57. The Man Behind Donald Trump

25:37out in their kind of, you know, think tank wildernesses, not in power, down in Florida, here in Washington. They've been, and we'll talk about this again, because Stephen Miller is a big part of this, but they've been preparing for victory. The Democrats were also preparing for victory, but they weren't preparing for defeat. There was no project going on in this city to think about what happens if Donald Trump wins again. Maybe it was because they were so horrified by the idea. Maybe it was because, and I'm told they genuinely did believe this, even on the day of the election. They genuinely believed they were going to win.

26:09But they didn't have a team sitting there in November thinking, OK, what are we going to do? So they've had two months to get themselves together. And the speed with which Donald Trump has come out of the gate has wrong footed them. Their own sense of shock that they lost has wrong footed them. Those who want to run in 2028 don't want to put their heads above the parapet at the moment. They're trying to figure out what's the right thing to say and how's the right way to say it. And so you're hearing very little from all of those people that we mentioned that could be potential successes to Joe Biden, from Gretchen Whitmer is not saying very much, Andy Beshear is not saying very much, Pritzker from Chicago is talking out.

26:46And I would say two moments have happened this week where I think we've seen the start of some sort of signal of life in the opposition. One was when Donald Trump flew to California and Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, was not meant to be on the runway. He was not invited, but he put himself there anyway. And there was a kind of rather awkward moment where Donald Trump wouldn't get off the plane and all the press pool, I'm told, was standing there by my friends in the reporting pool. And it just took way too long. And eventually, Gavin Newsom would not move. Donald Trump came down the steps and Gavin Newsom shook his hand and Donald Trump wanted to pull his hand back and Gavin Newsom would not let it go.

27:22And Gavin Newsom got what he wanted out of Donald Trump. He got the praise. He got the commitment to do things for California. So in a way, Gavin Newsom stood up to Donald Trump in that weird small moment. And then when Donald Trump cut all federal funding for grants and programs domestically around the country, which he did on Monday night in a very confused executive order from the White House, you saw on Tuesday, the Democrats in sync, hustle a press conference, go on TV shows, talking about how this was unconstitutional. So I think you saw a little flicker of it this week. And the reason you saw a little flicker, and we should run through this, is because Donald Trump is breaking the law.

28:06And what ways do you think, I've made a list of them, where do you think Donald Trump's breaking the law? Well, I mean, first of all, you can't freeze the spending. The spending is mandated in a separate article of the Constitution. It's voted in by the Congress. And so you don't have the unilateral power to stop the spending. So Congress passed a bill and Donald Trump just says, actually, no. Yeah, we're not going to disperse it. So again, for people outside the U.S., the Congress passes the bill, the appropriations goes in, they vote on the spending, and then the Treasury Department of the United States, which is under the control of the executive branch, is now supposed to disperse that spending.

28:48So tax revenues, borrowings go into Treasury, and then Treasury sends that money to the various places, whether it's foreign aid, whether it's Medicaid. Medicaid is there to help people below the age of 65 that are indigent, don't have their own money, a result of which they have to get help from the government. And Donald Trump has just decided unilaterally he's going to stop all the spending. Now, we have a judge that has stepped in, but he says it's a temporary step in because he wants the Congress to get organized and he wants to hear arguments on both sides as to why this would even be legal.

29:26So it's right there in the playbook though. So I guess the thing for me, which I'm befuddled by, okay, he said he wasn't going to do project. I do believe that people listen to Trump. I do believe they listen to him. I believe there's a psychological compulsion where he's saying something and people, okay, I want to believe that. I don't, Project 25 is not something I'm sanctioning and he takes people off foot when he goes ahead and does it. And by the way, catch the interaction with Gavin Newsom for a second. He's calling him new scum. Yeah. His press secretary, his 20 odd year old press secretary is calling him new scum as well.

30:04This stuff filters down. Right. Exactly. So the fish thinks from the head down and typically happens is you get a terrible leader and then the people that are beneath the leader go to an exponent of the terrible leader to try to impress the leader. That's what happened to Chris Christie when they shut down the George Washington Bridge here in 2012. But here's the situation. He's calling him new scum. Gavin's meeting him at the tarmac. What does Trump say to Gavin face to face? Caddy, did you hear what he said? It was on the mic. Oh, Gavin, you're a great guy, Gavin. You're a great guy. Because he is the classic, classic bully.

30:40He's a keyboard warrior with those little tiny fingers, you know, pressing the flat screen of his iPhone. He's a keyboard bully. But in Gavin's face, the only thing he can muster is, you're a great guy, Gavin. You're a great guy. I don't think our adversaries to the United States are not watching this and are not set up to handle him in terms of the way he acts and the overbite that he creates in our society and how they can frankly manipulate him. And so We only have 207 more weeks to go, Katty Kay. Okay, this is day nine of the Trump administration, part two. I mean, day nine, we've spoken about stopping the distribution of funds that were allocated by Congress.

31:27Illegal. He has overridden the ban on TikTok. Also illegal. He fired 17 inspector generals. These are the watchdogs that make sure that government departments are working according to the law, that they're not being corrupt. he got rid of 17 of them this is unprecedented you're meant to give a 30-day pause and in so i've come up i mean three cases where in the case of nine days donald trump has stepped over the bounds of the law and how is the supreme court this is my question is how is the supreme court if these get to the supreme court going to react to this because there are we know there are maximalists in terms of presidential power on the supreme court but in practice are they going to sanction a president who, within nine days, may have broken the law three times in the pursuit of his own presidential power, is this Supreme Court really going to say, okay, we're fine with that?

32:22Listen, it'd be very hard for them. You know, Justice Roberts, if you read his decisions, and he wrote the famous immunity decision, Amy Coney Barrett, very hard for these people who are originalists and are looking at the original intent of the Constitution and what the powers are. And they would all subscribe to what Justice Scalia once said, which is that every single person in Washington has to be a little powerless. That's what makes the system go. You know, I had lunch with him before he died and he was great. And he was eating pasta. I mean, I know you make fun of me sometimes for my Italian background.

33:01Only because one of us at seven o 'clock in the morning has a cup of coffee because they know how to make a cup of coffee and one of us doesn't. Before we went live, you said something very hurtful. I said, I don't have my coffee today. And you were like, oh, because nobody made it for you. You're so Italian. I mean, it hurt. It hurt. But let's go back to the actual conversation as I'm still stung by this. I'm still waiting for the coffee, by the way. But anyway. It is still waiting for somebody to make you a cup of coffee in your household. Exactly. Your poor wife. I love her. I'm an Italian mama's boy, but our viewers and listeners know that.

33:34But here's Scalia twirling the pasta. Red wine is going everywhere. You know, he was a great eater. I mean, if you were in his perimeter, he had to make sure you didn't get your arm bitten off while he was, you know, he was in Jabba the Hutt mode. But he says to me, Anthony, the most important part of this constitution, which has made America successful, are the checks and balances. Go look at the North Korean constitution. They have the same flowery language. Go look at the Russian constitution. Constitution, boy, do they have a big exposition on human rights and the value of human life. He said, but ultimately what makes this is that nobody in Washington is powerful enough to disrupt the system.

34:14And now here is Donald Trump trying to do that. So I do think the Supreme Court, many of which are acolytes of Antonin Scalia, I do think the rule against them. I mean, fundamentally, what makes the United States different from China or Russia? It's the fact that it has a reliable, solid, independent system of rule of law. That's why foreigners can come and do business here. That's why people can invest in this country. That's why you can set up a business and not have to worry about the fact that there will be corruption if you do so. I mean, it's why you can commit a crime and know that you'll get a fair hearing.

34:51And does it work perfectly? Of course it doesn't work perfectly. But it is America's system of rule of law that makes it exceptional. And in nine days, in three different ways, in three distinct areas, Donald Trump has said, okay, I'm the president. I'm above the rule of law. It's not how the system works. That is not what makes America a strong, stable democracy. I think that is such a great insight. And just want to expound upon it further. The people empower this government. It's not the government empowers the people. The people in the government, according to our founders, work for the people.

35:32It's not Putin's America where I'm working for Donald Trump and if Donald Trump doesn't like what I'm saying, he's going to hurt me or take my rights away or do things untoward to me. Do you see what I mean? But my buddies on Wall Street are calling me left and right and they're saying, whoa, I can't believe this happened And, whoa, I can't believe that happened. And I'll just finish on this note. It's, hey, fellas, you get the whole buffet table. You get your tax cut that you want. You get your pro-crypto legislation. But you do get tyrannical anarchy at the buffet. There's no a la carte meal with Donald Trump.

36:07You're getting everything, whether you like it or not. You're right. You can't pick and choose. The whole lot is happening right now. And some people are loving it. and Democrats are hoping that the country will wake up and see this and see that this is executive power run amok. And they're hoping that something, either the public or the courts or something else will stop Donald Trump. But at the moment, the White House is banking on the fact that you throw 500 ideas, it's like bits of spaghetti, you throw 500 proposals at the wall, and 400 of them will be shot down, but 100 of them will stick.

36:44And that the opposition just doesn't have the bandwidth to try and fight back. And Congress is not organized enough to fight back. The Republicans in Congress are too cowed. The Democrats in Congress seem too weak. The courts, a lot of the courts have judges that were put in by Donald Trump. A lot of them have judges put in by Joe Biden. So it may depend where it is. And the Supreme Court is in the White House's favor at the moment. But one other thing I would say is that I had a very interesting meeting with a whole bunch of very senior national security types, including somebody who had worked in the first Trump administration in a senior position.

37:18And they were painting a picture of we are in this moment where it really is a nexus of countries of Russia, China, Iran and North Korea working together. And there is a kind of power moment, a power balance moment between the United States and that nexus. And we've seen this week how much America and the American stock market was freaked out by the Chinese AI software that came out that was released. But in that power moment, the thing that America needs more than anything else is allies, allies, allies. That's how this senior defense official described it to me. And what America is doing at the moment is not encouraging to its allies, because allies are used to looking at America and saying that is a country with these norms and traditions and values and rule of law.

38:09And if we can't rely on that, do we start looking somewhere else? And I think that's what's happened this week. I think we should end it there and go to a break. I mean, it's so well said. And then take, what, a four-year holiday, the two of us? Maybe this break is going to last a lot longer than we thought because I'm kind of feeling done in after nine days. Let me tell you something. I can't even count the Scaramuccis left in this thing. I mean, it's just too many of them. Okay, we're going to take a break and come back and talk about Stephen Miller and immigration. We'll be right back.

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39:49Welcome back to The Rest is Politics US with Katty and Anthony. I'm going to say Anthony's name. Anthony has not got any coffee this morning, so he's feeling a little lethargic. He doesn't know how to plug in the coffee machine, guys, or actually how to filter the coffee or pour the coffee or perhaps even carry the coffee cup. You know, I mean, what you're saying stings, but the people that are listening— You were the one who said to me, you were the one who said to me, I said, you're so lucky you've got a cup of coffee. I said, yeah, I made a cup of coffee. It's early in the morning. I made a cup of coffee.

40:25And you said, oh, yeah, I don't know how to make a cup of coffee. You put yourself - And then you said, you're Italian man, Italian males. I really stung. But just so you know, you can start with all this, but the people listening in, if they had to make a prediction whether I had that skill set or not, 99 % of them would have said no. Okay. What do you want to talk about? Okay. We're going to talk about somebody who is not an Italian man. I don't know if he makes his own coffee or not. We're going to talk about Stephen Miller, who is the architect of much of what has been catching the media's attention this week, which is the deportation flights around the country.

41:06So Stephen Miller, I know you know him. I'll just fill people in a little bit on his background. Born in Santa Monica in the mid-1980s, he went to high school in Santa Monica where he ran the sort of class office in his high school, again, Santa Monica, super liberal area. He ran against weird things like students shouldn't have to pick up their trash because janitors were employed to do that. He's actually on tape saying that. He ran against rampant political correctness. He ran against all of the sort of colorful native festivals that were celebrated for the students that came from all over the world in his high school.

41:46He didn't like any of that. And basically, Stephen Miller today is kind of the same person that he was at 16 years old. And he found his way into Trump world because in 2006, he became a vocal defender of a group of Duke University lacrosse players who had been accused falsely, it later became clear, of rape. And there was a lot of outcry about these lacrosse players. They were being pilloried. And Stephen Miller stuck up for them and said it was absolutely appalling that they could be falsely accused. They turned out to be right. They had not raped this woman. and he became a celebrity. And it was at that point that he came to Washington, went and worked on Capitol Hill for Jeff Sessions, who of course was Donald Trump's first attorney general, and made his way into Trump world and became part of the Trump team.

42:39And his overriding ambition is to stop all illegal immigration into the United States, certainly. And I suspect with Stephen Miller because of things he said in the past, he would really like to stop most legal immigration into the United States as well. He does not buy the proposition that immigration makes America stronger. And he has spent the last four years having felt he was thwarted by the deep state in Donald Trump's first term. He has spent the last four years in a sort of a pseudo think tank, raising money, getting to know people in Congress, getting to know wealthy donors, and sifting through the American rulebook and all of the statutes around immigration to see exactly what they could do to implement his plan.

43:29And Stephen Miller is the reason that we have had this whirlwind first couple of weeks. I want to inject some personal anecdotes here because I think it'll add some color. I meet Stephen Miller in May of 2016, and I'm on the Trump plane with him. We're flying out to Albuquerque, New Mexico, and we have a conversation. And I said, well, how did you find your way to Donald Trump? And Stephen Miller was working for Jeff Sessions. And this is an important part of the story because Jeff Sessions was the first standing United States senator. He was a senator from Alabama. that endorsed and supported Donald Trump.

44:13And he brought him down to Alabama for a very big rally, and he signified his endorsement. When he got on the plane with Trump to talk about what Trump wanted to do, he said, oh, I have an aide. I have an acolyte that is a populist. I have an aide that's an acolyte that shares your views on immigration. Why don't you meet him? And may I suggest that he moves over to your campaign because you're at that time, Caddy, a little light and a little thin on policy. And so this is the wonder of Donald Trump. And this is something that people can never underestimate about him. He carried everybody to the first presidency.

44:56He was very thinly staffed. He didn't have typical campaign strategists, typical campaign policymakers. He didn't have, I mean, listen, I was a Wall Street guy offering him some communications help as an example. So it was a loosey goose pack of people, but the force of Donald Trump's personality carried them into the presidency. And what's interesting about Miller, he was there from the inception and he's very pure because these guys like the word purity, So let's use it. He has a purity about him as it relates to immigration, being offensive to non-white people, particularly non-white immigrants.

45:43And this is something Donald Trump enjoys. And so he is one of the few people who has had the 10 year standing relationship with Donald Trump. You really can't find that many people. oh, I was with Trump in 2016. Where are you now? Well, I'm in a foxhole. I'm in alcohol rehabilitation. I'm a former recovering drug addict. I'm dodging people who are trying to kill me because MAGA has put me under the crossfires. Right. I've just hired 26 people to be my security detail. There's very few people that have lasted this long. So you gave a great rendition of who he is, but I want to expound upon it and say the following.

46:22He has Trump's ear and he has Trump's hand, Katty Kay, he can tell Trump to sign something and Trump will just wantonly sign it because it's coming from the philosophy of Stephen Miller. So a couple of things that I think are interesting about Stephen Miller. One, you're right, Trump trusts him. And I think part of that I've heard is because he doesn't leak. I mean, Trump's Trump world leaks like a sieve. And Susie Wiles, the chief of staff, is trying to put a stop to that. But one person who has never leaked is Stephen Miller. Stephen Stephen Miller, even after January the 6th, when all other Republicans were kind of, where are the lifeboats out of here?

46:59How fast can you row me away from this train wreck? He was the one that was still going on television, saying that he thought that Donald Trump had done great things. And then the other question that I have for you is, do you think actually Stephen Miller is to the right of Donald Trump on immigration? And that there may be things that Stephen Miller ends up doing that could backfire in the sense that Donald Trump is not going to love it if the stock market tanks because suddenly there are no undocumented workers to work in the fields in the spring. to plant the fields. We're coming up for planting season.

47:41Farmers need a load of people to plant. They then will need a load of people to pick. If Stephen Miller really does manage to get 2 ,000 people deported a day, which is what he has gone on television this week and said his aim is, then that could have it with the neighbor market. Donald Trump's not going to love that. And he's also not going to love it as he did in the first term if we do start seeing pictures of kids leaving school and crying because their parents have been rounded up in one of these big roundups and they have no one to go home to. So Stephen Miller may not care about any of that.

48:15In fact, I suspect Stephen Miller doesn't care about any of that. This week he said, well, ideally we'll just have automation and then we won't even have to be having this conversation about people working in the fields. Obviously we're away from that. He wasn't really dealing with what we're going to do in the meantime, but that's his view is let's automate everything and then we don't have to have any undocumented workers at all. But could he end up getting Donald Trump into trouble if he does, as you said, I think purity is the right word, right? If he goes too pure? Well, I mean, you're bringing up so many interesting points.

48:47So let me just say this to you. I don't think you can be further to the right than Donald Trump, but I think Donald Trump is a better politician than Stephen Miller. So if it goes wrong, he'll blame Stephen Miller, he'll blame people around him. He'll pull back. And he's very good at that. Trump has figured out that he wrote a book called The Art of the Deal. But the real book that has to be written is The Art of the Lie. Because nobody lies like Donald Trump and nobody lies in a way that he can get away with it. He actually says it with such brimming confidence that you're like, oh, oh, okay, maybe it was Stephen Miller that wanted to deport all those people.

49:29Maybe it was Stephen Miller that wanted the kids cowering in the house where they're not going to school anymore and they're getting food drops from their family members that have green cards. Maybe it was just Stephen Miller, but it's not. It's Donald Trump. Donald Trump loves that stuff. Do you think he likes lying? Do you think Donald Trump enjoys lying and getting away with it? Yes, loves. That's what I was just, when you said that, He loves lying. I hadn't even thought about it before, but it just occurred to me that that might be something he would like getting away with. He loves the art of a lie.

50:01But here's the thing about Stephen Miller. Stephen Miller has got the Steve Bannon crazy without the Steve Bannon bombast. Okay. And trust me, because I know Trump. Okay. Hegseth is going to get himself in trouble. Vance is going to get himself in trouble. They're just a little bit too good on TV for Donald Trump that's going to take attention away from them. Miller looks like a robotic humanoid where they're about to unplug him. You know, like he's got some kind of Tesla neural link in his personality and he's rat tat tat tat tat, rat tat tat tat tat. And like Trump like, okay, yeah, he's irritating all the liberals.

50:40He's owning the liberals with the rat tat tat. But he looks like, you know, I don't know. He looks like a character from Beetlejuice. Like his head is partially shrunken. You know, I'm not trying to attack him personally like that, but I'm just saying I have no no joy for Stephen Miller. And I had more than one fight with Stephen Miller. Ooh, I want to know what the fight was about. Oh yeah. I got him on the phone. There was a policy guy that wanted to meet with him, was giving several million dollars to the campaign. And Stephen Miller brushed him off like it was a flake of dandruff on his shoulder, just brushed him off.

51:17And I got on the phone with him, I said, hey, we're not raising any money. Do you realize that? I mean, we did figure it out at the end to get the nickels and dimes off of Facebook and all the people that would run at the Capitol on January 26th. I said, but if you want these real Republican donors, you're going to have to spend some time with them. He blew the guy off. And so I got in his grill and I went up and down the side of his head and said, you better get in that meeting. Okay. And I don't know who the hell you think you are. I know you're like a young punk and you're a know-it-all, but we got to raise the money.

51:50otherwise we're not going to win. And he fell in line. And then when I got the job, he was very, very nice to me, almost to the point of a sequiousness because that's what happens with these types of bullies. That's Donald Trump on the tarmac. Oh, Gavin, you're such a good guy. But in the meantime, you're new scum when I get behind my iPhone. Yeah. So look, Miller's out there. He's going to cause a lot of consternation. Which is what he wants. And by the way, Anthony, news I've just heard in the last couple of days, Stephen Miller, who has lasted forever in Trump world, far longer than Anthony Scaramucci ever lasted.

52:33Somebody who may not be lasting very long is the National Security Advisor, Mike Waltz. Apparently, there has been a dispute in the White House about whether Mike Waltz tried to hire somebody who had worked for the former head of USAID, Samantha Power. That person may or may not have taken it out of their resume. Anyway, Mike Waltz got caught flat footed and somebody in the White House is out to get him and says has been saying to Trump, look, he's hiring all of these people who worked in the Biden administration. He is not a loyalist. He's just an old school, you know, lefty who likes foreign aid programs.

53:13I don't know if he said he's a lefty. But anyway, Mike Waltz, perhaps not for this parish for very long, which would leave Marco Rubio as, do you remember when we first had these nominations and Mike Waltz and Marco Rubio were the first ones who were appointed, who were told we were going to have? And they were the first names that were released. And everybody heaved a sigh of release and said, oh, this actually looks pretty normal. Well, if Mike Waltz goes as national security advisor, the speculation is that Rick Grinnell, who is a much more hard MAGA person, comes in. And that leaves Marco Rubio by himself.

53:48And Marco Rubio, I've also heard this from people who've been in these conversations and close to the conversations with him. He said one thing to people at the State Department during his confirmation hearings about what he was going to do. And he's doing something very different now. It doesn't look like he has the strength to stand up to Donald Trump. A lot of what is happening has happened up until now. It's not actually been very different from what happened under the Biden administration and what happened in the Obama administration. The numbers of people being deported has picked up in the last day or two, but for the first week, it was about the same.

54:22The way these people are restrained, which is getting a lot of attention, is exactly the same way I am told as was under the Biden administration. They have a five point retention system. They're restrained at the wrist. They're restrained with shackles at the feet. They're restrained at the waist. That is not new. A lot of people are making a lot out of that. The big difference is, as you're suggesting, they go and film this stuff. They get right wing conservative talk show hosts to be there when these people are being picked up. They filmed them being put onto the airplanes. Now, some of this may be they could say, well, it's a deterrence to other countries and to other migrants trying to cross the border.

54:58And some of it's just, you know, catnip for the MAGA base. They want to see these people in shackles and it proves that they're doing what they said. but actually some of the people that have been deported so far were actually people that were detained under the Biden administration so this some of this was happening it was happening under Barack Obama much more so than under Trump one and under Biden it was happening under Biden it happens people do get deported every single day from this country they just don't usually have a whole spectacle about it and the Trump administration does seem to have quotas for these field offices of the ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

55:38And it looks like they are looking to deport about 2000 people a day, which would be significantly more than the 315 a day that were being deported under Joe Biden. Just to kind of clarify, because I think everyone thinks, oh my God, America's gone crazy on the immigrations and deportations and this has never happened before. No, every president does this. They are ramping it up in a way that is exponential. And let's see, because we could start to have families being separated and kids not having anyone to come back home to. And the way they're making a show of it is what other countries are objecting to.

56:11And it looks like a sort of spectacle. And that in and of itself is unusual and pretty harsh. When you were growing up, Katty, and you were thinking about America, what were your thoughts about America in the mid 80s? What were your thoughts about America in the early 90s? America was cool in the mid 80s, right? I mean, America was the bulwark against communism. It was the country everybody looked up to. When we thought about nuclear attacks in Europe, it was America that was going to save us. But if I thought more about the countries, and I started to get to know it more in the 90s, it was this land that was made up of people from all over the world.

56:53When I moved here in the 90s, I moved here in 1996. You know the thing that struck me most, I moved here from Japan, one of the most homogenous countries in the world. I could not believe that I could walk down the street and hear all of these different languages and see all of these people that clearly came from different countries around the world. And I thought, wow, this is my kind of country. I mean, you know, I thought it was remarkable. Let me test your memory. Do you remember Camden Palace in London? It was North London. It was a dance club. You ever been there? No, I've never been there, but I do remember Camden Palace.

57:28Yes. Okay. All right. I remember the image of it. Okay. So I don't know if it's still there, but I was listening to Boy George songs there in the mid eighties. I was at the London School of Economics. I used to go with my buddies there. There were Brits there that would buy us drinks, come up to the bar and they say, let me buy a beer, let me buy an ale. And the conversation was thank God for America. Thank God that we have troop support. Thank God that we've got some muscularity as it relates to missile defense and thank God for America. And when I traveled in Europe, America was thought of as a country that was generally trying to get things right.

58:12Generally kind of, there was a kindness. There was a strength about America, but there was an undercurrent of like a warrior veteran humility. Eisenhower was a great warrior and a great organizer of the war, but he was a man that represented himself with some level of humility. And I'm watching what's happening today. And I do a lot of travel and I'm traveling now as a 60 year old, not as a 21 year old. So the conversation - So you're not going to Camden Palace anymore. I'm not going to Canada Palace anymore, but I am going into places where I have honest conversations with European business leaders, Arab business leaders, Jewish business leaders in Israel around the world.

58:58And America is stressing people out now. And here's the thing, Katty, and I think you know this, and I looked at this over the weekend. We had 4 % of the world's population in the mid-80s, about 25, 26 % of the world's output. Today, we have about 4 % of the world's population, 25 % or 26 % of the world's output. If you just step back for a second and thought of our policies, America kept its relative output. Think of the growth, think of the living standards, the improvements that have happened in the last 40 years around the world. And yet America, through its policies, its decision making, maintained its general level, and forgive me for saying it this bluntly, economic superiority, military superiority.

59:50And yet we have a guy in the White House that rails on America, dumps on America, and has half of the American people thinking that America has been taken advantage of by the rest of the world. Where great leaders in America would say, no, America is part of the world. Because of our economic strength and because of who we are, we need to be integrated with the rest of the world. Allies, allies, allies, right? As that general said to me. And a lot has happened this week, which has been head spinning for people watching. We're going to in our founding members question and answer session, we are going to talk more about the cut in US foreign aid, which has been dramatic.

1:00:33Two people in my own household have had stop work orders. My daughter, who was working on malaria research in West Africa, has immediately had to stop work on that malaria research. It's a program to see where malaria spikes. It's actually a program that Marco Rubio, when he was in his confirmation hearing, said malaria research and knowing where malaria strikes is incredibly important for the United States. She's had a stop work order. And the young Afghan woman who's been living with us for the last few years after she came out in the evacuation and was working to try and help young journalists in Afghanistan bring the world the news of what is happening in Afghanistan.

1:01:11she's had a stop work order as well so the ramifications of this are being felt very fast for people around the country but more importantly for the people in other countries who have been the recipients and i would argue that that does not help america because where america pulls back politics loves a vacuum anthony and somebody else drum roll who could that be will step in no no question. And that's how you create unnatural allies. We will be back on Sunday with that founding members question answer session. Do think of becoming a member. We have lots of fun content for you as well. Just sign up at the rest is politics us.com.

1:01:51But for this week, that's it. Another busy week. We've been wondering whether we should do extra episodes in this crazy time. Let us know if you think you'd like to hear more from us on a more frequent basis or just occasionally when something big happens. And we will continue in our mission to try and sort through what is signal and what is noise and what really matters and what really changes America and what is just the Donald Trump show. I'm going for my coffee, Katty Kay. Good. I'm glad somebody else is up in the household ready to make it for you. I can hear people. I can hear footsteps.

1:02:23Time for coffee. Excellent. Thanks for listening, guys. Thanks, guys. See you next week.