past that's not coming back,

57:38Rahm Emanuel:that 2028 will be the first election about the future. I'm going to, if I decide to do this, lay out a vision of that future. We don't have a person to waste or a community to overlook, which we did in the past. And I am not complacent about 50 % of our kids not able to read at the grade level. I am not complacent for the fact that we've decided only one energy source. It is a strategic asset. America has a lot of capacities and a lot of capabilities to leapfrog China. I am not happy that we have a president of the United States and a Congress complicit with cutting our scientific and technological advantages.

58:14Rahm Emanuel:So those are the kind of things. I could go on for hours on this, but I think you get the flavor. We get the flavor. Thank you.

58:20Rory Stewart:Thank you very, very much. Thank you for your time. We really, really appreciate it. Thanks, guys. And you appreciate that you and Alistair have many, many things in common, but swimming is one of them.

58:30Rahm Emanuel:All right. Well, you're not as, so you don't know this. You didn't ask this. So when I was 17, I almost died. And I was in the hospital for seven weeks. And I had five blood infections, two bone infections, and gangrene. And first 96 hours, 72 hours was touch and go. I had 105 plus fever. And three of my different roommates over those seven weeks died. And the doctor said, if it wasn't for your physical condition, you'd have been a goner. And then I become neurotic about it. Not only my exes, my wife would say neurotic about everything, but I was never going to let a day go to waste. But more importantly, so by way of example, I did one hour of weights today, swam a mile.

59:16Rahm Emanuel:And for lunch, I will go do one hour yoga. But it's like, now it helps me balance stress. but most importantly it comes out of this impetus where I almost, having almost died, I appreciated life a lot better. Great.

59:30Rory Stewart:Well, great to hear from you. And thank you again. Lovely to see you. Okay, guys. Thank you again.

59:34Rahm Emanuel:And I want you to know this. Here's the deal. Here's the deal we'll have. Yeah. If I decide to jump into the deep end of the pool and if I'm lucky enough to win the confidence of the Democratic primary voters, my first foreign interview will be with you. Okay? Oh, thank you. That's what we like to hear.

59:50Rory Stewart:That's what we like to hear. We'll hold you to it. All right, guys. Thank you. I promise not to be broken. Thank you. All right. Bye bye. You got it.

1:00:01So Rory, do you reckon he's got it? One, do you think he's running? And two, do you think he's got what it takes? One to get the nomination and two to get the people?

1:00:11Rory Stewart:He's definitely running. And it was a charming final move to try to stop me doing my normal being rude to our guests by saying that he's going to give us the first foreign interview when he wins the nomination. Listen, I've got my own prejudices about him, but you're a much more experienced person about political communication. So give me a sense what your gut instinct is. How does he compare to Gavin Newsom, Sarah McBride? I mean, any of the other Democrats that we've interviewed recently, what do you think about his, or indeed Clinton or Obama? What do you think about his raw political skills?

1:00:43First of all, what are your prejudices?

1:00:45Rory Stewart:It'll get onto, you know, I'll start grumbling about adjectives. I'll start grumbling about certain kinds of communication i'll start grumbling about sense of humor and various other things but anyway look listen put me aside i'm not trying to i'm not trying to preempt this um i i said to him beforehand that he said he thought i needed to get out more after i had my morning swim this morning i went to his school and then i came back and for the last three hours i've just been listening to a few podcast interviews that he's done and quite a lot of the things that he said word for word were things that i'd heard this morning i've got nothing i don't have a problem i'm i'm the mr message discipline guy but i think my sense of him at the moment i think he's running but i think as he's deciding to make the final leap into saying i'm going for it which is such a big thing to do because you know you're talking about raising ridiculous amounts of money you're talking about billions of dollars now billions of dollars to go the whole way yeah and you're talking about incredible stress and all that stuff so but i think he is running and i think what he's doing is testing for himself a set of arguments that he's going to use.

1:01:48I wouldn't be surprised, for example, if this interview and other interviews are put through a kind of pretty rigorous focus group machinery that basically says, yeah, they really like the fact that you don't like TikTok. You don't see yourself as the TikTok guy. He clearly wants to make education a big thing. I think, look, we're living in a world where Donald Trump has become president twice, including after proving himself to be utterly useless, utterly corrupt, and a threat to democracy. So you can't rule anything in or out. Let's say you mentioned Clinton. I said to him, you know, what are the strengths and weaknesses of Clinton, Obama, Biden?

1:02:24I got the feeling he didn't want to say too much about Biden, because I think he basically felt Biden should have gone a lot earlier than he did. But Clinton and Obama, in their own different ways, are truly exceptional political figures. But you asked about communication, Clinton and Obama. Obama's got one of the most beautiful voices in the world. He's got an incredible use of language, his lyricism, the values that come through it. And I would argue that Clinton as well is an amazing communicator. Could I see Rahm Emanuel on that level? No, I don't think so. Could I see him on a level that he wins a primary?

1:02:57Yeah. Could I see him on a level that he wins an election? And he was very proud of his own record in terms of winning campaigns but it's always i think it's always particularly hard for me i mean i know he's been an elected politician twice but i guess my consciousness of him is very much more as the advisor role um and and so i'd be i'd be i'd be jury out but jury leaning towards positive and i definitely think he's going to run yeah i mean

1:03:24Rory Stewart:it's an interesting thing isn't it i mean i wonder what the equivalent is it's a bit like jonathan Powell suddenly deciding to run to be prime minister or something i mean i guess there's a little there are differences i can tell you i can tell you that now rory that is not gonna happen that is definitely not gonna happen it's not gonna happen and there might might be a reason why it wouldn't happen um the um but i'm afraid part of the problem for me uh is and i you know i came to it you know i i've met him a couple of times i went to chicago as a minister when he was the mayor. I'm quite close to people in Chicago who are close to his campaign.

1:04:00Rory Stewart:So I've always been very intrigued by him. And there was a lot about his education policy that I liked, and you probably wouldn't have liked. I mean, you probably would have felt it felt quite kind of Gove-like the way that he did his education reforms in Chicago. I'm afraid though, even without having spent three hours listening to the interviews, I'm afraid a lot of the lines did feel a bit as though they had been used in interviews before. And one of the skills of a politician, which I think Clinton and Obama have, and even Trump has, is their skill is they may well be repeating what they said before, but it doesn't sound like they're repeating what they said before.

1:04:36Rory Stewart:Maybe that's part of the trick. The tone of voice, the lyricism makes it seem as though they're freshly engaging. I also think in a world that is about attention, I wonder whether he's going to hold attention. I wonder what those focus groups will say. I mean, yeah, there were very effective lines of course there are and he's worked out you know strengths weaknesses but gavin use some would have been much funnier and more self-deprecating when you asked about weaknesses i mean crazily so he would have said well okay i was dyslexic i was drunk or i'm a disaster i don't even know where to start with my weaknesses instead of well if it's a weakness to care about detail you know this kind of stuff so i wonder i wonder i can't think of an American president really like that, probably since Truman.

1:05:21Rory Stewart:Very difficult to think of an American president communicating like that. Maybe, certainly Reagan wasn't anything like that. Clinton, Obama, George W. Bush, Trump. I mean, they, you know, love them or hate them, are, you know, big extrovert, quick on their feet, self-deprecating, highly humorous communicators. So I guess he's, but he probably would say, listening to that, that he's been underestimated all his life. He'd probably say, you know, a bit like Keir Starmer, that everybody's always said that about him, and yet he's made it. They probably said it when he ran to be a congressman. They probably said it when he went around to be Mayor of Chicago.

1:05:56He's also clearly trying to occupy

1:05:59Rory Stewart:the right of the Democratic Party, isn't he? Surprisingly, you know, some of that stuff about, well, you know, Europe's responsible too. And, you know, I'm obviously not a fan of President Trump, but you know, there's harm on both sides. I mean, it feels like somebody who, And that speech, I'm not about the bathrooms, I'm about the boardroom, I'm not the bathrooms, I'm about the classroom. He's trying to scoop up, I assume, the kind of soft Republican right in the center as well. And he's trying to be tough on national security and be the tough guy, isn't he? Well, I mentioned the 2006 midterms where he put together the strategy.

1:06:35A lot of it was about going out and finding candidates who were like in the military or police officers. And it was very much seen as a sort of, you know, kind of a pitch to the center. And I also think, I mean, interestingly, the interview he did with Tommy Vietro on Pod Save America, Tommy basically, I think, felt that Ram is misrepresenting how the Democrats fought the last election. The truth is, the reason why the trans issue became such a big issue was because the Republicans spent an absolute fortune saying that it was the Democrats' issue. And how do you deal with that? So Tommy's point was, look, we're talking about really vulnerable people that people like us should really care for when the right is weaponizing the issue to the extent that they are.

1:07:22And you're right. He's basically saying, no, I'm not going to fall into any of those traps that the Republicans are laying down for me. But it's interesting because, of course, at the moment, I think he's clearly testing the waters. He's finding out what people are saying, what people are thinking. look the truth is if you get the nomination let alone if you become the president you have the platform so you don't have to worry trump yes is a genius at the attention economy but you get the attention of economy just by dint of your your position i think where he sees himself in terms of his style of communication is as a very aggressive force and that is that isn't reagan in a way that isn't you know that isn't um it's not even clinton really it's definitely not obama

1:08:06Rory Stewart:so it is a it is it's not it's it's not that it's not yeah it's not the happy warrior which is since since since uh theodore roosevelt's meant to be the style it's not a great joyful optimistic hopeful yeah it's quite grim give me a fight i'll win it you know yeah he seemed he seems quite Quite Gordon Brown. He seemed to, he seemed to, I thought, I thought he was, yeah, I think he's, look, I think it's very interesting what he's doing at the moment. He's definitely testing it and he's giving himself a bit of time to test it. I would have, I tell you, tell you what, one more, one more thing I would have liked to see.

1:08:44Rory Stewart:Pronouns, semicolons. Cost of living. Oh yeah. Cost of living. I'd like more sense of the ordinary voter. Stories, people, encounters on the streets, sense of compassion, sense of how people are struggling, sense of how much the United States is actually, I'm afraid, a disgrace. I mean, it's not just that, you know, when asked about China, he said, people aren't graduating from high school with proper literacy rates. And of course, that's a disgrace. But the real disgrace in America, I would have thought, is homelessness, poverty, exclusion from health care, lives of real misery. I mean, you know, the European economies are a much worse situation than the American economies.

1:09:30Rory Stewart:But our extreme poor are not in the positions of some of the people that you can see in Mississippi or Flint, Michigan. So that surprised me as a Democrat. Yeah, but on that, he's probably thinking, though, with a couple of Brits, you know, they've got this podcast. You know, yeah, they seem nice guys and people seem to listen to him. But he's probably not thinking he's talking to an American audience. And I thought he felt... Oh, Adam! No? I think he... Well, put it this way. Well, I don't know. Quite a lot of those lines seem to be prepared for an American... It didn't seem as though he was, like, relaxing with a couple of foreigners.

1:10:01Rory Stewart:Quite a lot of those seem polished lines for an American audience. In the Infuse you watched, the three hours of intus you watched, did he... talk more about poverty in the United States? He did he did he talked a lot more about education a lot more about you know kids the system being rigged against the poor he talked a lot more about that I thought he I mean I don't know what he was expecting and you know I we did warn his team that you and I don't over prepare these things we kind of take the conversation wherever it goes so he probably thought he was he was I think he's a little bit surprised that we started off with sort of 10 minutes on the Middle East but I I actually found that in some ways one of the most interesting parts of the interview because he's a he's a very you know he's jewish middle name israel and he absolutely hates benjamin netanyahu there's no doubt about that whatsoever and he does have that feeling and i quite liked his notion of the 23 state solution um i've not seen him say that in any of the previous interviews by the way so but i think listen overall i think he's a he's a he's got a lot of experience he's got a lot of strength he clearly prides himself on being stroll he's going to go for it it's going to be a crowded field um he's i'd say he's in with a shot has him with a shot great well it was fun alistair it was fun and uh i'm not sure i'm voting for him in the primary but i don't get a vote anyway you're voting for gavin this thing stand i'm delighted we get an interview if he wins i mean that's terrific so that's he might not if he hears what you've just said he might not he might have sort of prayed that that could be the first promise he breaks.

1:11:27Rory Stewart:Well, that's usually the problem with my promise of slagging everybody off after the interview. All right. See you soon. Bye-bye. All right. Take care. Bye.

1:11:41Why did we really go to war with Iraq? And did Saddam Hussein really have weapons of mass

1:11:48Rory Stewart:destruction? I'm Gordon Carrera, national security journalist. And I'm David McCloskey, author and and former CIA analyst. We are the hosts of The Rest is Classified, and in our latest series, we are telling the true story of one of history's biggest intelligence failures, Iraq WMD. In 2003, the US and UK told the world that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, but they were wrong. This wasn't a simple lie. It was something far more complicated, far more interesting, and far more dangerous. Spies who believed their sources, politicians who wanted the public to believe in the threat, and a dictator who couldn't prove he'd already destroyed the weapons.

1:12:31In this series, we go deep inside the CIA and MI6,

1:12:35Rory Stewart:go into the rooms where decisions were made, and look at the sources who fabricated the intelligence that took us to war. The Iraq War reshaped the Middle East and permanently weakened public trust in governments and intelligence agencies, and its consequences are still playing out today. Plus, in a Declassified Club exclusive, we are joined by three people who are at the heart of the decision to go to war. Former head of MI6, Richard Deerlove, Tony Blair's former communications director, Alistair Campbell, and former acting head of the CIA, Michael Morell. So get the full story by listening to The Rest is Classified and subscribing to The Declassified Club wherever you get your podcasts.